Fear Itself

Molly has a great column today about how the spiraling insanity in the Middle East may be our October Surprise. Read it!

From the first day of 24/7 coverage, you could tell this was big. By the time Chapter 9,271 of the conflicts in the Middle East had gotten its own logo, everyone knew it was HUGE. I mean, like, bigger than Natalee Holloway. Then anchormen began to arrive in the Middle East and people like Anderson Cooper and Tucker Carlson - - real experts and then Newt Gingrich -- and who would know better than Newt? -- declared it was World War III. Let's ratchet up the fear here -- probably good for Republican campaigning.

By then, of course, you couldn't find a television story about the back corridors of diplomacy and what was, or more importantly, what was not going on there. Between Anderson Cooper and Tucker Carlson, it was obviously World War III, and besides, there were a bunch of American refugees in Lebanon who couldn't get out, and so, elements of the Katrina story appeared, Thank God Anderson was there.

Meanwhile, people who should have known better were all in a World III SNIT over Chapter 9,271. Actually, they all knew better, but it was a better story if you overplayed it -- sort of like watching a horror movie that you know will turn out OK in the end, but meanwhile you get to enjoy this delicious chill of horror up your spine. What if it really was The End? I mean, any fool could see it could easily careen out of control, and when George W. Bush is all you've got for rational, fair-minded grown-ups, well, there it is.

If I may raise a nasty political possibility. One good reason for the Bush administration to leave Chapter 9,271 to burn out of control is that this administration thrives on fear. Fear has been the text and the subtext of every Republican campaign since 9/11. Endless replay of the footage from 9/11 has graced every Republican campaign since. Could it be that 9/11 is beginning to pall, to feel as overplayed as Natalee Holloway? Fear is actually more dangerous than war in the Middle East. For those who spin dizzily toward World War III, the Apocalypse, the Rapture -- always with that delicious frisson of terror -- the slow, patient negotiations needed to get it back under control are Not News.

All we have to fear, said FDR, is fear itself. And when we are afraid, we do damage to both ourselves and to the Constitution. Our history is rank with these fits of fear. We get so afraid of some dreadful menace, so afraid of anarchists, Reds, crime or drugs or communism or illegal aliens or terrorists that we think we can make ourselves safer by making ourselves less free. We damage the Constitution because we're so afraid. We engage in torture and worse because we're afraid. We damage our standing in the world, our own finest principles, out of fear. And television enjoys scaring us. One could say cynically, "It's good for their ratings," but in truth, I think television people enjoy scary movies, too. And besides, it makes it all a bigger story for them.

CT- Sen Imbroglio

I haven't covered the Liebermann-Lamont primary brouhaha mostly because I don't know enough about CT politics or Lamont to have much of an opinion. That said, I mostly loathe Liebermann for his penchant for acting like a Repug or at the least giving them protective cover from the 'left'.

mcjoan at dKos, has a long column today about the Liebermann side trying to twist Liebermann's attacks on Clinton in l'affaire Lewinsky as a positive for Clinton and the Dems. What hogwash (the argument, not mcjoan's column). I highly recommend the posting.

Her summary says it all:

Well, that is certainly true, for this president, anyway. The next time Lieberman scolds President Bush will be the first. But Lieberman was not always so shy about scolding Presidents:

... (excerpt from the Liebermanners...)

Scolding Presidents does not always go against the grain for Lieberman. But he sees no reason to scold President Bush's performance as "the steward of our freedoms and our values."

President Clinton betrayed his wife. President Bush betrays the Constitution. Lieberman "scolds" the former. He can not be bothered with the latter. Just another reason why Lieberman should be defeated on August 8.

Well, Why Would You?

SusanG, at DKos, has a great post, the intro to which is below. Read the whole thing here.

Would you hire a babysitter who hates children and thinks they should be eliminated? Or who declares for years in your hearing that children are irritants who should be starved to be small, unseen and mute?

Would you hire cops who think laws are stupid and useless and should be abolished?

Would you hire a conductor for your orchestra who believes music itself an abomination?

Then why would you hire - and you did hire them, America; they are your employees, after all, not your rulers, despite their grandiose pretensions - members of a political party who think government is useless, ineffective, bloated and untrustworthy?

Reed Goes DOWN

Ralph Reed, exhead of the so-called Christian Coalition, and current scuzbucket associate of Abramoff and ripper-off extraordinaire of Indian tribes, was squashed in his attempt to gain the Repug nomination for GA Lt Gov. It wasn't quite 2-1 (at least in the early returns I saw) but it was close enough to qualify as a landslide. And a landslide couldnt land on a nicer target!

Lebanon/Then and Now

From TalkingPointsMemo:

If Rip Van Winkle had fallen asleep under a cedar tree in Lebanon in 1982 and awoke today, you could hardly blame him for thinking he had snoozed for only a few minutes.

Israel is still in Lebanon. Iran is America's great nemesis. Russia-U.S. relations remain tense. An imperial power (Britain/U.S.) is conducting a military campaign in a farflung locale (Falkland Islands/Iraq) in what is maybe its last gasp of imperialism. There is a gathering threat in the East (Japanese economy/North Korea). The news even includes mention of the death of a popular princess (Grace Kelly/Diana) in a car accident.

The only things missing are Survivor, Toto, and Air Supply.

When critics of the Iraq War suggested it would set back progress in the Middle East for a generation, I didn't take it to mean we would revert to a generation ago.

-- TPM Reader DK

Gotta Love 'Radioactive Slime'

Ann Coulter apparently headlined a fundraiser for Colorado Bob Beauprez. How much did she raise for him? Let's just say, not even Beauprez showed up!

I'd have paid just to see that! :)

Bush Drift

Kevin, at Political Animal, got me thinking about Shrub this morning:

But that's really just a single piece of a broader, and even more remarkable turn of events: the Bush administration literally seems to have no foreign policy at all anymore. They have no serious plan for Iraq, no plan for Iran, no plan for North Korea, no plan for democracy promotion, no plan for anything. With the neocons on the outs, Condoleezza Rice at the State Department, and Dick Cheney continuing to drift into an alternate universe at the OVP, the Bush administration seems completely at sea. There's virtually no ideological coherency to their foreign policy that I can discern, and no credible followup on what little coherency is left.

As near as I can tell, George Bush has learned that "There's evil in the world and we're going to stand up to it" isn't really adequate as a foreign policy for a superpower but is unable to figure out anything better to replace it with. So he spins his wheels, waiting for 2009. Unfortunately, the rest of us are left spinning with him.

Bush's life has basically been a series of bailouts/buyouts. Tired of flying planes and possibly getting your ass shipped of to Viet Nam? Bail out! Tired of diddling around drilling for oil? Run for Congress! Tired of drilling dry holes and bankrupting your friends? Get another friend to buy you out! (Repeat as needed) Tired of being a waste-of-space Preznit and fucking the world of over? Well, let's see how he bails out of this one!

Texas Repugs MUST Keep DeLay on Ballot

Like everyone born and raised in Texas, I will always be a Texan, regardless of where of I've escaped to. Therefore, I tend to follow the shenanigans of Texas politics, even from afar.

In a case that ultimately has no real consequences outside of Sugarland, a judge has ruled that Tom Delay (R-soon-to-be-Leavenworth) must remain on the ballot as the Republican candidate in the TX-22 Congressional race. The judge essentially ruled that Delay withdrew and that, as such, he can NOT be replaced on the ballot. This should give this formerly Repug seat to the Dems.

Wanna bet they redistrict his ass whenever the the biennial Texas Lege manages to meet again?

Ken Lay Dies

Kenny-Boy croaked today in his temporary exile in Aspen (while awaiting sentencing in the Enron debacle.) I wish I could care. He totaled a company and virtually everyone who worked for it, crippled the state pension programs in FL and CA (at the least), bankrupted much of CA, it's municipalities and electric providers, and generally shat on everybody's rug.

What does perk my interest is the White House trying to downplay the relationship between Kenny Boy (Bush's largest contributer, campaign plane loaner, transition team member, energy policy advisor, etc etc etc) as merely an 'acquaintance'. Check out the film 'Smartest Guys in the Room' to see how fallacious that story really is.

And just between you and me, is Tony Snow the biggest jerkoff around? He combines the moronic qualities of Scott McClellan with the smarmy assholier-than-thou attitude of Ari Fleischer to create moronic assholiness. Of course, he was pretty much a moronic asshole on FNC, so I shouldnt be surprised.

Final thought..... the coroner ruled he died of a heart attack (wasnt that quick, conspiracy theorists?) Who'd have thought he had one?

EDIT:

SmokingGun blows the BEJESUS out of the 'acquaintances' story!!!

Thoughts on Korea

So lil Georgie had his bluff called yesterday. North Korea fired (depending on reports) between five and ten missiles, basically into the Sea of Japan. Apparently, all the missiles were failures, the dreaded Taepondong-2 missile fizzled after 42 seconds and crashed into the ocean (sorry, fishies...); the rest were apparently already known entities, but either crashed, or were crashed, shortly after takeoff. Kim Jong Il didnt have to prove anything; he was just thumbing his nose at lil Georgie.

We had spent weeks blustering about how horrible the consequences would be for Kim if he launched his little air-mada (actually, the multiple launch was a bit of a surprise, at least to the public- we just expected the TpD-2). And he did. And we didnt shoot them down. We didnt blow them up on the launchsite. We didnt do shit. And Kim knew this. And thus, Georgie gets his Korean nose-thumb.

And lil Georgie has no one to blame but his own damn self, as we say in Texas. He's stretched our military to the point that it can really only sit in place in Iraq and get shot at. He's removed us so far from the mainstream of diplomacy that we couldnt organize a escape in a Turkish prison. And he's spent our asses into such a hole, that even if we could pull something off, we couldnt pay for it.

So, when Iran does something egregious, or Somalia lobs a rocket at something of ours in the Persian Gulf, or some 'state' somewhere does something against our best interests, remember this Fourth of July. It's the day the rest of the world declared it's independence from American influence.

Bush Closes Bin Laden Search Unit

Mr War on Terrah himself closed down a CIA operation, started by Mr Bill Appease the Terrorists Clinton to find Bin Laden. Way to go, Shrub!

Who Are These Guys?

Did someone sneak in and replace the Supremes with actual sentient beings? The Hamdan ruling is startling in it's rectitude and sweeping rejection of everything BushCo has been doing and the legal underpinings thereof.

SCOTUSblog has great coverage (here and here) and notes that POTUS etal could be guilty of warcrimes. Very tasty.

WaPo coverage here.

SWIFT-ly FLOW THE LIES.....

There's been a lot of coverage of the fact that most of what the NYT, LATimes, and WSJ 'revealed' in their coverage of the SWIFT operation to track terrorist money transfers has been previously touted in speeches by Shrub et alia. Dan Froomkin, in WaPo, (more here) has a good overview/commentary. Also, at no additional charge, is some thinking on Shrub's signing statement idiocy.

Insert Your Own Punchline

From CBS Palm Beach: Rush busted at Palm Beach with prescription drugs not his own :)

(CBS4 News) WEST PALM BEACH Conservative talk show host Rush Limbaugh was detained at Palm Beach International Airport for the possible possession of illegal prescription drugs Monday evening.

Limbaugh was returning on a flight from the Dominican Republic when customs officials found a Viagra prescription that did not bear his name. Instead, the bottle of pills had the names of two doctors on it according to the Palm Beach Sheriff�s Office.

...

Limbaugh was detained for about three hours and was let go after cooperating with officials. He could be facing a second-degree misdemeanor violation if the State Attorney�s office presses charges.

Limbaugh entered a plea deal back in April in a previous case where his charge of fraud to conceal information to obtain prescriptions was dropped under the condition he continue undergoing treatment for addiction.

...

Limbaugh's attorney, Roy Black, issued the following statement:

"While going through routine Customs inspection of luggage at Palm Beach International Airport upon his return from an international trip, Rush Limbaugh was detained by customs agents after they noticed a non-narcotic prescription drug, which had been prescribed by Mr. Limbaugh's treating physician but labeled as being issued to the physician rather than Mr. Limbaugh. After a brief interview, Mr. Limbaugh was permitted to continue on his journey."

Now I Understand....

Okay, I know, given the realities of geopolitics and insurgencies and invading forces in undeveloped countries, that we can't really 'win' in Iraq. But after the news today, I finally understand how people might have thought we could win. Saddam is just nuts.

As everyone probably heard, this morning, AFTER breakfast, Saddam announced he was going on a hunger strike since his lawyer had been killed in an ambush by ummmm.... someone (third lawyer, so far.) Anyway, tonight (Baghdad time), he announces he's made his point and the hunger strike is over.

If Gandhi and Bobby Sands had had that type of sheer determination, Britain's empire would have crumbled long ago!

Now I Understand....

Okay, I know, given the realities of geopolitics and insurgencies and invading forces in undeveloped countries, that we can't really 'win' in Iraq. But after the news today, I finally understand how people might have thought we could win. Saddam is just nuts.

As everyone probably heard, this morning, AFTER breakfast, Saddam announced he was going on a hunger strike since his lawyer had been killed in an ambush by ummmm.... someone (third lawyer, so far.) Anyway, tonight (Baghdad time), he announces he's made his point and the hunger strike is over.

If Gandhi and Bobby Sands had had that type of sheer determination, Britain's empire would have crumbled long ago!

Pentagon Shoots Down Santorum

Gee. What a shock! Apparently, despite Lil Ricky's lies... er claims yesterday, there haven't been any WMD found in Iraq. And, didn't he violate the law by showing around that supposedly classified document on Fox? Just curious?

Net Neutrality Revisited

I dont like, he says again, to post entire blog entries from elsewhere, but this (from dKos) is important!

Net Neutrality Action

by mcjoan

Thu Jun 22, 2006 at 09:59:02 AM PDT

The Senate Commerce Committee is starting mark-up on the telecommunications bill today. On the table is a so-called "compromise" on net neutrality by Ted Stevens:

Sen. Ted. Stevens, R-AK, who authored the Senate telecom overhaul, recently amended his own bill to establish a way for consumers to complain about alleged violations of net neutrality. But Sen. Daniel Inouye, D-HI, the committee's ranking democrat said those changes "utterly fail to protect consumers and preserve an open Internet."

Word is that we are as close as one vote away from killing this amendment in committee. The committee vote is likely to be on Tuesday, giving us five days to convince our Senators to vote against the Stevens proposal, and support the Snowe/Dorgan bill (S. 2917) without amendment.

Calls coming from the home state carry more weight than others, but don't let that stop you from being heard. Here's the list of Senators on the Committee that are our focus as being persuadable on this. (You can also call toll free at 1-888-355-3588 to the Capitol switchboard, and they will transfer you to any Senate or House office.)

John McCain (AZ): (202) 224-2235; Fax: (202) 228-2862

Trent Lott (MS): (202) 224-6253; Fax: (202) 224-2262

Kay Bailey Hutchison (TX): 202-224-5922; 202-224-0776 (FAX)

Olympia J. Snowe (ME): (202) 224-5344; FAX (202) 224-1946

Gordon H. Smith (OR): 202.224.3753; Fax: 202.228.3997

George Allen (VA): (202) 224-4024; Fax: (202) 224-5432

Bill Nelson (FL): 202-224-5274; Fax: 202-228-2183

Maria Cantwell (WA): 202-224-3441; 202-228-0514 - FAX

Frank R. Lautenberg (NJ): (202) 224-3224; Fax: (202) 228-4054

E. Benjamin Nelson (NE): Tel: (202) 224-6551; Fax: (202) 228-0012

Mark Pryor (AR): (202) 224-2353; Fax: (202) 228-0908

Here is a list of the full committee membership, phone and fax numbers (thanks, FDL!). While the list above are the people supposedly on the bubble for us, it can't hurt for the entire committee to hear from us.

Hagel Barks at Repugs

WOW!!!

Congress fails in its duty when we do not probe, when we fail, we do not ask tough questions, and we fail when we do not debate the gate issues of our day. There is no issue more important than war. The war in Iraq is the defining issue on which this Congress and the administration will be judged. The American people want to see serious debate about serious issues from serious leaders. They deserve more than a political debate. This debate should transcend cynical attempts to turn public frustration with the war in Iraq into an electoral advantage. It should be taken more seriously than to simply retreat into focus-group tested buzz words and phrases like “cut and run,” catchy political slogans that debase the seriousness of war. War’s not a partisan issue, Mr. President. It should not be held hostage to political agendas. War should not be drug down into the political muck. America deserves better. Our men and women fighting and dying deserve better.

Arianna on Tony Snow

From Huff Po:

I've known Tony Snow for a long time -- and there's no question that he's a very bright and articulate guy.

But he's showing himself to be an honors graduate of the Shit Happens School of Politics. The new poster child for the Bush administration's brand of Callous Conservatism.

It's worth noting that Snow is arriving on the scene just as Michael Gerson, the conscience of the administration and the intellectual architect of the Bush White House's never-made-it-off-the-drawing-board compassionate conservatism, is heading out the door.

According to Josh Bolten, Gerson "reflected the president's heart." So if Karl Rove is Bush's Brain, and Gerson reflected his heart... what part of the president does Snow embody?

So far, I'd say it's located below the waist and to the rear.