“The Iranian programmes are proceeding apace and represent a strategic threat,” said the diplomat. “The aim is to have a big impact on the Iranian financial system, targeting the economic lifeline of the regime.”

Well, then.  The “diplomat,” who doesn’t sound particularly diplomatic to me, is Ivo Daalder, the US ambassador to the EU.  Earlier, in response to Iran’s hardly surprising threats to close the Strait of Hormuz in response to even stiffer sanctions, he said this:

“The strait of Hormuz needs to remain open and we need to maintain this as an international passageway,” he told the BBC. “We will do what needs to be done to ensure that is the case.”

Of course, Daalder justifies such acts of war against Iran because of its still-hypothetical nuclear program, and the force of the related “Killin’ Habibs for Jesus” foreign policy from George Bush and Fox News that Obama has eagerly adopted for his own.  No matter the vast majorities of Americans opposed to any more wars, the Hope and Change campaign is in an election year, which means, ironically, no Hope and no Change, when it comes to chicken-hawkery.

Since no other American media figure will do so, with the notable exception of Glenn Greenwald and a few others, let’s look at this, just for a moment, from Iran’s perspective, if only hypothetically:

CHNN: So, Abdul, why do all you dusky-hued sand niggers want nukes?

ABDUL: So you fat whiteys won’t bomb us and steal our oil.

CHNN:  That couldn’t possibly be the reason.  Isn’t it really because you hate our freedoms?

ABDUL:  What freedoms?

CHNN:  Never mind about that.  Next, we go to Pamela Geller….

It’s useless.  Now that “American Exceptionalism” has become our national religion, even the ostensibly “liberal” politician pretending to be president must beat the war drums until we as a nation are left limbless and caterwauling like the guy in the Monty Python movie.  Unlike politicians, ordinary people can see that we never “win” wars, we just have them, and pay for them with our futures.  And unlike media stars who “cover” our overlords, we actually care if their ballooning expenses are bankrupting us.  Sadly, wars, like every other major decision we as a country make, have been moved upstairs, and nobody has any say in the matter except those who profit from them.  Democrat, Republican, it doesn’t matter; the latter will loudly demand more wars and more money for them, while the former will do so too, only more, uh, diplomatically.

One dreadful consequence of the current Republican disarray, for ordinary people anyway, is that it leaves Obama free to pick useless, unwinnable fights hither and yon while everyone’s busy snickering at his opponents.  The worst is that nobody cares, and why would they?

Orwell must be rolling over in his grave.

Back when Bush was in office, stories like the one below fell like rain on virtually every subject, and always ended the same way; some branch or other of the government would just flatly declare that its past or current actions, no matter how heinous, simply aren’t anybody’s business.  It started with Cheney’s infamous energy policies, which we now know involved little things like invading Iraq and deregulating fracking.  As you’d expect, the stupider and more damaging the policy choice was, the more likely that it was to be implemented without any public debate at all; instead, narratives were chosen and relentlessly touted to either sell to or, more often, distract voters from, what was really going on.  Cheney famously said that elections are the only “accountability moment” for an administration; after that voters should just sit down and shut up.

Sadly, Obama behaves exactly the same way, which is more than a little disappointing considering that the guy was, well, elected to do just the opposite.  That ol’ “Constitutional Lawyer” was often trotted out, and spoke movingly and convincingly about the illegal activity and excessive secrecy that was threatening democracy.  His cowardly flip-flop on FISA, which happened before the election, was barely a taste of the outrages to follow, but it set the tone.  Accountability-free government, bloated, deceitful, overbearing, and corrupt, was firmly established as what you got from both parties, now, so I guess we should just get used to it. (from AP via the WaPoo…)

WASHINGTON — The Justice Department is refusing to release legal memos the George W. Bush administration used to justify his warrantless surveillance program, one of the most contentious civil liberties issues during the Republican president’s time in office.

In responding to a Freedom of Information Act request, the department is withholding two legal analyses by then-government lawyer John Yoo, and is revealing just eight sentences from a third Yoo memo dated Nov. 2, 2001. That memo is at least 21 pages long.

So there you have it.  One of the vilest and completely unpunished criminals from the Bush Administration, John Yoo, is being actively protected not just from his advocacy for torture, but also his advocacy of illegal, expensive, and ultimately useless warrantless searches.  Note how easily “warrantless” slips off the tongue these days, despite the explicit use of that word, right there in that “quaint” constitution of ours.  Having embraced approximately 94% of everything Yoo wrote, I suppose it’s natural for the “Justice” Department of a nominally “opposition” party to try to cover that up, like a cat in a litter box, but that makes it even more galling.

In this case as in so many others, Obama has proven himself to be much worse than Bush for the future of this country, because he has shown the American people that we really do have no choice anymore in how we are governed; the rightward march is on, and the elimination of civil liberties will continue to be ratified by all Presidents, regardless of party.  As Glenn Greenwald and others have noted in recent days, such a course is the grim necessity of a corrupt government that is steadily handing away its resources to the wealthiest and most well-connected; as inequality skyrockets and more and more working people fall into poverty and hopelessness, an up-and-running police state is a handy thing to have lying around.

Lefty film director Ken Loach, in a recent interview with The Guardian, put it best when he said, “The ruling class are cracking the whip.”   I’ll say.  To quote a less respectable analyst, “How’s that hopey-changey thing workin’ out for ya?”

I was pleasantly surprised with President Obama’s speech today, and although by now I find myself reluctant to believe much of it will happen, for once he firmly laid the blame for the deficits and debt where it belongs, with the Republican Party.  Of course, the fact that he hasn’t been making this point in a thousand ways for a thousand days partially explains both his current weak political position and the loss of congress that created it, but better late than never, Mr Ivy League.  While I rejoiced at his admittedly belated willingness to talk about tax cuts for the wealthy in a more factual way, i.e. that money given to so few people who don’t need it blights the lives of millions who do, he still didn’t take a crack at the bonkers philosophy behind it; that such short-sighted and dumb-ass cruelty is supposedly good for us all.

Saddled with his bankster-sodden administration and, sadly, policies, Obama has put himself in a place where he always has to leave behind the biggest rhetorical tool in the shed, one that would bedazzle everyone from teabaggers to firebaggers*: Simply and plainly stating that rich people, when allowed to, will use their excess money to buy the government, and widespread poverty and suffering is the inevitable result.  Every Republican policy, every last one, shows this, and basically hands him a daily narrative of oligarchic plunder to exploit, were he so inclined.  We have thirty years of data to prove that, far from benefitting the economy, handouts to the rich invariably cause debt and repeated crises, and always result in a declining standard of living for everyone else.

Of course, that inconvenient truth would have gone over like a fart in church amongst the millionaire Villagers, who still say a prayer to St. Ronnie whenever their contracts come up, so in his typically wienie way, Obama wouldn’t go after either the idiocy of the Laffer Curve (in which evidently 100% or Republicans still believe) nor the resulting pernicious uses to which absurdly rich people put their newfound large excesses of cash, like buying elections, for instance.  Naw, he couldn’t say that, not when he’s got an election to buy for himself; too chancy to try and get it for free (which he would) by puncturing some of the right’s most successfully embedded Big Lies, so he is left to fight a squirmish** here and there, but against a narrative so stupid and discredited that he shouldn’t have to fight it at all.

Today Glenn Greenwald argued pretty persuasively what I’ve been thinking for a long time, that Obama isn’t really trying to reverse the rightist lurch because he never really wanted to; it’s disappointing but probably true.  After all, as we saw today, he is smart, and has gifts to which he could put to any goal he wanted.  And so far, those goals appear to differ only in style and presentation from his predecessor, the worst president America ever had, who seems an odd model for success for someone supposedly in the nominal opposition.

It’s infuriating enough to anyone to the left of say, Blanche Lincoln, to continually find that nearly all politicians of both parties, once they reach Washington, end up on the same self-serving team.   It’s doubly infuriating if you’re a Democrat, and naively thought that was exactly what you were ostensibly voting against. Obama made some welcome if predictably tentative steps back toward his repeatedly scorned “base” today, and went further than I expected in “educating,” as righty might put it, those listening.  But he again failed to aim his slingshot squarely at the Chicago School Goliath, that is, Voodoo Economics itself.  It was either a missed opportunity, or a simple and understandable desire to spend his twilight years at Burning Tree, resting assured that generations of his heirs won’t have to work.  Just like Bill Clinton, who compellingly showed all future Democrats that doing good for others should never get too much in the way of doing well for oneself.  Ideological purity is quite evidently a luxury only available to Republicans these days.

President Kennedy is reported to have once wondered aloud how much money it took to turn a Democrat into a Republican, but being rich himself, he was only talking about voters, not Presidents.  Those were the days, huh?

*When Firedoglake criticized, appropriately, some of Obama’s early caves, other lefty bloggers dropped them from their blog rolls and called them “firebaggers.”

**Thank heaven for Sarah Palin’s many Shakespearian contributions to the language….

Is the juvenile cluelessness and stupidity of HBGary’s Aaron Barr’s IM exchange with an unnamed (but clearly smarter) coder, with his poorly spelled assertions that despite the math, he was still right, any different than G. Gordon Liddy’s elaborate charts with plans to hire hookers and blow up the Brookings Institution?  Only in scale; both were flagrantly illegal and potentially disastrous if exposed, but they both served the purpose of further empowering the powerful at the expense of everyone else, so they were, shall we say, “on the table.”  Both were immediately showered in a hail of non-denial denials from the faux-horrified higher-ups, and scapegoats were duly chosen and dispatched.

Unfortunately, 2011 is not 1974, and today one could drop a bomb on Washington and not injure anyone who is even surprised, much less outraged, at such chilling, multimillion dollar hijinks against ordinary citizens and journalists.  After all, planting fake documents with their adversaries and then loudly “discovering” they were forgeries worked pretty damn well in the more capable hands of Karl Rove when he needed to get rid of Dan Rather, so why not try it again?  Smearing progressive groups with guilt by association and doctored “evidence” was a great success in killing ACORN, so why not get the SEIU and all the rest of them next?  We can make fun of the childish bravado of Mr. Barr and and the absurd melange of venom and pearl-clutching pouring out of the Chamber of Commerce, but who laughs last?

As Glenn Greenwald, one of the operation’s chief targets, points out, the only thing unusual about this story is that we actually found out about it before the damage was done.  That generally isn’t so, as careers are ruined, punitive lawsuits are filed, and voices of dissent are routinely crushed as the comfortable, well, get comfortable-er, and the media gazes on approvingly.  After all, if it’s good for the Chamber of Commerce and Bank of America, only a dirty America-hating hippie could possibly be against it…   The Obama DOJ even recommended the ridiculously well-connected (scoff) law firm, Hunton and Williams, who assembled Barr’s team of Merry Pranksters, to BofA to aid in its preemptive attack on WikiLeaks, and is currently arresting hackers faster than HBGary was ever able to find them.

While it’s heartwarming to see the other firms involved in this skulduggery, like Palantir and Berico, denounce such behavior in the scathing terms their lawyers undoubtedly concocted for them, anyone who believes for a moment that they are chastened by this little episode ought to consider that this is the new normal, and nobody involved is going to jail, or even go help Jimmy Carter build houses or something.  ”Security,” devoted to squelching public opinion when it conflicts with, or worse, impedes however slightly, the aims of the elite, is the only growth industry left in post-Bush America, gobbling up the budgets of governments and corporations alike, and as everyone but the rich continue to be squeezed it will only become more “necessary.”

For a moment, the whores have been dragged into church, and as you’d expect, they’re a little nervous there.  But Saturday night is always just around the corner, and there are plenty more customers waiting.

Few politicians are as consistently revolting as Joe Lieberman, but this little display really takes the cake.  Notice how the loathsome little Likudnik fumbles over the patently ridiculous Fox charges of treason, and instead mutters something about “espionage” as he barrels forward like Brezhnev in the old commie days, sure that any excuse could be used for tossing somebody in the Gulag; never mind the law.  Laws are whatever Joe “Leonid” Lieberman thinks they are, any given day, and they are always there solely to punish his “enemies.”

Funny, isn’t it, that here in the good ol’ USA we used to make fun of the hated commies for lying when the truth would sound better, and resorting to such clumsy and obvious efforts to control the press, but now in Privatized America, the government (and people like Lieberman) can now make a few phone calls and bring Interpol, VISA, MasterCard, PayPal, Amazon, and some Swiss (!) banks along to silence whomever they please, and be CHEERED ON by our utterly captured Fourth Estate for their toughness.  Hell, Joe, let’s bring in Blackwater, to boot, unless they’re too busy with all their no-bid contracts everywhere else.  Who knew you could run a police state so much better on the capitalist model?

Of course, we know that Freedom Isn’t Free, so already beleaguered (non-rich) taxpayers can expect a big bill in the mail from each one of these globe-trotting corporate behemoths for their hooker-like favors, but nobody who pals around with Joe Lieberman will ever get one.  And nobody in the green rooms of the media would ever deign to take the sorts of risks Assange and Wikileaks did, so it’s their right to be smug; it compensates for the fact that they haven’t come close to doing their jobs for at least twenty years, and some uppity nobody came along and did it for them, making them look like asses.  That alone deserves a drone attack, according to our intrepid Watchdogs of the Press.

As many others have written on this subject, including Marcy Wheeler and Glenn Greenwald, the scary part about all this is that it appears to be the global elite’s final assault on what remains of press freedom across the world; like the commies of yore, they know that their candle is burning at both ends, and like any Vegas gambler, all they need is one more chance at the table to cash out for good.  Asking them to not try it would be like asking fish not to swim.  It’s their nature.

Mr. Assange’s own fate seems as imperiled as Private Manning’s. Last Monday, the Swedish Migration Board said Mr. Assange’s bid for a residence permit had been rejected. His British visa will expire early next year. When he left the London restaurant at twilight, heading into the shadows, he declined to say where he was going. The man who has put some of the world’s most powerful institutions on his watch list was, once more, on the move.

Or, in plain English, the Grey Lady says, “off with their heads.”  As Glenn Greenwald wrote today, the article demonstrated the degree to which the supposed liberal media is fundamentally against journalism itself, when it comes to, say, informing the public about the activities of the government.  John Burns really, really doesn’t like that sort of impertinence, and isn’t the least bit embarrassed to say so on Page One; nor, evidently, are his editors.  After years and years of pointless casualties in the pointless wars Burns has been covering, he’s gotten more, not less, trusting of the Pentagon, and he sees this disturbing credulity as the proper model for others.  Why does the public want to be bothered with all that torture and slaughter of civilians?  Barbara Bush doesn’t worry her “beautiful mind” about such ephemera, and neither does Burns.  He thinks that Assange must be crazy, and sets out to prove it.

As Greenwald points out, it’s certainly understandable that a discredited Pentagon toady like Burns would go after Assange with such unseemly gusto, since he managed to do in a few months on a shoestring what Burns couldn’t do in nearly ten years with all the king’s horses and all the king’s men:  in this case the kings are the NYT and the Pentagon, who seem to have split Burns’ tab.  Still, the overkill is pretty startling.  I’m a little surprised Burns couldn’t find somebody who disliked Assange when they were in Boy Scouts, or whatever the Australian equivalent would be.  It seems that deep down, there is still a tiny journalist lurking within Burns and his collaborators, and they’re pissed because they’ve been scooped, but their strategy for dealing with their hurt feelings must be something they picked up from Maureen Dowd.

While Greenwald accurately compared Burns’ article with the work of Nixon’s plumbers, and the irony that the Times, which successfully beat the Nixon Administration in Supreme Court to publish the Pentagon Papers, had so clearly moved to the other side when it came to Pentagon secrets, it’s actually worse than that.  The plumbers committed multiple crimes in hope of finding real dirt on their enemies, to then take to the media, which in those days required evidence of sensational smears.  No evidence is required anymore, as long as the “enemy” is someone outside the corridors of power, whether those corridors be at the Pentagon or the New York Times.  Doubters of wars will always be smeared, so John Burns’ grandchildren can grow up to be little war correspondents, and David Petraeus’ grandchildren can grow up to be little generals, and only the truly little people will die and all that icky stuff, while they keep their secrets and burnish their resumes.  They aren’t worried about their “fates.” Nice fucking work if you can get it.

What was missing from Greenwald’s excellent analysis was the sheer, unadulterated imperiousness of the article, as exemplified in the closing paragraph I quoted.  Though Burns repeatedly calls Assange “imperious,” he also manages, in every other sentence, to darkly intone that it is Assange who should take responsibility for any of the remotely possible but nonetheless plausibly scary repercussions of his work, while Burns is, by definition, to be held blameless, seemingly because he was following orders, and Assange wasn’t.  Burns, who never questioned two disastrous wars tainted by torture, corruption, and lies that led to the deaths of at least a hundred thousand people, when he was in a position to do so, cannot justify himself, so he seeks to silence Assange, instead.  It’s like Nuremberg, reverse-engineered.

In the perfumed chambers of such mendacious, war-loving elitists as Burns, there are certain things never to be said in front of the servants, and the fact that the two intractable and catastrophic wars bankrupting the country morally and materially were lost before they begun is pretty much on the top of the list.  Who, pray, is calling whom imperious?   The well-paid “journalist” who argues, vehemently, against the peoples’ right to know, or the powerless outcast who had the temerity to disagree?   We report, you decide.

Interestingly, the “pragmatic” acceptance of right-wing policies as one’s own is accompanied by an adoption of the right-wing sales tactics that went with them, since, well, what else is there?  Liberals, nominal or otherwise, have never had to practice pitching such horrors; generally, in the old days, we lamented them.  But as far as setting up straw men, misdirecting anger, and victim-blaming, we really ought to return to our core competencies and leave that field to the right, if the astonishingly unconvincing crap I’m reading is any indication.  No, Kossack, Firedoglake’s candid and accurate assessment of the “enthusiasm gap” isn’t “stupid,” but rather a wake-up call to a compromised and languishing party whose craven leaders somehow thought couldn’t lose, even if it fucked up royally, which it did.  And no, No More Mister, Glenn Greenwald and Jane Hamsher aren’t “Firebaggers,” when they criticize Bush-grade Democratic sellouts to corporations; they’re literate.  It makes a difference.

Now, the Obamabots are marveling at the mojo our Leader showed when he belatedly and inadequately fired up and, although with undue politeness, actually called out Republicans for the reprehensible behavior they’ve been exhibiting since before he was sworn in, which back then might have been a good idea, but now, after his serial capitulations, seems to all concerned to be the empty political gesture it clearly is.  Bush may have relied on media appearances rather than reality on many occasions to bolster his image, but he did deliver, for his particular slice of the electorate, on the bread and circuses part, too, that is if tax cuts are your bread and war is your circus…   Obama, for all his vaunted smarts, still doesn’t get this, and is going to pay dearly at the polls for it, deservedly.

Sadly, there is no group more likely to reinforce the meme that the reason for the Democrats’ utter failure to make use of their two-election mandate was Obama’s undetectable, but nevertheless disqualifying, “leftism,” than the Obamabots.  Each time they join Mitch McConnell and Dick Armey in decrying the “moonbats” within their own ranks, another Fox host gets her highlights, or maybe boob job.  Inevitable Democratic losses in November can be interpreted by the media in several ways: 1) They were due to a bad economy and Republican intransigence, which is only partly true but at least less damaging to the liberal cause over time; or 2) They were due to Obama’s capitulation to the right that caused his policies to fail and made him look like a vacillating, principle-free wimp; or 3) America is a center-right nation and only Republican-approved policies are ever acceptable, no matter how crazy and no matter how Americans vote.  This bunch, which calls itself liberal, seems to be gunning for #3, and they’re calling me stupid.  Sheesh.

Like many of the other publicly disaffected Democrats subject to serial, rote abuse from the left (ish) thought police, I would never dream of not voting in November, nor, I imagine, would any of the rest of us hippies White House spokesman Robert Gibbs thinks are in need of a drug test: no election is without consequences, and we’ll drag our pot and patchouli-scented selves to the voting booth regardless.  My question is…  Who else do you expect to do so?

It turns out that the left-wing commentator Glenn Greenwald doesn’t like me (who knew?). In a rather long posting, he accuses me of many different sins, mainly, though not exclusively, having to do with my early support for the Iraq war, and for my reporting from pre-invasion Iraqi Kuridstan. (Greenwald has always been vehemently opposed to the invasion.)

So he starts right off obtusely saying, like a four-year old, that that “left-wing,”  long-winded Greenwald, for no apparent reason, just “doesn’t like me.”  Well, boo f*ucking hoo.  You say obnoxious, false, and asinine things in print; what’s to like?  And he manages, unconvincingly, to imply that Greenwald is some nobody anyway, even though he’s clearly smarter, much more highly regarded, and, well, more in touch with reality than ol’ Goldberg, and also lacks Goldberg’s lengthy and unblemished record of wrongness.

As it happens, I was e-mailing yesterday with the prime minister of Iraqi Kurdistan, Barham Salih, and I mentioned Greenwald’s critique. I explained that Greenwald believes the invasion was a criminal act, to which Salih responded by asking if Greenwald had ever visited Iraqi Kurdistan. I said I didn’t know, not having too much contact with him, on account of him hating me. So Salih asked me to extend an invitation to Greenwald to visit Iraqi Kurdistan. So, Glenn, you are hereby invited to visit Iraqi Kurdistan. I’m happy to go with you (I’m actually a  pretty good travel companion — even Matt Yglesias says that I can be both “funny” and “charming,” though, to be fair, he also says I can be “dangerous” and “inaccurate”). But if you didn’t want to go with me, I’m sure I can find someone to go with you.

This paragraph smells so strongly of ass that I would only recommend it to the constipated, to be read on the toilet.  First, the bragging:  ”I emailed real Iraqis, nyeah nyeah.”  Then the fake best friend speaks up, then the completely fabricated offer, and then the insulting remark that Greenwald supposedly couldn’t find a traveling companion with the unfortunate but telling accidental admission that it’s Goldberg who has to beg people to ride with him on an elevator.  Glenn has a husband, fatso, and by the way, the Iraq invasion was illegal, and is seen as such by the majority of humanity.

The prime minister said we could invite Kurds from different political parties and media outlets to  a big, public forum, and Glenn could explain to them his position that the invasion was immoral, and the Kurds could explain why they supported the invasion. (Of course, we would try to find some Kurds who opposed the invasion, and there are, indeed, some out there, to meet with Greenwald as well).  We would also be able to visit Halabja, and the other towns and villages affected by Saddam’s genocide, and I’m sure we could arrange meetings with other Kurdish leaders and dissidents.

It’s funny how righties always try to pose as humanitarians, when they will gladly toss humans into the meat grinder, and money down the toilet, for their pet wars, which kind of makes life crappy or over for many more people that it “helps.”  Remember Laura Bush and the plight of Afghan Women?  Me neither.  Goldberg is just a cynical piece of shit who cares less about Kurds that he does about any other brown-skinned human;  Saddam was indeed a monster, but he never managed to kill as many Americans as, say, George W. Bush, who was, back in the day, Goldberg’s hero.

Obviously, I think this is a good idea, because I view the subject of Iraq as a complicated one, and I think that Greenwald has an overly simplistic, black-and-white view of the situation.  If he were to meet with representatives of the Kurds — who make up 20 percent of the population of Iraq and who were the most oppressed group in Iraq during the period of Saddam’s rule (experiencing not only a genocide but widespread chemical gassing) — I think it might be possible for him to understand why some people — even some Iraqis — supported the overthrow of Saddam. Also, as a bonus, I’m reasonably sure we could meet with Kurdish intelligence officials who could explain to him why they believe Saddam was secretly supporting an al Qaeda-affiliated Kurdish extremist group, and, if we have time, I could also arrange a visit to Najaf or the equivalent, where Greenwald could meet with representatives of the Shi’a, who also took it on the chin from Saddam.

This is where just being an ass descends into being a complete idiot with a lampshade on your head and a wet spot on the front of your trousers.  The bouncers are assuredly coming to get you when you, in 2010, claim that Saddam was involved with Al Qaeda.  Better yet, in Goldberg’s world, the rise of the Shi’a, which brought with it the rise of religious extremism in Iraq and directly led to the triumph of Shiite Iran in the region was all good, too.  Can a person be dumber and more self-contradictory than that and still be, pardon the expression, “toilet trained?”  As for the usual straw man arguments the pervade Goldberg’s thin and embarrassing tirade, saying Greenwald somehow fails to see how “complicated” the Iraq situation is is perhaps the most pathetic.  Greenwald, like every other sentient, “simplistic” human on earth, knew that Iraq would be a costly, pointless disaster, and it is, in spades, whether the Kurds are marginally and temporarily happier at the moment or not.

This is a sincere offer from a very important Kurdish official, and I hope Glenn Greenwald takes it seriously.

Why?  It isn’t serious.  The worst thing for the portly and pampered Goldberg would be that Greenwald takes him up on it, which I’m pretty sure he will.  That’s when Goldberg will pull a Sarah Palin (minus the cute) and back out and blame Greenwald.  I’ve seen this movie many, many, times.

Take it away, Concern Troll:

Founded in 1946 by leading liberals such as J. K. Galbraith, Walter Reuther, Reinhold Niebuhr, and Eleanor Roosevelt, the Americans for Democratic Action (“ADA”) is America’s oldest liberal organization. Each year, the ADA performs the useful service of rating the “liberal” quotient of each member of Congress’s voting record based on “key” votes. Such surveys can be questioned as a measure of a politician’s commitment or effectiveness but are a reasonable indicator of his or her ideological stance on most issues which actually come before Congress. For example, for 2009, Barney Frank got a 100 percent score for his House votes while Eric Cantor received a zero score, about what one would expect.

Can you smell the pseudo-science coming?  I knew you could.  Note that he says “key votes,” which in two little words contains two nifty dodges; their behavior that shaped the final legislation regardless of their vote, and also leaves out all the less “key” votes which would utterly disprove his flimsy argument.

It will also surprise no one to learn that Representative John Boozman (R-AR), this year’s Arkansas Republican Senate nominee, also received a zero grade from the ADA for his 2009 House votes. But, in light of recent events, it is disconcerting to learn that Senator Blanche Lincoln (D-AR) got a 95 percent score for her 2009 Senate voting record, one short of perfect. She voted for the stimulus bill, and with the Administration on every key health care vote and on every other vote viewed as important by the ADA, except for the Durbin mortgage “cramdown” amendment, which deprived her of 100 percent.

Of course, only the threat of a primary challenger made her remember, briefly, which letter was after her name, and aberrantly vote accordingly here lately.  Her previous record had to be scrubbed from this faux-academic “study,” natch, and  she also will be beaten handily by Boozman, anyway, but that’s another story for another day.

However, given the facts that: (a) she represents a southern state carried by John McCain with 60 percent of the vote in 2008; and (b) she is up for reelection in 2010, one would have thought that her voting record would have been considered laudable by liberals across the country, and that they would have rallied to support her reelection campaign against a formidable challenge, in what is shaping up to be a very tough year for Democrats nationwide. It will be an especially difficult year in Arkansas, where two incumbent Democratic House members, Marion Berry and Vic Snyder, are retiring in the face of adverse polls. But if you thought that, you would be very wrong.

This is a center-right country, after all, so what you want are Republicans who call themselves Democrats to join hands with the real Republicans, and rule the small people the way Republicans want.  It’s what Jesus intended.

In fact, Senator Lincoln was on the receiving end of a serious 2010 primary challenge from the left by Arkansas Lieutenant Governor Bill Halter, who was backed by such key progressive players as the Service Employees International Union (“SEIU”), and the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (“AFSCME”), and such luminaries of the left blogosphere as Markos Moulitsas (“Daily Kos”) and Jane Hamsher (“Firedog Lake”) as well as left libertarian columnist Glenn Greenwald of Salon.com. Halter’s effort fell short, 52-48 percent. But, speaking for that new coalition of labor activists and the netroots, known as “Accountability Now,” which had led the pro-Halter effort, Greenwald pronounced Lincoln’s Senate record to be “awful” and denounced her as a corrupt “corporatist.”

Those pesky Greenwaldian facts are always so insulting, as most of us here have seen, (to our considerable delight, especially when the target further digs his grave by responding…) that they all but demand a response, however lame.  So Connolly (any relation to Ceci?  It would be a match made in heaven…) launches into an incredibly boring and fatuous recitation of  ”history,” which in a nutshell says that because the Democrats stupidly started liking the darkies back in the 60′s,  afterward they had to do everything else the Republicans wanted for evermore, or be consigned to political oblivion by America, which as you know is supposed to be run by the rich and white.  Watch the scare quotes, which are as emblematic of such trolls as slime trails are to slugs:

In a June 10 column, he explained that his “purpose” had been to “remove her from the Senate, or failing that at least to impose a meaningful cost on her past behavior,” such as her failure to support a health care “public option” and union backed card check legislation. But why did Lincoln’s “behavior” warrant a challenge this year when neither she nor any other similarly situated southern Democrat would have been subject to one in the past? What may be happening is a break with a tacit understanding which has governed Democratic Party politics for the past forty years. This new departure is worthy of more discussion than it has received.

Oh, yeah, we never hear about how the hippies permanently discredited liberalism, at least those of us who are blind, deaf, and dumb.  Never mind that they were right, then as now.

That understanding, to be explained below, has its roots in the Democratic Party’s Great Trauma of the 1960′s. In 1964, Lyndon Johnson won 44 states (all except AL, LA, GA, MS, SC and AZ) and 61% of the popular vote. It was the high water mark of 20th Century liberalism. In 1965, the Democrats held 68 Senate seats and 295 House seats and proceeded to enact a plethora of laws, including the Voting Rights Act, Medicare, Medicaid, federal aid to higher education, and immigration reform, which liberals regard as among the greatest modern achievements of the United States government. However, by 1966, things had begun to go sour for the Great Society, with Republicans gaining 47 House seats and 3 Senate seats in the election that fall. Despite the Democrats’ continuing majorities of 247-187 and 64-36 in the House and Senate, the Republican/Dixiecrat coalition was back in control by 1967 and the Johnson’s Administration’s domestic initiatives were essentially over. By 1968, a genuine political transition was underway. The presidential election of that year is usually remembered for its background of an escalating war in Vietnam, assassinations, cultural conflict on generational lines, and racial violence, as well as for the closeness of its outcome. But one striking aspect of it in retrospect is the clear shift in voter allegiances since 1964 which it reflected. The winner, Richard Nixon, received 43.4% of the vote, while the runner-up, Hubert Humphrey pulled 42.7%, which made the election seem very close at the time. However, George Wallace, running on an overtly racist third party ticket, won a staggering 13.5% of the vote, carrying five deep southern states, including Arkansas. Right wing candidates thus won 57% of the total vote.

Only a disnonest revisionist historian could call 13.5% of the vote “staggering,” and still have to leave out Humphrey’s last-minute turn against the war that nearly cost Nixon the election, despite his phony “secret plan” to end it that gave him his lead in the first place, and as a moderate, not a right-winger.  It could just as easily be said that peace candidates won by a similar margin.  Then there’s the question of “winning,” which if you’re Nixon or George W. Bush, means flatly lying about your intentions until November, and then abruptly veering right.  The number of people who would vote for an openly right-wing candidate has remained constant, around 30%, forever.

By 1972, the shift was complete. President Nixon managed to incorporate Wallace’s 1968 vote and add more besides, winning 60.7 percent of the total vote against George McGovern. Thus, in eight years, fully one-third of President Johnson’s 1964 majority had been sheared away, losses concentrated among socially conservative white voters in the upper south and in suburbs all over the country.

Never mind the infamous shenanigans that produced the 1972 landslide, as well as Nixon’s downfall.  All Republican “victories,” no matter how crooked, are sweeping mandates for right-wing governance.

This huge alteration in voting patterns created the context of modern American politics, making the once endangered Republican party the default preference in US presidential elections. Between 1968 and 2004, the Republicans won 7 out of 10 presidential elections, with their majorities always based on the same coalition which Nixon first assembled.

The filthy rich, scofflaw industries, racists, and religious nuts….  What a proud achievement.  And of course, between 1960 and 2008, Democrats won 6 out of 13 presidential elections, which kind of negates this dubious line of inquiry anyway.

The Democrats continued to do better in Congressional elections, in part owing to the ability of what Alan Ehrenhalt called Democratic “political entrepreneurs,” i.e. politicians skilled at survival in inhospitable electoral environments, such as Tom Daschle and Fritz Hollings. But here too the trend lines were clear, with the Republicans controlling the Senate from 1980 to 1986, 1994 to 2001, and from 2002 to 2006, and the House from 1994 to 2006.

Yes, dirty politics and corruption do work pretty well, but not always, as Connolly here glumly and sheepishly admits, behind a barrage of faux triumphalism.

However, despite or perhaps because of these losses, Democrats came to understand, that there was a formula for occasional victories at the presidential level, which was essentially the same as the formula for Democrats winning southern Senate races. To win, the Democrats had to nominate a moderate centrist candidate, liberal enough to hold their liberal/labor/African American base (which exhibited great forbearance and political maturity), but not so left wing that he could plausibly be labeled a Liberal, i.e. someone associated with the least popular legacies of the sixties. Such centrist candidates would be able to capture enough moderate and independent votes to win elections. Aided by other factors, this is the formula which worked for Jimmy Carter (1976 version), and Bill Clinton. It would have worked for Al Gore in 2000 as well, but for the Palm Beach County ballot, Ralph Nader’s third party candidacy, and a partisan Supreme Court. But when the Democrats ran more forthright liberals from north of the Mason-Dixon Line, e.g. McGovern, Mondale, Dukakis and Kerry, they always went down to defeat.

Here, he basically admits that a pretty significant Republican “victory” he’s heretofore been using to bolster his “argument,” Bush v. Gore in 2000, wasn’t a victory at all, nor does he explain how Kerry and Dukakis could were “forthright” liberals, or even liberals at all.

Of course, there was another election, in 2008, which appeared to shatter this political mold. Barack Obama, an unabashed liberal from Chicago by way of Hawaii and New York, and an African American besides, won an astonishing 52.7% of the vote, carrying such improbable states as Indiana and Virginia. It is this victory, in which young and minority voters played a newly prominent role, which has evidently created such high expectations in the world of left liberalism that a Blanche Lincoln has somehow become unacceptable.

Barack Obama, an “unabashed liberal?”  I bet this guy’s mother is a little embarrassed over that one, assuming she still can stand to read his work.

But did the election of 2008 actually mark a shift comparable to 1968? The 2009 Virginia and New Jersey gubernatorial election results and the 2010 Massachusetts Senate election shocker would indicate that the answer is “no.” It is probable that the 2008 result had more to do with transient factors such as McCain’s age, Sarah Palin’s lack of qualifications, the financial crisis, and weariness with the Bush administration’s wars and perceived incompetence, than with any kind of permanent ideological shift, at least among the type of independent voters who swung for Obama, and then voted for Republicans Robert McDonnell, Chris Christie, and Scott Brown in 2009 and 2010.

More “probable” scenarios that sound like they came out of Sean Hannity’s ass.  No mention of the multiple kooky teabagger-backed challengers who have and will continue to fuck things up for the Republicans; you see, it’s only Democrats that have to agree (with Republicans) all the time.

If that is the case, then the kind of primary challenge aimed at Lincoln or the third party candidacy now allegedly being contemplated to challenge Representative Larry Kissell (D-NC), are a formula for certain Democratic defeat in general elections. Unless people are motivated by a kind of nihilistic desire to punish, such primary or third party campaigns have to be based on a reasonable belief that southern states and the United States will, in normal electoral circumstances, elect people to the left of Blanche Lincoln or for the matter, Barack Obama, also now a frequent target of “progressive” criticism. As was shown in his fierce and effective campaigning for Senator Lincoln, no less an expert on southern (and American) politics than Bill Clinton obviously considers such a belief to be profoundly mistaken. I agree with Clinton, but the Democratic Party’s future may depend in part on what netroot and other liberal activists believe regarding this suddenly important question. Either the Blanche Lincolns and Larry Kissells of the world will face tough primary and/or third party challenges or they will not. To paraphrase another Lincoln, Abraham, in his First Inaugural, in the hands of those activists now rests the momentous question of party civil war.

As any such contemptible nonsense always does, Connolly’s piece ends with a concern troll’s dire warnings, based on, as usual, nothing.  Ordinarily, I’m annoyed when such purportedly “liberal” sites such as Huffpo give voice to such right-wing claptrap, but in this case, I think it’s instructive, and I’m sure it will be taken as the sincerest form of flattery by its targets, particularly Greenwald and Hamsher, who have fought the good fight against this sort of preemptive capitulation by the Village Idiots much more forcefully than they’ve bothered to fight any individual unworthy like ol’ Blanche.

This morning, Glenn Greenwald had an excellent post about the despicable fear-mongering ad Liz Cheney and Bill Kristol had slapped together to smear not just the Obama DOJ, but basically the entire tradition of western jurisprudence, the evenhandedness of which seems to offend vermin like them.  Watching the ad and considering its source, I didn’t really give it much more thought; surely such spurious McCarthyite smears have long passed their due date, and surely no non-Fox journalist would ever take them seriously.  Well, no they haven’t, and yes they would, and stop calling the Los Angeles Times Shirley.

Behold:
Reporting from Washington – Nine top political appointees at the Justice Department previously worked as lawyers or advocates for “enemy combatants” confined at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, prompting new questions from Congress and conservative critics about the integrity of the administration’s handling of detainees.

Ooh, sounds scary, and “new,” to boot.

The Justice Department insists that the officials have not involved themselves in matters dealing with enemy combatants. But the department has revealed the names of only two of the nine appointees, making it difficult to independently assess the claim. And one of the named officials — Jennifer Daskal, a lawyer in the national security division — sits on a task force weighing the future of Guantanamo prisoners. She is a former senior counsel for Human Rights Watch, which worked on behalf of ensuring constitutional rights for detainees during the George W. Bush presidency.

Since everybody knows that only people with a demonstrated desire to kill all Arabs indiscriminately should ever be allowed to work at the Justice (!) Department.

The other named official is Neal Katyal, the principal deputy solicitor general, who argued before the Supreme Court on behalf of Salim Ahmed Hamdan and won a 2006 ruling that Bush’s military tribunal system violated the rules of military justice and the Geneva Conventions. Hamdan, a former bodyguard and driver for Osama bin Laden, later was released and returned to Yemen.

According to congressional sources, one of the other seven appointees is Tony West, an assistant attorney general who heads the civil division. In 2002, he was part of the California-based legal team that represented John Walker Lindh, the so-called American Taliban.

I have a list of names, said the drunken sociopath from Wisconsin….

These kinds of backgrounds and connections “raise serious questions about who is providing advice on detainee matters,” a group of Republican senators told Atty. Gen. Eric H. Holder Jr. last week.

“Some say.”  Can you believe this?  Who?  Michelle Malkin?

One of the sharpest critics is a group called Keep America Safe, run in part by Liz Cheney, daughter of former Vice President Dick Cheney. It has derided the unidentified appointees as the “Al Qaeda 7,” and in a video on its website Tuesday asked, “Whose values do they share?”

Ah, finally a disinterested observer willing to go on the record.  It gets worse, though, when the pussies at DOJ, instead of calling such fascist propaganda what it was and giving this un-American cabal a little needed history lesson, this lame capitulation comes forth:

In a Feb. 18 letter to the senators, Ronald Welch, an assistant attorney general, said five Justice Department lawyers provided legal counsel to detainees and four filed friend-of-the-court legal papers on behalf of detainees or advocated on their behalf. He identified them only as working in Holder’s office, for the deputy attorney general and in other top positions at the department.

“To the best of our knowledge,” Welch wrote, “during their employment prior to joining the government, only five of the lawyers who serve as political appointees represented detainees, and four others either contributed to amicus briefs in detainee-related cases or were otherwise involved in advocacy on behalf of detainees.”

Others, he said, “came to the department from law firms where other lawyers represented detainees.”

In naming Katyal and Daskal, Welch said both appointees had been careful not to overstep rules governing professional conduct.

He said Katyal, after joining the Justice Department, had “participated in litigation involving detainees who continue to be detained” at Bagram air base in Afghanistan. He said Katyal also has participated in litigation involving Ali Saleh Kahlah al-Marri, who was arrested in Illinois and accused of being an Al Qaeda sleeper cell agent.

Welch said Daskal had “generally worked on policy issues related to detainees” but that “her detainee-related work has been fully consistent with advice she received from career department officials regarding her obligations.”

In referring to all of the political appointees, Welch said that none “would permit or has permitted any prior affiliation to interfere with the vital task of protecting national security, and any suggestion to the contrary is absolutely false.”

Wait a minute.  Did one or more shriveled but still rule of law supporting gonad actually threaten to descend?  Quick, bring in somebody else….

In addition, Tracy Schmaler, a department spokeswoman, said Tuesday that “department attorneys are subject to ethics and disclosure rules as required under both department guidelines and the administration’s own ethics rules, which are the strongest in history.” She added that “it should be clear that fighting terrorism and keeping the American people safe is our No. 1 priority.”

That’s more like it.  Naturally, the right-wing nutjobs who dreamed up this little putsch couldn’t have been more delighted, or more theatrically outraged, at a pathetically weak response as that, and went on, and on.

Nevertheless, Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee, led by Sen. Jeff Sessions of Alabama, said the Justice Department had not given a full accounting of who and how many top appointees might have conflicts.

Sessions said the issue was whether “the attorney general believes that treating terrorists like civilians enhances or damages our ability to gather crucial intelligence.” He said that issue could not be answered until the other seven names were released.

“It’s time for these policies to meet the light of day — and for the public to get the answers they deserve,” Sessions said.

Good job, LATimes.  And always give the last word to the scariest neoconfederate sore loser in the Senate, those types always have a lot to contribute to an informative discussion of human rights and such.  This genius article was typed by:

richard.serrano@ latimes.com

I think I ought to pour a little something and write to him.

UPDATE: (whatever unlikely replies will be eagerly appended….)

Dear Mr. Serrano,
Have you ever read the Constitution?  What about the Magna Carta?
Heck, did you ever watch Sesame Street?  Considering what you wrote
today about the flagrantly un-American attacks a discredited
neofascist like Liz Cheney made on not just the Obama DOJ, but the
entire idea of western jurisprudence, I can only conclude not.
I’ll type slowly for you…  We have, in those parts of the world that
are nominal democracies, what’s known as an adversarial system of
justice.  All alleged (do you know what that word means?) criminals
are entitled to legal representation, whether or not they are
citizens, and whether or not some chickenhawk nutjob has
extrajudicially pronounced them guilty.  This is kind of a big thing
and has been since 1215 or so, but  maybe you’ve been busy with other
things.
I know that those of you in the withered shell of our media are
desperately afraid of being called “liberal,” but when “liberal” means
not accepting medieval despotism, it would be sort of your duty as an
American to go ahead and risk the scarlet letter.  Who knows?  If such
a thing caught on, people might start reading newspapers again.
It’s worth a try, since the way you’re going about it is having the
opposite effect.
I only want to help.

Cocktailhag

Portland, Oregon

Reply

Serrano, Richard to me

show details 2:58 PM (3 minutes ago)

Cocktailhag,
You say you will type slowly for me. Why don’t you not type at all.

Regards
Rick.

Boy, did he show me, I tell you.  I’m so glad I get to call him Rick.