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The Weapon of the Enemy

March 10, 2008 – 11:09 am
Fear was the year’s biggest crop. It hung from the fruit trees instead of apples and peaches, and bees made fear instead of honey. In the paddies, fear grew thickly beneath the surface of the shallow water, and in the saffron fields, fear like bindweed strangled the delicate plants. Fear clogged the rivers like water hyacinth, and sheep and goats in the high pastures died for no apparent reason. — Salman Rushdie

The Galadriel Test

Late in The Fellowship of the Ring, Frodo offers the Ring of Sauron to the beautiful elf queen Galadriel. Tempted, she conjures a vision of herself becoming as great and terrible as the Dark Lord himself. Using the power of the One Ring, she could rule Middle Earth instead of joining her people’s retreat to the Havens in the West. “All shall love me and despair!” she prophesies. But then, temptation conquered, she refuses Frodo’s offer. The weapon of the Enemy, she realizes, cannot be used for good. “I will diminish,” she accepts, “and go into the West, and remain Galadriel.”

Two weeks ago, reeling from a dozen consecutive losses in primaries and caucuses across the country, Hillary Clinton faced the likelihood that she would diminish, go back to the Senate, and never become president. Instead of accepting that fate, she chose to use the weapon that the Republicans rode to victory in 2002 and 2004, and hope to use again in 2008: Fear.

Her ad Children, though not nearly as overt as the Wolves ad Bush ran in 2004, carried the same message: The world is a scary place, so you don’t dare risk change. You need someone safe and familiar in the White House. (Arianna Huffington characterized it as “making no real argument about preparedness to lead, only the shadowy insinuation that bad things will happen to your kids if you vote for Obama.”) Clinton coupled this ad with a new low in rhetoric: She praised John McCain over Barack Obama. She and McCain, Clinton said, have the experience to be commander-in-chief. Obama, she implied, does not.

I’ll let Gary Hart explain why you don’t unfavorably compare a rival in your own party to the other party’s nominee. But why shouldn’t Clinton — or any Democrat — invoke fear? It’s a good question, and (despite a good response by DailyKos’ Bob Johnson), I’d like to take my own crack at answering it.

Sometimes things get clearer as they recede into the past. Let’s go back to the 1996 State of the Union address, when Bill Clinton was gearing up for his re-election campaign. The big sound bite from that speech was: “The era of big government is over.” It was a very well-written and well-delivered line, Clinton got some good press out of it, and of course he beat Bob Dole in the fall. But the Republicans held on to both houses of Congress and even increased their majority in the Senate by two seats. Any hope of progressive legislation in Clinton’s final term was dead.

Why did that happen? Well, the phrase big government means more than the dictionary would have you believe. Republicans had been working on that phrase for decades, so by 1996 it evoked an entire picture: wasteful spending, lazy bureaucrats, welfare cheaters, and red tape that makes sure nothing is ever accomplished. When the leader of your party starts talking about big government, you can’t segue into advocating national health insurance, it gets very hard to explain why you don’t want to privatize Social Security, and you can’t defend the kind of regulations that might have avoided the Enron debacle or today’s subprime mortgage mess. With the progressive agenda off the table, it became hard to explain why voters should cast a ballot for any Democrat other than Bill Clinton.

That’s what Hillary is setting us up for in the fall. “National security will be front and center in this election,” she announced. “We all know that.” Do we? Maybe by November the recession will be front and center, or the tumbling of dominoes in our banking system. Maybe it will be the trillions of dollars we’re wasting in Iraq, or the tens of millions of Americans with no health insurance. Maybe our government’s illegal spying. Maybe the environment. Maybe our energy policy. Maybe another bridge or two will have collapsed and our neglected infrastructure will be front and center. If the public is paying attention to any of those issues, not only will a Democrat win the presidency, but we’ll toss out a lot of those Republicans who went to the Senate during the first fear campaign in 2002.

The only chance that McCain and the Republicans have is to make this a one-issue election, framed exactly the way Clinton is framing it now: Who’s going to protect your children from the evil-doers? And the Republicans won’t stop with the suggestion that you want someone safe and familiar (like all their incumbent senators), they’re going to ask: “Who’s willing to do whatever it takes?” Who’s willing to torture? to gut the Constitution? to spy without warrants? to stretch our military to the breaking point? to attack more countries that haven’t threatened us — but might sometime in the future? They’re going to tell you that any Democrat who isn’t willing to do those things isn’t serious about protecting your children. Democratic congressmen who are (for the moment) standing firm against telecom immunity are probably already wondering what will happen to them if Clinton gets nominated and keeps echoing the Republican fear-rhetoric.

If enough free-floating dread gets generated, it might save my senator here in New Hampshire, John Sununu, who is well behind in the polls. It might save New Mexico’s Pete Domenici, Minnesota’s Norm Coleman, Alaska’s Ted Stevens, and all the other endangered Republicans.

The weapon of the enemy has been carefully forged to achieve the enemy’s purposes, whoever wields it. Galadriel understood that. If only the Clintons understood it too.

The Art of the Empty Scandal

In the days leading up to the Texas and Ohio primaries, I kept hearing about Obama’s “ties” to a shady businessman named Tony Rezko, whose trial for something-or-other started that Monday. But the stories never spelled out exactly what Obama was supposed to have done, so I made a mental note to check it out before writing this week’s Sift. As so often happens when I make such notes, Glenn Greenwald beat me to it:

I spent several hours yesterday morning reading every “Rezko” article I could find in an attempt to understand as much as possible about the allegations. The point isn’t that there is no credible evidence of any wrongdoing on the part of Obama, although that’s unquestionably true. It’s far beyond that. There aren’t even any theoretical allegations or suggestions as to what he might have done wrong at all. … The only substantive connections Obama and Rezko have is that the latter was a contributor to Obama’s campaign and was a partner in a standard residential real-estate purchase which nobody suggests, at least in terms of Obama’s conduct, was anything but above-board.

… It’s precisely the empty nature of the “scandal” that makes it impossible to resolve. The more he addresses it, the more he fuels it; conversely, the more he refuses to address it, the more he will be accused of “stonewalling” and not being forthcoming. It’s just illusory innuendo that, by design, can never be satisfactorily addressed because nobody can ever apprehend what the substance of the “scandal” is.

Glenn compares this to the Clinton Whitewater “scandal” which was investigated to death by Ken Starr without any charges being brought. The Clintons were never even accused of profiting, yet the term Whitewater appeared in countless news articles as if it referred to some specific accusation of corruption on their part.

Glenn references a Digby post that explains what empty scandals all have in common:

They are based on complicated details that make the casual reader’s eyes glaze over and about which the subject has to issue long confusing explanations in return. They feature colorful and unsavory political characters in some way. They … tend to be written in such a way as to say that even if they aren’t illegal they “look bad.” The underlying theme is hypocrisy because the subjects are portrayed as making a dishonest buck while pretending to represent the average working man. Oh, and they always feature a Democrat. Republicans are not subject to such scrutiny because a craven, opportunistic Republican isn’t “news.” (Neat trick huh?)

No single story will bring down a candidate because they have no substance to them. It’s the combined effect they are looking for to build a sense [of] overall sleaziness. “Where there’s smoke there’s fire” right?

Glenn examines the double standard in more detail. Enron’s Ken Lay, a major Bush supporter,

committed one of the most massive frauds in American corporate history. The President’s own brother, Neil, has been involved in numerous accusations of serious impropriety and yet continues to be paid by multiple sources for virtually nothing other than being George Bush’s brother. The central cog for the GOP fundraising machine, Jack Abramoff, is now imprisoned as a serial felon. Led by his involvement in the Keating Five scandal, John McCain has been linked to some of the sleaziest figures around.

Yet somehow, the standard in those cases is that, in the absence of specific allegations of wrongdoing on the part of the political official, merely being linked — even intimately — to thieves and felons won’t be held against the political official.

And that’s the same standard that should apply to Obama and Clinton. Any time someone tries to tell you about some “scandal” involving either candidate, ask for a specific allegation. If they can’t come up with one, look down your nose at them and walk away.

Oh, and the “NAFTA-gate scandal,” where Obama was supposed to have told the Canadians not to take his anti-NAFTA rhetoric seriously? That doesn’t check out either.

Short Notes

Glenn Greenwald reports that the House is about the cave in to Bush on telecom immunity and pass the Protect America Act. Julian Sanchez takes apart a Weekly Standard editorial line-by-line to demonstrate that even an aggressive spin of the truth isn’t sufficient to support Bush’s PAA position — you have to get the facts egregiously wrong to have any hope of justifying it. In a comment on the Sanchez post, a telecom engineer remembers his training in the 1980s and says: “There is no question in my mind that everyone at the phone companies who gave away all the information without even warrants from a secret court did knowing full well they were breaking many many Federal and State laws governing communications.” And a new report by the Department of Justice’s Inspector General says that the FBI has been regularly abusing the powers given it by the Patriot Act. Glenn is shocked: “If unchecked power is vested in government officials, they’re going to abuse that power … who could have guessed? How come nobody warned us about the dangers of ‘unchecked government power’ and the need for checks and balances?”

Feeling poorer this year? According to the Federal Reserve, the total net worth of American households dropped by $533 billion in the fourth quarter of 2007, an annual rate of 3.6%. Adjusted for inflation, household net worth dropped for the entire year of 2007. In 2007, the equity Americans have in their homes fell below 50% for the first time since such statistics have been kept, to a low of 47.9% by the end of the year.

Josh Marshall stays on top of the McCain/Hagee issue.

There’s been another case where a female Halliburton employee is being forced to arbitrate her rape accusation because of the agreement she signed when she was hired. The rape allegedly took place in a Halliburton barracks in Iraq, so it’s an internal corporate matter. FireDogLake imagines the Halliburton sexual harrassment briefing: “Now folks, we’re not encouraging you to commit sexual assault, but if you do, please have the decency to do so on company premises.”

Think more Americans should vote? Researchers have discovered a way to increase turnout by 8.1 percentage points, but you may not like it. It relies on the fact that whether or not you voted (not who you voted for) is a matter of public record. So the experimenters sent letters to voters listing whether their neighbors had voted in the past two elections — and implying that the neighbors had all gotten similar information about them. The letter promised that a follow-up letter would go out after the next election. Neighborhoods that received the letter had a 37.8% turnout compared to 29.7% in the control group.

Jonathan Turley, a law professor at George Washington University and a frequent TV talking head on legal issues, wrote an L. A. Times article about Mukasey’s Paradox, which he describes like this: “Lawyers cannot commit crimes when they act under the orders of a president — and a president cannot commit a crime when he acts under advice of lawyers.” He derives this paradox from two instances of Attorney General Mukasey’s testimony before Congress. Turley concludes, “Mukasey’s Paradox, if adopted, will result in administration officials being effectively beyond the reach of the law.”

Democrat Bill Foster won the special election to replace Dennis Hastert in Congress after the former Republican Speaker of the House resigned. Foster is a physicist and we can expect him to be a pro-science vote in Congress. Glenn Greenwald points out what should be the obvious lesson: Opposing telecom immunity (which Foster’s well-funded opponent tried to make an issue) does not hurt a Democrat at all, even in a red district. Glenn concludes: “There is not, and there never has been, any substantial constituency in America clamoring for telecom amnesty or warrantless eavesdropping powers.” [Disclaimer: I gave money to the Foster campaign and I’ve eaten at an ice cream shop owned by his opponent Jim Oberweis. It was good ice cream.]

The little girl in Hillary Clinton’s Children ad turns out to be Casey Knowles. She’s 17 now, and the Clinton campaign got the footage of her sleeping from Getty Images, which has owned it for years. Clinton wouldn’t have gotten it from Knowles: She was an Obama precinct captain in the Washington state caucuses. She’s hoping Obama contacts her to make a counter-ad.

The Onion News Network reports what we all suspected: Bullshit will be the most important issue in the 2008 elections. “What a candidate wears at public appearances,” ONN’s expert gives as an example, “is crucial to the bullshit-conscious voter.” Thanks to the Internet, he notes, there are pages and pages of bullshit on all candidates. And the anchor inquires: “How can we in the news media do a better job focusing on bullshit and really hounding candidates on these petty issues?” In another report, ONN wonders if the government is doing enough to keep the nation’s 1.5 million paranoid schizophrenics safe. Perhaps round-the-clock video surveillance is needed, or monitoring devices implanted under their skin.

Answer to the February 25 Sift challenge: The title Fear Strikes Out came from the 1955 autobiography of Red Sox outfielder Jimmy Piersall, who suffered from bipolar disorder. It was made into a movie of the same name starring Anthony Perkins. Several people got it.

By weeklysift | Comments (2)

Does Hillary Survive the Alamo?

March 3, 2008 – 8:00 am
If the liberties of America are ever completely ruined … it will in all probability be the consequence of a mistaken notion of prudence, which leads men to acquiesce in measures of the most destructive tendency for the sake of present ease. — Samuel Adams

The worst prediction I made this primary season was that Obama’s big win in New Hampshire would lock things up. That’s the problem with writing on Mondays: a Tuesday surprise might be right around the corner. Well, this Tuesday we have the Ohio and Texas primaries, which Hillary Clinton has called a “firewall” after ten straight Obama victories. Bill has said that she has to win both. If she’s going to catch up in the delegate count, she needs to win big. At the moment the polls predict two close races, with Obama favored in Texas and Clinton in Ohio. Will that finally clinch the nomination for Obama?

Is Sexism Stronger Than Racism?

Pundits have already started performing autopsies on the Clinton campaign. Some blame her message: The Clinton campaign has a lot of positions, but it has no theme. Others point to the hostility of the media and its contrasting worship for Obama, as parodied on Saturday Night Live and The Daily Show. There’s certainly something to this, but I should also point out that a vicious cycle of bad coverage is always part of a front-runner’s fall. Failure leads to stories about dissension within the campaign, falling poll numbers, staff shake-ups, and poor fund-raising — which leads to more failure. Giuliani went down that way, and McCain endured a similar stretch of bad news last summer, even though the press is famous for liking him.

The numbers say this: Obama has consistently increased his support among whites, while Clinton has consistently lost support among men. But why? Is sexism is a stronger prejudice than racism? Speaking as a white male, set up by birth and culture to have both prejudices, I’ve got my doubts. Let me try to explain how I see prejudice working inside myself, and why Obama is avoiding it better than Clinton.

Like most people these days, I don’t have an absolute I-won’t-vote-for-an-X kind of prejudice. But think about how negative campaigning works in general. The point of a negative campaign is to plant the thought: “That candidate isn’t like me, doesn’t get me, and isn’t even talking to me.” It can be subtle. Bill Clinton’s famous, “I feel your pain” reminded you that Bush Sr. was a patrician, and it put the idea in your head that Bush couldn’t get you because he had never suffered.

Any difference can be exploited — McCain is too old to understand you, Edwards is too pretty — but race and gender are big, obvious differences. So it’s important for a candidate to speak across those gaps, reminding voters: “I get you. I’m talking to you.”

Obama — if my racial prejudices are anything to judge by — has been brilliant at presenting himself to whites. His campaign never trips the land mines that racism has put in my mind. Watching Obama, I never have to stamp out thoughts like, “Oh, that’s why he says stuff like that. He’s black. He’s not talking to me.” Instead, Obama gives me constant subtle reminders that blacks and whites don’t have to be that far apart. Oprah helps — imagine if he’d done that campaign swing with Al Sharpton instead. Obama’s voice and cadence make me think of Martin Luther King, not a gangster rapper. Stuff like that shouldn’t matter, but it does — especially in a contest with so few policy differences. The result is that when Obama says “Yes we can” I feel included in that we.

Clinton, by contrast, seems to have no idea how she sounds to men, so she trips the sexist land mines in my head all the time. When she waved Obama’s anti-Clinton pamphlet in the air and scolded, “Shame on you, Barack Obama,” I’ll bet every man in America cringed. She sounded like Obama’s mother waving the Playboy magazine she’d found under his mattress.

Another land mine of sexism is captured by those t-shirts that ask: “If a man speaks and no woman hears, is he still wrong?” It’s the feeling that a woman is disagreeing just to be disagreeable, and that nothing you could possibly say will be right.

For me, Clinton tripped that mine during Tuesday’s debate in Ohio. The evening was already at a low point: Tim Russert had just asked Obama to answer for Louis Farrakhan’s endorsement, which Obama has neither sought nor used. Obama did a fairly creditable job of handling a low-blow series of questions — once again without tripping any of my racial land mines. He denounced Farrakhan’s anti-Semitism, recalled how important Jews were to the civil rights movement, expressed his support for Israel, and promised to keep working to repair the black/Jewish relationship. And he deftly cut Russert off before he could read a list of Farrakhan’s most offensive statements.

Then Hillary started to speak. For a moment I thought she was going to do the right thing. (Josh Marshall’s live-blogging of the debate records a similar hope at 10:13.) She might have aimed her scolding voice at a person who had it coming: Russert. She might have pointed out that right-wingers say outrageous things every day, and Republican candidates are never expected to denounce them. Ann Coulter has said “Jews need to be perfected” and has claimed that the Jersey-Girl widows were happy that their husbands died on 9/11. And yet her candidate (Mitt Romney) did not have that thrown in his face during a debate. Pat Robertson has called for the assassination of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, has suggested that our own State Department should be nuked, and has urged his flock to “Pray that additional vacancies occur within the Supreme Court” — pray that liberal judges die, in other words. And yet Robertson’s endorsement was described by Fox News as “a coup for the Giuliani campaign.” But Democrats are expected not just to disagree with their supporters who go over the line, but to insult them as well. (See the piece about McCain and John Hagee below.)

In short, this was a chance for Clinton to rise to the occasion, to be the leader of the Democratic Party, to defend all Democrats rather than attack the one who was in her way. (She could even have gotten a dig in: She voted against the Senate resolution denouncing MoveOn, while Obama didn’t vote.) But no: She joined Russert and piled on. Obama had eaten a little crow, but he hadn’t cleaned his plate yet. He hadn’t, she pointed out, used the word reject. He needed to specifically say that he rejected Farrakhan’s support.

Underneath his smile, Obama wore an expression any man could recognize and empathize with: Just tell me what I need to say. You want reject? Fine. I’ll say reject. Clinton looked triumphant after that exchange, but she wasn’t. She had just lost more male votes, and she didn’t even know.

So if Obama wins, I don’t think it proves any conclusion stronger than this: A deft handling of racism beats a clumsy handling of sexism.

John Hagee: McCain’s Farrakhan

Speaking of endorsements by offensive religious leaders, John Hagee just endorsed John McCain.

Hagee is a leader among those Christians who support Israel so that they’ll be on the right side during the Battle of Armageddon. (Listen to his NPR interview.) Later in their interpretation of the prophecies, the Jews either convert to Christianity or are annihilated — so the claim that Hagee is “pro-Israel” needs an asterisk. Hagee has also referred to the Catholic church as “the whore of Babylon” from Revelations.

In the wake of the Obama/Farrakhan flap, the liberal blogs are trying to turn this into an issue for McCain, who (unlike Obama with Farrakhan) actively sought Hagee’s endorsement and has made public appearances with him. So far McCain’s response has been that he welcomes Hagee’s support although he doesn’t “agree with all Pastor Hagee’s views.” Like maybe the view (expressed at the 22:35 mark of the NPR interview) that New Orleans was destroyed by God’s wrath for its tolerance of homosexuality? McCain didn’t say.

Anyway, the McCain/Hagee relationship has drawn the wrath of another vengeful patriarch: the Catholic League’s Bill Donohue. FireDogLake couldn’t resist illustrating this story with a picture of Godzilla battling the three-headed King Ghidorah.

As of Sunday, the blog efforts were starting to bear fruit: Wolf Blitzer grilled McCain supporter Senator Kay Bailey Hutchinson about Hagee, though still not to Josh Marshall’s satisfaction.

Marching Toward Hell by Michael Scheuer

This new book makes me wish I were an editor. Michael Scheuer was the head of the CIA’s Bin Laden unit from 1996-1999, and in general has one of the best understandings of Al Qaeda I have found. His previous book Imperial Hubris was one of the main sources for my Terrorist Strategy 101: A Quiz. He understands things that I wish more people understood.

But if you read this book on my recommendation, you’ll be annoyed with me. Marching Toward Hell: America and Islam After Iraq is undisciplined. It’s like listening to a crusty old uncle rant his way through Christmas dinner: Scheuer hates multiculturalism; he thinks Ronald Reagan won the Cold War single-handedly; he can’t mention the Europeans without getting apoplectic; he believes that American values rest on Christianity and that secular liberals oppose those values. There’s more along those lines, but I’ve put it out of my mind. None of it has anything to do with what Scheuer really knows and understands, and you don’t have to agree with any of it to get the book’s main point. A good editor would have made sure it wasn’t in the final draft. But there it is.

What is that main point? This: From the moment Osama bin Laden declared war on the United States in 1996 he has pursued the same strategy, and that strategy is working. Our leaders of both parties have told us a lot of nonsense about Al Qaeda, and as a result our policies are doomed to failure.

The stupidest thing we are told about bin Laden and his allies is that they hate us for our freedom and democratic values. Actually, rage at the satanic American culture was Ayatollah Khomeini’s attempt to inspire jihad a generation ago, and it didn’t fly. It turns out that the average Muslim just can’t get that worked up about Americans drinking beer, voting, and letting their women run around in short skirts. They may disapprove of those things — well, not the voting so much; they’d like to do that themselves — but they’re not willing to kill or be killed about it.

Bin Laden’s real message is that America is at war with Islam and has been for decades. War against Islam is something that Muslims do get worked up about. That war, bin Laden claims, is why America has propped up corrupt secular dictators like Mubarak in Egypt and Musharraf in Pakistan, and corrupt traditional autocrats like the House of Saud or the Emir of Kuwait. That’s why we support foreign occupations of Muslim lands, like Israel in Palestine, Russia in Chechnya, India in Kashmir, and China in its western Xinjiang province. Bin Laden doesn’t denounce our democratic values, he uses them against us by blaming us and our puppet governments for the lack of freedom in the Muslim world.

By declaring a Global War on Terror and defining Palestine, Chechnya, Kashmir, and Xinjiang as part of that war — and enrolling new autocratic allies in places like Uzbekistan and Tajikistan — we ratified Bin Laden’s thesis. And every time we threaten, bomb, invade, or occupy another Muslim country, Muslims all over the world nod their heads and say, “Osama was right.”

Bin Laden’s strategy against America is to strip away our allies, stretch our military thin, and break our economy. It worked on the Soviet Union and it’s looking pretty good against us too. Our debts and our war expenses go up every year, with no turning point in sight.

I’m more impressed by Scheuer’s diagnosis than his prescriptions. But there is at least a logic and coherence to his strategy that our current strategy lacks. Long-term, Scheuer would invest heavily in energy independence so that we don’t need to control the Middle Eastern oil, and then he would stop messing with the Middle East, Israel included. (He sees our alliance with Israel as resting on domestic politics, not on any vital national interest.) In the meantime we should not be afraid to use force to defend our safety, but against Al Qaeda that means raids, not occupations. Scheuer’s wars would be short and vicious. We should have gone into Afghanistan with our own troops rather than local proxies, gotten Bin Laden and his confederates as quickly as possible, and then pulled out. Don’t worry about collateral damage; don’t worry about nation-building; don’t worry about what the subsequent government does about democracy or women’s rights. Just get it over with fast.

The scariest part of the book is his survey of the Muslim countries most of us aren’t paying attention to. Watch Nigeria. There’s a Christian/Muslim civil war there, and a lot of oil. That might be our next intervention.

Short Notes
The Marine I wrote about in Supporting My Troop is on his way back to Iraq. He might be there by now.


A few weeks ago I told you the amusing story of the Oval Office painting that Bush thinks is a Methodist circuit rider, but actually is a horse thief. Well, Jacob Weisberg, who did the research for his book The Bush Tragedy, tells the story even better in this video.

The Onion News Network reports that a “minor software glitch” has caused Diebold voting machines to reveal the winner of the November election too early. (It’s McCain.) A disappointed citizen asks: “If you can’t trust your shadowy overlords to keep a secret, what is the purpose, really, of voting in a public democracy?”

The makers of the OutFoxed DVD put together real clips from Fox News to make this fake ad for Fox News Porn.

The FCC scheduled a public hearing in Boston to listen to public concerns about net neutrality. One issue is that media giants like Comcast might block their Internet customers from downloading video that competes with Comcast’s cable offerings. So what did Comcast do? It hired people to take all the seats 90 minutes early, blocking the public from complaining to the FCC. That’s got to build your confidence in their good intentions.

We’re #1! With 2.3 million people in prison, the United States leads the world in the number of people behind bars. U-S-A! U-S-A!

Josh Marshall had a good week on TPM-TV. He gave a clear explanation of McCain’s problem with the campaign finance laws. His weekly assessment of the state of the election campaign was excellent: The first half brings you up to date on the Obama/Clinton race, and the second half explains how McCain plans to run against Obama. And the Weekend Extravaganza of all the week’s most embarrassing clips is hilarious, particularly the last one: Republican Congressman Jack Kingston appears on MSNBC claiming that Obama isn’t patriotic because he doesn’t wear a flag pin. And then host Dan Abrams points out that Kingston isn’t wearing a flag pin. Oops.

House Resolution 888 bears watching. It appears to be one of those harmless praise-mom-and-apple pie resolutions that Congress passes all the time: It proclaims the first week in May to be “American Religious History Week.” What’s wrong with that? Well, it also has a long series of “whereas” clauses that list historical “facts.” Except that they aren’t facts: They’re myths that Christian supremacists spread to argue that the Founders intended America to be a Christian nation, without separation of church and state. Chris Rodda debunks many of them. If the resolution passes, Christian supremacists will take it to their local school boards and argue that these myths are “findings” of Congress.

Wonder why the Obama campaign resembles the Santos campaign from the final season of West Wing? There’s a reason. And Reese Witherspoon makes a convincing young Hillary Clinton in this splicing-together of news clips and the movie Election. Jack Nicholson spliced together some of his old movie clips to make a Clinton commercial, which as far as I know appears only on the Internet. It’s over the top, but it makes me wonder: What if there had been a humorous “Real Men Vote for Hillary” campaign months ago?

The Austin Lounge Lizards have a bouncy animated video promoting the fictitious drug Progenitorivox in The Drugs I Need. (“If death occurs, discontinue use of Progenitorivox immediately.”)

Finally, Russ Feingold sums up the FISA debate very succinctly.

By weeklysift | Comments (1)

Fear Strikes Out

February 25, 2008 – 3:01 pm
Test the average man by asking him to listen to a simple sentence which contains one word with associations to excite his prejudices, fears or passions — he will fail to understand what you have said and reply by expressing his emotional reaction to the critical word. — Aleister Crowley

The Weekly Sift is now it’s own blog. (Which should be obvious if that’s where you’re reading these words.) I bill it as “a political blog for people who don’t have time to follow political blogs.” My occasional longer political pieces will still be on Open Source Journalism and my philosophical/religious stuff on Free and Responsible Search.

Fear-mongering, Week II

We’re still not dead.

This week President Bush and the Republicans did their best to convince us that our continuing survival (in the wake of the expiration of the Protect America Act a week ago Saturday) is just some kind of happy accident that we shouldn’t count on. As President Bush put it in his weekly radio address:

Congress’ failure to pass this legislation was irresponsible. It will leave our Nation increasingly vulnerable to attack. And Congress must fix this damage to our national security immediately. … Somewhere in the world, at this very moment, terrorists are planning the next attack on America.

Here’s the audio link. It fascinates me that even on the radio, where all he has worry about is his voice, President Bush still sounds like he’s reading a text he doesn’t understand. Frank Caliendo still does a better Bush impression than Bush does.

At the start of a 9-minute polemic (that I didn’t watch all the way to the end either), MSNBC host Keith Olbermann summarized the issue concisely: “President Bush has put protecting the telecom giants from the law above protecting you from the terrorists.” The House has already passed an extension of the Protect America Act that doesn’t include immunity for the telecoms. President Bush has promised to veto it, and Congressional Republicans have boycotted a bipartisan meeting to work out the differences between the two PAA-extension bills. That’s how urgent they think this really is. If ordinary Americans get their day in court, the terrorists win.

The issue fundamentally comes down to a difference between two visions of how the power to spy on American citizens should be controlled. In the Republican vision, the President’s people go to the telecom companies informally and get their cooperation with no oversight from anyone outside the executive branch. (What could possibly go wrong with that?) In the Democratic vision, we follow the Fourth Amendment and require that some neutral party issue a warrant — in this case, a FISA court specially designed to be quick and secure; if time is critical, the warrant can even be issued retroactively. The often-repeated claim that the FISA oversight structure is inadequate has never been supported by any evidence whatsoever. Whenever challenged, the Republicans always skip over evidence and go straight to fear-mongering.

In the most over-the-top element of the fear campaign, the House Republican Conference sponsored an Internet video made in the style of 24. (Somebody needs to tell them that 24 isn’t a documentary.) It’s got red-LED countdowns and weapon-waving jihadists and music that seems to be building towards some ultimate doom. The Republican video almost parodies itself, but that didn’t stop another two parodies from appearing almost instantly. The first uses all the same visual elements, but turns the narration around to tell the story of the heroic House Democrats standing up for the Constitution. The second goes straight for yucks and is absolutely hilarious. It ends with: “This message paid for by Republicans trying to get you to crap your pants so that you forget how we screwed everything up.”

The fascinating thing about this video back-and-forth is that the Democratic Party had nothing to do with it. In the Internet Age, the capacity to make compelling video is widely distributed, so the battle plays out like Microsoft vs. Linux. On the one hand you have the minions of our corporate overlords, and on the other you have the voluntary creativity of the people.

The Revelations about St. John

It all started Thursday, when the New York Times published an article about John McCain and a much younger female lobbyist. Back in 1999, the NYT claimed, McCain staffers were worried that their boss was having an affair that might threaten his campaign. If you read carefully, the story was about appearances and McCain’s lack of judgment, not about sex per se. But that’s not what caught everybody’s attention.

By almost all accounts, the article was a bad piece of journalism. Here’s what the Times’ own public editor said Sunday:

The article was notable for what it did not say: It did not say what convinced the advisers that there was a romance. It did not make clear what McCain was admitting when he acknowledged behaving inappropriately — an affair or just an association with a lobbyist that could look bad. And it did not say whether Weaver, the only on-the-record source, believed there was a romance. The Times did not offer independent proof … A newspaper cannot begin a story about the all-but-certain Republican presidential nominee with the suggestion of an extramarital affair with an attractive lobbyist 31 years his junior and expect readers to focus on anything other than what most of them did. And if a newspaper is going to suggest an improper sexual affair, whether editors think that is the central point or not, it owes readers more proof than The Times was able to provide.

But after the article appeared, two interesting things happened. The first, which I think is noteworthy because it points up an essential difference between liberals and conservatives, is that the liberals blogs handled the story in a partisan-but-responsible way: From the get-go, most of them played down the poorly supported sex angle and instead focused on the legitimate connections-to-lobbyists angle. (Maybe we remember how easily stories about “appearances” turn into smears, like the Washington Post’s article about the rumors that Obama is a Muslim.) OpenLeft’s first article on the brewing scandal was ambivalent: “I wish the focus of the story had been more on the corruption angle than the sex angle.” Kevin Drum wrote: “If McCain didn’t have an affair, there’s no story. If he did, then let’s hear the evidence.” Jane Hamsher: “the part of the story they’re obsessing about (alleged sex) isn’t really the story at all.” Matthew Yglesias sums up: “In a nation of 300 million people, I’m sure some people on the left have jumped at the opportunity to skewer McCain, but just about every liberal I read has taken the time to note that the Times‘ sexual innuendos were a pretty inappropriate way to frame a news story.”

The second interesting thing was this: On the lobbying and corruption side of the story, McCain’s denials didn’t add up, and in some respects were simply false. The lobbyist, Vicki Iseman, was working for Paxson Communications (and according to the Washington Post “extolling her connections to McCain … she would regularly volunteer … to be the point person for the telecom industry in dealing with McCain’s office.”). McCain, then the chair of the Senate Commerce Committee, wrote two letters (described by the FCC chairman as “highly unusual”) pressuring the FCC to approve Paxson’s purchase of a Pittsburgh TV station. According to the Post article: “At the time he sent the first letter, McCain had flown on Paxson’s corporate jet four times to appear at campaign events and had received $20,000 in campaign donations from Paxson and its law firm.” Iseman was on the jet with him at least once.

The McCain campaign responded that McCain had never spoken to anyone at Paxson about the issue. But it turned out that he had. And he had testified to it himself in a 2002 deposition discovered by Newsweek: “I was contacted by Mr. [Lowell] Paxson on this issue.” The McCain campaign tried to weasel out of the contradiction by saying that McCain was using “shorthand” for the fact that Paxson’s staff had talked to McCain’s staff. But that turned out not to be true either: The Washington Post talked to Paxson, who verified that he met McCain face-to-face in his office.

Now, as I said last week, McCain is a politician. And the Paxson exchange-of-favors is garden-variety corruption in Washington today. If you threw out everybody who did something like this, Congress might be empty. (One chapter of Obama’s The Audacity of Hope consists of his thoughts while riding on a private jet and wondering how this easy luxury might corrupt him.) But this is news because it unravels the whole “straight talk” image. If you ask John McCain an embarrassing question, he just might lie to you. Color me shocked. Horrified.

Why Words Matter

One way to tick off a writer is to say that something is “just words.” It’s like telling a cancer researcher that his new drug is just a molecule. So I feel a professional obligation to point out the significance of Barack Obama’s ability to inspire people with words.

It comes down to this: By the time the public sees an issue, powerful behind-the-scenes processes have already shaped the possibilities. That’s why President Bush can’t be impeached, despite the ample grounds. Any discussion is immediately written off as pointless; it’s impossible. That’s why we can’t have single-payer health care, and why we can’t pull our troops out of Iraq. As soon as you open your mouth, people start rolling their eyes. Why even talk about something that’s impossible?

Bill Clinton’s biggest failing as a president wasn’t that he couldn’t keep his pants zipped, it was that he couldn’t change the possibilities. He inherited a trail map of the Possible from the Reagan/Bush years. And though he tried to walk down the most humane and sensible paths, he never changed the map. When he left office, we were still talking about deregulation, Saddam, balancing the budget, global free trade, welfare reform — Reagan/Bush issues. That’s why Bush Jr. could restart the rightward push so easily: Clinton never really stopped it.

If we’re ever going to change the possibilities, we need a president who can go over the heads of the possibility-defining establishment and talk directly to the people. Obama can do that. Bill Clinton couldn’t and Hillary Clinton can’t either. That matters.

Here’s the video of Obama’s speech in Houston after winning the Wisconsin primary. (You can skip the first 6:30, which is a wildly cheering crowd followed by some Texas-specific stuff.) I found it jaw-droppingly effective. My wife wanted to go to bed, but couldn’t pull herself away from the TV. I don’t remember ever having that reaction while watching either Bill or Hillary.

Previews of the Fall Campaign

Two developments strike me as previews of the Republican plans for an anti-Obama fall campaign. The first is the use of trivia to suggest that Obama is unpatriotic. He doesn’t wear a flag pin. Apparently there’s some photo of him not holding his hand over his heart during the national anthem. This seems modeled on the pledge-of-allegiance “issue” that Bush Sr. exploited against Dukakis in 1988. (Let’s not even get into National Review’s implication that Obama’s parents must have been Communists.)

The second is to jump on any Obama story that sounds implausible to Republicans and charge that Obama must have made it up. We saw it happen this week with Obama’s story about an officer in Afghanistan who didn’t have his full platoon because some soldiers had been sent to Iraq. (The story checks out.) They did the same thing with John Edwards’ claims about homeless veterans earlier in the campaign. Expect the Right to manufacture a bunch of these incidents and then turn them into an Obama-makes-things-up theme, as they did to Al Gore in 2000.

After writing the above, I discovered the Kevin Drum was having similar thoughts.

The YouTube Election, Part II

I already talked about videos in the fear-mongering section, but the creative political audio and video just keeps coming.

My favorite is a message to Ralph Nader from an anonymous supporter of his 2000 campaign, asking him not to run again. The gag is that all of the Nader-2000 people have to be anonymous now, so Phil Donahue and Michael Moore appear with black rectangles over their eyes. (Too bad Ralph ignored it. Obama’s response to the Nader announcement: “He thought that there was no difference between Al Gore and George Bush, and eight years later I think people realize that Ralph did not know what he was talking about.”)

Second best is The Art of Speech, which is made in the style of a 1950s instructional video. It contrasts the bad example of a lifeless speaker named John (“Old Stone Face”) with the good example of an animated speaker who happens to be Obama.

One of my heroes, Stanford law professor Lawrence Lessig, has started a Change Congress campaign and is deciding whether to run for Congress himself. He explains it in this video. (I consulted a California progressive activist on Lessig’s chances in the CA-12 district, and though he also admires Lessig, he was pessimistic.)

You can watch sock puppets explain the new economy and neoliberalism. This rock song by Max and the Marginalized protests Clinton’s attempt to count the rule-breaking Michigan and Florida primaries. A Spanish folk music video (with English subtitles) brings the Obama message to Hispanics. Jon Stewart had a very political Oscar monologue, which you can see here.

Short Notes

A lot of the Internet video I watched this week wasn’t political. I recommend the darkly funny and engaging series You Suck at Photoshop. Ostensibly, these are 5-6 minute instructional videos made by some Photoshop geek named Donnie who you never see. (They all start: “Hi, my name is Donnie, and you suck at Photoshop.”) But stories emerge as you watch Donnie alter his pictures, and you come to understand that what really sucks in Donnie’s life has nothing to do with you or with Photoshop.

Bookmark this: Donnie’s creator Big Fat Brain is a member of My Damn Channel, a consortium of Internet video artists. Another good way to find new videos is through the Did You See This? blog at Slate V.

Everybody’s going to be talking about the Atlantic article Marry Him by Lori Gottlieb. Gottlieb recommends that women not hold out for Mr. Right, but should marry Mr. Good-Enough while they’re still young and attractive enough to have the opportunity. This article is sure to generate the kind of reactions described by the Crowley quote above. (The “critical word” is settle.) Just for clarity: Mr. Good-Enough isn’t the boyfriend who mistreated you or lacked basic life skills; he’s the guy you never considered as boyfriend material because he was too short or dressed funny or had an irritating laugh.

In the long run, the biggest story of the week was probably that Musharraf’s party got soundly beaten in Pakistan’s parliamentary elections. If the new parliament can get its act together, we may find out how you impeach a president for violating the Constitution.

This week’s challenge: Can anybody (without using Google) recognize where I got the “Fear Strike Out” title?

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Got Death?

February 18, 2008 – 3:48 pm
He that would make his own liberty secure must guard even his enemy from oppression. — Thomas Paine

This weekly series appears every Monday afternoon. It’s old name was “What Impressed Me This Week” on the blog Open Source Journalism.

Fearmongering Finally Fails

I can only hope that a few of you are still alive to read this. You see, the Protect America Act expired at midnight Saturday, so America is now unprotected. The continued survival of our nation has become a matter of luck. In fact, the Heritage Foundation has a ticking clock on its web site so that future generations will know just how long it has been since we all died.

Or something like that.

A little background: The PAA amends the FISA law to increase the government’s power to spy. It was passed in a big panicked rush right before the Congressional recess last August — what might have happened otherwise is too horrible to contemplate — but in a tiny gesture of sanity Congress included a six-month sunset clause, which just expired. The last month or so has seen the most bizarre parliamentary maneuvering. Bush and the Republicans in Congress have threatened vetoes, stalled, filibustered, blocked temporary extensions, and done whatever they could to recreate the situation of August, with Congress up against a hard deadline and no choice other than surrender to the terrorists or give Bush everything he wants — including retroactive immunity for the telecom companies who broke an unspecified number of laws in helping the administration spy on American citizens.

The Senate caved, convincing me that Chris Dodd should be majority leader. But the House refused to be stampeded and adjourned for a week without taking action. This is probably just a meaningless gesture of rebellion before they give in too, but we’ve got to enjoy it while we can.

A lot of people are writing about this situation, so I’ll link to them rather than reproduce their arguments. Scott Horton wrote before it was clear what the House would do. Glenn Greenwald summarizes the issues and skewers all the right-wing fear-mongering. The best case for telecom immunity comes not from the administration but from liberal blogger Kevin Drum.

The administration’s arguments are only impressive if you believe that they would never abuse secrecy or lie to us about the things we aren’t allowed to know. They make lots of assertions, but the supporting details are classified, so if they told us they’d have to shoot us. Director of National Intelligence Mike McConnell wrote in the Washington Post: “Under the Protect America Act, we obtained valuable insight and understanding, leading to the disruption of planned terrorist attacks. Expiration would lead to the loss of important tools our workforce relies on to discover the locations, intentions and capabilities of terrorists and other foreign intelligence targets abroad. Some critical operations … would probably become impossible.” The Balkinization blog characterizes McConnell’s article as: “The fox requests immunity for its previous guarding of the chicken coop.”

The White House put out a myth/fact sheet on the PAA, but again the “facts” are either uncheckable assertions or pure statements of opinion. And, as Brian Beutler points out, sometimes the “fact” is a non-sequitur, because the administration actually can’t deny that the “myth” is true. One “fact” says: “Companies should not be held responsible for verifying the government’s determination that requested assistance was necessary and lawful” — which caused Dan Froomkin to wonder: “But isn’t that the very definition of a police state: that companies should do whatever the government asks, even if they know it’s illegal?”

And then there’s this from President Bush himself:

The American people have got to know that what we did in the past gained information that prevented an attack. And for those who criticize what we did in the past, I ask them, which attack would they rather have not permitted — stopped?.Which attack on America did they — would they have said, well, you know, maybe it wasn’t all that important that we stop those attacks.

So apparently there’s a secret list of terrorist attacks that didn’t happen. We can’t look at the list, but Bush challenges us to pick which of these unknown non-happening events we would have wanted to happen. Because it would have failed not to happen if not for … wait, I’m lost. The whole thing reminds me of this old joke: Auditors are interviewing a big-city mayor about all the relatives he has on the payroll and what they do. When they come to his mother, the mayor explains that she protects the city from tigers. One auditor objects: “But there are no tigers for thousands of miles.” And the mayor says: “Don’t thank me. Thank Mom.”

Who Are They Really?

Back in 2000, the media presented us with two very clear images of the presidential candidates. George W. Bush was a regular guy who’d be fun to hang around with. Al Gore, on the other hand, was a pretentious bore — preachy, self-important, and generally not somebody you’d want to spend any time with.

Looking back, those images seem pretty ridiculous. Bush is a fun guy if you don’t mind him giving you a humiliating nickname like “Turd Blossom” and if you never hint that he might have made a mistake. He’s so charming that all his campaign stops in 2004 had to be invitation-only events. Otherwise hard questions from voters might have evoked the Furious George that we saw in the first Bush-Kerry debate.

Gore, meanwhile, becomes more fascinating all the time. He starts companies. He makes movies. He turned around public opinion on global warming. Already in 2000, you might have read Earth in the Balance and seen a guy with wide-ranging curiosity who used his political status to see a lot of interesting things and talk to the smartest people in the world. I’d love to have a chance to sit down with Gore one-on-one.

The purpose of that history lesson is to wonder: Is the same thing happening now? Are lazy journalists fitting the facts into simplistic narratives that lack any foundation in reality? Yeah, I think they are. Let’s take the remaining candidates one-by-one.

Obama. Here’s the media narrative about Barack Obama: He’s an inspiring speaker, but he lacks substance. His way with words is all fuzzy abstraction that masks his lack of detailed understanding.

The “inspiring speaker” part is true. But I saw him answer questions at a rally last summer, and his command of details is as good as anybody’s. And if you chase the links on the issues page of Obama’s web site, you’ll find quite a bit of detailed policy commitment. His health care plan, for example, is a lot more specific than John McCain’s — even though McCain has been able to exploit the media narrative by saying: “To encourage a country with only rhetoric rather than sound and proven ideas … is not a promise of hope. It is a platitude.”

So Wednesday when Obama gave a speech in Janesville, Wisconsin specifically to outline his economic plan, it should have been a man-bites-dog moment, right? If you had the expertise and resources of, say, the New York Times or the Washington Post, think of the service you could offer your readers: You could examine his proposals in detail, get experts to assess whether they would help anybody, figure out what they’d cost, and so on. Readers aren’t set up to do that kind of analysis for themselves — and neither am I, to tell the truth (at least I provide the links) — but you’re a big news organization. It’s right up your alley.

Well, maybe not. The Post sort of mentioned that Obama had made some economic proposals, but their article was totally focused on the political tactics behind the proposals: the up-coming Wisconsin primary, Clinton’s advantage with working class voters, and on and on. If you want to know what Obama actually proposed, good luck to you. (Matt Yglesias took the Post to task here.) Ditto for the Times: They note that Obama is “adding detail to his oratory“, but they treat “detail” as an ingredient, like salt. You don’t need to know what the details are, just that he’s adding them. And of course, you get a long tactical analysis about why he’s adding details and what he hopes they’ll do for him with certain kinds of voters.

Here’s the upshot: Obama can spell out as much as he wants, but if the Times and the Post are sitting between him and the voters, nothing’s going to get through. And even if you’re a faithful reader of both the Post and the Times, when the guy in the next cubicle at work says: “That Obama — he sounds good, but there’s nothing there” you won’t know enough to argue.

Clinton. In the musical 1776 John Adams doesn’t want his personal unpopularity to sink the cause of independence. So he goes from one member of his committee to the next, looking for someone else to write the proposed Declaration. After several rebuffs, he approaches Robert Livingston.

ADAMS:
Mr. Livingston, maybe you should write it.
You have many friends, and you’re a diplomat.

FRANKLIN: Oh, that word!

ADAMS:
Whereas if I’m the one to do it,
They’ll run their quill pens through it.

CHORUS OF COMMITTEE:
He’s obnoxious and disliked.
Did you know that?

LIVINGSTON: I hadn’t heard.

Today, you’d have to be as diplomatic as Robert Livingston to claim you hadn’t heard this about Hillary Clinton: She’s unlikeable. She’s cold and calculating and doesn’t care about anything but power. Even her supporters don’t like her. Women vote for her because she’s a woman. Men support her because they have something to gain out of the Clintons’ return to power, or because they’re racists who don’t like Obama, or because they’re afraid she’s going to win anyway so they want to get on her good side.

Now, I can’t claim to have spent quality time with Hillary Clinton. But when I did see her in person at a New Hampshire Democratic Party dinner last March, I didn’t find any support for the stereotype. She seemed quite likable to me, and I found one particular part of her message very moving: She talked about all the people who are invisible to the Bush administration, and she promised that as president she would see them.

I’ve talked to some of those older women who are Hillary’s primary base of support. (My mom is one.) You know what? They like her. They don’t just support her because she’s a woman. They support her because they know the kind of crap a woman has to take to succeed in a man’s field. Those women see Hillary sailing through the crap-storm with her head high, and they just admire the heck out of her.

McCain. Clinton supporters often claim that Hillary gets bad coverage because a strong woman threatens the manhood of male pundits like Chris Matthews. They’re missing the bigger story: John McCain gets good coverage because he threatens the manhood of male pundits like Chris Matthews.

I feel something similar myself. Like most of the male talking heads on TV, I live in safety and comfort. My physical courage, my ability to think clearly when threatened, that whole Hemingway grace-under-pressure thing — it’s never really been tested. Given the chance, would I be a hero? Would I scream and faint like a little girl? Nobody knows, least of all me.

The intimidating thing about John McCain is that he’s been tested and he passed. He knows. That gives him an alpha-dog aura that makes untested men want to follow him around like puppies. When he called on me during the question period at his town-hall meeting, I felt a little thrill that I normally don’t. I felt honored. It’s irrational, but very effective.

That’s why McCain’s media narrative is so positive: He’s the straight talker. The maverick. The guy who says what he thinks and follows his conscience.

The truth — and this really shouldn’t be so controversial — is that he’s a politician. Not an outstandingly devious or dishonest one, but still a politician. When his target voters don’t like one of his positions, he changes it or soft-pedals it or somehow makes it go away. Brave New Films put together a collection of his flip-flops. But you know, the striking thing about those waffles and self-contradictions is how ordinary they are. If not for the straight-talk myth, they wouldn’t be noteworthy.

He’s also not that much of a maverick. He has made a few independent noises over the past seven years, but when it comes time to vote he gets in line with all the other Republicans. This week he even backed down on his signature issue: torture. But again, that shouldn’t shock anybody. There are no Republican mavericks. The breed is extinct.

The one downside of McCain’s image — his temper — is also overblown. What strikes me about McCain’s temper is that he gets over it. No campaign in recent memory was as nasty as the one Bush ran against McCain in South Carolina in 2000. But McCain has put it behind him. (A questioner took him to task for this at the town meeting I attended. McCain shot right back: The American people care about issues and getting things done; they don’t want to hear about his ancient feuds.) He made up with Jerry Falwell. He even went back to Vietnam. Try to imagine George W. Bush doing anything similar. If you piss off W, you can go to Hell; he’s done with you. McCain isn’t like that.

The YouTube Election

When they get around to writing the history of YouTube’s influence on politics, they’ll start with the Jim Webb senate race in 2006. And then they’ll say that it was a harbinger of the presidential election of 2008, when political viral video really came into its own.

Just look at all this stuff. Start with the inspirational music video made from Obama’s “Yes We Can” speech. Then look at the parody about McCain. Then look at this other parody about McCain. (Weirdly, when I went there the page had a McCain advertisement.) And then check out the three commercials made by Brave New Films, where ordinary Americans call U.S. Customer Service to try to get the Iraq War charge taken off their monthly bill.

Those are just the beginning. This year will produce an amazing outpouring of political creativity, and overwhelmingly it will favor the Democrats. Why? Well, Erick Erickson, editor of the biggest and most influential conservative blog on the Internet, has it all figured out: Liberals have more free time. You see, conservatives “have families because we don’t abort our kids, and we have jobs because we believe in capitalism.”

That’s got to be it, don’t you think?

Short Notes

Michael Scheuer used to be the head of the CIA’s Bin Laden group, and he still understands terrorist strategy better than any writer I know. In this article, he imagines what Bin Laden must be thinking now: “Thanks be to God, brothers, America is hemorrhaging money and ruining its military by trying to fight al-Qaeda’s mujaheddin wherever they appear — or, more accurately, wherever U.S. officials imagine they appear.”

McCain’s identification with the Surge may have worked this winter in Republican primaries, but next fall will be a different story. I was planning to write something on that theme, but now I don’t have to — Joe Conason did.

New York Governor Eliot Spitzer connects the dots: The states tried to regulate against predatory mortgage lending, and the Bush administration stopped them. Remember that the next time somebody tells you that government regulations are bad for the economy.

One of the best news/comedy sites on the Internet is 23/6. This week Ian Gurvitz tried to imagine the reaction if Jesus came back and entered the presidential race. My favorite reaction came from McCain, who found “blessed are the peacemakers” in one of Jesus’ old speeches and commented: “Sounds like a guy who’s soft on defense, my friends, and I’m not sure this is who we need as commander-in-chief in these troubled times.” And not all the barbs on 23/6 are aimed at Republicans. Check out Clinton Campaign to Replace Clinton.

Patrick Cockburn of the British newspaper The Independent gives an on-the-ground view of post-surge Baghdad. He compares it to Lebanon during the various lulls in its decades-long civil war “when everybody in Beirut rightly predicted that nothing was solved and the fighting would start again. In Iraq the fighting has never stopped, but the present equilibrium might go on for some time.”

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