alternative hippopotamus

It’s hard to say what significance it all has historically at this point, though it does shed some new light or at least deepens our understanding of the role the Nixon administration’s antagonism with the FBI had in bringing Nixon down.

Josh is a really bright guy, and I’m a bit confused why he confounds the Whitehurst Freeway for the Watergate on this one. I’m guessing he’s caught up in the history of the moment, and doesn’t understand that folks on the right have been looking at Watergate for years as the defining act of the liberal MSM.

Perhaps he doesn’t understand that, according to the right, Deep Throat was just a wetdream of Woodward and Bernstein. As long as Deep Throat was potentially fictitious, then one could plausibly deny that Nixon abused the instruments of government.

Confronted with a living, real Deep Throat, who also happens to be a former #2 in the FBI, one has to ask whether abuses of political power are much more common than we’d like to think.

When a group of moderate senators announced Monday they had reached a deal over the filibustering or blocking of federal judicial nominees, a major fight was averted. Legislative business would not come to a halt, as it could have.

That made a difference for those fighting against and for ANWR development.

“As it relates to ANWR being tied into the budget, I am more optimistic today about it than I was yesterday,” Sen. Murkowski said.

If the Senate continues to avoid the “nuclear option” — a name given to the deep conflict over judicial nominees — it’s more likely that Congress could pass a final budget measure this year. And that measure could allow ANWR to be drilled in order to raise revenue for the federal government.

Remember that the principle weapon used by pro-drilling Republicans is the budget in that a filibuster is not possible.

I thought it was interesting that the author of this piece didn’t even bother to cloud the issue with false claims that it will lower gas prices, make us less dependent on foreign oil, or any of the other claptrap that the White House uses.

It’s about money.

Taken at a memorial statue near the Vietnam Wall, Memorial Day.

Browsing around a bit on truedater.com I ran across this gem:

I never got to meet this guy in person, but I pity any poor soul who would suffer to actually spend time with him. Never have I encountered anyone as pompous, conceited, or self-righteous… and now I can add spiteful and vengeful to that list. While he may claim to be intelligent, in point of fact, his knowledge is broad, yet shallow. While he may claim to be religious, there is not a drop of Christian compassion to be found in him. He is a poster-child for prejudice and spite. He obviously has no alternative than to spend his “precious” time tarnishing the reputation and integrity of people he has never met. Quite pathetic

You’ll note that the reviewer had not actually met the umh… victim of this review.

It’s a great comic premise at any rate. Imagine two people on a first date armed with each others entire dating history. Oh, and when I say comic, I mean it in the most Kafkaesque sense.

You might have assumed that the November election made this and other books of their ilk, passe. To which I respectfully respond: au contraire.

As it turns out, the Downing St. Memo and the report of pre-war bombing (Times of London) makes a second pass at this material that much more relevant.

One of the things that was never clear to me was the hubub over the passage in the 2003 SOU concerning whether Sadam Hussein had attempted to buy uranium from Niger, and in particular the reaction against Joe Wilson. Why go the politically risky route of exposing a CIA operative in retaliation for exposing the weakness of that assertion? To me that would be like destroying a wildlife reservation so you can take your SUV on a roadtrip.

Okay, bad example. And, certainly, the Bush administration has never been accused of under-reacting on anything. Except of course for the PDB about Bin Laden attacking a month before he attacked. Okay, so you need to pick your examples carefully.

The point is, it wasn’t just the SOU as we learn from this passage in Chain of Command:

Two days later, Secretary of State Colin Powell, appearing before a closed hearing of the Senate Foeign Relations Committee, also cited Iraq’s attempt to obtain uranium from Niger as evidence of its persistent nuclear ambitions. The testimony from Tenet and Powell helped to mollify the Democrats, and two weeks later the resolution passed overwhelmingly, giving the President a congressional mandate for a military assault on Iraq. (William Harlow, the C.I.A. spokesman, initially denied that Tenet had briefed the senators on Niger when my story appeared, in March 2003. I learned later that an internal Senate investigation was launched to identify my source.)

The same bogus Niger-uranium story was used to make the case to the Senate, and if I’m reading Hersh right, was a key piece of evidence to get them to authorize the war. That would at least explain why the reaction to What I Didn’t Find in Africa was so strong.

The more I reflect on what drives the Bush machine the more I come around to those two magic words: propaganda and disinformation. What the right has been persistently effective at is using these tools to confound issue after issue. See Rather, Dan for more details.

More to the point, there’s a new bit of corporate speak that all the kool kids have picked up on: FUD. While the acronym is etymologically unrelated to FUBAR, the inference is understandable. No, FUD stands for Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt. Poking around a bit I found this explanation:

F.U.D. stands for Fear, Uncertainty, Doubt. It is a marketing technique used when a competitor launches a product that is both better than yours and costs less, i.e. your product is no longer competitive. [ed: hard not to think of the 2004 election, eh?] Unable to respond with hard facts, scare-mongering is used via ‘gossip channels’ to cast a shadow of doubt over the competitors offerings and make people think twice before using it.

In general it is used by companies with a large market share, and the overall message is ‘Hey, it could be risky going down that road, stick with us and you are with the crowd. Our next soon-to-be-released version will be better than that anyway’.

In the computer world, FUD was first practiced on a large scale by IBM in the 1970’s. Many people cite Amdahl as coining the phrase when he left IBM to start his own company thus making himself a FUD target.

When IBM moved into the desktop market with the launch of the IBM PC, it took FUD tactics along with it. IBM themselves only reckoned on selling around 100 to 200 thousand units of the PC, which were to be sold as an alternative to the APPLE II in ‘all IBM’ companies. It should be remembered that in many respects the IBM PC was an overpriced and retrograde step for the desktop market which had already reached the level of 16 bit multi-user, multi-tasking machines with a good deal of flexibility and inter-operability of hardware. The IBM PC had non of these characteristics and cost more, but by marketing on the strength of the IBM label (stick with us, we are big), the PC exceeded all expectations and killed off the existing market.

While the technique traditionally refers to one brand over another, say for instance Bush vs. Kerry, it can also be applied to a Go/No Go decision, for instance, Iraq. The line of reasoning for this case would be: the Republicans are strong on security and good to the military (as opposed to the anti-war crowd who are unpatriotic) so stay with me on this.

Was Iraq sold on the basis of FUD? I would say yes. I’m certainly watching the right-wing blogs, FOX news, the Washington Times, etc., to see if they come up with a FUDish campaign to get their Boy George out of this mess. And, yes, when 50% of people polled (Gallop) say they believe Bush misled on the issue of the Iraq invasion, I’d call that a mess.

Rhinochrisy has a good point about our attitude towards sacrifice, and I’ve got a few thoughts along this line, that even relate to Memorial Day.

Roxanne appears to be having a hard time with life in DC. Fair enough, I kind of miss California myself. I’m a little concerned when I hear the National Zoo called “shitty” however. Rox, it’s a place where the Smithsonian keeps endangered species so they don’t die off.

Bullworth is bringing up issues of religion and politics that merit review. The discussion reminds me of some of Jung’s students (I’m thinking in particular of Maurice Nicholl), or perhaps C.S. Lewis, and I wonder if the real subject here is Esoteric Christianity as opposed to the current practise of Christianity.

As Oliver points out, Maryland politics can’t be taken for granted in 2006. Paul Sarbanes is retiring, and the Republicans are likely going to put a conservative African-American on the ballot.

Apparently, when the president says: “Thank you for giving me a chance to come by and say hello” he really means: “I like it better when it’s just me and Condi.”

We will vote to invoke cloture on the following judicial nominees: Janice Rogers Brown (D.C. Circuit), William Pryor (11th Circuit), and Prisiclla Owen (5th Circuit).

Let’s take a look at some views either regarding these nominees or by the nominees themselves.

• Janice Rogers Brown: “These are perilous times for people of faith, not in the sense that we are going to lose our lives, but in the sense that it will cost you something if you are a person of faith who stands up for what you believe in and say those things out loud.”
• William Pryor: “Let’s take William Pryor, who’s been nominated to the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals. As Alabama’s Attorney General he tried for years to undo a host of federal laws, including the Family Medical and Leave Act, the Americans with Disabilities Act, the Age Discrimination in Employment Act, the Clean Water Act, and the Violence Against Women Act. I would say that William Pryor never met a federal law he liked. And he tried to undo dozens and dozens of these laws. He testified at his hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee that abortion was the worst abomination in Constitutional history, and admitted to Senator Schumer (D-NY) that he would overturn Roe if given the opportunity.”
• Priscilla Owen: “to construe the Parental Notification Act so narrowly as to eliminate bypasses, or to create hurdles that simply are not to be found in the words of the statute, would be an unconscionable act of judicial activism.”

Now, remember, those are the ones that last night’s agreement said were acceptable. What makes them different from the nominees that were deemed unacceptable? Let’s take a look:

• Henry Saad: “Henry Saad’s record as a judge on the Michigan Court of Appeals raises troubling questions in the areas of workers’ rights and consumers’ rights, and also reflects a willingness to engage in judicial activism, for which his colleagues have appropriately criticized him. “
• William Myers: “As with a number of Bush’s nominees, William G. Myers III has a long record of ideological extremism that raises questions about his suitability for the federal judiciary. What distinguishes Myers from the others is that the controversy is not focused on his views on abortion or civil rights.”

Might it be that Owens, Pyror, and Brown are all outspokenly anti-abortion while Myers and Saad are merely anti-environment, anti-consumer, and anti-worker? Might this be the distinction that makes the former more desirable to the fundamentalist right and the latter acceptable sacrifices?

I believe that in whatever is left of Frist’s conscience, he knows that what he’s doing in the current power grab is wrong, but he also believes that he can say those 5 magic words: the ends justify the means, and he’ll be absolved.

It’s a bit offensive, though, when Frist et al, are finger-pointing at Democrats as being the activists. For instance, when he says… (Boston Globe)

“The moment draws closer when all 100 United States senators must decide a basic question of principle, whether to restore the precedent of an up or down vote…or to enshrine a new tyranny of the minority into the Senate rules,” said Majority Leader Bill Frist, R-Tenn.

… he’s being the activist. And by the way, why is “an up or down vote” a matter of principle? Is he saying that votes that require a 2/3’s majority are unprincipled? The bigger question, though, is his use of the word “precedent.” Usually precedent means doing something the way you’ve always done it. I’d have to say that changing the Senate rules so that a majority vote is required for a rule change is without precedent.

All’s I’m saying here is that in this scenario Frist is the radical hippie-type extremist activist. The big difference is that unlike the flower children of Haight-Ashbury he’s a Make War not Love kind of guy.