Edgewise

The Bush-haters meme

David Neiwert has ably deconstructed the equivalency argument that equates opposition to Bush with the rabid Clinton-hating of the last decade.

Cheney coverup

Oliver Willis cites Dick Cheney for obstruction of justice. What happeend to that story circulating a few weeks ago that the energy task force documents included maps of Iraq's oil fields?

Speaking of connecting the dots, when is someone going to connect Bush et al., Ken Lay, Enron, the California energy crisis, the northeast blackout, and that Texas-only power grid?

Something tells me that if, Heaven forfend, Bush is reelected, that his second administration will be bogged down by special investigators and the ilk. It seems like the tradition with scandals is for them really only to catch fire after about five years in office (Nixon, Reagan, Clinton...).

Twice the casualties

I heard on the Lehrer news hour today that the number of U.S. casualties in Iraq since the declaration of an end to major combat operations now equals the number of casualties during said major combat operations. So now the occupation is already technically as deadly as the invasion was and we are still only at the beginning.

The Internet as political tool

In Net gains, an op-ed in the Boston Globe, Cory Doctorow argues that a political sleeping giant - the Internet-savvy - is waking up and trying to learn how to go beyond pointing out flaw and poking holes.

He mentions the greater sources of news information online, weblogs, and things like the campign Meetups and MoveOn.org. [Editor's note: This past Saturday I did some tabling for Howard Dean the Grand Lake Farmer's Market in Oakland. I plan to write more about the experience, why I did it, the conversations I had, and who I met, when time permits.]

The crucial next step for the Internet generation is positively influencing governance and power:

Turning information into action is not easy. The quaint isolationism of the Internet's early days is seductive: In the sublime purity of bits and binary, who needs the sticky, ugly business of politics? The more recent flavor of naysayer Internet politics, in which large groups of people were informed of suppressed information and enraged into lashing out, is easy - at least when compared with the political deal: putting your own items on the political agenda.

The learning curve is steep but we have a whole ant farm of plugged-in people working on it.

Bush toy a disappointment

Apparently the aviator-flashback doll of President George W. Bush didn't play well with others in the household (and backyard) of this writer.

Please all, please none

Matt Welch deftly illustrates how Gray Davis, a trimmer, has micromanaged himself into standing for nothing and for nobody. OK, I guess "raising money" and "himself" might fit the bill, but the point is that those of us who fear another right-wing coup legal project have little to fight with here. We can be against the recall but that's not where the action is. Bustamante is not exactly awe inspiring either. Watching a robot self-destruct is always fun. That's why Survival Research Laboratories exist.

Everyone seems to agree that Gray is probably toast on his own petard. "When they came for Gray Davis, I said nothing."

O'Reilly as USENET-type troll

In this Blogcritis post, Stephen Silver fisks Bill O'Reilly's "editorial" defending the Fox network's lawsuit against Al Franken (for people outside the Instapundit orbit, fisking has come to mean interlacing a source text with refutations and rebuttals).

While scanning the article (it isn't too hard to debunk O'Reilly's half-baked bluster), I noticed a familiar typo:

It's unfortunate, but in this country, if you're successful or famous, many courts will allow defamation, slander and liable [sic] to go unpunished.

Aw, that poor, rich, famous, Bill O'Reilly. It must be so hard, when you attack people for a living, to have to deal with all the attacks... my heart bleeds.

I remembered how on USENET when trolls and busybodies would get into arguments, inevitably someone would end up being called a "looser" and someone else would be making accusations about "liable."

There were other typos in the transcript, and it's probably typed up by an intern or something, but it still leaves the impression of O'Reilly as a nerd-cook prone to blowing his top.

I've got your 'fair and balanced' right here

Oliver Willis sees conspiracies (Dear Fox News) what the rest of us rubes attribute to shortsightedness and malice.

Apologia for Michael Moore

This front-page post to kuro5hin includes a point-by-point defense of Michael Moore and "Bowling for Columbine".

I still haven't seen the movie, but I keep meaning to so I can make up my own mind about it.

Depends on the meaning of 'imminent'

Apologists for the Bush team and its war policy now say that Bush et al. never declared the threat from Iraq to be an "imminent" threat. Slyblog, among others, isn't letting them get away with revising history. I thought this kind of parsing of words to excuse half-truths and outright lies went out with the last administration?

Best analysis of recall yet

Once again, The Onion has the best political coverage around.

Reclaiming our political history

New slogan here today: "Radical Liberal Conservative." Think of it as shorthand for "radical ideas, liberal goals, conservative means." I am also describing a spectrum, with the very small number (percentagewise) of radical leftists in this country, large number of moderate liberals in the center, and conservatives on the right who have taken redbaiting so far that they are now in bed with their own radical factions because the sensible moderate center has become tainted in their quest for purity.

But that's another topic for another time. If the true conservatives (root-canal Republicans) woul distance themselves from the nanoconservative adventurists wackos, they could make an honest fight for the center, but as it is, they are way out there on a limb and this time around I think even the Naderites will help with sawing it off.

So, I like to entertain radically imaginative ideas about how things could be ("other men ... why not?" JFK), and I am aware that radical agendas of the past sometimes became the mainstream norm after time, so I look to radical thinking for experimental ideas about the future. For example, I think I would support an instant runoff system, which is probably still too radical for most people.

I reclaim the word radical.

Of course I am an optimistic, fightin' liberal. I want to extend the progressive project of freedom and dignity and equality and - hell, yes, let's bring it back - fraternity. I'm not naive. I just can't always turn my head away from the people that things aren't working out so good for.

The liberal tradition is the greatest political movement in history. Liberalism has conquered the world. The liberal project has miles to go, but the Republican habit of vilifying the word liberal stops here with me right now.

I reclaim the word liberal.

I have a family, a home. These are things I would fight to protect. I donate to charity but I do so within an affordable budget. I always want things to change for the better but I don't always want things to change much at all, because I believe the world is sometimes hostile and arbitrary and I don't like anything that reminds me of my lack of perfect security. There is a conservative tradition as noble as the liberal one, related to it, and not inherently tied to royalist origins or authoritarian offshoots. My grandfather was a Democrat. My father is a Republican. I have always declined to state and I have always voted.

I reclaim the word conservative.

Radical ideas Liberal goals Conservative means

Lieberman breaks Reagan's 11th Commandment

Regardless of which Democrat eventually gets the nomination, by no means should the candidates be tearing each other down at this stage. I was dismayed to see Lieberman attacking Dean as too liberal, as quoted in this Dean interview with Larry King:

KING: Speaking of the others attacking you, yesterday, on Sunday, Senator Joe Lieberman, another candidate, compared you to George McGovern and described a party led by Dean as a ticket to no where. Today he spoke at the National Press Club. Here's what he had to say and we'll get your comment.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SEN. JOE LIEBERMAN (D-CT), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: A candidate who was opposed to the war against Saddam, who has called for the repeal of all of the Bush tax cuts, which would result in an increase in taxes on the middle class, I believe will not offer the kind of leadership America needs to meet the challenges that we face today. And as I said in my prepared remarks, I believe that that kind of candidate could lead the Democratic Party into the political wilderness for a long time to come. Could be really a ticket to no where.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

KING: Your reaction?

DEAN: Well, obviously I don't agree.

As Harry Truman reputedly said "Give the people a choice between a Republican and a Republican, and they'll pick the Republican every time."

Now, to be honest, I don't like Lieberman and I don't think he's a strong candidate. The man oozes what the Spanish call "antilust," a sort of negative charisma. He tries to overcome this repulsive effect with the sort of unctuous fake folksiness that went out with the current President's dad.

The important thing is for opponents of Bush to keep their eye on ball. If Dean keeps running away with things, it may be that the DLC view of things won't control the party this time around.

Given Lieberman's history and track record (defeating moderate Republical Lowell Weicker by running to his right, carrying water for the insurance industry, giving Cheney a pass in his one debate in the last election), his redbaiting of Dean is especially unwelcome. (username/password: mediajunkie/mediajunkie)

It's easy to paint Dean as too far left given his appeal to activists at this stage and the disaffected, but I think it's both misguided (unless you are defending the incumbents) and factually incorrect.

Oliver Willis sees a sea change in the works, suggesting that Dean might be a kind of backbone-having, bedrock Democrat that could restore the party's base and reach out to the vast undecideds, as Ronald Reagan did, despite the concerns of wise men from his own party.

At this point, I'm throwing in with Dean. He's close enough to me on enough issues, and he seems willing to go toe to toe with the people in power now. He's got some good ideas about mobilizing the people left out by or cynical about our current politics, and I think he could surprise us all.

Having said that, if another candidate takes the nomination, I hope the energy Dean is tapping into doesn't dissipate but moves forward with eyes on the prize. Dean himself said that any of the current Democratic candidates would make a better president than Bush and I agree.

The Cluetrain candidate

Influential weblogger, academic, consultant and author David Weinberger (one of the coauthors of the Cluetrain Manifesto), has come out For Howard Dean:

[W]hat I've been doing so far: Sundry writing for the campaign and talking with them about Net issues. I've also done a little speaking on behalf of the campaign - well, once, substituting for Joe Trippi, the campaign manager, at a panel in DC on the Internet and democracy. Now I'll be doing more writing, advising and speaking for the campaign. I'm thrilled, of course. Why Dean? Because he's the candidate closest to my views who can beat Bush.

Dean does seem to be gaining momentum and intelligently pursuing the Internet (and blogs in particular) as a new transformative communications medium.

John Robb feels that Rove and the other Republican machers will decipher the blogosphere right quick and turn it to the dark side of the force, but in the meantime it's hard to deny the sense that Dean is on the right track.

Some are concerned that he will peak too early, or is too liberal, or too conservative. If he can survive the money primary, the Iowa caucus, New Hampshire and South Carolina, he's going to be a contender to the end.

I think I prefer Kerry's politics but he seems moldy. I considered Edwards the most electable (and I relished an open fight over "trial lawyers" and pseudopopulism) and he may have fire in the belly, but he isn't catching on the way Dean is.

I feel that the current Republican leadership represents such an extreme vision in an already polarized environment that I feel a broad coalition is called for of everyone who feels we could be doing better in at least one major area. I don't think we all have to agree about war, the economy, the WTO, cloning, the environment or what-have-you, as long as we agree in general on the need to stop this destructive runaway administration.

Weinberger says

The Dean campaign has been doing an astounding job of energizing a base of voters who haven't cared enough to come to the polls before. I like that strategy a lot better than trying to get 51% of the center by out-Bushing Bush. And no campaign has ever gotten the Internet so right. ... They understand that it's about giving voice to the "ends" of the Net (AKA us), that it means they lose some control of their message, that they need to enable groups to self-organize, that it's about listening and conversations more than about center-out broadcasting.

SRO on Coulter

I generally try to ignore Ann Coulter (as I do all trolls) but I couldn't resist mentioning that over at Standing Room Only, Hugh Elliott has some Queer Tips for the Right-Wing Bitch.