Edgewise

Republicanists

If the Republicans (and, increasingly, the media) get to keep calling us the “Democrat Party” instead of the “Democratic Party,” because they think it subliminally emphasizes the word “rat,” can we start calling them “Republicanists”? As in “What my Republicanist colleague forgets to mention is…”

It would make people think “pianist” every time they thought about the GOP. Ha ha ha! That would be funny! If people thought all Republicanists played piano! “Hey Ahnold, why don’t you go play piano or something?”

Seriously. We should do this.

Bush insider: Bush administration used and mocked Christian right

MSNBC reports that a new book called Tempting Faith, by former administration official David Kuo, gives an inside look at the Bush administration that’s bound to give some of the Christian Right pause on election day.

He says some of the nation’s most prominent evangelical leaders were known in the office of presidential political strategist Karl Rove as “the nuts.” “National Christian leaders received hugs and smiles in person and then were dismissed behind their backs and described as ‘ridiculous,’ ‘out of control,’ and just plain ‘goofy,’: Kuo writes. More seriously, Kuo alleges that then-White House political affairs director Ken Mehlman knowingly participated in a scheme to use the office, and taxpayer funds, to mount ostensibly “nonpartisan” events that were, in reality, designed with the intent of mobilizing religious voters in 20 targeted races.

Tempting Faith will be out October 16th. It’s going for $16.50 on Amazon, where’s it’s currently ranked #35 among all books. Olbermann ran a piece on it Thursday night and word on DailyKos is that 60 Minutes will be covering it this Sunday.

John Murtha's not mincing words

Here’s an amazing snippet a friend just emailed me. This is from a new MoveOn.org exhortation written by Congressman John Murtha:

A year ago when I presented my plan for Iraq, I did it to provide leadership and protect our troops. The Republicans have spent their time name-calling while the situation for our troops in Iraq gets worse. They’ve tried to smear me, other veterans, Democrats, you and anybody who stands up to them. Well, let me say one thing right now: screw them. Those gravestones at Arlington cemetery don’t say Democrat or Republican on them. We are all patriots.

At long last, have you no decency?

I don’t think Cheney’s getting traction anymore. Average Americans think he’s some kind of vampire/monster. Hillary Clinton and Hairplug Biden have both dissed him openly on the talking head shows.

Zach at Hanlon’s Razor has the right idea (Dick Cheney’s heart pumps bile):

Saying that Iraq is the War on Terror ad nauseum and that pulling out would be helping the terrorists is nothing new, but here we find Dick taking it a step further.

“Some in our own country claim retreat from Iraq would satisfy the appetite of the terrorists and get them to leave us alone,” Cheney told a Veterans of Foreign Wars convention in Reno, Nevada. “A precipitous withdrawal from Iraq would be … a ruinous blow to the future security of the United States.”

Pause, reflect, read for a second time. The Penguin is saying that there are people who want to pull out to make the terrorists happy. I will offer $1,000 right now if anyone can provide me any kind of evidence that he’s actually heard someone suggest that. Of course, it wouldn’t be adequately Cheney if he didn’t add something even more retarded.

“They overlook a fundamental fact. We were not in Iraq on September 11, 2001, but the terrorists hit us anyway,” he said, in a reference to the hijacked plane attacks that killed almost 3,000 people.

And the terrorists had no connection to Iraq. Hell even Bush said that. You could replace “Iraq” with any nation in the world and that statement would be equally valid. “We were not in New Zealand on September 11, 2001, but the terrorists hit us anyway.” Iraq != War on Terror. Get it through your head, asshole.

what would Mr. Rogers do?

can you say “habeas corpus”?

What if King Friday got taken away to a secret jail in the middle of the ocean by the Central Intelligence Agency? And the government said King Friday could not file a writ of habeas corpus because he had no rights. Because Congress just happened to sort of incidentally take them all away….

Justices Hint That They’ll Rule on Challenge Filed by Detainee - New York Times

red dwarf exits red america

Post.com Blogger Quits Amid Furor

“When I was 17, I was certainly sloppy,” said Domenech, who did not graduate from college. “If I had paid more attention, none of these problems would have happened.”

Is this statement:

False__

Plagiarized__

Really stupid__

(what score did WashPost’s Jim Brady get?)

Color Theory: "Red America" and "Red Dawn"

Edgewise readers are probably familiar with the story of the Washington Post Online’s new right-wing blog, “Red America,” written by a 24-year-old sometime Republican speechwriter named Ben Domenech, who also runs the RedState.org site. Various writers at Daily Kos & eslewhere have detailed the various aspects that make his hiring so egregious —- that a party functionary has been hired to “balance” a working reporter (Dan Froomkin), that he feels no need to support his assertions with links or other references, that he’s such a chickenhawk his website sells Cafe Press coffee mugs drooling about Marines killing Bad Guys (coffee mugs! you can’t make this stuff up), plagiarism, etc., so I won’t rehash all that here.

Instead, I’ll just note that his blog demonstrates how completely the political connotations of “red” have been reversed in the last 20 years or so. In his inaugural column (no link, as a matter of principle), Domenech cites the 1984 movie “Red Dawn” as some sort of cultural/political touchstone. I haven’t seen it, but it’s apparently a fantasy of gun-totin’ American resistance to a Soviet invasion. That is, “red” in the movie title refers to communism, and in the blog title it refers to Republican voters. A red dawn was a Bad Thing, back in the day, but a red America is now a Good Thing.

The similarities between the radical Republican impulse toward single-party rule and communist totalitarianism have also been discussed elsewhere, and IMO somewhat exaggerated. But it is fascinating how enthusiastically those who a generation ago said “better dead than Red” have embraced the new color symbolism. I suspect that when the TV networks first used red/blue color coding to denote which party had gotten a state’s electoral votes, they assigned blue to Democrats because assigning red would have looked like overt red-baiting. The symbolism works for Republicans in the same way that it worked for communism, by evoking a powerful emotional response. Red is the hot color, blue the cool color. Red is the color of blood, of life, of sex; blue is the color of dispassionate discourse. We can’t break that association, of course, but maybe by bringing it to light we can detach it from our political parties.

The Devils' Dictionary

The Nation has compiled and published a Dictionary of Republicanisms. Of the definitions they’ve published in the magazine (or rather, in this case, on the website), here are two of my favorites:

laziness n. When the poor are not working.

leisure time n. When the wealthy are not working.

(Both definitions by Justin Rezzonico of Keene, Ohio.)

Shooting Indians in a Barrel: The Trust Scandal

It’s nearly as easy as shooting fish in a barrel. Gale Norton’s Department of the Interior is so far winning the Bush Administration’s fight against the Indians. A ten-year-old struggle to right 118 years of wrongs against American Indians is at an impasse with the Bush government holding most of the trump cards. The fight, embodied in the class-action lawsuit, Cobell v. Norton, has been likened to the legendary lawsuit in Charles Dickens’ Bleak House that brought nothing but trouble and despair to generations of family heirs.

Norton’s Interior department, refusing to accept defeat after losing the lawsuit, filed an appeal, which it also lost, and is now seeking to remove the judge who ruled for the Indians. And if that ploy doesn’t work, there’s the Dear Tribal Leader letters dated Jan. 26, and signed by Associate Deputy Interior Secretary James Cason, telling the Indians that Interior plans to pay the $7.1 million in court and lawyer fees they were ordered to pay through cuts in various Indian programs.

The lawsuit, filed in 1996, came out of Indian tribes’ attempt to find and recover billions of dollars in revenues from government leases of their lands since 1887. Since that year, 11 million acres of Indian tribal land have been held in trust by the Bureau of Indian Affairs, or BIA, within the Department of the Interior, which was to collect and distribute over $300 million in annual revenues from agriculture, oil, mining, and timber leases on the Indian lands. In fact, an audit of the Interior department’s Individual Indian Monies (IIM) trust revealed that no records could be located before 1973, and between 1973 and 1992 more than $2.4 billion in revenues owed to Indians was missing or unaccounted for. U.S. District Judge Royce Lamberth, who has presided over the decade-long suit and appeal, told one Interior witness in the trial, “You know any banker would be in jail for handling funds like this, don’t you?”

And if you don’t think the Bush Administration is out to get every last dime they can cheat from Indians going into the future take a look at the article by D.C. Attorney Lee Helfrich, writing for Nieman Watchdog who notes that:

Both Senator John McCain (R. Ariz.) and Representative Richard Pombo (R. Ca.) have introduced legislation that would preclude Indians from acting collectively by filing class actions. Instead each Indian will be left alone to seek relief from the federal government—no level playing field for them. The bills only mandate that the government consider the money that actually “passed through” an individual Indian account in paying on a claim, not what Interior left uncollected for a century because of its “honor system.”

That “honor system” allowed gas, oil, and mining companies to pay what they wanted—including nothing—for public and Indian land leases.

Over at Daily Kos, Wampum blogger MB Williams points out that the Abramoff influence buying and campaign contribution scandal is part of a bigger picture that involves Bush’s cabinet appointees and Republican legislators:

The story of Jack Abramoff’s buying of influence goes well beyond a few Congressional players. While those relationships are key to the story, they’re secondary to his cozy relationship with CREA director Italia Federici, her former boss, Sec. of the Interior, Gale Norton, and Deputy Sec. Steven Griles, and this seedy gang’s take-over of the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA).

Williams points out that Republican attempts to “settle” the Cobell v. Norton lawsuit at the expense of Indian plaintiffs is likely to be helped by the current characterization of “Abramoff tribes”:

McCain and Pombo are once again pushing for a settlement, and in the increasingly hostile environment for Indians due to success in portraying Abramoff’s tribal clients as villains, not victims, they’ll most likely get it, at rock-bottom prices.

Abramoff vs The Tribes

San Francisco Chronicle columnist Debra J. Saunders sounded like Rep. Richard Pombo’s big sister taking on the corner bullies in her Sunday rant, “Lay off Pombo” in which she lit into “the left”, Nancy Pelosi, and Democratic party leaders for picking on Pombo for getting money from the tainted former lobbyist, Jack Abramoff, and his “client tribes.” She pointed out that Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash) also got money from “Abramoff tribes,” thus proving her point that “…Democratic leaders don’t really care about ethics.”

The Abramoff “lobbying” scandal has begun to morph into a veiled attack on American tribal groups now described as “client tribes” of the confidence man and scam artist Jack Abramoff. The tribes were the victims of the scandal - not the perpetrators. It was their money that Abramoff siphoned into his fake “charity” groups, such as the Capital Athletic Foundation, which received $2.02 million from tribes he promised to help. The Capital Athletic Foundation then spent the money on a private school Abramoff created and which his sons attended. Abramoff also solicited tribal contributions for the National Center for Public Policy Research, which in turn paid for the now-infamous golfing party in Scotland for indicted former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, his wife, and others.

The tribes believed they were getting access to the people in Washington who could help them secure enabling legislation for their casino operations, highly lucrative businesses for the tribes that are able to build them. Jack Abramoff was a canny operator who used the tribes’ profits to fund his own ambitions as a star fundraiser for conservative politicians and the Republican party. Here’s what one of them told Washington Post journalist, Thomas B. Edsall, in a Nov. 8, 2004 article:

Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-Calif.), said Abramoff convinced him that “it was the conservatives who would be the saviors of the Indians by providing an environment where they could be self-sufficient and run their own affairs instead of being like inner-city welfare recipients.”

It is obvious from the e-mail messages (evidence in the Senate Indian Affairs Committtee investigation) between Jack Abramoff and his business partner, Michael Scanlon, that they had nothing but contempt for the tribal leaders that funded Abramoff’s political kitties. And as for being a “super lobbyist” (as Saunders refers to him), Abramoff directed most of the tribes’ money to his own private slush funds not to Greenberg-Traurig, the lobbying firm he was nominally employed by.

And as for Debra J. Saunders, you have to read the fifth paragraph of her Sunday column carefully to catch her unequal comparison of “Abramoff” money received by Sen. Patty Murray and Rep. Richard Pombo: Murray’s money ($40,980 in 2002 and 2004) came only from “Abramoff tribes” while Pombo’s money came directly from Abramoff and his wife ($7,000 in 2004) as well as from “Abramoff tribes” ($33,500 in 2004).

So Debra and others, Lay Off The Tribes and see Abramoff for what he really is, Republican confidence man who saw in tribal profits a path to political riches for the party of George W. Bush.

Bush signed anti-torture statute with fingers crossed

“When I use a word,” Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, “it means just what I choose it to mean—neither more nor less.”

“The question is, ” said Alice, “whether you can make words mean so many different things.” “The question is,” said Humpty Dumpty. “which is to be master—that’s all.”

Lewis Carroll, Through the Looking Glass

First, the President signaled his intention to reserve his authority, as Commander in Chief, to ignore statutory mandates. These include provisions that require advance notice of congressional committees before the use of funds to initiate a special access program, a new overseas installation, or a new start program; and a “report and wait” provision that requires the President to wait 15 days after notifying six congressional committees before using certain appropriations to transfer defense articles or services to another nation or an international organization for international peacekeeping, peace enforcement, or humanitarian assistance operations.

…

Second, the President unsurprisingly signals that the Administration reads the Graham Amendments to cut off currently pending habeas cases, including most importantly the Hamdan case that’s now before the Supreme Court and the Al Odah case (Rasul on remand) that the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit has under review

Marty Lederman, So Much for the President’s Assent to the McCain Amendment

Abramoff & DeLay: "free-market " friends

Just cleaning out my files….here’s an excerpt from Thomas B. Edsall’s piece in the Washington Post from 2004:

In 1995, Abramoff took on another major client, the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands, an American protectorate in the Pacific. Again, he capitalized on his ability to exploit conservative ideology. The Marianas sought to retain exemptions from U.S. immigration and labor laws to import laborers from China at $3.05 an hour — $2 under the federal minimum wage — to make garments labeled “Made in the U.S.A.” Abramoff portrayed the Marianas as a case study of the success of the free market unfettered by wage and immigration laws. DeLay became Abramoff’s strongest ally, leading the fight against Democratic efforts to impose wage, hour and immigration regulations on the protectorate. On a trip to the Marianas, DeLay told officials, according to media accounts:

“When one of my closest and dearest friends, Jack Abramoff, your most able representative in Washington, D.C., invited me to the islands, I wanted to see firsthand the free-market success and the progress and reform you have made.”

[By Thomas B. Edsall Washington Post Staff Writer Monday, November 8, 2004; Page A23 ]

and the latest on suspension of habeas corpus for Guantanamo prisoners….

Sue, are you? Sue sue, sue, sue

Tort reform for thee but not for me: Sirotablog: NOW & THEN: Trent Lott on suing & lawsuits

I was saying "Boo-urns"

Abramoff scandal spreads to the Senate: Now A Republican Senator Tied Up In Abramoff Scandal... | The Huffington Post

In which I predict the future again!

I predict that in just a few hours it will be proven once and for that I cannot in fact predict the future!

What planet is Hugh Hewitt phoning it in from?

From Why the Right Was Wrong:

... tactics previously exclusive to the left - exaggeration, invective, anonymous sources, an unbroken stream of new charges, television advertisements paid for by secret sources ...

Wha?

Excuse me. Project much?

Who leaked to Novak beside 'Official A'?

OK, so the indictment says that Official A leaked to Novak. But didn't Novak say that he was leaked to by (at least) two people, one of whom was "no partisan gunslinger." Assuming that Official A is Rove and that Rove cut a deal and rolled on Libby, thus keeping his shit clean (for now), who was the other leaker? I'm not saying that Novak couldn't have just been flat-out lying. I'm just saying.

Cheney the prime mover behind leak

According the special prosecutor's press release

On or about June 12, 2003, Libby was advised by the Vice President of the United States that Wilson’s wife worked at the CIA in the Counterproliferation Division. Libby understood that the Vice President had learned this information from the CIA.

So, at least as far as Libby is concerned, Cheney was the one pushing the information. Like any good crime boss, he didn't do the actual whacking himself, but he made it clear what was expected.

In which I predict the future!

Many years ago, before Seinfeld became a national Thing, I looked up one day and I said "I'm going to start watching Seinfeld." And I didn't just say this myself. I said it to other people too. For example, So-Called Bill.

It didn't make much sense at the time. And then that episode with the whole whoosie thing happened and suddenly everyone was watching. And that was when I first realized that I have the intermittent ability to reach into the future and pluck out a truth.

Well, it's happening again. It's happening right now, in fact. And that's why I'm here to tell you: George W. Bush will pick Maureen E. Mahoney to be the next Supreme Court Justice. And she'll be confirmed.

Don't say I didn't warn you. Because I did. Just then.

You were warned.

Watergate-esque

You could make the case that Plamegate isn't and won't be Watergate, in that all the focus has been on the possibility that some of the President's key people may go down, but you don't really hear much speculation that the President himself could be dragged in.

But then there's this: when Nixon left office, it's pretty safe to say that he was running his White House. You don't have to be partisan to posit that the same might not be quite as true for President Bush.

And then, what if Bush stays on, as we all expect he will, but the people who've been running the White House for him go home? Or at least, go elsewhere...?

Does that make it Watergate? Well, still, not exactly. I mean, it's not the same thing as the President stepping down.

But it does make it Watergate-esque.

Speaking of which: could this have anything to do with why we haven't seen much of the Vice President of late?

But doesn't she deserve an 'up or down vote'?

Conservatives Launch 'Withdraw Miers' Website

Sauce for the goose?

No guarantee Rove won't be indicted

And when the frogs, come marching out.... Think Progress :: BREAKING: Karl Rove to Give Additional Testimony ... oh Lord I want Karl to be in that number, when the frogs go marching out.

Though I'd easily let go of my Karl-wish to see him roll over on the boss.

Update: I had titled this "Rove requests a do-over" but this Kos article suggests that the offer to testify further was made back in July and that it's Fitzgerald who took him up on the offer just now (while explicitly not offering him any immunity for further testimony).

I admit it

It amuses me that conservatives are just now beginning to notice how totally they've been played by Dear Leader.

In fact, this thread a RedState is totally making my day. A few choice excerpts:

We're disgusted By: SpectatorGirl

Bush lied to us. Let Kos cheer.

The post below should not get lost, that her name was on a list of acceptables supplied by the Democrats.

Bush is a gutless, abortionist liar. I spit on him. Seriously.

and this

Bush did lie to us, and now that I know he is capable of such blatant lying, I am distraught.

Now we have to seriously wonder if the Democrats were right all along. Did we go to war for oil? Was it payback for daddy?

and and this

Will never give another dollar to Republicans By: captain

we have 55 republican senators.
could have picked a real conservative.

instead, he picks a 60-year-old woman who's never been married and has never had kids. are we really to believe that she'll vote to overturn roe?

are we to believe that this woman hasn't had sex outside of marriage over the past several decades? and if she has, hasn't she been counting on the right to abortion just as other career-oriented women do?

bush has betrayed us. i will never again contribute to the republican party.

What took so long

Can anyone verify the following assertions (from a mailing list I'm on)?

Halliburton hired for storm cleanup 01 Sep 2005:
The Navy has hired Houston-based Halliburton Co. to restore electric power, repair roofs and remove debris at three naval facilities in Mississippi damaged by Hurricane Katrina. Halliburton subsidiary KBR will also perform damage assessments at other naval installations in New Orleans as soon as it is safe to do so.

Halliburton gets contract to repair damage from Hurricane Katrina (HalliburtonWatch.org) 01 Sep 2005:
The US Navy asked Halliburton to repair naval facilities damaged by Hurricane Katrina, the Houston Chronicle reported today. The work was assigned to Halliburton's KBR subsidiary under the Navy's $500 million CONCAP contract awarded to KBR in 2001 and renewed in 2004. The repairs will take place in Louisiana and Mississippi.

Blackwater USA Joins Hurricane Katrina Relief Effort:
On September 1, 2005, Blackwater USA joined the ongoing relief effort in the Gulf Region devastated by Hurricane Katrina by dispatching a SA-330J Puma helicopter to help assist in evacuating citizens from flooded areas.... The following services are available: Airlift Services, Security Services, Communication Support, Crowd Control, Humanitarian Support, Services Logistics, and Transportation Services.

Have these people NO SHAME?

Peter

BTW, Mike ***** reports that Homeland Security FORBADE the Red Cross to enter New Orleans.

It was bound to happen

In an administration that considers the press a special interest and likes to take their message directly to the people, it was inevitable that eventually President Bush would start his own blog.

Can't tell the Plamers without a scorecard

Think Progress has helpfully assempled a dossier listing 21 Administration Officials Involved In Plame Leak and detailing what we know about them, whether they've been interviewed by prosecutors or the grand jury (as far as we know), and what they've said on the record so far.

Legal complaint v. Sensenbrenner

saw this on the Well:

Treasongate primer

Tired of listening to mealy-mouthed Republican apologists for treason? Check out the Left Coaster's Response to GOP talking points. Print out, stick in your pocket, speak truth to power.

Carnival of the Rovegate

Tony Pierce holds Glenn Reynolds feet to the fire, the Editors point out that the Washington press corps isn't having an attack of conscience right now, Frank Rich analyses the Watergate analogy, John Aravosis asks the musical question, "If Karl Rove is fully complying then why does the president have to wait for the investigation to be over for him to know if Karl was the leaker?" Kyra Phillips identifies a smear campaign against... no, not Joe Wilson, David Corn, who broke the story originally, updates us on the stonewall strategy, Bull Moose Marhsall Whitman quips "for Bush to get rid of Rove, would be like Charlie McCarthy firing Edgar Bergen," and Joshua Marshall reports that Rove at al. are back to smearing Wilson again, all on deep background so they're willing to leak about a criminal investigation but not talk about it on the record?

It's beginning to look a lot like Rovegate

Quoting from James Wolcott: Blowback Is a Bitch:

When word broke that Karl Rove's name was the live hand grenade rolling around in Matt Cooper's notes, I immediately flashbacked to this almost Elizabethan scenario of palace intrigue and betrayal from From the Wilderness. Its author, Michael C. Ruppert, author of Crossing the Rubicon.

Its title, Coup D'Etat.

It weaves a spider's web connecting Valerie Plame, the Niger documents, George Tenet's resignation, Peak Oil, Ahmed Chalabi, and Bush and Cheney's decision to secure lawyers in the Plame inquiry.

It's worth rereading now that it looks as if we may be in for a Rovegate summer.

Wanting to Get to the Bottom of It

The very next Q&A in the press conference xian links to below is also a prize specimen of weasel-wordedness:

Q Two questions. First, you've said in the past that, on the matter of Matt Cooper and Judith Miller that the President supports the investigation. What specific steps is the White House taking to support it? Has the President called people into the Oval Office?

MR. McCLELLAN: What I said is the President wants to get to the bottom of the investigation; no one wants to get to the bottom of it more than he does. It is a very serious matter and the President has said that if anybody has information, they ought to provide that information to the prosecutor so that they can continue forward on their investigation.

Q Has he called specific people into the Oval Office to ask them if they --

MR. McCLELLAN: What we made a decision to do was to support the efforts of the independent prosecutor to move forward on the investigation and that's what we're doing. If there are any specific questions you have about individuals, those are questions that are best directed to the special prosecutor in this matter.

There's an eerie similarity to the Unocal/PR exchange, where the indirectly stated answer was, "No, the President can acknowledge no conflict of interest imputed to a crony. He's a stand-up guy, you know?" Here, what's indirectly stated is "No, the President hasn't actually done anything to find out which of his staff members implemented the decision to punish Joseph Wilson."
I particularly like the phrase "wants to get to the bottom of the investigation," which McClellan, like a blues singer, gives us twice with minor variation. The purity of Bush's intention --- he wants to; he really, really wants to --- outweighs his actual inaction.

Grand-jury perjury angle to Valerie Plame case

I've been thinking this could turn out to be Watergate 2.0 - a first-term scandal that bears fruit in the president's second term. Or maybe not. Here's an update from Quoting from Mark A. R. Kleiman:

David Ignatius speculates in the Washington Post that Patrick Fitzgerald's pursuit of journalists' testimony might indicate that he has shifted attention from the revelation of an undercover intelligence officer's identity to the cover-up, and in particular to possible perjury before the Plame grand jury.

That could well be so. But I question the premise of Ignatius's column: that the revelation itself is next-to-impossible to prosecute because the Intelligence Identities Protection Act has such a tough-to-prove set of elements. I continue to think that a prosecution under the Espionage Act would be a slam-dunk, given proof of the mention of "Valerie Plame" and "CIA operative" in the same breath to anyone without the very high security clearance required to know the identity of an intelligence officer acting under non-official cover.

Remember Republicans?

Kung Fu Monkey writes I miss Republicans and I pretty much agree.

We liberals have our work cut out for us reforming the Democratic Party but is there anybody even left to try to straighten out the supposedly conservative party?

A Mockingbird for our times

Hush little baby don't you cry,
Daddy's gonna buy you an alibi.
If that alibi don't work,
Daddy's gonna bribe the county clerk.
If that county clerk don't bribe,
Daddy's got Congress on his side.
If that Congress still don't budge,
Daddy's in tight with a Supreme Court Judge.

- The Mammals, "The Bush Boys"

Why I read the Poor Man religiously

It's simple, really: Even his throwaway lines are 10 x teh funny of just about any other blog out there. For example, in Hugh Hewitt is the stupidest man alive, he locates the source of the Happy Talk Virus in "the right-wing Prozacosphere."

Red-baiting the AARP

So this astroturf Linkletterish front group claiming to represent the elderly, "USA Next," is now trying to paint the AARP pink in order to cram Social Security reform deconstruction down our collective throats.

Steve Soto at The Left Coaster thinks we shouldn't let the GOP get away with it and has some ideas about how to hold their feet to the fire: Democrats Should Not Let USA Next Get Away With Smearing The AARP

(via TPM)

Secrets and lies

I'm starting to get a queasy feeling about Jeff "so-called" Gannon's access to sensitive information in the White House.

Is Jim-Jeff Guckert-Gannon gonna be Monica Lewinsky this time around? Whose ox is gored now, whose cover has been blown?

Republicans against torture

I've been wondering when we'd hear an actual conservative take a principled position against torture instead of the subject-changing, excuse-making, or moral relativism we've mostly seen from the right on this issue.

Sebastian Holsclaw, who described himself as a conservative blogger with a mostly liberal audience (he used to be a regular commentator on a number of the more prominent liberal weblogs) seems to understand that this isn't (or shouldn't be) a partisan wedge issue (Exhortation):

The Republican Party has spent so many years in the minority that sometimes I think we have not adjusted to the fact that we are in power. We are in power now. We control both Houses of Congress and we have our people throughout the administration. We don't need to wait for the Democrats to raise this issue. We can't hide behind the worry that exploring our practices is going to get a President elected who is going to retreat from Iraq. We are the party which leads the most powerful country in the world. And lead it we must. President Bush must be shown that the Republican Party is not willing to stand for the perversion of our moral standards.

The Yuck Factor

A good example of why I don't read Faux News' website: I accidentally stumbled onto it today and saw a banner for Greta Van Susteren's show tonight, with the headline "Newt Gingrich for President?"

I think I speak for half of America when I say, Yikes! and, Eewwww!

Torture is bad

There. I've gone out on a limb and said it. I feel so brave.

Quoting from the Nielsen Haydens' blog (Happy New Year):

Ogged of Unfogged:

[...T]his will become a "Democrats are soft and looking to score points" issue. I've given up. Complain, protest, organize and fund all you want; one more attack here and your neighbors will be lining up to torture somebody, anybody.

Ezra of Pandagon:

Unfogged is right; barring a miracle of competence and media responsibility, opposing torture will end up making the Democrats look like we get the vapors whenever the menfolk whip out the cigars and talk terrorism. Our press flacks are ineffective, our caucus can't stick to a message, and we don't have a party leader charged with articulating our position to the public.

Doesn't matter. Torture just isn't something you compromise on. I'm as coldly political as the next guy, but not torture. That's not part of the country I grew up believing in.

Digby of Hullabaloo:

[T]he mere act of finally drawing that line in the sand, of saying "No More," is the very thing that refutes the charge. It's hemming and hawing and splitting the difference and "meeting halfway" and offering compromises on matters of principle that makes the charge of Democratic spinelessness believable. This isn't about a special interest giving money or bending to the will of a powerful constituency. People can feel the difference. There is nothing weak about simply and forcefully standing up for what is right. [...] I think it may just be a defining issue for Democrats.

It's not that I believe that all Americans are horrified, or even a majority of Americans are horrified. Clearly, the dittoheads think it is just ducky. But that isn't the point. Just because they aren't horrified or even endorse it on some level doesn't mean that they don't know that it's wrong. They do. And it is very uncomfortable to be put in the position of defending yourself when you know you are wrong. Even good people find ways, but it cuts a little piece out of their self-respect every time they do it.

Every person alive in America today grew up with the belief that torture is wrong. Popular culture, religion, folklore and every other form of cultural instruction for decades in this country has taught that it is wrong, from sermons and lectures to films about slavery to photographs of Auschwitz to crime shows about serial killers. ^[1] It is embedded in our consciousness. We teach our children that it is wrong to torture animals and other kids. We don't say that there are exceptions for when the animals or kids are really, really bad. We have laws on the books that outright outlaw it. The words "cruel and unusual" are written into our constitution.

The problem is not that there isn't a widely accepted admonition not to conduct torture, it's that many people, as with all crimes, will choose to ignore the admonition under certain circumstances. However, that does not mean that they do not know that what they are doing is wrong. There is nothing surprising in that. It's why we have laws.

The arguments for torture being raised by the right are rationalizations for what they know is immoral and illegal conduct. Their discomfort with the subject clearly indicates that they don't really want to defend it. (Witness the pathetic dance that even that S&M freak Rush Limbaugh had to do after his comments were widely disseminated.) Will they admit that they know it's wrong? Of course not. But when they take up their manly jihad and accuse the Democrats of being swooning schoolgirls they will also be forced to positively defend something that many of them know very well is indefensible. And every time they do that their credibility on values and morals is chipped away a little bit.

I don't expect them to change their tune. Way too much of this comes from a defect in temperament and garden-variety racism and that's not going to go away. But Democrats have to thicken their skins and be prepared for the usual attacks and insist over and over again that it is against the values and principles of the United States to torture people, period. It is not only right, it is smart.

As I wrote below, the opposition will bluster and fidget and scream bloody murder. But listen to the tenor of their arguments. ^[2] [The Wall Street Journal] rails against the "glib abuse of the word" as if they can run away from the issue by engaging in a game of semantics. They are reduced to claiming that unless we torture it will be unilateral disarmament. We, the most powerful military force the world has ever known, will be defeated by a bunch of third world religious misfits if we don't engage in torturing suspects. Just who sounds weak?

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[1] Maureen Dowd: "Before [Alberto Gonzales] helped President Bush circumvent the accords and reserve the right to do so 'in this or future conflicts,' you had to tune in to an old movie with Nazi generals or Vietcong guards if you wanted to see someone sneeringly shrug off the international treaty protecting prisoners from abuse. ('You worthless running dog Chuck Norris! What do we care about your silly Geneva Conventions?')"

[2] The Poor Man: "The point is this: 'To protect subordinates should they be charged with torture, the memo advised that Mr. Bush issue a "presidential directive or other writing" that could serve as evidence, since authority to set aside the laws is "inherent in the president."' Alberto Gonzales thinks that the Magna Carta is liberal pablum."

So-called conservatives don't deserve civility

A nonpublic mailing list I'm on is discussing politics, and the subject of maintaining civil political discourse came up. I invested enough time and emotion in my contribution that I want to log it in public view. It's just preaching to the choir here on Edgewise, but it gives me a URL to point my friends to, a place to edit in any URLs I turn up later, and perhaps a spot where likeminded folks can point out the screaming howlers in the midst of my rant.

First I wrote:

That Kerry would be a far better president than Bush is my opinion. That he lost in such a photo finish does not suddenly convince me otherwise or suggest that he was a poor choice to oppose Bush. Such a razor-thin election doesn't tell us anything about the country or about the candidates that we didn't already know. We have no precedent to hold it up to; from 1896 to 1996, we never had consecutive elections where the margin from first to second was less than 6%, but here we are with -0.5 and 3.1 in the two most recent. Remember, America isn't red or blue; it's purple. (Howard Kurtz is a hack, but even a hack gets it right sometimes.)

However, there is a division, and it does have its effects: I admit we need civil discourse, but liberals are not the source of the incivility and so cannot be the solution.

Because I'm a liberal, the right calls me a traitor, the enemy, a cancer in our country, someone who deserves to die. (I am not exaggerating; these are some of the exact words that the current administration's highly paid mouthpieces have used.) My respect and tolerance toward those with differing beliefs, my time spent hearing out people from differing circumstances and opposite assumptions, is all being returned upon me as scorn, hatred, and threats.

I was writing level-headed op-eds about tolerance back when I was being shunned in my [then] own Baptist circles for campaigning for Carter against Reagan. But in those days they didn't talk about withdrawing my right to speak, vote, or live.

I will not be civil with anyone who believes that people like Norquist, Delay, Rove, Ashcroft, and Dobson should be running the country. If the bare majority chooses as our leaders those who would eliminate me, don't anybody expect me to be polite about it.

At this point, several people on the list asked something along the lines of:

How does it harm you to be civil to them (or those who think like they do)? Doesn't being uncivil mean that they win? They've modified your behavior and made you less than you were.

The harm is, these people want me to be locked up, exiled, or killed. Literally, not some figurative use of these phrases. I can be polite to someone who disagrees with my opinion on whether we should have occupied Iraq, but I cannot do so with someone who believes that concentration camps or execution are appropriate responses to political disagreements.

There are far too many examples to list without a large paid staff. The politicians themselves dodge and weave so they can communicate their contempt for liberals to their right-wing following, while still denying any extremism to the rest of us. (More and more people, fortunately, are keeping us all alerted to this, but David Neiwert is the best.)

It's inexcusible for serious ordinary citizens to equate political dissent with treason. But for the [just departed] Attorney General to say that opponents of the administration "only aid terrorists" and "give ammunition to America's enemies" is a step toward fascism.

It's disgusting, but legal, for ordinary Americans to say that everyone should get their religion, or at the least simply give in to those who believe in a ghost in the sky. But it's worse--evil and frightening--for a Supreme Court Justice to ignore "Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed" and write instead that governments are anointed by God and that "people of faith" should combat claims to the contrary "as effectively as possible."

In far larger quantities and far more explicit language, propagandists such as Ann Coulter, Sean Hannity, Rush Limbaugh, Hugh Hewitt, Michael Savage, Bill O'Reilly--far too many to name--label liberals as traitors, the enemy, the cancer, and are praised by Republican politicians for it. They all want to eliminate liberalism, and it seems easiest to them to do so by eliminating liberals. Most carry their bloodthirst overseas as well, wanting to "invade their countries, kill their leaders and convert them to Christianity."

Many in government agree with Michelle Malkin, who argues that opposition to the so-called war on terror justifies roundups and concentration camps like those in WWII. James Dobson believes that opposition to "most of the things that conservative Christians stand for" means you hate those people. (Dobson and other notable rightists stood on the same stage and applauded Jimmy Swaggert's announcement that he would kill any man who looked at him funny; who's hating here?) Human Events Online, "the national conservative weekly," says it's time to expel California, Illinois, New York, New Jersey, Massachusetts, Vermont, New Hampshire, Maine, Rhode Island, Connecticut, Maryland, and Delaware from the U.S. (An appropriate response, full of vulgarity but also full of useful hyperlinks, is here.)

Thousands of private-citizen conservatives publically call for the execution of liberals, and they go uncriticized by conservative politicians. Famous right-wingers who make the same call ("My only regret with Timothy McVeigh is he did not go to the New York Times Building.") are justified by the right-wing mainstream media with the lie that it's all in jest.

A vote for George Bush was a vote for all of this. I know that voting for a candidate doesn't mean agreeing with 100% of what that candidate stands for, but death threats against political opponents are a category that may not be written off.

People who vote for this pogrom-to-come don't deserve a patient hearing-out. I'd love to be polite, and I can be so long as politics doesn't come up. But when someone—even my relatives—suggests to me that they're breathing a sigh of relief because Bush skated by again, I say damn you and the hateful horse you rode in on. When you come to imprison me for my liberalism, be prepared for my rage.

Hey look! I'm being bipartisan!

Let's form a progressive alliance with Bull Moose Republicans.

I'm no fan of Scoop Jackson per se, but I'd like to see more moderate and principled Republicans, so I'm willing to talk.

Talk about your Manchurian candidate

Wouldn't it be strange if left-wing sleeper agents infiltrated the Republican party like the Russians posing as Americans in that Charles Bronson film and under the guise of a "new" form of conservatism, introduced a bizarre almost Trotskyist foreign policy and will to power that succeeded in duping America's foremost right-wing party into self-destructing?

It would be just like the left to put our nation at risk by trying to heighten the contradictions to such a drastic degree.

Good thing we're not living in some strange kind of Philip K. Dick type universe in which, say, one of the characters in the novel is played by a movie actor who marries into the anti-Nixon political dynasty and goes on to be the governor of the state in a time of heightened security alerts and competing versions of reality.

My beef with Greenspan

In a discussion thread at Kos two days ago (Daily Kos :: Comments Kill the moderators) a fellow called johnmorris succinctly put the hammer down on Alan Greenspan's disingenuous betrayal of our nation's social compact with its frail and elderly:

in 1983 Greenspan predicted disaster for Social Security unless we doubled the withholding tax and built up a reserve so we did it. With the reserve built up and the budget in surplus Greenspan waltzes in and tells congress they need to pass the tax cut to avoid "paying down the debt too fast". When the tax cut puts the budget into deficit the bastard jumps up and says we have to cut social security. Fuck him, he's a cheap suit hustler.

I've never heard the term "cheap-suit hustler" before (although I have heard of the Cheap-Suit Serenaders), but I like the sound of that, and I think the profanity is warranted too.

Too bad we got distracted by the lockbox folly last time around. Meanwhile, the foxes have been guarding the chicken coop.

Tom DeLay is toast

Journalist Amy Rozen fills us in on Washington scuttlebutt in her War and Piece weblog.

Couldn't be happening to a nicer guy.

A brotherhood of man

Imagine all the people, singing John Lennon songs, here.

(this has been out for a little bit, but I'm late to the party, and I figgered there might be others who are likewise a lil bit behind the times. nod to xian for pointing this out to me over the weekend.)

Republicans trying to have it both ways on race

Joshua Micah Marshall, whose Talking Points Memo is one of the best political blogs around, has a new column in The Hill. His first column takes on Republican tolerance of intolerance:

Critics on the left often wrongly claim that the Republican Party is some hotbed of crypto-racism, when, in fact, most Republicans are nothing of the sort. Many want to build a racially inclusive party. The problem is that too many Republican officeholders still believe it's important to keep the GOP a congenial home for all manner of unreconstructed yahoos and even downright racists.

It's the Secrecy, Stupid

Enron is a sideshow. The persistent ill-behavior of the present administration is most evident in its relentless bent toward secrecy - secrecy for Republican administrations, that is.

A court just ruled that the Admin must release thousands of documents pertaining to those same energy policy task-force meetings that Cheney is stonewalling the GAO about. Hiding of Reagan-Bush era records is also telling. You can run, W., from history but you can't hide.