After Taking A Deep Breath

I will make my position clear. I was swept up a bit in the whole Georgian/Russian war fever a bit, partly out of a sense of solidarity with the tiny nation stranded in the Caucusus Mountains, sandwiched between Mother Russia and Iran, attempting to keep its sovereignty and integrity intact in the face of internal dissension and the ever-present threat of military intervention from its much larger neighbor to the north. I never once thought the US should intervene, God forbid. I also realize that extending NATO membership, or even the promise of eventual NATO membership, to Georgia was foolish in the extreme. Risking a general European war with Russia over a Georgian border dispute is ridiculous in the extreme; the Russians, in all probability, understand that, even if hawks in the United States pushed the alliance in that direction, the alliance would crumble before the Europeans would agree to anything as stupid as war with Russia over something like that.

Gregory Djerijian has a wonderful piece at The Belgravia Dispatch that does two things quite neatly. First, it explains the strategic nonsense that has been our current policy toward Georgia (rhetorical support, including promises never meant to be kept, keeping alive my own belief this is more like Hungary 1956 than Czechoslovakia 1938).

Look, all of this would have been stupid and deeply flawed policy, but at least morally defensible, if we meant to actually defend the Georgians. But we don't, and never will, as this would mean a war with Russia. We've had a tough go of it fighting small militias and tribes in Iraq and Afghanistan, so even McCain would pull back from such unbridled folly (though doubtless some imbecile will pen an op-ed in coming days about the need for NATO airstrikes on Russian forces should they attack Tbilisi).

--snip--

Meantime, a Georgian soldier tells a U.S. reporter in the same piece: "Write exactly what I say. Over the past few years, I lived in a democratic society. I was happy. And now America and the European Union are spitting on us." They are, aren't they? They had no business making the cheap promises and representations that were made. No business on practical policy grounds. No business on strategic grounds (though I guess it got Rummy another flag, near the Salvadorans, say, for the Mesopotamian "coalition of the willing"). And now our promises are unraveling and nakedly revealed for the sorry lies and crap policy they are, with the emperor revealed to have no clothes, yet again. This is what our foreign policy mandarins masquerade about as they play policy-making, in their Washington work-stations. It's, yes, worse than a crime, rather a sad, pitiable blunder.

A perfect synopsis of the reality, versus our innate desire to "do something".

Second, the article paints in grim detail the dangers of a McCain Presidency in the face of events such as have transpired over the past weekend.

An honorable man who served his country well, it is clear [McCain's] time has past and his grasp on the most basic foreign policy calls we'll need to make in the coming years is very tentative indeed. He'll be surrounded by second-tier 'yes-man' realists and residual neo-con swill, few with any ideas worth pursuing if we mean to take the national interest seriously with sobriety and freshness of perspective. So let us help him exit off-stage gracefully, as he served his country with dignity when called upon, but let us not sacrifice our children's future to ignorants with deludely romantic notions of empire. Been there, done that. Indeed, we have a President who has announced a pre-emptive doctrine which allows us to, willy-nilly, instigate regime change when and where we deem appropriate. Who are we to lecture Putin now? What standing do we have to do so? And what parochial and self-satisfied myopia has us indignantly thinking we are some unimpeachable arbitrer of right and wrong in the international system after the disastrous missteps of the past eight sordid years?

With the Russians having halted at the northern city of Gori, in what seems to be a message that is both reassuring and threatening, it seems the time is ripe for serious diplomatic work. This is a situation that is a classic international military/political situation (hardly a "crisis"; sometimes even wars aren't crises) calling for serious, credible diplomats.

Which removes most members of the Bush Administration from the equation. I think we will be sidelined in this by the Europeans (Pres. Sarkozy of France is currently in discussions with Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin), which is all to the good. Historically, the Russians have always had contempt for any other country that does not abide by diplomatic niceties combined with a realistic understanding of the forces at work in any situation (which is at the root of Stalin's comment, made during a wartime summit with Roosevelt and Churchill, in which an offer of arbitration for peace by the Vatican was rejected by the Soviet leader, who said, "How many divisions does the Pope command?").

This entire situation leaves our credibility, not just in the south Caucusus, but in the world in general, in even greater tatters than before. McCain's stupidity and blustering do not help the situation. Recognizing the reality of Russian power in the region, and moving forward on other issues requires people who have a sense not just of history, but of the reality of the limits of power, most especially American power. John McCain disqualifies himself from consideration because he refuses to admit that we can't "do something".

"The current situation in Georgia and his response should make clear to everyone how dangerous a president John McCain would be."

Thus Josh Marshall.

With a bonus link to Andrew Sullivan (who is crazy when it comes to Hillary Clinton, but spot on about most other things):

From his knee-jerk COld War posture over Georgia to his Rovian campaign tactics, McCain is simply too close to [the Bush Administration's] disastrous record to contemplate. McCain's trigger-happy temperament, shallow understanding of the complexities and passion for military force as the answer to everything is the bigger risk. He is a recipe for more, wider and far more destructive warfare. . .

Music Monday

I was going to do a post on the Philly sound - the O'Jays, the Levert Brothers, Teddy Pendergrass - when I heard that Isaac Hayes passed away. So, from one funk sound to another. While best remembered for his Oscar-winning soundtrack to Shaft, Hayes had been a long-time Stax/Volt session guy and songwriter until he broke out and proved himself. Since I already did the whole Shaft thing a while back, here is Hayes doing what he did best. First, he sings Bachrach (!!) in a way that Dionne Warwick should have, with "The look of love":

Here he is, from a French television program, with some help from two members of Soul2soul, with the old Temptations song, "Papa was a rolling stone":

Finally, a great slow-dance song. Or slow "something" song. "I stand accused":

On A Lighter Note - Cokie Roberts Makes A Run At Doug Feith's Title

First, the title was bestowed upon Douglas Feith, former Undersecretary of Defense, by General Tommy Franks in the latter's memoir. Franks called Feith, "the stupidest fucking guy on the planet." Second, of all the blabbermouths on television pretending to understand politics, none arouse my disdain more than Cokie Roberts. Implicated in a news-faking incident several years back (she was presented doing a stand-up in front of the Capitol building, but in fact was on a set in front of a blue screen, with an image of the Capitol behind her), she has since gone on to be one of the really stupid people who talk about politics. The one thing on her resume she has going for her is that her father was a Democratic Representative for Louisiana, back in the 1950's and 1960's. Also, she is married to Steve Roberts, who, while looking like a Rhodes Scholar next to his wife, in reality isn't much brighter.

So, why do I think Cokie should be named "the stupidest fucking [gal] on the planet"? Please read this and weep for our nation.

I know his grandmother lives in Hawaii and I know Hawaii is a state, but it has the look of him going off to some sort of foreign, exotic place. He should be at Myrtle Beach and if he’s going to take a vacation at this time. I just think this is not the time to do that.

He's going back home, to the grandmother who helped raise him. He's going to a state in the United States. But, somehow, it seems "exotic", even "foreign" to Roberts.

Ladies and gentlemen, I do believe we have a winner in the "Doug Feith Title" contest.

Is It Like Munich Or Hungary?

So the Russians have invaded Georgia. It seems this war in the Caucusus has brought out the rough beast in the hearts of our ultra-hawks. God knows they just want more and more war, always with other people doing the fighting and dying. Listening to Bill Kristol is a sure way to fail. Yet, the situation is a complex one, and the Administration is doing the exactly wrong thing in its rhetorical approach to the war.

I do not think most Americans are as "concerned" with this situation as others, and certainly not as concerned as members of the Administration or various foreign policy experts. I believe they see it as a far-away war in a land with a strange name (Abkhazia?). The involvement of the Russians is certainly of note, yet the stakes for the United States are minimal. Our diplomats, in concert with those from the European Union and the UN are doing what they can, which is about all that can be expected right now.

Yet, members of the Administration are doing their best to undermine our credibility and to create a bellicose atmosphere vis-a-vis Russia. For the life of me I can't imagine what they are thinking. Like Woodrow Wilson after the sinking of the Lusitania, who said that while the US remained neutral, encouraged anti-German feeling by saying that the American people might not be able to remain neutral in their hearts, Cheney, for example, is insisting that the Russians should "pay" for their military aggression against Georgia.

"The vice president expressed the United States' solidarity with the Georgian people and their democratically elected government in the face of this threat to Georgia's sovereignty and territorial integrity," Cheney's office said in a statement.

It said Cheney, in a phone call on Sunday, told Saakashvili that "Russian aggression must not go unanswered, and that its continuation would have serious consequences for its relations with the United States, as well as the broader international community.

Andrew Sullivan notes that comparisons to the Czech crisis of 1938 are being dragged in (of course; these people are one-hit wonders). My own sense is that official rhetoric of this kind is reminiscent less of the fake Sudenten crisis than of another historical parallel - the 1956 Hungarian uprising against the Soviet Union.

When the Hungarians rose up, Voice of America encouraged them. President Eisenhower and Secretary of State John Foster Dulles (of whom Winston Churchill said, "He is the only bull who carries his own china shop with him.") hinted that military support from the United States might be forthcoming if the Soviets attempted to end the coup by force. The Soviets, of course, invaded, and their mighty tanks rolled in to Budapest. The United States response? Apparently the Hungarians misunderstood our words. We were offering moral encouragement only. I think it goes without saying the Hungarians felt betrayed, and members of the Eisenhower Administration couldn't, for the life of them, figure out why.

I think sympathy for the Georgians is fine. Official neutrality, however, rather than talk of reprisals - obviously, at this point, merely diplomatic - is far more realistic. Any talk of military support (shoot, even flying home the Georgian troops in Iraq was a really stupid thing to do) is meaningless.

If this sounds like I have changed my mind since Saturday, I do not believe this to be so. I do not believe Russian adventurism in Georgia, or anywhere else, is a good thing. Yet, I am not sure what if anything we can do except register our disappointment.

Please Provide A Caption

REUTERS/Larry Downing

It doesn't even have to be in good taste. . .

The Sad Case Of Political Realism

At Fire Dog Lake, Ian Welsh offers an analysis of the situation in the Caucusus that relies very heavily on real politique. He offers three bullet points, the first two of which show the limits of this particular school of political thought.

One: Georgia is completely inside Russia's sphere of influence.

Two: NATO expansion into Georgia would be incredibly stupid.

Three: The international fetish for territorial integrity based on essentially arbitrary borders is a problem.

To the first, I would counter that "spheres of influence" would allow the US to invade Venezuela to overturn the socialist government of Hugo Chavez. Or even instigate a coup against him, as the US did in 2002. Indeed, such a view of power politics would permit the US free reign from Canada to Chile, including the Caribbean, as this has been our traditional "sphere of influence". It would legitimate the coup in Chile in 1973, our attempted coup in Venezuela, and our myriad invasions in El Salvador, Nicaragua, Dominica, Cuba, and Mexico.

As to two, Georgia appealed for NATO membership for this very reason. I do not think they would have used the pretext of such membership as a cover for war to reclaim Ossetia. Rather, I think the Georgians have been pushed past the point of endurance, resorting to force in the final extremity, knowing full well they would face Russian troops. As a member of NATO, they might have had the benefit of other members to support diplomatic efforts against the Ossetians. Had it come to war, the Russians might just have thought twice against intervening (my Franz Ferdinand reference in a previous post holding true).

As to the third, while his major point - that borders in our contemporary world are, in many cases, arbitrary - is correct, this does not mean, ipso facto they can be changed willy-nilly, or should be considered impermanent. This point also takes away with one hand what it offers with the first. That is to say, it states that self-determination should guide diplomatic efforts to deal with nationalist yearnings for autonomy; to do so, we should be willing to carve up nation-states to create new borders that are, by definition (at least the definition offered here) malleable. It is the yearning for recognized borders, for that most important symbol of independence, that lies at the heart of self-determination. There is a fundamental, practically unworkable, contradiction at the heart of the dismissal of borders.

I do not believe there is much anyone can do except look on in sympathy at the civilian populations in the paths of the various military forces, appeal to Russia to resist the temptation to absorb Georgia in to a Greater Russian, and work through diplomatic channels to alleviate the situation as soon as possible. I do not think, however, that we should concede Georgia as part of a Russian "sphere of influence"; nor should we necessarily deny Georgia a place in NATO. Finally, we should uphold the principle of nation-state border integrity in the face of Wilsonian "national self-determination" because it creates the situation we are currently in.

Saturday Rock Show

Des Moines' own Slipknot has a new release in the works, and this is the first released song (with the demise of vinyl, including 45's, I really don't like calling them "singles"), "Psychosocial". This is really a kind of breakthrough. The lead singer actually sings. I have always had trouble liking this band because that hardcore screaming/growling just doesn't do it for me, but now the singer is reminding folks that he can, indeed, sing. And the song doesn't lose any of its punch for that.

Besides that, any band that has a tympani player in it is pretty cool in my book.

Public Sex, Part II - John Edwards (UPDATE)

I think the thing I am most frustrated about concerning the revelations that John Edwards had an extra-marital affair is this - this story, which is really quite meaningless (apart from the personal hurt and betrayal former Sen. Edwards' wife must feel), has managed to push the war in the Caucusus Mountains off the radar screen. Right now, I really want to know what the hell is going on between Georgia, its two break-away provinces of South Ossetia and Abkhazia, and Russia. The last time I checked, Georgia had applied for NATO membership. If it has it, this could be another Franz Ferdinand moment*. If not, it might be anyway, because we have a trigger-happy bunch of ignorant yahoos in power who aren't content with screwing up two wars, and are constantly looking for a third. Usually, the intended target is Iran, but, hey, why not invade Russia and vindicate Ronald Reagan's dream as well?

Back to John Edwards.

Big deal. He isn't a closeted gay man, he isn't hiring prostitutes, he isn't a pedophile, and he isn't implicating his lady friend in the rape of her child. These Democrats just don't know how to do it up right, do they? No flare. No imagination.

*Franz Ferdinand was the son of the Ausro-Hungarian Emperor whose assassination by Serbian terrorists was the spark that ignited World War I. In itself, the event really meant little. It was the intricate web of alliances and secret defense protocols that led, in the end, to the slaughter of a generation.

UPDATE: Josh Marshall offers a different perspective, one which I think is relevant to the extent that it considers one possible outcome. In an alternate universe. Where Edwards won the nomination.

Edwards made a strong run for the presidency knowing full well that he was carrying on an affair, at least in the early stages of the campaign, which could come to light in the midst of the general election and fatally damage all Democrats' hopes for regaining the presidency. Just think how fun this weekend would be if John Edwards had won the nomination. Indeed, it seems clear that the aftermath of the affair was such that the chances of its coming to light were substantial. It's a level of recklessness and selfishness that I probably shouldn't but still do find shocking.

Public Sex, Part I - Another Republican Family Values Pervert

It's getting so you have to wonder about an entire movement that prides itself on its defense of "traditional family values".

Missouri state Rep. Scott Muschany, R-Frontenac, was indicted today in connection with a reported sexual assault of a 14-year-old girl on May 17, the day after this year’s Legislative session ended.

Gotta get that legislative business done, first, I suppose.

The alleged victim is the daughter of a state employee. The girl’s mother and Muschany -– who is married and has two children — were romantically involved, the woman said.

Or, perhaps they were not so much "romantically" involved as they were "involved so that he could nail her fourteen year old daughter."

A Cole County grand jury returned an indictment today charging Muschany with the Class C felony of “deviate sexual assault.” The indictment identifies the victim only by initials. It says that on May 17, Muschany “had deviate sexual intercourse” with the girl, “knowing that he did so without” her consent.

It would have been so much better had a fourteen year odl girl given her consent to having sex with her mother's adulterous boyfriend.

My favorite line, in a sick and twisted way, finishes this all up:

The document also alleges that the mother “did admit that the incident did take place, including her witnessing same.”

The next time some right-winger says that those who support, say, gay marriage or even full social and economic rights for sexual minorities are a threat to family values, I'll ask that person if family values includes adultery and pedophilic exhibitionism.

Bust This Blog

So, I'm going to try some syndication with Bustablog. In order to this, I have to put up the following HTML - JG8D69D. If this works, maybe I won't have too many more nights like the one I had last night.

Don't ask.

Suffice it to say that falling about eight feet and landing on concrete flat on your back makes your bones ache, especially when those bones are 42 years old.

A Magic Book On The Magic Of Words

When I was in seminary, I worked as a receiver at the campus bookstore. One day, in a shipment of books from the distributor Ingraham came, unsolicited and unordered, a small paperback book entitled Quote, Unquote by Jonathan Williams. It is a small paperback compendium of quotes from the famous to the obscure, ranging from the profound to the absurd to the vulgar. The book is to Bartlett's what Boone's Farm is to Dom Perignon - a (small "d") democratic version of the idea that even the most meaningless collection of sounds might hold magic for someone who works hard enough to discover it.

In the seventeen years since I got it (it came in without a price point; occasionally, Ingraham would send along something "free" if the order was big enough, and the store supervisor told me I could have it, because it was far too vulgar to put on the shelves of a nominally Christian bookstore), the book has passed in and out of my mind and bookshelves I don't know how many times. I can remember not packing it when we moved from Virginia to Illinois in 1999, and complaining to my wife because I had lost this wonderful little book. I also remember not unpacking it when we moved in. In the spring of 2000, though, there is was, on a shelf where it didn't belong.

I have no idea where it disappeared to next, but it did, and it passed out of my mind until about three years ago, when I found it sitting on my dresser, next to our bed. Don't ask me how it got there. I put it on the shelves downstairs, but this afternoon I spied it sitting on the small shelves in our bedroom, tucked away neat as could be, even though I distinctly remember seeing it just a couple weeks ago on some shelves downstairs, where I had put it when I found it a few years back.

Whether it's the absurdity of Joe Garagiola ("What got you here will get you out of here."), the wit of Harry Truman ("Never kick a fresh turd on a hot day."), or the observation of someone named Norman Douglas ("I'd cross an Alp to see a village idiot of quality."), this book has what a real book of quotes should have - an opportunity to discover the beauty and power and, yes, magic of words.

From this little book, I have changed the quote in my sidebar to one from that most American of writers, Walt Whitman.

Political Analysis From The Onion

With a wonderful hat-tip to Parklife for emailing me a link, I offer the Onion News Network's analysis of the way our media covers our Presidential elections.

Poll: Bullshit Is Most Important Issue For 2008 Voters

On Solzhenytsin

The passing of Alexandr Solzhenytsin is an historic moment. Unlike, for example, Anatoly Sharansky, who has dived in to the politics of his adopted home of Israel, Solzhenytsin disdained the celebrity his status brought him, and sought in rural Vermont the quiet life. He was rewarded by his adopted hometown by the protection they could afford (that and a fence surrounding his property).

There is no doubt his Gulag Archipelago opened the eyes of the west to the details of the brutality of the Soviet regime. To be sure, there were few who had illusions about them; yet, in the post-Stalinist era, they at least could pretend that things were different. It was a difference of degree, however, not of kind, as Solzhenytsin's writings made clear. I remember reading them in the midst of the Reagan era of hyper-anti-Soviet rhetoric. It was difficult to maintain the necessity of engaging a state as brutal as theirs, except perhaps through the minimalist position afforded by realpolitique.

There is certainly something of the hero about Solzhenytsin. Yet, as Masha Lipman writes in today's Washington Post, his life and beliefs were so wholly caught up in a peculiar Russian approach - not so much "premodern" as Lipman writes as "nonmodern" - that his example is difficult to follow. He was, in many ways, a combination of two of Russia's great writers and thinkers, Tolstoy and Dostoevsky. From Tolstoy comes the kind of idealism that views the modernizing tendencies of western influence as a threat to a certain kind of peculiar Russian agrarian purity. From Dostoevsky comes a love of the purity of Russian ethnic identity, including religious conformity under the Orthodox Church, that cuts through the moral relativism of modernity and offers simple answers and a clarity of vision which, in Solzhenytsin's case, gave him the moral courage to write his book in the face of all the power of the state to silence him, including death.

While there is in the US an intellectual legacy that is similar to his (that of the pantheistic anti-modernism of Thoreau), I do not think that, other than as a symbol of resistance to a particular form of modern tyranny and a gifted artist who could see clearly because he was not willing to see shades of gray in his own nightmare, he offers a way to understand our world. That's OK, though, because he has left us a legacy that should serve as a warning to any who might harbor illusions about the benignity of totalitarianism.

Music Monday

As promised, more of your requests. Except for this first one, which comes from the Mrs. Seeing as she does have some pull around here, I figured I'd put this one out first. Of course, I like it, too, but that's beside the point. It's the Dead, from 1991, with (what else?) "Truckin'".

For Alan, here are the Gin Blossoms, with "Hold Me Down" (a much better song than "Hey Jealousy"):

For Kirsten, here is one of Amy Ray's best songs for the Indigo Girls. There are a lot of great road songs from them, but "Chickenman" is probably the best. By the way, what are "median cats"?

Fighting Trivia (UPDATE)

It seems the McCain campaign and its surrogates in the RNC are gearing up for another Trivia Campaign.

Today, Sen. John McCain’s (R-AZ) presidential campaign and the Republican National Committee are taking issue with Sen. Barack Obama’s (D-IL) recent suggestion that Americans inflate their car tires to save on gasoline.

Both are not only falsely claiming that Obama’s energy policy is based entirely on car maintenance, but they are concurrently selling and handing out tire gauges reading “Obama’s Energy Plan” as part of a fundraising campaign.

The Democrats should have seen this coming as early as Friday, when Newt Gingrich appeared on FOXNews calling this off-hand remark of Obama's "loony" (I suppose Gingrich should be considered the expert on nutty off-the-cuff remarks . . .). I suppose this is another signal the Republicans really don't have anything to offer the American people other than mocking a Democrat through trivia. Yet, I have neither seen nor heard nary a peep on how, or even if, to respond. My guess is that he is in a "Damned if he does, damned if he doesn't" position - if he responds, he is giving a certain legitimacy to the charges; if he doesn't, he is weak in the face of the hardball tactics of the Republicans. I find this kind of thing infuriating. AN excellent example is Somerby's column from today. His advice to the Obama campaign was to "laugh" at the Obama/Britney ad. To my recollection, he didn't respond at all; it was bloggers and some surrogates who responded - myself included among the former category. Yet, I'm not sure what good making light of the ad would have done, because that is hardly a muscular response to the coded racism the Republicans have been using since 1968 to win Presidential elections.

Rather than respond to the specific nonsense of the tire gages, it might be nice to have Obama put out a TV ad that began with McCain's recent statement that he is reluctant to talk about his POW experience, then feature clips of all the times he has talked about it. Or, perhaps an ad featuring McCain's various flip-flops, using his own words to prove the point. Or even an ad featuring McCain stammering to try to answer questions. In other words, fight trivia with substance.

Or, he could use these tactics and ads as a way of pointing out the fact that McCain's got nothing. Just an ad featuring all this crap, juxtaposed with images from the war, of home foreclosures and bank runs. I think this might even be the best idea yet.

Yes, it's negative. Yes, it's the "old" politics that Obama has sworn to change. Yet, I fail to see where he has much choice now. The Republicans have nothing, and this stunt reveals that. It would be far better to go as hard after him in a far more substantive manner than to sit back and allow this death by a thousand cuts.

Of course, if Obama takes this advice, I want a consultancy fee. . .

UPDATE: I had a brain storm just now, and I think this is a winner. Should this ad run, I expect a big, fat check from the Obama campaign . . .

Juxtapose images of the war with images from the Obama/Britney/Paris ad. Juxtapose images from a recent bank run with images of McCain stuttering to try and answer a question. Juxtapose images of the price of gas with those of Republicans handing out tire pressure gages. No words. Just the images. Then, with no voice over, a simple sentence sits on the screen for about ten seconds: "Is John McCain ready to be President?" In fact, it would be best to run the images of him stuttering and stammering right before that question appears.

I should be a political consultant.

Is Michelle Obama From Babylon, NY? If So . . .

I suppose this kind of nuttiness was inevitable.

America has never faced so many different crises at the same time in living memory. The war with al-Qaida and Islamic terror, the Iran crisis, Afghanistan, nuclear proliferation, the rising price of oil, the falling dollar, enemy acronyms like OPEC, NAM, OIC, U.N. ... Obama is correct in saying that the world is ready for someone like him – a messiah-like figure, charismatic and glib and seemingly holding all the answers to all the world's questions.

And the Bible says that such a leader will soon make his appearance on the scene. It won't be Barack Obama, but Obama's world tour provided a foretaste of the reception he can expect to receive.

He will probably also stand in some European capital, addressing the people of the world and telling them that he is the one that they have been waiting for. And he can expect as wildly enthusiastic a greeting as Obama got in Berlin.

The Bible calls that leader the Antichrist. And it seems apparent that the world is now ready to make his acquaintance.

Thus Hal Lindsay of The Late Great Planet Earth fame.

Please note how careful Lindsay is here. He quite clearly says Obama is not the anti-Christ. Yet, he is walking like that particular duck, quacking like that particular duck, so we are left to ponder, if not Obama, then who?

If every person fingered as the anti-Christ by these dispensationalist whackos were indeed the child of Satan come to Earth, we would be facing an army of them, from Napoleon through Kaiser Wilhelm II, to Woodrow Wilson, Josef Stalin, Hitler (obviously) to Saddam Hussein. Seeing as all these previous A/C's are all dead, I suppose that does leave the field open for Obama - putting his mark on us, making war on the saints, and all that.

When "defenders" of "Christian values" write garbage like this, I do believe any pretense that these people have any clue what it means to really follow Jesus should just be set aside. We can laugh at them and their murderous fantasies, their near-schizophrenic howling at the way liberals want to kill us all and make us all gay at the same time. But "Christian"?

Please.

A Mixed Week

While technically Sunday is the beginning of a new week, everyone treats it as "time off" from the rest of the week, a day removed from the rest of the flow of time. In that spirit, we have a chance to sum up the past week's events and, perhaps, look forward to new challenges coming up.

Much of the political talk on the Sunday shows concerned the Obama/Britney/Paris ad and the race issue, including the interesting finding in a poll that a slim majority of Americans believe that Obama started it. Joe Trippi has a great explanation of the way this has unfolded to McCain's advantage, although I believe that advantage to be only temporary. When a former aide to Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan gets on This Week and politely but firmly explains the reality to the gathered half-wits, I do believe the conversation is beginning to turn.

God Bless David Gergen! Really--he was on This Week and said (check the video or transcript for exact wording), "When McCain's camp calls Obama "The Messiah" and "The One", he's really calling him "upitty." I'm from the South, and we understand what that means. That's code."

I think digby is wrong in this analysis, if for no other reason than people are already discussing the not-so-subtle racism of the Obama/Britney/Paris ad. It is subtle, which I acknowledged in my post on the ad. But, as I also said, just because it's subtle doesn't mean it isn't there. I think McCain's options in this arena are actually more limited now. While it's true that the Rasmussen poll indicates that people see the issue as having been opened by Obama, McCain's attempt to square the circle of his own position has become far more difficult because there are people paying attention now, and calling him out. This isn't about a few liberal bloggers, either. Again - David Freakin' Gergen made the point as clear as day on This Week. It doesn't get any more plain than that. McCain's options are now limited because there are fewer more Establishment figures than David Gergen.

Obama has had a rough week, it is true. McCain, however, narrowed his options - regardless of the opinion poll - and forced the issue of what digby calls "dogwhistle politics" on to the table. Finally. I think, despite all appearances, the long-run implications of the Rovian tactic of using an opponents strengths against him will backfire precisely because Obama's strengths are so much greater than McCain's.

One of the things in Obama's favor this week is we are entering the August doldrums. Between the Olympics, Congress' time off, and the conventions, we are entering a time when the focus is off big events (barring something either catastrophic or phenomenal). I think that Obama is waiting to really open up. He's got far more money. He's got many more advantages publicly. He isn't limited by an infamous temper, or the way he's altered his public positions to win over a very narrow political base.

Twelve years ago, a certified war hero was running against a much younger opponent. This certified war hero was known about Washington, not only as a great figure, but for a certain misanthropy that arose every once in a while. The war hero managed to gain an advantage coming out of his own convention by nominating a younger person of a much different political ideology. That advantage became a lead in the polls moving in to the autumnal race. The problem was that the war hero had little money, and the social and political climate mitigated against the radical break of electing a new President from a different party. Even as the polls fluctuated throughout the fall, it became clear that the war hero would lose. It wasn't just incumbency that Bill Clinton had going for him. The times favored him. The political climate favored him. His youth favored him. In retrospect, Bob Dole's convention bump, helped by picking Jack Kemp as his running mate, was a political anomaly, the kind of thing that happens but means little in the long run.

There are two comparisons to make here. The election of 1932. The election of 1996. Study those, and maybe some understanding of the dynamics of this race will come.

Reasonable People Can Disagree

I suppose it is in keeping with my own commitment to a certain kind of American pragmatism that I am interested in discussions with others whose political and other views differ from mine. I have an interest in dialogue for its own sake, a conversation to move forward a certain kind of social and political understanding in which differences become a matter of negotiation through mutual understanding and respect. Part of that understanding and respect is rooted in an acceptance not just of limits, but of fallibility as well. No one has access to the keys to the Universe. No one has insight in to the mind of God. No one has the corner on wisdom, knowledge, morality, and correct judgment. One of the beautiful things about the American political system as it has developed over the past 119 years is a desire, no matter how vital an issue, to keep talking. Our lives play out our beliefs, and even the most dedicated reformer, the hardest working entrepreneur, the most self-satisfied CEO, and the most humble clergy person are all also American citizens. We live out our pragmatism by continually talking; we try to share our perspective with others in the hope that such will create a shared vocabulary in order to induce others to work with us.

On the other hand, there is the nagging suspicion that some do not accept the idea that even on matters of great import there is room for disagreement. For thirty years, on matters of abortion, of the place of religion in the public sphere, and a host of other issues, we have been bombarded with a rhetorical onslaught of absolutist rhetoric that not only shuts down meaningful debate and work towards compromise, but betrays what is the heart of American politics - public discourse. The introduction of absolutes in to our public debates is the end of politics. We enter a non-political realm in which those who do not accept the position being offered are not considered worthy fellow-members of society. Differences become a matter not of the complexity and joy of human diversity, but of moral perversion.

Recently, in a discussion on abortion at another website, I was the subject of a long polemical attack by someone who stated, unequivocally, that those who are pro-choice on abortion desire the murder of infants. Not only had I made my own position on abortion - a pretty minimalist pro-choice position, I might add - abundantly clear, I also made it clear that, of all the great troubles facing our land, I didn't even see abortion as being on the political, social, or cultural radar screen. For the most part, the American people have accepted the kind of regulated regime that exists right now, in which for all practical purposes, most areas of the country are shut out of having the option of abortion (the vast majority of counties in the US do not have an abortion provider, and the average distance of travel for someone who does not live near one is well over fifty miles).

The personal invective leveled at me was quite substantial. The person who did this at least had the consistency to speak out of a belief that, abortion being murder, those who accept the practice are aiding and abetting murder. We are moral monsters, in other words.

Our "exchange" is almost a case study in the way the introduction of any kind of absolutes - be they moral, religious, or what have you - in to our political debates in fact destroys those very debates. It is the end of American politics. Dare I say it is even un-American. The roots of our politics are in dialogue, in compromise, in listening to another, and seeking common ground. It is rooted in the wonderful humanistic idea that different people can hold different beliefs, even very strongly-held beliefs, and still be fully human, fully moral agents with which one can deal and dialogue. When a person sees no room for moral nuance, or can accept that a person can differ from him or her on a matter of great personal import and still be a person worthy of respect, that person is no longer willing to participate in the democratic process. Our politics is always about giving away one thing to get another. No one gets everything they want - the art of political negotiation is figuring out how to finagle more of what I want and less of what you want, knowing full well you are trying to do the same with me - so the introduction of any kind of absolutist position, rooted in extra-legal, extra-Constitutional grounds, destroys the political process, because by definition, there can be no compromise on issues rooted in the acceptance of moral absolutes.

This is where, ultimately, the comparison between the pro-life movement and the Civil Rights movement fails. Despite all the high-flown rhetoric of Martin Luther King, Jr., in the end, his position, and that of the hundreds and thousands of local activists and others who did the grunt work towards equal rights for African-Americans, was rooted not in the Bible but in the American Constitution. It was a movement with roots in the Church, to be sure, and fueled by a certain religious passion. The political heart, however, was not a Christian belief in the sanctity of human life, but a (small "d") democratic belief in the (small "r") republican values that include the dignity of all human beings. There was no compromise available on the issue of Civil Rights not because it was an absolutist position in the way, say, a pro-life person views abortion as murder. There was no compromise because the structural racism that existed then and exists now is a betrayal of our Constitution. Our polity is warped by a social and legal structure that denies part of our Constitution.

On the other hand, to take another example, the debate over same-sex marriage, by bringing in religious arguments, also runs the risk of ending any serious political dialogue. While those who oppose same-sex marriage also often rely on historical arguments, these at least have the virtue of being proved or disproved. When one hears, "God made marriage between a man and a woman," all opportunity for understanding and dialogue come to an end. Politics stops at that point. Reasonable people can argue the merits of legal recognition of same-sex unions on a par with marriage (and there are gay rights activists who view the emphasis on gay marriage as a distraction from other issues). It becomes impossible to reach a political agreement when one side insists that any agreement would betray a moral abosolute.

It is possible to view others who hold political opinions and beliefs far different from one's own as fully human moral agents, worthy of respect, dialogue partners in the democratic experiment. Once one stakes out a position rooted in the belief that compromise is impossible, however, one no longer becomes a (small "d") democrat, but a tyrant, demanding acquiescence to a certain moral standard that is arbitrary, betraying the very heart of our political system.

Monster Mash

I am sure that if you are seeing this blog, you know about this:

Now, I have no opinion on what it might be, if it is anything at all.

Since I was a kid, I have had a fascination with this kind of thing. I remember well reading and re-reading a book - I must have been in the fifth or sixth grade, because I read it in the library of Elm Street School, and I only attended that school during those years - on the history of werewolves. The book was a compendium of information, including woodcuts, on the phenomenon. I even learned about lycanthrope from from reading that book, and its possible connection to the werewolf phenomenon. The reason I bring up werewolves is, while perusing a Google search, I came across this at a site called The National Post, which had a link, which I clicked because it concerned something called "The Beast Of Bray Rd." I had not heard of this before, but was surprised to learn this was just over the border from where I currently reside. One sighting noted at the last link I provided occurred in Williams Bay, WI, just half an hour from where I live.

Now, I have a healthy skepticism about this kind of thing. Please don't get me wrong. At the same time, I find these stories fascinating, if for no other reason than the people involved certainly seem to have experienced something out of the ordinary. I would enjoy such an experience myself, even if I could not relate what, exactly, it was I had experienced.

Anyway, what say any or all of you? Is this Montauk Monster thing a hoax? Some cryptid, as-yet documented by biology? Is it a partially rotted sea turtle?

Have any of you had an experience that was both out of the ordinary and still impervious to any explanation? Now, I want serious things here, folks. Take your time, I will not laugh or disparage your account.

Why I Think Obama Will Win

I have been very clear. In a recent comment, I predicted a pretty wide electoral college victory for Barack Obama. I think there are ample reasons for such confidence.

Yet, much of the left blogosphere has been in panic mode all week because of the ridiculous, racist Britney/Paris ad, and the constant barrage of attacks McCain has leveled against Obama. Jamison Foser's Media Matters column points out the odd juxtaposition of the media - correctly - pointing out that McCain's recent spate of attacks on Obama are all false, all the while pushing a narrative based upon these falsehoods. Brad at Sadly, No! has penned a couple doomsaying posts in which he sees the imminent death of the Obama candidacy and another Republican victory on the horizon. Digby used a review of late-night monologue jokes from 2004 to show that, even when lies are shown to be just that, they still sit out there, becoming fodder for our public discourse. We have been force-fed an endless stream of nonsensical, irrelevant, and not-very-vaguely racist nonsense, attempting to portray the presumptive Democratic nominee for the Presidency of the United States as "presumptuous", "arrogant", "overconfident" - because he acts like every single Presidential candidate has done in the past.

Now, it is quite possible that Obama could still lose, because there are any number of unknowns - Don Rumsfeld's "unknown unknowns" as it were - that could effect the outcome. Yet, all other things being equal, and barring either catastrophe or some odd event, such as Pres. Bush suddenly bringing home American troops from Iraq, I think Obama will win. I also think that the Democrats, and many liberal bloggers, are making the single biggest mistake - they are forgetting the elections of two years ago, and what they portend for this fall.

Two years ago, the Republicans were so over-confident, they really didn't do much in terms of an overall strategy for the mid-term elections. Even as that long, hot summer bled in to a pleasant autumn, and there were more reports of scandals - most especially the Mark Foley business, and the involvement of the office of then-Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert in covering up his predilections - they continued on their "message" that the Democrats were all dangerous radicals, who once put in office would destroy our way of life. Even as polls showed the Democrats in a position to make serious gains in both Houses of Congress, both the press and liberals warned of all sorts of horrid events, not the least of which would be Rovian dirty-tricks to ensure a Republican victory. Some of my earliest posts, when I started this Mark II version of my blogging life, were in the waning hours before the fateful election of 2006. At the time, Karl Rove was still seen as some grand political genius, and in a now-infamous interview the weekend before the election, spoke of having "the math" in the Republican's favor. Except, of course, he didn't and it was all bluff, a bluff some Democrats and liberals fell for.

We have been so used to this kind of nonsense for so long that a lie like Rove's carries a certain cachet among those supposedly in the know. The entire premise of a site like The Daily Howler is that the press, somehow either befuddled or out-right partisan in its practices, does the work of framing our politics in such a way that Democrats are hapless to counter. Of course, in actual practice, the Democrats do appear hapless, and befuddled, incapable of figuring out how to deal with Republican tactics, whether it's House Democrats running scared from the buffoons on the other side of the aisle or Democratic Presidential candidates tacking in to the hot air coming from the McCain campaign.

The examples of liberal sites crowing about how Republican tactics, and the lapdog national media will create an environment in which McCain will eke out another Republican four years in the White House has a lot going for it as a thesis.

It is also wrong because, even more than in 2006, the American people are demanding things get done. One thing eight years of George Bush in the White House, six of them with a Republican Congress at his beck and call, have proved is that the Republicans are administratively bankrupt. They are incapable of governance. This is no grand conspiracy to prove the small-government types correct by screwing things up on purpose. No, they are really that bad.

John McCain has shown himself to be a desperate old man this past week. Unlike Obama, whom he accused of being willing to lose a war to win a political campaign - as scurrilous a personal attack as I've heard in a long time - McCain seems willing to show that he has absolutely no ideas, no policies, no plans. He is an empty suit who believes he should be President because he flew a fighter plane. That's it and that's all. He's got nothing.

We are in the doldrums, politically speaking, from now until after Labor Day. Between the Olympics and the national party conventions, and the end of the summer rush to get stuff done, no one is really paying attention right now. When people return to a certain routine of life that always emerges as summer ends, I have no doubt that, come November, Obama's win will be historic on a number of levels.

I do believe we have nothing to fear from the Republicans. They have no money. They have no ideas. They offer nothing but fear and trembling, war and bankruptcy. Everyone knows it. Their time has come and gone. It's that simple.

Saturday Rock Show

Ray Lamontagne's new CD, Gossip in the Grain, is due this October. If you haven't heard of him, or heard him - imagine Neil Young's acoustic music mixed with the raw, naked expression of early Ray Charles and Otis Redding. Some of his songs remind me of Bob Dylan's Blood on the Tracks - an album so raw it is almost embarrassing to listen to. His first release, Trouble contains some of the most powerful music I have heard in years. In a sane world, he would be a superstar. From that first release, here he is on Letterman, doing "Forever My Friend". As great as this song is, it should be said that there isn't a weak song on that first release, or his second, Until The Sun Turns Black, either. The quality of the song-writing, the arrangements, even the song order - this is the way music should be presented.

God Bless you, Ray, because you are one of those rare gifts to the world.

Dick Move Of The Week - The Media And John McCain's Narrative Shredded By Jon Stewart

This is one of those moments in television that work because all the pontificating and concern trolling and other nonsense on the blogs are distilled down to a simple, commonsense approach - you simply use a person's own words and attitudes to point out the stupidity and emptiness of the developing narrative. There is nothing partisan about this approach. Stewart is simply hoisting McCain on his own petard. One sentence, after a collage of images and words tossed out in the news media calling Barack Obama "presumptuous" and "arrogant", should end any attempt to make this narrative work. It should also be repeated as often as possible.

He's running for President.

Here's the video with the dirty words bleeped out.

Dana Milbank Thinks He's Funny . . . (UPDATE)

. . . But he comes off like a bad character cut from My Dinner With Andre. Seriously, how "funny" is it to buy in to right-wing talking points about Obama's "presumptuousness", especially when he is doing nothing different in kind from what McCain did on his trips to Canada and Colombia? Since the McCain campaign is attempting to portray Obama as a presumptuous celebrity, entranced by his own persona (and a black man who likes blonde white women, to boot), I see very little to laugh at here.

Indeed, the whole "Whine" thing is no more than rank bitchiness. Had you written something that was actually funny, Dana - see The Daily Show or read Sadly, No! - it might have appeared amusing. Instead, it appeared as nothing more than a rejected Maureen Dowd column.

Since you don't like taking criticism, any more than most reporters, I guess, like most reporters, I'll ignore you.

UPDATE: It seems Media Matters has caught my wave. I do so love Millbank's claim that no one is disputing the words, only the context. As if the words had meaning outside of any context, just floating there, waiting to be snatched up by Millbank as fodder for his piece. Dday, at Hullabaloo, also comes a day late the my party, even noting, as I did, the Dowdishness of Millbank's piece. All self-tooting of my horn aside, I think it important to repeat that this reveals Dana Millbank to be a ridiculous individual, shallow, thin-skinned, and without any credibility whatsoever.

Would it ever, even once, hurt these people to admit they screwed up?

The Anthrax Suspect

One of the most mysterious and frightening events in the aftermath of the September, 2001 terrorist attacks were the mailing of letters to various politicians and media types containing anthrax. These "other" terror attacks killed some postal workers who were exposed to the bio-toxin. Surprisingly, these events disappeared down a memory hole, except for the reports of a payout to Steven Hatfill, who managed to get six million bucks from the feds for leaking his name as "a person of interest" in the events, based on nothing more than hearsay.

Tuesday, a man from the lab where tests on the anthrax took place committed suicide after he was informed he was to formally charged in the mailings.

The death of Bruce Ivins raises far more questions than it answers. Glenn Greenwald goes in to great detail, not only on the fear these mailings engendered in the wake of the attacks on New York and Washington, but the way they were manipulated, from the very start, in to a casus belli with Iraq. Now, it seems, they came from our own military research facilities. This is like a really, really bad Tom Clancy novel (I suppose that's redundant).

Greenwald also implicitly raises questions about the involvement of a major news organization - ABC, in this case - as well as federal officials, in continuing to cover up the sources of information long ago proved to be false. As now seems clear, it might well be Bruce Ivins himself pointed a finger of blame at Iraq (the notes inside the envelopes certainly helped; you can view one of them at Greenwald's blog).

I do not think speculation about such things is "wild" at this point precisely because Ivins' death raises so many questions that are, or should be, unsettling. They should not just be unsettling to a few liberal bloggers, or conspiracy nuts (I do not consider myself such a one, but this event certainly raises my hackles). These mailings, coming as they did so soon after 9/11 (indeed, I had forgotten until reminded of the chronology by Greenwald's post, that the first letter was sent on September 18, 2001), heightened a sense of vulnerability, that we were, indeed, not safe here at home from the depredations of terrorists bent on killing us. Of course, the sniper shootings in MD, DC, and VA later that same autumn in to winter didn't help, either (another event that has disappeared down that strange memory hole reserved for events we would rather soon forget).

I do hope that Ivins' death is not the end, but rather the beginning of some serious investigative work by competent journalists. Unlike the much-hyped "China spying" at Los Alamos Laboratories, that turned out to be a huge crock of stinking poo, here we have a civilian employee at a military facility dedicated to bio-weapons research being a soon-to-be-indicted suspect in the most blatant attempt at bio-terrorism directed at senior figures in government and the media. This story, as they say, has legs.

I do so hope someone teaches them to run.

I have about a thousand million questions. And none of the answers I think might be coming will be pleasant.

Elitism

Part of the Republican playbook, since 1968, and more explicitly since 1988, has been that Democrats are elitist. They do not mean "elite" in the socio-economic sphere, because clearly the Republicans have them beat there. They mean that Democrats believe they are intellectually and morally superior to the run-of-the-mill folks who didn't go to graduate school, don't know who Jacques Derrida or Gilles Deleuze are, and just try to live their lives day-to-day as best they can. They are speaking, in other words, of cultural elitism.

Let's face it. In the 1970's, liberals gave them plenty of ammunition. There are few more smug, self-satisfied people than ERA-button-wearing, consciousness-raising 1970's liberals. Earnest, filled with a sense of their own superior wisdom and knowledge, they were annoying and, in the end, helped destroy the liberal coalition. I realize this is a minority view, and might tick off some of my fellow liberals.

It is also true.

The events of the 1960's created a sense of self-righteousness on a number of social and cultural issues, be they race, class, gender, or the content of popular art and its relationship to fine art that I find difficult to defend. I believe I am far more radical than any of the limousine liberals who partied with Fidel Castro during his visit to the UN in the late-1970's, or had cocktail parties with Black Panthers in the late 1960's because I find Castro an abhorrent figure deserving of nothing more than a trial before the ICC, and I can't imagine what I would have to talk about with Bobby Seale other than agreeing that organized community action is a good thing.

Yet, this is 2008, not 1968. American liberals are not the smug superior folks we once were. The events of the past eight years, I believe, have demonstrated that there might be some need for simple competence in public administration, and this requires a certain amount of education and a serious-mindedness that comes with being intelligent and insightful. Since the policies of the Republican Party have clearly benefited the most wealthy in America, the issue of elitism has shifted back to far more honest territory - referring to those who hold the reins of power rather than who has read the most books.

Let's face it. Barack Obama is among the elite in this country. So is John McCain. Neither one is a NASCAR kind of guy, and neither one should pretend he is. To give Obama credit, he doesn't pretend to be. Yet, McCain's - and the entire Republican establishment's - attempt to paint Obama as some kind of "elitist" because he eats arugula is really kind of silly. It shows they have nothing left. They have no ideas, no plan, no serious policy initiatives. They know nothing other than Rovian politics of divide and conquer to get that 50 percent-plus-one-vote majority, then declare a mandate to govern as if they won a landslide.

I do not believe it will work. For one thing, their attempts are being vivisected the moment they appear. For another, they are transparent and stupid, pale imitations of the Willie Horton ads of yesteryear. Finally, the times being what they are, and Republicans clearly demonstrating they lack the ability to govern (I do not buy the argument that this is all some ploy on the part of anti-government types to show how bad government administration is; I just think they are grossly incompetent), I think Obama is running a smart campaign by not addressing Senator McCain all that much, except to point out that he is a flailing, desperate old man whose policies are no different than the past eight years of abject failure we have known. Since Obama also points out that McCain's campaign ads are full of lies, this is all to the good, learning a lesson from John Kerry's delay in dealing with the Swift Boat nonsense of four years ago.

We want our Presidents to be part of the elite. George Washington was. Franklin Roosevelt was. Andrew Jackson, Teddy Roosevelt, Ronald Reagan, Thomas Jefferson, even Abraham Lincoln - they were all part of the elite. Harry Truman may not have been as much as the rest, but since he was unpopular and had an Administration filled with corrupt underlings whom he tolerated for purely partisan reasons (the resurrection of Truman's reputation is in part a Republican strategy to rewrite history; Truman, Carter, and Bush are the three least popular Presidents in modern American history), I do not see where elevating him to iconic status helps all that much. Warren Harding was a regular guy sitting around the White House playing poker with his buddies while they all violated the Volstead Act. Meanwhile, his Interior Department managed some cozy deals that became known as the Teapot Dome scandal that was every bit as big and illegal as Watergate and the entire eight years of the Bush Administration. When you elect regular folks to office, you tend to get inefficiency and corruption.

All this discussion of who is an elitist because of diet, haircuts, or the price of loafers is really silly. I no more like the nonsense when it's tossed at John McCain than when it's tossed at John Edwards or Barack Obama because it really carries the topic forward, rather than dismissing it as lacking any relevance whatsoever.

Barack Obama and John McCain. Two elites running for President. That's the reality. Everything else is just a lot of blue smoke and mirrors.

A Life Of Its Own

The Obama/Britney/Paris ad has become the Prometheus Unbound, the creature that has come to life through electricity. By opening up all sorts of discussion about the way our public discourse is distorted by nonsense, it is, in a way, the "daisy girl" ad of this election cycle. For those who may not know, in 1964, President Johnson's re-election campaign designed and ran and ad, exactly once, of a young girl plucking the a daisy's petals. The sound of her voice faded out as a countdown faded in, and the image suddenly exploded in to a mushroom cloud of a nuclear explosion. As the sound of the blast faded, the campaign ran a stump speech of Johnson's on the dangers of nuclear war. The Goldwater campaign complained the ad was beyond the pale, and Johnson pulled it.

Since those halcyon days, when an ad could be pulled because the opposition complained about it (even if it was fair; Goldwater was going around the country talking about turning North Vietnam in to a glass parking lot, rolling back the Warsaw Pact through military means, and other nonsense), we have had Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan, Jim Bakker (Reagan's campaign manager and first Chief of Staff, who, before he became a Washington darling and Secretary of State, was a below the belt hitting political operative who got Reagan to begin his 1980 campaign in Philadelphia, MS, site of a notorious Civil Rights-era murder; it should have been obvious to anyone paying attention that Reagan was signaling the bigots still bitter about the Civil Rights era that he was on their side, considering Reagan was a California politician; why else would he be in the sweaty south?), Lee Atwater, and, of course, the Swift Boaters. Screaming about "playing the race card", preferably in an aggrieved, even Inspector Reynauldish, tone ("I'm shocked, shocked!") when it is pointed out they are doing something racist is a nice way to divert attention from reality. It has worked in the past. My instinct, however, tells me it isn't going to work this time.

As I said yesterday, the ad works on a number of levels, all of them legitimate readings. Trying to tease out "the" meaning from the ad is ludicrous, because it is doing a number of things all at once, which is part of its (evil) genius. Yet, now they are being called on it pretty much across the political spectrum, and, as Atrios notes, even Andrea Mitchell (Mrs. Alan Greenspan to those not in the know), in an interview with McCain campaign chair Rick Davis, points out (or attempts to point out; Davis tries to get his talking points in no matter what) the ad can only mean that McCain thinks Obama is an empty-headed slut. One of the nice things about this interview, again as noted by Atrios, is that Rick Davis not only lies and lies some more, but comes off sounding really quite stupid. He needs to be out there even more than he has been in order to give Obama a boost.

I think the kind of "meta" discussions prompted by the Britney/Paris ad are a good thing. They are shining a light in to the most dark recesses of the Republican Party's political strategy. Obama doesn't have to do much of anything about it, because the blogs and reporters are doing it for him. This is all to the good, because we can finally talk about the way these folks operate in an honest, open way.

Carefully Chosen Thoughts And Words

When tragedy strikes, we try to figure it out. We try to find meaning in a situation that is inherently meaningless. We try to find some link to the larger society and culture that might help us understand how and why such a horrid event could occur. Arguments ensue over the relative strength of the relationships between various cultural factors and the actors who carried out these horrid acts of violence.

Sometimes, however, that meaning just doesn't exist. In 2000, at my place of employment, a high school student was doing some homework during down time. She had to write an essay on Lord of the Flies, and asked me for help in understanding what the book was describing. Without hesitating, I said, "The Columbine High School shooting is Lord of the Flies in real life." Some Christians tried to make hay out of the death of one of the students, because she allegedly refused to denounce her beliefs before being murdered. Yet, all the students who died that day, Christian or not, died not because of what they believed or didn't believe. They died because the two young men who went on that killing spree were interested in killing. Period. No amount of post hoc scrutiny of this or that particular case will wrest anything more out of that event.

When a Luddite left-winger mails bombs to those he believes are destroying our world, the right goes in to overdrive on the dangers of liberal ideology.

When a small group of right-wing extremists bomb a building, killing 159 people, including children at an on-site day care facility, it might be important to look at the way popular anti-government talk - especially all the descriptions of government employees as "faceless bureaucrats" - might have helped depersonalize the victims enough to allow those responsible to carry out their act of terrorism.

When a young man is beaten to death for the heinous crime of hitting on one of a pair of bar-hopping buddies, his body left on display as a warning to any other young gay man, I would think the demonizing of gays might need to be paid attention to just a bit more (although, to be fair to the murderers here, the murder of gays for this particular crime against masculinity goes hand-in-hand with the rhetoric of anti-gay hatred).

Assessing the level of social and cultural culpability in any tragic event is, to a certain extent, a fools errand. Even should clear lines of cause and effect, or at the very least correlation, exist, their relative merits and strengths will always be a matter of dispute. One can allow rage to overwhelm one, as Tony Kushner did in a November, 1998 article in The Nation, in which he hung the death of Matthew Shepard around the necks of every politician and religious figure who ever spoke out against gays and "the gay lifestyle".

The facts of the David Adkisson case in Tennessee are pretty clear. A man, frustrated over lack of work, and directing his hostility out at "liberals" enters a Unitarian Church and opens fire, killing two and wounding several others before being subdued by members of the congregation as he reloads. At his home are book by radio personalities Michael Savage, Sean Hannity, and Bill O'Reilly. The lines of correlation are pretty clear here; these and other right-wingers routinely insist that liberals are responsible for our social ills, even if what they describe as social ills aren't at all, but figments of their own perfervid imaginations. While the shooter reached a breaking point due to a confluence of unfortunate circumstances, his grievances against a society that seemed to exclude him from making a positive contribution was certainly fed by a book describing liberalism as a mental disorder.

This is not to say that such books should not appear. This is not to say that right-wingers are not entitled to their opinions. This is only to say that when a right-winger goes on a shooting rampage, and leaves a note behind blaming liberals for all his troubles and explicitly targeting these same liberals, and there is abundant evidence that the man in question was exposed to the slurry coming from right-wing talking-heads and blabbermouths, it might be nice to hear a thoughtful word or two from these same folks acknowledging a certain level of culpability.

Stephen King removed from print copies of his pseudonymous novel Rage after Columbine. Are Savage, Hannity, and others who have written pages and pages of scurrilous nonsense about how liberals are destroying our country going to respond in a like fashion? Are they even going to acknowledge that in the fever-swamps of the right, there might be those who take their words so seriously as to end the threat to our way of life by murdering a bunch of church-goers watching a children's program?

I'm John McCain And I Approved This Piece Of Racist Garbage

First, a video of the latest McCain ad against Obama. It seems so innocuous. In fact, I think part of it might hurt McCain, reminding people that Obama can get 200,000 people to come out and hear him speak, while McCain has a hard time filling a room without his advance people dragging in local supporters. Yet, it is the first few seconds of the ad that count. Watch, and I'll explain after:

I had seen a reference and commentary on this ad over at Talking Points Memo (to which I shall repair in a moment), but it was watching it in this post at Hullabaloo, in which dday points out that McCain has hired the guy responsible for the Harold Ford "Call me, Harold" ad, perhaps the most transparently racist ad since the Jesse Helms "white hands" ad in 1990, that I was gobsmacked.

Here's the thing. Those images of Britney Spears and Paris Hilton last barely a second, fading out as images fade in. The image of Ms. Hilton fades directly to a picture of Barack Obama smiling. Do I have to spell this out for you? I will be honest and say that, before I saw the ad, I thought this was a bit of a stretch. Indeed, textually, the ad seems to imply that Obama is an empty-headed celebrity, famous for being famous, with policies that don't quite jibe. That might even be a fair criticism to make. Seeing the ad, and the way those images fade out over one another, with the final shot of Obama smiling fading in over a photo of Paris with the only expression she ever wears - I just sat here in my empty house and said, "Wow!"

To be clear, I want to quote at a bit of length from digby's discussion of "racist dogwhistles":

I think we need to have a little discussion of what "racist dogwhistle" means. It is a word or phrase that conjures up certain subliminal images in those who are predisposed to see things in racial terms. It doesn't mean that everyone who hears the word as a criticism sees it in that way --- only those who get "the code." So, when Karl Rove sends out McCain's minions to spread the word "presumptuous" all over the place, the idea is to signal to the racists among us that Obama is "uppity." It doesn't mean that if you think Obama is presumptuous that you are a racist. You might just think, "yeah, he's acting like it's in the bag already." But racists hear that Obama is an uppity black man.

See, it works on two levels. That's why it's called a dogwhistle --- only the racists can hear the racism in it.

This is a complicated mode of communication that's been developed on the right for many decades. It's not something I just made up. There are dozens of examples: "welfare queen" and "Willie Horton," the "Hands" ad by Jesse Helms and most recently, the Harold Ford "Call Me" ad in 2006. The most famous of all was Ronald Reagan slyly beginning his campaign in Philadelphia, Mississippi, where one of the worst atrocities of the civil rights movement happened. Over the years it's gotten more subtle as the nation becomes less tolerant of overt racism, but it's never completely gone.

Josh Marshall has a couple things to say about this particular bit of garbage as well.

[I]t is the norm that obvious campaign tactics that are treated as obvious after a campaign is over are nonetheless treated by most reporters as ambiguous or unclear during a campaign. But in this case it would be nice if that were not the case. Because here we have a candidate, John McCain, who is running on a record of straight talk and honorable campaigning running a campaign made up mainly of charges reporters are now more or less acknowledging are lies. But there's precious little drawing together of the contradiction. What's more, as everyone will acknowledge after the campaign, the McCain campaign is now pushing the caricature of Obama as a uppity young black man whose presumptuousness is displayed not only in taking on airs above his station but also in a taste for young white women.

Not only is he an empty-headed preener dazzled by all the attention he's getting, but he's a (nudge, nudge) black guy who likes (wink, wink) blonde white women (a nod's as good as a wink to a blind bat, eh?). Obviously, the McCain campaign and his supporters will cry foul - how dare they call Sen. Straight Talk a racist? I am not doing any such thing. What I am doing is calling out the subtle racist message encoded in this ad. It is one of those things you can take or leave. If you take it though, you were looking for it, and I mean that in both a positive - Yeah, he's an uppity Negro with a hankering for white meat! - and negative - What a bunch of racist claptrap! - way. Just because it's subtle doesn't mean it doesn't exist.

Music Monday

I got such a great response last week, I find it hard to limit my choices to just three. Someone said "anything by Johnny Cash", and this is a great song to listen to as one winds his or her way down country roads in the south (I did it myself):

The next is my own choice. I honestly had a hard time picking which Allman Brother's song I'd use. "Statesboro Blues"? "In Memory of Elizabeth Reed"? Shoot, the 20-minute version of "Whipping Post" is great for those long hauls. I settled on "Midnight Rider" because it has a certain atmosphere about it. Doesn't everyone imagine, for a moment or two, that they're the outlaw type, wanting nothing more than to just hit the road, live a life outside any restriction or boundary? It was hard to find a good version, but I like this, despite the bad sound quality, because it's all stripped down, and Greg's vocal performance matches the song so well (as it should, as he wrote it):

Finally, no road trip would be complete without an honest-to-Elvis classic. Here's Chuck Berry with "No Particular Place to Go":

Two things. He reused this same melody for a song called "School Days". Second, if you didn't see your choices here, have no fear. Next week, we shall do more of your requests for top-down, summer driving songs. Since people are driving less because gas is so damn expensive, we can at least enjoy the music we would listen to if we were driving.

Affirmative Action Republican Style

The Department of Justice' Office of Inspector General released a report today on the suspicious hiring practices of the Justice Department under former Attorneys General John Ashcroft and Albert Gonzalez. Two key figures, Kyle Sampson and Monica Goodling, were repeatedly named as violators not just of department policies and procedures m - usually enough to get someone at least suspended from a job if not fired - to violating federal law by inappropriately asking questions regarding the political views of persons seeking positions at the department. An example of the kind of thing is highlighted at TPMMuckraker, where the pdf. file report is being gone over with a fine tooth comb. I offer this particular snippet for those who might want to argue "they all do this don't they?":

Federal immigration judgeships were especially targeted for politicization. In October 2003, shortly after Sampson started working at DOJ, then as Counselor to Attorney General John Ashcroft, he began to overhaul the selection process for immigration judges. "[We] were only considering essentially Republican lawyers for appointment," Sampson said, according to the IG's report. (It was not clear from the report whether Sampson said that to IG investigators or in another setting)

Prior to 2004, immigration judges were appointed in an essentially non-political bureaucratic process handled by the Office of the Chief Immigration Judge. Vacancies were posted, resumes sorted, interviews conducted and decisions made by lower-level DOJ officials, according to the report.

Sampson's new process involved "coordination" with White House and an extra effort to get friends of the Bush administration into the judgeships when possible. Sampson circulated a document outlining the new process.

"Many lawyers seeking positions within the Administration, including judgeships, become known to the White House offices of Political Affairs, Presidential Personnel, and Counsel to the President." The document stated that some lawyers might qualify to be IJs, and that "coordination" was needed to ensure that such lawyers were "informed of the opportunity" to become IJs."

Think Progress highlights two examples of Monica Goodling's antics while working as a liaison between DoJ and the White House. For those who may not have been paying attention, Ms. Goodling was a graduate of Regent University Law School, and appeared out of her depth when called before Congress to testify. Actually, she appeared as if she would have been out of her depth outside a candle party. I felt bad for her, because all those mean Congress folks were asking her tough questions when, as the OIG report clearly shows in detail, all she was doing was trying to make the Department of Justice safe for George W. Bush:

In April, NPR reported that the Justice Department Inspector General was investigating whether former DOJ White House liaison Monica Goodling dismissed a career DOJ attorney “because of rumors that she is a lesbian.”

--snip--

As the report notes, the assistant U.S. attorney (AUSA) received “outstanding” performance reviews, the highest possible rating, and was subsequently granted a work extension in 2006. Goodling, however, opposed it.

--snip--

When Executive Office for U.S. Attorney Associate Counsel Natalie Voris told Goodling she supported the extension, Goodling “responded that Voris did not know the AUSA as well as she thought she did“:

Voris said that Goodling then told her that the [assistant U.S. attorney] had a homosexual relationship with the U.S. Attorney in the AUSA’s USAO and that the two took trips together at government expense. Voris told us she believes that the AUSA’s alleged sexual orientation was a factor in Goodling’s decision not to extend the detail.

Furthermore, when the assistant U.S. attorney sought a detail in the Office of Violence Against Women, Goodling objected “because it would look like the Department was sanctioning the homosexual relationship.”

--snip--

[T]he report states.

“We concluded that Goodling’s actions violated Department policy and federal law, and constituted misconduct,” the report adds. Both the assistant U.S. attorney and the U.S. attorney denied the relationship.(italics added)

So much for a valiant effort to protect us all from Teh Gay. She also figured that it was important to maintain the purity of the Department on a purely partisan basis (for fun, replace the word "Democrat" with the word "Jew" and violate Godwin's law):

In one disgraceful example, Goodling refused to hire “one of the leading terrorism prosecutors in the country” because his wife was a Democrat

Here are some of the interview questions Ms. Goodling used, via Sadly, No!:

* Tell us about your political philosophy. There are different groups of conservatives, by way of example: Social Conservative, Fiscal Conservative, Law & Order Republican.

* [W]hat is it about George W. Bush that makes you want to serve him?

* Aside from the President, give us an example of someone currently or recently in public service who you admire.

As I noted above, the report is clear that these examples all violate the policies and procedures of the Department of Justice. They also, per the report, violate federal law. Whether that matters much - no law enforces itself - only time will tell. It might be nice if Ms. Goodling no longer has a license to practice law, or her version of it anyway, so she can go to some happy Christian home, where the man is the priest, and she can dutifully serve him by providing all sorts of children for him. Isn't that what Christian women are supposed to do?

Easy Like A Sunday Morning

Just back from church, where the preacher talked about Jesus saying, "I am the resurrection and the life." Had communion - always a good thing. It's time to rest, as Sunday night is the first day of my work week. Sat and listened to a Schubert Mass this morning, much to the chagrin of my older daughter, who sat impatiently while her father enjoyed some sacred music.

What's your day been like so far, and what are your plans for the rest of it?

Defending The Constitution Must Be Anti-American

I haven't recommended a Glenn Greenwald piece in a while, but his discussion from this past Thursday on the horrid, radical, anti-American efforts of the American Civil Liberties Union to force the Bush Administration to make public the paper trail of its decision-making regarding the treatment of detainees clearly shows what a dangerous organization it is.

It has been left to the ACLU and similar groups (such as the Center for Constitutional Rights and Electronic Frontier Foundation) to uncover what our Government is doing precisely because the institutions whose responsibility that is -- the "opposition party," the Congress, the Intelligence Committees, the press -- have failed miserably in those duties. And while Democrats in Congress passively ignore their oversight responsibility or do the opposite by helping to conceal Bush crimes, the Democratic Party establishment goes around repudiating and even demonizing the factions that have tried to step into the void that they've left . . .

--snip--

When Jesse Helms died last month, there was a discussion about Helms in an online email group of prominent liberal Beltway journalists, and one participant asked whether the Left has any equivalent to Jesse Helms, and a well-known "liberal" journalist responded: "Yes -- the ACLU extremists." Time's Joe Klein said last year that objections to the Senate's warrantless eavesdropping bill were merely "fodder for lawyers and civil liberties extremists" -- a phrase which GOP Rep. Pete Hoekstra then praised in National Review. The very same Beltway denizens who have so submissively enabled the radicalism of this administration simultaneously harbor and continuously spew contempt for those Shrill, Unserious "activists" -- such as the dreaded ACLU extremists -- who challenge and disrupt their little Beltway fiefdom.

While I think that Greenwald misses Jonathan Alter's larger point - bloggers don't do "journalism", which is the biggest straw argument there is - by demonstrating the abject failure of the press to move beyond the conventional wisdom and practices (which Alter describes, in a quite Greenwald cites earlier in his piece, as contacting mid-level officials who have the real skinny on doings), except in rare instances, which Greenwald also cites, this particular little snippet captures a surprising reality in Washington culture. An institution dedicated to ensuring the Constitution is not only adhered to, but that violations of the Constitution and abuses of power are brought to light is, 20 years after George H. W. Bush could make hay of Michael Dukakis' being a "car-carrying member of the ACLU", still held in contempt.

While torture and its variants are debated with all seriousness, and it take months for Joe Klein to finally jump off the John McCain bandwagon, the ACLU, perhaps the most idealistic organization, most American organization I can imagine, is depicted as being "extremist". Oh, to be a civil liberties radical! Oh, to believe the Constitution is not just a scrap of paper, but a body of laws to which all of us - including those in government - must adhere! Send these Commies to China or Cuba so they can see how far their special pleading for civil liberties gets them!

The depth of silliness and stupidity and superficiality of our Inside-the-Beltway conventional wisdom rivals the Mariannas Trench. It crushes common sense and thought.

I Predict They Deliver

A couple days ago, I said that I thought the press would turn Obama's trip abroad in to a plus for John McCain, who spent the week eating in a German restaurant and having an awful photo-op in a grocery store, having a fake conversation with a hand-picked local supporter. McCain's campaign seems to be run by the same people who ran Michael Dukakis' infamous 1988 Presidential run, not able to catch a break even from the weather. Obama, on the other hand, was practically tongue kissed by French President Nicolas Sarkozy, previously the darling of the right.

According to this overview by a diarist at Daily Kos, not only did the press somehow step up and try to turn Obama's triumph in to some kind of negative, they did so using the same word - presumptuous. This commenter says roughly the same thing I do about this entire story:

It's interesting how the corporate media sets up these ridiculous narratives to screw Democrats. You'd almost think they were getting their talking points from the RNC. ("Gambling? Here? I'm shocked!")

Before the trip the narrative was "This is a big test for Obama. If he makes any mistakes, it proves he's not ready to be President."

Then when he completely kicked ass and made no mistakes (while McCain was back here making a gaffe a day) the narrative became "He's presumptious" for being so competent and awesome. Hand it to the propagandists in the corporate media to somehow turn a brilliant flawless performance on the world stage into a negative. It really is bat shit fucking insane.

That word, presumptuous, is a nice, polite off-hand way of saying that Obama is an uppity nigger. Period. Not only that, he has the audacity to be accepted by leaders of other countries as an important person. Of course, there are those on the right who dismiss the opinions of people and leaders from other countries, especially when those opinions don't jibe with their own.

Back in 1999, George W. Bush was questioned on his knowledge of world leaders. In a bit of historical irony, or perhaps an instance of karma turning around and leaving big old teeth marks on his butt, he famously couldn't answer when asked who was the leader of Pakistan (then in the news because of the coup that led to the military dictatorship of Gen. Prevez Musharaf). When that interview took place there was a howl of rage from many pundits, who insisted that such knowledge was unnecessary to be President (which turned out to be true, in a minimalist kind of way). They called the interview the worst kind of "gotcha" journalism, a kind of verbal mugging. They did everything but promise to coach Bush for any future encounters.

The goal posts constantly move around for Republicans and Democrats, but in different directions. When a Republican candidate for President, whether George W. Bush or John McCain, shows basic incompetence, or even a tendency towards a certain lack of understanding, excuses are made until what should be evidence of a lack of qualifications becomes a plus. On the other hand, when a Democrat not only has a record of competence, but rises to certain occasions with aplomb and class, that doesn't matter, because the original demands have suddenly morphed in to a new set demands that weren't even visible before. For example, Michael Dukakis ran on a record of more-than-competent governance, including a sterling environmental record as Governor of Massachusetts. George H. W. Bush stages a photo-op in Boston harbor, where journalists can take pictures of dirty water while the then-VP claims he wants to be the "environmental President", thus juxtaposing an image and a good sound-bite that are neither related to one another nor true with the honest record of a good Administrator.

Obama is chastised for not going overseas, so he not only does so, he does so in style, with an agility and ability that is stunning, especially given the past seven years when we all cringe whenever the sitting President goes to another country and embarrasses all of us. Because he outshone not only McCain, who whined today because he didn't get the press Obama did, but our current sitting President (not that that's hard; my St. Bernard could do better), he is, therefore, "presumptuous" to have done so.

Suck it up, Republicans. Obama knocked the entire week out of the park, out of the parking lot. McCain got a chili dog when he ordered nachos, and complained about the lousy seats he had behind third base.