The Poopyhead Rationale

Lieberman:"I'm running as an independent because the winner was mean!"

The senator said last night he was staying in the race because Mr. Lamont had run a primary campaign of “insults” and “partisan polarizing” that relentlessly blamed Mr. Lieberman for President Bush’s wartime policies, which the senator has supported and defended but also criticized at various points.

Hey hey hey, Goodbye

Well it wasn't a blood bath, but Lieberman's gotta be hurting right about now. I doubt he'll truly understand why he lost this race. He'll blame the blogs, the "virulently anti-semitic far left," anything but his own tone-deafness. I hope that his lack of basic courage prevents him from seriously going for an independent run, but one cannot underestimate his narcissism.

Meanwhile, hurray for Lamont. Onwards to November.

It's Ned Day

Watchin' the polls from the city that employs 99.9% of CT.

Teach Your Children Well

Kids do the darndest things.

Friday Malamute Blogging

"What me spoiled?"

Kodi rarely has to be coaxed to eat in this fashion. He typically employs purely for the sake of attention. As a puppy he was at one point in danger of eating himself to death. A miscommunication on the part of his owners resulted in a week of overfeeding, during which time he became distinctly pearshaped and earned the nickname "Poop Machine." He also effectively wiped out the household supply of plastic bags. It took a while to clue in to this because he ate like he was starving to death. These days he's mellowed out some having been turned on to the wonderful world of people food. Avocado is a particular favorite.

Timebomb Atop the Volcano

Warm fuzzy thoughts heading into the weekend.

Sending a bunch of white supremacists off to Iraq might not be such a good idea.


A decade after the Pentagon declared a zero-tolerance policy for racist hate groups, recruiting shortfalls caused by the war in Iraq have allowed "large numbers of neo-Nazis and skinhead extremists" to infiltrate the military, according to a watchdog organization.

Joe Biden's Dubya Moment

Memo to Joe Biden: The Simpsons is not an accurate reflection of reality (link via Atrios).

Belated Malamute Blogging

This is one from the Kodi archives. In this picture he's behaving relatively well, but trying to get him to accept the leash was kind of interesting. At first he'd simply sit down and howl and refuse to move. Later, when he realized the the leash meant "park" and "playing with dogs," he accepted the leash but insisted on holding part of it in his mouth in an "I'm not being walked, I'm walking you" move.

Stupid

I was going to blog about Al Gore's appearance on The Daily Show last night simply because it was just a cool interview. But I saw this and all the warm fuzzies went away.

Wait! I'm not the one who said that. According to The Washington Post--yes, yes, MSM "douchebags," I know, I know--a new study by two researchers at East Carolina University found that Stewart's cynicism has the effect of making viewers so disgusted with politics on both sides of the aisle that they feel too discouraged to vote. Constant ridicule seems to have the effect of turning the political system into one gigantic self-parodying freak show, with no sign of imminent change or relief.

That could be why all the pre-election talk about Jon Stewart sending his young viewers--though the average age of a "Daily Show" viewer is actually 47--to the polls in great numbers to vote for Kerry was just that--talk. It simply never happened.

So maybe ridicule and invective, though entertaining, and a refreshing alternative to the mainstream media's passivity and reserve, isn't the boon to democracy it's cracked up to be? Anyway, don't despair, and don't get enraged because that's just the bad news about Stewart. The good news is that he's not a fascist.

Atrios points out the both Siegel and the Post mis-represent the study (big surprise there). I haven't really been tuned into the whole blogofascism debate over the last week or so. My dilletante approach to blogging kinds of disqualifies me from weighing in. But it seems to me that Siegel's approach to both blogging and Stewart are part of the same shorsightedness regarding what's happening in this country regarding politics, media and the like.

This insistence within the MSM upon locating the central nerve system of the leftwing blogosphere betrays a certain amount of anxiety over hierarchical structure. And never mind that the invective coming out of rightwing blogs makes us look downright sweet.

Juan Cole describes it thusly:

For all the talk about freedom of speech and individual freedom in the United States, ours is actually a hierarchical society in which most people cannot afford to speak out unless they are themselves independently wealthy. A lot of Americans work for corporations, which would just fire anyone who became so outspoken in public as to begin to affect their company's image. Look at how many bloggers are anonymous! Purveyors of opinion in the mass media, who use their real names, are employed by, or in some way backed by, media moguls. It is fairly easy to depart from the spectrum of acceptable opinion (i.e. acceptable to the three million or so people who have disproprotionate weight in how America is run), and if one does, after a while one is not heard from so much any more. Thus, those attacking Kos work for Martin Peretz and Arthur Shulzberger, Jr., and if they didn't they would not have their current influential perches.

The very wealthy are used to getting their way in US politics and to dominating public discourse, since so much can be controlled at choke points. Journalists can just be fired, editors and other movers and shakers bought or intimidated. Look what happened to MSNBC reporter Ashleigh Banfield, who dared complain about the propaganda in the US new media around the Iraq War. Phil Donohue, who presided over MSNBC's most popular talk show, was apparently fired before the war because General Electric and Microsoft knew he would be critical of it, and did not want to take the heat. Politicians who step out of line can just be unseated by giving their opponents funding (the Supreme Court just made it harder to restrict this sort of thing).

A grassroots communication system such as cyberspace poses a profound challenge to the forces of hierarchy and hegemony in American society. Now anyone with an internet connection and some interesting ideas can potentially get a hearing from the public.

Kos and his community, in short, are at the center of a discourse revolution. Now persons making a few tens of thousands of dollars a year can be read by hundreds of thousands of readers with no mediation from media moguls. The old joke had been that anyone can own a newspaper, it only takes a million dollars (a really old joke, since it would take much more).

The lack of choke points in cyberspace means that people like Kos can't just be fired. How then to shut them up? Why, you attempt to ruin their reputation, as a way of scaring off readers and supporters. This technique, as Billmon points out, does not usually work very well in cyberspace itself, though it can be effective if the blogger moves into a bricks and mortar institutional environment where big money and chokeholds work again. A political party is such an environment.

Cyberspace itself, though, is a distributed system, not a centralized one. That is why the charges against Kos are so silly. In essence, creatures of the old choke-point hegemonies are projecting their own hierarchical system inaccurately on Kos. Of course you wouldn't expect people like Peretz or David Brooks to understand what a distributed information system is, dinosaurs as they are, of both politics and media

Very well put although I doubt it is as simple as misunderstanding the nature of networking in cyberspace. There is also a lack of analytical know-how going on. Siegel looking at Kos and the Kossacks is trying to understand something without really trying to understand it. He makes baseless comparisons and rather than looking at Markos's evolution as a blogger, he chooses to play pscychologist and take a patronizing attitude. Blogs began as sites for discussion and the exchange for information. One of the main reasons I started reading blogs is that they quickly exposed how completely fractured the MSM is at the moment. When somebody with a day job and DSL can take a few moments to do a little research that contradicts something written in the Times or the Post, something has clearly gone wrong.

As for his slam on Stewart, give me a friggin' break. Again, Siegel writes like someone who maybe watched one or two episodes. It's true that part of the Stewart's schtick is the whole are-you-sure-you-want-to-know-what-the-goverment's-up-to-'cause-'it-will-make-you-cry thing. But it's not cynicism. If you watch the show regularly you can't miss the thread of true outrage that runs through many of the reports and interviews. But like I said, Siegel can't take the time.

Friday Malamute Blogging

I'm officially calling for a "Take a Malamute to Work Day" because it's just selfish to keep these bundles of energy and mischief all to ourselves.

Ann Coulter Needs to Be Kicked in the Neck

There is no way to get around it anymore. Ann Coulter is way overdue for a good old-fashioned ass-kicking. I'm actually pretty astounded it hasn't happened yet. Oh there was the failed pie incident. But I'm talking about one of those satisfying knock down drag outs. In fact if were Ann (before I gave the world a break and retired, taking a vow of silence for good measure), I wouldn't make a move without an army of bodyguards, a bulletproof car, and my own private arsenal.

Ann is impossible to humiliate because she doesn't understand the nature of humility. If she did she wouldn't have a career. One cannot humiliate her on an intellectual level because she's too stupid to know when she's been out-argued. Having failed in the realm of ideas, it is now time to move to the realm of fisticuffs. Those of us who have ever faced down a schoolyard bully and lived to tell about it, know what happens in a fight. There is no humility like doing your damndest to try and not go out like a punk. At that moment it doesn't matter how clever or pretty or right you may think you are. All that matters is that the other person is out to beat you up and you either have to put up a good fight or just get beat. And until Ann has to face down someone who seriosly wants to kick her bony ass, she will never understand humility.

It's Just Another Day in the Life of Apes with Ego Trips*

"Ann Coulter Needs to be Kicked in the Neck" has been preeempted for some actual news.

According to Bart Gellman's review of Ron Suskind's new book the following things are true:

• Al-Qaedist Abu Zubaydah was captured in March 2002.
  
• Zubaydah's captors discovered he was mentally ill and charged with minor logistical matters, such as arranging travel for wives and children.
  
• The President was informed of that judgment by the CIA.
  
• Two weeks later, the President described Zubaydah as "one of the top operatives plotting and planning death and destruction on the United States."
  
• Later, Bush told George Tenet, "I said he was important. You're not going to let me lose face on this, are you?" and asked Tenet if "some of these harsh methods really work?"
• The methods -- torture -- were applied.
  
• Then, according to Gellman, "Under that duress, he began to speak of plots of every variety -- against shopping malls, banks, supermarkets, water systems, nuclear plants, apartment buildings, the Brooklyn Bridge, the Statue of Liberty."
  
• At which point, according to Suskind, "thousands of uniformed men and women raced in a panic to each . . . target."

(link via Atrios)
Buy the book.

*Brandon Boyd

More Obama Stuff

Tbogg speaks.

I would buy Obama's deference to leaders in the Democratic party if I felt that were any leaders in the Democratic party (Anyone? Anyone?) but he doesn't seem to want to fill the void and so we end up with a bland parsing pol who spends all of his time trying to not leave anything distinctive on his permanent record...and we already have an Evan Bayh. Personally I'm tired of Democrats who are obsessed with process and talking about how they need to get their message out. There comes a time to decide what you stand for...and then stand for it.

I don't have a horse in the 2008 Presidential election and I'll vote for any Democrat short of the Joe's (Lieberman and Biden), I only have one requirement for my candidate: someone who can win. And for that, and because both parties bases are pretty much set in stone, you need someone who can excite the mushy middle (also known as the "independents") and I don't think that you can get them off the couch them with more mush.

If you want to lead the party, then lead. Otherwise stop wasting my time and sucking the air out of the room...

Word. Obama, contrary to what he seems to think, at this point probably has the least to lose by taking a bold stand on something. Being both near the bottom of the list in the Senate and one of the most popular Democrats out there puts him in a position to take a risk. I understtand wanting to build a record before making waves, but when he Republicans control everything and the casualty rate in Iraq is creeping up to 3,000, there is little time for process and caution. Obama should take a cue from the lukewarm response to Hillary's baby steps onto the campaign floor, another junior senator who could have set the pond and fire and did not.

Okay I'll stop picking on Barack for now. Next up, why hasn't someone punched Ann Coulter in the neck.

Monday Morning Coffee Reading

Krugman

I would like to offer some advice to my fellow pundits: face reality. There are some commentators who long for the bipartisan days of yore, and flock eagerly to any politician who looks "centrist." But there isn't any center in modern American politics. And the center won't return until we have a new New Deal, and rebuild our middle class.

Republican methodology to divide and conquer the middle class, both against itself and against the lower classes, is something that seems to hamstring the Dems on two levels. On one level, they are compelled to counter arguments regarding Gay marriage, etc. thereby entering into an argument they cannot win largely because the problem doesn't really exist in the frist place. On another, some of them (cough Leiberman) are beholden to the same rich constiuency that the Republicans favor. When Democrats run "centrist" campaigns (and notice that it is usually Democrats and not Republicans that make a big show of centrism)they're falling into trap of trying to unite artificially divided constiuencies.

O'Reilly Vs, Stewart (via Atrios)

Responding to a segment on the June 13 broadcast of The Daily Show during which host Jon Stewart satirized O'Reilly's recent trip to Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, O'Reilly suggested that Abu Bakar Bashir -- the extremist religious leader recently released from prison where he was serving time for his role in the 2002 Bali terrorist attacks -- could "bunk with" Stewart "when he comes to the USA." O'Reilly then characterized his own "program" as "serious" -- as opposed to Stewart's "comedy show" -- and asserted that while being "a smart guy," Stewart has taken to pandering to the "[d]opey college kids" who "are gonna watch him."

Bring it on Bee-oo--tch. Seriously, this little feud is already over. O'Reilly's got nothing. If you read the transcript of the show, it sounds like a criticism leveled at Pink Floyd when The Wall was first released. But, hey, if Bill wants to stir shit up with Jon, let him. I have a feeling Jon knew exactly what he was doing when he did that bit about O'Reilly at Gitmo.

Friday Malamute Blogging

Looking at the world sideways.

Is the Bloom off the Rose?

David Sirota has probably one of the best pieces I've read to date on Barack Obama in this week's The Nation. The other night, I found myself in political conversation with a group of well-meaning white liberal types in which the inevitable adjective "well-spoken" was used in reference to Obama. For all that we'd like to believe we are above the racial tokenism of the right, there is a certain similarity in the way both sides treat politicians, cabinet members, etc. of color i.e. extra points for charisma, articulateness, and the like. It's annoying because it smacks of a low-grade racial panic. Oh finally, a black person I don't have to grit my teeth to like.

Obama has managed to get a lot of mileage out of his 2004 Democratic Convention speech, but if Sirota's piece is any indication, the tank is low on gas. Sirota points out that Obama shows himself to be more cautious than not.

Then there is the Iraq War. Obama says that during his 2004 election campaign he "loudly and vigorously" opposed the war. As The New Yorker noted, "many had been drawn initially by Obama's early opposition to the invasion." But "when his speech at the antiwar rally in 2002 was quietly removed from his campaign Web site," the magazine reported, "activists found that to be an ominous sign"--one that foreshadowed Obama's first months in the Senate. Indeed, through much of 2005, Obama said little about Iraq, displaying a noticeable deference to Washington's bipartisan foreign policy elite, which had pushed the war. One of Obama's first votes as a senator was to confirm Condoleezza Rice as Secretary of State despite her integral role in pushing the now-debunked propaganda about Iraq's WMD.


In November Obama's reticence on the war ended. Five days after hawkish Democratic Representative Jack Murtha famously called for a withdrawal, Obama gave a speech calling for a drawdown of troops in 2006. "Those of us in Washington have fallen behind the debate that is taking place across America on Iraq," he said. But then he retreated. On Meet the Press in January Obama regurgitated catchphrases often employed by neoconservatives to caricature those demanding a timetable for withdrawal. "It would not be responsible for us to unilaterally and precipitously draw troops down," he said. Then, as polls showed support for the war further eroding, Obama tacked again, giving a speech in May attacking the war and mocking the "idea that somehow if you say the words 'plan for victory' and 'stay the course' over and over and over and over again...that somehow people are not going to notice the 2,400 flag-draped coffins that have arrived at the Dover Air Force Base."

Sirota freely admits to being vulnerable to the Obama personality spell, referring to is "mesmerizing ability to connect with people." It is true that there is something to be said for personality, but I think that Democratic nostalgia for the cult of Clinton has been overall bad for business. Both Gore and Kerry suffered for not having that "zing" thereby exposing the chinks in the Democratic campaign machine. For Sirota to challenge Obama to be the progressive politician and not just look the part shows a degree of chutzpah.

On truths inconvenient

We saw Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth last night. It's a must see (red rabbit may be posting on this later). What I'll say for now is that it underscores my previous post about the immediate need to define a core progressive position upon the belief that government can and must be used to solve certain problems. To be sure, the film leaves us with a host of things we can do as individuals to reduce our personal greenhouse emissions to zero, but there’s no getting around the fact that our failure to act collectively to address global warming by establishing fuel efficiency standards, limiting greenhouse gas emissions, and ratifying the Kyoto treaty stems from having allowed corporate interests rather than the public good determine national priorities.

Democrats have colluded in bringing about this state of affairs, and Paul Krugman gives us insight into how this happens in his Monday column on the way Republicans rhetorically use the phrase “Some Americans believe” (or alternately “other Americans don’t believe”) to attribute to Democrats all sorts of opinions they do not hold. This is to be expected from the Right, but part of our problem is that we get the same treatment from the left side of the aisle. Among the offenders Krugman cites is our own Senator Obama. Krugman writes:

And when Senator Barack Obama told The New Yorker that Americans "don't believe that the main lesson of the past five years is that America is an evil hegemon," he seemed to be implying that influential members of his party believe just that.

Krugman goes on to note, wryly that some might observe “that the alleged influence of the Some is no more real than the problem of flag-burning, that right-wing propagandists are attacking straw men to divert attention from the Bush administration's failures. And they wonder why people like Mr. Obama are helping these propagandists in their work.”

But, hey, this has been Obama’s m.o. from the outset. His much-ballyhooed keynote address at the Democratic National Convention included the following, “Now, don’t get me wrong. The people I meet -- in small towns and big cities, in diners and office parks -- they don’t expect government to solve all their problems,” implying, of course, that Some members of his party do expect this very thing and that the first battle to be waged is against these wild-eyed “Tax and Spenders” about whom the Republicans have warned us. But the truth is, Democrats since the Reagan era have been so intent on proving themselves not to be the stereotypes of Republican propaganda who believe that government should do everything they have systematically compromised all of the things government can and should do by granting loopholes and concessions to the corporate sector. And all that this has gotten us is a government almost unable to do anything—Grover Norquist, for one, is thrilled . . ..

Go Tell it in Las Vegas, the Yearly Kos, or What's a Progressive Anyway?

Las Vegas sounds like it was an important political milepost. Let's hope it produces a pithy formulation of what makes someone a progressive, namely, the commitment to

(1) use public resources and power to make life better for those who live and work in this country, and (2) reduce dramatically the economic inequality between the few who control most of the nation's wealth and the many who actually create it.

All other issues, including, ending the War, protecting abortion, supporting gay marriage, etc., should orbit around these core committments.

If they don't, then we may as well be moderate Republicans, who famously declare themselves conservative on economic issues but liberal when it comes to social issues--and if you haven't noticed, moderate Republicans are an endangered species these days . . .

Friday Malamute Blogging

Freedom's just another word for trampled flowers and holes in the lawn.

Congratulations, Graduates!

Word of advice: be careful who's got your back.