marccooper

We Interrupt This Blog....

                                           *** ATTENTION ***

The blog is in the middle of a face lift, makeover, server transfer etc. Please bear with all interruptions, quirks, apparitions etc. over the next few days. It's gonna be weird.

As of Wednesday night, October 19, we are in the middle of moving the blog to a new server. Given the intricacies of the Internet, for the next day or two some people will see the old blog site -- which you are looking at now. And some are already seeing the new-- which you are apparently not. Go figure! This must be what Bush meant by The Internets. By the end of the week, everyone should see the new version.

AND CHECK BACK OVER THE NEXT FEW DAYS. WE DON'T WANT TO  LOSE YOU.

Miller Time(s)

 

It’s rather breathtaking to watch Judy’s Miller’s flame-out (no pun intended). That the New York Times’ self-described "run-amok" reporter is self-immolating, I believe, is now an inevitability beyond any doubt.

It’s only a matter of time – a few weeks or a few months at most—before some sort of graceful, cosmetic exit is found. The wily and enterprising Ms. Miller no doubt will try to cash in with some over-hyped tell-nothing book (probably to be published by Judith Regan!) and then she’s off into the sunset: spending the rest of her years either giving talks to the Ahmed Chalabi Memorial Society, picking up tenure in some fourth-rate J School or playing dominoes with Dan Rather.

Never in my life have I seen an entire industry so completely and voraciously turn on one of its own. And with such good reasons!

In the veritable thicket of stories, commentaries, and blog-postings on the Miller-Libby-Rove-Plame scandal, one item above all sticks in my mind. Says The Washington Post:

Craig Pyes, a former contract writer for the Times who teamed up with Miller for a series on al-Qaeda, complained about her in a December 2000 memo to Times editors and asked that his byline not appear on one piece.

"I'm not willing to work further on this project with Judy Miller," wrote Pyes, who now writes for the Los Angeles Times. He added: "I do not trust her work, her judgment, or her conduct. She is an advocate, and her actions threaten the integrity of the enterprise, and of everyone who works with her . . . She has turned in a draft of a story of a collective enterprise that is little more than dictation from government sources over several days, filled with unproven assertions and factual inaccuracies," and "tried to stampede it into the paper."

That was five years ago. But Miller continued to run amok. Even after the Times’ new editor Bill Keller came to power in 2003 and ordered that she be yanked off the WMD hobby horse she was so recklessly riding, Judy stayed firmly in the saddle. Indeed, dating back to the 1980’s and the Reagan’s Administration’s now-forgotten “war on international terrorism,” Miller has consistently played this same role as cheer-leader for the most unrestrained and untethered hawks and she wasn't about to give it up just because the lowly editor-in-chief of the Times told her to.

I make no pretension of adding to the debate over this still unfolding matter. Many others are doing a great job of tracking and unpacking the ragged zig-zags and byzantine layers of this story. But I want to comment on two points that have surfaced; two points that I think have forever doomed what was left of Miller’s rep and credibility with other reporters.

Her assertion that she can’t remember the source of her notebook notation “Valerie Flame” [sic] is simply preposterous. This is Clinton-class bullshit. Within days of that notation, the Plame story broke open and you’re not going to convince a soul that a frontline reporter for the New York Times didn't have her memory jogged – even if you were willing to believe she had temporarily lapsed.

Second, her stated intention to identify Dick Cheney’s chief-of-staff Scooter Libby, per his oily request, as merely a “former Hill staffer” is nothing short of a deliberate and calculated attempt to mislead the readers. Not because she fudged the attribution; anonymous sourcing is by definition all about fudging. But rather because she covered up a partisan charge in a partisan dispute i.e. she was willing to pass off an interested party as a disinterested neutral observer. This is a major journalistic felony. Give it a try in my USC graduate reporting class and you’re toast, pal. Do it at the New York Times and you deserve the never-ending scorn of your peers as you meekly turn in your badge and your gun.

P.S. Long over-due marccooper.com blog facelift and redesign coming very soon.

Gore Vidal at 80

"The American people will stand for anything and will stand for nothing," said the irrascible Gore Vidal when I taped an interview with him last week in his Hollywood hills home.

The mp3 audio file of that interview --60 minutes long-- can be heard by clicking here.

Or you can download a podcast at this address:
http://feeds.feedburner.com/RadionationPodcast

The basic theme that emerged from that chat, as his been Vidal's theme for some time now, is that Americans may choose either a republic or an empire -- but not both.

I found Vidal darker, more pessimistic than usual. He certainly has the right.

I also found his disdain for what he calls the "Oil &  Gas Junta" of Bush-Cheney to be immeasurable.  Vidal has assigned himself the job of being America's bad conscience; and given the scant competition for the post, I think we should unreservedly grant him the post.

There are some real nuggets in this interview. Not only Vidal's assertion that the Bush administration isn' smart enough to have had a hand in something as well-planned as 9/11, but also some dish on Truman Capote and Gore's surprising take on gay marriage.

For all of his fulminating, in the end, Gore Vidal is an old-fashioned conservative -- arguning passionately to conserve the constitution, the bill of rights and, ultimately, The American Republic.

So please take a listen.  Whatever your politics, I challenge you to not admire Vidal's withering wit and impromptu eloquence.

Later in the week, an edited text transcript of the interview will also be posted.

A Modest Proposal

I offer a modest and very brief proposal in today's L.A. Times to the Minutemen who have just announced another border sweep.

In case you're not a Times subscriber I rerproduce my offering below:

       

MODEST PROPOSAL

Minutemen, grab your hoes and march north

           By Marc Cooper

MARC COOPER is a contributing editor to the Nation and a columnist for L.A. Weekly.

         October 16, 2005

THE LEADERS of the anti-immigration Minutemen have begun another monthlong sweep along the Southwest border, searching for illegal aliens.

But a rugged, mountainous desert border is the toughest place to find large groups of the undocumented. These guys should stow their binoculars, fold up their lawn chairs and head not south but, rather, north to California's lush Central Valley.

All the Minutemen have to do is go up to the flyspeck towns around Fresno or Bakersfield, get up around 4 a.m. and watch the thousands of illegals mustering for a day's work picking, packing or pruning our basic crops.

The illegals have no access to welfare programs, so it's either work or go home. If the Minutemen were smart, they'd trade in their side arms for a pair of gloves and a straw hat and simply take those jobs back from the illegals — even for a month. Just get out on the highways and offer themselves up to the labor contractors and, boom, our illegal alien problem is over.

What red-blooded American employer wouldn't rather have a reliable, English-speaking, patriotic and military-fit crop picker than an undocumented Mexican from who-knows-where? Because they volunteer their time now, the Minutemen should appreciate making the farm labor standard of approximately $7 an hour (the state's minimum wage is $6.75), nine hours a day with two 10-minute breaks and a half-hour lunch. The state guarantees some drinking water and a porta-potty. And there are no bothersome deductions for healthcare or dues for unions because there is virtually none of either.

There are risks. Earlier this year five immigrant farmworkers died of heat exposure. But the summer's come and gone. And this is the season when the Minutemen can step in and make the difference. Drop your weapons, pick up a hoe and save America. -- + --    

---

 

Arnold Falling

My Nation magazine cover story on Arnold Schwarzennger can now be seen online.

In it, I trace the Governator's ongoing crash since the beginning of the year and assess  his political future heading into a November 8 special election. Arnold called the election to pass a number of ballot initiatives which have all proven to be unpopular. His own popularity rating, meanwhile, continues in the tank. Read the whole piece, but here's an excerpt:

"One of two things is going to happen," says Republican consultant [Allan] Hoffenblum. "First scenario is this election degenerates into a fight between both party bases, a contest over who can turn out the most hard-core supporters." With the Democrats' sizable edge in party affiliation, that scenario would be grim for Schwarzenegger. "Second scenario is that Arnold is able to motivate some soft Democrats and independents by persuading them that redistricting and taking power away from the legislature are important issues." But that, says Hoffenblum, will be "very, very difficult" for the governor to pull off.

You'd think this sort of Republican gloominess would brighten the hearts of California Democrats. And you'd be right. But only in the short run. A recall effort, launched in October, is unlikely to get anywhere. And while the smart money figures on Schwarzenegger getting whipped in his own special election next month, most observers on both sides--at least in private--concede he's still the odds-on favorite for re-election a year from now.

The two declared Democratic candidates, State Controller Steve Westly and State Treasurer Phil Angelides, have little name recognition in populous Southern California. Westley is a wealthy Silicon Valley entrepreneur, and Angelides is a wealthy Northern California developer. Further complicating matters, the centrist Westley, a former eBay executive, is seen by many liberals as being too pro-business; Angelides's Bay Area liberalism might get in the way of attracting swing voters.

Little surprise, then, that so far Schwarzenegger's strongest Democratic critic has been his Hollywood compadre Warren Beatty. Sounding a tad like his movie character Jay Bulworth, Beatty has in the past few months verbally trounced Arnold in university and union venues, arguing that the governor "misled" Californians with his initial moderate pitch.

Beatty, whose political activism dates back to the 1960s, is an unlikely long shot to actually run against Schwarzenegger. But he told me he's not completely ruling it out. "Being as meticulously truthful as possible," Beatty said, "I'm saying I don't want to run for governor. But I do believe in public service, in giving back. We have two good men out there who have announced their intention to run against Arnold. But I don't close the door."

Karl's World

My latest L.A. Weekly column on the political collapse of the Bush administraton is now posted. Take a look.

"Business Is Good"

Blogging will be light through the weekend as I'm in Arizona working on some border stuff.

Meanwhile, I was talking on the phone yesterday to a friend who works for a research institute in Washington D.C.  "Business must be great for you journalists," he said to me. "Seems like everything's coming apart at the same time."

Indeed. I'm used to following several story lines at once, but events are conspiring to make that as difficult as ever.

Just keeping up on the Judith Miller/Karl Rove/Libby Scooter/Valerie Plame story alone requires a road map, a scorecard, a crystal ball and a secret decoder ring. Patrick Fitzgerald's probe is quickly coming to a head and, frankly, I'm going to be damn disappointed if some big trees don't come crashing down.  How do I know how to evaluate Arianna's claim that major news organizations are about to tie Cheney to the federal probe? I'm going to sit here and watch with the rest of you.

The most aberrational aspect of this story is the posture of the New York Times. Not only are other papers merely out-scooping the Times' reporting on its own reporter -- Ms. Miller-- but the Times has gone mum. The same paper who bored us to death with its interminable, excruciatingly detailed mea culpa around the insignificant Jayson Blair, has virtually nothing to say about the Miller Scandal.

The always sharp Jay Rosen asks all the right questions in this comprehensive posting  on the NYTimes and its editor, Bill Keller. A small excerpt:

What combination of things prevents the New York Times from telling us more right now? Again we don’t know, and the Times isn’t telling. The only explanation we have is: “…the paper had been wary of revealing too much about the case for fear of compounding Ms. Miller’s legal problems.” It feels constrained because the Fitzgerald investigation goes on. Which works for why Miller is not divulging her testimony.

• But would it explain why the columnists have been silent on the case since her release?

• Would it tell us why the Times hasn’t covered the reaction and controversy in journalism circles over the terms of Miller’s release?

• Does it make you curious that Keller has written no editor’s note about the glaring inability of the paper to tell us what it knows, or even do normal journalism?

• Do you understand why none of the bosses in this photograph has gone on television to explain how the paper is handling the Miller case and what it sees as the lesson, the stakes? They know Charlie Rose’s table is waiting.

• Now even if we could explain Keller’s reticence with “not making more trouble for Miller” (doesn’t make sense to me, but…); and even if we did understand why the columnists and media reporters and legal correspondents have fallen silent (doesn’t make sense to me, but…) we would still have to explain why the public editor, Byron Calame, whose whole job is to represent readers, sees no reason even to mention the matter in this Sunday’s column or at his web journal, which were invented for this very reason.

Make sure to read all of Rosen's piece and all of the links. Put aside an entire hour to do so. It's worth it.

When you're done, you will be chilled. The silence of the Times is nothing short of ominous. This is a sobering reminder of the awesome power that such institutions have over us. Not only by commission but also by omission.

Miers Un-Hitched

Christopher Hitchens takes apart the politico-religious hypocrisy around Harriet ‘Ham Sandwich’ Miers (as well as John Roberts) in his usual slicing manner.

Hitch calls out the Senate for not having called Roberts on his outrageous statement that he would recuse himself (!) if he had to judge a conflict between the teaching of the law and the dogma of the Vatican -- effectively winking at his ultra-religious stance. Then Hitchens lays into Hammie Miers:

“Of the nomination of Harriet Miers, by contrast, it can be said that only her religion has been considered by her conservative fans to be worth mentioning. What else is there to say, in any case, about a middling bureaucrat and yes-woman than that she attends some mediocre place of worship? One could happily make a case that more random civilians, and fewer fucking lawyers, should be on the court. But the only other thing to say about Miers is that she is a fucking lawyer. Her own opinion of herself is somewhat higher: She does not attribute her presence among us to the laws of biology but chooses to regard herself as having a personal and unmediated relationship with the alleged Jesus of Nazareth, who is further alleged to be the son of God. Such modesty! On this basis, the president and his people have felt able to issue assurances of her OK-ness. So, as far as I can determine, she was set, and has passed, a religious test: that of being an "Evangelical" Christian. “

Remember, whatever you think of Hitchens’ views on Iraq, he is first and foremost a fellow anti-theist.

And just to keep everyone off-pace, on the Miers issue he jabs the Democrats from the left.

And what's up with the Democrats, anyway, with Miers? They made all kinds of grunts and noises that they were going to block John Roberts – which they couldn’t and they didn’t. And now that the stupendously unqualified Miers is literally hanging by an ever-fraying thread, the feckless, mealy-mouthed Dems have gone silent.

What a useless excuse for a party.

P.S. Has anyone ever seen Merkel and Miers in the same place at the
same time?

How Do We Know What We Say We Know?

Is it true that Democrats lose elections because they are not sufficiently populist? Would they enlarge their vote, motivate those who usually don’t vote, and sweep into office if they took the unabashedly liberal, or progressive positions, on health care, education and more heavily taxing the rich?

Along with a lot of my friends, I’d sure like to think that is true. It’s what liberal politicians –dead and living—from Paul Wellstone to Howard Dean to Russ Feingold meant when they have said they represent “the Democratic wing of the Democratic Party.”

It’s what Robert Borosage, of the left-of-center Progressive Majority argued recently in The Nation.

For these liberal and progressive Democrats, their blood enemies are the conservative or so-called "centrist" Democrats grouped in the Democratic Leadership Council. The DLC types argue, meanwhile, the opposite case i.e. that the only hope Dems have is to firmly occupy the middle ground and cede nothing to the left. The most recent broadside from these quarters was issued by former Al Gore confidant Elaine Karmach and Clinton domestic policy adviser William A. Galston. 

Their latest report was bloody chum for liberal attackers who argued that the two wonks were proposing a Republican Lite strategy. Among the critics was the Washington Monthly’s Kevin Drum who declared himself   “underwhelmed” by what he called the “conventional slice-and-dice electoral polling analysis.”

Drum’s critique of the centrist Dems wasn’t harsh enough for Internet Liberals like Avedon Carol who wrote:

“I'm sick and tired of being told the base is too far left. What does the base believe in? Universal health care, universal education, safe and fair employment, a healthy economy that provides good jobs, regulation to prevent corporations from defrauding us, care for our environment.”

Now, Drum has responded with a new post defending himself that also raises some pretty tough questions. Like the one I started off with this on this post i.e. how do we know if Democrats were just more outspoken on progressive positions they would win more? Is it possible that “the people” really don’t want political solutions that more closely conform to what we think their “real interests” are? Can it be than it for four decades the Democrats have just failed to find bold enough candidates? Or is George Lakoff – who I have criticized— actually right and it’s a matter of proper messaging?

I’d add a few more unccomfortable questions implied in Drum’s posting. If, ineed, the Democratic base and its supposedly latent allies are so liberal and progressive, why did Howard Dean never poll more than 30% among these same Democrat primary voters? Why did Dennis Kucinich only get about 3% of the Democratic vote? Why didn’t Democrats flock to these progressive alternatives? Why is it, indeed, that the only successful Democratic Presidential candidates of the last 45 years have been southern conservatives?

I don’t have any facile answers. Nor am I endorsing any side in this debate. I just want to know how we know what we say we know.

Dead Serious

I was talking to some friends today who were poking great fun at the disconnect between the Feds and New York officials over the possible terrorist threat to the Big Apple’s subways.

I told them I failed to see any humor in the situation. They failed to see my point: Just because George W. Bush highjacked the Islamo-fascist threat to justify the war in Iraq, doesn’t mean that threat isn’t real. And mortal.

Al Qaeda and similar armed religio-fascist groups are not just a bogeyman invented by neo-cons to stampede the public (as hard as they might try).

Nor are they simple inventions of the United States or its policies – an alarmingly common view among much of the American Left. In her most recent interview, Cindy Sheehan endorses this view that September 11^th was of our own making:

"I think that US foreign policy is totally responsible for 9/11, as well as the recent bombings in London. Our policies of killing innocent Iraqis; Afghanis; supporting the occupation of Palestine; our permanent bases in Saudi Arabia; our presence in Lebanon; our support of the Shah; supporting Saddam and giving him the WMDs used on his own people. I think this sort of behavior drives hatred toward the US. This is just all my opinion, of course. I am not a politician or a military strategist. I am just a citizen voicing my opinions..."

We’ll give a Sheehan a moral pass precisely based on that disclaimer of her not really knowing what she’s talking about. Because she doesn’t. Belief in an extremist religious world view is what produced 9/11. And the London bombings were the work of similar, cold-blooded fanatics -- and not the handiwork of Bush and Blair (however much you might rightfully dislike them).

This mistaken – and extremely dangerous—notion was ably taken apart recently by leftist writer and journalist Sasha Abramsky in an essay on Opendemocracy.net An excerpt:

"British journalists Robert Fisk, John Pilger, and Tariq Ali, along with British MP George Galloway, and, on the other side of the Atlantic, commentators such as Naomi Klein have all essentially blamed Britain and the United States for bringing the attacks upon themselves. While being careful to denounce the bombers and their agenda, these advocates uttered variations on the same theme: get out of Iraq, bring home the troops from all points east, curtail support for Israel, develop a more sensible, non-oil-based energy policy, and our troubles would dissipate in the wind…

…Pilger, Fisk, Ali, Galloway, and Klein grasp the undeniable fact that shortsighted western policies and alliances of convenience over the past century have contributed to today’s mass alienation of young Muslims, to a climate in which millennial groups such as al-Qaida flourish…

…But theirs is also a truncated analysis. They assume that groups like al-Qaida are almost entirely reactive, responding to western policies and actions, rather than being pro-active creatures with a virulent homegrown agenda, one not just of defence but of conquest, destruction of rivals, and, ultimately and at its most megalomaniacal, absolute subjugation.

It misses the central point: that, unlike traditional “third-world” liberation movements looking for a bit of peace and quiet in which to nurture embryonic states, al-Qaida is classically imperialist, looking to subvert established social orders and to replace the cultural and institutional infrastructure of its enemies with a (divinely inspired) hierarchical autocracy of its own, looking to craft the next chapter of human history in its own image.

Simply blaming the never quite defined, yet implicitly all-powerful “west” for the ills of the world doesn’t explain why al-Qaida slaughtered thousands of Americans eighteen months before Saddam was overthrown. Nor does it explain the psychopathic joy this death cult takes in mass killings and in ritualistic, snuff-movie-style beheadings."

Please read Sasha’s entire essay before commenting.

He’s absolutely spot-on arguing that precisely because Bin-Ladenism is committed to combatting the very notion of an open, liberal society, too much of the activist left’s post-911 response has been “woefully, catasrophically inadequate.”

When ordinary Americans worry that their cities, ports or subways might be bombed by suicidal fanatics, it’s laughable and insulting to tell them that if they would just help put an end to U.S. imperialism the whole problem would go away.

Certainly, many aspects of U.S. foreign policy help foment widespread resentment in the Middle East and Muslim world. But the totalitarian and ultimately nihilist ideology of Al Qaeda possesses its own agency and is likely to act no matter what position this or that American White House takes.

When liberals and leftists just shrug their shoulders, when they write off all terrorist threats as mere fear-mongering (or worse as the chickens coming home to roost) they not only abdicate all moral responsibility, they also effectively take a progressive policy alternative off the table. Do that, and you kick the door wide open and unobstructed for the current disastrous policies of the Bush administration. I may think the Bush and his Department of Homeland Security are fools. But I take Al Qaeda and its allies dead seriously.

Let Me Count The Ways

Oh yeah, that Karl Rove guy is a genius. A real schemin’ Machiavelli. The most brilliant political strategist in recent times.

Right.

Let’s count the ways this administration is imploding.

Item:
Bush’s trumped-up “big speech” on Iraq Thursday morning went over like a Mars bar in the diabetes ward. As one pundit put it: “He turned up the volume on a broken record." Virtually no one is buying his case that Iraq was central to the war on terror. Meanwhile, we have now been in Iraq longer than U.S. troops fought in World War I. And the bloody fighting threatens to overshadow the constitutional voting a week from now.

Item:
Senator John McCain punched his President right in the nose yesterday, leading the U.S. Senate to vote 90 to 9 for a measure setting humane standards for interrogation i.e. an anti-torture bill. Ninety-to-nine against the threat of a veto. I believe that qualifies for the term “White House defeat.”

Item:
The White House is panicking as it attempts to quash a conservative revolt
against the nomination of Harriet “The Ham Sandwich” Miers to the Supreme Court. Now, there’s talk of Bush having to dump her.

Item:
The Bush administration has the honor of hosting the first White House spy in recent histor. So glad the Daddy Republicans are in power making us feel so snuggly-safe.

Item:
The new Republican House Majority Leader Roy Blunt, it turns out, was the recipient of “excess funds”  raised by his immediate predescessor, Tom "The Ham Sandwich" DeLay (please excuse the culinary repetition). Suppose this proves what goes around comes around.

Item:
The Bush administration’s former chief procurement official has now been indicted on charges of making false statements and obstructing the investigation into lobbyist and Tom DeLay butt-buddy Jack Abramoff. Can’t pin this one on Ronnie Earle.

Item:
FEMA, yes that FEMA has now been forced by public outrage to re-open $1.5 billion in sweetheart contracts doled out right after Katrina ("Abandon all cruise ships!").

Item:
Back to Genius Karl Rove. He’ll now be appearing once again before the Federal Grand Jury investigating the CIA leak on Valerie Plame. Not a few observers guess he and Scooter Libby are gonna get tagged.

My readers know I have argued, from the onset, that Karl Rove was over-rated. He’s a dull, unimaginative parochial political hack who lucked out with the Bush family.(No smarter than last decade’s celebrated “genius,” the wildly over-rated hack James Carville who turned out to be much more talented as a self-promoting carnival huckster).

It’s always been the Democrats, much more than the Republicans themselves, who have pumped up the fearsome image of the Sinister Rove. A convenient excuse for their own ongoing and myriad failures. No more excuses. This administration's political future is already foreclosed. All that’s left is the paperwork and the document signing. Anybody ready to move in and take over?

 

Ham Sandwiches Part 2

Seems obvious now that not only can Ham Sandwiches be indicted by a grand jury – they can also be nominated to the Supreme Court.

The flap over Harriet Miers has finally brought some comic relief to the grim national political scene. Whether she ultimately gets confirmed or not, her nomination already seems a rather colossal blunder by President Bush. 

This choice is near impossible to defend (that is, unless, you are faith-based Bushie or a mediocre Democratic Senator from Searchlight).

The blogosphere is a bit on tilt over Miers but I am most amused by the growing mud fight among Republicans. Fox News tried to frame this rightist rebellion to be plain folks (supporting Miers) against elitist snobs (those opposing her). Not exactly. As John Dickerson wrote for Slate, this is a confrontation between the Christian Right and the Corporate Right. Says Dickerson:

"In this battle, the White House has clearly sided with the churchgoing masses against the Republican Party's own whiny Beltway intellectuals. The Bushies have always mistrusted their own bow-tied secularists, but the rift has never before been so public. "This is classic elitism," says a senior administration official of the GOP opposition to the Miers nomination. "We often blame the left for it, but we have it in our own ranks. Just because she wasn't on a shortlist of conservatives who prepared their whole life for this moment doesn't make her any less conservative … and just because she hasn't penned op-eds for the Wall Street Journal doesn't mean she hasn't formed a judicial philosophy."

Left-wing bloggers may see the Bush administration and its allies as a uniform mass, but like all successful political teams, it's actually a coalition. At the heart of the coalition is an uncomfortable mix between, on the one hand, right-wing intellectuals, including the neoconservatives whose backing for the Iraq invasion has been so important, and, on the other, the evangelicals who turned out in such numbers to vote for a man who boasted that he was one of them. The Bible-thumbing armies may carry the elections, but they sometimes make the elites in the Republican Party as uncomfortable as they make Maureen Dowd and Michael Moore. In return, the mega-church attendees are mistrustful of the party's often secular, often not-Christian pundits and wizards."

Read the entire post as it is chock full of some good links.

Meanwhile, over at the Republican astroturf site Progress for America , the pseudo-grass roots group running TV spots in support of Miers, the photo of her has been retouched to excise the bags under her eyes. Now that’s kinda dumb. If anything, this lady desperately needs more baggage, not less.

Harriet Who? [Updated]

It’s not that Harriet Miers has never served as a judge. Dozens of U.S. Supreme Court Justices, some of them quite distinguished, were also recruited from somewhere other than the bench. Seems like a good idea to me to have a few civilians up there.

Problem is, Harriet Miers is a nobody. Just a loyal toady and handservant to the President who appointed her. Can this even pass the giggle test?

Let’s have a little contest. Read the partial editorial below and guess who wrote it:

"President Bush struck a blow for diversity on the Supreme Court by picking White House Counsel Harriet Miers as his latest nominee. Bush thus made a strong statement that the Court has room for highly distinguished justices and not-so-distinguished justices, for nominees who have made their reputations in the wider legal world and for nominees people have hardly heard of, for world-class lawyers and for lawyers he happens to know and like.

After the nomination of John Roberts, Bush boosters hailed the president for bucking the political imperative of selecting a woman or a minority and for instead caring above all about high qualifications. They now have to take all that back. We don’t know much yet about Harriet Miers, except that she is the anti-Roberts, a nominee whose credentials are less than sterling and whose qualifications for the Court are less than obvious.

It might turn out that she is an outstanding justice. But there is no way for anyone besides President Bush’s immediate circle to know it. Of course, other Supreme Court justices have come without experience on the bench. Chief Justice Earl Warren was governor of California. Harriet Miers was “an elected member of the Dallas City Council,” as Bush put it in his announcement of her nomination.

Watching Bush strain to pump up her accomplishments was cringe-making. He said she has tried cases “before state and federal courts”! She has “argued appeals that covered a broad range of matters”! She was head of the Texas Lottery Commission and “insisted on a system that was fair and honest”! She was a leader with Child Care Dallas, Meals on Wheels, and other charitable groups! She has a law degree! From Southern Methodist University! …

…Democrats have an interesting choice. They can accept Miers on the theory that as an unknown quantity she is the best they can hope for from Bush, given that his short list included well-established, intellectually hefty conservatives. Or they can try to deal Bush a blow by attacking her as a crony. If they choose the first course and Miers votes as a down-the-line conservative on the Court, Bush’s pick will, over time, be seen as politically canny. Now it looks like the latest act of an overly insular, increasingly off-key White House.

So wrote that? Frank Rich? Paul Krugman? Bob Herbert? Um… guess again.

UPDATE:  Kevin Drum posts a nifty compendium of conservative disillusionment with GW Bush. It's worth taking a look.

Tom "The Ham Sandwich" DeLay

So Tom, The Hammer, er make that Tom, "The Ham Sandwich," DeLay has now been re-indicted on a pair of money laundering charges – enough to put him behind bars for the rest of his life.

I mean that is what we’re now going to hear from the blindest of the Bushies, isn’t it? That any D.A. can get a grand jury to indict even a ham sandwich. No doubt. Except in this case we’re talking about a live piggy, not its smoked and canned little rump.

These, of course, are the charges that DeLay’s case merit. From the documents already made public we can see that’s exactly what Mister Dee-Lay was doing – laundering corporate money illegally into state legislative campaigns.

Now the fun really begins. Not just watching The Ham Sandwich get basted. But also watching to just what depths of partisan denial so many Republicans will now stoop. Not that the GOP has any monopoly on this sort of hypocrisy. Democrats are just as adept; millions of them spent the last two years of the Clinton administration rationalizing away Big Bill’s sleaze. That the Chief Executive of the United States lied under oath as a defendant in a sexual harassment case and conspired to suborn perjury was (and is still  is blithely reduced) to “getting a blow job.” Right.

Enough about Clinton. Back to DeLay. Time for you Republicans and conservatives to show us that you are every bit as craven as the Clintonistas. Just like them you will first check your voter registration card before deciding what is right and what is wrong. For the Democrats, it was all about Ken Starr and not about Clinton’s total lack of character and honesty. For the Republicans, it will now be all about Democrat D.A. Ronnie Earle and his vendetta against poor Tommy. Right.

It’s worth, I think, recalling the political atmosphere before September 11^th – if that’s possible. I first started covering the Bush campaign in the Summer of 1999 when Dubya blew a bundle to win the non-binding beauty contest known as the Iowa Republican Straw Poll.

He was contending with Buchanan, Forbes and Keyes on his right. McCain to his left and contesting the Republican center with Lamar and Liddy. Bush had a moderate pitch back then. Moderate in scope and in tone. He was all about being simple, uncomplicated. About pulling back from the military interventionism of the Clinton era (Somalia, Haiti, Bosnia, Kosovo) and not enmeshing the U.S. in hopeless “nation-building.”

What Bush did push, what were his biggest applause lines, was his vow to “restore honor, dignity, and integrity to the White House.” He’d say those words, jutting his jaw a tad, and the Republican crowds would go wild. The coding here was hardly subtle; the immediate subtext was if I come to power, I’m not going to change things radically but I’m gonna get rid of the stench of Clinton and all those corrupt Democrats.

Indeed, re-reading the history of the 2000 campaign, Bush’s vow to be Mr. Clean is probably the key issue that defeated Al Gore.

Looks like GW fibbed on both accounts. The changes have been radical. And if Republicans want to celebrate that, I suppose that’s fair. But let’s be honest about the second half of the old Bush formula. The cronyism and corruption of this crew has begun to stink to high heaven. Not just the no-bid sweetheart contracting. Not just the fiasco provoked by such incompetents as “Brownie.” But throw in the SEC investigation of Dr. Frist. And the triple indictment of The Ham Sandwich. I could go on, but it would take all night to list all the hogs trying to squeeze under the gate.

How many honest Republicans, with genuine integrity, will now step forward to shun these stinkers? Or is it just about partisanship?

P.S. Omigod, I must be dreaming. Just found out that over at the offshore betting site bodog.com you can wager real cash money on whether or not DeLay gets convicted. Is this a great world or not? You can make money and watch the Ham Sandwich get sliced?  By the way: DeLay's ultimate conviction was already paying 6 to 5 before today's new indictments.  By this time tommorrow he's gonna be a favorite. Get your bets in quick. Non va plus!

Monkey Business

My old pal, Michael Balter, now a Paris-based author and journalist has got a great piece in this Sunday's Los Angeles Times. Michael's essay has particular resonance because he's not only a correspondent for Science magazine, but he also writes from a leftist, secular vantage point.

Yet, Michael argues, why not let the theory of Intelligent Design be taught in schools along with Darwin?  Says Balter:

Most scientists don't want any debate. Many view intelligent design as simply a new and more sophisticated attempt — "the thinking man's creationism," as Science magazine put it — to slip old-time religion into the classroom. They maintain that the theory of evolution, in particular natural selection, is so well supported by the evidence that it is the consensus scientific view. As such, it deserves a monopoly in school curricula...

...Opinion polls consistently show that a majority of Americans don't believe that the theory of evolution is the best explanation for our own origins. A November 2004 Gallup poll, for example, found that only 13% of respondents said they believed that God had no part in the evolution or creation of human beings, and 38% said they thought humans evolved from less-advanced forms but that God guided the process. About 45% said they believed that God created humans in their present form within the last 10,000 or so years. These results echoed similar Gallup polls dating to 1982...

...Could it be that the theory of evolution's judicially sanctioned monopoly in the classroom has backfired?

...For one thing, the monopoly strengthens claims by intelligent-design proponents that scientists don't want to be challenged. More important, it shields Darwinian theory from challenges that, when properly refuted, might win over adherents to evolutionary views.


...The history of the theory of evolution is one of bitter debates between religion and science, and the debates continue today...

...The best way to teach the theory of evolution is to teach this contentious history. The most effective way to convince students that the theory is correct is to confront, not avoid, continuing challenges to it...

...Given the opportunity to debate, scientists should say: "Bring it on."

I have to say, as not only a secularist, an atheist and a downright anti-theist, I love this piece. Michael's absolutelty right. Let the games begin. Meanwhile, I'm gonna sit up in this tree and finish my banana.

   

My Multi-Media Offensive

As part of my escalating plan to dominate all media, I have two items to which to draw  your attention.

Once again on Friday, I will be guest hosting "Right, Left & Center" on public radio station KCRW in Santa Monica.  My panelists will be Arianna Huffington, Robert Scheer and John O'sullivan.

If u live in So Cal, u can hear it live over the air at 2:30 p.m. and rebrdcst at 7 p.m. at 89.9 FM.

Other wise, you can listen over the internet at KCRW.org or at http://kcrw.org/show/lr .

While your're listenting, pop open the L.A. Times and take a gander at my opinion editorial on why it was smart to scuttle the Freedom Center that was slated for construction at the World Trade Center. Here's a teaser:

But there is a good reason to scrap the center: In our current popular and political culture, the very word "freedom" has so many different meanings to so many people that it has ceased to have much collective meaning.

To paraphrase (or bastardize) the Kris Kristofferson song, freedom's just another word we use when we have nothing else to say. It can alternately be used to describe our right to free speech or the availability of 53 types of toilet paper. Or the right to sit in the middle of the street, or the right not to have our day disrupted by such public disobedience.

To others, freedom means providing all with the basics of life, while some are certain it guarantees the right to gain as much personal advantage as possible, even at the expense of the most disadvantaged. More...

Max: 'Why We March'

Max Sawicky over at MaxSpeak has written a strong response to criticisms of last weekend's peace demonstration levelled by Daily Kos, David Corn and yours truly.

Max is an official Good Guy in my eyes and I take everything he writes seriously, including this latest of his.

You should read the post and reach your own conclusions. To be frank, I agree with much of what Max says. For example, I don't fully share Kos' assertion that street protests are "obsolete." But I firmly believe that the sort of challenge made by Kos (and Corn) can force others in the peace movement to better think out their strategies. Or, at a minimum, to realize they should have some strategy other than just congregating warm bodies. If demos are worth it, then be ready to argue the case and tell us to where they lead.

That said, a couple of my responses to Max:

He shares my distaste for the tiny A.N.S.W.E.R. sect that monopolizes the logisitics and the speakers' list for the big demos, recognizing them as a some sort of Trotskyist splinter group of a "noxious brand." Correct. Then Max reminds us: "There are some very radical groups with very smart, humane people with whom I happen not to agree."

Fair enough. But A.N.S.W.E.R. doesn't have any smart people I can detect in its commanding positions. It is among the very worst of sects, born out of a mini-party that many of its ex-adherents describe as something more akin to a cult. The A.N.S.W.E.R. cadres are not just adept at securing police permits. They are masters of bullying, bare-knuckle tactics that squeeze other more broad-minded types right out of the event planning.

Max also reminds me, in particular, that there are no real-world alternatives to the A.N.S.W.E.R.-led protests: "What is the alternative vehicle to register one’s dissent from this war? Where is the Klean Koalition that my friends can support without embarrassment? There isn’t one. Why is that? Cooper made this point, but he seems to blame the marchers for the abstention of Democrats or democratic-socialists."

Either Max misread me or I didn't make myself clear. I don't blame the marchers for the absence of a more mainstream face for the protests. I blame the same people he does -- the feckless Democrats who can't clearly differentiate themselves from Bush on the war. But -- here's the difference-- I also blame the repellant nature of A.N.S.W.E.R. for making sure there is absolutely no hope of building bridges between the protestors and more mainstream liberals. And I blame non-Democratic "progressives" for not taking on A.N.S.W.E.R. and thereby paving the road to such bridges (if you'll allow such metaphors).

Max concludes: "A peaceful, progressive mass action is a glorious event. There is no substitute for it, though it doesn’t solve all problems or meet all needs. It is the starting point and culmination of grass roots activity – the alpha and omega. Nobody sitting on their ass in their pajamas is going to stop a war. If you don’t like ANSWER – and who could – then give people somewhere else to go."

OK, Max, again we agree. That's my entire point. Together, we need --precisely-- to provide some sort of better alternative to A.N.S.W.E.R.  After we all change out of our pajamas (ahem) in the morning, there are many, many things we can all do during the day toward that end. I am content --thank you very much-- just to try and get the debate started on the movement leadership. I and a few others have tried for two years and have failed.

This time around, there are many more voices of discontent and a tenuous conversation seems to be finally taking place. At least, there is now--at least-- some recognition of the problem. Hundreds of thousands of well-meaning, concerned protestors -- horrified by this administration's war policies -- deserve a leadership a hundred times more intelligent and effective than the sectarian wretches from A.N.S.W.E.R.

So, I plead guilty to Max's insinuation. I can't conjure up some sort of alternative leadership by merely sitting around and bitching. But that's not my job anyway. All I can do is hope that we can get this problem out in the open and discuss it without throwing things.

Max has made a valuable contribution to that process.

Marching. Or Walking in Circles? [Updated]

Back to discussion about what, I think at least, is the directionless peace movement. Daily Kos , a darling of Liberal Democrats, has courageously gone way out there in critiquing last week’s big protest demos.

Directly challenging his own vast and loyal constituencies, Markos questions if the protests were even worth it. Actually, he decides, they weren’t. It’s a crucial point he raises; one that deserves serious reflection. Says Markos of the demos:

The lack of focus is maddening, obviously. But my biggest problem with anti-war protests is that they're obsolete. What do they accomplish? Historians still argue about the role Vietnam-era protests had on ending the war (shortened it versus prolonged it). But today, they mean nothing.

We are a media-saturated world, bombarded on all angles by information. A bunch of people marching in the street no longer have any serious emotional effect on media consumers. One picture on a front page and CNN of flag-draped coffins would likely have a greater effect on war opinions than 1,000 marches like the one we had last weekend……Ultimately I was agnostic over the march this past weekend because I can appreciate that people want to gather to fight for the cause, I appreciate that they want to feel like they're doing something. My question, then, becomes whether the money and effort people expended getting to DC to march might've been better spent in other forms of activism -- letters to the editor, contributions to anti-war candidates, politicians, and organizations, calls and letters to their elected officials, creating anti-war media (e.g. Flash animations, documentaries), and so on....

Make sure you read the entire post. I’m pleased that Kos is trying to advance the discussion. We need it and too few are willing to confront it.

Update: There's also this heartfelt and strongly-worded entry from one of the Kos diarists. Read it.

And: Here is my latest L.A. Weekly column on the same subject. Some reworked thougts that appeared earlier this week on the blog.

RE-UPDATE: Great minds think alike. David Corn now weighs in. His title "March to Irrelevance."

A Great American: Hammered

What a bum rap for House Majority Leader Tom "The Hammer" DeLay. This fine American is plain getting hosed.

Forget about Kansas. What’s the matter with Texas? They let Democrats be prosecutors down there?

What kind of partisan horsepuckey is that? How’d that guy Ronnie Earle get to be a D.A. without first being a Republican?

This is obviously a baseless, unfounded witch hunt. A partisan frame-up. A cheap political charade. Some very ugly payback for an upstanding American politician who has always played by the rules. Who has always put the little people and their welfare first.

And just what is Brother DeLay being accused of anyway? What’s the big deal? So he might have conspired to launder illegal corporate donations that fueled a Republican takeover of the Texas legislature which then proceeded to redistrict congressional districts in favor of the…um… Republicans. Doesn’t anyone have a sense of humor anymore?

I stand proudly with this Great American, Tom DeLay.

Crapped Out

Call me fearless.

I’m finally ready to enter that burning debate that has consumed post-Katrina America: Under what conditions should the thirteen Mississippi casinos wiped out by the storm be allowed to rebuild?

And you thought I’d never speak out!

First, some background. Mississippi casino gambling was legalized in the early 90’s And to keep operations limited, it was restricted to casinos that could float; and those could be only along the Gulf Coast or along the Big Muddy.

Now, some of the biggest gambling corporations are demanding that when they rebuild they be allowed to do so on dry land. And some pro-gambling lobbyists want a new law that would put a ten year freeze on any hike in the gambling tax – currently set at 12% (Nevada casinos pay about 8%).

Governor Haley Barbour, a certified GOP hack and former RNC Chairman, has been on all sides of these issues . And the pro-gambling forces are led by, well, Democrats. It’s not clear how these matters will ultimately be resolved. But it’s an almost certainty that the state will grant new concessions to the casinos -- yummy incentives far beyond the imagination of the poor sucker civilians who got their houses blown away.

Mississippi casinos contribute about $190 million or just short of 5% to the state budget—a whole lot of money. The Gulf Coast casinos provide about 14,000 jobs – most of them low paying and non-union.

These are the “benefits” derived from legalized gambling. These are the reasons why the pols will do what they can to appease the gambling interests.

What’s never toted up in these calculations are the hidden and not so hidden costs of casino gambling. What are the social costs in social services, broken families, criminal justice etc. that are incurred as a result of compulsive and problem gamblers? A lot more, by the way, then one might imagine.

Further, how much local revenue is “cannibalized” by the casinos? In other words, how many local businesses, restaurants, theaters and bowling alleys have closed because so much discretionary income has been redirected into the slot machines and gaming tables?

So whether or not the casinos are on barges or 2,000 feet inland really makes no difference and should not be at the heart of the debate.

Instead, a serious economic study of the impact of gambling is in order. As desperate as Mississippi might be to reopen the casinos, it’s not like the gambling corporations can relocate to wherever they please. The state holds a strong negotiating hand -- if it cares to really play.

Any new concessions to the casinos should be balanced with substantial corporate givebacks: increased gambling taxes; living wage guarantees for casino workers; community development projects financed by gambling profits.

Don’t count on any of this happening. You're more likely to flop a Royal Flush than to see Mississippi get tough with the gambling industry. Sprouting casinos are always the markers of failed political leadership. They signal a surrender – a lack of any will or imagination to promote economic development other than through a regressive local tax (the bottom line of legalized gambling). At best, a strip of casinos is an ugly necessary evil. Any chance offered to renegotiate the deal between their owners and the surrounding communities should always favor the latter.