Follow Up

The hacktacular George Will:

Webb certainly has conveyed what he is: a boor. Never mind the patent disrespect
for the presidency. Webb's more gross offense was calculated rudeness toward
another human being -- one who, disregarding many hard things Webb had said
about him during the campaign, asked a civil and caring question, as one parent
to another. When -- if ever -- Webb grows weary of admiring his new grandeur as
a "leader" who carefully calibrates the "symbolic things" he does to convey
messages, he might consider this: In a republic, people decline to be led by
leaders who are insufferably full of themselves.

Uh huh. I'm sure you can figure this one out. For reference, see the post below.

Kos makes a funny:

In a republic, people decline to listen to self-styled media gasbags who are
insufferably full of themselves.

I think Will's last sentence there is fine; however, he's referring to the wrong BUSH person BUSH. For reference, see the 2006 elections.

Greg Sargent has a write-up at TPM Cafe on something that I'd noticed while reading Will's column, which is that Will has the journalistic integrity of Judith Miller in the presence of an administration official. In case you're wondering, contrast the quote here, as reported by Will, to the one in the post below.

When Bush asked Webb, whose son is a Marine in Iraq, "How's your boy?" Webb
replied, "I'd like to get them [sic] out of Iraq." When the president again
asked "How's your boy?" Webb replied, "That's between me and my boy."

Last but not least, there is the blatant hypocrisy in Will's column. It's really great that he's morphed back into a highschool girl who's really concerned with grammar, appropriate tone of voice when talking to the appropriate people and heaven forbid that someone could possibly be rude to someone else - especially when that someone else makes fun of that person's son almost getting killed in a war he started - but where was all the hullabaloo - Digby has not yet posted on this but I'm sure he will - over the past six years when Bush displayed that he lacked the verbal capabilities of a middle schooler? "Is our children learning"? "The Grecians are our friends"? "Families is where our nation finds hope, where wings take dream"? Who the hell is this man?! Furthermore, it's not like this was a problem limited to Bush. Will has no quarrel with Cheney telling Leahy to go Cheney himself and he never wrote a full column on Duke Cunningham's gibberish letter - the Daily Show did this so well - but if that Jim Webb steps out of line he needs to be reminded of The Elements of Style! I'll let Sirota go deconstructionist on Will's ass.

Commander Prissypants

Blackadder ain't got nothing on this guy:

At a private reception held at the White House with newly elected lawmakers
shortly after the election, Bush asked Webb how his son, a Marine lance corporal
serving in Iraq, was doing.
Webb responded that he really wanted to see his son brought back home, said a person who heard about the exchange from Webb.
“I didn’t ask you that, I asked how he’s doing,” Bush retorted, according to the source.
Webb confessed that he was so angered by this that he was tempted to slug the commander-in-chief, reported the source, but of course didn’t. It’s safe to say, however, that Bush and Webb won’t be taking any overseas trips together anytime soon.

Slugging Bush would have been the least Webb could have done. Bush is in for a rough ride now that he will have to deal with men who have spines.

Update: Bush is a complete psychopath.

Be Thankful

I hope everyone had a happy and healthy Thanksgiving. Among the things that we are thankful for, I think we should all take time out to be thankful for not being in Iraq.

The bloodiest bombings in Baghdad since the U.S. invasion in 2003, and the
reprisals that swiftly followed, show that Iraq's sectarian conflict may be too
far gone for leaders to stop, even if they want to.
The killings of some 250
people in just a few days last week marked a "high-water mark", analysts said.
It demonstrated with savage clarity how little control Iraq's government
exercises, with a security force accused of sectarian bias and a series of peace
plans doing little to slow the pace of killing.

We should be thankful for what we have, feel anguish for those who are not as fortunate as we are and feel contempt for those who are committed to take from some so that they may enrich themselves.

The World's Stupidest Pundit

Still the guy who knows funny.

I was originally going to go paragraph by paragraph and take Cohen apart, but everything he says is so abhorrent that you need to read his column in its entirety. For example:

Daily I read the casualty list from Iraq -- and I invent reasons to make the
deaths less tragic. This is a hopeless, maybe tasteless, task, but it matters to
me if someone is a career soldier who knew what he was getting into as opposed
to some naive kid digitally juiced on a computerized version of war -- or, even
sadder, some guardsman who enlisted for God, country or spare cash, but not by
any means for Baghdad. He's a volunteer, all right, but not for a war that
didn't exist when he raised his right hand and took the oath.

Translation: we should have sympathy for the poor, 101st Fighting Keyboarders who signed up - heh heh - because they did not know what they were getting into, but to hell with all those real soldiers; they got what was coming to them. I probably will eventually reverse my position on the war still being a Good thing, but the war as it was conceived in 2003 in its Platonic form was Good and is still good.

Apparently Cohen is also schizophrenic. Fun times.

Update: Hilzoy and Greg Mitchell agree.

The Non-Southern Strategy

Tom Schaller.

Die, Conservativism Zombies! Die!

Orientalism

Marty Peretz of the New Republic.

All the talk of we could have done it better than Bush and trying to speak for what Iraqis really want - because some neocon magazine editor really knows - is Orientalism of the highest order, which is to say an assumption of one's omniscience and infalibility to the detriment of being able to more objectively assess reality. In Peretz's case, this has a lot to do with Israel. From over at TPMCafe:

It's pretty interesting once you understand that Peretz has only one yardstick
by which he judges people: pro-Israel and anti-Israel. The subcategory is Jewish
or not Jewish.

The only strong feeling I have towards Israel is that it be treated no differently from any other foreign country. I think it is wrong for an American to place the interests of one foreign country above all others countries, especially his own. Peretz's overtly negative characterization of Iraqis - never mind it ignores the horrors Bush committed because Bush supports Israel - is a result of his hawkish unilateralism and is completely wrong minded. It leads him to make spurious attributions - and not make others - to both Bush and Iraq. Yglesias has more, via the first link, on how wrong Peretz is.

This last point is important. Peretz was wrong from the beginning, is wrong, and will most likely continue to be wrong. Therefore, no one should pay attention to him. He is pathetic and belongs circle jerking with the rest of the Keyboard Kommandos.

It's That Time Again

What Digby said.

and again,

What Digby said.

I think it is our duty as citizens of this country to make people aware of the level of discourse. If the Presstitutes want to party like it's 1998, then we need to take a (metaphorically speaking, I'm not Pam Oshry) baseball bat to their heads. If they want to play it like they're too cool for the Democrats, we need to loudly remind them of every time they went weak in the knees for Commander Codpiece and abetted his and the Republican party's destruction of this country. Such people have no right to spend hours agonizing over Bill Clinton's continued 'taint' on the party or Nancy Pelosi's already doomed leadership. They are part and parcel of the problem.

The correct answer is how Mary Mapes responded to Rush Limbaugh (I think there was someone else who said something similar, but I can't remember who):

"I don't need to be lectured on ethics from a much married, obese, drug addict."

If the media wants to engage in character assassination - YEEEEARRRGGGHHHH!!!!!! - then I have no problem throwing right back in their faces how feckless - can't get away from Atlas Juggs today, go read this FDL post - and destructive they are to the national discourse and therefore the entire nation. It's springtime in punditland, and if they want to poke their heads out of the woodwork to try and be cool, it's time we played some whack-a-mole.

We Are All Rush Limbaugh

If by "we" you mean the established media.

This shit should not fly. I stopped watching CNN after Kyra Philips spent more energy attacking Nancy Pelosi and defending Bush than reporting. I have not look back.

Conservatamism

Glenn Greenwald nails it:

"Conservatism" -- like "communism" -- has only one real definition, only one
definition that matters: "that which 'conservatives' and the leaders they
support do when in power." Conservatism is a set of principles about how
government ought to function and the policies which political leaders should
implement. And those principles can be known not by how they exist in some
Platonic form, abstractly enshrined by think tank groups or in textbooks. One
knows it by how its proponents -- "conservatives" -- actually govern and by who
and what they support.

... although I am pretty sure I could define it pretty well with a couple of four letter words.

Crazy Psycho Liberals

Michael Moore.

I can't wait to see how many different ways this can make Rush Limbaugh's and Ann Coulter's heads explode.

Majority Leader

The race is on. Hoyer,

For the last four years, I have been honored to serve as your Whip, working
on a daily basis with Nancy, Jim, John, Rahm, and all of the Members of our
Caucus to bring us to this point. Together, our Caucus has achieved
unprecedented unity – and our unity, I believe, proved to be instrumental to
last night’s tremendous Democratic victory. This was a team effort!

Today, as part of the leadership team that helped our Caucus regain the
House Majority, I am writing to ask you to support my candidacy for the position
of Majority Leader when the Caucus elects its leaders for the 110th Congress on
November 16th. I would be honored to serve as your Majority Leader, and am
grateful for the depth and broad range of commitments that have been given by
Members for my candidacy. While my top priority has been helping our Caucus
regain the Majority, I assure you that I have given a great deal of thought to
the duties of this leadership position.

vs. Murtha,

Talk is cheap, which is why, up until Iraq forced me to, I didn't do a lot of
it. But empty rhetoric is expensive. It has cost America three years in a failed
war at nearly three thousand lives lost and will cost us a trillion dollars by
the time we can extricate ourselves from it. Empty rhetoric has cost us years of
lost time in finding a solution to our dependence on foreign oil, at a price tag
that is nearly impossible to guess, but surely in the hundreds of billions.

This so-far bipolar decision has generated some discussion in the blogosphere (dkos, mydd), with what I think can safely be said as the majority of participants favoring Murtha. I have to agree. Even though Murtha has a pork problem and is a fairly conservative Dem, I think he would make a good majority leader by enforcing order and not stabbing Pelosi in the back. Hoyer, on the other hand, has one of the worst K-Street problems of any Dem and has backstabbed Pelosi.

What I would like to know, however, is who do people think would make a good majority leader? We have almost 200 contenders to choose from and I am sure there are some more interesting candidates out there.

But Why Is The Rum Gone?

(just because I could)

Stupid, Stupid Pundits

David Brooks (free Times Select week, and look what we get stuck with. I want my Krugman):

In some ways, this election reminds me of the 1974 Democratic sweep. The
Republicans have screwed up. Democrats have surged in. But the result leads not
to a liberal tide but to Jimmy Carter, who in 1976 ran as a conservative
anti-political reformer who won on fiscal discipline and with the support of Pat
Robertson.

This election didn’t define a new era, but it marks the end of an old
one. If Democrats are going to take advantage of their victory, they will have
to do two things. They will have to show they have not been taken over by their
bloggers or their economic nationalists, who will alienate them from the
suburban office park moms. Second, they’ll have to come up with ideas as big as
the problems we face. Their current platform consists of small-bore tax credits
and foreign policy vagaries about, say, “redoubling” our efforts to get Osama
bin Laden. (Why not retripling or requadrupling?)

Um, so because Carter ended the era of liberalism and Democratic dominance by running as a conservative, Democrats should run away from the more progressive elements of their base and run as conservatives? What is Brooks trying to say here? I really cannot figure it out. It is nice to see that he understands the past, but for Democrats that understanding should translate into the future by embracing the blogs and grassroots, something they have run away from for long enough. Our victory was achieved by embracing progressive ideas and candidates, not machine-backed, milquetoast, Republican lite ideas and candidates (nice try, Rahm).

By the way, what is an economic nationalist? Is this the new vogue term for people who are anti-CAFTA and Republican versions of "free trade?" I have never heard of it before.

Moreover, Democrats need to come up with ideas? Brooks is an idiot. There is a trove of information on this. A ten second Google search for Pelosi's website yielded this document, and I am sure the DNC has more. Here are some small-bore tax credits and foreign policy vagaries:

1. Implement 9/11 Commission proposals to secure our ports
2. Raise the minimum wage
3. Make college tuition tax deductible and cut student loan interest rates
4. End tax giveaways to big oil companies
5. Fix the Medicare prescription drug benefit program by negotiating lower prices and promoting stem cell research.

Of course David Brooks and his all-seeing eye know better without examining anything. That is why he is an all-knowing, all-powerful pundit.

Brooks is both intellectually lazy - he cannot draw the correct conclusion from mountains of evidence - and dishonest - he either avoided looking at Democratic plans alltogether or lied about their content - and should be let go from his job. Would any normal, hard-working American be treated any differently?

Predictions

My predictions:

House - Dem gain of 22
Senate - Dem gain of 4 and Lamont wins CT

I realize I'm being conservative, but like many other left-wing bloggers, I've been burned badly before. Oh well.

As for Lamont, everyone's saying it's a stretch because the polls show Lieberman up, but there is record turnout this election - some think up to 70% - which my buddy, working on the ground has confirmed, and because I refuse to believe Schlesinger will get under 15% of the vote at the end of the day. He's #1 on the ballot with a big fat Republican next to his name, and when given the choice between the real Republican and the fake Republican - as we have found out time and time again in recent elections - voters will choose the real Republican. Furthermore, Joe's position on the ballot is dead last. My friend said you can't even see his name under the levers of the polling machine. Take a look for yourself:



Joe's seriously verkacht. Best quote of the election (aside from the KY assault), from Colin McEnroe:

Also, people report it is even harder than they thought to find Joe
Lieberman on the ballot. One correspondent: "You'd have to be stupid to
vote for Lieberman. And then they make it hard for stupid people to find him.
It's not fair!"

It's high past time you went, Joe.

Limbo Kings

Republicans.

Andrew Sullivan and I actually agree on something. Almost makes you wonder how far out the Republicans are. Almost...

Elite Wisdom

Kate Phillips:

We promised no predictions, but Mr. Lamont has pretty much proven he was a
one-issue wonder, and despite the anti-war sentiment here and in other places,
we’d suggest Democratic party leaders figure out how to welcome Mr. Lieberman
back into the fold. (If only so Vice President Dick Cheney will stop using the
party’s shunning of Mr. Lieberman as encouragement for Al Qaeda-minded
terrorists.)

This is what passes for liberal media? If so, Bill O'Reilly's found himself his new best friend forever (much like Dick Cheney has found Joe Lieberman).

First of all, if the author of this article spent two minutes outside of the DC buzz and on the ground in CT, she would realize her claim that Ned Lamont is a "one-issue wonder" is a load of crap. Ned is strong on healthcare, net neutrality, job creation, social security, taxes and a whole host of issues that are important to voters in CT.

Second, "Democratic party leaders [should] figure out how to welcome Mr. Lieberman back into the fold"? What kind of bullshit is this?! The CT Democratic party explicitly kicked Lieberman's sorry, Bush-kissing - no pun intended - ass out of the Democratic party because he does not qualify as a Democrat. But to the NYT, the will of the people does not really matter because what powerful people in DC do is where it is at. The fact that the Congressional Democratic leadership did not immediately dig in behind Lamont, and have continued to court Lieberman even while he has campaigned Republicans shows a blatant disregard for the will of their base and is disgusting.

Third, Phillips' little parenthetical aside proves that she understands nothing about how politics work. Cheney will use any opposition to any plan - be it energy, social security, or habeas corpus - to bludgeon Democrats to death by calling them Al Qaeda lovers. If Phillips understood this she would then realize there are two options: 1. The Democrats cease to be a party and become absorbed into the Republican machine, or 2. The Democrats get rid of slimy sycophants like Lieberman, who aid and abet the people who are hell-bent on destroying this country, like Dick Cheney, and stand up for a better America. Phillips, however, would rather see the same cast stay on for the next season, even as their ratings plummet.

Progressives suggest that the NYT fire Kate Phillips so we could welcome them back into the progressive fold. If only so we have a shot at option 2 above, instead of inevitably slipping into option 1.

Crunch Time

Good night and good luck.

CfL

What Digby says.

Jesus oh Jesus how I want to see Joe Lieberman lose. Connecticut Dems who say
they are voting for Lieberman: you know not what you do.

Even if Lamont loses on Tuesday, we have accomplished a great victory by getting Lieberman out of the Democratic party. Joe can no longer claim that he speaks for any of us.

Wrong

(adj.) - George W. Bush:

Last March, the federal government set up a Web site to make public a vast
archive of Iraqi documents captured during the war. The Bush administration did so under pressure from Congressional Republicans who had said they hoped to “leverage the Internet” to find new evidence of the prewar dangers posed by Saddam Hussein.

But in recent weeks, the site has posted some documents that weapons
experts say are a danger themselves: detailed accounts of Iraq’s secret nuclear research before the 1991 Persian Gulf war. The documents, the experts
say, constitute a basic guide to building an atom bomb.

Heckuva job Bushie, Iran couldn't have done it without you.

Also, death to the blasphemous NYT for reporting the existence of this website. Sure, it existed before, but no one would have known about it if they had not reported it. WHY DOES THE LEFT HATE AMERICA!!!!!!!!!!!

No Soldier Left Behind

Oops.

Mr. Maliki’s public declaration seemed at first to catch American commanders off
guard. But by nightfall, American troops had abandoned all the positions in
eastern and central Baghdad that they had set up last week with Iraqi forces as
part of a search for a missing American soldier. The checkpoints had snarled
traffic and disrupted daily life and commerce throughout the eastern part of the
city.

Not that I agree with the strategy - I vehemently oppose it - , but even Israel stands for something more than we do. Bush hates our troops. He has publicly stated that he will honor their sacrifices by sacrificing even more of them. He uses them like a king would, as political props and cannon fodder. He does not realize that in America every man and woman is equal, and he cannot abuse the people's trust in this manner.

That's your Republican party for you, stabbing our soldiers in the back to save their political fronts.