Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

So it was an October Surprise A Day, like an Advent calendar but for crime.

Sadly, media malpractice has become standard practice.

Red lights blinking on democracy’s dashboard

Wow, you are pre-disappointed. How surprising.

Too often we hand the biggest microphones to the cynics and the critics who delight in declaring failure.

This country desperately needs a functioning Fourth Estate.

If you still can’t see these things even now, maybe politics isn’t your forte and you should stop writing about it.

“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.”

I’d try pessimism, but it probably wouldn’t work.

A democracy can’t function when people can’t distinguish facts from lies.

Speaking of republicans, is there a way for a political party to declare intellectual bankruptcy?

This isn’t Democrats spending madly. This is government catching up.

I’ve spoken to my cat about this, but it doesn’t seem to do any good.

Let us savor the impending downfall of lawless scoundrels who richly deserve the trouble barreling their way.

“That’s what the insurrection act is for!”

There are more Russians standing up to Putin than Republicans.

It may be funny to you motherfucker, but it’s not funny to me.

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

Damn right I heard that as a threat.

How can republicans represent us when they don’t trust women?

Quote tweet friends, screenshot enemies.

Anyone who bans teaching American history has no right to shape America’s future.

Fuck these fucking interesting times.

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

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Archives for March 2008

The Purity Trolls Of The Republican Base

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In case anybody still wonders what I meant by that cute little phrase, the answer is Brent Bozell. People like Bozell won’t rest until the Republican party adopts his personal vision of total, unwavering ideological rigidity. For whatever reason they don’t understand that the Republican party cannot possibly answer their demands, for two reasons.

First, the GOP has too many factions for rigidity to work. The GOP of the DeLay/Frist golden years wasn’t rigid at all – order was maintained through a heady mix of brown people fearmongering, rank corruption and keeping coalition-threatening agenda items off the table. Should they please the Chamber of Commerce or the Minutemen? Panty-sniffing vagina inspectors or libertarians? Small government types or surveillance state neocons? Unless you count Schiavo (and maybe you should), pushing that immigration bill was the beginning of the end.

Bozell also forgets that the GOP agenda isn’t very popular. Even setting aside this year’s blowout numbers, national polls routinely consistently favor Democratic agenda items over Republican. Most of George Bush’s pre-9/11 agenda involved repackaging his doctrinaire Republicanism in ways that disguised its real purpose. One of the few times that the GOP laid their agenda on the table without the doubletalk, over privatizing Social Security, the initiative failed so miserably that it became the yardstick against which future policy failures will be measured.

Fringe nuts like Bozell aren’t on the fringe any longer; folks as extreme as Bozell and worse have become the heart of the base that wags the party. If the base wants the GOP to commit suicide by purity then I say bully for them.

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And Another Thing

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And another thing about this O’Hanlon piece in the NY Times– what exactly is this:

At the moment, we give the Iraqis a score of 5 out of 11 (our system allows a score of 0, 0.5, or 1 for each category, and is dynamic, meaning we can subtract points for backsliding). It is far too soon to predict that Iraq is headed for stability or sectarian reconciliation. But it is also clear that those who assert that its politics are totally broken have not kept up with the news.

Was a scale of 1 to 10 copyrighted, or does a scale of 0 to 11 with .5 intervals just make things easier to distort?

I propose, in the future, all schools grade on a scale of 3 to 97, with 1/3 intervals and prime numbers as actual grades. For clarity and to properly note backsliding, of course.

*** Update ***

An example of the new grades:

At the moment, we give the young Jimmy a score of 51.13 out of 97 (our system allows a a scale of 3 to 97, with 1/3 intervals and prime numbers as actual grades, and is dynamic, meaning we can subtract points for backsliding). It is far too soon to predict that your children is learning. But it is also clear that those who assert that he is completely hopeless have not kept up with our new grading system.

I think it works.

*** Update #2 ***

Apparently Michael O’Hanlon has a future in the music industry:

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More On Doug Feith’s FSBOTFOTE*

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Digby points out another bit of Feith-related fun. When Bush insisted on December 31, 2002,

Again, I hope this Iraq situation will be resolved peacefully. One of my New Year’s resolutions is to work to deal with these situations in a way so that they’re resolved peacefully.

…he was lying through his teeth. Feith:

Among the disclosures made by Feith in “War and Decision,” scheduled for release next month by HarperCollins, is Bush’s declaration, at a Dec. 18, 2002, National Security Council meeting, that “war is inevitable.”

Friendly fire accident? Did Feith mean to contradict his political patron? I suppose that after sevenish years of reflexive mendacity it gets hard to say anything at all without contradicting one fib or another. Anyway, we’re not exactly breaking new ground with this. Just a helpful reminder why only 17-20% of Americans still don’t regret electing George H.W.’s lesser son.

(*) fucking stupidest book on the face of the Earth. Hat tip to Gen. Tommy Franks.

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Thanks Again, Hillary

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From the 60 Minutes hagiography on John McCain tonight:

“You’re saying that Senator Obama doesn’t have the experience? That he’s too naïve to be president?” Pelley asked.

“No, I am saying that I have that. And if the phone rings at 3:00a.m., I think the American people would want me to answer it first,” McCain replied.

If the Democrats lose in 2008, it can be traced directly to Hillary’s decision to enter this 3 am nonsense into the discourse in her last-ditch attempt to have super-delegates overturn the will of the people.

Also in the piece was this gem:

“In your town hall meetings you’re fond of saying that you will follow Osama bin Laden to the gates of hell,” Pelley remarked. “With respect, following him to the gates of hell is easy. What’s hard is putting several divisions of U.S. forces on the border of Afghanistan and Pakistan. What are you willing to do?”

“Well, the first thing is not tell Osama bin Laden what I’m gonna do. But I’ll get him,” McCain vowed.

Now that there is some straight talk you can take to the bank.

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The Fucking Stupidest Book On The Face Of The Earth

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Apparently Doug Feith lost patience waiting for the candy flower explosion that would let him write a sneering gloatfest over the prostrate bodies of his critics, so he cut that stuff out and published an I didn’t do it book instead. But where is the jacket blurb from Tommy Franks?

If anything the book ought to help DC reporters see why it’s useless to bow and scrape for favors from top-placed sources like Feith. Information from these people is always self-serving, three fourths bullshit and, as the book will thoroughly show, political appointees usually know less about their subject than mid-level careerists. People who make $60,000 a year don’t serve foie gras crostini at their cocktail parties, but then reporters who interact with them live without the shame of being Judith Miller.

For me the most entertaining aspect is Feith’s persistent support for fallen neocon darlings like Ahmed Chalabi, who at one time they thought would make a great choice for Saddam 2.0. I wish I knew how many times an Iraq booster has insisted to me, despite all evidence, that I was crazy to think that we would go into Iraq with such a transparently idiotic plan. In a sense it’s true. Wth Chalabi’s incompetent, double-dealing hucksterism in even plainer view these days it seems almost incredible to believe that someone would put America’s security in the hands of such a tool, and fail to come up with a backup strategy if genius plan #1 fails to deliver. The guy switched his loyalty to Iran after the war, assuming that he even needed to switch.

A typical example of a neoconnish war booster walking back the Chalabi story is… Doug Feith.

Feith, the No. 3 Pentagon official, has been struggling to put to rest what he regards as unfair charges that he was trying to create a separate intelligence network in the Pentagon to guide administration decisions, and that he was an “intimate” of Chalabi. Feith met with Chalabi fewer than 10 times, said a spokesman.

That’s not my phase IV plan, baby!

So how fiercely does Feith’s magnum opus deny the Chalabi connection? Not very.

Others have criticized Feith’s plan as relying too heavily on Iraqi exile politicians, including Ahmed Chalabi. Feith says that he considered Chalabi one of the most astute and democratically minded Iraqis but that he had no special brief for him. Instead, he charges that the State Department, the CIA and the military’s Central Command were pathologically opposed to the exiles and to Chalabi in particular.

Verily. Only John Bolton’s moustache knows when State and the CIA will wash out the stain of being “pathologically opposed” to handing Iraq to a band of criminal nincompoop conmen who were working for Iran.

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Gaming the System

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I rarely pay attention to John kerry, but this morning on Face the Nation, he explained things regarding the Mi and Fl primaries as clearly and directly as anyone:

SCHIEFFER: What do you think ought to happen?

Sen. KERRY: I think the rules ought to be followed. I think that obviously Barack Obama believes very strongly that delegates from those states ought to be represented at the convention. And Barack Obama believes in inclusivity, but he also believes in playing by the rules, not changing them after the fact. He played by the rules in Michigan. He even went to the lengths of taking his name off the ballot, as did every other candidate except for Hillary Clinton. And now…

SCHIEFFER: And he–and none of the other candidates campaigned in Florida.

Sen. KERRY: Correct. And they didn’t campaign. But–well, there was a campaig under the radar screen in Florida and everybody knows that. A lot of money was spent in Florida, and Senator Clinton went there the night of the primary and claimed a victory.

SCHIEFFER: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Sen. KERRY: So, in a sense here, what you see is sort of two different attitudes about how American politics ought to be played. Barack Obama will play by the rules and he will do whatever the party and the states decide to do. And so…

SCHIEFFER: So if they decide to do what Senator Nelson’s talking about, he’ll do that.

Sen. KERRY: He will play by the rules. He will play by the rules, but let me emphasize that Senator Clinton is trying to change the rules in Michigan. She’s saying, `I won’t accept a caucus,’ which is, frankly, up to the state, also the party, and they had a caucus there. That’s exactly what was there. So she’s busy gaming it, frankly, in the same way that, unfortunately, I think she’s gaming this commander as chief issue.

Pretty much.

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