Digby's Hullabaloo Posts

I Am Ashamed Of My Party And My State

By 56 percent to 42 percent, likely voters support ousting the Democratic incumbent, a sign that Davis has lost ground in the closing phase of his battle for political survival. Support for Davis has slipped among key parts of his political base — Democrats, women, moderates and liberals among them — since the last Times Poll in early September found 50 percent for the recall and 47 percent against it.

Summing up the view of many voters was poll respondent Gladys Taub, a Democrat exasperated by the state’s giant budget shortfalls

Gov. Davis has been doing a terrible job, and I just want to get rid of him,” the 62-year-old paralegal, who plans to vote for Schwarzenegger, said in a follow-up interview. “Look at the state our state is in. If I ran my home that way, spending a whole lot more money than I was taking in, I’d wind up bankrupt. I’d wind up on the streets.”

[…]

Overall, the poll found the central theme of Schwarzenegger’s candidacy has struck a chord with likely voters: Rather than finding the actor frightening, they see him as the candidate most apt to curb the influence of special interests in Sacramento.

“I look at him as maybe like a Kennedy, where he really wants to do something good, because he’s not in it for the money,” said Jim Rego, 58, a Castro Valley independent who owns a gas station near Oakland.

Rego faults Davis for the state budget mess and sees Schwarzenegger as “a guy who can run a business, balance the books.” He typically votes for Democrats; Schwarzenegger will be the first exception since Rego went for Ross Perot in the 1992 presidential race.

[…]

Many likely voters do harbor reservations about the former champion bodybuilder. Only 8 percent think Schwarzenegger has the best experience for the job of governor, well behind Davis, McClintock and Bustamante. Also, only 8 percent believe Schwarzenegger seemed more knowledgeable than his opponents in last week’s televised debate in Sacramento.

But that appeared to matter less than other qualities. A broad swath of voters see in Schwarzenegger an aptitude they have found lacking in Davis since California was struck by the energy crisis of 2001: leadership skills.

[…]

For Davis, a key challenge in the final days of the race is to bolster support among Democrats. Despite his aggressive efforts to woo union members, Hispanics and other traditional blocs of the party, the poll found 27 percent of Democrats support the recall, up from 19 percent in the last poll.

Among liberal Democrats, support for the recall grew from 1-in-10 to 2-in-10. Among moderate Democrats, support for the recall rose from 30 percent to 35 percent. Union members, a key to Davis’ success in previous elections, also tilted further in favor the recall, 54 percent-43 percent.

[…]

For Bustamante, the poll results are bleak. Only 41 percent have a favorable impression of him, while 58 percent view Schwarzenegger favorably, and 62 percent view McClintock in a positive light.

Bustamante’s millions of dollars in campaign donations from casino-owning Indian tribes — the subject of an unfavorable court ruling and a host of Schwarzenegger ads — appear to have damaged his public image. More than four in 10 voters say those contributions make them less likely to vote for Bustamante.

Schwarzenegger has relentlessly barraged this state over the last month with ads, the media has been following him around like they’re practicing to be Leni Reifenstahl, and he has said nothing substantive ever. His debate performance proves that the patented “stupid is as stupid does” smartass fratboy Bush approach is, once again, a winner with the public.

He is winning because he seems to be filling the role of “leader,” a complete misaprehension because movie stars are pampered little princes who are kept away from any of the ugly necessities of leadership on a movie set. They are leaders only to the extent that they usually lead everyone around them to have a nervous breakdown, and Arnold is reputed to be as difficult as any in that respect. I am unaware of any “leadership” he has shown in the various failed investments he tries to pass off as business experience. His restaurant, Schatzi, sucks.

He is a “leader” because he plays a leading man in the movies, period.

Now please give me the lecture again about how off-base I am to argue that the Democrats must find a way to compete in the brand obsessed media environment. And don’t forget to harrangue me about the great hoardes of Democrats who have been holding back their votes because the candidates haven’t been liberal enough.

Read those numbers above. Democrats in the most Democratic state in the union are saying that they will vote in large numbers for a vapid GOP Hollywood celebrity asshole — one who will undoubtedly be taking his marching orders from Karl Rove because he is incapable of doing the job on his own — rather than keep the Democrat they voted for less than a year ago or the perfectly acceptable Democratic Lieutenant Governor they voted in the same election to be the person best to replace him.

We are our own worst enemy. If I could stomach their policies, I’d be tempted to become a Republican myself. At least they vote their own self interest.

Objective Career Prosecutors

Josh Marshall posts the new Gonzales letter telling White House staffers more specifically what they have to stop shredding. He notes that the two Newsday reporters who did the best early work on the story are part of the mix now:

Knut Royce and Timothy Phelps of Newsday have done some of the best reporting of anyone in town on the whole issue of Iraq, politicized intelligence and the Joe Wilson matter. They’ve clearly got some awfully good and pretty generous sources. What are their names doing in this memo?

If I were a cynical person I might just think that ole Johinnie Ashcroft and the boys are trying to help Uncle Karl find out who’s been naughty and nice. But, that would be if I were cynical.

The last time we saw anything like that was when Nixon was in office….

Thank You Sir, May I Have Another?

The Note says:

If you care even a whit about America having a civil national public discourse (during this time and forever), read every word of David Brooks’ brilliant New York Times column, and thank Arthur for hiring him.

Well, I do care about America having a civil national public discourse, but I’m certainly not frigging dumb enough to believe that this is best done by continuing year after year to kowtow to Republicans and allowing them to constantly change the rules to their own advantage.

This hectoring about the Democrats’ “bad manners” is getting ridiculous. They are basically saying:

The Republicans played the lowest form of dirty politics in order to gain complete institutional power in Washington. Democrats are very angry about these tactics and they are fighting back.

This is a terrible way to conduct our politics and the Democrats should stop it right now.

… while the Republicans consolidate the power they attained by continuing to use dirty tactics.

Everything will be allright if the Democrats do the right thing and let the Republicans do whatever they want.

It’s too bad nobody said much about this when the Republicans were systematically trying to destroy the Clintons and anybody who ever crossed their path, but that’s spilled milk and everybody should get over it.

Surely, if Democrats just set a good example now, they won’t ever do it again.

While I am so very impressed with the logic of this argument, I can’t endorse it right now because I’m afraid that “setting a good example” isn’t really going to get the job done, you know what I mean?

I just have the niggling feeling that certain types of bullying pricks on this earth aren’t really open to the finer ideas of “civil discourse.” Particularly those who pay and listen to people who spend upwards of, say, 40 hours a week working themselves into a complete frenzy of loathing against the “enemy” (who, by the way, is me.)

Something tells me that it would be a tiny bit naive of me to believe that these modern Republicans, who have shown they will go to any lengths to smear and destroy their political oppposition, are going to be chastened by my fine example of turning the other cheek to their merciless onslaught of invective toward me and everything I believe. In fact, it’s been my experince that they find that attitude is an invitation to laugh uproariously while they rhetorically deliver a gratuitous kick in the teeth. Ask Max Cleland about that.

It just seems like common sense that if you’ve been hit over the head for 15 solid years by the same people that you are fucking fool if you don’t put up your dukes and hit back at some point. Contrary to the lies and myths of the GOP, Democrats are not actually pacifists. We may be slow to boil, but we are perfectly capable of fighting when we are pushed too hard. And we have been pushed way beyond any civilized limits.

This isn’t really about Bush hatred. The man is just a figurehead, unworthy of much more than amused derision for his obvious lack of command and intellect. Democratic anger is about an arrogant and merciless political movement that simply does not respond to ordinary notions of civility or compromise. They have misrepresented themselves to the American public. Their tactics are ruthless and immoral and they are governing in a radical and undemocratic fashion.

Our passion and our anger is directed at a machine that is not observing traditional standards of decency and through long and difficult experience we have learned that they cannot be stopped simply by “setting a good example.” Anybody who hasn’t yet grasped that is either willfully blind or intellectually stunted.

Oh yes. And thank you Arthur for giving another column to a Republican shill. How very Fair and Balanced of you. But, take my word for it. You can’t buy their love and you can’t appease them no matter how whorish you become. Until you completely turn the Gray Lady into the Washington Times you are the enemy. Just a little word to the wise.

Loose Lips

Alterman points to this little gem from last April. It’s a real goodie:

Later, after the terrorist attacks, Woodward and another reporter interviewed Mr. Bush in the Oval Office.

The reporters had an hour to ask their questions. But Woodward said the president gave them 90 minutes, often speaking candidly about classified information and explaining the reasons behind some of his actions.

Apparently, even the president spills classified information pretty much willy

He one went on to say:

Certainly Richard Nixon would not have allowed reporters to question him like that. Bush’s father [former President George Bush] wouldn’t allow it. Clinton wouldn’t allow it.

“As a journalist I like somebody who is straight and direct,” Woodward said.

Yeah. He likes him. He really likes him.

Perhaps it might be useful to ask the president about this next time the White House press whores get a chance to pull his string and turn on his pre-programmed Chatty-Cathy response of the day. It’s always so entertaining to watch him get that far away look in his eye as he answers different questions exactly the same way over and over and over again.

Angry Spooks

Just a couple of observations on the events of the last few days.

—-First, when reading the transcript of the gaggle yesterday, I find nobody asking Scott McClellan why he thinks Bob Novak is lying. He says over and over again, after all, that they “have no evidence” that the leaks emanated from the administration. He says they cannot be expected to investigate every leak that is printed in the press, (lamely neglecting the fact that this particular one is clearly a felony and breach of national security in wartime) as if such stories are routinely made up.

But, it wasn’t just any journalist who wrote this story. It was staunch conservative Bob Novak. Unless they think he made it all up, they have the evidence they need to investigate this particular leak. Bob Novak’s word.

— One item in the Post story of the 29th caught my eye and I haven’t seen much interest in it. It says:

Three weeks ago, intelligence officials said, the CIA returned to the Justice Department a standard 11-question form detailing the potential damage done by the release of the information. Officials said it may have been the first such report ever filed on the unauthorized disclosure of an operative’s name.

It would seem that despite claims that CIA referrals to the FBI are as routine as spring rain, this particular type of referral appears to be highly unusual if not unprecedented.

The bigger issue, it seems to me, is the ongoing war between the CIA and the administration. It is clear that the administration “sexed-up” the intelligence and is now trying to shift the blame to the CIA for it. When the administration stupidly attempted to make Tenet take the fall for the Niger flap the battle was drawn. The CIA is fighting back.

They were used and brow beaten into making assessments that fit the agenda of a bunch of neocon radicals. The assessments have been proven spectacularly wrong, and the CIA is left holding the bag. The congress is issuing reports that they provided lousy intelligence which means that they are going to have to defend themselves against charges of incompetence.

This is a very dangerous situation for the administration; the CIA is not the institution you want to make your enemy. The Plame affair is really only the first shot across the bow.

Nonsense Defense

The standard defense today seems to be that no crime was committed because Plame wasn’t actually an undercover operative. Novak said:

“….According to a confidential source at the CIA, Mrs. Wilson was an analyst, not a spy, not a covert operator, and not in charge of undercover operatives’…

The strange shill who they had on Crossfire to defend the Bush administration on this (who also claimed that because Plame was still alive, there wasn’t any credence to the story!) said something about Plame being a “glorified secretary.”

Can someone explain logically why the CIA would refer the matter to the Justice Department if Plame wasn’t undercover? Is it up to the Justice Department to determine the definition of “undercover?”

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.