Maureen Dowd Goes There

Normally, MoDo annoys me, but today she went there. When Maureen Dowd notices the problem that the GOP has with a Black man as president, the GOP has a BAD problem...

I’ve been loath to admit that the shrieking lunacy of the summer — the frantic efforts to paint our first black president as the Other, a foreigner, socialist, fascist, Marxist, racist, Commie, Nazi; a cad who would snuff old people; a snake who would indoctrinate kids — had much to do with race.

I tended to agree with some Obama advisers that Democratic presidents typically have provoked a frothing response from paranoids — from Father Coughlin against F.D.R. to Joe McCarthy against Truman to the John Birchers against J.F.K. and the vast right-wing conspiracy against Bill Clinton.

But Wilson’s shocking disrespect for the office of the president — no Democrat ever shouted “liar” at W. when he was hawking a fake case for war in Iraq — convinced me: Some people just can’t believe a black man is president and will never accept it.

You follow the Southern Strategy...it leads right THERE. And it doesn't even take a detour.

Follow Up To Torture

EnviroMom responded to yesterday's post in a way that has caused me to think and extend my remarks:

The thing that disturbs me the most about all of this is that
we tend to feel, as a society and a species, as if we've evolved. But
intimidating prisoners to get them to confess to things for political gain, well
that beautiful concept dates back quite a bit longer than the Bush
administration. Think the Red Scare, the Salem Witch Trials, the Spanish
Inquisition...torturing confessions out of prisoners is not exactly a new idea,
and it doesn't make me feel any more hopeful about mankind's ability to learn
from its past mistakes.

That left me thinking about her point, which I'm going to both refute and reinforce (quite the trick). I think of all this as a case of the reptile brain gaining ascendancy.

When I'm confronted by something, someone or some situation I dislike, there's a part of me that wants to say, "Hulk Smash!" and get with the smacking down. I don't do it because it would be wrong (the fact that cops show up helps).

What we had in 2002 in particular was a freak out, where the government's reptile brain (Dick Cheney) ran wild. As I said, understandable. What is unusual is in this era when the consensus is that torture is wrong, someone(s) in the White House and the Pentagon, and for all I know, Langley, decided that, "What the hell. As long as we have the thumbscrews out, let's help W get his war on and smack those latte sipping liberal elites around a bit too...show that they're not really serious about defending the country."

The Inquisition, the Witch Trials (the ones in central Europe around that time, by the way, were FAR bloodier than their little American cousins) and so forth were conducted using what were AT THAT TIME, standard "criminal" techniques. Henry the VIII had the punishment for poisoners set at "boiled alive by being slowly lowered feet first". Torture was, in those days, the modern equivalent of putting a prisoner in solitary confinement.

Today, torture is no longer the cultural punitive norm (and that's a good thing, BTW). THAT'S what makes what Bush/Cheney did in service of their political agenda particularly vile. It's what makes Republicans today arguing that not using it reflects unseriousness about protecting ourselves reprehensible. They're trying to refight a long ago resolved discussion about what constitutes inhumane treatment.

That's why this is so dangerous. THAT'S why the current batch of Republican politicians and pundits who won't come out publicly and continually to state, "Torture is still always wrong," in the style of the 70s era Saturday Night Live Weekend Update that would always start, "Generalissimo Francisco Franco is still dead," are contemptible. Until John McCain and Mitch McConnell and John Boehner and Rush Limbaugh and Micheal Barone and Charles Krauthammer and Fred Barnes come out continually and say THAT, something they don't do...something in fact that all of them have directly or indirectly contradicted at some point in the last eight years, I really don't think the country is safe from them.

We are AT RISK, because some people saw an opportunity to refight the real "Culture War." The one between the Dark Ages and the Enlightenment. The forces of superstition and fear still want their drawing and quartering, and if the forces of rationality and enlightenment do not fight them, continually and with neither cessation nor mercy, superstition will win.

Words Fail Me

Well obviously not, but I see this and I have trouble not breaking into a stream of profanity.

If you don't click links, it seems that one of the uses Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld found for "enhanced interrogation techniques" in 2002 and 2003 was in...wait for it...torturing prisoners to find an Al Qaeda-Iraq connection.

You know what? It's one thing to lose your moral compass from a fear...a not unjustified fear...that Al Qaeda might have had more cells out planning something. It would be WRONG, but at least understandable. NOT forgettable, not even forgivable, but at least I could understand it...the way I can understand, but not forgive, Hamas rocket attacks.

That isn't what happened here. Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld (plus the usual supporting crew) tortured people to cover their political asses and to have a talking point to beat up Democrats with.

These people and their enablers (aka the Republican Party) are beneath pond scum. You and I and everyone we know lived in a dictatorship for 8 years. I think the reason Dear Leader Rush Limbaugh is freaking out is he's afraid that someone might be after payback.

He should be glad it's Obama in charge and not me.

McCain Tries For The Early Checkmate

By revealing Obama's itinerary for travel in Iraq.

Joke's on him though, Obama landed in Afghanistan.

Either a) He's trying to get Obama killed before the white supremacists can get to the Democratic nominee or b) his campaign was complicit in a disinformation campaign.

Given that you get the same effect from not saying a goddamn thing as from planting false information...guess which one *I* think? Not that I think St. John the Divine did this; just one of his Repub Frat Boy Staffer types...the ones the Repub party is so thoroughly larded with these days.

Republicans And Love Of Country

Basically, I'm mad as hell and I'm not going to take it anymore. Obama is making a patriotism speech where basically he says that he won't let anyone impugn his patriotism.

Which McCain has, if not in so many words. Has the man never heard of the Intertubes?? He says outrageous shit and then simply denies he said it. This may be the first year in which YouTube is used more to debunk a lying politician than to check out Leeroy Jenkins.

OK. Plug your ears and lock up the kids. I'll wait...


WHAT THE FUCK IS WRONG WITH REPUBLICANS?!?!?!?

Seriously.

Did you somehow become fucking convinced that only YOU love your Country(TM)? News flash assholes, not only do you NOT have a monopoly on loving America, I'm still not convinced that upwards of 90% of you ACTUALLY love America. Sean Hannity dry humping the country (and one sort of envisions that happening to Florida...like a little rat dog humping a leg) notwithstanding, what Republicans ACTUALLY do is TALK about loving America.

I'm going to give you a little hint. Republicans (in the main) don't love America, they love themselves. The reason they spend so much time talking about loving America is that they figure that America is the country most likely to allow them to love themselves with the least amount of interruption or inconvenience. If another country, say Albania, made them a better offer...they'd be on a plane in a second, all those country and western songs notwithstanding.

How can I say this? Simple. If, when discussing taxes, your first words about taxes are something on the order of, "It's MY money, how dare they tell me what to do with it," you love yourself.

If you are terribly concerned with a terrorist attack on American soil...putting YOU at risk...without regard to whether an attack is an existential threat to the country? You love yourself.

Are you concerned with what "Teh Gay" is doing to our moral fabric (LINK WARNING: Shower before and after clicking on the link)...mainly because it makes you feel icky (or even worse, vaguely titillated)? You love yourself.

Basically, what we have is a group of people who are like an abusive boyfriend. As long as America puts out, in whatever kinky way these Republicans want it to, they'll let America occasionally go out to the mall or see friends. If the bitch crosses them though? She'll be sorry.

So spare me your patriotic chest thumping. Go play with a tub of butter or something and leave those of us who actually care about her take her to the ER and have the broken bones looked at.

Fuck The Clarifications

You might be aware that Michelle Obama is "Proud" or "Really Proud" of her country for the first time in her adult life. The right wing blogs and Faux have been having a fake rage-gasm over the quote. Let me say...officially...if you don't agree with her you haven't been fucking paying attention the last thirty years.

To explain, let's go back to when she turned 18, in fact let's even make the poor woman older and go allllllll the way back to 1968. For presidents, Michelle has watched, in chronological order: a Malignant Tumor, an Ineffectual Well-Meaning Sop, an Amiable Moron, a Bloodless Technocrat, a Smarmy Morals Challenged But Competent Letch and a Not-Very-Amiable Vindictive Incompetent Uber-Moron. Hell, with that rogues gallery it's the first time I'm proud of my country and I wasted four years defending it so that the KGB couldn't listen to our phone conversations without warrants and send citizens to the Gulag to be tortured without due process. Oh, wait...

I'm beginning to understand why all those Boomers get their panties wet whenever they talk about JFK or RFK. Obama actually inspires me to do something more than shop. Had 9/11 occurred under Obama, I'm willing to bet he would have asked us all to something noble. Not to go out shopping prop up an economy he'd spent the last nine months badmouthing in an attempt to justify tax cuts he'd already decided on.

Frankly, the latest two minute hate is all the right wing in this country has left. Intellectually bankrupt, all they can do is impugn the patriotism or sanity of anyone opposing them. As someone said on a blog (and I really don't feel like digging it up, so just take my word for it), if you spend all your time implying that 45% of the country aren't really Americans, eventually that 45% is going to get really pissed off. And you don't win elections by needing to get 90% plus one of all the votes left available to you.

The only thing Obama could do that would make me prouder is flying down to Guantanamo immediately after his inauguration, personally setting off the charges that blow the prison there sky high and then remanding those responsible to the International Criminal Tribunal in the Hague starting with Cheney (if possible) and Rumsfeld (without fail). Rumsfeld can stand up all the way there.

All Your Base Are Belong To SATAN!

Via Kevin Drum I find this from Joe Klein at Swampland. Normally I hold Joe in a kind of "dupe of the power structure" regard for his false equivalency columns when comparing Repubs and Democrats. But lately his blog posts show the behind the scenes horror he feels about Bush and the Repubs. May have felt all along but didn't write, don't know. I'm giving him the benefit of the doubt.

Presuming you don't click the link, it concerns Klein at an undecideds Repub focus group during the most recent debate, and he highlights two things he called "really distressing". As you read this, I want you to understand that focus groups are carefully selected to be AS REPRESENTATIVE AS POSSIBLE of the population it is selected from...in this case Repubs, likely to vote in primary type, i.e., "the base".

First, when Mike Huckabee said that financial aid should be available to the children of illegal immigrants because we are all Children of God his score went into the 30s. For those of you not in the focus group biz, 1 to 100 dial scoring has a sliding scale of inaccuracy the farther you get from 50 (neutral). Scores in the low twenties are kind of the theoretical minimum, statistically indistinguishable from "1" or Total Universal Disagreement by the group. So all but a few Repubs at large agree that US Citizens should be isolated from even the OPPORTUNITY of college because of what their parents did and fuck this "children of God"/Christianity bullshit...bring on the Old Testament, Sins Of The Father God.

Then John McCain weighed in on Waterboarding As Torture. HIS scores went into the twenties. Yes. Repubs universally approve of torturing prisoners of war. Words fail me. I knew it was bad, but UNIVERSAL DISAPPROVAL of the guy telling you what you want to do with the non-Christian brown people is TORTURE for fuck's sake? What the fuck do these people want to do to ME and my latte sipping ways? Jail? Concentration Camps? A Final Solution?

I really DID waste my time in the Army, didn't I? I should have spent it accumulating assets held in Swiss Banks for the moment I have to pack up and run for the border 'cause the brownshirts are after me.