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Friday, May 07, 2004
He Must Have Moved on to Harder Stuff
Yes, Rush Limbaugh said these things, courtesy of David Brock's new organization, Media Matters:
LIMBAUGH: All right, so we're at war with these people. And they're in a prison where they're being softened up for interrogation. And we hear that the most humiliating thing you can do is make one Arab male disrobe in front of another. Sounds to me like it's pretty thoughtful. Sounds to me in the context of war this is pretty good intimidation -- and especially if you put a woman in front of them and then spread those pictures around the Arab world. And we're sitting here, "Oh my God, they're gonna hate us! Oh no! What are they gonna think of us?" I think maybe the other perspective needs to be at least considered. Maybe they're gonna think we are serious. Maybe they're gonna think we mean it this time. Maybe they're gonna think we're not gonna kowtow to them. Maybe the people who ordered this are pretty smart. Maybe the people who executed this pulled off a brilliant maneuver. Nobody got hurt. Nobody got physically injured. But boy there was a lot of humiliation of people who are trying to kill us -- in ways they hold dear. Sounds pretty effective to me if you look at us in the right context.
Still, Limbaugh says it's no different from a pop concert or homoerotic pornography:
LIMBAUGH: The thing though that continually amazes -- here we have these pictures of homoeroticism that look like standard good old American pornography, the Britney Spears or Madonna concerts or whatever, and yet the Libs upset about the mistreatment of these prisoners thought nothing of sitting back while mass graves were being filled with three to 500,000 Iraqis during the Saddam Hussein regime.
On his May 5 show, Limbaugh attributed the American public's outrage over the allegations to "feminization":
LIMBAUGH: I think a lot of the American culture is being feminized. I think the reaction to the stupid torture is an example of the feminization of this country.
Thursday, May 06, 2004
It's All About Power
Two Sundays ago, the New York Times magazine ran an article about the Bush campaign's organization in Ohio and the detailed planning involved, down to the point of telling a county leader to get 523, not 500, not 520, but 523 volunteers.
Now, just imagine if they had put anywhere near that kind of effort to planning for post-war Iraq...
"With Saddam Gone, There Are No Longer Torture Rooms and Rape Rooms in Iraq"
William Saletan at Slate does a nice job of breaking down the statements by Bush and the Administration to this effect, interspliced with snippets from the report on Abu Ghraib.
The Slate headline has it right: Iraq's Rape Rooms -- Under New Management.
Or the Who: Meet the New Boss. Same as the Old Boss.
He's Gotta Still Be on the Stuff and Needs More Rehab
That's the only way to explain these statements by Rush Limbaugh:
CALLER: It was like a college fraternity prank that stacked up naked men --
LIMBAUGH: Exactly. Exactly my point! This is no different than what happens at the Skull and Bones initiation and we're going to ruin people's lives over it and we're going to hamper our military effort, and then we are going to really hammer them because they had a good time. You know, these people are being fired at every day. I'm talking about people having a good time, these people, you ever heard of emotional release? You of heard of need to blow some steam off?
The day before, on his May 3 show, Limbaugh observed that the American troops who mistreated Iraqi prisoners of war were "babes" and that the pictures of the alleged abuse were no worse than "anything you'd see Madonna, or Britney Spears do on stage."
LIMBAUGH: And these American prisoners of war -- have you people noticed who the torturers are? Women! The babes! The babes are meting out the torture.
LIMBAUGH: You know, if you look at -- if you, really, if you look at these pictures, I mean, I don't know if it's just me, but it looks just like anything you'd see Madonna, or Britney Spears do on stage. Maybe I'm -- yeah. And get an NEA grant for something like this. I mean, this is something that you can see on stage at Lincoln Center from an NEA grant, maybe on Sex in the City -- the movie. I mean, I don't -- it's just me.
What Nader Could Do
Sorry for the radio silence, loyal readers. I've been traveling for my day job.
I'm still believe that Nader will have less of an effect than he had in 2000, and, as in 2000, the numbers he actually garners will be much less than he is polling now. But he still could have some impact, particularly if a state is as close as Florida last time.
Bruce Ackerman from Yale Law School has an interesting idea: Have Nader select the same electors as Kerry, so that Nader's votes will be, essentially, a vote for electors who would vote for Kerry in the electoral college.
Now, I'm not sure about the viability of this; I mean, aren't electoral votes awarded to the candidate who wins a state, and then his chosen electors get to cast those votes? As opposed to electors themselves garnering votes, and the electors with the most votes taking the right to cast that state's electoral votes? Is this a question of individual state law? Anybody have some insight?
Monday, May 03, 2004
Exhibit A of Bush's Arrogance
Here's a great clip of Bush wiping his glasses on a Letterman producer's sweater during a commercial break. What a jerk.
Why the White House Likes Woodward's Book
Bob Somerby has been pushing his view on this for a few days now, and I'm now completely sold.
Somerby notes:
Let’s face it: Bob Woodward could do a thousand shows and no TV pundit would ever dare ask about his book’s most puzzling narrative. No one would ever dare to ask about that weird scene from December 2002—the scene in which Strong Leader Bush challenges hapless George Tenet. Everyone knows how to play the scene. They play it the way Tim Russert did when Woodward did an hour-long turn on his eponymous CNBC program:
RUSSERT (4/24/04): The book, Plan of Attack, the author, Bob Woodward, and he is here talking to us about it. December 21, 2002: George Tenet and his top deputy briefing the president, in effect, a slide show, if you will, on the weapons of mass destruction, in the Oval Office, and the president at the conclusion says, quote, “Nice try, but that isn’t going to sell Joe Public. This is the best we got?”
WOODWARD: Question mark.
RUSSERT: A real skeptic.
Bush was “a real skeptic,” Russert said—showing that he, Tim Russert, isn’t. After all, by the time this ballyhooed briefing was held, Woodward’s book quite clearly states that Bush and Cheney had been overstating the intel on WMD for four solid months, driving the nation to war in the process! If Bush was such a masterful “skeptic,” why wasn’t this briefing held before December—before he misstated the intel for months? The question here is perfectly obvious—but every pundit knows not to ask it. Indeed, Russert carried the clowning further only a few moments later:
RUSSERT: You think he—Bob, you take it even further.
WOODWARD: Yeah.
RUSSERT: You say the president several times said to Tenet, Make sure no one stretches to make the case.
Put simply, Woodward let the White House feed him a great story about the President being skeptical about the intelligence that he was given by Tenet, a story that shows Bush as a strong leader, but, perhaps more important, shows that at least he was trying to contain the intelligence from stretching with respect to Iraq's WMDs, providing Bush political cover since we now know that there are no WMDs and the intelligence was stretched.
Somerby rightly notes:
But that’s the problem with Woodward’s book! When Bush tells Tenet not to stretch, he himself has been stretching for months! But Russert knows not to notice this point, or to ask Woodward how to explain it. Everyone knows how this script has been blocked. Everyone knows to admire the way Strong Leader Bush challenged Tenet.
No, no TV pundit ever asks Woodward about this part of his book.
And then, late Thursday night, e-mail flooded our Advanced Message Center. Someone had asked him about it:
E-MAIL: On Monday you pointed out that neither Woodward, nor anyone else, picked up on the fact that while Bush was [allegedly] skeptical about WMD’s when Tenet briefed him in December he’d already been selling the idea for months.
Well one newsman picked up on it. On Thursday night, that’s exactly what Jon Stewart asked Woodward about on The Daily Show.
Somerby rightly notes how dysfunctional our media has become when we have to rely on a comedian to ask the obvious follow-up questions.
Here's the transcript of Stewart's show (unfortuntately things digressed to the point where Woodward never had to answer the question and point out the obvious -- he had been used):
WOODWARD: Tenet’s deputy made a detailed presentation…It was quite long and at the end there was this silence, and the president, President Bush, said, Nice try, but it doesn’t sell. Joe Public will not buy it. And so he turned over to Tenet, who was sitting on one of the couches, and said, What have you got, George? I thought this was good stuff! And Tenet twice said, Oh don’t worry, it’s a slam-dunk. Now Bush’s sniffer—his instinct—told him something didn’t add up here. Tenet said a slam-dunk. Ideally, they should have gone back to Square One and said, Let’s really look at this intelligence, because this was the basis for war. This was not just what sort of bill they were going to send up to the Senate.
Of course, many things don’t quite “add up” in this Official Story. Stewart teased out one such problem with his next pair of questions:
STEWART (continuing directly): Right. What I think was even so interesting about it was the timing. Because when did this briefing take place?
WOODWARD: The Saturday before Christmas, about three months before the war started.
STEWART: And they had been promoting this idea of weapons of mass destruction and the intelligence associated with it already for months, had they not?
WOODWARD: Yes, initiated by Dick Cheney, the steam-roller in all this, saying—
Things were starting to move along. Then, the inevitable occurred. Stewart broke in with a joke:
STEWART: No, he is—and again, I don’t know if you interviewed him on this—a mindless cyborg. He is not man but machine.
The audience laughed, Woodward did too, and Jon-and-Bob never got back on track about Plan of Attack’s puzzling story.
Just curious: has anyone ever heard Tenet confirm that the "slam dunk" conversation ever took place (or that it took place in December '02, and not, say July '02) ?
New VP Name
Interesting Novak column yesterday suggesting that Sen. Joe Biden is being considered by Kerry as a VP choice. This is the first time I've heard this name mentioned, but my reaction is positive. First, Biden would bring a certain amount of firepower to Kerry's national security credentials. (Although I wonder, with Nader trying to position himself as the anti-war candidate, if Biden might move more liberals to Nader).
Second, Biden can give a great speech. Yes, he can be longwinded, and loves to hear himself talk. (Interestingly, Biden suffered from a stuttering problem when he was younger, which he tried to overcome by putting rocks in his mouth, as detailed in the unbelievably good "What It Takes" by Richard Cramer.) But Biden, circa 1988, was viewed as one the great orators in the Democratic Party. (I myself found myself so taken with his speech that on the one occasion I got to speak with Biden, immediately after the Thomas hearings, I reflexively praised his handling of the hearings, a sentiment that time, and Jane Mayer and Jill Abrahamson's's fantastic book, Strange Justice, ultimately revised dramatically.)
I don't think Biden's 1988 campaign or the plagarism charges would be a big issue. I'm intrigued by this choice. Certainly, I'd be more excited by Biden than Gephardt. Any thoughts?
More Praise
I've mentioned the Center for American Progress a number of times on this space, noting that they are providing a much needed left-wing counter-balance to the myriad of conservative think-tanks in DC. Now David Brock, right-wing-pawn-turned-left-wing-whistle-blower, has created a group called Media Matters for America, aimed at pointing out conservative media distortions, a subject Brock knows all too well. It's well worth a look.
