Republican shamelessness, part (?? I’ve lost count) –

I’m smacking this up a day later than I intended, so you’ve undoubtedly seen the stink somewhere (e.g., Altercation, Eschaton, Political Animal, and the Progress Report). Demonstrating just how willing the press is to regurgitate administration talking points, CNN reporter Kelli Arena tells us that Al Qaeda wants John Kerry to be elected because they’ll have a better chance of winning Iraq. How long will the press get away with this crap? The Eschaton link above has the email address for registering your disgust…

Meanwhile, was the latest warning really necessary, or was Ashcroft just starting to miss being in the spotlight? You know how he likes his face time.

Sad but true? –

George Monbiot has some bitter reflections on the western brand of “democracy.” These two paragraphs are not sequential in the essay; I’ve snipped them out for the points they make…

The real reason why Kerry won’t discuss the issues Kettle lists or, for that matter, any issues at all, is that the powers behind the powers in the US forbid both meaningful discussion of policy in public places and meaningful dissent in private places. This, of course, is why Kerry is the Democratic nominee, rather than someone who represents that portion of the electorate which isn’t married to heiresses and didn’t learn its politics at Yale’s Skull and Bones club. He could have offered the citizens of America free healthcare, but only if he was prepared to lose the support of the medical companies which will help to fund his re-election. He could have voted against the decision to attack Iraq, but only if he had been prepared for Fox News, the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post and every other major media outlet to ensure that he never again dared to show his face in public. John Kerry is the product of a system which has reduced democracy to a spectator sport. Democracy is the means by which the elite resolves its trifling differences while the rest of us look on…

–and–

From time to time a genuinely popular government, like Nelson Mandela’s ANC or Lula’s Partido dos Trabalhadores, will win the popular vote and stay in office. But it will retain power on one condition: that it compromises with capital (Mandela’s failure to pursue a coercive land reform programme, Lula’s capitulation to the IMF) until it differs from a government of the propertied class only by being a passive rather than an active partner in exploitation. Ever since the fall of the Berlin Wall (and for quite a while before that), the triumphalists of the West have insisted that democracy is impossible without capitalism. It should surely be pretty obvious by now that democracy is impossible in the presence of capitalism or, for that matter, any system which permits the concentration of wealth.

Catholic leaders overplaying their hand? –

Amy Sullivan wonders if Catholic voters are going to tolerate the intimidation:

This conflict is about the fact that the church has not been successful at convincing lay Catholics to abide by its teaching regarding reproductive control. Catholic leaders can’t go into the voting booth with individual Catholics to see if they support pro-choice politicians or policies, but they can target visible Catholics and hold them out as examples. That is upsetting enough to many Catholics, but when the leaders then tell them who they can and cannot vote for, the dams burst loose.

Dan Carpenter wryly comments upon the selective enforcement of Catholic church doctrine (thanks for the link, A.):

How is a poor bishop or even pope to keep up with all the insidious ways in which public servants can fail their religious masters? The most gallant try made so far is that of the Bishop Michael Sheridan of Colorado Springs, Colo., who has informed his flock they may not take communion if they vote for politicians who support abortion, stem-cell research, euthanasia or gay marriage. But even Bishop Sheridan left out the death penalty and the bombing, saying they weren’t as big a deal as, like, women holding hands.

And Anna Quindlen discusses some of the obvious hypocrisies in the policy, and the “curious” timing of the sanctions:

What of the pro-life policies of a living wage or decent housing? The church is opposed to the death penalty, yet no bishop has yet suggested he will deny the sacrament to those who support capital punishment. And sanctions for Democratic candidates have far outnumbered those for Republicans, even Republicans who favor legal abortion. The timing of all this is curious as well. It coincides with that new Catholic holy day, the feast of the first Tuesday in November, known to secularists as Election Day.

The worst of Times –

The New York Times admits that it was a little lazy in some of its Iraq reporting:

…we have found a number of instances of coverage that was not as rigorous as it should have been. In some cases, information that was controversial then, and seems questionable now, was insufficiently qualified or allowed to stand unchallenged. Looking back, we wish we had been more aggressive in re-examining the claims as new evidence emerged — or failed to emerge.

Interestingly, they avoid specifically naming Judith Miller, who, as Slate noted, “deserves special scrutiny because so many of her sensational stories never panned out.” Granted, the Times also provided this sample of the suspect stories and their problems, so you can simply survey the authors’ names and draw your own conclusions. But why tippy-toe? Why not fire her? I’m sure Rupert Murdoch can put her to work.

While we’re on the subject of the Times, this weasly gloss job on the Florida 2000 debacle rankled me greatly when it ran Monday, but I didn’t get back to it to provide a link and a rant. (Body and Soul expounds on it, though — and in greater detail than I would have.) Times writer Abby Goodnough informs us that “…intentional disenfranchisement was never proved, and blatant voter intimidation now seems to have been far more limited than first reported,” and that “(Repubicans say) rumors of black voter intimidation in 2000 remain grossly exaggerated: a Florida Highway Patrol investigation of an unauthorized police checkpoint near a precinct in a black neighborhood outside Tallahassee, for example, found no evidence that it delayed or prevented blacks from voting.” Isn’t that a relief? ‘Cuz, it sure seemed like intentional disenfranchisement and blatant voter intimidation. But the most amazing reconstruction was this one:

…in 2000, the counties mistakenly purged an unknown number of legitimate voters from the rolls because of faulty data.

“Mistakenly purged.” Who is this woman?! If you don’t remember how they were “mistakenly purged,” see this old Greg Palast article, or the first couple chapters of his book The Best Democracy Money Can Buy, or just watch this little presentation which I’ve pointed to in the past…

5 pages of nothing new –

I know I’m not the only one who heard nothing new in the president’s “major speech” last night. But this piece by William Saletan sums up my thoughts better than I can… I guess, technically, the part about razing Abu Ghraib was new, but it’s also symbolic of the Bush administration response to anything reflecting badly on the administration: Bulldoze it! (The speechwriters were working overtime to make Bush look “in command,” though: “I have instructed…,” “at my direction…,” “I will send…,” “I’ve asked…,” “I’ve directed…” Unfortunately, those assertions weren’t followed by any new initiatives or plans.) Meanwhile, just as so many warned at the outset of the invasion of Iraq, US actions there continue to inspire new legions of terrorists from all over the region. And is the UK trying to distance itself just a bit from US policies in Iraq?

Losing control of the media, too? –

You know they just hate it when they can’t keep everyone on message.

Tax exemption for Texas Unitarians –

Deciding, apparently, that Unitarianism is a religion, afterall, Comptroller Strayhorn reversed her decision on their tax-exempt status.

Well, I thought I’d give Blogger’s new photo feature a test drive and display this photo of a mystery cactus blossom from the backyard. The cactus is an orphan from a friend’s mother’s garden. (The blossom comes from the long, flat green “tongues,” not from the stubby succulent underneath.) It beats discussing Bush’s comments, which I could not watch (as usual) and will have to read instead… 

Pay no attention to the men behind the curtain…

Kevin Drum’s links and comments yesterday, and Elisabeth Bumiller today point to the same basic conclusion: This president has to be the most tightly scripted, tightly protected, tightly controlled figurehead of any president we’ve seen outside the movies. At least Americans are increasingly waking up…

Fight global AIDS, fight extreme poverty…

Go sign this petition. You KNOW this administration needs help locating the moral highground.

It’s abuse, not torture –

Truthout links to this Newsday op-ed about the US media’s reluctance to use the word “torture” to describe what has been happening at Abu Ghraib. I heard on the news last night that the administration plans to release photos and interviews with Iraqis who were tortured by Saddam Hussein, apparently so that we can see how abuses by US prison guards are really much nicer by comparison. Isn’t that pathetic?

And how would you like your crow done? –

Eric Alterman doesn’t have much patience for the reassessments coming from the so-called Neocons and hawky journalists who are beginning to realize that Bush could lose his war on Iraq:

…Excuse me, but just what was so hard to understand about this bunch? We knew they were dishonest. We knew they were fanatical. We knew they were purposely ignorant and bragged about not reading newspapers. We knew they were vindictive. We knew they were lawless. We knew they were obsessively secretive. We knew they had no time or patience for those who raised difficult questions. We knew they were driven by fantasies of religious warfare, personal vengeance and ideological triumph. We knew they had no respect for civil liberties. And we knew they took no responsibility for the consequences of their incompetence. Just what is surprising about the manner in which they’ve conducted the war?

There’s a reason we call ourselves progressive Christians –

Roberta Ahmanson, board member of the Institute for Religion and Democracy (IRD):

The Christian community isn’t just who is alive… Christians believe that we are in communion with the living and the dead. We pray each week for the living and the dead, and most of the previous generations are in disagreement with a lot of this stuff… If you take the weight of Christianity for 2,000 years, all that weight is on the orthodox side.

Oh, so many ways to go with this… A friend who pointed me to this Times article profiling the IRD wondered if they would use the same weighting system to reverse all of our 20th century achievements in civil rights, health care, chid care, etc. But of course! They are conservatives, afterall. Another friend wrote, “I guess they forgot about what Jesus was doing in his ministry, which at least to some of us, seemed to be entirely not about the orthodoxy of his time.” Well, the IRD is an organization whose raison d’etre is to divide Protestant denominations into bitterly warring conservative and liberal camps (on a spectrum of biblical orthodoxy), with the goal of getting the liberals to leave (according to the president of the organization). Writers Goodstein and Kirkpatrick declare that the IRD is “now playing a pivotal role in the biggest battle over the future of American Protestantism since churches split over slavery at the time of the Civil War.” Well, that says a lot right there, but today, instead of slavery “…the flashpoint is homosexuality, but there is another common denominator as well. In each case, the Institute on Religion and Democracy, a small organization based in Washington, has helped incubate traditionalist insurrections against the liberal politics of the denomination’s leaders.” In other words, if your church insists on ordaining women, or on using the NRSV, or on treating gay and lesbian individuals like human beings, withhold your money! Starve the beast! The piece is worth reading, if only to learn more about the interdenominational efforts and tactics this group of unhappy people will use to press their religious and political agenda.

Take that! –

Michael Moore’s Fahrenheit 9/11 takes the top prize at Cannes!!!

Keep on them –

Nationwide momentum is building to protect electronic votes from power outtages, software glitches, and database tampering…

“Let my people go!” –

Yes, Ahmad Chalabi actually said that. The big story is, of course, the US raid on Chalabi’s home — evidence, on the heels of the recent announcement that he is no longer being payed for faulty intelligence, that his relations with the White House have finally gone sour. But Atrios linked to this alternative hypothesis, suggesting that the raid is a bit of a ruse to make Chalabi look less like a US installation:

The still-neocon-dominated Pentagon—which this week stopped funding Chalabi’s INC —is playing its last card, hoping that it can boost Chalabi’s sagging fortunes by pretending to sever ties with him. That, the neocons hope, will allow Chalabi to strengthen his ties to Sistani, the king-making mullah who, they hope, holds Iraq’s fate in his wrinkled hands.

But Joshua Marshall thinks that might be giving planners more credit than they deserve:

I don’t doubt that some of Chalabi’s Washington supporters have encouraged him to take a more oppositional stand toward the occupation authorities to bolster his own popularity. But there are many US government players in Iraq right now. And many of them really are hostile to Chalabi.

Something quite that orchestrated would, I suspect, be far too difficult to pull-off. And are we dealing here with smooth operators? Answers itself, doesn’t it?

One other point: You only have to look next door to see what happens to American puppets after they have their fallings-out with the Americans. Clue: They don’t get embraced by the other side. In fact, that guy from nextdoor was lucky to get out of the country in one piece.

Another theory — or at least a portion of one — is contained in an article appearing this morning in Salon by Andrew Cockburn. The article points to US government suspicions that Chalabi may be plotting against the soon to be announced caretaker government, chosen by American officials and UN representative Lakhdar Brahimi.

And Newsweek says the raid stems from an ongoing investigation into corruption in Chalabi’s Iraqi National Congress. We sure can pick ‘em!

Could he be a little more insulting? –

Bush says Iraqis are ready to “take the training wheels off” and assume governance of their occupied country. (Rep. Pryce helpfully expands on the analogy, in case it was too abstract for us: “The Iraqi people have been in training, and now it’s time for them to take the bike and go forward.”) As Josh Marshall observed:

That’s a bit of a condescending thing to say about a country which encompasses what is generally considered to be the cradle of civilization. But the thought that an extra set of training wheels may now be available prompts the question of whether the Iraqis might be willing to hand their pair off to the White House.

Well, someone had to say it –

Congresswoman Pelosi:

I believe that the president’s leadership in the actions taken in Iraq demonstrate an incompetence in terms of knowledge, judgment and experience in making the decisions that would have been necessary to truly accomplish the mission without the deaths to our troops and the cost to our taxpayers.

Now, three guesses as to what Tom Delay said! Right, you probably won’t need all three:

She apparently is so caught up in partisan hatred for President Bush that her words are putting American lives at risk.

Here’s your chance to protect Ohio’s election results! –

Go here. Sign petitions, send money, help, help, help.

This is your government on drugs –

I get the Progress Report each day from the Center for American Progress. Today’s links to this Common Cause report on the Medicare sham. Some of the lowlights:

REPORT ALLEGES CONSERVATIVE HOUSE LEADERS BRIBED MEMBERS FOR VOTES: …conservative leaders in the House held the vote on the Medicare bill open for 3 hours in the middle of the night while they pressured Rep. Nick Smith (R-MI) and others to switch their votes. Normally, votes in the House are open for 15 minutes. In a 11/23/03 column on his website Rep. Smith wrote, “members and groups made extensive financial campaign supports and endorsements for my son Brad who is running for my seat. They also made threats of working against Brad if I voted no.”

CONSERVATIVE HOUSE LEADERS CENSORED C-SPAN: The House leadership controls the C-SPAN cameras in the chamber. Normally, during a vote, the camera constantly pans side to side monitoring floor activity. But during the three hours the conservative leadership was harassing members to switch their votes, the camera was locked on the Democratic side of the chamber. As a result “there is no visual record of who was talking to whom that night while votes were sought by the leadership.”

ADMINISTRATION THREATENED GOVERNMENT EMPLOYEES TO HIDE TRUE COST: Chief Medicare actuary Richard Foster “was threatened with dismissal if he released his official estimate of the cost of the prescription drug bill,” which was $156 billion higher than the administration promised. The White House was well aware of the higher estimate because Foster gave the estimates to them in June 2003.

EMPLOYEE WHO ISSUED GAG ORDER CASHES IN: In December 2003, just after the president signed the Medicare bill, chief Medicare administrator Tom Scully joined a law firm that represents drug manufacturers and other major players in the health care industry who benefited from the law. The Bush administration granted Scully an ethics waiver “so that he could negotiate with potential employers while he helped write the Medicare law.”

(An ethics waiver. That’s a good one!)

And don’t forget the fake news segments touting the bill, which the GAO has declared illegal.

Just another day in the Bush Administration. Honor and Integrity-R-Us!

How scary is this? –

Remember last month, when Bush made a “historic policy shift” that endorsed Israeli Prime Minister Sharon’s plan for withdrawing from Gaza, annexing West Bank Jewish settlements, and prohibiting Palestinian refugees from returning to Israel? More than a few comments I read at that time suggested that Bush was more aggressively courting the Jewish vote. But Rick Perlstein shows us what might really have inspired the seachange.

It was an e-mail we weren’t meant to see. Not for our eyes were the notes that showed White House staffers taking two-hour meetings with Christian fundamentalists, where they passed off bogus social science on gay marriage as if it were holy writ and issued fiery warnings that “the Presidents [sic] Administration and current Government is engaged in cultural, economical, and social struggle on every level”—this to a group whose representative in Israel believed herself to have been attacked by witchcraft unleashed by proximity to a volume of Harry Potter. Most of all, apparently, we’re not supposed to know the National Security Council’s top Middle East aide consults with apocalyptic Christians eager to ensure American policy on Israel conforms with their sectarian doomsday scenarios.

But now we know.

“Everything that you’re discussing is information you’re not supposed to have,” barked Pentecostal minister Robert G. Upton when asked about the off-the-record briefing his delegation received on March 25. Details of that meeting appear in a confidential memo signed by Upton and obtained by the Voice.

The e-mailed meeting summary reveals NSC Near East and North African Affairs director Elliott Abrams sitting down with the Apostolic Congress and massaging their theological concerns. Claiming to be “the Christian Voice in the Nation’s Capital,” the members vociferously oppose the idea of a Palestinian state. They fear an Israeli withdrawal from Gaza might enable just that, and they object on the grounds that all of Old Testament Israel belongs to the Jews. Until Israel is intact and David’s temple rebuilt, they believe, Christ won’t come back to earth.

Abrams attempted to assuage their concerns by stating that “the Gaza Strip had no significant Biblical influence such as Joseph’s tomb or Rachel’s tomb and therefore is a piece of land that can be sacrificed for the cause of peace.”

Three weeks after the confab, President George W. Bush reversed long-standing U.S. policy, endorsing Israeli sovereignty over parts of the West Bank in exchange for Israel’s disengagement from the Gaza Strip.

The whole feature is alternately amusing and frightening. (Thanks for the heads-up, J.) My question to the president’s apocalyptic Christian advisors: do you really think God needs our help with this?