Fear and Feingold

Over at MyDD:

According to Progress Now, Senator Wayne 'Whiny' Allard, Republican of Colorado, accused Feingold of 'siding with terrorists' by introducing his censure resolution. They have a petition up demanding Allard apologize. Frankly, Senator Whiny Allard should be expelled from the Senate for accusing a colleague of treason.

Senator Feingold, you are a man of integrity and a real Democrat.

I'm proud of your strength and your leadership.

Senator Allard, your weak, cowardly nature means that you don't know what it means to fight the fear that terrorists seek to spread. You and conservatives like you enable terrorists with your weakness and posturing. May I recommend Depends brand undergarments, in case you soil yourself in the Senate as you cower in the corner?

This is just getting absurd- now it's treason to dare to formally say that the President is doing a bad job? That's all that Russ Feingold's censure resolution means, after all; it doesn't carry the force of impeachment. I mean, yes, this is an attempt at intimidation, and everybody knows that, especially those making the accusation. Still, one is forced to wonder just how egregious the crime would have to be before the "wartime prez" types relent.

Crashing the Blogosphere

Over at Crooks and Liars, there's a good discussion of the problems the "blogosphere" has in having Dems take it seriously, prompted by the NYTimes review of Kos and MyDD's new book. Here's some quotation:

One of the principal themes of the book raises a topic which I truly believe is of unparalleled importance -- the role of the blogosphere in influencing the nation's political debates as well as shaping the strategies adopted by the Democratic Party.

With very few exceptions, national Democrats in Washington see the blogosphere as composed of uninformed, ranting, dirty masses who need to be kept as far away as possible.

To be fair, I've seen some truly hairy comments threads that, perhaps, might bolster this perception. Plus, the problem of prominent right-wing bloggers and their commentators acting like racist thugs (LGF, anyone?) looms large, and shouldn't be discounted.

That said, one could just as easily ask questions about those people who ARE in charge, as by and large, they're really only experts in one thing: getting elected. Many of those who aren't tend to be "journalists" (at least on the right) whose chief skill is towing the party line and deliberate misinterpretation of liberals, or real experts who, nonetheless, are perfectly comfortable talking about things that they have little formal education in.

(Case in point: the spectacle of trained economists analyzing everything but economics, due to their all-encompassing faith in formalism and statistical inferrence.)

The way in which so many national Democrats run away from the blogosphere and try to pretend that it does not exist -- as though it is some sort of dangerous, poisonous sewer -- is really quite bewildering. Within the last two weeks, I had some extensive communications with a high-ranking staff member in a Democratic Senators' office (whose identity I promised not to reveal before the discussions began) in which I argued that systems should be created to enable Democratic Senators to work cooperatively with the blogosphere in order to prevent the Bush Administration from continuing to suppress investigations into its wrongdoing, including as part of the NSA scandal and other scandals.

I explained that there is a bursting and eager energy among the literally millions of people who write and read blogs to take meaningful action against the Bush Administration. The people in the blogosphere are highly motivated, informed, and politically engaged. Activating that energy and having national Democrats work cooperatively with the blogosphere (rather than ignore it or scorn it) could make an enormous difference in how these stories end up being covered and resolved. It is monumentally dumb not to embrace the one mechanism which has the ability to unleash genuinely impassioned, mass citizen action. And there are obvious and easy -- yet quite potent -- ways for national Democrats to work with bloggers and the blogosphere to maximize the force of these efforts.

This was the response I ultimately received:

I think there is an opportunity for us to figure out a better way to work together. But, you have to understand, my ultimate goal is to help [the] Senator [] achieve his objective of real oversight on national security matters by the Intelligence Committee.Even with the best of intentions, I’m not convinced that bloggers can help us meet that goal. In fact, I worry about it hurting our efforts given the increasingly partisan environment.

This response is not uncommon. Many - if not most - national Democrats really are afraid of working with actual citizens, and are particularly afraid of having any involvement at all with the blogosphere. It's as though they think they need to remain above and separated from the poorly behaved, embarrassing masses. They actually have been scared away from working with the very people who they are supposedly representing and who are on their side.

A long quote, but I think it's best seen through the prism of that one bolded quote: "increasingly partisan environment". Amato points out the elitism involved in the Dems' attitude towards blogs, and it should be pointed out, but it ultimately comes back to that same old bugaboo- Democrats' fear of their own name, and their own party, and the simple fact that by definition, they are the most left-wing of the two major parties. They are not a "third way", because there's no "second way" for them to array themselves against. They are the second way, and they should be proud of that, because history has shown that their way is the best of the two. They fear the bloggers because they worry that they'll be brought down by the company they keep, but let's face it: we're in bed together, whether they like it or not. There's no "sistah souljah" moment here.

(I've never been convinced, in any case, that that was as important to Clinton's success as is bandied about.)

As in so many cases, it comes down to group identity: "us" vs. "them". The most important part of the conservative movement is that they've carefully nurtured the perception among elite conservatives that they are "us" and their liberal counterparts are "them", while simultaneously widening the set of those who can be considered "elite conservatives" to the array of non-elected conservative pundits and writers in the think tank archipelago, as well as the hordes of otherwise-useless conservative "journalists" out there. Democrats are still trapped believing that "us" is Washington lawmakers and their hangers-on, including the Republicans, and "them" is everybody else. They need to support whatever consensus exists among those lawmakers in order to maintain their identity as part of the "us" group.

Bloggers challenge that consensus and are resolutely not part of that group, so why on earth listen to them? Why associate with them? Exploit them, certainly; exploiting the "other" is a proud and noble tradition. But certainly don't let them in, unless they demonstrate that they hold the right opinions and have the right background.

Which is sad, because in the end, the blogosphere is really only good for one thing: ideas. It's a factory and refinery for ideas, whether political or policy-oriented. If there's one thing the blogosphere's liberal contingent is screwing up, it's that there's little discussion of ideas and endless discussion of process and personalities. It's the latter that gets linked to, it's the latter that gets read, and it's the latter that gets commented on.

(Face it: gossiping about Harry Reid is meaningless. )

Right wing bloggers don't need this- they just support the ideas coming out of the right-wing think tanks, and attack the left. That's their job, and they do it with gusto. Left bloggers cannot do that, because there are no consciously left-wing think tanks of the Heritage and AEI stripe, and academe is still too particularist and resolutely non-partisan to play that role. If the Dems are going to get ideas, it needs to come from here.

(Well, not here. Maybe back when I had 1000+ readers a day. But you know what I mean.)

I'll leave it with Amato:

That obviously isn't going to happen. So the sooner Democrats realize that the blogosphere and citizen activism is something to embrace rather than scorn, the sooner it will be that they can find ways to finally cause the Bush Administration and all of its appendages to come crashing down.

Projection

Over on James Wolcott's blog, we see a comment about Sharon Stone and Debbie Schlussel's obsessive attacks on her.

Schlussel--Dairy Queen's answer to Ann Coulter, the unthinking person's Monica Crowley--is incensed as only a rightwing blogger can be that the former star of Basic Instinct is making unauthorized noises about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict while visiting the Mid-East. Here is one of the incredibly insensitive, inflammatory things Stone did while on tour in Israel.

"During her visit, Stone played football with a mixed group of Israeli and Palestinian children on Wednesday and later visited Israeli hospitals that care for Palestinian children."

For this outrage against all that is decent (how dare she!), Stone is called "crotch-woman" and other choice niceties.

"Crotch-woman"? Is that the best they can do? Weak.

Anyway, this obsession with celebrities actually opining on politics and international affairs is an old one on the right, and if you think about it, it doesn't really seem to make sense. I mean, sure, celebs can be somewhat idealistic and utopian, (on all sides- witness Arnold's belief that toughguy posturing could serve as effective governance), but it still doesn't really explain why they're so obsessed as to foam at their mouths whenever Bono opens his.

Now, however, I think I've figured it out. The common complaint is that celebrities don't know squat about policy. That is manifestly untrue in many cases- I'd match (as two prominent examples) Bono's knowledge of third world debt and Clooney's knowledge of foreign policy against most of the general public- including those rock-ribbed red staters that are lionized by Republicans for their common sense and insight. Sure, they might be wrong, but they aren't disproportionately uninformed, so why attack them for the latter?

See the title.. it's projection. Who the hell is Debbie Schlussel? What right does she have to talk about anything? Her bio says that she has a law degree and an MBA, but that doesn't qualify her to talk about foreign policy; hell, it barely qualifies her to talk about domestic policy, considering the type of people who are getting MBAs these days.

Going through her bio, her biggest credential is being a Republican and anti-Islamic hack; all her journalism credits are for "exposes" which, if as weak as her attacks on Roger Ebert for daring to support the case of an Iraqi Kurd, are beneath contempt. The "V" review shows that she has absolutely no idea how to write a review, as she completely ignored everything that, well, made the movie a movie...

...honestly, what kind of ace journalist isn't able to write a simple review?

This women is at the top of the heap, too. Most of the troglodytes that hunker beneath her are even less qualified to be "journalists", or writers, or analysts, or, well, much of anything. They are "journalists" because they're conservative hacks, not because they've actually written anything of note. Were they to switch sides, they'd be working in a factory. At best.

So, how to get credibility, when your bully pulpit is arbitrarily based on your political views? Criticize someone else's bully pulpit instead! Celebrities don't get credibility for being tools, they get credibility for being (generally, with key exceptions) good at something else. While Pitt and Jolie (as two quasi-activist examples) may be annoying at times, both have demonstrated that they're pretty good actors; Jolie in Gia, Pitt in River Runs Through It and Fight Club. Bono has had a longer and more influential musical career than almost everybody working today, and Clooney is a gifted actor and director, especially when handling the sort of political issues that Schlussel rants about in such a ham-handed fashion. All of these, and Sharon Stone, have demonstrated their dedication to the causes they espouse, Bono to a level that many would consider extreme.

So why the hell should anybody listen to a tool like Schlussel, when they could listen to someone like Clooney- who has demonstrated skill in a difficult and crowded field, and whose commentary is no worse than any number of Republican hacks?

Because the hacks made the accusation first! They insulate themselves from attacks by asserting their ability to judge who is, and isn't, a proper spokesman, and those already inclined to agree will go along with it. Nobody needs to know that Schlussel would be a non-entity if she were a Democrat. Nobody needs to know that she's a tool. If she and the rest scream loud enough about the other side, they'll be too busy with the accusations to think about them.

That's the only way that Schlussel and co. can dodge around the simple truth, as World o' Crap puts it:

Yes, Jolie only pretends to care about the world's poor, impoverished, poverty-stricken, not-rich children. Which is why she donated all that pretend money to UN children's programs, and contributed all that time and energy working on their behalf. Clearly, Angelina is a big poseur skank. (Unlike Debbie, who really helps needy children by, um, writing scathing blog entries about how some of them are being turned into camel jockeys.)

...the simple truth that there isn't a reason in the world to take them seriously, and listen to what they have to say.

To use an appropriate movie reference, they're Richard Gere, tapdancing as fast as he can go, trying to distract the audience. I liked that movie, but it's just no way to run a movement.

M is for Milk(?)

I should probably stop doing that.

In any case, while some are lamenting the news that bumper stickers at a conservative convention say "Happiness is Hillary's face on a milk carton", I've gotta say that I'm rather pleased and emboldened by it.

It means that there is now a single eight-word sentence that trumps the entire winger canard of "irrational hate of Bush". No matter what, just eight words and it's dead in the water.

So smile, "lie-brals". This terribly unfunny eliminationist bull actually does you a huge favor.

(Old news? Yeah, but I hadn't got around to mentioning it before, aside from a reference to Digby a while back... and it IS rather handy, isn't it?)

S for Serious

Slight change of focus.

Digby and Michael Berube both point out a simple fact about "theocons", one that should serve as a warning to those who think that the "I didn't think about the women" argument will solve things by itself:

They really mean what they say. They really want to do what they say. They really do want to get rid of abortion and birth control and everything else they say, and while moderates can be embarassed by the details, on a fundamental level they simply don't care.

First Berube, then Digby.

The idea is that an actual abortion ban would go too far: the first back alley death, and the Republican Party is in deep trouble. Well, maybe and maybe not, folks. You might think, along similar lines, “the first hideous death by torture in the War on Terror, and the Republican Party is in deep trouble,” or “the first unconstitutional power grab by the executive branch, and the Republican Party is in deep trouble,” or “the first data-mining program of domestic spying, and the Republican Party is in deep trouble,” or “the first systemic corruption scandal involving Jack Abramoff and Duke Cunningham and Tom DeLay, and the Republican Party is in deep trouble,” and you’d be, ah, wrong, you know. Besides, there’s a nasty time lag between that first back-alley death and the repeal (if any) of a state’s draconian abortion law, and in that time-lag, that state’s Republican Party might or might not be in deep trouble. It’s hard to unseat incumbents in this jerry-built and gerrymandered system, after all. So there’s no guarantee that popular outrage against back-alley deaths would jeopardize a state’s elected GOP officials en masse. But we can be pretty sure that women with unwanted pregnancies would be . . . how shall we say? in deep trouble.

This is a vital point that is often missed by the "strategists" out there: embarrassment is not necessarily going to stop someone from doing something. If you truly believe that what you do is right, and don't care about how you're perceived by those who disagree, then you aren't going to relent when you've done something embarrassing in their eyes. Besides, with news being what it is, embarrassing and extreme acts by people in "safe" positions are actually a hidden bonus, because the drive to create a "balanced" narrative will lead to your act having moved the goalposts of acceptability.

(We've already seen this happen. Even 10 years ago, something like South Dakota's proposal would have had the entire country screaming bloody murder. Now....)

Digby:

They really mean it. This is no bullshit. There is no downside to overturning Roe for them --- and if there is, they don't care. If they want to overturn Griswald, they'll do that too. They fought the gun control fight when people were freaking out over crime in the streets and political assassinations. Conservative absolutists don't give up just because liberals get up-in-arms. They certainly don't care if we think they are shrill.

I believe that this fight is going to have to be fought on a number of fronts. We must make some decent people who have not fully explored the ramifications of their stand take a good hard look at it from a moral and logical standpoint. They need to be shown that their leaders (in the mode of Jack Abramoff and Ralph Reed) are very cynical and deceitful. What they say to their flock is very different from what they believe...

....But more than anything else we must accept the fact that these people are serious. They want to outlaw abortion and they want to curtail people's access to birth control. They aren't lying. And as they've shown with gun rights, they are in it for the long haul. We must be just a stubborn as they are and seek to wear them down rather than let them wear us down.

This is not an issue for tweaking. Let's tweak on the Ten Commandments or public funds for parochial schools or something else if it is necessary to adjust for this family values crap in order to win elections. State mandated forced childbirth and denial of access to birth control cannot be negotiated or finessed. This one's going to have to be fought out head to head, day to day to a final reckoning. That's what they are going to do and if we don't recognise that and act accordingly, we will lose.

Similar words, but from a somewhat different standpoint. It speaks to the core problem that Dem strategists have: that it is not all about who is the best steward of the economy, and it is not all about the relative spending on entitlement programs, and it is not about how many times you try and fail to change the subject. At some point, you have put the polls away and actually believe in something.

They sure as hell do.

Edit: that said, I do disagree with the idea that Thomas Frank had totally ignored this in what's the matter with Kansas... one of his points that is often overlooked is that while the "money Republicans" had sought to simply exploit the religious conservatives, the latter have been slowly taking over the party due to their greater dedication and numbers. I don't think Frank was ignoring the threat they posed, just emphasizing the situation as it was. That situation is changing, and the means of that change was something that he did predict.

W for Wolcott

(Yeah, I'm getting rather partial to this naming scheme. Among other things, it's easy.)

I've linked to some critical (if not overly compelling) reviews of V, so it's only fair to link to James Wolcott, who was absolutely enamored of it.

A paragraph:

V for Vendetta may be--why hedge? is--the most subversive cinematic deed of the Bush-Blair era, a dagger poised in midair. Unlike the other movies dubbed “controversial” (Fahrenheit 9-11, The Passion, Munich, Syriana), it doesn’t play to a particular constituency or polarized culture bloc, it’s working on a deeper, Edger Allen Poe-ish witch’s brew substrata of pop myth. Cultural conservatives will loathe it without seeing it (they love not having to leave their houses to lament the latest installment of civilization’s decline and fall) once they hear of and read about the movie’s disturbing political parallels (a fascistic TV host with a witty resemblance to Berlusconi, fertilizer explosives a la Timothy McVeigh; torture, renditions, and subway bombings; black hoods that will be forever associated with Abu Ghraib). Yet lots of cultural liberals with educated tastes will find it anxiety-producing and irresponsible too, not only because they’re more comfortable with humanistic stories and documentary techniques than with pop spectacle (as Kael discovered whenever she praised upstart movies like DePalma’s Carrie or The Warriors and received letters from profs and Ph.D couples complaining about her soiling the New Yorker’s space on trash), but because V for Vendetta doesn’t just depict a 1984’s dystopia--it advocates radical remedy, and illustrates what it advocates with rhapsodic, operatic, orgasmic flourish. It follows the course of its own logic to its Kubrickian conclusion, but this isn’t a clinical exercise, like Kubrick at his most voyeuristically detached. This movie is fully engaged. Its masked, caped vigilante is both Batman and Joker, nocturnal enigma and nimble trickster, the Count of Monte Cristo, Zorro, and the Phantom of the Opera tucked into one suavely tormented frame, the antihero’s secret lair a gothic sanctuary equipped with its own Wurtlizer jokebox on which Julie London’s Cry Me a River sultrily plays. The river of tears is the Thames, on the bank of which sits London’s House of Parliament, the movie (based on Alan Moore’s graphic novel) drawing its inspiration from Guy Fawkes and the foiled Gunpowder Plot to destroy Parliament on November 5th, 1605, a day celebrated annually in Britain with fireworks and parties. In V for Vendetta, monochromatic tyranny so oppresses, represses, and depresses Britain in its totalitarian condition that the only proper way to honor the memory and insurrectionary spirit of Guy Fawkes is to finish what he started. V for vendetta, v for violence, v for vindication. The return of the repressed with a vengeance.

You know how I can tell he really liked it? Because any writer that good who writes paragraphs that breathlessly lengthy is really, really, really excited.

What the controversy about this movie is really about, though, seems to be dodged by all. It's a movie about a conflict between a repressive regime and a violent, terroristic anarchist. The film clearly sympathizes with the latter, and (if it is at all like the graphic novel) provides plenty of good reasons to do so. The problem is that there are rather a lot of people out there who cannot and will not accept that a terrorist could be right; either because of trauma over 9/11, or because they're apologists for power, or because anarchism's leftish elements bother them, they feel compelled to criticize those who create the scenario rather than accept that someone whose position and tactics they loathe could be a sympathetic character. The scenario long predates the current situation; even a note-for-note adaptation of "V" would be anarchistic, so it's not that "V" should be condemned as a reaction to Bush, the WoT, or the Iraq war; "V" would have the same message, no matter what.

The problem, though, is that sometimes the powerful are wrong, dangerously so; and sometimes they aren't easily identified Germans with funny mustaches, but people that belong to your own society and who appropriate your own traditions for their own ends. Tradition is no guarantee of morality (witness slavery), and neither is enjoying a governmental or quasi-governmental bully pulpit. It is that that makes this movie subversive towards conservatism; not the attacks on over-the-top fascism, but the idea that maybe, just maybe, traditional positions of power may not be the source of legitimacy they want to believe they are.

F for Frightened

In the vein of the diatribe I linked to comes Debbie Schlussel's similar porcine squeal of fear and loathing.

It's simpler to sum up, though, with a one-line quote:

"It's an exciting, quality Bin Laden film."

What more needs to be said, really?

Well, ok. One other quote.

Under the religious Christian Chancellor, "unjust" Gitmo-style military tribunals and absurd NSA-style wiretapping is going on at every corner. Throughout the movie, we are shown vans of law enforcement personnel listening in to every home. As if that's what NSA wiretapping was about. It isn't, but "V" drills it into you the way the ACLU wants you to see it: every conversation in every kitchen, etc., secretly being listened in on and laughed at by guys in sweaty, rumpled shirts and ties.

This would be a more effective attack if this ditzy waste of oxygen remembered that the film is both set in Britain (where surveillance is omnipresent and an issue far more serious than the United States) and was almost certainly scripted long before anybody knew about the NSA issue!

Not to mention it's drawing on standard totalitarian imagery of annihilated privacy that predates ORWELL, for god's sake, let alone Moore!

Now I'm almost not sure if I want to see the movie, because I honestly can't see it as being anywhere near as entertaining as the right's terrified reaction to it.

D for Doctrinaire

I hadn't originally planned on seeing V for Vendetta, as I'm a big fan of Alan Moore and somewhat bothered by the fact that he distanced himself from the project, but after having read a hilariously ironic attack on the film for being anti-statist and and anti-authority on a site named, of all things, Libertas, how could I resist?

What's great about the review? Not one single word is given to the actual quality of the film as a film. It's just a stream of spittle-flecked invective, as seen here:

In the world of “V” anyone who is deemed an “enemy of the state” (specifically we are shown gay couples…and more gay couples) mysteriously contracts an incurable disease that we learn was created by — everyone sing along now — the evil Conservatives. Lions and Tigers and Elephants, oh my. Again, subtlety is not a gift of the writers or director. The paranoid message is that AIDS was created by conservatives to kill off all them heathen, immoral “fags.” Never mind that the conservative Bush administration has spent more money on AIDS research than the Clinton administration. But when facts get in the way of your fear-mongering, bury the facts.

So we've got a few words on a concept from the film, one that isn't even that rare in SF, and somehow it becomes about AIDS research spending by Bush v. Clinton? Never mind the fact that conservative hero Reagan wouldn't even admit that it's a problem, what the hell does it have to do with AIDS, and who on the left has ever actually believed that AIDS was created to kill gays? AIDS' genesis by a sentient creator is a fantasy of the RIGHT, not the left.

(Of course, the real problem he could have is anybody claiming that conservatives have an eliminationist attitude towards liberals. Don't know where they could have got that idea. .)

And then there's the issue of faith. He does make the case that the movie attacks the idea of faith (including, yes, Christianity) used as a means of supporting totalitarianism. Might have been more compelling if he hadn't responded to an imagined connection between conservatism and Nazism in the film by attempting to make the case that Liberals are Nazis due to the ACLU's "attacks on Christianity"- but he did make the case. Unfortunately, it's a pointless one. Yes, Religion is used as a tool of repression, and there's nothing new about that. I realize that many conservatives of this stripe see Communists everywhere, and Communists didn't use faith as a tool, but you'd be hard pressed to find any other repressive regime that didn't. A much more effective critique of the film would be that it's unsurprising and uninteresting, but instead, we get frothing idiocy from somebody whose desperate defense of an increasingly bankrupt philosophy knows no bounds.

That there's a heaping helping of censorious "this film should not have been greenlit by Time-Warner, because it puts someone I don't like in a good light and I like censorship as long as it isn't overt" twaddle only seals the deal.

So, yeah, I'm gonna go see V, if only to spite this foaming little tool and every other "conservative" who hates free speech and free expression.

(Free bonus: check out the "state's rights" loons in his comments, who somehow segue from a British film to the "war of northern aggression", for a little free comedy. Sometimes, I really do get why high-profile conservatives avoid comments on their blogs.)

Eschat-on the Warpath

Atrios is hitting tweety hard, with the common theme being (any surprise?) that although Tweety (Chris Matthews, by the by) can ask some tricky questions of his Republican guests, there is still an overall leaning towards said Republicans, and (as the exchange he quotes on abortion) makes clear, he can't bring it home.

Case in point: After raising the valid question of what the punishment would be to women who get abortions (one that the Republicans are dodging), his final response?

MATTHEWS: OK, thank you very much, Congressman Pat Toomey. Thanks for playing HARDBALL. You may well win this one.

"You may well win this one"? That's the best he could come up with? And considering the political climate in the country, what on earth compelled Matthews to say that? Yes, the Republicans are closer to tossing out Roe v. Wade than they've ever been, but the public mood isn't on their side, elite opinion probably isn't on their side, and (since it's abortion) it's not like there's a strong economic incentive for banning abortion, either. Trying to make any sort of anti-abortion regime work would be a policy and political nightmare. Chris as much as said it when he raised the question of punishment. Pity that he was, as always, too scared to follow through.

Also, how the hell did the United States get to this point? What happened to all the confident assertions that Roberts and Alito wouldn't be enough to shift the balance? Were they ever serious, or were they just cover?

Perhaps the only good thing out of this is that they're trying to punish doctors, rather than women. Any legal regime that even implies that women can abort, but doctors can't help will only lead to one thing: the wire hanger. Not that the spectre of dead young women is anything but horrible, but it should go a long way towards showing people that the choice is not between dead or living fetuses, but between dead or living women. Every politician who tries to punish the doctors and leave the women alone is arguing the hanger's case, and damned if he shouldn't have that shoved down his throat.
Every.
Single.
Day.

Abortion battle ramping up

That didn't take long.

PIERRE, S.D. - Lawmakers here are preparing to vote on a bill that would outlaw nearly all abortions in South Dakota, a measure that could become the most sweeping ban approved by any state in more than a decade, those on both sides of the abortion debate say.
If the bill passes a narrowly divided Senate in a vote expected today, and is signed by Gov. Michael Rounds, a Republican who opposes abortion, advocates of abortion rights have pledged to immediately challenge it in court - which is precisely what the bill's supporters have in mind.
Optimistic about the new additions to the U.S. Supreme Court, some abortion opponents say they have new hope that a court fight over a ban here could lead to the overturning of Roe v. Wade, the 1973 decision that asserted the legality of abortion around the country.

With these two additions, is it any wonder? Yes, Roberts was cagey about Roe v. Wade, but he (and Alito) had every reason to be. If nothing else, I'm sure that abortion opponents would want to nail down their positions, so they know how close they are to overturning Roe v. Wade if they can't simply do it now.

Of course, it might not even pass; apparently the State Senate may not go ahead with it, but somebody would have passed a law like this sooner or later.

Hat tip to Digby, who notes that the abortion debate is largely about punishing "loose women" as much as protecting innocents' lives (else why exclude the innocent children of rape and incest, as so many abortion opponents do?)

Reprisal

Sunni Cleric killed in retaliation.

BAGHDAD, Iraq Gunmen in Iraq have killed a Sunni cleric in Baghdad as protests erupted following an explosion at a famous Shiite shrine.
The Iraqi Army says the cleric was sprayed with bullets as he entered a mosque.

Shiite leaders have been calling for calm following an early morning attack at a shrine in Samarra. But a leading Sunni politician says militants have attacked 29 Sunni mosques nationwide. He fears the situation could get "out of control."

It could. FAST. Sistani needs to redouble his efforts, and bring every Shiite imam in the country onside that he can.

Yes, the Shiites would win a civil war. They'd win a broken country, though, and endure instability for a very long time. They don't want this, and the imams need to make damned sure that everybody knows it.

Spark of the Iraqi Civil War

I guess we're about to find out exactly how stable Iraq really is, becuase if this doesn't spark serious conflict, what could?

One of the most revered shrines in Shiite Islam was bombed early this morning north of Baghdad, causing the collapse of its dome, police and eyewitnesses said. There was no immediate estimate of casualties in the latest in a series of sectarian attacks in the country.

The attack on the Askariya shrine, also known as the Golden Mosque, in the city of Samarra sparked immediate and widespread protests among Shiites across Iraq and reports of reprisal attacks on Sunni mosques. The blast appeared designed to further inflame sectarian tension between Iraq's Shiite majority and the Sunni Arab population from whose ranks the bulk of the country's insurgency is drawn.

"The main aim of these terrorist groups is to drag Iraq into a civil war," said Iraq's national security adviser, Mowaffak al-Rubaie, in an interview on al-Arabiya, a Dubai-based Arabic news channel.Thousands of Shiite militia fighters -- many armed with pistols, automatic rifles and grenade launchers -- took to the streets of cities across Iraq after the bombing, even as Shiite political and religious leaders called for peaceful demonstrations and restraint.

It's good news that the Shiite leaders are calling for restraint; it also makes perfect sense, as they're quite aware where the power lies in Iraq. Unfortunately, so do those trying to start a war, and they know how to enrage the Shiites.

That said, it's unlikely that every, or even most, Shiites in Iraq will all of a sudden grab AK-47s and go fight. The bombers are counting on hotheads to ignore their leaders and execute a reprisal, preferably one that affects innocent Sunni and gives Sunni extremists the excuse they need for violence: one that doesn't directly involve them in the bombing.

That's why this isn't nearly as encouraging:

In Baghdad, news of the mosque bombing prompted thousands of Shiite men to abruptly leave their homes and jobs to report to offices of Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr. School boys, fighting-age men and graying elders marched on foot, or piled into buses and the back of pickup trucks, to report for action.

"We are waiting for orders from our clerics," men shouted outside the headquarters of Sadr, in Baghdad's Sadr City.

Over loudspeakers late in the day, a preacher at the Sadr headquarters blamed the bombing on Iraq's "occupiers," meaning Americans, and ordered that there be no retaliation against Sunnis.

If Sadr also avoids blaming this on the Sunni, that may help prevent civil war... but by foisting it on the Americans, things will become rougher for the U.S. in Iraq.

(Which is, of course, entirely in Sadr's interests.)

In any case, Iraq just became that much more dangerous.

Cheney resignation?

I'm with Tristero and Bob Herbert. If it is proven that Cheney was drunk when he shot Harry Whittington, he should resign; but if he does, it's very much possible that the vice president to follow would be worse than ol' Dick.

He floats the idea of Vice-President Rice. While I'm sure that would be the logical choice for a Democratic president, a Republican has to deal with the "southern strategy". A black woman as Vice President would make a lot of people angry that Republicans really don't want angry.

(Nothing that they'll admit to, but regardless...)

Edit: Apologies to Tristero for giving credit to digby for the story.

Good try...

Over on Reclusive Leftist there are comparisons of the infamous pictures of Mohammed that are causing so much controversy and similar satirical pieces involving Jesus. Dr. Socks points out the similarities between, say, the "bomb in the turban" Mohammed and the joke about "Republican Jesus". He/she/it also notes that for some of the drawings (particularly a first one featuring Mohammed in the desert) the dark hair and aquiline nose prominent in the picture are accurate to the time, and another picture showing him wielding a dagger is accurate because "he's a warrior".

The problem with this, however, can be ferreted out if you look at the comparisons closely. In each case where Jesus was featured as opposed to Mohammed, the point of the cartoon was either a relatively harmless joke or an indictment of how Jesus' followers pervert or ignore his teachings, rather than the teachings and the man himself. "Republican Jesus" isn't supposed to be Jesus, but a representation of the selectiveness of his followers.

The representations of Mohammed and Muslims, on the other hand, have the clear implication not that Muslims are betraying their prophet's teachings, but that both the prophet and the followers are intrinsically ridiculous, and monstrously immoral to boot.

As for the drawing of Mohammed? It's not that he has an aquiline nose or black hair, but everything else- he has tiny, squinting eyes, what appears to be a low forehead, and a distrustful expression. The "warrior" picture is much the same, with a reference to the treatment of women under Islam to boot: represented by the fearful, full-body veiled women standing behind the prophet, and the protective stance that he has in front of them. The compared depictions of Jesus (a nearly angelic picture of Christ with a gun, and another joke about hypocrisy with a picture of Jesus riding a bomb saying "what would Jesus bomb") aren't really comparable.

There's more, but it comes down to a simple problem: for each picture, Socks has picked the most forgiving interpretation of Mohammed's pictures, and the most critical interpretation of the Jesus pictures.

I realize that he's trying to defuse the tension, and none of this justifies the violence going on because of these pictures. No speech act could. In order to defend freedom of speech, though, you need to be able to accept what it actually is.

The Hullabaloo Over the Cartoons

I hadn't posted on the conflict over the Danish cartoons yet (although I have seen them).

If anybody is wondering, I agree with Tristero on the subject. Freedom of speech is vital, and a part of that is understanding what exactly that speech entails. In the case of the Danish cartoons, many call them satire; as Tristero points out, however, satire is used as a means of speaking truth to power. Since Muslims are for all intents and purposes powerless in Denmark and in Europe in general, and as they are seen as the encroaching "Other" by many in Europe, it isn't really satire. It's merely harsh mockery and ridicule intended to more precisely define the line between Us and Them.

This isn't to say that one can't satirize those that you disagree with; far from it. At some point, though, there has to be a point of shared agreement or belief. When Jon Stewart is satirizing the media, he's recognizing that there is value in the media's job, while simultaneously showing that they are doing it badly. When the Simpsons satirizes American society, they (at least when it works) demonstrate their empathy towards it.

Hence the reason, for example, that Ned Flanders is such a brilliant character. Yes, he's an object of satire, but they recognize that he is at his core a fundamentally good person, and extend the satire to people's reactions to him. Homer is another good example: he's somewhat dumb, but he reflects the foibles of all Americans, and the best episodes are the ones where the satire is done with the lightest and deftest touch.

There is nothing "deft" about the Danish cartoons, however. There's no respect, no acknowledgement of the positives in the mockery of the negatives. Heck, most of them barely make sense. They're just mockery and ridicule from an artist's pen.

Are they protected speech? I think so. Do they in turn, however, deserve scorn? I think so too.

Atrios and Assured Destruction

Eschaton caught flack from Byron York for suggesting that a nuclear Iran isn't the Scariest Thing Ever. Yorke:

Nuanced foreign policy analysis from the popular left-wing blogger Atrios, who doubles as a key player at David Brock's Media Matters for America watchdog site:

Look, I just don't get this stuff. I don't want Iran to have nukes. I don't think that's a good thing for the world. I certainly didn't want Pakistan or India to have nukes. But is a nuclear Iran really a threat to us? Certainly an Iran-with-nukes could blow the hell out of a city or two, but an Iran that did such a thing would pretty much cease to exist. It isn't mutually assured destruction, it's you f--k with us a little bit and YOU NO LONGER LIVE BITCHES!

Atrios' response?

He of the best hair in punditry gives us a preview of the coming political campaign. Anyone who suggests that Iran is not the biggest scariest monster in the world is going to have their comments misrepresented.

I of course never even implied the notion "who cares about a city or two?" The point is that the deterrence that kept a few thousand ICBMs coming our way from the Soviet Union should also work with smaller state nuclear powers, with the added benefit that "mutually assured destruction" simply becomes "assured destruction" - theirs, not ours.

North Korea can also presumably take out a couple of US cities, and that country is both more desperate as well as having a leader who is more likely be an irrational actor. Pakistan is under a dictatorship and is one successful assassination attempt away from who knows what. They too can presumably take out a couple of US cities.

I'm quite against nuclear proliferation in all of its forms and it would've been nice if we had been taking it more seriously. But thinking that Iran shouldn't have nukes is not the same as imagining that Iran with nukes is the "greatest threat to the Republic" that we face. I just have no idea how that computes.

Atrios was, and is, absolutely right. The point of mutually assured destruction is that both sides are deterred by the certainty of self-destruction in the case of a first strike.

Unequal situations (like the America/Iran one) just mean that only one of the parties is deterred, and in this case, it would be Iran. If the United States were attacked, they would have every right (if not the obligation) to respond in kind.

This is basic nuclear strategic thinking; York was and is an idiot by trying to fault Atrios for it.

The only issue is whether or not the Iranian leadership is insane enough to court annihilation by attacking someone else. This is somewhat more legit, but not for the U.S.: it'd be Israel that's the target in that case. I doubt that Ahmadinejad is actually that crazy; even if he were, he's not the entire leadership, and someone rational would probably end up putting a bullet in his brainpan. Iran almost certainly wants nukes for the same reason anybody else does: it guarantees the continuous existence of your regime from foreign invasion.

This isn't to say, however, that a nuclear Iran is a good thing. It isn't. The whole world would be better off with an Iran that eschews these weapons. As long as the U.S. keeps on making noises about "regime change", however, there's no way of stopping them, because they know that nuclear weapons can stave off the U.S.

Whether having that option be off the table is the REAL reason for the fearmongering, I can't say.

What I can say is that attempts by the right to monopolize foreign policy arguments, even in idiotic little blog posts like York's, doesn't do them any favors.

I'm With Bob Burnett

Watching you act like a package of vacuum-sealed weenies on national television has gotten old, Dems. Stewart was dancing around that issue last night on the Daily Show, but he knows, you know, and I know what it's really about: the consultant class, who are so frightened of "alienating" theoretical swing voters that they cajole otherwise decent public servants into dribbling pablum.

"There's a better way"? That's an election slogan, and election slogans don't do you any good if you aren't using them to back up a more concrete message that people can get behind.

(Just ask the Liberals.)

Kaine should have torn Bush a new orifice. Those Americans who could possibly ever vote for the Dems would have applauded him for showing some backbone in doing so.

(Note: that isn't all Americans. Die-hard hard-right movement conservatives would attack him. So? Alienating them is a good thing.)

Sadly, that's exactly what he didn't do.

Someday, I hope the United States gets an opposition party.

Iraq Reconstruction Was a Disaster

Is anybody actually surprised?

The first official history of the $25 billion American reconstruction effort in Iraq depicts a program hobbled from the outset by gross understaffing, a lack of technical expertise, bureaucratic infighting, secrecy and constantly increasing security costs, according to a preliminary draft

A little later, we see the almost certain problem here:

"It almost looks like a spoils system between various agencies," said Steve Ellis, a vice president and an authority on the Army corps at Taxpayers for Common Sense, an organization in Washington, who read a copy of the document. "You had various fiefdoms established in the contracting process."

Everybody wanted a turn at the trough.

What wasn't mentioned in the article, though, was that this was THE pet project of Bush neo-conservatives, and that the people on the ground over there were the very same breed as those who were arguing in favor of the war over here.

Amazing, really: I would have expected that they would have done and said and paid anything to have their pet project work out right. Instead, they screw it up, and the American taxpayers--that endless source of Republican rhetoric--get screwed out of their money.

Even the libertarians won't be happy, because Iraq was supposed to be a free-marketeers paradise after all was said and done. Instead, it's a mess.

Can't say I'll shed a tear for the whole lot. I save my grief for the poor Iraqis.

Comedy Gold

On a related note to the post below, the WP:

The bloggers and online donors represent an important resource for the party, but they are not representative of the majority you need to win elections,' said Steve Elmendorf, a Democratic lobbyist who advised Kerry's 2004 presidential campaign. 'The trick will be to harness their energy and their money without looking like you are a captive of the activist left.'"

What the hell does a Kerry advisor know about winning elections?

(thanks to MyDD again)

MyDD and Alito

Matt Stoller over at MyDD reveals how miserable a Democratic failure the Alito confirmation was, the basic contradiction between Americans' views on abortion and the views of the nominee, and the way it could have been done right.

At its core?

As soon as Bush nominated Alito, new ad hoc unbranded groups would have broadcast ads around the country with pictures of a coathanger hanging on a rusty nail, saying that Bush wants to make abortion illegal and take us back to the time when women died in back alleys and doctors were sent to jail for providing medical care. There would have been a media firestorm over liberal extremists, which would generate free media. The next ad would have been harder hitting, showing sleazy used car salesman offering abortion services. TV networks would have refused to run these ads, generating more free media. These groups would then leak direct mail pieces that are even harder hitting, with pictures of women barefoot and pregnant. The advertising would have included the recent mining accident, and blamed Bush for it. All of these tactics would have been used to generate a climate of fear around crossing the pro-choice movement. Protests, live-site events, and cultural products would be sold around this campaign.

There's lots more, particularly about how the Dems would use surrogates but keep their distance, and a very nice point that "with the political space thus created, Senators would be free to preen and lecture us about maintaining a civil bipartisan tone around not killing women in back alleys."

This is something the Republicans have always understood, and the Dems always shie away from: if you can't say something for fear of re-election, get somebody else to say it for you. This is the very reason Rush Limbaugh and the AEI "scholars" exist. They "speak it as they see it", take some heat, but change the bounds of the debate in the process.

Of course, Stoller does miss one thing: the Dems have to have the desire to do anything. As long as they're focused on the kind of transparent triangulation featuered in, say, Carville and Begala's book, it's not going to happen. Democrats react to polling numbers- Republicans know how to create them.

Edit: fixed some messed up brackets, and a clarification: Carville and Begala do believe that the Democrats need to demonstrate a spine, but miss the point that there is no way that they can win everybody over on every issue. They want Dems to take stands on poll-tested issues, but that's precisely the problem, because everybody KNOWS that they're going to take stands on those issues. "I'm against those things that everybody hates" is stereotypical politics, not good politics. You need to be willing to buck the trend on at least a few issues, so that you're seen as driven by something that goes beyond the desire to get elected. Yes, you'll probably tick some people off, but that's the fun thing: if they agree with you on other issues, they'll back you anyway.

The Dems know enough to do this to their base (and, yes, this has to happen with the base to a certain extent), but don't know enough to do it to self-proclaimed "centrists". Sooner or later, you have to move away from the center, because your very existence as a candidate will define the center as somewhere between where you and your opponent stand. No matter how careful the positioning, you can't dodge that simple fact. If you can use it, though, to define yourself as someone that the voters can trust to lead and represent them, then you're already halfway there.