OK, just one more (via Atrios). The Poor Man reflects upon Kristoff, too, with an even more interactive list of Bush lies. Now I’ll leave this alone for awhile, at least until I go home tonight and pull out my copy of The Lies of George W. Bush.

“Meteor Blades” of Daily Kos, cogitating on the absurd Kristoff column with a little more finesse and grace than I did, points to this highly relevant Eric Alterman column from 2002. Alterman concludes:

Reporters and editors who “protect” their readers and viewers from the truth about Bush’s lies are doing the nation — and ultimately George W. Bush — no favors. Take a look at the names at that long black wall on the Mall. Consider the tragic legacy of LBJ’s failed presidency. Ask yourself just who is being served when the media allow Bush to lie, repeatedly, with impunity, in order to take the nation into war.

The Press Makes the Man –

I think I’ve seen this Columbia Journalism Review item blogged in a couple of places. Back when Kerry was being considered as Al Gore’s running mate, he was “handsome” and “charasmatic” and possessed of an “easy manor.” Now he’s “wooden,” “dour” and “aloof?”

What should we call it, then? –

I know Democrats are not supposed to point out Republican hypocrisies, but it’s kinda hard to disagree with Molly Ivins:

Is it Christian to cut money for Head Start? Is it Christian to cut poor children off health care? Is it Christian to cut old people off Medicare? Is it Christian to write memos justifying torture? Is it Christian to cut after-school, nutrition and AIDS programs so multimillionaires can have bigger tax cuts?

What should we call it, then? Part II –

Kristoff sets aside Sudan today to scold liberals for calling Bush a liar. What is wrong with this man? “Stretched the truth”??!! And is there really any comparison to Clinton’s “stretched truths”? You’ve just got to read this. In fact, let me make it a little easier for you:

So is President Bush a liar?

Plenty of Americans think so. Bookshops are filled with titles about Mr. Bush like “Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them,” “Big Lies,” “Thieves in High Places” and “The Lies of George W. Bush.”

A consensus is emerging on the left that Mr. Bush is fundamentally dishonest, perhaps even evil — a nut, yes, but mostly a liar and a schemer. That view is at the heart of Michael Moore’s scathing new documentary, “Fahrenheit 9/11.”

In the 1990’s, nothing made conservatives look more petty and simple-minded than their demonization of Bill and Hillary Clinton, who were even accused of spending their spare time killing Vince Foster and others. Mr. Clinton, in other words, left the right wing addled. Now Mr. Bush is doing the same to the left. For example, Mr. Moore hints that the real reason Mr. Bush invaded Afghanistan was to give his cronies a chance to profit by building an oil pipeline there.

“I’m just raising what I think is a legitimate question,” Mr. Moore told me, a touch defensively, adding, “I’m just posing a question.”

Right. And right-wing nuts were “just posing a question” about whether Mr. Clinton was a serial killer.

I’m against the “liar” label for two reasons. First, it further polarizes the political cesspool, and this polarization is making America increasingly difficult to govern. Second, insults and rage impede understanding.

[...]

In fact, of course, Mr. Bush did stretch the truth. The run-up to Iraq was all about exaggerations, but not flat-out lies. Indeed, there’s some evidence that Mr. Bush carefully avoids the most blatant lies — witness his meticulous descriptions of the periods in which he did not use illegal drugs.

True, Mr. Bush boasted that he doesn’t normally read newspaper articles, when his wife said he does. And Mr. Bush wrongly claimed that he was watching on television on the morning of 9/11 as the first airplane hit the World Trade Center. But considering the odd things the president often says (”I know how hard it is for you to put food on your family”), Mr. Bush always has available a prima facie defense of confusion.

Mr. Bush’s central problem is not that he was lying about Iraq, but that he was overzealous and self-deluded. He surrounded himself with like-minded ideologues, and they all told one another that Saddam was a mortal threat to us. They deceived themselves along with the public — a more common problem in government than flat-out lying.

[...]

It wasn’t surprising when the right foamed at the mouth during the Clinton years, for conservatives have always been quick to detect evil empires. But liberals love subtlety and describe the world in a palette of grays — yet many have now dropped all nuance about this president.

Mr. Bush got us into a mess by overdosing on moral clarity and self-righteousness, and embracing conspiracy theories of like-minded zealots. How sad that many liberals now seem intent on making the same mistakes.

Worth noting –

“A state of war is not a blank check for the President when it comes to the rights of the Nation’s citizens,” according to Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor.

Where have you gone, General Shinseki? –

The army is pulling more than 5000 troops out of retirement.

Clearly not a member of the White House Press Release Corps –

An Irish journalist made the mistake of trying to hold an intelligent conversation with the Leader of the Free World. This I gotta see.

Surprise! –

Thank heaven Bush Co was able to dominate the headlines this morning with the surprise early transfer of pseudo-sovereignty (here for the Doonesbury synopsis) to Iraq two days ahead of schedule. Otherwise, the leading stories could have been any of the following: the Supreme Court rejection of a key tactic in Bush’s “War On Terror,” Bush’s failure to convince NATO to send troops to Iraq (I could hardly believe my ears last week when I heard Bush telling NATO they had a “responsibility” to assist in securing Iraq; NATO has a responsibility to get Bush out of his “mess o’potamia” ???), the abduction of an American marine, or the box office record-setting opening of Michael Moore’s “Fahrenheit 9/11” (leading even in “red states“).

Remember Afghanistan? –

The “defeated” Taliban killed 16 people because they were carrying voter registration cards.

How absolutely shocking –

Billions in Iraq oil revenues are unaccounted for.

Testy times –

Via Josh Marshall, this terrific Joe Klein column on the real reason Cheney is swearing. (Where has the word “testosteronics” been all my life?!)

Fahrenheit 9/11 –

I was able to join friends to see the show Saturday afternoon, thanks to their fine logistical work in securing tickets and a good place in a gratifyingly long line. (Thanks, C, D, and E!) By now you’ve read dozens of reviews (Slate has two good ones - Hitchins’ thumbs-down [of course; but he makes some fair points] and Edelstein’s thumbs-up). My take: I doubt that it will really change any minds, because the people who most need to see this movie are least likely to attend; they are the ones who will organize boycotts and phone in threats and do whatever else is necessary to prevent their own and their neighbors’ convictions from being challenged by fact. It will, however, cohere and energize those who are already actively working for “regime change” in November.

If you’ve been reading books like House of Bush, House of Saud and following the “alternative press” tracking of the evolution of the Patriot Act (e.g., here), there is little that will surprise you, much to distress you (film footage of bombing victims - US and Iraqi alike; footage of a heartbroken elderly Iraqi woman sobbing “where are you, God!”), and some cheap but well-deserved laughs: Moore managed to secure film footage that makes each of the Bush Co players look as evil and conniving and deranged as they already loom in our heads (again, assuming this movie is preaching to the choir). Each shot of the Cheney Sneer generated audience hisses. A long segment of Bush “on camera” but not yet “live” to announce the beginning of war in Iraq shows him for many moments looking terrified and vacuous at the same time; then he seems to — I can’t be sure — catch his image in a monitor?, or perhaps he sees an “imaginary friend”?, and he smirks, nods, slides his eyes sideways… Paul Wolfowitz sops his comb and his fingers with spit in order to slick his hair into place while he is being prepped for the camera. Some of the best laughs come from Moore’s choice of background music: “We gotta get out of this place,” plays while the bin Laden family is shown fleeing the country; Eric Clapton’s “Cocaine” plays while Moore-as-narrator discusses Bush’s altered National Guard records. The movie’s least necessary elements include virtually any of Moore’s on camera moments, and a long segment on state trooper cutbacks in Oregon. His argument that the army targets the economically disadvantaged for recruiting, while compelling, doesn’t add a great deal to the movie narrative.

Bush is able to look simultaneously vacuous and evil through much of the movie. (Moore certainly set out to facilitate this impression through his careful selection of film footage, but the material was there for the picking. This is not a special effect.) This is a combination of traits that I’ve struggled to reconcile in my understanding of Bush during the last four years. I always thought that to be truly, effectively evil, it is necessary to possess SOME mental agility, which is already more than I’m willing to attribute to Bush. But there it is, frame after frame. An empty, and yet menacing look. (Which reminds me: doesn’t the remake of the “Manchurian Candidate” look interesting?)

Will the right people see this movie? That tiny percentage who say they haven’t yet made up their minds? For them, this movie has at least one good take-home message, stammered by Bush himself. “There’s an old saying in Tennesee… Well, we have it in Texas. You probably have it in Tennessee, too. It says, ‘fool me once…’” [-- obvious groping, looking down at notes, long pause -- ] ’shame on you. [-- another long pause --] Fool me again…’ [furrows brow, leans forward on the podium, waits for the second half of the saying to come to him] … See, the thing is, we can’t get fooled again!”

Couldn’t have said it better, myself, Mr. President! (OK, yes, I probably could have.)

A Friday afternoon hodgepodge –

(1) I need to think about how I feel about this. Does Congress need a religious caucus? Is there a prayer that it would welcome representatives of both progressive and conservative ideologies? Here’s the LA Times story they mention. And here is The Revealer’s skeptical take on the matter.

(2) If you’re using Inernet Explorer to read page, you might want to know about this newest security flaw. I followed the recommended steps and seem to be clean. But as a friend observed, this might be as good a time as any to switch to Opera.

(3) Daily Kos shows how much Oregon Republicans want Nader on the ballot.

(4) Did Cheney stage a coup? Also from Daily Kos, referring to this Newsweek item:

This is startling information. The vice president ordered the president sent away and took control of the government. There is no other word for this than ‘coup’.

There was a reason Cheney didn’t want Bush testifying to the commission

by himself.

Here’s a segment of the Newsweek piece:

But the question of Cheney’s behavior that day is one of many new issues raised in the remarkably detailed, chilling account laid out in dramatic presentations by the 9-11 Commission. NEWSWEEK has learned that some on the commission staff were, in fact, highly skeptical of the vice president’s account and made their views clearer in an earlier draft of their staff report. According to one knowledgeable source, some staffers “flat out didn’t believe the call ever took place.” When the early draft conveying that skepticism was circulated to the administration, it provoked an angry reaction. In a letter from White House lawyers last Tuesday and a series of phone calls, the White House vigorously lobbied the commission to change the language in its report.

“We didn’t think it was written in a way that clearly reflected the accounting the president and vice president had given to the commission,” White House spokesman Dan Bartlett told NEWSWEEK. Ultimately the chairman and vice chair of the commission, former New Jersey governor Thomas Kean and former representative Lee Hamilton—both of whom have sought mightily to appear nonpartisan—agreed to remove some of the offending language. The report “was watered down,” groused one staffer.

(5) Via today’s Progress Report: Apparetly the Carlyle Group, which has long, deep ties to the Bush clan and to the Saudi royals has purchased Loew’s cineplex Theaters. This nicely packages another component in the military-industrial-media complex.

(6) Al Gore, of “John Kerry’s Coalition of the Wild-Eyed,” delivered this speech to Georgetown University. Among the take-home observations:

I am convinced that our founders would counsel us today that the greatest challenge facing our republic is not terrorism but how we react to terrorism, and not war, but how we manage our fears and achieve security without losing our freedom. I am also convinced that they would warn us that democracy itself is in grave danger if we allow any president to use his role as commander in chief to rupture the careful balance between the executive, the legislative and the judicial branches of government. Our current president has gone to war and has come back into “the city” and declared that our nation is now in a permanent state of war, which he says justifies his reinterpretation of the Constitution in ways that increase his personal power at the expense of Congress, the courts, and every individual citizen.

(7) This just leaves me speechless. Schwarzenegger wants to save the money by killing stray animals sooner.

( Via Kevin Drum, a fascinating roundtable on Iraq in the current Rolling Stone.

(9) A match made in heaven — Ben Harper and the Blind Boys of Alabama! I’m definitely going to need to make another centimeter of space on the CD rack for this one. (I only ran into that because I was poking around the Rolling Stone Magazine site; why did I stop reading that so many years ago?)

Black Box Voting –

Once again, Body and Soul has compiled a great posting - this one on electronic voting. Do have a read.

Friends in high places –

The Supreme Court continues to do the White House’s bidding, refusing to make Cheney turn over his energy task force papers. But the duck-hunting had nothing to do with it!

Union-busting, discriminatory hiring, low wages –

Another story about Wal-Mart? Nope, Ralph Nader. See what Eric Alterman has rounded up. Will the Naderites ever open their eyes?

Bush wants more control over the Ryan White Act –

We’ve seen what he’s done to international family planning and reproductive health efforts. Any doubts about how this will turn out?

They’re a little slow to come around –

But apparently enough people have died, now. The majority of Americans polled now believe it was wrong to send troops to Iraq, and that the war has made us more vulnerable to terrorism.

Cheney supports safe sex –

I’ve never read Wonkette, and finally decided to check her out, since several of the blogs I look at daily have links to her site. So today was my first visit, and the first thing I read is this hysterical gem.

Neither rain nor snow… Blog hosts, however, are another story –

Posting problems today (error messages from Blogger), but it looks like this will finally stick.

Say goodbye –

to an unusually brave, mature, enlightened and poetic young man.

How is that Clear Skies Initiative working?

Atmospheric toxins have increased for the first time since 1997, and only the second time since the EPA started keeping track, in 1988. See here, too.

California’s Happy Cows –

produce toxic milk.

Was Cheney in the bathroom when the bill came? –

A friend marooned in Lincoln, Nebraska sent this item. Has there been a cabinet in history that managed to turn more “official visits” into fundraising opportunities?

I missed this WaPo story over the weekend, about evangelical Christian voters’ apparent lack of enthusiasm for a constitutional ban on gay marriage. I love what Jim Wallis had to say:

The Rev. Jim Wallis, head of Call to Renewal, a coalition of religious groups devoted to fighting poverty, said he believes the Christian right is “out of touch” with most Christians’ concerns. “Do we really think that Jesus’s primary concern in this election year would be a marriage amendment? With the poverty rate rising, with one in six of all U.S. children and one in three children of color living below the poverty line, with more than a billion people around the world living on less than $1 a day?” Wallis asked.

“The truth is, the religious right is not even a majority among evangelicals, but they have very loud voices that presume to speak for a lot more people than they really do,” he said.

The Reagan Glow –

– didn’t last for long, did it? Bush fires off 85 million dollars in attack ads, and -oops!- Kerry comes out looking even better.

About that “clerical error” –

The State Department report on terrorism has now been officially revised. The actual number of terrorism deaths is DOUBLE that previously reported. Double.

What people are reading –

This should keep those Justice Department library spooks busy tracking down thousands of enemies of the state. Click on the list to see the political leanings of the top ten books people are checking out!

Democrats, the party of the secular heathens –

– get some advice from David Brooks on how to address faith issues. Amy Sullivan thinks it sounds familiar.

Nope, never said it (again) –

Sydney Schangberg writes in the Village Voice:

On March 21, 2003, the day after the war began, President Bush sent a letter to both houses of Congress laying out the legal backing and underpinning for his decision to go to war. In the letter’s second paragraph, Bush wrote: “I have also determined that the use of armed force against Iraq is consistent with the United States and other countries continuing to take the necessary actions against international terrorists and terrorist organizations, including those nations, organizations, or persons who planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001.”

Read his lips. He keeps swearing he never claimed a direct link, but here it is, as the saying goes, in black and white. It is very difficult to think of any interpretation of the above sentence other than that the president of the United States was declaring that Iraq was one of the “nations, organizations, or persons who planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001.

Democracy in decline? –

Martin Jacques is worth pondering, here, but I don’t really have time to ponder right now. Here’s a good excerpt:

If it is mistaken to regard western democracy as a universal abstraction that is equally applicable across the world, it is also wrong to see it as frozen and unchanging. Indeed, there are grounds for believing that western democracy, as we have known it, is in decline.

The symptoms have been well-rehearsed: the decline of parties, the fall in turnout, a growing disregard for politicians, the displacement of politics from the centre-stage of society. These trends have been observable more or less everywhere for at least 15 years.

The underlying reasons are even more disturbing than the symptoms. The emergence of mass suffrage and modern party politics coincided with the rise of the labour movement, which drove the extension of the vote and obliged political parties to engage in popular mobilisation. The rise of the modern labour movement, moreover, provided societies with real choices: instead of the logic of the market, it offered a different philosophy and a different kind of society. The decline of traditional social-democratic parties, as illustrated by New Labour, has meant the erosion of choice, at least in any profound sense of the term. The result is that voting has often become less meaningful. Politics has moved on to singular ground: that of the market.

The influence of the market is manifest in multiple ways. The funding of parties now moves solely to its rhythm: big business and the rich are as important to New Labour as they are to the Conservatives. The same interests fund, and therefore influence, the parties. Big money calls the tune. Nowhere is this truer than in American politics, which has become a plutocracy mediated by democracy, rather than the reverse.

As the media has displaced traditional forms of discourse and mobilisation, ownership of the media has become increasingly important in the determination of political choices and electoral results. The most dangerous example is in Italy, where Silvio Berlusconi’s ownership of the bulk of the private media has enabled him to transform Italian democracy into something verging on a mediaocracy, leaving politics and the state besieged by his immense personal power and wealth.

Perhaps these developments point to a deeper problem incipient in western democracies. Far from the free market and democracy enjoying the kind of harmonious relationship beloved of western propaganda, democracy grew in fact as a constraint on the market, holding it at bay and enabling a pluralism of values and imperatives. What happens when this healthy tension becomes a dangerous imbalance, in which the market is dominant and consumerism is established as the overriding ethos of society, permeating politics just as it has invaded every other nook and cranny of society? Democracy comes under siege. In Italy it is

already gasping for breath. In the US it is deeply and increasingly flawed. Democracy is neither a platitude nor an eternal verity - either for the world or for the west.

CBS: a venerable tradition of censorship –

The signs were there. They were there before CBS killed the Reagan miniseries, before they refused MoveOn.org’s Super Bowl ad, and before they tried to kill the 60 Minutes interview with tobacco whistleblower Jeffrey Wigand. As I mentioned before, I’ve been reading “A Problem from Hell” and, last night, I was reviewing the various sticky flags I’ve placed throughout the book. One of them was for this item on page 77, part of a summary of the US reluctance to recognize the Holocaust:

“Hollywood eased into more realistic accounts of the horrors. The 1961 film Judgment at Nuremberg, starring Judy Garland and Spencer Tracy, jarred millions of viewers by including actual graphic footage from the camps, but the film contained few references to the specific victim groups. When a major network sponsor, the American Gas Association, objected to the mention of gas chambers in the 1959 teleplay version of the film, CBS caved in to pressure and blanked out the references.” (emphasis mine)

Recall, in the matter of the Moveon.org ads, that CBS explained its policy was to decline “advocacy” advertising. Nonetheless, they apparently ran anti-Clinton ads by Citizens United in some markets, during the Sunday night 60 Minutes interview with Bill Clinton!

See Condi spin –

I didn’t get a chance to post anything over the weekend, so by now you’ve probably seen or read Condi’s spectacularly contrived reinterpretation of what the 9/11 Commission meant to say in their report…

Never said it –

It doesn’t seem to matter that the administration keeps getting caught in outright lies and contradictions of earlier taped and published statements, because they just keep doing it. But for the record, here’s another gem from Cheney. (Um, was Gloria Borger even listening???)

Maybe she’s just jealous? –

If you read this profile of Kerry in today’s Times, it was hard to miss Wilgoren’s sledgehammering attempts to show us that Kerry is very rich. But in case you did miss them, the Daily Howler is on it. When do you suppose we can expect Wilgoren’s piece on the holidays and living quarters of Bush’s multi-millionaire cabinet? Maybe when she stops working for their campaign.

Bush, Dry Drunk? –

This not entirely implausible analysis must be getting a lot of hits today, because it’s up on the Google news site, at least for now. (The theory is not new, but this article is.)

Another book –

This one alleging that Al Qaeda will attack in order to keep Bush in office, because no administration has been better for their cause.

The Global Gag Rule hits UNICEF -

Body and Soul has a terrific post on Bush Co’s Global Gag Rule.