Here's What's Left

Compassionate Conservatism and Katrina

I'm generally of the opinion that the unmitigated disaster that is Hurricane Katrina shouldn't be unnecessarily politicized.  But I think the following is more unnecessary; here's conservative economist Jack Chambless last night on Fox News' Your World with Neil Cavuto (sorry, no link to the transcript; LexisNexis):

JACK CHAMBLESS, ECONOMICS PROFESSOR, VALENCIA COMMUNITY COLLEGE: Well, if we look at Article One, Section Eight of the United States Constitution -- and I encourage all Americans to look at that before we start opening up our tax coffers to pay for all of this -- we have every obligation to provide for New Orleans in terms of charity, private charity from one person to the other.

But the founding fathers never intended, Article One, section Eight of the Constitution, never intended to provide one dollar of taxpayer dollars to pay for any disaster or anything that we might call charity.

By way, here's beginning of Article I, Section 8:

Clause 1: The Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States; but all Duties, Imposts and Excises shall be uniform throughout the United States;

How it is that hurricane disaster relief doesn't count as the "general Welfare" I don't know.  But nevermind.  Prof. Chambless continues:

What we now have is the law of unintended consequences taking place, where FEMA has come into New Orleans, a place where, ecologically, it makes no sense to have levees keeping the Mississippi River from flooding into New Orleans, like it naturally should.

Now with FEMA bailing out Louisiana, bailing out Florida and lowering the overall cost of living in these places, we have people with no incentive to leave. And the law of unintended consequences means that more people are dying with every one of these storms. They're becoming more and more expensive, more and more property loss, just because the federal government has violated the Constitution to provide for these funds.

OK, let's be clear about this: Chambless is saying that it's the federal government's fault in the first place because, yes, they give out money to help victims of natural disasters.  The Katrina disaster can really be blamed on the federal government, he's saying, because they didn't let nature take its course and destroy New Orleans years ago.  Because people didn't have enough incentive to leave. 

Astonishing. 

Now, this isn't that big a deal, because I feel sure that almost no one in this country shares Prof. Chambless's fuckwit interpretation of the Constitution.  One thing about it interests me, though, which is this part:

But the founding fathers never intended[...]

It's an entirely normative conservative appeal to originalism.  Most conservatives who like to go around spouting a 'whatever the founding fathers thought' jurisprudence probably don't realize that it can put them in very uncomfortable positions. 

Sounds like a question for Judge Roberts and all who consider themselves principled conservatives to me: do you think FEMA is an unconstitutional entity?  Do you think it goes against the wishes of the founding fathers to give money to those who have lost their homes, businesses, all that they own, in the wake of Hurricane Katrina?  If so, won't you please go fuck yourself?

-- Michael

Questioning Roberts

Cass Sunstein's piece in the WaPo today contains generally good ideas on how to question Judge Roberts in his nomination hearing:

For example, Roberts is perfectly entitled to decline to say whether he would vote to overrule Roe v. Wade. But does he believe that the Constitution protects a general right of privacy? Judge Robert Bork, along with many others, has insisted that the Constitution protects no such right. This position would require the court to overrule cases recognizing the right to use contraceptives, to keep medical records private and to live with members of one's family. Does Roberts accept the privacy right?

And the question should be worded similarly.  'Do you accept a right to privacy?  Because a lot of the freedoms we take for granted depend on it -- like the right to keep our medical records private, the right to use contraception, not to mention abortion rights.  I would certainly hope, Judge Roberts, that you believe that the Constitution protects such basic freedoms.'

The trick, of course, is framing the question so that Roberts looks either mean-spirited by giving the conservative answer or sneaky by giving a non-answer.  Hence, a question like this wouldn't work:

The Constitution does not explicitly forbid the national government from discriminating on the basis of race or sex. Nonetheless, the Supreme Court has read the Constitution to ban both forms of discrimination. Some conservatives disagree; they think that the Supreme Court has no legitimate basis for prohibiting either racial segregation or racial profiling at the national level. What does Roberts think about the question of whether the national government can engage in discrimination on the basis of race and sex?

Because Roberts would say, 'yes, of course the Constitution bans discrimination on the basis of race and sex.'  And thought there might be a series of follow-up questions, the 'yes' is all you would hear on the news. 

In my opinion, the media-strategic aspect of these confirmation hearings should not be underestimated.  If Roberts is really as even-tempered and level-headed as everyone thinks he is, the challenge for Democrats will be to find a way to not let him come across like that.

-- Michael

Those damn America-haters

One of the fellows who captured Saddam Hussein a year and a half ago, Jeans Cruz, just appeared on MSNBC's Countdown tonight.  He was advocating a pullout from Iraq.  (I'll quote from the transcript when it's available.)

I wonder how long it will take the right-wing attack machine to get going.  'Why do the soldiers hate America?'  'Why don't the troops support the troops?' 

Looking forward to it.

-- Michael

republican cognitive dissonance

One thought about a common republican talking point that I've always found particularly annoying and nonsensical:

On Saturday, Bush defended his foreign policy in a nationwide radio address that linked the military offensives in Iraq and Afghanistan to the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

"On that day, we learned that vast oceans and friendly neighbors no longer protect us from those who wish to harm our people. And since that day, we have taken the fight to the enemy," Bush said. "We're fighting the terrorists in Afghanistan, Iraq, and around the world, striking them in foreign lands before they can attack us here at home."

I don't know why it never occurred to me -- because they say this stuff all the time -- but this talking point seems conflict weirdly with the other way in which they talk about Iraq.  The other thing they always say, increasingly laughable as it is, has to do with Iraqi liberation, with freeing the good people of Iraq.  In this defense, the focus is on some sort of beneficial effect for Iraqis and the magnanimity of the US. 

And this model, the Iraqi liberation model, seems to conflict with the notion quoted above that "we're taking the fight to them," that we're "striking them in foreign lands" so we don't have to face the "here at home."  By saying that we're fighting them in foreign lands, there is an implicit disrespect for and devaluation of those foreign lands.  Somehow, those foreign lands, we're made to think implicitly, are lesser that "here at home."  Look at what a good president I am -- I'm keeping the terrorists killing the brown people over there, rather than killing US citizens here. 

To me this rhetoric is, therefore, not only dishonest, but deeply unethical because it undervalues the lives of the innocent Iraqis that are dying.  The logical consequence of this rhetoric is an 'at least they're not Americans' assumption that is always there but never spoken explicitly.  

In a real sense, of course, it's the president's job to keep Americans from getting killed.  But I'm sorry Mr. President, you can't both deflect the terrorists off on to the Iraqis, let them be the ones who get blown to bits, and pretend like you're doing them a favor at the same time.  Of course, not that you're doing either particularly well, but please don't pretend like you're doing both.

-- Michael

Roberts and women: all too typical

Yeah, establishment Dems, I know y'all haven't gotten so excited about opposing John Roberts, being afraid of his disastrously cute kids and the fact that he's apparently more handsome than William Rehnquist.  But seriously, if y'all can't get something together over this, I'm going to start voting for the Green Party:

Supreme Court nominee John G. Roberts Jr. consistently opposed legal and legislative attempts to strengthen women's rights during his years as a legal adviser in the Reagan White House, disparaging what he called "the purported gender gap" and, at one point, questioning "whether encouraging homemakers to become lawyers contributes to the common good."

Look at those girls trying to become lawyers!  How precious.  Apparently the White House thinks it's funny too:

For its part, the White House defended its nominee. "It's pretty clear from the more than 60,000 pages of documents that have been released that John Roberts has a great sense of humor," said Steve Schmidt, a spokesman for Bush. "In this memo, he offers a lawyer joke."

Yeah, Steve, I'm laughing my ass off. 

But that's the thing.  Women's rights have always been a joke to republicans, and John Roberts having essentially said so is a good opportunity.  Both to finally give the Roberts nomination some long overdue trouble and to remind the country that when republicans spout off about women's rights, they're full of shit. 

-- Michael

More on NARAL's mistake, or, the mainstream media's unwitting complicity in republican strategy

Dana Milbank had a piece in the WaPo Friday that wasn't dissimilar to what I said yesterday.  But the focus is in the wrong place, and the article inadvertantly reveals something:

The decision by the abortion rights group NARAL Pro-Choice America to pull an incendiary ad attacking President Bush's nominee to the Supreme Court has produced a fresh round of recriminations within the Democratic Party and a return to a nagging question: Has the opposition lost its nerve?

When conservatives complained about the ad -- which suggested that nominee John G. Roberts Jr. condoned violence against abortion clinics -- a number of prominent liberals joined in the criticism and elected Democrats ran for cover rather than defend the ad, which was dropped.

Amid similar criticism against another controversial ad, most Republicans brushed aside demands to repudiate Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, a group that had taken aim at John F. Kerry's war record. Some Democrats said the difference revealed on their side an ambivalence about modern political combat that helps explain why their party is out of power.

"Republicans don't mind running an ad that's entirely false, but Democrats have never learned, and I'm not sure many of them want to learn, how to play that kind of politics," said Robert Shrum, an adviser to several Democratic presidential campaigns. NARAL had to pull the ad, he said, because "they weren't getting support from any substantial quarter."

There's something almost perverse about a piece about how Dems have no backbone that quotes Bob Shrum criticizing his own side for not defending a fundamentally indefensible ad. 

Though it might be true that the Dems have tended to be, until recently, relatively spineless as an opposition party, it's also true that they haven't been quite as spineless since the election.  So what's really striking to me about this article is that it was written at all.  In what kind of a media environment does one see an article that is about how wimpy Dems are for not standing by a false ad?  Only in a media environment where wimpy Dems are already part of the narrative.  The trope of the listless, drifting Democratic party has been around since at least the 2002 midterms, created by the republican spin machine, and then internalized by the mainstream media and some Dems themselves (especially those trying to win points in red states). 

It's an effective trope with some staying power because there's something sickeningly self-perpetuating about it.  Here's how it works:

Dems are a weak opposition party

NARAL runs a mean/slanderous ad

A lot of Dems criticize the mean/slanderous ad

That means Dems don't have the stomach to be tough

So Dems are a weak opposition party. 

My point here is that the recurrent trope of the weak Democratic party has made the NARAL ad scandal worse, and made the left look weaker -- this despite the fact that most on the left behaved much more honestly in these circumstances than their republican counterparts in equivalent situations (Swift Boat Vets, etc.). 

My more important point here is that the mainstream media is as much to blame as the republican spin machine and the Democratic party is.  Only in a world in which the mainstream media fundamentally buys into a republican talking point -- that the Dems are spineless -- can they cover something like the Swift Boat Vets story with a kind of pathetic one-the-one-hand-on-the-other-hand-I-don't-know-I-guess-the-truth-is-somewhere-in-the-middle coverage but cover the NARAL ad as being outrageously false, as Jeff Greenfield did on CNN. 

And as I said yesterday, until the left learns how to change what is a blatant (even if possibly unwitting) bias against them in the mainstream media, they have to learn how to manipulate it.

-- Michael

NARAL's mistake

Since I wrote a post last week condemning the NARAL ad, there has been an absolute media feeding frenzy condemning it.  Liberals, I think have been pretty honest about it, and have been calling it what it is: a disgrace.  E. J. Dionne's column on it was particularly good I thought. 

I said at the time that the ad was terribly dishonest, and I stand behind my characterization of it.  But that doesn't stop me from thinking there's a little bit of hypocrisy in the media's dealing with it, nor does it stop me from thinking that there's a lesson in this for Dems who are serious about winning elections.

Because the ad's rhetoric was no more dishonest than that of ads run by the Bush campaign last year.  In fact, it's the same sort of dishonesty that has become a hallmark of republican thinking (just look at this bullshit from yesterday). 

Remember when the Bush campaign claimed that John Kerry said that terrorism is a nuisance?  (He didn't)  Remember when they claimed that Kerry had a "global test"?  (He didn't.)  Remember the stuff about Kerry being "the most liberal man in the Senate."  (He isn't.) 

Remember the WMDs?  Remember Iraq?  Remember the first term of the Bush administration?

The list just goes on and fucking on.  There is a huge amount of information that the Bush administration has lied through its teeth about publicly and unapologetically without a peep from the mainstream media.  Yet we're all shocked, shocked that someone on the left, NARAL would use such dirty partisan tactics as taking something someone wrote out of context. 

The clear lesson here is that Dems have to learn how to live with a media double-standard that's been created by years of republican mendacity.  Not that we should accept the double standard, not that we shouldn't fight for a real media that holds the republican party to account.  But that, until we have such a media, we play smart enough to not have the shit kicked out of us over something that's not that unusual.

Not that the NARAL ad wasn't wrong.  It was.  But it was also stupid.  The aftermath was totally predictable and a serious group with serious issues shouldn't be dumb enough to get beat up over a story like this. 

-- Michael

Roberts and NARAL; *ugh*

I'm amazed at all the preparation and money and thought and blood and sweat and tears that went into prepared for a Supreme Court nomination, and that this is the best we can come up with so far:

A prominent abortion rights group launched a television ad yesterday that accuses Supreme Court nominee John G. Roberts Jr. of siding with violent extremists and a convicted clinic bomber while serving in the solicitor general's office, an accusation that Roberts's supporters immediately condemned as a flagrant distortion.

The ad, sponsored by NARAL Pro-Choice America, focuses on Roberts's role in a case involving whether a 19th-century anti-Ku Klux Klan statute could be used to shut down blockades of health clinics by abortion protesters. The solicitor general's office filed a friend-of-the-court brief siding with the clinic protesters, including Operation Rescue. The high court ruled 6 to 3 against the health clinics in January 1993.

I'm of two minds about this.  I'm one of the ones always complaining that the left is not shrill enough, that we don't fight dirty enough, and that republicans have a tactical advantage because they're so unscrupulous.  But when our side runs an ad that says this,

"Supreme Court nominee John Roberts filed court briefs supporting violent fringe groups and a convicted clinic bomber," the ad states. The ad concludes by saying, "America can't afford a justice whose ideology leads him to excuse violence against other Americans."

something that doesn't seem to be true, I get really pissed off.  There's no evidence that Roberts excuses violence against other Americans, or that Roberts' brief (did he actually write it? it's not clear from the article) is his actual opinion. 

This is rhetoric worthy of republicans.  All you have to do is change some of the wording and you end up with the-left-wants-to-blame-America-first style rhetoric.  It's pointless.  It doesn't contribute to our political discourse.  It doesn't tell you anything about John Roberts.  And it certainly won't defeat his candidacy. 

What it will do is provoke a round of the who-can-feign-outrage-more-convincingly game and ignore the real issues.  With friends like these...

-- Michael

Monstrous

Jean Schmidt, elected Tuesday in a special election, will be in the US Congress, representing a district from the state of Ohio.  Ohio is the state in which the 20 Marines who have died this week in Iraq were based.  Chris Matthews asked her about that last night.  Here's what she said:

MATTHEWS:  Let's take a look at something you said here on this program last week and see if you still think this way right now. 

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SCHMIDT:  They're not solely focused on this war.  Maybe the national media is, but the people right here in southern Ohio are talking about issues that affect them.  They're talking about having tax cuts that are permanent, because they want to spend their own money.  They don't want government to. 

(END VIDEO CLIP)

MATTHEWS:  Issues that affect them.  Do you think that the loss of the 20 guys over there, servicemen fighting for their country over in Iraq, that Ohio-based unit, is going to bring this war home to people? 

SCHMIDT:  I don't think it is going to bring the war home any more differently than the button that I wear on my lapel.  And that's for Matt Maupin, the only missing soldier in Iraq. 

The people in Ohio are very smart.  They understand the sacrifice that these men and women are making on our behalf.  But they also want to talk about other issues, issues like taxes and tax reform, like a strong energy policy.  They want to talk about national issues, including Iraq, but also border patrol and border security. 

And yesterday, as I stood outside the polls for 13 hours, I never heard people talking about the war.  They talked about issues that were more important and more local to them.

Congressperson-elect Schmidt sure does have her priorities straight; she knows what really matters.  Congressperson-elect Schmidt knows that there are issues that are "more important and more local" to the people of Ohio than when 20 US Marines based in Ohio are killed in a matter of days.  Congressperson-elect Schmidt wants to remind us what they really care about: "other issues, issues like taxes and tax reform, like a strong energy policy." 

Thanks, Congressperson-elect Schmidt, for explaing to everyone what's really important -- making sure that a family of four making over $200,000 a year gets an extra thousand dollars this year, so they can buy some solid gold lapels that their expensive media consultants tell them look great on television.  Because as you know, Congressperson-elect Schmidt, freedom isn't free.  It costs money, and how can we expect real patriots to afford the American flag handbags, bumper stickers, and bikinis that your campaign probably tried to sell them if they're giving too much of their money to the federal government, which is probably spending it on the latte-drinking volvo-driving smug liberal elitist media evolutionist welfare queens who hate people of faith anyway?

Thanks, Congressperson Schmidt, for making sure that the rest of us patriots know that the people of Ohio aren't phased by 20 of their boys being blown to bits.  That they have their priorities straight, and want to make sure their bosses at the lumber mill have that extra money to spend, er, invest, on new kitchen counters and silver shower curtains.  I assumed, like the rest of the country, that people from Ohio would be sad that some of their children wouldn't be coming home.  Thanks for the setting the record straight, Congressperson-elect Schmidt, and telling us that as long as the richest 1% of Americans gets its tax cuts, the people of Ohio will happily wait for their few dollars to trickle down.  I appreciate your truly selfless devotion to correcting those of us who assumed you had a soul.

-- Michael

The return of the fake evolution debate

Josh Marshall makes an excellent point regarding Bush's recent statements about Intelligent Design:

Most mainstream religious groups have long since made their peace with evolutionary theory. As in, most Protestant denominations, the Catholic Church, Judaism in its Conservative, Reform, and most Orthodox groups. The stipulation, in most cases, is simply that evolution is part of God's plan for the creation of life.

Few have any real beef with that stipulation because it is one that is just not relevant to the sorts of question evolutionary biologists study. It allows religion and science to happily coexist.

I don't know why this point isn't made more often and louder.  Not only is there not necessarily a conflict between evolutionary theory and religious creation stories -- many world religions have actually accepted evolutionary theory outright.  In fact, there is no real grand debate of the SCIENCE VS RELIGION CAGE MATCH style that some media analysts might want there to be.  So what's really going on?  Marshall continues:

What you have here with the president and the intelligent design hucksters is an attempt to teach creationism as a rival theory to evolution in science classes. And more broadly, it is a brief for Biblical literalism being taught in the public schools, despite the fact that people as far back as Origen could figure out that at least certain parts of the Bible could not possibly be intended to be understood as literal truth.

I think the operative word here is "hucksters," because I increasingly have a hard time believing the public advocates of intelligent design (by which I mean your Kansas schoolboards, your Dobsons, your Bushs, not the rank and file) believe any of what they're saying.  I don't know; maybe they think they do, or maybe they've made up some sort of rationization.  But given that there doesn't have to be a conflict between evolutionary theory and religion, and that a cursory examination of the world's major religions would reveal this, I have a hard time believing that this fake debate is anything other than pure partisan politics -- a GOTV strategy for the republican party. 

Well, maybe it's a little more than that.  Maybe it's a shrewd way for the republicans to capitalize upon a culture of resentment among some communities.  That those who advocate intelligent design don't really believe it necessarily, but are so resentful of the non-existent smug liberal elites that they want not to believe in evolution in order to antagonize the "evolutionists."

And for Bush, a supposedly educated man who claims to care about the education of children, to make a statement pretending that the two are on par ("different schools of thought") is truly shameful.  But not surprising.

-- Michael