So how did Christopher Hitchens commemorate the fourth anniversary of the toppling of the Saddam statue? By ignoring Iraq altogether and turning himself into Andy Rooney:
The You Decade
There's a new narcissistic pronoun in town.
I suppose I started to notice it about two or three years ago, when the salespeople at Rite-Aid began wearing dish-sized lapel buttons stating that "YOU are the most important customer I will serve today." It was all wrong, in the same way that a sign hung on a door saying "Back in five minutes" is out of time as soon as it is put in place....
The annoying lapel button was soon discontinued, and the bright consultant who came up with it was no doubt promoted to higher things, but "You" retained its centrality. A room-service menu, for example, now almost always offers "your choice" of oatmeal versus cornflakes or fruit juice as opposed to vegetable juice. Well, who else's choice could it be? Except perhaps that of the people who decide that this is the range of what the menu will feature. Fox TV famously and fatuously claims, "We report. You decide." Decide on what? On what Fox reports? Online polls promise to register what "you" think about the pressing issues of the moment, whereas what's being presented is an operation whereby someone says, "Let's give them the idea that they are a part of the decision-making process."
The next time you see an ad, the odds are increasingly high that it will put "you" in the driver's seat. "Ask your doctor if Prozac/Lipitor/Cialis is right for you" -- almost as if these medications could be custom made for each individual consumer. A lawyer or real-estate agent will promise you to address "your" concerns.....
It goes on and on like this. Hey, get off my lawn!
This column is a mess: Hitch throws together more or less current trends (though they seemed a lot more current back in December when Time and other publications were prattling on about "You"), a decade-old Fox slogan, and (in a part I didn't quote) this World War I-era British military recruiting poster. Oh, and the word "y'all," which is even older than that poster, and not a trend at all. What the hell?
Of course, the subtext here is obvious: Not "you"! Me! ME, dammit! Hitchens hates "you" because Hitchens hates you. Far too many of you won't acknowledge the moral superiority of him.
Tuesday, April 10, 2007
I see that over the weekend Dan Gerstein penned a mash note to Rudy Giuliani, in the form of a book review in the New York Post:
...I suspect the "Rudy can't win" mantra is being driven as much by Democratic fear and loathing -- of both conservatives and Giuliani himself -- as by Republican politics and performance.
...To these liberals, Giuliani winning the GOP nomination is doubly scary: He threatens their worldview - and, worse, as a socially tolerant 9/11 hero, he's probably the biggest threat to beat the Democratic nominee. So when they say he can't win, part of what they're really saying is they don't want him to win.
... liberals' big error here is to dramatically discount the long-term political impact of 9/11.... This is the pre-eminent, transcendent issue for this generation of conservatives, and Rudy's credentials are saint-like....
Oh, we will definitely see Gerstein's 2006 advisee, Joe Lieberman, campaigning for Rudy if he wins the nomination.
...I suspect the "Rudy can't win" mantra is being driven as much by Democratic fear and loathing -- of both conservatives and Giuliani himself -- as by Republican politics and performance.
...To these liberals, Giuliani winning the GOP nomination is doubly scary: He threatens their worldview - and, worse, as a socially tolerant 9/11 hero, he's probably the biggest threat to beat the Democratic nominee. So when they say he can't win, part of what they're really saying is they don't want him to win.
... liberals' big error here is to dramatically discount the long-term political impact of 9/11.... This is the pre-eminent, transcendent issue for this generation of conservatives, and Rudy's credentials are saint-like....
Oh, we will definitely see Gerstein's 2006 advisee, Joe Lieberman, campaigning for Rudy if he wins the nomination.
Some people got all worked up about Nancy Pelosi's decision to wear a headscarf in a Syrian house of worship as a sign of respect, but for many women it's not a choice -- in Iraq, according to The Washington Times:
Extremists force women to hide under head scarves
BAGHDAD -- For two years, Faiza Abdal-Majeed has carried a head scarf in her purse for emergencies.
For a woman in the Iraqi capital four years after the fall of dictator Saddam Hussein, these emergencies can include passing unlawful checkpoints manned by armed militiamen, impromptu forays through neighborhoods controlled by religious zealots and taxi drivers who refuse her fare unless she covers her hair.
In addition, Mrs. Abdal-Majeed's job with Iraq's women's affairs ministry frequently brings her into contact with government officials, police officers and Muslim clergymen who insist that she cover up before they speak with her.
"Some clerics and politicians are forcing religion into our lives," said Mrs. Abdal-Majeed, 45. "We're being pushed back 1,000 years in time."
Baghdad once was considered a secular, cosmopolitan metropolis where Islamic customs seldom collided with women's fashion. Today, however, religious ideology has strengthened its grip and forced half the population to submit to traditional Islamic dress.
On the streets of the capital, the most common couture is what women call the Islamic uniform: the bulging black abaya that covers the body from head to toe; the head scarf, or hajib; and the long, dark ankle-length skirts commonly seen on schoolgirls, university students and professionals....
"Baghdad once was considered a secular, cosmopolitan metropolis" -- and when might that have been? Er, under Saddam, perhaps?
(Look, he was a horrible sonofabitch -- but he was secular.)
Oh, and guess where things are better?
Bushra Yousef, 51, is the managing editor of an Iraqi women's magazine who fled from Baghdad to Damascus in December after threats on her life. She said women in the Syrian capital are given more autonomy in dress than their Iraqi counterparts.
"Syrian women have freedom to choose what they wear," Mrs. Yousef said by telephone from Damascus. "Women in Iraq are often forced to wear Islamic uniform, even Christian women." ...
(You'll note that Pelosi didn't wear a headscarf when she met with President Assad of Syria.)
Extremists force women to hide under head scarves
BAGHDAD -- For two years, Faiza Abdal-Majeed has carried a head scarf in her purse for emergencies.
For a woman in the Iraqi capital four years after the fall of dictator Saddam Hussein, these emergencies can include passing unlawful checkpoints manned by armed militiamen, impromptu forays through neighborhoods controlled by religious zealots and taxi drivers who refuse her fare unless she covers her hair.
In addition, Mrs. Abdal-Majeed's job with Iraq's women's affairs ministry frequently brings her into contact with government officials, police officers and Muslim clergymen who insist that she cover up before they speak with her.
"Some clerics and politicians are forcing religion into our lives," said Mrs. Abdal-Majeed, 45. "We're being pushed back 1,000 years in time."
Baghdad once was considered a secular, cosmopolitan metropolis where Islamic customs seldom collided with women's fashion. Today, however, religious ideology has strengthened its grip and forced half the population to submit to traditional Islamic dress.
On the streets of the capital, the most common couture is what women call the Islamic uniform: the bulging black abaya that covers the body from head to toe; the head scarf, or hajib; and the long, dark ankle-length skirts commonly seen on schoolgirls, university students and professionals....
"Baghdad once was considered a secular, cosmopolitan metropolis" -- and when might that have been? Er, under Saddam, perhaps?
(Look, he was a horrible sonofabitch -- but he was secular.)
Oh, and guess where things are better?
Bushra Yousef, 51, is the managing editor of an Iraqi women's magazine who fled from Baghdad to Damascus in December after threats on her life. She said women in the Syrian capital are given more autonomy in dress than their Iraqi counterparts.
"Syrian women have freedom to choose what they wear," Mrs. Yousef said by telephone from Damascus. "Women in Iraq are often forced to wear Islamic uniform, even Christian women." ...
(You'll note that Pelosi didn't wear a headscarf when she met with President Assad of Syria.)
Monday, April 09, 2007
SO MUCH FOR NEWT
Damn -- I was rooting for this obnoxious SOB to join the '08 GOP race and break double digits, just in the hope that he'd help drag the party down. Alas, it can't possibly be:
Gingrich to Urge Action on Global Warming
Add former House Speaker Newt Gingrich to the list of former (and possibly future) politicians who are urging action to fight global warming. His forthcoming book, A Contract With the Earth, will present a 10 point plan of "market oriented" policies that will lead to a "bipartisan environmentalism."
The book is due in November, around the same time Gingrich said he would decide about a possible presidential race.
But ... but ... but global warming is a hoax, dammit! A hoax perpetrated by Algore! Et tu, Newtie?
"Maarket oriented" isn't going to help him. The base will never forgive him for this.
That report is from Tagan Goddard, who also tells us that another right-wing love object has deviated from correct thinking:
Fred Thompson (R) said in 1994, during his first run for the U.S. Senate, "that the ultimate decision to have an abortion 'must be made by the woman,'" according to the American Spectator.
Speaking to a reporter, Thompson said: "Government should stay out of it. No public financing. The ultimate decision must be made by the woman. Government should treat its citizens as adults capable of making moral decisions on their own."
That's gonna hurt, though I have a feeling the base will forgive Fred and just accept his flip-flop -- he's on TV! He played an admiral in a movie!
****
UPDATE: Told ya -- Freepers are calling him an "ecotard" (and one even says, "Et tu Newt?").
Damn -- I was rooting for this obnoxious SOB to join the '08 GOP race and break double digits, just in the hope that he'd help drag the party down. Alas, it can't possibly be:
Gingrich to Urge Action on Global Warming
Add former House Speaker Newt Gingrich to the list of former (and possibly future) politicians who are urging action to fight global warming. His forthcoming book, A Contract With the Earth, will present a 10 point plan of "market oriented" policies that will lead to a "bipartisan environmentalism."
The book is due in November, around the same time Gingrich said he would decide about a possible presidential race.
But ... but ... but global warming is a hoax, dammit! A hoax perpetrated by Algore! Et tu, Newtie?
"Maarket oriented" isn't going to help him. The base will never forgive him for this.
That report is from Tagan Goddard, who also tells us that another right-wing love object has deviated from correct thinking:
Fred Thompson (R) said in 1994, during his first run for the U.S. Senate, "that the ultimate decision to have an abortion 'must be made by the woman,'" according to the American Spectator.
Speaking to a reporter, Thompson said: "Government should stay out of it. No public financing. The ultimate decision must be made by the woman. Government should treat its citizens as adults capable of making moral decisions on their own."
That's gonna hurt, though I have a feeling the base will forgive Fred and just accept his flip-flop -- he's on TV! He played an admiral in a movie!
****
UPDATE: Told ya -- Freepers are calling him an "ecotard" (and one even says, "Et tu Newt?").
GIULIANI SIDES WITH THE CRAZIES
I missed this last week. Good grief:
Rudy Giuliani Says He Backed Govt Efforts to Help Terri Schiavo's Family
... the former New York City mayor made a campaign swing through Florida and told people there that he supported the state government's efforts to save Terri Schiavo's life.
..."I thought it was appropriate to make every effort to give her a chance to stay alive," he said at the campaign stop....
Yeah, sthat's the standard we should be following, right -- "it was appropriate"? Screw the law, which consistently sided with Schiavo's husband.
This man should never be president.
I missed this last week. Good grief:
Rudy Giuliani Says He Backed Govt Efforts to Help Terri Schiavo's Family
... the former New York City mayor made a campaign swing through Florida and told people there that he supported the state government's efforts to save Terri Schiavo's life.
..."I thought it was appropriate to make every effort to give her a chance to stay alive," he said at the campaign stop....
Yeah, sthat's the standard we should be following, right -- "it was appropriate"? Screw the law, which consistently sided with Schiavo's husband.
This man should never be president.
THE BUSH ADMINISTRATION: STILL THE GOLD STANDARD FOR INCOMPETENCE, VINDICTIVENESS, AND INCOMPETENCE LACED WITH VINDICTIVENESS
A lot of people screw up. Most people, however, at least try to stop doing anything that's exposed as a screw-up on 60 Minutes.
Not the Bushies.
Last fall, 60 Minutes told us this:
...60 Minutes managed to obtain a copy of the No Fly List and without giving away any national secrets, found it to be incomplete, inaccurate, outdated and a source of aggravation for thousand of innocent Americans.
...[The list] has created enormous frustration and aggravation for thousands of innocent travelers who have the misfortune of sharing a name with someone on the list and some of the names are among the most common in America. Like Gary Smith, John Williams or Robert Johnson....
... Yet they say they are pulled aside and interrogated, sometimes for hours until someone at the Transportation Security Administration decides they are not the Robert Johnson on the No Fly List. And they say it happens nearly every time they go to the airport....
That kind of exposure would shame ordinary people into correcting the problem. But the Bushies are in a league of their own. They're still doing it.
Mark Graber at Balkinization reported yesterday that Professor Walter F. Murphy was recently told he was on the list:
"When I tried to use the curb-side check in at the Sunport, I was denied a boarding pass because I was on the Terrorist Watch list. I was instructed to go inside and talk to a clerk. At this point, I should note that I am not only the McCormick Professor of Jurisprudence (emeritus) but also a retired Marine colonel. I fought in the Korean War as a young lieutenant, was wounded, and decorated for heroism. I remained a professional soldier for more than five years and then accepted a commission as a reserve office, serving for an additional 19 years."
"I presented my credentials from the Marine Corps to a very polite clerk for American Airlines. One of the two people to whom I talked asked a question and offered a frightening comment: "Have you been in any peace marches? We ban a lot of people from flying because of that." I explained that I had not so marched but had, in September, 2006, given a lecture at Princeton, televised and put on the Web, highly critical of George Bush for his many violations of the Constitution. "That'll do it," the man said. " ...
Hmmm ... Walter Murphy. A very common name -- like (as I've noted in several posts over the years) Edward Kennedy, the U.S. senator, who was briefly on the list in 2004. Or James Moore, coauthor of two books critical of Karl Rove, who wrote in the Huffington Post in 2006 that he's regularly stopped. Or (James) Richard Kelly, the director of Donnie Darko, whose forthcoming film is a dystopian fantasy with references to national security crackdowns. Or -- yes -- Dr. Robert Johnson, who's twice run for Congress in upstate New York, as a Democrat.
All presumably somewhat suspicious to the Bushies. And all with very common names.
Incompetence? Vindictiveness? Both?
Whic hever it is, the Bushies will never stop doing it, until they're no longer there to do it.
(Via the Volokh Conspiracy and Memeorandum.)
A lot of people screw up. Most people, however, at least try to stop doing anything that's exposed as a screw-up on 60 Minutes.
Not the Bushies.
Last fall, 60 Minutes told us this:
...60 Minutes managed to obtain a copy of the No Fly List and without giving away any national secrets, found it to be incomplete, inaccurate, outdated and a source of aggravation for thousand of innocent Americans.
...[The list] has created enormous frustration and aggravation for thousands of innocent travelers who have the misfortune of sharing a name with someone on the list and some of the names are among the most common in America. Like Gary Smith, John Williams or Robert Johnson....
... Yet they say they are pulled aside and interrogated, sometimes for hours until someone at the Transportation Security Administration decides they are not the Robert Johnson on the No Fly List. And they say it happens nearly every time they go to the airport....
That kind of exposure would shame ordinary people into correcting the problem. But the Bushies are in a league of their own. They're still doing it.
Mark Graber at Balkinization reported yesterday that Professor Walter F. Murphy was recently told he was on the list:
"When I tried to use the curb-side check in at the Sunport, I was denied a boarding pass because I was on the Terrorist Watch list. I was instructed to go inside and talk to a clerk. At this point, I should note that I am not only the McCormick Professor of Jurisprudence (emeritus) but also a retired Marine colonel. I fought in the Korean War as a young lieutenant, was wounded, and decorated for heroism. I remained a professional soldier for more than five years and then accepted a commission as a reserve office, serving for an additional 19 years."
"I presented my credentials from the Marine Corps to a very polite clerk for American Airlines. One of the two people to whom I talked asked a question and offered a frightening comment: "Have you been in any peace marches? We ban a lot of people from flying because of that." I explained that I had not so marched but had, in September, 2006, given a lecture at Princeton, televised and put on the Web, highly critical of George Bush for his many violations of the Constitution. "That'll do it," the man said. " ...
Hmmm ... Walter Murphy. A very common name -- like (as I've noted in several posts over the years) Edward Kennedy, the U.S. senator, who was briefly on the list in 2004. Or James Moore, coauthor of two books critical of Karl Rove, who wrote in the Huffington Post in 2006 that he's regularly stopped. Or (James) Richard Kelly, the director of Donnie Darko, whose forthcoming film is a dystopian fantasy with references to national security crackdowns. Or -- yes -- Dr. Robert Johnson, who's twice run for Congress in upstate New York, as a Democrat.
All presumably somewhat suspicious to the Bushies. And all with very common names.
Incompetence? Vindictiveness? Both?
Whic hever it is, the Bushies will never stop doing it, until they're no longer there to do it.
(Via the Volokh Conspiracy and Memeorandum.)
WAS KERIK TRYING TO MAKE HIMSELF SCARCE?
I really enjoyed yesterday's article in The Washington Post about the large amount of negative information that surfaced during the brief White House vetting of Bernie Kerik -- none of which prevented the White House from announcing his appointment as Homeland Security secretary.
The Post reminded us that Kerik is going to be in the headlines for a while:
Federal prosecutors have told Kerik that they are likely to charge him with several felonies, including providing false information to the government when Bush nominated him, sources have told The Washington Post.
But, er, what happened to the new job (or jobs) he was supposed to have by now?
Back in the fall, we learned this:
Ex-NYC Top Cop To Head Guyana Reforms
Guyana's president says former New York City police commissioner Bernard Kerik ... will oversee reforms to the violence-wracked country's police force.
President Bharrat Jagdeo told reporters late Tuesday that Kerik will "definitely" lead an overhaul of the South American country's police department despite recent criticism over the move....
Right from the start, there were questions about this:
Contrary to claims from Guyana's President Bharrat Jagdeo, money from a US$20 million Inter-American Development Bank loan cannot be used to pay for the services of former New York City police commissioner Bernard Kerik.
Officials of the IDB yesterday stated, "None of our current bank operations in Guyana is financing the consulting services of Bernard Kerik either as an individual or as part of a consulting firm."
The Bank's statement comes about a week after ... Jagdeo had noted that the IDB loan will help fund [Kerik's] services.
By January, it looked as if the Guyana deal was going to happen, Jagdeo announced, almost apologetically:
...President Bharrat Jagdeo announced last week that they were close to signing a contract with Kerik, despite some concerns from Opposition Leaders in the South American nation.
... Critics of the Jagdeo government have opposed the appointment citing Kerik's involvement in several controversies, including accepting gifts from a company that was trying to do business with New York City while he served as a senior police officer.
... "He will be placed on a retainer, so if we hire him to perform other kinds of duties to the police force, he will be paid separately for those issues, and if he has to come in under the IDB (Inter-American Development Bank) programme, he would have to follow the bidding process for the IDB programme," Jagdeo explained.
...Kerik recently met with the Minister of National Security in Trinidad and Tobago to discuss anti-crime measures amidst huge criticisms....
Yes, he was going to go to work in Trinidad too. And yes, that met with criticism as well:
THE Opposition United National Congress is now in a tailspin after having made another 'fatal attempt at political gimmickry' in dealing with crime, Congress of the People National Security Advisor, Captain Gary Griffith has said.
In a release issued Thursday, Captain Griffith was responding to recent reports of the deepening legal problems being faced by former New York Police Commissioner, Bernard Kerik.
Kerik was brought to Trinidad and Tobago by UNC deputy leader, Jack Warner ...
However, according to Captain Griffith, 'their gimmickry has failed again'. He said: "You cannot put someone in a position to lead the fight against crime, when he himself is facing allegations and charges of corrupt activity!" ...
And then the whole thing got delayed:
Former New York Police Department Commissioner Bernard Kerik has apparently postponed plans to work as a security consultant for two Caribbean countries because of unresolved legal troubles, Guyana's interior minister said Wednesday.
Kerik was expected to begin a one-year contract as Guyana's national security adviser in February. He was also hired as a consultant by Trinidad, although it was unclear when that job would begin.
But Guyanese Interior Minister Clement Rohee said that Kerik sent a statement to Trinidadian authorities saying he could not travel while U.S. prosecutors were investigating him....
What was up with all this? Well, Bernie does like to take a job overseas every now and again -- after all, in addition to his stint in Iraq for the Coalition Provisional Authority (where he spent a lot of money, accomplished nothing, and left early), he had a job at a hospital in Saudi Arabia in the early 1980s (where he was accused of spying on the personal lives of women the hospital administrator was involved with and men they knew).
So was that it? Just wanderlust? Or did Kerik -- or someone else -- think (naively) that he might be able to avoid indictment, or at least scrutiny, if he left the country?
I really enjoyed yesterday's article in The Washington Post about the large amount of negative information that surfaced during the brief White House vetting of Bernie Kerik -- none of which prevented the White House from announcing his appointment as Homeland Security secretary.
The Post reminded us that Kerik is going to be in the headlines for a while:
Federal prosecutors have told Kerik that they are likely to charge him with several felonies, including providing false information to the government when Bush nominated him, sources have told The Washington Post.
But, er, what happened to the new job (or jobs) he was supposed to have by now?
Back in the fall, we learned this:
Ex-NYC Top Cop To Head Guyana Reforms
Guyana's president says former New York City police commissioner Bernard Kerik ... will oversee reforms to the violence-wracked country's police force.
President Bharrat Jagdeo told reporters late Tuesday that Kerik will "definitely" lead an overhaul of the South American country's police department despite recent criticism over the move....
Right from the start, there were questions about this:
Contrary to claims from Guyana's President Bharrat Jagdeo, money from a US$20 million Inter-American Development Bank loan cannot be used to pay for the services of former New York City police commissioner Bernard Kerik.
Officials of the IDB yesterday stated, "None of our current bank operations in Guyana is financing the consulting services of Bernard Kerik either as an individual or as part of a consulting firm."
The Bank's statement comes about a week after ... Jagdeo had noted that the IDB loan will help fund [Kerik's] services.
By January, it looked as if the Guyana deal was going to happen, Jagdeo announced, almost apologetically:
...President Bharrat Jagdeo announced last week that they were close to signing a contract with Kerik, despite some concerns from Opposition Leaders in the South American nation.
... Critics of the Jagdeo government have opposed the appointment citing Kerik's involvement in several controversies, including accepting gifts from a company that was trying to do business with New York City while he served as a senior police officer.
... "He will be placed on a retainer, so if we hire him to perform other kinds of duties to the police force, he will be paid separately for those issues, and if he has to come in under the IDB (Inter-American Development Bank) programme, he would have to follow the bidding process for the IDB programme," Jagdeo explained.
...Kerik recently met with the Minister of National Security in Trinidad and Tobago to discuss anti-crime measures amidst huge criticisms....
Yes, he was going to go to work in Trinidad too. And yes, that met with criticism as well:
THE Opposition United National Congress is now in a tailspin after having made another 'fatal attempt at political gimmickry' in dealing with crime, Congress of the People National Security Advisor, Captain Gary Griffith has said.
In a release issued Thursday, Captain Griffith was responding to recent reports of the deepening legal problems being faced by former New York Police Commissioner, Bernard Kerik.
Kerik was brought to Trinidad and Tobago by UNC deputy leader, Jack Warner ...
However, according to Captain Griffith, 'their gimmickry has failed again'. He said: "You cannot put someone in a position to lead the fight against crime, when he himself is facing allegations and charges of corrupt activity!" ...
And then the whole thing got delayed:
Former New York Police Department Commissioner Bernard Kerik has apparently postponed plans to work as a security consultant for two Caribbean countries because of unresolved legal troubles, Guyana's interior minister said Wednesday.
Kerik was expected to begin a one-year contract as Guyana's national security adviser in February. He was also hired as a consultant by Trinidad, although it was unclear when that job would begin.
But Guyanese Interior Minister Clement Rohee said that Kerik sent a statement to Trinidadian authorities saying he could not travel while U.S. prosecutors were investigating him....
What was up with all this? Well, Bernie does like to take a job overseas every now and again -- after all, in addition to his stint in Iraq for the Coalition Provisional Authority (where he spent a lot of money, accomplished nothing, and left early), he had a job at a hospital in Saudi Arabia in the early 1980s (where he was accused of spying on the personal lives of women the hospital administrator was involved with and men they knew).
So was that it? Just wanderlust? Or did Kerik -- or someone else -- think (naively) that he might be able to avoid indictment, or at least scrutiny, if he left the country?
Sunday, April 08, 2007
On Thursday, Julia pointed out that Bill Donohue of the Catholic League has been unusually quiet about Rudy Giuliani's support for abortion rights and, in some cases, public funding of abortions -- odd given Bill's harsh words for other politicians who take similar stands (and who happen not to be Republican).
Well, scroll down to the last item in this post from Julia's blog on Friday -- apparently if you regularly mock New York's Catholic archbishop on Don Imus's show (you know, this Don Imus), Donohue will issue a mild rebuke ... once. And then Donohue will happily appear on the show to talk about how Muslims are evil.
And I'm also grateful to Julia for the story about Rudy Giuliani doing an imitation of Marlon Brando in The Godfather at a campaign appearance:
"Thank youse all very much for invitin' me here tuh-day, to this meeting of the families from different parts'a California," Giuliani said.
Yikes.
Also this:
"I am a candidate. She's a civilian, to use the old Mafia distinction," Giuliani said, referring to his wife Judith Nathan Giuliani.
Er, I'm Italian. We don't all do this at the drop of a hat. (And some of us don't even own any muscle T's.)
Well, scroll down to the last item in this post from Julia's blog on Friday -- apparently if you regularly mock New York's Catholic archbishop on Don Imus's show (you know, this Don Imus), Donohue will issue a mild rebuke ... once. And then Donohue will happily appear on the show to talk about how Muslims are evil.
And I'm also grateful to Julia for the story about Rudy Giuliani doing an imitation of Marlon Brando in The Godfather at a campaign appearance:
"Thank youse all very much for invitin' me here tuh-day, to this meeting of the families from different parts'a California," Giuliani said.
Yikes.
Also this:
"I am a candidate. She's a civilian, to use the old Mafia distinction," Giuliani said, referring to his wife Judith Nathan Giuliani.
Er, I'm Italian. We don't all do this at the drop of a hat. (And some of us don't even own any muscle T's.)
Oh, dear -- we may not be blessed with Ralphie's presence in '08:
Nader, in local visit, scoffs at political machine but won't commit to running again
RHINEBECK [N.Y.] - Consumer advocate, political activist, lawyer and four-time presidential candidate Ralph Nader continues to rage against the political machine, but he isn't sure if he'll run for president again in 2008.
"It's too early," Nader, 73, said to about 160 people on Saturday after a sold-out screening of the documentary "An Unreasonable Man" at Upstate Films in Rhinebeck. "You need thousands of volunteers to answer that question."
Oh, what a crock. He just thinks Obama might beat Hillary for the nomination. Good '60s guy that he is, he's probably got too much white guilt to screw things up for a black man, even if the black man is an (ick!) Democrat. Ah, but if Obama fades and Hillary rises, he'll be there, you betcha.
[UPDATE: Yeah, maybe that doesn't make sense -- he probably sees Obama as yet another money-mad corporatist Democrat (see the link). I do think, though, that his decision will be based almost exclusively on his feelings about the Democratic nominee. On second thought, I'm guessing he's planning to stay out if Edwards (lawyer, populist) gets the nod.]
...NADER CALLED Bush "a runaway president" and the war in Iraq "a horrendous tragedy."
"He sent us to war on false pretenses," Nader said....
No! Really? You don't say, Ralph! Nice to have you around to bring us this newsflash.
...He said the country "grossly underestimated the impact of electronic gizmos," which he believes have caused a "paralysis" of participation and activism in America.
"That was a huge miss," he said. "We should have paid more attention." ...
Er, dude? If it weren't for YouTube and the "macaca" video, there'd be a GOP Senate right now. And, er, what technology put Reagan and a GOP Senate in power in 1980? The Betamax?
Nader, in local visit, scoffs at political machine but won't commit to running again
RHINEBECK [N.Y.] - Consumer advocate, political activist, lawyer and four-time presidential candidate Ralph Nader continues to rage against the political machine, but he isn't sure if he'll run for president again in 2008.
"It's too early," Nader, 73, said to about 160 people on Saturday after a sold-out screening of the documentary "An Unreasonable Man" at Upstate Films in Rhinebeck. "You need thousands of volunteers to answer that question."
Oh, what a crock. He just thinks Obama might beat Hillary for the nomination. Good '60s guy that he is, he's probably got too much white guilt to screw things up for a black man, even if the black man is an (ick!) Democrat. Ah, but if Obama fades and Hillary rises, he'll be there, you betcha.
[UPDATE: Yeah, maybe that doesn't make sense -- he probably sees Obama as yet another money-mad corporatist Democrat (see the link). I do think, though, that his decision will be based almost exclusively on his feelings about the Democratic nominee. On second thought, I'm guessing he's planning to stay out if Edwards (lawyer, populist) gets the nod.]
...NADER CALLED Bush "a runaway president" and the war in Iraq "a horrendous tragedy."
"He sent us to war on false pretenses," Nader said....
No! Really? You don't say, Ralph! Nice to have you around to bring us this newsflash.
...He said the country "grossly underestimated the impact of electronic gizmos," which he believes have caused a "paralysis" of participation and activism in America.
"That was a huge miss," he said. "We should have paid more attention." ...
Er, dude? If it weren't for YouTube and the "macaca" video, there'd be a GOP Senate right now. And, er, what technology put Reagan and a GOP Senate in power in 1980? The Betamax?
Global Warming, Crackpot Science, and Media Bias
The AP reports that global warming denier Dr. William Gray is harshly critical of Al Gore and An Inconvenient Truth. Hindrocket thinks the article is an example of liberal media bias.
Here's what he presents as evidence:
What it comes down to, of course, is that the article is biased because it fails to present Gray's theory as dispositive.
Now, Gray has been saying this sort of thing for a while, as RealClimate noted in evaluating a paper Gray gave at last year's hurricane conference:
The scientific critique is mostly beyond my grasp, but it certainly seems damning:
It seems to me that the AP was likely far too kind to Dr. Gray in giving his comments a forum regardless of their validity. That's the bias here--the standard lazy journalistic pattern of falsely 'balancing' the reasonable with the batshit crazy.
[Cross-posted at If I Ran the Zoo]
The AP reports that global warming denier Dr. William Gray is harshly critical of Al Gore and An Inconvenient Truth. Hindrocket thinks the article is an example of liberal media bias.
Here's what he presents as evidence:
- The article says Gray has 'long railed' against global warming, implying he's a crank.
- The article implies that the UN IPCC report, released the same day, represents scientific consensus (when everybody knows the IPCC is a political body).
- It describes his theory as "contrary to mainstream thinking".
- It closes with a quote from a scientist who disagrees with Gray.
What it comes down to, of course, is that the article is biased because it fails to present Gray's theory as dispositive.
Now, Gray has been saying this sort of thing for a while, as RealClimate noted in evaluating a paper Gray gave at last year's hurricane conference:
Anybody who has followed press reporting on global warming, and particularly on its effects on hurricanes, has surely encountered various contrarian pronouncements by William Gray, of Colorado State University.The paper in question
begins with a quote from Senator Inhofe calling global warming a hoax perpetrated on the American people, and ends with a quote by a representive of the Society of Petroleum Geologists stating that Crichton's State of Fear has "the absolute ring of truth."So basically, we're dealing with a guy who thinks James Inhofe and Michael Crichton are the real experts on climate change. I think that takes settles the 'crank' question.
The scientific critique is mostly beyond my grasp, but it certainly seems damning:
None of the assertions are based on rigorous statistical associations, oceanographic observations or physically based simulations; it is all seat-of -the-pants stuff of a sort that was common in the early days of climate studies, but which is difficult to evaluate when viewed as a scientific hypothesis.Gray relies on out-of-date models, gets the basic physics wrong, and when his basic assumptions are shown to be false he invents a new theory with the same conclusions.
It seems to me that the AP was likely far too kind to Dr. Gray in giving his comments a forum regardless of their validity. That's the bias here--the standard lazy journalistic pattern of falsely 'balancing' the reasonable with the batshit crazy.
[Cross-posted at If I Ran the Zoo]
Saturday, April 07, 2007
Bush To Run For Third Term
OK, well, not exactly, but what would you call someone who is running on this platform?
I know his poor financials led him to change his financial strategery this week, but did he hire Bob Shrum or Al From to run his campaign and form his message, too?
Not that I'm complaining or anything.
OK, well, not exactly, but what would you call someone who is running on this platform?
I know his poor financials led him to change his financial strategery this week, but did he hire Bob Shrum or Al From to run his campaign and form his message, too?
Not that I'm complaining or anything.
Mormon Romney: More Jed Clampett than Teddy Roosevelt.
While I'd prefer the Wisemen of our Media pay at least some attention to the candidates' statements on things like arresting American citizens without warrants, I can't help being amused at the latest dust-up surrounding Mormon Flip-Flop Romney.
In case you missed it, in a further effort to buttress his right-wing credentials, the former Mass. Governor claimed to be a lifelong hunter. Guess by claiming he was the manly sort of man that went about shooting defenseless animals Romney thought that would endear him to the bloodthirsty but cowardly segment of the GOP base, but I repeat myself.
Unfortunately for Mormon Romney, it turns out there are some truthyness problems with this "lifelong hunter" image. One, it turns out he's never had a hunting license to shoot small, defenseless animals in the states he's lived that require them. It also turns out Romney doesn't own a gun, which presents a bit of a conflict with his earlier claim that he in fact did own a gun. Then after initially being challenged on his manly-man, gun-totin' claims, his staff asserted Romney had only been hunting twice in his life, once during his teens, and again more recently with some big-wig GOP donors in--wait for it--Georgia. But Mormon Romney flip-flopped on his staff once again by coming out of the closet to boldly declare that he had gone hunting many more times than just two times, because manly-men campaigning for GOP president need more dead animal heads than could be acquired from two mear hunting expeditions.
When he corrected his staff's statement during a news conference Thursday in Indianapolis, Romney said: "I've always been a rodent and rabbit hunter, small varmints, if you will." He added: "I began when I was 15 or so and I have hunted those kinds of varmints since then. More than two times."
Kinda makes you feel warmy and fuzzy all over, doesn't it?
He also said, and here I guess Mitt was trying to make a funny--
"I've hunted small game numerous times, as a young man and as an adult. I'm by no means a big game hunter. I'm more Jed Clampett than Teddy Roosevelt."
There ya have it: Mormon Romney for president--because he's more Jed Clampett than Teddy Roosevelt. And he's a lifelong hunter of small defenseless animals. Maybe.
While I'd prefer the Wisemen of our Media pay at least some attention to the candidates' statements on things like arresting American citizens without warrants, I can't help being amused at the latest dust-up surrounding Mormon Flip-Flop Romney.
In case you missed it, in a further effort to buttress his right-wing credentials, the former Mass. Governor claimed to be a lifelong hunter. Guess by claiming he was the manly sort of man that went about shooting defenseless animals Romney thought that would endear him to the bloodthirsty but cowardly segment of the GOP base, but I repeat myself.
Unfortunately for Mormon Romney, it turns out there are some truthyness problems with this "lifelong hunter" image. One, it turns out he's never had a hunting license to shoot small, defenseless animals in the states he's lived that require them. It also turns out Romney doesn't own a gun, which presents a bit of a conflict with his earlier claim that he in fact did own a gun. Then after initially being challenged on his manly-man, gun-totin' claims, his staff asserted Romney had only been hunting twice in his life, once during his teens, and again more recently with some big-wig GOP donors in--wait for it--Georgia. But Mormon Romney flip-flopped on his staff once again by coming out of the closet to boldly declare that he had gone hunting many more times than just two times, because manly-men campaigning for GOP president need more dead animal heads than could be acquired from two mear hunting expeditions.
When he corrected his staff's statement during a news conference Thursday in Indianapolis, Romney said: "I've always been a rodent and rabbit hunter, small varmints, if you will." He added: "I began when I was 15 or so and I have hunted those kinds of varmints since then. More than two times."
Kinda makes you feel warmy and fuzzy all over, doesn't it?
He also said, and here I guess Mitt was trying to make a funny--
"I've hunted small game numerous times, as a young man and as an adult. I'm by no means a big game hunter. I'm more Jed Clampett than Teddy Roosevelt."
There ya have it: Mormon Romney for president--because he's more Jed Clampett than Teddy Roosevelt. And he's a lifelong hunter of small defenseless animals. Maybe.
Electability
Sifu Tweety writes (a week ago, but hey, I'm slow and lazy) about the dubious value of 'electability' in choosing candidates:
He suggests a simpler way to choose:
I think this is very right, with two qualifications.
The first is that, speaking strictly for myself (although I think I'm not the only one), the qualities I find appealing are often the exact opposite of what most other people find appealing. I have a weakness for eggheads; I'd have voted for Adlai Stevenson (my parents did). I thought Mondale was genuinely appealing. More to the point, someone with whose policy positions I agree 100% would almost certainly go down to flaming ignominious defeat. (And forget about the 'voters will support somebody who stands for something even if they disagree' dodge; the problem is that most voters see progressive policies as pandering in themselves, so a politician who embraces them is seen not as standing up for what's right but merely as another panderer.)
The point here being, sure, go with your own response...but temper it with what you know about your own idiosyncratic biases.
The second caveat is that there are objective factors influencing whether a candidate is genuinely electable. If you really like a candidate but their organization is clearly a mess, or they blow through $50 million and you can't tell what they spent it on, or they hire Bob Shrum...well, that might well give you pause. Conversely, if you're lukewarm about a candidate but really impressed by their campaign effort, that might be reason to give them another look. These things will be factors in the general, so to the extent they're apparent now they're well worth considering.
On the whole, though, Sifu Tweety is right: trying to second-guess the voters is a mug's game. Just figure out what you think, and go from there.
Sifu Tweety writes (a week ago, but hey, I'm slow and lazy) about the dubious value of 'electability' in choosing candidates:
What you are trying to do, when you are trying to decide if somebody running for President is “electable,” is figure out the aggregate thought process of hundreds of millions of complete strangers....What are they looking for in a candidate?...You are trying to estimate - just based on your own instincts - how each of these highly subjective, personal categories will average out across vast multitudes of voters you know absolutely nothing about. It is exactly as impossible as consistently predicting the movement of the market, and for exactly the same reasons...You could listen to pollsters, and consultants, and analysts, but those people are wrong most of the time, too.Case in point: 2004 primary voters tried to vote for the most 'electable' candidate. That went well, didn't it?
He suggests a simpler way to choose:
May I humbly suggest an easier way? The things that make a candidate “electable” are the exact same things that make them an appealling candidate to you, personally. Rather than try and divine the contents of a million scattered consciousnesses, why not refer back to the one brain you have instant, 24 hour access to, and see what it likes. Pick who you trust, who you believe in....The absolute best thing we as Democratic primary voters can do is pick who we judge to be the best candidate. Not the most electable. The one who we think will do the best job of being President.
I think this is very right, with two qualifications.
The first is that, speaking strictly for myself (although I think I'm not the only one), the qualities I find appealing are often the exact opposite of what most other people find appealing. I have a weakness for eggheads; I'd have voted for Adlai Stevenson (my parents did). I thought Mondale was genuinely appealing. More to the point, someone with whose policy positions I agree 100% would almost certainly go down to flaming ignominious defeat. (And forget about the 'voters will support somebody who stands for something even if they disagree' dodge; the problem is that most voters see progressive policies as pandering in themselves, so a politician who embraces them is seen not as standing up for what's right but merely as another panderer.)
The point here being, sure, go with your own response...but temper it with what you know about your own idiosyncratic biases.
The second caveat is that there are objective factors influencing whether a candidate is genuinely electable. If you really like a candidate but their organization is clearly a mess, or they blow through $50 million and you can't tell what they spent it on, or they hire Bob Shrum...well, that might well give you pause. Conversely, if you're lukewarm about a candidate but really impressed by their campaign effort, that might be reason to give them another look. These things will be factors in the general, so to the extent they're apparent now they're well worth considering.
On the whole, though, Sifu Tweety is right: trying to second-guess the voters is a mug's game. Just figure out what you think, and go from there.
Friday, April 06, 2007
[Here's an example of what Bulworth is talking about below. Cheney's still flogging the same dead horse.]
Cheney: Deluded or just a big ol' liar?
Cheney: Deluded or just a big ol' liar?
Captured Iraqi documents and intelligence interrogations of Saddam Hussein and two former aides "all confirmed" that Hussein's regime was not directly cooperating with al-Qaeda before the U.S. invasion of Iraq, according to a declassified Defense Department report released yesterday.And -- what a surprise! -- former head of the Office of Special Plans Douglas Feith was right in the middle of the whole deception.The declassified version of the report, by acting Inspector General Thomas F. Gimble, also contains new details about the intelligence community's prewar consensus that the Iraqi government and al-Qaeda figures had only limited contacts, and about its judgments that reports of deeper links were based on dubious or unconfirmed information. The report had been released in summary form in February.
The report's release came on the same day that Vice President Cheney, appearing on Rush Limbaugh's radio program, repeated his allegation that al-Qaeda was operating inside Iraq "before we ever launched" the war, under the direction of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the terrorist killed last June.
Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Carl M. Levin (D-Mich.), who requested the report's declassification, said in a written statement that the complete text demonstrates more fully why the inspector general concluded that a key Pentagon office -- run by then-Undersecretary of Defense Douglas J. Feith -- had inappropriately written intelligence assessments before the March 2003 invasion alleging connections between al-Qaeda and Iraq that the U.S. intelligence consensus disputed.Okay, the report was released on the same day Cheney made his comments. Are we to assume he hadn't already seen it? Maybe he's been so isolated in that undisclosed location that he hasn't heard -- even W now pretends that he never tried to link Saddam to 9/11. Isn't it time to blame some underlings and move on?The report, in a passage previously marked secret, said Feith's office had asserted in a briefing given to Cheney's chief of staff in September 2002 that the relationship between Iraq and al-Qaeda was "mature" and "symbiotic," marked by shared interests and evidenced by cooperation across 10 categories, including training, financing and logistics.
Instead, the report said, the CIA had concluded in June 2002 that there were few substantiated contacts between al-Qaeda operatives and Iraqi officials and had said that it lacked evidence of a long-term relationship like the ones Iraq had forged with other terrorist groups.
Oh, and since it's clear that the real intelligence didn't support going to war with Iraq, why exactly was it so important to fake some? Why did we really attack Iraq in the first place? Hmmm?
Don't Encourage Them
I don't know why we're continually being treated to these post-hoc analyses documenting one or another of the Bush administration's lies or follies about the Iraq war or anything else. Rather than prompt them to admit a mistake, it seems to just encourage them, bringing to mind for them a long past but favored point of time when it seemed the whole world bowed in awe before their mighty threats and pronouncements and upon hearing the latest report they somehow manage to neglect its conclusions and revert to the old tapes, as if suddenly cued by the motel wake-up call or the Manchurian Candidate code word to repeat as if it was still 2001 the broken record mantra spinning around the dusty turntable the various bumper sticker themes of the Glorious War on Terrorism which then still included promises to track down Osama been Forgotten in addition to the bullicose threats building to roll over a grateful, liberated Iraqi nation and its would-be terrorist neighbors.
I don't know why we're continually being treated to these post-hoc analyses documenting one or another of the Bush administration's lies or follies about the Iraq war or anything else. Rather than prompt them to admit a mistake, it seems to just encourage them, bringing to mind for them a long past but favored point of time when it seemed the whole world bowed in awe before their mighty threats and pronouncements and upon hearing the latest report they somehow manage to neglect its conclusions and revert to the old tapes, as if suddenly cued by the motel wake-up call or the Manchurian Candidate code word to repeat as if it was still 2001 the broken record mantra spinning around the dusty turntable the various bumper sticker themes of the Glorious War on Terrorism which then still included promises to track down Osama been Forgotten in addition to the bullicose threats building to roll over a grateful, liberated Iraqi nation and its would-be terrorist neighbors.
Imus is Sorry
Apparently he let lose, once again, and made some "regrettable" remarks. But you can bet the usual cast of politician-type suck-ups will continue to prostrate themselves on his radio "show".
If you've managed to somehow avoid hearing Imus's schtick over the years, the great James Wolcott has reviewed the lowlights.
Apparently he let lose, once again, and made some "regrettable" remarks. But you can bet the usual cast of politician-type suck-ups will continue to prostrate themselves on his radio "show".
If you've managed to somehow avoid hearing Imus's schtick over the years, the great James Wolcott has reviewed the lowlights.
It's About 2012
Or so I'm tempted to speculate when I read something like this by Steve M, about the U.S. (i.e., Cheney) backing an al Qaeda-linked organization formerly headed by Khalid Sheikh Muhammed that carries out terrorist attacks in Iran.
In other words, we're backing al Qaeda allies against the country that offered to help us against al Qaeda.
Just add this one to the whole sad inventory of things they've done (and continue to do) that are so recklessly, catastrophically stupid that they defy explanation. An inventory that (I sometimes think) can't be explained by any standard measure of incompetence or corruption or arrogance or even any perfect-storm combination of the three.
And it makes me wonder: are they trying to do this much damage? Have they given up on 2008? Are they committed to simply making life hell for the next (Democratic) president?
Are they banking on 2012?
I ask semi-facetiously...but only semi-. Consider the damage they're doing to executive power. Consider Iraq: Republicans worry about total meltdown if we're still there during the 2008 elections...which Bush has said is a certainty. Leaving the mess for the next folks is a lousy strategy for 2008, but it may not be a bad strategy for 2012.
Whatever their motives, we've got another 22 months of dealing with this madness. All we can hope to do at this point is limit the damage until it's over.
[Cross-posted at If I Ran the Zoo]
Or so I'm tempted to speculate when I read something like this by Steve M, about the U.S. (i.e., Cheney) backing an al Qaeda-linked organization formerly headed by Khalid Sheikh Muhammed that carries out terrorist attacks in Iran.
In other words, we're backing al Qaeda allies against the country that offered to help us against al Qaeda.
Just add this one to the whole sad inventory of things they've done (and continue to do) that are so recklessly, catastrophically stupid that they defy explanation. An inventory that (I sometimes think) can't be explained by any standard measure of incompetence or corruption or arrogance or even any perfect-storm combination of the three.
And it makes me wonder: are they trying to do this much damage? Have they given up on 2008? Are they committed to simply making life hell for the next (Democratic) president?
Are they banking on 2012?
I ask semi-facetiously...but only semi-. Consider the damage they're doing to executive power. Consider Iraq: Republicans worry about total meltdown if we're still there during the 2008 elections...which Bush has said is a certainty. Leaving the mess for the next folks is a lousy strategy for 2008, but it may not be a bad strategy for 2012.
Whatever their motives, we've got another 22 months of dealing with this madness. All we can hope to do at this point is limit the damage until it's over.
[Cross-posted at If I Ran the Zoo]
Trying to Marginalize Us
A few days back I took issue with a David Ignatius op-ed in which the Wash Post writer once again called for the Democrat Party to be Reponsible in regard to providing still more billions of dollars for the Iraq occupation. The gist of the column was the by now familiar refrain that timelines and benchmarks are good ideas, sort of, but not really, because we must be ever mindful of the "conditions on the ground" in Iraq and we don't want to give the Islamicist Facisist Terrorists in Iraq any bad ideas about our maybe leaving someday.
But I neglected to highlight what I suspect was the real point of Ignatius's message: Serious, Responsible Democrat Party people are those who repudiate their Fringe Followers and Enablers in the wicked blogosphere. You know, sites like Kos. Ingatius liked the fact that candidate Obama appeared to say something along the lines of how important it is to keep the cash-spigot flowing to our military in Iraq, which just so happens to be the company line among the professional op-ed writing class, people like Ignatius and his buddies, like Charles Krauthammer, who in the same paper writes stuff like this. And what especially floated Ignatius's boat was that Kos criticized Obama's remarks. So for Ignatius, Obama's remarks, aside from their having any relevancy to "conditions on the ground" in Iraq, is really important because it makes the op-ed writer assume that Obama is on his side, fighting arm-in-arm with him and his pals against the likes of Atrios, Kos and Glenn Greenwald, who for some stupid reason, keep insisting that the professionally trained, well-paid, and establishment-emeshed corporate media types be held accountable for the material they publish and regurgitate, which so happens to most often come straight from the government types Ignatius likes and depends on so much, and who shouldn't be subject to examination, much less criticism, from blogger-types who have probably not ever even been to J-school like themselves.
As the media types now begin enlisting for the administration's war against and on Iran, we can only expect this type of backlash to continue, particularly if Not Responsible Democrat Party leaders like Nancy Pelosi make trips to States That Sponsor Terror, like Syria, which also might make for a worthy military target someday.
Update: I apologize for linking above to comments by Noam Chomsky, who is not a member in good standing with the media elite and is not a Very Serious Person at all.
A few days back I took issue with a David Ignatius op-ed in which the Wash Post writer once again called for the Democrat Party to be Reponsible in regard to providing still more billions of dollars for the Iraq occupation. The gist of the column was the by now familiar refrain that timelines and benchmarks are good ideas, sort of, but not really, because we must be ever mindful of the "conditions on the ground" in Iraq and we don't want to give the Islamicist Facisist Terrorists in Iraq any bad ideas about our maybe leaving someday.
But I neglected to highlight what I suspect was the real point of Ignatius's message: Serious, Responsible Democrat Party people are those who repudiate their Fringe Followers and Enablers in the wicked blogosphere. You know, sites like Kos. Ingatius liked the fact that candidate Obama appeared to say something along the lines of how important it is to keep the cash-spigot flowing to our military in Iraq, which just so happens to be the company line among the professional op-ed writing class, people like Ignatius and his buddies, like Charles Krauthammer, who in the same paper writes stuff like this. And what especially floated Ignatius's boat was that Kos criticized Obama's remarks. So for Ignatius, Obama's remarks, aside from their having any relevancy to "conditions on the ground" in Iraq, is really important because it makes the op-ed writer assume that Obama is on his side, fighting arm-in-arm with him and his pals against the likes of Atrios, Kos and Glenn Greenwald, who for some stupid reason, keep insisting that the professionally trained, well-paid, and establishment-emeshed corporate media types be held accountable for the material they publish and regurgitate, which so happens to most often come straight from the government types Ignatius likes and depends on so much, and who shouldn't be subject to examination, much less criticism, from blogger-types who have probably not ever even been to J-school like themselves.
As the media types now begin enlisting for the administration's war against and on Iran, we can only expect this type of backlash to continue, particularly if Not Responsible Democrat Party leaders like Nancy Pelosi make trips to States That Sponsor Terror, like Syria, which also might make for a worthy military target someday.
Update: I apologize for linking above to comments by Noam Chomsky, who is not a member in good standing with the media elite and is not a Very Serious Person at all.
Thursday, April 05, 2007
GUESS WHERE ELSE WOMEN WEARS VEILS?
A commenter responding to my Nancy Pelosi post got me wondering about this and, yes, it's true:
... [Mel Gibson] actually built a church called the Holy Family Chapel in the mountains of Los Angeles, near Malibu....
Members of the Holy Family are a very traditionalist bunch who reject the changes enacted by the Second Vatican Council of 1962-1965.... They insist that Latin be the only language spoken in the church, as it was in pre-Vatican II times. Women are required to wear hats or veils, and everyone is to fast on Fridays.
*****
(The commenter, by the way, recently wore a veil to a funeral at an Opus Dei church, where the veil is requested, though not required.)
A commenter responding to my Nancy Pelosi post got me wondering about this and, yes, it's true:
... [Mel Gibson] actually built a church called the Holy Family Chapel in the mountains of Los Angeles, near Malibu....
Members of the Holy Family are a very traditionalist bunch who reject the changes enacted by the Second Vatican Council of 1962-1965.... They insist that Latin be the only language spoken in the church, as it was in pre-Vatican II times. Women are required to wear hats or veils, and everyone is to fast on Fridays.
*****
(The commenter, by the way, recently wore a veil to a funeral at an Opus Dei church, where the veil is requested, though not required.)
WHY IS ZOGBY INTERNATIONAL DOING AN ANTI-CLINTON PUSH POLL FOR JUDICIAL WATCH?
Well, we know why Judicial Watch is doing it: to generate a phony "news story" that starts in the right-wing media but isn't meant to stay there. (And the coverage has begun: "Almost Half of Americans Fear Corruption if Clintons Return to White House, Poll Finds" at CNSNews.com, and similar stories at World Net Daily and Judicial Watch's own site. Surely a Drudge link can't be far behind, and then a link at the Politico....)
But what the hell is wrong with Zogby? I thought it was a respectable outfit, but check out these questions (PDF):
304. Some people believe that the Bill Clinton administration was corrupt. Whether or not you believe the Clinton administration was corrupt, how concerned are you that there will be high levels of corruption in the White House if Hillary Clinton is elected President in 2008?
Very concerned / Somewhat concerned / Not very concerned / Not at all concerned / Not sure
305. When thinking about Hillary Clinton as a politician, which of the following best describes her?
Very corrupt / Somewhat corrupt / Not very corrupt / Not at all corrupt / Not sure
306. Which of the following statements comes closer to you point of view – A or B?
Statement A: If Hillary Clinton is elected president, Bill Clinton cannot be trusted to behave honestly in the White House.
Statement B: If Hillary Clinton is elected president, Bill Clinton can be trusted to behave honestly in the White House.
Oh, and presumably for the Grover Norquist crowd, we have:
Do you strongly agree, somewhat agree, somewhat disagree, or strongly disagree with the following statement: Bigger government leads to more corruption?
This is garbage. This is a push poll.
At least a third of Americans, of course, always think politicians are more corrupt than ordinary citizens. Even with decidedly non-neutral questions, the numbers for the Clintons don't go much higher than the numbers for pols on average.
Well, we know why Judicial Watch is doing it: to generate a phony "news story" that starts in the right-wing media but isn't meant to stay there. (And the coverage has begun: "Almost Half of Americans Fear Corruption if Clintons Return to White House, Poll Finds" at CNSNews.com, and similar stories at World Net Daily and Judicial Watch's own site. Surely a Drudge link can't be far behind, and then a link at the Politico....)
But what the hell is wrong with Zogby? I thought it was a respectable outfit, but check out these questions (PDF):
304. Some people believe that the Bill Clinton administration was corrupt. Whether or not you believe the Clinton administration was corrupt, how concerned are you that there will be high levels of corruption in the White House if Hillary Clinton is elected President in 2008?
Very concerned / Somewhat concerned / Not very concerned / Not at all concerned / Not sure
305. When thinking about Hillary Clinton as a politician, which of the following best describes her?
Very corrupt / Somewhat corrupt / Not very corrupt / Not at all corrupt / Not sure
306. Which of the following statements comes closer to you point of view – A or B?
Statement A: If Hillary Clinton is elected president, Bill Clinton cannot be trusted to behave honestly in the White House.
Statement B: If Hillary Clinton is elected president, Bill Clinton can be trusted to behave honestly in the White House.
Oh, and presumably for the Grover Norquist crowd, we have:
Do you strongly agree, somewhat agree, somewhat disagree, or strongly disagree with the following statement: Bigger government leads to more corruption?
This is garbage. This is a push poll.
At least a third of Americans, of course, always think politicians are more corrupt than ordinary citizens. Even with decidedly non-neutral questions, the numbers for the Clintons don't go much higher than the numbers for pols on average.
HEATHCLIFF WITH A COMBOVER
I know someone who once tried to get a couple of romance novels published. I learned some conventions of the genre from her -- for instance, how common it is for the guy who turns out to be the hero to initially seem, to the heroine, to be an insensitive boor -- but an intriguing insensitive boor. Sometimes the problem is that the guy is very angry, almost out of control -- but it turns out, of course, that that's not a problem (for the right woman).
With that in mind, let's turn to Slate, where John Dickerson writes about Rudy Giuliani in New Hampshire:
When I walked into Rudy Giuliani's first New Hampshire house party, I thought, Somethin's gonna blow.
OK, I'm not going to take a cheap shot by drawing your attention to that.
(Oh, wait, I guess I just did. What Dickinson goes on to say, though, is that the room is overstuffed with clutter and people.)
...It was a perfect setting for Rudy Giuliani -- also a presence too big to fit in his party, meaning the GOP.
Ahem, again. Er, let's just jump ahead a bit.
...If Giuliani wins the nomination, it will be because he has a big shiny thing to distract GOP voters: experience. "I am the candidate in the race who has gotten the most things done," he said to loud applause on the staircase landing in Hampton Falls. This is a boast and a promise. In his stump speech, Giuliani offers a hail of statistics to show that in New York he lowered taxes, cut government spending, and shrank the welfare rolls before the 9/11 attacks. Then he held the city together afterward. "If you can do it in New York you can do it in Washington," he told the Portsmouth Chamber of Commerce Tuesday. "The reason I can do it is because I've done it."
Sounds as if this rhetoric really impressed Dickerson. But wait, here's the insensitive-boor part:
Giuliani wisely ignores the more complex picture of his leadership skills, the bloated budget he left his successor, his prickly uncompromising manner, and horrible race relations. But there's reason to be concerned about him even if you buy his tough-talking self-portrayal. The thing about a candidate who gets things done is that he might actually do them. When it comes to opening up a new war with Iran, this might give voters pause. When asked this week about the possibility that Iran could acquire nuclear weapons technology, he offered a sample of what he would tell the country's leaders: "We're not going to let you do it -- no way no how.... There's no way you're getting nuclear weapons. You've got to get it straight." If this threat of military action is more than rhetoric, then given how the Iranians are behaving, we could be lacing up for a new war before Giuliani's first State of the Union address.
That's well put -- in fact, that's the case against Giuliani in a nutshell. (If you don't like the adventurism and "My way or the highway" style of the current administration, why sign on for four more years of it, with a guy who's even more petulant and snappish and sure that he's always right than W?)
Ah, but here's where the heroine starts seeing Insensitive Boor's vulnerable side, and the pulse rate elevates again:
... After the house party, the mayor met with his hosts and a few influential Republicans in the bar at the hotel where he was staying and where a few reporters had also decamped.
... A bar is a good setting for him. It's a venue that can accommodate his buoyant or brawler side. Monday night, as he drank Diet Coke, he told stories and cracked jokes.... Giuliani wears a better class of suit now that he's in the lucrative private sector, but he still seems like the candidate most likely to be comfortable wearing a muscle-T. When he stopped by the table where I was sitting with a few fellow reporters, the conversation turned to his foot doctor, and he took off his shoe to show his well-worn and stained orthotics. (Most candidates are too pent up to admit they have orthotics.) If you think back to the voter sentiment in 2000 that George Bush was the candidate they'd most like to have a beer with, you can imagine primary voters making Giuliani their preferred drinking buddy. But he may want to keep his shoes on.
Yeesh.
Yes, I'm thinking of the opening sentences of Peggy Noonan's memoir, in which she imagines cradling Ronald Reagan's foot in her arms. I'm also thinking -- maybe because I'm Italian and grew up in an Italian neighborhood -- that Giuliani strikes me as far too white-collar a guy to wear a muscle T (assuming that all Italian guys wear muscle T's is sort of like assuming that Barack Obama must love chitlins).
But maybe Dickerson just wishes Rudy would wear one -- just for him.
Am I being too harsh? Sorry, but I just don't want to see this thug elected because too many journalists develop man-crushes on him.
I know someone who once tried to get a couple of romance novels published. I learned some conventions of the genre from her -- for instance, how common it is for the guy who turns out to be the hero to initially seem, to the heroine, to be an insensitive boor -- but an intriguing insensitive boor. Sometimes the problem is that the guy is very angry, almost out of control -- but it turns out, of course, that that's not a problem (for the right woman).
With that in mind, let's turn to Slate, where John Dickerson writes about Rudy Giuliani in New Hampshire:
When I walked into Rudy Giuliani's first New Hampshire house party, I thought, Somethin's gonna blow.
OK, I'm not going to take a cheap shot by drawing your attention to that.
(Oh, wait, I guess I just did. What Dickinson goes on to say, though, is that the room is overstuffed with clutter and people.)
...It was a perfect setting for Rudy Giuliani -- also a presence too big to fit in his party, meaning the GOP.
Ahem, again. Er, let's just jump ahead a bit.
...If Giuliani wins the nomination, it will be because he has a big shiny thing to distract GOP voters: experience. "I am the candidate in the race who has gotten the most things done," he said to loud applause on the staircase landing in Hampton Falls. This is a boast and a promise. In his stump speech, Giuliani offers a hail of statistics to show that in New York he lowered taxes, cut government spending, and shrank the welfare rolls before the 9/11 attacks. Then he held the city together afterward. "If you can do it in New York you can do it in Washington," he told the Portsmouth Chamber of Commerce Tuesday. "The reason I can do it is because I've done it."
Sounds as if this rhetoric really impressed Dickerson. But wait, here's the insensitive-boor part:
Giuliani wisely ignores the more complex picture of his leadership skills, the bloated budget he left his successor, his prickly uncompromising manner, and horrible race relations. But there's reason to be concerned about him even if you buy his tough-talking self-portrayal. The thing about a candidate who gets things done is that he might actually do them. When it comes to opening up a new war with Iran, this might give voters pause. When asked this week about the possibility that Iran could acquire nuclear weapons technology, he offered a sample of what he would tell the country's leaders: "We're not going to let you do it -- no way no how.... There's no way you're getting nuclear weapons. You've got to get it straight." If this threat of military action is more than rhetoric, then given how the Iranians are behaving, we could be lacing up for a new war before Giuliani's first State of the Union address.
That's well put -- in fact, that's the case against Giuliani in a nutshell. (If you don't like the adventurism and "My way or the highway" style of the current administration, why sign on for four more years of it, with a guy who's even more petulant and snappish and sure that he's always right than W?)
Ah, but here's where the heroine starts seeing Insensitive Boor's vulnerable side, and the pulse rate elevates again:
... After the house party, the mayor met with his hosts and a few influential Republicans in the bar at the hotel where he was staying and where a few reporters had also decamped.
... A bar is a good setting for him. It's a venue that can accommodate his buoyant or brawler side. Monday night, as he drank Diet Coke, he told stories and cracked jokes.... Giuliani wears a better class of suit now that he's in the lucrative private sector, but he still seems like the candidate most likely to be comfortable wearing a muscle-T. When he stopped by the table where I was sitting with a few fellow reporters, the conversation turned to his foot doctor, and he took off his shoe to show his well-worn and stained orthotics. (Most candidates are too pent up to admit they have orthotics.) If you think back to the voter sentiment in 2000 that George Bush was the candidate they'd most like to have a beer with, you can imagine primary voters making Giuliani their preferred drinking buddy. But he may want to keep his shoes on.
Yeesh.
Yes, I'm thinking of the opening sentences of Peggy Noonan's memoir, in which she imagines cradling Ronald Reagan's foot in her arms. I'm also thinking -- maybe because I'm Italian and grew up in an Italian neighborhood -- that Giuliani strikes me as far too white-collar a guy to wear a muscle T (assuming that all Italian guys wear muscle T's is sort of like assuming that Barack Obama must love chitlins).
But maybe Dickerson just wishes Rudy would wear one -- just for him.
Am I being too harsh? Sorry, but I just don't want to see this thug elected because too many journalists develop man-crushes on him.
A couple of weeks ago, a story was posted at an ABC News blog about Russian criminal gangs that are picking up keystrokes from computers "at hotel business centers and other Internet connection points," learning passwords and other personal information needed to get into online accounts, and then selling the information to others who can drain the accounts and keep the income.
A version of the story was broadcast last night (video link) -- and here's a fact that wasn't in the original version:
So far, the major U.S. brokerage firms have reimbursed their customers, but the fund handling the 401(k)s for federal employees and the military says it won't do that, because it doesn't have to legally.
Not even for the troops? Who, er, have to travel?
All heart, your government.
****
(Or maybe I'm being harsh. After all, unlike the major U.S. brokerage firms, the federal government is flat broke -- primarily because of tax policies that have enriched the brokerage firms and the people who run them.)
A version of the story was broadcast last night (video link) -- and here's a fact that wasn't in the original version:
So far, the major U.S. brokerage firms have reimbursed their customers, but the fund handling the 401(k)s for federal employees and the military says it won't do that, because it doesn't have to legally.
Not even for the troops? Who, er, have to travel?
All heart, your government.
****
(Or maybe I'm being harsh. After all, unlike the major U.S. brokerage firms, the federal government is flat broke -- primarily because of tax policies that have enriched the brokerage firms and the people who run them.)
Wednesday, April 04, 2007
LITTLE GREEN DEFLATED FOOTBALL
This is the best comeback you could come up with, Chucky Boy?
"I'm rubber, you're glue" would have been Oscar Wilde by comparison.
This is the best comeback you could come up with, Chucky Boy?
"I'm rubber, you're glue" would have been Oscar Wilde by comparison.
MASTERS OF THE UNIVERSE (AND M.o.t.E. WANNABES) THINK RUDY IS A JERK
Isebrand notes a recent online poll in which respondents were asked whether they think Rudy Giuliani has the temperament to be president; 68% said no, 32% said yes.
But this poll was different from most online polls -- it was at the Web site of Crain's New York Business.
Brooklyn hipsters don't read Crain's. Neither do middle-aged liberal bloggers like me. Crain's is read by people who make money by making money -- people you'd think would want a hard-ass Republican for president.
Even they think he's a jerk.
People who live and work here know Rudy. Trust us: You don't want him as president.
Isebrand notes a recent online poll in which respondents were asked whether they think Rudy Giuliani has the temperament to be president; 68% said no, 32% said yes.
But this poll was different from most online polls -- it was at the Web site of Crain's New York Business.
Brooklyn hipsters don't read Crain's. Neither do middle-aged liberal bloggers like me. Crain's is read by people who make money by making money -- people you'd think would want a hard-ass Republican for president.
Even they think he's a jerk.
People who live and work here know Rudy. Trust us: You don't want him as president.
PSYCHOPATHIA SEXUALIS
New York Post today:
W. KICKS NANCY'S ASSAD
SPEAKER A 'COVER' GIRL ON SYRIA SUCK-UP TOUR
President Bush yesterday blasted House Speaker Nancy Pelosi for cavorting with Syrian strongman Bashar Assad....
Strongman? Cavorting? Suck-up? Cover girl? Ass(ad)-kicking? You know, reading this crap is like wandering much too far into the adult section of the video store, all the way to the grimy corner where they keep the really disgusting porn that involves elaborate tales of humiliation and subjugation.
This is how right-wingers see American democracy.
****
And while we're on the subject on the right's sexual psyche, we have this from Lucianne Goldberg today, in reference to a New York Observer story:
I believe that's what Goldberg and various other GOP schoolgirls have also told us about Donald Rumsfeld, Dick Cheney, and George W. Bush.
****
UPDATE: And then, at the other extreme -- or maybe not -- we have President Bush distinguishing CBS's Bill Plante from another reporter named Bill by saying that Plante is "the cute-looking one." Bizarre.
New York Post today:
W. KICKS NANCY'S ASSAD
SPEAKER A 'COVER' GIRL ON SYRIA SUCK-UP TOUR
President Bush yesterday blasted House Speaker Nancy Pelosi for cavorting with Syrian strongman Bashar Assad....
Strongman? Cavorting? Suck-up? Cover girl? Ass(ad)-kicking? You know, reading this crap is like wandering much too far into the adult section of the video store, all the way to the grimy corner where they keep the really disgusting porn that involves elaborate tales of humiliation and subjugation.
This is how right-wingers see American democracy.
****
And while we're on the subject on the right's sexual psyche, we have this from Lucianne Goldberg today, in reference to a New York Observer story:
I believe that's what Goldberg and various other GOP schoolgirls have also told us about Donald Rumsfeld, Dick Cheney, and George W. Bush.
****
UPDATE: And then, at the other extreme -- or maybe not -- we have President Bush distinguishing CBS's Bill Plante from another reporter named Bill by saying that Plante is "the cute-looking one." Bizarre.
OUR GUYS
Echoing Seymour Hersh, ABC's Brian Ross and Christopher Isham identify an Al Qaeda-affiliated group that's being funded by the U.S. to undermine Iran, with no congressional oversight:
A Pakistani tribal militant group responsible for a series of deadly guerrilla raids inside Iran has been secretly encouraged and advised by American officials since 2005, U.S. and Pakistani intelligence sources tell ABC News.
The group, called Jundullah, is made up of members of the Baluchi tribe and operates out of the Baluchistan province in Pakistan, just across the border from Iran....
Tribal sources tell ABC News that money for Jundullah is funneled to its youthful leader, Abd el Malik Regi, through Iranian exiles who have connections with European and Gulf states....
"He used to fight with the Taliban. He's part drug smuggler, part Taliban, part Sunni activist," said Alexis Debat, a senior fellow on counterterrorism at the Nixon Center and an ABC News consultant who recently met with Pakistani officials and tribal members.
"Regi is essentially commanding a force of several hundred guerrilla fighters that stage attacks across the border into Iran on Iranian military officers, Iranian intelligence officers, kidnapping them, executing them on camera," Debat said....
That jibes with what Hersh told us a couple of months ago:
The U.S. has ... taken part in clandestine operations aimed at Iran and its ally Syria. A by-product of these activities has been the bolstering of Sunni extremist groups that espouse a militant vision of Islam and are hostile to America and sympathetic to Al Qaeda.
The Bushies tell ABC that Jundullah is helping in the fight against Al Qaeda. But a Pakistan news source asserted in 2004 that Jundullah is linked to Al Qaeda:
"Many of those involved in the recent terrorist attacks in the city received training in camps in Waziristan," says Tariq Jamil, chief of the Karachi police. "Jundullah has close ties with Al-Qaeda."
And the Asia Times noted in 2004 that
Jundullah was allegedly headed by Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the al-Qaeda operational commander of the September 11 terrorist attack in the US.
Whose brilliant idea is this? Hersh told us:
While Rice has been deeply involved in shaping the public policy, former and current officials said that the clandestine side has been guided by Cheney.
And ABC now says:
Pakistani government sources say the secret campaign against Iran by Jundullah was on the agenda when Vice President Dick Cheney met with Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf in February.
The Democrats should have started impeachment proceedings against this sonofabitch in the first hundred hours.
Echoing Seymour Hersh, ABC's Brian Ross and Christopher Isham identify an Al Qaeda-affiliated group that's being funded by the U.S. to undermine Iran, with no congressional oversight:
A Pakistani tribal militant group responsible for a series of deadly guerrilla raids inside Iran has been secretly encouraged and advised by American officials since 2005, U.S. and Pakistani intelligence sources tell ABC News.
The group, called Jundullah, is made up of members of the Baluchi tribe and operates out of the Baluchistan province in Pakistan, just across the border from Iran....
Tribal sources tell ABC News that money for Jundullah is funneled to its youthful leader, Abd el Malik Regi, through Iranian exiles who have connections with European and Gulf states....
"He used to fight with the Taliban. He's part drug smuggler, part Taliban, part Sunni activist," said Alexis Debat, a senior fellow on counterterrorism at the Nixon Center and an ABC News consultant who recently met with Pakistani officials and tribal members.
"Regi is essentially commanding a force of several hundred guerrilla fighters that stage attacks across the border into Iran on Iranian military officers, Iranian intelligence officers, kidnapping them, executing them on camera," Debat said....
That jibes with what Hersh told us a couple of months ago:
The U.S. has ... taken part in clandestine operations aimed at Iran and its ally Syria. A by-product of these activities has been the bolstering of Sunni extremist groups that espouse a militant vision of Islam and are hostile to America and sympathetic to Al Qaeda.
The Bushies tell ABC that Jundullah is helping in the fight against Al Qaeda. But a Pakistan news source asserted in 2004 that Jundullah is linked to Al Qaeda:
"Many of those involved in the recent terrorist attacks in the city received training in camps in Waziristan," says Tariq Jamil, chief of the Karachi police. "Jundullah has close ties with Al-Qaeda."
And the Asia Times noted in 2004 that
Jundullah was allegedly headed by Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the al-Qaeda operational commander of the September 11 terrorist attack in the US.
Whose brilliant idea is this? Hersh told us:
While Rice has been deeply involved in shaping the public policy, former and current officials said that the clandestine side has been guided by Cheney.
And ABC now says:
Pakistani government sources say the secret campaign against Iran by Jundullah was on the agenda when Vice President Dick Cheney met with Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf in February.
The Democrats should have started impeachment proceedings against this sonofabitch in the first hundred hours.
Tuesday, April 03, 2007
EEEK! EEEK! NANCY PELOSI WORE A VEIL IN SYRIA!
Yes she did, in a mosque in Damascus.
And while various knuckle-dragging right-wing morons get their knickers in a twist about this ("Pelosi Allows Radical Muslim Propaganda Coup"!!!), let me remind you that Pelosi's own faith, Roman Catholicism, required women to wear veils in church until Vatican II -- which took place when she was in her mid-twenties. Some Catholics are still steamed about the abandonment of that custom -- here's a "traditionalist" Catholic Web site's call for the return of veil-wearing by Catholic women.
I'd also like to point out that, like a lot of goyim, I've worn yarmulkes at weddings. Last time I looked, it didn't turn me Jewish.
****
UPDATE: John the Baptist's tomb is in the mosque Pelosi visited. Freepers are examining another photo of her and asking if she's making the sign of the cross before the tomb. They've got that photo and, as a lapsed Catholic, I have to say I think that's exactly what she's doing -- just the way I'm sure she did it while wearing a veil many times in the past.
****
UPDATE: Guess what Jackie wore when she married JFK? Guess what Laura Bush wore at the Vatican? The Mahablog talks about all that, and has the pictures.
****
AND: dnA at Too Sense points out the difference between a headscarf and a hijab, for right-wingers who can't be bothered to learn the difference.
****
AND ALSO: They wear veils at Mel Gibson's church.
Yes she did, in a mosque in Damascus.
And while various knuckle-dragging right-wing morons get their knickers in a twist about this ("Pelosi Allows Radical Muslim Propaganda Coup"!!!), let me remind you that Pelosi's own faith, Roman Catholicism, required women to wear veils in church until Vatican II -- which took place when she was in her mid-twenties. Some Catholics are still steamed about the abandonment of that custom -- here's a "traditionalist" Catholic Web site's call for the return of veil-wearing by Catholic women.
I'd also like to point out that, like a lot of goyim, I've worn yarmulkes at weddings. Last time I looked, it didn't turn me Jewish.
****
UPDATE: John the Baptist's tomb is in the mosque Pelosi visited. Freepers are examining another photo of her and asking if she's making the sign of the cross before the tomb. They've got that photo and, as a lapsed Catholic, I have to say I think that's exactly what she's doing -- just the way I'm sure she did it while wearing a veil many times in the past.
****
UPDATE: Guess what Jackie wore when she married JFK? Guess what Laura Bush wore at the Vatican? The Mahablog talks about all that, and has the pictures.
****
AND: dnA at Too Sense points out the difference between a headscarf and a hijab, for right-wingers who can't be bothered to learn the difference.
****
AND ALSO: They wear veils at Mel Gibson's church.
THEY ALSO SERVE ...
Just thought you'd like to know that a very popular thread at Free Republic right now is "Victory in Iraq... Bumper Sticker Ideas." Yup, that's what's keeping us from Mission Accomplished -- a lack of pithy bumper-sticker slogans:
We are losing the media battle for the hearts and minds of Americans over the war on terrorism in Iraq. The left controls the MSM...networks, much of cable, the major newspapers, magazines, hollywood, academia, etc....
The only way we can reach the public is by going around the MSM. This doesn't leave many avenues but there is one...outdoor advertising. While we don't have the money to rent thousands of billboards (yet) there is one thing we can do in the next 18 months that could be very effective...bumper stickers....
We need to create BS "slogans" that our targets will go "hmmm" at. They can't be in your face, they can't be overtly political and they absolutely cannot make them feel like they are traitors or are being accused of not supporting the military. ...
I like that last part, given the fact that the most popular bumper sticker so far seems to be:
THANK A DEMOCRAT FOR THE NEXT 9/11.
Other favorites:
The Democrats - What Iran Wants!
Defeat Terrorism - Defeat democRATS
Withdraw? Are we French?
Terrorists will kill liberals first
Piss off Ted Kennedy
Win in Iraq !
Peace or Islam,choose one!
Who wants to lose the war on terror besides the Democrats?
Democrats have converted to terrorism
Democrats have just ceded the U.S. to Islam
Democrats invite terrorists to come to America
Democrats pray to Allah for more power
Democrats ask terrorists to help them get reelected!
What do Kennedy, Clinton and Pelosi have in common? They all want the terrorist to win.
Lying
Intently
Because
Everyone
Resists
All
Liberals
(Clever, that, or it would be if it made any sense whatsoever.)
Islam is the Problem
Not George Bush
Vote Democrat-You’ll Look GREAT In A Burqa!
Why Does Pelosi Look So Much Like My Dog’s (Picture of dog’s rear end and tail)
And ultimately we get this:
Stiffen Up, America!
or, with frustration...
Fer Chrissake, Stiffen Up!
And so we arrive exactly where we thought we'd arrive.
Just thought you'd like to know that a very popular thread at Free Republic right now is "Victory in Iraq... Bumper Sticker Ideas." Yup, that's what's keeping us from Mission Accomplished -- a lack of pithy bumper-sticker slogans:
We are losing the media battle for the hearts and minds of Americans over the war on terrorism in Iraq. The left controls the MSM...networks, much of cable, the major newspapers, magazines, hollywood, academia, etc....
The only way we can reach the public is by going around the MSM. This doesn't leave many avenues but there is one...outdoor advertising. While we don't have the money to rent thousands of billboards (yet) there is one thing we can do in the next 18 months that could be very effective...bumper stickers....
We need to create BS "slogans" that our targets will go "hmmm" at. They can't be in your face, they can't be overtly political and they absolutely cannot make them feel like they are traitors or are being accused of not supporting the military. ...
I like that last part, given the fact that the most popular bumper sticker so far seems to be:
THANK A DEMOCRAT FOR THE NEXT 9/11.
Other favorites:
The Democrats - What Iran Wants!
Defeat Terrorism - Defeat democRATS
Withdraw? Are we French?
Terrorists will kill liberals first
Piss off Ted Kennedy
Win in Iraq !
Peace or Islam,choose one!
Who wants to lose the war on terror besides the Democrats?
Democrats have converted to terrorism
Democrats have just ceded the U.S. to Islam
Democrats invite terrorists to come to America
Democrats pray to Allah for more power
Democrats ask terrorists to help them get reelected!
What do Kennedy, Clinton and Pelosi have in common? They all want the terrorist to win.
Lying
Intently
Because
Everyone
Resists
All
Liberals
(Clever, that, or it would be if it made any sense whatsoever.)
Islam is the Problem
Not George Bush
Vote Democrat-You’ll Look GREAT In A Burqa!
Why Does Pelosi Look So Much Like My Dog’s (Picture of dog’s rear end and tail)
And ultimately we get this:
Stiffen Up, America!
or, with frustration...
Fer Chrissake, Stiffen Up!
And so we arrive exactly where we thought we'd arrive.
A TRUE STORY ABOUT HECKLING
Right-wingers were appalled at the bogus story that CNN's Michael Ware heckled John McCain. Anyone remember any right-wing outrage about this?
...On October 27, 1999, [Al] Gore and [Bill] Bradley staged their first debate in a small venue at Dartmouth College. The session was broadcast live on CNN. The 300 journalists in attendance watched on large-screen TVs, penned up in a separate pressroom.
... Howard Mortman, then of the Hotline, appeared on that publication's cable show one week later. Mortman described the remarkable scene inside that Hanover hall.
... "The media groaned, howled and laughed almost every time Al Gore said something," Mortman reported. "What happened with Bradley?" a panelist asked. "Stone silence. Really," Mortman said....
Seven weeks after the Dartmouth debate, Salon's Jake Tapper described the same conduct. Appearing on C-SPAN's Washington Journal, he replied to a question about "liberal bias:"
TAPPER: Well, I can tell you that the only media bias I have detected in terms of a group media bias was, at the first debate between Bill Bradley and Al Gore, there was hissing for Gore in the media room up at Dartmouth College. The reporters were hissing Gore, and that's the only time I’ve ever heard the press room boo or hiss any candidate of any party at any event....
If we're talking about the utter abandonment of any pretense of objectivity, does it even matter that this wasn't done to Gore's face?
Do you know of any high-minded right-wing defender of journalistic standards who's expressed outrage about this?
Right-wingers were appalled at the bogus story that CNN's Michael Ware heckled John McCain. Anyone remember any right-wing outrage about this?
...On October 27, 1999, [Al] Gore and [Bill] Bradley staged their first debate in a small venue at Dartmouth College. The session was broadcast live on CNN. The 300 journalists in attendance watched on large-screen TVs, penned up in a separate pressroom.
... Howard Mortman, then of the Hotline, appeared on that publication's cable show one week later. Mortman described the remarkable scene inside that Hanover hall.
... "The media groaned, howled and laughed almost every time Al Gore said something," Mortman reported. "What happened with Bradley?" a panelist asked. "Stone silence. Really," Mortman said....
Seven weeks after the Dartmouth debate, Salon's Jake Tapper described the same conduct. Appearing on C-SPAN's Washington Journal, he replied to a question about "liberal bias:"
TAPPER: Well, I can tell you that the only media bias I have detected in terms of a group media bias was, at the first debate between Bill Bradley and Al Gore, there was hissing for Gore in the media room up at Dartmouth College. The reporters were hissing Gore, and that's the only time I’ve ever heard the press room boo or hiss any candidate of any party at any event....
If we're talking about the utter abandonment of any pretense of objectivity, does it even matter that this wasn't done to Gore's face?
Do you know of any high-minded right-wing defender of journalistic standards who's expressed outrage about this?
WHY McCAIN CAN'T WIN
Even as John McCain was desperately trying to reach out to red-meat right-wing GOP primary voters by holding a pressconference after his Iraq-is-so-getting-better photo op, he was insulting Republican voters' heroes. Check out what he says in the first video posted here by Raw Story, starting at 1:05:
...and I'm not saying that "the mission is accomplished" or "last throes" or "a few dead-enders," but what we don't read about every day and what is new since the surge began is a lot of the good news....
Good grief -- he's insulting Bush, Cheney and Rummy! He really doesn't get it -- red-meat GOPers still think those guys were right.
Even as John McCain was desperately trying to reach out to red-meat right-wing GOP primary voters by holding a pressconference after his Iraq-is-so-getting-better photo op, he was insulting Republican voters' heroes. Check out what he says in the first video posted here by Raw Story, starting at 1:05:
...and I'm not saying that "the mission is accomplished" or "last throes" or "a few dead-enders," but what we don't read about every day and what is new since the surge began is a lot of the good news....
Good grief -- he's insulting Bush, Cheney and Rummy! He really doesn't get it -- red-meat GOPers still think those guys were right.
Monday, April 02, 2007
THE NEVER-ENDING CIVIL WAR
This is the creepiest thing I've seen on the Internet in a while:
Erik Loomis of Alterdestiny posted it over the weekend. I'll let him explain what it is:
... this poster [was] made for the country/metal musician Hank Williams III by Art Schmuck.
The image takes an old picture of Robert E. Lee, puts a Jason-style hockey mask thing on him, and has him holding the decapitated head of William Tecumseh Sherman.
That's right -- just in case you're one of those naive people who thought the Civil War was over.
Here's part of Erik's gloss on this image (though you really should read the whole thing):
... The Lee image is iconic and many of the people who purchased that poster no doubt know where it comes from. Even if they don't, the artist and Hank III certainly do. By giving Lee that mask, they make connections between the Confederacy and terrorist organizations like the Ku Klux Klan. While the actual imagery may be different than the KKK, using the horror movie theme impresses upon viewers that Confederate leaders were as tough as Freddy Kruger and Jason and that anyone who gets in their way will be crushed like roaches. Of course, in reality the people this terror was turned upon was not Sherman or other Union leaders but African-Americans who escaped the horrors of slavery only to face a southern white populace determined to destroy all vestiges of black freedom and personal dignity. As Sherman played such a large role in freeing the slaves, the decapitation of him also serves as a decapitation of all he stood for, including the ending of slavery....
All true -- but I'd also add that it's a message of violent defiance against the the North as a whole. And though I suppose it's meant to be in good fun, and though it's based on wishful thinking rather than an actual act of violence, it's almost like an insurgent beheading video.
George W. Bush's appalling presidency is a setback for the culture war some Southerners will never cease trying to wage against non-Southern America -- but it's a long war, and I can't help thinking the South will rise again.
This is the creepiest thing I've seen on the Internet in a while:
Erik Loomis of Alterdestiny posted it over the weekend. I'll let him explain what it is:
... this poster [was] made for the country/metal musician Hank Williams III by Art Schmuck.
The image takes an old picture of Robert E. Lee, puts a Jason-style hockey mask thing on him, and has him holding the decapitated head of William Tecumseh Sherman.
That's right -- just in case you're one of those naive people who thought the Civil War was over.
Here's part of Erik's gloss on this image (though you really should read the whole thing):
... The Lee image is iconic and many of the people who purchased that poster no doubt know where it comes from. Even if they don't, the artist and Hank III certainly do. By giving Lee that mask, they make connections between the Confederacy and terrorist organizations like the Ku Klux Klan. While the actual imagery may be different than the KKK, using the horror movie theme impresses upon viewers that Confederate leaders were as tough as Freddy Kruger and Jason and that anyone who gets in their way will be crushed like roaches. Of course, in reality the people this terror was turned upon was not Sherman or other Union leaders but African-Americans who escaped the horrors of slavery only to face a southern white populace determined to destroy all vestiges of black freedom and personal dignity. As Sherman played such a large role in freeing the slaves, the decapitation of him also serves as a decapitation of all he stood for, including the ending of slavery....
All true -- but I'd also add that it's a message of violent defiance against the the North as a whole. And though I suppose it's meant to be in good fun, and though it's based on wishful thinking rather than an actual act of violence, it's almost like an insurgent beheading video.
George W. Bush's appalling presidency is a setback for the culture war some Southerners will never cease trying to wage against non-Southern America -- but it's a long war, and I can't help thinking the South will rise again.
ANOTHER SIGN OF PROGRESS
From CNN, in case you missed it:
Last week's suicide truck bombing in the northern city of Tal Afar is the deadliest single attack since the beginning of the Iraq war in 2003, a high-ranking Iraqi Interior Ministry official said Monday as a new death toll for the blast surfaced.
The Wednesday attack -- in which a truck packed with 4,000 pounds (1,814 kilograms) of explosives detonated in a Shiite area of the city -- was initially blamed for 85 deaths, according to an Iraqi army officer in Tal Afar who estimated the death toll Thursday. Hundreds of others were wounded.
But the Interior Ministry official said Monday that the death toll was 152, making it the war's deadliest single attack....
Ah, but as we learned at the time of the attack from Army Brigadier General Mick Bednarek, deputy commander of Task Force Lighting and Multinational Division North, this "only demonstrates to the world how desperate this enemy is." So it's really OK.
From CNN, in case you missed it:
Last week's suicide truck bombing in the northern city of Tal Afar is the deadliest single attack since the beginning of the Iraq war in 2003, a high-ranking Iraqi Interior Ministry official said Monday as a new death toll for the blast surfaced.
The Wednesday attack -- in which a truck packed with 4,000 pounds (1,814 kilograms) of explosives detonated in a Shiite area of the city -- was initially blamed for 85 deaths, according to an Iraqi army officer in Tal Afar who estimated the death toll Thursday. Hundreds of others were wounded.
But the Interior Ministry official said Monday that the death toll was 152, making it the war's deadliest single attack....
Ah, but as we learned at the time of the attack from Army Brigadier General Mick Bednarek, deputy commander of Task Force Lighting and Multinational Division North, this "only demonstrates to the world how desperate this enemy is." So it's really OK.
Cheney Says Democrats Undercutting U.S. Troops in Iraq
--AP today
Cheney: Democrats Are Undermining Our Troops
--AP, March 25, 2007
Cheney: Democrats Undermining U.S. Troops
--UPI, March 13, 2007
Er, dude? We heard you the first time. We've got it. Thanks for sharing.
--AP today
Cheney: Democrats Are Undermining Our Troops
--AP, March 25, 2007
Cheney: Democrats Undermining U.S. Troops
--UPI, March 13, 2007
Er, dude? We heard you the first time. We've got it. Thanks for sharing.
NO GRACE UNDER PRESSURE
So Bush isn't going to throw out the first pitch at the Washington Nationals' home opener, for the second year in a row? That's what The Washington Post says, although the Post tiptoes around the glaringly obvious reason. (Go to any of the links here if you want to see what happened to Cheney last year when he went in Bush's place.)
I wonder if Chris Matthews will have anything to say about this, given how eager he was to gush in the days when Bush actively sought out photo ops of this kind:
Going back to 9/11, Matthews found himself blown away not by Bush's political or military response but by his ability to throw a baseball. He compared the man to--I kid you not--Ernest Hemingway. "There are some things you can't fake," he explained breathlessly. "Either you can throw a strike from sixty feet or you can't. Either you can rise to the occasion on the mound at Yankee Stadium with 56,000 people watching or you can't. On Tuesday night, George W. Bush hit the strike zone in the House that Ruth Built.... This is about knowing what to do at the moment you have to do it--and then doing it. It's about that 'grace under pressure' that Hemingway gave as his very definition of courage."
Oh, gag me. But we can't ignore this kind of nonsense, because far too many idiots think there's some correlation betweeen jockishness and being an effective political leader.
I think they're still selling souvenir photos of Bush on the mound at Yankee Stadium at the southwest entrance to Central Park, a few blocks from where I'm sitting now. (Selling them to the red-state tourists, that is -- no one who lives here ever wanted the damn things.)
So Bush isn't going to throw out the first pitch at the Washington Nationals' home opener, for the second year in a row? That's what The Washington Post says, although the Post tiptoes around the glaringly obvious reason. (Go to any of the links here if you want to see what happened to Cheney last year when he went in Bush's place.)
I wonder if Chris Matthews will have anything to say about this, given how eager he was to gush in the days when Bush actively sought out photo ops of this kind:
Going back to 9/11, Matthews found himself blown away not by Bush's political or military response but by his ability to throw a baseball. He compared the man to--I kid you not--Ernest Hemingway. "There are some things you can't fake," he explained breathlessly. "Either you can throw a strike from sixty feet or you can't. Either you can rise to the occasion on the mound at Yankee Stadium with 56,000 people watching or you can't. On Tuesday night, George W. Bush hit the strike zone in the House that Ruth Built.... This is about knowing what to do at the moment you have to do it--and then doing it. It's about that 'grace under pressure' that Hemingway gave as his very definition of courage."
Oh, gag me. But we can't ignore this kind of nonsense, because far too many idiots think there's some correlation betweeen jockishness and being an effective political leader.
I think they're still selling souvenir photos of Bush on the mound at Yankee Stadium at the southwest entrance to Central Park, a few blocks from where I'm sitting now. (Selling them to the red-state tourists, that is -- no one who lives here ever wanted the damn things.)
WHAT IF THEY GAVE A SHAMELESS PHOTO OP AND NOBODY CAME?
Notice what you don't see in the blog response to John McCain's heavily guarded stroll through Baghdad: any reaction from right-wingers. There seems to be none -- positive or negative. What's more, there's no McCain story topping the Lucianne.com site, and as I type this there are no McCain discussions on the first threads page at Free Republic. If this had worked for him, there'd have been positive Net chatter on the right for days.
There are a couple of positive statements about McCain in this Free Republic thread, but for the most part the Freepers don't care about him -- all they want to talk about is the media:
Yep. The MSM is the scorekeeper for the terrorists.
****
The delegation was accompanied by heavily armed U.S. troops ... They traveled in armored military vehicles under heavy guard.
AP just cannot help themselves, even in an article talking about the lack of coverage of the good news and a focus made on the bad, they have to take a shot.
****
You're right. The MSM always puts a hugh wet blanket on top of ANY good news. They do make it obvious what their job 'really' is.
*****
Yes, there is much good information that is not being published by MSM. And the Democrats are purposefully keeping their voters dumbed down....
And on and on. It's as if McCain disappeared from his own photo op.
So, no, this stunt won't help him in the primaries. The message was too complicated -- McCain was trying to make a point about the war and a point about the media. Really, if he wants GOP votes, he should just stay stateside and focus on targeted attacks against "liberal" institutions such as the media. The one detail of the story that actually has aroused the interest of the right is the Matt Drudge claim that CNN's Michael Ware "heckled" McCain and Senator Lindsay Graham. That's the kind of thing that gets right-wingers' blood racing -- the real enemy, the real face of evil, given a name and a face. Alas, it wasn't Dan Rather or David Gregory or "Katie Commie," but Michael Ware will do.
(TBogg, by the way, makes short work of the Ware story, particularly credulity-straining quote Drudge ascribes to his unnamed source. UPDATE: The Carpetbagger Report debunks the story in greater detail. UPDATE: And now video posted at Raw Story proves that there was no heckling.)
By the way, there's an amusing Freudian slip in that Free Republic thread, in a statement of praise for one of McCain's possible rivals:
I'm not ruling out any of the announced candidates yet, but if Fred Thompson jumps in I'm on his bang wagon.
Yeah, I'm sure you are.
Notice what you don't see in the blog response to John McCain's heavily guarded stroll through Baghdad: any reaction from right-wingers. There seems to be none -- positive or negative. What's more, there's no McCain story topping the Lucianne.com site, and as I type this there are no McCain discussions on the first threads page at Free Republic. If this had worked for him, there'd have been positive Net chatter on the right for days.
There are a couple of positive statements about McCain in this Free Republic thread, but for the most part the Freepers don't care about him -- all they want to talk about is the media:
Yep. The MSM is the scorekeeper for the terrorists.
****
The delegation was accompanied by heavily armed U.S. troops ... They traveled in armored military vehicles under heavy guard.
AP just cannot help themselves, even in an article talking about the lack of coverage of the good news and a focus made on the bad, they have to take a shot.
****
You're right. The MSM always puts a hugh wet blanket on top of ANY good news. They do make it obvious what their job 'really' is.
*****
Yes, there is much good information that is not being published by MSM. And the Democrats are purposefully keeping their voters dumbed down....
And on and on. It's as if McCain disappeared from his own photo op.
So, no, this stunt won't help him in the primaries. The message was too complicated -- McCain was trying to make a point about the war and a point about the media. Really, if he wants GOP votes, he should just stay stateside and focus on targeted attacks against "liberal" institutions such as the media. The one detail of the story that actually has aroused the interest of the right is the Matt Drudge claim that CNN's Michael Ware "heckled" McCain and Senator Lindsay Graham. That's the kind of thing that gets right-wingers' blood racing -- the real enemy, the real face of evil, given a name and a face. Alas, it wasn't Dan Rather or David Gregory or "Katie Commie," but Michael Ware will do.
(TBogg, by the way, makes short work of the Ware story, particularly credulity-straining quote Drudge ascribes to his unnamed source. UPDATE: The Carpetbagger Report debunks the story in greater detail. UPDATE: And now video posted at Raw Story proves that there was no heckling.)
By the way, there's an amusing Freudian slip in that Free Republic thread, in a statement of praise for one of McCain's possible rivals:
I'm not ruling out any of the announced candidates yet, but if Fred Thompson jumps in I'm on his bang wagon.
Yeah, I'm sure you are.
Sunday, April 01, 2007
In a recent piece in The Atlantic, Ross Douthat writes that "it's become fashionable to draw comparisons between George W. Bush's sins and those of Richard Nixon, and for good reason. Both presidents are likely to be remembered as polarizing figures who left the country more divided than they found it. Both wereaccused of wartime deceptions: both also lost their way in disastrous second terms. And both men's blunders...are the sort that could take decades to undo." I'm not sure I understand the last sentence there; it's certainly true of Bush, whose first act as president was to undo the economic gains bequeathed to him by the previous administration, and who has openly boasted that he intends to leave his misbegotten war for his successor to clean up. But the biggest and most ruinous mistakes Nixon made in office were related to his and his aides' criminal conduct, the most potentially damaging policies those related to his attempt to create an imperial presidency and destroy the system of checks and balances, all of which were immediately corrected by driving the asshole-in-chief out of office. If Nixon did anything that blighted the country for decades to come, it was establishing the Southern strategy of pandering to racist white voters which enabled Republican candidates very different in both political approach and ideological bent than himself to thrive and prosper.
Yet Douthat's point is that what Bush and Nixon really have in common is that, even in their moment of self-implosion, they can be credited with laying the groundwork for future Republican presidents who will carry forth their "legacy." I guess it all comes down to what you mean by a legacy. It's not as if Nixon and Ronald Reagan had anything much in common in terms of the direction in which they wanted to steer the country, but they did both have little "[R]"s next to their names on the voting ballots. Bush obviously has a lot more in common with the man who explained to David Frost that "if the president does it, then it's not illegal." But it's looking more and more as if this will not turn out to be a banner than anyone wants to pick up any more than it was in Nixon's day. What exactly is the Bush "legacy" that Douthat thinks other candidates will openly embrace. Well, writes Douthat, other candidates will follow Bush's lead in blathering about "fiscal restraint" without actually doing anything to keep the budget or the size of the government in check if that might cost them a vote somewhere. He probably has something there, though he's out of his mind if he thinks that this particular vein of hypocrisy was invented by Bush; Reagan ran with it like Charlie Brown trying to get a kite in the air. (The only Republican president of the past quarter-century to have actually made a public show of doing something politically risky in the name of budgetary sanity was Bush's father, and he's been pilloried for it ever since.)
Douthat also thinks that "although the Iraq War is likely to be an albatross for the Republican Party for years to come," it doesn't take anything away from "the rest of Bush's national security vision." Which is what? Refusing to negotiate with North Korea, with the result that they see no reason not to pursue their nuclear program? Making a token show of cleaning up Afghanistan on the way to the showdown with Iraq that the administration really wanted, so that years later, the army is stretched too thin to prevent the Taliban from regrouping? Never bringing Osama bin Laden to justiice? Gitmo, Abu Ghraib, torture? Using the Patriot Act to give the administration means to shore itself up politically? No, Bush's national security "vision" is the Iraq War. It was supposed to be the case for "preventive war" and the first step in boldly remaking the Middle East; it was supposed to be such a great thing, with such seismic, positive effects, that it would make little things like never capturing Bin Laden (never mind not preventing 9/11 in the first place, something that Bush and Ashcroft and company may get more of an automatic pass on than they deserve) forgivable. Take that away and all you have is the tough talk you expect from any adminstration, married to more evidence of Bush's wild-eyed power-grabbing. And you can't just not take Iraq into account; it's the huge mess that will define Bush's administration; it deserves to, because Bush did so much to insist on being defined by it back when everyone was calling it a shining success.
Like Castro, Bush really believes that "history will absolve" him--except that Castro at least used to get out of bed in the morning and do some work. In retirement, he'll sit in a big room at his ranch and surround himself with courtiers who will interview him again and again ("And then, while everybody else on Air Force One was cowering and whimpering, I swing decisively into action...") and tell him about the greatness of his legacy, just as Nixon did with professional boot-lickers such as Monica Crowley. But Bush's legacy is likely to remain that of a stupid rich layabout whose family worked to jigger him into the presidency as if it were an open slot on the board of directors of a savings and loan, a job that he wanted because it came with a really neat weekly gathering at the country club golf course. Stuck there with no mandate and a minimum of actual popular support, he was just supposed to quietly do his eight years and then retire to the speechmaking circuit, spending the rest of his life enjoying being addressed as "Mr. President." And then something happened that reminded everyone that the job actually comes with real responsibilities, and the poor fella went batshit. He was given the absolute trust of a frightened nation to do whatever it took to make people feel safe, and he--a man with no sense of other human beings in the world and no understanding of the traditions and ideals of his country or how its government was meant to work but a deep belief in his own innate greatness, the greateness of someone who doesn't have to do anything to prove it but who cannot be questioned, because it's tantamount to doubting God's wisdom in anointing him as His earthly representative--used that trust to claim unchecked power for himself, just because he should have it, and every kind of advantage for his political party, because his party is America. He knows that he can't single out every person who fails to understand all this and have them locked up, but the fact that he can't is part of what makes him look so pouty and aggrieved these days.
Who will replace him? Well, John McCain has no shot, let's get that out of the way right now. We live in a culture where attitude counts more than anything, and the fact that Bush managed to hang onto reserves of popularity for as long as he did can be credited to the fact that his stupid, belligerant arrogance looked to a lot of people like the manly impudence they associate with Hollywood Western action stars, the kind that you want to send out to scare the terrrorists, comptence be damned. McCain simply doesn't have the right attitude for a Republican presidential candidate--he doesn't do piety, and he has a sense of irony that the true believers see as snotty, too David Letterman. So the candidate who is actually closest to the culturally conservative true believers on such issues as war and abortion will never get their votes because they think that he isn't their sort. Besides, the religious right will never forgive McCain for his attacks on them, any more than the kind of people who admired him for those attacks will ever forgive him for trying to suck up to them now. The most amusing thing about Mitt Romny in this context is that, as he goes from forum to forum on his knees, whining that every potential voter tell him what they want to hear and, by God, he'll say it and believe it, he resembles nothing so much as Bush's dad, except without the resume and the money. I always assumed that without the resume and the money, Bush Senior never would have made it out the first gate; Romney has already done better than that, but, again unlike a Bush, the poor guy has actually had to get out there and work a little.
I remember that when Bush Junior was running in 2000, I heard from more than one Texas-based editor or reporter that, of course, they knew how to dismantle him in about ten seconds of air time, take apart the illusion that he had any business running for dogcatcher and leave his hopes flapping in the breeze, but nobody wanted to be the one who spoiled the state's chances for having their guy in the White House. It's one more measure of how weird New York is that, in the last few weeks, local magazines and newspapers have been lining up to publish articles expressing something like dismay at the prospect of a President Guiliani. The hot line on Guiliani lately is that his lively personal history and vulnerability on social issues where the religious right is concerned will have to hurt him. Yet he and Bush have a core resemblance to each other that might override all that in a field where the religious right has no real true believer like Bush to throw its weight behind. Guiliani made his name as a prosectuor of white collar criminals and Mafia figures, then became the mayor who liked to boast of his bare-knuckled triumph over the squeegee men and graffiti artists. The major link holding the pieces of his career together is a self-righteous satisfaction in having his boot on some miscreant's throat. In the documentary Guiliani Time, Guiliani can be seen mocking a man with Parkinson's disease who calls in to his radio show complaining that his benefits have been cut off. What's creepy and disturbing about it is the naked enjoyment Guiliani seems to take in having the power to rub the man'snose in it; he makes no attempt to ask the man about his situation and find out what's happening with him, he simply responds to anything that he perceives as a challenge with chortling contempt: I'm the big dog, so you must not matter. It calls up memories of the infamous moment when Bush told a man in a crowd, "Who cares what you think?"--and that was before 9/11 was sold as confirmation that Bush was no mere mortal man who walks humbly among us. As his history with Bernard Kerik and his firing of Police Chief William Bratton demonstrate, he also shares with Bush a preference for cronyism over competence, and even an outright opposition to competence when he feels that it's getting in his way. If Guiliani has a clear walk to the Republican nomination, it'll be at least in part because Republican voters still feel drawn to the ugly, thuggish qualities of George Bush--qualities that they mistook for personal strength--and decided that what they really want now is a smart George Bush, a loud-mouthed bully who won't overreach. I'm honestly not sure at this point whether a smart Bush--a Bush who might know how to control himself-- would be better or worse than the Bush we've had, a model programmed to autodestruct. I could be very happy never finding out for sure.
[cross-posted on The Phil Nugent Experience]
I usually skip the celebrity interview segments on The Daily Show, but when Dennis Miller oozed out onto the floor last week, I found that I was curious to see what the weary old fudd was like in these hard days for the Bush hardcore. Part of it was the way Jon Stewart quietly uttered his name in the show's opening moments, as if worried that, given the opportunity to react, the crowd might boo, the way they did when John Bolton took a few moments away from running the International Society of Evil to drop by and explain that he didn't mind working for the most unpopular president of modern times because, hey, back in the sixties he was a Goldwater supporter. (He was? And now he supports Bush? Does he think that Bush and Goldwater have anything in common? I wish I could use one of my three wishes to bring Goldwater back from the dead just long enough to let him have three minutes to share his thoughts on the current administration with the nearest microphone.) I guess Stewart feels some kind of professional brotherhood with Miller, who he called "a very funny comedian," even though "funny" is simply inaccurate and even "comedian" is pushing it. I've never liked Miller, just as I've never really liked Christopher Hitchens, though I do think that Hitchens wanted to be a journalist, whereas Miller is a guy who'd have been happy hosting a game show or being a weatherman, so long as it got him some money and attention. Instead, he made it onto Saturday Night Live and was the first performer there to be the official "Weekend Update" guy who didn't generally appear in other sketches, a distinction that is a tribute to his one-note quality as a personality. In some of his book reviews, Hitchens actually managed to achieve competence; Miller, whether on SNL or hosting a failed talk show or failing on Monday Night Football or "starring" in a movie spin-off from the played-out Tales from the Crypt TV show, is just a stiff, tight-assed dude with a geeky sophomore's knack for stringing cultural references together. Even his most distinctively irritating quality--the way he laughs at his own jokes even as he's spewing them, to tip the audience off that the sentences he's speaking are indeed supposed to be jokes--wasn't an original affectation; Eddie Murphy did it to let audiences at the Beverly Hills Cops movies know that the shootouts and explostions that had originally been written with Sylvester Stallone in mind were now supposed to be funny, just because Murphy was now the trigger-happy badass at the center of them. But at least Murphy knew that it would be better for his career, after he'd cooled off considerably, to stop tittering and actually tell some real jokes.
So as I say, I'm predisposed not to be crazy about the guy. My impression that he looked deflated should probably be taken with that in mind. Still, I thought that it was interesting that, with Stewart trying to help him out by presenting him as a real comedian instead of a Limbaugh-like partisan mouthpiece, Miller couldn't help himself: the first thing he did when he sat down in the guest's chair was to tell Stewart that he "appreciated" him for having given "equal time" that night by making some jokes about the Democrats. Miller seemed to think that it was an unusual thing and that maybe Stewart had done it out of respect for Miller being there to keep him honest. He didn't seem to grasp that Stewart, like most comedians, will pick on anybody if they seem to be asking for it. In the same era that Miller has been remaking himself as, in his words, "a Rat Pack of one" for George Bush, Jr., The Daily Show and South Park have established themselves as satirical institutions. The former is regularly identified as somewhat liberal and the latter has its own cult of self-styled "South Park conservatives," but if you actually look at the shows themselves, both have been all over the map in terms of their targets. You can't accuse them of consistently shilling for one side or the other; if they did, they'd be too predictable to be funny, in the way that Rush L:imbaugh, for all that you hear about his supposed wit, is finally too predictable to be really funny. (That's why, when Limbaugh makes a noise that's heard outside his church of the already converted, it's not because he's done something especially funny, it's because, as when he mocked Michael J. Fox's Parkinson's symptoms, he's gone completely beyond the pale.)
Some of us grow up with a romantic attitude about both comics and reporters, because they're supposed to be the ones who know the score and tell the truth. In an age where people use stand-up stages as platforms for getting their own situation comedies and Washington journalists see themselves as validating their own high salaries and speaking fees according to how much cozy "access" they enjoy with the powerful, that might seem like a preposterous notion, but some dreams die hard. If both Hitchens, the self-styled hard-scrapping opinion writer, and Miller, the professional wiseass, have seemed even harder to take than usual in their Bush-era incarnations, it's because, by linking their wagons to Bush's star when he was riding high, they seem to have betrayed the roles they'd chosen for themselves. I'm not saying that it's inconceivable that someone could have honestly supported Bush around the time of the start of the Iraq War and remained smart and funny about it, but both these guys threw down the gauntlet and basically declared that they would stand by Junior through thick and thin, to the bitter end, no matter what. I don't doubt that opportunism had something to do with it, and abject quaking fear in the wake of 9/11, though I suspect that they both also recognized Bush as some kind of soul mate. (What they probably lacked the self-knowledge to see was the real basis for their seeing themselves in him. Like Bush, both Miller and Hitchens have thick, unexamined bullying streaks that have really blossomed in these times.) What I'll bet they didn't realize was just how thin things could get for a Bush loyalist as the bitter end arrived on schedule. Neither can just turn on Bush now; their declarations of eternal fealty are too well-documented, as are their most bilious denunciations of anyone who's ever had the temerity to doubt the greatness of our mighty war president. (Hitchens, who, like Dwight Shrute, Rocky Balboa, and that potted plant that's wilting on my fire escape, is much smarter than Miller, has been showing signs since Katrina that he'd like to tiptoe away from his circa-2004 estimations of Bush's infallibility, but he can't quite do it; in the end, he agrees with Bush that any criticism of Bush amounts to criticism of the war, and Hitchens will never tolerate any criticism of or even any doubts about the war.)
What makes it sad is that these are such rich times for crusading opinion journalists and professional wiseasses, and Miller and Hitchens have cut themselves off from getting a piece of the action. The president of the United States is a moron, he's heading for a constitutional crisis in order to hang onto an Attorney General who is, almost unimaginable as it is, an even bigger moron, the White House is sinking under the weight of its hypocrisy and venality, and poor Dennis Miller is stuck there sitting next to Jon Stewart with nothing he can say but, boy, that Harry Reid's a stiff, huh? And don't get me started on global warming--what a hoax, right? Miller was never going to be the next Lenny Bruce, but as savvy as he once seemed to be--given his level of talent and likability, it's a major feat that he even had a career--I don't think anyone ever expected him to turn out to be the next Westbrook Pegler. (There's a reference for you. If it means nothing to you, don't bother googling it, just take that as the point and move on.) I imagine Miller, around the time of the 2004 elections, catching sight of people telling the truth about Bush and the war on late night TV and smirking as he thought to himself, what losers! But aspiring wiseasses should take him as the cautionary example that he is. In the end, the truth tellers have the most fun.
[cross-posted at The Phil Nugent Experience]
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