How a sane person -- in this case, an AP reporter -- describes a horrible event in Iraq:
A suicide bomber struck a crowd of mostly poor Shiites in Baghdad on Tuesday, killing at least 63 people and wounding more than 200 after luring construction workers onto a pickup truck by offering them jobs as they were eating breakfast....
The Baghdad suicide attack shattered storefront windows, dug craters in the road and set fire to several cars. People rushed to the devastated area to see if friends or relatives were killed or wounded. Mangled bodies were piled up at the side of the road and partially covered with paper. Two men sat on the sidewalk, crying and covering their faces with their hands....
Most of the victims were Shiites from poor areas of the capital such as Sadr City, said police Lt. Bilal Ali....
Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, a Shiite, blamed the "horrible crime" on Sunni extremists....
How a right-winger -- in this case, Al Brown of NewsBusters.org -- describes the same event, with his explanation of what really sticks in his craw about it:
The negative story about a successful suicide bombing, one of many staged for the benefit of Western news cameras, received 779 news citations on Google.
There you go. A sane person sees carnage, chaos, and sectarian conflict. A right-winger sees .... a publicity stunt. That's all. A guy blows himself to bits, takes 63 people with him, and Al is upset because it gets too much news coverage -- after all, it's just a pseudo-event, trumped up for the cameras like dozens before it. Nothing to see here; move along. If you just ignore it, it will go away.
Right-wingers are depraved.
Wednesday, December 13, 2006
I PREFERRED THE JAMES DEAN-JIM BACKUS VERSION
I don't know why the announcement of the Bushies' grand new strategy is being postponed, but part of the problem could be the family drama in Boy Bush's head.
From today's New York Times:
Some members of the administration, including some in Vice President Dick Cheney's office, have argued that the administration needs to provide clear support to a strong Shiite majority government, but the State Department, led by Condoleezza Rice, views that as a recipe for perpetual civil war. Ms. Rice has instead advocated a proposal intended to woo centrist Sunni leaders to Mr. Maliki's side, including provincial leaders.
Uh-oh -- Bush's surrogate dad is arguing with Bush's surrogate wife (surrogate mom?). No wonder the Decider can't decide.
With regard to Surrogate Dad, this morning an NPR reporter pointed out that Cheney pal Donald Rumseld is leading the listening session at the Pentagon today, while Cheney has been present at all the sessions. To Bush Kremlinologists, the departure of Rumsfeld was a sign of a reduction in Cheney's influence -- but now Dick's back.
What the hell is going on with Rummy? He was booted, but he was allowed to stay on well past Gates's confirmation, he made that trip to Iraq with no reporters other than a bloviator from Cheney's favorite news outlet, and now he's the alpha dog at the meeting today.
It's as if Junior, attacked by the bullies (voters, Democrats, the media) and clearly not being defended by his real dad (represented by James Baker), became sullenly compliant and let Rumsfeld go in favor of one of Dad's friends -- but now Surrogate Dad is stiffening Junior's spine, and so Surrogate Dad's friend Rummy is back in favor.
Or maybe Cheney and Rumsfeld represent the "bad crowd" Junior's been ordered not to hang around with. His sullen compliance lasted a couple of weeks -- but then Cheney pulled up in front of the house with his elbow out the window and Rummy riding shotgun, and Junior sneaked out his bedroom window and went off joyriding with them, even though he's grounded.
People talk about the "psychodramas" of the Clinton years -- E.J. Dionne was using that word just yesterday -- but Clinton's dramas were personal, and what was called "compartmentalization" was really just the mature ability to put personal issues aside and get to work.
Bush's presidency, by contrast, is one long psychodrama, and it all plays out in terms of policy. Everything he does is an attempt to get back at the liberals he felt mocked by at Yale, or to get back at and/or outdo his centrist wuss father. Maureen Dowd gets it, and even Bob Woodward, who usually seems too cyborgy to understand human nature, has started to get it, but I wish more of the press corps did.
I don't know why the announcement of the Bushies' grand new strategy is being postponed, but part of the problem could be the family drama in Boy Bush's head.
From today's New York Times:
Some members of the administration, including some in Vice President Dick Cheney's office, have argued that the administration needs to provide clear support to a strong Shiite majority government, but the State Department, led by Condoleezza Rice, views that as a recipe for perpetual civil war. Ms. Rice has instead advocated a proposal intended to woo centrist Sunni leaders to Mr. Maliki's side, including provincial leaders.
Uh-oh -- Bush's surrogate dad is arguing with Bush's surrogate wife (surrogate mom?). No wonder the Decider can't decide.
With regard to Surrogate Dad, this morning an NPR reporter pointed out that Cheney pal Donald Rumseld is leading the listening session at the Pentagon today, while Cheney has been present at all the sessions. To Bush Kremlinologists, the departure of Rumsfeld was a sign of a reduction in Cheney's influence -- but now Dick's back.
What the hell is going on with Rummy? He was booted, but he was allowed to stay on well past Gates's confirmation, he made that trip to Iraq with no reporters other than a bloviator from Cheney's favorite news outlet, and now he's the alpha dog at the meeting today.
It's as if Junior, attacked by the bullies (voters, Democrats, the media) and clearly not being defended by his real dad (represented by James Baker), became sullenly compliant and let Rumsfeld go in favor of one of Dad's friends -- but now Surrogate Dad is stiffening Junior's spine, and so Surrogate Dad's friend Rummy is back in favor.
Or maybe Cheney and Rumsfeld represent the "bad crowd" Junior's been ordered not to hang around with. His sullen compliance lasted a couple of weeks -- but then Cheney pulled up in front of the house with his elbow out the window and Rummy riding shotgun, and Junior sneaked out his bedroom window and went off joyriding with them, even though he's grounded.
People talk about the "psychodramas" of the Clinton years -- E.J. Dionne was using that word just yesterday -- but Clinton's dramas were personal, and what was called "compartmentalization" was really just the mature ability to put personal issues aside and get to work.
Bush's presidency, by contrast, is one long psychodrama, and it all plays out in terms of policy. Everything he does is an attempt to get back at the liberals he felt mocked by at Yale, or to get back at and/or outdo his centrist wuss father. Maureen Dowd gets it, and even Bob Woodward, who usually seems too cyborgy to understand human nature, has started to get it, but I wish more of the press corps did.
Tuesday, December 12, 2006
AN ABU GHRAIB OF THE MIND
Lynn Chu, the right-wing literary agent (Michael Savage, John Yoo, Michael Ledeen, Midge Decter, Max Boot), has written a Beat poem of sorts (or maybe it's supposed to be Whitmanesque) entitled "why i continue to believe in the war in iraq." An edited version appears in today's New York Sun; the whole thing (yes, with the title all in lowercase -- groovy!) is on her agency's Web site.
Because to depose a murderous despot is a good thing.
Because the UN resolved to do something a dozen times and didn't.
Because we are the only nation in the world with the decency and strength to do it....
It goes on and on like this.
I can't decide which line is my favorite. Is it "Because other nations, rueing their past glory, are envious"? Or "Because the war and rebuilding can be self-financing with oil"? Or maybe "Because in truth the world respects us for it, however they moan"? No, I think it's this:
Because to them their jihad has only just begun, and crush it we must,
For Osama Bin Laden is not Deng Xiao-Ping.
Uh ... right. That makes a lot of sense.
I've said before that in the fantasyland of Wingnuttia it's always the spring of 2003, with absolute triumph over both terror and liberalism all but achieved. Nevertheless, I can't believe Chu leaves this up on her Web site, and I can't believe that, after Harper's snarkily published the shortened version in its September issue, the right-wing Sun said, "Let's reprint it! We don't think it's funny! In fact, it's still valid! Yes, even the line 'Because we did so with a minimum of human loss'!"
In any case, I really want to hear this poem read aloud in a smoky subterranean club. With bongo drums.
Lynn Chu, the right-wing literary agent (Michael Savage, John Yoo, Michael Ledeen, Midge Decter, Max Boot), has written a Beat poem of sorts (or maybe it's supposed to be Whitmanesque) entitled "why i continue to believe in the war in iraq." An edited version appears in today's New York Sun; the whole thing (yes, with the title all in lowercase -- groovy!) is on her agency's Web site.
Because to depose a murderous despot is a good thing.
Because the UN resolved to do something a dozen times and didn't.
Because we are the only nation in the world with the decency and strength to do it....
It goes on and on like this.
I can't decide which line is my favorite. Is it "Because other nations, rueing their past glory, are envious"? Or "Because the war and rebuilding can be self-financing with oil"? Or maybe "Because in truth the world respects us for it, however they moan"? No, I think it's this:
Because to them their jihad has only just begun, and crush it we must,
For Osama Bin Laden is not Deng Xiao-Ping.
Uh ... right. That makes a lot of sense.
I've said before that in the fantasyland of Wingnuttia it's always the spring of 2003, with absolute triumph over both terror and liberalism all but achieved. Nevertheless, I can't believe Chu leaves this up on her Web site, and I can't believe that, after Harper's snarkily published the shortened version in its September issue, the right-wing Sun said, "Let's reprint it! We don't think it's funny! In fact, it's still valid! Yes, even the line 'Because we did so with a minimum of human loss'!"
In any case, I really want to hear this poem read aloud in a smoky subterranean club. With bongo drums.
By the way, I think I'm going to be on S2DRadio tonight -- I'm waiting for confirmation. I have no idea what the hell I'm getting myself into, but if it happens, I'll be on from 10:30 to 11:00 Eastern time, and the live feed will be here.
****
UPDATE: Guess not -- I'm being rescheduled. I'll keep you posted....
****
UPDATE: Guess not -- I'm being rescheduled. I'll keep you posted....
It's as if the entire Bush White House is some sort of Wharton School of Mismanagement:
WORLD Bank president Paul Wolfowitz faces mounting criticism from directors of the international lending organisation who say he relies on political advisers with little expertise in development while driving away seasoned managers.
Half of the bank's 29 highest-level executives have left since Mr Wolfowitz, the former US deputy defence secretary and an architect of President George Bush's invasion of Iraq, took office in June last year....
Mr Wolfowitz, 62, "has placed considerably more trust in a small group of outsiders from the Republican Party than in the seasoned experts in the bank", said Alison Cave, head of the World Bank staff association.
"The changes under Wolfowitz are unprecedented in the calculated manner in which inexperienced or ideological replacements are being placed in senior positions," said Mr [Devesh] Kapur [a former World Bank economist]....
Can we please disqualify anyone who's ever worked for the Bush administration from ever doing anything again that involves other people in any way whatsoever?
(Via DU.)
WORLD Bank president Paul Wolfowitz faces mounting criticism from directors of the international lending organisation who say he relies on political advisers with little expertise in development while driving away seasoned managers.
Half of the bank's 29 highest-level executives have left since Mr Wolfowitz, the former US deputy defence secretary and an architect of President George Bush's invasion of Iraq, took office in June last year....
Mr Wolfowitz, 62, "has placed considerably more trust in a small group of outsiders from the Republican Party than in the seasoned experts in the bank", said Alison Cave, head of the World Bank staff association.
"The changes under Wolfowitz are unprecedented in the calculated manner in which inexperienced or ideological replacements are being placed in senior positions," said Mr [Devesh] Kapur [a former World Bank economist]....
Can we please disqualify anyone who's ever worked for the Bush administration from ever doing anything again that involves other people in any way whatsoever?
(Via DU.)
BUSH YOUTH
Still struggling to deal with the fact that nonwhite people exist:
MEDFORD, Mass. -- An editor at a Tufts University conservative journal has apologized for publishing a satirical Christmas carol that ridiculed black students and campus affirmative action policies.
The controversial carol, entitled, "O Come All Ye Black Folk," was published in the most recent edition of the Primary Source, which bills itself as "the journal of conservative thought at Tufts University."
The parody of "O Come All Ye Faithful" calls black people "boisterous" and proclaims, "Born into the ghetto. O Jesus! We need you now to fill our racial quotas."
The lyrics also say, "No matter what your grades are, F's, D's or G's, give them all privileged status." ...
The carol has been removed from the Primary Source site, but I gather that this is it. Besides being racist, the damn thing doesn't even scan:
O Come All Ye Black Folk
Boisterous yet Desirable
O come ye, O come ye to our University
Come and we will admit you,
Born in to oppression;
O come let us accept them,
O come let us accept them,
O come let us accept them,
Fifty-two black freshman....
(There are two more verses -- see the link.)
The editor who oversaw this issued the usual non-apology apology:
Alison Hoover, the fall semester's editor-in-chief of the Primary Source, first issued an apology for the wording of the poem.
...The song intended to criticize affirmative action by adopting the perspective of an admissions officer, Hoover said. "However, many people interpret this carol as having crossed the line from making fun of a harmful institution to making fun of the black race."
"This was not my intention; it is not the opinion of The Primary Source that there are no qualified black students at Tufts University or that any of the other generalizations in the song are true. I apologize that this carol did not accurately reflect the views of The Primary Source, and I take full responsibility for failing to edit it to ensure that it did."
(Translation: We're sorry that anyone interpreted this the way it was intended to be interpreted.)
But shed no tears for Ms. Hoover -- she's already contributing articles and blog posts on a regular basis to The Washington Times. Hey, maybe it's even a good career move -- after all, isn't overseeing the publication of racist parodies at a right-wing college publication how Dinesh D'Souza got his start?
****
UPDATE: "non-apology apology" link fixed.
Still struggling to deal with the fact that nonwhite people exist:
MEDFORD, Mass. -- An editor at a Tufts University conservative journal has apologized for publishing a satirical Christmas carol that ridiculed black students and campus affirmative action policies.
The controversial carol, entitled, "O Come All Ye Black Folk," was published in the most recent edition of the Primary Source, which bills itself as "the journal of conservative thought at Tufts University."
The parody of "O Come All Ye Faithful" calls black people "boisterous" and proclaims, "Born into the ghetto. O Jesus! We need you now to fill our racial quotas."
The lyrics also say, "No matter what your grades are, F's, D's or G's, give them all privileged status." ...
The carol has been removed from the Primary Source site, but I gather that this is it. Besides being racist, the damn thing doesn't even scan:
O Come All Ye Black Folk
Boisterous yet Desirable
O come ye, O come ye to our University
Come and we will admit you,
Born in to oppression;
O come let us accept them,
O come let us accept them,
O come let us accept them,
Fifty-two black freshman....
(There are two more verses -- see the link.)
The editor who oversaw this issued the usual non-apology apology:
Alison Hoover, the fall semester's editor-in-chief of the Primary Source, first issued an apology for the wording of the poem.
...The song intended to criticize affirmative action by adopting the perspective of an admissions officer, Hoover said. "However, many people interpret this carol as having crossed the line from making fun of a harmful institution to making fun of the black race."
"This was not my intention; it is not the opinion of The Primary Source that there are no qualified black students at Tufts University or that any of the other generalizations in the song are true. I apologize that this carol did not accurately reflect the views of The Primary Source, and I take full responsibility for failing to edit it to ensure that it did."
(Translation: We're sorry that anyone interpreted this the way it was intended to be interpreted.)
But shed no tears for Ms. Hoover -- she's already contributing articles and blog posts on a regular basis to The Washington Times. Hey, maybe it's even a good career move -- after all, isn't overseeing the publication of racist parodies at a right-wing college publication how Dinesh D'Souza got his start?
****
UPDATE: "non-apology apology" link fixed.
CNN's Jeff Greenfield on Barack Obama (via Atrios):
The senator was in New Hampshire over the weekend, sporting what's getting to be the classic Obama look. Call it business casual, a jacket, a collared shirt, but no tie.
It is a look the senator seems to favor. And why not? ...
But, in the case of Obama, he may be walking around with a sartorial time bomb. Ask yourself, is there any other major public figure who dresses the way he does? Why, yes. It is Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who, unlike most of his predecessors, seems to have skipped through enough copies of "GQ" to find the jacket-and-no-tie look agreeable.
And maybe that's not the comparison a possible presidential contender really wants to evoke.
To which one can only reply:
The senator was in New Hampshire over the weekend, sporting what's getting to be the classic Obama look. Call it business casual, a jacket, a collared shirt, but no tie.
It is a look the senator seems to favor. And why not? ...
But, in the case of Obama, he may be walking around with a sartorial time bomb. Ask yourself, is there any other major public figure who dresses the way he does? Why, yes. It is Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who, unlike most of his predecessors, seems to have skipped through enough copies of "GQ" to find the jacket-and-no-tie look agreeable.
And maybe that's not the comparison a possible presidential contender really wants to evoke.
To which one can only reply:
Monday, December 11, 2006
ATTENTION COLLEGE REPUBLICANS
Please note who's going (back) to Iraq in your place:
Nothing was stranger for Mary Jane Fernandez than the events of last Christmas, which had her 24-year-old son, newly returned from the war in Iraq, downing sedatives, ranting about how rich people were allowed to sit in recliners in church, and summoning the Waterbury police to come arrest him.
This Christmas may top that.
Despite being diagnosed with severe post-traumatic stress disorder and rated 70 percent disabled by the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, Damian Fernandez has been called back to duty and told to prepare for another deployment to Iraq....
Mary Jane said she cannot picture Damian, whose symptoms include paranoia and hallucinations, back in a war zone.
"I don't trust him taking out the garbage, let alone watching someone's back on the battlefield," she said....
He's not alone:
Mary Jane Fernandez said she already has notified the Army about Damian's chronic PTSD, and is stunned that he has not been excused. She said a friend of Damian's, who also has severe PTSD, has opted to go back to Iraq because "he misses killing people," the friend told her.
Oh, great.
This doesn't have to happen, Bush Youth. Feel free to enlist anytime....
(Via BuzzFlash.)
Please note who's going (back) to Iraq in your place:
Nothing was stranger for Mary Jane Fernandez than the events of last Christmas, which had her 24-year-old son, newly returned from the war in Iraq, downing sedatives, ranting about how rich people were allowed to sit in recliners in church, and summoning the Waterbury police to come arrest him.
This Christmas may top that.
Despite being diagnosed with severe post-traumatic stress disorder and rated 70 percent disabled by the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, Damian Fernandez has been called back to duty and told to prepare for another deployment to Iraq....
Mary Jane said she cannot picture Damian, whose symptoms include paranoia and hallucinations, back in a war zone.
"I don't trust him taking out the garbage, let alone watching someone's back on the battlefield," she said....
He's not alone:
Mary Jane Fernandez said she already has notified the Army about Damian's chronic PTSD, and is stunned that he has not been excused. She said a friend of Damian's, who also has severe PTSD, has opted to go back to Iraq because "he misses killing people," the friend told her.
Oh, great.
This doesn't have to happen, Bush Youth. Feel free to enlist anytime....
(Via BuzzFlash.)
Is this nuts? Well, yes, obviously:
This morning on MSNBC, outgoing Sen. Rick Santorum (R-PA) unveiled his plan to "confront" Iran. Santorum said that the United States should have supported a bus driver strike that occurred a few weeks ago. According to Santorum, "We should have quietly gone in there and given them a whole boat-load of money so they could sustain the strike and continue to cause unrest within Iran to try to topple the government."
But here's my question: Why is Santorum on MSNBC at all?
I've lived long enough to see a couple of watershed congressional elections, and I don't recall the press immediately rushing to seek out the wisdom of the Democratic senators who lost in 1980 or the Democratic members of both houses who went down to defeat in 1994. I especially don't remember anyone looking fore foreign policy advice from incumbents in those years who lost by 18 points.
I know that Santorum is having some sort of weird midlife crisis that's led him to fantasize that he's Winston Churchill. He's given a couple of blood-and-guts speeches lately that won applause on the red-meat right. So what? He's a loser. When Democrats lose, the Establishment banishes them to a sort of Siberia. Why doesn't Santorum get the same treatment?
(Via the Carpetbagger Report.)
This morning on MSNBC, outgoing Sen. Rick Santorum (R-PA) unveiled his plan to "confront" Iran. Santorum said that the United States should have supported a bus driver strike that occurred a few weeks ago. According to Santorum, "We should have quietly gone in there and given them a whole boat-load of money so they could sustain the strike and continue to cause unrest within Iran to try to topple the government."
But here's my question: Why is Santorum on MSNBC at all?
I've lived long enough to see a couple of watershed congressional elections, and I don't recall the press immediately rushing to seek out the wisdom of the Democratic senators who lost in 1980 or the Democratic members of both houses who went down to defeat in 1994. I especially don't remember anyone looking fore foreign policy advice from incumbents in those years who lost by 18 points.
I know that Santorum is having some sort of weird midlife crisis that's led him to fantasize that he's Winston Churchill. He's given a couple of blood-and-guts speeches lately that won applause on the red-meat right. So what? He's a loser. When Democrats lose, the Establishment banishes them to a sort of Siberia. Why doesn't Santorum get the same treatment?
(Via the Carpetbagger Report.)
CONUNDRUM
Does a Santa Speedo Run qualify as pro-Christmas -- or as part of the War on Christmas?
Help me, Bill O'Reilly, I'm so confused!
(This rawk radio station is sponsoring the run on behalf of these people. Looks like a worthy cause, so I think Jesus would approve.... No, wait a minute -- the event is meant to spread "Holiday Cheer." "Holiday"! Not "Christmas"! So it's satanic. Never mind.)
Does a Santa Speedo Run qualify as pro-Christmas -- or as part of the War on Christmas?
Help me, Bill O'Reilly, I'm so confused!
(This rawk radio station is sponsoring the run on behalf of these people. Looks like a worthy cause, so I think Jesus would approve.... No, wait a minute -- the event is meant to spread "Holiday Cheer." "Holiday"! Not "Christmas"! So it's satanic. Never mind.)
So, is this administration going to make an effort from now on to represent the whole country, by taking seriously the anger of the voters and the criticisms in the Baker-Hamilton report?
Or will it just continue to be a major outpost of a right-wing cult?
Let's see....
Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld returned to Washington Sunday after his surprise trip to Iraq....
The only member of the media allowed to accompany Rumsfeld was Sean Hannity, a conservative Fox News Channel host.
Yup, it's still a right-wing cult.
****
(Actually, I have to assume that the utterly pointless trip, or at least the choice of stenographer, was the brainchild of America's undisputed number-one Fox Fan, Rummy's old pal Dick Cheney.)
Or will it just continue to be a major outpost of a right-wing cult?
Let's see....
Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld returned to Washington Sunday after his surprise trip to Iraq....
The only member of the media allowed to accompany Rumsfeld was Sean Hannity, a conservative Fox News Channel host.
Yup, it's still a right-wing cult.
****
(Actually, I have to assume that the utterly pointless trip, or at least the choice of stenographer, was the brainchild of America's undisputed number-one Fox Fan, Rummy's old pal Dick Cheney.)
Sunday, December 10, 2006
THE WEEK THAT WAS
Don Imus's reference to the "Jewish management" of CBS as "money-grubbing bastards" barely causes a ripple, and then Mel Gibson's movie hits #1 at the box office.
I realize two wrongs don't make a right, or three, but if Michael Richards is resentful of the fact that Gibson's career isn't over and Imus's wasn't even momentarily sidetracked, I don't blame him.
Don Imus's reference to the "Jewish management" of CBS as "money-grubbing bastards" barely causes a ripple, and then Mel Gibson's movie hits #1 at the box office.
I realize two wrongs don't make a right, or three, but if Michael Richards is resentful of the fact that Gibson's career isn't over and Imus's wasn't even momentarily sidetracked, I don't blame him.
PRINTING THE LEGEND?
Richard Brookhiser endorses Rudy Giuliani's presidential bid in today's New York Post -- and tells a tale that sounds as if it might have been too good to check:
My favorite of the early reax to Rudy was flagged by columnist Deroy Murdock: An anti-Giuliani Web site, SayNoToRudy.org, posted by social conservatives in Ohio, pulled the plug on itself after deciding that "Giuliani is truly a committed Republican and an accomplished conservative on many issues."
Yup, here's SayNoToRudy.org, and all that's there is a message titled "SayNoToRudy.org Ceases Operations, Endorses Giuliani for President."
Why don't I believe this?
Let's go back to the Deroy Murdock column, which appeared at National Review Online just before Thanksgiving:
Cincinnati prosecutor Steve Giudicci says by phone that he launched SayNoToRudy.Org late last summer, along with a few dozen fellow grassroots conservative activists, mainly in Ohio.
First of all, I wonder why Giudicci told Murdock that he was from Cincinnati, but when he signed SayNoToRudy.org's online petition (one of a whopping thirteen signatures), he said he was from Concord, New Hampshire.
(Oh, and why only thirteen signatures if the group had "a few dozen" members?)
More from Murdock:
"I am about as socially conservative as you can get -- on everything from abortion, to gun rights, to smaller government, and less taxes. You name it," [Giudicci] says. The website offered T-shirts, refrigerator magnets, wall clocks, boxer shorts, and other items with a logo featuring "Giuliani '08" and a circle and red line running through it. "Nominate a REAL Conservative," the merchandise demanded.
But the more Giudicci and his colleagues learned about Giuliani, the more they realized they had misunderestimated him....
Giudicci saw Giuliani speak at a New Hampshire campaign stop on November 3 and was sold. The former Rudy foe is now a Rudy fan who hopes to swing more grassroots activists his way.
"If a President Giuliani meant the same thing as Mayor Giuliani -- namely innovative and competent leadership, less government, lower taxes, a strict-constructionist judiciary, and bad guys brought to justice -- then I'm all for it."
So Giudicci and all of his colleagues had this sudden, absolute Road-to-Damascus conversion simultaneously? Does that seem plausible?
And I can't find a trace of any of that anti-Rudy merchandise, or any anti-Rudy postings from the site, anywhere -- not cached at Google or Yahoo, not at the Wayback Machine.
Invent a phony group of purist right-wingers who learn more about Giuliani and are so bowled over they abandon their campaign to block his nomination? Sure, why not? Especially if you can get supposedly serious people like Murdock and Brookhiser to believe you. It's a hell of a political story -- and here it is, working its way up the news food chain.
Print the legend....
****
Incidentally, a more straightforward online campaign, Draft Rudy Giuliani for President, was begun last year by two political operatives based in Chicago, Allen Fore and Nicholas Tyszka. Tyszka's name has come up in the past in connection with some interesting online work:
A company owned by the manager of Republican businessman John Cox's recently ended U.S. Senate primary campaign has acknowledged responsibility for a nasty little parody web site....
The site ... featured the photo of Democratic senate candidate and Ill. Sen. Barack Obama that appears on Obama's actual campaign web site doctored with an Osama Bin Laden-style beard:
"A dream to destroy America," said the logo.
Further down the page, the text identified Obama as among the candidates who are "so liberal that they are downright anti-American."
Democrats tracked control of the site back to a South Bend, Ind., company owned by Nicholas Tyszka, 24, and leaked the story to the Capitol Hill newspaper Roll Call.
Tyszka said that when the Roll Call reporter contacted him yesterday afternoon, he reviewed the site--which he said he hadn't seen -- took it off line and terminated the employee who had designed and posted it....
(Scroll down to October 23 here.)
Tyszka and Fore are both veterans of the Heartland Institute, which "campaigns on 'junk science', 'common-sense environmentalism' (i.e. anti-Kyoto, pro-GM), smokers' rights (anti-tobacco tax, denial of problems from passive smoking), the introduction of school vouchers, and the deregulation of health care insurance," according to Sourcewatch. (That's not a bad fit, by the way: Rudy as mayor praised and parroted much of the "free market" thinking of the Manhattan Institute.)
(Research on Draft Rudy courtesy of Julia.)
****
UPDATE ON SAYNOTORUDY.ORG: Cautious Man notes in comments that the site was created in late October, even though the creators say they launched it "last summer." Curious.
Richard Brookhiser endorses Rudy Giuliani's presidential bid in today's New York Post -- and tells a tale that sounds as if it might have been too good to check:
My favorite of the early reax to Rudy was flagged by columnist Deroy Murdock: An anti-Giuliani Web site, SayNoToRudy.org, posted by social conservatives in Ohio, pulled the plug on itself after deciding that "Giuliani is truly a committed Republican and an accomplished conservative on many issues."
Yup, here's SayNoToRudy.org, and all that's there is a message titled "SayNoToRudy.org Ceases Operations, Endorses Giuliani for President."
Why don't I believe this?
Let's go back to the Deroy Murdock column, which appeared at National Review Online just before Thanksgiving:
Cincinnati prosecutor Steve Giudicci says by phone that he launched SayNoToRudy.Org late last summer, along with a few dozen fellow grassroots conservative activists, mainly in Ohio.
First of all, I wonder why Giudicci told Murdock that he was from Cincinnati, but when he signed SayNoToRudy.org's online petition (one of a whopping thirteen signatures), he said he was from Concord, New Hampshire.
(Oh, and why only thirteen signatures if the group had "a few dozen" members?)
More from Murdock:
"I am about as socially conservative as you can get -- on everything from abortion, to gun rights, to smaller government, and less taxes. You name it," [Giudicci] says. The website offered T-shirts, refrigerator magnets, wall clocks, boxer shorts, and other items with a logo featuring "Giuliani '08" and a circle and red line running through it. "Nominate a REAL Conservative," the merchandise demanded.
But the more Giudicci and his colleagues learned about Giuliani, the more they realized they had misunderestimated him....
Giudicci saw Giuliani speak at a New Hampshire campaign stop on November 3 and was sold. The former Rudy foe is now a Rudy fan who hopes to swing more grassroots activists his way.
"If a President Giuliani meant the same thing as Mayor Giuliani -- namely innovative and competent leadership, less government, lower taxes, a strict-constructionist judiciary, and bad guys brought to justice -- then I'm all for it."
So Giudicci and all of his colleagues had this sudden, absolute Road-to-Damascus conversion simultaneously? Does that seem plausible?
And I can't find a trace of any of that anti-Rudy merchandise, or any anti-Rudy postings from the site, anywhere -- not cached at Google or Yahoo, not at the Wayback Machine.
Invent a phony group of purist right-wingers who learn more about Giuliani and are so bowled over they abandon their campaign to block his nomination? Sure, why not? Especially if you can get supposedly serious people like Murdock and Brookhiser to believe you. It's a hell of a political story -- and here it is, working its way up the news food chain.
Print the legend....
****
Incidentally, a more straightforward online campaign, Draft Rudy Giuliani for President, was begun last year by two political operatives based in Chicago, Allen Fore and Nicholas Tyszka. Tyszka's name has come up in the past in connection with some interesting online work:
A company owned by the manager of Republican businessman John Cox's recently ended U.S. Senate primary campaign has acknowledged responsibility for a nasty little parody web site....
The site ... featured the photo of Democratic senate candidate and Ill. Sen. Barack Obama that appears on Obama's actual campaign web site doctored with an Osama Bin Laden-style beard:
"A dream to destroy America," said the logo.
Further down the page, the text identified Obama as among the candidates who are "so liberal that they are downright anti-American."
Democrats tracked control of the site back to a South Bend, Ind., company owned by Nicholas Tyszka, 24, and leaked the story to the Capitol Hill newspaper Roll Call.
Tyszka said that when the Roll Call reporter contacted him yesterday afternoon, he reviewed the site--which he said he hadn't seen -- took it off line and terminated the employee who had designed and posted it....
(Scroll down to October 23 here.)
Tyszka and Fore are both veterans of the Heartland Institute, which "campaigns on 'junk science', 'common-sense environmentalism' (i.e. anti-Kyoto, pro-GM), smokers' rights (anti-tobacco tax, denial of problems from passive smoking), the introduction of school vouchers, and the deregulation of health care insurance," according to Sourcewatch. (That's not a bad fit, by the way: Rudy as mayor praised and parroted much of the "free market" thinking of the Manhattan Institute.)
(Research on Draft Rudy courtesy of Julia.)
****
UPDATE ON SAYNOTORUDY.ORG: Cautious Man notes in comments that the site was created in late October, even though the creators say they launched it "last summer." Curious.
FALL OF THE HOUSE OF BUSH
Marked down to 50% off at Barnes & Noble and Amazon, even though it was published only two months ago:
As I've explained a couple of times before, this is what happens to a new book when the publisher and booksellers realize that far too many copies were printed and it'll be impossible to unload them at anything close to list price. The book is said to be "remaindered in place" -- the bookseller slaps on a 50%-off sticker (which is what's happened at my neighborhood bricks-and-mortar B&N) and everyone just hopes the extra markdown will be enough to get the white elephant to sell.
More evidence that the mighty have fallen? Shed a tear....
Marked down to 50% off at Barnes & Noble and Amazon, even though it was published only two months ago:
As I've explained a couple of times before, this is what happens to a new book when the publisher and booksellers realize that far too many copies were printed and it'll be impossible to unload them at anything close to list price. The book is said to be "remaindered in place" -- the bookseller slaps on a 50%-off sticker (which is what's happened at my neighborhood bricks-and-mortar B&N) and everyone just hopes the extra markdown will be enough to get the white elephant to sell.
More evidence that the mighty have fallen? Shed a tear....
Mission accomplished, version 1:
...The Taliban gunmen who murdered two teachers in eastern Afghanistan early Saturday were only following their rules: Teachers receive a warning, then a beating, and if they continue to teach, must be killed.
The new list of 30 rules, decided on during a high Taliban meeting in September or October and since circulated over the Internet, ... contain a grave warning for aid workers and educators.
Rule No. 24 forbids anyone to work as a teacher "under the current puppet regime, because this strengthens the system of the infidels." One rule later, No. 25, says teachers who ignore Taliban warnings will be killed.
Taliban militants early Saturday broke into a house in the eastern province of Kunar, killing a family of five, including two sisters who were teachers....
The two sisters brought to 20 the number of teachers killed in Taliban attacks this year, said Education Ministry spokesman Zuhur Afghan. He said 198 schools have been burned down this year, up from about 150 last year....
Late last month, The Independent had a story about a truly brutal killing of a teacher -- the killers literally had the teacher torn apart. The story is here, but I'm warning you, the details are grisly.
Afghanistan could have been the big demonstration project of the Bush Doctrine. But Iraq was the neocons' white whale, Oedipus Bush wanted to kill the guy his father didn't kill, and Rove wanted the mother of all wedge issues. So here we are.
...The Taliban gunmen who murdered two teachers in eastern Afghanistan early Saturday were only following their rules: Teachers receive a warning, then a beating, and if they continue to teach, must be killed.
The new list of 30 rules, decided on during a high Taliban meeting in September or October and since circulated over the Internet, ... contain a grave warning for aid workers and educators.
Rule No. 24 forbids anyone to work as a teacher "under the current puppet regime, because this strengthens the system of the infidels." One rule later, No. 25, says teachers who ignore Taliban warnings will be killed.
Taliban militants early Saturday broke into a house in the eastern province of Kunar, killing a family of five, including two sisters who were teachers....
The two sisters brought to 20 the number of teachers killed in Taliban attacks this year, said Education Ministry spokesman Zuhur Afghan. He said 198 schools have been burned down this year, up from about 150 last year....
Late last month, The Independent had a story about a truly brutal killing of a teacher -- the killers literally had the teacher torn apart. The story is here, but I'm warning you, the details are grisly.
Afghanistan could have been the big demonstration project of the Bush Doctrine. But Iraq was the neocons' white whale, Oedipus Bush wanted to kill the guy his father didn't kill, and Rove wanted the mother of all wedge issues. So here we are.
Saturday, December 09, 2006
So why is it urgently necessary for every store clerk in America to say "Merry Christmas," and for "Happy Holidays" to be banned?
Because, as Don Feder explains at FrontPage magazine, saying "Happy Holidays" is the first step on a slippery slope to the Holocaust:
...The secular left wants to extinguish God-based morality. The only way to do that is to drive Christianity underground. Hence, the War on Christianity. Hence, the War on Christmas.
...That's why, Jews -- as Jews -- must oppose revisionist efforts to deny our nation's Christian heritage, must stand against the drive to decouple our laws from Judeo-Christian ethics and must counter attacks on public expressions of the religion of most Americans -- Christianity.
Jews are safer in a Christian America than in a secular America (or Europe).
Look at the fate of Jews in post-Christian Europe.
Stephen Steinlight, former director of the U.S. Holocaust Museum, says there are an average of 12 assaults a day on Parisian Jews -- comparable to Nazi attacks on Jews in the dying days of the Weimar Republic. In recent years, synagogues, Jewish day schools and kosher restaurants have been targeted by Europeans of the jihad persuasion.
So obviously there's going to be another Holocaust here if we stop saying "Merry Christmas," or if there aren't creches on public property in every town in the land.
And not only a Holocaust -- a Holocaust led by Muslim Nazi Communist Hollywood liberals!
In a commentary in the October 17th Jerusalem Post, David Meyer (a French-born rabbi serving a synagogue in Brussels) writes: "I am frightened not just by the anti-Semitism (resurgent in Europe) but by the collective European response of indifference and appeasement. Today, Europe worships compromise. It is 'fanatical' in its non-violence. It is a Europe that, in the face of Islamist fanaticism, is ready to stay silent."
Nature abhors a spiritual vacuum. In a Europe where churches are empty, mosques are filling and new ones are being built every day.
...The principal threats to Jews in the mid-20th century were creeds which which sought to replace God with secular ideologies, based on evolutionary race theory or a maniacal class consciousness.
While Christmas isn't part of my religion, I'm all for public acknowledgements of a religious holiday celebrated by 95% of the American people.
What's the alternative -- an America dominated by the twisted theories of Planned Parenthood, the ACLU, Michael Moore and George Clooney? Instead of the red and green of Christmas, how about an America where burka black is the dominant color?
So, what do you prefer to say: "Merry Christmas"? "Workers of the world unite?" Or "Allah Akbar"?
There's your future, then -- a tyrannical Godless America presided over by baseball-cap-wearing Comrade Michael bin Schicklgruber! And all because you didn't tell the H.R. department at work, "I refuse to attend the company 'holiday' party, cursed infidel! I celebrate Christmas!"
Because, as Don Feder explains at FrontPage magazine, saying "Happy Holidays" is the first step on a slippery slope to the Holocaust:
...The secular left wants to extinguish God-based morality. The only way to do that is to drive Christianity underground. Hence, the War on Christianity. Hence, the War on Christmas.
...That's why, Jews -- as Jews -- must oppose revisionist efforts to deny our nation's Christian heritage, must stand against the drive to decouple our laws from Judeo-Christian ethics and must counter attacks on public expressions of the religion of most Americans -- Christianity.
Jews are safer in a Christian America than in a secular America (or Europe).
Look at the fate of Jews in post-Christian Europe.
Stephen Steinlight, former director of the U.S. Holocaust Museum, says there are an average of 12 assaults a day on Parisian Jews -- comparable to Nazi attacks on Jews in the dying days of the Weimar Republic. In recent years, synagogues, Jewish day schools and kosher restaurants have been targeted by Europeans of the jihad persuasion.
So obviously there's going to be another Holocaust here if we stop saying "Merry Christmas," or if there aren't creches on public property in every town in the land.
And not only a Holocaust -- a Holocaust led by Muslim Nazi Communist Hollywood liberals!
In a commentary in the October 17th Jerusalem Post, David Meyer (a French-born rabbi serving a synagogue in Brussels) writes: "I am frightened not just by the anti-Semitism (resurgent in Europe) but by the collective European response of indifference and appeasement. Today, Europe worships compromise. It is 'fanatical' in its non-violence. It is a Europe that, in the face of Islamist fanaticism, is ready to stay silent."
Nature abhors a spiritual vacuum. In a Europe where churches are empty, mosques are filling and new ones are being built every day.
...The principal threats to Jews in the mid-20th century were creeds which which sought to replace God with secular ideologies, based on evolutionary race theory or a maniacal class consciousness.
While Christmas isn't part of my religion, I'm all for public acknowledgements of a religious holiday celebrated by 95% of the American people.
What's the alternative -- an America dominated by the twisted theories of Planned Parenthood, the ACLU, Michael Moore and George Clooney? Instead of the red and green of Christmas, how about an America where burka black is the dominant color?
So, what do you prefer to say: "Merry Christmas"? "Workers of the world unite?" Or "Allah Akbar"?
There's your future, then -- a tyrannical Godless America presided over by baseball-cap-wearing Comrade Michael bin Schicklgruber! And all because you didn't tell the H.R. department at work, "I refuse to attend the company 'holiday' party, cursed infidel! I celebrate Christmas!"
Friday, December 08, 2006
Trouble in Let's-Convert-the-Gaysville:
...Dr. Joseph Nicolosi, President of the National Association for Research and Therapy of Homosexuality (NARTH) has stepped down amid a cloud of controversy stemming from a polemic justifying slavery found on the group's Web site. The Encino-based NARTH had also taken heat in recent months for advocating child abuse against gender variant children....
Trouble began mounting for Nicolosi after Canadian doctor Joseph Berger, who serves on NARTH's "Scientific Advisory Board" wrote on the organization's website that gender variant children should be sent to school in opposite-sex clothing so they can be "ridiculed" into conforming.
But criticism of NARTH reached a crescendo after "Scientific Advisory Board" member, Dr. Gerald Schoenewolf, penned a polemic on the group's website that seemed to justify slavery and said that African-Americans taken away in chains on slave ships "were in many ways better off than they had been in Africa."....
Gee, and I thought it was just my nasty liberal prejudice that made me think that those who want to convert gay people are doing so out of hate.
The Schoenewolf essay (PDF) is a simple-minded denunciation of "political correctness"; to the good doctor, advocates of gay rights are just the latest in a long line of fascists who, like feminists and advocates of racial equality, derive their totalitarian techniques from the Father of PC, Karl Marx. (I'm not exaggerating this at all.) How bad are anti-racists? This bad:
There is no attempt by civil rights leaders to see both sides of the conflict, to understand the complex sources of the problem, to view people on both sides as having both good and bad in them. There is no attempt to negotiate a win-win situation that would benefit all society; instead a win-lose scenario is forced on all of society, whether they like it or not....
With all due respect, there is another way, or other ways, to look at the race issue in America. It could be pointed out, for example, that Africa at the time of slavery was still primarily a jungle, as yet uncivilized or industrialized. Life there was savage, as savage as the jungle for most people, and that it was the Africans themselves who first enslaved their own people. They sold their own people to other countries, and those brought to Europe, South America, America, and other countries, were in many ways better off than they had been in Africa.
Wow.
The Berger essay encourages "normal" kids to treat "gender-variant" kids the way, er, Dr. Schoenewolf thinks liberal fascists treat everyone else. According to the L.A. Times,
Berger said that instead of teaching tolerance, schools should "let the other children ridicule" boys and girls who don't conform.
"It is a mistake for various interfering, ignorant and biased busybodies to try to 'counsel' the other children into accepting the abnormal," Berger wrote. "It is very healthy to be able to draw the line between what is healthy and what is sick."
Schoolyard bullying and demonization of the outsider: ah yes, those are the hallmarks of a truly healthy society.
NARTH will go on, of course (a new president has already been named), as will the notion that gay people can be flipped. Alas, I haven't been able to determine whether Dr. Nicolosi's offer of NARTH help to Ted Haggard was ever accepted.
(Via DU.)
...Dr. Joseph Nicolosi, President of the National Association for Research and Therapy of Homosexuality (NARTH) has stepped down amid a cloud of controversy stemming from a polemic justifying slavery found on the group's Web site. The Encino-based NARTH had also taken heat in recent months for advocating child abuse against gender variant children....
Trouble began mounting for Nicolosi after Canadian doctor Joseph Berger, who serves on NARTH's "Scientific Advisory Board" wrote on the organization's website that gender variant children should be sent to school in opposite-sex clothing so they can be "ridiculed" into conforming.
But criticism of NARTH reached a crescendo after "Scientific Advisory Board" member, Dr. Gerald Schoenewolf, penned a polemic on the group's website that seemed to justify slavery and said that African-Americans taken away in chains on slave ships "were in many ways better off than they had been in Africa."....
Gee, and I thought it was just my nasty liberal prejudice that made me think that those who want to convert gay people are doing so out of hate.
The Schoenewolf essay (PDF) is a simple-minded denunciation of "political correctness"; to the good doctor, advocates of gay rights are just the latest in a long line of fascists who, like feminists and advocates of racial equality, derive their totalitarian techniques from the Father of PC, Karl Marx. (I'm not exaggerating this at all.) How bad are anti-racists? This bad:
There is no attempt by civil rights leaders to see both sides of the conflict, to understand the complex sources of the problem, to view people on both sides as having both good and bad in them. There is no attempt to negotiate a win-win situation that would benefit all society; instead a win-lose scenario is forced on all of society, whether they like it or not....
With all due respect, there is another way, or other ways, to look at the race issue in America. It could be pointed out, for example, that Africa at the time of slavery was still primarily a jungle, as yet uncivilized or industrialized. Life there was savage, as savage as the jungle for most people, and that it was the Africans themselves who first enslaved their own people. They sold their own people to other countries, and those brought to Europe, South America, America, and other countries, were in many ways better off than they had been in Africa.
Wow.
The Berger essay encourages "normal" kids to treat "gender-variant" kids the way, er, Dr. Schoenewolf thinks liberal fascists treat everyone else. According to the L.A. Times,
Berger said that instead of teaching tolerance, schools should "let the other children ridicule" boys and girls who don't conform.
"It is a mistake for various interfering, ignorant and biased busybodies to try to 'counsel' the other children into accepting the abnormal," Berger wrote. "It is very healthy to be able to draw the line between what is healthy and what is sick."
Schoolyard bullying and demonization of the outsider: ah yes, those are the hallmarks of a truly healthy society.
NARTH will go on, of course (a new president has already been named), as will the notion that gay people can be flipped. Alas, I haven't been able to determine whether Dr. Nicolosi's offer of NARTH help to Ted Haggard was ever accepted.
(Via DU.)
From an L.A. Times article on right-wing responses to the Iraq Study Group report:
... conservative commentator William J. Bennett vented in volcanic fashion. "In all my time in Washington I've never seen such smugness, arrogance, or such insufferable moral superiority," Bennett wrote on the National Review website.
Apparently Bennett doesn't own a mirror.
... conservative commentator William J. Bennett vented in volcanic fashion. "In all my time in Washington I've never seen such smugness, arrogance, or such insufferable moral superiority," Bennett wrote on the National Review website.
Apparently Bennett doesn't own a mirror.
YO, ADRIAN! HAVE YOU ACCEPTED DA RISEN JESUS INTO YAW HAWT?
I don't want to leap to conclusions about the worldliness of conservative Christian journalists, but this Baptist Press article seems a tad naive:
NASHVILLE, Tenn. (BP)--Believe it or not, Sylvester Stallone says the infamous movie character Rocky was meant to reflect the nature of Jesus, and the sixth film in the series, "Rocky Balboa," scheduled to hit theaters Dec. 22, carries an intentionally Christian theme.
"It's like he was being chosen, Jesus was over him, and he was going to be the fella that would live through the example of Christ," Stallone said of Rocky in a conference call with pastors and religious leaders. "He's very, very forgiving. There’s no bitterness in him. He always turns the other cheek. And it's like his whole life was about service."
Wow, a superstar Hollywood actor comparing the fictional alter ego he created for himself to Jesus -- believe it or not! That's so odd -- most Hollywood stars have really humble self-images!
... "The more I go to church," [Stallone] said, ... "and the more I turn myself over to the process of believing in Jesus and listening to His Word and having Him guide my hand, I feel as though the pressure is off me now."
Stallone, in the conference call, compared the need for church to the need for a physical trainer.
"You need to have the expertise and the guidance of someone else. You cannot train yourself," he said. "I feel the same way about Christianity and about what the church is: The church is the gym of the soul." ...
Wow, I bet a publicist didn't even write that line for him -- even though, as this Focus on the Family Citizenlink article points out, the movie is "being marketed to the 'faith and values' crowd." I bet Stallone just made it up off the top of his head!
Well, it's understandable if Christian journalists are falling for this -- the movie's Christian outreach campaign is fairly serious, to judge from RockyResources.com, a slick site that links the film to Jesus, and that features laudatory statements on the movie's spiritual force from semi-prominent faith leaders. ("This movie is a must see event. Not only is it a fitting conclusion to the fabulous Rocky story, but what a joy to see Sly Stallone transcend his faith through this awesome story that millions of people are going to see." --Bryan London, vice president of marketing at America's Christian Credit Union.)
However, I'm struggling in vain to find any reference to any of this on the main Rocky site, unless what Sly and Frank Stallone are drinking here
is Communion wine.
I don't want to leap to conclusions about the worldliness of conservative Christian journalists, but this Baptist Press article seems a tad naive:
NASHVILLE, Tenn. (BP)--Believe it or not, Sylvester Stallone says the infamous movie character Rocky was meant to reflect the nature of Jesus, and the sixth film in the series, "Rocky Balboa," scheduled to hit theaters Dec. 22, carries an intentionally Christian theme.
"It's like he was being chosen, Jesus was over him, and he was going to be the fella that would live through the example of Christ," Stallone said of Rocky in a conference call with pastors and religious leaders. "He's very, very forgiving. There’s no bitterness in him. He always turns the other cheek. And it's like his whole life was about service."
Wow, a superstar Hollywood actor comparing the fictional alter ego he created for himself to Jesus -- believe it or not! That's so odd -- most Hollywood stars have really humble self-images!
... "The more I go to church," [Stallone] said, ... "and the more I turn myself over to the process of believing in Jesus and listening to His Word and having Him guide my hand, I feel as though the pressure is off me now."
Stallone, in the conference call, compared the need for church to the need for a physical trainer.
"You need to have the expertise and the guidance of someone else. You cannot train yourself," he said. "I feel the same way about Christianity and about what the church is: The church is the gym of the soul." ...
Wow, I bet a publicist didn't even write that line for him -- even though, as this Focus on the Family Citizenlink article points out, the movie is "being marketed to the 'faith and values' crowd." I bet Stallone just made it up off the top of his head!
Well, it's understandable if Christian journalists are falling for this -- the movie's Christian outreach campaign is fairly serious, to judge from RockyResources.com, a slick site that links the film to Jesus, and that features laudatory statements on the movie's spiritual force from semi-prominent faith leaders. ("This movie is a must see event. Not only is it a fitting conclusion to the fabulous Rocky story, but what a joy to see Sly Stallone transcend his faith through this awesome story that millions of people are going to see." --Bryan London, vice president of marketing at America's Christian Credit Union.)
However, I'm struggling in vain to find any reference to any of this on the main Rocky site, unless what Sly and Frank Stallone are drinking here
is Communion wine.
Thursday, December 07, 2006
By the way, did you see the cover of today's New York Post?
"Surrender monkeys" is still a knee-slapper in Wingnuttia.
In Wingnuttia, it will always be the spring of 2003, Bush will always have a 70% approval rating, and the WMDs will always be in a cave just past the next sand dune, sure to be discovered any minute now.
"Surrender monkeys" is still a knee-slapper in Wingnuttia.
In Wingnuttia, it will always be the spring of 2003, Bush will always have a 70% approval rating, and the WMDs will always be in a cave just past the next sand dune, sure to be discovered any minute now.
An ISG-bashing editorial in the New York Sun harrumphs:
The list of those with whom the Baker commission consulted includes dozens of foreign ambassadors, former generals, and newspaper columnists, but not a single widow of a New York City firefighter.
Oh, good grief.
What country do we have 150,000 troops in again? And how many 9/11 hijackers came from there?
The list of those with whom the Baker commission consulted includes dozens of foreign ambassadors, former generals, and newspaper columnists, but not a single widow of a New York City firefighter.
Oh, good grief.
What country do we have 150,000 troops in again? And how many 9/11 hijackers came from there?
THE GOP HAS TWO MOMMIES
Doesn't it seem very, very likely that Mary Cheney and her partner of 15 years, Heather Poe, put off having children until now at least partly for political reasons, so that the joyous news would be announced only after -- in fact, just after -- the last campaign in which, presumably, Mary's dad would be a significant issue?
Obviously these things can't be timed exactly, but surely there was an effort to get this done when it would do the least damage to the GOP. That effort appears to have been successful. Needless to say, many people try to time pregnancies so they'll happen after one member of the couple makes partner, say, or finishes a novel. What's unusual in this case is that it may be the first time a pregnancy has been planned in consultation with Karl Rove.
Of course, timing pregnancy is sort of a Cheney family tradition.
Doesn't it seem very, very likely that Mary Cheney and her partner of 15 years, Heather Poe, put off having children until now at least partly for political reasons, so that the joyous news would be announced only after -- in fact, just after -- the last campaign in which, presumably, Mary's dad would be a significant issue?
Obviously these things can't be timed exactly, but surely there was an effort to get this done when it would do the least damage to the GOP. That effort appears to have been successful. Needless to say, many people try to time pregnancies so they'll happen after one member of the couple makes partner, say, or finishes a novel. What's unusual in this case is that it may be the first time a pregnancy has been planned in consultation with Karl Rove.
Of course, timing pregnancy is sort of a Cheney family tradition.
You've heard about the "fetal pain awareness" bill that was brought up in the lame-duck session of Congress as a sop to anti-abortion voters, even though it had no chance of becoming law. (It was defeated in the House last night.) Well, it seems that at least one anti-abortion figure isn't upset -- he opposed the bill not because it's too extreme, but because it's not extreme enough.
Columbine Dad and newly elected President of Colorado Right to Life [Danny Brian Rohrbough] is challenging the wisdom of National Right to Life and Senator Sam Brownback's "Unborn Child Pain Awareness Act." Any law that ends with "and then you can kill the baby, is an inherently evil law."
...According to Rohrbough, "Would any rational human being have felt better about what the Nazis did to the Jews, if they had offered them pain medication? Why, then, does National Right to Life think it appropriate to suggest that women sedate innocent, pre-born infants before they are murdered by abortionists?"
..."The American people deserve the opportunity to hear an honest debate with the nation's largest pro-life organization about why they propose legislation that merely promotes a kinder, gentler way of killing," said the father of Danny Rohrbough, who was murdered at Columbine.
(Yeah, Rohrbough is the guy who blames the Columbine massacre on legalized abortion, a notion so bizarre and outlandish that Katie Couric agreed to give it a national TV airing on CBS in the wake of the recent Amish school shootings.)
Columbine Dad and newly elected President of Colorado Right to Life [
...According to Rohrbough, "Would any rational human being have felt better about what the Nazis did to the Jews, if they had offered them pain medication? Why, then, does National Right to Life think it appropriate to suggest that women sedate innocent, pre-born infants before they are murdered by abortionists?"
..."The American people deserve the opportunity to hear an honest debate with the nation's largest pro-life organization about why they propose legislation that merely promotes a kinder, gentler way of killing," said the father of Danny Rohrbough, who was murdered at Columbine.
(Yeah, Rohrbough is the guy who blames the Columbine massacre on legalized abortion, a notion so bizarre and outlandish that Katie Couric agreed to give it a national TV airing on CBS in the wake of the recent Amish school shootings.)
Wednesday, December 06, 2006
HANNITY'S NEO-NAZI ELIMINATIONIST EX-PAL
World Net Daily has an article about Hal Turner -- and given the politics of typical WND reader, I'm not sure if the article was published out of outrage, amusement, or the desire to give Turner some free advertising:
A radio talk-show entertainer whose earlier statements that he "may" have to assassinate members of Congress if the wrong people were elected Nov. 7 now has set a timetable for those killings.
In a statement on his website, Hal Turner noted that a newspaper has reported that a bill granting amnesty to illegal aliens is expected to be enacted in January, when the Democratic Party takes control of the U.S. Senate and House....
"Members of The United States House of Representatives or United States Senate who try to grant any form of Amnesty to millions of illegal aliens are hereby notified they may as well paint a bulls-eye target on themselves. Our Bullets don't care about their sovereign power," he wrote.
"This seems to be 'it' folks. I'm going to do what I have to do to protect my nation from its government. I know where all of my New Jersey Congressmen and Senators live. Do you know where yours live? If not, you better find out before January so you can scope out their neighborhoods and prepare yourselves," he said....
This is standard operating procedure for Turner:
..."All of you who think there's a peaceful solution to these invaders are wrong. We're going to have to start killing these people," neo-Nazi radio host Hal Turner posted to his website the day after 500,000 immigrant rights activists marched through downtown Los Angeles.
"I advocate using extreme violence against illegal aliens. Clean your guns. Have plenty of ammunition. Find out where the largest gathering of illegal aliens will be near you. Go to the area well in advance, scope out several places to position yourself and then do what has to be done."
Turner linked the post to a website titled "Ka-Fucking-Boom!" that provides detailed instructions on constructing pipe bombs, ammonium nitrate "fertilizer bombs," car bombs, chlorine gas bombs, and dozens of other homemade explosive devices....
I wonder if Sean Hannity is proud of his former pal:
... During an August 1998 episode of the show, Turner reminded Hannity that were it not for the graciousness of the white man, "black people would still be swinging on trees in Africa," according to Daryle Jenkins, co-founder of the New Jersey-based antiracism group One People's Project. Instead of rebuking Turner or cutting him off, Hannity continued to welcome his calls.
... according to Jenkins, Turner and Hannity had bonded off-air. In 1998 Hannity received an anonymous e-mail linking to an AOL discussion board on which Turner had allegedly confessed to a cocaine problem and alluded to past homosexual trysts. Turner (or someone claiming to be Turner) wrote in an August 4, 1998, Google discussion forum that Hannity called him to clear the air.... Turner added that such chats with Hannity were "not unusual," often occurring while Hannity held his calls during commercial breaks.
Jenkins told me that ... he encountered Turner [in 2003] and asked him about his relationship with Hannity. Turner claimed that he and Hannity would talk by phone and even recounted that Hannity had once invited him and his son on to the set of Hannity and Colmes....
But Hannity was becoming a TV star and his show stopped taking Hal's calls. So Hal went out and started doing broadcasts and Webcasts on his own. Don't think of it as a snub -- think of it as Hannity kicking the baby bird out of the nest.
World Net Daily has an article about Hal Turner -- and given the politics of typical WND reader, I'm not sure if the article was published out of outrage, amusement, or the desire to give Turner some free advertising:
A radio talk-show entertainer whose earlier statements that he "may" have to assassinate members of Congress if the wrong people were elected Nov. 7 now has set a timetable for those killings.
In a statement on his website, Hal Turner noted that a newspaper has reported that a bill granting amnesty to illegal aliens is expected to be enacted in January, when the Democratic Party takes control of the U.S. Senate and House....
"Members of The United States House of Representatives or United States Senate who try to grant any form of Amnesty to millions of illegal aliens are hereby notified they may as well paint a bulls-eye target on themselves. Our Bullets don't care about their sovereign power," he wrote.
"This seems to be 'it' folks. I'm going to do what I have to do to protect my nation from its government. I know where all of my New Jersey Congressmen and Senators live. Do you know where yours live? If not, you better find out before January so you can scope out their neighborhoods and prepare yourselves," he said....
This is standard operating procedure for Turner:
..."All of you who think there's a peaceful solution to these invaders are wrong. We're going to have to start killing these people," neo-Nazi radio host Hal Turner posted to his website the day after 500,000 immigrant rights activists marched through downtown Los Angeles.
"I advocate using extreme violence against illegal aliens. Clean your guns. Have plenty of ammunition. Find out where the largest gathering of illegal aliens will be near you. Go to the area well in advance, scope out several places to position yourself and then do what has to be done."
Turner linked the post to a website titled "Ka-Fucking-Boom!" that provides detailed instructions on constructing pipe bombs, ammonium nitrate "fertilizer bombs," car bombs, chlorine gas bombs, and dozens of other homemade explosive devices....
I wonder if Sean Hannity is proud of his former pal:
... During an August 1998 episode of the show, Turner reminded Hannity that were it not for the graciousness of the white man, "black people would still be swinging on trees in Africa," according to Daryle Jenkins, co-founder of the New Jersey-based antiracism group One People's Project. Instead of rebuking Turner or cutting him off, Hannity continued to welcome his calls.
... according to Jenkins, Turner and Hannity had bonded off-air. In 1998 Hannity received an anonymous e-mail linking to an AOL discussion board on which Turner had allegedly confessed to a cocaine problem and alluded to past homosexual trysts. Turner (or someone claiming to be Turner) wrote in an August 4, 1998, Google discussion forum that Hannity called him to clear the air.... Turner added that such chats with Hannity were "not unusual," often occurring while Hannity held his calls during commercial breaks.
Jenkins told me that ... he encountered Turner [in 2003] and asked him about his relationship with Hannity. Turner claimed that he and Hannity would talk by phone and even recounted that Hannity had once invited him and his son on to the set of Hannity and Colmes....
But Hannity was becoming a TV star and his show stopped taking Hal's calls. So Hal went out and started doing broadcasts and Webcasts on his own. Don't think of it as a snub -- think of it as Hannity kicking the baby bird out of the nest.
Yesterday, the Carpetbagger Report was quoting an NBC story titled "2008 GOP Field Disappoints Some Conservatives" (Subhead: "No Bona Fide Social Conservative Among the '08 Republican Favorites"). A day later, here's Michael Graham, a right-wing talk-show host (and occasional on-air Muslim-basher, so you know his social-conservative bona fides are in good order), writing in the Boston Herald that Mitt Romney would be perfectly satisfactory to evangelicals:
...in America today, where religion and faith are under constant media assault, the question evangelical voters are asking isn't "Christian vs. Jew" or "Methodist vs. Mormon," but rather "God or no God?" For values voters, the battle is between people who value faith and those who either ignore it or are actively hostile toward it.
Romney is an ally to evangelicals not because he is or isn't a Christian, but because he's a conservative who believes in God and takes his faith seriously....
Don't believe me? Then explain to me why the most popular Democrat among southern evangelicals today is Joe Lieberman.
Sen. Lieberman may not spend much time at Wednesday night Bible study, but evangelicals admire him because he takes his Judaism seriously....
Graham isn't alone. A week ago, Gary Bauer told two reporters for the Christian-right Agape Press that he would consider voting for a Mormon, and a week earlier, there was this at CNN:
The Rev. Jerry Falwell, an evangelical who founded the Moral Majority, said he expects Christian conservatives will focus more on Romney's personal morality and his current views than his past statements or his faith.
"We're not trying to find a Sunday school teacher in chief; we're trying to find a commander in chief," said Falwell, who traveled to Massachusetts last month to meet with Romney. Also attending the meeting were Franklin Graham, Gary Bauer, Lou Sheldon, Richard Land and other conservative social and religious leaders.
If Giuliani loses the nomination, it'll happen because religious-right leaders send out signals that Romney is the acceptable choice, in terms of both electability and passing litmus tests. (Romney is moving to the right on abortion and gay marriage, whereas Guiliani isn't, and that shift seems to be winning him converts. McCain, of course, said he'd support the South Dakota abortion law, but the simple fact is that nobody on the right likes him.)
(And If you're wondering why Romney's flip-flopping isn't being met with skepticism, here's my theory, based on many comments I've read at Free Republic and elsewhere: Right-wingers think a Republican simply has to espouse social-liberal positions to win over all of us psycho loonies who live up here in the Northeast. Those who are willing to embrace Giuliani regularly say this in reference to him.)
Michael Graham tells us this, by the way, about Romney's appeal in the Bible Belt:
There's ... his central casting presidential good looks; his gorgeous wife and their five strapping sons; his record of business success and his highly-praised oversight of the 2002 Olympics.
Chris Matthews may not have picked up on this yet, but rich, handsome, successful white guys aren't exactly anathema to southern conservatives.
Maybe being (or strutting around like) an alpha dog is the real GOP-base litmus test.
...in America today, where religion and faith are under constant media assault, the question evangelical voters are asking isn't "Christian vs. Jew" or "Methodist vs. Mormon," but rather "God or no God?" For values voters, the battle is between people who value faith and those who either ignore it or are actively hostile toward it.
Romney is an ally to evangelicals not because he is or isn't a Christian, but because he's a conservative who believes in God and takes his faith seriously....
Don't believe me? Then explain to me why the most popular Democrat among southern evangelicals today is Joe Lieberman.
Sen. Lieberman may not spend much time at Wednesday night Bible study, but evangelicals admire him because he takes his Judaism seriously....
Graham isn't alone. A week ago, Gary Bauer told two reporters for the Christian-right Agape Press that he would consider voting for a Mormon, and a week earlier, there was this at CNN:
The Rev. Jerry Falwell, an evangelical who founded the Moral Majority, said he expects Christian conservatives will focus more on Romney's personal morality and his current views than his past statements or his faith.
"We're not trying to find a Sunday school teacher in chief; we're trying to find a commander in chief," said Falwell, who traveled to Massachusetts last month to meet with Romney. Also attending the meeting were Franklin Graham, Gary Bauer, Lou Sheldon, Richard Land and other conservative social and religious leaders.
If Giuliani loses the nomination, it'll happen because religious-right leaders send out signals that Romney is the acceptable choice, in terms of both electability and passing litmus tests. (Romney is moving to the right on abortion and gay marriage, whereas Guiliani isn't, and that shift seems to be winning him converts. McCain, of course, said he'd support the South Dakota abortion law, but the simple fact is that nobody on the right likes him.)
(And If you're wondering why Romney's flip-flopping isn't being met with skepticism, here's my theory, based on many comments I've read at Free Republic and elsewhere: Right-wingers think a Republican simply has to espouse social-liberal positions to win over all of us psycho loonies who live up here in the Northeast. Those who are willing to embrace Giuliani regularly say this in reference to him.)
Michael Graham tells us this, by the way, about Romney's appeal in the Bible Belt:
There's ... his central casting presidential good looks; his gorgeous wife and their five strapping sons; his record of business success and his highly-praised oversight of the 2002 Olympics.
Chris Matthews may not have picked up on this yet, but rich, handsome, successful white guys aren't exactly anathema to southern conservatives.
Maybe being (or strutting around like) an alpha dog is the real GOP-base litmus test.
I've got a rush project on my desk, so this isn't the best day for me to react to big (or seemingly big) news, but I made my way through The Washington Post's story on the Iraq Study Group's report and I suspect the Bushies aren't going to have less trouble than you think recovering from it.
Yes, it says conditions are "grave and deteriorating"; yes, it says "staying the course" won't cut it; yes, it says that "none of the operations conducted by U.S. and Iraqi military forces are fundamentally changing the conditions encouraging the sectarian violence"; yes, it says al-Qaeda is only a small part of the problem; and yes, it puts forth the notion of talking directly to Iran and Syria.
But the Bushies won't need to use all that much rhetorical jujitsu to turn lines like "If current trends continue, the potential consequences are severe" against the supporters of withdrawal -- at least in a way that's convincing to their supporters (and the press). Sure, you know and I know that this line is a critique of the results of Bush policy -- but the Bushies will say that this and other conclusions ("it would be wrong to abandon the country through a precipitate withdrawal of troops and support") are calls for precisely the "adjust-to-win strategy" the administration had in mind. (The report even uses the word "adjust," asserting that the U.S. should "adjust its role in Iraq to encourage the Iraqi people to take control of their own destiny.") And even the refrence to the "grave and deteriorating" situation is leavened by a line the administration will eagerly quote:
"The situation in Iraq is grave and deteriorating," says the report's executive summary. "There is no path that can guarantee success, but the prospects can be improved."
"Prospects can be improved." The Bushies will brandish that line. They'll use it to bash "cut and run Democrats" and they'll segue from it into talk about "not leaving until the mission is completed."
So on we'll go, more or less as we would have if this report had never happened.
Yes, it says conditions are "grave and deteriorating"; yes, it says "staying the course" won't cut it; yes, it says that "none of the operations conducted by U.S. and Iraqi military forces are fundamentally changing the conditions encouraging the sectarian violence"; yes, it says al-Qaeda is only a small part of the problem; and yes, it puts forth the notion of talking directly to Iran and Syria.
But the Bushies won't need to use all that much rhetorical jujitsu to turn lines like "If current trends continue, the potential consequences are severe" against the supporters of withdrawal -- at least in a way that's convincing to their supporters (and the press). Sure, you know and I know that this line is a critique of the results of Bush policy -- but the Bushies will say that this and other conclusions ("it would be wrong to abandon the country through a precipitate withdrawal of troops and support") are calls for precisely the "adjust-to-win strategy" the administration had in mind. (The report even uses the word "adjust," asserting that the U.S. should "adjust its role in Iraq to encourage the Iraqi people to take control of their own destiny.") And even the refrence to the "grave and deteriorating" situation is leavened by a line the administration will eagerly quote:
"The situation in Iraq is grave and deteriorating," says the report's executive summary. "There is no path that can guarantee success, but the prospects can be improved."
"Prospects can be improved." The Bushies will brandish that line. They'll use it to bash "cut and run Democrats" and they'll segue from it into talk about "not leaving until the mission is completed."
So on we'll go, more or less as we would have if this report had never happened.
FAIR AND BALANCED
So, does anyone know who on Fox News called the Baker-Hamilton commission the "Iraq Surrender Group"?
So, does anyone know who on Fox News called the Baker-Hamilton commission the "Iraq Surrender Group"?
Tuesday, December 05, 2006
It would seem reasonable to conclude that President Bush has actually learned some lessons from the past three and a half years and now intends to change course significantly in Iraq and elsewhere. After all, he's nominated someone for secretary of defense who today (according to The New York Times) "said it was 'too soon to tell' whether the American invasion in 2003 had been a good idea"; who said "No, sir" in response to the question "Do you believe that we are currently winning in Iraq?"; who "was ... direct in criticizing the Bush administration's decision to disband the Iraqi Army and, for a time, to bar from government jobs tens of thousands of Iraqis who were members of Saddam Hussein's Baath Party"; who said, "I think that military action against Iran would be an absolute last resort"; and who said, "I suspect, in hindsight, some of the folks in the administration probably would not make the same decisions that they made and I think one of those is that there clearly were insufficient troops in Iraq after the initial invasion to establish control over the country."
What kind of person would nominate someone like Robert Gates, set him loose to say these things, and not be intending to acknowledge past errors and change course?
Well, maybe Bush. I suspect he's been criticized for so long (and has heard Rumsfeld criticized for so long) that he essentially hired one of his own critics just so he can rebuff him, marginalize him, and humiliate him. Like a guy walking into a bar and looking for a fight, Bush is saying, "Yeah? You think you're so tough? Come fight me on my turf."
If I'm right about this, it's an absolutely lunatic reaction to a foreign-policy crisis. But, hey, it's Bush. I really think this is what's going on.
What kind of person would nominate someone like Robert Gates, set him loose to say these things, and not be intending to acknowledge past errors and change course?
Well, maybe Bush. I suspect he's been criticized for so long (and has heard Rumsfeld criticized for so long) that he essentially hired one of his own critics just so he can rebuff him, marginalize him, and humiliate him. Like a guy walking into a bar and looking for a fight, Bush is saying, "Yeah? You think you're so tough? Come fight me on my turf."
If I'm right about this, it's an absolutely lunatic reaction to a foreign-policy crisis. But, hey, it's Bush. I really think this is what's going on.
When I saw that Salon had published a Cintra Wilson article on Rudy Giuliani, I knew there'd be some dead-on character analysis:
...Before the planes hit [on 9/11], when he had too much power and not enough to do, Giuliani, like an old soldier who comes home and starts abusing his family in lieu of a real enemy, was pulling a Great Santini on New York, rooting around in our sock drawers with a Maglite, looking for vices to confiscate and sins to punish....
But I wasn't expecting Wilson to provide real detail -- more than in any recent article by the legend-printers of the political press corps. In addition to the usual stories (Bernie Kerik, the ugly marital history), there's this from Wilson on Giuliani's second and most notorious police commissioner -- not Kerik (he was #3), but Howard Safir:
Safir's NYPD beefed up the Street Crime Unit, a corps of hyper-macho officers once described by the Village Voice's Nat Hentoff as "a rogue police operation whose members make Clint Eastwood's Dirty Harry look like Mahatma Gandhi." They were given leeway to enact "stop-and-frisks" of ordinary citizens -- supposedly to discourage them from carrying guns. While Safir's office implemented easier arrestee processing methods, New York's nonwhite citizens became increasingly alarmed by a police force they perceived as hostile, overzealous and racist. Go figure: members of the Street Crime Unit, Hentoff reported, delighted in wearing T-shirts emblazoned with such intimidating slogans as "We Own the Night!" and the Hemingway quote, "There is no hunting like the hunting of man, and those who have hunted armed men long enough and like it never care for anything else." ...
(It was in the Giuliani/Safir years that Amadou Diallo and Patrick Dorismond were killed and Abner Louima was the victim of forced instrumental sodomy in a precinct-house toilet.)
And here's Wilson on Giuliani the petty authoritarian:
Giuliani called his critics jerks, Marxists and fuzzy-headed liberals. He accused them of having psychological problems. He denigrated and gay-baited schools chancellor Ramon Cortines, calling him "precious" and a "little victim."
In 1997 a man named James Schillaci, who took a videotape exposing the existence of an NYPD speed trap in the Bronx, was crushed like a bug. After Schillaci took his evidence to the New York Daily News, the NYPD went to his apartment and hauled him off to jail for unpaid traffic tickets....
To jail. For traffic tickets.
... nearly 70,000 people filed lawsuits against the New York Police Department during Giuliani's two terms as mayor, claiming they were strip-searched for offenses as minor as jaywalking.
This is why Giuliani is scary and this is why Giuliani can win. He can win, unless I'm wrong, because voters from the GOP's base are sensing this nasty aspect of Giuliani's personality and responding instinctively and positively, as they do to Bully Boy Bush. (Meanwhile, the rest of the country seems to have swallowed the myth that Rudy is a nothing more than a charismatic, passionate centrist who fights only bad guys.) This is the authoritarian who may outdo Bush and Cheney; the swing voters don't know, but the wingnuts understand.
(And I should add that the press may really respond to him as well. Allegedly liberal New York reporters loved him for most of his eight years. I think their hearts were aflutter in response to his authoritarianism -- just the same response we see in the national media to Bush, even now.)
...Before the planes hit [on 9/11], when he had too much power and not enough to do, Giuliani, like an old soldier who comes home and starts abusing his family in lieu of a real enemy, was pulling a Great Santini on New York, rooting around in our sock drawers with a Maglite, looking for vices to confiscate and sins to punish....
But I wasn't expecting Wilson to provide real detail -- more than in any recent article by the legend-printers of the political press corps. In addition to the usual stories (Bernie Kerik, the ugly marital history), there's this from Wilson on Giuliani's second and most notorious police commissioner -- not Kerik (he was #3), but Howard Safir:
Safir's NYPD beefed up the Street Crime Unit, a corps of hyper-macho officers once described by the Village Voice's Nat Hentoff as "a rogue police operation whose members make Clint Eastwood's Dirty Harry look like Mahatma Gandhi." They were given leeway to enact "stop-and-frisks" of ordinary citizens -- supposedly to discourage them from carrying guns. While Safir's office implemented easier arrestee processing methods, New York's nonwhite citizens became increasingly alarmed by a police force they perceived as hostile, overzealous and racist. Go figure: members of the Street Crime Unit, Hentoff reported, delighted in wearing T-shirts emblazoned with such intimidating slogans as "We Own the Night!" and the Hemingway quote, "There is no hunting like the hunting of man, and those who have hunted armed men long enough and like it never care for anything else." ...
(It was in the Giuliani/Safir years that Amadou Diallo and Patrick Dorismond were killed and Abner Louima was the victim of forced instrumental sodomy in a precinct-house toilet.)
And here's Wilson on Giuliani the petty authoritarian:
Giuliani called his critics jerks, Marxists and fuzzy-headed liberals. He accused them of having psychological problems. He denigrated and gay-baited schools chancellor Ramon Cortines, calling him "precious" and a "little victim."
In 1997 a man named James Schillaci, who took a videotape exposing the existence of an NYPD speed trap in the Bronx, was crushed like a bug. After Schillaci took his evidence to the New York Daily News, the NYPD went to his apartment and hauled him off to jail for unpaid traffic tickets....
To jail. For traffic tickets.
... nearly 70,000 people filed lawsuits against the New York Police Department during Giuliani's two terms as mayor, claiming they were strip-searched for offenses as minor as jaywalking.
This is why Giuliani is scary and this is why Giuliani can win. He can win, unless I'm wrong, because voters from the GOP's base are sensing this nasty aspect of Giuliani's personality and responding instinctively and positively, as they do to Bully Boy Bush. (Meanwhile, the rest of the country seems to have swallowed the myth that Rudy is a nothing more than a charismatic, passionate centrist who fights only bad guys.) This is the authoritarian who may outdo Bush and Cheney; the swing voters don't know, but the wingnuts understand.
(And I should add that the press may really respond to him as well. Allegedly liberal New York reporters loved him for most of his eight years. I think their hearts were aflutter in response to his authoritarianism -- just the same response we see in the national media to Bush, even now.)
PLANTING THE FLAG
NASA announced plans on Monday for a permanent base on the Moon....
While the Bush administration and NASA have spoken in general terms about plans for a return to the Moon, followed by human spaceflight to Mars, the lunar outpost plan is the first time officials have proposed a permanent presence.
"We're going for a base on the Moon," [NASA's Scott] Horowitz said. "It's a very, very big decision." ...
--New York Times today
Well, I guess they were under pressure to declare some territory fully conquered before Bush left office.
And I guess we're reasonably certain that, in this case, insurgents won't fight back.
Actually, as the story notes, the base probably won't be built until about the year 2020. Maybe we'll be able to use some of this money to celebrate our triumph -- I doubt we'll have had much reason to dip into it by then.
NASA announced plans on Monday for a permanent base on the Moon....
While the Bush administration and NASA have spoken in general terms about plans for a return to the Moon, followed by human spaceflight to Mars, the lunar outpost plan is the first time officials have proposed a permanent presence.
"We're going for a base on the Moon," [NASA's Scott] Horowitz said. "It's a very, very big decision." ...
--New York Times today
Well, I guess they were under pressure to declare some territory fully conquered before Bush left office.
And I guess we're reasonably certain that, in this case, insurgents won't fight back.
Actually, as the story notes, the base probably won't be built until about the year 2020. Maybe we'll be able to use some of this money to celebrate our triumph -- I doubt we'll have had much reason to dip into it by then.
JUST A SUGGESTION
I don't have much to say about Dennis Prager's ignorant follow-up to his ignorant column denouncing the notion of using a Koran at a congressional swearing-in ceremony. (Prager says pretty much exactly what you'd expect: liberals are evil and full of hate, let me repeat that liberals are evil and full of hate, America is a Christian nation and anyone who disagrees is helping to bringing about the end of civilization as we know it, Christianism is good for the Jews, and did I mention that liberals are evil and full of hate?) But Prager does say this:
I am for no law to be passed to prevent Keith Ellison or anyone else from bringing any book he wants to his swearing-in, whether actual or ceremonial.
Er, if that's the case, shouldn't you, as a copyright holder, be demanding that the American Family Association stop using your column to demand just such a law?
****
A bit of history:
[Jacob] Henry was North Carolina's first Jewish legislator. He was elected to the general assembly in 1808. But the state constitution had a religious test for office. He was asked to take his oath on the New Testament or suffer expulsion from office. Henry refused. He then delivered a speech in defense of full religious liberty for all Americans. He was permitted to take his seat.
Permitted to take his seat? I'm sure Dennis Prager would say that this is when America started to go to hell in a handbasket.
(Prager says in the follow-up that he also opposes swearing on the Torah, though I notice he never got around to writing a column entitled "America, Not Linda Lingle, Decides What Book a Governor Takes Her Oath On.")
I don't have much to say about Dennis Prager's ignorant follow-up to his ignorant column denouncing the notion of using a Koran at a congressional swearing-in ceremony. (Prager says pretty much exactly what you'd expect: liberals are evil and full of hate, let me repeat that liberals are evil and full of hate, America is a Christian nation and anyone who disagrees is helping to bringing about the end of civilization as we know it, Christianism is good for the Jews, and did I mention that liberals are evil and full of hate?) But Prager does say this:
I am for no law to be passed to prevent Keith Ellison or anyone else from bringing any book he wants to his swearing-in, whether actual or ceremonial.
Er, if that's the case, shouldn't you, as a copyright holder, be demanding that the American Family Association stop using your column to demand just such a law?
****
A bit of history:
[Jacob] Henry was North Carolina's first Jewish legislator. He was elected to the general assembly in 1808. But the state constitution had a religious test for office. He was asked to take his oath on the New Testament or suffer expulsion from office. Henry refused. He then delivered a speech in defense of full religious liberty for all Americans. He was permitted to take his seat.
Permitted to take his seat? I'm sure Dennis Prager would say that this is when America started to go to hell in a handbasket.
(Prager says in the follow-up that he also opposes swearing on the Torah, though I notice he never got around to writing a column entitled "America, Not Linda Lingle, Decides What Book a Governor Takes Her Oath On.")
ANTI-SCIENCE CHRISTIANISM GOES GLOBAL
From Yahoo News via LiveScience.com:
Scientist Fights Church Effort to Hide Museum's Pre-Human Fossils
Famed paleoanthropologist Richard Leakey is giving no quarter to powerful evangelical church leaders who are pressing Kenya's national museum to relegate to a back room its world-famous collection of hominid fossils showing the evolution of humans' early ancestors.
...Leaders of Kenya's Pentecostal congregation, with six million adherents, want the human fossils de-emphasized.
"The Christian community here is very uncomfortable that Leakey and his group want their theories presented as fact," said Bishop Bonifes Adoyo, head of the largest Pentecostal church in Kenya, the Christ is the Answer Ministries.
"Our doctrine is not that we evolved from apes, and we have grave concerns that the museum wants to enhance the prominence of something presented as fact which is just one theory," the bishop said.
Bishop Adoyo said all the country's churches would unite to force the museum to change its focus when it reopens after eighteen months of renovations in June 2007....
As Bartholomew's Notes on Religion noted when this story was first reported, Bishop Adoyo has involved himself in a number of controversies: He was, for instance, a member of a commission appointed by president Daniel arap Moi to determine the extent of Satan worship in Kenya. (The commission found Devil worship all over the place, including the Mormon Church and "the golfing society.") Also, Bishop Adoyo also calls Islam a "destructive monster." Hmmm .. I wonder if Dennis Prager ever uses a guest columnist...
(Via DU.)
From Yahoo News via LiveScience.com:
Scientist Fights Church Effort to Hide Museum's Pre-Human Fossils
Famed paleoanthropologist Richard Leakey is giving no quarter to powerful evangelical church leaders who are pressing Kenya's national museum to relegate to a back room its world-famous collection of hominid fossils showing the evolution of humans' early ancestors.
...Leaders of Kenya's Pentecostal congregation, with six million adherents, want the human fossils de-emphasized.
"The Christian community here is very uncomfortable that Leakey and his group want their theories presented as fact," said Bishop Bonifes Adoyo, head of the largest Pentecostal church in Kenya, the Christ is the Answer Ministries.
"Our doctrine is not that we evolved from apes, and we have grave concerns that the museum wants to enhance the prominence of something presented as fact which is just one theory," the bishop said.
Bishop Adoyo said all the country's churches would unite to force the museum to change its focus when it reopens after eighteen months of renovations in June 2007....
As Bartholomew's Notes on Religion noted when this story was first reported, Bishop Adoyo has involved himself in a number of controversies: He was, for instance, a member of a commission appointed by president Daniel arap Moi to determine the extent of Satan worship in Kenya. (The commission found Devil worship all over the place, including the Mormon Church and "the golfing society.") Also, Bishop Adoyo also calls Islam a "destructive monster." Hmmm .. I wonder if Dennis Prager ever uses a guest columnist...
(Via DU.)
Monday, December 04, 2006
Remember Paul Morin?
The National Commander of The American Legion called on Sen. John Kerry to apologize for suggesting that American troops in Iraq are uneducated.
"As a constituent of Senator Kerry's I am disappointed. As leader of The American Legion, I am outraged," said National Commander Paul A. Morin. "A generation ago, Sen. Kerry slandered his comrades in Vietnam by saying that they were rapists and murderers. It wasn't true then and his warped view of today's heroes isn't true now." ...
A Democratic Underground poster remembers, and points out that Morin has now been exposed as a shameless resume-padder:
When Paul A. Morin, the national commander of the American Legion, sought election to the office in August, he described himself in the lead sentence of his campaign biography as a "Vietnam veteran of the US Army." Since he was elected Aug. 31, the Legion's website has featured the same description.
...And three months ago, Morin said he hopes that servicemen returning from Iraq will be treated better than those who returned from Vietnam. "When we came home, life was a little different. We do not want to see any veteran ever returning to what we did, so we'll be there to be welcoming them home with open arms," Morin said....
But the only place Morin ever returned from was Fort Dix, N.J. According to his military records, Morin spent his entire two years of Army service, from 1972 to 1974, at that Army training base.
It's not an innocent slip-up:
When he was the ranking member of the Legion's Massachusetts Department, the state website correctly identified him as a Vietnam-era veteran who had been a supply technician and lineman stationed in New Jersey.
But that changed this year with Morin's campaign brochure. Under the headline, "The American Legion Department of Massachusetts Proudly Presents Paul A. Morin for National Commander," it described him as a Vietnam veteran in the first line.
And -- like most Democrat-bashers -- even after he's caught in an untruth, he feels no shame:
Asked, for example, about his statement about how he was treated when he came home, Morin said he believes that even servicemen who returned home from New Jersey were shunned.
Yes, he really said that.
During an October visit to an American Legion post in Indiana, Morin said, according to a newspaper report: "One thing we must never do, that was done during my war, is to separate the warrior from the war."
Morin, who confirmed that he made the remark, said he did not intend it to mean that he served in Vietnam. "By 'my war,' I meant the war that occurred during the period of time I was in the military," he said.
And now I'd like to tell you about "my Emmy" -- well, it's not mine, exactly, but I knew someone who won one and let me hold it for a few seconds.
So much, I guess, for the "Honor" part of "Duty, Honor, Country."
The National Commander of The American Legion called on Sen. John Kerry to apologize for suggesting that American troops in Iraq are uneducated.
"As a constituent of Senator Kerry's I am disappointed. As leader of The American Legion, I am outraged," said National Commander Paul A. Morin. "A generation ago, Sen. Kerry slandered his comrades in Vietnam by saying that they were rapists and murderers. It wasn't true then and his warped view of today's heroes isn't true now." ...
A Democratic Underground poster remembers, and points out that Morin has now been exposed as a shameless resume-padder:
When Paul A. Morin, the national commander of the American Legion, sought election to the office in August, he described himself in the lead sentence of his campaign biography as a "Vietnam veteran of the US Army." Since he was elected Aug. 31, the Legion's website has featured the same description.
...And three months ago, Morin said he hopes that servicemen returning from Iraq will be treated better than those who returned from Vietnam. "When we came home, life was a little different. We do not want to see any veteran ever returning to what we did, so we'll be there to be welcoming them home with open arms," Morin said....
But the only place Morin ever returned from was Fort Dix, N.J. According to his military records, Morin spent his entire two years of Army service, from 1972 to 1974, at that Army training base.
It's not an innocent slip-up:
When he was the ranking member of the Legion's Massachusetts Department, the state website correctly identified him as a Vietnam-era veteran who had been a supply technician and lineman stationed in New Jersey.
But that changed this year with Morin's campaign brochure. Under the headline, "The American Legion Department of Massachusetts Proudly Presents Paul A. Morin for National Commander," it described him as a Vietnam veteran in the first line.
And -- like most Democrat-bashers -- even after he's caught in an untruth, he feels no shame:
Asked, for example, about his statement about how he was treated when he came home, Morin said he believes that even servicemen who returned home from New Jersey were shunned.
Yes, he really said that.
During an October visit to an American Legion post in Indiana, Morin said, according to a newspaper report: "One thing we must never do, that was done during my war, is to separate the warrior from the war."
Morin, who confirmed that he made the remark, said he did not intend it to mean that he served in Vietnam. "By 'my war,' I meant the war that occurred during the period of time I was in the military," he said.
And now I'd like to tell you about "my Emmy" -- well, it's not mine, exactly, but I knew someone who won one and let me hold it for a few seconds.
So much, I guess, for the "Honor" part of "Duty, Honor, Country."
WHO'S NEXT? JOE?
John Bolton's leaving the UN in January. There'll be no fight to keep him on in the Congress, no trickery (e.g., appointing him as a deputy and holding the ambassador's job open so he can still serve), nothing.
Now, is it possible that Bush will pick Lieberman to replace him, so that Connecticut's GOP governor can name Joe's successor (and thus flip the Senate)?
I can so easily imagine Bush -- while Iraq burns -- choosing to pick this fight.
A December 8, 2005, story in the New York Daily News speculated that Lieberman might replace Rumsfeld, but there was also this:
The Daily News has learned that the White House considered Lieberman for the UN ambassador's job last year before giving the post to John Bolton, a Bush adviser said.
I don't know if Lieberman would be legally required to abstain from voting on his own nomination. I imagine it would be customary. But as we've seen over and over and over again, the movement conservatives with whom Lieberman has aligned himself throw custom out the window whenever it stands in the way of a raw power grab. So there's your likely vote count: every Republican senator + Lieberman = 50, plus Cheney as a tiebreaker = 51. That means the new Democratic Senate will have to bottle the nomination up in committee, while surely being attacked as partisan (while "bipartisan" Bush is subject to less criticism).
And, of course, if the Democrats do stand firm and block the nomination, Lieberman can just stay in the Senate and switch parties, a move he refused to rule out after he was reelected.
Crazy or plausible?
****
(I post this knowing full well that I could be proved wrong as early as today -- Bush doesn't like to let these matters lie.)
John Bolton's leaving the UN in January. There'll be no fight to keep him on in the Congress, no trickery (e.g., appointing him as a deputy and holding the ambassador's job open so he can still serve), nothing.
Now, is it possible that Bush will pick Lieberman to replace him, so that Connecticut's GOP governor can name Joe's successor (and thus flip the Senate)?
I can so easily imagine Bush -- while Iraq burns -- choosing to pick this fight.
A December 8, 2005, story in the New York Daily News speculated that Lieberman might replace Rumsfeld, but there was also this:
The Daily News has learned that the White House considered Lieberman for the UN ambassador's job last year before giving the post to John Bolton, a Bush adviser said.
I don't know if Lieberman would be legally required to abstain from voting on his own nomination. I imagine it would be customary. But as we've seen over and over and over again, the movement conservatives with whom Lieberman has aligned himself throw custom out the window whenever it stands in the way of a raw power grab. So there's your likely vote count: every Republican senator + Lieberman = 50, plus Cheney as a tiebreaker = 51. That means the new Democratic Senate will have to bottle the nomination up in committee, while surely being attacked as partisan (while "bipartisan" Bush is subject to less criticism).
And, of course, if the Democrats do stand firm and block the nomination, Lieberman can just stay in the Senate and switch parties, a move he refused to rule out after he was reelected.
Crazy or plausible?
****
(I post this knowing full well that I could be proved wrong as early as today -- Bush doesn't like to let these matters lie.)
THE REAL TARGET
New York Times today:
One spring day during his three and a half years as an enemy combatant, Jose Padilla experienced a break from the monotony of his solitary confinement in a bare cell in the brig at the Naval Weapons Station in Charleston, S.C.
That day, Mr. Padilla, a Brooklyn-born Muslim convert whom the Bush administration had accused of plotting a dirty bomb attack and had detained without charges, got to go to the dentist.
... one guard held down a foot with his black boot, the others shackled Mr. Padilla's legs. Next, his hands emerged through another hole to be manacled.
Wordlessly, the guards, pushing into the cell, chained Mr. Padilla's cuffed hands to a metal belt. Briefly, his expressionless eyes met the camera before he lowered his head submissively in expectation of what came next: noise-blocking headphones over his ears and blacked-out goggles over his eyes....
This despite the fact that he's reported to be passive and nonviolent in prison. He's not Hannibal Lecter. There's no security reason for this.
But let's face it -- Padilla (and others who are surely being treated this way) aren't the real targets of this. Not in the deepest reaches of the psyches of those behind it.
Boston Globe, November 26:
Cheney ... has repeatedly said his agenda includes restoring the presidency to its fullest powers by rolling back "unwise" limits imposed by Congress after the Vietnam War and the Watergate scandal....
Cheney's ideal of presidential power is the level of power the office briefly achieved in the late 1960s, the era of what historian Arthur Schlesinger Jr. called the "imperial presidency." ...
In May 1975, [Seymour] Hersh wrote an article discussing how US submarines eavesdropped on the Soviet Union's undersea cables. Fearing that the article had damaged national security, Cheney pushed the idea of indicting the reporter using the 1917 Espionage Act.
Making an example out of Hersh, Cheney wrote, would "create an environment" that might intimidate both the press and Congress....
Carol Devine-Molin, reviewing John Podhoretz's book Bush Country:
Podhoretz also cites one of the defining moments in Dubya's young life, when, at the age of 18 at Yale, the university's "rock-star-famous chaplain" William Sloane Coffin denigrated his father who just lost a Senate election. Coffin stated, "Oh yes, I know your father. Frankly, he was beaten by a better man." Apparently, the young George W. Bush said nothing, but Barbara Bush stated years later: "You talk about a shattering blow. Not only to George, but shattering to us." Podhoretz believes that this incident helped situate "George W. Bush at odds with the Eastern Establishment" ...
For Cheney, it's everyone who won't kneel before the imperial executive branch who's in those goggles and headphones.
For Bush, it's William Sloane Coffin and all the Eastern peaceniks who mocked him up north who are being silenced -- and perhaps Bush's own father, whom he once drunkenly threatened to fight "mano a mano" as well as Dad's friends.
New York Times today:
One spring day during his three and a half years as an enemy combatant, Jose Padilla experienced a break from the monotony of his solitary confinement in a bare cell in the brig at the Naval Weapons Station in Charleston, S.C.
That day, Mr. Padilla, a Brooklyn-born Muslim convert whom the Bush administration had accused of plotting a dirty bomb attack and had detained without charges, got to go to the dentist.
... one guard held down a foot with his black boot, the others shackled Mr. Padilla's legs. Next, his hands emerged through another hole to be manacled.
Wordlessly, the guards, pushing into the cell, chained Mr. Padilla's cuffed hands to a metal belt. Briefly, his expressionless eyes met the camera before he lowered his head submissively in expectation of what came next: noise-blocking headphones over his ears and blacked-out goggles over his eyes....
This despite the fact that he's reported to be passive and nonviolent in prison. He's not Hannibal Lecter. There's no security reason for this.
But let's face it -- Padilla (and others who are surely being treated this way) aren't the real targets of this. Not in the deepest reaches of the psyches of those behind it.
Boston Globe, November 26:
Cheney ... has repeatedly said his agenda includes restoring the presidency to its fullest powers by rolling back "unwise" limits imposed by Congress after the Vietnam War and the Watergate scandal....
Cheney's ideal of presidential power is the level of power the office briefly achieved in the late 1960s, the era of what historian Arthur Schlesinger Jr. called the "imperial presidency." ...
In May 1975, [Seymour] Hersh wrote an article discussing how US submarines eavesdropped on the Soviet Union's undersea cables. Fearing that the article had damaged national security, Cheney pushed the idea of indicting the reporter using the 1917 Espionage Act.
Making an example out of Hersh, Cheney wrote, would "create an environment" that might intimidate both the press and Congress....
Carol Devine-Molin, reviewing John Podhoretz's book Bush Country:
Podhoretz also cites one of the defining moments in Dubya's young life, when, at the age of 18 at Yale, the university's "rock-star-famous chaplain" William Sloane Coffin denigrated his father who just lost a Senate election. Coffin stated, "Oh yes, I know your father. Frankly, he was beaten by a better man." Apparently, the young George W. Bush said nothing, but Barbara Bush stated years later: "You talk about a shattering blow. Not only to George, but shattering to us." Podhoretz believes that this incident helped situate "George W. Bush at odds with the Eastern Establishment" ...
For Cheney, it's everyone who won't kneel before the imperial executive branch who's in those goggles and headphones.
For Bush, it's William Sloane Coffin and all the Eastern peaceniks who mocked him up north who are being silenced -- and perhaps Bush's own father, whom he once drunkenly threatened to fight "mano a mano" as well as Dad's friends.
Sunday, December 03, 2006
Eric Foner, Michael Lind, David Greenberg, Douglas Brinkley, and Vincent Cannato have op-eds in today's Washington Post on the question of whether George W. Bush is the worst president ever. (The verdicts are, respectively: worst, fifth-worst, not as bad as Nixon, pretty bad, and not great so far but time will tell. I think W. can forget that fifth-face-on-Rushmore thing.)
I don't have much to say about the overall arguments -- I don't care if you think he's the worst ever, as long as you as you acknowledge that he's awful -- but I do want to comment on a point David Greenberg makes while comparing Bush with Nixon:
But can we conclude that Bush's war policy is worse than Nixon's? However toxic the fallout from Iraq, it's hard to imagine that it could greatly exceed the damage wrought by Vietnam, the wounds from which are still raw 30 years later, as its role in the 2004 presidential election showed.
I don't buy that -- I don't buy the notion that Vietnam's "wounds ... are still raw" and that we saw evidence of that in 2004.
It seems clear that the vast majority of voters in America have voted for a presidential candidate who avoided service in Vietnam at least once (probably twice) in the last four presidential elections -- and, by doing so, voted against a war veteran (a combat veteran in all but one instance). A large number of voters who chose Clinton loathe Bush, and vice versa. Is the war the key factor?
I don't think so. Vietnam is part of the big split in America, but it's just a part. The split is between those who unquestionably defend all of the following and those who express skepticism about all, some, or even just one of them: America's projection of power in the world, capitalism; traditional mores regarding sex and expression; conservative Christian religious beliefs; and the right to keep and bear arms.
If you have "liberal" views on any of these issues, the conservatives consider you a mortal enemy and a "liberal" on all of them. Thus, straight arrows such as John Murtha, James Webb, and Jon Tester become dirty hippies, in the eyes of right-wingers, because they express skepticism about some of the items on the sacrosanct list.
That's the split. Vietnam is just a symptom. The culture war is the disease.
I don't have much to say about the overall arguments -- I don't care if you think he's the worst ever, as long as you as you acknowledge that he's awful -- but I do want to comment on a point David Greenberg makes while comparing Bush with Nixon:
But can we conclude that Bush's war policy is worse than Nixon's? However toxic the fallout from Iraq, it's hard to imagine that it could greatly exceed the damage wrought by Vietnam, the wounds from which are still raw 30 years later, as its role in the 2004 presidential election showed.
I don't buy that -- I don't buy the notion that Vietnam's "wounds ... are still raw" and that we saw evidence of that in 2004.
It seems clear that the vast majority of voters in America have voted for a presidential candidate who avoided service in Vietnam at least once (probably twice) in the last four presidential elections -- and, by doing so, voted against a war veteran (a combat veteran in all but one instance). A large number of voters who chose Clinton loathe Bush, and vice versa. Is the war the key factor?
I don't think so. Vietnam is part of the big split in America, but it's just a part. The split is between those who unquestionably defend all of the following and those who express skepticism about all, some, or even just one of them: America's projection of power in the world, capitalism; traditional mores regarding sex and expression; conservative Christian religious beliefs; and the right to keep and bear arms.
If you have "liberal" views on any of these issues, the conservatives consider you a mortal enemy and a "liberal" on all of them. Thus, straight arrows such as John Murtha, James Webb, and Jon Tester become dirty hippies, in the eyes of right-wingers, because they express skepticism about some of the items on the sacrosanct list.
That's the split. Vietnam is just a symptom. The culture war is the disease.
OK, I get it.*
I understand the reason for the release of the Rumsfeld memo. It's not an embarrassing leak for the administration -- the Bushies wanted the memo out, as part of the wall of noise they want to build to drown out the Baker commission's recommendations.
Consider a couple of stories following up on the New York Times's disclosure of the Rummy memo:
AP:
The U.S. ambassador to Iraq said Sunday a classified memo that Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld sent to the White House shortly before he resigned was part of the administration's broad effort to assess progress in Iraq....
"It's a good thing. It's energizing to review and adjust and the secretary of defense was offering his own ideas. Others in the administration have also sent their ideas for consideration," U.S. Ambassador to Iraq Zalmay Khalilzad said....
Another AP story:
President Bush is open to some of the major change in Iraq policy that Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld suggested in a classified memo days before he resigned, the White House's national security adviser said Sunday....
"The president had asked agencies to begin a review of our policy in Iraq, and what Secretary Rumsfeld did, I think, very helpfully, was put together a sort of laundry list of ideas that ought to be considered as part of that review," Hadley said.
"The president really wanted us to open the aperture, consider all ideas, and it was input by Secretary Rumsfeld, helpful input into that process," he said....
Open the aperture. Consider all ideas. That's the message. All ideas -- not just the ideas from Daddy's friend.
Don't forget:
In addition to the Iraq Study Group, [President Bush] will soon be receiving reports from his own staff, the Pentagon and the National Security Agency.
I don't know whether or not Rumsfeld's memo was written in connection with either of those reports. But it doesn't matter. Releasing the memo was a preemptive strike against Baker. Today you hear his set of recommendations. Soon you'll hear the Pentagon's. And the NSA's. The Bushies want Baker's report to be just one of many reports, rather than the standard against which Bush's policy is measured.
So it really didn't matter to them what Rummy said -- all that mattered is that it's out there. Confusion is being sown.
****
*My second (third, fourth) thoughts have been moved here.
SUNDAY EVENING UPDATE: Well, when I read this now, a few hours later, it seems really wrongheaded. I think I was giving the Bushies way too much credit for cleverness and skill at political jujitsu. But I'll leave it up for anyway, for the hell of it.
MONDAY MORNING UPDATE: On the other hand, some readers think I was right -- see the comments.
MONDAY AFTERNOON UPDATE: Maybe I wasn't crazy -- Dan Froomkin at The Washington Post and Steve Benen at the Carpetbagger Report think it's conceivable that this and the leak of the Hadley memo were planned leaks from the White House. As Steve says:
I haven't any idea, but I do think it's interesting that the Bush gang screams bloody murder (sometimes literally) when classified materials are leaked that they don't want to see on the front page, but seem oddly passive about these recent leaks.
That was one reason I thought the Rummy leak was planned.
I understand the reason for the release of the Rumsfeld memo. It's not an embarrassing leak for the administration -- the Bushies wanted the memo out, as part of the wall of noise they want to build to drown out the Baker commission's recommendations.
Consider a couple of stories following up on the New York Times's disclosure of the Rummy memo:
AP:
The U.S. ambassador to Iraq said Sunday a classified memo that Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld sent to the White House shortly before he resigned was part of the administration's broad effort to assess progress in Iraq....
"It's a good thing. It's energizing to review and adjust and the secretary of defense was offering his own ideas. Others in the administration have also sent their ideas for consideration," U.S. Ambassador to Iraq Zalmay Khalilzad said....
Another AP story:
President Bush is open to some of the major change in Iraq policy that Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld suggested in a classified memo days before he resigned, the White House's national security adviser said Sunday....
"The president had asked agencies to begin a review of our policy in Iraq, and what Secretary Rumsfeld did, I think, very helpfully, was put together a sort of laundry list of ideas that ought to be considered as part of that review," Hadley said.
"The president really wanted us to open the aperture, consider all ideas, and it was input by Secretary Rumsfeld, helpful input into that process," he said....
Open the aperture. Consider all ideas. That's the message. All ideas -- not just the ideas from Daddy's friend.
Don't forget:
In addition to the Iraq Study Group, [President Bush] will soon be receiving reports from his own staff, the Pentagon and the National Security Agency.
I don't know whether or not Rumsfeld's memo was written in connection with either of those reports. But it doesn't matter. Releasing the memo was a preemptive strike against Baker. Today you hear his set of recommendations. Soon you'll hear the Pentagon's. And the NSA's. The Bushies want Baker's report to be just one of many reports, rather than the standard against which Bush's policy is measured.
So it really didn't matter to them what Rummy said -- all that mattered is that it's out there. Confusion is being sown.
****
*My second (third, fourth) thoughts have been moved here.
SUNDAY EVENING UPDATE: Well, when I read this now, a few hours later, it seems really wrongheaded. I think I was giving the Bushies way too much credit for cleverness and skill at political jujitsu. But I'll leave it up for anyway, for the hell of it.
MONDAY MORNING UPDATE: On the other hand, some readers think I was right -- see the comments.
MONDAY AFTERNOON UPDATE: Maybe I wasn't crazy -- Dan Froomkin at The Washington Post and Steve Benen at the Carpetbagger Report think it's conceivable that this and the leak of the Hadley memo were planned leaks from the White House. As Steve says:
I haven't any idea, but I do think it's interesting that the Bush gang screams bloody murder (sometimes literally) when classified materials are leaked that they don't want to see on the front page, but seem oddly passive about these recent leaks.
That was one reason I thought the Rummy leak was planned.
YOUR OH-SO-PERCEPTIVE PUNDIT CLASS
Here's the beginning of the last paragraph of Nicholas Kristof's newest New York Times column (available free here):
Now that the Christian Right has largely retreated from the culture wars....
What? Excuse me?
Is he living in the same country I am?
****
(Cf. David Brooks's assertion in 2003 that "we've moved from the age of the culture wars" and that "the furious arguments we used to have about cultural and social issues ... have died down." Arguing that we can all stop worrying about right-wing culture warriors allowed Brooks to say in that column that the people we should really be afraid of are nasty, unhinged lefty Bush haters. Kristof is worried about "evangelical atheists" who might bring us "irreligious intolerance." Yeah, we're the gathering threat; pay no attention to all those people who think using a Koran in a swearing-in ceremony ought to be illegal and that saying "Happy Holidays" at the checkout counter is grounds for a boycott.)
Here's the beginning of the last paragraph of Nicholas Kristof's newest New York Times column (available free here):
Now that the Christian Right has largely retreated from the culture wars....
What? Excuse me?
Is he living in the same country I am?
****
(Cf. David Brooks's assertion in 2003 that "we've moved from the age of the culture wars" and that "the furious arguments we used to have about cultural and social issues ... have died down." Arguing that we can all stop worrying about right-wing culture warriors allowed Brooks to say in that column that the people we should really be afraid of are nasty, unhinged lefty Bush haters. Kristof is worried about "evangelical atheists" who might bring us "irreligious intolerance." Yeah, we're the gathering threat; pay no attention to all those people who think using a Koran in a swearing-in ceremony ought to be illegal and that saying "Happy Holidays" at the checkout counter is grounds for a boycott.)
Saturday, December 02, 2006
TRUTH CREEP
Headline of an AP story at Fox News:
First Muslim Congressman Insists on Using Koran for Ceremonial Swearing-In
Er, where did "Insists" come from? Does anyone have any evidence that Keith Ellison is insisting on this -- is insisting that, for instance, even if other members of Congress don't use Bibles (as seems to be the custom), he's going to use a Koran?
Elsewhere, the headline of the AP story is much more neutral. The body of the story merely refers to "his plan to use a Koran during his ceremonial swearing-in." So "Insists" is just an add-on from Fox.
As for what Ellison's plans really are, The New York Times said on November 10, "Arab news reports highlighted the fact that Mr. Ellison would probably take the oath of office on the Koran." Probably.
ABC was more definite on November 11, asserting that Ellison "will be sworn into the House of Representatives with his hand on a Koran." But no source was cited.
Anyone know of an "insistence" by Ellison?
By the way, this McClatchy story points out that the hysterics who are denouncing this plan, if it even is a plan, are to the right of Tom Tancredo. ("'He wants to take his oath on the Quran, that's fine,' Tancredo said. 'I think whatever you believe is necessary for you to uphold your obligations to the Constitution, that is fine with me.'") Oh, and there's this:
Taking an oath on the Quran isn't unprecedented.
In 1999, the News-India Times reported that Osman Siddique, a Virginia businessman of Bangladeshi origin, used the Quran to take the oath when he became the U.S. ambassador to Fiji and three other Pacific nations: Nauru, Tonga and Tuvalu. He took the oath on the Bible and the Quran, with the Quran on top, the newspaper reported.
Mr. Siddique, as it turns out, confirmed this yesterday in a Washington Times op-ed, "Muslims Must Come Forward," in which he urged fellow Muslims to oppose terrorism. The usually Muslimphobic Little Green Footballs praised Mr. Siddique's op-ed.
Headline of an AP story at Fox News:
First Muslim Congressman Insists on Using Koran for Ceremonial Swearing-In
Er, where did "Insists" come from? Does anyone have any evidence that Keith Ellison is insisting on this -- is insisting that, for instance, even if other members of Congress don't use Bibles (as seems to be the custom), he's going to use a Koran?
Elsewhere, the headline of the AP story is much more neutral. The body of the story merely refers to "his plan to use a Koran during his ceremonial swearing-in." So "Insists" is just an add-on from Fox.
As for what Ellison's plans really are, The New York Times said on November 10, "Arab news reports highlighted the fact that Mr. Ellison would probably take the oath of office on the Koran." Probably.
ABC was more definite on November 11, asserting that Ellison "will be sworn into the House of Representatives with his hand on a Koran." But no source was cited.
Anyone know of an "insistence" by Ellison?
By the way, this McClatchy story points out that the hysterics who are denouncing this plan, if it even is a plan, are to the right of Tom Tancredo. ("'He wants to take his oath on the Quran, that's fine,' Tancredo said. 'I think whatever you believe is necessary for you to uphold your obligations to the Constitution, that is fine with me.'") Oh, and there's this:
Taking an oath on the Quran isn't unprecedented.
In 1999, the News-India Times reported that Osman Siddique, a Virginia businessman of Bangladeshi origin, used the Quran to take the oath when he became the U.S. ambassador to Fiji and three other Pacific nations: Nauru, Tonga and Tuvalu. He took the oath on the Bible and the Quran, with the Quran on top, the newspaper reported.
Mr. Siddique, as it turns out, confirmed this yesterday in a Washington Times op-ed, "Muslims Must Come Forward," in which he urged fellow Muslims to oppose terrorism. The usually Muslimphobic Little Green Footballs praised Mr. Siddique's op-ed.
HIS MAJESTY IS INERRANT IN THESE MATTERS
First The Washington Post reported an exchange between James Webb and George W. Bush in which Webb was frank about his impatience with the war and Bush was downright boorish.
Then George Will followed up in the opinion pages of the Post, dishonestly editing the president's snappish remarks, leaving out "That's not what I asked you," which preceded Bush's repetition of "How's your boy?"
Now we have a news-section follow-up in the Post that quotes Bush in full -- but then completely sidesteps the question of whether Bush might been the boor.
Go read it -- 1,027 words and not a hint that the president might have been out of line. Instead, "fairness" is achieved by quoting a number of people who praise Webb's lack of niceness and several more who think he was being a jerk.
Bush? Well, Norman Ornstein of the American Enterprise Institute says, "I think the president was trying to be a nice guy." And a Post online commenter says, "I think that 'How's your son doing?' is the most bipartisan thing the president could ask him."
So there. The president is the soul of decorum, and, in the Post, that's just not subject to dispute.
First The Washington Post reported an exchange between James Webb and George W. Bush in which Webb was frank about his impatience with the war and Bush was downright boorish.
Then George Will followed up in the opinion pages of the Post, dishonestly editing the president's snappish remarks, leaving out "That's not what I asked you," which preceded Bush's repetition of "How's your boy?"
Now we have a news-section follow-up in the Post that quotes Bush in full -- but then completely sidesteps the question of whether Bush might been the boor.
Go read it -- 1,027 words and not a hint that the president might have been out of line. Instead, "fairness" is achieved by quoting a number of people who praise Webb's lack of niceness and several more who think he was being a jerk.
Bush? Well, Norman Ornstein of the American Enterprise Institute says, "I think the president was trying to be a nice guy." And a Post online commenter says, "I think that 'How's your son doing?' is the most bipartisan thing the president could ask him."
So there. The president is the soul of decorum, and, in the Post, that's just not subject to dispute.
Friday, December 01, 2006
IN CASE YOU'RE INTERESTED
Pat Robertson apparently believes in demonic possession of houses by poltergeists.
Gosh, I'm so happy that our president used to take time out of his busy schedule to meet with this man. And that government resources were used to direct money to his charity after Katrina....
****
UPDATE: Bush appeared on The 700 Club on November 1, less than a week before the election. He was interviewed by someone other than Robertson, but it's still Robertson's show. Maybe after January '09 Bush will start guest-hosting.
Pat Robertson apparently believes in demonic possession of houses by poltergeists.
Gosh, I'm so happy that our president used to take time out of his busy schedule to meet with this man. And that government resources were used to direct money to his charity after Katrina....
****
UPDATE: Bush appeared on The 700 Club on November 1, less than a week before the election. He was interviewed by someone other than Robertson, but it's still Robertson's show. Maybe after January '09 Bush will start guest-hosting.
Just thought you might like to know (scroll down to the boldface): Donald Wildmon's American Family Association wants to make it illegal for a member of Congress to swear an oath of office on any book other than the Bible.
Constitution, schmonstitution.
John F. Kennedy, September 12, 1960:
I would not look with favor upon a President working to subvert the first amendment's guarantees of religious liberty; nor would our system of checks and balances permit him to do so. And neither do I look with favor upon those who would work to subvert Article VI of the Constitution by requiring a religious test, even by indirection. For if they disagree with that safeguard, they should be openly working to repeal it.
Working to subvert Article VI by indirection? Sounds like a plan!
(Or perhaps just a good way to raise money. Note the request for funds right under the boldface in the first link.)
Incidentally, USA Today, citing the Dennis Prager hate tract that stirred up so much fuss, tells us the following:
Prager, who is Jewish, wrote that no Mormon elected official has "demanded to put his hand on the Book of Mormon." But Republican Sen. Gordon Smith of Oregon, carried a volume of Mormon scriptures that included the Bible and the Book of Mormon at his swearing-in ceremony in 1997.
(See that story and this one from Think Progress for more on how nonreligious the process really is.)
Oh, and as Sadly, No! reminds us, President Bush appointed Prager to the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Commission a few months ago, praising his "unique moral voice."
Constitution, schmonstitution.
John F. Kennedy, September 12, 1960:
I would not look with favor upon a President working to subvert the first amendment's guarantees of religious liberty; nor would our system of checks and balances permit him to do so. And neither do I look with favor upon those who would work to subvert Article VI of the Constitution by requiring a religious test, even by indirection. For if they disagree with that safeguard, they should be openly working to repeal it.
Working to subvert Article VI by indirection? Sounds like a plan!
(Or perhaps just a good way to raise money. Note the request for funds right under the boldface in the first link.)
Incidentally, USA Today, citing the Dennis Prager hate tract that stirred up so much fuss, tells us the following:
Prager, who is Jewish, wrote that no Mormon elected official has "demanded to put his hand on the Book of Mormon." But Republican Sen. Gordon Smith of Oregon, carried a volume of Mormon scriptures that included the Bible and the Book of Mormon at his swearing-in ceremony in 1997.
(See that story and this one from Think Progress for more on how nonreligious the process really is.)
Oh, and as Sadly, No! reminds us, President Bush appointed Prager to the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Commission a few months ago, praising his "unique moral voice."
No doubt out of a deep, abiding love for freedom, the right is expressing delight at the announcement of a press crackdown by that bastion of due process, the Iraqi Death Squad Interior Ministry:
Iraq's Interior Ministry said Thursday it had formed a special unit to monitor news coverage and vowed to take legal action against journalists who failed to correct stories the ministry deemed to be incorrect.
Brig. Gen. Abdul-Karim Khalaf, spokesman for the ministry, said the purpose of the special monitoring unit was to find "fabricated and false news that hurts and gives the Iraqis a wrong picture that the security situation is very bad, when the facts are totally different."
... As an example, he cited coverage by The Associated Press of an attack Nov. 24 on a mosque in the Hurriyah district in northwest Baghdad.
The AP reported that six Sunni Muslims there were burned alive during the attack....
Khalaf said the ministry had dispatched a team to the Hurriyah neighborhood and to the morgue but found no witnesses or evidence of burned bodies....
Gateway Pundit says "Wow!" Michelle Malkin quotes Brigadier General Khalaf, apologist for the torture-enabling ministry, proudly and at great length. And here's more from Free Republic:
EXCELLENT! I'm excited about the prospect of them taking a much more 'active' role in battling AP/Reuters than the Bush administration or DOD are able (politically) to take.
****
Good. Should have done this sooner. The media is a huge if not the main "front line" in this war. On this side of the ocean too.
****
Our government should take a hint.
If you're not up to speed on the burning story invoked by the general and the right-wing blogosphere's efforts to debunk it, you can catch up here.
I came late to the story myself, and -- since we're talking about a country where about a hundred people a day are murdered, many of them beheaded after torture -- I'm having a little trouble understanding the fuss over whether this particularly horror story is true. All I can think is: OK, maybe that one story about improper food sanitation on the Titanic was flawed, but you still haven't told us why the damn ship sank.
Iraq's Interior Ministry said Thursday it had formed a special unit to monitor news coverage and vowed to take legal action against journalists who failed to correct stories the ministry deemed to be incorrect.
Brig. Gen. Abdul-Karim Khalaf, spokesman for the ministry, said the purpose of the special monitoring unit was to find "fabricated and false news that hurts and gives the Iraqis a wrong picture that the security situation is very bad, when the facts are totally different."
... As an example, he cited coverage by The Associated Press of an attack Nov. 24 on a mosque in the Hurriyah district in northwest Baghdad.
The AP reported that six Sunni Muslims there were burned alive during the attack....
Khalaf said the ministry had dispatched a team to the Hurriyah neighborhood and to the morgue but found no witnesses or evidence of burned bodies....
Gateway Pundit says "Wow!" Michelle Malkin quotes Brigadier General Khalaf, apologist for the torture-enabling ministry, proudly and at great length. And here's more from Free Republic:
EXCELLENT! I'm excited about the prospect of them taking a much more 'active' role in battling AP/Reuters than the Bush administration or DOD are able (politically) to take.
****
Good. Should have done this sooner. The media is a huge if not the main "front line" in this war. On this side of the ocean too.
****
Our government should take a hint.
If you're not up to speed on the burning story invoked by the general and the right-wing blogosphere's efforts to debunk it, you can catch up here.
I came late to the story myself, and -- since we're talking about a country where about a hundred people a day are murdered, many of them beheaded after torture -- I'm having a little trouble understanding the fuss over whether this particularly horror story is true. All I can think is: OK, maybe that one story about improper food sanitation on the Titanic was flawed, but you still haven't told us why the damn ship sank.
I've been meaning to say something about Chuck Todd's list of reasons Hillary Clinton might have trouble in the '08 primaries. I'm not saying that Hillary's inevitably going to coast, but I just don't buy Todd's reasoning, particularly his first point:
Passion: Who loves her? How big is this group of voters?
Now ask yourself, who loves Illinois Sen. Barack Obama (D)? Who loves former North Carolina Sen. John Edwards (D)? Or even Arizona Sen. John McCain (R) or former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani (R)? And of course, who loves former President Bill Clinton? ...
But the primary-season winner is almost invariably not the candidate voters feel passion for. Think Clinton beating Jerry Brown and Paul Tsongas in '92, Poppy Bush beating Buchanan in 92, Dukakis beating Jesse Jackson in '88, Mondale beating Gary Hart in '84, Ford beating Ronald Reagan in '76. Think of the Dean implosion in '04. Maybe this isn't a hard-and-fast rule, but it holds more often than not: strong support and money with less passion beats more passion and less money. If no deep-pocketed superstars run again Hillary, I think it'll hold again.
(I actually thought, before he dropped out, that Russ Feingold would be the last candidate standing against Hillary in '08, following the pattern of the races I've listed, though he'd never really get close.)
Todd also thinks Hillary could struggle in the Midwest because she's a woman. (Where? In Michigan, which has a female governor and senator? In Kansas, which also has a female governor? In Illinois, whose biggest city elected a female mayor decades ago?)
On Iraq, Todd says:
She's been far more critical of the war recently, but fundamentally she's still a hawk, and the Democratic primary electorate (especially in Iowa) is full of doves. Can her semi-pro-intervention argument on Iraq withstand an onslaught of criticism from each one of her opponents? She's no Sen. Joe Lieberman, I/D-Conn., but could she end up accumulating Lieberman-like hatred in the blogosphere because of Iraq? It's possible.
If it's possible, why didn't it happen in 2006? There was no netroots agitation for a challenge to her, even as a protest vote, despite the fact that she had an anti-war challenger in the Democratic primary and a Green challenger in the general election. Besides, she's more critical of Bush's Iraq policy the worse things get. Which way do you think things will go in the next two years?
Todd thinks we might be sick of dynasties -- that we might want to avoid the cycle of Bush, Clinton, Bush, Clinton. But voters all over the country regularly vote for members of dynasties -- Kennedys, Bayhs, Landrieus, Murkowskis, Udalls. It would be ironic if the Democrats rejected Hillary for this reason while the Republicans nominated Mitt Romney.
Todd adds,
Also, don't underestimate the polarization fatigue.
True -- although, given the modern GOP, is there even the slightest chance we can avoid that? (Actually, there is: if we nominate Lieberman.)*
I'm not saying she's a lock. I'm saying she's holding a very, very strong hand.
*****
*Naaah -- on second thought, that wouldn't even work. He'd be turned back into Sore Loserman, and denounced as an evil social liberal and military ballot foe. So, maybe Zell Miller? With Ben Nevers as a running mate? I think you'd have to go that far -- i.e., nominate two wingnuts -- before you could have the even-tempered campaign all the Broderesque pundits want.
Passion: Who loves her? How big is this group of voters?
Now ask yourself, who loves Illinois Sen. Barack Obama (D)? Who loves former North Carolina Sen. John Edwards (D)? Or even Arizona Sen. John McCain (R) or former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani (R)? And of course, who loves former President Bill Clinton? ...
But the primary-season winner is almost invariably not the candidate voters feel passion for. Think Clinton beating Jerry Brown and Paul Tsongas in '92, Poppy Bush beating Buchanan in 92, Dukakis beating Jesse Jackson in '88, Mondale beating Gary Hart in '84, Ford beating Ronald Reagan in '76. Think of the Dean implosion in '04. Maybe this isn't a hard-and-fast rule, but it holds more often than not: strong support and money with less passion beats more passion and less money. If no deep-pocketed superstars run again Hillary, I think it'll hold again.
(I actually thought, before he dropped out, that Russ Feingold would be the last candidate standing against Hillary in '08, following the pattern of the races I've listed, though he'd never really get close.)
Todd also thinks Hillary could struggle in the Midwest because she's a woman. (Where? In Michigan, which has a female governor and senator? In Kansas, which also has a female governor? In Illinois, whose biggest city elected a female mayor decades ago?)
On Iraq, Todd says:
She's been far more critical of the war recently, but fundamentally she's still a hawk, and the Democratic primary electorate (especially in Iowa) is full of doves. Can her semi-pro-intervention argument on Iraq withstand an onslaught of criticism from each one of her opponents? She's no Sen. Joe Lieberman, I/D-Conn., but could she end up accumulating Lieberman-like hatred in the blogosphere because of Iraq? It's possible.
If it's possible, why didn't it happen in 2006? There was no netroots agitation for a challenge to her, even as a protest vote, despite the fact that she had an anti-war challenger in the Democratic primary and a Green challenger in the general election. Besides, she's more critical of Bush's Iraq policy the worse things get. Which way do you think things will go in the next two years?
Todd thinks we might be sick of dynasties -- that we might want to avoid the cycle of Bush, Clinton, Bush, Clinton. But voters all over the country regularly vote for members of dynasties -- Kennedys, Bayhs, Landrieus, Murkowskis, Udalls. It would be ironic if the Democrats rejected Hillary for this reason while the Republicans nominated Mitt Romney.
Todd adds,
Also, don't underestimate the polarization fatigue.
True -- although, given the modern GOP, is there even the slightest chance we can avoid that? (Actually, there is: if we nominate Lieberman.)*
I'm not saying she's a lock. I'm saying she's holding a very, very strong hand.
*****
*Naaah -- on second thought, that wouldn't even work. He'd be turned back into Sore Loserman, and denounced as an evil social liberal and military ballot foe. So, maybe Zell Miller? With Ben Nevers as a running mate? I think you'd have to go that far -- i.e., nominate two wingnuts -- before you could have the even-tempered campaign all the Broderesque pundits want.
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