politics
March 05, 2008
Peter Gammons Leans to Obama
From Gammons's ESPN Insider blog:
"The Angels know who they got in Torii Hunter -- a man who drips energy and preaches hope and potential. There are numbers that will quantify what Hunter is or isn't worth, just as there are politicians who try to tell us that "experience" is far more important than the foundation of hope and potential. Those numbers don't matter as much as Hunter's ability to energize and inspire his teammates, with character that cannot be quantified."
As an Obama fan, I'm tickled, but I'm perturbed to see him equated with an aging, overpriced outfielder, however much of a mensch Hunter is. Who does that make Hillary - maybe an uninspiring sabermetric fave like Jack Cust?
Posted by tedf at 04:55 PM | Comments (0)
March 05, 2007
New Spin on Apple's Classic "1984" Ad
This amateur Obama ad isn't really fair to Clinton, but it's pretty funny if you know the original.
You can read my essay on the original "1984" ad here.
Posted by tedf at 04:40 PM | Comments (1)
May 08, 2006
Democratic Political Consultants: Not Just Incompetent, But Greedy, Too
If you feel like you aren't quite cynical enough yet about American electoral politics, check out Walter Shapiro's horrifying piece in Salon on the slimy world of political consultants. Did you know that both Republican and Democratic consultants pocket commissions of 10-15% of every TV ad buy? That Bob Shrum's company made $6 million (plus reimbursement for production costs) to bungle the 2004 Kerry campaign? That consultants often get "victory bonuses" not only for wins in the general election, but even for wins in barely contested primaries?
Hey - why don't the Dems take a page from the playbook of their trial lawyer benefactors, and make it all or nothing for consultants? 33% if they win, zilch if they lose. Maybe then you'd see them go for the jugular more often.
This morass of sleaze and complacency shows why the netroots needs to do more than just raise money for Democratic candidates. All the money Howard Dean raised in 2004 didn't mean much once he hired the same old hacks to make his ads. And why do incompetents like Bob Shrum still have jobs?
We need to be thinking about ways to shake up every aspect of Democratic business as usual. We need to encourage creativity and fresh blood by funding innovative consulting startups. We need to bring the online world's innovation to the hidebound world of political TV advertising. And we need to do it
Posted by tedf at 10:49 PM | Comments (0)
May 02, 2006
Our Constitutional Crisis
Bush challenges hundreds of laws - The Boston Globe
Posted by tedf at 01:55 AM | Comments (0)
April 22, 2006
Goodbye, Scott McClellan. Hello, War in Iraq?
Press critic Jay Rosen argues in this astute piece that the painfully inarticulate stonewalling of outgoing Bush press secretary Scott McClellan wasn't just clumsy spin. It was a new kind of presidential press strategy. McClellan wasn't trying to "manage" the press as previous secretaries in the TV age have tried to do. Instead, his job was to delegitimize the press, and indeed the whole idea of the public's right to know. McClellan didn't try to persuade. He just repeated the same points over and over, running out the clock without even bothing with the illusion of engaging reporters' questions.
News organizations could and should have responded by refusing to play McClellan's game, and abandoning the pretense that what McClellan said every day was in any meaningful sense "information," let alone "news." Instead, they played into his hands by continuing to send their reporters out there day after day, legitimizing the administration's delegitimization strategy.
Will Tony Snow or anybody else who comes in to replace McClellan change this approach? Certainly, the administration will want to try to do something to shore up those tanking poll numbers. But they probably won't risk actually attempting to explain and defend their policies, simply because at this late stage, they've become patently inexplicable and indefensible.
More and more, I'm fearing that Karl Rove's grand plan to save congress for the Republicans will involve bombing Iran at the most politically opportune moment - maybe so close to election day that the blowback doesn't even have a chance to start until after the polls close. As Joshua Micah Marshall has been pointing out over at Talking Points Memo, one hallmark of the Bush administration is that every major policy initiative has peaked in popularity on the day of its announcement, then slowly and steadily declined. The important thing for Democrats - or anybody concerned with the security of our nation and the world - to do is to preempt this potential October (or even early November) surprise now, while there's still time. Lay the groundwork so that the idea of bombing Iraq right before the election is widely seen as intolerably craven and reckless, so that polls clearly show that doing so would end up backfiring. That might not be enough to sway the regime-change-aholics in Cheney's office. But it should be good enough for Rove, who may end up the only person on the planet capable of pulling Bush back from the brink.
God help us, we've reached the point where Turd Blossom could be the closest thing to a moderating influence left in the White House . . .
Posted by tedf at 02:21 AM | Comments (0)
March 27, 2006
New Poll: GA Republicans May Be Vulnerable
According to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, new polls suggest that W's low approval ratings and Ralph Reed's links to the Abramoff scandal (Reed is the former Christian Coalition head running to be the Republican candidate for Lietenant Governor) are dragging down Governor Sonny Perdue's numbers. The question for Democratic primary voters is, who's the better option: Lietenant Governor Mark Taylor or Secretary of State Cathy Cox?
Taylor likes to pose as an economic populist. Every year he discovers a new threat to the popular HOPE scholarship program, practically daring the Republicans to take him on and look anti-education. But HOPE is easy to demagogue on - it's a benefit that, overall, transfers money from largely poor instant-lottery players to largely middle-class parents of college students. That doesn't mean it's not a valuable program - it's almost always a good thing for a state to invest more in education, however it can find the money. Better for the state to capture its own gamblers' money, rather than letting that spending go to convenience stores set up just past the Tennessee or Alabama borders, or now, I'm sure, online, where no state gets a cut at all.
But the point is, HOPE hype alone does not a true economic populist make. Will Taylor actually have the guts to try to raise any taxes in the teeth of a legislature that's likely to stay Republican for the rest of the decade, thanks to gerrymandering? More to the point, can he rally public support in such a way that makes it possible for him to propose raising some taxes, and succeed? God, I hope so, although it seems like a long shot.
The second top contender, Cox, has a rep for competence with the Georgia lawyers I know. Lawyers, after all, are the ones who deal with the Secretary of State's office every day. But in her most high-profile decision in her job, she blew it: she pushed for those scandalous Diebold electronic voting machines which are not adequately protected from hacks and which leave no paper trail for a recount. Her office also bungled the 2004 elections, as understaffed polling stations in poor, nonwhite districts had lines stretching for hours, shamefully suppressing the vote by discouraging some from voting at all. I don't know what share of the blame she deserves for that, but it's certainly not evidence that her next stop should be the governor's mansion.
I do like the idea of more Democratic women running for office in the South. In terms of the battle for swing voters, I think the political calculus makes sense: stop coddling angry white men, and instead focus on winning over soccer moms. After all, there's no reason white Southern women need buy into the Fox News conservatism of so many white Southern men. It's not like patriarchy is working so well for them - especially if they've been divorced. The Bible Belt has the highest divorce rates in the country, and women almost always end up in worse economic shape after divorce than men.
But I'm not sure if any progressive can really trust or support Cox, given her spotty record on electoral issues. That means Georgia progressives might as well get behind Taylor, I guess, and do our best to pressure him from the left.
Unless, that is, I'm missing a big side of the story from only getting my GA political news from the AJC - a likely prospect, come to think of it . . .
Posted by tedf at 03:44 PM | Comments (0)
How The American Media Ignored Sandra Day O'Connor's Warning That The US Is In Danger of Sliding Into Dictatorship
O'Connor's speech is the judicial equivalent of Eisenhower's farewell warning about the "military-industrial complex." Coming from one of the Republican justices who handed the White House to Bush in 2000, it's very, very big news. But beyond Nina Totenberg, the US media ignored the story for over a week.
When the traditional gatekeepers drop the ball, it's up to the blogosphere to call them on it. It did, and the outrage started to build. Finally, two weeks after the speech, this story is beginning to get the kind of attention it deserves.
Check out Jonathan Raban's article in Seattle's The Stranger for all the details.
Posted by tedf at 01:46 PM | Comments (0)
March 26, 2006
The Lessons of the Bush Era
Following up on the debate over whether Reagan was a better president than Bush, reader M.M. makes these astute points on Matthew Yglesias's TPM Cafe blog:
First, the difference between Bush and Reagan in domestic policy is not that Reagan was nicer, more optimistic, or more moderate. It is that in the 1980s the Democratic majority in the House curbed Reagan. Reagan was prevented from doing much of what he wanted to do, even from raising his battier ideas, by the fact of divided government and checks and balances. Republicans, on the other hand, have controlled both houses of Congress for Bush's entire term. To ignore this distinction and to credit Reagan personally for avoiding Bush's excesses is not only to overlook the excesses that did occur under Reagan; it also is to value the personal over the institutional.
Second, the difference between Bush and Reagan in foreign policy is not that Reagan's foreign policy really was not that bad, that it was not reckless and it did not aspire - with the important exception of Central America - to subvert and invade countries (check out Reagan's views on Vietnam in the '60s). The difference is that the fact of Soviet power and the structure of the Cold War exerted an inhibiting effect on Reagan's foreign policy. The Bush administration faces fewer impediments to its ambitions, allowing it to pursue projects that were inconceivable for Reagan (such as the destabilization of the Mid-East). In ignoring the constraints Reagan inherited, your critics again are privileging the personal, this time at the expense of the structural. The difference between Reagan and Bush is not Reagan's sunny disposition: it is the change in the international context.
Finally, it is silly and counter- productive of your critics to attack Bush in 2006 for personal shortcomings (incompetence, stupidity, fanaticism). Bush is all of these things, but Bush will not run for the presidency again. But Reaganism is running already. To attack Bush by letting Reaganism off the hook is not only wrong in its understanding of the 1980s versus the 2000s. It also is counterproductiv e politically. In attributing the damage Bush is causing to Bush personally, liberals not only are personalizing and trivializing the threat of the right; they also are endorsing the fundamental premises of contemporary conservatism - that Reaganism reigns supreme and, by inference, that Bush is failing because he strayed from it. The right, once again, is thinking about politics, while liberals are thinking about the personal.
I'm always a sucker for the argument that the American cult of the individual depoliticizes our discussion of politics. We blame Bush himself, instead of understanding the much more powerful institutional structures and ideological assumptions which brought him to power and will be around long after 2008.
On the flip side, I wonder if in some ways a culture can really only make sense of institutions and ideology via the language of myth - of heroes and villains.
Certainly, we can't let the right get away with turning Bush into a scapegoat, an outlier rather than the ultimate embodiment of Reaganism. That's the revisionist spadework that conservatives like Bruce Bartlett are already getting started on.
But at the same time, I think it's only natural, and perfectly justified, to also bash Bush qua Bush. That's because we want to counter the myth of Reaganism - that hodgepodge of cultural backlash, voodoo economics, and military belligerence which has sold so well in this country ever since the 1980 election - with a new, much more honest story about what conservative policies do to a country. We can call it "The Lessons of the Bush Era."
We want Bush to be for the Left today what Jimmy Carter was for the Right in the 1980s: the discrediting example of what happens when your opponent's policies are pursued.
This wasn't fair to Carter, but it was very effective politics at the time. We remember Carter more fondly today, thanks largely to his laudable post-presidential career working for the poor, for peace, and for international democracy. But through much of the '80s, his name was political poison. He was the guy who discredited the term "liberal" - even though he was far enough to the right within the party that Ted Kennedy actually challenged him from the left in the 1980 primaries.
"The Lessons of the Carter Era" with which those Reagan Republicans made so much hay in the 1980s were supposed to be that the Democrats just want to "tax and spend," and that you can never let the terrorists push you around.
Of course, Reagan ended up running the country into a deep recession which, combined with cruel cuts in social services, inflicted far more pain than the so-called "stagflation"of the Carter years. Meanwhile, he made deals under the table for hostages with Iranian terrorists, while breaking the law to secretly fund anti-Communist paramilitary terror squads in Central America.
"The Lessons of the Bush Era" will be much closer to the truth than the bogus "Lessons of the Carter Era." They should discredit the term "conservative" much the way Carter, fairly or not, discredited "liberal." They should make coming from the party of Bush strike one against every Republican politician running in every election at every level of government for the next decade.
The Republicans were handed the keys to the country by the Supreme Court in 2000. Here are the consequences of a half a decade of conservative rule:
- Our soil is attacked for the first time since 1941. Thousands of civilians are murdered after critical intelligence information warning of the attack is ignored.
- Billions and billions of dollars are transferred, through tax cuts, from the middle-class and working-class recipients of government funds and services to a small number of megamillionaires and billionaires. The resulting debt is financed by international investors who hold increasing influence over the national economy.
- Our country spreads false propaganda through all channels of American journalism and international dipolmacy in order to drum up support for an unnecessary, unwinnable war which kills thousands of American soldiers and tens of thousands of Iraquis. That war is conducted in open violation of the Geneva Convention, producing anger against our country among not only Arabs throughout the Middle East, but the citizens of almost every other country on the globe.
- Our country abandons the international struggle to prevent climate change which could threaten the lives and homes of large portions of the globe's population, and which already may be responsible for a sharp upsurge in the numbers and severity of natural disasters.
- The executive branch's criminally negligent mishandling of one natural disaster results in the loss of at least 1300 lives (and perhaps many more), the creation of hundreds of thousands of refugees, and the near-destruction of one of the world's cultural treasures, the city of New Orleans.
Now, it's time to talk about "The Lessons of the Bush Era." Here's where the Left needs to figure out how to properly frame the Bush disaster, so that it ends up being not just about one man, but about everything he stands for.
Hereare some proposed "Lessons of the Bush Era." Feel free to add your own.
- Progressive taxation is the cornerstone of economic fairness.
- All Americans have a right to health care and retirement security.
- International diplomacy must always be the preferred arena for global conflict resolution.
- The government must always choose openness over secrecy.
- Public financing of campaigns is the only way to avoid the corruption of the democratic system by the wealthy.
- The president is not above the law.
Posted by tedf at 05:37 PM | Comments (0)
March 23, 2006
Letterman's "Top Ten Reasons Dick Cheney Won't Resign"
10. Trying to fix up Condi Rice with his daughter
9. Turns out when you shoot somebody, if you're not vice president, you gotta do time
8. Bush leaves at two every day and then it's margaritas and Fritos
7. Set the solitare high score on his office computer
6. Wants to see if he can help Bush get his approval rating under ten
5. Too hard to give up Vice Presidential Discount at D.C. area Sam Goody stores
4. Wants to stay on the job until every country in the world hates us
3. Extra-zappy White House defibrillators
2. Undisclosed location has foosball and whores
1. Why quit when things are going so well?
Late Show with David Letterman : Top Ten (via
Posted by tedf at 03:03 AM | Comments (0)
March 22, 2006
"The Eternal Sunshine of David Brooks's Mind"
Awesome piece by Daniel Radosh deconstructing the selective memory of conservative pundit David Brooks - the guy on PBS and the New York Times Op-Ed page who's supposed to be the "thinking person's conservative." Brooks wrote a piece praising the conservative punditocracy for its supposedly sober, prescient response to the end of the conventional portion of the Iraq war. But thanks to the miracle of the Lexis/Nexis database, Radosh is able to go back and track down multiple examples of Brooks himself leading the cheering section back in 2003. "Let the over-exhuberance recommence!" he wrote after the taking of Baghdad, in a piece which goes on to scold all the doubters and naysayers.
You could get away with this in the days of Pravda, where they'd airbrush old photos of gatherings of Soviet leaders to hide the faces of those who'd been purged. It's a lot harder to rewrite history in the internet age. But people still try - just the other day, Bush claimed in his press conference that we only went to war after Saddam "kicked out the inspectors" - a patent falsehood obvious to anybody who was awake just three years ago. Thankfully, the American people don't appear to be buying it - hence, the bogglingly low approval ratings - 33% in a recent Pew poll.
Posted by tedf at 10:19 PM | Comments (0)
March 21, 2006
W: Worst President Ever?
I'm not enough of a historian to attempt to weigh GWB against Grant or Buchanan. And obviously, a lot depends on how Bush handles the next three years - while Iraq has been a catastrophe, the spillover hasn't yet threatened American global hegemony. That may start to happen in the next few years, as our military remains spread too thin, other countries pull farther away from alliances with our rogue state, and international investors begin switching their holdings from dollars to euros (something Dubai has already threatened to do in the aftermath of the whole port sale drama).
Actually, that in itself wouldn't be the worst thing in the world. America's days as the world's only superpower are probably numbered, no matter what any president does. We're clearly moving into the decline phase of the cycle outlined by Paul Kennedy in The Rise and Fall of Great Powers. The real scary question will be how W handles the inevitable weakening of US preeminence. Let's just hope the really challenging stuff - say, a faceoff with a country with nukes - doesn't come down until after 2008. Here's another case where even McCain or Hegel (though probably not Frist) would be a huge improvement over Bush - while a "moderate" Dem like Hilary could find herself in a huge bind trying to do the smart thing while still looking "tough."
Sticking to modern presidents, Joshua Michah Marshall makes a strong case here that W is a lot worse than Ronald Reagan was. As a child of the '80s, that's pretty hard for me to hear. But Reagan was willing to rethink his assumptions and raise taxes when necessary, limit his invasions to countries the US could safely bully (or run away from, as in Lebanon), and work with Gorbachev as the Soviet Union collapsed. Could you imagine W having the intelligence, flexibility, and vision to do any of those things?
Posted by tedf at 01:32 PM | Comments (0)
March 16, 2006
Jessica Simpson Outclasses Bush
Concerned about politicizing her favorite charity, singer-actress Jessica Simpson on Wednesday turned down a invitation to meet with U.S. President George W. Bush, a snub that left Republicans dismayed. . . .
The blond star of the film "The Dukes of Hazzard" still plans to visit Washington on Thursday to lobby members of Congress on behalf of Operation Smile, a non-profit venture offering free plastic surgery for disadvantaged children overseas with facial deformities.
People close to Simpson said she declined a request to appear that same evening at the gala fund-raiser of the National Republican Congressional Committee -- even after she was offered some private face time with Bush -- because Operation Smile is a non-partisan group.
"It just feels wrong," one Simpson insider told Reuters on Wednesday, adding that the actress keeps her political views private. "She would love to meet the president and talk about Operation Smile ... but she can't do it at a fund-raiser for the Republican Party."
Jess knows a sinking ship when she sees one.
Posted by tedf at 01:37 PM | Comments (0)
March 15, 2006
Russ Feingold: The Only Dem Senator With Any Guts?
Believe it or not, right now Russ Feingold can't get a single other senator to sign on to his push to censure Bush over illegal wiretapping and lying about Iraq.
The other Democratic senators counter that before voting for censure, they should push for investigations. That would be nice, but the Republicans have blocked every attempt to investigate. Not that investigations are even needed to unearth what the Bush administration will happily tell you to your face: that they believe the president is above the law. Forget about the wiretaps and war lies - what about these "signing statements" where the president now claims to have ultimate authority to determine the meaning of legislation? McCain pushed through his anti-torture bill, Bush signed it, but then added a "signing statement" that boils down to "this law doesn't really apply to me." And McCain, sadly choosing electability over integrity, let him get away with it.
This isn't a partisan issue, however it may be framed by the media. Any senator, Democratic or Republican, who doesn't work to check this executive's frightening, unconstitutional usurpation of power is doing a grave disservice to the future of American democracy.
During Watergate, at some point Republicans with integrity broke with Nixon. What the Bush administration already admits to doing is far worse than Watergate. When will any politician other than Feingold - Democrat or Republican - show some spine?
UPDATE: Tom Harkin has now signed on as the bill's first co-sponsor.
UPDATED UPDATE: Here's a story from Dana Milbank in the Washington Post that would be hilarious if it wasn't so depressing: Dem senators stumpling over each other to avoid answering reporters' questions about the Feingold resolution.
"I really can't right now," John Kerry (Mass.) said as he hurried past a knot of reporters -- an excuse that fell apart when Kerry was forced into an awkward wait as Capitol Police stopped an aide at the magnetometer.
Hillary Rodham Clinton (N.Y.) brushed past the press pack, shaking her head and waving her hand over her shoulder. When an errant food cart blocked her entrance to the meeting room, she tried to hide from reporters behind the 4-foot-11 Barbara Mikulski (Md.).
"Ask her after lunch," offered Clinton's spokesman, Philippe Reines. But Clinton, with most of her colleagues, fled the lunch out a back door as if escaping a fire.
See also this great piece from Anonymous Liberal.
Posted by tedf at 08:07 PM | Comments (0)
Great Molly Ivins Column
Enough of the D.C. Dems | The Progressive (via Blog for Democracy)
Posted by tedf at 12:36 AM | Comments (0)
March 10, 2006
The State of American Journalism
Joshua Micah Marshall discovered (via a reader tip) this inflammatory, inaccurate headline on the CNN website:
As Marshall explains,
Needless to say, no Democrats have been indicted. The headline is for an AP story in which RNC honcho Ken Mehlman 'indicts' the Democrats for having no message.Who's the headline writer? Yet more of the long steady decline of CNN.
CNN is still a great global newsgathering organization. Many of my international graduate students come to Atlanta because of the stature CNN International has all over the world.
But here in the US, we get an often-inferior product, packaged to appeal to an audience assumed to be made up exclusively of white professionals and soccer moms. It presents many more conservatives then progressives, and passes along the Bush administration's baldfaced lies with neither healthy skepticism nor necessary contextualization.
This specific headline gaffe in itself is more likely a result of one incompetent, unprofessional editor, rather than evidence of an institution-wide rightward slant. But the fact that the headline could make it online shows that quality control at CNN is not what it should be.
Company-wide, CNN right now should be searching its soul to ask how it could have allowed itself to be duped by the Bush administration into repeating so many of its lies on the way to war in Iraq. Bush used CNN, along with the rest of the American journalistic establishment, to sell his illegal war. They let him get away with it, just as they're letting him get away with impeachable offenses such as knowingly breaking the FISA law with warrarntless wiretaps. Oh, they're "reporting" on the story. But they're framing the issue as "is or isn't the administration breaking the law?" when the illegality of the wiretaps isn't really in any doubt. It's what Marshall calls "up-is-down-ism" - Republican spinners can present demonstrably untrue statements, and so-called journalists will simply report them as if they're one credible point of view. Another way to put it would be "2+2=5-ism." That's the logical impossibility the prisoners in Orwell's 1984 were forced by the government to agree was true.
But restoring journalistic integrity - to say nothing of the future of democracy - doesn't appear to be very high on the list of CNN priorities. CNN's owner, Time Warner, is currently making a major push to please the Republican Party, hiring a Tom DeLay protege as its chief DC lobbyist. That's because CEO Richard Parsons only narrowly survived a recent takeover bid by corporate raider Carl Icahn, who'd like to buy Time Warner, then sell it off in pieces.
One of the criticisms that has weakened the Parsons regime is that Time Warner hasn't been doing enough to shed a "liberal" image. (See, for example, this dustup last August, which presumably led to Time Warner's capitulation in hiring the DeLay crony.) That liberal image, it's presumed by stock analysts, is hurting its profits (since it has insufficient leverage with Republican regulators) and share price (since it's displeasing the conservative investor class). Parson's being one of the country's most powerful African-Americans is probably already a strike against Time Warner in some racist boardrooms. Not that I have a ton of sympathy for Parsons, who seems eager enough to sign away his organization's integrity to make good with the Republicans.
So there may well be corporate pressure at CNN to become something like Fox-lite. This may explain why they've so comfortably swallowed the conventional opinion that there's no money to be made in programming for the left. Evidence, however, has shown this to be a myth. One of the very few avowedly liberal tak shows ever allowed on cable, Phil Donahue's show for MSNBC, was cancelled even though its ratings were higher than those of many of its peers. Donahue later described how the network put ongoing pressure on the show to avoid booking too many liberals.
I'm sure it helps GE with the Bush administration to keep MSNBC to the right of center. GE, after all, is a global conglomerate with many regulatory interests at stake. It's also run by a bunch of very rich men who've saved many millions in taxes under the Bush administration, and look to clean up even after death if the estate tax is repealed.
It's not just GE and CNN, though. Research by Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting has repeatedly found that all the TV networks favor Republicans over Democrats, and moderate Democrats over progressives, in their choices for hosts and guests. Think of how relentlessly CBS, like Time Warner a cosmopolitan organization based in "liberal" New York City, has been hammered by the right for attempting investigative reporting of the Bush administration. With the ascension of Bob Shiffer, it looks like CBS is giving in, for now at least.
Bush has often said that he greatly admires Silvio Berlusconi, the Prime Minister of Italy. Italian media resembles Pravda more than it does the public sphere of a vibrant democracy. Berlusconi owns the major Italian television networks, and controls the public broadcast system as Prime Minister. No wonder he's been able to survive numerous corruption trials, as he owns the major sources of public information for voters. I'm convinced the Republican Party looks to Italy as a role model. (Check out this site, for more on Berlusconi. It's the homepage for an excellent PBS documentary on Italian media and democracy, "The Prime Minister and the Press." See also this book from Verso.) Then there's Bush's admiration for Putin . . .
One huge irony, as the great documentary Control Room shows, is that while the US has been lecturing the Arab world on democracy, Al Jazeera is actually a much more professional, credible, and accurate international news organization than, say, The New York Times, which still hasn't come close to acknowledging the harm the Judith Miller saga did to this country. Without those bogus stories about Iraqui nuclear and chemical weapons - fabrications fed to Judy by Scooter Libby as part of a concerted propaganda strategy - American opinion, especially among the elites who read the Times, would have been far more skeptical about going to war. The Times really does have blood on its hands.
Just to put this in the context of the hallowed history of the "old grey lady," imagine what the consequences might have been for the country if the Times had quashed the Pentagon Papers and published only Nixon administration lies instead. The antiwar movement would have never reached the level of credibility needed to turn the majority of Americans' minds against the war. Without pressure to end the war, Nixon might very well have expanded it further. And the quagmire would have been even more difficult to extract outselves from.
Think also about the courage it took for Walter Cronkite to come out against the war, and the impact it must have had. Does any newsanchor today have that kind of courage? Why are comedians (Jon Stewart, Steven Colbert, Dave Chappelle, Chris Rock, Bill Maher) the only ones on TV today allowed to tell the truth? And, more to the point, what can be done to change this sorry state of affairs?
CNN could try to offer a real alternative to Fox: fair, rigorous reporting, along with smart, thoughtful opinion from all sides of political issues. That doesn't have to be PBS-level dull, or dumbed-down. It can just be smart, engaging, and open, like The Daily Show or Sportscenter, except with real news.
This may be what Anderson Cooper thinks he's trying to do, but from what I've seen, other than those telegenic tears in New Orleans, he hasn't really followed through. And that Wolf Blitzer show with all the video screens just gives me a headache. Both of these shows seem to want to be hip and edgy without actually having to speak the truth to power. But that's not good journalism, or even compelling TV. It's just depressing.
So far, the most intriguing attempt to try a "Daily Show with real news" is Countdown with Keith Olbermann on MSNBC. With Dan Patrick, Olbermann invented the Sportscenter sensibility at ESPN, and it turns out to be a solid fit for other forms of news, as well. Countdown appears to be both getting better and building an audience, which is encouraging. I'll be very curious to see how this develops - and whether Olbermann, a prickly guy with real integrity who left previous jobs at ESPN and Fox over conflicts with higher-ups, will start running into pressure from the bosses at GE to tone it down.
I'm actually not too depressed about the state of TV news right now, overall. With The Daily Show and The Colbert Report, there's more progressive satire on television than at any previous point in American history. If progressives can get the congressional tide to turn in '06, many media corporations will be relieved to back off of their marriage-at-gunpoint to the Republican party. And new experiments in democratic video production like Al Gore's Current TV, while not quite yet ready for prime time, are pretty exciting. I could imagine a service that combines Google Video and Google News to present a personalized, algorithm-generated daily newscast composed entirely of clips sent in from users around the world. (Now that I think of it, I wonder how hard it would be to create that myself via the Google API. Any thoughts?)
One way or another, that's the next step: for videoblogging to challenge TV journalism just as text blogging is challenging newspapers, and podcasting is challenging radio. It's going to be a bigger challenge, since viewers expect certain levels of production standards, and video production takes a lot more time and money than just writing words or talking into a microphone. And journalism often demands resources and training that amateurs are unlikely to have. But there are already some interesting projects that leverage the power of the web to make ambitious work widely available at little cost. For example, the progressive/radical nightly news show Democracy Now! is now available as a free video podcast through iTunes. There's also a great podcast, War News Radio, that's produced by a bunch of Swarthmore undergraduates largely by interviewing Iraqi citizens via Skype, the free international internet phone service. These students leverage new technologies to allow amateurs to share with a global audience the kind of information that even reporters on the scene aren't privvy to.
Those interchangeable bloviators on the TV talk shows are the dying gasps of a corrupt, bloated system. The web is the future of journalism.
In the meantime, I'm sure all of these news organizations are filled with smart, talented, and creative reporters, editors, producers and technicians chafing against these diktats from on high. As viewers and bloggers, let's do everything we can to encourage and support courageous journalists in the Eward R. Murrow tradition like Keith Olbermann.
At the same time, let's also not think we can ever trust the global media oligopoly to give us the information we need about our world. Let a million videopodnewscasts bloom!
Posted by tedf at 07:11 PM | Comments (0)
March 09, 2006
The Depressing Saga Of Andrew Young
Andrew Young began his career began as part of MLK's inner circle. He was Jimmy Carter's ambassador to the UN, then mayor of Atlanta in the 1980s.
Now, he lends his credibility to fake grass-roots "astroturf" PR organizations such as something called "Working Families for Wal-Mart."
Unfortunately, this piece eviscerating Young quotes a major chunk of a 1997 New Republic article that happened to be written by Steven Glass, the guy who got busted for fabricating stories. I don't know if anything from that part was made up. But the rest of the piece is completely credible, and very disappointing.
I guess Young has to make a living, just like everybody else. He also has foundations and other philanthropic organizations to keep bankrolled. But it's possible to be a political mover and shaker without selling out your civil rights legacy to become a corporate shill. Just look at John Lewis, the great Georgia congressman.
Posted by tedf at 05:18 PM | Comments (0)
March 08, 2006
What Should Be In A Progressive "Contract for America"?
Should congressional Democrats run on a progressive Contract for America in 2006? Yes! Yes they should! They need to nationalize the 2006 elections, and not let each congressional Republican slink away from those low Bush numbers! They need to think about their party, and not just about their own political fortunes.
They even need to risk strategies that threaten all incumbents by supporting redistricting plans that make more districts truly competitive among the parties. There should be no such thing as a "safe seat," Republican or Democratic. That's not how democracy was designed to work.
But Salon's War Room reports that many cowardly Democratic leaders, including Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi, are pushing a decentralized, nonideological campaign approach. Because that's worked so well in congressional elections for Democrats since 1994!
What the Dems need right now, I'm afraid to say, is a progressive Newt Gingrich. Rahm Emmanuel, this is your moment to shine!
To help him out a little, let's start a conversation right here. What should be in a truly progressive, truly effective Democratic Contract for America? What should it be called? How should it be promoted? And how can the blogosphere make this happen in the face of the indifference of the Democratic establishment?
Here's what I'd start with: The Five Promises
- We promise to get the US out of Iraq via the Murtha plan
- We promise to create a system of universal health care
- We promise to raise the minimum wage
- We promise to reform the political system
- We promise to establish American energy independence through a "Manhattan Project" for renewable fuels
Promote the hell out of it - brand it, like any new product. Sell the Democratic party to the American people. They're looking to buy.
Posted by tedf at 02:54 AM | Comments (3)
March 07, 2006
GA Loses NASCAR Museum to Charlotte - Hooray!
Hey, Georgians, let's take a moment to celebrate a progressive victory by default: losing the race for a NASCAR musem to Charlotte.
It looked like the legislature was ready and willing to fork over $102 million in bribe money to the already preposterously wealthy France family to get them abandoning North Carolina, the home of NASCAR. That's the opposite of the model the city used to build the Aquarium, where the rich guy, Home Depot cofounder Bernie Marcus, gave the city money, rather than taking it.
Nothing against NASCAR, by the way - they just don't need state money to build a self-promotional museum.
The NASCAR bid was relentlessly hyped in the business pages and often the front page of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. I was disappointed by the slant of most of these stories, which seemed to presume a consensus that throwing taxpayer money at rich people is a good thing. When Atlanta city offials objected to the legislature attempting to grab a pot of $20 million already earmarked to efforts for the Atlanta homeless, they were protrayed as spoilsports.
The AJC editorial page, however, run by the formidable Cynthia Tucker, demurred from what appears to be Atlanta elite opinion with a much smarter critique of a rigged game where corporations play one state off against another in a race to the bottom. I saw the other side of that first-hand when I lived in New Haven, CT - all the good jobs had migrated South, where the states are always ready to help companies break unions and pay less taxes. New Haven's primary strategy in response was to throw taxpayers' money at anybody who might be willing to do business in the city, in scenarios straight out of Roger & Me. We usually only see this game when the business is entertainment, like baseball teams and NASCAR museums. But that's just the ugly tip of a skanky, skanky iceberg.
Apparently the Supreme Court will be ruling on whether this whole system of having states compete against each other with tax "incentives" is unconstitutional. I can't imagiine the Roberts court shutting it down, but man, would that be a boon to the American taxpayer and the American worker.
Anyway, with the NASCAR romance off, maybe the legislature can get behind something less mercenary and more valuable as an investment of the state's resources. There's an interesting discussion going on about this issue at the Blog for Democracy, a great group blog for Georgia progressives. If GA progressives start talking now, maybe we can influence the next plan, from the bottom up. At the very least, this is an interesting thought experiment: what would a smart, progressive government do with a big exhibition space in the heart of a revitalizing downtown?
Here's what I propose: How about another world-class educational attraction to complement the Aquarium? Not another corporate shrine, like The World of Coca-Cola. (For more on the World of Coke, check out this piece I published in Communication Research. It was actually my first journal article, and it started out as my undergraduate senior thesis. The World of Coke and I go way back.)
In any case, the point is to build not another World of Coke or World of NASCAR, but something of real civic value, along the lines of the High Museum of Art for another discipline.
When I lived in North Carolina in the 1990s, Raleigh went on a museum-building tear: a new Natural History museum, expansion of the North Carolina Museum of Art, and a goofy but intriguing "interactive museum about the world" called Exploris. North Carolina (their own NASCAR museum bid aside) is a state that really knows how to invest in education. The result is the economic successes of the Research Triangle. That should be the model for Georgia - and all states - to follow - to invest in growing the city's "creative class," rather than throwing money at carpetbaggers.
I can think of a few possible museums:
- A museum of journalism, to complement the CNN Center. The challenge here would be to do something smarter (and less US-centric) than The Newseum, an underwhelming "musem of news" run in Virginia by the Freedom Forum, a nonprofit put together by the founder of USA Today. For more on the Newseum, check out this essay I wrote for Critical Studies in Media Communication.
- A museum of civil rights. This is a no-brainer for Atlanta, althought the best location might be as part of a renovated MLK Historic Site. The lack of investment in the MLK site has been scandalous. How can the legislature get away with throwing around money for racecar museums, but not for honoring (and economically exploiting) its state's greatest citizen?
- A interactive science museum. Most cities of Atlanta's size have one. We did, an underfunded place called Sci-Tech that finally closed. This time, we should do it right, with a focus on cutting-edge technologies.
Have other ideas? Please join the Comments below - I really think if we get people talking, maybe we can influence what comes next to downtown.
UPDATE: After the winning bid was announced, a NASCAR team owner was quoted as saying the fear of crime in downtown Atlanta was a major strike against the city. This appeared to be not only dumb (downtown Atlanta's no scarier than any other city downtown at night - I'd be more spooked walking around in the emptiness of downtown Charlotte than the bustle of fans after a Thrashers game) but also racially coded. One more reason to be glad to be rid of the France family and their buddies.
Posted by tedf at 06:11 PM | Comments (1)
March 06, 2006
Republicans After Bush
Niall Ferguson is best known as a sometimes-apologist for imperialism, but this piece from the L.A. Times on the collapse of the Bush imperial dream is spot on. (Via Ygelseias on TPMCafe.)
What creeps me, though, is the thought that the Republicans could run a sensible "maverick" like McCain or Hegel - or even just throw a sop to that chunk of the party by running one as VP with a mandate to run foreign policy at the White House) - and the party could never have to face an "accountability moment" for Bushism and all it's wrought. Maybe it's worth the tradeoff - maybe just like "only Nixon could go to China," it'll turn out that "only McCain (or Hegel, or whoever) could withdraw from Iraq." I'd probably take that over a President Hilary Clinton deciding (as she might, I fear) that she has to placate the right by staying bogged down into the next decade.
But in terms of progressive strategy, it would be a catastrophe if the collapse of Bushism, at home and abroad, weren't exploited as a crucial teaching moment. The Bush implosion should give Dems a landslide in '06 the way Watergate did for the famous reformist Dem "class of '74." (Whatever happened to them?) But I greatly fear the Dems are going to blow it through cowardice and clumsiness.
What the Dems need is a smart, coherent strategy to nationalise the '06 elections, and mobilize the base and the disaffected - young voters, nonvoters, working-class Bush supporters - to turn out in numbers the batterred and disillusioned Republicans can't match. A real "throw the bums out" environment is the way to neutralize the Republican incumbency/gerrymandering edge by making every district competitive.
In turn, following the Watergate::Plamegate/Katrinagate/Wiretappinggate/Dubaigate/etc. analogies, a successful Congressional Dem takover in '06 should set the stage for a reform-oriented, "outsider" Democrat to galvanize the party in '08 the way Carter did in '76, Hopefully, whoever shows up for that slot - whether it's John Edwards, Russ Feingold, whoever - can replace Carter's combination of strategic clumsiness and political caution with Clinton's charm and FDR's vision.
Because otherwise, paying the piper from '08-'12 - escaping Iraq, raising taxes to cut the deficit, fixing health care one way or another - is going to eat the next president, Democratic or Republican, alive. We can only hope that whoever the president is - Democrat or Republic - they have the courage to do what the country needs and make a clean break from the debacle we'll remember as the Bush Years.
Posted by tedf at 11:45 PM | Comments (1)
Scary News From The GA Legislature
Guest post from Curt:
Here's some info on what's going on with the Georgia General Assembly. I'm really disturbed...I am now counting the days until they all go back home & stop addressing the most unimportant items possible.
Their two big issues over the last two weeks has been abortion and the creation of new municipalities. On the abortion front, the Senate has passed three laws: One forces women seeking an abortion to pay to have an ultrasound before the procedure can be done - this dovetails with their earlier new law requiring a "waiting period." The second law protects pharmacists who refuse to fill prescriptions for the "morning after" pill. The third one is less objectionable, but seems to be a smokescreen for future abortion action. This last bill would charge a criminal with two deaths if they kill a pregnant woman. Republican officials acknowledge that their goal is to force a Supreme Court test to see if the new appointees will overturn Roe v. Wade. Their actions are similar to those in other Republican Legislatures, such as South Dakota.
The other big issue this week is a bill to create two new cities in metro-Atlanta. This follows the successful fight last year to create a city of Sandy Springs. The rationale is "local control." What it really comes down to is that in many metro counties, richer parts of the county help support poorer parts. The rich people don't like that, so they want to create their own cities to spend their money in their already-affluent parts of the county. It seems the whole idea of pooling money for the greater good is under attack in metro Atlanta.
The other big issue on the horizon is, of course, immigration. There are several bills making their way through committees to punish undocumented workers and, surprisingly, the companies who hire them. It will be interested to see how hard legislators push to punish Republican business-owners who speak out against immigrants, but use them as cheap labor.
To keep up with local news, I'm following:
The Atlanta Journal Constitution
The AJC's Political Insider blog
Bill Shipps' column
Georgia for Democracy (though they don't seem to be very consistent in updating)
Peach Pundit
Posted by tedf at 04:50 PM | Comments (0)
March 05, 2006
More On the Not-So Solid South
Via TPM: Elon University Poll shows support for Bush at 43 percent in Southeastern states
Posted by tedf at 06:40 PM | Comments (0)
March 04, 2006
Countering Conservative Populism With Progressive Populism (John Edwards) and Reform Populism (Kinky Friedman)
This Sunday on Meet the Press:
a pair of one-time vice presidential candidates -- Democrat John Edwards and Republican Jack Kemp -- have teamed up to co-chair the Council on Foreign Relations' Independent Task Force on Russian-American Relations. The two political veterans will join us exclusively this Sunday to preview their upcoming report . . .
This is pretty funny - more like the "independent task force on finding ways to make two populist presidential wannabes sound more credible on national security."
But more power to Edwards. I still have this fantasy where he rises up as the great Southern hope who bridges populism and progressivism - the cross between Clinton and RFK who succeeds in reaching "red staters" in the polling booth just as he does in the courtroom. God knows how Hillary could manage that one - although, more power to her if she finds a way.
Somewhere out there there's room for at least reformist populism, if not progressive populism. That's why I think Kinky Friedman's campaign to be the first country-singing Jewish governor of Texas is actually going somewhere - if they don't get shafted by a bogus Texas law that requires independent candidates for governor to get 45,000 signatures from people who didn't vote in the primaries.
Conservative populism - the stuff Thomas Frank writes about in What's the Matter With Kansas - has been a very effective Republican ploy to appear to be the party of the people while serving the interersts of the rich and powerful.
But there has to be an opening for an inspiring speaker with Oprah-style interpersonal chops who can make the case for a populism of substance rather than empty "values" rhetoric - populism that supports popular initiatives such as universal health care, progressive taxation, workers' rights, environmental protection, electoral reform, and media reform.
Maybe it'll be Edwards. Maybe Hillary will rise to the challenge, though as a Southerner desperate for somebody who can play below the Mason-Dixon line, I'm exceedingly doubtful. Same goes for Russ Feingold, I'm sad to say.
But my real fear is that the Dems will go with yet another candidate who can't speak to the South the way Clinton could. National Dems seem to have written off large chunks of the South as "red states." They didn't bother to campaign here in 2004 - Georgia wasn't a "swing state." As the New Yorker's always-brilliant Hendrick Hertzberg argues here, this way of reifying shifting political allegiances into monochromatic absolutes does damaging things to our democracy. If we ever want real progressive change in this country, it's got to happen acrosss the whole red, white and blue.
Posted by tedf at 09:57 PM | Comments (0)
March 03, 2006
A Real Feminist Victory
Thanks to activist pressure, Wal-Mart has reversed its policy and will stock the so-called "Morning-After" pill.
From NARAL: Victory against Wal-Mart: A first step.
Posted by tedf at 07:15 PM | Comments (0)
Go Kinky!
Kinky Friedman for Governor: Kicking the Money Changers Out
Posted by tedf at 07:08 PM | Comments (0)
This Is Something The Netroots Should Really Push
Paul Keil, one of the new "muckrackers" hired at the expanding Talking Points Memo, reports that in the Senate, "There is a bipartisan reluctance to pass ethics reform." Democratic senators have given Republicans easy political cover on this key issue - one that's important both strategically, for the Dems to run on in the '06 elections, and progressively, if we're going to have politicians that represent the people rather than the moneyed interests.
Maybe much of the Dem establishment is as slack and corrupt as the Republicans. If so, they need to go, too. The netroots should be lighting fires under these guys, just as we did at the end of the Alito hearings. Let the Dems know that they can't take their base for granted.
Posted by tedf at 06:53 PM | Comments (0)
February 18, 2006
Reforming a Broken Political System
I just joined MoveOn.com's "Action Forum", a bulletin board where members post their proposals for MoveOn's political action goals, then vote on their favorites. It's an interesting attempt to develop strategic consensus among the notoriously fractious left. Then again, having enemies as frightening as Cheney and Bush makes it easier to focus the mind and find common ground.
I posted my own suggestions, which focus on issues of political reform. I don't think anything else is possible until we fix our broken democracy. Hey, if we don't push on this Diebold thing, it's not even possible to confirm that we still live in a democracy.
Since I appear to be the 16,184th person to post a comment, it may be hard to track down on the site itself. So, here it is:
The return of true democracy to American politics requires several interconnected reforms. These are all nonpartisan ideas that any voter concerned with the state of American democracy could support:
- Voting: Replacement of all Diebold electronic voting machines with reliable machines producing paper ballot receipts. Elimination of exclusionary state practices such as the Georgia Voter ID law.
- Campaign Finance: Federal and state campaign funding to qualified candidates for major political offices, to end inequalities in fundraising which reflect the support of the wealthy rather than the people. This must include fuding for both primary challengers and third party candidates who demonstrate substantial voter support through either petitions or previous ballot performance.
- Electoral Reform: The end of re-redistricting, as in Texas and Georgia. A commitment to a redistricting policy after the 2010 census which maximizes competitive districts, rather than safe seats for incumbents.
- Influence Peddling: Strict laws at both federal and state levels forbidding lobbyist gifts of travel, food, and entertainment. Immediate online disclosure of all lawmaker contacts with lobbyists. Requirement of multi-year gaps between government service and employment as a lobbyist.
- Media Reform: The return of the FCC "fairness doctrine," requiring that all licensed TV and radio station provide equal time for opposing points of view. Additional requirements that stations provide free airtime for political candidates to address voters in increments longer than 30 seconds. Strong new laws limiting media consolidation.
These kinds of reforms in themselves won't end the war in Iraq or poverty at home. But they'll built a responsive political infrastructure beholden to the American people, rather than to powerful donors. And since the American people's actual views are much to the left of the American political elite, that's the first step towards more far-reaching reform.
Posted by tedf at 11:53 AM | Comments (0)
February 17, 2006
digby on Cheney
"He saw his friend get wounded (by who?) right before his eyes. He was traumatized and profoundly affected. It was horrible for him.
And I think we now know that when confronted with such issues, one should stonewall for as long as possible, blame the victim and only agree to take questions from sycophants. That's how real men handle it when they've accidentally shot an old man in the face."
"What To Tell The Children" by digby
Posted by tedf at 07:48 PM | Comments (0)
February 16, 2006
Jay Rosen on the Sorry State of the Press
PressThink: Dick Cheney Did Not Make a Mistake By Not Telling the Press He Shot a Guy
Posted by tedf at 07:52 PM | Comments (0)
Glenn Greenwald on the Bush Cult of Personality
Unclaimed Territory - by Glenn Greenwald: Do Bush followers have a political ideology?
Posted by tedf at 01:12 AM | Comments (0)
February 09, 2006
Even Scarier News About White House Surveillance Programs
This Christian Science Monitor article shows how the warrantless wiretapping scandal is just the tip of the iceberg. The whole reason the Bush administration couldn't go through the FISA court is that their plans go far, far beyond surveilling people who are "talkin' to Al Queda." The goal pretty clearly is to sweep up as much information as possible from all available sources, with no regard for "probable cause," then use "data mining" technology to sift through it. This technology can be used to keep track of terror threats - or to spy on and harass political opponents, just as J. Edgar Hoover and the Nixon White House (home of Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld) did to Martin Luther King, John Lennon, and many other civil rights and anti-war activists.
This system is more or less what John Poindexter proposed in 2002 with his "Total Information Awareness" program. (Poindexter is the same guy who was convicted in 1990 for lying to congress and destroying evidence about the Iran-Contra program. The conviction was overturned in 1991 "on the grounds that the prosecution's evidence may have been tainted by exposure to Poindexter's testimony before the joint House-Senate committee investigating the matter, in which Poindexter's testimony was compelled by a grant of 'use immunity'.") At the time, the TIA program was publicly shot down and disavowed. The creepy Illuminati-esque logo couldn't have helped:
But now, it seems pretty clear that behind the scenes, the Bush administration has continued to work on this plan all along.
This should scare Republicans as much as Democrats. Eventually, there will be a Dem in the White House again. Would Republicans want Dems to have that kind of power? Hopefully, the libertarian wing of the Republican party - the Cato Institute crowd - will come to their senses and conclude that this kind of stuff is far more dangerous and frightening than their usual bugaboos like environmental regulation and higher marginal tax rates.
US plans massive data sweep | csmonitor.com
Posted by tedf at 01:57 PM | Comments (0)
February 07, 2006
You Gotta Love Russ Feingold
"This administration reacts to anyone who questions this illegal program by saying that those of us who demand the truth and stand up for our rights and freedoms somehow has a pre-9/11 world view. In fact, the President has a pre-1776 world view. Our government has three branches, not one. And no one, not even the President, is above the law."
Talking Points Memo: by Joshua Micah Marshall February 7, 2006 11:57 AM
Posted by tedf at 09:38 PM | Comments (0)
January 31, 2006
New Poll: Majorities of Democrats, Republicans, and Independents All Support Murtha Withdrawal Plan
This is a fascinating story. The progressive weblog MyDD raised $17,000 to hire a pollster, just like the pros in Washington do. One question asks:
Here are the numbers in response:
Strongly Support 11.8 8.8 17.9 9.5
Support 51.5 50.5 46.8 56.4
Oppose 22.3 25.1 23.6 18.7
Strongly Oppose 14.4 15.6 11.8 15.4
As myDD notes:
MyDD :: Polling Project, Fifth Release
Posted by tedf at 08:18 PM | Comments (0)
Roll Call of Shame . . .
Here's a list of all the Democratic senators who voted either to confirm Alito, or to cut off debate and end the fillibuster. May all of them hear loud and clear from their prochoice constituents what this betrayal will cost them poltiically.
Salon.com News & Politics | War Room
Posted by tedf at 07:45 PM | Comments (0)
January 27, 2006
Smart Analysis of Neoconservatism in a Global Context from Matt Yglesias
TPMCafe || Neoconservatism and Gaullism
Posted by tedf at 12:52 AM | Comments (0)
January 17, 2006
More from Gore's Great MLK Day Speech
"One of the other ways the administration has tried to control the flow of information has been by consistently resorting to the language and politics of fear in order to short-circuit the debate and drive its agenda forward without regard to the evidence or the public interest. President Eisenhower said this: "Any who act as if freedom's defenses are to be found in suppression and suspicion and fear confess a doctrine that is alien to America." Fear drives out reason. Fear suppresses the politics of discourse and opens the door to the politics of destruction. Justice Brandeis once wrote, "Men feared witches and burnt women." The founders of our country faced dire threats. If they failed in their endeavors, they would have been hung as traitors. The very existence of our country was at risk. Yet in the teeth of those dangers, they insisted on establishing the full Bill of Rights. Is our Congress today in more danger than were their predecessors when the British army was marching on the Capitol? Is the world more dangerous than when we faced an ideological enemy with tens of thousands of nuclear missiles ready to be launched on a moment's notice to completely annihilate the country? Is America really in more danger now than when we faced worldwide fascism on the march, when the last generation had to fight and win two world wars simultaneously? It is simply an insult to those who came before us and sacrificed so much on our behalf to imply that we have more to be fearful of than they did. And yet they faithfully protected our freedom and now it's up to us to do the very same thing."
Transcript: Former Vice President Gore's Speech on Constitutional Issues
Posted by tedf at 02:08 PM | Comments (0)
Al Gore's Speech on the Present Constitutional Crisis
Gore may have been a disappointing candidate in 2000 - bashing Bradley from the right in the primaries, running away from Clinton's record in the campaign, failing to stand up to the Republican's thuggish tactics during the recount - but he's been a mensch of an ex-candidate. Here's the latest in a string of candid, astute speeches on the sorry state of American democracy. His emphasis here is just where it should be - that the separation of powers isn't just an inconvenience, but the mechanism which forces accountability and ensures competence.
Here's the crux of his argument:
"Vigilant adherence to the rule of law actually strengthens our democracy, of course, and strengthens America. It ensures that those who govern us operate within our constitutional structure, which means that our democratic institutions play their indispensable role in shaping policy and determining the direction of our nation. It means that the people of this nation ultimately determine its course and not executive officials operating in secret without constraint under the rule of law. And make no mistake: The rule of law makes us stronger by ensuring that decisions will be tested, studied, reviewed and examined through the normal processes of government that are designed to improve policy and avoid error. And the knowledge that they will be reviewed prevents overreaching and checks the accretion to power. A commitment to openness, truthfulness and accountability helps our country avoid many serious mistakes that we would otherwise make. Recently, for example, we learned from just-declassified documents after almost 40 years that the Gulf of Tonkin resolution which authorized the tragic Vietnam War was actually based on false information. And we now know that the decision by Congress to authorize the Iraq war 38 years later was also based on false information. Now, the point is that America would have been better off knowing the truth and avoiding both of these colossal mistakes in our history. And that is the reason why following the rule of law makes us safer, not more vulnerable."
I don't know for sure whether this line of argument can be a winner for the Dems in the '06 elections. But it's true, and it's vitally important to the survival of democracy in the most powerful nation in human history, and that ought to count for something.
Transcript: Former Vice President Gore's Speech on Constitutional Issues
Posted by tedf at 01:52 PM | Comments (0)
January 16, 2006
Peter Daou on the Dysfunctional Liberal Establishment
Daou's astute point is that the Democratic establishment has utterly failed to incorporate the power of the blogosphere and take their message to the media, leaving them completely ineffectual on issue after issue - the Alito hearings, the warrentless wiretapping outrage, and so on.
One might hope that Dean being in charge of the DNC would have improved things, but the bottom line appears to be that the Democratic establishment - especially in the Senate - is far to the right of the grassroots, with little interest in the kind of structural reform and courageous backbenching that might threaten their own power bases - even if, at the national level, the party is currently powerless.
Posted by tedf at 07:33 PM | Comments (0)
Great Post from Atrios on How Bush Will Demagogue on Iran
The one place I diverge from Atrios is in his assumption that this will be only election-year rhetoric. This adminstration is perfectly capable of starting a real war just to back up their phony rhetoric.
(This is all separate from whatever security threat/human rights tragedy Iran actually poses, which certainly could be significant. But expecting this administration to make any of that better is preposterous. The best we can hope for is that they keep their hands off Iran until a responsible regime - Edwards, McCain, whoever - shows up to clean up Bush's messes in 2008.)
Posted by tedf at 06:19 PM | Comments (0)
December 26, 2005
The Beginning of the End for the Solid South?
Maybe this is just wishful thinking, but this sure is appealing:
Salon.com News & Politics | War Room: A Democratic Senator from Mississippi?
Posted by tedf at 07:35 PM | Comments (0)
December 09, 2005
This May Finally Explain the Way the White House Operates . . .
From The Onion:
Voice Of God Revealed To Be Cheney On Intercom
Posted by tedf at 06:43 PM | Comments (0)
December 01, 2005
Parallels Between Bush's "National Strategy for Victory in Iraq" and Nixon's 1969 "Vietnamization of the Vietnam War" Speech
The bottom line: despite Nixon's promises, it took another four years, 8000 American soldiers' lives, and many more Vietnamese deaths before the US finally withdrew from Vietnam. Will it take until 2009 for our leaders to accept what the American people have already figured out - that the Iraq war is a crime and a debacle?
Salon.com News & Politics | War Room
Posted by tedf at 07:43 PM | Comments (0)
November 29, 2005
More, Scarier News on Bush War Planning
Sy Hersch's piece in the New Yorker is frightening and credible. The key to the US drawdown isn't just retreat of US troops, but replacement of that manpower with US airpower to support Iraqi troops. What that means in practice is few US casualties, but much more use of bombs to target insurgents. That, in turn, will mean many more Iraqui civilian deaths from collateral damage and mistaken targeting. Which is both abhorrent and unstrategic - it certainly doesn't sound like a great recipe for winning hearts and minds in Iraq (although, sadly it just could work to win voters in the US).
Posted by tedf at 08:17 PM | Comments (0)
November 27, 2005
Josh Marshall on the Emerging Bush Plan to Withdraw from Iraq
Josh Marshall has convinced me that all the Murtha-bashing of the last two weeks has been about laying down cover to prepare for Bush's plan to declare victory and retreat:
". . . there is no debate about withdrawing American troops from Iraq. That's over. What we have is posturing and positioning over the political consequences of withdrawal. The White House and the president's partisans will lay down a wall of covering fire, calling anybody who considers withdrawal an appeaser, to allow the president to go about the business of drawing down the American presence in Iraq in time to game the 2006 elections."
Talking Points Memo: by Joshua Micah Marshall November 26, 2005 12:14 AM
Posted by tedf at 02:59 PM | Comments (0)
November 23, 2005
Walking in an Iraqui's Shoes
Everybody in America ought to try these thought experiments . . .
The Blog | Larry Beinhart: Imagine (Torture & The Geneva Conventions) | The Huffington Post
Posted by tedf at 05:48 PM | Comments (0)
November 22, 2005
Another Truly Frightening Story . . .
It's news like the story below (via Daily Kos) that makes me wonder if the "adults" in the Republican Party are eventually going to turn on Bush the way they did on Nixon. I've always figured Watergate must have been less about the heroism of the Fourth Estate and more about internal government power struggles. Both the revelation that Deep Throat was the #2 guy at the FBI, and that Woodward is even more of a servant to power than previously thought, provide evidence for this hypothesis. Nixon must have just made too many enemies within his party and within the permanent government. Combine that with the JFK assassination, and it means 2 out of 3 presidents in that era were more or less pushed aside through coups of some sort. Follow that up with the Clinton impeachment and the ballot irregularities in 2000 and 2004, and the smooth transition of power through the electoral process starts to look less like the rule in modern America, and more like the exception.
If that's a very scary thought - and it is - it also leads one to wonder if the bells may soon toll for Bush, Cheney & Co. What happens as all the Republican donors who aren't in the oil business start looking at how those high prices affect their own bottom lines? It's understandable that the party owns the extractive industries, but you'd think the manufacturing and service sectors have vested interests in low energy prices, international stability, and Brand America. Plus, they may even be wondering if shifting the insurance burden to government might be the only way to salvage crushing benefits responsibilities. You figure top Foutune 500 execs may be greedy and "conservative," but they're not stupid. Or, I don't know, maybe they are . . .
Mirror.co.uk - News - EXCLUSIVE: BUSH PLOT TO BOMB HIS ARAB ALLY
Posted by tedf at 02:04 PM | Comments (0)
The Perils of Being a Blue-State Comic in Alabama
This is a fascinating post by stand-up comic Christian Finnegan (Best Week Ever, Chappelle's Show) about getting bumrushed on stage by a drunken heckler screaming, "I'VE SPENT TWO YEARS IN IRAQ! I'M FIGHTING FOR YOUR FREEDOM OF SPEECH! I'M FIGHTING FOR YOUR FUCKING FREEDOM OF SPEECH!!!" It took eight security guards to drag the guy offstage before he could rearrange Finnegan's face. Beyond the surreal incident itself, Finnegan goes on to thoughtfully examine the dilemmas of joking to the unconverted.
Christian Finnegan's Tower of Hubris
Posted by tedf at 12:20 PM | Comments (0)
November 03, 2005
19 Percent
That's Dick Cheney's approval rating. Given that he's the one who really runs the country, it's perhaps an even more relevant number than George Bush's historically low 35 percent.
United Press International - NewsTrack - Bush's job approval falls to 35 percent
Posted by tedf at 03:17 PM | Comments (0)
October 26, 2005
"If Fox News Had Been Around Throughout History"
Brilliant stuff. I think we'll be seeing a lot more like this as the Daily Show/Onion sensibility seeps into pop historiography. It's definitely a nice change of pace from Ken Burns . . .
If Fox News Had Been Around Throughout History (via Daily Kos)
Posted by tedf at 08:05 PM | Comments (0)
Powerful Interactive Photo Essay of 27 Funerals of Soldiers Killed in Iraq
Posted by tedf at 09:16 AM | Comments (0)
October 24, 2005
Juan Cole and Steve Gilliard on the Judith Miller Saga
Juan Cole has the sharpest analysis I've seen of why the NYT allowed Judith Miller to hijack their Iraq coverage: they were cowed by the attacks from Fox News. They were getting repreatedly slammed from the right for not cheerleading Bush's war mobilization, and they figured Miller's reportage would appease the critics calling them traitors. They problem was, just on the level of facts, they had been right, while their critics - and Miller - were full of it.
See also Steve Gilliard's great coverage of the battles within the Times and the rest of the Plame drama, featuring Photoshopped pix of Miller, Cheney, Rove and Libby in "Stop Snitching" t-shirts.
Posted by tedf at 10:33 AM | Comments (0)
October 06, 2005
Surprisingly Sharp Al Gore Speech on the Sorry State of American Journalism
I don't know if Gore's new cable network, Connect TV, is the answer, but this is a great speech. Who knew Gore had been off reading Habermas?
http://www.tpmcafe.com/story/2005/10/5/14301/6133
TPMCafe || Gore on the Threat to American Democracy
Posted by tedf at 12:56 AM | Comments (0)
October 04, 2005
Beatty to Challenge Arnold?
This is just too rich - Arnold's groping finally defuses Beatty's womanizer label, so Beatty can finally go from Bullworth to the state house. If the country is really starting a slow turn to the left, a Beatty win might be one great early indication.
Is Clash of the Movie Titans a Trailer?
Posted by tedf at 03:48 AM | Comments (0)
May 10, 2005
"Bush in 30 Years" Flash Contest Winner
Here's the winner of MoveOn.org's contest to create a Flash animation on the subject of Bush's Social Security proposals. It's a great example of the communicative power of clean, elegant graphic design. And what it actually proposes is both eminently sensible and far to the left of most of the Democratic party: simply removing the $90,000 cap on taxable income for social security payments, so that all taxpayers contribute an equal 6.2% of income.
Posted by tedf at 07:06 PM | Comments (0)
March 02, 2005
"Bush in 30 Years"
In the spirit of “Bush in 30 Seconds,” the 2004 contest to create an anti-Bush election ad, Moveon.org is now sponsoring “Bush in 30 Years.” The idea is to create an online ad in Flash on the problems with the Bush Social Security plan. More details here:
Posted by tedf at 07:04 PM | Comments (0)