ARE THE POWER TOOLS NOW GHOSTWRITING MATERIAL FOR KARL ROVE?
John Hinderaker at Power Line yesterday:
CRIMINALIZING CONSERVATISM
Many liberals don't just want to defeat conservatives at the polls, they want to send them to jail. Toward that end, they have sometimes tried to criminalize what are essentially policy differences. President Obama hinted at another step in that direction when he said today that he is open to the idea of bringing criminal charges against the Justice Department lawyers who wrote opinions to the effect that waterboarding and other harsh interrogation methods could legally be used on al Qaeda detainees....
Karl Rove on Fox News last night:
"What the Obama administration has done in the last several days is very dangerous," Rove said.... "What they've essentially said is if we have policy disagreements with our predecessors... we're going to turn ourselves into the moral equivalent of a Latin American country run by colonels in mirrored sunglasses and what we're gonna do is prosecute systematically the previous administration, or threaten prosecutions against the previous administration, based on policy differences. Is that what we've come to in this country?"
There's no longer a point in the Republican Party where the establishment ends and the freelance ranters begin. Everyone in the GOP is now in the latter category.
(Hinderaker post via Instaputz.)
Wednesday, April 22, 2009
THE "MIRACLE SHOE" IN THE SUPPOSEDLY TORTURE-FOILED L.A. TERROR PLOT
In yesterday's Washington Post, Marc Thiessen, a former Bush speechwriter, cited a specific terrorist attack one torture memo say was thwarted by brutal interrogation techniques:
Specifically, interrogation with enhanced techniques "led to the discovery of a KSM plot, the 'Second Wave,' 'to use East Asian operatives to crash a hijacked airliner into' a building in Los Angeles." KSM later acknowledged before a military commission at Guantanamo Bay that the target was the Library Tower, the tallest building on the West Coast. The memo explains that "information obtained from KSM also led to the capture of Riduan bin Isomuddin, better known as Hambali, and the discovery of the Guraba Cell, a 17-member Jemmah Islamiyah cell tasked with executing the 'Second Wave.'" In other words, without enhanced interrogations, there could be a hole in the ground in Los Angeles to match the one in New York.
The right-wing CNSNews site followed up with this:
The Central Intelligence Agency told CNSNews.com today that it stands by the assertion made in a May 30, 2005 Justice Department memo that the use of “enhanced techniques” of interrogation on al Qaeda leader Khalid Sheik Mohammed (KSM) -- including the use of waterboarding -- caused KSM to reveal information that allowed the U.S. government to thwart a planned attack on Los Angeles.
And in today's New York Times, we have:
The Bush administration has long argued that harsh questioning of Qaeda operatives like Zubaydah helped prevent a planned attack on Los Angeles and cited passages in the memos released last week to bolster that conclusion.
Um, does anyone remember the details of that plot, as recounted by the Bush administration in 2006?
President Bush offered new information on Thursday about what he said was a foiled plot by Al Qaeda in 2002 to fly a hijacked airplane into the tallest building west of the Mississippi, the U.S. Bank Tower in Los Angeles, as he sought to make the case for his record on national security.
Although the administration made public the Los Angeles plot in general terms four months ago, Mr. Bush, in a speech to the National Guard Association, disclosed more specific details, including what he said was the planned use of a "shoe bomb" by hijackers to breach the airplane's cockpit door and take over the controls.
What's wrong with this picture? Oh, a couple of things.
First, how on earth do you use a shoe bomb to blow open a hole in a cockpit door without either (a) injuring or killing yourself or (b) destroying critical equipment you'll need to pilot the plane into the building? That's got to be an awfully precise shoe. (Remember, Richard Reid shoe bomb was meant to blow up the plane.)
And second, this attack was meant to take place in 2002? Following the Richard Reid incident, there were shoe inspections at airports starting in December 2001:
... in airports all across the United States today, people who were taking off their shoes and putting them through the magnetometers.
Furthermore,
Michael Scheuer, a veteran al-Qaida expert who was working at the Central Intelligence Agency in 2002, when the arrests were made, told the Voice of America that he never heard about them, and a U.S. government official told the Los Angeles Times that the plot never approached the operational stage. Moreover, as the story of United Flight 93 demonstrated, the tactic of flying passenger planes into buildings -- which depended on passengers not conceiving of that possibility -- didn't remain viable even through the morning of 9/11 ("Let's roll").
Is that what torture saved us from? A poorly developed pipe dream?
****
UPDATE: There's also the inconvenient fact that Khalid Shaikh Mohammed was captured months after the L.A. plot was broken up according to Bush administration statements. Timeline here.
In yesterday's Washington Post, Marc Thiessen, a former Bush speechwriter, cited a specific terrorist attack one torture memo say was thwarted by brutal interrogation techniques:
Specifically, interrogation with enhanced techniques "led to the discovery of a KSM plot, the 'Second Wave,' 'to use East Asian operatives to crash a hijacked airliner into' a building in Los Angeles." KSM later acknowledged before a military commission at Guantanamo Bay that the target was the Library Tower, the tallest building on the West Coast. The memo explains that "information obtained from KSM also led to the capture of Riduan bin Isomuddin, better known as Hambali, and the discovery of the Guraba Cell, a 17-member Jemmah Islamiyah cell tasked with executing the 'Second Wave.'" In other words, without enhanced interrogations, there could be a hole in the ground in Los Angeles to match the one in New York.
The right-wing CNSNews site followed up with this:
The Central Intelligence Agency told CNSNews.com today that it stands by the assertion made in a May 30, 2005 Justice Department memo that the use of “enhanced techniques” of interrogation on al Qaeda leader Khalid Sheik Mohammed (KSM) -- including the use of waterboarding -- caused KSM to reveal information that allowed the U.S. government to thwart a planned attack on Los Angeles.
And in today's New York Times, we have:
The Bush administration has long argued that harsh questioning of Qaeda operatives like Zubaydah helped prevent a planned attack on Los Angeles and cited passages in the memos released last week to bolster that conclusion.
Um, does anyone remember the details of that plot, as recounted by the Bush administration in 2006?
President Bush offered new information on Thursday about what he said was a foiled plot by Al Qaeda in 2002 to fly a hijacked airplane into the tallest building west of the Mississippi, the U.S. Bank Tower in Los Angeles, as he sought to make the case for his record on national security.
Although the administration made public the Los Angeles plot in general terms four months ago, Mr. Bush, in a speech to the National Guard Association, disclosed more specific details, including what he said was the planned use of a "shoe bomb" by hijackers to breach the airplane's cockpit door and take over the controls.
What's wrong with this picture? Oh, a couple of things.
First, how on earth do you use a shoe bomb to blow open a hole in a cockpit door without either (a) injuring or killing yourself or (b) destroying critical equipment you'll need to pilot the plane into the building? That's got to be an awfully precise shoe. (Remember, Richard Reid shoe bomb was meant to blow up the plane.)
And second, this attack was meant to take place in 2002? Following the Richard Reid incident, there were shoe inspections at airports starting in December 2001:
... in airports all across the United States today, people who were taking off their shoes and putting them through the magnetometers.
Furthermore,
Michael Scheuer, a veteran al-Qaida expert who was working at the Central Intelligence Agency in 2002, when the arrests were made, told the Voice of America that he never heard about them, and a U.S. government official told the Los Angeles Times that the plot never approached the operational stage. Moreover, as the story of United Flight 93 demonstrated, the tactic of flying passenger planes into buildings -- which depended on passengers not conceiving of that possibility -- didn't remain viable even through the morning of 9/11 ("Let's roll").
Is that what torture saved us from? A poorly developed pipe dream?
****
UPDATE: There's also the inconvenient fact that Khalid Shaikh Mohammed was captured months after the L.A. plot was broken up according to Bush administration statements. Timeline here.
Tuesday, April 21, 2009
LET'S GET STUPID (AGAIN)!
There was a bit of interest in the blogosphere today about this:
Gary Johnson for President?
Bill Kauffman reports that Gary Johnson, the former Republican governor of New Mexico, is thinking about a run for the presidency in 2012. Kauffman compares him to Gov. Mark Sanford (R-S.C.) and Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas), two libertarian heroes.
An antiwar, pro-legalization libertarian for president? Sounds like a real change of pace, right?
Yeah, but when I read this I had a vague memory that I couldn't quite call up of an anecdote from a few years ago that made Johnson seem a bit more of a recognizable presidential type. It took me a while, but I finally found it. It's from mid-2000:
Politicians are usually so coached and cloistered that the window of truth remains tightly shut. But every once in a while, it opens a crack.
Such was the case in Albuquerque the other day when New Mexico Gov. Gary Johnson, a Republican, was introducing his friend George W. Bush, the Texas governor and the GOP's presumptive nominee for president.
... The New Mexico governor began his introduction of Bush before a crowd of 600 by saying, "I'll tell you a story.''
Here's what Johnson then revealed:
"At one of these governors' conferences, George turns to me and says, 'What are they talking about?' I said, 'I don't know.' He said, `You don't know anything, do you?' And I said, `Not one thing.' He said, 'Neither do I.' And we kind of high-fived."
Celebrating ignorance with a high five.
Now, that's the real George W.
And if that's the real Gary Johnson, maybe -- alas -- he wouldn't be, given our standards until recently, such an odd choice for president after all.
There was a bit of interest in the blogosphere today about this:
Gary Johnson for President?
Bill Kauffman reports that Gary Johnson, the former Republican governor of New Mexico, is thinking about a run for the presidency in 2012. Kauffman compares him to Gov. Mark Sanford (R-S.C.) and Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas), two libertarian heroes.
Yes, as a congressman Sanford opposed the U.S. intervention in Kosovo under a Democratic president; Gary Johnson opposed a Republican president’s war upon Iraq. Sanford reluctantly endorsed McCain in 2008; Johnson emphatically endorsed Ron Paul. Sanford has potential on civil liberties; Johnson, like Paul, has the guts to call for the legalization of marijuana and an end to the drug war.
An antiwar, pro-legalization libertarian for president? Sounds like a real change of pace, right?
Yeah, but when I read this I had a vague memory that I couldn't quite call up of an anecdote from a few years ago that made Johnson seem a bit more of a recognizable presidential type. It took me a while, but I finally found it. It's from mid-2000:
Politicians are usually so coached and cloistered that the window of truth remains tightly shut. But every once in a while, it opens a crack.
Such was the case in Albuquerque the other day when New Mexico Gov. Gary Johnson, a Republican, was introducing his friend George W. Bush, the Texas governor and the GOP's presumptive nominee for president.
... The New Mexico governor began his introduction of Bush before a crowd of 600 by saying, "I'll tell you a story.''
Here's what Johnson then revealed:
"At one of these governors' conferences, George turns to me and says, 'What are they talking about?' I said, 'I don't know.' He said, `You don't know anything, do you?' And I said, `Not one thing.' He said, 'Neither do I.' And we kind of high-fived."
Celebrating ignorance with a high five.
Now, that's the real George W.
And if that's the real Gary Johnson, maybe -- alas -- he wouldn't be, given our standards until recently, such an odd choice for president after all.
BROOKS: HOW DARE THE PRO-MIDDLE CLASS PARTY TRY TO WIN OVER THE MIDDLE CLASS!
In today's column, David Brooks seems rather astonished -- and worried and offended -- because Barack Obama is not wearing a bandolier and a Che shirt and talking about economics in terms of class warfare. Here's Brooks on Obama's recent economics speech in Georgetown:
Obama's chief concern was not inequality. It was irresponsibility. Obama didn't sound like an economic liberal at Georgetown. He sounded like a cultural conservative.
America once had a responsible economic culture, Obama argued. People used to save their pennies to buy their dream houses. Banks used to lend by "traditional standards." Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac used to stick to their "traditional mandate." Companies like A.I.G. used to limit themselves to the "traditional insurance business."
But these traditions broke down, Obama continued. They were swamped by irresponsibility. Businesspeople chased "short-term profits" over long-term investments. Smart people spent more time manipulating numbers and symbols than actually making things. Americans consumed too much and saved too little. America became corrupted by "excessive debt," "reckless speculation" and "fleeting profits."
Obama vowed to end this irresponsibility and the cycle of boom and bust. It’s time to get back to basics, he said. He embraced tradition, order and authority. He quoted the New Testament and argued that it is time that the U.S. built its economic house on rock and not sand.
Where's the surprise here? Obama's grandmother was a VP at the Bank of Hawaii. He had a chance growing up to be exposed to non-turbocharged capitalism. Obama -- as these two articles by David Leonhardt in The New York Times Magazine make clear, is a believer in the market even though he recognizes that it is known to fail, and he also knows that we need prosperity that doesn't come from financial chicanery and bubbles.
Brooks seems particularly worried -- and offended -- that Obama's approach might destroy the notion that the GOP is the party of ordinary Joes and Janes. Brooks apparently thinks that Republicans -- the party of Hollywood Ronald Reagan, Phil "UBS" Gramm, and the Bush dynasty -- deserve ordinary Joes and Janes. If the party of FDR takes them back, that's theft!
If Republicans aren't nervous, they should be. Obama is arguing for his activist agenda not on the basis of class-consciousness, which is alien to America, but as a defense of middle-class morality, which is central to it. Obama is positioning the Democrats as the party of order, responsibility and small-town values. If he pulls this mantle away from the Republicans, it would be the greatest train robbery in American politics.
(Emphasis mine.)
I think Brooks almost gets it -- up to a point, he realizes that Republicans have failed America miserably. But "train robbery"? Sorry -- there's still a part of Brooks who's waving an autographed copy of Bobos in Paradise and shouting, "Arugula! Swiss-water decaf! Um, Sub-Zero refrigerators! Come on, Middle America, you can't be serious about abandoning Republicans for those people! Pay no attention to all the tax cuts for the rich! Republicans are your real friends!"
What he doesn't realize is that Middle America doesn't see the GOP as "the party of order, responsibility and small-town values." Order? The economy fell into chaos on the GOP's watch. Responsibility? Under the GOP, fat cats got away with murder. Small-town values? It wasn't bankers' kids who died by the thousands for a lie in Iraq.
Obama can't seize that mantle from the GOP in any event. The GOP lost it a long time ago.
In today's column, David Brooks seems rather astonished -- and worried and offended -- because Barack Obama is not wearing a bandolier and a Che shirt and talking about economics in terms of class warfare. Here's Brooks on Obama's recent economics speech in Georgetown:
Obama's chief concern was not inequality. It was irresponsibility. Obama didn't sound like an economic liberal at Georgetown. He sounded like a cultural conservative.
America once had a responsible economic culture, Obama argued. People used to save their pennies to buy their dream houses. Banks used to lend by "traditional standards." Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac used to stick to their "traditional mandate." Companies like A.I.G. used to limit themselves to the "traditional insurance business."
But these traditions broke down, Obama continued. They were swamped by irresponsibility. Businesspeople chased "short-term profits" over long-term investments. Smart people spent more time manipulating numbers and symbols than actually making things. Americans consumed too much and saved too little. America became corrupted by "excessive debt," "reckless speculation" and "fleeting profits."
Obama vowed to end this irresponsibility and the cycle of boom and bust. It’s time to get back to basics, he said. He embraced tradition, order and authority. He quoted the New Testament and argued that it is time that the U.S. built its economic house on rock and not sand.
Where's the surprise here? Obama's grandmother was a VP at the Bank of Hawaii. He had a chance growing up to be exposed to non-turbocharged capitalism. Obama -- as these two articles by David Leonhardt in The New York Times Magazine make clear, is a believer in the market even though he recognizes that it is known to fail, and he also knows that we need prosperity that doesn't come from financial chicanery and bubbles.
Brooks seems particularly worried -- and offended -- that Obama's approach might destroy the notion that the GOP is the party of ordinary Joes and Janes. Brooks apparently thinks that Republicans -- the party of Hollywood Ronald Reagan, Phil "UBS" Gramm, and the Bush dynasty -- deserve ordinary Joes and Janes. If the party of FDR takes them back, that's theft!
If Republicans aren't nervous, they should be. Obama is arguing for his activist agenda not on the basis of class-consciousness, which is alien to America, but as a defense of middle-class morality, which is central to it. Obama is positioning the Democrats as the party of order, responsibility and small-town values. If he pulls this mantle away from the Republicans, it would be the greatest train robbery in American politics.
(Emphasis mine.)
I think Brooks almost gets it -- up to a point, he realizes that Republicans have failed America miserably. But "train robbery"? Sorry -- there's still a part of Brooks who's waving an autographed copy of Bobos in Paradise and shouting, "Arugula! Swiss-water decaf! Um, Sub-Zero refrigerators! Come on, Middle America, you can't be serious about abandoning Republicans for those people! Pay no attention to all the tax cuts for the rich! Republicans are your real friends!"
What he doesn't realize is that Middle America doesn't see the GOP as "the party of order, responsibility and small-town values." Order? The economy fell into chaos on the GOP's watch. Responsibility? Under the GOP, fat cats got away with murder. Small-town values? It wasn't bankers' kids who died by the thousands for a lie in Iraq.
Obama can't seize that mantle from the GOP in any event. The GOP lost it a long time ago.
LIMBAUGHISM IS "THE REV. JACKSON OF THE GOP"
Holy crap -- via Applesauce, I see that even one of the saints of the right (albeit a minor saint) has had to grovel before Rush Limbaugh:
Last week in an interview with the Kansas City Star editorial board, Rep. Todd Tiahrt (R-KS) risked alienating thousands of ditto-heads by giving his honest opinion of whether Rush Limbaugh was the "de facto leader of the GOP." "No, no, he's just an entertainer," Tiahrt said.
According to the Wichita Eagle (via Kansas Jackass), Tiahrt's office is now also rushing to apologize:
Tiahrt? Todd Tiahrt has to kiss the ring?
Todd Tiahrt wrote the Tiahrt Amendment, fer crissakes!
Tiahrt is the author of the Tiahrt Amendment, which prohibits the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (BATFE) from releasing information from its firearms trace database to anyone other than a law enforcement agency or prosecutor in connection with a criminal investigation. Additionally, any data so released is inadmissible in a civil lawsuit. Some groups, including the Mayors Against Illegal Guns Coalition, believe that having further access to the BATFE database would help municipal police departments track down sellers of illegal guns and curb crime. These groups are trying to undo the Tiahrt Amendment.
Not even that exempts you from the Wrath of Rush? Not even authoring one of the sacred texts of the gun religion?
****
This makes me think about a Politico piece that appeared yesterday, in which Jeremy Mayer of George Mason University argued that Sarah Palin now is like Jesse Jackson a generation ago -- incapable of winning the presidency in a general election, but impossible to attack within her own party:
... Like Palin, Jesse Jackson was the best crowd rouser in his party.
... every white Democrat in the race knew that to attack Jackson head-on risked losing the black vote.
... For the same reason, if Palin chooses to run in 2012, no Republican will be able to go negative on her without losing the right-wing Christian populists who flocked to her rallies in 2008....
I think this greatly overstates Jackson's position in the 1980s -- Michael Dukakis could have won the '88 election easily (he was well ahead in the polls after a convention in which Jackson made multiple appearances), but he didn't know how to fight off the Willie Horton/ACLU back-alley mugging he got from the GOP, which had nothing to do with Jackson.
But I also think the notion that Palin is sacrosanct isn't quite right. What's sacrosanct is Limbaughism -- or whatever you'd call the Taliban conservatism that dominates the GOP. Palin is certainly beatable for the 2012 GOP presidential nomination -- Mark Sanford or Newt Gingrich or whoever wants to beat her will just have to out-Limbaugh her, or find a way to suggest that she's not quite Limbaugh-worthy. She's not exalted -- the Cause and the Way and the Truth are. A meaner, crazier Defender of the Truth can certainly beat her.
Holy crap -- via Applesauce, I see that even one of the saints of the right (albeit a minor saint) has had to grovel before Rush Limbaugh:
Last week in an interview with the Kansas City Star editorial board, Rep. Todd Tiahrt (R-KS) risked alienating thousands of ditto-heads by giving his honest opinion of whether Rush Limbaugh was the "de facto leader of the GOP." "No, no, he's just an entertainer," Tiahrt said.
According to the Wichita Eagle (via Kansas Jackass), Tiahrt's office is now also rushing to apologize:
Asked about the episode and resulting Web buzz, Tiahrt spokesman Sam Sackett said Tiahrt was not speaking negatively about Limbaugh but was trying to defend him against the suggestion that Limbaugh could be blamed for the GOP's woes. "The congressman believes Rush is a great leader of the conservative movement in America -- not a party leader responsible for election losses," Sackett told The Eagle editorial board. "Nothing the congressman said diminished the role Rush has played and continues to play in the conservative movement."
Tiahrt? Todd Tiahrt has to kiss the ring?
Todd Tiahrt wrote the Tiahrt Amendment, fer crissakes!
Tiahrt is the author of the Tiahrt Amendment, which prohibits the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (BATFE) from releasing information from its firearms trace database to anyone other than a law enforcement agency or prosecutor in connection with a criminal investigation. Additionally, any data so released is inadmissible in a civil lawsuit. Some groups, including the Mayors Against Illegal Guns Coalition, believe that having further access to the BATFE database would help municipal police departments track down sellers of illegal guns and curb crime. These groups are trying to undo the Tiahrt Amendment.
Not even that exempts you from the Wrath of Rush? Not even authoring one of the sacred texts of the gun religion?
****
This makes me think about a Politico piece that appeared yesterday, in which Jeremy Mayer of George Mason University argued that Sarah Palin now is like Jesse Jackson a generation ago -- incapable of winning the presidency in a general election, but impossible to attack within her own party:
... Like Palin, Jesse Jackson was the best crowd rouser in his party.
... every white Democrat in the race knew that to attack Jackson head-on risked losing the black vote.
... For the same reason, if Palin chooses to run in 2012, no Republican will be able to go negative on her without losing the right-wing Christian populists who flocked to her rallies in 2008....
I think this greatly overstates Jackson's position in the 1980s -- Michael Dukakis could have won the '88 election easily (he was well ahead in the polls after a convention in which Jackson made multiple appearances), but he didn't know how to fight off the Willie Horton/ACLU back-alley mugging he got from the GOP, which had nothing to do with Jackson.
But I also think the notion that Palin is sacrosanct isn't quite right. What's sacrosanct is Limbaughism -- or whatever you'd call the Taliban conservatism that dominates the GOP. Palin is certainly beatable for the 2012 GOP presidential nomination -- Mark Sanford or Newt Gingrich or whoever wants to beat her will just have to out-Limbaugh her, or find a way to suggest that she's not quite Limbaugh-worthy. She's not exalted -- the Cause and the Way and the Truth are. A meaner, crazier Defender of the Truth can certainly beat her.
Monday, April 20, 2009
WHY STOP AT STUPID WHEN YOU CAN GO ALL THE WAY TO CLINICALLY PARANOID?
Right-wingers are ginning up controversy about President Obama's handshake with Hugo Chavez of Venezuela (my favorite bit: Newt Gingrich's claim that, by contrast, previous presidents have never been known to "rush over, smile, and greet Russian dictators," which Think Progress found absurdly easy to debunk).
But just getting the vapors about the possibility that Obama might have picked up pinko cooties from touching Chavez isn't enough for the right. The right needs a conspiracy theory.
Enter Rush Limbaugh. Here he is on today's show:
...But back in November of 2006, there was an education forum in Caracas, Venezuela. President Hugo Chavez was there. He had invited Bill Ayers, the man who introduced Barack Obama to Chicago politics. Bill Ayers is a good friend of Barack Obama's. Chavez invites Ayers to come down and attend an education seminar, an education forum in Caracas. And this is what Ayers said. The first thing he did is he "proclaimed his support for 'the profound educational reforms under way here in Venezuela under the leadership of President Chávez. We share the belief,'" Bill Ayers and Chavez, "'that education is the motor-force of revolution. . . . I look forward to seeing how you continue to overcome the failings of capitalist education as you seek to create something truly new and deeply humane.'
"Ayers concluded his speech by declaring that 'Venezuela is poised to offer the world a new model of education -- a humanizing and revolutionary model whose twin missions are enlightenment and liberation.'" Now, Ayers and his buddies at the Annenberg Project and whatever educational projects that Ayers is a part of, he believes that the purpose of education is to indoctrinate public school students in the belief that America is a racist, militarist country, and that the capitalist system is inherently unfair and oppressive. That's Barack Obama's buddy, Bill Ayers (about whom nobody cares during the campaign) in November 2006, getting an award from Hugo Chavez, our new friend in Caracas, Venezuela, praising Chavez for reforming education, turning it into a means of social revolution, opposing capitalism and militarism. And that is what Ayers' curricula here in the United States attempts to do.
Now, again, we're probably going, "Well, Obama didn't know anything about that! Obama didn't know that Ayers went down there. Obama doesn't know what Ayers' curricula construction is all about. Obama doesn't know this." Of course not. No, Obama doesn't know, he just goes down there and yuks it up with the guy when honors his friend, Bill Ayers. He goes down there and accepts a book (Open Veins of Latin America, Five Centuries of the Pillage of a Continent." Oh, but Obama doesn't know anything about this. "No, no, no, Rush. He can't possibly know anything about this at all." Basically what you got, is you got Bill Ayers down there applauding Hugo Chavez for teaching Marxism in the public schools and agreeing that this is what needs to happen in the United States to get rid of the capitalist system and to get rid of the notion of American militarism.
There it is! It's all one big conspiracy! Ayers is Obama's BFF -- and Chavez's, too! So they're BFFs also! They've essentially been bestest pals (or only one degree of separation from bestest pals) for years! We know Bill Ayers and Barack Obama are two men with but a single mind -- they may as well be the same person! Didn't Ayers ghostwrite Obama's book or something?
Seriously, folks: soon enough, the standard line on the right is going to be not that Obama is being foolishly conciliatory, but rather that he's Chavez's great buddy (or at least a great buddy of a great buddy of Chavez's) from way, way back, so of course he was palsy-walsy with Chavez. Objective reality is for quislings!
Right-wingers are ginning up controversy about President Obama's handshake with Hugo Chavez of Venezuela (my favorite bit: Newt Gingrich's claim that, by contrast, previous presidents have never been known to "rush over, smile, and greet Russian dictators," which Think Progress found absurdly easy to debunk).
But just getting the vapors about the possibility that Obama might have picked up pinko cooties from touching Chavez isn't enough for the right. The right needs a conspiracy theory.
Enter Rush Limbaugh. Here he is on today's show:
...But back in November of 2006, there was an education forum in Caracas, Venezuela. President Hugo Chavez was there. He had invited Bill Ayers, the man who introduced Barack Obama to Chicago politics. Bill Ayers is a good friend of Barack Obama's. Chavez invites Ayers to come down and attend an education seminar, an education forum in Caracas. And this is what Ayers said. The first thing he did is he "proclaimed his support for 'the profound educational reforms under way here in Venezuela under the leadership of President Chávez. We share the belief,'" Bill Ayers and Chavez, "'that education is the motor-force of revolution. . . . I look forward to seeing how you continue to overcome the failings of capitalist education as you seek to create something truly new and deeply humane.'
"Ayers concluded his speech by declaring that 'Venezuela is poised to offer the world a new model of education -- a humanizing and revolutionary model whose twin missions are enlightenment and liberation.'" Now, Ayers and his buddies at the Annenberg Project and whatever educational projects that Ayers is a part of, he believes that the purpose of education is to indoctrinate public school students in the belief that America is a racist, militarist country, and that the capitalist system is inherently unfair and oppressive. That's Barack Obama's buddy, Bill Ayers (about whom nobody cares during the campaign) in November 2006, getting an award from Hugo Chavez, our new friend in Caracas, Venezuela, praising Chavez for reforming education, turning it into a means of social revolution, opposing capitalism and militarism. And that is what Ayers' curricula here in the United States attempts to do.
Now, again, we're probably going, "Well, Obama didn't know anything about that! Obama didn't know that Ayers went down there. Obama doesn't know what Ayers' curricula construction is all about. Obama doesn't know this." Of course not. No, Obama doesn't know, he just goes down there and yuks it up with the guy when honors his friend, Bill Ayers. He goes down there and accepts a book (Open Veins of Latin America, Five Centuries of the Pillage of a Continent." Oh, but Obama doesn't know anything about this. "No, no, no, Rush. He can't possibly know anything about this at all." Basically what you got, is you got Bill Ayers down there applauding Hugo Chavez for teaching Marxism in the public schools and agreeing that this is what needs to happen in the United States to get rid of the capitalist system and to get rid of the notion of American militarism.
There it is! It's all one big conspiracy! Ayers is Obama's BFF -- and Chavez's, too! So they're BFFs also! They've essentially been bestest pals (or only one degree of separation from bestest pals) for years! We know Bill Ayers and Barack Obama are two men with but a single mind -- they may as well be the same person! Didn't Ayers ghostwrite Obama's book or something?
Seriously, folks: soon enough, the standard line on the right is going to be not that Obama is being foolishly conciliatory, but rather that he's Chavez's great buddy (or at least a great buddy of a great buddy of Chavez's) from way, way back, so of course he was palsy-walsy with Chavez. Objective reality is for quislings!
NOBLE SAVAGERY FROM TINA BROWN
(Apologies if this post seems out of place. I was thinking of it in terms of elite media figures and their utter lack of self-awareness.)
I don't follow American Idol or its analogues elsewhere in the world -- but I'm aware of Susan Boyle, the not-young, not-beautiful, surprisingly successful contestant on the U.K. Idol analogue, Britain's Got Talent.
Now, would someone explain to perfectly groomed ex-Vanity Fair editor Tina Brown that Boyle's success is not a triumph for people like Tina Brown?
At the Daily Beast, Brown writes:
The surge for Boyle reinforces the point again: we're all getting sick of being bullied by bad values. Sick of disappearing everyone who's plain or strange or not one of the cool crowd.
We are? Since when? And who's we? Tina, you've made a freaking career of "disappearing everyone who’s plain or strange or not one of the cool crowd" -- as a frou-frou editor, that's been your job for as long as I've been aware of you.
And if you've changed your point of view and are suddenly ready to embrace ordinary shmoes, you have an interesting way of showing it:
The YouTube clip of Susan's angel voice soaring from the unkissed mouth of that scrunchy-faced, eyebrow-enforested, unprepossessingly dumpy representative of anonymous humanity was [an] irresistible message to us all to get over ourselves.
Could you be more contemptuous of this woman, even as you pat yourself on the back for admiring her?
And the noble savage has to remain savage, according to Brown:
There is a passionate desire from Ms. Boyle's new fans all over the blogosphere not to see her subjected to the seemingly inevitable show business makeover. Keep that frumpy little dress! Don’t let some mincing beautician-to-the-stars rip out those exploding eyebrows!
Yes, says Tina Brown, self-appointed spokeswoman for ordinary people everywhere, keep her looking exactly the same! I say that on behalf of her fans! I'm not saying that so I can continue to feel she's someone I wouldn't have anything to do with. Heavens no! That's not what I mean at all!
Brown is a member of the elite who wants to maintain her elite status while also partaking of ordinary people's ordinariness, particularly the ordinariness of ordinary women. Hillary Clinton helped her do this last year:
Among the many underdog groups Boyle scored with was that universally dismissed demographic -- Invisible Women: The unbeautiful 47 year-olds who don't rate a second look and never get a chance to make their point in the meeting. There are so many aging women who feel dissed by popular culture and employers alike. Much of Hillary Clinton's strength in the 2008 campaign was built on this overlooked demographic. Unwanted by TV shows, advertisers, movies, and corporate recruiters, Invisible Women feel that their experience -- often holding families together while doing the work that puts bigger egos in the corner office -- goes not just unrewarded but unrecognized. Can't they at least see me? goes the voice in their heads. Especially after all those wasted hours trying to look younger, slimmer, and better dressed just to get their rightful desserts.
And why, Tina, do you think they waste all those hours trying to look younger and slimmer? Because they're told they should by everything you and your friends publish.
So spare me the "we" and "our":
That’s why it brought tears to our eyes when Susan Boyle presented herself to the Roman mob and proved that its low expectations of her were unfounded....
It will of course be only a matter of months before Susan Boyle's eyebrows get a pluck job -- and a new wave of reality television co-opts "authenticity" as the fake new thing. Yesterday's New York Times told how last fall MTV convened an urgent executive meeting to discuss how to scare up some positive social messaging from their glitz-peddling reality shows.
What a drag. We wanted to keep the Susan Boyle moment for ourselves. If it was an illusion, at least it was our illusion. It made us feel so much better than theirs will.
Oh, yes -- "theirs." This will be a re-grooming by them -- by people who are nothing whatsoever like Superstar Editor Tina Brown.
(Apologies if this post seems out of place. I was thinking of it in terms of elite media figures and their utter lack of self-awareness.)
I don't follow American Idol or its analogues elsewhere in the world -- but I'm aware of Susan Boyle, the not-young, not-beautiful, surprisingly successful contestant on the U.K. Idol analogue, Britain's Got Talent.
Now, would someone explain to perfectly groomed ex-Vanity Fair editor Tina Brown that Boyle's success is not a triumph for people like Tina Brown?
At the Daily Beast, Brown writes:
The surge for Boyle reinforces the point again: we're all getting sick of being bullied by bad values. Sick of disappearing everyone who's plain or strange or not one of the cool crowd.
We are? Since when? And who's we? Tina, you've made a freaking career of "disappearing everyone who’s plain or strange or not one of the cool crowd" -- as a frou-frou editor, that's been your job for as long as I've been aware of you.
And if you've changed your point of view and are suddenly ready to embrace ordinary shmoes, you have an interesting way of showing it:
The YouTube clip of Susan's angel voice soaring from the unkissed mouth of that scrunchy-faced, eyebrow-enforested, unprepossessingly dumpy representative of anonymous humanity was [an] irresistible message to us all to get over ourselves.
Could you be more contemptuous of this woman, even as you pat yourself on the back for admiring her?
And the noble savage has to remain savage, according to Brown:
There is a passionate desire from Ms. Boyle's new fans all over the blogosphere not to see her subjected to the seemingly inevitable show business makeover. Keep that frumpy little dress! Don’t let some mincing beautician-to-the-stars rip out those exploding eyebrows!
Yes, says Tina Brown, self-appointed spokeswoman for ordinary people everywhere, keep her looking exactly the same! I say that on behalf of her fans! I'm not saying that so I can continue to feel she's someone I wouldn't have anything to do with. Heavens no! That's not what I mean at all!
Brown is a member of the elite who wants to maintain her elite status while also partaking of ordinary people's ordinariness, particularly the ordinariness of ordinary women. Hillary Clinton helped her do this last year:
Among the many underdog groups Boyle scored with was that universally dismissed demographic -- Invisible Women: The unbeautiful 47 year-olds who don't rate a second look and never get a chance to make their point in the meeting. There are so many aging women who feel dissed by popular culture and employers alike. Much of Hillary Clinton's strength in the 2008 campaign was built on this overlooked demographic. Unwanted by TV shows, advertisers, movies, and corporate recruiters, Invisible Women feel that their experience -- often holding families together while doing the work that puts bigger egos in the corner office -- goes not just unrewarded but unrecognized. Can't they at least see me? goes the voice in their heads. Especially after all those wasted hours trying to look younger, slimmer, and better dressed just to get their rightful desserts.
And why, Tina, do you think they waste all those hours trying to look younger and slimmer? Because they're told they should by everything you and your friends publish.
So spare me the "we" and "our":
That’s why it brought tears to our eyes when Susan Boyle presented herself to the Roman mob and proved that its low expectations of her were unfounded....
It will of course be only a matter of months before Susan Boyle's eyebrows get a pluck job -- and a new wave of reality television co-opts "authenticity" as the fake new thing. Yesterday's New York Times told how last fall MTV convened an urgent executive meeting to discuss how to scare up some positive social messaging from their glitz-peddling reality shows.
What a drag. We wanted to keep the Susan Boyle moment for ourselves. If it was an illusion, at least it was our illusion. It made us feel so much better than theirs will.
Oh, yes -- "theirs." This will be a re-grooming by them -- by people who are nothing whatsoever like Superstar Editor Tina Brown.
OH YEAH -- POLITE EXCEPT FOR THAT
Instapundit, tryingt to set the terms of the first-thing-Monday-morning blog debate by citing posts about one large tea party:
SOME TEA PARTY PHOTOS from Fresno. "Fresno had over 7.500 attend the most polite protest I have ever witnessed." ...
Yup -- really polite.
... um, if you don't count this woman from Fresno:
Or this guy:
Speakers in Fresno compared the federal government's economic stimulus package to socialism and told the Homeland Security chief to "go straight to hell," among other things, ringing a chord with the crowd.
(That speaker also said, "We are a Judeo-Christian nation, and anyone that says we're not can go straight to hell.")
Oh, and it was an admirable rally except for, er, um, this guy:
Brian Blanchard of Coarsegold wanted to warn everyone that the Federal Emergency Management Agency, or FEMA is just waiting to take control. "And they have Gestapo like powers. They can take your house, they can take your car, they can your money they can take your dog." He said.
And is the Fresno speaker in this video saying what I think he's saying, with a few euphemisms?
I haven't seen one American bailed out yet! ... I'll tell you what: if you're going to bail out somebody, sure in the hell don't bail out Goldman Sachs! Don't bail out JP Morgan and Chase bank and that damn Bank of America! ... they want to give six trillion dollars to those freaks in New York City! ... You guys gotta know: they're coming for every dime you've got, and when they're done with dimes, they want your blood!
(The same guy repeats the money-and-blood formula near the end of the clip -- after ranting about the Federal Reserve. Draw your own conclusions.)
Oh, and Insty is boasting that five or six nonwhite people were seen in Fresno -- out of a crowd estimated at 7500. Math is hard, but that would be a rally that's less than one tenth of one percent nonwhite. Fresno is, in fact, 8% African American, 40% Hispanic, and 5% mixed-race.
Yeah, brag on, Insty.
Instapundit, tryingt to set the terms of the first-thing-Monday-morning blog debate by citing posts about one large tea party:
SOME TEA PARTY PHOTOS from Fresno. "Fresno had over 7.500 attend the most polite protest I have ever witnessed." ...
Yup -- really polite.
... um, if you don't count this woman from Fresno:
Or this guy:
Speakers in Fresno compared the federal government's economic stimulus package to socialism and told the Homeland Security chief to "go straight to hell," among other things, ringing a chord with the crowd.
(That speaker also said, "We are a Judeo-Christian nation, and anyone that says we're not can go straight to hell.")
Oh, and it was an admirable rally except for, er, um, this guy:
Brian Blanchard of Coarsegold wanted to warn everyone that the Federal Emergency Management Agency, or FEMA is just waiting to take control. "And they have Gestapo like powers. They can take your house, they can take your car, they can your money they can take your dog." He said.
And is the Fresno speaker in this video saying what I think he's saying, with a few euphemisms?
I haven't seen one American bailed out yet! ... I'll tell you what: if you're going to bail out somebody, sure in the hell don't bail out Goldman Sachs! Don't bail out JP Morgan and Chase bank and that damn Bank of America! ... they want to give six trillion dollars to those freaks in New York City! ... You guys gotta know: they're coming for every dime you've got, and when they're done with dimes, they want your blood!
(The same guy repeats the money-and-blood formula near the end of the clip -- after ranting about the Federal Reserve. Draw your own conclusions.)
Oh, and Insty is boasting that five or six nonwhite people were seen in Fresno -- out of a crowd estimated at 7500. Math is hard, but that would be a rally that's less than one tenth of one percent nonwhite. Fresno is, in fact, 8% African American, 40% Hispanic, and 5% mixed-race.
Yeah, brag on, Insty.
Sunday, April 19, 2009
WHITE HOUSE PRESS CORPSE
Ana Marie Cox just made a lot of enemies in D.C.:
[crossposted at Rumproast]
Ana Marie Cox just made a lot of enemies in D.C.:
Name a major political story broken by a White House correspondent. A thorough debunking of the Bush case for Iraqi WMD? McClatchy Newspapers' State Department and national security correspondents. Bush's abuse of signing statements? The Boston Globe's legal affairs correspondent. Even Watergate came off The Washington Post's Metro desk. [...]I think Jake Tapper could really use a hug right now.
It's not that the reporters covering the president are bad at their jobs. Most are experienced journalists at the top of their game -- and they're wasted at the White House, where scoops are doled out, not uncovered. The day of a typical White House correspondent consists, literally, of waiting to be told things. Legitimate security concerns and a tightly scripted political world keep the presidential press corps physically corralled and informationally hostage.
[crossposted at Rumproast]
War Protesters and Whiners,
There's a discussion going on about whether the people who got out and protested the Iraq war, especially early on, were somehow "the same" or "like" the Teabaggers. I know that a lot of time has passed since the run up to the war but the amount of sheer forgetting that people are doing is just unbelievable to me. First--the protests only started after 9/11 and the Anthrax scare. That is to say they only started after many people were rightly feeling pretty much like we were at the start of an armageddon of massive proportions. Even people who opposed the war had those feelings--feelings of loss, guilt, fear, anxiety. Lots of people woke up after 9/11 and were wondering whether Nuclear war was next. After the Anthrax attacks people were practically hiding under their beds afraid of all human contact.
In a sense mere conventional war was the easy out--it gave us a target and it told us how the war was going to be fought. Most people didn't oppose the war (s) at all. They thought Afghanistan was totally justified and they thought that the war in Iraq was something too big for the Bush people to lie about. (Barney Frank, for example, dismissed all protest against Afghanistan by saying that the war was "overdetermined" and was simply going to happen.)
I had a near screaming match with a dear friend, a liberal New Yorker, who believed very strongly that we had to fight back, against whoever, because New York had been attacked. He simply couldn't believe what my father proposed fairly early on, which was that Saddam had no, repeat, NO, WMD at all.
It took a massive level of scepticism to see through the Government's tons of bullshit. A level of scepticism that was unshared by our national Democratic leaders who either abandoned us because it was politically convenient or abandoned us because they just couldn't believe that Bush et al would lie to them, personally, to their faces. I personally believe that lots of people, Kerry included, had such a high opinion of the Office of the President and of their own importance as Very Important People that they thought that lies at that level were out of the question. And these are people who had worked with Cheney. Shows how dumb they were. Stupider than the lowest unemployed housewife at the first of those United For Justice With Peace meetings.
Which brings me back to the question of the nature of the anti war protests. Over at Baloon Juice there are people saying they "didn't go to any" but they are sure that they were easy and fine and fun and silly. And other people saying they went and it was no big whoop. And still others saying--uh, no, it was scary and disheartening and you felt at risk. Its silly to say that there can only be one perspective on a huge, amorphouse, series of public events taking place in many little publics. I would like to bring a moment of clarity to this discussion, however, by pointing out that *of course* people are going to have had very different experiences and the experience of sheer loneliness that lots of people felt may have even been assuaged and changed by the experience of going to a rally. A movement from isolation to a sense of power and cohesion is itself the goal of rallies. So one guy who was frightened in his little Florida town can stay frightened and not protest, even verbally, but put him on a bus and send him to New York for a big rally and he sees that he's not alone. Thats.The.Whole.Point.Of. Rallies. Not to overthrow the government by sheer terror. Not to make the media guys go "wow! look at all those good patriots!" but to help people realize they are not alone, to help them get started organizing on the ground for electoral stuff.
I went to the big, big, NY Protest. Not my first, of course, I come from a protesting family. My parents were there too although the crowd was so huge that we could barely find each other. It was an amazing, joyful, solemn moment. The streets were filled with grandparents, children, grandchildren, college students. People who'd been to protests going back to Vietnam and people who had never imagined protesting. Sure, ANSWER had partly organized the damn thing and there were plenty of "free mumia" signs or "legalize hemp" but you can't stop those in a free protest--only in a police state protest. The police were hostile--I've seen friendly police and I know what that looks like--they weren't hitting people but they were under orders to surround and compress the march and to make it as difficult as possible. It was odd because the protesters were so uniformly generous, gentle, and talkative to the police. It was decidedly not an *anti* type March.
The march route was made torturous and complex. Subways were shut down. When you got to the "end" of the March you found Desmond Tutu and a few other people talking but no--NO--actual political figures from the Democratic Party or any other party. They stayed rigorously away. My parents and I met up on the sidelines eventually and took off--I had young children and had to get back on a train and get home and my parents are in their 70's. We went back to their hotel room and discovered that none of this was on the news. Zero. Zip. New York One showedn othing but graphics of traffic blockages for the sake of commuters. You would have thought there was a broken water main somewhere that was causing the traffic police to shut down half the city. By the evening news there was brief footage of one shirtless college aged guy wrestling with the Police with a hostile voice over from the media people. The implication was that it was a disorderly, teenage style, protest that the police had to monitor to prevent I don't know--shirtless protesting?--no interviews with the grandparents, Quakers, College Students, Organizers, Mothers, etc... who made up the bulk of the protestors.
So, was it a success? Well, no, not from some perspectives. But on the way back I found myself on a train stuffed with people who were energized, hopeful, and organizing. Was that pre-Dean? I think it was. But I remember exchanging information with people and talking about what to do next. And it wasn't long before I became a member of several anti war organizations and eventually became a Dean supporter and from that became more politically active than ever before in my life.
If the Teabag protests get that far, frankly, the Republican party has a problem on its hands. They are riding a tiger and they don't know it. But on the question of whether the anti war protests were as self indulgent and as easy as these Teabag protests. Uh. No. It was a scary, scary time and people who made any kind of fuss were made very aware that the Government and its local level allies were going to consider domestic protestors as the enemy. And the treatment of the enemy was something that was under daily discussion, and it didn't look pretty.
aimai
There's a discussion going on about whether the people who got out and protested the Iraq war, especially early on, were somehow "the same" or "like" the Teabaggers. I know that a lot of time has passed since the run up to the war but the amount of sheer forgetting that people are doing is just unbelievable to me. First--the protests only started after 9/11 and the Anthrax scare. That is to say they only started after many people were rightly feeling pretty much like we were at the start of an armageddon of massive proportions. Even people who opposed the war had those feelings--feelings of loss, guilt, fear, anxiety. Lots of people woke up after 9/11 and were wondering whether Nuclear war was next. After the Anthrax attacks people were practically hiding under their beds afraid of all human contact.
In a sense mere conventional war was the easy out--it gave us a target and it told us how the war was going to be fought. Most people didn't oppose the war (s) at all. They thought Afghanistan was totally justified and they thought that the war in Iraq was something too big for the Bush people to lie about. (Barney Frank, for example, dismissed all protest against Afghanistan by saying that the war was "overdetermined" and was simply going to happen.)
I had a near screaming match with a dear friend, a liberal New Yorker, who believed very strongly that we had to fight back, against whoever, because New York had been attacked. He simply couldn't believe what my father proposed fairly early on, which was that Saddam had no, repeat, NO, WMD at all.
It took a massive level of scepticism to see through the Government's tons of bullshit. A level of scepticism that was unshared by our national Democratic leaders who either abandoned us because it was politically convenient or abandoned us because they just couldn't believe that Bush et al would lie to them, personally, to their faces. I personally believe that lots of people, Kerry included, had such a high opinion of the Office of the President and of their own importance as Very Important People that they thought that lies at that level were out of the question. And these are people who had worked with Cheney. Shows how dumb they were. Stupider than the lowest unemployed housewife at the first of those United For Justice With Peace meetings.
Which brings me back to the question of the nature of the anti war protests. Over at Baloon Juice there are people saying they "didn't go to any" but they are sure that they were easy and fine and fun and silly. And other people saying they went and it was no big whoop. And still others saying--uh, no, it was scary and disheartening and you felt at risk. Its silly to say that there can only be one perspective on a huge, amorphouse, series of public events taking place in many little publics. I would like to bring a moment of clarity to this discussion, however, by pointing out that *of course* people are going to have had very different experiences and the experience of sheer loneliness that lots of people felt may have even been assuaged and changed by the experience of going to a rally. A movement from isolation to a sense of power and cohesion is itself the goal of rallies. So one guy who was frightened in his little Florida town can stay frightened and not protest, even verbally, but put him on a bus and send him to New York for a big rally and he sees that he's not alone. Thats.The.Whole.Point.Of. Rallies. Not to overthrow the government by sheer terror. Not to make the media guys go "wow! look at all those good patriots!" but to help people realize they are not alone, to help them get started organizing on the ground for electoral stuff.
I went to the big, big, NY Protest. Not my first, of course, I come from a protesting family. My parents were there too although the crowd was so huge that we could barely find each other. It was an amazing, joyful, solemn moment. The streets were filled with grandparents, children, grandchildren, college students. People who'd been to protests going back to Vietnam and people who had never imagined protesting. Sure, ANSWER had partly organized the damn thing and there were plenty of "free mumia" signs or "legalize hemp" but you can't stop those in a free protest--only in a police state protest. The police were hostile--I've seen friendly police and I know what that looks like--they weren't hitting people but they were under orders to surround and compress the march and to make it as difficult as possible. It was odd because the protesters were so uniformly generous, gentle, and talkative to the police. It was decidedly not an *anti* type March.
The march route was made torturous and complex. Subways were shut down. When you got to the "end" of the March you found Desmond Tutu and a few other people talking but no--NO--actual political figures from the Democratic Party or any other party. They stayed rigorously away. My parents and I met up on the sidelines eventually and took off--I had young children and had to get back on a train and get home and my parents are in their 70's. We went back to their hotel room and discovered that none of this was on the news. Zero. Zip. New York One showedn othing but graphics of traffic blockages for the sake of commuters. You would have thought there was a broken water main somewhere that was causing the traffic police to shut down half the city. By the evening news there was brief footage of one shirtless college aged guy wrestling with the Police with a hostile voice over from the media people. The implication was that it was a disorderly, teenage style, protest that the police had to monitor to prevent I don't know--shirtless protesting?--no interviews with the grandparents, Quakers, College Students, Organizers, Mothers, etc... who made up the bulk of the protestors.
So, was it a success? Well, no, not from some perspectives. But on the way back I found myself on a train stuffed with people who were energized, hopeful, and organizing. Was that pre-Dean? I think it was. But I remember exchanging information with people and talking about what to do next. And it wasn't long before I became a member of several anti war organizations and eventually became a Dean supporter and from that became more politically active than ever before in my life.
If the Teabag protests get that far, frankly, the Republican party has a problem on its hands. They are riding a tiger and they don't know it. But on the question of whether the anti war protests were as self indulgent and as easy as these Teabag protests. Uh. No. It was a scary, scary time and people who made any kind of fuss were made very aware that the Government and its local level allies were going to consider domestic protestors as the enemy. And the treatment of the enemy was something that was under daily discussion, and it didn't look pretty.
aimai
Friday, April 17, 2009
YESTERDAY, IN A NUTSHELL
This pic from yesterday's Dallas teabagging party pretty much says it all...
[crossposted at Rumproast]
This pic from yesterday's Dallas teabagging party pretty much says it all...
[crossposted at Rumproast]
Thursday, April 16, 2009
DEEP THOUGHT
Liberals may sneer that the tea party crowds were small, but let me remind those sneering liberals that the organizers of the tea parties got those crowds without the help of the Decemberists!
Liberals may sneer that the tea party crowds were small, but let me remind those sneering liberals that the organizers of the tea parties got those crowds without the help of the Decemberists!
OK, ONE MORE
Sent by a reader, who says he saw it in Jacksonville, Florida:
Yikes.
This isn't the first appearance of this phrase in reference to Barack Obama -- here's an Uncle Sambo jacket at Cafe Press, and there's also this and this and this and this, and that's a partial list (and you probably don't want to ruin your day clicking on any of those links). Some Northerners during the Civil War, a Philadelphia newspaper of the time said, were "Willing to fight for Uncle Sam" but not "for Uncle Sambo." We're making progress, but it's slow....
Sent by a reader, who says he saw it in Jacksonville, Florida:
Yikes.
This isn't the first appearance of this phrase in reference to Barack Obama -- here's an Uncle Sambo jacket at Cafe Press, and there's also this and this and this and this, and that's a partial list (and you probably don't want to ruin your day clicking on any of those links). Some Northerners during the Civil War, a Philadelphia newspaper of the time said, were "Willing to fight for Uncle Sam" but not "for Uncle Sambo." We're making progress, but it's slow....
ONE MORE
From Free Republic:
Think the genius who made the sign in the upper-left-hand picture even realizes that we already have term limits for the president and vice president?
****
BONUS PHOTO: Traditional values from one of the Tea Youth.
From Free Republic:
Think the genius who made the sign in the upper-left-hand picture even realizes that we already have term limits for the president and vice president?
****
BONUS PHOTO: Traditional values from one of the Tea Youth.
THE WISDOM OF CROWDS (or lack thereof)
Nate Silver has reviewed crowd estimates for a number of the tea parties yesterday and found that they ranged between 5,000 and 20. His list is incomplete -- it doesn't include, say, the Atlanta tea party, which was turned into a Fox News prime-time special starring Sean Hannity (as well as country singer John Rich) and drew 15,000.
Impressive? Maybe not -- not when you consider that an NBA game last night between the 19-62 L.A. Clippers and the 22-59 Oklahoma City Thunder drew 19,060 people. That many people paid to see a game between two of the worst teams in basketball. The tea parties, by contrast were free.
(Admittedly, it was Fan Appreciation Night in L.A., which meant the Clippers were giving away free kettle corn and free car rags. That must have boosted the crowd a lot, right?)
The moral of this: if you use enough marketing muscle, you can get a crowd to come out for just about anything.
(Nate Silver link via TBogg.)
****
UPDATE: Nate now has an estimate for Atlanta, per The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, of "7,000 (per archived article; since changed to 'thousands')." A bit more than a third of the crowd for the Clippers and Oklahoma! At best! And Atlanta was free and had Hannity and John Rich! That's, um, pretty weak tea.
Nate Silver has reviewed crowd estimates for a number of the tea parties yesterday and found that they ranged between 5,000 and 20. His list is incomplete -- it doesn't include, say, the Atlanta tea party, which was turned into a Fox News prime-time special starring Sean Hannity (as well as country singer John Rich) and drew 15,000.
Impressive? Maybe not -- not when you consider that an NBA game last night between the 19-62 L.A. Clippers and the 22-59 Oklahoma City Thunder drew 19,060 people. That many people paid to see a game between two of the worst teams in basketball. The tea parties, by contrast were free.
(Admittedly, it was Fan Appreciation Night in L.A., which meant the Clippers were giving away free kettle corn and free car rags. That must have boosted the crowd a lot, right?)
The moral of this: if you use enough marketing muscle, you can get a crowd to come out for just about anything.
(Nate Silver link via TBogg.)
****
UPDATE: Nate now has an estimate for Atlanta, per The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, of "7,000 (per archived article; since changed to 'thousands')." A bit more than a third of the crowd for the Clippers and Oklahoma! At best! And Atlanta was free and had Hannity and John Rich! That's, um, pretty weak tea.
YOU CAN BE HEROES, THEY LIED
Watching the tea parties, Atrios, like a lot of other lefties, is scratching his head and saying he doesn't get it:
... The problem is that it was never clear what they were protesting.... honestly, I still have no idea what it was about. I mean, I know it was about tribal allegiance against Barack Mumia Saddam Obama III. But it wasn't actually about anything else.
A couple of days ago, Matt Taibbi said the tea partiers had been steered away from the true targets, by Beck, Santelli, and others. Taibbi focused on the right's attacks on attempts to claw back AIG bonuses and wrote:
... actual rich people can't ever be the target. It's a classic peasant mentality: going into fits of groveling and bowing whenever the master's carriage rides by, then fuming against the Turks in Crimea or the Jews in the Pale or whoever after spending fifteen hard hours in the fields. You know you're a peasant when you worship the very people who are right now, this minute, conning you and taking your shit. Whatever the master does, you're on board.
But I've looked through a lot of tea party photos and the anger wasn't about attempts to claw back AIG bonuses. And there was plenty of anger at banks. The peasants, as Taibbi calls them, aren't really identifying with the villains.
But the peasants don't have any memory of ever finding a way to get back at banks -- hardly anyone alive remembers genuine successful American class warfare. So the message crafters of the tea-party movement have given the peasants a task they feel they actually can accomplish, and said this will (somehow) get us out of our current mess: throw the bums out (now that the bums are Democrats) and elect people who'll lower taxes and not give our hard-earned tax money to ... anyone.
The peasants have fond memories of throwing Carter out and electing Reagan (even though he didn't really cut government and vastly increased government debt and ultimately raised taxes), and the peasants also have memories of electing Bush (they remember him as a Reaganite hero of low-taxism even though they know he's now a tax-and-spend villain). So they think they can do this. And, boy, would it be emotionally satisfying.
Barack Obama and the congressional Democrats are pursuing solutions that aren't emotionally satisfying -- we know the banks screwed up, but we have to give them money to get them lending, and we know debt is bad but we have to increase the federal debt in the near term to stimulate consumer spending, and we know that some people in mortgage trouble got that way because they took on debt they couldn't repay, but we have to help them to shore up neighborhoods and prevent further financial losses in housing. There's no satisfying "Take that!" in Obama's approach. There's no sense of heroes punishing villains.
The tea-party message crafters give the peasants a nice list of villains and say that punishing those villains will make all the pain go away. And what do you know -- it's the same list of villains the right-wing peasants always hate! Democrats! Liberals! Black community organizers! Nancy Pelosi and Barney Frank! George Soros! The IRS! How convenient! Refighting the Revolutionary War is easy!
Taibbi's mostly right, but the ultimate Enemy, the ultimate evil Other, is always the liberal, the Democrat. It's fine to hate bankers, as long as you know that they made bad loans because Barney Frank wanted them to and they got bailouts because B. Hussein Obama has a compulsive need to spend. (And yes, of course the ultimate Enemy just so happens to be the corporate and political enemy of Dick Armey, Rupert Murdoch, et cetera.)
Maybe the White House could turn this populist outrage around -- by, say, nationalizing a few banks and creating its own list of villains. But the right has a real head start here. The right has been lovingly tending its narrative of the evil, sinister Democrat, its Protocols of the Elders of Liberalism, for a long time now. The right can fit pretty much anything into that narrative.
Watching the tea parties, Atrios, like a lot of other lefties, is scratching his head and saying he doesn't get it:
... The problem is that it was never clear what they were protesting.... honestly, I still have no idea what it was about. I mean, I know it was about tribal allegiance against Barack Mumia Saddam Obama III. But it wasn't actually about anything else.
A couple of days ago, Matt Taibbi said the tea partiers had been steered away from the true targets, by Beck, Santelli, and others. Taibbi focused on the right's attacks on attempts to claw back AIG bonuses and wrote:
... actual rich people can't ever be the target. It's a classic peasant mentality: going into fits of groveling and bowing whenever the master's carriage rides by, then fuming against the Turks in Crimea or the Jews in the Pale or whoever after spending fifteen hard hours in the fields. You know you're a peasant when you worship the very people who are right now, this minute, conning you and taking your shit. Whatever the master does, you're on board.
But I've looked through a lot of tea party photos and the anger wasn't about attempts to claw back AIG bonuses. And there was plenty of anger at banks. The peasants, as Taibbi calls them, aren't really identifying with the villains.
But the peasants don't have any memory of ever finding a way to get back at banks -- hardly anyone alive remembers genuine successful American class warfare. So the message crafters of the tea-party movement have given the peasants a task they feel they actually can accomplish, and said this will (somehow) get us out of our current mess: throw the bums out (now that the bums are Democrats) and elect people who'll lower taxes and not give our hard-earned tax money to ... anyone.
The peasants have fond memories of throwing Carter out and electing Reagan (even though he didn't really cut government and vastly increased government debt and ultimately raised taxes), and the peasants also have memories of electing Bush (they remember him as a Reaganite hero of low-taxism even though they know he's now a tax-and-spend villain). So they think they can do this. And, boy, would it be emotionally satisfying.
Barack Obama and the congressional Democrats are pursuing solutions that aren't emotionally satisfying -- we know the banks screwed up, but we have to give them money to get them lending, and we know debt is bad but we have to increase the federal debt in the near term to stimulate consumer spending, and we know that some people in mortgage trouble got that way because they took on debt they couldn't repay, but we have to help them to shore up neighborhoods and prevent further financial losses in housing. There's no satisfying "Take that!" in Obama's approach. There's no sense of heroes punishing villains.
The tea-party message crafters give the peasants a nice list of villains and say that punishing those villains will make all the pain go away. And what do you know -- it's the same list of villains the right-wing peasants always hate! Democrats! Liberals! Black community organizers! Nancy Pelosi and Barney Frank! George Soros! The IRS! How convenient! Refighting the Revolutionary War is easy!
Taibbi's mostly right, but the ultimate Enemy, the ultimate evil Other, is always the liberal, the Democrat. It's fine to hate bankers, as long as you know that they made bad loans because Barney Frank wanted them to and they got bailouts because B. Hussein Obama has a compulsive need to spend. (And yes, of course the ultimate Enemy just so happens to be the corporate and political enemy of Dick Armey, Rupert Murdoch, et cetera.)
Maybe the White House could turn this populist outrage around -- by, say, nationalizing a few banks and creating its own list of villains. But the right has a real head start here. The right has been lovingly tending its narrative of the evil, sinister Democrat, its Protocols of the Elders of Liberalism, for a long time now. The right can fit pretty much anything into that narrative.
Wednesday, April 15, 2009
"THE AMERICAN TAXPAYERS ARE THE JEWS FOR OBAMA'S OVENS"
Wow.
(And this was posted on a pro-tea-party site. This was posted by someone who's proud to be allied with that guy.)
****
UPDATE: I realize this is the same guy who defended his Obama-as-Hitler sign to an interviewer on CNN today (dude showed up with a lot of signs, I guess):
A real prince, this guy.
Wow.
(And this was posted on a pro-tea-party site. This was posted by someone who's proud to be allied with that guy.)
****
UPDATE: I realize this is the same guy who defended his Obama-as-Hitler sign to an interviewer on CNN today (dude showed up with a lot of signs, I guess):
A real prince, this guy.
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