Politics: Quick Hits
A couple few quick ones this morning, owing to pressing business at the real job:
1. Pryor nomination will be voted on this morning in the Senate Judiciary Committee. Sadly, Pryor's real record of unbelievably right-wing activism from the office of Attorney General, from his speeches denouncing the Supreme Court and Roe v. Wade to his breathless support for Decalogue-crazy Judge Roy Moore, will all be swept aside because questions about his ethics and fundraising tactics appear to sell papers. I think the efforts of the Republican Attorneys General Association to raise money from corporations that were also subject to state litigation is dispicable, but on Pryor's dance card, duplicitous fundraising is fairly far down the list.
2. The New York Times assembles a Issa-as-Bush piece. As an east coast liberal, I'm supposed to gobble this sh*t up, I know, but if you look closely, you can see the implications nationwide. When the New York Times covers somebody like Rep. Darrell Issa (who is spearheading all this recall garbage in California), the standard NYTimes method of laying out information becomes a de facto judgement of the subject. And this judgement is part of the low-expectations, "liberals hate us" game that the GOP now plays. It wins with snarky frat guys because the people who hate the snarky frat guys are the people (like myself) who can't believe how easy life is for a snarky frat guy. Simpsons fans will recognize the modified "Frank 'Grimey' Grimes syndrome;" they may also recognize the bulging vein on my forehead when I think too long about how the world somehow flipped backwards. Now the smart people are reviled and the dumb are revered. Issa's no idiot (for some reason, the Times quotes his I.Q., and, after explaining he's dyslexic, quotes him saying "I have to work real hard to get things when I read.") but this is a guy with a car theft arrest at age 27.
Still, even the Times, as it simultaneously talks down and therefore pumps up Darrell Issa, can't resist falling into the Bush-time travel trap. Read the front page blurb as it appeared at 8:54 am:
In his youth? He was 27! That isn't your youth by any measure on the planet. Pretty soon, that's going to be the total lifespan of people in Liberia for chrissakes. I know Bush's youthful indiscretions ended when he was forty and within fifteen years, he was president, but should that be the national standard for high office?
3. I know we killed Uday and Qusay. The LA Times and the Washington Post all breath a sigh of relief on behalf of President Bush, and predict that now that we've killed these two maniacs that everyone in Iraq hated already, we won't have to worry about that insurgency we've been fighting for the past two months. Or maybe not. Maybe the continued attacks (two more dead today, plus nine wounded) have less to do with restoring the Saddam Hussein government than with what comes after. Wouldn't it make sense for the Iranis who have carefully fostered exiled Shiite leaders to support action to strengthen the Shiite hand in an utterly chaotic Iraq? Aren't there about a million other groups of people with guns and bombs interested in something other than an occupation force in Iraq?
4. This is good for democracy: US forces shut down a newspaper in Baghdad today. The paper was printing some truly inciteful stuff, publishing an article a week and a half ago entitled "Death to all spies and those who cooperate with the U.S.; killing them is religious duty." So we shut them down, in an effort to protect, we claim, the Iraqi people and our own people there.
My question is, don't we need to undertake these kinds of tasks with more finesse? Can we do nothing more than, as neighbors reported, break down the door, ransack the office and detain the editor? Do we absolutely have no tact whatsoever? Did we honestly believe that this newspaper editor, who ten days ago printed some inciteful items, was going to be hiding guerrillas in his office? Will these kinds of activities make the lives of regular soldiers in Iraq easier or harder?
A couple few quick ones this morning, owing to pressing business at the real job:
1. Pryor nomination will be voted on this morning in the Senate Judiciary Committee. Sadly, Pryor's real record of unbelievably right-wing activism from the office of Attorney General, from his speeches denouncing the Supreme Court and Roe v. Wade to his breathless support for Decalogue-crazy Judge Roy Moore, will all be swept aside because questions about his ethics and fundraising tactics appear to sell papers. I think the efforts of the Republican Attorneys General Association to raise money from corporations that were also subject to state litigation is dispicable, but on Pryor's dance card, duplicitous fundraising is fairly far down the list.
2. The New York Times assembles a Issa-as-Bush piece. As an east coast liberal, I'm supposed to gobble this sh*t up, I know, but if you look closely, you can see the implications nationwide. When the New York Times covers somebody like Rep. Darrell Issa (who is spearheading all this recall garbage in California), the standard NYTimes method of laying out information becomes a de facto judgement of the subject. And this judgement is part of the low-expectations, "liberals hate us" game that the GOP now plays. It wins with snarky frat guys because the people who hate the snarky frat guys are the people (like myself) who can't believe how easy life is for a snarky frat guy. Simpsons fans will recognize the modified "Frank 'Grimey' Grimes syndrome;" they may also recognize the bulging vein on my forehead when I think too long about how the world somehow flipped backwards. Now the smart people are reviled and the dumb are revered. Issa's no idiot (for some reason, the Times quotes his I.Q., and, after explaining he's dyslexic, quotes him saying "I have to work real hard to get things when I read.") but this is a guy with a car theft arrest at age 27.
Still, even the Times, as it simultaneously talks down and therefore pumps up Darrell Issa, can't resist falling into the Bush-time travel trap. Read the front page blurb as it appeared at 8:54 am:
Darrell Issa, the millionaire congressman who is bankrolling the effort to recall Gov. Gray Davis, is facing nagging questions about two arrests for car theft in his youth.
In his youth? He was 27! That isn't your youth by any measure on the planet. Pretty soon, that's going to be the total lifespan of people in Liberia for chrissakes. I know Bush's youthful indiscretions ended when he was forty and within fifteen years, he was president, but should that be the national standard for high office?
3. I know we killed Uday and Qusay. The LA Times and the Washington Post all breath a sigh of relief on behalf of President Bush, and predict that now that we've killed these two maniacs that everyone in Iraq hated already, we won't have to worry about that insurgency we've been fighting for the past two months. Or maybe not. Maybe the continued attacks (two more dead today, plus nine wounded) have less to do with restoring the Saddam Hussein government than with what comes after. Wouldn't it make sense for the Iranis who have carefully fostered exiled Shiite leaders to support action to strengthen the Shiite hand in an utterly chaotic Iraq? Aren't there about a million other groups of people with guns and bombs interested in something other than an occupation force in Iraq?
4. This is good for democracy: US forces shut down a newspaper in Baghdad today. The paper was printing some truly inciteful stuff, publishing an article a week and a half ago entitled "Death to all spies and those who cooperate with the U.S.; killing them is religious duty." So we shut them down, in an effort to protect, we claim, the Iraqi people and our own people there.
My question is, don't we need to undertake these kinds of tasks with more finesse? Can we do nothing more than, as neighbors reported, break down the door, ransack the office and detain the editor? Do we absolutely have no tact whatsoever? Did we honestly believe that this newspaper editor, who ten days ago printed some inciteful items, was going to be hiding guerrillas in his office? Will these kinds of activities make the lives of regular soldiers in Iraq easier or harder?
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