Lizz Winstead is one of the hosts of Air America's nine-to-noon show, Unfiltered. I heard her do a breathless rant on the show this morning and I enjoyed it so much I asked for a copy of the text:
I don't know if you've noticed, but it seems that lately more and more Americans are stopping to smell the roses on the freshly dug graves, and after taking a measured, reasoned look at our President, more and more of them are concluding, "Wow, he's a big, lying sack of crap, isn't he?" But this hasn't stopped the Karl Rove spin machine from getting more and more ridiculous. They've already been trying to convince us that a fast-food gig is now a manufacturing job. So what's next? Are they going to try to get us to wear safety goggles when we eat Big Macs? And remember when Bush called himself the Education President? Well, nobody is going to believe that anymore, so what's his next scheme? Issue an Amber Alert every time he leaves a child behind? And what about his Clean Air Initiative? Who knew that he meant that gasoline prices would get so high that nobody could afford to drive? It looks like when it comes to spinning their lies, the Bushies have hit a wall; well, we're going to need a wall to list the names of all who have died because of his corrupt policies. Bush's neo-con job just won't work anymore. The Professor Harold Hill routine is wearing thin. The American public is finally starting to realize that the marching band uniforms are never going to arrive.
Oh, we got trouble, right here in River City. 23:06 BST
You have my deepest apologies for having failed to bring to your attention this wonderfully snarky post by the fabulous Michael Bérubé, who has done it again.
Ken McLeod: The trouble with liberals [...] is that they often mistake a fight for an argument, and the right never does.
To deflect their own accountability, American leaders confidently proclaim that the guilty ones are just a few rotten apples in an otherwise sweet American bushel basket. We are told that the abusers do not represent America. The reality, as always, is more painful. Go out and ask Americans what they think about Abu Ghraib. An ABC News/Washington Post poll recently found that 46 percent of Americans believed that physical abuse short of torture is sometimes acceptable, while 35 percent thought that outright torture is acceptable in some cases.
Again, you will say: Let's not exaggerate. Let's not lose our nerve here. But no other democracy is so exposed by these painful moral juxtapositions, because no other nation has made a civil religion of its self-belief. The abolition of cruel and unusual punishment was a founding premise of that civil religion. This was how the fledgling republic distinguished itself from the cruel tyrannies of Europe. From this sense of exceptionalism grew an exceptional sense of mission. President Reagan's funeral was a high Mass of rededication to that eternal mission. The question is whether these reaffirmations still inspire Americans to be better than they actually are, or whether the nation's rhetoric has degenerated into a ritual concealment of what the country has actually become.
Andrew Sullivan and Gene Healy both denounce Hillary Clinton's insidious plan to "take things away from you [a group of wealth people] on behalf of the common good." And I'm glad they did it. If I may plug my column again this is a debate that liberals will win every day of the week. And it's the debate we should be having -- this is the real ideological divide in the country.
And here's the nut graf from that article:
Put this way, we can see what the real debate in America is all about. There's one party that wants the government to do more to clean the environment, to protect workers' rights, and to raise the funds necessary to spend more on health care and education while narrowing the deficit, and there's another party that's ideologically committed to doing none of these things.
I think Matthew somewhat over-values the current improvement in the economy, such as it is, and underrates the impact a president's policies can have on the economy, both short- and long-term, but I don't think he's wrong about this other stuff.
What worries me quite a bit is that the kind of "improvement" we have now can be manipulated and can easily mislead people into thinking things are not so bad. 16:27 BST
Things I saw
Some idiot at NRO thinks he has proven that same-sex marriage hurts the institution of marriage overall. At Alas, a blog, Lucia picks it apart.
Nathan Newman says the decision in the Barbie case represents a more important victory than some people realize: Not because the court declared that the artist-defendant, who had created photographs condemning consumerism using images of Barbie, could not be sued for copyright violations, since his work was protected under fair use. [...] Corporate use of copyright and trademark laws are destroying the First Amendment every day, as courts threaten to bury defendants in mountains of legal bills. Hell, yes! It's great to see a judge criticize litigants for bringing forward a lousy case because they knew they could out-spend their victim.
Kevin Drum: So is Fahrenheit 9/11 unfair, full of innuendo and cheap shots, and guilty of specious arguments? Sure. But that just makes it the perfect complement to the arguments of many in the pro-war crowd itself. Perhaps the reason they're so mad is that they see more than a little of themselves in it.
I hate to be pedantic, but this "let freedom reign" thing bugs the hell out of me.
The common phrase is "let freedom ring" not "let freedom reign."
A Google search turns up 2,090 references to "let freedom reign" one of the top links coming from a white supremacy web site called "Panzerfaust Records" that features a bunch of racist lyrics. "My Country Tis of Thee" is not amongst them, as you might imagine.
And Jeralyn and everyone else are linking to Scotusblog for the big news of the day, which is that the Supreme Court decided Bush was not king after all.
I haven't seen Fahrenheit 9/11 yet but I'm already sick of pompous oafs who entirely misunderstand the process of trying to fill in the gaps. Moore presents the footage you should have been seeing on your screens all along. This in itself is a good thing. (Via Diana Moon, who had a little brain-fart and consistently refers to the film as "Fahrenheit 411", and whose permalinks seem to be useless. Can't disagree with her about Brooks, either.)
Of course, F9/11 isn't about cinema, it's about something that should be a bit more important to us. Everyone is going to see what significance they want, I suppose; The Atlantic thinks it's what Bush's behavior on that fateful morning says about his lack of sand.
CrazySoph sent a few of us a heads-up on the latest efforts of Bush & friends to keep everyone ignorant about safer sex. I've been a bit preoccupied but Jeanne has it covered. Watch out for that "condoms don't work" meme, folks. They certainly don't work if you don't use 'em.
Hey, remember that ad from the GWB site that looked like it was comparing Democrats to Hitler? Well, they've edited it a bit to make their point more clear, but it's still lousy. 17:39 BST
Buncha links
Today's cynicism alert from Air America's Morning Sedition: Did the administration decide to hold the phony Iraq handover two days early in order to knock down the top headline that Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11 was breaking records?
Years ago, Isaac Asimov analyzed "the Reagan Doctrine", and came to the conclusion that it was full of contradictions. Rantivation has the whole thing, and says: a quarter-century almost now. Amazing. In all that time we've only fallen farther into the morass..
Your time is up, George - Will Hutton in The Observer says neoconservatism has eroded universalist principles in the west, thus dooming our foreign policies: It is no accident, for example, that the election of Ronald Reagan launched a fivefold increase in the numbers held in American prisons or that the profound growth of inequality also began with him. Whether it's criminal justice or tax policy, Britain and the industrialised West have been profoundly affected by the retreat of American liberalism. (via)
Do big time CEOs - no matter how compassionate and cuddly they might be personally - have to be SOBs on the job?
Yes, says the conventional wisdom of greater CorporateWorld. The bottom-line dictates that wages and benefits be slashed and that offshoring be pursued with a vengeance. It's not personal, just business. "Look Ye to Wal-mart," boom the Market Gods, directing CEOs to follow the anti-labor, low-wage, no benefit, move-it-all-to-China ethic of this giant. The gods decree that no one can out-compete Wal-Mart, so best to imitate the beast.
Apparently, Jim Sinegal has been going to the wrong church. He's CEO of Costco, the profitable warehouse club retailer that's fast growing across the country. He takes a shockingly heretical view of his job, boasting of his company's fair treatment of employees: "We pay much better than Wal-Mart," Sinegal says. "That's not altruism. It's good business."
Indeed, Costco's pay is much, much, much better - a full-time Costco clerk or warehouse worker earns more than $41,000 a year, plus getting terrific health-care coverage. Wal-Mart workers get barely a third of that pay, plus a lousy health-care plan. Costco even has unions!
Yet, Costco's labor costs are only about half of Wal-Mart's. How's that possible? One reason is that Costco workers feel valued, which adds enormously to their productivity, and they don't leave - employee turnover is a tiny fraction of Wal-Mart's rapidly revolving door.
I had been completely unaware of Bubba Ho-Tep until now, but the DVD came out last month and some of the reviews I'm seeing make it sound like a lot of fun - and anyway, I always did like Bruce Campbell in Xena.
Media Matters catches two lying liars at once, as Bill O'Reilly gives new life to former Pennsylvania Governor Bob Casey's claim that he was prevented from speaking at the 1992 Democratic convention because he was anti-choice, when in fact other anti-choice people did speak at the convention, and Casey was really omitted because he refused to endorse the ticket.
Skippy is enjoying the fact that Disney won't be benefitting from Fahrenheit 9/11's record-breaking success.
The NYT says 'Hunting' Hits Its Target: EVERY STORY needs a villain, and the story spun in "The Hunting of the President: The Ten-Year Campaign to Destroy Bill Clinton" is no exception. In Harry Thomason and Nickolas Perry's fascinating documentary on what Hillary Rodham Clinton once called the "vast right-wing conspiracy" to discredit her husband, the bad guy is one Ken Starr, the former chief independent counsel in the Whitewater investigation.Scoobie Davis liked it a lot and says see the film, bring a friend, and recommend it to others.
"On the Senate floor, Dick Cheney flipped out and told Senator Pat Leahy to go f-himself. Can you believe that? Aren't these the same guys trying to fine Howard Stern for bad language?" - Jay Leno (via) 18:54 BST
In the press
Robin Cook thinks Downing Street has White House disease: Former Foreign Secretary Robin Cook has accused senior Downing Street staff of suffering from the "rather dangerous delusion" that they do not need Foreign Office advice. [...] He added that "in fairness, a whole range of advice was given by Britain to the United States which was ignored by the President".
John Gorenfeld links two excellent articles on Sun Myun Moon's coronation and his empire and how it has insinuated itself into national politics. He says that the article from Black Entertainment Television is, "one of the best articles on Moon written since the 1980s," and that Dennis Roddy's column in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette is "outstanding."
David Corn (of The Nation) has written to The Washington Post to give them a well-deserved spanking: Your paper tries to have it both ways. After chastising Bush critics, it acknowledges that Cheney has overstated "rather tentative ties" between bin Laden and Hussein. But if your paper believes the links were "rather tentative," how can it endorse Cheney's use of the term "long-established ties"?
The Chicago Tribune has a feature on Sy Hersh, The Muckraker: "We're living in dark times," he says, gently rubbing his gray-thatched temples. 17:23 BST
Your Sunday morning sermon
I was going to link to this letter by a Paul Kokoski in Friday's IHT, but they seem to have printed Thursday's lettercolumn twice instead, so I only have the paper version. It refers to an article I linked earlier, and is a prime example of the kind of nuttiness you can expect from the sort of person who can't stand the idea of going through an hour of life without some gross display of false piety:
In questioning the Bush administration's "political theory of personal good and evil" and at the same time suggesting that the Bible and the U.S. Constitution are not compatible, Robert O. Keohane and Anne-Marie Slaughter ("Bush's mistaken view of U.S. democracy," Views, June 23) take unfair aim at religion in American Democracy.
Of course, the article doesn't say that the Constitution and the Bible are incompatible. (Unfortunately, it doesn't point out that Bush's view is incompatible with the Gospels, either.)
In coining the phrase "separation of church and state in 1801, Thomas Jefferson never intended that social and political issues be divorced from codes of morality. He merely meant that the U.S. government be prevented from establishing one or another church as the official religion.
No one said anything about divorcing social and political issues from codes of morality, either. Some people would say that someone who has no problem with torturing people is the one who is divorced from morality, though.
The article represents a growing trend in the world to banish religious principles from public debate; to discount and marginalize persons with religious faith. But history has shown that a democracy without religion sooner or later turns into anarchy.
Yes, well we remember all those atheist democracies that have fallen to anarchy in the past. Why, there must be dozens of them. I just can't seem to think of one at the moment.
But wait - where is this "growing trend in the world to banish religious principles from public debate"? Religious posturing, sure - it is offensive to many believers as well as unbelievers to see politicians pretending that their public invocations of the deity and holy books are a reasonable substitute for morality. A real dedication to morality would surely place higher priority on walking the walk than on talking the talk.
The idea that going a few hours or days without some public demonstration of piety represents the eradication of religion is just plain whacky. America is packed with religious references jumping out of your TV screen constantly, and it's a sad commentary on the spiritual life of the country that so many believers appear to go into a panic if they aren't surrounded by them. Insecure or what?
Meanwhile, I understand Amy Sullivan's desire to see the Kerry campaign become a force for good in the effort to remind the public that the Bushistas don't own Christianity, but it seems to me that she's showing signs herself of Not Enough Religion Syndrome. Kerry's church attendance and quotes from the Bible are still in the news, and there really isn't much need to hammer people with it all the time.
(I'm not sure whose side to take over this, though. If you're worried about the Kerry campaign "screwing up", I'd think you'd want to avoid screwing them up by offering the righties more phoney ammunition. I don't like the way the campaign reacted - does seem a bit Bushian - but still....) 11:07 BST
Profiling
I've always thought it was interesting that the mass murder of September 11 was allegedly committed by a multi-millionaire. We always say it was committed by a "terrorist" or by an Islamic fundamentalist or an "Arab," but we never define Osama by his rightful title: multi-millionaire. Why have we never read a headline saying, "3,000 Killed by Multi-Millionaire"? It would be a correct headline, would it not? No part of it is untrue - Osama bin Laden has assets totalling at least $30 million; he is a multi-millionaire. So why isn't that the way we see this person, as a rich fuck who kills people? Why didn't that become the reason for profiling potential terrorists? Instead of rounding up suspicious Arabs, why don't we say, "Oh my God, a multi-millionaire killed 3,000 people! Round up the multi-millionaires! Throw them all in jail! No charges! No trials! Deport the millionaires!"
It would really be worth your time to watch Al Gore's speech on Freedom and Security. It's over an hour long, but it's not boring, and it always adds a great deal - even if you've already read it - to see him deliver it. He gives a pretty detailed accounting of how the administration has abused our Constitution and our rights, and also walks you through the means by which ordinary investigation would have made it possible to round up the entire 9/11 hijack team before they made it to the planes, had they considered it worth their while to exercise due diligence.
And he also makes clear that though the administration's intrusions on our liberties do more harm than good to the fight against terrorism, their plan clearly shows the intention to make suspension of the Constitution permanent.
And he calls for the Patriot Act to be repealed.
Oh, yeah, he also quotes my very favorite line from the Bible. 18:26 BST
Martina
She grew up under communist rule, and yet...
She puts on her jacket. Unlike the advertisement-strewn clothes of many players, it has just one sticker: "Beat Bush."
"I'm mortified by the fact that he may win the presidency again. We have a regime every bit as oppressive as communism. It's very depressing. We're force-fed propaganda and lies, and it's astonishing people don't question it. The government only tells you what they decide you should know, and it may not be exactly the truth because they don't think we can handle it. B-S! If you're loyal to Bush, you're golden. If you're not, your career is dead in the water. I've been called unpatriotic [one TV interviewer suggested she return to Czechoslovakia], which is going back to McCarthy days. I thought democracy meant you can say what you think.
-- Martina Navratilova, Radio Times, 26 June-2 July
(That's your web exclusive, by the way, since the Radio Times doesn't post articles on the web.) 16:44 BST
The kids are alright
The Convention Will be Televised: A melding of live performance, film, panel discussions, and rallies brought some 3000 delegates and participants to Newark, NJ last week for the National Hip Hop Political Convention. The group, which represented an impressive cross section of the hip hop generation, came together from urban areas around the nation to educate and inspire one another's activism and grassroots involvement.
Rolling Stone gives five stars to Beastie Boys' new album, To the 5 Boroughs, a love song to New York and heavy Bush-bashing album. More than anything, To the 5 Boroughs is the Beasties' valentine to the city where they, and rap, were born. It is a brash, passionate toast to what we lost on 9/11 (in the cover illustration, the Twin Towers are still standing) and what survives: in memory, on the ground. 15:13 BST
Kinder and gentler than what?
During Reagan Week, Bartcop said something that's worth remembering:
When Bush the Smarter assumed the presidency from Reagan, he declared that his administration would be a "kinder, gentler" administration.
Why did he do that?
Because Reagan was such a mean, harsh and heartless bastard and Bush wanted it on the record that America was tired of that kind of "leadership."
Kids watching today's funeral political rally might come away with the idea that Reagan was a decent, caring man, but that would be a false assumption.
Bush lauded Reagan's "legacy of patriotism and optimism" as if no other leader had ever been patriotic or optimistic, which is, let's face it, kind of weird, as if Kennedy had not made us feel we could do anything, as if Clinton had not told us to keep thinking about the future. But perhaps not as weird as Bush's own kind of "patriotism and optimism" in which he seems to believe that no matter what sort of mess he makes it's all coming up roses. The big news over the last couple of days was Bush's utterly unwelcome visit to Dublin, where even the Irish people are stunned to find themselves feeling less than enthusiastic over the presence of an American president in Eire. Conservatives may like to kid themselves that contempt for Bush has something to do with contempt for America, but the Irish just love us, they still regard Clinton as a hero, and they'd still come out to cheer him if he went there today.
It's easy to see why. You only have to watch Carole Coleman's interview with Bush to see why this childish, obtuse man turns people off the world over. The fantasy on the right is that a media that does not trouble to put a pretty face on Bush's ugly performance is somehow hostile to our country, but for everyone else it's just a question of why American conservatives are so unwilling to see through the pro-Bush propaganda they get from Fox News.
Bush's childish performance fits all too neatly with his childish view of the world, one in which he never has to make moral choices at all because he simply takes for granted that if he does it, it's right, no matter whose life is made miserable, no matter how many die. Even Bush's idea of Christianity seems weird, as if he alone among men is incapable of error, and "We're all sinners" is, y'know, just an expression where he's concerned. But he only gets away with it because so many enablers are prepared to make excuses for him.
THE White House has lodged a complaint with the Irish Embassy in Washington over RTE journalist Carole Coleman's interview with US President George Bush.
And it is believed the President's staff have now withdrawn from an exclusive interview which was to have been given to RTE this morning by First Lady Laura Bush.
It is understood that both RTE and the Department of Foreign Affairs were aware of the exclusive arrangement, scheduled for 11am today. However, when RTE put Ms Coleman's name forward as interviewer, they were told Mrs Bush would no longer be available.
The Irish Independent learned last night that the White House told Ms Coleman that she interrupted the president unnecessarily and was disrespectful.
She also received a call from the White House in which she was admonished for her tone.
So imperious that he shows respect to almost no one, he demands it from others when he has not earned it. You know, "childish" just doesn't begin to cover it.
(And it occurs to me that it's just possible the reason he was so nice to Clinton, and actually looked natural doing it, was that he realized he was in the presence of a real president.)
Further update: From Atrios: "The policy of the White House is that you submit your questions in advance, so they had my questions for about three days."
-Carol Coleman, RTE. Watch it here. 13:53 BST
What the papers say
The Washington Post thinks the Supremes are showing double-standards with regard to the deference owed to the executive, which apparently is different for someone who is not named Clinton. Also in the Post, Thomas J. Healey says Social Security might be healthy enough to take care of the boomers after all, right-wing fruit-bat Charles Krauthammer rewrites Clinton's history, and E.J. Dionne explains why you should like Barack Obama (this article was published before his opponent dropped out of the race).
In The New York Times, Bob Herbert notices a discrepancy between reality and AMA claims of a "crisis" caused by "frivolous" law suits (The newspaper reported that an analysis of the data showed that malpractice payments in New Jersey had declined by 21 percent from 2001 to 2003. But malpractice insurance premiums surged over the same period); Paul Krugman says that whether the administration's phony numbers that obscured the rise in terrorism are due to incompetence or dishonesty (the latter possibility being entirely in character for them), it's just no excuse; William Fisher wisely says it is stupid for the music industry to hinder new media; and Kembrew McLeod says - also wisely - that the industry is making a mistake in blaming file-sharing for its problems.
In The Los Angeles Times, Max Boot makes so many errors in his understanding of either Clinton's behavior or Bush's programs (only a nitwit thinks No Child's Behind Left or the so-called "drug benefit" are even remotely the sort of thing liberals would like to see) that I could hardly begin to enumerate them (Shorter Max Boot here - but don't miss this while you're there), and Mike Farrell says that Limbaugh Has No Place on the Front Line - or at least opposing views should be available to our troops in Iraq on radio provided by tax-payers' dollars. 02:50 BST
Friday, 25 June 2004
Republicans
Air America's Morning Sedition pointed out a funny thing that happened this week. The news media made a big deal of the fact that John Kerry took a day off of campaigning to vote to preserve veterans' benefits - and that the Republicans deliberately delayed the vote so that Kerry would be forced to take an extra day off - but they didn't seem sufficiently interested in the subject to tell us what happened to the bill. Nancy Pelosi explains how Republicans support our troops:
"In the House yesterday, Congressman Dave Obey proposed a bill that would have provided $2.3 billion to maintain quality health care for veterans and would have improved the quality of life for military personnel and their families. Republicans roundly rejected it.
"In the Senate, Senator Tom Daschle proposed an amendment to establish mandatory funding for veterans' health care, which I support. Republicans roundly rejected it.
Michael Moore fights back against RNC censorship efforts: The Federal Election Commission (FEC), an independent bipartisan body responsible for enforcing U.S. election laws, is considering the question of whether political documentary film-makers should be allowed to have radio or television ads within 30 days of a political primary or within 60 days of a general election.
The New Republic blog, &c., points to this interesting flier:
Hi, this is _______ with Citizens for a Sound Economy...
I am calling because we have a chance to stop John Kerry from Winning in Oregon.
As you have probably heard, Ralph Nader is trying to make the ballot in Oregon for the November Election. He is going to be in town this weekend to host a nominating party on Saturday night at Benson High School.
Ralph Nader needs 1,000 signatures to qualify for the ballot, and we need to ensure he gets them...
Citizens for a Sound Economy, I learn from Kevin Drum, is led by right-wing fruit-bat Dick Armey. (Rittenhouse Review has more on the nature of Ralph's candidacy. And, sorry, folks, but third parties are not really that good a thing. How do you think Margaret Thatcher stayed in office despite the fact that 60% of the electorate voted against her?)
Kevin is also one of many people to comment on the other Dick's unfriendly language toward Senator Patrick Leahy. I guess the RNC decided Cheney hadn't provided a good encore to his "big-time" remark and was overdue. 23:28 BST
Things I saw
In case you were wondering: PNH has put up a post at Electrolite explaining why he hasn't posted lately. Wish I could see the new place....
Brad DeLong discovers Clinton's secret - arithmetic - and despairs that George Bush is unfamiliar with it. And Richard Cohen makes Brad groan by forgetting history he lived through.
Larry King interviewed Bill Clinton, and there are a lot of great quotes from President Bill, but I enjoyed this: KING: We're back. This is the president's first live interview since the publication of the book. And it's an honor to have him with us. He's discussed a lot of things already, so we're going to try to skirt other areas. I like to hear the phrase "the president" used to refer to someone who was actually elected to the office.
When we Americans first began, our biggest danger was clearly in view: we knew from the bitter experience with King George III that the most serious threat to democracy is usually the accumulation of too much power in the hands of an executive, whether he be a king or a president. Our ingrained American distrust of concentrated power has very little to do with the character or persona of the individual who wields that power. It is the power itself that must be constrained, checked, dispersed and carefully balanced, in order to ensure the survival of freedom. In addition, our founders taught us that public fear is the most dangerous enemy of democracy because under the right circumstances it can trigger the temptation of those who govern themselves to surrender that power to someone who promises strength and offers safety, security and freedom from fear. [...] Having painstakingly created the intricate design of America, our founders knew intimately both its strengths and weaknesses, and during their debates they not only identified the accumulation of power in the hands of the executive as the long-term threat which they considered to be the most serious, but they also worried aloud about one specific scenario in which this threat might become particularly potent -- that is, when war transformed America's president into our commander in chief, they worried that his suddenly increased power might somehow spill over its normal constitutional boundaries and upset the delicate checks and balances they deemed so crucial to the maintenance of liberty. [...] Thus, for all these reasons, President Bush and Vice President Cheney have decided to fight to the rhetorical death over whether or not there's a meaningful connection between Iraq and al-Qaida. They think that if they lose that argument and people see the truth, then they'll not only lose support for the controversial decision to go to war, but also lose some of the new power they've picked up from the Congress and the courts, and face harsh political consequences at the hands of the American people. As a result, President Bush is now intentionally misleading the American people by continuing to aggressively and brazenly assert a linkage between al-Qaida and Saddam Hussein.
If he is not lying, if they genuinely believe that, that makes them unfit in battle with al-Qaida. If they believe these flimsy scraps, then who would want them in charge? Are they too dishonest or too gullible? Take your pick.
But not so bad that the GOP isn't allowed to compare Gephardt, Gore, Dean, and Moore to Hitler. These people scream when bloggers joke about it, but, just go to the GWB website and watch their little film. (Heard it on the Randi Rhodes show, apparently via Don of Take Back the Media.) 23:59 BST
Wendy McElroy: Is Ralph Nader the Y2K of the upcoming election? That's the latest wisdom on how the much-ballyhooed Nader will effect the November elections: namely, not at all. So many people are abandoning him that there is now a Repentant Nader Voter site. (Also: Have it your way.)
The Long Now Foundation provides free downloads of speeches by Bruce Sterling, Brian Eno, and others - the Sterling speech ("The Singularity: Your Future as a Black Hole") is new; Bill Humphries saw it live last week. (Also: Is this how to raise people who hate free speech?)
Is McCain a Fraud? by J. Russell Tyldesley. The answer is, "Yes," of course, but on learning that this commentary was supplied to The Baltimore Chronicle by "an insurance executive from Catonsville, Md.," I couldn't help but think, "Boy, Bush is in real trouble if he's even losing insurance executives." (via) 22:39 BST
Things to read
I don't really think there's much point in signing an open letter to Bush, but it does include this reminder of another one of Bush's phony moments of "compassion": In your 2000 campaign, you promised that if you became President, "people will be able to take their HMO insurance company to court." Yet your administration sided with the HMOs instead of the American people when the issue was recently argued before the U.S. Supreme Court.
Rev. Moon's Crowning on Capitol Hill Brings Disclaimers: NPR's Melissa Block talks with John Gorenfeld, a freelance writer for Salon.com and writer of the blog "Where in Washington, D.C., Is Sun Myung Moon?," about a peculiar ceremony held at the Dirksen Senate Office Building this past March. In the course of the event, Moon declared himself the Messiah. Most congressmen who attended the event are now distancing themselves from Moon and his claims. (There is an audio stream if you want to listen.)
Bill Clinton was interviewed on Charlie Rose's show; the archive isn't up yet but check here if you want to hear it. Meanwhile, via Poynter, I see that the NYT must have been pretty embarrassed by the dismal review they printed the other day of Clinton's book by a Clinton-hater, because there's another review up by Larry McMurtry, who praises it as "the richest American presidential autobiography" and says Clinton is a much better writer than his predecessors. I gather this one wasn't supposed to be released for another couple of weeks, but they took a hammering over the earlier one. I like this quote: During the silly time when Clinton was pilloried for wanting to debate the meaning of "is," I often wondered why no one pointed out that he was educated by Jesuits, for whom the meaning of "is" is a matter not lightly resolved.
Moore's Magic: 9/11 Electrifies, by Rex Reed: The movie begins with the awesome night in 2000 when the U. S. Supreme Court decided the election, not the American voters, then unveils footage that was never reported on TV of the Bush inauguration limousine being pelted with raw eggs. Instead of the traditional walk to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, he was so afraid to leave the car that he became the first President in history who was forced to sneak into the White House through a back door.
Lis Riba looks at what children mean in the gay marriage argument. Meanwhile, on The Daily Show...
Cass Sunstein posts at Balkanization about a curious clause in Iraq's interim constitution that gives the Iraqis something most Americans would dearly love to have - and may have identified its source. 16:46 BST
Saving a nation
Partly it's that we've gone straight past "Unamerican" to "Un-constitutional monarchy." So much for the notion of "benevolent hegemony" as conducing to national virtue, says Jim Henley. He identifies the Republican party as The Enemy and declares that there can no longer be any reason for preferring them to Democrats.
Dave Trowbridge concurs, saying that voting for the Libertarian Party is also a diversion that libertarians can no longer afford; we all need to send the unsubtle message that, "this kind of systematic corruption of American values will not be tolerated."
Later, Jim says it's not so much neocons as "national greatness" cons who are the real problem: They are not to be trusted with the nation's defense because they are not trying to defend it. They're trying to purge the place. 13:18 BST
Conservatives pretend they don't hate America. Look, if you're criticizing the values of the majority of Americans all the time, you hate America. Jesse Taylor is wise to these guys.
Rob Humenik was listening to a Pacifica segment with special guest Chris Bell, who has filed an ethics complaint against his colleague Tom DeLay. About five minutes into the show, after Rep. Bell briefly laid out the substance of his complaint, Gerry started to take calls, and who should call in by Rep John Culberson, a Republican and backer of Tom DeLay. Hilarity ensued.
Simbaud at King of Zembla is pleased to see a film that brings up something that has been bugging him for a long time: Donald Rumsfeld "sat on the board of a company that sold nuclear reactors to North Korea."
But maybe that's why we probably can't expect to see the film this summer at one of the world's largest cinema chains, which is being purchased by The Carlyle Group, a part of the Bush Family Empire. 15:51 BST
"They have taken this country down a dead-end road," he said. "They have broken promises, and they have demonstrated contempt for some of the trademarks of democracy. . . . This is truly an administration that has broken the mold." [...] "What this threatens is the very spirit of America," Gore practically shouted. "What we stand for. . . . This changes, for many people in the world, the meaning of America. That's what this election is about . Is this the United States of America or not?"
I've noticed a couple people lately saying that Al Gore is currently fulfilling the role of a vice presidential candidate, making the hard attacks so that the presidential candidate can stay "above the fray" and stick to more positive campaigning. Whether this is intentional or not, he's doing a pretty good job of it, drawing the fire while Kerry takes his time. Kerry has a rep as a guy who hangs back until coming in for the kill. We shall see. 14:40 BST
Thoughts while reading Matt's weblog
A lot of people think child abuse is just about sex, but there is much more physical violence against children, by their own parents, and it leads to fatalities more often than you might think. Jeff Jarvis bears watching.
Note that I never produced a single sentence associating Jarvis with child abuse. But if Bush apologists want to play this game, perhaps they deserve a taste of it themselves. Anyway, Matt points out that (a) whatever they said, people sure did get the impression that Iraq had something to do with 9/11, and (b) Cheney said it. But do read the comments, from which I filched the idea that was illustrated at the top of this post. Here's mine:
You know, it's funny: If you mention the October Surprise, right-wingers will shrug it off as a "conspiracy theory", and yet it has far more substance than any of the arguments that were used tie Iraq to Al Qaeda.
In any case, I'll wait for the picture of Atta shaking hands with a member of Saddam's government; in the meantime, we have this. So now we know who to drop bombs on, right?
Meanwhile, I thought this was obvious three years ago, and it's a shame we had to prove it before people caught on.
My condolences to Matt on the death of his mother, who was only 53. I'm glad you got to be there at the end, Matt, and that you knew she was proud of you. 13:25 BST
Susan at An Age Like This says, "Boy, and Howard Dean got in trouble for his "I have a scream" speech. Check out the maniacal picture of Dubya Mark Kleiman prints here. Yikes!" And Mark says: "Either someone at AP really and truly hates the President, or GWB has really and truly started to lose it."
I just watched the BBC interview with Bill Clinton and I really enjoyed seeing President Elvis tell David Dimbleby, "One of the reasons he [Kenneth Starr] got away with it is because people like you only ask me the questions. You gave him a complete free ride. Any abuse they wanted to do. They indicted all these little people from Arkansas, what did you care about them, they're not famous, who cares that their life was trampled. Who cares that their children are humiliated."
Seymour Hersh in The New Yorker, with Plan B: In July, 2003, two months after President Bush declared victory in Iraq, the war, far from winding down, reached a critical point. Israel, which had been among the war's most enthusiastic supporters, began warning the Administration that the American-led occupation would face a heightened insurgency-a campaign of bombings and assassinations-later that summer. The border stayed open, however. 01:43 BST
Tuesday, 22 June 2004
Music news
I just heard a song on the Randi Rhodes Show that quotes George Bush saying, "I hope we're not going to war in Eye-rack," among other things, by the George W. Bush Singers, and it cracked me right up. You gotta hear this. 20:50 BST
Why we fight
Shameless Agitator measures the distance between Edward R. Murrow's vision of democracy and what we have now, providing examples like these:
"I want you to just let a wave of intolerance wash over you. I want you to let a wave of hatred wash over you. Yes, hate is good."
-- Randall Terry, the New Republic, 8/1/1994
"We're going to keep on building the party [the Texas GOP] until we're hunting Democrats with dogs."
-- Sen. Phil Gramm, R-Texas, Mother Jones, August 1995
SA also calls our attention to this post at Daily Kos, which asks:
We know there's evidence that Bush is being less than forthright. We know Cheney is full of it. So why do Republicans refuse to be enlightened?
This question worries me, I admit. Some of the people who seem to be standing by this administration are not entirely stupid and have nothing to gain from supporting them, and yet they do refuse to be enlightened. What could cause this?
There's something I don't get. How come the same administration that believes we will be tainted by any association with abortion, no matter how much good can be accomplished, also works with and financially supports brutal governments on the grounds that some greater, long term good will come from it? In other words, why is it anathema to have a three times removed connection to a doctor in Africa telling a woman whose body can't take any more pregnancies how to get an abortion, but it isn't wrong to directly finance a government that boils people alive?
David Neiwert acknowledges the temptation to quit blogging, but says it's still important to keep doing it.
It's vital, at this point, to keep fighting, and to be prepared to fight for another decade or more. For the foreseeable future, that's what I hope to achieve at my little blog.
There are days when I ask myself whether a little weblog like this can make a difference, but my experience tells me that, yes, it can. In the same way that I have people come up to me and tell me that reading my books really made them think, or even made them change their mind. We don't sell huge numbers of our books, but a lot of people seem to find them somewhere, maybe in a library or on a friend's bookshelf, and they think about what they read. In the same way that I once convinced a kid that the newspaper he was selling (White Power) was a load of ignorant crap; just one person, but all minds are changed only one at a time. And one person tells another, or remembers something they read at just the right moment in a conversation, and you just never know where the seeds are going to take root. So yes, the effort matters. However you make it. 19:23 BST
Noted
For the first time in a long time, Jeff Cooper has a post up. His son is starting to talk. It's been a long wait.
More insanity: The latest legislative gem from Hatch is the Induce Act to be introduced next week. Induce allegedly stands for "Inducement Devolves into Unlawful Child Exploitation Act," and it furthers Hatch's exploitation of children-centered concerns in his quest to appease deep-pocketed entertainment companies. In short, the act seeks to hold liable anything and everything that could be used to infringe copyrights. Burn the VCR, burn the photocopiers, folks. For the children, of course. (via)
Poll Shows Bush Losing Ground on Anti-terror Policy: For the first time in ABC News/Washington Post polls, more than half of Americans, 52 percent, say the Iraq war was not worth fighting. Seven in 10 call U.S. casualties there "unacceptable," a new high. And there's been a steady slide in belief that the war has enhanced long-term U.S. security; 51 percent now say so, down 11 points this year.
A reader informs me that his job requires drug tests, and the company that does the tests is none other than ChoicePoint. Boy, they have their fingers in everything, don't they?
Bruce Schneier wrote to point to his article on the CLEAR Act, which is yet another more-hindrance-than-help set of laws purportedly meant to make us safer but, of course, does not; makes life harder for a lot of us, though.
Statistics are not reality says Nathan Newman, noting that while the establishment professes to be baffled that the public has not responded to the "improved" economy, the reasons are actually pretty obvious. Things like "GDP" and "productivity" are in practical terms mere abstracts for most of us, and what really matters to us is whether we see improved opportunities for ourselves economically.
So what happens to someone who loses a good job, goes for months without any job at all. and finally gets a job at half their previous salary with no benefits, no room for advancement, and no room for discretionary spending? What about people who, though they still have their old jobs, see their neighbors and co-workers being laid off and having to sell their homes for something cheaper because they can no longer support a middle-class lifestyle? What if your kid graduates from college and has to get a job at Wal-Mart and get on some sort of state program just to cover health care or other basics?
If you grew up in the American middle-class any time between 1950 and 1990, even the working-class people you knew didn't have to live like that. People started off with crummy jobs but could expect that a good job record would lead to promotion, higher income, and economic comfort in time for them to retire in a house that they owned outright. Those were the days of upward mobility - and they seem to be gone. 21:16 BST
Eschaton digest
Atrios, who says, "They really just think that rules don't apply to them," finds this:
Thomas B. Griffith, President Bush's nominee for the federal appeals court in Washington, has been practicing law in Utah without a state law license for the past four years, according to Utah state officials.
And the following links come from comment threads at Eschaton:
The Kerry/McCain stuff is obvious rubbish, and McCain has been sticking close to Bush, despite their differences. But here's something to worry about: Colin Powell is preparing to retire, and Bush is gonna have to replace him with someone. Why worry? Because it will make Bush look good without actually improving anything, anymore than Powell managed to improve anything.
The Thorn Papers on Darth Cheney and his mysterious 9/11 activities from the bunker.
A really rude post by Rude Pundit - but that doesn't mean he's wrong.
Attaturk is on the same page with me about comparisons between Moore and Coulter, but this post is still unfair to Marilyn Manson. 18:18 BST
What Rapture?
Roz called me up a little while ago and asked me if I can recall anyone talking about the Rapture "before". It's such an obvious question that I'm surprised I didn't think of it myself.
Okay, the first time I remember hearing about it was in about '68 or '69 when these people started coming around saying that we'd all been raised to believe in a "Santa Clause" god and that we were wrong. (Got that? Being raised to believe in the just-and-loving god was wrong.) And that's when we first started hearing about people disappearing and all that.
Which came as rather a shock to a lot of us, since we'd mostly been raised as Christians, had to hear Bible stories in public school, went to church and studied the Bible there, too - I mean, it's not like the Bible was that much of a secret to us.
Now, when something like that happens and it's the '60s, you just figure that this is another one of those religious groups that you haven't heard much about because it's not mainstream, and you're getting used to hearing about religions you'd never heard of as a kid - y'know, Buddhists and Muslims and Jains and whatever.
But, now that Roz mentions it, I've never noticed a single poem, or painting, or even legend relating to the Rapture that pre-dates the '60s. Jesus didn't talk about it, Michaelangelo didn't paint it, there is no room full of Rapture paintings at the National Museum.
And then I click on my blogroll link for Slacktivist and notice I've had it messed up all this time and it goes back to this old post, which contains this paragraph:
The problem with all of this is that Jerry Falwell spouts his theories of "the end of days as laid out in the New Testament" and Horowitz simply passes this on, uncritically, as the literal gospel truth. He accepts -- without a hint of skepticism -- that LaHaye's sensational brand of 19th-century Darbyism is "in the Bible" just because LaHaye claims it is.
Well, I've fixed the link, anyway. But I'm still wondering what our otherfavorite commentators on religious matters have to say about the "eternal truth" of this heresy. Roz thinks religious leaders like, oh, say, the Pope, should perhaps be saying something about this.
Guest-blogging at Talking Points Memo, Spencer Ackerman of TNR discusses the latest new book to critique Bush policy, Imperial Hubris: How the West is Losing the War on Terror, by an anonymous intelligence professional. Does the book exhibit contempt for the administration's policies? Certainly. It also takes a dim view of the White House's conception of what motivates al-Qaeda and how to fight it. But in the book and in an interview, Anonymous doesn't traffic in Bush-bashing. He has much harsher words to say about the leadership of the intelligence community, whom he faults for bending too far to the predispositions of the policymakers they serve.
Media Matters learns from Rush that it is part of the vast, left-wing conspiracy and it's all about Hillary.
The White Rose Society is continuing to host archives of various radio shows, including some of the old Mike Malloy shows from I.E.America. I've posted this before, but if you haven't heard it yet, you really ought to listen to George W Bush and 1984: You decide. 12:49 BST
Happy Solstice
High Summer's Day, 19 years ago, it was chilly and rainy and we got married. Unlike family values mouthpieces Rush and Newt, we are still married. So nyaa, nyaa, nyaa.
Anyway, here's some stuff:
TChris at Talk Left: While grand juries in most jurisdictions are easily led to indict by the prosecutors who control them, the experience in New York may point the way to welcome reform of the grand jury system. The target of a grand jury investigation in New York has the right to testify. By telling their side of the story and explaining away circumstantial evidence, many targets have been able to avoid indictment. [...] That means grand juries in New York are doing their jobs -- saving the innocent from needless prosecutions -- when given a chance.
Tim Porter has some important things to say about the way that some bloggers are now doing a superior job of practicing journalism, compared with the people who are getting paid to do it. (There are also some interesting posts on the issue of anonymous sourcing.)
Charles Dodgson takes a good whack at conservative logic, which appears to be based on the theory that when "liberals" cite things that were front-page news at the time, this constitutes some sort of conspiracy theory. For example, the "theory" that Reagan negotiated with the Soviet Union. There's just one loose end which he neglects to tie up. What exactly does he think Reagan and Gorbachev were doing at Reykjavik? And then there's that Iraq-Qaeda connection thing, among others.
NPR has updated their Ray Charles page to include an audio stream for the memorial service. 00:52 BST
Sunday, 20 June 2004
She scribbles from Gotham
Diana Moon (still grumpy about losing all her links from warbloggers since she turned against the war) is, like me, not to thrilled with the idea of a Kerry/McCain ticket, and for much the same reasons. I'm not quite sure how to describe this post about Israel but go read it and see what you think. (And yes, Diana, the article from Capitol Hill Blue about how Bush is losing it has been making the rounds in the blogosphere. We all enjoyed it but we're not quite sure what to make of it.) 21:52 BST
Bloground
Ayn Clouter reveals much truth through numerology in her review of the latest Clinton White House Event, and answers a recent question of mine with these ominous words: And there was given unto him a mouth speaking great things and blasphemies; and power was given unto him to continue forty and two months.
But never forget, the left really doesn't have anyone like Ann Coulter.
Gail Davis' current page is rich with posts to get you good and pissed off, including several on just how bad the Republican Drug Card really is. 17:45 BST
In The Washington Post
Ombudsman Michael Getler, Looking Back Before the War, compares his paper's pre-war performance with that of The New York Times and concludes that while the Post wasn't as bad as Judith Miller, it buried too much of the other side of the story inside the paper instead of putting it on the front page where it belonged. He glosses over the fact that there was more data available than the Post could be bothered to print at all, making the excuse that the administration itself was ungenerous with information, as if the numerous other experts elsewhere who dissented from administration spin were somehow not providing the facts far more reliably.
TNR's Jonathan Chait visits the Post op-ed page with Why This Election Isn't All It's Cracked Up to Be, in which he says: This year, with an election that, on the economic front, really does amount to little more than irrelevant and tiresome quibbling, everyone is convinced that we're facing an unusually momentous election. Sorry, everybody. You're four years too late. While it is certainly true that securing the White House in 2000 would have prevented a considerable amount of damage, Chait is ultimately wrong. If Bush is allowed to remain in office, it will tell the world that we accept recklessness and lawlessness at the top and are therefore unreliable partners.
Kathleen Clark and Julie Mertus, in Torturing the Law, explain just how wrong the legal advice Bush received on torture was, and just how wrong Justice's Office Of Legal Counsel was to provide it. And there is worse: How could Bybee have written such a scandalous opinion? Lawyers who tell their clients what they want to hear -- rather than the advice they need -- are sometimes rewarded with career advancement. Last year, Jay Bybee was appointed to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit.
The Ice Cube Project First known incidence of someone painting an iceberg
[Update: We have now been informed that this isn't the first such incidence by a long-shot, although as far as we can tell it's the first time it's been done merely to produce art.]
David Neiwert was interested to see Tucker Carlson claiming that "hate" is emanating from MoveOn.org to the same extent that it is coming from the right. In The hate these days, he investigate's MoveOn "hate" and sees if it stacks up against what right-wing sources. I hope someone will send a copy of it to Tucker.
In a letter to Altercation, Charles Pierce responds with a bit of history to Aaron Brown and others in the "liberal" media calling for "civility" from Democrats, and concludes:
All this concern erupted when the left started hitting back a little, and developing institutions and vehicles through which to do it. Well, for the moment, f**k civility. The center cannot be allowed to remain where it is. It has to be shoved back and shoved back hard. And if that means calling out ABC for criticizing Michael Moore's methodology while continuing to employ --nay, PROMOTE -- a corporate fabulist like John Stossel up through its news division, or if it means striking back at the people who go on television with their perpetual wounded victimhood and call people "Nazis," well, I'm sorry, Aaron, that's just the way politics is going to have to be for a while. Take a pill and go sit in a dark room until the vapors pass.
At the top of the same post, Eric himself looks at the 9/11 commission report and points out that even without being Sy Hersh, he "was able to piece together what happened through openly available sources that appeared in corners of the media but were never picked up by the SCLM or deemed worthy of discussion by the Sunday morning poohbahs or Cable TV scream fests." And he said it last year.
Eric also has a new piece in The Nation on how The Soros Slander Campaign Continues with extraordinary charges that George Soros is a far-left loony who is trying to engineer a coup against Bush by helping Democrats (and all the other sane people in the country) campaign for Kerry. I find it particularly interesting that the idea of ordinary funding and activism for one's candidate in order to help them win an election by actually getting more votes is being referred to as a "coup". 19:34 BST
Buncha links
I had this open and went, "Oh, my god!" and I was going to blog it eventually but my computer crashed and afterwards I couldn't remember where I'd seen it. It finally occurred to me to check Blogpulse and see if I could track it back. So, thanks to
Jak, who also explains why it sent chills up my spine to learn that, "The IRS contracts out to a firm called ChoicePoint to obtain personal information on individuals. Besides residential addresses, this includes financial information." Not that I think this should be contracted out at all, but bloody ChoicePoint! Jeez!
Bruce Schneier has tried to answer some questions: Ahmed Chalabi is accused of informing the Iranians that the U.S. had broken its intelligence codes. What exactly did the U.S. break? How could the Iranians verify Chalabi's claim, and what might they do about it?
You know, I can remember hearing a lot about how Clinton and Gore didn't exactly look trim - lots of stuff about cheeseburgers and cookies. How come no one ever mentions that this guy hasn't managed to run it off? 13:17 BST
Kevin Drum is wrong! Cherry Cheesecake cigarettes? Kevin, they're not aimed at kids, they're aimed at me! Cherry Cheesecake without the calories! Whee! On the other hand: Liberal media my eye, as someone would say.
Seeing the Forest says What people don't get about this case: it isn't about Enron alone. The Enron Tapes and the Snohomish vs. Enron hearing aren't just about a few potty mouthed "bad apples" at Enron engaging in opportunistic exploitation of regulatory loopholes (as Enron's PR people would like you to believe). They highlight a fundamental problem of our system of governance: the balance of power between corporations and the average human citizen is way out of whack. This is a point that those of us on our side of the issue would be well served to bring to the fore. [Also: a really stupid cartoon is in the newspapers.]
Rittenhouse Review explains it to Maureen Dowd: Vice President Cheney repeats the transparently false Iraq-Al Qaeda lies not because he can't help himself, but because it's part of the program, it's a core element of the Bush-Cheney reelection campaign. 22:27 BST
A real president would fire him
And Atrios says that this alone would be enough reason. From Gail Sheehy in The New York Observer:
What's more, the decades-old procedure for a quick response by the nation's air defense had been changed in June of 2001. Now, instead of NORAD's military commanders being able to issue the command to launch fighter jets, approval had to be sought from the civilian Defense Secretary, Donald Rumsfeld. This change is extremely significant, because Mr. Rumsfeld claims to have been "out of the loop" nearly the entire morning of 9/11. He isn't on the record as having given any orders that morning. In fact, he didn't even go to the White House situation room; he had to walk to the window of his office in the Pentagon to see that the country's military headquarters was in flames.
Mr. Rumsfeld claimed at a previous commission hearing that protection against attack inside the homeland was not his responsibility. It was, he said, "a law-enforcement issue."
Why, in that case, did he take onto himself the responsibility of approving NORAD's deployment of fighter planes?
And why is Gail Sheehy the only one who's really looking into the questions that the rest of the press has been running from for years?
None of these people do their jobs, or indeed seem to know what the hell their jobs are. Please please please we have to get rid of them. 19:48 BST
Wil Wheaton is promoting a good "support our troops" idea of passing on your GMail invites to the troops. (He also talks a bit about what Wesley Crusher means to him.) 18:39 BST
The Hunting of the President
It's worth getting the free day pass at Salon for Joe Conason's warning that they're at it again:
Whatever doubts I might have felt about the current relevance of "The Hunting of the President" -- the new documentary based on the book of the same name by Gene Lyons and me -- were abruptly dispelled last Tuesday evening, after the movie's premiere screening in Little Rock, Ark.
As I was leaving the auditorium, an older gentleman approached to shake my hand and offer his generous compliments.
"I'm a Vietnam veteran," he said. "I served with John Kerry. I'm supporting him for president, I've campaigned for him -- and I want to tell you, they're trying to do the same thing to him that they did to Bill Clinton." He explained that in recent weeks, a private investigator has contacted many of the vets who served on the Navy's swift boats with Kerry. According to him, the investigator asks insinuating and sometimes outlandish questions about the former lieutenant's wounds, decorations and military operations. Exactly who hired the Kerry-bashing detective is not yet clear, but his queries echo accusations promoted by Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, a Republican-backed band of Kerry-bashing veterans.
Salon also has a sneak preview of the film that's worth looking at, which features David Brock saying:
I don't think that they necessarily learned anything from the '90s, except that they almost won.
Susan MacDougal, Paul Begala, and Joe Conason are also featured in the clips. (This may be a local phenomenon, but I found the Quicktime version ran much more smoothly than the RealPlayer version.)
The American Prospect has an interview with Joe Conason and Gene Lyons about the film. They talk a lot about how much of the story there just wasn't room for in the movie:
Lyons: Let me say this about the local aspect of the story: For the people who were caught up in the Starr investigation in one sense or another, living in Arkansas in the '90s was not like living in America. Because Starr wasn't investigating crimes, he was investigating people. He would get dirt on someone by subpoenaing every piece of paperwork he could find -- often going back to college, as was the case with Gov. Jim Guy Tucker. Starr would cobble together some kind of alleged crime and then squeeze. He treated the people of Arkansas who had tangential relationships with Clinton as if they were members of the mob. By the end of this, everyone in this small place knew someone they trusted who had been ground up and spit out, and they didn't believe Starr's people.
But they also say that there are things in the movie that couldn't be shown in the book, and that the movie helps make the book a bit easier to follow because you get a better picture of some of the characters.
One episode that makes me laugh is an interview we did with Claudia Riley, the 76-year-old wife of former Lt. Gov. Bob Riley and friend to Susan McDougal. With great dignity, she told us how Starr's people investigated her sex life to the point where they asked her if she had slept with Bill Clinton. She drew herself up proudly and said, "He never asked."
Here's something I'm still waiting for an acknowledgment of from the NYT:
Lyons: This is a bit of an exaggeration, but The New York Times' relationship to Ahmed Chalabi was very much like the Times' relationship to David Hale and the other Whitewater entrepreneurs. They hitched their star to people like Hale and Starr -- con-men! -- who led them by the nose into a morass. And in the case of Whitewater, the Times never will admit it.
And we're talking about a lot of the same editors. For instance: When Joe Lelyveld reviewed Sidney Blumenthal's book [The Clinton Wars], he was still trying to justify the Times' coverage of Whitewater. He attacked Blumenthal, and us, for having the temerity to point out that The New York Times didn't have any pants on, so to speak. And he got the facts wrong, again! And we had to correct him all over again. The response that I got, when I started to point out inaccuracies in his coverage of the story, was something akin to: "We're The New York Times, and you're not. We don't have to answer to you."
There's a lot more there about how badly the media behaved back then and continues to behave, and about why the conservatives hated Clinton so much. But they also address the disappointment many of his supporters felt over Monica Lewinsky - which is apparently in the movie; it's not a paean to Bill Clinton.
Poll Suggests Bush Support Has Grown: President Bush got a boost from the public's recent focus on the funeral of Ronald Reagan and support for his Iraq policy spiked over the last month as the United States prepared to hand power over to Iraqis, according to a poll released Thursday.
A nude model, five bodies and the Mormon assassination plot attempt: This week, a jury in Martinez, a small town outside San Francisco, will retire to consider the bizarre, brutally violent cult surrounding one Glenn Taylor Helzer, a lapsed Mormon accused of bludgeoning and dismembering five people in an elaborate extortion racket intended to hasten the second coming of Jesus Christ.
Norman Solomon compares NPR and The New York Times with margarine. Well, he's actually talking about the mea culpa in the Times about their banging the drum for the White House, and about this study by FAIR showing that NPR not only isn't liberal-leaning, it's not even balanced.
Hannity took offense when John Podesta suggested that Hannity is a bit divorced from reality. So he demanded evidence of "one example where I -- where I said something that was so false." The Center for American Progress provides a little list in The Document Sean Hannity Doesn't Want You To Read. 13:23 BST
Assorted links
Salon has a review article about three new books on George Bush's character, psychology, and faith, that contains this little nugget:
...the death of his younger sister Robin, from leukemia, when he was 7 and she was 3.
Bush's parents dealt with Robin's death by squelching any expression of grief; there was no funeral and they played golf the day after she died.
Sounds like he learned a lot from them. (Barbara Bush sounds pretty creepy elsewhere in the article, too.)
King of Zembla recommends a good speech by Bill Moyers on class war: Nothing seems to embarrass the political class in Washington today.
Cakewalk to Baghdad with Country Joe; read the lyrics or click on Richard Perle to hear it streamed. (Scroll down past the band info - hey, I recognize those names!) (via)
I heard Mark Riley on Air America's Morning Sedition say this administration reminds him of the guy he used to see rooking people with card tricks. (I usually refer to their bait-and-switch tactics, but this is a good characterization of some of their other strategy.)
Natasha has a couple of recent posts at Pacific Views that shine a light on the games the right is playing. She did her own little bit of investigative reporting:
After all the discussion of the organization that's agitating to keep Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11 out of theatres, I thought I'd try to talk to the people at Russo Marsh + Rogers. So I call them up and ask to speak with their media representative to ask a couple questions about the firm, and I was told to leave my information and expect a callback.
Then I called the phone number for Move America Forward, and a polite young man comes on who instantly recognized my voice as I started to talk. It's the same person who answered the phone when I called the RM+R number. For a minute I thought I'd dialed wrong, apologized for calling back again, and said goodbye. But I hadn't dialed wrong.
So a little while later, Siobhan Guiney from MAF calls me back. (From her MAF bio: "She has worked as a legislative advocate fighting for the people against liberal corruption.") She says that RM+R did register the site for them, but that they hadn't paid for it or consulted on the name. Paid staff at MAF did the design work, and she said that she paid for service when they rolled the phones over to the same receptionist, and that the two groups only shared a building. [...] Regarding Fahrenheit 9/11, she said that "his movie is a piece of propaganda" that "...shouldn't be advertised as a documentary." As an example of a specific error, she offered the assertion in the film that President Bush gave the order to move the Bin Laden family out of the country. [...] Guiney had also said that the original purpose of the organization was to support the troops in America's war on terror. She said that Moore was attacking the troops and their morale, and when asked to cite examples, one thing she mentioned was his stated goal of helping to defeat George W. Bush. In response to the obvious question of why that was synonymous with attacking the troops, she said, "He's our Commander in Chief. It's his policies in place [and we] have to support those policies."
She said several times that they didn't oppose his right to make the movie or say what he wanted. There was even the standard, "Thank God he lives in a country where...," bit. And of course, she was equally thankful that MAF lived in a country where they could give their opinion of his work. I said that in calling for a boycott, weren't they doing more than just disagreeing? She said that they were just informing theaters that a number of people wouldn't show up to see the movie. She didn't really have anything else to say on why it wouldn't be enough to just not show up.
She seemed to be really ready with other well-known RNC talking points, as well - like trying very hard to conflate the Taliban's policies on education for girls with those of Saddam.
Natasha also notes a recent example of Bush's compassion:
Bush addressed the Southern Baptist Convention today via satellite, and among all the usual 'yay, fetus' jargon, was this:
We will also continue our support for crisis pregnancy centers...
Crisis pregnancy centers are fundamentalist church group fronts that sometimes advertise as though they were abortion providers or groups that acted as quality watchdogs for abortion services.
What we're talking about here is blatant deception, and it puts people's lives at risk. It's not new, either; back in the '70s I had a young woman nearly bleed to death all over me because she'd gone to one of these places and they had lied to her about the result of her pregnancy test. These were the days of another scandal called the Dalkon Shield, an IUD that was promoted as being safe for women who had never previously been pregnant (not true; none of them are). By that time people like me who were working in women's health clinics knew that the Shield posed a special danger and should immediately be removed; among other things, they presented a significant risk of fatality in the event of a pregnancy. These people had been told that she had a Shield in place, and if they'd been responsible they would have realized that by claiming she wasn't pregnant they were putting her life in danger. In the end, this teenaged college student ended up requiring a hysterectomy. In the name of "pro-life" they had come very close to committing murder.
Meanwhile, Dick Cheney again repeated the false claim that there were ties between Saddam and Al Qaeda. The White House has also continued to weasel about applications of the Geneva Conventions. The press actually tried to get something straight out of them; Josh Marshall has a transcript that shows Scott McClellan ducking and diving all over the place. It seems pretty obvious that these people are lying, and they know they're lying.
Perhaps sleaziest of all, Josh highlights the very clear attempt by Team Bush to corrupt Catholicism in aid of Bush's campaign efforts. He quotes from an article in The Washington Post:
Karl Maurer, vice president of Catholic Citizens of Illinois, a conservative grass-roots group, said he would add sodomy and gay marriage to that list. Some liberal grass-roots groups have said they believe the church's teachings against war and the death penalty are worthy of equal treatment.
"Once you open this door, what's going to come rolling through it?" asked Deal W. Hudson, editor of the magazine Crisis and a key Catholic ally of the Bush administration. "Pretty soon, no one would be taking Communion."
Hudson said he believes the denial of Communion should begin, and end, with Kerry. Even better, he said, would be if priests would read letters from the pulpit denouncing the senator from Massachusetts "whenever and wherever he campaigns as a Catholic."
Hudson's and Rove's agenda here seems rather clear.
Oh, yeah.
I think most Catholics get that this kind of thing is a move by a government to control and corrupt their church. The only religious group that doesn't object to this thing seems to be the right-wing non-Catholic fundamentalists who want to impose a theocracy based on their own beliefs.
But I'm confused about one thing. Could the end-timers who seem to worship him really be unclear on the obvious similarities between Bush and The Beast? Or do they recognize those similarities and want to join forces with The Beast himself in a deliberate attempt to bring on Armageddon? 14:17 BST
Stuff to read
Zogby says: If the election for president of the United States were held today, Democratic challenger John Kerry would win easily, approaching the sort of lopsided electoral college victories reminiscent of the Clinton 90s and the Reagan 80s.
LiberalOasis: And if people don't like religious leaders telling pols what to do, you can bet they really don't like pols telling religious leaders to tell pols what to do.
Republican politicos are, not unpredictably, trying to organize a boycott by movie houses of Fahrenheit 9/11; Political Strategy is providing resources for those who would like to push back.
World O'Crap reads the runes and makes a prediction. (Also: Laugh your hiney off at some reviews of right-wing nuts; the Virgin Ben Shapiro one is lovely.) 00:43 BST
Yes, it's time for another episode. Adam from Muncie, Indiana writes today:
"Goldstein, don't you think you're overplaying this whole Abu Ghraib thing? I mean really, so what if some Iraqis were made to stand or march around, or didn't get to bed on time? I'm sure it wasn't pleasant but come on, it's not torture!"
Thanks for writing Adam. I've received similar messages from many patriotic Americans, and I'd like to respond.
Ken MacLeod, who also loved the ideals that were America:
The American Revolution is over.
When the President claims for himself powers outlawed in every country issuing from the English Revolution, and last exercised when James the II & VII personally supervised the splitting of Presbyterian shins, I guess we have to admit that in the long run the English Revolution failed.
Oh well. Freedom can always choose another people.
I liked it better when we were the good guys. 16:30 BST
In The Washington Post
An editorial complains that once again the administration is Muzzling Abortion:
Abortion will always be an agonizing issue, and the right balance between abstinence and contraception is a fair subject for debate. But the attempt to deny conference platforms to groups that oppose the administration's view is inimical both to free speech and to scientific inquiry. To attack a conference of public health specialists, canceling grants that would have been used to allow delegates from developing countries to attend, is to drag the battles over abortion and conservative values into forums where they have no place.
To understand the magnitude of what may have gone on in America's secret prisons, you don't need special security clearance or inside information. Anyone who wants to connect the dots can do it. To see what I mean, review the content of a few items now easily found on the Internet. [...] But articles, television reports and blogs are useful only insofar as they move the public.
For in the end, it is public opinion that matters, and it is on public opinion that the fate of any further investigations now depends. Voters have some items of information available to them, as listed above. Voters -- ultimately the most important source of pressure on democratic politicians -- can petition their congressmen, their senators and their president for more. If they don't, the elections will be held, the subject will change. Without a real national debate, without congressional approval, without much discussion of what torture actually means and why it has so long been illegal at home and abroad, a few secret committees will have changed the character of this country.
Indeed, if the voters can't move the politicians, and the politicians aren't courageous enough to act alone, we may wake up one morning and discover that torture has always been legal after all.
Once again the government pursued "the course of least resistance," rounding up thousands of foreigners, not for terrorist activity but for technical immigration violations. Many were arrested in secret, held without charges, denied access to lawyers, presumed guilty until proven innocent, tried in secret, and kept locked up long after their cases were fully resolved. In the name of "preventing terrorism," the government has locked up more than 5,000 foreigners who had nothing to do with terrorism.
For 2 1/2 years, little has been done to rectify this situation. But today several senators and representatives plan to introduce the Civil Liberties Restoration Act of 2004, a bill that seeks to ensure that the next time we suffer a terrorist attack, we will hold fast to basic principles of fairness, due process and human rights, especially in our treatment of foreign nationals.
The depressing thing about the CLRA is that it "assures" rights that, three years ago, everyone understood to apply to everyone in the United States. I forget who it was (Brandeis?) who said that no law can protect our rights if the public's belief in those rights is weak, and no law is necessary to protect them if the public truly supports those rights. 15:07 BST
Time magazine's review of James Bamford's new A Pretext for War has a pretty explosive allegation here:
Douglas Feith, a senior Pentagon official, set up several secret offices in the Pentagon that received data from Israel's own intelligence teams and coordinated its findings with them, partly as a way to get around CIA caution in the region. Bamford reveals that the original source of the spurious allegation that Saddam harbored "mobile biological-weapons labs" did not come from the brother of a top aide to Ahmad Chalabi whose code name was Curveball, but from an Israeli tip going back to 1994. Bamford quotes anonymous CIA agents who say that they suspected that much of the hard-liners' intelligence on weapons of mass destruction (WMD) was bogus but there was pressure from within and without to shut up about it.
It comes in the context of describing Bamford's analysis of the role the neocons played in the pre-war intelligence.
As much as some might try to marginalize this film as a screed against President George Bush, "F9/11" - as we saw last night - is a tribute to patriotism, to the American sense of duty, and at the same time a indictment of stupidity and avarice.
Fox says this is, "a film that members of all political parties should see without fail."
