Night Light

we've moved!

2005-02-08T16:16:00.000-08:00

which way to typepad?

Night Light has moved. We are a little too visually-oriented for the blogspot.com environment. Come visit us at our new digs, http://nightlight.typepad.com. We've converted all of our old posts and sorted them by categories.

Comments and suggestions about the new format are welcome. Speaking of comments, they unfortunately didn't come along with the move, but we appreciate all the feedback and home to here now.

Y'all stop by now ...

sky captain and the budget of tomorrow

2005-02-07T22:22:00.000-08:00

home, mr. president?

Bush dares evoke FDR? Under Roosevelt we lived in a country where the President made poor children’s dreams come true. Now it’s the other way around. Welfare programs have been cut to the point of endangering the health of children, yet a $6.1 billion dollar order has been placed for 23 high-tech Presidential helicopters, a gee-whiz fantasy for a self-obsessed leader. Low-income kids in DC will experience “food insecurity” (.pdf file) while the President rides above them to Camp David in his new “Oval Office in the Sky,” giving new life to Zola’s observation that to some, freedom means that “the poor man is just as free to sleep under a bridge as the rich man is to ride over it in his carriage.”

Veterans medical services are being cut, yet the new Presidential copter fleet is on its way. So those who sacrificed the most during wartime will tighten their budgets and do without the essentials, but no belt-tightening is forecast for the Imperial White House. Why 23? There’s only one of him, unless you count Cheney, in which case there are two. And how much time does he spend in a helicopter, anyway? Doesn’t he just use them to get to and from Air Force One and Camp David?

For the non-math-inclined among you, that’s an individual cost of more than $265,000,000 for each helicopter. I can’t get my hands on the line item budget cuts yet, so the numbers are approximate, but imagine: Cut a couple helicopters and you can restore the Park Service budget. Cut ten and you can restore veterans’ health. Cut 21 of them – leaving one for the President and one for “Go F**k Yourself” – and you can restore the physical and emotional health of millions of children who are underfed. Cut all of them and you can protect 3,000 U.S. airliners from missile attack by terrorists.

I’m not suggesting the President should be left unprotected from terrorist attack, and if there is some cost in retrofitting his vehicles to protect them from rocket launchers, let’s spend what it takes. But an “Oval Office in the Sky?" When he spends more time vacationing away from the one on the ground than any President in history?

We have other options. For instance, we could replace both the Presidential helicopter and the Presidential limousine with one of these nifty flying cars:

here's my favorite:

Cool, huh? And cheaper than what he's getting. Or, he could inspire the country by showing that he’s willing to economize, too. Then this could be his new flying vehicle:

On the other hand … Some of us will read what has happened to those hungry children, and then see what he has planned for their mothers, veterans, and others in need, and may think this is as good as he deserves:

(picture courtesy of jalopnik.com and the Ugliest Car Competition)

Maybe it’s time for the President to learn what a lot of other Americans have learned. You go to the office with the vehicle you have, not the vehicle you wish you had.

hot licks

2005-02-06T15:09:00.000-08:00

the media critic's guru, Dan Hicks

Although he fails to give Dan Hicks his props for his post's title, I will give James Wolcott grudging admiration for the best and most readable blog entry of the week. But don't miss out on Dan Hicks. Talented, mercurial, misanthropic, seemingly alcoholic, Hicks has it all. Oh - he also sings and plays guitar and writes songs.

For those of you who don't know, Dan Hicks and his Hot Licks were a San Francisco Bay Area attraction during the 60's and 70's, distinguished most by their utter lack of any relationship to anything else happened there at the time , musically or culturally. Hicks drew his inspiration from classic country, folk, and jazz (heavy on the swing), and relied on acoustic guitar & bass, jump-jivin' fiddle, and two female backup singers to carry the day. The 70's dance/rock/soul act Kid Creole and the Coconuts owed a lot to Hicks' style, and he is overdue for a revival. In a Bay Area suffused with shoulder-length hair (for men), granny dresses, and beads, Hicks dressed in pinstripe suits and fedoras and his Lickettes were dolled up like gun molls.

Classic Hicks favorites included the Jimmie Rodgers-derived "Reelin' Down," a drifter's ballad, and the swinging ode to domestic decomposition, "Is This My Happy Home?" Then there was his best-known tune, consciously or otherwise referenced by Wolcott, "How Can I Miss You When You Won't Go Away." Lesser-known songs also hold great pleasures. My favorite is the haunting yet swinging fiddle-driven story of obsession, "I Scare Myself." Escapists among you will appreciate his response to the rash of reported UFO kidnappings in the 70's, simply titled "Hell, I'll Go."

Oh, Wolcott's post is great too.

social (security) drinking

2005-02-04T17:30:00.000-08:00

cocktail party debate briefing book: entry #1

We need to know what to say when people bring up Social Security, particularly in business or family situations where we don't want to be confrontational. As an ongoing public service, Night Light will be offering suggested responses or conversational gambits to be used whenever the topic comes up. Here suggestion #1:

"Don't you think it's funny that the guy who ran up the biggest deficits in history is so worried about the one government program that isn't going to have any funding problems for forty years?"

If you feel it's necessary, you can then add, "Just asking."

of michael jackson

2005-02-04T10:57:00.000-08:00

he's moonwalking

In an interview with MTV, Michael Jackson described his ability to withstand criticism with the unfortunate phrase, "I've got rhinoceros skin." That explains a lot, especially since the word "rhinoceros" is derived from the Greek and Latin words for "nose horn."

In fact, zoologists have recently discovered that Jackson illegally acquired the skin of a rhinoceros and had it surgically grafted on to his body. They have determined that Jackson acquired the skin of the rare white rhinoceros, which as you will see here has not one but two nose horns. You will also see that birds frequently perch on the white rhinoceros. There is no evidence to suggest that Michael Jackson is a nesting site or rookery for any avian species.

The white rhinoceros has become an endangered species, since people hunt it in the mistaken belief that its nose has aphrodisiac properties. Such deeply-embedded folkways take a long time to die. This is demonstrated by the fact that anthropologists have also discovered people that buy the albums Jackson has made since "Thriller."

The rhino's nose, unlike Jackson's, cannot be easily removed. This has led to the widespread killing of these fine animals. The white rhino lives on tall grass that it eats while it walks. Unlike its newest predator, the rhinoceros only walks in a forward direction, which is why this form of food consumption is possible.

The white rhinoceros has not been charged with any crimes, nor has it ever grabbed its own crotch. It is Michael Jackson, however, and not the white rhino, that brought Eddie Van Halen in to play that brilliant guitar solo on "Beat It." This does not indemnify him in the court of musical taste for having sung "Man in the Mirror."

While the court process is underway, feel free to choose: Who do you support more and why: Michael Jackson, or the white rhino?

democrats for torture

2005-02-03T23:09:00.000-08:00

i'd like to thank the people who voted for me ...

... especially those Democrats who crossed party lines to support me on the moral issue of their lifetime. I'm the Spirit of Abu Ghraib, and I'm here to acknowledge the little people - the truly little people - who have made me what I am today. Like they say, without you I'm nothing. These U.S. senators have told their nation and the world that they endorse the man who said the Geneva Convention's provisions were "quaint, " and that torture was fine until it simulated the pain of "organ failure or death." Before I thank these fine people by name, I have a question: How do you know exactly how painful organ failure or death is unless you've experienced it yourself? Maybe these six American solons can tell us, since they've experienced the failure of their hearts and the death of their consciences.

And now, a big shout out and all my love to:

Joseph Lieberman of Connecticut: Joe, I always knew I could count on you.
Ken Salazar of Colorado
Mary Landrieu of Louisiana
Bill Nelson of Florida
Ben Nelson of Nebraska
Mark Pryor of Arkansas

And let's not forget those 54 Republicans , too. To all 60 of you, I can only say in closing: you complete me.

- The Spirit of Abu Ghraib

"I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just." Thomas Jefferson

wild about harry

2005-02-03T21:39:00.000-08:00

the trouble with harry is ...

... nothing. Not a damn thing. In fact, this is one hell of a good guy. I was displeased when he was chosen for the job, and I had some words about it at the time. You know what? When I eat that crow tonight I hope I find some white meat. I honor Harry Reid today, the man who said this about the nomination of Alberto Gonzales:

Because of our unshakable belief in human rights, we became a ray of light, a beacon for people in other parts of the world. America has been that beacon because we are a nation governed by laws, not by men ...
We are a nation where no one, not even the President of the United States,is above the law. We are a nation where our military is bound by the uniform Code of Military Justice and the laws of war. And we are a nation that even at war stands for and upholds the rule of law.
... We need to stand against torture because of what it does to us as a country, to those serving now, to the future servicemen of our country, and what it does to us as a nation.
If we fail to oppose an evil as obvious as torture -- it is an evil and it is obvious it is wrong--then as President Thomas Jefferson said, I will "tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just."

Thanks to Armando at DailyKos (who's turning out to be my kind of guy) for highlighting these words. Harry Reid, I was wrong about you. I assumed that your political history and your warm statements toward Bush meant that you would be a Neville Chamberlain Democrat. I could not have been more mistaken. You have not only stood forthrightly for what is great and good about this country, but you have done so eloquently and with honor. I applaud your last sentence, for it reminds us all that the government's tolerance of torture makes a mockery of the spiritual values our leaders claim to uphold.

"I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just." Thomas Jefferson

'Truly, I say to you, as you did it to one of the
least of these my brethren, you did it to me.'
Matthew 25:31-40

of nugent, seger, and the politics of the atom

2005-02-02T19:27:00.000-08:00

ted nugent: is he a pion, a lepton, or a kaon?

I got badly scratched by the house feline yesterday. I was afraid I would come down with cat scratch fever, but luckily the incubation period passed without symptoms. Thank God. I try to avoid catching any diseases that share their names with Ted Nugent songs, which made last year’s crippling bout of Wango Tango particularly upsetting.

I'll ruminate on Ted today, but save my praise for Bob Seger. If you haven’t checked him out lately, you really should. He’s under-appreciated. And I’ll wind up suggesting how modern politics can be explained using particle physics. Can you guess which particle Don Rumsfeld is? Bear with me, and maybe it will make more sense that either you or I are expecting right now.

You may remember Ted Nugent, the marginally successful rock singer and guitarist from the 70’s. The Michigan-based Nugent, who is almost universally looked down upon by his fellow musicians, made a name for himself as an aggressively right-wing pro-meat eating hunter. He has been able to extend a languishing entertainment career by embracing these conservative positions, which I guess makes him the musical Dennis Miller. Or makes Christopher Hitchens the literary Ted Nugent.

But (and this is important enough to break the rules and start a paragraph with “but”) – I’m not going to go after “the Nuge,” as he is called. No. Hitchens was enough. Joseph Campbell used to quote the old Irish saying, “Is this a private fight or can anyone join in?” Nevertheless, there are some bar brawls even I don’t consider worth jumping into. (I shouldn’t end a sentence with “into”, either – but it doesn’t sound right to say “There are some bar brawls into which even I won’t consider jumping.”)

I admit to having at times been morbidly fascinated with Ted Nugent. I once saw him perform and, while I wasn’t moved, he seemed to induce a fist-pumping, beer-spraying, halter-top-removing response from the men and women (respectively) in the crowd. My fascination was with Ted, though – his extraordinary self-confidence in the absence of apparent musicianship was extraordinary to watch. And I mean that in (sort of) a good way.

Michigan is also the home of Bob Seger who, unlike Nugent, is highly talented. He is the author of the drug-bust masterpiece “Get Out of Denver,” with its speeded up Chuck Berry riffs and lyrics that update the literary narrative style of … well, Chuck Berry. “You look just like a commie and you might just be a member,” says a hostile cop to the hippie protagonist. “Get out of Denver.”

(click on "Permalink Page" to talk more Seger, analyze the Nuge, and help create the new field of politico-physics)

As a native blue-stater, Seger encountered the same anti-longhair violence I and others did in other parts of the country back in the day. In the mournful “Turn the Page,” his masterpiece description of life on the road, he captures the feeling we all had on entering a back-country diner in “counterculture” dress and facing the hostile stares:

Some times you can’t hear ‘em talk, other times you can
it’s all the same clichés, “Is that a woman or a man?”
but there’s more them than there are of us, no way to make a stand

No way to make a stand. To young, peace-and-music loving men who still needed to feel macho, that “fight ‘em if you can” stand felt like a battle cry. It apparently provided inspiration for Metallica, who later covered the song. Seger was a hard-rocker who finally hit it big late in his career when he switched to power ballads. He even sang “Against the Wind” with The Eagles, with its simple yet powerful line on the pain of aging, “wish I didn’t know now what I didn’t know then.”

Seger’s crowning achievement for me comes in the last verse of “Night Moves,” an unfortunately overplayed but still powerful ballad. The song starts as a relatively shallow reminiscence on his first sexual experience. It has a strong melody, and builds up in intensity before dropping away to a near-whisper for these final words, made even more powerful by the way they seem to appear as a complete non sequitur:

Woke last night to the sound of thunder
How far off? I sat and wondered
started humming a song from 1962

ain’t it funny how the night moves
with Autumn closing in?

It has a powerful, haiku-like feel and structure, even down to the seasonal reference traditionally required for that form of poetry. I said it felt like a non sequitur, but of course it’s not. Its elegiac tone summons the loss of youth, the yearning for what’s gone, and the sense of the nearness of death. It gives the recollections of backseats and breasts a much deeper meaning, and is the work of a very gifted writer.

So if the music doesn’t sound too dated to you, and you want to reconnect with Bob, you can buy his stuff here.

Back to the Nuge: I was a teenager, I think, when Ted began to “come out” as a conservative. I remember reading an interview in Rolling Stone where he espoused views about guns that were almost militia-like. Michigan, a state where I once briefly lived, certainly likes its guns. Hunting season was distinguished by the lines of cars returning from the Upper Peninsula on Sunday nights with deer tied over a fender or on the roof. That was not a familiar sight from my blue-state youth.

Something Nugent said in the interview fascinated me. Talking of his own importance, he said “I am the nucleus. I have life d**ked.” I was raised to be self-effacing, studious, and considerate of others. The fact that I lost many of these habits for many years never changed the fact that I assumed they were equally important to others. My reaction to “I have life d**ked” was to marvel that someone would consider life something to be penetrated, speared, and otherwise conquered like that. It was inconceivable to me.

I am … the nucleus?? As I say, I was raised to be self-effacing. As a younger child, the idea that I might be the center of anything seemed inconceivable. As a global statement of self-importance and indifference to others, this attitude was foreign enough to my thinking that it genuinely filled me with a sense of wonder that was greater than the repulsion I also felt.

I’m not trying to score cheap political points when I say that the attitude I get from this Administration – Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, and Ashcroft in particular – bas been very similar to Nugent’s. The famous smirk, Cheney’s parka at Auschwitz, Rumsfeld blithe “democracy is messy” dismissal of tragedy – seem to me to scream out that these actors feel they are the nuclei, and that they do indeed “have life d**ked.” I have them same amazed horror toward their actions that I did as a teenager reading the Nugent interview. It is foreign to me.

Is it a conservative thing? Not necessarily, and not with older-school conservatives. Tucker Carlson may have it, but Bob Dole certainly doesn’t. George Will may have it, but Pat Buchanan’s too “hot” (in McLuhan terminology) and doesn’t. These guys in Washington do, though. So naturally, my wife being out of town and me having time on my hands, I started to wonder: which people make up the other parts of the atom?

For example, is Bush alone the nucleus, or is Cheney kind of a co-nucleus with him? If they share, is Bush the protons and Cheney the neutrons or vice versa? Are the Cabinet members the electrons? Did Colin Powell have a negative charge, because he wasn’t “nucleus-minded” enough, and is that why he was repelled? Was he that electron you see getting expelled in those physics experiments? Is the reason Bush won’t fire anybody for incompetence because they are bound to him – the nucleus – by the “strong force”? Is the rule of law the “weak force”?

If the cabinet members are electrons, who are the other particles – muons, for example? Muons are in cosmic rays and crash into other particles, but they’re unstable and quickly decay into something simpler. They are sort of like Libertarians, most of whom seem to winding up taking a straight conservative party line. Neutrinos have very little mass and pass through most things without any effect. Plus they change a lot, although they always stay neutrinos. They’ve gotta be your Democrats, right?

Photons generate light, of course. They can also be two things at once (“particle” or “wave”), and in two places at once. They change depend on who’s looking at them, according to the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle. They are, of course, the media., although not a lot of light is being cast these days.

Time is reversible at the subatomic level, which is we are un-signing the Geneva Convention, undoing Social Security and other New Deal reforms, and making a progressive tax code more regressive. You liberals ought to stop being so upset about all this. If you knew your physics you’d understand. Instead of fulminating about some right-winger tonight, I challenge you to assign particle identities to some politicians yourself.

And that’s what I have to say because I got scratched by a cat.

neoconman

2005-01-31T21:07:00.000-08:00

surrealism goes to war

There he goes again. Christopher Hitchens, the man who put the ‘con’ in neocon, is using Mobius-strip logic, misstatements, and vituperation in another vain attempt to defend the Iraqi war policy of his mentor, Paul Wolfowitz. I thought I had finished with Hitchens in my last piece on him, and invective's more his specialty than mine. But I’m getting sick of being called a Baathist or jihadist supporter because I oppose a bloody, counterproductive war and its mendacious architects. His piece cites Monty Python and that’s appropriate, because it is Pythonesque in its surrealist absurdity. So, Chris, here’s my open letter to you. Actually, it’s more of an editorial note. I’ll go through the piece line by line, because – well, to be honest, it still needs a lot of work.

_______________________________________________

Dear Chris:

Just read your latest Slate piece on Iraq. The great thing about the Internet is you can go back in and make revisions if you find there are problems. Unfortunately, this piece has plenty. Let’s go through it together, and maybe we can clear a few things up. You did a lot of great work back in the day. Maybe I can pay back the debt by lending a hand now.

There it was again, across half a page of the New York Times last Saturday, just as Iraqis and Kurds were nerving themselves to vote. "Flashback to the 60's: A Sinking Sensation of Parallels Between Iraq and Vietnam."

Do you think the Iraqis and Kurds were reading the Times that day? If so, why lead with this?

The basis for the story, which featured a number of experts as lugubrious as they were imprecise, was the suggestion that South Vietnam had held an election in September 1967, and that this propaganda event had not staved off ultimate disaster.

“As lugubrious as they are imprecise.” That reminds me of … oh, forget it. shall we continue?

I can't quite tell why this article was not printed on the day before the Afghan or Palestinian elections, or at any of the times when Iranian voters overwhelmingly chose reform candidates but were thwarted by the entrenched reserve strength of the theocracy.

Well, Chris, it's because we didn’t go to war to make the Palestinian or Iranian elections happen. So no war critic, however "lugubrious,"would draw a parallel with Vietnam. You’re making a false argument here. With Afghanistan, maybe it's because there was a rationale for the war that was both rational and honestly presented. And, by the way... maybe there is a parallel.

But perhaps now is the moment to state the critical reasons why there is no reasonable parallel of any sort between Iraq and Vietnam.

"Perhaps now"? Are you going to debate your timing with the reader? Yes, Chris, now would be fine.

(to continue click on "Permalink Page" below)

To begin with, Vietnam had been undergoing a protracted struggle for independence since before World War II and had sustained this struggle militarily and politically against the French empire, the Japanese empire, and then after 1945 the French empire again. By 1954, at the epic battle of Dien Bien Phu, the forces of Ho Chi Minh and Gen. Giap had effectively decided matters on the battlefield, and President Eisenhower himself had conceded that Ho would have won any possible all-Vietnamese election. The distortions of the Cold War led the United States to take over where French colonialism had left off, to assist in partitioning the country, and to undertake a war that had already been lost.

Lengthy and off-point – lose it. While it’s ample demonstration of your emotional attachment to the Vietnamese struggle, one I actually find somewhat moving, it’s a non sequitur. Iraqis also do not speak Vietnamese or practice the Buddhist religion, Vietnam is near neither the Tigris nor the Euphrates, and the national flags use different colors. So?

Whatever the monstrosities of Asian communism may have been …

Chris, Chris, Chris! Would you ever allow it to pass unremarked if an Iraq war opponent began a paragraph with, “Whatever the monstrosities of Saddam’s regime may have been …”?? Sounds like moral relativism mixed with a desperate attempt to structure a winning argument.

… Ho Chi Minh based his declaration of Vietnamese independence on a direct emulation of the words of Thomas Jefferson and was able to attract many non-Marxist nationalists to his camp.

You’re undercutting your own argument. Saddam was able to attract Iyad Allawi to his "camp," remember? Yet we selected and supported Allawi. In fact, Saddam was also able to attract Ronald Reagan and Donald Rumsfeld to his "camp"! You’ve seen the photo. You know Rumsfeld, of course – he’s the guy who employs your man in Washington, Paul Wolfowitz.

Why do I say Wolfowitz is “your man”? Perhaps I’m thinking of this quote from your radio debate with Tariq Ali, in answer to his question about whether you are a neoconservative: “I would say I was a supporter of Paul Wolfowitz, though, if you want that answer from me.”

He had, moreover, been an ally of the West in the war against Japan.

And Saddam had been an ally of the US in the war against Iran, with the support of the Defense Department in which Wolfowitz then served. And, let’s see, you support Wolfowitz, right?

Nothing under this heading can be said of the Iraqi Baathists or jihadists, who are descended from those who angrily took the other side in the war against the Axis…

Is genealogy now a reason to declare war? Look out, Silvio Berlusconi, Hitchens is coming! I suggest you leave guilt by ancestry out of your future polemics. It reeks of eugenics, with a little Hutter Gibson thrown in on the side.

… and who opposed elections on principle. If today's Iraqi "insurgents" have any analogue at all in Southeast Asia it would be the Khmer Rouge.

A pretty decent analogy, but - unfortunately for your argument - one that reinforces the parallel the article draws. The Khmer Rouge were the enemy of the Vietnamese whose government we were placing in power through US-sponsored elections, and of the Cambodian royalty we supported. I’m sure those “experts” you’re castigating appreciate the help, though.

Vietnam as a state had not invaded any neighbor (even if it did infringe the neutrality of Cambodia) …

Oh, that little thing!

… and did not do so until after the withdrawal of the United States when, with at least some claim to self-defense, it overthrew the Khmer Rouge regime. Contrast this, even briefly, to the record of Saddam Hussein in relation to Iran and Kuwait.

The war you support, Chris, was not in response to any invasion. And again, the US encouraged Iraq against Iran.

Vietnam had not languished under international sanctions for its brazen contempt for international law, nor for its building or acquisition, let alone its use of, weapons of mass destruction.

Iraq had dismantled its weapons of mass destruction prior to our invasion - a fact known to weapons inspectors and therefore our own decision-makers at the time. Thanks for the reminder that we are spending hundreds of billions of dollars, and the lives of our young people, under false pretenses. Glad you still think the war’s a good idea, though – that must be such a comfort to those Gold Star Mothers.

Vietnam had never attempted, in whole or in part, to commit genocide, as was the case with the documented "Anfal" campaign waged by Saddam Hussein against the Kurds.

A horrible and despicable act – like all decent human beings, I’m outraged by it. Unfortunately, Anfal would have been more difficult without the relaxed posture the Reagan Administration took toward Saddam in the 80’s. Did I mention that Paul Wolfowitz served in that Administration? And that you referred to yourself as a Wolfowitz supporter? I didn’t want to leave that out.

In Vietnam the deep-rooted Communist Party was against the partition of the country and against the American intervention. It called for a boycott of any election that was not an all-Vietnam affair. In Iraq, the deep-rooted Communist Party is in favor of the regime change and has been an enthusiastic participant in the elections as well as an opponent of any attempt to divide the country on ethnic or confessional lines. (Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, who is not even an Iraqi, hates the Kurds and considers the religion of most Iraqis to be a detestable heresy: not a mistake that even the most inexperienced Viet Cong commander would have been likely to make.)

Chris, now you're cut-and-pasting the data in true Brion Gysin fashion - interesting, but not coherent. That is to say, the Communist Party was the party waging revolution in Vietnam, and later the government, whereas it’s a marginal movement in Iraq. It is the oldest political party in that country, which is the germ of truth on which you base this otherwise random-seeming association, but to equate the two in this context is meaningless.

Re Zarqawi – sure, he considers the religion of most Iraqis a heresy. If that's a tactical mistake, he will not succeed. He is one of many leaders in a disorganized and decentralized insurgency. There aren't very many people who think he is in an equivalent role to a Viet Cong commander, so ... your point? Zarqawi interprets the Quran differently than other Iraqis. Ho Chi Minh thought the political views of the peasant class were incorrect. Bush thinks most of us – including you and me – will be left behind in the Rapture. This is all sleight-of-hand stuff, immaterial to the issue we’re discussing.

No car bomb or hijacking or suicide-bombing or comparable atrocity was ever committed by the Vietnamese, on American or any other foreign soil. Nor has any wanted international gangster or murderer ever been sheltered in Vietnam.

No car bomb or hijacking or suicide-bombing or comparable atrocity was ever committed by the Iraqis on American soil, either. And the notion that Saddam sheltered terrorists spread in part because al Qaeda activity allegedly took place in Iraq –but in territory controlled by the Kurds whose cause you advocate, not by Saddam. Other than that, there is no basis for this allegation. It doesn't serve your argument, except to put me in the creepy position of appearing to defend the Butcher of Baghdad by forcing me to set the record straight about another false justification for this wasteful war.

American generals and policymakers could never agree as to whether the guerrillas in Vietnam were self-supporting or were sustained from the outside (namely the northern half of their own country) ... it was certainly true that Hanoi, and the southern rebels, were regularly resupplied not by minor regional potentates but by serious superpowers ... The Iraqi "insurgents" are based among a minority of a minority, and are localized geographically, and have no steady source of external supply. Here the better comparison would be with the dogmatic Communists in Malaya in the 1940s, organized principally among the Chinese minority ... But even the die-hard Malayan Stalinists had a concept of "people's war" and a brave record in fighting Japanese imperialism. The Iraqi "insurgents" are dismal riff-raff by comparison.

Is that why we’re winning so handily? A long digression indeed. Your shout-out to Malayan Stalinists is interesting, though.

Where it is not augmented by depraved Bin Ladenist imports, the leadership and structure of the Iraqi "insurgency" is formed from the elements of an already fallen regime, extensively discredited and detested in its own country and universally condemned.

These “dismal riff-raff” have “leadership and structure”? It seems you ascribe an organizational sophistication to them that does not exist in fact. Intelligence from the field suggests many rag-tag independent groups are at work. What’s more, the theory that the insurgency is being led by former Baathists is widely discredited. Certainly many former Baath Army members are participating in the revolt, since the Army was disbanded under your friend Wolfowitz’s management – a move now widely accepted to have been a major blunder. Oh, wait – you discuss that below, and create another trap for yourself. Hang on for a paragraph or two and we’ll get there …

This could not be said of Ho Chin Minh or of the leaders and cadres of the National Liberation Front.

The option of accepting a unified and Communist Vietnam, which would have evolved toward some form of market liberalism even faster than China has since done, (really??) always existed. It was not until President Kennedy decided to make a stand there, in revenge for the reverses he had suffered in Cuba and Berlin, that quagmire became inevitable. The option of leaving Iraq to whatever successor regime might arise or be imposed does not look half so appetizing. One cannot quite see a round-table negotiation in Paris with Bin Laden or Zarqawi or Moqtada Sadr, nor a gradually negotiated hand-over to such people after a decent interval.

See? That didn't take long. You’ve just contradicted your statement above, that the “leadership and structure of the Iraqi "insurgency" is formed from the elements of an already fallen regime.” Neither Bin Laden, Zarqawi, nor Moqtada Sadr were members of the former regime, yet it would certainly be the “leadership and structure” of the insurgency that would take power under your scenario.

Try to leave at least three paragraphs between your contradictions next time. (We’ll let the psycho-historical fantasia about Kennedy’s motives pass for the moment – although I was waiting for you to complete that list of his motives with “and his inability to sustain an erection.”)

In Vietnam, the most appalling excesses were committed by U.S. forces. … The worst atrocities--free-fire zones, carpet-bombing, forced relocation, and chemical defoliation--were committed as a direct consequence of orders from above. In Iraq, the crimes of mass killing, aerial bombardment, ethnic deportation, and scorched earth had already been committed by the ruling Baath Party, everywhere from northern Kurdistan to the drained and burned-out wetlands of the southern marshes. Coalition forces in Iraq have done what they can to repair some of this state-sponsored vandalism.

10,000-20,000 civilian deaths. Don’t they count? Massive damage to infrastructure caused by US bombings. Doesn’t that count? Or is that considered "repair"? Fallujah was subject to very rigorous bombing - or would that be "state-sponsored vandalism"?

In Vietnam, the United States relied too much on a pre-existing military caste that often changed the local administration by means of a few tanks around the presidential palace. In the instance of Iraq, the provisional government was criticized, perhaps more than for any other decision, for disbanding the armed forces of the ancien regime, and for declining to use a proxy army as the United States had previously done in Indonesia, Chile, El Salvador, and Greece. Unlike the South Vietnamese, the Iraqi forces are being recruited from scratch.

Yeah – and look how well it’s going. All 7,000 of them.

In Vietnam, the policy of the United States was--especially during the Kennedy years--a sectarian one that favored the Roman Catholic minority. In Iraq, it is obvious even to the coldest eye that the administration is if anything too anxious to compose religious differences without any reference to confessional bias.

Although an election without much Sunni participation is just fine, apparently. One should exclude “confessional bias” when composing a government, but it’s apparently acceptable to form one based on a difference in doctrine regarding the infallibility of the martyred Caliph Ali.

I suppose it's obvious that I was not a supporter of the Vietnam War. Indeed, the principles of the antiwar movement of that epoch still mean a good deal to me. That's why I retch every time I hear these principles recycled, by narrow minds or in a shallow manner, in order to pass off third-rate excuses for Baathism or jihadism.

I was not a supporter of the Vietnam War either. That’s why I “retch” every time I hear both decency and logic distorted into such topological shapes by someone who – obscenity of obscenities – tries to equate opposition of this war with “third-rate excuses for Baathism or jihadism.” Chris, despite the fact that your pal Wolfowitz and his group won’t intervene in Darfur, I don’t consider them apologists for raping women after their children are murdered before their eyes. So don’t make morally equivalent statements about me or those who agree with me about Iraq.

A friendly suggestion from a fellow Vietnam War opponent: Lose the vicious and hysterical rhetoric, pal – it’s beneath even you. Otherwise, it would be more apt for me to say that this piece is a fourth-rate excuse for the death of innocent civilians and the further degradation of US security in the Mideast and at home.

But one must also be capable of being offended objectively. The Vietnam/Iraq babble is, from any point of view, a busted flush. It's no good. It's a stiff. It's passed on. It has ceased to be.

Yeah, yeah, we get it. It is no more. It hath joined the choir invisible. We know it's a Monty Python reference. The rest of the paragraph is unclear, though, Chris. You say "one must be capable of being offended objectively": Are you offended, or not? If not, why not? Tighten up here. One’s writing must be capable of being comprehended - objectively.

In closing, Chris, even the "dead parrot" quotes don’t excuse this vituperative, illogical chicanery. A better Python analogue for this piece would be the “how to defend yourself against fresh fruit” routine. Remember? “But we’re not being attacked by fresh fruit,” the baffled students would reply when John Cleese brought out the banana, or apple, or orange. They would try to make him understand what the real dangers were, but he wouldn’t listen. Instead he’d attack them with increasing shrillness for their simple and reasonable act of objection. He kept getting more and more vicious, until in the end he was left alone in a room full of corpses.

But, Chris, that was just a comedy routine.

Best wishes for the New Year,

RJ Eskow

homecoming day

2005-01-31T15:16:00.000-08:00

My guest-blogger gig at Rox Populi ends today, and my welcome-home note to my host is here.

Tip to future bloggers: Having used Typepad for a week now, there's no comparison. It's much easier to use and more flexible than blogspot.com. If I were you I'd pay the $4.95 a month and go that route. I'm just not up for converting everything over quite yet, so I imagine I'll be right here.

alien love

2005-01-29T10:20:00.000-08:00

don't knock it 'til you've tried it

Why is this alien smiling?

Don't you think that with all this talk of alien anal probes, much of it as the result of a Harvard professor's work, that you'd want to avoid writing an article called The Gnostic Theory of Alien Intrusion? It's not about that.

Some people say it's all pseudoscience, but I think they're just afraid of trying new experiences. I'm waiting for that liberating weekend seminar at Esalen - "Rigelian Love Secrets." For it is only be embracing the alien outside us that we can learn to love the alien within. So what if you can't sit down for a few days? It's a small price to pay for becoming one with the erotosphere. Move over, Rev. Falwell, and stopping hogging the jacuzzi.

Aliens. Spongebob. Ken Mehlman. It's an epidemic.

They're all saying the same thing to the Dobsons and Falwells of this little world we call home: gay or straight or bi, all healthy sexuality is OK. Release that part of your personality that makes you think sexual thoughts about 'toons and other non-humans! Let him out of that closet you call your mind! Find your sexual heart now - before you make fools of yourselves again.

Hey, honey, I'm gonna put "Fly Me to the Moon" on the stereo. I feel the love comin' on.

once a dick ...

2005-01-29T09:35:00.000-08:00

thug culture at Auschwitz

US Vice President Dick Cheney confirmed for the world today that the government is being led by crude thugz who make 50 Cent look like David Niven. As the Washington Post observed, he was dressed to operate a snow blower. Oh, and his parka had his name inscribed on it. Maybe he's going to start his own fashion line, like Puffy. Dick was representin' - in fact, he was representin' ... you.

Cheney to Holocaust victims: Go f**k yourselves. Cheney to formally dressed fellow attendees: You think I'm gonna get cold for you, bitches? Halliburton is in the house!

This revives the competence question, too. According to Washington tradition, the Vice President's only job is to attend funerals. He can't even do that right. It shouldn't be a surprise. After all, Cheney was one of only six congressmen who voted against commemorating Martin Luther King with a holiday.

Hey, Cheney himself is going to leave this world someday, and there's going to be a funeral for him.
____________________________

Q. What should we do to honor the memory of a man who showed disrespect for the memories both of Auschwitz victims and Dr. Martin Luther King?

A. Nothing.

real life is random

2005-01-28T21:46:00.000-08:00

it's still the same old story ...

Today I learned there's a little blog tradition going around, allegedly started by Feministe, to set your music player on "random" or "shuffle" every Friday and list the first 10 songs it serves up. I also learned, courtesy of the same Feministe, that it is no longer cool. That means it's just the right time for Night Light to jump on board.

Here's what WinAmp produced today after shuffling the musical deck:

1. "Oh! What a Storm," Dry Branch Fire Squad (bluegrass group)
2. "Kiss An Angel Good Morning," Charley Pride
3. "Try Me Little Girl," Bob Dylan & the Band (Basement Tapes)
4. "Between the Bars," Elliott Smith
5. "Wine Me Up," Faron Young
6. "Where the Hell is Bill," Camper Van Beethoven
7. "You Have Been Disconnected," Brian Jonestown Massacre
8. "Friday on My Mind," the Easybeats
9. "Last Broadcast," Doves
10. "Whirling Hall of Knives," Butthole Surfers

I beg to differ - this is way cool. The "random 10" wrote a short story using only song titles. Does this always happen?

It is a short story. It is a story of potential, possibly even love, whatever that is. A story of drink, of futility, of pain, of endings. It is a short story. It is a Raymond Carver short story.

Man! I can't wait to play again next week. I'm just afraid it won't have as good a narrative flow. Roll over O. Henry, and tell O'Connor the news.

monkey man

2005-01-28T17:25:00.000-08:00

what makes George "curious"?

You have to go to Rox Populi to find out ... but it's not about the President. He's the incurious one, remember?

DNC race - trouble ahead, whoever wins

2005-01-28T14:19:00.000-08:00

heart doctor

As the race for DNC chair moves into its final phase, the ‘liberal blogosphere’ has decided: it’s anybody but Dean or any of the other guys. Dean is said to carry all the heavy negatives with swing voters and conservative Democrats, Rosenberg has not addressed his tactical blunders regarding the Iraq war, Frost is too ‘Bush-lite’, and nobody seems to like poor Donnie Fowler. It looks as if the winning candidate will have fences to repair, whoever he is. If the rumors are true and the Clintons don’t want Dean, Rosenberg may be in a good position to replace Frost as the best alternative. It could be a Pyrrhic victory for both Rosenberg and the Democrats, however, if he can’t explain his defense of the Iraq war – a defense that, in both tone and content, will create problems for both him and the Democrats down the road should he prevail. Bloggers supporting several candidates have characterized the race as one between “heart” (represented by Dean) and “brain” (represented by Rosenberg), but neither organ is winning the netroots decisively.

Many people I respect highly support Rosenberg, and I would like nothing better to join them. Unfortunately, he has been unable or unwilling to defend comments like the one he made on Fox News on Sept. 9, 2004: “I think the debate that is not happening is whether or not the war was a good idea. The war was a good idea. I think the American people were behind the President.” I consider this statemen a blunder at best, for a number of reasons. First,you are alienating the Democratic base on an important policy issue(and are flat wrong, in my opinion) when you say that “the war was a good idea.” The “people were behind the President” remark disregards both the large numbers of protesters and the polls showing majority opposition to the war until it started – a point where public opinion typically coalesces around supporting the troops. These remarks have left committed Democrats who opposed the war feeling slighted, and believing that Rosenberg was on the wrong side of a moral issue. Those feelings can be repaired, but Rosenberg has not said how he would go about doing that.

Second, events had shown long before September that the Democrats resonated far more with voters when they had a clear anti-war message than they did with the overly nuanced-seeming “it was a good idea but we manage it better” spin Kerry tried for a while. Nobody bought it. In that regard, Rosenberg’s comment displayed a tin ear for the music of the 2004 campaign. Lastly, comments like these will be used against the Democrats in future campaigns, as others have pointed out. While the DNC chair does not set policy, as others have pointed out, he or she must not make statements about policy that work against the interests of the party.

(Click on "Permalink Page" for full post.)

I would like to support Rosenberg, given his organizational talents. I contacted his campaign in the hope that he has a a plan to address these problems: why these statements were made, what he has learned, what he would do in the future to repair the breach. They did not respond, maybe because they’ve read Night Light’s sitemeter numbers. (In fairness, this is crunch time for the DNC candidates, so I don't take it personally. I do think it's incumbent on them, however, to respond to this concern in some forum.)

Rosenberg benefits from broad support among more influential bloggers, however, as reflected in Josh Marshall’s words:

“First, I think Simon is one of the relatively few people in the Democratic party today who combine two things: a) a deep and considered understanding of why we must and how we can rebuild the infrastructure of the Democratic party and -- and it's a huge 'and' -- b) the organizational abilities and skills to be part of making it happen.”

Stirling Newberry of BOPNews echoes these points, and adds that “I come from that school that says first one must dominate the line of scrimmage,” which is his term for “defining the terms of the debate.” Dominating the line of scrimmage does not help, however, if you’re calling the wrong plays. That’s the issue Rosenberg has yet to address. I don’t doubt that he’s organizationally brilliant, based on his track record. It also appears that he is personally very charismatic and persuasive, since many of his blog endorsers had personal interactions with him which they cite in their endorsements. But that’s not enough. I hope Rosenberg can address his remaining major negative promptly enough to a) boost his candidacy’s chances, especially if Dean should stumble, and b) ensure that he does not take office with too much working against him.

“Ya gotta have heart,” says the old song (ironically for Vermonter Dean, it's from the musical “Damn Yankees.”) I must admit I have warm feelings for Howard Dean. Those very excesses that might work against him as DNC chair are qualities that inspire affection in me, but we all need to be realistic. While not a big fan of sports metaphors, I’ll follow Newberry’s lead here and say that the DNC chair should be a coach. A good coach must be part businessman, part motivator, part chooser and builder of talent, and part tactician. A good coach needs a brain and a heart, and must speak to the brains and hearts of his team.

If forced to choose I’ll pick the heart anytime, but a choice like that should not be necessary. If someone can address the barrier Rosenberg has built for himself, I will probably endorse him. Otherwise, I can’t. My heart wouldn’t be in it.

thinking outside the ...

2005-01-28T13:42:00.000-08:00

close de' box*

Via Mr. Sun, a challenge to come up with new slogans to replace that well-worn cliche, "thinking outside the box." My suggestions, based on years of forced attendance at corporate training sessions:

Smoking some kick-ass talcum.
Being a random word generator.
Using up the airspace so no other idiot gets to talk.
Desperately trying to think of something before I have to finish this sentence.
Matriculating at the University of Me.
Where's that goddam box when you need it?
Thinking outside the unemployment office.

Come up with some of your own.

You get extra points if you caught the Kurt Cobain reference - the picture, of course, is of a "heart shaped box." (You remember: Hey, wait, I got a real complaint ... St. Cobain could be bitchy, too, as evidenced by his description of plump rival rocker Billy Corgan as a "pear shaped box.")

*You get even more extra points if you get the reference in the caption.

UPDATE: Give up on that caption reference? Go here.

honk if you love satan

2005-01-28T11:30:00.000-08:00

it's official: Satan now controls the Right Guard

From Reuters:

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Procter & Gamble Co. on Friday said it would buy Gillette Co. in a deal worth $57 billion, uniting two of the world's largest makers of household goods ranging from Pampers diapers to Duracell batteries.

You may recall that before the Christian Right started protecting us from gay cartoon characters it attacked Proctor & Gamble, claiming that their logo was a satanic symbol and spreading the rumor that P&G's president swore allegiance to the Church of Satan on live television.

With this acquisition those fears are now confirmed, and the Underworld now controls more than 300 household products. Expect to receive orders from from our new master, the Dark One himself, Bart Simpson- broadcast live on The Simpsons' host network (which is Fox, naturally.)

As I wrote in Rox Populi, be prepared to propitiate the Horned One by purchasing more and more disposable and worthless goods. But wait - haven't we been doing that already? Evil cannot be sated - no matter how much you give, it will turn and destroy you in the end. Just ask Tom Daschle.

1-900-LIE2ME

2005-01-28T08:54:00.000-08:00

commentators are standing by ....

Eric Boehlert has another fine article on the Bush administration today in Salon (you need to view an ad to read it - or better yet, subscribe). He's becoming a leading voice in identifying and detailing the misdeeds of this Administration. Watch him.

This piece discusses the third commentator to be caught (so far) taking public money to promote the Administration's initiatives. My only complaint (and it's more than a quibble) is with the title, which Boehlert probably didn't write, "Third columnist caught with hand in the Bush till." Actually, their hands are in your till, and mine. Government money is being spent in unprecedented numbers to influence public opinion. Sometimes it's being done deceptively, either through these secret payments to commentators or though the creation of false "news reports" and "articles" disseminated by local TV stations and newspapers. In other words, I'm paying these commentators to lie to me, and so are you.

It makes a good film noir moment when a desperate man or woman looks across a smokey bar and says "Lie to me, baby." I can't think of too many examples of people willingly paying someone to lie to them, but there may be 900 phone lines set up just for that purpose. If not, it may be a new and profitable business for Halliburton or Arbusto to go into when this Administration leaves office. But not before, and not with my money, thank you very much.

On the other hand, if there's somebody out there willing to to say "RJ, nobody can tell you're losing your hair," just tell me where to call.

make up your own damn joke

2005-01-27T17:51:00.000-08:00

pro-gay, pro-alien, and why aren't I laughing?

Hey, you know what? I was going to try writing something oh-so-clever about the "Buster promotes gays" flap. I was going to go after the so-called "Christian" right wing (who are no more Christian than bin Ladin is Muslim) for their continued attacks on cartoon characters. I was going to link to this recipe on Buster's website for peanut butter and pickle sandwiches. It's part of his "postcard" from Roswell, New Mexico. Buster says "if it's good enough for aliens, it's good enough for me," so I was going to come up with something about how they don't mind that he's promoting a pro-alien agenda, thereby encouraging our future enslavement to the Andromedans, it's just the gay thing that bothers them. It's pretty good material - almost writes itself.

But then I started to feel really, really sad. Like crying-sad. You know why? Because these people will desecrate anything - anything - to promote their agenda, including the innocent fun of children. I don't know if "Postcards for Buster" is a good show or a bad one. I don't know if very many kids love it or learn from it. But I know that some do, and I know that some of them have heard about this whole ginned-up "controversy." And it's made them feel pretty bad. Kids need safe places, and they just lost another one.

(Click on "Permalink Page" to continue)

Demagogues use whatever's at hand to promote themselves. Sure it's infuriating, and of course it's ridiculous too. But it's also very cruel, and very sad. The innocence of childhood is just another propaganda tool for them. "They'd shit on the morning star if they could reach it," said the poet Robinson Jeffers. It's a form of child abuse, and I wish someone would come along and make them stop. But that's just the kid in me talking, looking for a "good adult" to make the bad ones stop.

The trouble with kids is they just don't understand irony. You tell them something and they believe you. So somebody else have fun with this one. Take this graphic, too. It says "Can you find me?" Make an "outing" joke with it or something. Buster's all yours.

death penalty sought for suicidal man

2005-01-27T10:48:00.000-08:00

who says irony is dead?

From the Postmodern Department of Found Poetry:
____________________

LENDALE, Calif., Jan. 27 - The Los Angeles County district attorney said today that he would probably seek the death penalty for the suicidal man who abandoned his S.U.V. on a heavily traveled commuter rail track here early Wednesday, causing a violent wreck involving three trains that left at least 11 people dead and nearly 200 injured.
____________________

From the New York Times

ain't that good news!

2005-01-26T18:15:00.000-08:00

US Senate Dems: Anti-torture Chamber

Please link on over to Rox Populi, where I display a new side of my online personality by being positive. US Senate Democrats -- well, some of them -- stood up for what was right on two occasions today.

They get their props over at Roxanne's blog.

the moral issue of a generation

2005-01-25T15:15:00.000-08:00

'Truly, I say to you, as you did it to one of the
least of these my brethren, you did it to me.'
Matthew 25:31-40

Every generation or so an issue arises that highlights the moral universe of a society in its time. The issue may involve millions of lives, as slavery and segregation did, or it may involve one individual or a few people as the Dreyfus affair did. Either way, their suffering suffuses the ethical landscape with a harsh brightness that leaves only light and shadow. State-sponsored torture, endorsed and carried out by our government, is one such issue. There is no room for equivocation, no room for caveats, no room to allow partisan political allegiances to stand in the way of the human conscience. There is only room for the "yes" or "no" answer to one question, posed in a song once long ago: Which side were you on?

Eric Martin discusses the issue at length, and eloquently, on Total Information Awareness, but the basic issue is simple. Government memos were written to circumvent the Geneva Convention. Andrew Sullivan coyly tries to elide the issue in this week's New York Times Book Review, using the sleight-of-hard observation that "our enemies" don't abide by the Convention, nor are they signatories to it or other documents of international law. We are - and we're supposed to be better than the torturers, not better torturers. Memos were written, orders were given, "encouragement" was provided, and human beings were tortured. We are all responsible. We all paid for it. The government has made its position clear by punishing no one except a few low ranking folks who got caught. The real perpetrators have been promoted. So now that we bear collective responsibility, the question is: what are you going to do about it?

If you're not a fan of international law, you can always conduct this simple experiment: How would you feel if you saw American soldiers being subjected to the practice? Would you consider it "abuse"? Would "waterboarding" be OK? How about being tormented with the threat of bites from a vicious dog, after which the dog was released and shredded a human leg? Would you be happy if you heard American Christians forced to thank Allah, or Buddha, or Shiva that they are still alive? When you heard that dozens of our men and women tried to kill themselves in captivity, would you feel anything? What would you think of a government that condones or encourages such practices? Now, take those feelings and imagine if you knew that many of the people being subjected to these practices are innocent civilians. Then imagine a leader of the opposition party in that government saying of that policy's legal architect, as Sen. Patrick Leahy said of Alberto Gonzales, that he is "nice." Would you consider that country a true democracy?

What would you think of "bloggers" who condoned this activity, or felt that objections to it were exaggerated? What would you think of Senators who voted to confirm that legal architect? What would you think of anyone who supported that political party and worked in its campaign (think Schwarzenegger, Giuliani, Pataki, McCain, and other so-called "moderate" Republicans?) Would you think they're good human beings? "Nice"? What would you think if they had someone like Rush Limbaugh over there, who compared the torture to a fraternity hazing? Would you think any of these people should be allowed a seat at the table where civil human discourse takes place?

I am signing this petition,which came to my attention through BOPNews. I urge other bloggers - including those on the Right, and especially libertarians - to do so. This is not a left/right issue. This is an issue of morality. I believe a great many politicians, "pundits", and other public figures who equivocate on this issue will be remembered in disgrace for generations to come.

At least I hope so.

squarepants II: the republican sin machine

2005-01-23T13:28:00.000-08:00

God's eye for the queer guy

The Spongebob Squarepants scandal is actually worse than I first thought. It turns out that Rev. Dobson began the flap by objecting to the fact that the sponsor of Spongebob's diversity cartoon has a statement on its website encouraging “respect” for others, whatever their sexual identity. That's right: "respect" is the offending word. Whatever happened to “hate the sin, love the sinner”? Meanwhile, a so-called “movie ministry” censures Spongebob for “cartoon rear male nudity, ” "pinching ... between nude (cartoon) buttocks," and “suggestions” of S&M and transvestitism. These witch-hunts aren’t politically motivated – perish the thought - so I’ve created the following visual guide to Republicans who must be also be banned. And for those who think enough has been written about Heinygate, I can only quote Spinal Tap: How can I leave this behind?

Sadly, the burning must start with my beloved ZZ Top. Although they performed at the RNC like good Republicans, they recorded a song called “Tush” and so must go. (And don't even ask what "Pearl Necklace" is about.) Country singers Brooks & Dunn? Nope – they sang “Boot Scootin’ Boogie," another buttocks-oriented conservative number. Now grab some popcorn and have a seat, because our Republican slide show is beginning. WARNING: Not work safe. The picture of a Republican governor’s genitals is enough to make a dead man blush, to paraphrase the late blues singer Lucille Bogan (whose works would not survive in a Dobson theocracy.)

First, let’s start with Rev. Dobson. I think these two books tell us all we need know about him:

A generation of British public school boys can attest to where this combination leads

Then there’s Arnold Schwarzenegger: Republican governor, groper, speaker at the Republican National Convention, male model. Promisekeeper Alert! Schwarzenegger also played a CIA agent in “True Lies” who lies to his wife for 20 years about his work, then pimps her out to the bad guys when he gets in a jam. I’m sure that Dobson and the Movie Ministry are preparing their statements of outrage as we speak.

the emerging Republican majority

We move next to Kid Rock, who played at the Bush twins’ party. Sure, he was eventually banned from the Inaugural, probably for his lyric about bangin’ Barbara Bush on Air Force One, but he’s still a popular Republican supporter. Not when Dobson and the Movie Ministry get a hold of him! His “Kid Rock Christmas” ad for MTV was played heavily on cable. That’s the one where he’s sitting on a toilet and emits a loud burst of flatulence. Here he is in the forest with some sculptures.

Kid prepares to destroy banned art works by Michelangelo

Say hello to Bo Derek: Republican supporter, former “10”, Playboy foldout.

i got yer "Red state" right here ...

Remember Ron Silver? His 15 minutes of fame are over, but this war hawk and RNC supporter played a pornographer in the TV series “Skin.” I’m sure his censure will be announced any day now. They'd tell people not to give him any decent parts, but ... wait! Maybe they already have ...

newflash! B-list celebrity supports Iraq war! but where does the guy who played the next-door neighbor on "The Jeffersons" stand?

Then there’s Dennis Miller, whose one leading film role was in “Bordello of Blood,” a soft-core porn movie about vampire prostitutes. In the big finale Dennis gets to burn many of them alive in their lingerie, some reduced to nothing but sexy legs in stockings and high heels. Surprisingly, Dennis has been embraced by Republicans and conservatives for his political views, but wait until Rev. Dobson gets a hold of him!

but, of course, I could be wrong ...

Say a big hello to Ken Starr, pornographer, who used taxpayer money to widely disseminate graphic depictions of sexual acts. I can't remember Rev. Dobson's howls of outrage, but he must have rebuked this guy something awful.

i promise to tell the juicy stuff, the whole juicy stuff, and nothing but ...

We end with a fella that needs no introduction, “Mr. Loofa.” First him, then Spongebob. This Republican tool is the first of what may prove to be a long line of sponges implicated in sexual scandals. And I'll bet that O'Reilly's gonna get a talking to!

knows the sex secrets of the porifera phylum ...

Rev. Dobson, these individuals are trembling in fear, knowing that your righteous wrath will fall upon them at any moment. A sin-saturated nation awaits your call. The Republican Sin Machine is about to feel your wrath!

today the world, tomorrow the solar system

2005-01-22T21:49:00.000-08:00

tomorrow's earth today

From RedNova's feature on Titan, Lighting Up the Flammable Moon:

Titan is a world where bits of muck continually fall out of the smoggy sky, blanketing the frozen surface like dark gooey snow. Squalls of methane rain periodically wash the surface clean, sweeping the organic gunk into rivers. The methane rivers ferry the gunk down through hills of rock-hard ice, and empty into the valley below. "The region we landed in is more typical of arid regions on the Earth, like Arizona," says Martin Tomasco, Principal Investigator. "We had great difficulty obtaining these pictures. We had only one percent of the illumination from the sun, we're going into a very thick atmosphere with lots of haze that blocks light from penetrating to low levels ..."

Substitute carbon monoxide for methane and it kind of sounds like what the Earth will be like after another 100 years or so of "relaxed air-quality standards." No wonder Cheney keeping those pro-energy-industry task force meetings so secret. And that's why Bush gets on that "manned flight to Mars" kick every once in a while: the real estate's going to be a lot nicer there someday.

the great emancipator and the sponge

2005-01-22T11:03:00.000-08:00

you should hear him sing "Happy Birthday Mr. President"

What a weird couple of weeks for sexual politics. Two public figures, one a President and one a cartoon character, have been ‘outed’ for very different reasons. Lincoln’s orientation is being debated by historians, but there’s nothing to debate about Spongebob Squarepants: Rev. Dobson and his allies are truly sick people. On one hand they push v-chips and censorship to protect children from obscenity. On the other hand, they tell little Tommy and Johnny that their favorite cartoon hero is encouraging men to have sex with other men. What kind of emotional scars must that leave in a God-fearing Christian child?

‘Gaydar’ used to be a talent only claimed by gay men, an unerring instinct for identifying closeted homosexuals across a crowded room. It has obvious value for them, both defensively and socially. Rev. Dobson makes even more extravagant claims for his, however. The Reverend’s gaydar crosses the time/space/reality continuum into that alternate universe inhabited by cartoon characters. Like Rev. Falwell before him, he is able to determine the sexual orientation of non-existent beings who appear to lack genitals. Sponges do become larger when moistened, of course, but there is no indication in Spongebob’s case that this growth is concentrated in any one area.

Reverend Dobson now states that he is not ascribing sexuality to Spongebob Squarepants, but objecting to a 'diversity' video including him and other cartoon characters popular with 6 and 7 year olds. Why? Because if you go to the diversity organization's website (which few 6 year olds will do) you will see a suggestion that people "tolerate" others, whatever their "sexual identity." What could be more un-Christian than "tolerance," after all? Yet a reporter who heard the Reverend's original remarks said that he singled out the Absorbent One for vilification, condemning him and other characters like Jimmy Neutron for participating in a "pro-homosexual video." And it turns out that, according to Reuters, Spongebob

was "outed" by the U.S. media in 2002 after reports that the TV show and its merchandise was popular with gays.

In another story, the late C. A. Tripp ascribes homosexuality to Abraham Lincoln in a recently published book, The Intimate World of Abraham Lincoln. Tripp, an associate of Dr. Alfred Kinsey, uses historical documents to make that case that Lincoln was gay – or, more accurately, that he had gay experiences during a time when the gay/straight distinction was not as binary as it is today. I have only read excerpts of the book, plus analyses both pro and con, so I can only comment in a limited way.

It’s hard for me to buy some of Tripp’s arguments, since they seem to be based on open and public statements that would have been shocking even back then if they truly had the sexual implications Tripp gives them. But we’re still learning the cultural history of Lincoln’s time, so who knows? Tripp’s motives may include a sexual/political agenda, but Lincoln is a public figure and a legitimate area of study. Tripp is doing what academics should do: challenging public assumptions and raising new theories. Dobson is doing what demagogues must do: frightening the public, polarizing society, and – sadly, in this case – traumatizing children. And why is he so sensitive about this issue?

Maybe there’s a gay bar in Toon Town, where Twinkie the Teletubbie and Spongebob Squarepants are drinking and dancing to the latest techno hit by Massive Attack, or whoever’s popular in the club scene these days. Maybe the cartoon version of a tall gaunt man in a stovepipe hat is walking in right now and sitting down at the bar, just as DJ Jimmy Neutron cues up another tune. Perhaps as he orders a Sex on the Beach another cartoon man walks in, wearing glasses and a tie. “Rev. Jim!” screams the bartender. “It’s been forever! What closet have you been hiding in?”

“No closet,” says the Reverend. “I’m just here to protect the people.” Then, turning to the long-legged man next to him, he says in a low purr, “Hey there, fellow Republican. What say we go back to that ol' log cabin of yours and play 'free the slaves'?”

ike debates w.

2005-01-20T20:20:00.000-08:00

Once there were Republican Presidents who believed in American values, and served as responsible leaders of a democracy. You might disagree with them about policy, but never about core ideals. Once there was Dwight D. Eisenhower. The words of a real American leader's Second Inaugural address serve as a rebuke to the small man who now sits in his place, and provoke a debate between the current President and the hero's ghost: "May we pursue the right - without self-righteousness," says the hero. "May we know unity - without conformity. May we grow in strength - without pride in self. May we, in our dealings with all peoples of the earth, ever speak truth and serve justice." And lastly, "We are .. pledged to honor ... the authority of the United Nations. For in that body rests the best hope of our age for the assertion of that law by which all nations may live in dignity."

I can almost hear the newly sworn-in President respond. "No 'self-righteousness'?" Bush snickers. "I get my orders from God! No'conformity' - but America is a Christian nation! 'Speak truth and serve justice'? What are you, a liberal?" Bush chuckles a little. " 'No pride in self'? Shucks, General, I rehearsed this swagger for years in Texas before I got it right."

"Only in respecting the hopes and cultures of others will we practice the equality of all nations," replies Eisenhower. "Only as we show willingness and wisdom in giving counsel—in receiving counsel—and in sharing burdens, will we wisely perform the work of peace."

W. answers to the approving nods of his watchful Cabinet: "Receiving counsel? Surely you don't mean from ... France? They won't help us with what we really want -- to bring more nations into the US orbit. How will we dominate regionally if we have to go around asking for counsel?"

"We honor the aspirations of those nations which, now captive, long for freedom," responds General Eisenhower. "We seek neither their military alliance nor any artificial imitation of our society."

W. rolls his eyes. "General, surely you mean to say, 'you're either with us or you're against us,' and that we will teach the world to practice democracy in the high form to which we have refined it in Florida and Ohio." The General's picture appears to smile sadly as the 41st President continues to speak.

"You know something, General, you sound like Paul Wellstone." Condi Rice smiles and says "Good one, sir." Bush continues: "And what's this 'honor the authority of the UN' crap? I'm not asking Jacques Chirac for permission to go to the bathroom." Karl Rove nods. "And besides, they'll just tell me to honor the Geneva Convention."

The General points a scolding finger at W. when the Geneva Convention is mentioned. "There must be law, steadily invoked and respected by all nations, for without law, the world promises only such meager justice as the pity of the strong upon the weak."

W. looks away uneasily. "Hey," he says, "that doesn't sound very ... unilateral. You think I'm going to negotiate ... with Iran? Bombing's quicker."

"The law of which we speak, comprehending the values of freedom, affirms the equality of all nations, great and small." Bush and Rumsfeld exchange skeptical glances. "Yeah? Tell it to your striped-pants pals at the UN," says W. "I don't like those mullahs, and the caissons are gonna roll again." Bush stares into Ike's eyes. "What's wrong with you? Don't you want America to be free?"

"No nation can longer be a fortress, lone and strong and safe. And any people, seeking such shelter for themselves, can now build only their own prison."

"But ... but ... we're already drafting Patriot Act II," W. replies. Narrowing his eyes, he adds, "General Eisenhower, it sounds like you're not on board with us."

The General only responds, "We look upon this shaken earth, and we declare our firm and fixed purpose—the building of a peace with justice in a world where moral law prevails."

"Maybe in your book," W. answers. "But not if Alberto Gonzales has anything to say about it."

cavorts with terrorists

2005-01-20T17:01:00.000-08:00

the Reagan/terrorist connection

"We knew that he was an implacable enemy of the United States who did cavort with terrorists. "
-- Condoleezza Rice during her confirmation hearings, justifying the invasion of Iraq

ca·vort (ke-vort)
intr.v. ca·vort·ed, ca·vort·ing, ca·vorts

To bound or prance about in a sprightly manner; caper.
To have lively or boisterous fun; romp: The children cavorted in the water, splashing and ducking each other.

(from Dictionary.com)

Main Entry: ca·vort
Pronunciation: k&-'vort
Function: intransitive verb
Etymology: perhaps alteration of curvet
1 : PRANCE
2 : to engage in extravagant behavior

(from Merriam-Webster Online)

So there they are, Saddam and Donald, having their lively fun, engaging in God-knows-what kind of extravagant behavior while the cameras weren't running, and mayhaps even prancing.

prance

1 : to spring from the hind legs or move by so doing
2 : to ride on a prancing horse

"Come on, Donald! You've pranced long enough! I want to be the horse now!" "Oh, Saddam, how come you get to wear the uniform?" Rumsfeld was quite the wrestler in his younger days, too. Who knows what kind of "horse play" went on in that Iraqi palace? Boys will be boys.

But of course it wasn't all fun and games. Rumsfeld was there as Reagan's Presidential envoy, emphasizing his "close personal relationship" with the ruggedly handsome American leader, and informing Saddam of America's intent to bolster Iraq in its war against Iran. And Saddam wasn't his only playmate. Tariq Aziz enjoyed meeting his new friend, too, as they jointly stated that "the U.S. and Iraq shared many common interests." There's a good recap of the Rumsfeld/Iraq connection here.

It's a tale epic enough for the big screen, both an international adventure and a buddy picture. I can see it now. Kevin Costner directs "Dances With Terrorists, " starring Donald Rumsfeld and Saddam Hussein. And as himself, Ronald Reagan: emblem of freedom, Republican icon - cavorter.

all's fair

2005-01-20T16:41:00.000-08:00

oh, him again

Andrew Sullivan writes the following on the "plus" side in evaluating the Bush Presidency:

Since 9/11, America has not suffered any equivalent attack. That is something I never expected. No, it wasn't all his doing. But he would have been blamed had another attack destroyed a major U.S. city. Why should he not garner some praise for the alternative, happier, scenario? Fair's fair.

The only attack America ever suffered happened during his Presidency. The real question is: Why hasn't he been blamed for letting it happen, when he and his leadership ignored repeated and urgently phrased warnings it was coming? The 9/11 Commission identified at least eight opportunities for Bush Admistration employees to avoid this disaster. Why doesn't his head hang in shame? Why did the individual with responsibility for our national security - who ignored critical warnings that this attack was coming - just get confirmed as Secretary of State? These people should be facing impeachment and Congressional investigations.

Of course Andrew Sullivan "never expected" we could escape a second attack for this long. He "never expected" the war to go anything but swimmingly, either. Sullivan has yet to apologize for calling opponents of the Iraq War a "fifth column." His head should hang in shame, too. Fair's fair.

insult to injury

2005-01-20T13:39:00.000-08:00

return to sender ...

Several days ago I wrote an email to Sen. Feinstein, posted on this blog, in which I told her that I felt she should ask tough questions at Condoleeza Rice's confirmation hearings, rather than speak in favor of her nomination. Usually a staff member reads letters from constituents and responds accordingly, but Sen. Feinstein does not even bother to provide this basic service. Instead she uses a little Internet technology to generate form letters. I guess she's become so close to the Bush Administration that she's adopted their noblesse oblige attitude toward governing. You don't have to listen to your constituents when you're political royalty. The form letter let me know that she a) supports the Iraq war effort, and b) is still implying that they had WMD's!! Not a word of criticism for her friend Condi or Condi's boss for getting us in this mess, nor any ideas on how/why/why we should get out.

This began when I composed my letter and went to the Senator's website to post it. There, you are forced to select from a predefined menu of topics before submitting email. I picked "Iraq", which seemed to be the closest option. I assumed this meant that the email would be directed to the appropriate staffer. Instead, it created an auto-generated response. From it, I learned that Sen. Feinstein is not just bullish Condi, but on Iraq, too. Here's what it said:

(Continue reading on Permalink Page)

Thank you for writing me regarding the future of Iraq. I
appreciate hearing from you on this important issue.

Throughout the majority of Iraq, the regime of Saddam Hussein
has been defeated and removed from power. Despite our success in
freeing the Iraqi people, our military continues to encounter resistance
throughout the country and must maintain a presence until an interim
authority can be established to restore order and begin helping the Iraqi
people reconstitute their basic social services.

So, as the fighting stops and as the remnants of the regime are
removed, we must take the lead in rebuilding the Iraqi nation, in
stabilizing its new government, in providing interim security to prevent
the emergence of tribal hostilities and to see that Iraq is no longer a
producer of weapons of mass destruction. (emphasis mine)

I am hopeful that all Iraqis of every ethnic and faith group, large
and small, will be engaged in the process to establish a new Iraq. I
firmly believe that the U.S. should work closely with the United Nations
and our allies in the reconstruction of Iraq.

It is essential to demonstrate to Muslims everywhere that the
United States, while a powerful nation, is motivated by a sincere desire
to one day see the entire world safe, prosperous, and free.

Again, thank you for writing. I hope you will continue to keep
me informed of your views and concerns. If you should have any further
questions or comments, please do not hesitate to contact my Washington,
D.C. staff at (202) 224-3841.

Sincerely yours,

Dianne Feinstein
United States Senator

It's an evasive letter in some ways, but here's how I read it: we've kinda sorta mostly won, in parts of the country anyway, except that we haven't. So we need to keep fighting. We should work closely with the UN and our allies (ah yes, those allies - don't forget Samoa), but we have to be in charge of it all. That means the the UN will tell us to go Cheney ourselves, so we'll have to do everything on our own - include rebuild the basic social services that we destroyed. We have to make sure Iraq is "no longer a producer of weapons of mass destruction" - which, of course, it had ceased being before we invaded. She doesn't say otherwise. She just lets the implication hang there, the way the Bush people do, and lets the voters draw the obvious conclusion. Slippery and legalistic, but misleading, like Bush's own statements on the matter.

The war is ours, says Dianne, and we need to keep fighting. No, Dianne, we should turn it over to the UN and support their efforts to rebuild the nation.

Dianne disagrees. It's a matter of face. She says we have to show "Muslims everywhere" how much we care - apparently by continuing to kill them. We wanted to show this child how much we care, but unfortunately - according to the military, anyway - her parents ran a checkpoint ...

Sorry about your parents, kid. And that trauma of having their blood all over you. I know you'll live with that forever. But remember, it's because we care. Maybe when you're older Auntie Dianne will explain it all to you.

It's trivial by comparison for me to ask Auntie Dianne when she will explain to me how she expects me to "continue to keep her informed of (my) views and concerns" when no living human being reads her emails. Trivial, but not unimportant, if we want to practice that "democracy" we are so eager to export to this little girl and her fellow Muslims everywhere.

here's a little post about George and Dianne

2005-01-18T14:00:00.000-08:00

ooh, yeah, life goes on ...

A word about Feinstein and her cronies: they are the Neville Chamberlain Democrats. They live in a dream of the past, a time when bipartisanship equaled statesmanship, and to be truly bipartisan meant you were a successful diplomat. Diplomacy is a fine quality that has been much belittled by the Bush Junta in recent years – and that’s the point. You’re not dealing with people who want to compromise. Mountbatten was a diplomat, because he negotiated with Nehru. Chamberlain was a fool, because he negotiated with the Axis. For a Democrat to be bipartisan today means to cooperate in one way only: You want to put your foot on my neck, and I’ll help you put it there.

The Neville Chamberlain Democrats don’t realize – or choose not to acknowledge - that true bipartisanship in Washington is dead, crushed by thugs like DeLay and Frist, and by Gingrich and Lott before them. Rule changes suppressing the rights of the minority in both houses of Congress are just one sign of this new spirit. Tom Daschle caved in to extremist demand after extremist demand, always protesting that he was “neither Democrat or Republican, just a patriotic American.” His thank-you was a defeat orchestrated by national Republicans, in an unprecedented intervention by a national party against the re-election of the other party’s leader.

"They made promise after promise," said Red Cloud, "and never kept but one. They promised to take our land, and they took it." Red Cloud might have some words of wisdom for the Neville Chamberlain Democrats, if they were willing to listen.

(Continue reading on Permalink Page)

And how does Sen. Feinstein show her bipartisan spirit? By endorsing the nomination of Condoleeza Rice. This is the same Condoleeza Rice who tried to lie to the 9/11 Commission. That Commission was created through the initiative of those courageous 9/11 widows, who wouldn’t take no for an answer. Rice knew that Richard Ben-Veniste had read the memo, “Bin Laden Determined To Strike Inside U.S.,” when she mischaracterized it as strictly “historical.” She knew its contents were classified, and that her Administration would resist declassifying it. Who would expect them to? The Neville Chamberlains have accepted unprecedented and runaway secrecy without a whimper, even as it makes public oversight of government less and less practical. Rice was counting on Ben-Veniste to behave like his Neville Chamberlain colleagues, a faith that proved misplaced when he asked her for the memo’s title, which was not classified. Score one for the good guys. Condi tried to lie to the widows, and didn’t get away with it.

This is the woman Sen. Feinstein says has “the skill, , the judgment and the poise and the leadership to lead in these difficult times.” I’ll say it again: Condoleeza Rice is dishonest. Her other qualifications? She was wrong about America’s terrorist threat, failed to do her job as National Security Advisor in even a minimally competent manner, and has neither the training nor the temperament to be – excuse the dirty word – a diplomat.

Then Dianne gave the left-handed compliment. “My sense is that the president trusts her implicitly.” That’s true. Lucky Luciano trusted his lieutenants, too. That didn’t make them worthy to hold high office in the United States of America. That’s not called a qualification – that’s called cronyism. The question is not whether the President trusts her. The question is whether the American people – who, according to the civics books, are her bosses – can trust her. The evidence is clear: they cannot. Neither can the world, to whom she will be representing us.

Some on the left have felt betrayed by Feinstein’s actions today. “She used to be a hero,” one blogger wrote. Well, I remember Dianne Feinstein from her early days running for mayor of San Francisco. She was no hero. She ran against George Moscone, a strong and decent man, by taunting him from the right. She was also the first mayoral candidate in my memory to use a campaign jingle in her TV ads. “Dianne makes a difference,” jaunty voices would sing in their best Pepsodent-smile way. Dianne lost, through the wisdom of the voters of San Francisco, only to reach the office anyway when Dan White’s bullets struck down Moscone and Harvey Milk. It was a bitter pill to swallow for many Moscone supporters when Feinstein stepped into that office.

(You remember Dan White, don’t you? He was the right-wing, tough-on-crime, telegenic conservative who didn’t take his political failures in a sportsmanlike manner. I a fit of rage, or pique, he murdered two men. He then used the wimpiest, whiniest, ‘it’s not my fault’ defense imaginable: he claimed that blood sugar problems affected his mood and meant he wasn’t responsible for his actions. This ‘Twinkie defense,’ as it became known, was successful and he got off with a shockingly light sentence. This paved the way for the criminal defense of generations of hard-right hypocrites to come. They’re tough on crime until it’s them or their family, when they become touchy-feely types begging for mercy and crying about how they’re misunderstood. That’s why Noelle Bush is still ‘out’ after her ‘three strikes.’ Paging Officer Krupke. Rush Limbaugh, are you listening?)
_____________________________________________________________________

Dear Sen.Feinstein, Should you decide to run for re-election, and I hope you do not, I will be working for your defeat in the next primary. Many people will join me. Please go home. Live off the defense contract money your husband earns at URS. I don’t know if your motivation in the Rice nomination was true bipartisanship, a back room deal, or the desire to be treated kindly at the next URS Board of Directors cocktail party. But go. Go, now. Or we will mobilize to make you go. You don’t want a bitter primary fight, and we don’t want one either, but we’ll do it if we have to. So just go.
______________________________________________________________________

I don’t want the Democratic Party to lose another seat, but if that’s what it takes to send the Neville Chamberlains a message, I’m willing to risk it. As for Dianne Feinstein, “if Dr. Rice's past performance is any indication, we can rest easy,” said the good Senator. I hope it’s the Senator’s turn to rest in 2006. With all that Defense Department money waiting at home, that should be easy.

yo, californians!

2005-01-14T14:00:00.000-08:00

Listen up. Here's a 3-step plan for doing something positive today in less than 5 minutes:

1. Read about Sen. Dianne Feinstein's plan to introduce Condoleeza Rice's name into nomination as Secretary of State here. (It's subscription, or you have to watch an ad.)

2. Gasp with horror.

3. Go to her website and write the good Senator an email - the simpler the better. Mine is below.

If she proceeds as planned, let's mobilize when she's up for re-election.

Simple, huh?
_______________________________________________________

Dear Sen. Feinstein,

I have just read that you plan to introduce Condoleeza Rice's name into nomination. I believe Ms. Rice's nomination deserves serious and aggressive investigation. A reading of her testimony to the 9/11 Commission suggests a prima facie case for intent to deceive the investigators. There is no question that many of her statements to the American people regarding Iraq (e.g "the next smoking gun could prove to be a mushroom cloud") were false. There is a great deal of evidence to suggest she knew these statements to be false when she made them.

The only way to learn the truth about potential deception of the public during the run-up to the Iraq war is to use the Rice nomination to seek out the hard facts, wherever they may lead. I expect nothing less from you, as my Senator. If I get less, you may be assured I will dedicate whateve time and resources I have available to ensure that you are not renominated as the Democratic candidate from California.

Sincerely,

listen, they're singing ...

2005-01-13T18:42:00.000-08:00

beware of ... them

All music tonight, (almost) no politics.

Some singers have a special quality to their voices, that unnamable something that induces an almost physical pleasure response. They’re one of them, the bearers of vocal tones from the beyond, those resonances that set off sympathetic vibrations in the listener’s innermost core. It’s a subjective quality, this that-ness, but like Justice Stewart with pornography, I know it when I see it - or rather when I feel it. It's a reaction that’s almost embarrassingly sensual, although it doesn't have to be sexual in nature. When sexuality gets into the mix, though, it's aphrodisiacal. Depending on your inclinations, your musical version of a loaded gun could be Barry White, Emmylou Harris, or Muddy Waters.

I’m a “roots music” guy, so it’s not surprising that for me it doesn’t depend on the technical skill of the singer. I can like a singer very much even if they don’t have it, but I love them when they do. Even those singers can make lousy records, because magic will only take you so far. But when one of them makes good records, look out. My list of these magicians doesn't include too many obscure names, because success is a much higher probability for these fortunate few. But there are some hidden treasures out there, and I'll think of some more in the future. Here's who's on my mind tonight.

My wife and I have played the voices game on long car drives because, at least for us, our reactions are surprisingly similar. Play it if you like – “them or not-them?” – but be prepared for controversial results. Stevie Winwood, yes – Stevie Wonder, no. (Even though Stevie Wonder made many great records, and is a powerful and deeply soulful singer.) Dionne Warwick, yes – her niece Whitney Houston, no. (Whitney’s an unfortunate example of the calisthenic school of modern R&B singing.) Van Morrison, emphatic yes. Ray Charles – what, are you kidding? Of course.

Aretha Franklin (Jesse Kornbluth just wrote about my favorite Aretha album) gets stunning yesses on both electricity and technique. Diana Ross? Her costume changes may be a bit much, but listen to any Supremes hit and you’ll see she was one of them. So were other Motown greats, like the immortal Marvin Gaye, Levi Stubbs of the Four Tops, and the troubled David Ruffin of the Temptations. Check out Otis Redding, but don't forget Otis Clay, Al Green's fellow graduate of the Willie Mitchell Memphis soul machine, whose songbag was raided for Bob Seger's version of "Trying to Live My Life Without You." And the prodigal preacher of soul, Howard Tate, who once was lost but now is found (after 30 years on the street and rebirth as a preacher.)

What about country? Willie Nelson for sure, but be more selective in buying albums than he was in releasing them. Dolly Parton gets a yes, and is one of the under-recognized greats of country songwriting too. Be discriminating with her, too – the general rule of thumb with Dolly and Willie is the earlier the better. Lefty Frizzell, not Hank Williams, created the template for 99% of the male country singers out there today, with a voice as smooth and relaxing as Irish coffee. His chief acolyte, Merle Haggard, also has the touch. And listening to George Jones makes me fall off the bar stool every time, although I haven’t had a drink in years. Then there’s Tammy Wynette, who should have been underwritten by a Defense Department research lab: her voice is a machine for inducing remote-control heartbreak.

I suspect Ralph Stanley has lived for 10,000 years, and that's just in this incarnation. He will chill your blood when he wails out "Man of Constant Sorrow" or "Oh Death." I revere Stanley so much that I’m in that small minority who didn’t care for “Oh Brother Where Art Thou" - although I recognized and appreciated the Preston Sturges homage in the title, and am generally a Coen Brothers fan. Having a group called “The Soggy Mountain Boys” re-do Constant Sorrow was sacrilege for me, however, and having Stanley’s voice come out of a Ku Klux Klan leader’s mouth was an insult I couldn’t bear. I suspect regional prejudice is at work. Ralph Stanley is a world-class artist. Would film makers have been allowed to treat Pavarotti this way? Or Yo-Yo Ma? Or Mahalia Jackson? I put Ralph in a class with any of them, and the fact that he talks with a Southern accent doesn't detract from the respect I believe he deserves. But enough gripin', let's get back to the singin'.

Otis Redding. Sam Cooke. For me, Bob Dylan qualifies, too. Listen to “We Are The World” again (if you can stand it) and you’ll hear him blow away a roomful of superstars because, while they were all terrific singers, he was one of them. Michael McDonald has a voice that can electrify anything, even the excessively wispy soft-rock of Christopher Cross’ "Ride Like The Wind." But listen to his greatest stuff instead, starting with his politically minded "Takin' It to the Streets," with its brilliant opening line, “You don’t know me but I’m your brother, ” and another that could be directed to the President, “you don’t know my kind in your world." Then move on to "What a Fool Believes," where Carole Bayer Sager’s powerful lyrics can equally be applied to this Administration: “what a fool believes/no wise man has the power to reason away.” Then forget lyrics and just listen to that voice.

For more blue-eyed soul, The Righteous Brothers were both dazzling singers, but only Bill Medley was one of them. Listen to his baritone resonance, with the Brothers and on his own, especially on his then-controversial 60’s interracial love song, "Brown-Eyed Woman." “I could love you,” he sings in that voice, and the all-black female chorus (filled with those voices, too) responds “Stay away, baby.” The forbidden love feels unstoppable.

And no appreciation of that-ness would be complete without a tribute to Dusty Springfield, whose magical tones triggered a yearning in the heart and body of a pre-adolescent future blogger - a longing that I now know was doomed from the start. If it's just lust on my mind, not the full spectrum of romantic desire I felt for Dusty, I can always listen to the woman who makes the orgasmic sound at the beginning of "Gun Love" by ZZ Top. But I digress a little ... she ain't even singin'.

Group voices can have it too, and so can the tonal quality of certain instruments in combination, even when the singers or instruments don't have it independently. The Davis Sisters (especially on their classic song "I Forgot More Than You'll Ever Know"), or Lou Rawls backing Sam Cooke on "That's Where It's At," or the organ/violin blend on Don & Dewey’s classic soul instrumental "Justine" - they all had it. The Everly Brothers have it as a duo, sometimes, particularly on songs like the relatively obscure "Oh What a Feeling." There are certain blends of voices or instruments seem to work every time, no matter who the participants are. That’s why I want to be reincarnated as three black women who can sing, or two Texans who can play twin fiddles.

Those voices are out there to be found. I’ll think of a dozen more as soon as this piece is done. But don’t take my word for it. Go. Listen. Test the theory for yourself. Warning: it is highly addictive.

Get Them:

You can start anywhere. For soulful sounding voices, start with greatest hits collections for: Steve Winwood, Dionne Warwick, Marvin Gaye, the Temptations and David Ruffin solo, the Four Tops, the Supremes (where Diana was at her best), Sam Cooke (or better yet, this incredible live recording ), Howard Tate and Otis Clay, the Doobie Brothers (with too much non-Michael material, although that’s pretty good 70's rock), the Righteous Brothers, the exquisite Dusty Springfield, (try the funky Dusty in Memphis, too), and Aretha at her best. "Never Loved A Man" remains incredible. It's the R&B first-person version of "Women Who Love Too Much", with that straight-to-the-point opening lyric: "you're a no-good heartbreaker, you're a liar, and you're a cheat," followed immediately by the demand for a kiss.

For country, the honky-tonk primogenitor is Lefty Frizzell, and on the distaff side are the angelic voices of Davis Sisters, who weren't actually sisters. Skeeter Davis took the last name to join the duo, and when her partner died in a car crash went on to stardom on her own. I love this Willie Nelson album and this one. Emmylou Harris is a great harmony singer, so try these duets. Here's a collection of some of Merle Haggard's best. On the folk side, I think Dylan sings great when he covers old folk tunes on Good As I've Been to You. "Jim Jones" is chilling, and great Method acting too. Van Morrison kills on this collection, and on this hypnotic meditation of an album. These George Jones hits are awesome. Ralph Stanley’s keening genius shines here and here, so take your pick. Start your worship experience of Ray Charles and the immortal Otis Redding with these collections, if you're not already a believer.

A man on your mind? Try Barry White, Muddy Waters, or Waylon Jennings for a testosterone-fueled rush. Or find some of them on your own and tell me about it.

Who did I forget? Do you disagree with my list?

no cash? bad credit? we can work something out

2005-01-13T13:53:00.000-08:00

something tells me he's into something good

Every commentator on the planet is talking about Armstrong Williams and the $240,000 he received for plugging No Child Left Behind. This Act was a Trojan horse, said to provide Federal funding in return for creating national standards. It wound up providing very little money, but did impose national targets that force teachers to train kids for irrelevant tests instead of actually teaching them. Conservatives should be especially outraged at this Federal intrusion on a State and local activity. The Williams scandal may be our first glimpse of a very important story: widespread tax-funded Republican bribery to corrupt the public discourse. But that’s not the real reasons pundits are upset. Secretly they’re all saying to themselves: where’s mine?

That’s right. They're saying: Aren’t I important enough? Is there a big party going on and I wasn’t invited? What’s he got that I haven’t got? Oooh, that bitch! Full disclosure: I haven’t been bought off. But I’m available. True, I usually speak in favor of Democratic causes and issues, and that’s a problem. Democrats just don’t have the ready cash, especially now that Republicans control all sources of Federal largesse. So what could Democrats have offered to me and other left-leaning keyboard jockeys in the way of bribes during the past year? Here are some suggestions:

Howard Dean: With health care costs continuing to skyrocket, the good doctor could have offered free annual checkups to every commentator willing to endorse his candidacy. No cash need exchange hands, although I still appreciate getting a lollipop when it’s over. (Preferred flavor: raspberry.)

John Edwards: Emails from Elizabeth would be enough for me. Whenever the Kerrys and Edwardses shared a stage I wondered why, of the four of them, she wasn’t the candidate. Her published emails show a bright, engaged, and original mind at work.

Al Sharpton: Rev. Al was the only candidate this year empowered to perform weddings. I have a daughter. Need I say more?

Wesley Clark: The General could come over and order me to straighten up my office. He is authoritative: I would obey. God knows it needs it, but I just can’t motivate myself any other way.

Dennis Kucinich: I heard Kucinich do a pitch-perfect Donald Duck imitation once. (Seriously!) He could record my answering machine message. Or, if he’s mistaken me for someone important, he could have Natalie Merchant come over and sing “Peace Train.” She does it better than Cat Stevens, which means it’s probably a bad idea to get on a plane with her. But hold the Vegan meals for somebody else. I respect the concept, but tofu burgers make me kind of nauseous.

John Kerry: I’ll take a box of whatever they’re selling at that cookie stand he started in Faneuil Hall. It will get the taste of tofu out of my mouth.

Ralph Nader: Nothing, but he can drive my Corvair as much as he wants. (We kid, we kid.)

As for Armstrong Williams, I have the sinking feeling that this will turn out to be a good career move for him. Now he can repent, which will be even ickier to watch. Stephen Glass, Jayson Blair … I have a feeling Armstrong’s book deal is being negotiated right now. Conservatives are especially good at using personality failings as an excuse for bad behavior – remember Dan White and the “twinkie defense”? Let’s have a little quiz:

What will Armstrong’s excuse be?

Depression/mental disorder
Addiction/alcoholism
Brutal childhood
All of the above

What will he use as a device to convince us he’s redeemed?

Religion (also permits him to force prisoners to pray on command)
A tough-minded but compassionate therapist (think Robin Williams in Good Will Hunting)
The love of a good woman
All of the above

What form will his payoff for being a “good soldier” take?

A regular slot on Fox News
A prestigious and high-paying appointment to a conservative think tank
Membership on two or more corporate Boards of Directors
The love of Ann Coulter
All of the above

I'lll keep you posted on the results. In the meantime, I hope Armstrong Willams is happy with the money he has earned, and will earn, from this process. I will give the last word to George Clinton of Parliament/Funkadelic (which is a good idea in almost any circumstance.) As George wrote in “Funky Dollar Bill”:

U.S. dollar bill
It'll buy a war
It pollutes this air
In the name of wealth
It'll buy you life
But not true life
The kind of life
Where the soul is hard

Good luck with your soul, Armstrong. "You don't buy a life, you live a life," the song says. Nevertheless, you Democrats who want me for your spokesman? Picture me pantomiming placing a phone receiver to my ear and mouthing the words: Call me.

Fun With Infinity

2005-01-11T15:21:00.000-08:00

To infinity and beyond

Josh Marshall suggests that bloggers who have no idea what to post about today write about this Q&A with the White House's Social Security "expert," Chuck Blahous, who repeats the spin that Social Security needs $10 trillion to meet its projected gaps. OK, you're on. $10t is the figure you get if you calculate the total costs of projected future benefit shortfalls, in “present value,” extended out through infinity. Sure, there’s no reason to calculate present value that way unless you’re trying to scare people. And sure, you can use that logic to say that the “present value” of Bush’s tax cuts for the wealthiest 2% of Americans is $15-40 trillion or higher. But I say ease up, Josh! Look on the bright side – we have an Administration so visionary it's thinking about infinity. I started wondering how I could be just as forward thinking in my daily life. Guess what? I can save $22 million dollars by tipping at 15% instead of 20%.

Numbers from the infinity machine (an Excel spreadsheet):

Shortfall between my income and monthly outlays for food, transportation, and shelter: $31.06 billion.

Net present value (NPV) cost of going to the movies - forever: $743 million. (Hey! Sidney Lumet will still be directing in 500 years! There's some good news ...)

Meals out: $440 million. Plus tips: $88 million. Potential savings from tipping at 15% instead of 20%: $22 million.

Magazines: $44 million.

Spare change for the homeless: Current NPV $ 1,575,000. When increase in homelessness due to Republican policies factored in, $11.575 million.

Change that falls out of my pocket and under car seats, thereby becoming permanently irretrievable: $1,394,000.

Psychiatry if Republicans stay in office: $1.1 billion.

Psychiatry if Democrats regain office but don't change their futile strategy of appeasement: $1.1 billion.

Pet food: $28 million. Pet food during Friday catblogging: $4 million.

Internet fees: $55 million. Offset by blog revenues of $347.

Why aren’t they infinite numbers, you may ask, since they are supposed to last for infinity? Because, smart guy, spending deficits end at some point in the future, as long as some money's coming in – when they end is determined in part by the interest assumptions you use. That’s another one of the many ways you can game these numbers to death. Speaking of which, if there’s an economist in the house, please correct my inevitable errors, up to and including the preceding sentence. (But excluding the ones having to do with my personal finances. I’m not giving you the raw data on that!)

What’s that you say? I’m not going to live until infinity? Guess what – neither is the Federal government. For both of us, it’s just going to seem that way.

Extra - God Punishes California!

2005-01-10T13:33:00.000-08:00

As ye reap ....

UPDATE: There has been tragic loss of life and lots of disrupted lives as these storms have progressed. This piece will stay up, since it has been linked to by a couple of friendly sites, but there is no intention to make light of the human cost that has been experienced by this storm. That kind of trivialization of human tragedy is Tom DeLay's job, not mine.
________________________

In a striking act of vengeance, God punished California this week for its irresponsible decision to elect Arnold Schwarzenegger as its Governor. “Torrential rainstorms should remind these guys I’m not that easy to fool,” the Supreme Being commented, ”especially considering those heavy snows I’m sending them at higher altitudes.” Added the Lord, “I still love Americans and consider them teachable, But come on, people! Just because somebody sounds socially tolerant, that doesn’t make him a good person." The cross-sounding deity then added, “I judge people by their acts, and this fella Arnold has done nothing to help my people, those in need, and everything to help special interests.”

When pressed for details, God specifically mentioned Schwarzenegger’s deficit spending and his refusal to raise taxes on the wealthiest Californians to relieve these fiscal crises. “He’s cutting social services for the young and helpless, and saddling them with terrible debts for the future,” added the All-Knowing. “When I said ‘suffer the children’ this was not what I had in mind. I hesitate to punish people with the weather,” God added. “I did it in Florida to get at those politicians who stole the election in 2000, but I was sorry I did. They just used it to pretend they have the people’s interests in mind by staging photo ops of those awful Bush Brothers handing out food that other people paid for.”

God was asked about Tom Delay’s widely criticized use of quotes from Matthew 7 in a prayer service for victims of the Asian tsunami. “I gave mankind the tools to prevent that tragedy by use of early warning systems, but sadly they weren’t put in place.” He added regretfully, “That was not my choice. Why, I even gave the wealthier countries the money needed to get it done, but they just kept it.” When pressed further about DeLay He said “I forgive all my children, but distorting my words that way was despicable of him. It must be the bug spray.”

Bug spray, the Lord was asked? “Yes, he inhaled a little too much when he was an exterminator by trade. That, plus the shame of driving around in that car with a giant cockroach on the top, made him both confused and prideful. The world is suffering for it,” He remarked, “especially those poor camera operators for C-SPAN. They have to listen to him just about every day.” God then added, “I would never punish those good people of Asia like that, but I do have a little something in mind for the Congressman.”

how i spend my blogger money

2005-01-06T16:23:00.000-08:00

Night Light attends art gallery opening

AP, Jan. 6, 2005 --- The blogger known as "Night Light" made another high society appearance last night, attending a star-studded Hollywood art-gallery opening. The French-based show, "Surrealism et Journalisme," consists of 300 televisions showing cable TV news reporters covering disasters while loudspeakers play a tape loop of the Jive Five singing "I'm a Happy Man" alternating with Freddy Fender's "I'll Be There Before the Next Teardrop Falls." The anonymous poet who writes the CNN news crawls also attended last night's opening and performed live readings from his upcoming compilation, "Crawlspace: The Facts in Peripheral Vision." Anonymous also accepted an award from the Catchphrasers Association of America (the group behind the phrase, "hot enough for ya?") for the idea of renaming NewsNight "Turning the Tide" while they cover the tsunami in Asia.

----------------
OK, maybe I made up the art gallery part. I know I should ease up on CNN and give the new guy a chance, but that "Turning the Tide" thing was pretty appalling. Soledad O'Brien filed a beautiful report last night, though - her ability to be professional yet deeply empathetic should be a model for some of the more, er, self-aware reporters on the network. Some of them are so studiously casual on-camera that I can hear music playing while they speak. 80's style music. They do photograph well in direct sunlight over there, but I say more Soledad, less vogueing.

But dig the photo. Gotta spend all that easy money somewhere. The coat can be found here. I got the idea to look for it after an email exchange with Michael Berube about how we intend to spend all the blogger-bling that is no doubt about to come our way. Yes, bloggaz is playaz. Somebody's coming over later to pimp my 1999 Nissam Maxima. I don't know if I'll look as tired as that guy in the picture when I go big-time but hey, the pressure of supporting my entourage is bound to take its toll. I will persevere nevertheless because, like anyone who does this, I'm all about the love.

T2: tucker's judgement day

2005-01-06T11:02:00.000-08:00

... i'll be back

So Tucker Carlson is leaving CNN after all, and Crossfire is being retired. CNN President Jonathan Klein told the Washington Post that he agrees with Jon Stewart about Crossfire and what I call "shrieking-head" TV, so he's spiking the show and Carlson's leaving the network. "There was zero fit between what he wanted to do and what we wanted to do," Klein said. " . . . Our network is about roll-up-your-sleeves journalism, powerful storytelling." How much of this was really Klein's decision to make, and to what extent Carlson had already decided to leave for MSNBC, is unclear. Certainly Carlson's moment in the anchor chair last week looked like a ploy to convince him to stay, although his performance may have backfired and worked against him. Either way, he's gone. If Klein's remarks were in part a bitch-slap at a departing diva, however, I'll say this: It couldn't happen to a nicer guy.

"This is no slap at Fox," said Klein of his comments about the shrieking heads. Yeah, right. I think this guy's off to a great start. So we can put my suggestion about rolling boycotts of CNN on hold - for now. Your next assignment, Mr. Klein: Create an internal ombudsman position. He or she can start by investigating the potential conflicts of interest represented by personal relationships like those of Daryl Kagan and radical right-wing extremist Rush Limbaugh. But don't hire Daniel Okrent for the job. MSNBC may be scouting him already.

brothers and vandals

2005-01-04T11:11:00.000-08:00

God bless the Louvin Brothers

Punk rock and hard-core hillbilly music illuminate the Red in my Blue state soul, and provide the soundtrack for a divided country. First, major props today for the Vandals, a SoCal punk band that played a New Years' Eve gig in Iraq. Good move: it may be their war but they're our troops too. They may have the yellow "Support Our Troops" stickers on their cars - paradoxically, always an indicator that the driver supports an administration that won't given those troops enough armor, pay, or respectful attention should they die. It's the war opponents that want our troops to be protected, paid well, and honored when they give the ultimate sacrifice. Guitarist Warren Fitzgerald was unapologetic in the New York Times that the Vandals didn't draw Toby Keith-sized crowds. "You rock out with the band you have," he said, "not the band you wish you had." That's my quote of the day.

Yesterday I listened to a lot of Louvin Brothers. They're the country singing duo from the 50's and 60's who modernized the 'brother harmony' sound of the Delmore Brothers and the Blue Sky Boys. From the heart of fundamentalist Alabama, the Louvins wrote songs of deep Baptist faith and alcoholic infidelity - blending the two into a good reflection of this Janus-like society that can embrace both Pat Robertson and Desperate Housewives. They were brilliant at what they do, crafting beautifully architected harmonies that were the template for Don and Phil Everly and later John, Paul, and George. Their songs, whether gospel or secular, were hillbilly poetry.

Brother Ira was the genius of the group. His high and aching tenor may have been unequaled in country music. "Ain't but two tenors in America," said the ever-modest Bill Monroe, "and Ira's dead." Dead he is, and it wasn't a quiet death. A highly temperamental alcoholic, Ira often inserted extended devout sermons into their songs when not living and writing a cheater's life. After the brothers split bitterly, Ira's wife got fed up with his infidelities and shot him. Younger brother Charlie got the call that Ira had been shot seven times. "Call me back when the son of a bitch dies," he said.

But Ira didn't die then. Some say he gave up drinking and cheating, some say he didn't. Either way, he went on the road as a solo act and died in a car crash shortly thereafter, with the same gun-happy wife at the wheel. With him went the gospel-plus-carnality soul of the act. "While you're cheatin' on me," they sang, "I'm praying for you." "That word 'broad-minded' is spelled S-I-N," they warned. "I take the chance," they said, by betraying the wife "to be with you." "Satan's jeweled crown, I've worn it so long," they rejoiced, "but God for my soul has reached down." "I wish it had been a dream," they lamented, "last night, pretending wrong was right." War supporters - Korean War, that is - they sang, "let us trust and use the weapon of prayer."

A friend and I performed their "Don't Let Them Take the Bible Out of the Schoolroom" at a folk festival workshop on political songs. The audience and other performers howled in protest - everyone else was singing Phil Ochs, Pete Seeger, or Civil War ballads - but it was a political song, and a good one, and we wanted all sides represented. Written fifty years ago, it is contemporary in its Red state vision of Christian theocracy. "Don't let them take the Bible out of the schoolroom, don't let them close the door to your child's heart," it goes. "If it's right to allow liquor in most counties, on the newsstands see the sinful pictures there, if it's right for moving pictures of corruption, Dear God how can it be wrong for prayer?"

That's the perspective of Ira Louvin, the prodigiously gifted artist who used to lose his temper and smash his black mandolin to pieces on stage, years before Townsend or Hendrix came along. Ira, the son of Colonel Louvin Loudermilk of Alabama, had read the Bible backward and forward - but not, apparently, the Constitution. (See Ellen Dana Nagler.) He was the product of his time and place, and to ignore that is to ignore a powerful political reality. That vision is a challenge to Democrats and progressives, for it is built on idealism and spirituality as well as ignorance and fear.

Ira was also capable of something else. His Biblical vision led to the writing of "Love Thy Neighbor As Thyself," with this verse: "Why, I remember two old guys near the farm where I lived/and I wish everyone could live the way they did/they'd swap out work and lend each other money, mules, and plows/and many's the time I've seem 'em both take milk from one old cow." Radical vision of agrarian Communism there, Ira. That socialist imagery is Christian in origin, too. How can such a vision be illuminated for the Alabamans of today? Where are the singers, writers, film makers who can meet that task?

Charlie Louvin is alive today. They say he's a right-winger. No surprise there. But the music he made with Ira lives on, uplifting the heart and challenging the Democratic vision. Check it out, but be warned: it's hard-core hillbilly. Speaking of hard core, maybe I'll check out the Vandals, too. I haven't heard them yet, but they - like the Louvins - have a place in my heart. Will I ever stop trying to reconcile these two types of art? Only, as the Louvins would say, when I stop dreaming.
_______________________________

Buy the Brothers

You can get a great starter collection of their secular hits here, and some of their gospel greats in this collection. Satan Is Real is their best single work of gospel, with a cover to die for (and they nearly did -- they started a fire in the photo studio while setting the fires of hell you see on the cover.) The best secular album released during their career is probably Tragic Songs of Life, a collection of woeful folk songs. Perhaps my favorite of all is Weapon of Prayer, an album of heart-tugging war-related songs complete with Norman Rockwell cover of a lonely soldier. These guys would up-armor those Humvees in a country minute.

new year's heroes

2004-12-31T09:31:00.000-08:00

... if just for one night

Light posting this week, what with the holidays an' all. And now it's New Year's Eve... first footin' time! The tradition of "first footing" got me thinking about heroes, which got me thinking about our fascination with martyrs, which got me thinking about a new model of distributed- processing heroism for the Internet age. With a side trip through Psalms, the MC5, and a salute to that hero of the blues, the Iceman. Gotta watch where a train of thought can take you. I even made - and broke - a New Year's resolution before it was through. Note to self: cut down on the caffeine in '05.

"First footing" came from the British Isles, and was popular in parts of the Midwest. (But then, so is calling convenience stores "party stores" and soda "pop".) Supposedly the first person who sets foot in your house after the stroke of midnight on New Year's Eve creates the fortunes of the home for the year, good or bad. For "first footing" you find the person who will set the right tone, luck-wise, and ask them to step across your threshold. So I started thinking, who would I ask? Well, I'd want to go for the best and ask someone I thought of as a hero, and there just aren't that many living people I can put in that category. I wish Paul Wellstone was around, or Myles Horton. But I couldn't think of anyone that's alive. And first footing takes on macabre overtones if you don't choose from among the living ...

Could it be that the martyrdom tradition is so strong in our culture that it's hard to make heroes out of living people? After all, worship of the idealized dead runs from the crucifixion, through medieval hagiographies, the Romantic poets, up through all those books of bad Jim Morrison poetry, on past all those lamentations on the lost genius of Kurt Cobain (accurate, as far as I'm concerned), the Latina singer Selena, John Ritter, on and on ... Interestingly, liberals and Democrats seem more bound to this "doomed hero" tradition than right-wingers. I saw action figures of George W. in his flight suit for sale (and not as a joke) in the toy stores this Christmas season. Can you picture Democrats buying Kerry action figures? Probably not, even though he actually saw action. No, Democrats stick to their martyrs - the Kennedys, King, etc. Must be all those lit. majors reliving their love affairs with those beautiful and doomed young English poets.

Another old New Year's tradition was to open the Bible and pick a passage at random, which would set the tone for the year. Here are some passages from Psalms that could do nicely:
________________________________

141:2 Let my prayer be set forth before thee as incense; and the lifting up of my hands as the evening sacrifice.

141:3 Set a watch, O Lord, before my mouth; keep the door of my lips.

141:4 Incline not my heart to any evil thing, to practise wicked works with men that work iniquity; and let me not eat of their dainties.

141:6 When their judges are overthrown in stony places, they shall hear my words: for they are sweet.
_________________________________

Some good resolutions for myself for the New Year (plus some wish-fulfillment about "their judges" and that part about "their dainties" -- Ho-Ho's, perhaps? Pop-Tarts?) Speaking of food, here's a small but good suggestion from my friend Wayne Cotter: Every time you eat Thai or Indian food go online and contribute to a disaster relief fund for the Asian tsunami. Easy to do, and badly needed.

Sometimes heroism comes in micro-units. Rather than ghetto-izing it behind portraits and biographies, maybe we can titrate our own heroic impulse and keep it flowing in manageable units. A million small good deeds beats one martyr hands down. Called it "distributed processing" heroism, or "thin client" sainthood. We have some of the technology now - Internet, credit cards, etc. - and should create more soon. The SETI@Home project distributes the computational work needed to search for life in other galaxies onto hundreds of thousands of PCs in private homes.

Maybe we can do the same for noble behavior, moving away from the centralized full-time heroes of the past toward a new model - the hero as network, who performs countless small acts of valor in many lives rather than a few great acts in one. "Future now," said the MC5. "Freedom's yours right now, if you rule your own destiny."

Wanna be a hero, if just for one day? American Express, Visa, Discover, all accepted here. "Mastercharge! Oh, let's charge it!" sang the great Albert Collins. Do it in the name of the late great Telecaster Master of the Blues, the Iceman himself. Play his "Angel of Mercy" while you do. There's no way you can lose.

Listen to me lecturing! What happened to "set a watch on my mouth"? Well, that's a resolution for ya. Draw your brakes, as DJ Scotty sang down in Kingston. Stop that train of thought, I want to get off. I still don't know who to pick for first footing, and I've only got a few hours left. Were U2 correct when they sang that "nothing changes on New Year's Day"? Hope not. Happy New Year.

the most trusted name in news is ...

2004-12-28T11:30:00.000-08:00

tucker carlson
(don't be too rough on yourself if you didn't guess it the first time)

I turned on CNN's NewsNight last night, like the serial masochist that I am, and who do I see in the anchor's chair but Tucker Carlson. The anchor's chair: a seat of power once considered a position of both authority and trust. Walter Cronkite's chair. And there's Tucker Carlson, who once dismissively called the horror story of a tiny girl's insides sucked out in a community pool "a Jacuzzi case." Why would he do that? To score a cheap political point against John Edwards. Good old CNN, "the most trusted name in news," strikes again. Unbelievably and comically, Carlson referred to Malibu twice and the Hamptons once while covering the tragedy in Asia. When do the boycotts begin?

Carlson's "Jacuzzi" gambit wasn't just wrong, it was evil. This is Valerie Lakey and her parents.

Valerie was five years old when her accident occurred. As Tim Grieve reported in Salon, and as later reported by Hunter in Daily Kos, her father held her in his arms as the ambulance came, repeating "Daddy loves you" over and over as blood and tissue filled the community pool. Look at Valerie's picture, then look again at Tucker's. The next time you see him on TV, try -- just try -- to be seduced by the bow tie and the Animatronic boyish grin. Betcha it doesn't work for you. But it works for CNN.

Moral objections aside, Tucker's not very good at the job. He tried to report on the Asian tsunami disaster, but he just couldn't get it. He listened as a correspondent explained that many people were fascinated by the water being drawn "out into the ocean where the beach suddenly appeared to be bigger, deeper, longer.. " Some apparently ran into the extended beach area and were killed. "When the beach disappears, bad sign," replied Carlson. No, actually, if there's more beach than ever, that's a bad sign.

Later, a bemused-looking Denver geologist named Stuart Sipkin tried to take him through the science. Carlson misunderstood his answer to the question, "when was the last time the continental U.S. was hit by a tsunami that took human life." After that was cleared up, the scientist referred in passing to the fact that some people went to the beach to see the tsunami and lost their lives. Carlson's wrap-up was, "All right, Stuart Sipkin and a cautious warning against tsunami watching." Which was hardly the point of Sipkin's ... ah, forget it. I can't untangle the mess he made of the anchor's job, which is to find the key points in a report and summarize them in the tag.

There were real laughs as well as groaners in Carlson's reporting, however, despite the gravity of the story. (Be warned: what follows in NOT parody, but verbatim language from CNN transcripts. Emphases mine.)

CARLSON (introducing story): Now, could it happen here? It seems like that's the first question you hear whenever something terrible happens to other people in other places. Is it groundless hysteria manufactured by a ratings hungry news media? In part of course it is. Yet, tomorrow morning people will still be buying beachfront property in Malibu and they probably should.

CARLSON (interviewing Sipkin): So, I mean does this mean it's time to, you know, dump the beachfront property in Malibu? I mean, what does it mean?

CARLSON (interviewing Sipkin): Now what about, we've been hearing all day about this volcano in the Canary Islands that may collapse at some point and send a tsunami toward the East Coast of the United States drowning the Hamptons.

Leave it to Tucker Carlson and CNN to make one of the greatest tragedies in human history, a Third World disaster, into a story about Malibu and the Hamptons. And apparently he'll be back again in the anchor's chair tonight.

Let me hazard a guess here: I would venture to say that a significant portion of CNN's viewership are not right-wing fanatics. I would further venture that if CNN had chosen, say, Al Sharpton to chair NewsNight there would be an enormous uproar, if not organized boycotts. And don't even get me started on the Dan Rather controversy. So here's my proposal. Liberals will never stop watching cable news. It's a benign addiction. So let's start some "rolling boycotts." Let's say to CNN, every time you perform such a blatantly biased stunt, we will stop watching you for one week. Just one week - surely you can handle that, can't you, liberals? We'll set up one website as a location, and whenever we give the signal then CNN (or MSNBC, or ABC, or whomever) will be hit with a one-week drop in viewership.

What do you say?

'twas the night before a blogger's christmas 2004

2004-12-23T22:20:00.000-08:00

'Twas the night before Christmas, when all through the Web
not a blogger was blogging, posts were all at an ebb
The stockings were hung by the modem with care
In non-sectarian hope .. er, someone soon would be there.

The Lefties were nestled all snug in their p.j.s,
prepared to save Pagans, and poor folks, and gays
And my Partner in jammies, and I baseball capp'd,
had just settled down for a long winter's nap

When out from the keyboard there arose such a typing
it sounded as loud as a wingnutter griping
Out to the office I flew on a winged foot
to see who was keystroking all of that input.

The moon through the window that fell on my keys
gave the lustre of mid-day to my ancient PC
Where, what to my wondering eyes should appear
but an icon that looked like a sleigh with reindeer.

There was tiny St. Nick, and then I could see
the reindeer were people at keyboards, like me
As speedy as wireless they all typed with one aim,
"For the cause!" said St. Nick, as he called them by name:

"Now TalkLeft! now, BopNews! Now Pandagon! Markos!
On, Wolcott! on Wonkette! on Skippy! On Atrios!
Go get the info and write those next posts
and influence thinking, at least on the coasts!"

As ballots of paper that before the winds fly,
and when meet with an obstacle, mount to the sky
so up up those site meter readings just flew,
with blogrolls and linking to me and to you.

And then in a twinkling, I heard from my speakers
a clatter of feet as if clad in old sneakers
as I drew in my hand, and was touching the keys
when out of the screen St. Nick came in a breeze.

He was dressed all in fur, (but synthetic of course),
with a lead he'd received from an undisclosed source
a bundle of goodies he'd flung on his back
and he looked like a lobbyist opening his pack.

His eyes - how they twinkled! His dimples how merry!
His cheeks were all red, like those states on the prairie!
The beard of his chin was as white as the snow,
he looked fat like Falwell, but nicer to know.

The stump of a pipe he held tight in his mittens,
"Can't smoke inside," he said, "that law pisses off Hitchens",
he had a broad face and a little round belly,
"Why pick Kerik?" he said, "there was always Ray Kelly."

He was chubby and plump, a right elf just like Ferrell,
(who's anti-Bush and more laughs than that other guy, Darrell),
Then he spoke and said he had brought gifts for the nation,
from his cold, undisclosed (just like Cheney's) location,

And then filling the stockings with toys, treats, and tricks,
said "now let's get ready for 2006"
he said "we'll prevail, if we all share the load,"
then nodding, back to the PC he flowed;

On the screen he jump backed on the sleigh and then whistled,
and flew like a Star Wars (well it IS a dream!) missile.
But I heard him exclaim, ere he flew out of sight
"HAPPY INCLUSIVE HOLIDAYS ALL, AND GOOD NIGHT!"

Happy Holidays from Night Light.

where are your manners, o'reilly?

2004-12-23T15:42:00.000-08:00

he just wants ta testify

This "Christmas" controversy is getting way too complicated on both sides, and we're all getting sick of it, so let's keep it simple. Saying "Happy Holidays" isn't a betrayal of Bill O'Reilly or the baby Jesus, it's just good manners. You're saying to someone, whether they're a customer, a friend, or a colleague: "You're welcome here - in my place of business, in my home, in this country - even if you don't believe as I do." Hey, O'Reilly, it's called courtesy, hospitality, and kindness. That doesn't sound like a betrayal to me - it sounds like proper etiquette. Make your guest comfortable in your home, I was always taught.

So which side are you on, Mr. O'Reilly and all you paragons of the Right? Do you believe in good manners and mutual respect or don't you? Do you welcome strangers into your household, or do you think that somehow you're "betraying" your own family by doing that? To those of you who disagree with Bill and his pals, don't bother with sophisticated arguments. Just say, hey: Do you want to be polite or rude? And by the way, isn't it great that so many corporations like Fox, and so many politicians like President Bush, are considerate enough of others to say "happy holidays"? Doesn't that tell you that we're becoming the civilized, well-behaved nation you're telling us you want?

Hey, O'Reilly, Happy Holidays to you too.

hippies and the hitchens brand

2004-12-21T18:16:00.000-08:00

all you need is guns

Christopher Hitchens™ applies his patented brand of booze 'n' BS to "hippies" in the December 19 New York Times Book Review. Let's see: "Hippies" thought they could transform a nation that didn't share their world view - without planning, organization, or clarity of purpose. And they thought they'd be welcomed with flowers. Then they ... hey, wait a minute! Is this a gag? Substitute "neocons" for "hippies" and we could be talking about the Iraq war. Replace grass with alcohol and we're describing "Hitch" himself. It's all part of the Hitchens™ branding scheme - phony 'contrarianism,' the 'two-fisted drinker' persona, and a wannabe theater of the outrageous directed against liberal orthodoxy.

"The marketing of the 60's has come to necessitate the blending of quite discrepant images," Hitchens writes in his typically bloviated style. He should know. He's been able to market a colorful but unreliable prose style and a combative personality into a very successful career. The contradictions and tortured logic of his opinions only seem incoherent when viewed through the lens of political thought. Don't bother. The point is not to be right, or fair, or even consistent. It's all about branding: the book jacket poses surrounded by empty glasses and full ashtrays, the unruly look, the pugnacious attitude. It's about being different, unique, memorable - and "the blending of quite discrepant images." Pay attention, pundits manqué.

Hitchens appeared on the Daily Show recently (as one of several recent guests who threaten Jon Stewart's status as the new lefty icon.) The Daily Show doesn't provide transcripts, but when Stewart asked him about his takedowns of Mother Theresa and Mahatma Gandhi, his response was something to the effect of "People don't pay attention when you attack people they already hate, like Tom DeLay. Attack their heroes, and people sit up." At that moment I sat up. When a marketing master deigns to share his secrets, I listen. Holding his paper cup carefully so that it would be in the camera shot, Hitch was telling us how it's done.

On one level, you can't blame the guy. His anti-Clinton rants were so successful, and brought him so much attention as a Left apostate, that it must have fueled an already addictive personality. He has a certain talent for the slashing put-down and vicious innuendo. That's a skill not unlike playing the musical saw: It's impressive that someone's bothered to master it, but all it produces is grating music. Yet there's an audience for it, especially when the saw maestro presents himself as the rebel that's going to save you from all those violin-playing phonies in that boring community orchestra.

The only problem is we're not talking about bad music, but bad ethics. When Hitchens lies to support a wrongheaded policy, he contributes in his small way to people getting hurt. When he lies about decent people, whether to defend his positions or to increase his market visibility, he damages real reputations. Clinton's just the most egregious example, and he can take it. How about conservative J. P. Zmirak, who Hitchens labeled a "ruthless anti-Semite." Why? Zmirak listed the names of several prominent neoconservatives, with whom he disagrees about Iraq, in an article. The basis for Hitchens' potentially career-ending charge? The names were (according to Hitchens) ethnically Jewish, hence Zmirak is anti-Semitic.

Hitchens' writing history is filled with this kind of intellectual dishonesty - and isn't "intellectual dishonesty" just a longer way to say dishonesty? His willingness to spread misinformation about people and policies is wrong when viewed through a moral lens, but again - don't bother. It's all about the branding. Outrageous! Shocking! Critics agree: you'll never forget Hitch! It's Ann Coulter with a veneer of intellectuality and a tattered shred of ex-leftist credibility. Smearing a minor figure like Zmirak is not the behavior of a pathological liar. It's the act of a sociopathic liar, who has no feeling for the reputations he might damage or destroy in the process of self-advancement.

Hitchens ostentatiously places himself at Abbie Hoffman's funeral, lined up with fellow speakers like Bobby Seale and Allen Ginsberg - speakers "whose names," in Hitchens' words, "collectively spelled 'sixties.'" (Note to Hitch: If you want to be seen as an iconoclast, don't write in clichés.) Abbie was a marketing genius - Antonin Artaud meets Saul Alinksy - and Hitchens has tried to adopt some of his shock'n'awe style. But Abbie Hoffman had both a moral code and a higher purpose, whether you agreed with them or not. (I did.) Hitchens appears to have none, other than to propagate his brand at any cost.

Hitchens refers to "the herbivorous - in both senses - Woodstock." Hmm ... "herbivorous" rings a bell. Oh, yes. In his hatchet job on Michael Moore, Hitchens referred to the left's "image and self-image as something rather too solemn, mirthless, herbivorous, dull, monochrome, righteous, and boring." Please get this man a new thesaurus (and an invitation to some better parties.)

There is a vague and tortured line of reasoning through the "Hippie" piece, that somehow leads through the Port Huron Statement to the anti-globalization movement, about which Hitchens writes: " the ... movement has started to reject modernity altogether, to set its sights on laboratories and on the idea of the division of labor, and to adopt symbols from Fallujah as the emblems of its resistance." Really? No citations, no quotes, no footnotes. And who leads the "movement," anyway? If you support the anti-globalization movement, you're probably out beheading someone as we speak. This is demagogic writing at its - in both senses - worst. Any reader who lets a Hitchens allegation like this one pass unquestioned hasn't been paying attention. We want documentation, Mr. Hitchens. Your credibility is no longer enough.

Hitchens writes of the inherent conservatism of the Port Huron Statement, and its "yearning for a lost agrarian simplicity." Uh-oh, "herbivores" again. The possibility that the writers were using metaphors and models appears alien to him. "Human relationships should involve fraternity and honesty," say the Statement's authors, perhaps unaware that concepts like "fraternity" and "honesty" would seem like relics of the distant agrarian past to a sophisticated urbanite like Hitchens.

And so the brand plays on, dispensing its toxic but memorable product while conspicuously displaying the logo: the carefully disheveled hair, the paper cup, and the aroma of stale cigarettes. Like so many branding campaigns, in the end it's all sizzle and no steak.

the ghost of christmas future

2004-12-19T15:51:00.000-08:00

'Truly, I say to you, as you did it to one of the
least of these my brethren, you did it to me.'
Matthew 25:31-40

more camera shy than richard mellon scaife

2004-12-17T17:39:00.000-08:00

Friday catblogging as conducted by paparazzi

two out of three doctors agree

2004-12-16T16:07:00.000-08:00

threat level: orange

"Two-thirds of the scientists questioned by the Department of Health and Human Services' inspector general said they lacked full confidence in the FDA's ability to monitor side effects of prescription drugs after they hit the market," according to Reuters. "Nearly 20 percent of U.S. Food and Drug Administration scientists surveyed in late 2002 said they were pressured to approve or recommend approval of a medicine despite their reservations about the drug's risks or effectiveness, according to documents made public on Thursday." But who cares? CNN is ignoring the story in favor of Bin Laden, Bush's "Social Security as WMD" sales pitch, and other critical stories like "spilled bees on highway a honey of a mess", a surfer killed by sharks, Elvis, and the rising price of Hershey bars.

Americans are taking prescription drugs at record rates, and Vioxx alone is suspected of causing 55,000 deaths. This story should be front-page news everywhere, but your news media don't give a damn. We are right to consider capturing bin Laden and destroying Al Qaeda top priorities (and conspicuous Bush Administration failures), but this illustrates perfectly how effectively the War on Terror is being used to distract Americans from other threats to their lives and well-being - threats that have already taken many American lives. The foxes are in charge of the henhouse at the DEA, but big deal! At CNN this story's not even in the Top Ten. Take a look at what they're presenting instead:

CNN News Headlines

• Bush: Time to overhaul Social Security
• Saddam meets with attorney for first time
• GOP senator joins Rumsfeld critics
• Birth control study flawed, new analysis finds
• Mom charged in death of 4-year-old at motel
• CNN/Money: Hershey chocoholic beware: Prices going up
• Spilled bees on highway a honey of a mess
• Horror as surfer killed by great white sharks
• Promoter buys Elvis estate for $100 million

Fox News ignores the story, too, as does ABC. NBC buries it under "Health News". Only those Rather-loving Communists at CBS are leading with the story. But who listens to them anymore?

the marketplace of ideas is now officially closed

2004-12-14T09:05:00.000-08:00

he's being followed by a moonshadow

The State Department withdrew the visa it had issued for Muslim scholar Tariq Ramadan last August by citing the Patriot Act, just days before he was to arrive in the U.S. for a teaching position at Notre Dame. Ramadan is widely known throughout Europe and the Third World. While highly regarded by many, Ramadan has his critics, who accuse him of taking moderate positions when speaking in English and more extreme ones when using Arabic. I cannot speak to these criticisms, since I don't speak Arabic. It should be noted, however, that even this accusation centers on his ideas and statements, and does not suggest any kind of terror-related activity. The scholastic community at Catholic Notre Dame, which knows a lot more about him than I do, continues to support Mr. Ramadan and has expressed its outrage at this action.

After waiting several months for a final decision on his visa, Ramadan was finally forced today to withdraw from the position, as reported by Reuters. Thus we see another striking victory for an Administration that can't seem to catch real terrorists but protected us earlier this year from that other Islamic threat to our ideas, Cat Stevens. Sure, when he's in the Western eye he's the good Cat Stevens, the one who wrote "Peace Train" and "Wild World" and other great songs. But when you're not looking he's the bad Cat Stevens, the one who wrote those really annoying songs like "Moonshadow", "Longer Boats", and "I Want to Live in a Wigwam." You just can't trust these guys. When you let your guard down they might try to insert some poison ideas or irritating music into what Sterling Hayden in Dr. Strangelove called "our precious bodily fluids."

I thought the Patriot Act was supposed to protect us from terrorism, not thoughts. If Mr. Ramadan expresses his ideas duplicitously, as some critics suggest, we should have brought him into this country and let him fight it out with his opponents. It's called the marketplace of ideas. Remember? We used to say we believed in it, back when it was the USSR that liked to suppress free speech. And we used to say we'd win a fair fight over ideas, too. Don't we believe that Bill O'Reilly or Sean Hannity could get the best of some Islamic professor who lives in Europe somewhere?

So Notre Dame, home of the Gipper and Knute Rockne, will have to do without Tariq Ramadan. Here's a quote from Coach Rockne: "One man practicing sportsmanship is better than fifty preaching it." And here's another: "Win or lose, do it fairly." Oh, but I guess the Coach's philosophy is like the "marketplace of ideas" concept: out of style.

metapropaganda and the goebbels model

2004-12-13T11:43:00.000-08:00

did he write the book?

An article in today's New York Times reviews what it calls "bitter, internal high-level debate over how far (the military) can and should go in managing or manipulating information to influence opinion abroad." These missions "could take the deceptive techniques endorsed for use on the battlefield to confuse an adversary and adopt them for covert propaganda campaigns aimed at neutral and even allied nations." Of course, it would be impossible to deceive allies and still tell the truth to U.S. citizens, so truth at home would become more "collateral damage." The debate is just one more chapter in the saga of an administration that has (whether consciously or not) employed Goebbels' principles of propaganda to an unprecedented extent. The parallels, as enumerated below, are striking. The Times article may itself be "metapropaganda" designed to conceal the fact that the military's disinformation campaign is in fact well under way.

Anytime you associate U.S. public figures with Nazis in any way you're playing with dynamite. The comparison being made here is not one of ideology, but of technique. Just as Leni Riefenstahl's film making techniques in Triumph of the Will created the vocabulary for future political films, Goebbels created the vocabulary and skill set for generations of propagandists - those who would intentionally manipulate public opinion using all available techniques. Social psychologist Leonard W. Doobs collated and summarized Goebbels' operating philosophy into 19 principles for the 1948 book Public Opinion and Propaganda. They include the following:

Propaganda must be planned and executed by only one authority. (principle #2)

According to the Times, Donald Rumsfeld is studying the proper relationship between "secret psychological operations" and the military's public affairs function, which is used to provide the public with accurate and timely information. A secret Joint Chiefs study recommends the creation of a single "director of central information" to manage both functions. This is in accordance with Goebbels principle #2(c), which states that the propaganda authority "must oversee other agencies' activities which have propaganda consequences." The proposed Director of Central Information would have both budget and operational control over all related functions.

The propaganda consequences of an action must be considered in planning that action. (principle #3)

There are very few independent commentators who doubt that the timing of the Iraqi elections has been determined by propaganda considerations more than strategic ones. The scheduling of the attack on Falluja until after the U.S. elections is also widely believed to have been determined by political considerations.

To be perceived, propaganda must evoke the interest of an audience and must be transmitted through an attention-getting communications medium. (#6)

Fox News Network. Flight suits, flying in a fighter jet, "Mission Accomplished" banner. Photo ops. Plucky Private Lynch. The staged pull-down of Saddam's statue. Plastic turkeys. Add your own - it's easy.

Propaganda may be facilitated by leaders with prestige. (#12)

Ever wonder why they kept Colin Powell on for so long? That's why.

The communication must reach the audience ahead of competing propaganda. (13a)

Karl Rove knew the issue of armor for soldiers' fighting vehicles was bound to erupt sooner or later. That's why the Republicans kept saying that Kerry "voted against armor for the troops." They knew they were vulnerable on this issue, and needed an inoculation.

A propaganda theme must be repeated, but not beyond some point of diminishing effectiveness. (13b)

Freedom is on the march. Freedom is on the march. Freedom is on the march.

Propaganda must label events and people with distinctive phrases or slogans. (14)

Flip-flopper. Those who hate our freedoms. Liberals.

They must evoke desired responses which the audience previously possesses. (#14a)

Latte-sipping, elitist, NASCAR-hating liberals. Rich flip-flopper. Arabs.

They must be capable of being easily learned. (#14b)

Kerry exaggerated his own war wounds. Liberals hate America. All Arabs except Chalabi and Allawi and their friends hate our freedoms.

They must be utilized again and again, but only in appropriate situations. (#14c)

Anyone doubt that we're hearing the same message again and again? Democrats may consider it simple-minded, but Goebbels was right: Repetition works.

Let me say that again: Repetition works.

Propaganda to the home front must prevent the raising of false hopes which can be blasted by future events. (#15)

"It's going to be tough." "Let me warn you, the road ahead will not be easy." "It's hard, hard work. It's very hard. Hard work."

Propaganda to the home front must create an optimum anxiety level. (#16)

That would be your Orange Alert ... but ...

Propaganda must diminish anxiety which is too high. (#16b)

Remember to keep shopping, and flying, and going on about your daily lives.

Propaganda must facilitate the displacement of aggression by specifying the targets for hatred. (#18)

The terrorists. The liberals. Dan Rather. Michael Moore. Those who hate our freedoms.

It's difficult to know whether the Times article is a result of leaks from disaffected Pentagon staffers, or is itself a piece of metapropaganda - that is, propaganda about the propaganda effort. That there has been some metapropaganda appears probable, however, when we read that Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Richard Myers issued a memorandum warning field commanders against mingling military public affairs with covert information operations. Per the Times, the memo is not being followed in the field because commanders there "believe they are safely separating the two operations " Field officers would not ordinarily disregard a memo from the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs - unless the memo was written for public rather than internal consumption.

When you start playing the propaganda game, anything you say is open to question. That game is being played aggressively. Are Goebbels' principles being consciously used? You decide. If not, the Administration has crafted a similar set of rules on its own. In any case, Democrats and other Administration opponents need to understand the techniques being employed against them if they are to hold their own in future battles for public opinion.

UPDATE: Ian Welsh at BOPNews has a related post on The 14 Features of Fascism that may be of interest. Not because I'm using that empty left-wing rhetoric that says the other guys are "fascist" or anything - I'm just sayin'. There could be a "crying wolf" problem eventually, though. After 40 years of calling Officer Wiggums and every hapless cop on the beat a "fascist pig," what would you say if the real thing came along?

Social Security - Crisis? What Crisis?

2004-12-12T10:31:00.000-08:00

do you feel lucky, Grandma? well, do you?

Bob Somerby and Kevin Drum both attack the phony story being spread by the Bush team and dutifully echoed by the press that Social Security is in "crisis." Somerby focuses on the disingenuous David Brooks, who repeats the spin point that in 1935 there were 42 workers for every retiree, and soon there will be only two to one. This is, as Bob points out, irrelevant (see talking points, below). Kevin quotes Rep. Robert Matsui as saying the administration's false alarmism is ideologically driven. There is another explanation besides just ideology, however. Investing massive amounts of income that has been set aside for retirement purposes will make a lot of Republican investors very, very wealthy. The Democrats need a coherent counter-argument, and fast.

Kevin hopes that the LA Times' coverage of the Matsui statement will begin the process of circulating a counter-meme to all the "Social Security in danger" stories being flogged by the press. Obviously the Democrats should not cross their fingers and wait for good luck, however. They need to push back on this topic hard before it's too late. Some points to emphasize:

1. "42-to-1" vs. "2-to-1" is a shell-game argument. Every one of those 42 workers has already paid for his or her benefits. It's in the bank. As long as the government doesn't raid that money to pay for their tax giveaways to the wealthy and make their campaign contributors richer, there's no problem. The "2" workers in 1935 were the recipients of government largesse, but for the 42? It's their money - your money.

2. The Administration is risking future benefits in order to prop up the stock market and further enrich their fat cat supporters. "Ownership society" is a coded way of saying their high-class cronies will own a lot more -- cars, boats, houses -- while everybody else pays the tab as usual.

3. They want to spend trillions of dollars on this get-rich-quick scheme for their Wall Street pals, adding to the huge Republican deficit that was created as part of their massive transfer of wealth back to the wealthy. The end result will place your chance to live securely in your old age in greater peril, by leaving you dependent on the ups and downs of the stock market. If it takes a tumble, you might not be able pay for food and housing. (And you might remind them that huge federal deficits are usually a drag on the stock market.)

4. They won't promise to keep their hands of the money already contributed into the system -- and remember, that's your money - while they're busy making boatloads of money of this privatization scam.

These are just my suggestions. Surely there are people out there who can come up with more and better talking points. Just as long as they are clear, direct, honest, and easy to understand. The battle to save Social Security is now official underway.

UPDATE: Jesse at Pandagon is on it, too.

Nixon Resigns, Citing "Nanny Problems"

2004-12-12T09:34:00.000-08:00

somebody tell Mom, the babysitter's illegal

There may still be people out there credulous enough to believe that Bernard Kerik really withdrew his name because he had "nanny problems". (Well, not people, exactly - the media.) So many skeletons are emerging from Kerik's closet that it looks like a Day of the Dead parade. Nevertheless, when he first made the announcement it was taken at face value by the media. Wow - that was easy. What if more people had used this handy, easy-to-sell, hardly-guilty-seeming excuse?

President resigns: In a tearful farewell address to the nation, Richard M. Nixon insisted he was "not a crook" but suggested that impending questions about the immigration status of the family nanny would make governing as President impossible. The nanny was hired, not for the Nixon children, but as a playmate and babysitter for the family dog Checkers. Coincidentally, the President's resignation follows that of Vice President Spiro Agnew, who cited similar hiring problems.

King Abdicates: King Edward VIII abdicated in 1936, citing the immigration status of the Royal Family nanny who served as a chaperone on his dates with "that racy American woman." Denying that his love for twice-divorced Wallis Simpson was a factor in his decision, the King insisted that he had not followed proper legal procedure by seizing the nanny's native country as part of the British Empire before hiring her. Conveniently, he is now free to marry Ms. Simpson. King Edward's later friendship for the Nazi Ambassador Ribbentrop, and his favorable remarks about the British Union of Fascists, were also eventually blamed on "immigration problems."

Morihiro Hosokawa cites Immigration Problems: The Prime Minister of Japan resigned today, citing his use of American campaign advisors without proper immigration papers as the reason for stepping down. He denied that his misuse of political funds was a factor in his decision. "Corruption the voters can forgive," said Hosokawa. "That useless gaijin Bob Shrum, never."

Attorney General Quits: Attorney General Elliott Richardson submitted his resignation hours after being ordered by President Nixon to fire Watergate special prosecutor Archibald Cox. "Firing Cox is no big deal to me," said Richardson, "but I just found out I didn't file the right papers before we hired our au-pair." Richardson insisted there was no matter of principle involved. Deputy Attorney General William Ruckelshaus immediately discovered the same nanny problem and resigned the same day. Solicitor General Robert Bork then became Attorney General and carried out the order. "Thank God I'm gay," said Bork, "because if I'd had kids I'd have needed a nanny."

OK, Bork's not gay, so I shouldn't have said it. Don't blame me, blame my nanny. In the meantime, will somebody please check up on Rumsfeld? I'm hoping he has a nanny too.

anticrime or antiabortion? pick one

2004-12-11T18:32:00.000-08:00

unintended consequence

The "Geniuses" issue of Esquire includes a profile of economics professor Steven Levitt, whose research suggests that if anti-choice advocates succeed in banning abortion they will be responsible for increasing the crime rate. Prof. Levitt investigated why organized crime fell in the 1990’s, instead of escalating and creating a new breed of “superpredators” as William Bennett and others were predicting. (If Mr. Bennett wagered on this prospect, he lost.) Levitt’s theory: one factor in the falling crime rate was the legalization of abortion in the 1970’s, which prevented the birth of a generation of criminals that would have come of age in the 90’s.

It’s a difficult case to prove, but the statistics are compelling. A few states had already legalized abortion around 1970, before Roe v. Wade made it legal for the entire country in 1973. The crime rate fell earlier for these states than for the nation as a whole, and by the same overall rate (30%) that the country followed later, according to Levitt’s research. Why would this be so? Unwanted children are more likely to be unloved, and social science research suggests that unloved children have more adjustment problems and are more likely to commit crimes. This raises some interesting questions:

1) How does the Religious Right plan to protect society from the crime wave coming 20 years from now if they succeeding in overturning Roe v. Wade?

2) How would racially-biased evangelical voters react if they knew that one consequence of their push to outlaw abortion would be a dramatic increase in the number of violent minorities on the streets of their cities and towns?

3) This one’s a cliché, but it’s true – why is it that some people’s “moral values” lead them to impose unwanted children on those least able to care for them, but don’t require them to support any social policies that would give assistance to those children once they’re born?

It seems the drive to prevent abortions does not always translate into compassion for the helpless – leading to the widely held suspicion that many abortion opponents are motivated by feelings about sex, rather than by a moral perception of the unborn as fully human. Wes Clark addressed this issue eloquently, as reported in Blogging of the President.

Esquire also profiles law professor Noah Feldman, who among other things writes on democracy and Islam. Feldman points out that by some estimates there are now as many Muslim Americans as Jewish Americans, with increasing numbers of Hindus and other religionists. He raises the perfectly valid question: how can America continue to call itself a "Judeo-Christian" nation as its religious composition changes? Are we now to be described as a “monotheistic” nation? If so, there will be those Hindus to contend with. And there are other questions Feldman doesn’t raise, but which are certainly implicit: Why should we identify ourselves as a nation with any form of belief at all? Isn’t that incompatible with our principle of freedom of religion? And is it possible to persuade voters in all 50 states that religious freedom is more important than putting the Ten Commandments on a stone in from the local courthouse? Our country was founded on the idea that whenever a state defines itself in religious terms, it eventually starts exerting control over the religious beliefs of its citizens. That's what brought the Puritans to New England.

Anda last question: it possible to persuade voters in all 50 states that religious freedom is more important than putting the Ten Commandments on a stone in from the local courthouse? Even I, the perennial optimist, have my doubts about that one.

Reaching the Christian Wedge

2004-12-07T19:07:00.000-08:00

Henry Fonda: Democratic Party symbol

Sorry that my Nightblogging has been, well, “light.” I’ve been traveling. I have been reading, however. Ellen Dana Nagler has an important post on The Constitution vs. God up at Blogging of the President. This is a piece that deserves serious consideration. In it, she suggests framing the Democrats as the Party of the Constitution. I think this form of ‘branding’ deserves far more serious consideration than the logos and slogans being circulated by Oliver Willis and others. As pleasing as some of these may be, they strike me as items meant to please those of us in the "echo chamber", not as tools that can truly change hearts & minds or win elections.

The Constitution, however, has a powerful folk appeal in this country. Our foundational documents, and the stories of our early national heroes, can still mist the eye of at least some Americans in every demographic bracket (this one included.) Branding the party as Ellen suggests would pit one set of icons against another – Ben Franklin vs. Moses, Honest Abe vs. Joseph and Mary, etc. It’s not that I personally see a conflict between the real values represent by each iconography. I see them in harmony, but the “Christianists” place one symbology over the other for political purposes. That’s why I see the brilliance in fighting back this way.

I wouldn’t identify the counter-movement as “secular liberal” as Ellen does, if I had my way. Here's why: part of the great appeal of the Religious Right, in my opinion, is the fact that it speaks to the heart while liberalism speaks to the head. That’s what excites me about this idea: It presents the seed of a liberalism, or progressivism, that speaks to the heart too. Recall John Ford’s “Young Mr. Lincoln,” where the director of classic Western movies recounts the early days of the martyred President. In the final scene, Henry Fonda as young Abe steps away from his wife’s grave, and walks over a hill into the gale winds and flashes of a thunderstorm the audiences can’t see but can foretell all too well. Don’t you want that yearning, idealism, and tragic heroism calling people to your side?

I think Democrats often make the mistake of thinking of evangelical Christian voters as a monolithic bloc. Many of them may be sentimental, ill informed, or simplistic, but that’s true of all groups. They may vote against their own economic interests for what they consider to be higher values – but what’s nobler than that? Many of them are idealistic and patriotic, but I consider myself to be those things too. I believe that some of those voters will return to the Democratic Party if they can feel good about themselves for doing so. I call them “Christian Wedge" voters, because I think Democrats can use them to drive a wedge between the Republican party and its Red state base.

There should be a major initiative to bring Christian Wedge voters back to the Democratic Party, using the heart as well as the head to attract them. It wouldn’t take too many conversions to let the Democrats win some of those close elections for President, and especially for the Senate. (See my post on close Red-state Senate races and debunking that self-defeating realignment myth.) I think the ‘Party of the Constitution’ approach could work, especially if it’s presented as being in harmony with, rather than in opposition to, basic Christian values of love, tolerance, respect for strangers, and concern for the poor.

Plus, liberal or not, I’m a sucker for John Ford movies.

political informatics

2004-12-04T09:10:00.000-08:00

data ring of fire

What our political universe is missing these days is a good data architect, someone who can develop an information schematic that reflects our polarized reality. The private sector knows how to link data sets, to mine all available information on consumers, markets, and transactions. For example, we all worry about those Diebold machines manipulating election outcomes. A real IT type would tell you that’s only one of their capabilities. They’re also terrific consumer data collection nodes. Everybody wants user demographics, and in politics, it’s Diebold that’s got ‘em.

How do we use this capability? My first suggestion is that we simply record every Kerry voter’s demographic profile and immediately download it to Homeland Security’s no-fly list. No more racial profiling, with its gross segmentation into ethnic cohorts (how very 20th Century). No more random selection (even more retro), or pulling everyone with a one-way ticket out of the line and into the shoe- and belt-holding contingent. If your video rentals tell us that you’re likely to buy a Volvo, surely your voting patterns will tell us if you’re likely to hijack a Boeing or not.

Blue-staters can plug into the new architecture, too. Michael Bérubé suggests a new social safety net, funded by Democrats,

... a fallback system for helping out everyone who gets devastated by Bush’s social and economic policies, every family without health care, every elderly citizen fleeced by Medicare “reform,” every gay man and lesb***n hounded by the Fell Legions of the Right-- as long as they voted for Kerry.

So there’s data link #2: Diebold --> BérubéNet. Next, how about cross-referencing a list of Republican voters with a list of subscribers to gay magazines, and using the output file to create on online discussion group on, say, cognitive dissonance? Or evangelical church members with Democratic voters, and sending each one a copy of “Profiles in Courage”?

Try some of your own. I was a data architect for years. It’s fun. Once you get the swing of it, you’ll start to find patterns and relationships you never knew existed. Some researchers say pattern recognition and relationship structuring are the foundation of intelligence. William Blake said that wise man find outlines, and therefore they are wise. (Later he said madmen find outlines, and therefore they are mad - but let's not change the subject.)

C'mon, political types - evolve from common sense to artificial intelligence. Give it a shot. Become a citizen in the new United States of Schematica: one nation, informational, with connectivity and access for all. Under God, of course.

The Kerik Kontroversy

2004-12-03T13:56:00.000-08:00

what color is his parachute?

It took Tom Ridge a few months to ruin his credibility with the public, but Bernard Kerik’s comes pre-shredded. His management of both the NYPD and the Iraqi police training program was poor, by the available evidence. But by issuing alarmist, unsupported allegations that America would be hit by a terror attack if Kerry were elected, Kerik showed he has the “right stuff” to be Bush’s Director of Homeland Security. The country desperately needs a good leader and a trustworthy spokesman in that job. Unfortunately, Kerik has demonstrated that he is neither.

The Kapsule Kerik: He was in charge of the NYPD during September 11, for which he and his team were cited for poor command and control operations by the 9/11 Commission. Two months after the tragedy, Kerik cut and ran on a traumatized community and a hard-hit police force to cash in on some lucrative private contracting assignments. The police training program he directed in Iraq was a debacle, as most of the trainees either joined the insurgents or ran away at the first sign of conflict. During the campaign, he said that “"if you put Sen. (John) Kerry in the White House, I think you are going to see (a terror attack) happen." These unsupported and wildly irresponsible allegations would never have been spoken by a responsible leader. Lastly, for good measure, an executive who worked closely with him was quoted in the Washington Post as saying “Management just simply isn’t his strong suit.”

That’s the short-version bio of Kerik: Management just isn’t his strong suit. Where do you go with a resume like that? Somewhere where management skills are not the top criterion for getting hired. Where you gotta be willing to get your hands dirty to if you want the job, as Kerik did with his reckless charges during the campaign. When he showed that he was willing to say whatever was necessary to elect the President, regardless of proof or the dictates of responsibility, he showed his willingness to take a fall on the integrity issue. He was on the team, willing to do what it takes to be a made man. Now comes his reward, which is also seen as a payoff to Rudy “Blame the Troops” Giuliani.

What a career path. What management skills. What ethics. What a choice for Homeland Security.

Good luck to all of us. And expect a lof ot "orange alerts," or whatever they're called by then, around the time the '06 elections come around.

cyberhurtin'

2004-12-03T08:05:00.000-08:00

these old eyes have seen it all

Three stories today at the intersection of futurology and pathology: A robot tries to find a cyber-CEO and fails, cyber-Nazism is on the march, and a cyberlectorate can websurf but can't read. First, the CEO of a Michigan-based technology company, CyberNET, killed himself after a shootout with police. CyberNET, according to its website, specialized in local outsourcing of IT departments for U.S. corporations. They were undoubtedly under a great deal of competition from firms using lower-cost offshore programmers. Barton Watson and several others were under investigation for fraud. As reported by local broadcaster WOOD-TV,

Michigan State Police officials sent a camera-equipped robot to search inside the home. The robot found nothing on the home's first level and was unable to make it to the second level. So deputies decided to go in the home at 8:30 a.m. "We did enter the home, did a search room to room, and unfortunately, the person we were looking for was found deceased in one of the bedrooms in the upper level,” said Sergeant Roger Parent of the Kent County Sheriff’s Department.

Watson was found dead from a self-inflicted gunshot wound. The story has more resonance than I care to contemplate - the technology boom-and-bust, outsourcing, the robot's failed attempt to locate his body. High-tech or not, some things are just sad.

Meanwhile, Blue Lemur reports (via Raw Story) that hackers invaded Howard Dean's website and inserted Nazi slogans:

The "ESX" and "boxocide" references are too obscure for me, and I don't know how to hack a website. But we've all seen the emotion before, as has Dean (who, it should be remembered, has a Jewish wife.)As Ellen Dana Nagler reports on Blogging of the President, "blog" was the word most looked up by users of Merriam-Webster Online. Other words in the Top Ten included "incumbent," "electoral," and "partisan," suggesting that many people are far more adept at surfing the Web than they are at operating the basic tools of democracy. We may well wind up having more information and less knowledge than any electorate in human history. Trite, but I don't seem to be accessing any e-irony right now.

Sinner Man where you gonna run to?

2004-11-29T17:58:00.000-08:00

will miss Ozzfest this year

Internet rule #1: Think before hitting "send" on an email.

Internet rule #2: Think before posting to a blog. I applied rule #2 carefully before completing the following post, but after some thought, additional research, and the addition of some disclaimers, I decided to go ahead with it. I'm not just talkin' trash here. I believe this post is fair to its subject, and that his story puts certain issues we face today into context. So here it is:
_____________________________

As part of our continuing study of the moral example provided by conservative "values" icons, Night Light today notes the passing of the Rev. Billy James Hargis, whose obituary is in today's New York Times. Hargis was the Southern clergyman who began as a "bawl and jump" country preacher, but moved on to bigger and better things. His life story is instructive in light of recent developments, particularly the conservative movement's use of the media and religion to promote partisan politics and an agenda of intolerance. Billy James Hargis condemned his political opponents for sins he was busy committing, and lived to pay for it (but probably not enough.)

As a self-proclaimed anti-Communist, Hargis used his radio and television shows to label certain institutions and individuals as Communist- sympathizing, Red-inspired, or just plain immoral. Among Hargis's main themes were the evils of indiscriminate and "deviant" sex, celebrities he considered sexually transgressive (the Beatles were a favorite target with those provocative mop-tops), and the liberal world's attitude of permissiveness toward sin. Other preferred targets were the Anti-Defamation League, the women's liberation movement, and Richard Nixon (after he "betrayed" America by going to China.)

A journalist named Fred Cook brought his media empire down (or diminished it considerably) by suing for equal time under the FCC's now all-but-dismantled Fairness Doctrine. Hargis had savaged Cook over Cook's biography of Hargis favorite Barry Goldwater. Broadcasters carrying Hargis' programming objected to carrying Cook's response and, as the Times puts it, "many stations thereafter were less inclined to broadcast controversial programs."

This was just the beginning of Hargis' troubles. He had long-running battles with the IRS over his religious organization's overt endorsement of Goldwater for President, and its support for specific legislation. The IRS ruling stated that this behavior disqualified his group for tax exemption as a religious organization, and was later upheld by the Federal courts. Can you picture today's IRS making a similar decision, and a Bush-appointed judge upholding it? Ironically, Hargis had ratted out another religious institution to the IRS, the Christian Century magazine, after it endorsed Lyndon Johnson in an editorial. The Century temporarily lost its tax exempt status.

The next twist in the 270-pound Hargis's career - well, let's let the Times tell the story: "In 1974, after Mr. Hargis was accused of having sexual relations with students of both sexes, he resigned as president of the college he had founded. He denied the accusations at the time and in a 1986 autobiography." So, it seems that male and female he "made" them, our Rev. Hargis. What the Times fails to mention is that Hargis originally confessed to the seductions, blaming "genes and chromosomes" rather than taking personal responsibility, before withdrawing his confession and undertaking a series of public denials of the charges.

His victims were members of his choir, the "All American Kids." Insert your own ironic joke here: I'm getting worn out. His pattern of behavior came to light, according to at least one source, when two of the Kids got married. On their wedding night, each learned that the other had also been seduced. Other members of the choir confirmed the allegations, leading to the Reverend's temporary confession. His abdication of responsibility to genetic science was followed by a withdrawal of the confession, then by a series of denials and the continuation of his clerical and political activities.

It seems to follow the usual pattern: conservative decries liberals for their immorality and their belief that you don't have to be responsible for your actions, then runs for every excuse he can find when they (or a member of their family) behaves badly. Consider the behavior of Rush Limbaugh or the Bush family, for starters. For reference, Merriam-Webster defines a "hypocrite" as "a person who puts on a false appearance of virtue or religion."

Three Disclaimers: First, I would not repeat allegations that I thought might be untrue, but it seems unlikely these charges are false given Hargis's own confession. And imagine the courage it took for any molestation victims, much less devoutly fundamentalist college students, to come forward in the 1970's. (Unfortunately it's not much easier today.) Second, I hope I don't hold others to a higher moral standard than I do myself. I have made mistakes in this life, like anyone, but I hope I've made sincere amends and avoided hypocrisy. Third, I don't judge Hargis for his obesity, although it creates unfortunate graphic images of his life story. End of disclaimers.

So now Billy James Hargis takes his leave and faces Judgment. Far be it from me to say what fate awaits him. But a word to the Reverend: If you do meet Satan, please tell him thanks for the Black Sabbath reunion tour but not to bother moving on to Twisted Sister.

Today's Sinner: Billy James Hargis
Commandments Violated: VII. Thou shalt not commit adultery; IX. Thou shalt not bear false witness.
Deadly Sins: Pride, Greed, Lust, Gluttony

Conservatives in Academia

2004-11-28T20:11:00.000-08:00

meet your new department head

Jesse at Pandagon has a new post addressing George Will's latest piece. The esteemed Mr. Will is best known for helping Ronald Reagan prepare for a Presidential debate using stolen briefing materials, then providing live television commentary of the same debate while concealing his role in the candidate's preparations. Will is now using his position of moral authority to allege that academia is biased against conservatives. Jesse writes,

There is a groundswell of complaint about systematic bias against a phantom group of academics who appear to not really want to work in academia to begin with. The "problem" will continue apace, because most of the time of schools' recruitment departments will be spent out there trying to find any conservative professor who will teach there...or, worse yet, flooded with second and third-rate potential professors who are all of a sudden die-hard Bush supporters.

We know what's coming next, because academia is only the latest target. We''ve seen what happens when similar allegations of bias are levelled against the news media. The latest institutional victim of the accusations (PBS, for example) cantilevers even more precipitously to the right in a vain attempt to avoid further rebuke - or, as a worse fate, is forced to offer yet another primetime programming slot to Tucker Carlson. Thus, false allegations of bias toward the left result in an actual tilt toward the Right - which, after all, is the ultimate objective.

The rush to find willing media conservatives for "balance" has provided jobs for otherwise underqualified talking heads like Carlson, McLaughlin, O'Reilly, and the entire Fox Network staff. It's what affirmative action must look like on Bizarro World. Now it's academia's turn.

UPDATE: Michael Berube's now on this one, too. Keep following what he has to say -- it should be interesting.

Debunking the Realignment Myth

2004-11-28T09:51:00.000-08:00

Let the numbers do the talking: "realignment" is a myth, an "is there/isn't there" debate that obscures the real picture. Today's Washington Post piece by John Harris revives the nearly month-old debate on whether this year's election represents a major realignment or just another squeaker. DemFromCT addresses the issue in DailyKos and is cited by the Daou Report and Memeorandum. Here's a number: In the Senate, a difference of less than one-half of one percent would have given Democrats a clear majority. Democrats would be foolish, however, to assume that they can succeed by conducting business as usual. Some imaginative research, and a defensive playbook against an Administration that will use every advantage of incumbency, will be needed if the Democrats are to thrive.

Let's look at those numbers. A difference of only 230,000 votes would have resulted in a deadlocked Senate, and an additional 113,000 votes (less than 400,000 total) would have given Democrats Senate control. That's a change of only 0.046% in total votes cast. Democratic candidates for the Senate received more than 3,000,000 votes than their Republican opponents, as shown here.

Several Republican Senate victory were certifiable squeakers, including a 4500-vote margin in South Dakota (1.16% of votes counted), 10,000 in Alaska (4% of all votes but a low raw number), 22,000 in Kentucky (1.3%), and 78,000 votes in Florida (1%). Then there's that screwball result in Louisiana, where there were four different Democratic candidates. The combined vote for these Democrats was only 66,000 less than the Republican victor's. Democratic victories in these states are achievable.

The Presidential race is another challenge, however. A 51% majority is still a majority. What is even more significant are the trends. Democrats need to be highly sensitive to those trendlines (in the Red states, among evangelicals, by class & ethnicity) that are moving against them. A lot more investigation is needed to determine what factors drove this year's results, and to separate temporary swings from developing trends. Incumbency, terror, media manipulation, evangelical and "moral values" drives, get-out-the-vote, negative campaigning - each was a factor. We need a comprehensive study that weighs these factors and their impact on the race, both nationally and by region. Democrats cannot build a Presidential election strategy without knowing the facts. Detailed analysis of this year's results should be job #1.

Non-voters are still the largest bloc, as this chart shows, and the one least understood. Bush was elected by 31% of eligible voters, while Kerry and other candidates were supported by 30% of eligible voters. "Decline to participate" continues to lead with 39%, a result with intriguing implications. The field of non-participant voter study, which should be an important political science subspecialty, appears fragmented and is certainly poorly understood by most commentators and political consultants. It is a rich and fascinating area of research, and will hopefully receive the attention it deserves.

The Republicans have their reasons for promoting realignment: to discourage their opponents, to create a false sense of "mandate" for a radical conservative agenda, and to create a self-fulfilling prophecy. The media will generally assist in this effort unless challenged, both because it can be 'spun' and because many reporters lack analytic skills. Harris' article is a refreshing exception, but it will be incumbent upon Democrats themselves to frame the discussion differently - both for political reasons, and to ensure that their own analyses are free of false assumptions.

The comments of Howard Wolfson and Mark Gersh in the Post article show both perspective and insight. There is no "major realignment" taking place, but we have an administration that is aggressively using policy and the power of incumbency to shore up its electoral strength. Democrats will need to display quick-wittedness and an ability to see beyond popular assumptions and mythologies if they want to prevail in the coming years. That, plus some innovative research into the behavior and belief systems of non-voters, could help the Democrats move beyond the "realignment myth" and into some creative strategic thinking.

i hate myself for loving hugh

2004-11-27T15:40:00.000-08:00

The Daou Repo rt provides a link to Hugh Hewitt's blog - where, unexpectedly, I find myself agreeing with Hugh when he says "Democrats don't like being the minority party, and the Washington Post sympathizes. Well, then, win some elections ... Whining, however, doesn't win Congressional seats. In fact, the opposite is true: Sounding like a victim instead of a serious opponent gets a party all the respect it deserves."

He's right - the Democratic Party needs a change of tone. I suspect that Hugh's prescription for winning, however, would look like defeat to me. It might even mean bringing Joe Lieberman out of his "spider hole of denial." Can't win for losing, going that route.

Skippy's back in town, too, highlighting blog items of interest as always. Thanks to DR and Skippy for the valuable research and links. Oh, and for linking to our post about the God Gulag, too ... much appreciated.

Cartier-Bresson and God

2004-11-27T13:34:00.000-08:00

The sin of Pride - a 'decisive moment'

This image, where Bush broke with protocol for a Presidential Library ceremony and forced his way past Clinton to be the first through the door, brought to mind these quotes:

Matthew ch.023 v.012: "Whosoever shall exalt himself shall be abased; and he that shall humble himself shall be exalted."

Proverbs ch.011 v.002: "When pride cometh, then cometh shame."

Job ch.040 v.012: "Look on every one that is proud, and bring him low."
___________________________________________

And this one:

"To me, photography is the ... recognition, in a fraction of a second, of the significance of an event." Henri Cartier-Bresson

The God Gulag

2004-11-27T11:36:00.000-08:00

FL Corrections chief Crosby - say "amen" or else
Bush Brothers - on a mission from God

I was going to write something ironic about the renewed call for faith-based initiatives, and how that means we'll need a Department of Religion. As I began to read and think about the whole issue of faith-based policy, however, darker realities began to set in, especially regarding "faith-based prison reform." It has been suggested that faith-based prisons will be high on the list of second term initiatives for the Bush Administration. That's a grim prospect. The Bush prison initiative disinters a 200-year-old thought control experiment and animates it with an "Up With People"/"Promisekeepers" facade. The Department of Religion will have to wait. The experimenters are at the gates.

The Acton Institute, a religiously-based think tank supporting faith-based imprisonment, is open about what it considers the value of this 'reform' program: "Able adults who are behind bars cannot contribute to the economy by using their God-given talents creatively. They cannot build up civil society by participating in social networks and supporting families." In other words, let's get more workers on the street - devout, presumably compliant workers. Let's have them join "social networks," which is a code word for churches, boosting membership and conservative voting rolls. Lastly, once they are indoctrinated let's make sure that "support families," meaning "procreate" and create more model citizens.

The prison "reform" project is actually a time travel experiment that takes us back to the 18th Century. That's a long journey even for this Administration, which usually aims no further back than the pre-New Deal 1920's. The first faith-based prison reform project was undertaken by Quakers in Pennsylvania in 1790, attempting to replace the dungeons of the time with a place where prisoners were kept in enforced isolation and given religious training. The hope was that the spartan living conditions and enforced spiritual indoctrination would eventually make the prisoners penitent (hence the name "penitentiary.") Inmates were housed in more comfortable surroundings, but were not allowed books, social contact, or any other distractions. They were required to work constantly, which would have pleased the Acton Institute, and given only the Bible for study. The abusive and coercive nature of this experiment led to its widespread condemnation and eventual closure, and these facilities eventually became the 'penitentiaries' of today.

Flash-forward to the 21st Century, where Florida "Secretary of Corrections" James Crosby described Jeb Bush's model faith-based prison as "a cocoon" where inmates could practice their faith free from "negative pressures and interactions." Mr. Crosby, thy speech doth sound strangely familiar.

Nobody can rationally argue that our prison system doesn't need reform. It is a torture chamber with 1,000 rooms. It is no coincidence that guards from the U.S. prison system were used to supervise the torture at Abu Ghraib. Yet the "reform" being promised here is a thought control project run amok. The misinformation being spread about this initiative includes the following:

Participation is strictly voluntary. Prisoners are, in fact, heavily coerced to participate. The potential consequences for refusing to participate include a longer prison term and harsher living conditions while incarcerated. Given this enormous pressure, it is surprising that 100 out of 800 prisoners at Lawtey Prison (the Florida experiment) declined to participate when the program was created, knowing that they would be transferred to other prisons and denied the opportunity of early release as a result.

It is non-sectarian. The program's organizers stated, and the press dutifully reported, that the prisoners at Lawtey represented 26 faiths. This implies an ecumenical program, but experience teaches otherwise. The InnerChange Prison Initiative, initiated in Texas in 1997 when George W. Bush was Governor and expanded into Iowa, is exclusively Christian. A more telling statistic, reported in Science & Technology News: "Most of the groups that work at Lawtey are Christian; on a roster provided by the Florida Department of Corrections, there are no non-Christian volunteers listed."

Just to underscore the point, I'm sure all the non-Christian prisoners got the message when Jeb Bush came to visit for the holidays and said, “I can’t think of a better place to reflect on the awesome love of our Lord Jesus than to be here at Lawtey Correctional. God bless you.” Happy Hannukah to you too, Mr. Governor.

There is no coercion to practice religion: In fact, the InnerChange Initiative required prisoners to study the Bible and to attend church regularly for three months after release. Failure to comply is reported to prison authorities and can impact release and parole restrictions. In Lawtey, Science & Theology News describes an evening service:

“My job is to guide you to a personal relationship with the god of your faith. Amen?” (the leader) asks, moving from one man to the next and resting his palms on their shoulders. “And the only way I know how to do that is prayer.”

The leader is asking for an "amen" back from each prisoner. Jews don't shout out individual "amens" like evangelical Christians do. Neither do Muslims, Buddhists, Hindus, or Native Americans. Imagine the social pressure on a prisoner who does not, in fact, reply with a hearty "amen" in front of his peers - and under the eyes of the warden, who was sitting in a back row during the service.

The Prison Fellowship Initiative actively participates in the faith-based prison initiative. Its leader, Pat Nolan, is refreshingly honest about his motivations, in contrast to the Bush brothers: “We don’t do this because it works. We do it because it’s what Jesus calls us to,” Nolan says. “We do it because Jesus was explicit, and we think that Christianity is the way, the truth and the life. That’s what we have to share. If we try to get it down to a generic faith thing, it loses its meaning.”

If Pat Nolan was talking my Parole Board, I know exactly what I'd say to him: "Amen."

In a related story, a Christian-based operator of privatized prisons called the Maranatha Corporation has been charged by the State of California with misappropriating $1.6 million in funds collected from prisoners' pay phones and redirecting it to their reform efforts. They are in negotiations with the state, which wants them to return the funds. "Maranatha" means "our Lord is coming." Maybe he'll bring the money.

Charles Dickens wrote extensively about the horrors of Poor Houses and prisons in England, and one might have expected him to be de-sensitized to harsh penal conditions by the time he visited an American penitentiary. Yet he wrote this in 1842 after visiting one such institution: "Those who designed this system of Prison Discipline ... do not know what it is that they are doing. ... I hold this slow and daily tampering with the mysteries of the brain to be immeasurably worse than any torture of the body."

Let me hear you say 'yeah.'

friday hepcatblogging

2004-11-26T10:39:00.000-08:00

Lord Buckley

My kitty is sleeping in one of her secure undisclosed locations, so I have to use another cat for Friday catblogging. If mine ever gets up I'll post a picture, if only for Night Light reader Grandma Jo and other devotees of Friday catbloggers everywhere.

Today's substitute is the hippest of all hip cats, the great Lord Buckley, spoken-word artist of the Jazz Age. Learn more about him at www.lordbuckley.com. Once inside, I recommend you go to "wordland" (cool name, that) and peruse Lord Buckley's speeches using the Hip 'O' Matic 5000 Turbo as a translator. But be warned - there is no substitute for the Lord. He must be heard, rather than read, to be truly appreciated.

Find your way to "The Nazz," his beautiful and surprisingly reverentful telling of the story of Jesus. It sure ain't the Pat Robertson version.

Talking Deadspeak to Leahy

2004-11-24T10:41:00.000-08:00

look, i can catch my hand

So Sen. Patrick Leahy, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee, has been quoted as saying that Alberto Gonzales is "nice," and that he's "no Attila the Hun." I know we've lowered our standards, guys, but didn't realize that as long as you don't rape & pillage you're OK. Sure, Mr. G was the legal architect behind Abu Ghraib, but he didn't tell Leahy to "go fuck himself" like Cheney so Pat's thinks he's got "good vibes" or something. (Check out Liquid List's post on Mr. Nice.)

How do you reason with a guy who says Gonzales is "nice"? Wait: He told us himself. When Jerry Garcia died, Leahy mentioned that he's been a lifelong Deadhead. (Was that him in the corner in '71, tripping on Sunshine and moving his hand up and down in the strobe light?) So, Pat, let me try some Deadspeak and see we can communicate. I've linked to this useful Grateful Dead lyric database to use phrases you'll remember from their songs. (Deadheads, I've footnoted each lyric in case you want to play Name That Tune.)

"Dear Mr. Fantasy" (1):

"Please don't dominate the rap, Jack, if you got nothing new to say." (2) "This town ain't got no heart" (3) and "treachery is tearing me limb from limb." (4) Unfortunately, "you've all been asleep and would not believe" (5) that you can't be a "friend of the devil" and still be a "friend of mine". (6) Remember, "in the thick of the evening when the dealing gets rough" (7) these guys will "steal you face right off your head." (8) "Some folks look for answers, some folks look for fights, " (9) so ”watch what you're doin' with your time." (10)

”What do you want me to do, to watch for you while you are sleeping?" (11) There's "trouble ahead, trouble behind" (12) and it's "later than I thought when I first believed you." (13) "What else do you lack to make it right" (14)? Sure, "it costs a lot to win," but it's "even more to lose" (15), and "if you make a mistake, you're going to pay for it twice." (16) "If all you got to live for is what you left behind (17)," then, Pat, history will ask of you: "Did he doubt or did he try?" (18) So, come on, brother. "Nobody's finished, we ain't even begun." (19)

See you at the snack bar during "Dark Star."

---------------------------------------------------------------

(1) Dear Mr. Fantasy (orig. by Traffic); (2) New Speedway Boogie; (3) Shakedown Street; (4) Althea; (5) Estimated Prophet: (6) Friend of the Devil; (7) Scarlet Begonias; (8) He's Gone; (9) Playing in the Band; (10) Cream Puff War; (11) Box of Rain; (12) Casey Jones; (13) Ship of Fools; (14) Cats Under the Stars; (15) Deal; (16) Chinatown Shuffle; (17) Mississippi Halfstep Uptown Toodeloo; (18) Saint Stephen; (19) The Golden Road (to Unlimited Devotion)

A Progressive Gives Thanks

2004-11-23T11:58:00.000-08:00

William Blake - who lays the smackdown on Jerry Falwell (below)

I've never really been a big fan of Thanksgiving. A 'progressive,' if that's what I am, is a person who sees what is wrong with the world and seeks to right it. Being a progressive, like being a conservative, is as much a statement of personality as it is of politics. The character trait of discontentment can be a great force for good. Some of us can take a good thing too far, though. Like while driving.

Gratitude has never been a natural part of my emotional repertoire, so Thanksgiving and I were never a good fit. I've been lucky enough to have some good advice over the years, however. It's been suggested that I stop every now and then to remember the positives - to try keeping my balance through difficult times like these. There are a few good things out there that come to mind. It means letting go of my ironic detachment, to which I've become very sentimentally attached, but here goes anyway ...

I'll be giving thanks tomorrow to whatever Force or scientific principles gave us the following:

Our voters - More than 57 million people voted for John Kerry. More than 41 million voted for Democrats in the Senate races, a 3,000,000+ victory over the Republicans nationally. This shows that there is a great reservoir of wise people in this country - people who were able to see the truth and act accordingly, despite the armada of electronic hypnotists that we call media. This is a strong base for future action.

Our activists - A huge wave of volunteers was formed this year. MoveOn.org and other organizations created outlets for nascent activism, and the results were impressive. So they beat us the first time around - big deal! They've been doing it for thirty years and we're just getting started. To the Falwells and Dobsons of the world, I'll quote the great Satchel Paige: "Don't look back, something might be gaining on ya."

Good advocates - We've got a lot of effective communicators speaking up for progressive positions. Michael Moore, you may have your flaws, but don't we all? You've gotten the word out to a heck of a lot of people, and you never quit. Thanks, big guy. Bruce Springsteen, I always knew you were a hell of a songwriter. Now I know you're a great spokesperson, too. It figures - some guys have all the luck. Bill Maher, Jon Stewart - who knew that stand-up comedians would become the new protest singers. What's next - Shecky Greene leads the revolution? Jackie Vernon as Minister of Culture and Brother Theodore as spiritual advisor?

New information outlets - I don't care what anybody says, the "Internets" worked. We have the blogs to keep us informed, MoveOn to keep us (sort of) organized, and outlets like Guerrilla News Network, truthout.org, Democratic Underground, Liberal Oasis, and Common Dreams to gives us voices.I'm thankful for every information source we can get, and for voices like Daily Howler and Media Matters that let us know just how distorted a picture our "news organizations" really provide.

Great music that's also good - See the above-mentioned Mr. Springsteen. He's Exhibit A, but we've also got John Fogerty, Eminem, Willie Nelson, Chuck D, and a bunch of great punk bands speaking out for us. Not to mention the immortal Merle Haggard, who's not on anybody's side but wrote a terrific song called "That's the News" about the Iraq war.

Some new leaders - Barack Obama, Barack Obama, Barack Obama. There's probably somebody else I'm forgetting.

Fine writing - Eric Alterman. Thomas Franks. James Wolcott. And lots more where that came from.

Their political mistakes - They're already overplaying their hand. I mean, come on - Changing the House rules so that DeLay can stay on even if he's indicted? Thank you, thank you, thank you! It remains to be seen if the Democrats can effectively use gifts like these, but I'm grateful for each golden opportunity.

The religious teachings of the Jewish prophets, Jesus Christ, and Mohammed, which stand in stark contrast to the actions of their purported followers in the Israeli ultra-right, our so-called "religious" Right, Islamic terrorists, and Wahhabi states like Saudi Arabia. We can use the teachings of these three religions to combat religiously-inspired oppression. And for the wisdom of William Blake, who wrote "that vision of Christ which thou dost see/is my vision's greatest enemy." Take that, Jerry Falwell.

Heroes like Gandhi, Martin Luther King, and Nelson Mandala, who struggled for many years against odds much longer than we face, and yet prevailed. I know I've got it easy.

Bush approval ratings that are hovering at 50%, despite the fact he just won an election. They went from 90% after September 11 to 71% after we invaded Iraq. Now he can't get much past the halfway mark. That's a major shift in the right direction. Not far enough to win the 2004 election, but now we've got 2006 in our sights.

Real Democrats - I'm thinking of Jimmy Carter and Al Gore, who seem to have become the conscience of the Party. I just wish both of them had been this forceful when they were elected President.

Let me know if you have anything to add to this list. Otherwise, have a Happy Thanksgiving.

UPDATE: Two good new additions to the list from Ellen M. - Al Franken (how could I forget Al?) and Sorry Everybody, the website where we can tell the world we did everything we could to win in 2004.

The Joy of Losing

2004-11-22T17:01:00.000-08:00

this is SO the wrong way to go

Bob Somerby at Daily Howler has a great piece today on the contempt some people have been showing toward those who objected to the NFL's new locker-room-seduction promo. You don't have to agree that the ad was offensive, or that Janet Jackson's breast-baring was vulgar, etc. etc., to respect other people's feelings on the subject, yet many of us don't. Hel-lo .... Instead, some of us adopt an attitude of moral superiority toward anyone who's offended or repelled by sexual content. Good way to perpetuate the Blue/Red culture gap. Remember, "offended" or "repelled" reactions are emotions, not political positions. I thought we believed in respecting the feelings of others.

Why do so many people want to mock or demean those with whom they disagree? Bob says it's tribal, and I think he's right. The "IDIOT" image and label shown above is from one of those places that sells clothing to "progressives," if that's the right word. There was a time when to be "progressive" meant to have respect for all, even those who disagreed with you. It meant working to create a better country in partnership with many diverse groups. That's the point of community organizing - the community only agrees with you after you organize it, not before. Should Saul Alinsky have stayed home with his friends, talking about how inferior other people and their leaders are?

This t-shirt represents, to me, much of what's wrong with the new 'progressive' movement's thinking and behavior. Don't we want to win people over to our side? Those who voted for Bush won't be persuaded by political apparel like this. If you're NOT wearing it to win people over, then I think Bob's right and it's about some kind of social bonding with those who already agree with you. That may make you feel better, but shouldn't we draw the line when our 'feel-good' activities start harming the cause we want to feel good about?

Here's another question (the obvious one): If Bush is such an idiot, why do the people buying these t-shirts keep losing to him? Clearly what he does resonates with a lot of voters. That something is worthy of study, so we can learn and improve. He's doing something right, even if its only picking the right people to lead his campaign. Face it: he picked Rove, and Kerry picked Shrum. Who was smarter there?

On the same note, this morning I saw a bumper sticker that said "Yee-ha is not a foreign policy." Well, "yee-ha" isn't Bush's foreign policy, either, so this is a stupid sticker that oozes misguided contempt. Like it or not, our government's actions are driven by a calculated strategy, not a goofy rebel yell. Granted, the execution has been terrible, but our government's actions reflect both strategy and ideology. Belittling them doesn't win any voters over, and it blinds us with such a brilliant ray of self-satisfaction that we don't analyze what that strategy might be and how to combat it. That's playing right into the hands of the "idiot."

I don't think the people who voted for Bush are bad people. I think they're human. I think they're preoccupied with their very human lives, and I think they believed what they were told over and over in the 'liberal media.' Insulting Bush means insulting them, too. It lets them know that WE'RE WRITING THEM OFF. And it doesn't accomplish anything positive.

Which leads me to a question that's often asked in Twelve Step circles: Would you rather be "right" or happy? Meaning, would you rather have the satisfaction that comes from knowing you're on the "correct" side of a nasty fight, or would you rather avoid the fight if possible and work together to solve your relationship problems? Because what we have, when all is said and done, is a bad relationship with our Red-voting neighbors. Do we want to "work things out" or get one of those "secede from the South" divorces so many people are fantasizing about? I'd rather see a few more Bush voters become comfortable with the Democratic Party and its values - values that are often consistent with "Red State" sociology, anyway, no matter what hokum David Brooks is peddling this week. Honey, can we talk?

Caring,respect, love of children, kindness -- these things are as important to the average evangelical as they are to the most ethical liberal. (I exclude their leaders, the cynical ministers and politicians, from this assessment.) I know, because I've lived among of them. Yes, progressives, like Margaret Mead or Levi-Strauss I've lived among the natives and come back to tell the tale.

The new progressive mantra: People are the same everywhere - except in Texas, Mississippi, Oklahoma ...

The good news about the values we all share is getting scrambled in transmission, and lost in the noise of our disagreements over gay marriage, sexual content in the media, and abortion. We don't have to back away from our beliefs. But do we want to be right, or happy? The happiness of winning will be ours when we learn to stress consensus as well as conflict, agreement as well as antagonism. Unless, that is, we've decided we'll never win an election again, in which case we're free to trash anybody who doesn't think like we do.

Once you've lost hope, the natural reaction is to lash out. But how much satisfaction will that really give you? And wouldn't you rather find reasons to be hopeful? I would - and so would most Bush voters. After all, it's only human.

Democrats for Christ

2004-11-20T10:20:00.000-08:00

Sen. Tom Coburn, MD (R-OK)

I'm going to role-play a little here. Say I'm a political consultant who likes to win. You ask me what it would take to win a couple more Red states for the Democrats in the '06 Congressional and Senatorial races. Here's what I say:

First, form a Christian values 527. Then find a white male Southern minister to serve as a spokesman. Now, run an ad like this throughout the Red states during the campaign:

AD: "FOR GOD'S SAKE"

"Hello, I'm Reverend ____ ____". As he speaks we see a black screen, with pictures of Republican politicians fading in and out as they are mentioned.

REVEREND: Republicans. They claim to represent our moral values. Then why did they elect a U.S. Senator who, by his own admission, killed unborn children - and then lied about it so that he could get paid for it out of your tax dollars? You can't represent life when you've delivered death. And why did the Republicans elect a Speaker of the House who cheated on his wife - while she lay in a hospital bed with cancer? Why did they elect a Governor in California who molested unwilling women, and now supports dissecting fetuses for stem cell research? Are these really people you want upholding your moral values?

Abortionists. Cheats. Adulterers... Republicans. For God's sake, don't vote for them.

(END)

It's a page from the Karl Rove playbook: Attack them where they're strong, not where they're weak. Pretty soon false equivalence will work for you, not against you. "Yeah," evangelical voters will say, "I guess neither party's really very Christian." GOP voter turnout drops, and then a few close elections in the Red states (e.g. KY, OK, South Dakota this year) swing back our way.

Now this ad might never even get aired, given the attitudes of media owners, but the free publicity it would receive (as with the Swift Boat ads) will guarantee that it gets shown over and over on the news. Democratic candidates can express their outrage over it, calling the ad "vile" and "indecent" while reaping its benefits.

So when I'm done, you tell me you don't want to run that kind of dirty campaign. I say "Hey, do you wanna win or don't you?" Brutal? Yes. Effective? Probably.

This is the "bootleg version" of Democrats for Christ, but there's a radio-friendly one, too. In that version, the Reverend talks about the ethics and teachings of Jesus and how they're routinely violated by Republicans and conservatives. We would all more be comfortable with this approach, and some might even consider it high-minded. But I'm the consultant, right? And I say the nice version just isn't going to be all that effective. You want to fight, you gotta get dirty.

So consider this a thought experiment for Democrats. Visualize the bootleg ad and ask yourself: How badly (in both senses of the word) do you want to win? Because they want to win really, really badly.

I'm struggling with this one, because I don't want us to become like them. I don't want them to keep winning ugly, either. And ugly seems to win every time. So help me out. Should we get in the trenches or not? And if we don't, how do we stop losing the Red states?

evil dead

2004-11-19T20:57:00.000-08:00

killed 4 children, went free for 30 years in "moral values" Red state

The right-wing catchphrase of the 1980s was "moral relativism. " This was originally an academic term, but came to be used by Christian conservatives to denounce the tolerant attitude they felt liberals held toward sin. The fuzzy-headed, atheistic "progressives" (supposedly) condoned drug use, street crime, even murder, when practiced by people toward whom they were allegedly biased - the poor, minorities, youth, and the like. Moral relativism became an epithet, containing as it did the suggestion that lefties condoned or rationalized evil when their friends were doing it.

Turns out the real moral relativists are the so-called Christian right. Any one of the Ten Commandments can, it seems, be broken with impunity by their allies and friends. I'll give you couple of case studies that are, as the old movies used to say, "ripped from today's headlines."

Today's obituaries note the passing of two luminaries from the religious Right. The indisputably evil Bobby Frank Cherry died of cancer in prison. Cherry was one of the conspirators who set the bomb that killed four little black girls attending church school in Birmingham in 1963. Though their identities were well-known to local law enforcement, the perpetrators of this horrific crime lived in freedom for thirty years after committing their murders, enjoying the wonders of nature and the comfort of friends and family. These precious gifts, forever denied to four beautiful children, were made possible by the sympathy felt toward these killers by white politicans in the Red state of Alabama, and the "moral values" of those who voted for them.

The segregationist leaders of Cherry's home state were among those who created the Republicans "Southern strategy," which continues to rely on coded racist signals to build its dominance in the once-Democratic South. Ronald Reagan launched his 1980 Presidential campaign in Philadelphia, Missisippi, where three civil rights workers were murdered by segregationists. The symbolism was not lost on Cherry's allies and sympathizers at the time. The same goes for George W. Bush's 2000 campaign speech at Bob Jones University, where interracial dating was still banned at the time.

Today's Sinner #1: Bobby Frank Cherry.
Commandment broken: #7 - Thou shalt not kill.

No responsible conservative political or religious leader would do anything but condemn a killer like Cherry. I would never suggest otherwise. Liars are another matter, however.

Today's obituary page also marked the passing of Reed Irvine, the founder of Accuracy in Media. Irvine was the architect of the "liberal bias" myth, and successfully pressured the media into assuming its current supine position regarding the mass deception carried on by the religious right, the Republican party, and the Bush administration. Not content with this achievement, Irvine went on togenerate a continuing stream of falsehoods regarding the Left, Democrats, and especially then-President Bill Clinton. There is ample documentation that he and his allies knew they were spreading falsehoods - which is also known as bearing false witness. (See the writings of David Brock, who now runs Media Matters.)

The most shocking and repellent act in this man's sordid career remains his campaign to frame Clinton for murder. His calculating lies regarding the suicide death of Vince Foster caused untold torment to Foster's grieving family and friends. The elementary decency most of us would show to a bereaved widow and her children was lacking in this man, whose political blood-lust overwhelmed any sense of morality. Media Matters and others continue to document the Right's disinformation campaign.

Today's Sinner #2: Reed Irvine
Commandment Broken: #9 - Thou shalt not bear false witness

I wonder what Jesus would say to these two men should they ever meet in Heaven - which is not a likely prospect, given their track records.

whirling claws of steel

2004-11-19T19:55:00.000-08:00

look into these eyes. then try petting her.

It took me a year to be able to hold her - a scratch-filled passion play of a year, with theme music by Ted Nugent. (She was my wife's, originally - a stepcat.) It was a Zen exercise to try making friends with her. Now, ten years and two pints of O-positive later, I can't get her off my lap. The end result: i can friday catblog, too, just like the legends.

dedicated to the one i love

2004-11-14T10:54:00.000-08:00

not the Democratic minority leader

Oh, so the Senate Democrats have selected Harry Reid to be their leader, not Terry Reid. I wasn't clear on why the Democrats would turn to a minor British rocker from the 1960's to lead them in this critical time. I thought maybe it was part of this "search for a new identity" they keep talking about. If feeding the poor isn't a good enough image anymore, or protecting innocent civilians from death and injury, or defending Social Security, or respecting a woman's right to choose - if standing for these ideals isn't good enough for them anymore, then I figured they might be ready for anything. And, while Harry Reid opposes a woman's right to choose and pandered to the right with a flag-burning amendment, Terry Reid was offered the lead singer position in Led Zeppelin before Robert Plant took it. That's a pretty good credential. He also covered Sonny & Cher's "Bang Bang," while Harry Reid seems determined to remake their other big hit, "The Beat Goes On."

So this is how the Senate Democrats choose to define themselves. Mrs. Night Light brought this issue to my attention this morning by flinging the New York Times across the room and emitting a near-ultrasonic shriek that cleared the trees of birds and left hairline cracks in the French crystal. (Well, not really, but she was pretty pissed.) She was reading about Sen. Reid, the teetotaling Mormon who boasts that a former Republican Committee chair is one of his biggest supporters, and who promises that his friendship with President Bush will not affect his performance.

Remember, Democratic Senate candidates won the popular vote nationally by more than 3,000,000 votes, a mandate equal to or greater than the President's. Remember, too, Harry Truman's observation that "in a race between a Republican and a Republican, the Republican wins every time." Yet the Democrats have once more chosen the time-worn path of appeasement. Mr. Reid will be polite and humble and won't make a mess on the carpet. Give 'em ... heck, Harry. They continue to try the 'loyal opposition' approach, since it worked so well for Tom Daschle. And that pro-Iraq vote sure helped Kerry craft his message. Listen up, wimps: The meek may inherit the earth, but not while Karl Rove's alive.

Thanks, Democrats, for destabilizing my marriage. I had finally talked the Mrs. out of moving to Europe by pointing out that conservatives didn't move to Argentina when Goldwater lost. They hung in for 30 years and took over the world, like Number Two did for Dr. Evil. We can do it, too, I told her. She was just starting to go for it, and now this. Why fight for Democrats, says Mrs. NL, if they're going to start becoming more & more like Republicans? She says they've stabbed all of their voters in the back and let down the armies of GOTV volunteers (she was one of them), by picking this guy.

flawless execution

2004-11-14T09:29:00.000-08:00

going all the way

From Dahr Jamail's Daily Dispatches, this link to a Scottish newspaper's story of an innocent Fallujah family decimated by the assault there. You won't read much about these kinds of civilian horrors in the US press, though. What you can read are the exultant statements of Marine Major General Richard Natonski, from ABC News' website. "Maybe we learned from April," Natonski said in an interview with The Associated Press. "We learned we can't do it piecemeal. When we go in, we go all the way through. We had the green light this time and we went all the way." And, says ABC,

"On Sunday, Marines were expected to reopen the bridge where two American contractors killed by militants were strung up in March, sparking the earlier siege of Fallujah by U.S forces. 'This is a big event for us,' said Maj. Todd Des Grosseilliers, 41, from Auburn, Maine. 'It's symbolic because the insurgents closed the bridge and we are going to reopen it.'"

So, a year after the images of Saddam's statues being pulled down by "ordinarily Iraqis" were proven to have been staged, there's going to be another "symbolic event." Expect lots of press coverage for it, but none for the funeral of Artica Salim, who was seven months pregnant when she died.

DEMS WON 3,000,000 MORE SENATE VOTES THAN GOP

2004-11-11T09:55:00.000-08:00

Have Extensive "Political Capital" For Blocking Presidential Extremism

I just spent an hour totaling the Senate results for the entire country. Democratic candidates received 3,184,943 more votes than Republicans nationally - a victory margin of nearly 4% in the popular vote. Disproportional representation in the Senate accounts for the difference. Barbara Boxer's margin of victory in California alone (1,956,938 votes more than her Republican challenger), is greater than the Republican margins in Florida, Kentucky, Louisiana, South Dakota, North Dakota, North Carolina, South Carolina, Oklahoma, New Hampshire, Missouri, and Utah put together. This may be the most votes ever received nationally by a political party for a Senate campaign.

What a mandate. In fact, the Democratic Senatorial mandate is virtually identical to the Bush's self-proclaimed Presidential "mandate." Look:

Let's get the message to Harry Reid and the Senate Democrats: stay strong. Question Alberto Gonzales directly and clearly. Filibuster judicial nominees if they are biased and partisan. Block the dismantling of fifty years of social progress.

Don't be shy -- we've got lots of political capital to spend.

NEW HEADLINE - "Dems Win by 3,000,000 Nationally - Unfortunately, in an election that's even less representative than the Presidency."

wolfs

2004-11-09T19:54:00.000-08:00

weakness attracts those who are waiting to do America harm

Poor Wolf. No matter how distorted his reporting gets, he always seems like such a decent guy to me. He just seems weak, cowed, afraid to wander off message and get clobbered. Tonight he was reading from the new post-election script, the one that reflects all that new political capital the President says he's amassed. There's a trapped look in his eyes, and I can't see his fingers when he's on TV. Maybe he's using hand gestures like the USS Pueblo sailors did, signalling to us that he doesn't want to say these things but they put him under so much pressure.

Tonight on NewsNight Wolf told us thatBush "visited injured solders, which he does from time to time." He should take notes from CNN's own Dana Bash, who reported today that the President made "his sixth trip to Walter Reed (to visit injured soldiers), but he hasn't been there in about eight months, since March 19 ... Now, the White House denies that the campaign, either the campaign schedule or politics, was the reason for him not visiting wounded soldiers there in eight months." Dana, maybe you can talk to your anchorman and let him know you can still slip a little truth onto TV in Red America. For the moment.

The President "visited injured solders, which he does from time to time." That sounds so ... nice, like it's something he remembers to do on the way back from the grocery store. From time to time. Like when it's not politically inconvenient. Wolf, his spine torqueing from the administration's headlock, papers over the unpleasant but embarrasingly obvious reality that even our wounded soldiers are nothing more than props to be hidden or paraded as deemed expedient.

The CNN anchor: he can be ... persuaded.

You know, I hope Wolf really is caving under pressure, because I don't know how he can believe this stuff. Wolf, Rush's girlfriend Daryl Kagan, Paula Zahn ... I'd love to see what the employment application forms at CNN look like. "Describe an incident in your career where you successfully made a Mobius strip out of factual information." "Please provide the names of three references - one from the American Enterprise Institute, one from the Cato Institute, and one from the Republican party - to provide a broad political spectrum of opinions about your capabilities."

I still want to believe, though, that Wolf is a good person in a bad situation. Maybe it's the beard. Maybe I just wish we still had a Fourth Estate in this country. Edward R. Murrow, the nation turns its lonely eyes to you.

First, solve for x

2004-11-09T13:56:00.000-08:00

the arc of red over blue

We seem to be the kind of people who don't balance their checkbook. All the airtight arithmetical arguments about tax cut inequality, social security, and ballooning deficits failed against the steady drumbeat of slogans and images. Our campaign speeches sounded like algebra problems to a lot of voters. That's the bad part.

The good part (and I think there is one) is that we are a country that votes with its heart. That's an endearing quality, if you don't think about the consequences. The heart makes us do foolish things, as they say. Hearts want to do good, but don't know how to do it. Learn to reach more hearts, and we will win. Besides, I don't balance my checkbook either.

Hearts are won with music, not numbers or words. The power of repetitive slogans is the power of a catchy song: you forget the words but you can't stop humming the melody. We've got the right political math, now we need to create political music.

How about stealing a tune from Barry Goldwater? "In your heart, you know he's right." Or let's make up a song of our own, something catchy. Something that gets in your head and stays there. Something you might sing to yourself while you're sitting through 5th period Algebra. C'mon, kids, let's put on a show!

bringing it all back home

2004-11-08T22:30:00.000-08:00

a senator's best friend?

Nick at Blogging of the President has the right take on the Republican cultural offensive.

How do we do wage culture war right back? We target ALL MODERATE (and not so moderate ie. that bitch, Rick Santorum) REPUBLICANS IN BLUE STATES. They want to support their crazy fucking party? Then they should have to pay for it. (snip) A simple scary ad. "You grew up in a pro-choice world. A vote for INSERT MODERATE LOCAL CONGRESSMAN HERE will ensure that you lose that choice." A vote for Governor Pataki is a vote to reverse Roe V. Wade. A vote for Arlen Spector is a vote to give your tax money to evangelical Churches. A vote for Mayor Bloomberg is a vote to have Creationism taught in schools.

That may be putting it a little harshly, but it's absolutely right - bring it on for every Blue State Republican (or BSRs, as I call them.) Raise the price of collaboration with the New Republicanism and its agenda. Let the Republicans know that if they want to win campaigns through polarization, they're going to lose some the same way. The Democrats have been using Marquis of Queensbury rules while the Republicans have been fighting with chains and knives.

The new mantra: a vote for a Republican is a vote for extremism. That will be effective, and you know what - it's true. BSRs showed us during the campaign that when the chips were down they would twist into whatever contortions Karl Rove asked of them. Pataki lied about Kerry. Guiliani disparaged the troops. Santorum raised the visibility of man/dog love* as a lifestyle option. (That one might not have been Rove's idea, though; it has the ring of personal inspiration to it.)

As we used to say in the 60's, bring the war back home. We don't have to lose moderate voters by pointing out the consequences of voting for a BSR, either. The Republicans seem to retain some moderates no matter how extreme they get. In fact, they've shown us that once you've gone all medieval you can backpedal just a little and people think you're more moderate than the other guy. You might even get a hug from Tom Daschle - a good and decent man who just didn't understand what he was up against.

*Prompting my favorite reporter’s quote of the year: “I'm sorry, I didn't think I was going to talk about "man on dog" with a United States senator, it's sort of freaking me out.” He was experiencing that "clash of cultures" we've been hearing so much about. And people say we're too out there for them? Santorum should at a minimum observe the same rules that Mafia porn distributors allegedly once used: no bestiality.

political capitalism

2004-11-08T16:24:00.000-08:00

Less than one-third of all eligible voters endorsed the Bush/Cheney vision for America. They're gonna write a lot of checks with this "capital" anyway. It's called leveraging.

Kubler-Ross for DNC Chair

2004-11-06T22:36:00.000-08:00

Dr. Elizabeth Kubler-Ross

The Daily Kos is floating some names as replacements for Terry McAuliffe. I'd like to propose a new one: Elizabeth Kubler-Ross. She can help the Democrats through the five stages of grief:

Denial: Conspiracy theories are our denial mechanism. Face it - the guy won. We won't find four million stolen votes. Sure they might've grabbed a few here and there. We need to let them know we're watching (which is why I support Black Box Voting), but whatever we find will have just been a practice run for next time. The electorate really voted this way, and we should plan our lives accordingly.

Anger: Dr. K-R taught us to accept this emotion, unjudged. It is healthy. It will motivate us for the task ahead. Don't stay in this stage too long, however, or you will burn out. We need steady combustion for the next four years, so let's not explode in a brief ragingl fire. We have work to do.

Bargaining: This stage is best represented by those who call for cooperation or negotiation with the Republicans. As Cass Sunstein effectively points out in Salon (yes, it's a subscription link, but you should subscribe anyway), this is a futile effort. Just ask Tom Daschle.

Depression: Many of us went straight to this stage. Fine. We've broken out the George Jones records, watched old film noir DVDs, engaged in "risk-taking behavior," or survived for days on nothing but coffee and comfort food. Feel better? Now let's get to work.

Acceptance: In this case, acceptance does not meet silently withdrawing to meet our fate. It means accepting that we're at war. Acceptance means fighting. Remember, we're looking for "closure." You want closure? This is life during wartime - welcome to the Resistance.

So I vote Elizabeth! She's the one. And her accent's more authoritative than Arnold's. Sure, she's passed away herself and that's unfortunate. On the other hand, Bob Shrum's died, what, like seven times already? The Democrats still turn to him. Dr. Kubler-Ross, this is your moment.

tomorrow's ghosts today

2004-11-05T21:47:00.000-08:00

coming soon to a haunting in your neighborhood

yeah, yeah, my sign is Big Fun

2004-11-05T17:17:00.000-08:00

George W. Bush is a Cancer. The excerpt below is from "Regina Russell's Tea Room":

The sign Cancer is symbolized by the Crab.

You are emotional, intuitive, sympathetic and moody. You enjoy shopping and visiting with friends. Cancer is sentimental, sensitive, and needs to have a sense of security. Cancer may be interested in politics even if it's only on the local level. You tend to over protect what is yours. Cancer is intensely romantic and has a vivid imagination. Your home and family are very important to you.

Possible negative aspects of the sign Cancer:
You can be cruel, grasping, weak, possessive, domineering, timid, lazy and tend toward brooding and cynicism.

I think I have to start believing in astrology now.

bipolar disorder

2004-11-05T16:47:00.000-08:00

license to ill

"'A house divided against itself cannot stand.'

I believe this government cannot endure, permanently half slave and half free.

I do not expect the Union to be dissolved -- I do not expect the house to fall -- but I do expect it will cease to be divided.

It will become all one thing or all the other."

Abraham Lincoln

(chart courtesy of Pandagon and Tom Tomorrow)

an empty bottle, a broken heart, and you're still on my mind

2004-11-04T13:42:00.000-08:00

Robert F. Kennedy: 1925-1968