Digby's Hullabaloo Posts

Cancer Warning

I don’t have a lot of time today so I can’t get into the Plame story as much as I’d like. As I wrote on the issue back in July:

It would be very wrong of me to speculate wildly that the infamous smear operation of the South Carolina primary that is now working right in the White House “communications shop” could possibly be behind this (or more trivially but just as telling, behind the Drudge Report expose of the “Gay Canadian” reporter.)

But, just for the sake of conversation, it is interesting to remember what has happened in the past when the Bushies found themselves on the defensive. In this Salon article Jake Tapper notes the slimeball activities of certain Bush staffers and quotes a senior McCain advisor as saying about the Florida strategy, “When the going gets tough for Governor Bush, he turns to the darker side of our party. We saw that in South Carolina, and we see that today.”

I’m certain that these same people who now work extremely closely with George W. Bush and his advisors would never resort to such dishonorable and undignified behavior in the sacred office of the President of the United States. It’s merely a coincidence that the tactics are so very similar.

The people in Dan Bartlett’s shop are professional liars and smear artists. Bartlett, Eskew and Wilkinson, particularly, are political operatives who have been elevated to the very top of the administration’s foreign policy apparatus and have been deeply involved in the “selling” of the Iraq war. From a Newsweek web exclusive article September 18, 2002:

For starters there’s Deputy Communications Director Jim Wilkinson, 32, a fast-talking Texan who has become an unlikely but keen student of Islam. He recently got back from a trip to Morocco where he continued his study of Arabic (which he can now read and write pretty well).

It was Wilkinson who spearheaded the successful Afghan women’s campaign last year. A Naval Reserve officer, Wilkinson got his start working with Bush ally Texas Rep. Dick Armey. He’s the go-to guy when the White House needs information against its enemies.

In the last few weeks, he and his underlings have weeded through hundreds of pages of news clippings, U.N. resolutions and State Department reports to compile an arsenal of documents against Saddam Hussein. They released the first round last week: “Decade of Defiance and Deception” (a broken-U.N.-resolutions hit parade).

Then there’s Tucker Eskew, 41, a savvy South Carolinian, who will soon be named the director of the new Office of Global Communications, which will be formally launched this fall. Neither a Texan nor a lifelong Bushie, he earned his stripes during the Florida election mess by becoming the campaign’s tropical smooth-talker.

During the Afghan conflict, the White House sent Eskew to London, where he worked with British spin master Alastair Campbell on setting up the first version of an actual war “war room.” Campbell was an inspiration for Bill Clinton’s 24/7 rapid-response communications team.

[…]

The Band started, not coincidentally, right after the White House had to pull an op-ed by Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld that The Washington Post was planning to publish on Sunday, Sept. 8. The piece was an argument for preemptive strikes—President Bush’s new foreign-policy doctrine.

But that was not the message of the week as Bush planned to look more multilateral days later in front of the U.N.

Some members of the National Security Council staff raised the alarm, and the White House yanked the article. From that point on, the Band would coordinate.

They often include Mary Matalin, Tori Clarke and Richard Boucher (the mouth guards for Cheney, Rumsfeld and Secretary of State Colin Powell, respectively) on the daily conference calls.

This group is a foreign policy spin operation comprised of veterans of the dirtiest elements of the Bush 2000 campaign. It is the nexus of politics and policy on the Iraq war in the Bush administration.

I believe that Bartlett is one of the senior administration officials who dropped the dime on Plame. I don’t know who the other was, but it doesn’t really matter. They do not operate alone; they are entrenched within the hierarchy. These guys answer the highest reaches of the White House and the White House uses them for what they were hired to do. Lie, spin and intimidate on matters of national security.

There is a fast moving malignancy in the Bush White House. It metastisized from Campaign 2000 to Rove’s and Cheney’s office to the NSC and the political foreign policy spin operation. It is deadly.

Interestingly, this article also mentions that Bartlett and the band were in daily contact with Campbell as the dodgy dossier was being prepared … these fellows always seem to be around when clumsy lies are being told.

Simplism is as simplism does

The issue of Clark’s supposed flip-flop on the war is as Josh Marshall says part of the media’s apparent embrace of “simplism as the new integrity.” Clark made the mistake of speaking to political reporters in complex terms instead of bumper sticker slogans, which is akin to accidentally saying the F word in front of a group of 4 year olds — they don’t understand what you’re saying but you know they’re going to embarrass you by repeating it.

He went some way toward fixing that today in the debate by joking good-naturedly, “in my 9 days in politics I’ve learned never to answer a hypothetical question.”

As Franklin Foer points out in his article on the subject in TNR, Bush made a case that he needed the resolution to convince the UN that America was serious in wanting Saddam to “disarm.” Most people believed that Saddam had at least a usable cache of biological or chemical weapons — he certainly had acted as if he had something to hide. If you took Bush at his word, it appeared that he wanted to use the threat of military force to make Saddam allow inspectors back in under the imprimatur of the UN because he might let those weapons get into the hands of terrorists.

According to Foer:

[at the time] Tom Daschle argued, “I am not confident that they will not see it as a green light, which is why I admonished the administration to remember this is the first step.” Clark may be naïve for sharing this stance, and it may reveal him to be less of a dove than many liberals imagined, but it doesn’t make him a flip-flopper.

I’m not surprised that a former military man would fall into the camp of those who voted for the resolution. That camp consisted of 28 of the 50 Democrats in the Senate (including such right wingers as Tom Harkin and Chris Dodd) so it isn’t exactly an exotic position. And in the 50/50 Senate it was going to pass as long as Zell Miller and Joe Lieberman still had a breath in their bodies.

(I thought it was stupid and cynical for any Democrat who wasn’t in a tightly contested race in the south to take that position because I believed it would depress turnout in the mid-terms and we would lose the Senate — and I was right.)

I don’t trust Bush as far as I can throw him, so I can’t imagine voting to support any war he wants to wage unless it is in direct retaliation for attacking us first — like Afghanistan. Especially with Don Strangelove and Dick Razputin running the show. And, I think some of the safe seat presidential contenders made a bad political calculation that was obviously wrong. But I grant that it wasn’t an easy call for those who had to actually make it. And it most certainly wasn’t simple.

I wrote at the time that Bush would get credit for running the most courageous bluff in history if he had the guts to take yes for an answer and allow the inspections to run their course and keep Saddam on a leash. Bush had said, “If you want to keep the peace, you’ve got to have the authorization to use force,” and rather than tossing it off as the usual incoherent gibberish, many believed that this statement meant he was trying to force Saddam’s hand without actually invading.

But, neither the Senators nor General Clark had any idea how much George W. Bush was dying to shimmy into a skintight jumpsuit and prance around an aircraft carrier like a Chippendales dancer. Now they do.

Round-Heels

How much is it worth to Howard Fineman and Chris Matthews to maintain their prize spots as first ladies of the Bush harem?

It must be quite a lot. And, they do so love their jobs.

Fineman pretty much feels the Democrats are hardly worth talking about they’re so insignificant. And, Matthews managed to get the words Wesley Clark, stinky, Monica and Marion Barry all in one sentence. Tony Blankley belched something indiscipherable. And Lawrence O’Donnell tried to defend Clark’s specificity to derisive laughter and eye rolling all around.

Ralph Reed’s up next to provide the view from the left. Feel the magic.

Lord Saleton’s Edict

Hear ye, hear ye:

If you want to see the tricks of the right exposed, read Somerby. If you want to hear the tricks of the left exposed, listen to Limbaugh. But if you don’t want to get trapped inside either wing’s echo chamber, read Slate.

*sniff* Ooooh yes indeed. Listen to the rabble if you must. This Sommerby and this Limbaugh are two sides of the same dirty coin. They soil me with their equally coarse blind partisanship so that I cannot even bear to read or listen to them myself.

Take my advice. For a truly vapid and incomprehensible (yet edifyingly elitist) waste of time, do read His Grace’s fine paeons to the terminally passionless and intellectually banal.

Then have a bracing snifter of brandy and treat yourself to a good wank.

(I’ll Rip Your) Face-Off!

Lame, theatrical, embarrassing. But, you can’t help but love those battling Gabor sisters.

This is what the voters have to choose from in California. An arrogant Austrian prick, a typical GOP Nazi, a testy new age Greenie, a glib professional provacateur and Mr. Spacely.

Does everyone finally understand how Gray Davis won two elections?

Tiresome Hypocritical GOP Meme Of The Day

The press isn’t giving the whole story on Iraq. They are being biased as usual. The media only cares about violence. If it bleeds it leads. Shame, shame on them. Little schoolchildren are learning arithmetic. US soldiers are playing soccer with grateful Iraqis. Everything is going really well.

Don’t believe anything you see unless you see it on FoxNews.

Worn Out Saws

Michael Tomasky has an interesting read about this ridiculous whisper campaign about the evil Clintons being behind the Clark campaign. He points out the obvious truth that most Americans aren’t exactly frothing at the mouth about Clinton anymore, if they ever were. In fact, the entirely predictable knee jerk grab for the Clenis whenever things get dicey is getting almost funny.

However, he doesn’t mention the oft repeated observation that blaming the Clintons for everything from global warming to male pattern baldness usually gets some dollars flowing from the rubes. (Not that the greedy bastards need any more cash — it’s getting to the point where it might actually be easier for them to just buy every American a new car if they’ll vote for Junior than run a campaign.)

But, there is a small, vocal minority on the left who have always disliked Clinton and what they perceive as his creature, the DLC. Safire and the boys may be helping to stoke that little bonfire. Either that, or Safire is simply consumed with lust for Hillary — he’s completely insane on the subject.

I have had some serious strategic disagreements with the DLC this past year (and they need to enter the new millenium, anyway) but they are members of the team and I’m not pushing anybody off the bus as we’re heading into what is very likely to be another close election.

As for what the whole “evil Clinton cabal” thing actually accomplishes, I think Tomasky has it right. It is very, very tired. I can’t imagine that anybody but the most obsessed wing-nuts do anything but roll their eyes and yawn.

They need a new schtick. The France bashing really isn’t working, Osama and Saddam are probably holed up in Uzbekistan watching re-runs of “Mannix” on TVLand, and “liberals” have been reduced to a bunch of ineffectual, treasonous pussies. They have to find a new object for their loathing or the AM radio ratings are going to tank.

I wonder if those couple of arrests down in Gitmo might just portend the development of a new target.

Democracy DeLayed

For some reason I never hear the real reason the Texas redistricting plan is undemocratic. It’s not because they are redistricting just 2 years after it was done by a court. That’s not customary and if it’s practiced widely it’s going to throw the machinery of democracy for a loop. But, it’s not strictly undemocratic.

The reason this reprehensible ploy is undemocratic is because the reason that Republicans hold fewer congressional seats than their Republican majority would normally call for is because there are some Texas Republicans who split their ticket and vote for a Democratic representative.

I’m sure that DeLay has held guys like Martin Frost’s head in the toilet at the Capitol gym and threatened to cut of his “funding” if he didn’t switch to Republican, but it didn’t work. And, I’m sure they’ve done everything possible to get those rural Republicans to vote for someone else and that didn’t work either. Those Texans like their congressman and they don’t care that he is a Democrat.

These Democrats, as you might expect, are not exactly bleeding heart liberals and vote like republicans more often than not. DeLay wants to get rid of them purely for reasons of Party strength, not ideology.

So, he and Rove are doing an end run by redistributing the constituents who like these Democrats into uncohesive districts, many of which make no sense at all in terms of common concerns and affinity.

Basically, DeLay is using technical rules to deny members of his own party the right to have the congressman of their choice. That sure sounds undemocratic to me.

Here I Go Again

Here’s some rather obtuse analysis for you from TNR, which should know better:

We don’t entirely agree with the reasoning behind Dick Morris’s prediction of a Wesley Clark flame-out. But Morris does have a point when he says, “The Dean candidacy is the first creation of the Internet age. By contrast, Clark’s is perhaps the last of the media-created candidacies.”

A number of conservatives (and non-conservatives) have compared Clark to Ross Perot to foreshadow what they hope are the soon-to-be-exposed flaws in Clark’s candidacy–namely, that he’s a little short-tempered, nutty, and prone to conspiracy theories. But the real value in the analogy between Clark and Perot has less to do with the characterological flaws the men share than with what Morris rightly identifies as the media-driven nature of their campaigns.

If Dick Morris says it, you can be sure it’s utter bullshit and this one is a doozy.

Here are just a few of Dickie’s greatest hits:

“Eventually, France will cave to the U.S. position.” – On the Iraq/war alliance, New York Post, February 4, 2003

“Republican members of the Senate want their own person controlling the floor so they can have an independent voice … When they reconvene in January, Trent Lott will still be there for one good reason: The Republican senators don’t want him to go.” – New York Post, December 16, 2002

“(U)nless (GWB) starts this war on schedule in September … he’s going to lose Congress.” – Fox News Channel, Hannity & Colmes, August 5, 2002

“None, none.” – The Sean Hannity Show, May 13, 2002, in response to Sean asking if Dick has any doubt that Hillary Clinton will run for president in 2008

Yeah, he’s the fucking oracle of Delphi.

But his greater “point” (and that of TNR) is total nonsense as well. All campaigns are media driven campaigns.

The greatest political media creation is history is George W. Bush — not Ross Perot and not Wesley Clark. Karl Rove managed to get over 50 million people to vote for a brand name in an empty suit for president. He further managed to turn this ventriloquist dummy into someone whom over 60% of the people believe is a “strong leader.”

The Republican media operation managed the media so effectively during the last administration, with tabloid style manipulation and constant spoon-feeding of speculation and innuendo, that it created an environment in which the line between fact and fiction has narrowed to the point that our current president can lie blatantly about matters of life and death while the “press” meekly stands by and treats it as a purely partisan matter.

Politics IS the media. Rather than this election featuring “the last media campaign” I’m afraid we are really only seeing the beginning.

As I have said before, I agree that the internet is potentially a powerful organizing and communication tool. Lest people remain confused about the massive influence of the internet on ordinary Americans today, or the huge liberal movement it signifies, it would do well for them to read the PEW center report(pdf) on internet usage and attitudes on the Iraq war.

If you make the logical correlation between liberal politics, an anti-war position and internet usage, we are a long, long way from critical mass.

89% of all Americans reported that they get most their news from television. 87% of internet users report the same thing. In fact, only 17% of internet users reported that they get most of their news from the internet. 64% of those who got any of their news from the internet believed it was about the same as the news they got elsewhere. 76% said they got their news from American network sites, newspaper sites or US government sites. Only 18% reported that they regularly visited foreign and alternative sites.

6% said they got news from sites opposed to the war. 4% visited blogs.

In the days before the Iraq war, internet users supported the war by a 3 – 1 margin. They were more likely than non-internet users to think that the war was going well and that president Bush had made the right decision.

54% of internet users had said they sent or received patriotic e-mails or prayer requests with respect to the war. 10% received information from an organization opposed to the war. 5% communicated with an elected representative about the issue.

By the same token, while it seems terribly impressive that an estimated 70.1 million watched the first night of the Baghdad bombing on the eight major news networks: ABC, CBS, Fox, NBC, CNBC, CNN, Fox News Channel and MSNBC, it should be noted that the January 2001 Super Bowl attracted 79.5 million viewers.

Just the top 10 rated TV shows on prime time gain a weekly audience of about 200 million viewers, on average.

The fact is that most Americans are going to vote on the basis of what they see in the mainstream media and a large amount of that through advertising and quick cuts of news images. They are going to make a decision based less on specific issues and more on an emotional reaction to the candidate and the party. They are not going to be largely motivated by the internet, no matter how much we news junkies and bloggers would like to see that happen. That just isn’t the world most Americans live in.

None of this is to denigrate Dean’s accomplishment (or the draftClark people, for that matter.) And I see no reason why Dean cannot win a media campaign if he gets the nomination. His rolled-up-sleeves, straight talking approach and feisty willingness to speak truth to power is a very potent television image, if handled properly.

Because, let’s face it liberals — it’s not his stand on gun control or balancing the federal budget that gets you all excited about this guy either. It’s his attitude and personality that turns you on.

That’s what I’m talking about and that’s how campaigns are won and lost in this country nowadays. If more people watched the super bowl than the opening night of the war, I think it’s fair to say that we’re going to need to run a “media campaign” if we want to win this one.

Not even “Shock and Awe” could get as many viewers as the thrilling contest between Tampa Bay and New York — and that super bowl was the lowest rated since 1990.

They Remind Me Of My Maiden Aunt Sally

Thank you TBOGG for the link to the best laugh I’ve had in weeks:

Needles on the Beach’s Prick(s) of the week: Master Ben Shapiro and his cadre of sad little Bushie Jungen:

But the perpetual adolescent in me would say that if you’re a 17-year old (who’s been in the biz for a couple of years) who frequents airports and worries about the miniscule chance that a terrorist will board his plane and kill him – you are a fucking loser. Might as well give up now, punk. It’s the End of the World As We Know It (And I Feel Fine).

What a fucking pussy. We – that is, those of us who were adolescents from 1953 to 1991 – lived under a modulating, but ever-present threat that our lunatic, lazy or brain-damaged ‘leaders’ were going to end mankind with the touch of a button. Not an airliner. Not a few blocks of a city. The WHOLE FUCKING PLANET. Now that’s fear, baby. Knowing that ‘duck and cover’ would ensure that we were atomically fused to the underside of a desk, or that Reagan simply could have thought he was ringing the butler instead of ending life as we knew it – man, it was a bracing time.

Read it all. You’ll thank yourself.

* haha. Fixed freudian slip. Thanks p mac. Although it actually worked the other way too…