Digby's Hullabaloo Posts

Watch What You Say

Oh Gosh. You take a few days off and look what happens. Greg Easterbrook, one of those wonderful “reasonable” writers often held up as an example of what liberals should strive to be (conservative, apparently) reveals a lack of self awareness so huge that you wonder if he should be allowed to cross the street unassisted, General J.C.Christian Patriot turns out to be a real person and Rummy says we maybe, might, could win the WOT but it’ll probably mean that we have to create an entirely new war room … er… department because the pentagon is just too untidy.

The Easterbrook flap is interesting in the same way that the Limbaugh black quarterback flap was interesting. (And isn’t that similarity likely to be the reason that ESPN let Easterbrook go? Some sense of what’s good for one bigot is good for another?) I’m very impressed with all the testimonials from Easterbrook’s many friends in the political press and the editorial apologia in TNR this week could bring a tear to your eye. All of these people say they just couldn’t believe that old Greg meant what it sounded like and that it is completely out of character and that he needs an editor and that blogs are so frightfully slapdash and slipshod and my goodness people certainly do get upset over every little thing, don’t they?

But, these slapdash little weblogs can be quite revealing. I certainly have written some things that I wish I hadn’t and I’m sure I’m not alone. But, whatever it was, I know that it came from somewhere inside my fried and flaky head so it is my responsibility.

The question then is how to explain such a glaringly obvious, clichéd, anti-semitic remark as Easterbrooks’. He claimed it was a mistake and he’s sorry, which I don’t doubt. But, this kind of thing doesn’t just appear completely out of the blue and unrelated to anything we believe or think. The mind doesn’t work that way.

Easterbrook’s Tarantino movie rant was highly emotional, almost to the point of being irrational. (It certainly bore no relationship to any kind of reasonable cinematic critique or even an intelligent treatise on movie violence.) While he called Tarantino a “phony” and spared him no amount of snobbish disdain, he reserved his true ire for the allegedly money worshipping Jew who runs the parent company and the allegedly money worshipping Jew who runs the distribution company that released Tarantino’s allegedly artless film.

The thought and the idea came to him because on some level, when he got mad about Tarantino’s movie and he thought about who was responsible, something in him said … money worshipping Jews. He could have thought … rich white liberals. Or… decadent culture salesmen. Or, balding elitist fatcats. But he didn’t. Seeking to blame someone for a violent martial arts movie made by an Italian American starring a blond Buddhist, for some unknown reason, he just immediately thought of the “money worshipping Jews” involved and furiously admonished them in his little unfiltered forum before he had a chance to edit himself.

I don’t doubt that Easterbrook no more thinks he is an anti-semite than Rush thinks he is a racist. Most anti-semites and racists don’t think they are anti-semites and racists. Sometimes it comes out in anger, when they aren’t thinking clearly and they kind of clap their hands over their mouths like Easterbrook did and whisper, “did I say that?” Others think they are making reasonable observations and that those who object are being peculiarly sensitive. They search for justifications and usually claim victim status themselves at the hands of the PC police.

But, here’s the thing. When you get mad about something and the words “money worshipping” and “Jews” come immediately to mind, that’s anti-semitism. Period. When you see a black quarterback who’s not performing up to expectations and your interpretation, based upon no evidence whatsoever, is that the only reason he’s got his job is because of “social concern in the NFL ” and that “the media has been very desirous that a black quarterback do well, you’re a racist.

You thought it, you said it, you wrote it, you’re responsible for it.

The same thing applies to Jesus’ General and good ole Rummy, the man who makes Peggy almost as hot as her man Dutch.

I’m beginning to think that Stanley Kubrick and Terry Southern are God. What other explanation can there be for these two?

Poetic Justice

Uggabugga has one of his patented charts up showing how the unbelievable Evan Thomas Newsweek article frames the Rush pill popping story as the sad, sad story of a shy, retiring guy who’s just looking for love in all the wrong places. I couldn’t believe it either, and Quiddity very nicely lays it out in all it’s vomit inducing glory.

Thomas sets forth Rush’s excuse that he took these drugs for back pain as if it is a proven fact. But, he apparently never mentioned back pain to the housekeeper (although he did say his left ear was bothering him at one point) and the e-mails that are published don’t ever mention pain. He doesn’t say, “it takes more and more to ease the pain,” or “I need at least 30 a day to get relief.” What he says is “I want to go out with a bang, tee hee.” or “They obviously go longer when mixed with the little blues, which I really like.”

I simply can’t dredge up any compassion for this guy no matter how hard I try. Being revealed as a drug addict, one who illegally purchased drugs on the black market — many of which are obtained by stealing from people who really need the medication — is poetic justice.

He has never shown one ounce of sympathy for the misfortunes of anyone, always chalking up whatever problems people have with weakness of character or laziness or the liberal culture of decadence. I doubt if he has ever in his life thought, “there but for the grace of God go I,” always assuming that his success is attributable to his moral superiority, which also protects him from the vagaries that beset those whom he considered lesser beings.

This petty demagogue, who has done more than any single person to destroy the last vestiges of civil discourse in this country — this purveyor of lies who transformed the stupid, corrupt fringe of hate radio into a mass media phenomenon and brought it into mainstream thinking — this Goebbels of the modern, quasi-fascist Republican Party that now threatens to do to the country as a whole what it has done to our political system — this weak man, this immoral man deserves everything that’s happening to him.

It’s called karma.

Oh, and Jonah, please feel free to use this as an example of leftist hate speech and lack of compassion toward Rush. And use this one too, if you like (although it might undercut your argument just a tad if anyone happens to read the excerpts of Rush’s right wing hate speech toward old people who can’t afford their heart medications.)

Yo Atrios

Don’t give that extra money away. Spend it, save it or buy something for your wife who no doubt deserves to get something out of your blogging obsession. If she’s not happy, you’re not happy, then we’re not happy. You see, it’s really a selfish gesture, so you shouldn’t feel guilty.

Of course, now that you’re getting a fancy new laptop, we expect you to up your output from 20 hours a day to 22. You have no excuses. You can sleep when you’re dead.

Clarkism

Ray Teixeira analyses the gallup poll data and evaluates how Clark might appeal to some of the very people we need to win the election. (His site, btw, is invaluable and should be read with regularity by anybody interested in serious scholarly analysis.)

It tracks nicely with my instinctive feeling about the guy, so naturally I’m impressed.

The Demographics of Clarkism

In the latest Gallup poll, Wesley Clark once again is the top choice of Democratic registered voters around the nation. Clark garners 22 percent support, compared to Dean at 15 percent, Kerry and Lieberman at 12 percent and Gephardt at 10 percent.

These results are similar to an earlier Gallup poll of September 19-21, so Gallup was able to combine the data from the two polls and run demographic analyses of the different candidates’ bases of support. These analyses are quite revealing, especially when comparing Clark and Dean.

While Clark receives more support than Dean among both men and women, his margin over Dean among women is just 3 points (16 percent to 13 percent), but an impressive 12 points among men (29 percent to 17 percent). He also beats Dean in every region of the country, but especially in the south (25 percent to 8 percent). Also intriguing is how well he does among low income voters (less than $20,000), clobbering Dean by 26 percent to 5 percent. In fact, Clark bests Dean in every income group up to $75,000. Above $75,000, Dean edges Clark, 26 percent to 25 percent.

In terms of ideology, Dean beats Clark among liberals, 24 percent to 18 percent, but Clark wins moderates by 24 percent to 11 percent and conservatives by 23 percent to 7 percent. The general picture, then, is that Clark does especially well, relative to Dean, among the very groups where Democrats have been having the most problems. That suggests to DR that the emerging Clark candidacy deserves very serious consideration indeed.

And there are other reasons, too, of course. Like Clark’s ability to raise a large amount of money in a short time period. Or his increasing success in connecting with voters on the retail level. Or that he may be able to generate considerable support from blacks, the Democratic Party’s most loyal constituency. Or, counter-intuitively, the very thing that has led to so much criticism of Clark from his Democratic rivals: he’s not a “regular” Democrat. He says he voted for Nixon and Reagan. He only recently registered as a Democrat. He’s said nice things about Republicans in the past.

The fact of the matter is that in today’s anti-establishment, pro-outsider mood–witness the destruction of Gray Davis and election of Arnold Schwarzenegger–these are probably all good things to have on a Democratic candidate’s resume. Swing voters who are dissatisfied with Bush and therefore inclined to look closely at the Democratic candidate will not be put off by Clark’s partisan heterodoxy; on the contrary, it will make it easier for them to see the Democratic candidate as an agent of change, not of the Democratic party’s establishment (as, say, Gephardt or Kerry) or of the liberal faction of the party (Dean).

This last is big, particularly in the South. Clark being a “Manchurian Republican” is primary campaign hype. His narrative “journey” to the Democratic Party is a powerful invitation to many who have been brainwashed by the dittohead crapola but are feeling the cognitive dissonence of Republican triumphalism/failure. Combined with the natural affinity of the cavalier culture with a succesful military man, Clark is the best positioned to edge out Bush in a few critical southern swing states.

On a grander scale I think he can win because he’s got a look, a biography, a confidence and a story overall that serves as a metaphor for manly achievement and leadership — the current obsession of the entertainment zeitgeist. If we can’t get George Clooney or Michael Douglas to play the role, I’d say Wesley Clark has got the best chance of winning the hearts and minds of the giant studio audience we call the American public. And, as an extra added bonus, he can actually do the job.

Before everyone starts calling me a shallow-piece-of-shit-Clintonite-DLC-pig, please be advised that I’m a pissed off Democrat of the highest order, so Dean is da man for me as far as that’s concerned. I love what he’s saying and in a perfect world he’d be my guy. Indeed, according to the poll, he already is — he wins with liberals in Democratic states who make more than 75k a year (or used to …)

But, I am rather desperate that we keep these right wing zealots from doing any more harm and that means taking back the presidency in 2004 and immediately working on taking back the congress shortly thereafter. I believe that Clark has the best chance of doing that and these demographics illustrate why.

But, lest anyone think that I don’t care about substance, I do support Clark for one major substantive reason beyond what I think is his electability. He’s a rare foreign policy expert/intellectual with long military and diplomatic experience who’s willing to enter the public sphere and do it as a Democrat. His thinking on the subject is completely correct, in my view, and that is one area in which the president of the United States (as we are seeing) really wields power and must exert control. This guy has the goods on this subject over any candidate in the race. He could re-shape the relationsip of the US with the rest of the world during a very challenging period and finally put to rest the left-over GOP red-baiting about the Democrats at long last.

And, if people are worried about Clark being too inexperienced on domestic politics, they should take heart that this is his weak point. When it comes to domestic policy, I just have a feeling that the Democratic Party can provide more than enough expertise. As an institution, we’ve forgotten more about successful economics and social programs than the GOP has blond fascist pundettes. I don’t worry that he won’t get the right kind of advice.

And, unlike our current president, he’s actually smart enough to understand it and make a decision all by himself.

Inside Neocon Baseball

Pandagon’s Rules

Apparently, the proper way to have handled Zimmer lunging at Pedro Martinez would have been for the Red Sox to head into the Yankees bullpen at the beginning of the game before anyone had done anything and then throw Zimmer down. Even though they hadn’t threatened the Sox or Martinez to that point, their history with the Sox, as well as the clear and present danger Clemens had historically posed to hitters would have justified it. And if we find out that they weren’t actually planning to attack Martinez, well, it’s okay, because we’d have brought peace and prosperity to the New York Yankees.

Indeed

From The Great Minds Think Alike Files

Holy Codpiece, Batman

The Great Tom Tomorrow (who does it much better)

Via The Great Atrios

Can You Blame Me?

Matt thinks I’m a tad cynical. (Not that there’s anything wrong with that…)

Maybe, but I’m not the only one. Read this by Todd Gitlin.

… with the respect Americans have long paid to the most efficient hucksters, since P. T. Barnum, they admire him [Schwarzenegger] for the style with which he pulls the wool over their eyes.

For all that his supporters may think they’ve outfoxed politics as usual, Schwarzenegger is “smart” the way any conventional politician is “smart”: About his positions, he’s said next to nothing. California has snookered itself, thinking it’s defeated politics as usual. What it’s done is ditch a blah celebrity in favor of a wow celebrity.

And so, once again, the Democrats reaped the bitter harvest of their own pallor and incompetence. As governor, Davis droned. As lieutenant governor, Cruz Bustamante droned. As campaigners, they droned. Neither shone. Neither made himself lovable. They gave lousy spectacle. In a world of stargazers, they were third-magnitude stars. And so they discredited politics.

Thus did the self-made demagogue spin implausibility into victory. Give him this: He struck a blow at dreariness. He pulverized doubt. He proved himself the king of demolition as self-help. Life’s a movie, after all. Don’t like the government? Go out and blow up some stuff. Nothing is real.

Just remember, it isn’t only a “California problem.” It’s a national problem. And, it ain’t going away.

[Schwarzenegger] campaign officials now concede, preparations for his candidacy and especially for the remarkably successful strategy he would follow — avoiding the traditional press and going straight to the entertainment media with vague messages and movie-style sound bites — were laid as early as June, when they conducted a series of highly revealing focus groups.

The groups, put together in San Francisco and the conservative San Fernando Valley, almost unanimously described Gov. Gray Davis as indecisive, remote and beholden to special interests. Schwarzenegger was seen in a much more positive light; the participants were generally aware of the actor’s involvement with the Special Olympics and after school programs in California. They also expressed less interest in policies and more in “leadership” when asked what it took to govern.

The focus group findings gave birth to one of the most audacious media campaigns ever waged, in which the candidate made an end run around the establishment media — newspapers and the more serious television news shows — and used talk radio, entertainment shows and televised daily events to sell himself to “viewers” (as voters became known to some inside the Schwarzenegger campaign). He presented himself as an outsider who, though light on detailed policies, was decisive, optimistic and forward-looking.

[…]

The most important element to me was striking the balance between policy Arnold and celebrity Arnold,” said Dan Schnur, a Republican consultant who worked on Peter Ueberroth’s short-lived campaign. “Schwarzenegger made people comfortable with the idea that he could govern. The lesson is that substance matters, or at least the appearance of substance.”

In fact, Schwarzenegger sat down for more lengthy interviews with print journalists than critics believe, said Walsh — 13 in 9 weeks.

But many of the articles that appeared seemed to have been influenced by the television coverage, a number of experts said, with much of the emphasis placed on Schwarzenegger’s appearance and manner, rather than his comments on policy matters.

“What we were witnessing was a highly evolved version of a tendency already in place,” said Schell. “The power of the entertainment media eclipsed the serious media. Nobody seemed to notice.”

How about this:

David Gergen, director of the Center for Public Leadership at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, noted: “We sometimes don’t like to admit it, but acting is part of political leadership. Franklin Roosevelt once told Orson Welles that they were the two best actors in the country.” He said that Mr. Schwarzenegger “has a window to do things that few others would have, but it’ll close fast.”

[…]

Mr. Reagan was a consummate pragmatist, but he was guided by fixed views. It is not yet clear whether Mr. Schwarzenegger is, too, but he has so far pursued his career goals single-mindedly, while reinventing himself periodically.

When asked, before he ran for office, what kind of governor he would be, Mr. Reagan famously answered: “I don’t know. I’ve never played a governor before.”

By the end of his presidency, he would confess there had been times when he “wondered how you could do the job if you hadn’t been an actor.”

Or (save me) how about this:

The 20-year-old voted for the first time because “this year it seems like your vote counts.”

She went with the recall and was leaning toward Schwarzenegger “because he wasn’t a politician,” she said. “And I also really liked his wife.”

But at the last moment, Richardson switched her vote to Green Party candidate Peter Camejo.

Now maybe we can completely change American politics in the next 12 months by running a sincere and earnest campaign based upon the issues and good old fashioned grassroots campaigning. But after last week, I am more convinced than ever that we will lose huge if we try that.

I admit that I’m cynical about how the process works these days. But, I also think I’m realistic. I’d like the Democrats to wise up and save this country from the radical right wing that holds all institutional pwoer in the federal government right now. And that will not happen by spending the next year deluding ourselves that the people in this country vote on the basis of 12 point plans and “Dingell-Norwood” bills.

Most people think that politics is an interactive reality TV show. We’d better be prepared to put on a good show.

Let’s Roll

I have, at long last, added the following links to the blogroll. I’m sure that most of them are already regular stops. I urge you to check out those that may be new to you. They’re all good.

My list is in no particular order, as you can see. This means absolutely nothing except that I dread alphabetizing the whole damned thing.

Smirking Chimp

The Hamster

corrente

Steve Gilliard

Whiskey Bar

Left Coaster

War Liberal

Suburban Guerrilla

Open Source Politics

Tristero

Mark Kleiman

Mad Kane

Not Geniuses

Sasha Undercover

Crisis Papers

Easter Lemming

Bohemian Mama

Nitpicker

Prometheus 6

Crooked Timber

Take Back The Media

Pen-Elayne

Brief Intelligence

Book Notes

Update: I knew this would happen. I forgot some of the links I intended to include.

I’ll add them for awhile as I think of them:

Prometheus Speaks

longstoryshortpier

discourse.net (a law professor for our side)

hellblazer

Political Spann

Atrios is featuring an interesting Novak note (Via Cosmic Iguana) about CIA disgruntlement over the leak of Johnny “Mike” Spann’s name in the media in November 2001.

You do have to wonder if Novak ran his Plame story past the same CIA contacts who expressed such outrage over Spann. Why would they have such completely differing views on what should have been the same issue — unless his CIA sources are not very well informed and didn’t know Plame’s status. (Then again, maybe Novak is a lying piece of garbage and never bothered to check it out with the CIA, always a possibility, considering his political bias and habit of believing traitors when they tell him what he wants to hear.)

There was a difference between the Spann case and Plame, though — and not just because Spann was dead.

The CIA itself made the early determination that revealing Spann’s name wouldn’t compromise anyone in the field because of the kind of operative he was. This is from the NewsHour November 29, 2001:

TED GUP: I think Jim Risen is right in his read on this. I would caution that we not read too much into this disclosure. I don’t think that it represents a sudden break with tradition or policy at the agency, a sudden rush towards revelation and openness. I think that the reason that his identity could be revealed was not only because it was somewhat compromised by the media, because in the past others have been outed, so to speak, by the media in life and in death. And the agency has not owned up to it. But in this case, I think he was purely paramilitary in his functions, as opposed to the sort of clandestine case officer working in an embassy who has a long-running relationship with foreign nationals, running them as agents, getting intelligence and documents and such.

So in this case, exposing his identity, I think, did not run the risk of endangering foreign nationals who are who were reporting to him. I think he was in country a brief time. He had only been at the agency for two years, and so I think they could afford to disclose his identity without those other ramifications.

Larry Johnson, angry Novak critic on the Plame affair, was also a big critic of the administration’s admitting Spann’s CIA affiliation. His fear in that case, was that Spann’s family would be in danger from terrorists.

Here is the CIA’s official response to critics about the Spann revelation.

It is very interesting, though, that somebody leaked Spann’s identity to the media and proceeded to turn him into the first military hero of the WOT, replete with Arlighton burial. Tenet was right out front in the beatification, most people believing at the time that he was desperately trying to salvage the CIA’s tattered reputation after having failed to predict 9/11. We must remember that the Spann revelation took place only about 6 weeks after that day. The country was in a frenzy.

But looking back it sure reeks of the administration using the CIA for self-serving politics and PR — much the same as the Plame scandal, if less dark and sinister.

Perhaps the best defense at this point for any leaker, if caught, is to say that since the administration had been leaking the names of CIA operatives since November, 2001 they just didn’t realize that there was anything wrong with it. It has been SOP from the very beginning.

And A Little Child Rode His First Pony, Too

BAGHDAD (Reuters) – A powerful car bomb has killed at least 10 people outside a central Baghdad hotel used by U.S. officials, injuring many and filling the air with thick black smoke, police say.

Eyewitnesses said they saw a car crash through the security barrier at the Baghdad Hotel and explode. The hotel is widely thought to be used by members of the CIA, officials of the U.S. -led coalition, their Iraqi partners in the Governing Council as well as U.S. contractors.

A policeman at the scene said at least ten people had been killed. Hotel employees said five or six bodies lay in the hotel courtyard.

At a nearby hospital, a Reuters photographer saw more than a dozen wounded, many seriously. Several were Iraqi policemen.

Maybe we should all pitch in to sent the NBA refs to Washington and New York to teach the media how to avoid being manipulated by hectoring coaches into changing their calls. From what I’m seeing this morning, the kool-aid kidz are completely in the tank.

move along folks …

Look! A family eating dinner!