Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

This blog will pay for itself.

It’s always darkest before the other shoe drops.

“Everybody’s entitled to be an idiot.”

Spilling the end game before they can coat it in frankl luntz-approved dogwhistles.

There are no moderate republicans – only extremists and cowards.

No offense, but this thread hasn’t been about you for quite a while.

It’s easier to kill a dangerous animal than a man who just happens to have different thoughts/values than one’s own.

A sufficient plurality of insane, greedy people can tank any democratic system ever devised, apparently.

Come on, media. you have one job. start doing it.

Let’s delete this post and never speak of this again.

Pessimism assures that nothing of any importance will change.

Every reporter and pundit should have to declare if they ever vacationed with a billionaire.

Everything is totally normal and fine!!!

We cannot abandon the truth and remain a free nation.

“Look, it’s not against the rules anywhere, but a black woman with power was dating and there has to be something wrong with that.”

Michigan is a great lesson for Dems everywhere: when you have power…use it!

Seems like a complicated subject, have you tried yelling at it?

Narcissists are always shocked to discover other people have agency.

An almost top 10,000 blog!

When someone says they “love freedom”, rest assured they don’t mean yours.

People are complicated. Love is not.

Whoever he was, that guy was nuts.

He wakes up lying, and he lies all day.

My right to basic bodily autonomy is not on the table. that’s the new deal.

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Archives for October 2006

Gingrich And DeLay

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Politics as tribal war did not just happen, specific people made it happen. Said it before but now the point has the stamp of authority.

Q Is the current Congress demonstrably more partisan than those in the past? Why does it matter?

MANN: Partisanship particularly increased after the 1994 elections and then the appearance of the first unified Republican government since the 1950s. Now it is tribal warfare. The consequences are deadly serious. Party and ideology routinely trump institutional interests and responsibilities. Regular order — the set of rules, norms and traditions designed to ensure a fair and transparent process — was the first casualty. The results: No serious deliberation. No meaningful oversight of the executive. A culture of corruption. And grievously flawed policy formulation and implementation.

[Q] Congress has been rocked by the Foley scandal. Was the House GOP leadership’s response an example of reflexive partisanship? Are there larger lessons to learn from it?

ORNSTEIN: Part of the response to Foley was undoubtedly human nature — lawmakers wanting to take Foley at his word that he wouldn’t write any more improper e-mails. But it is hard to look at the responses of the collective majority leadership, including Speaker Dennis Hastert, GOP campaign chair Tom Reynolds and Page Board chair John Shimkus, without putting them into a context that makes it more damning.

The entire leadership team made sure that there was no significant ethics or lobbying reform in this Congress. They knew their majority was hanging in the balance, that the Duke Cunningham-Jack Abramoff-Tom DeLay scandal problem had not coalesced into an electoral catastrophe. The last thing they wanted was another embarrassing scandal. There is a lot to suggest that there was a systematic state of denial here, and an indifference to the possibility of a bigger problem that Foley might represent.

This is precisely why I think that independents often mistake partisan bitterness for some sort of inborn tribal instinct. In a language with multiple types of state-of-being verb, Spanish for example, it would be like mistaking ser for estar. In fact specific people made the decision to poison the atmosphere because they guaged, correctly, that a split America would benefit them politically. Our friends Gingrich and DeLay deserve credit for the job they did – our framers did a good job of creating a system that works despite and even because of the venality and self-interest of each individual involved. Our government takes effort to wreck, but recent times have shown that with a good plan and more than a little talent the job is far from impossible.

To be frank, I would have a lot more respect for principled moderates, the news media and even rightwingers themselves if they stopped treating the bitterness in DC as a passive-tense verb. It took the best effort of some great minds who have a right to take pride in a job well done. Never mind that murmuring from Hannah Arendt’s restless ghost.

***Update***

More at Atrios. Most people seem to think that partisan spite will outlive our current Republican leaders, but I don’t see why that should be. To maintain a steady drumbeat of the special kind of hate you need two things: incredible party discipline and a willingness to constantly screw with the rules to keep comity at a minimum. If you think that Democrats have either then you must be new here.

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Another Republican Under Investigation

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These guys are getting federal attention so fast I can’t come up with clever titles for posts about them:

The Justice Department is investigating whether Republican Rep. Curt Weldon of Pennsylvania traded his political influence for lucrative lobbying and consulting contracts for his daughter, according to sources with direct knowledge of the inquiry.

The FBI, which opened an investigation in recent months, has formally referred the matter to the department’s Public Integrity Section for additional scrutiny. At issue are Weldon’s efforts between 2002 and 2004 to aid two Russian companies and two Serbian brothers with ties to strongman Slobodan Milosevic, a federal law enforcement official said.

The Russian companies and a Serbian foundation run by the brothers’ family each hired a firm co-owned by Weldon’s daughter, Karen, for fees totaling nearly $1 million a year, public records show.

Karen Weldon was 28 and lacked consulting experience when she and Charles Sexton, a Weldon ally and longtime Republican leader in Delaware County, Pa., created the firm of Solutions North America Inc. in 2002. Both are registered with the Justice Department as representatives of foreign clients.

Word of the inquiry, which has been closely held within the Justice Department and the FBI, comes from two individuals with specific knowledge of the existence of the investigation. They both declined to be identified because of the confidentiality of criminal investigations.

We are going to lose the war on terror because all of our agents are tied up investigating the GOP.

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Falling Down

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People respond in strange ways to the prospect of losing your job and knowing that there is not a thing that you can do about it. Throw in the public disgrace, add a chance of incarceration and most people will pass some sort of breaking point. See, for example, the increasingly weird behavior of Republican candidates.

* Mark Foley (R-FL) may be gone, but Tom Reynolds (R-NY) and Dennis Hastert (R-IL) remain as living symbols of how not to manage a crisis.
* Don Sherwood (R-PA) strangles his illicit mistress, she survives, and now he wants voters to forgive him. Polls suggest that he should have tried not strangling his mistress.
* Katherine Harris (R-FL), the eternal sunshine of the clueless mind.
* The president‘s practically incoherent press conference. While not a candidate, this election is more or less a referendum on him. And it seems fairly likely that losing both Houses will eventually lead to jail.
* The strain of maintaining the “moderate” facade seems to have pushed Chris Shays (R-CT) over the edge.
* Knowing that he will lose his race might be what caused Rick Santorum (R-PA) to flip his lid on live TV.
* Bob Ney (R-OH) pleads guilty to corruption (possibly the least surprising development so far this year) but declines to resign until after the election. That kind of self-interested hubris would be fine if this was the 2002 midterms and the terra-sploitation steamroller could. not. be. stopped. But it ain’t 2002. No doubt the Dems will appreciate having a living symbol of GOP corruption hanging around Congress. [Correction] Ney will step down next week. Smart boy.
* [Update] John already has this above, but crazy Curt Weldon [R-PA] of Able Danger fame will face an FBI investigation over charges of corruption and nepotism.

Just a random sampling from the recent news.

fallingdown

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The Second Commandment

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“You shall make no graven image or any likeness of anything in heaven or earth, nor bow down to any such thing.”

Over the past few days, Keith Olbermann has been highlighting the revelations (video here and here) in David Kuo’s new book about the cynical exploitation of the religious right:

In the book, Kuo, who quit the White House in 2003, accuses Karl Rove’s political staff of cynically hijacking the faith-based initiatives idea for electoral gain. It assails Bush for failing to live up to his promises of boosting the role of religious organizations in delivering social services.

White House strategists “knew ‘the nuts’ were politically invaluable, but that was the extent of their usefulness,” Kuo writes, according to the cable channel MSNBC, which obtained an advance copy.

“Sadly, the political affairs folks complained most often and most loudly about how boorish many politically involved Christians were…. National Christian leaders received hugs and smiles in person and then were dismissed behind their backs and described as ‘ridiculous’ and ‘out of control.’ ”

It is unclear whether Kuo identifies any specific official as having used the dismissive language.

The book says that before the 2002 elections, then-White House political director Ken Mehlman issued “marching orders” to use the faith-based initiative in 20 House and Senate races, according to MSNBC. To avoid appearing overtly political, Mehlman said his staff would arrange for congressional offices to request visits from the faith-based program officials.

Throughout the 2002 and 2004 campaigns, faith-based officials would meet with lawmakers in some places in an effort to generate publicity for them, while also hosting conferences in battleground states attracting hundreds of pastors and community activists eager to learn how to apply for federal grants.

The response in the blogosphere and in political circles has been almost nonexistent, and I attribute this to one simple fact- Kuo’s assertions are so obviously true that they can not be denied. No cheap character assassination campaigns have been launched because they will fail miserably- Kuo has the goods on this White House and the so-called religious leaders, and they don’t have the balls to attack him. To do so would be even more disastrous than to sit by and do nothing (and, as commenters point out, not attacking Kuo and hoping this issue just goes away may be the smart tactical manuever). Sure, there have been tepid refutations from the White House, but compare the reactions to this book as opposed to the reactions to Paul O’Neil’s ‘defection.’

In a compelling post yesterday, Digby brings up a few relevant points:

Rove and these other strategists knew the religious right were “new voters” which is the political promised land. Everybody dreams of dragging some of the unaffiliated, apathetic uninvolved into the political arena. Getting an entire block of voters who will vote according to what they are told by an authoritarian organization is a miracle. Hallalujah.

With the business marketing savvy of the big money boys of the GOP they were quite successful in the last decade or so at convincing the media and many of the public that the Republican party actually is more moral and more sincerely religious than the Democrats. However, the events of the last year have begun to unravel that carefully constructed image.

***

This sounds as though the GOP thinks that conservative Christian leaders are dupes, but I doubt that is literally true. I think they understand each other quite well and have plenty of respect for their different roles in the power structure. It’s obvious to me that both the Republicans and the leaders of the Religious Right are contemptuous of rank and file conservative Christians, not each other.

***

The glue that holds it together is the business of evangelism. Those followers who give their money to these churches and organizations that sell Republicanism as a religious brand might as well spend their money at WalMart. They’re buying the same thing. It’s tribal identity but it isn’t religious and it isn’t moral.

It’s time everybody recognized that so we can deal with it honestly. These so-called religious leaders (and it’s not just the national leadership, it’s the whole hierarchy) are not dupes. Sure Rove and the rest call them nuts. But the leadership and the party know they are essentail to each others’ continued status, even if they spar over who’s their daddy. The truth is that they are all elites who have the same goals — power.

It is why every two years the GOP embarks on a campaign of gay-bashing, despite the fact that Republican elites have no problem with gays in their midst. It is why the GOP chose to attempt to shred the Constitution and suspend years of alleged fealty to the concepts of states rights and federalism and intervene in the lost cause that was Terri Schiavo. It is why, in large part, Bush backtracked on his nomination of Harriet Miers (although the fact that she was supremely unqualified for the position in the eyes of everyone but Hugh Hewitt played a role in her dismissal as candidate). It is why the FBI, despite being tasked to track down terrorists in this ‘fight for civilization’ is sending agents to porn shops and raiding Tommy Chong. It is why religious leaders were given more say on the FDA’s decisions regarding Plan B than the medical community. It is why Bush favors allowing intelligent design to be taught in schools (although in Bush’s ‘defense,’ he may actually be that stupid). It is why pundits and pols favor allowing outright proselytization in the military. It is why 24 year-old punks are given authority over the work done by accomplished veteran scientists.

Sure, there may be some people out there who think this stuff makes sense, but the Republican leadership and the false idols at the top of the power structure of the religious right don’t. They understand that what is at stake is not the future of our society as a “Christian nation,” but their positions of power and luxury at the top of the federal gravy train. Some Republicans are honest enough to point this out, although it isn’t surprising that the ones who are willing to speak out are not running for office. Cue Dick Armey (who has been a one man wrecking crew the last few weeks):

Another Armey’s Axiom says that if it is about power, you lose. And unfortunately when it comes to James Dobson, my personal experience has been that the man is most interested in political power.

As Majority Leader, I remember vividly a meeting with the House leadership where Dobson scolded us for having failed to “deliver” for Christian conservatives, that we owed our majority to him, and that he had the power to take our jobs back. This offended me, and I told him so.

In a later meeting Dobson and a colleague came into my office to lobby against a trade bill, asking me to stop the legislation from going to the House floor. They were wrong on the issue, and I told them no. Would you at least postpone the vote, they asked? We have a direct mail fundraising letter about to go out to our membership, they said.

I wondered then if their opposition to the bill was driven less by their moral compass and more by the need to rile their membership and increase revenue. I wondered then, if these self-appointed Christian leaders, like many politicians, had come to Washington to do good, but had instead done well for themselves.

***

Freedom works. Freedom is a gift from God Almighty, and we have a responsibility to protect it. Christians face a temptation to power when we are fortunate enough to have a majority of support in Congress. But government can never advance a faith that is freely given, and it is corrosive to even try. Just look at Europe, where decades of nanny-state activism— including taxpayer support for churches and for religious political parties— have severely eroded the faith. In America today, too many of our Christian leaders fail to recognize the temptation to power and the danger it holds for our society and our faith.

And so America’s Christian conservative movement is confronted with this divide: small government advocates who want to practice their faith independent of heavy-handed government versus big government sympathizers who want to impose their version of “righteousness” on others through the hammer of law.

The lies, the deceit, the cynicism, and the betrayal of beliefs to simply attain and maintain power should be enough to compel sane people to throw both the Republicans and their ‘religious’ enablers/partners out of Washington for a long time. But if that isn’t enough, just look through the wreckage left in the wake of this man-made disaster. Bush’s GOP and the so-called religious leaders of the right have implemented dozens of ill-conceived policies, queered the public debate, sowed the seeds of divisiveness for sheer political gain, and have betrayed not only their followers, but the entire country. Our so-called religious leaders are so corrupt and have so wholly confused their religion and their politics that they have abdicated all of their moral authority and can’t even come out against torture.

They need to go, and they need to go now. Hopefully the Democrats will regain power in Washington in a few weeks, and we can begin to repair the old wounds, purge our leadership of the frauds and failures, and begin to rebuild a sane Republican party whose focus is on earthly matters other than lining their own pockets and preserving their positions of power and prestige.

*** Update ***

In the comments, Sglover notes:

1) Historically, many of the proudest achievements of progressive political agitation got their start among devoted churchgoers. Think abolitionism, the civil rights movement, the urban welfare/social justice movements of 100 years ago.

2) At their best, churches of all denominations can provide a community of mutual helpfulness and caring that few other human institutions can match. This is something that not even the most sincere protest rally or nonprofit group or political party is able to do. (Lest any right-wingers feel smug, this kind of communitarian feeling is something that most would-be libertarian ubermenschen sneer at, when they even bother to acknowledge it all).

Many or most of the attendees of fundamentalist churches are at or near the bottom of the social pyramid—they’re working in poorly-paid jobs that might disappear tomorrow, and they’re disdained by the kind of people who read political blogs (or even use the internet at all), or who go on to the state capital or even Washington. It is not stupid or irrational for these people to follow the concensus that exists in what might be the only institution that’s doing them any tangible good.

It is worth repeating that it really does not matter where you are in the world, if there are people starving, or sick, or in trouble and generally needing help, the chances are pretty good that there is a group of devoutly religious individuals, often evangelicals, who are the ones standing in mud up to their knees handing out whatever help they can. That should not be forgotten, and they should not be confused with the human debris who are, in many cases, leading people astray with politics masquerading as religion.

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Freedom’s Just Another Word…

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For nothing left to lose:

The British government sought today to defuse an embarrassing public debate over remarks by its top military commander that Britain should withdraw its troops from Iraq ‘’sometime soon.”

The comments were interpreted by some government critics as a challenge to the authority of Prime Minister Tony Blair since they seemed to be a direct contradiction of his insistence that a retreat from Iraq would be ”a craven act of surrender.”

The officer, General Sir Richard Dannatt, modified some of his remarks in a series of radio and television interviews to expand on his comments in The Daily Mail tabloid. But he did not completely retract his assessment that the presence of British forces in Iraq ‘’exacerbated” the violence there.

‘’I have withdrawn none of the comments that I have made,” he said in a radio interview. ‘’I have given a little more explanation about what I meant by ’sometime soon’; that’s not backtracking.”

It is over, folks. While some may pretend that Dannatt’s slight walkback from his more blunt earlier comments is evidence that the Brits are going to be with us till the end, they fail to recognize that this IS the end. We have have a fractured coalition, an American military that is weary, overstretched, and breaking, we have huge amounts of sectarian violence, no clear mission, no clear strategy, and no way to define ‘victory.’

In short, we are at the end of the experiment. And I am not the only one who thinks this:

A commission formed to assess the Iraq war and recommend a new course has ruled out the prospect of victory for America, according to draft policy options shared with The New York Sun by commission officials.

Currently, the 10-member commission — headed by a secretary of state for President George H.W. Bush, James Baker — is considering two option papers, “Stability First” and “Redeploy and Contain,” both of which rule out any prospect of making Iraq a stable democracy in the near term.

It is over, folks. The grand experiment has, at least in the short term, failed (you can hold out hope that perhaps after the imminent civil war a stable state may emerge. And hope is really all we have right now, as the new Iraq is splitting up before our very eyes). While military leaders and politicians put on a brave face and continue with plans to keep troops in the field until 2010 and beyond, the soldiers and the troops know the score:

All: I haven’t written very much from Iraq. There’s really not much to write about. More exactly, there’s not much I can write about because practically everything I do, read or hear is classified military information or is depressing to the point that I’d rather just forget about it, never mind write about it. The gaps in between all of that are filled with the pure tedium of daily life in an armed camp. So it’s a bit of a struggle to think of anything to put into a letter that’s worth reading. Worse, this place just consumes you. I work 18-20-hour days, every day. The quest to draw a clear picture of what the insurgents are up to never ends. Problems and frictions crop up faster than solutions. Every challenge demands a response. It’s like this every day. Before I know it, I can’t see straight, because it’s 0400 and I’ve been at work for 20 hours straight, somehow missing dinner again in the process. And once again I haven’t written to anyone. It starts all over again four hours later. It’s not really like Ground Hog Day, it’s more like a level from Dante’s Inferno.

***

Most Memorable Scene — In the middle of the night, on a dusty airfield, watching the better part of a battalion of Marines packed up and ready to go home after over six months in al-Anbar, the relief etched in their young faces even in the moonlight. Then watching these same Marines exchange glances with a similar number of grunts loaded down with gear file past — their replacements. Nothing was said. Nothing needed to be said.

***

Biggest Hassle — High-ranking visitors. More disruptive to work than a rocket attack. VIPs demand briefs and “battlefield” tours (we take them to quiet sections of Fallujah, which is plenty scary for them). Our briefs and commentary seem to have no affect on their preconceived notions of what’s going on in Iraq. Their trips allow them to say that they’ve been to Fallujah, which gives them an unfortunate degree of credibility in perpetuating their fantasies about the insurgency here. Biggest Outrage — Practically anything said by talking heads on TV about the war in Iraq, not that I get to watch much TV. Their thoughts are consistently both grossly simplistic and politically slanted. Biggest Offender: Bill O’Reilly.

This should come as no surprise- the reality on the ground is not what is being portrayed by our leaders and our pundits (the newest insight- grammar is to blame for Iraq failure) and our cheerleaders and our radio talk show hosts. Iraq is a bloody mess, there is little reason for optimism and fewer reason for calls to stay the course (other than delusion and domestic political priorities) and in essence, it is all over except the dying. And there will be plenty of that, as the inevitable drawdown is going to expose the people we ostensibly are helping to even more short-term trauma and devastation. I have complete faith that the administration that botched every detail of this war will find a way to make the withdrawal as painful as possible for everyone involved. I have, in short, complete faith in the incompetence of this administration.

I wish I was wrong. Hell, I wish I was as wrong about this being over as I was wrong about virtually EVERY OTHER detail of the Iraq war, ranging from the ability of this administration to wage a war and reconstruct Iraq, the evidence of WMD, the reaction the Iraqi populace would have to alliance forces- you name it, I got it wrong. Tragically, I am afraid that when we look back in a few years, about the only thing I will have been right about this war was recognizing the end. The world truly is unfair- the only price I have to pay for my complicity and arrogance is guilt. I got off light.

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