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Another One Bites the Dust
Rove aide and special assistant to President Bush Sue Ralston has resigned over ties to Abramoff.
Tears in a bucket; motherfuckit.
The Art of Finesse
What Katherine Harris doesn’t understand is that GOP candidates aren’t supposed to come right out and say that their opponents aren’t “real” Christians; they’re just supposed to imply it over and over and over until the message is obvious but they can’t get called out for being overtly bigoted assholes. (Via.)
Meanwhile, if she’s right that “God is the one who chooses our rulers,” maybe she ought to consider why she’s currently being trounced by 28 points.
News to the Media
Froomkin, in discussing how Keith Olbermann is alone among network newscasters in “channeling” and “amplifying” public sentiments about Bush, which have been “clearly reflected in opinion polls dating back well over a year,” says: “The traditional media has been slow to come to grips with the American public's distrust and dislike of President Bush.”
Gee, ya think?
And unlike many issues which would be damaging to Bush if given them the full-throated attention they deserve, the public’s aversion to Bush is not just ignored by the media, but instead actively countered, with delusional references to how he’s well-liked and highly regarded, utter shock when someone expresses disapproval of Bush personally, and a reliance on the idea that liberals who object to any of his policies simply have an irrational hatred of him.
It’s the latter charge that drives me straight up one wall and down another—that we are driven by blind hatred, spawned of sour grapes and sore losing, to condemn anything and everything that Bush does, incapable of seeing that he’s a good man with good intentions and solid policies. Never does the media seem willing to contemplate that we are motivated by genuine discontent (and, increasingly, unadulterated fury) at the abject failure that Bush’s presidency has been since day one. To repeat myself, our hatred was never blind.
“You’re goddamned right if you think I found George Bush an insignificant slip of a man who was unprepared for and undeserving of the presidency, whose history as a drunken dullard, constructed aw-shucks shtick, and careful positioning as the ordained man who would marry religious extremists with neocon corporatists made me want to puke from the moment I laid eyes upon his sneering visage. You’re categorically correct if you think that his leadership shames me, that every heh heh which has emanated from his condescending mouth has made my skin crawl, that I am utterly unable to find the merest shadow of anything to like about him, that I fervently long for the day he takes his leave from governance and retreats to Crawford for good, where I won’t give the tiniest, microscopic shit about him whether he is lost in a tragic brush-clearing accident and his body devoured by wild dogs before the search party arrives, or whether he lives out the remainder of his useless life in good health and happiness—either way, I don’t care, as long as I never have to think about him for the rest of my days. You’re right as rain if you think I hated him from the get-go, but maybe it’s time to consider that my hatred left my eyes wide open, and it was his most ardent supporters who were blind. Blindly allegiant. Blind defenders. Deliberately, selectively blind.”
I include among those charged with willful blindness the media, because, for a long time now, it hasn’t been just liberals who distrust and dislike Bush. It’s also the moderates who view the increasingly radical conservative movement with which Bush has so firmly allied himself as both dangerous for America and aesthetically incongruent with their resolute moderation. It’s the center-right voters who trusted him on defense, but can no longer ignore the obvious conclusion that Bush is manifestly unprepared to have both a strong and smart foreign policy. It’s the traditional Republicans whose libertarian streaks are deeply offended by intrusions into family decisions like the Schiavo debacle and attempts to limit personal freedoms like the marriage amendment, and whose belief in small government has been roundly betrayed by Bush the Big Spender. It’s the conservative evangelicals who are worried that the narrowing separation of church and state is corrupting both, and who want someone to address the global climate crisis. It’s anyone who could watch Bush play the guitar while NOLA drowned and wonder what the hell he was thinking.
These aren’t people for whom the media has had much affection or given much interest, because they don’t conform to the convenient though erroneous storyline that Bush is a likeable guy whose only real enemies are unhinged liberals who wouldn’t like him no matter what. That moderates, center-right security voters, traditional Republicans, and critical conservative evangelicals are giving Bush a giant, collective thumbs-down hasn’t made the media sit up and take notice of them, but deliberately ignore them. They are willfully blind to whatever they don’t want to see—including the polling that shows Bush with such dismal approval rating, that, by the media rationale, the country must be comprised mostly of mindless, illogically Bush-hating liberals.
Why the media is so intent on pushing a “likeable Bush” storyline is another post altogether, but this much is known: They are pushing it, and doing so in spite of all evidence to the contrary. Bush is not liked, and there are a myriad of reasons that he isn’t, both political and personal. The question the media should have been asking for at least a year, and probably longer, is not why there people who don’t like Bush, but why there are still people who do.
Mr. Show: America Will Blow Up the Moon
My favorite Mr. Show sketch ever, Dr. X's Doomsday Telethon, hasn't made it to YouTube yet, so this will have to suffice in the interim.
Impeachy
The esteemed David Swanson on impeachment (bolds mine):
Believe it or not, the impeachment of George W. Bush and Dick Cheney is perfectly possible, although a number of factors will have to come together for it to happen. The public will is already there, and this is quite remarkable given the lack of action in Congress or mention in the mainstream media. The polling that has been done on impeachment is dramatic. The Washington Post finds that a third of the country wants Bush not just impeached but also removed from office. Zogby finds that, by a margin of 53% to 42%, Americans want Congress to impeach President Bush if he lied about the war in Iraq. When Americans were asked, "What 2 or 3 specific changes would have to take place in order to improve your trust in government today?" the winner by far was "personnel changes/impeachment proceedings." When Pennsylvanians were asked whether they would be likely to vote for a congressional candidate who "supports having impeachment proceedings against President Bush," 84.9% of Democrats said yes, while 7.0% said no. Among Independents, 49.3% said yes, while 40.6% said no.Go read the whole thing. Seriously.
…The Democratic base is aching for Democrats in Congress to get some spine and stand up to the criminals who are throwing away one of the most brilliant creations of the eighteenth century: our Constitution. Instead, Leader Nancy Pelosi has ordered Democrats in Congress to stay away from impeachment -- though she did say that they would hold hearings and see where they went… if the Democrats win a majority in the House of Representatives.
To voters who are paying attention, the "let's hold investigations and see where they go" approach looks disingenuous, given how many impeachable offenses are already public knowledge. I've heard reports from dozens of Congressional representatives, in both parties, who refused to sign onto Conyers' bill for an investigation, and not once has anyone argued that there is too little evidence. The argument always focuses on the "extreme" nature of impeachment or the political agenda behind impeachment. As a result, the Democrats are, for the most part, steering clear even of talk of future investigations.
Quietly, however, Democrats do acknowledge that impeachment is coming.
Charming
Belligerent braggadocio from Gitmo:
Guards at Guantanamo Bay bragged about beating detainees and described it as common practice, a Marine sergeant said in a sworn statement obtained by The Associated Press.Remember for a moment that the vast majority of the “enemy combatants” held at Gitmo have never even been charged with a crime. Less than a dozen have been charged. The rest of them haven’t even been charged, no less convicted. These could very well be innocent people—like Maher Arar—who are getting routinely abused by US military personnel.
…A 19-year-old sailor referred to only as Bo "told the other guards and me about him beating different detainees being held in the prison," the statement said.
"One such story Bo told involved him taking a detainee by the head and hitting the detainee's head into the cell door. Bo said that his actions were known by others," the statement said. The sailor said he was never punished.
…Other guards "also told their own stories of abuse towards the detainees" that included hitting them, denying them water and "removing privileges for no reason."
"About 5 others in the group admitted hitting detainees" and that included "punching in the face," the affidavit said.
"From the whole conversation, I understood that striking detainees was a common practice," the sergeant wrote. "Everyone in the group laughed at the others stories of beating detainees."
How many of them do you think hate us for our freedom?
"Making progress"
Condoleezza Rice goes back and forth on whether Iraqis should continue to "enjoy politics." Yesterday, the answer was an emphatic no:
"They don't have time for endless debate of these issues," Rice said during a news conference aboard her plane. "They have really got to move forward. That is one of the messages that I'll take, but it will also be a message of support and what can we do to help."
But later in the day, she seemed to have changed her tune:
“What the American people see on their television screens is the struggle,” she said. “It is harder to show the political process that is going on at local levels, at provincial levels and indeed at the national level.” Iraqis, she said, are “making progress.”
Iraqis are confused! Which is it, Dr. Rice?
As the NY Times piece states, the progress that Rice cites was less than evident on her arrival in Baghdad:
It began inauspiciously when the military transport plane that brought her to Baghdad was forced to circle the city for about 40 minutes because of what a State Department spokesman later said was either mortar fire or rockets at the airport.On Thursday evening, during her meeting with President Jalal Talabani, the lights went out, forcing Ms. Rice to continue the discussion in the dark. It was a reminder of the city’s erratic — and sometimes nonexistent — electrical service.
That account brings to recollection a World War II anecdote from William Shirer's The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich: a November 1940 conversation in Berlin between Soviet Foreign Commissar Vyacheslav Molotov and Nazi Foreign Minister Wilhelm Joachim von Ribbentrop. During a banquet, a British bombing raid forced the ministers into an underground shelter. Ribbentrop tried several times to convince the Soviet commissar that Britain was finished as a military power, to which Molotov icily replied: "If that is so, why are we in this shelter, and whose are these bombs which fall?"
(Cross-posted.)
Friday Cat Blogging
Nothing to see here.
Matilda: Peekaboo!
Shakes: You got me again.
Olivia: I’m sleepy.
Shakes: How can you be sleepy? You’ve slept all day.
Yawwwwwwwwwn.
In which I reveal myself to have an unhealthy emotional investment in a television show.
I’m serious. Hurry up.
Friday Blogrollin'
Alterdestiny
Book Learnin’ and Bra Smoke
Cynical-C Blog
Liberal Values
Pure and Easy
Reverent and Free
The Stranger
As always, if I should be reading your blog,
let me know in comments!
Cultural Garbage
The NY Times offers up another generally worthless article that cites an alarming but controversial statistic up front, only to suggest at the back end that the statistic upon which the article is based is probably bullshit, anyway. This time it’s about evangelical leaders who are afraid of losing teenagers.
There was one bit I found interesting, though. In an effort to combat the pop culture purveyed “on MTV, on Web sites for teenagers and in hip-hop, rap and rock music” that subverts their message, Teen Mania youth ministry founder Ron Luce, asked the thousands of teenage attendees at Acquire the Fire, a two-day “Christian youth extravaganza and rock concert” put on by Teen Mania, to expel “cultural garbage.”
Mr. Luce led the crowd in an exercise in which they wrote on scraps of paper all the negative cultural influences, brand names, products and television shows that they planned to excise from their lives. Again they streamed down the aisles, this time to throw away the “cultural garbage.”It occurs to me how futile (and hypocritical) it is for religious leaders to ask teenagers to throw away “cultural garbage” at an event which is just so much cultural garbage of its own. The root of the problem isn’t so much the specific brand of culture that teens are buying, but the nature of consumption itself. Packaging Jesus Rock the same way MTV packages hot artists is always going to leave teens with a choice between two products, rather than a choice between two philosophies.
Trash cans filled with folded pieces of paper on which the teenagers had scribbled things like Ryan Seacrest, Louis Vuitton, “Gilmore Girls,” “Days of Our Lives,” Iron Maiden, Harry Potter, “need for a boyfriend” and “my perfect teeth obsession.” One had written in tiny letters: “fornication.”
Some teenagers threw away cigarette lighters, brand-name sweatshirts, Mardi Gras beads and CD’s — one titled “I’m a Hustla.”
“Lord Jesus,” Mr. Luce prayed into the microphone as the teenagers dropped their notes into the trash, “I strip off the identity of the world, and this morning I clothe myself with Christ, with his lifestyle. That’s what I want to be known for.”
The Amish have stripped off the identity of the world; evangelicals at a rock concert where branded t-shirts, CDs, and tangential paraphernalia are hawked in a way not remotely dissimilar from the way they would be at Ozzfest haven’t.
Are teens wearing t-shirts advertising Teen Mania really “clothed with Christ,” or just clothed with Luce’s brand in the same way as a teen wearing a Sean Jean jersey? What’s the difference? Luce is still encouraging teens to consume a brand, and his only hope of retaining their alliance is that his brand is cooler than the rest—and that’s a battle he can’t win. Teens who aren’t totally dedicated to a life of abstinence until marriage and hatin’ the gays will eventually drift off toward mainstream culture; teens who really understand Christ will rebel against this perverted version of his message, once they stop to consider that the only time Jesus ever threw a shit-fit was when snake oil salesmen turned his Father’s house into a shopping mall. Luce will be left with the daft, self-loathing wankers who have no critical thinking skills and an entrenched need to make themselves feel better by expressing superiority via self-righteous moralizing—the exact people who give the conservative evangelical movement its bad name, but keep its leaders’ pockets lined.
The greatest irony of men like Luce is that they ally themselves with the political party who define consumption as the ultimate patriotic duty, who revere wealth above all else—a concept wholly antithetical to the message of Christ. It isn’t Iron Maiden and “Days of Our Lives” that Christian teens who want to clothe themselves with Christ’s lifestyle need to excise from their lives, but consumerism—the whole idea that buying shit, including tickets to Acquire the Fire, makes them better people, and that what they buy can make them better Christians.
Of course, that idea would put Luce and the gang out of business, so I don’t imagine we’ll be hearing that from their stage-lit pulpits anytime soon.
One Signing Statement Closer to King
WTF:
President Bush, again defying Congress, says he has the power to edit the Homeland Security Department's reports about whether it obeys privacy rules while handling background checks, ID cards and watchlists.In other words, he’s gutting Congress’ oversight abilities even further and conferring more power upon himself, including the right to interpret the law.
In the law Bush signed Wednesday, Congress stated no one but the privacy officer could alter, delay or prohibit the mandatory annual report on Homeland Security department activities that affect privacy, including complaints.
But Bush, in a signing statement attached to the agency's 2007 spending bill, said he will interpret that section "in a manner consistent with the President's constitutional authority to supervise the unitary executive branch."
It’s good to be king, bitchez.
As an example of what he’d personally interpret to his own satisfaction, Bush said he would “disregard a requirement that the director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency must have at least five years experience and ‘demonstrated ability in and knowledge of emergency management and homeland security.’ His rationale was that it ‘rules out a large portion of those persons best qualified by experience and knowledge to fill the office.’” Yeah, like dudes whose previous experience was running the International Arabian Horse Association. And we all know what a superb job those dudes do.
Respect his authoritay! And his immutable need to fill his administration with useless, ill-prepared, incompetent cronies!
Three More Pages Come Forward
ABC News: “Three more former congressional pages have come forward to reveal what they call ‘sexual approaches’ over the Internet from former Congressman Mark Foley. The pages served in the classes of 1998, 2000 and 2002.”
More graphic stuff and decidedly inappropriate, if not illegal, behavior on Foley’s part.
If any of them complained to any of the Republican leadership, however, ABC News doesn’t mention it. Which I imagine means they didn’t.
Question of the Day
Forgive me for the long intro, but I'll get to the question, I promise...
GOP forced off issues it wants to run on—“Republican House members, scattered across the USA for their first week of full-time campaigning, want to talk to voters about the reasons they believe they should be re-elected. Instead, they are dealing with issues they would prefer to avoid.”
Hahahahahahaha! Yeah, instead of holding themselves out as the party of moral values who are the only people fit to keep us safe, while demonizing liberals for being morally bankrupt and incapable of protecting Americans, they’re being slapped silly by the decidedly inconvenient reality that their party is chock full of pervs and they can’t even protect teenagers from themselves.
You know, I totally understand the sentiment that it’s frustrating that a sex scandal is finally the thing that might bring down the GOP juggernaut, especially when Bush is busily undermining the Constitution and revelations are springing forth left and right that the boobs he calls a cabinet were warned about 9/11 and did fuck-all to stop it, but let me just suggest an alternative way to regard this mess: Tell anyone who’ll listen, especially people who are finally listening for the first time, that it’s perfectly indicative of everything that’s wrong with the GOP.
Hollow Moralizing: Whether it’s Bill “The Book of Virtues” Bennett losing millions of dollars in Vegas casinos or Newt “Dump Wife #1 while in the hospital for cancer treatment; Dump Wife #2 over the phone on Mothers’ Day” Gingrich lecturing on ethics, the GOP is rife with some of the most odious turds in America—and some of them far worse than those two shitsacks. To wit: pedophiles, more pedophiles, yet more pedophiles, lots and lots of pedophiles, wife-rapers, mule-fuckers, falafel-creeps, closet cases, gay hookers, Hookergate, dirty novelists, and on and on and on. Meanwhile, they’re also the party that uses marriage and reproductive rights as wedge issues, constantly sticks their noses into our crotches and tries to legislate what’s going on down there, and utters phrases like “the sanctity of marriage,” “family values,” and “moral majority” without a trace of irony. Doctor, heal thyself—and in the meantime, shut the fuck up about what’s going on in my bloody bedroom between consenting adults. In fact, shut up about it forever.
Hypocrisy: This issue, like so many others, underlines the rank hypocrisy flaunted by the GOP on a continual basis. From a Commander in Chief who ignored a Presidential Daily Briefing entitled “Bin Laden Determined to Strike Inside US” and now invokes the disaster of September 11th he didn’t move a muscle to avoid as frequently as I say “fuck,” to a “Culture of Life” platform that includes sending our troops to die in an unnecessary war predicated on manipulated intelligence, the GOP is nothing but a bunch of sorry, useless hypocrites who wouldn’t know integrity if it was delivered to their front door like a phone-ordered rent boy.
Lack of Ethics: Sending “overly friendly” emails to underage pages is just fine and dandy with the GOP—so long as you’re discreet. Just like keeping Democrats out of committee meetings, taking hand-outs from lobbyists, lying to the public, letting energy companies write our national energy policy, dressing up corporate hand-outs as sound policy, deliberately misrepresenting who will benefit most from tax cuts, and all the rest of it.
Cover-Ups: The Plame outing, the Downing Street Memos, warnings about terrorist attacks, Katrina…take your pick. The GOP is better at nothing than CYA. No one knew anything, it’s not their responsibility, don’t play the blame game. They take accountability for nothing, scapegoat, obfuscate, misdirect, refuse to comply with FOIA requests, lie. Indeed, more crimes have probably been committed by this administration and the current GOP leadership in trying to cover-up non-criminal mistakes than we can even begin to contemplate.
Self-protection above all else: Ask Richard Clarke, Joe Wilson, Valerie Plame, Christine Todd Whitman, any one of the number of government whistle-blowers who have been professionally exiled, the soldiers who are “staying the course” in spite of no chance of “winning” in Iraq to justify a colossal foreign policy failure, the Congressional pages harassed by Mark Foley, and every other American citizen who has seen the GOP’s unquenchable thirst for power trump our safety. They don’t give a good plopper about what’s best for America; they only care about what’s best for them—and if that means ruining the career of someone working on weapons proliferation in the Middle East or not investigating a predatory Congressman of their own party, they’re going to do it.
Yeah, it would be swell if the GOP went down because they care as much about habeas corpus as my cats do about existentialist philosophy, but it’s not so bad that they’re going down for this. It is, after all, a flawless example of how truly, dreadfully rotten to the very core that stinking wreck of a party really is.
Now, tell me: What else did I forget? I'm sure there are plenty of other woeful traits of the ridiculously corrupt GOP of which this scandal is exemplary. So, let's have it, Shakers. Complete my list.
Ruh Roh x 3!
Maybe all those prominent Republicans—*cough*Bush*cough*Cheney*cough*—should have waited until the polling was in before they decided to stand behind their man:
House Republican candidates will suffer massive losses if House Speaker Dennis Hastert remains speaker until Election Day, according to internal polling data from a prominent GOP pollster, FOX News has learned.That’s called integrity, bitchez.
…The GOP source told FOX News that the internal data had not been widely shared among Republican leaders, but as awareness of it spreads calculations about Hastert's tenure may change. The source described the pollster who did the survey as "authoritative," and said once the numbers are presented, it "could change the focus" on whether the speaker remains in power.
More Ruh-Roh!
Rasmussen: “Sixty-one percent (61%) of American adults believe that Republican leaders have been ‘protecting [Mark] Foley for several years.’”
That’s the first time in a long time that 61% of American adults have been in agreement on anything.
Aside from, y’know, that Bush sucks.
The Dark One Emerges to Issue Grim, Gravel-Voiced Utterances
Vice President Dick Cheney said he “can’t tell” how a Republican sex scandal will impact next month’s elections, but insisted “it makes no sense” for House Speaker Dennis Hastert to resign.“We’re on it, chief!” said Diebold.
…Cheney flatly rejected predictions by pundits that Democrats will take control of the House and Senate in November.
“We will retain control of both houses,” he said.
