Incompetence of the Bush Administration, again....

in which a 22 year old Florida lad gets a $300 million contract to supply our troops with munitions.....


BushCo, supporting the troops as only they know how....

Not surprisingly, the Afghan army has been unhappy with the product. AEY shipped the decades-old ammo in cardboard boxes -- apparently to save money on shipping charges. And the Times reports that the boxes arrived in Afghanistan spilling out of the boxes, "revealing ammunition manufactured in China in 1966." It's illegal to deal in Chinese arms.

In response to the Times' questions, the Army has suspended AEY "from any future federal contracting, citing shipments of Chinese ammunition and claiming that Mr. Diveroli misled the Army by saying the munitions were Hungarian."

If it weren't so tragic, it would actually be funny.

Time for a Change?

Kevin Drum sums up the main problem with the McCain candidacy, particularly as it pertains to the press coverage McCain has received.

I try not to get too bogged down in how the talking heads treat the candidates, because the overall coverage is so ridiculously vacuous, and because people like O'Reilly, Limbaugh and Hannity have (to their credit, and shame) described themselves as 'entertainers', as opposed to journalists. Further, for anyone who really wants to find out about the candidates, to fact check their statements, or to dig into whether their rhetoric matches their record, the internets are available. That said, this is all you really need to say about McCain:

Let's recap. Foreign policy cred lets him get away with wild howlers on foreign policy. Fiscal integrity cred lets him get away with outlandishly irresponsible economic plans. Anti-lobbyist cred lets him get away with pandering to lobbyists. Campaign finance reform cred lets him get away with gaming the campaign finance system. Straight talking cred lets him get away with brutally slandering Mitt Romney in the closing days of the Republican primary. Maverick uprightness cred allows him to get away with begging for endorsements from extremist religious leaders like John Hagee. "Man of conviction" cred allows him to get away with transparent flip-flopping so egregious it would make any other politician a laughingstock. Anti-torture cred allows him to get away with supporting torture as long as only the CIA does it.

I think the more pertinent point is raised by Digby, namely that the pass that McCain receives is consistent with the treatment that the press gave other ignorant, possibly senile, and clearly challenged intellects like W and Reagan. Republicans, as well as the mainstream press seem to like their candidates proudly disengaged and uninformed. Junior, who famously told us that he "doesn't do nuance", and Reagan, who spent he last year of his presidency slurping porridge and watching Get Smart reruns are just the sort of towering intellects that the right seems to gravitate towards.

I for one have had enough of that. I suppose it's too much to ask the press to call out McCain on the fact that he doesn't understand the economy and thinks that the Iranian Shia are training Al Qeada, but hopefully the voters won't be so forgiving.

On the Record

Robert Byrd offered an amendment to the Authorization of Force in Iraq on October 10, 2002 in which he said the following:

Mr. President, 38 years ago I, Robert C. Byrd, voted on the Tonkin Gulf Resolution--the resolution that authorized the President to use military force to "repel armed attacks" and "to prevent further Communist aggression" in Southeast Asia.

It was this resolution that provided the basis for American involvement in the war in Vietnam.

It was the resolution that lead to the longest war in American history.

It led to the deaths of 58,000 Americans, and 150,000 Americans being wounded in action.

It led to massive protests, a deeply divided country, and the deaths of more Americans at Kent State.

It was a war that destroyed the Presidency of Lyndon Johnson and wrecked the administration of Richard Nixon.

After all that carnage, we began to learn that, in voting for the Tonkin Gulf Resolution, we were basing our votes on bad information. We learned that the claims the administration made on the need for the Tonkin Gulf Resolution were simply not true, and history is repeating itself.

We tragically and belatedly learned that we had not taken enough time to consider the resolution. We had not asked the right questions, nor enough questions. We learned that we should have been demanding more hard evidence from the administration rather than accepting the administration at its word.

But it was too late.

For all those spouting jingoes about going to war with Iraq, about the urgent need for regime change no matter what the cost, about the need to take out the evil dictator--and make no mistakes, I know and understand that Saddam Hussein is an evil dictator--I urge Senators to go down on The Capital Mall and look at the Vietnam memorial. Nearly every day you will find someone at that wall weeping for a loved one, a father, a son, a brother, a friend, whose name is on that wall.

If we are fortunate, a war with Iraq will be a short one with few American deaths, as in the Persian Gulf war, and we can go around again waving flags and singing patriotic songs.

Or, maybe we will find ourselves building another wall on the mall.

I will always remember the words of Senator Wayne Morse, one of the two Senators who opposed the Tonkin Gulf Resolution. During the debate on the Tonkin Gulf Resolution, he stated: "The resolution will pass, and Senators who vote for it will live to regret it."

Many Senators did live to regret it.

The Tonkin Gulf Resolution contained a sunset provision to end military action. S.J. Res. 46 will allow the President to continue war for as long as he wants, against anyone he wants as long he feels it will help eliminate the threat posed by Iraq.

With the Tonkin Gulf Resolution, Congress could "terminate" military action. With S.J. Res. 46 , only the President can terminate military action.

I should point out that the Tonkin Gulf Resolution and S.J. Res. 46 do have several things in common. Congress is again being asked to vote on the use of force without hard evidence that the country poses an immediate threat to the national security of the United States. We are being asked to vote on a resolution authorizing the use of force in a hyped up, politically charged atmosphere in an election year. Congress is again being rushed into a judgment.

This is why I stand here today, before this Chamber, and before this Nation, urging, pleading for some sanity, for more time to consider this resolution, for more hard evidence on the need for this resolution.

Before we put this great Nation on the track to war, I want to see more evidence, hard evidence, not more Presidential rhetoric. In support of this resolution, several people have pointed out that President Kennedy acted unilaterally in the Cuban missile crisis. That is true. I remember that. I was here. I also remember President Kennedy going on national television and showing proof of the threat we faced. I remember him sending our UN ambassador, Adlai Stevenson, to the United Nations, to provide proof to the world that there was a threat to the national security of the United States.

All we get from this administration is rhetoric. In fact, in an address to our NATO colleagues, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, according to the Chicago Tribune, urged our allies to resist the idea for the need of absolute proof about terrorists intent before they took action.

Before we unleash what Thomas Jefferson called the "dogs of war," I want to know, have we exhausted every avenue of peace? My favorite book does not say, blessed are the war makers. It says: "Blessed are the peacemakers." Have we truly pursued peace?

If the need for taking military action against Iraq is so obvious and so needed and so urgent, then why are nearly every one of our allies opposed to it? Why is the President on the phone nearly every day trying to convince our allies to join us?

So many people, so many nations in the Arab world already hate and fear us. Why do we want them to hate and fear us even more?

People are correct to point out that September 11 changed everything. We need to be more careful. We need to build up our intelligence efforts and our homeland security. But do we go around pounding everybody, anybody, who might pose a threat to our security? If we clobber Iraq today, do we clobber Iran tomorrow?

When do we attack China? When do we attack North Korea? When do we attack Syria?

Unless I can be shown proof that these distant nations do pose an immediate, serious threat to the national interests and security of the United States, I think we should finish our war on terrorism. I think we should destroy those who destroyed the Trade Towers and attacked the Pentagon. I think we should get thug No. 1 before we worry about thug No. 2.

Yes, September 11 changed many aspects of our lives, but people still bleed. America's mothers will still weep for their sons and their daughters who will not come home.

September 11 should have made us more aware of the pain that comes from being attacked. We, more than ever, are aware of the damage, the deaths, and the suffering that comes from violent attacks.

At that time, he was the longest serving human being in the history of the United States Senate, elected nine times for 6 year terms. He spoke with the authority of someone who had seen more and lived through more than any other elected official. He clearly pointed out that the AUMF was irresponsible on two counts, first because it was being rushed through the chamber by a bullying administration without clear evidence of an Iraqi WMD program, a link between Saddam and Al Qaeda, or a convincing case that our own national interest was being threatened, and more importantly, because it was an open-ended blank check and a gross abrogation of Congress's constitutional responsibilities.

He was opposed most vehemently by John McCain and Joe Lieberman, who own this war as much as Bush himself. Here, though, is the Junior Senator from New York's response, from which she cannot hide:

McCain's War

Remember. The surge is working.

We are now entering a period of Iraqi restlessness in which Sunni Sahwa militias are growing restive, Muqtada al-Sadr's ceasefire is on the verge of unraveling, and little political progress is being made. In fact, I received an email today from a friend in the Green Zone who told me he slept in his body armor last night--something not typically done these days. And it's not a good sign.

Perhaps this will give John McCain, Lindsey Graham, and Joe Lieberman pause to stop patting themselves on the back for five minutes in order to realize that they are not vindicated, they are still wrong, and any sort of resolution in Iraq will require a serious change from the current short-sighted Bush administration strategy of "pay them off until I'm out of office."

As I have said before, the violence in Iraq is cyclical and will remain so until we remove the bulk of our forces. And with 25 dead in two weeks, we are not headed in the right direction.

March Madness Snark.

All I can say is that Greg Paulus and the Blue Devils played like warriors in their one point victory over Belmont.

Saw the Pogues Last Week..

Ah, Shane was in fine form in Philly last Thursday night. Sang all the old songs, didn't he?

Atlas Shrugs , and takes a corporate handout

Dan Henninger in the WSJ blathers on and on in his column today on the conversion of David Mamet from a squishy-headed liberal to a steely-eyed conservative, and the mainstream media's willful ignorance of this apparently earth-shaking conversion. Leaving aside whether or not Mamet's conversion actually is newsworthy, I get more annoyed with Henningers' stock criticisms of liberalism, and oft repeated truisms about conservatism. He says:

Mr. Mamet in his (often hilarious) goodbye-to-liberalism essay credits the famed American newspaper editor William Allen White with the idea that government should basically stay out of the way of people trying to work out ways to get along and get ahead. Tom Stoppard ends with the same, central point: "The idea of the autonomy of the individual is echoed, I realize, all over the place in my writing."

Many Democrats know that individual autonomy is the moving spirit of our times. The Web is its relentless, daily metaphor. This notion is embedded in the thought of the writers David Mamet has been reading of late. Left-liberalism breeds many autonomous spirits -- but only in their private lives. The party's ethos is as it was in 1930 -- dark forces arrayed to thwart the delivery of benevolence to fragile masses. For the latest standard version, see the end of Mr. Obama's Tuesday speech on "the real culprits of the middle-class squeeze."

Unless the Democrats figure out a way to back down big brother, the years ahead likely will bring more Mamet drop-outs. Belief in autonomy may even reach Hollywood.

This tired notion that conservatives stand for rugged individualism, free markets, the gold standard of small government and little or no regulation has been exposed as bullshit this week in the pathetic and transparent bailout that you and I are financing for Bear Stearns. Perhaps more than any other bank, Bear represented the macho cutthroat of Wall Street, and they wore their arrogance proudly as they flooded the financial world with what has proven to be a steaming pile of worthless crap, known as mortgage-backed securities and derivatives based upon them. Their demise was halted by Henry Paulson, former CEO of Goldman and Bush's secretary of the treasury, who backstopped an absurd bid by JP Morgan to stave off bankruptcy for Bear. Make no mistake at all, the feds action was designed to save the bondholders of Bear, as well as the small coterie of investment banks who as counter parties who were locked into trades with Bear. Rather than let Bear slip into bankruptcy and the stricter bankruptcy laws that the Republican Congress passed, the government bailed out the masters of the universe, the Ayn Rand reading smugs who have been peddling the same tired bullshit that Henninger and Mamet spew when they speak of the rugged individualism of the right.

EJ Dionne called them out on this in very plain English. It's worth a read.

Never do I want to hear again from my conservative friends about how brilliant capitalists are, how much they deserve their seven-figure salaries and how government should keep its hands off the private economy.

The Wall Street titans have turned into a bunch of welfare clients. They are desperate to be bailed out by government from their own incompetence, and from the deregulatory regime for which they lobbied so hard. They have lost "confidence" in each other, you see, because none of these oh-so-wise captains of the universe have any idea what kinds of devalued securities sit in one another's portfolios.

So they have stopped investing. The biggest, most respected investment firms threaten to come crashing down. You can't have that. It's just fine to make it harder for the average Joe to file for bankruptcy, as did that wretched bankruptcy bill passed by Congress in 2005 at the request of the credit card industry. But the big guys are "too big to fail," because they could bring us all down with them.

Enter the federal government, the institution to which the wealthy are not supposed to pay capital gains or inheritance taxes. Good God, you don't expect these people to trade in their BMWs for Saturns, do you? ...

But in the enthusiasm for deregulation that took root in the late 1970s, flowered in the Reagan era and reached its apogee in the second Bush years, we forgot the lesson that government needs to keep a careful watch on what capitalists do. Of course, some deregulation can be salutary, and the market system is, on balance, a wondrous instrument -- when it works. But the free market is just that: an instrument, not a principle.

In 1996, back when he was a Republican senator from Maine, William Cohen told me: "We have been saying for so long that government is the enemy. Government is the enemy until you need a friend."

So now the bailouts begin, and Wall Street usefully might feel a bit of gratitude, perhaps by being willing to have the wealthy foot some of the bill or to acknowledge that while its denizens were getting rich, a lot of Americans were losing jobs and health insurance. I'm waiting.

It's about time.

Jesus H. Christ on a Segway, now he wants to fight!

Sitting next to his Vice President, who took five deferments in order to avoid the Vietnam war, your President, who once said this about his own military service during Vietnam:

“I was not prepared to shoot my eardrum out with a shotgun in order to get a deferment. Nor was I willing to go to Canada. So I chose to better myself by learning how to fly airplanes."

leaned back in his 'ol chair and let this beauty out:

"I must say, I'm a little envious," Bush said. "If I were slightly younger and not employed here, I think it would be a fantastic experience to be on the front lines of helping this young democracy succeed."

"It must be exciting for you ... in some ways romantic, in some ways, you know, confronting danger. You're really making history, and thanks," Bush said.

Somebody's been reading too much Kipling. I'm guessing the old Prez didn't get a chance to read this harrowing and heartbreaking account of just what the fighting in Afghanistan looks like, without the rose colored glasses.

I wondered how Kearney was going to win back his own guys, let alone win over the Korengalis. Just before I left, Kearney told me his biggest struggle would be holding his guys in check. “I’ve got too many geeking out, wanting to go off the deep end and kill people,” he said. One of his lieutenants wanted to shoot every Afghan in the face. Kearney shook his head. He wished he could buy 20 goats and let the boys beat and burn them and let loose their rage. He tried to tell them the restraints were a product of their success — that there was an Afghan government with its own rules. “I’m balancing plates on my goddamn nose is what I’m doing,” he said. “All it’s gonna take is for one of these guys to snap.”

Where'd this come from?

Wow. Chris Matthews grows a pair and calls out Bush for his horribly off color and tasteless song parody at the Gridiron Dinner this week:



Really. Making light of Katrina, Iraq, and Cheney's willful disregard for the Constitution is just not that funny, particularly to those who've been touched by the disaster of this administration. But, then again, Matthews laughed along with Bush when he did the skit at the correspondent's dinner in 2004, looking under the table for WMDs, and scolded Colbert for his viscerally cutting words at the same event in 2006. A cynic might say that Matthews only stood up to Bush when lame duckery set in and unfettered access to Bush became uninteresting.

Collective Wisdom

As our collective fatigue of the the Bush Administration drags on, and while we are pleasantly distracted by the Democratic Primary which represents a substantive change from the lowbrow tragedy of the last eight years, two very dangerous 'truisms' have slipped into our collective wisdom, both of which have been called into question quite starkly this week. It's important to remain vigilant, as these 'truisms' are most often wrong, and bullshit should be called...


Truism #1: The surge is working, has worked, and is a shining success. You only need to look to Bill Kristol's nomination of Petraeus or Odierno as GOP VP candidates to see that this meme is working its way into the mainstream. (Actually, Kristol's suggestion got even weirder than that, he also suggested Clarence Thomas, whom he referred as " the most impressive conservative in American public life", but that's a story for another day).

Eugene Robinson tells a different story about the surge in the WaPo in an op ed.

When the Bush administration celebrates a 60 percent reduction in overall violence in Iraq, it's easy to forget that this is compared with June 2007, when the sectarian civil war was raging and bombings with scores of victims were a regular occurrence. The surge managed only to reduce the level of violence from apocalyptic to agonizing -- and now even those gains seem to be slipping.

Bush's surge was designed to give the Iraqi government the necessary breathing space for Shiites, Sunnis and Kurds to reach vital compromises. President Jalal Talabani and Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki showed their gratitude this month by rolling out the red carpet, literally, for Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

Bush's Middle East policy is designed largely to blunt the influence of Iran, which seeks a dominant role in the region. So it must have been galling to the White House to watch as Ahmadinejad swept into Baghdad in a ceremonial motorcade and toured the city with fanfare. Never one to miss a chance to stick in the needle, Ahmadinejad questioned the motives of those who "visit this country in a stealth manner."

He was referring to the fact that Bush has to fly into Iraq unannounced and can stay for only a few hours. It would be far too dangerous to let citizens know in advance that their liberator was coming to check on their welfare.

Add to that the fact that Monday was the deadliest day in Iraq for US troops in six months. It's been clear for some time that the Mahdi army is waiting patiently while the US does its dirty work, clearing out the most radicalized Sunni elements, so that when Sadr decides to reengage, he can do so with unfettered room to move. It's also clear that the surge and the partial abatement of the extreme waves of violence of last summer can have no hope of long term success, with the only long term result being a further diminution of US military might. However, that is not what has passed into the consciousness of our current discussion, rather, there is general consensus that the surge has worked, and is working.

Truism #2: That US foreign policy is being handled by adults. There is general consensus that the replacement of Cheney/Rumsfeld by Rice/Gates was a nod to a more reasonable and diplomatic US policy in the Middle East and western Asia. The resignation of Fox Fallon yesterday calls that into question. Fallon, a vocal critic of Petraeus, Bush and the folly of the surge, an invasion of Iran, and the prospect of a long-term military presence in Iraq was fired only a year after Bush hand picked him as the commander in the Middle East and head of CentCom. He was generally seen as a strategic thinker who was a balance to the absurd and dangerous policy of insane chickenhwaks like Cheney, Doug Feith, and Paul Wolfowitz. It is now clear that the inept Rice has lost control of the machine of foreign policy and that the politics of crazy are back in control.

As Josh Marshall points out, the forced removal of Fallon should in no way be taken lightly:

Bear in mind too that Fallon was not foisted on the White House. Nor was he a holdover from a previous administration. The administration chose him. And while the political leadership of the Pentagon and the White House can't choose just anyone for that job they have a fair amount of latitude to choose an officer of sufficient rank who is to their liking -- a prerogative this administration has availed itself of as much or more as any in modern American history.

And as Spencer Ackerman points out, the Fallon departure may have huge reverberations:

Gates said in a press conference just now that no one should think the move reflects any substantive change in policy. That sure won’t be how Teheran sees it. The Iranians will consider Fallon’s resignation to indicate that the bombing begins in the next five minutes. If the new Central Command chief is General Stanley McChrystal, who ran special operations in Iraq until recently (read: responses to Iranian activities), that’ll be a pretty solid indicator that Bush is going to make the most of his last months in office. McChrystal just got a different command, but that, of course, was before the military’s most prestigious combatant command just opened up. Teheran will look verrrrry closely at who gets the job.

The success or failure of the surge and the return of the bloodthirsty neocon influence in the administration are linked closely, of course, and Fallon sat in the middle of it. He undoubtedly took the job under the mistaken impression that Bush had seen the error of his arrogance and would listen to reason with regard to Iran and Iraq. Fallon, who once called Petraeus an "ass kissing little chicken shit" for Petraeus' grandstanding tour of DC in support of the surge last March, obviously spoke out against the Cheney wing one too many times, and the Esquire article, in which he questioned the Bush plan in every way sealed his fate. He, like so many others, assumed that Bush has a shred of intelligence and self reflection when it comes to the mess he has created throughout western asia. That was wrong, of course, and like the drunken gambler that he is, Bush is never more dangerous as when he has nothing to lose. A lame duck Bush can do plenty of damage, and it would be a mistake to believe the conventional wisdom right now.

If you can't beat em, hire em.

Karl Rove, newly minted adviser to the McCain campaign, tells the heartwarming story of Cindy McCain's adoption of a sick Bangladeshi daughter:




Which would be the same daughter that Rover referenced in the 2000 campaign thusly:

Rove invented a uniquely injurious fiction for his operatives to circulate via a phony poll. Voters were asked, "Would you be more or less likely to vote for John McCain...if you knew he had fathered an illegitimate black child?" This was no random slur. McCain was at the time campaigning with his dark-skinned daughter, Bridget, adopted from Bangladesh.

It worked. Owing largely to the Rove-orchestrated whispering campaign, Bush prevailed in South Carolina and secured the Republican nomination. The rest is history--specifically the tragic and blighted history of our young century.

Ahh. The politics of the Bush administration. The Nation article (H/T, Think Progress) goes on to point out that South Carolina in 2000 led to a significant change in McCain, the Maverick was denuded by the defeat, and the man who opposed significant Republican initiatives on the separation of church and state, responsible fiscal reform, the confederate flag, became a reliable Bush supporter, cheerleader for the war in Iraq, and eventually turned his back on his principled opposition to the use of torture.

Ken Mehlman, the self loathing thinly closeted former RNC chairman, Rove, John Bolton, Jeb Bush, Dan Bartlett are all now supporting McCain. Maverick indeed....

Bring on the Cranky.....

I've been saying it for some time, and I guarantee we will see lots more of this as this campaign rolls on.....



As Atrios says, wait until they start asking questions about McCain's comments about leaving the Republican party altogether in 2001...

Faces...

Ian McLagan, Woody, Ronnie Lane and Kenny Jones backing some guy up.

Wake me up when it's over

And at the other end of the philosophical debate surrounding progressivism and conservatism, the notion of a federalist constitutional democracy, the nuances of our primary caucus structure, the proper role of the federal government in a modern nation, the subtle differences between the competing constituencies and how various leaders may appeal to those constituencies, the evolving role of the ascendant superpower on the world stage, comes Junior:

WASHINGTON - The White House says President Bush will veto legislation on Saturday that would have barred the CIA from using waterboarding — a technique that simulates drowning — and other harsh interrogation methods on terror suspects.



Bush has said the bill would harm the government's ability to prevent future attacks.

McCain and the End of Conservatism

So, McCain won, and I guess that's a big deal.

I listened to Fox News, and the sad and exasperated Juan Williams, who should really get a reprieve from pulling a paycheck for sitting in between Britt Hume and William "the bloody" Kristol, attempted to make the point that he found it amazing that McCain won the nomination in spite of the virulent opposition of the mouth-breathing hard right, including and led by Fat Rush, the Hillbilly Heroin addicted arbiter of drive time conservatism. Kristol, Hume and Fred Barnes responded with a long and disjointed discussion of previous Republican primary battles passed, including Bush/Reagan, Bush/Dole/Buchanan, and W/McCain and all nodded sagely that this particular Republican primary was fought politely and honestly.

I'm pretty sure that wasn't Juan's point.

The fact that the incredibly flawed McCain, the most slavish supporter of the disastrous Bush foreign policy of the last four years, the man that blindly ignored every shred of evidence of the folly of our illegal, imprudent and counterproductive Mesopotamian misadventure won the nomination over Rudy, Mitt and Huck is hardly an endorsement of a unified conservative movement. McCain, a heretofore staunch opponent of a prudent immigration policy, a somewhat tempered assessment of the completely irresponsible Bush tax cuts for the absurdly wealthy, and the principled opposition to the use of torture by our armed forces has of course backslid on all of these core "beliefs" in the interest of pandering to the Republican wingnut base. And John Kerry was a flip-flopper.

This sanctimonious phony, who was born again after the Keating 5 scandal, and passed the McCain-Feingold Act, which naively attempted to bring rules to the campaign finance world, only to ignore its spirit and accept tainted money and surround himself with lobbyists and special interests, becomes the Republican nominee, over the protestations of Rush, Hannity, and Glen Beck, who don't find him sufficiently pro-lobby, pro-tax cut, pro-torture. Wait until they find out that he was schtupping Vicki Iseman after all.

William's point was clear, although he never had the chance to make it.

They had nothing. Rudy was a cross-dressing, thrice married, pro-fag, pro abortion New York City mayor. Mittster was a Fagachussets pro abortion, pro-tax governor who was on the record opposing everything he supported over the last nine painful months.

Huckabee firmly believes Jesus rode on a dinosaur.

As I mentioned earlier, the strategy may be to throw this election, realizing that Bush's 17% approval rating, the recession, the cratering stock market, and the horrible diminution of our standing in the international community are too high a wall to climb, and then blame the defeat on the fact that McCain wasn't a conservative after all. Cynical, possible, but off base.

Because there really isn't anyone at this point, is there? McCain put on a brave face and attempted to outline exactly what it is that he'll be standing for between now and November. And it's all a little weird. As Fareed Zakaria points out in his column in Newsweek, 9/11 was but a brief respite for the Republican Conservative movement, in their inexorable decline that has seen entire voting blocs shift away from the party, probably for good. Latinos, women, Asian Americans, college educated and youthful minorities will not vote for the party of Rush, W, Karl Rove, or Bill Kristol. There is nothing that McCain can say or do that could change that.

Zakaria points out that

Conservatism grew powerful in the 1970s and 1980s because it proposed solutions appropriate to the problems of the age—a time when socialism was still a serious economic idea, when marginal tax rates reached 70 percent, and when the government regulated the price of oil and natural gas, interest rates on checking accounts and the number of television channels. The culture seemed under attack by a radical fringe. It was an age of stagflation and crime at home, as well as defeat and retreat abroad. Into this landscape came Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan, bearing a set of ideas about how to fix the world. Over the next three decades, most of their policies were tried. Many worked. Others didn't, but in any event, time passed and the world changed profoundly. Today, as Frum writes, "after three decades of tax cutting, most Americans no longer pay very much income tax." Inflation has been tamed, the economy does not seem overregulated to most, and crime is not at the forefront of people's consciousness. The culture has proved robust, and has in fact been enriched and broadened by its diversity. Abroad, the cold war is won and America sits atop an increasingly capitalist world. Whatever our problems, an even bigger military and more unilateralism are not seen as the solution.

Today Tim Russert babbles on and on about the big problem that the Democrats face. He says that while Hill and Obama will be fighting it out in Pennsylvania, McCain will have the opportunity to unite the Republican party around himself, providing the Republicans with an opportunity to coalesce around defining issues for November. Count me as skeptical that such a thing will occur.

Social Justice and the Left in Academialand

Discuss.

Mission Accomplished?

True this.

Eep:

Bush: US Is Not Headed Into Recession

This should fit in well with Bush’s other confident statements-o’-fact:

* “[Rafael Palmeiro]’s the kind of person that’s going to stand up in front of the klieg lights and say he didn’t use steroids, and I believe him. Still do.”

* “Both [Rumsfeld and Cheney] are doing fantastic jobs.”

* “Brownie, you’re doing a heck of a job.”

* “We do not torture.”

* “I don’t know whether we’re going to get [bin Laden] tomorrow or a month from now or a year from now. I don’t really know. But we’re going to get him.“

* On the Democrats retaking Congress in ‘06: “That’s not going to happen.”


Hold onto your wallets, friends. This economy’s headed straight down the dumper.

The Angry White Male!

The loathsome Michael Smerconish made a big deal of this editorial today on his radio show, and you'll hear much more about it in the coming weeks. Smerconish and the other dime store Limbaughs are treating it like some Talmudic revelation, rather than the infantile babbling of a blustery moron with an overwhelming fear of women, homosexuals and anyone with darker skin than Richie Cunningham.

A snippet of this eminent widsom:

The Angry White Man owns firearms, and he’s willing to pick up a gun to defend his home and his country. He is willing to lay down his life to defend the freedom and safety of others, and the thought of killing someone who needs killing really doesn’t bother him.

The Angry White Man is not a metrosexual, a homosexual or a victim. Nobody like him drowned in Hurricane Katrina — he got his people together and got the hell out, then went back in to rescue those too helpless and stupid to help themselves, often as a police officer, a National Guard soldier or a volunteer firefighter.....

He also votes, and the Angry White Man loathes Hillary Clinton. Her voice reminds him of a shovel scraping a rock. He recoils at the mere sight of her on television. Her very image disgusts him, and he cannot fathom why anyone would want her as their leader. It’s not that she is a woman. It’s that she is who she is. It’s the liberal victim groups she panders to, the “poor me” attitude that she represents, her inability to give a straight answer to an honest question, his tax dollars that she wants to give to people who refuse to do anything for themselves.

There are many millions of Angry White Men. Four million Angry White Men are members of the National Rifle Association, and all of them will vote against Hillary Clinton, just as the great majority of them voted for George Bush.

The obvious problem with this simplistic characterization of the Angry White Male, it seems to me is that there is a very strong possibility a few things have happened to this flattened cartoon of a man:

His son/daughter/nephew/cousin/neighbor was killed or maimed in Iraq or Afghanistan
His son/daughter/nephew/cousin/neighbor came out
His son/daughter/nephew etc. married a 'new American'
He worked for Chrysler, GM, Delphi, or Countrywide, with the operative word being "worked"
That fancy three year ARM just adjusted, and if he was smart enough not to drown in Katrina, it sure feels like he's drowning now



I'm guessing that the Angry White Male aint what he used to be, and probably never was.

WFB. Prick.

As the inevitable hagiographies of William F. Buckley roll off the presses this morning, let's pause to take a look at the man in his most honest moment, an angry, bigoted bully and liar, who exemplified the very worst of the "I've got mine, fuck you" mentality that underlies much of modern conservatism. The debate with Gore Vidal in 1968 surrounded the Chicago Police Department's violent raid of the hippie protests outside the Democratic National Convention, arguably one of the most important moments in modern American political history. Vidal, an open homosexual, atheist and famous man of letters made the point that many in the park, and throughout Europe and the world believed that the US policy towards North Vietnam was imperialist, illegal, ill fated and wrong. Buckley, of course, equated Vidal with the Nazi sympathizers of WW2, and questioned his patriotism, wondering why he supported those that were shooting at US soldiers.

Things have really changed, haven't they? Why does Obama hate America and love the terrorists, anyway?

Vidal, somewhat rudely, it must be said, noted that the only crypto-fascist that he could think of was Buckley himself, and at that point, Buckley shows the true colors. Here is the man with the pedigree, the erudition and the vocabulary, son of an oil baron, reverting to what he was at his core, a lying bigoted ass. The man who was born "with the entire tea service in his mouth" calls Vidal a queer, and tells him he'll sock him in the mouth. It made for good TV, anyway.

Many on the left are praising Buckley for his intellectual honesty, notably the fact that while he embraced McCarthyite and bigoted positions, he did so openly and defended them heroically. That they see as a stark contrast to today's conservatives who opt for the dog whistle of buzzwords that signal to the fundamentalists, homophobes, racists, and crackpots that they share the same principals. Instead of Buckley's eloquent defense of his own brutal opinions, we get appeals to "the culture of life", "strict constructionist judges", and "intelligent design". I suppose there is some merit to that, and a nod to Buckley for calling out Bush on Iraq and the abandonment of any pretense of fiscal responsibility is in order, I guess.

But for me, the video tells the real tale of the man:




UPDATE: James Wolcott does a fantastic job of capturing the essence of the man.

and concludes:

To quote Ackerman again, "The decline of the right, and perhaps of America more generally, is summed up in the intellectual slouch from the heights of Buckley to the depths of Hewitt and Reynolds and Limbaugh and Coulter and Kristol and O’Reilly and Hannity and Bush," and John Cole, anticipating a bout of nausea coming on, cautions, "Watching the right-wing lunatics who destroyed conservatism wrapping themselves up in Buckley's cold, dead embrace over the next few weeks will be disgusting." Though it's already provided a dollop of comic relief.

Turning the Page

WASHINGTON -- A day after warning that potentially critical terrorism intelligence was being lost because Congress had not finished work on a controversial espionage law, the U.S. attorney general and the national intelligence director said Saturday that the government was receiving the information -- at least temporarily.

On Friday evening, Atty. Gen. Michael B. Mukasey and Director of National Intelligence J. Michael McConnell had said in an unusually blunt letter to Congress that the nation "is now more vulnerable to terrorist attack and other foreign threats" because lawmakers had not yet acted on the administration's proposal for the wiretapping law.

But within hours of sending that letter, administration officials told lawmakers on the House and Senate intelligence committees that they had prevailed upon all of the telecommunications companies to continue cooperating with the government's requests for information while negotiations with Congress continue.

They keep playing the same hand, and of course, it's all a bad bluff. Bloodthirsty hordes of Muslofacists are massing at our porous borders, and if we don't give the simpleton in the White House the ability to read our emails, they'll come crashing over the newfangled electronic fence and wrap all of our women up in burkhas, and Sharia law will drift over the land like a dark seeping cloud....

Unless it doesn't, which is OK, too. Because to Bush and particularly to Cheney and his awful consigliere, David Addington, the real game isn't about protecting anyone, it is about control of the wheels of governance, about executive overreach, about a bald faced reversal of our constitutional history. They use fear and intimidation towards that end, question the patriotism of anyone who questions their authority (megads! where's Barak's lapel pin??), and when all else fails, just lie brazenly, as the report in the LA Times above points out. Mukasey and McConnell really define the word "tool", in all of its pejorative glory. Once again, Chuck Schumer is exposed as a fool who got played by Bush in the case of Mukasey. Schumer bought the administration's line that Mukasey represented a break with the pervasive cronyism that has been the defining hallmark of this administration, and he should be embarrassed for doing so.

The real question, it seems to me, is how we sanitize this mess going forward. A clue comes from the interview that William Leonard gave to Newsweek last month. Leonard was the poor soul who headed the National Archives and dared to challenge Dick Cheney's office regarding their flagrant disregard for the longstanding policies regarding classified information in the White House. You'll remember Cheney's absurd argument that because he could cast the tiebreaking vote in a locked Senate, he actually belonged to the legislative branch of government, and as such, actually exists in some netherworld between branches (the nebulous fourth branch of government that I don't remember studying, I guess). Leonard, a 34 year veteran of the ISOO, the branch of the National Archives that is responsible for handling the classified information from the executive branch thought that Cheney's argument was, well, insane, and challenged him on it. Cheney responded reasonably, and acceded to Leonard's request. Oh, no, he actually sicked Addington on Leonard, and attempted to have his job abolished. Leonard stepped down at the end of 2007. In the interview with Newsweek, though, he makes this point:

One of the things I've reflected on lately is that I truly believe we need to introduce a new balancing test. In the past, we've looked at it as, 'we have to balance national security against the public's right to know or whatever.' My balancing test would be national security versus national security: yes, disclosing information may cause damage, but you know what, withholding that information may even cause greater damage… And I don't think we sufficiently taken that into greater account.

The global struggle that we're engaged in today is more than anything else is an ideological struggle. And in my mind….that calls for greater transparency, not less transparency. We're in a situation where we're attempting to win over the hearts and minds of the world's population. And yet, we seem to have a habit—when we restrict information, we're often times find ourselves in a position where we're ceding the playing field to the other side. We allow ourselves to be almost reduced to a caricature by taking positions on certain issues, oh , we simply can't talk about that.

And I think that's where the Obama Presidency needs to begin. They need to state firmly that transparency, openness, engagement and diplomacy are critical in winning the struggle against the ideology of islamic fundamentalism. They need to restore us to our role as a beacon and and example, rather than a petulant bully. It's important, and it will work.

Digby thinks that we also need to prosecute all of the bad actors who dragged us into our current state by breaking the laws, and that may be true as well. She says:

The intelligence leadership has been caught in an enormous lie, making false claims about lost surveillance gathering for purely political reasons. This cannot possibly be an isolated incident. Of coure, we KNOW it's not an isolated incident. And indeed, many of the employees in the civil service who directed these lies and misstatements, not those at the top but the functionaries, will still be working in their same posts under a potential Democratic Administration. It needs to be extremely clear from the very beginning that they must be rooted out, expunged and turned over to the legal system for a determination. It should be a key part of the Democratic nominee's platform. Only then can we truly "turn the page," as our front-runner is likely to say.

In the interim, it has to be clearly stated: the Bush Administration overtly and admittedly lied about lost intelligence to bully the House into expanding executive power. This is a memorable episode.