Although Aron's political sympathies had always been with the non-Marxist left, the fact that he had broken with Sartre and wrote for the conservative paper Le Figaro meant that, in those polarized times, he was considered a man of the right. He surprised everyone, therefore, when he published two pamphlets in the late fifties in which he argued that France should abandon her North African colonies as soon as possible. By that time the simmering Algerian War had divided French opinion into two hostile camps: on the one side were those who saw French honor at stake in its colonies and worried about the fate of the pieds noirs, Frenchmen who had long since made their homes in Algeria; on the other were those who viewed decolonization as a simple matter of justice and self-determination and were repelled by the brutal means used to fight the war.

As was typical of him, Aron avoided terms like "honor" and "justice," and began with a cool historical analysis of the course of European colonialism and its unsustainability in the modern world. In an age of global politics and economics, remaining in Algeria would have necessitated either raising the standard of living in Algeria to that of France or tolerating massive immigration, options Aron considered economically impossible and culturally unwise. In an era ruled by nationalist and egalitarian ideologies, however, keeping Algeria in a dependent, servile state was equally untenable. Even if the Algerians, in terms of a crudely economic "standard of living," would be worse off after independence than they had been as colonial subjects, the fact that they had come to see themselves as a nation deserving of independence had to be acknowledged and respected. "It hardly matters whether this nationalism is the expression of a real or imaginary nation," he remarked. "Nationalism is a passion resolved to create the entity it invokes." Nor did Aron flinch at the prospect that Arab nationalism might take on a religious character, a possibility exploited by the right and ignored by the left: "So long as the human race is divided up into sovereign units, those units will need a dynastic, religious, or national principle, and that principle, whatever it is, may cause conflict and be condemned by those who know better. Everything that unites individuals also divides groups against one another." He then added a sentence that deserves to be pondered by those involved in the current reconstruction of Iraq: "A state that declines to be linked either to a religion or to an ideology is the work of centuries, not of a decision by the United Nations or by some imperial authority about to withdraw voluntarily or under compulsion."

posted by John 10:33 PM

Just How Much of a Religious Wacko is Shrub Anyway?

The scariest throwaway paragraph of the week is this little gem from Maureen Dowd's column today:

In their new book, "The Bushes," Peter and Rochelle Schweizer, who interviewed many Bushes, including the president's father and his brother Jeb, quote one unnamed relative as saying that W. sees the war on terror "as a religious war": "He doesn't have a P.C. view of this war. His view of this is that they are trying to kill the Christians. And we the Christians will strike back with more force and more ferocity than they will ever know."

Next time Shrub does his I-believe-I-was-put-on-this-earth-to-free-people-and-stuff thing, someone needs to ask him if he's been talking to Jesus in the little boy's room again.

posted by Jerry Bowles 4:33 PM

The Clorox Candidate

We know that Shrubby's real "inner circle" is as white as... Rice. But to think that there are no ping-pong balls with names like Kwame or Diego floating to the top of the presumptive democratic potty candidate 'brain trust'... oy vay. Former linebacker Jesse Jackson, Jr. says Beacon Hill, we've got a problem. The folks up on Louisburg Square can eat their unpasteurized camembert with platinum spoons from Shreves. The kids over on Blue Hill Ave. can eat paint chips with used Popeye's spoons. Maybe Shrum needs to fork out for some extra Bain de Soleil... One more thing... the Daily Howler is a great read. However, it was not consulted in the preparation of this item.

posted by Groom 3:38 PM

VP Time?

Speaking of Wes Clark, he had a piece defending Kerry's service in yesterday's NY Times and is on Paula Zahn tonight. Do we think something's up?

posted by Jerry Bowles 3:05 PM

Would that it were true

The December edition of Harpers contains a review of Raymond Aron's Dawn of Universal History: Selected Essays from a Witness to the Twentieth Century. The review is by Mark Lilla. The following paragraphs on page 92 leap out at me.

Responsibility was the key term in Aron's political lexicon. What disturbed him about the popular example set by Sartre was that it romanticized a posture of commitment and bred contempt for those who actuallyhave to exercise power and make decisions. For Aron, placing oneself imaginatively in the position of those in power was the sine qua non of responsibiliity. "For a half-century," he noted in his memories, "I have restricted my own criticisms by posing this question-'what would I do in their place?'" Answering that question demands not only a change in perspective, one very difficult for intellectuals who treat every issue as if it were as unambiguous as the Dreyfus case. It also requires mastery of the material that the statesman himself must master, whether that is diplomatic istory, strategy, basic economics, law, and the rest. In Sartre's fantasy world, it was the intellectual's independence from such compromising data that gave him the moral perspective needed to pass judgment on history; in Aron's world, which is ours, those who pronounce on politics in democratic societies are obliged to do their homework."

Would that it were true....would that it were true....Is there a statesman in the house?

posted by John 10:04 AM

A Moment of Silence Please

Buried in a Bloomberg story: According to U.S. Department of Defense figures, 126 U.S. soldiers and Marines have died in combat this month in Iraq, more than the 109 killed during the invasion phase that ended when U.S. President George W. Bush declared an end to major combat operations on May 1. Today's 10 deaths would bring that total to 136.

posted by John 9:24 AM

Why We Are Deadlocked

You couldn’t pay me enough to live in Georgia, or Texas, let alone Mississippi or Alabama. For the most part, folks living there and moving there do not share my values and I don’t want any of my daughters marrying them. And so the Red States get redder and redder.

This attitude that I have is apparently pervasive in the country, and in a useful analysis, Washington Post reporter David Von Drehle says the nation is consequently locked in a 50-50 split—actually polarization of attitudes and beliefs—along the Red vs. Blue States and it will remain this way for some time to come.

His primary conclusion is "the split is nurtured by the marketing efforts of the major parties, which increasingly pinpoint messages to certain demographic groups, rather than seeking broadly appealing new themes [italics are mine for emphasis]. It is reinforced by technology, geography and strategy. And now it is driving the presidential campaign, and explains why many experts anticipate a particularly bitter and divisive election.”

I suspect that such Red States as Colorado, Idaho, Montana and Wyoming, where I’d move in a heartbeat, are Red because their electoral votes are not worth courting by Democrats whose traditional constituencies and reliable voters are urban and never set foot on a ranch.

If Von Drehle is correct, this entire election is coming down to less than 50,000 voters scattered around the country will pick the next president based on the success or failure of a targeted message from BushCo or Kerry. As a marketing man, Andrew Card has already shown that he knows this. I wonder who is parsing the messages for Kerry. Amazing stuff!

posted by Josh 8:57 AM

Can't Win for Losing

More than half of the American people now think Iraq was a mistake. More than two-thirds think it was an unnecessary mistake. More than 40 percent believe it has made the terror threat worse.

Meanwhile, in some alternative universe, we have a candidate who spends his days trying to get his story straight about some ribbons he tossed across a fence 30 years ago and defending the fact that he can afford to have a guy make him peanut butter sandwiches.

God, I wish Wesley Clark had done Iowa.

posted by Jerry Bowles 8:08 AM

You Gotta Believe

Thick and Dick do their Bergen and McCarthy bit for the 9/11 Commission today. No swearing to tell the truth; no tapes; no official record. It's the kind of thing that makes you proud to be an American.

posted by Jerry Bowles 12:11 AM

Wednesday, April 28, 2004

For Dems, Incest Is Best

Repeat three times the phrase "I used to be a contender." Then say the word Shrum. Then hold your nose so it sounds like you have a cold and say the word Shrum and what do you hear... the word Shrub. Is this the sound of one hand clapping... or the sound of another Shrum candidate losing? Of all the "consultants" to be the brains behind the roadmap to victory for the "anybody but Bush" party? We're looking at the political equivalent of believing the Cubs or the Red Sox will win the world series this season. Dios mio.

posted by Groom 6:40 PM

Be Afraid. Be Very Afraid.

This is the big one, folks. Bigger than Brown, bigger than Roe, bigger than Miranda. Padilla vs. Rumsfeld for the fate of the republic. Will the Duckhunter do his usual facist thing or will he surprise us all and recognize a mortal blow to democracy when he sees it?

posted by Jerry Bowles 12:52 PM

Jihad Lite

A little dust-up in Thailand, underreported, of course. Only 112 killed in the day-long tussle. Not North Korea numbers, but a bigger kill list than Fallujah. Fanatical Islamic fundamentalists seeking a homeland in predominantely Buddhist Thailand. The Bush crew is using John Kerry's "non-botox" face as a jiffy mop on national security and foreign policy. One wonders why his brain trust of think tankers like Ivo Daalder don't help him get out in front of the issues with some policy statements or shadow critiques that could help stop the bleeding. The Jihads in Indonesia, Phillipines and Thailand aggregate to a far greater "national security" threat than Iraq, in terms of oil, other strategic minerals and lines of communications. Will JFK take the platinum spoon out of his mouth between sips of lemon grass soup and hear the music?

posted by Groom 11:11 AM

So Now It's Saint Howard?

The rush to canonize Howard Dean is coming quicker than I thought. To paraphrase Mark Twain’s famous cable from Europe to the Associated Press, reports (or wishes) of Kerry’s death are greatly exaggerated. I know it's painful, but let's recall that His Goodness and Most Holy Rightness, Doctor Howard Dean, was/is the guy who represented/represents the Democratic Wing of the Democratic Party, raised a historic amount of money via the internet (a record now surpassed by Kerry), and spent it all on winning one primary, his home state of Vermont, after he dropped out of the race. In the process he energized the Party, but like a whipped pup, sulked off to lick his wounds and do his own thing, whatever that is.

His much vaunted “new” coalition of constituents—made up chiefly of students, college-educated professionals, the “very liberal” and, significantly, no minority or ethnic groups failed to deliver for him. Except for the very liberal, they all abandoned him in the early primaries where Kerry beat out or held his own among Dean’s own core groups.

So what would Dean be saying today if he were the candidate? For one he’d probably already have picked a running mate to “plug that [foreign affairs] hole in my resume” as he candidly but stupidly was fond of saying. With Iraq and the war on terrorism looming as BushCo’s trump card, if Dean had not picked a running mate with war or foreign policy experience, the Republicans would have buried him by now.

I also imagine the campaign would be shriller and more polarizing with moderates and independents wondering what to do. The gay marriage issue, which Kerry has effectively neutralized, would be front and center on the valuesl front. On the political front the "Washington cockroaches," Dean’s saintly moniker for the Tweedle-Dumb Congressional Democrats, would be more tepid about Dean than Dean supporters are about Kerry. There would be catechisms on balancing budgets with Rove reminding voters that Vermont's budget is a rounding error at the Pentagon. And His Saintness would be on the ropes about repealing ALL taxes, unless he turned out to be a closet flip-flopper and changed his mind about middle class tax cuts. Gore would be back in the saddle and Clinton's book would be looming even larger than it is.

Fortunately, sainthood is a long process and Vermont is not the Vatican.

posted by Josh 9:59 AM

To Groom's Point of Pictures Speaking Loudly:

Borrowed link from Altercation.

posted by Evelyn 9:25 AM

Democrat or Faux-Aristocrat?

Lucky for John Kerry that few average American voters will bother to read or lack the literacy skills to tackle today’s New York Times. Jodi Wilgoren’s piece on Kerry’s “gofer” indicates that “Mr. Kerry is comfortable being catered to.” Not the kind of stuff the grey power crowd or the millions who are watching their jobs get “outsourced” want to hear about. All the more difficult to believe le parvenu when he says “my issues are jobs and health care,” and then calls in his gofer to roll up his sleeves. Contrast that style with someone from serious old money like Howard Dean and his no-frills approach to politics, or the plain folks approach of John Edwards and it's one more reason the Dems are in denial about a very big problem.

posted by Groom 5:15 AM

* Congress Probes INC's Lobbying Efforts *

The Iraqi National Congress of Ahmed Chalabi may have violated restrictions against using taxpayer money to lobby when it campaigned for the U.S. invasion of Iraq. The Congress' General Accounting Office will investigate the allegation, which if proven true, means that U.S. taxpayers paid to have themselves persuaded that it was necessary to invade Iraq.

Kinda warms the cockles of your heart, doesn't it? Robbing Peter and Paul to bamboozle both into war.

"Your Government Is Expanding -- To Meet The Needs Of An Expanding Government!"

posted by Michael 12:18 AM

Tuesday, April 27, 2004

Overwhelmed with (Dis)information

Jerry writes,

A big part of the problem is simply too much raw information for our little brains to process. Americans are bombarded by advertising messages every waking moment (and, believe me, somewhere right now somebody is trying to think of a way to produce pop-up ads in our dreams). There is literally no place to run, no place to hide from the hundreds of companies that want let you know that operators are standing by to make you rich, drop dead gorgeous, clean, sexy and erectilely-prepared. The same high-pressure techniques used to sell soaps and cars and sugared water are now used to sell political candidates. The incessant and inescapable media barrage of claims and counter-claims, hard news, news features, party spinning, advertising, office gossip, political messages all get mixed together in equal proportions to form the cement of hardened opinion.

So, where do we go from here?

Step 1 might be to recognize that this isn't just an American problem. Feeling overwhelmed by the sheer glut of things, events, and advertising/PR/news (all increasingly much of a muchness) is a global phenomenon. We live in a world where, as I tell my advertising students, trying to extract the one relevant bit of information we need is like trying to find a particular drop of water while standing in front of a fire hose. The resulting numbness, shrinking attention span, and ruthless filtering that limits what we accept to what fits our existing categories have been commented on endlessly by scholars around the world.

Step 2 might be to suggest that less is more. Japanese and European friends are appalled at the time and money wasted on political campaigns in the US of A. Most of the more civilized world has laws in place that radically shorten the time allowed for campaigns and ban TV advertising. The result is stronger political parties--since to win elections candidates must organize people who are willing to go door-to-door to get out the vote form them and can't speak over the party's head by raising obscene amounts of money and spending it on TV.

Step 3 is trying to figure out how to implement the suggestion. It's going to be damned hard since the mass media (TV in particular) are the primary beneficiaries of the status-quo circus. But you have to believe that at least some Congress animals are tired of spending half of every day fundraising to pay the last campaign's debt and start building a warchest for the next. And this is an issue that the blogosphere is ideally designed to push--by helping those who work with us to raise the money they need to stay in office.

Could this actually work?

posted by John 11:47 PM

The First Stone?

James Ridgeway in the Village Voice:

If things proceed as they are, the dim-bulb Dem leaders are going to be very sorry they screwed Howard Dean.

posted by Jerry Bowles 6:49 PM

Puppet Show

Jerry says that the US was much less divided when Walter Cronkite used to say “and that’s the way it is.” But let’s not forget who was working behind the scenes in those Cold War years. I remember when Douglas Edwards got canned and was replaced by the Texan, Cronkite. There was talk that Dougie had a drinking problem. He was later rehabilitated, on radio. Wonder if Paley ever gave it much thought…Cronkite, Rather, Schieffer, Wyatt Andrews… all CBS… all Texas.

Were the Rosenbergs any more guilty than Kim Philby, Guy Burgess or Donald McLean? Was LBJs Gulf of Tonkin sham any worse than Shrubby’s WMD lies that got the Iraq party started? Why did Justice Abe Fortas see fit to resign from the Surpreme Court while Justice Antonin Scalia does not?

Like the humor magazine of the same name, we live in funny times. The US is becoming a nation of functional illiterates, a pictographic society. If you use the written word or printed word to communicate anything beyond gospel or scripture, you’re either too old or a sinner heathen. This is the fabled advantage that plays into the hands of a dull but ambitious boy like Karl “I never heard of Vidkun Quisling” Rove. Nobody will ever win the White House spelling bee on the word uniter.

The internet has increased the velocity of information, but with that comes a decrease in the veracity of information. “Scientific pollsters” are welcome to disagree, and will since- as controllers rather than informers- they are part of the problem and not part of the solution. The notion that the net has leveled the playing field so as to provide more equal access to all people world wide is a grande illusion when you consider that access translates into pay to play. Unless, of course, you have a group that knows how to do what Tom Wolfe so poignantly called “Mau-Mau The Flak Catchers.”

And speaking of pay to play. The ever popular Calpundit has sold out to that great wellspring of ethical journalism, The Washington Monthly, for an undisclosed sum. And that’s the way it be and shit...

posted by Groom 6:04 PM

Watch those Gas Prices, People

Does anyone think it odd that HRH Prince Saud al-Faisal, Foreign Minister of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, decided to give an interview last night to Charlie Rose?

The interview begins with the Prince’s criticism of the decision to go into Iraq. He believed and apparently it was communicated to the Administration that to “achieve their goals,” Washington only had to wait it out a little longer, and to assure the Iraqi Army that this time, if it rose up against Saddam, the U.S. would provide protection.

It must be making the Kingdom just a tad nervous that things are not going all that well next door, and that new al-Qaeda recruits are getting in line every time al-Jazeera shows footage of dead children. As the Prince notes, the Saudis were the first target of bin Laden, and his larger goal remains to drive a wedge between the U.S. and Saudi.

Could it be that Faisal, one of the reasonable forces within the inscrutable regime, is simply countering those fireside photos of Bubba Bandar in his Calvins? Trying to make the Saudis look like real Muslims who care, and not just Scotch swillers who live more in Mayfair than Mecca? Or is it a sign of something more significant? After all, the Saudis recently prompted a rise in oil prices at OPEC, which would seem to run counter to the Woodward disclosure that Bandar had promised Shrub happy fill-ups for Hummers this summer.

What if the Saudis are really scared that Shrub is going to lose the keys to their kingdom with his wide-eyed search for the beast of Baghdad? What if they have a secret agenda to oust this guy? They may very well feel that, like Sam Giancana with JFK, this guy owes them, “big time.” As we know, the Bush circle has been supping at their desert table for a long, long time, but unlike Bush I, Shrub does not really understand how things work over there. It could be time for a whack, and who is better equipped?

posted by Evelyn 4:33 PM

Kerry to Bush: F*ck You; Strong Letter to Follow

Borrowing heavily from some excellent advice by Josh Marshall over at Talking Points Memo, here's an "immediate action drill" full of soundbites that Kerry should practice, in anticipation of the next time he's asked to respond to some Bush minion's slandering of his Vietnam service (and subsequent war protests):

"You know what? I'm tired of responding to some Bush lackey's attacks on me about my Vietnam service. If George W. Bush has a problem with my service (or my opinions about the Vietnam war afterward), let's hear it from him directly.

"I think we need to pull back and see the bigger picture here, too, which is: What's the signature pattern of George W. Bush's life?

"When he faces a challenge or a tough scrape, he lets his family and friends bail him out, and fight his battles for him. You see it again and again through his failed business dealings, his legal scrapes -- even the whole matter of his ducking service in Vietnam and then getting help cleaning up his records of his spotty service in the Texas Air National Guard.

"And it's come up again and again on the campaign trail. Remember, people: George W. Bush has faced three opponents who each served in Vietnam -- Senator McCain, Vice-President Gore, and now myself -- and he's had his underlings attack the service of each one of us.

"So here we have the same pattern, repeating itself again -- no different. If the president wants to attack my war record, then he needs to stop being a coward, and hiding behind the gossipmongering of his friends, like Karen Hughes (or whoever). Be a man, George. If you've got a problem with me, then come out into the daylight and tell it to my face. In other words, put up or shut up."

posted by Michael 2:35 PM

Mort Sahl on Liberals:

"God is watching us. If we support someone we don't believe in and say he's electable, then God will make sure he's not elected and hope we do better the next time." NY Times, April 27, 2004

posted by Jerry Bowles 10:53 AM

America, We Have a Problem

There was a time, not that long ago, when when Walter Cronkite said “And that’s the way it is” most Americans on both the left and the right generally agreed that that’s the way it was. We know now that Walter is a mushy-hearted old lefty, but over the decades that he commanded the CBS Evening News, he kept his politics to himself and strove mightily to report the “truth” without fear or favor, as it had been gathered by journalists committed to the code of objectivity, usually over the resistance of government “spokesmen” who saw lights at the end of tunnels that all too often turned out to be the headlights of oncoming trains.

In those media-deprived days before the Internet revolution, before cable became a major source of content (of variable reliability), before local newsfotainment programs with their ethnically-coordinated anchors with good hair and their jolly, overweight weathermen, “news” was what local newspaper and the three major TV networks said it was. Most people got their national and international news from the networks which enjoyed a virtual monopoly on our attention for the first 20 years of television’s existence. If Cronkite or John Chancellor or Howard K. Smith had reported that the government’s own team of experts had failed to find WMDs in Iraq after a long and expensive search and had concluded that weren’t any, most Americans would have said, well, I guess they just weren’t there.

Those days of communal reality are gone forever. America today is so deeply divided that we can no longer agree on what is “true” and what is not. Just how really, really confused we are was demonstrated by the now widely quoted Harris Poll from last week that showed that—all objective evidence to the contrary—51 percent of Americans still believe Saddam had WMDs and 49 percent believe that evidence of a Saddam connection to al Qaeda has been found.

Truth, it appears, is no longer an absolute but a multiple choice. If you don’t like the reality you hear from Peter Jennings or Dan Rather, you can switch over to Fox and Sean Hannity or Brett Hume will provide you with an alternative. WMDs? We just haven’t found the right turkey farm yet. Hey, it took longer than this for Hillary Clinton to find her Rose Law firm documents. Need a support system, try the Washington Times, or your local bookstore or Andrew Sullivan or Instapundit online. Or just check your e-mail. No matter how extreme or harebrained your views are—left or right—reinforcements are easy to find. Nothing is more empowering--and dangerous--than encouraging wackos to believe they are not alone.

A big part of the problem is simply too much raw information for our little brains to process. Americans are bombarded by advertising messages every waking moment (and, believe me, somewhere right now somebody is trying to think of a way to produce pop-up ads in our dreams). There is literally no place to run, no place to hide from the hundreds of companies that want let you know that operators are standing by to make you rich, drop dead gorgeous, clean, sexy and erectilely-prepared. The same high-pressure techniques used to sell soaps and cars and sugared water are now used to sell political candidates. The incessant and inescapable media barrage of claims and counter-claims, hard news, news features, party spinning, advertising, office gossip, political messages all get mixed together in equal proportions to form the cement of hardened opinion.

Many Americans have been beaten into a senseless stupor by the relentless pounding of media. They have stopped doing the hard work of filtering out the shuck and the jive and have mentally retreated to a smaller, more personal world where the big news flash is likely to be “Honey, I’m turning off the interstate, be home in about five minutes.” In this more primal world of the electronic, self-contained, automated protective environment (ESCAPE), emotions have replaced news as the most important tool of judgment. The new tautology of politics has become: I like George Bush because he is tough on terrorists. I know Saddam Hussein had secret weapons or connections to al Qaeda because if he didn’t that would mean George Bush lied to me. And I like George Bush.

A country where half of the population cannot agree with other half on what is true and what is not is a country divided against itself and a nation in danger of destruction by political gridlock. What the country needs most is what it was promised and didn't get--a leader who is a uniter, not a divider.

And that, Walter, is the way it is now.

posted by Jerry Bowles 12:33 AM

Monday, April 26, 2004

The Million-Woman March--or whatever it was

I was one of the throng on the March for Women's Lives in Washington yesterday. I rode down on a bus trip sponsored by NARAL of New Hampshire.

I hadn't marched since the April 1971 march against the Vietnam War. I've told myself for years that if there was one issue that could get me to march again, it would be restrictions on abortion. Well, the time has come, my friends.

The crowd was extremely well behaved and polite. I was astonished that so many people could share space so closely and maintain their equilibrium. I don't like people pushing me around and, even in a crowd this big, people weren't shoving or throwing their weight around.

I know there's been disgruntlement about the estimates of the crowd. However, I don't believe there were a million women there, though I can believe three-quarters of a million. I just have a feeling that if there had truly been a million, the city would have been more overwhelmed with people. Plus, the numbers of buses, numbers of Metro passes, etc. don't add up to a million to me.

I was delighted to see all the young women--women who have enough savvy to realize their rights are in jeopardy. Just this past week, I was talking with a young woman who seemed to be in her late 20s or early 30s. I told her that I was going on this trip and that, when I was in college, I had had at least two friends who had gotten illegal abortions and that one of them ended up in the hospital with complications. She wondered why they had gotten illegal abortions. It took a few seconds for me to realize that she didn't know that abortion used to be outlawed.

If you have a chance to come to Washington to march for an issue you care about, I recommend it. It's a lovely city with a mix of beautiful and ugly buildings, and, best of all: the mall where the demonstrations are held is a terrific place for people to gather. But as the organizers said, this doesn't mean much if we don't get people registered to vote against George Bush. (Or, as one sign put it, "Dump Thick and Dick in November.")

posted by Vicki 7:37 PM

What the Patriot Act Is Really About

To be understood in the broader context, particulary beyond the “war on terror,” the Patriot Act is a multi-purpose weapon that can be used to make instant “traitors” out of pro-choice activists, people who demonstrate against the phony Medicare “drug benefit” or the jacking of Social Security, or the outsourcing of jobs. In effect it has as much to do with managing the class conflict from our current “economic restructuring” (massive job loss, declining real wages, export of capital, so-called jobless recovery) as it does with fighting the Jihad inside our borders. Like Dick Vitale would say… remember the Reichstag fire, baby…

posted by Groom 1:09 PM

Confessions of a Reluctant Patriot Act Supporter

Groom Lake wants to take us into deep waters with his exaggerated prediction that “we may as well kiss our Constitutional rights and the two-party system as we know it, historically, good-bye,” if Kerry and the Democrats failure to stand up against the renewal of the Patriot Act. Nothing of the sort will happen, especially under a Kerry administration.

Kerry should lay low on this one. If push comes to shove and the Republicans want to renew it this year, I’d advise the Democrats to go along with the plan with only token arguments against it—remember what the Republicans did to the Democrats in 2002 with the Homeland Security legislation. Democrats lost the argument and lost the elections. A little civics lesson here: legislation is one thing, administration of legislation is another thing entirely. A Kerry administration can do anything it wants with the Patriot Act once it is in office—enforce it, dabble in it, shelve it, or change it.

This way the Democrats neutralize a Republican election-year wedge issue, but “neuterize” the enforcement of it when they are in office. There is nothing to be gained by taking the Groom Lake doomsday road and shouting from the rooftops that the Patriot Act is unpatriotic and erodes the Constitution. If so, it should be challenged before the courts.

I, for one, have not read the Patriot Act and like most Americans don’t see how it has impacted my little life. The government, and corporate marketers, already invade my personal life and did so well before the Patriot Act was a twinkle in Rove’s eye. Like the poor guy who has been randomly ticketed for speeding; what do I care, if I can continue to speed. Is there anyone among us who thinks their medical records were sacred before the Patriot Act—and most of us don’t participate yet in Medicare, where government foots the bill.

And what do I care if an Arab-American or two has been retained unlawfully so long as I’m not mistaken for an Arab. This country was built on retaining people unlawfully, destroying their property, disenfranchising them—as they did in Florida in 2000 and will do again in some form this year—and denying others equal protection under the law. It happens every day in every city and the Patriot Act has not lessened or increased the selective abuse of our rights by all kinds of law enforcement and government personnel. It’s part of the American way of life and we all live with this kind of abuse all the time and the Constitution is still standing.

posted by Josh 10:14 AM

Dems Bend Over for Patriot Games

Like the spineless Judenrats (councils of Jewish elders) who ran the Hitlerite ghettos and shrugged when the lesser Jews were shunted off to the death camps, the Democratic party is morphing into a crypto-fascist organization, toning down its rhetoric and refusing to go mano-a-mano with Shruby over the controversial Patriot Act. One reason: the polls. Click here to read more and see the zealous face of our American Hitler. If anybody should make a stand against the Nazi-like Patriot Act, which effectively abrogates the Constitution and Bill of Rights, it should be prospective candidate Kerry, who had relatives die in the camps. We had 9-11. The English had the Battle of Britain. We firebombed Dresden and nuked Hiroshima and Nagasaki and everybody moved on from there. The anthrax perps who terrorized Congress into passing the tricked-out Patriot Act are still out there in spite of the best efforts of Bush family retainer and FBI top banana for Mueller. If the Dems don't stop knee-jerking to the polls and make an effort to stop Shrubby and Obersturmbannfueher Rove from using the war on terror to psychoterrorize the American people, we may as well kiss our Constitutional rights and the two-party system as we know it, histiorically, good-bye.

posted by Groom 5:56 AM

Sunday, April 25, 2004

"I think that after September 11, the American people are valuing life more and we need policies to value the dignity and worth of every life," she said. "President Bush has worked to say, let's be reasonable, let's work to value life, let's reduce the number of abortions, let's increase adoptions. And I think those are the kinds of policies the American people can support, particularly at a time when we're facing an enemy and, really, the fundamental issue between us and the terror network we fight is that we value every life."

-- Karen Hughes, explaining today why to be pro-choice is to be pro-terrorist.

posted by Michael 10:42 PM

Slandering vs. Pandering--Is Either Politically Savvy?

Rummaging through the blogs this morning, I find that Atrios has ignited a firestorm. The most quoted sentence in his rant about religion (he thinks it's nonsense) and the poor, abused position of atheists (couldn't be elected dogcatcher in today's America) is

I'm tired of liberalish Christians telling me it's my job to reach out to Christian moderates who feel that "the Left" is hostile to them. Screw that.

Regarding religion as nonsense has a long pedigree on the left (some of us as old as I am remember Marx's famous description "the opiate of the masses"; some may have even read Voltaire). It is also true that atheists are, indeed, a minority in today's United States and that any self-proclaimed atheist running for public office will, by announcing his or her "religious" convictions make it very hard to win an election.

But, hold on a minute....isn't that the point? Atrios may feel nauseated by the sight of Democratic members of Congress publically emphasizing the "under God" clause in the Pledge of Allegiance. Would he feel better, I wonder, if the House and Senate were uniformly right wing?

If the answer is "No," and one indisputable fact about the American electorate is that a lot of voters go to church and actively dislike those who publically despise religion, does it make much POLITICAL sense to contribute ammunition to a Republican Party eager as hell to equate opposition to George Bush with opposition to God?

Wouldn't it make more sense to read the Bible and find the bits where Jesus talks our talk? To search out the common ground of concern for the poor and weak? No, we are not going to reconvert the fundamentalists. What we might do is pick up votes among sincere Christians and other people of faith, who can see as Jimmy Carter does that the Christian right is neither Christian nor right. And Atrios, old buddy, we've got an election to win...or maybe by getting on our high horse...lose this year.

posted by John 9:14 PM

When Hollywood Met the Beltway

So, Sony Pictures has bought the film rights to Richard Clarke's Against All Enemies. The May 3 print issue of Fortune has side-by-side photos (alas, not online) that suggest some great casting possibilities--Janet Jackson was splendid on Saturday Night Live as Condi. Nick Nolte was born to play Rummy (in more ways than one). Richard Clarke? Bill Murray, of course.

My personal favorite--Patrick Swayze as Karen Hughes.

posted by Jerry Bowles 1:16 PM

Energizer Bunny

Venezuela sits on more oil than Iraq. That's one reason why ex-contra shop thugs Eliot Abrams, Roger "the chin" Noriega and coupmeister Otto Johan Reich have been trying- on behalf of the Shrub Club- to topple the government of president Hugo Chavez for the past couple of years. Regardless of how this crew misues our tax dollars and covert funds, they can't get the yob done. Reuters reports that Chavez would win the "recall" the contra thugs have been pimping hands down. The main reason... since everyone in Venezuela knows that the referendum is a US invention, 34% of those queried say they would abstain. Better stick with trying to rig the next presidential vote in Mexico guys, you're a little big more on track with that one.

posted by Groom 12:42 PM