Wine-side chat on Iran

I learned something else new this weekend: audioblogging. If you click on the arrow next to the right of the label that says "Play this audio post", you can let me know how it sounds.

The audioblog is about the prospects that the Cheney-Bush administration might go to war with Iran. And, yes, that picture at the top is me.

Below is a photo of Mia Maestro. It has nothing whatsoever to do with the audio blog:

A transcript of the audio blog appears below the fold.


Transcript:

This is my first attempt at audioblogging. So I thought I would use it to address the question of going to war with Iran.

I'll start by describing my concerns about this situation. I really do believe, as both John Kerry and our Dear Leader Bush said in one of their Presidential debates in 2004, that nuclear nonproliferation should be the most important foreign policy priority for the United States. So the fact that Iran is moving toward the capability to build a nuclear weapon is a serious concern. The current effort by the European Union, the United States and the UN to get Iran to abandon any such goal is a very important one.

Understanding this whole issue is difficult because in matters of nuclear physics, 99.99% of us or more really are lay people. It's complicated by the fact that there are clearly Republicans, like Pete Hoekstra's House Intelligence Subcommittee, who are willing to deliberately deceive us about the status of Iran's nuclear program.

I made a blog post here at The Blue Voice on Thursday, September the 14th, that talked about how Gregory Schulte, the US Ambassador to the IAEA, the International Atomic Energy Agency, used a claim that that Iran had constructed 164 new centrifuges as a scare tactic. Actually, as I explained there, this means that Iran is still far away from the ability to produce enough uranium for even one nuclear bomb.

And there's no evidence as yet that Iran is producing any weapons-grade uranium at all. The United States shouldn't be making foreign policy based on panicky, worst-case assessments of problems.

But my other big concern with Iran, besides the nonproliferation challenge, is that the Cheney-Bush administration may use Iran's nuclear program as an excuse to launch military strikes on that country. Because that would be a disaster.

Whether someone supports a strike on Iran or not, there's no excuse for not being realistic about likely consequences of such an attack.

Let's start with the fact that it would be a preventive war, which is flat-out illegal in international law. As we've seen again this past week with this thoroughly shameful debate over torture taking place in the Republican-dominated Congress, neither Dick Cheney nor George Bush nor most Republican members of Congress have anything but contempt for international law. But launching such a preventive war against Iran wouldt have significant and far-reaching consequences that are likely to damage American interests. And anyone who believes otherwise is probably taking too much OxyContin.

Next, we have 147,000 American troops in Iraq, at last count, supporting the pro-Iranian, majority-Shi'a government there. If the Cheney-Bush administration bombs Iran, Iran would have maximum incentive to attack the American troops in Iraq and to press their Shi'a allies running the Iraqi government to join them in attacking the Americans.

Another factor is the increased risk of terrorism against American targets. It's difficult these days to tell which "expert on terrorism" to believe the most. But most of them seem to think that Lebanese Hizbullah has a signficant ability to commit terrorist acts worldwide, including in the United States. Hizbullah is a Shi'a organization closely allied with Iran.

The final risk I'll mention here of an American attack on Iran is closely related to the first. If Iranian regulars enter Iraq to fight American troops, other neighboring countries like Turkey and Syria are also more likely to invade to protect their own perceived interests in Iraq. That's not just a theoretical possibility. It's been reported in the press that Turkey has been conducting limited military operations in northern Iraq against the Kurdish PKK guerrilla group already.

There are three major degrees of disaster the United States could encounter in Iraq. One is an insurgency. Another is a civil war. The third is a regional war. We've had the insurgency basically since the invasion began in March 2003. The civil war has been going on at least since the second half of 2005. An American attack on Iran would likely bring on the regional war.

Attacking Iran is a very, very bad idea. For American citizens, we can at least try not to be bamboozled the way virtually all Republicans were over the phony claims of WMDs in Iraq prior to beginning that war. So were far too many Democrats deceived in the same way.

There's no excuse this time around.

Boobs and liberals and sin, oh my! (Updated)

It looks like I learned how to put photos in Blogger posts at just the right time.

If there are any Republicans out there that still somehow manage to think of yourselves as "libertarians" and just don't want to believe no matter what that the Christian Right is more and more calling the shots in your Party, you might want to check out the latest Republican objection to Democrats.

Some of them, it seems, wear clothes in public that fail to hide the fact that they have breasts! You can start with this 09/16/06 post by Duncan "Atrios" Black and go from there.

But, let's admit that sometimes even Republicans have a point. For instance, someone needs to put a burka on this young lady, and quick! I mean, think of the wicked, sinful thoughts that seeing photos like this could cause in an innocent young man!

Or Latina telenovela star Diana Osorio. Sure, she's a little more modest than that shameless hussy above. But, come on, her dress not only let's us realize that she has breasts, you can actually see part of them!

And do you know how many poor innocent boys - and maybe girls, too - no, let's not even think about that! - have gone blind just from looking at pictures like this one of Jennifer O'Dell from The Lost World TV series?

I mean, Arthur Conan Doyle's original story didn't even have female lead characters. It was all just guys out there enjoying each other's company with no sinful female breasts distracting them from all the important guy things they had to do. You know, fighting dinosaurs and stuff. What is the world coming to?!

[Update 10/18/06: I just wanted to mention that Jessica, the liberal blogger who Republican bloggers were attacking for having breasts, posts at Fiministing, and it seems to be a good blog. David Neiwert also weighs in on this particular blogosphere dustup.]

Does this make any sense?

I mean, even from a blame-the-Democrats-for-being-soft-on-terrorism-any-way-you-can perspective? Bush says his CIA torture program is absolutely totally critical to avoiding new terrorist attacks on America. You know, the terrorist attacks we're supposedly preventing by fighting The Terrorists in Iraq so we don't have to fight them here: GOP divisions widen over war by Zachary Coile San Francisco Chronicle 09/16/06. Coile reports:

Bush, in a televised news conference Friday, intensified the fight when he warned that he might shut down programs he said are necessary to break up terrorist plots if Congress continues to reject his legislative proposals for interrogating enemy combatants and putting them on trial.

But the Republican president didn't mention that his plans are being blocked by three leaders of his own party: Sen. John McCain of Arizona, a prisoner of war for six years in Vietnam; Sen. John Warner of Virginia, a former Navy secretary; and Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, who was a military lawyer for the Air Force.

I'm still not convinced those three are serious about restraining the Cheney-Bush torture program. If they are, you have to wonder why they haven't done something effective to put a stop to it long before now. The "McCain Torture Bill" was a bad joke. Still, if they've decided to act like responsible legislators, that's fine with me. But I don't think they deserve any special credit for opposing torture, the minimum Congress should have been doing from the start.

You can find the full transcript and a video of Dear Leader Bush's press conference defending torture here: Press Conference of the President 09/15/06.

Not My President

Hello again. I am supposed to be “on hiatus.” In fact, I think I may have even thrown in the towel on political posts, awash as I am in the world of hopeful entrepreneurialism. However…

I caught a G W Bush snippet on Keith Olbermann’s “Countdown” Friday evening. Something about a Rose Garden press conference to advance his call to “redefine” certain articles of the Geneva Convention…

And, I have to reassert…I am SO anti-Bush it hurts. I’m sorry….the man is an idiot. I cannot stand to watch him make “off the cuff” remarks for even ten seconds. He has no idea what he is talking about; that is immediately evident at any press conference where he actually responds, or attempts to respond, to questions put to him directly by reporters. Who does he think he is kidding with his chummy banter with the White House Press Corps? How many people are taken in by that, “I’m a regular guy, but I just happen to be the leader of the free world” persona he has cultivated?

I don’t know about anybody else. But watching a George W. Bush press conference scares the living shit out of me. And disgusts me beyond endurance.

Excuse me. I have to go break something.

Dog bites man: Republicans lie to start a war

The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has been harshing on the phony Republican propadanda report from the House Intelligence Subcommittee on Intelligence Policy: IAEA says Congress report on Iran's nuclear capacity is erroneous and misleading by Dan Glaister Guardian 09/15/06. Glaister reports:




Gratuitous Shakira photo

The UN's nuclear watchdog has attacked the US Congress for what it termed an "erroneous, misleading and unsubstantiated" report on Iran's nuclear programme.

In a letter to the Republican chairman of the House of Representatives' intelligence committee, a senior director of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) said the report was "incorrect" in its assessment that Iran had made weapons-grade uranium at a site inspected by the agency. Instead, the letter said, the facility had produced only small amounts of uranium, which were below the level necessary for weapons. ...

While the IAEA noted five major errors in the report, intelligence officials told the Washington Post that it contained a dozen assertions that were either wrong or impossible to substantiate.

See also: U.N. Inspectors Dispute Iran Report By House Panel: Paper on Nuclear Aims Called Dishonest by Dafna Linzer Washington Post 09/14/06.

What it's come to

Josh Marshall looks at the current torture debate in Congress in this 09/15/06 post and tries to focus on the practical politics, setting aside for a moment the Constitutional and rule-of-law issues.

I first read these two paragraphs and started to feel outraged. Then I realized he's describing the reality of what we face today with our neo-segregationist, Christian-Right-ified, authoritarian Republican Party:

I don't pretend that it's a clear political shot to argue, in a highly polarized electorate, that there are certain rights we should afford to anyone in our custody, no matter how bad they may be.

If there's some division over a president who wants to sully our national honor by enshrining torture as national policy, I don't think there's much division over a would-be torturer-in-chief who's so feckless that he can't even get his bills through congress - and this while he's twiddling his thumbs as Iraq goes to hell.

The Cheney-Bush torture policy not only shows us how far today's Republican Party has gotten from supporting the rule of law and democratic institutions. It also shows us what sort of Christian morality the Christian Right stands for.

Thanks to that crew, we now have news like this: A Defining Moment for America: The president goes to Capitol Hill to lobby for torture Washington Post 09/15/06.

Is Schwarzenegger a "compassionate conservative"?

I remember reading the late John Kenneth Galbraith talking about how "tax revolts" in America occur. As he put it, every few years some young reporter goes out and talks to people in the heartland, or somewhere. After a while, he makes the startling discovery that people of means would prefer not to pay taxes! He regards this as a surprising new phenomenon and starts writing about the brewing tax revolt out there.

A couple of recent articles by Ezra Klein reminded me of that. Because he seems to have discovered "compassionate conservatism" as a likely Republican response to the fact that a lot of their base voters are not exactly country club regulars or trust-fund babies.

One is an op-ed: The Wrong Apology From Schwarzenegger by Ezra Klein Los Angeles Times 09/15/06

Supposedly a partisan liberal Democrat, Klein's comments on Schwarzenegger's "Latino blood/black blood" remark are a variety of, "A plague on both your houses."

In other words, he conforms to the media script that quickly became standard, and which basically says, Schwarzenegger made an off-color comment and he apologized. But he's a blockhead and a groper, so what did you expect? It's no big deal. But that naughty, naughty Angelides campaign went so far as to criticize Schwarzenegger for it. How low into the gutter can they go?

Klein's version begin with a memorbable opening paragraph:

Am I the only one who misses the good ol' days, when California politics were wacky rather than merely depressing? The scrum of porn stars, child actors, Silicon Valley executives, action heroes and ambitious pols who vied to replace Gov. Gray Davis may have been a bit embarrassing, but it was also gloriously democratic, chaotic and hopeful.

But it goes downhill after that.


He continues:

Compare that to the latest iteration of our quadrennial reality show "Who Wants to Run the Largest State in the Union?" It looked, from the previews, like a fascinating contest. Unable to match Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's flash, Democrats would overwhelm him with substance in the form of state Treasurer Phil Angelides. Nerd vs. Jock - it would be high school all over again.

Angelides is a wonk's wonk, a gangly, earnest lefty who pioneered the investment of state pension funds in inner-city development and socially responsible companies. In a Democratic Party attempting to acclimate to an age of concentrated wealth and mega-corporations, he seemed likely to be one of the pols creating a new paradigm for responsible populism.

By midseason, however, it was clear something had gone terribly wrong. Unable to attract attention for anything positive or inspiring, Angelides has fallen back on a steady stream of ineffectual but ugly attacks on Schwarzenegger. His website features a photo of Schwarzenegger lounging around with Vice President Dick Cheney. And now there's the frenzy over whether his campaign hacked into the governor's computers to access an audio file of Schwarzenegger musing that a combination of black and Latino blood accounts for Cathedral City Republican Assemblywoman Bonnie Garcia's "hot" personality.

Gosh, that Ezra Klein's got a Principled Position from above the fray, doesn't he? He was hoping for "responsible populism" (whatever the heck that might be) from Angelides. Instead, Angelides, oh my, criticized Schwarzenegger for blatantly racist comments. (Klein doesn't seem to have caught on to the "non-apology apology" schtick yet.) Oh golly, oh gosh, instead of a Responsible Populist he's an old meany who criticized his opponent!

Also, my impression of Angelides image was that he is kind of a reassuring banker type. Klein, on the other hand - again, Klein's supposedly a liberal Democrat - in the quote above calls Angelides "a wonk's wonk, a gangly, earnest lefty". A "gangly, earnest lefty"? I could have made a hundred guesses at which politician that describes and Phil Angelides would not have been one of them.

I immediately connected this piece in my mind with an article of his in the current American Prospect (09/12/06 issue): The Rise of the Republicrats.

He actually does a good job in that one with some careful research defining the frustrating (for Democrats) reality that many people who vote Republican are getting royally screwed by Republican policies:

Evidence for this change in the republican [sic] coalition came with the release of the 2005 Pew Typology Survey, a comprehensive polling project conducted by the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press. Pew’s political typology studies, conducted in 1987, 1994, 1999, and 2005, sort the electorate into homogenous groups based on values, political beliefs, and party affiliation. The trends are telling: In 1987 and 1994, the Republican Party relied on two groups, Moralists and Enterprisers, the former emphasizing social conservatism, the latter small-government conservatism.

But the 1999 study noticed the emergence of a surprising third group: Populist Republicans. These are low-income and economically insecure Republicans who favor strong government regulation, entitlement aid, and moral enforcement; are largely centered in the South; and attend church regularly. By 2005, this group had solidified into Pro-Government Conservatives, and proven itself more than a momentary statistical artifact. Fully 80 percent of Pro-Government Conservatives believe the government must do more to help the needy, even if it means going into debt. More than 60 percent believe that environmental regulations are worth the cost, 83 percent fear the power corporations have amassed, and 66 percent believe government regulation is necessary to protect the public interest. Most tellingly, only 29 percent report that “paying the bills is not generally a problem,” as opposed to 88 percent of the Social Conservatives (the updated name the study gave the Moralists) and Enterprisers. That financial insecurity, more so than anything else, may explain their unwillingness to see the safety net shredded. ...

He then brushes up against a long-familiar reality, but seems to think it's a new discovery:

The Democrats may also gain from the shifting interests of a second group: Social Conservatives. While distinct for the typology’s purposes, these voters share the Pro-Government Conservatives’ beliefs about regulation and corporate power, with 88 percent fearing Big Business’s influence and 58 percent agreeing that regulation is necessary to safeguard the public interest. And large majorities of both Pro-Government Conservatives and Social Conservatives support the government guaranteeing health care (even if it requires raising taxes), raising the minimum wage, and repealing either all or some of the Bush tax cuts. Many of these voters are recent recruits to the GOP, absorbed during the Southern realignment of the past 40 years, during which once-monolithic Democratic control of all levels of government has ceded to a reality in which more than 50 percent of state houses, 60 percent of governor’s mansions, 90 percent of the South’s senators, and more than 60 percent of their counterparts in the House.

Let's see, there was a Southern realignment that made the Deep South (Texas, too) a Republican stronghold. What, what, what could it be that makes those voters want to vote for Halliburton Republicans?

Here's a clue: White people. Fundamentalist and Pentecostal Christians. White people who are more worried about the threat of Evil Negroes taking over than about health care. White Fudamentalists whose preachers keep telling them that Liberals are the agents of Satan straight from Hail. They vote Republican.

Not noticing this aspect of things, Klein proceeds to the logical argument that the Republicans will have to embrace more Big Government for popular social programs. The dedication that Bush and his Republicans have shown to phasing out Social Security also seems to have slipped by him for the moment.

He's discovered "compassionate conservatism", which is what Republicans use around election time to express to pretend their retrogade policies are damaging the interests of ordinary working people - including white ones.

It's not exactly a new approach, though the labels differ. One of Franklin Roosevelt's more famous speech is a campaign speech to the Teamsters Union of 09/23/44 (an audio file is also available there). It's mainly remembered for its humorous line about FDR's Scottish terrier Fala, and is commonly called "the Fala speech". The Fala part is this:

These Republican leaders have not been content with attacks on me, or my wife, or on my sons. No, not content with that, they now include my little dog, Fala. Well, of course, I don't resent attacks, and my family doesn't resent attacks, but Fala does resent them. You know, Fala is Scotch, and being a Scottie, as soon as he learned that the Republican fiction writers in Congress and out had concocted a story that I had left him behind on the Aleutian Islands and had sent a destroyer back to find him - at a cost to the taxpayers of two or three, or eight or twenty million dollars- his Scotch soul was furious. He has not been the same dog since. I am accustomed to hearing malicious falsehoods about myself - such as that old, worm-eaten chestnut that I have represented myself as indispensable. But I think I have a right to resent, to object to libelous statements about my dog.

He also noted of the Republicans and their seeming conversion to the New Deal:

We all know that certain people who make it a practice to depreciate the accomplishments of labor — who even attack labor as unpatriotic — they keep this up usually for three years and six months in a row. But then, for some strange reason they change their tune - every four years - just before election day. When votes are at stake, they suddenly discover that they really love labor and that they are anxious to protect labor from its old friends.

I got quite a laugh, for example - and I am sure that you did — when I read this plank in the Republican platform adopted at their National Convention in Chicago last July:

"The Republican Party accepts the purposes of the National Labor Relations Act, the Wage and Hour Act, the Social Security Act and all other Federal statutes designed to promote and protect the welfare of American working men and women, and we promise a fair and just administration of these laws."

You know, many of the Republican leaders and Congressmen and candidates, who shouted enthusiastic approval of that plank in that Convention Hall would not even recognize these progressive laws if they met them in broad daylight. Indeed, they have personally spent years of effort and energy-and much money - in fighting every one of those laws in the Congress, and in the press, and in the courts, ever since this Administration began to advocate them and enact them into legislation. That is a fair example of their insincerity and of their inconsistency.

The whole purpose of Republican oratory these days seems to be to switch labels. The object is to persuade the American people that the Democratic Party was responsible for the 1929 crash and the depression, and that the Republican Party was responsible for all social progress under the New Deal.

Now, imitation may be the sincerest form of flattery - but I am afraid that in this case it is the most obvious common or garden variety of fraud.

Of course, it is perfectly true that there are enlightened, liberal elements in the Republican Party [1944 was a long time ago!], and they have fought hard and honorably to bring the Party up to date and to get it in step with the forward march of American progress. But these liberal elements were not able to drive the Old Guard Republicans from their entrenched positions.

Can the Old Guard pass itself off as the New Deal?

I think not.

We have all seen many marvelous stunts in the circus but no performing elephant could turn a hand-spring without falling flat on his back. (my emphasis)

And speaking of criticizing the opposition, I don't think FDR would have fit Ezra Klein's notion of a Responsible Populist. In that same speech, he refers to a contemporary foreign leader in a way that these days we call Godwin's Law:

The opposition in this year has already imported into this campaign a very interesting thing, because it is foreign. They have imported the propaganda technique invented by the dictators abroad. Remember, a number of years ago, there was a book, Mein Kampf, written by Hitler himself. The technique was all set out in Hitler's book - and it was copied by the aggressors of Italy and Japan. According to that technique, you should never use a small falsehood; always a big one, for its very fantastic nature would make it more credible - if only you keep repeating it over and over and over again. (my emphasis)

FDR was a bit more intimately acquainted with the politics of the Second World War than Rummy or the 101st Fighting Keyboarders.

He also observed:

But perhaps the most ridiculous of these campaign falsifications is the one that this Administration failed to prepare for the war that was coming. I doubt whether even Goebbels would have tried that one. For even he would never have dared hope that the voters of America had already forgotten that many of the Republican leaders in the Congress and outside the Congress tried to thwart and block nearly every attempt that this Administration made to warn our people and to arm our Nation. Some of them called our 50,000 airplane program fantastic. Many of those very same leaders who fought every defense measure that we proposed are still in control of the Republican party - look at their names— were in control of its National Convention in Chicago, and would be in control of the machinery of the Congress and of the Republican party, in the event of a Republican victory this fall. (my emphasis)

Say what? You mean it was the Republicans who didn't understand the nature of the threat from Hitler? Oh, no! What we will tell the OxyContin crowd?

Air America To Declare Bankruptcy?

Think Progress says Air America Radio (AAR) is filing for major restructuring on Friday. Right wingers are already celebrating, even though AAR sent Think Progress a response denying the rumors.

Bankruptcy, as anyone with the most basic financial knowledge knows, doesn't necessarily mean you're kaput. Corporations reorganize all the time, at times coming out of it stronger than before.

AAR is doing some major programming changes : Jerry Springer will now be on syndication with Sam Seder taking his slot, while Rachel Maddow whose morning show will be replaced by The Young Turks will take Sam's slot in the evenings. Hardly the move of a company going under.

As for right wingers who think AAR's woes mean progressive radio is dead, think again. There is obviously a market for liberal talk which even radio giant Clear Channel -- hardly a liberal outfit -- can't ignore, as evidenced by its own liberal lineup that includes the highly rated Ed Schultz and Stephanie Miller. As Think Progress also pointed out, Clear Channel just announced a partnership with Center for American Progress and MSS, Inc. to search for the next Progressive Talk Radio Star.

This goes to show that AAR's problems aren't due to lack of demand but more due to not getting their act together. There was the poor way they handled the programming rigmarole with Mark Maron and Mike Malloy; Hoffmania also points to their "buy one, take all" syndication requirements in the beginning that was hard on affiliates.

There were also the financing and distribution missteps along the way. Radio is a tough business, even with a ready market. It's going to be an uphill struggle if one doesn't have deep pockets that can sustain losses for the first few years, and that's what's mainly ailing AAR.

AAR reminds me of our neighborhood small-time, family-owned sushi bar which toiled for months building a clientele, only to be swallowed by a bigger, savvier competitor which reaped the rewards of all their hard but hit and miss startup work. Hopefully, AAR can get it right this time around or Clear Channel will take it all.

Just when you thought you were safely on the road to Hail

From The Patriot Pastors’ Electoral War Against the ‘Hordes of Hell’ (People For the American Way Foundation, the NAACP, and the African American Ministers Leadership Council ) August 2006:

A new generation of Religious Right leaders is turning conservative churches into political machines for far-right Republican candidates with rhetoric that might make Pat Robertson blush. Christians may hold the most powerful political offices in the country, but to these pastors, Christians are on the verge of being thrown into jail for professing their faith. Political opponents aren’t just wrong, they are the "hordes of hell" and the "forces of darkness." Notably, high-level Republican officials aren't trying to distance themselves from such rhetoric. Far from it. They're embracing the self-proclaimed "Christocrats" and counting on a new wave of aggressive politics-from-the-pulpit to win elections. In Texas, a group is giving the governor organized support from pastors motivated to help his re-election campaign. In Pennsylvania, a nascent group seeks to do the same for their embattled senator. And in Ohio, the candidate anointed by the "Patriot Pastors" – Secretary of State Ken Blackwell – is the Republican gubernatorial nominee.

... Candidates for public office are judged either godly or tools of Satan depending on their adherence to the pastors’ unforgiving agendas – not only on traditional Religious Right "social" issues such as criminalizing abortion and stripping gay Americans of legal rights, but also on a wide range of economic policies that would limit the government's ability to pursue the common good. Patriot Pastor leaders embrace tax cuts, elimination of the minimum wage, and even doing away with environmental and worker safety regulations on industry. ...

The "Patriot Pastor" movement is predicated on a particular vision of American politics: (1) that America is an explicitly Christian nation that should endorse sectarian policies, and (2) that this Christian America – and Christianity itself – are under attack from powerful forces in politics, possibly in league with Satan. (my emphasis)

This report focuses in particular on Patriot Pastor operations in Ohio and Texas, which are regarded as important models for Christian nationalist groups in other states.


In The Paranoid Style in American Politics (1965), historian Richard Hofstadter wrote of politically conservative Christian fundamentalists:

People who share this outlook have a disposition to interpret issues of secular politics as though they were solely moral and spiritual struggles. They are less concerned with the battle against communism in the world theater than they are with the alleged damage it does to politcs and morals at home. The cold war serves as a constant source of recriminations about our moral and material failure, but as an objective struggle in the arena of world politics it is less challenging to them than it is as a kind of spiritual wrestling match with the minions of absolute evil, who, as is so often the case with Satanic powers, exercise an irresistible attractiveness. (my emphasis)

This recent People for the American Way report is a reminder that the Christian Right of 2006 is far more powerful - but just as given to fanatical takes on politics - as some of their parents and grandparents were in 1965:

[Rod] Parsley [Ohio], [Laurence] White [Texas], [Russell] Johnson [Ohio], and [Rick] Scarborough [Texas] are in many ways the next generation of the Religious Right movement, which has grown dramatically in the past two decades from fringe status to being perhaps the dominant partner in the Republican coalition. They make no bones about manipulating an atmosphere of resentment over a feverish persecution narrative, and they do not hesitate to mobilize churches in direct electoral politics - the latest stage in the evolution of the Religious Right, and potentially far more effective than interest-group lobbying. (my emphasis)

Mainstreaming the radical right's concepts

There are different kinds of "mainstreaming". As high school kids learn in their civic classes, third parties in America tend to fade out because when they start getting significant support, the two major parties start addressing their issues. There's enough truth in the idea that it's not totally misleading.

David Neiwert is one writer who pays attention to the ways in which not just particular issues, e.g., illegal immigration, are picked up, but the way in which radical-right framing of a problem and the proposed solutions regularly migrate from the far-right gutter to today's authoritarian Republican Party.

I was reminded of this today when I came across this blog post from our friend Brother Al: When Tolerance Doesn't Mean Toleration 09/0706.

Brother Al has discovered that a Jewish Marxist, the "New Left" philosopher Herbert Marcuse of the famous Frankfurt School, is a major source of what the Republicans sneeringly calling "political correctness", by which they mean liberal ideas that they themselves consider politically *in*correct. That particular equation of "politically correct" and "things I disagree with" could be an example of Freud's observation that words often take on opposite meanings. Maybe also of particular clinical phenomena that would interest Freud or other psychologists. But I digress.


Here's what Brother Al writes:

Forty years ago, the radical philosopher Herbert Marcuse penned an essay entitled "Repressive Tolerance." In that essay Marcuse offered what has now become a familiar argument about tolerance - all opinions and belief systems should be tolerated, except those that are not uniformly tolerant.

In other words, only liberal positions and belief systems were to be tolerated, since "repressive" beliefs did not deserve toleration. So much for tolerance in toleration.

Marcuse, who died in 1979, must be smiling at the statements offered by an influential Unitarian Universalist minister. Responding to Sam Harris's book, *The End of Faith*, and his proposal that all religious belief systems are inherently dangerous, this minister proposed that religious liberty should be extended only to liberal belief systems ...

He goes on to quote Rev. Dr. William R. Murry saying:

I get a little impatient with the concept that we should tolerate all religions because people are entitled to their own beliefs. If a religion is based on ignorance and irrationality and totalitarianism, there is no need to stand aside and pretend that that's OK. What I would say about tolerance is that we cannot tolerate intolerance.

I actually take an interest in Marcuse's work, which is better known and, in my impression, better published in the German-speaking world than in America, though a number of his books are still in print here (One-Dimensional Man, Eros and Civilization, An Essay on Liberation, The Aesthetic Dimension: Toward A Critique of Marxist Aesthetics [something tells me Brother Al hasn't read that one], Reason and Revolution: Hegel and the Rise of Social Theory , Counterrevolution and Revolt). Various collected papers have been published over the last decade or so, too.

Earlier this summer, I did a series of posts at Old Hickory's Weblog on the 1965 book of three essays in which Marcuse's "Repressive Tolerance" was first published, *A Critique of Pure Tolerance*. It also included essays by Robert Paul Wolff and Barrington Moore, Jr.

Those posts provide a look at how far off base that Brother Al is in his characterization of Marcuse's essay. What he argued was that the processes and class structure of American society produce conditions in which the *forms* of tolerance are preserved - with some glaring exceptions - while the critical substance and value of tolerance to society is actually neutralized. It's an argument that actually requires some thought and so is not easily reduced to a catch-phrase on a bumper-sticker.

I've also posted before at Old Hickory's Weblog about how this particular notion has made the journey from white-supremacist fringe to "respectable" conservative opinion: Conservatives can be strange 10/04/05. I'll illustrate here with some different material.

I'm generally reluctant to link to hate-sites. But since the point of this post is how an idea like this migrates virtually undiluted from the far-right to respectable Repbulicanism, it's hard to avoid it. In the final sentence of this article from the neo-Confederate, white-supremacist American Renaissance magazine (via some rightwing blog), The Origins Of "Racism": The Curious Beginnings Of A Useless Word by Sam Francis American Renaissance Sept 1995:

It is time that the enemies of racial, national, and cultural consciousness like Hirschfeld and the Frankfurt School cease to be able to claim a monopoly on rationality and sanity and that the obsessions and motivations that seem to shape their own ideologies and political behavior be subjected to the same scrutiny they apply to the societies and peoples whom their thinking could destroy.

Neiwert describes Sam Francis as "the late neo-Confederate who had a habit of writing for white-supremacist organs like the Occidental Review."

A version of this from another hate site: What Is the Frankfurt School? by Eleanor Sixth Column blog 03/28/06. At this writing, the site includes a sidebar, "Here's to the Founding Gringos of the United State of America!" This is the kind of site where you feel you've been slimed when you read it.

Actually, standards are so sloppy there, that the article is apparently by one Gerald Atkinson, "What is the Frankfurt School?" 08/01/99:

...Who in America today is at work destroying our traditions, our family bonds, our religious beginnings, our reinforcing institutions, indeed, our entire culture? What is it that is changing our American civilization?...

Just such a core group did, indeed, exist. That is, history identifies a small group of German intellectuals who devised concepts, processes, and action plans which conform very closely to what Americans presently observe every day in their culture. Observations, such as those made in this series of essays, can be directly traced to the work of this core group of intellectuals. They were members of the Frankfurt School, formed in Germany in 1923. They were the forebears of what some proclaim as 'cultural Marxism,' a radical social movement that has transformed American culture. It is more commonly known today as 'political correctness.'

'Cultural Marxism' and 'critical theory' are concepts developed by a group of German intellectuals, who, in 1923 in Germany, founded the Institute of Social Research at Frankfurt University. The Institute, modeled after the Marx-Engels Institute in Moscow, became known as the Frankfurt School. In 1933, when the Nazis came to power in Germany, the members of the Frankfurt School fled to the United States. While here, they migrated to major U.S. universities (Columbia, Princeton, Brandeis, and California at Berkeley). These intellectual Marxists included Herbert Marcuse, who coined the phrase, 'make love, not war,' during the anti-Vietnam War demonstrations.

* By promoting the dialectic of 'negative' criticism, that is, pointing out the rational contradictions in a society's belief system, the Frankfurt School 'revolutionaries' dreamed of a utopia where their rules governed. "Their Critical Theory had to contain a strongly imaginative, even utopian strain, which transcends the limits of reality." Its tenets would never be subject to experimental evidence. The pure logic of their thoughts would be incontrovertible. As a precursor to today's 'postmodernism' in the intellectual academic community, "...it recognized that disinterested scientific research was impossible in a society in which men were themselves not yet autonomous...the researcher was always part of the social object he was attempting to study." This, of course, is the concept which led to the current fetish for the rewriting of history, and the vogue for our universities' law, English literature, and humanities disciplines - deconstruction...

There's lots more drivel along those lines, although "Eleanor" does get around to naming Marcuse as one of these villains. Also remember when reading stuff in this paticular kind of sewer that they often use "German" as a euphemism for "Jewish". Why, I'm not sure. The racist fringe tends to have their own vocabulary, e.g., "macaca", although Virginia Sen. George Allen has now mainstreamed that one, as well.

Also, keep in mind that sites like this are even more fact-free zones than FOX News. The idea that Marcuse invented the phrase "Make Love, Not War" is a new one to me, and almost certainly untrue; not that it much matters either way, it's just that rightwing Republicans are obsessed with "culture war" images of the 1960s.

Getting back to Brother Al's post, it's a sign of the level of scholarship in fundamentalist seminaries that the president of a leading Southern Baptist seminary like Brother Al is pimping such pseudo-scholarship. Neiwert has a good post (Multiculturalism under fire Orcinus blog 01/20/03) in which he argues that if there's an identifiable intellectual who can be credited with originating the concept of multiculturalism, it would be anthropologist Franz Boas. Niewert reminds us that the conservative jihad against "multiculturalism" in America is identified with "the return of white nationalism".

Aside from the weirdo ideological associations involved with the now-Republican notion of the Frankfurt School as the godfathers of multiculturalism/"political correctness", it's also historically very questionable. Also keep in mind that for the Republican political paranoids, "multiculturalism" is a repressive ideology that has resulted in the persecution of the pore conservative white folks, and a Jewish "war on Christianity (and Christmas)". Neiwert cites this paper, Race, Pluralism and the Meaning of Difference by Kenan Malik New Formations Spring 1998, as giving a good account of the intellectual development of the concept.

Brother Al's post also illustrates a couple of other things which make the whiny-white-folks discourse often hard to decipher by those not familiar with it. For instance, he seems to be relying on some obscure definitions of common words, as in the title, "When Tolerance Doesn't Mean Toleration". What is the difference between "tolerance" and "toleration" he's referring to? Beats me.

Also, he offers us this conclusion which is at least as obscure as an explanation of why Ezekiel 38 directs the Cheney-Bush administration to sell cluster bombs to Israel:

True toleration exists when all persons are free to express their own deepest beliefs and to argue for the truthfulness and superiority of their beliefs, while respecting the rights of all others to do the same. This is chartered pluralism - an honest exchange of ideas, beliefs, and arguments in the public square - not ideological pluralism that denies that truth can be found, or the false tolerance that tolerates only what it likes.

It seems that in Brother Al's linguistic universe, "toleration" is good but "tolerance" is bad.

And has anyone reading this ever encountered the phrase "chartered pluralism" before? I'm no First Administration scholar. But I've read a fair amount about the history of democracy and free speech issues. And I really don't recall encoutering this phrase before. (If this article by Eduardo J. Echeverria is to be believed, Nature and Grace: The Theological Foundations of Jacques Maritain's Public Philosophy Journal of Markets and Morality Fall 2001, it's a concept based on the ideas of the Catholic thinkers Maritain and John Courtney Murray.)

These weird word games facilitate the approach Brother Al takes in this post in criticizing the Sam Harris book, which is to blur the differences between tolerance as a political/legal concept, tolerance as social practice and intellectual tolerance in the context of critical thinking. And blurring those differences is a standard feature of the "Christians in America are persecuted" schtick.

In this case, I first thought from Brother Al's brief description that what Harris was discussing was how more liberal or moderate Christians should relate to Christian fundamentalists. Actually, a quick look at the book at Border's showed me that Harris' book is an atheist pamphlet aimed at a general readership. His main goal is to make the standard atheist argument that religious claims have no truth-value of any significance and that the social functione of religion is clearly more negative than positive. A look through the opening and concluding chapters and consulting the index didn't turn up any references to wanting to abolish freedom of religion, though. (It's specifically William Murry that Brother Al quotes and characterizes what he said as wanted to abolish religious freedom.)

In any case, it's worth remembering that Christian Right Republicans tend to code any kind of criticism of their religious views or practices as a call for governmental suppression and persecution.

Although it's not Harris' focus, it's pretty clear from the quote Brother Al gave that William Murry was focusing on the challenges that fundamentalism does present for ecumenical-minded Christians: how does an ecumenical Christian theology regard rigidly-exclusionary Christian fundamentalism? Do we ignore their theological ideas? Try to argue against them on theological grounds? Argue only on the basis of real-world effects of policies favored by those who advocate theological persepctives like "premillenial dispensationalism"?

How does that extend to official church life? To personal attitudes toward individual fundamentalists? How difficult this social dimension can be is discussed in several books I've read recently, including Jimmy Carter's Our Endangered Values: America's Moral Crisis (2005) and two books by Fisher Humphreys: Fundamentalism [with Philip Wise (2004) and The Way We Were (2002). All three of these books deal with the real-life battles within the Southern Baptist Convention between fundamentalists and "moderate" evangelicals.

In light of Christian Right hostility to science, it's particularly ironic - and misleading - when Brother Al says he opposes "not ideological pluralism that denies that truth can be found, or the false tolerance that tolerates only what it likes". The Christian Right's current posture on issues like creationism is to demand that scientists pretend to accept crackpot notions like that *as science*. Brother Al and his ideological shipmates believe *scientific* truth can be found in the Christian Scirptures, as interpreted by inspired individuals like Brother Al, of course. Intellectual tolerance in science means that realistic arguments that are consistent with scientific methods and the current state of knowledge should be considered. It doesn't mean that scientists should accept any fool idea just because religious lobbyists support it.

In the end, Brother Al's post is a "respectably" worded Christian Right version of the white supremacist/John Birch notion: The Jew Commies are coming to git us!!

Goodbye Ann, I'm Gonna Miss You Like Hell

One of the leading lights and great role models of my life left the building yesterday. Ann Richards, who was diagnosed with esophageal cancer in March, died in her home, surrounded by her children and grandchildren. She was a political and personal hero to many Texas women long before she hit the national spotlight as the keynote speaker at the 1988 Democratic National Convention in Atlanta, "where she was hailed as the brightest star to come from Texas since the rougher-edged LBJ. (Her star turn was unexpected; in April 1988, an aide had scrawled on Richards' desk calendar: "WHAT DOES ANN NEED TO DO TO BE A DELEGATE TO NAT. CONVENTION?")" (Austin-American Statesman)

If you're not a Texas Democrat you may not know Ann as well as you should, the story of how she spent her early years as a "housewife" who feared her tombstone would state only "She kept a really clean house," then entered politics in 1969 via Sarah Weddington's (the lawyer who successfully argued Roe v. Wade case in the Supreme Court) run for the Texas House. When Weddington won the seat, Richards worked as her administrative assistant in the House, then ran for Travis County Commissioner herself in 1976, beginning the career that culminated in her election as governor of the state in 1990. Two stories this morning from Texas papers will bring you up to speed on Richards' life, this one from the Dallas Morning News, and the above-linked story from the Austin-American Statesman (this one may require a brief registration).

I worked as a volunteer on that campaign, and it remains one of the highlights of my life. The enthusiasm and energy she inspired in Democrats, especially women - young and older - were amazing. In person she gave off sparks of energy and hope, an example of where we could go and what we could do. She was funny, honest, as real a human being as ever existed. One of my most cherished possessions is a framed campaign poster that she autographed, it hangs here by my desk as I type. Every time I look at it I feel a hit of that exuberant energy, that million-watt smile lights up the room. As governor she promised to change Texas, and during her four years in office she did just that. For the better. She lost her second run for governor to YouKnowWho over two issues, one environmental (the protection of the Edwards Aquifer) the second a handgun issue. Hey, what can I say, it's still Texas.

Her political legacy is not over, however; she founded the Ann Richards School for Young Women Leaders, to open August 2007 in the Austin school district, to which memorial contributions can be made through the Austin Community Foundation, P.O. Box 5159, Austin, Texas 78763, 512-472-4483, or online at www.austincommunityfoundation.org.

When Ironworkers Attack

It's always a sad day when members of the labor movement fight each other instead of directing their energies against our common enemy. In the video Ironworkers cross the Carpenter's picket line and chaos insues.

We--the Carpenters--had just signed our new contract in July of this year and a few contractors were holding out. Immediately we had men picketing the job, but since we've opted out of the AFL-CIO the Ironworkers don't recognize our picket lines. Yikes.

Ironworkers think were rats for leaving the AFL-CIO; Carpenters think Ironworkers are rats for crossing the line. The bottom line is that unless we get serious about solidarity we're all in for a world of hurt.

(The video was filmed by the carpenters as far as I know.)

What a Small World

I spent the last week of my short-lived unemployment in Provincetown, MA, one of my favorite vacation places ever. I haven't been there in several years, but it is still a lovely little fishing- village-turned-tourist spot, with great shopping and art galleries, and it is still thankfully as queer as a three dollar bill. Although the drag queens aren't as numerous as in the 90's, the make-up of P-Town has more gay people per square foot than any vacation spot I've ever visited. Which makes it an interesting place to spend a week, rain or shine. If it's sunny, there are an assortment of fun things to do at the beach, or in a sailboat, a kayak, or just sitting on the deck of your guesthouse reading a book and being surrounded by blue in every direction. If it rains, you can always shop or visit the many art galleries, and after your credit card has become dangerously close to its limit, there is Tea Dance, where you can drink and watch gorgeous young men dancing to techno without much clothing on. There are also gorgeous young women, but to me they seem to be getting seriously younger every year, although they are still fun to watch.

But Provincetown is a special place, and seems to have an energy that makes you stop and reconsider your dismissal of a Supreme Being. There is no way to ignore the way that the water sparkles in the sun, and no way you can't stop to admire the setting sun painting the sky and the harbor an amazing shade of pink.

I love to kayak on the harbor when the tide is going out, I love to look through the shallow water and watch the marine life on the bottom. It's interesting to watch the shrimp and crabs crawling around doing whatever it is that they do all day (I'm not sure what they do, but I'm sure it beats working at a desk for 10 hours). I don't really feel comfortable actually being in the same water as these creatures, I find them sort of creepy, but still, looking down from the safe distance of my kayak, they are great entertainment. As a foodie, I am always viewing these sea creatures either in a form that's ready for food preparation, or as the finished product that I must garnish and send out to a waiting dinner guest. Seeing these critters in their own homes looking for their own dinner is completely fascinating. On this particular kayak adventure, I felt adventurous and I paddled out a bit further. The water began to feel heavy, and I was having trouble making headway. I stroked harder, and as my paddle came back up out of the water, it projected this ball of grey matter out of the water, and over the bow of my rented kayak. EEEWWWW! I thought I had churned up some creepy remains of a medical experiment gone wrong, this thing I had flung up from the sea looked like either the biggest ball of snot I had ever seen, or some poor jerk's brain that he had donated to science and was not deemed worthy enough to remain in the collection to be studied. I realized that I had stopped paddling, and that a girlie scream was threatening to escape my throat. A moment passed and the kayak slowed to a stop. I peered down into the water and discovered that my tiny plastic rented vessel was sitting atop a bunch of jellyfish. I thought that maybe it was only the dozen or so that I could see, but as I gazed further out, I saw the evil things spanned the circumference of that rented piece of plastic for as far as I could see under the water's surface.

It was then that I let out a scream that came out of the very depths of that girlie place in my being, that place that is afraid of spiders, monsters, and most of all, creepy sea creatures that look like giant balls of snot.

Unfortunately, I was downwind of The Boat Slip, where Tea Dance was in full swing, and my earth shattering scream was drowned under the thumping of half clothed young men dancing to an annoying techno beat. I had to consider that between my middle-aged ass and the sting of a hundred poisonous jelly fish and certain anaphlatic shock that would result, was a mere piece of rented plastic that was beginning to teeter from starboard to port. I was energized by that burst of girlie adrenalin, and courageously drove my paddle into the great jellyfish metropolis, making huge strides towards shore, and leaving a wake of snot-like sea monsters behind me. I stroked that rented kayak like an olympic champion, and even drove it up onto the beach with a final powerful surge, so that I did not have to step out into the evil sea that I was trying so hard to escape.

Once on dry land, I walked in the general direction of the techno beat, and arrived at The Boat Slip and proceeded to down two large Cosmo's. I thought back to a post I had done before I left for Provincetown called The Invasion of the Slime: Part One. I remembered a particular passage that talked about the death from over-fishing of large fish like tuna and swordfish and the rise of the the bottom -eeding jellyfish since there is no more advanced species competing for the food supply.

Jellyfish populations are growing because they can. The fish that used to compete with them for food have become scarce because of overfishing. The sea turtles that once preyed on them are nearly gone. And the plankton they love to eat are growing explosively. As their traditional catch declines, fishermen around the world now haul in 450,000 tons of jellyfish per year, more than twice as much as a decade ago, a logical step in a process that Daniel Pauly, a fisheries scientist at the University of British Columbia, calls "fishing down the food web." Fishermen first went after the largest and most popular fish, such as tuna, swordfish, cod and grouper. When those stocks were depleted, they pursued other prey, often smaller and lower on the food chain."We are eating bait and moving on to jellyfish and plankton," Pauly said.

I was thinking of creepy sea critters and looking out at one of those P-Town sunsets that was all pink and unbelievable and I thought that I could see the fingerprints of a Divine Being in the sand. I thought that the idea of evolution is some god's idea of progress, and here we are eliminating not just large fish, but other higher forms of life, human just like ourselves. The reasons we stamp out the things that sustain our own fragile biology are confusing and sometimes stupid. We attempt to pull in the large catch for profit, we destroy habitats because we are never, after eating the dwindling supply of nourishment, full enough, satisfied enough, we need more stuff, more space, we need more trees and sand to make summer homes and structures of glass. We have become predatory, not just of the fruit of this paradise we call home, but even of other humans, those of our own species. Our ape ancestors killed for food, but since we are so much more advanced, we kill for something much more noble, freedom and democracy.

I have enjoyed my summer vacation in paradise, and I am thinking of where I might travel next summer. While I would never choose to live in the wild places I have seen while traveling, I am grateful that they exist, and I have to utter a heartfelt thank-you to those people and organizations that work to keep these wild places wild, and these species, all a part of the Divine Creation, from extinction. Since I am now utterly afraid of the sea, crawling with creatures that we have fed and nurtured with our ignorance and neglect, I wonder what destination I might choose next August? It's fortunate that there now exist museums to sea life, such as Sea World, and that we can always go to Vegas if we want to see Venice, or New York, without the foul smell of the garbage, or the canals. If you like to snorkel, actually get in the same water as these scary creatures, you might be disappointed with the lack of places to view this rich pocket of marine life. If you have some extra pocket change you want to invest, you might want to get on board in the start-up of Snorkel World, the next big attraction for vacationers who miss the lush reefs of Florida and that great big dying thing called the Great Barrier Reef. We are losing the places we love to visit when we take that 2 week break from our mindless consumption, where will we go when there is no more reef, and the beach has become toxic?

Maybe finally, we will all go to DisneyWorld, and only then will we realize what a small world it truly is.

After All.

Threatening Iran

The Cheney-Bush administration (who was dead wrong about Iraq's WMDs) is telling the International Atomic Energy Commisssion (who was right about Iraq's WMDs) that the US knows about Iran's WMD programs. Apparently, the Cheney-Bush team want us to believe that Iran is on the verge of being able to crank out enough weapons-grade uranium for 40 nuclear bombs: U.S. to IAEA: Iran is determined to produce nuclear weapons Ha'aretz 09/13/06

The United States ambassador to the International Atomic Energy Agency Gregory Schulte, on Wednesday released a statement saying Washington is convinced that Iran is determined to acquire the technology, materials and know-how necessary for the production of nuclear arms. ...

Among other things, the U.S. ambassador says that Iran has assembled an additional 164 centrifuges at its Nantz plant, thus doubling their number; it prevents IAEA inspectors from receiving the documentation on centrifuge activation; and IAEA inspection monitoring records were confiscated and destroyed.

From [David] Albright: 'Room for Optimism' in Confrontation with Iran Council on Foreign Relations 09/12/06:

[H]ow far along is Iran in its own nuclear development?

That’s another bright spot and I think that's one of the things that opens up this idea of pre-negotiations. Last April when I talked to people in the IAEA with knowledge of the program in Iran and people in the United States there was an expectation that by the end of this summer Iran could very well have five or six cascades [a connected series of machines crucial to enrichment] operating. A cascade would be 164 centrifuges connected together by pipes, but in fact they only have one operational. They didn’t finish the second and third. The first one, which is operational, we estimated from the IAEA safeguards report only operated about 10% of what it could have. They barely have any enrichment going on. You don’t have Iran expanding the pilot plant as was expected last spring and so again you almost have something close to de facto suspension.

So I think Iran isn’t doing much enrichment and therefore for it to suspend enrichment for a few months is not that big of a step. And since there isn’t much enrichment going on I think the Europeans decided that could start a pre-negotiation process with Iran.

How many cascades are necessary to produce enriched uranium for a nuclear bomb?

Iran would want about ten to fifteen cascades operating to be able to produce enough highly enriched uranium for a bomb a year. There are a lot of factors in play, but it needs to go considerably further before it has a plant big enough. And the pilot plant may not be the best place to do it. It was designed to hold six cascades that could operate in parallel or simultaneously. That’s what you have to do in a centrifuge plant. It’s not enough to operate one, you have to operate many and they have to operate with common systems. So the pilot plant really isn't set up to be a production plant. It is certainly not designed to make highly enriched uranium. You could do it, but it would very inefficient. (my emphasis)

Notice how different the numbers sound; in the US letter, another 164 centrifuges!! Material for 40 nuclear bombs!!! Centrifuges and heavy water and bombs, oh my!


In Albright's interview 164 centrifuges = 1 cascade. You need a minimum of ten cascades to grind out enough weapons-grade uranium to for one bomb per year. Iran currently has one, according to Albright in his 09/12 interview. Schulte's letter claims that has been doubled to 2 cascades.

Gary Sick reported a couple of weeks ago (Gary Sick on Republican Hype on Iran No Quarter blog 08/27/06) in a brief piece discussing the Republican propadanda report released under the aegis of the House Intelligence Subcommittee on Intelligence Policy:

If you are going to take on the entire US intelligence community, it is a very good idea to at least get your basic facts straight. On a very quick reading, I found a statement on p. 9 claiming that the 164 centrifuges at the Iranian Natanz site are "currently enriching uranium to weapons grade." There is no evidence whatsoever that this is true - and a lot of evidence that the tiny bit of enriched uranium produced at this site was reactor grade (c. 2.5%? vs weapons grade c. 95%?). It may be true that [staffer and neocon true believer Frederick] Fleitz [who contributed significantly to the report according to Sick], and perhaps many in the neo-con community, suspect that weapons grade enrichment is either covertly underway or is planned, but their suspicions should not be allowed to substitute for facts.

Throughout the report, there is careful documentation of any & all criticism that the IAEA inspectors have produced or any questions that they may have raised about Iran's performance. However, there is no mention at all of any of the IAEA conclusions that they find no evidence of weapons production or activity. Some people will recall that the IAEA inspectors, in their caution, were closer to the truth about Iraqi WMD than, say, the Vice President's office. (my emphasis)

Democrats and fighting back

I've seen several comments from the "netroots" lately about how the Democrats need to stop being so fearful of Republican claims, stereotypes and issue-framing and instead go after them. One variety of this was the pleasant surprise of the number of blog posts and press opinion pieces around the 9/11 fifth anniversary saying that it's time to stop letting fear be the defining framework of our approach to combatting terrorism. Our own Tankwoman posted one of the better ones I saw in that regard.

Another line of that thought was about how Dems need to stop whining about the Republicans "politicizing" 9/11 and asking for "apologies" for this and that. Of course the Republicans are politicizing 9/11! They've been doing it for five years and *it's been working for them*. The Dems need to stop whining about the obvious and jam them over and over about the mistakes, blunders and - yes, Virginia - crimes they've committed in the name of their Global War on Terror (GWOT). Maybe even take a deep breath and challenge the "war" metaphor for the antiterrorism effort.

We have a version of that going on in California over the tape on which Gov. Schwarzenegger appeals to white bigots and anti-immigration fanantics with his comment that black people and Latinos are "hot" (i.e., irrational, overly-emotional) because of their physical racial heritage.

The news that Phil Angelides Democratic campaign admits giving the information to the LA Times (Angelides manager: we were the source Daniel Weintraub, California Insider blog 09/12/06) doesn't diminish my suspicion that Schwarzenegger's campaign may have wanted this to "leak" so he could issue his non-apology apology to let the hardcore Republican white folks know that he supports their particular racial prejudices.

But Democratic timidity and "press corps" dysfunction are combining once again to make what should be a slamdunk positive for the Democrats into a muddled mess that could well wind up being a positive political point for Schwarzenegger. Once the press corps script becomes "Schwarzenegger made an off-color remark and apologized for it but the Democrats behaved unethically in leaking it," then it becomes both an "I'm your guy" message from Schwarzenegger to the hardcore Republican base *and* a resassurance to those suburban whites who would like to think of themselves as "fiscally conservative but socially tolerarant.


Let's start with the fact that the Angelides campaign found the recording during their routine monitoring of the Governor's Web site. The Schwarzenegger campaign's claim that it was inappropriate, unauthorized access is pretty weak in itself, and until there's actual proof I'm going to accept the Angelides campaign's claim that there was nothing improper done in accessing it.

In any case, I'm guessing that most voters wouldn't consider it any kind of a scandal unless somebody hacked through a security firewall. (Weintraub's blog post linked above has details on how the Angelides people say that did it, which is plausible enough on its face.) But Schwarzenegger's non-apology apology has already sent a clear message to the base, reinforced on Tuesday by Schwarzenegger's op-ed criticizing immigrants for displaying Mexican flags. Mission accomplished. The message was sent and received: Arnold Schwarzenegger and the Republicans will protect you from brown people.

This article provides a good look at how seriously the hardcore, conservative California Republican base takes Schwarzenegger's alleged "moderation" - Republicans Stick to Schwarzenegger Despite Clashes Christian Post/AP 09/11/06:

Gelia Crayton is the picture of conservative California. She worships at the Crystal Cathedral, Orange County's gleaming megachurch, and opposes abortion and gay marriage. She thinks illegal immigration is the scourge of the state.

Crayton's hardline views are at odds with the moderation Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has gone out of his way to advertise this year, as he seeks re-election.

Yet on a recent Sunday after church services here, the 58-year-old real estate agent pledged to stay loyal to the governor "until he says, `Taxes are going to go up and welcome illegals."'

Don't ask me to pay taxes to support my country or state or community, and protect me from the brown people that speak some funny language. (I mean, just as long as you don't come arrest me for having Javier mow my lawn and Lucía clean my house.) A good Christian Republican creed. And Schwarzenegger's the guy for her. She's not worried about that "moderation" that is so charming the press corps.

Her friend Ruth Daugherty, who also was worshipping at the Crystal Cathedral, excused the governor's moderate stance on immigration [!!?!] as a political necessity in a state like California, where Democrats dominate.

"I think he's doing the best he can," said Daugherty, 73, a retired banker who lives in Irvine, "because he can't be as vocal about it as we are and get elected."

They had the message even before this week. The "black/Latino blood" tape just reinforced it.

So, why did the Angelides campaign think they needed to leak this? In my own not-running-for-office-myself lay person's view, Angelides missed a real opportunity to bring out the tape himself in a campaign commercial or publich appearance and jump on it directly saying something like:

"Okay, white folks out there in the suburbs. You think racial crudity is restricted to George Allen in Viriginia? You think Schwarzenegger's pandering to hard-right anti-immigration militants was just a passing phase? You think that if you're voting for Schwarzenegger and his Republicans that you're not supporting and enabling rightwing bigots? Well, think again. Take another listen to Schwarzenegger saying what he thinks about race. Maybe that youthful admiration for Hitler had more influence that he'd like you to believe."

Yes, the Republicans would howl as usual about how terribly unfair it all is. But it's not unfair. Let them howl, and let them do their comma-dancing over and over and over again, parsing each word to make it sound harmless and in doing so reminding Latino voters and white suburbanites who like to think of themselves as "respectable" Republicans just what they're voting for when they vote for Schwarzenegger and his party.

Instead, the Dems "leak" it to the press - actually it sounds like they were just doing the job our "press corps" is too lazy to do, i.e., monitoring what's actually publicly available on the Governor's Web site - as though mentioning it were something to be ashamed of.

And so instead of the story being "Schwarzenegger sounds like a bigot", we get stuff like this: The flap over his yap: Who's listening to the governor's tapes? Sacramento Bee editorial 09/13/06.

Thank goodness that California's two candidates for governor are finally grappling with some blockbuster issues. Better schools for our kids? Affordable health care? Fiscal responsibility?

Nahhh. The big story in Sacramento is Tapegate. Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger was caught making some boneheaded comments about a Latina legislator, and the Los Angeles Times got hold of the tape. The governor quickly apologized. Now we learn that employees in the Angelides campaign downloaded the digital recording off the governor's own Web site and leaked it to the Times. ...

So stay tuned for the next episode of Tapegate. In the meantime, any campaign issues of substance have been suspended because of technical difficulties.

Ah, just some boneheaded comment. True, a corporate executive or a public school teacher could get fired for saying it on work premises, but, hey, why bother? Isn't it silly we're talking about this at all? Those ridiculous Republicans and Democrats. "Tapegate". That's a cute name isn't it? Ha, ha, silly politicians.

"The governor quickly apologized." This rapidly congealed into the press corps script. They aren't going to challenge their own script. If the Dems don't do it, the alternative view is not likely to be presented in public nearly as much as the phony, "The governor quickly apologized."

Let's remember Schwarzenegger's non-apology apology:

Anyone out there that feels offended by those comments, I just want to say I'm sorry, I apologize, because that was not the intention. (my emphasis)

Translation: I'm sorry some of you people are such pathetic losers as to feel offended; I'm sorry you have such a comtemptable reaction. That was not my intention. My intention was to ridicule blacks and Latinos, especially the female variety, in private. (Alternative translation: My intention was to have this become public so the Republican base will remember I dislike brown people who speak Spanish as much as they do.)

The Democrats should be using this to bash Schwarzenegger, not huffing about his bad manners or allowing it to become muddled into an obscure discussion about how the Governor's office had their computer file directory set up.

The Republicans have worked hard to become the party of the "angry white folks". The Dems should be reminding everyone of just how much that is what the Republicans are.

Try to Catch the Goodmans' Tour

One reason I'm happy to be living in Albuquerque now is that, for the first time, I have radio access to Amy Goodman's fantastically gutsy and often controversial show, Democracy Now. Today, for instance, as I was driving in to work I was listening to David Corn (The Nation) and Michael Isikoff (Newsweek) discussing their new book Hubris: The Inside Story of Spin, Scandal, and the Selling of the Iraq War. I've been reading about this book, as well as reading some excerpts from it, so today's show was what the show always is, it seems, quite timely.

Not only can I listen to the show, but later this month I'll be able to hear both Amy Goodman and David, her brother, in person when they visit New Mexico on their 80 city Breaking the Sound Barrier Tour celebrating the show's tenth anniversary as well as the publication of the sister/brother duo's new book Static: Government Liars, Media Cheerleaders and the People Who Fight Back. Find out if your city is on the tour, and if so where and when, here. It's a killer schedule, including the two days in New Mexico - on one of which Amy Goodman will be speaking in tandem with Seymour Hersh at the Lensic in Santa Fe. Probably won't be able to make that, though wouldn't that be more truth than most people can stand at one time?, but I will catch the UNM stop the next evening. Amy Goodman is a hero of our time, if you listen to her show you know you'll hear things the MSM wouldn't touch with a ten foot pole.

Well, now, this is interesting ...

From Iran offers security help to Iraqi premier Deutsche Welle 09/12/06:

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmedinejad says Tehran is prepared to offer assistance in establishing security and stability in Iraq. Ahmedinejad made the statement at a joint press conference with visiting Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki in Tehran. He said they had agreed to co-operate on political, economic and security issues. Al-Maliki is to meet with Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and influential former President Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani on Wednesday.

Yes, boys and girls, that would be our deadliest, evilist enemy in all the world, Iran, offering to help provide security to the government of Iraq, our ally in the most criticalist of all fronts in the Global War on Terorism (GWOT).

This one (Iran offers to help Iraq Gulf News 09/12/06) shows a photo of our bosom ally in the GWOT, Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri Al Maliki, the guy whose government we're backing in the Iraq War that Dark Lord Cheney says if you don't support it whole-heartedly you're supporting The Terrorists. He's shaking hands - actually clasping both hands - with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. You know, Ahamadinejad, the new Hitler? The photo kind of reminds you of the one of Rummy shaking hands with Saddam Hussein back in the day.

Here's Aljazeera's version: Iran to aid Iraq on security 09/12/06.

100% Americanism: Arnold Schwarzenegger version

Schwarzenegger's little racial crack should show that, despite being a wealthy movie star, on matters of race there are a lot of backwoods hicks who have a more sensible and realistic view of the world.

But it's beginning to look like a Karl Rove special. Now, I have to agree with Josh Marshall that it's foolish to look for Karl Rove's puffy face behind every odd thing that happens in politics: "forget the cult of Rove," he advises Democrats. Chance, miscalculation and regular old blunders play a much bigger role in political affairs than most of us would prefer to think. A complete lack of understanding of that fact is how conspiracy nuts manages to invent imaginary plots and ignore real ones.

Still, the whole flap about Schwarzenegger's comment is a commentary or how dumb our politics have become and how clueless our "press corps" can be.

As a I said in my earlier post linked above, Schwarzenegger's "apology" was not an apology, it was a sneer. One so obviously meant to signal to mean-minded Republican white folks that he's really one of them, even though he's having to support some "girlie-man" environmental policies and things like that to hope to get re-elected, that I immediately thought it might well be his own campaign that leaked the tape.

Here's a few obvious conclusions and questions that I see in this story that our "press corps" seems to be choking on:


1. What kind of fool actually thinks like this? Here's what Schwarzenegger said, as quoted by the Los Angeles Times (Gov.'s Candid Moments Caught on Audiotape by Robert Salladay 09/08/06):

Referring to Assemblywoman Bonnie Garcia, the California legislature's only Latina Republican. he said, "I mean, they are all very hot. They have the, you know, part of the black blood in them and part of the Latino blood in them that together makes it."

From this version quoted in the San Francisco Chronicle, which is presumably the same passage, the Los Angeles Times politely softened the statement without adding an elipsis. Here's the Chron's version:

"I mean Cuban, Puerto Rican, they are all very hot. They have the, you know, part of the black blood in them and part of the Latino blood in them that together makes it."

Good God! I dance the comma-dance below. But does anyone in their right mind seriously think that a person's debating style or emotional make-up is caused by their parents' racial complexions? It may have been a respectable sentiment for British colonialists a century ago. But even then it wasn't anything but blind racial prejudice and any literate person had good reason to know better.

An audio of the file is available along with the Sacramento Bee story I link below, although the link hasn't worked for me yet.

2. Schwarzenegger grew up in Austria. So not only did he grow up in a time and place in which public officials of both the social-democratic and conservative varieties were distancing themselves from any kind of racialist rhetoric after the experience of the Third Reich and the Holocaust. But back during his recall election campaign/coup in 2003, he managed to finesse questions about his pal-ling around with rightwing Austrian policitian Joerg Haider (who has actually turned out to be far more of a narcissistic clown than a present-day Mussolini) by getting testimonials from various people who assured us he was pristinely free from prejudice.

In my early days of blogging, even though I was very much opposed to him, I did link to stories in which one of his bodybuilding mentors in Austria claimed that one one occasion, Schwarzenegger joined some others to rumble in the streets with a gang of neo-Nazis. See here and here.

And Schwarzegger was shocked to hear his own words sounding so crude on racial matters? Please.

3. Old times here are quick forgotten. Remember this report from ABC News back in October 2003?

ABCNEWS obtained a copy of an unpublished book proposal with quotes from a verbatim transcript of an interview Schwarzenegger gave in 1975 while making the film Pumping Iron.

Asked who his heroes are, he answered, "I admired Hitler, for instance, because he came from being a little man with almost no formal education, up to power. I admire him for being such a good public speaker and for what he did with it."

He is quoted as saying he wished he could have an experience, "like Hitler in the Nuremberg stadium. And have all those people scream at you and just being total agreement whatever you say."

Yeah, that Arnie, he's a real chamption of racial justice.

4. You shouldn't try the same thing at your own workplace: "I mean Cuban, Puerto Rican, they are all very hot. They have the, you know, part of the black blood in them and part of the Latino blood in them that together makes it."

Any manager in state government, local government or the corporate world (in California in particular but also in other states as well) who made a statement like that at work would be risking a reprimand, a sexual harassment charge (yes) or even a lawsuit against the company. At a minimum, getting a reputation for saying crap like this at the office is not generally a career enhancer.

Any supervisor with a high-school education has probably heard something like the previous paragraph at a company presentation on a supervisor's duties. But the Republican Governor of California doesn't know better? Apparently not.

5. Schwarzenegger the pore persecuted white guy. Now there's a report that the story may have come from someone hacking the computers of the Governor's Office: Police Investigating Schwarzenegger Tape San Francisco Chronicle/AP 09/11/06

Now Arnie's the victim of some nasty hacker? If you just ignore that Schwarzenegger's "apology" was actually a "non-apology apology" sneer, this seems perfectly plausible. If you look at the fact that it gave Schwarzenegger a chance to give a wink-and-a-nod shout-out to the racist and xenophobic elements of the California Republican Party, you have to wonder whether that story isn't a bit too convenient.

The rival Phil Angelides Democratic campaign says that it was publicly available on the Web site of the Governor's Office: Angelides camp denies hacking by Kevin Yamamura Sacramento Bee 09/12/06.

Again, not discounting the possibility of regular old mistakes, this would be consistent with a desire by Schwarzenegger's campaign to have the tape "leak" out.

Via Daniel Weintraub's California Insider blog (Hacks and Flacks 09/12/06), Donald Lathbury of the California Majority Report argues that the recording could resonably have been obtained from the Governor's Office Web site without any "hacking" going on.

6. Why can't our "press corps" see what any ordinary voter can see without a lot of painful thinking? Here's the editorial board of the San Francisco Chronicle (Flies on the wall 09/12/06). They say that they're shocked, shocked at "the fact that a governor would believe and express such nonsense". (I guess that Hitler quote is, like, so three years ago.) But then they manage to conclude, "Schwarzenegger further contained the damage with a rapid and forthright apology."

Yeah. There were WMDs in Iraq, too. And I'm Britney Spears' love-slave. That is, as long as we're creating our own reality here, aka, making s*** up.

Oh, and then there's that little matter about Schwarzenegger's pandering as Governor to the xenophobic, vigilante-minded anti-immigrant zealots. But, to our "press corps", that can't have any relationship to his making overtly racist comments about blacks and Latinos. No, nothing at all to do with that. In today's LA Times, in a column ludicrously titled Keep the Immigration Debate Civil, Schwarzenegger himself gives some friendly advice (nudge-nudge, wink-wink) to immigrants to stop waving them there Messican flags:

To the immigrant rights activists I say: Change your message. When I came to America, I wrapped myself in the flag because I wanted to be a part of the American dream. I worked hard, learned English and followed the laws. I learned the customs and culture of my new country. I spent time with English-speakers just so I could hear them talk and learn the language from them. ...

What people see today when immigrant rights activists march in the streets carrying Mexican flags and angry signs is that you do not want to join America's house. The message that sends is that you do not want to learn our language or our culture. Unlike the message sent by the masses of Irish, Italian, German and Asian immigrants, whom Americans now proudly call our "melting pot," these images suggest that Mexican immigrants do not want to make that effort.

No, they suggest that Schwarzenegger is pandering like mad to the xenophobes. Look up some pictures on the Internet of St. Patrick's Day and Columbus Day and Chinese New Year's parades and see if the images there are exclusively red-white-and-blue.

My wife is an Austrian immigrant, too, who has lived and worked and paid taxes in California for the past 12 years. But she has a European Union sticker on the bumper of her car. I suppose in the Republicans' eyes, that means she doesn't "want to make the effort" to be a responsible employee and resident of California.

I'll have to agree with their concluding point in the Chron's editorial, though:

It's obviously past time for the governor to bring his office's computer software - as well as the sophistication of his views on race and ethnicity - into the 21st century.

Actually, bringing his racial views into the 20th century would be an improvement.

7. Dancing with commas. Okay, let's go through the ritual. I'm going to borrow the abbreviation John Dean uses for the majority of today's Republicans, RWA (Right Wing Authoritarian).

RWA: But, but, Bonnie Garcia, the assemblywoman who he was talking about said she took it as a compliment.

Me: Yes, and that illustrates...

RWA: SHUT UP!!!

Me: As I was about to say before RWA was temporarily sedated, if you are going to be a Latino Republican or - even more so, an African-American Republican, be prepared to leave any old-fashioned personal dignity at home. This is the Christian Republican White People's Party we're talking about.

RWA (groggily): But, look, that La-TIN-a woman, whatever her name is, said she says the samething about herself. Even in that article you cited from the liberal, terrorist-loving Los Angeles Times said:

Garcia said the conversation didn't bother her in the least. She called herself an "unpolished politician" and said Schwarzenegger had shown nothing but respect for her.

"I love the governor because he is a straight talker just like I am," Garcia said. "Very often I tell him, 'Look, I am a hot-blooded Latina.' I label myself a hot-blooded Latina that is very passionate about the issues, and this is kind of an inside joke that I have with the governor."

Me: Garcia's own sense of dignity is up to her. But anyone who speaks English - actually, anyone who understands the concepts in any language - can tell the difference between someone describing herself as "hot-blooded" (passionate, tempermental) and a grown white guy saying, "I mean Cuban, Puerto Rican, they are all very hot. They have the, you know, part of the black blood in them and part of the Latino blood in them that together makes it." One is a conventional figure of speech. The other is bonehead racialist nonsense.

So, Mr. RWA, why don't you take an extra dose of OxyContin and go watch your favorite Ann Coulter videos now?

8. Business as usual. Schwarzenegger has at least been consistent about one thing: With Bills in the Balance, Arnold Hauls In Checks: Groups with an interest in pending legislation help California's governor raise $26.4 million by Dan Morain Los Angeles Times 09/11/06.

As legislators were approving more than 1,000 bills in August, Schwarzenegger was crossing the state, and the country, soliciting campaign cash. Now, as he decides whether to sign those bills into law or nix them with a veto, he will be cashing checks from scores of contributors whose interests intersect with legislation.

Schwarzenegger is vastly out-raising his Democratic challenger, state Treasurer Phil Angelides. He has taken $26.4 million into his reelection account so far this year, compared with Angelides' $13.4 million, according to records filed with the Secretary of State's office.

Last week alone, the Republican governor held five fundraisers, including two on Friday in the Central Valley, two in Los Angeles and one in suburban Sacramento. He has scheduled at least 22 such events this month.

"This is exactly the kind of practice he said he was going to Sacramento to end," said Angelides consultant Bill Carrick.

As a candidate in the 2003 recall campaign, Schwarzenegger called for fundraising blackout periods covering times when weighty decisions were being made. The proposal was a swipe at then-Gov. Gray Davis - the man Schwarzenegger ousted - who used the months when he was signing bills as prime fundraising season.

Schwarzenegger never followed through on his own idea.

And we can also be confident that he won't if he's elected to a second term, as well.