patrickmurfin

Barack Obama was able to manage the suspense almost until the last moment.  The campaign’s famous self-discipline and tight control of message unraveled only a little as a relentless mainstream media, sniffing the wind for any clue, began to besiege the home of Joe Biden the senior senator from Delaware.  Helicopters circled the scene as if it were an L.A. freeway chase.  When the Secret Service showed up it was game over.  The word was out just hours before the candidate was prepared to make an official announcement.

All evening  Kathy Brady-Murfin kept checking her cell phone.  “I’m expecting a text from Barack!” The message did not come through before she had to turn in.  I’m sure the first thing she did this morning before heading off to work was checking that phone.

Kathy usually does not share my passionate involvement in politics.  In her jaundiced eye all politicians are suspect.  And she usually maintains that there’s not much difference between Democrats and Republicans.  When push comes to shove, she usually does vote Democratic, however.  Rumor has it she may have even voted for me upon occasion.  But Kathy is genuinely excited about Obama.  How excited?  She even signed up for a modest monthly automatic contribution to the campaign through the election, overcoming her usual anxiety over our precarious finances.

My wife is symbolic of all of the folks breathlessly awaiting word from Obama.  It is the passionate devotion of people like her the will give the Democratic ticket an edge that no horse race poll can take into account. 

Are those folks happy with the choice? Judging from the comments flooding into pro-Democratic sites like Huffington Post and the Daily Kos, a handful of curmudgeons and inevitable trolls aside, the pick is a grand slam home run.

The new team got its debut today in Springfield.  Returning to the picturesque and symbolic steps of the Old State Capital on a warm, sunny afternoon, Obama immediately invoked the memory of an equally sunny but much colder March afternoon 19 months ago where he launched his campaign of hope and change to an ecstatic, if frozen audience.  In rolled up shirtsleeves this time, Obama introduced his choice for running mate with genuine enthusiasm and affection.  He emphasized not only Biden’s extensive and widely admired foreign policy chops, but his working class Irish Catholic background, his struggles over tragedy, and his legendary devotion to the family to which he returned each night from Washington on an Amtrack train.  He made much of Biden sharing in an “improbable story,” but one which is intensely American.

Obama also contrasted Biden’s handling to the recent Russian invasion of Georgia to McCain’s bellicose attempt at policy making by press conference by pointing out that Biden “quietly” went to Georgia to meet that nation’s embattled president.  He pointedly said that Biden was “what many others pretend to be -- a statesman with sound judgment who doesn't have to hide behind bluster to keep America strong.’

Biden for his part sprinted confidently to the stage looking—silver hair plugs not withstanding--almost as youthful as Obama.  His speech made it clear why he will be not only an outstanding addition to the ticket, but a great vice president as well.  It is expected that a veep pick will laud the man who picked him.  But Biden was able to articulate how he had personally come to admire Obama as a leader, an agent of change, and as a statesman.  He immediately diffused the pitiful attempts of John McCain’s campaign to use his own presidential debate remarks to undercut Obama.

More importantly, in his characteristic blunt, plain spoken language, Biden immediately went to work on destroying the McCain campaign without personal rancor against a man he called his long time friend.  He invoked the kitchen table discussions “after the kids have gone to bed” repeated in millions of American families beset by soaring prices, stagnating or falling wages, and plummeting home values about how to make ends meet.  He included himself and his family—he is the least wealthy member of the U.S. Senate and reportedly had to take second mortgages on his home to finance his children’s college education—in those kitchen tables discussions.  He contrasted this to McCain who will "have to figure out which of the seven tables to sit at.” 

Then it was off to the races.  Biden lashed McCain to George W. Bush’s sinking and disastrous presidency with a ruthless precision that Obama has been loath to pursue.  He was not even shy about taking on McCain’s status as a war hero who increasingly invokes his P.O.W. experience every time he faces criticism-- "these times require more than a good soldier, they require a wise leader."  He could point out that his own son, the sitting Delaware Attorney General, will soon be deployed to Iraq as a member of the National Guard linking himself to the sacrifice of military families everywhere.  What a contrast to the neo-con war hawks, McCain aside, who avoided war service for themselves and their privileged children.

All in all it was a stellar performance all around.  The photo op with two tall, handsome men flanked by attractive wives, although noticeably shorter in duration than the turn taken by Barack and Michelle last February—probably at the insistence of a nervous Secret Service—made for a compelling pictures.

I didn’t check in with Fox News, where I expect that the usual sniping echoed the pitiful talking points from the McCain campaign, but commentators on both CNN and MSNBC effusive in their praise of Obama’s choice and the performance of both members of the ticket in Springfield.  The only misgivings I heard were that Biden, the fifth senior U.S. Senator, would not reinforce Obama’s message of change and that he does not bring strong economic policy credentials on the table in a year when the sagging economy is emerging as the big issue.

I have to disagree with both assessments.  Biden, although a senior senator, was always something of an outsider just by virtue of his daily commutes back to Delaware and his intense devotion to his family.  Secondly, Obama can argue that the personal esteem in which Biden is held by both sides of the aisle will make him the perfect choice to help steer a program of change through congress.

On the economy, Biden is a great choice because, as Barack repeated in his introduction, “he gets it.”  He understands what working and middle class Americans are going through.  He has been there himself.  And he has a legislative history of not only fighting for, but often spearheading economic initiatives critical to those kitchen table voters.  And he is the antidote to the class cluelessness of the likely ticket of McCain-Romney.

Now it’s on to Denver and sharpening the message of the Obama-Biden campaign even more.

The front page of  Rocky Mountain News proclaimed the nomination of William Jennings Bryan at the 1908 Democratic Convention in Denver.
 

The following post began as a query from Larry Bohning of the First Universalist Church of Denver.  The Democrats will meet in Denver this summer for the first time since the convention of 1908, which nominated William Jennings Bryan (again.)  Larry wondered if there might be any record of Unitarian or Universalist delegates to that convention.  This was my reply.

Good luck finding Unitarian delegates to the 1908 Democratic Convention in Denver.  You might have somewhat better luck among the Universalists who had strength in the Democratic Upper South, Border States, and along the Ohio Valley in the Midwest.  Some Universalists in the Northern cities also tended to vote Democratic—remember P.T. Barnum’s earlier Connecticut political career was as a Democrat.

But Unitarians for many reasons—regional, cultural, ethnic, and philosophic—were at this period overwhelmingly Republican.  The most obvious reason was that Unitarianism was still largely a religion of New Englanders and the New England diaspora who had been remarkably consistent in their allegiance to the Federalist/Whig/Republican line of American politics.  The Civil War and its lingering aftermath—the sanctification of the martyred Lincoln (who had not in life been popular with abolitionist minded Unitarians), the Bloody Shirt rallying of the North against Copperhead Democrats, the massive political influence of the Grand Army of the Republic—cemented  loyalty to the Republicans. 

In addition, the tendency of Catholic and Jewish urban masses loyal to “corrupt political machines” to vote Democratic rallied many Unitarians out of ethnic and religious loyalty to the Republicans. 

It also must be said that one wing of the Republican Party was also legitimately the home of American liberalism of the period.  This faction was always at war with other factions that endorsed unrestrained Capitalism and protected the Robber Baron culture of the Gilded Age on one hand and with a kind of benign, if stogy, main street Midwestern conservatism.

In 1908 that liberalism was ascendant within the GOP in the wake of Theodore Roosevelt and the Progressivism embraced by William Howard Taft and many other leading Unitarian lights.

By contrast Democrats represented the white South and its successful counter revolution to Reconstruction reforms.  They were the party of triumphant Jim Crow.  They also had that foothold among the urban poor of the big cities.  Until William Jennings Bryan came roaring out to Nebraska and fused the small farmer and local labor Populists of the Midwest and Great Plains into the party, Democrats were universally considered the “conservative” party in the mold of Grover Cleveland.

Democrats had only begun to create ties to labor—remember it was Cleveland who had called in Federal troops to squash the Pullman  Strike of 1892, but it was also Democratic Illinois Governor John Peter Altgeld who had resisted him, representing an early dawning strain of Democrats with labor leanings.  The conservative craft unions of the American Federation of Labor (AFL) led by Samuel Gompers were largely in the Republican fold after being brought into the grand coalition of Mark Hanna’s National Civic Federation.  Partly in reaction to the “sell out” of the “aristocracy of labor” Mary Harris “Mother” Jones in 1908 campaigned for the Democrats among her beloved United Mine Workers instead of encouraging them to join the surging Socialist Party of Eugene V. Debs, home to most of the labor left.

In this environment, about the only place where you might be able to turn up a Unitarian or two among the Democrats might be in the Midwest stronghold of the Western Unitarian Conference and its associated Unity Clubs.  Some folks who associated with the Unity clubs and with Jenkin Lloyd Jones’s Unity Magazine, like the great agnostic Clarence Darrow and Felix Adler, founder of Ethical Culture, were Democrats.  But they were not, themselves, Unitarians.  Indeed the more radical members of Western Conference churches and their Eastern allies in what would become the Community Church movement, were more likely to be delegates to the Socialist Party Convention that nominated Debs that year than to the Democratic assembly.

Only when Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal recast the Democrats as America’s liberal party did the movement of Unitarians away from GOP begin in earnest.  It picked up speed when post war Democrats embraced the United Nations, vigorously denounced by most Republicans.  And it accelerated when Democrats stopped being the party of Jim Crow and became (at least on the national level) the champion of every social movement dear to many UUs since then-from ban-the-bomb and anti-Vietnam War to Women’s Liberation to Gay Rights to environmentalism has been identified with the Democrats.  Meanwhile once vigorous Republican liberalism, the kind UU’s identified with, has been virtually driven from the GOP by social conservatives and the “religious right.” 

In 2008 it will probably be as hard to find a UU delegate in Minneapolis as it was to find a Unitarian delegate in Denver in 1908.  But the world spins on,  Who knows what future realignments may occur or what the affiliations may be of delegates in 2108 if either party, UUism and Democracy in America itself survive that long?

(Related post, Riffing on William Howard Taft )

Regular readers of this blog (if any) may have wondered at the absence of regular commentary on the Democratic Presidential Race of late.  As a matter of fact I have not posted a detailed article on the contest since “The Tonya Harding Option—Will Clinton Take it?” way back on March 26th and touched on it tangentially in only three or four other posts.

This is not because the campaign has not been heated—it has raged at blast furnace intensity—or because it is uninteresting—it has had all of the high drama, intricate plot twists, a cast of vivid characters of the most sizzling blockbuster.  Nor has it been because my candidate, Barack Obama has taken some lumps and ridden out some rough patches as the Hillary Clinton, channeling the Bozo Bop Bag has kept on popping back up.  I stand by Obama and I have a grudging admiration for Clinton’s amazing resilience.

While I have not posted here, I have added comments here and there across the blog-o-sphere.  What those comments have consistently said is basically this:  “Look, like it or not Barack Obama is the likely nominee of the party.  Great form me.  Painful for Clinton’s staunch and adoring supporters.  But no matter what happens—even if deus ex machina Hillary is magically delivered the nomination—the stakes are far too high for the people of this nation and the peace and security of the world for Democrats to fail to rally enthusiasitycally around our candidate.  I personally pledge to do so if Hillary becomes the nominee.  Nothing is more worisome to me than polling data that indicates that very significant numbers of each candidates supporters will vote for John McCain or sit on their hands in Novemeber if their favorite looses the nomination.  We must recognize that beyond personal bitterness, far more unites us a Democrats and Americans than divides us.  Pick your favorite hobby horse issues—the war, the ecconomy, the envirornment, women’s rights, civil liberties, health care, education—and either Democrat outshines the tarnished and disgraced re-tread of the Bush maladministration offered by the Republicans.”

One of the big reasons I have not posted here is to keep from falling into the temptation of joining the tit-for-tat bashing, name calling, and whining that has for the last several weeks been the hallmark of the struggle, at least as it is played out with passion in pundit columns, cable trash talk, and endless blogs.  I choose not to help bitterness fester.  As for me, I may take issue with Clinton and her campaign about how and what they have done since realizing that the pre-ordained nomination was slipping from their her hands.  But I love and admire those who love her.  I would hope in the reverse circumstances they would love and admire me.  We need each other.  Honestly.  We have to go beyond mouthing vague platitudes to each other all the while muttering under our breaths.  We must not now make empty gestures of reconciliation based on convenience, but must reconcile out of principle and respect.

Is it too early for Democrats to start running against the leading Republican contender?  I don’t think so.

John McCain retains a certain appeal to independents and even some Democrats attracted to his image as a “straight talking” independent.  Certainly he would be the most formidable GOP candidate even if the Taliban faction of the party stays home and sulks.

McCain’s alleged independence is pretty thin.  He has been reliably conservative in his Senate votes on almost all issues.  He has strayed off the reservation on campaign finance reform, immigration, and lately he talks about global warming.  But that’s enough to drive the wing nuts foaming at the mouth crazy.  But their enmity is no excuse for embracing the Arizona Senator.

And on the big issue of the war McCain’s independence lies in being even more hawkish than the craziest Neo Con in Bushland.

Thanks to Robert Greenwald at Brave New Films, we have this reminder of the real McCain.  Share it with loved ones in danger of being taken in.

Looking for interesting, even startling, trends in McHenry County politics?  Try this one on for size. 

With a hot and bloody race for State’s Attorney and a multiple candidate contest for the honor of loosing to Melissa Bean in the 8th Congressional District, you would think early and absentee voting turn-out for the Republicans would be big.

On the Democratic side there is a lot of interest in the Presidential race, but Illinois favorite son Barack Obama is considered a prohibitive favorite here making the contest less interesting in some eyes.  And in McHenry County there are only contested races in the 8th Congressional (which Bean is not sweating,) County Board District 6, and for two Precinct Representative slots (including this scribe’s Nunda 5 post.)

As of  Wednesday evening, after three days of early voting, Democratic Party Vice Chair Kathy Bergan Schmidt relayed the following numbers from the County Clerk’s office:

                        Democratic Ballots:  691

                        Repubican Ballots:    663

                                    Green Ballots: 4

                                    Non Partisan (Referenda only)  3

And these numbers are not a one day fluke.  Daily tracking reveals that Democrats were virtually even from the beginning before pulling ahead.

The winds of change are blowing through McHenry County.

One of scores of MOVEON anti-filibuster rallies around the country.

Well, it’s over now.  A bleary-eyed SENATE has voted not to end the filibuster against the LEVIN-REED AMENDMENT to the DEFENSE DEPARTMENT budget allocation.  The final vote was 52-47.  Four REPUBLICANS—GORDON SMITH (Oregon,) CHUCK HAGEL (Nebraska,) OLYMPIA SNOW (Maine,) and SUSAN COLLINS (ditto) voted to end the debate and proceed to a majority vote on the amendment. JOE LIEBERMAN (Turd, Connecticut) of course voted with the Repugnitans.  But so did HARRY REID himself—a parliamentary maneuver that allows him to resurrect the amendment for yet another vote.  TIM JOHNSON, still recovering from a stroke, was absent for the vote.

            The DEMOCRATS thus picked up one GOP vote.  But Collins, in a tough re-election race, said that she only voted to allow an up or down vote on the amendment but would have voted against the amendment itself. This is desperate, meaningless hair splitting since the amendment was doomed any way.  And if it had come to a vote, it would have passed, even with her opposition.

            Republicans whined that it was all just theater.  That it was.  But it is important theater.  It required the parade of Bush loyalists to stand up and defend the indefensible.  It also showed them up as obstructionists at a time when the overwhelming majority of American voters want Congress to take action to end this unpopular war. 

            Reid knows from bitter experience that the public does not appreciate the nuances of Senate tradition and have little patience for the hallowed tradition of the FILIBUSTER as a means of thwarting the majority of the body.  The GOP was able to use that repugnance to wipe up the floor with Democrats in the hotly contested judicial confirmations of the last Congress.  Even though most voters disapproved of the kind of reactionary judges Shrub had sent to the Senate, they hated the obstruction more.  Now it was Reid’s turn to rub the new minority’s nose in its own shit.

            In recent years the filibuster has not much resembled JEFFERSON SMITH’S lonely crusade—or even the epic rear-guard actions of the segregationist Democrats against the Civil Rights acts of the 1960’s.  Instead it has been a carefully orchestrated dance in which the mere threat of a filibuster, when the votes are sure to sustain it, is enough to kill legislation or an appointment.  That way no one actually has to put any effort into one.

            But Reid has told the Minority that they must actually hold their “extended debate.”  What is more he has threatened to bring the issue of ending the War back again and again with this amendment or with others—perhaps with ROBERT BYRD’S and HILLARY CLINTON’S amendment to withdraw the Resident’s authority to wage the war under the original 2002 measure obtained under false pretences.  There is also a pile-up of progressive legislation already passed by the HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES that could be subject to the same strategy.  How bad with the GOP look filibustering, say, children’s health insurance?

            As for the Levin-Reed Amendment itself, it is far from the “bring-‘em-home-now” demands of much of the anti-war movement.  It is centrist in every respect echoing many of the recommendations of the IRAQ STUDY GROUP.  It calls for a draw down of American troops beginning 120 days after passage, limiting remaining troops to missions against AL-QAEDA—a provision repeatedly mocked by JOHN McCAIN as requiring that they “wear t-shirts” identifying themselves—and training Iraqi forces.  It also call for a diplomatic initiative with Iraq’s neighbors and mediation effort led by the UNITED NATIONS.

            Yet even action this limited represents a strong rebuke to the CHENEY/BUSH/NEO-CON war machine.  It would not stop the war, but it would put the breaks on and undoubtedly be followed by stronger measures.  Reid’s aggressive tactics represent a break with Democratic timidity that can not be underestimated.

            Like it or not, this war will not be ended in one fell swoop.  Some sort of steady, controlled departure is the best that we can expect from Congress.

            MOVEON recognized this, which is why it mobilized anti-filibuster actions around the country. They undoubtedly will be ripped as Democratic Party lackeys again.  Ignore the criticism.  Congretional Democrats are finally getting it right. 

Senators BARACK OBAMA and DICK DURBIN of Illinois at earlier event on vetran's issues.

CAROLYN QUINN has done it again!  This is the letter she sent to Senators DICK DURBIN and BARACK OBAMA in support of the all night session to discuss the LEVIN-REED AMENDMENT forcing Senate REPUBLICANS to defend the indefensible.

Dear Senators:

You are making me immensely proud today. Hang in there! We cannot allow the Republican Caucus to morph into The Incredible Pit of an obstacle course, because if we do, the rest of the Senate, and indeed the rest of the country, will be mired in the muck right along with them.

I am a teacher in McHenry County who has participated in school sponsored "lock-downs" where we have great groups of students stay overnight in the gymnasium to have Reading Marathons. Sometimes we organize for them to do 24-hour runs outside on the track. These are always huge events,and I know well how that kind of work can be both grueling and rewarding.

I am also the mom of a Navy Man recently returned from "Operation Enduring Freedom." We want our troops home now - not because we are tired of fighting, although we are. Our sense of desperation comes because it is not possible to EVER have a sense of having won this war. That could only happen in the situation where we were doing an honorable deed, which in this case we certainly are not. What we have is this: honorable warriors are fighting as honorably as they can while the commander in chief wages this war in a tapestry of dishonor. The original warp was established on lies, deceptions and a perverted sense of profit. Woven across that was established a pattern of further dishonor that blankets the very soul of our country. It casts a shadow on the sacrifices made by all our boots on the ground AND our boats in the depths of the ocean.

Never did I imagine the day would come when the Red Cross would identify my country as the perpetrators of torture. I'm sorry, but there is no honor in the torture chamber. This has festered far too long, and we have got to put a stop to the entire fiasco.

Slam on the brakes!

Don't give up! Don't lose heart! Don't miss your families and feel lonely in the Senate Chambers tonight! We are with you, we are behind you, we are proud of you. We are honored to be represented by you tonight.

Carolyn Quinn

Crystal Lake, IL

            Certified liberals everywhere are wringing their hands over yesterday’s SUPREME COURT OPINION overturning a key provision of the McCAIN-FEINGOLD ACT. 

            Forgive me if I do not share their angst. 

            It’s not that I am any less worried than they are by the corrupting power of money in American Politics.  Or that I am sanguine about the probability that unlimited bushels of cash will now be funneled through various interest groups broadcasting “issue information” aimed at sinking opponents without the contribution restraints on direct donations.  I have no doubt that the rich and powerful will do what they do best with the blessing of the Bush Court—bamboozle the American public in anticipation of being able to pick their pockets.

            So what else is new?  If the court had upheld the ban on such ads in the run-up to elections, those same clever fat cats would have found some other way to corrupt the system.

            In the past DEMOCRATS, progressives of all stripes, and left leaning advocacy groups were virtually helpless against the avalanche of money.  Dedicated volunteers and over heated mimeograph machines were no match for the corporate dollars that gave us the REPUBLICAN oligarchy.

            But things have changed.  We’ve changed.  Beginning with the DEAN campaign on one hand and the emergence on truly grass roots, web based organizations like MOVEON, we have learned to play the game our own way.  We are now raising millions of dollars, not just for candidates but for causes.  Just look at the reporting.  Our small donors are beginning to match their deep pockets dollar for dollar.

            And our issue oriented organizations—Pro-choice, anti-gun, health care reform, civil liberties, drug reform, gay rights, anti-war, you name it—are now eager to use some of those donations to go after the bad guys in congress with the same kind of ads that twisted RUSS FEINGOLD’S shorts.

            I have the distinct impression that if the Court had upheld the restrictions in this case, the [IN]JUSTICE DEPARTMENT would spend a great deal more time chasing after our folks than they would bite the hand that feeds its master.  Just a guess.

            So forgive me if I sit out the current liberal pity party.

            LET’S GET READY TO RUMBLE!

            HEIDI PRZYBYLA in a report for BLOOMBERG posted at TRUTHOUT.COM detailed how, despite HILARY CLINTON’s continued lead in national poll, BARACK OBAMA is the only DEMOCRATIC PARTY candidate who beats all REPUBLICAN contenders in head-to-head competition.

   Obama, an Illinois senator, is clearly the strongest general-election candidate. He is the only Democrat who beats all three major Republican contenders: Giuliani, McCain and Romney. Clinton runs behind all three Republican contenders in head-to-head match-ups.

Obama Versus Giuliani

    Obama also does better than any other Democrat among independent voters who will vote in the Democratic primary, who often are central to electoral success. Moreover, he has more appeal with some Republican voters. For example, 15 percent of Republicans say they would choose Obama in a head-to-head match- up against Giuliani, 63, a former New York City mayor. Just 3 percent of Republican respondents say they would pick Clinton in a similar contest.

    The poll shows other areas of strength for Obama. A majority of Democrats say they favor "a candidate who can bridge partisan divides" - a central theme of his campaign - over a candidate "with long experience in government and policy making," a cornerstone of Clinton's self-presentation. Independents voting in the Democratic primary say they favor unity over experience by more than 2-to-1.

Primary Voters

    In addition, 18 percent of Democratic primary voters say they couldn't vote for Clinton, the highest negative rating of any Democrat. Five percent say they couldn't vote for Obama.

    Obama is "a new breed and I think he can work with other people better than she can," said John Bryan, a 58-year-old retired budget analyst from Springfield, Illinois who favors Obama.

    Clinton still does better among core Democrats, according to the poll. While Obama is the first African-American to have a serious chance at winning the Democratic nomination, Clinton runs more than 2-to-1 ahead among minority voters. She also does much better with female voters than the other major candidates, though she isn't nearly as strong with males.

    Former Senator John Edwards, 54, who is in third place by a large margin behind the two Democratic frontrunners, has lost almost half his support since the last poll in April. Edwards stands at 8 percent, down from 14 percent two months ago.

            Obama is also once again expected to out fund raise the Clinton steamroller despite a heavy dependence on small independent voters.  Despite all of this, the usual suspects among main stream pundits and talking heads still act as if Clinton was inevitable.

            Me?  I think the Senator looks more and more like that guy standing behind him in the picture.

THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY e-mailed  me and asked if I could write a letter to the editor about the Resident’s plan for a 50 year or more deployment in IRAQ and the support it has been getting from across the field of imperial wann-a-bes known collectively as the REPUBLICAN presidential candidates.  I was glad to oblige.  Since I just had a missive printed in the NORTHWEST HERALD, my usual outlet for such letters, I sent this one to the DAILY HERALD.  I urge any of you to use the handy tool on the Party web site and send your own letters.

To the Editor--

Gee, it’s been so swell hanging around the Korean Peninsula for 50 plus years and waiting for a war to break out, that the President and his brain trust think it would be just peachy if we could do the same thing in Iraq. 

Never mind that there will be no “truce line” to separate us from our potential enemies.  They’ll be mixed up higgly-piggly with the local population just out side the gates of the massive bases this scheme envisions. 

Never mind that  there will be no government on the other side, not even one run by a crack-pot family dynasty a la North Korea, with which to negotiate if problems arise and things get dicey.

Never mind that that there likely will not even be an allied government that wants them to stay. Right now a majority of the Iraqi parliament wants to revoke the UN mandate under which the U.S. occupation is conducted and set an absolute deadline for our withdrawal from the country.

Never mind the overwhelming majority of the American people want this insanity over and done with NOW.

Senator John McCain says the President’s idea is just fine with him.  The other contenders for the Republican nomination, even those who stare at their shoes when the unpopular president is mentioned, agree.

Want to stop this?  Make sure a Democrat is elected our next president.  Senator Obama is my first choice, but any of the leading contenders would put the breaks on this bit of hubris in short order.

Patrick Murfin,

Crystal Lake, Illinois

All week the in-box of my e-mail has been stuffed with screaming outrage.  Thurdsay the Democratic led congress handed Resident GEORGE W.  BUSH  the fabulous gift of almost complete surrender on funding the WAR IN IRAQ.   After a “compromise” deal was worked out with the White House the measure cleared both houses on Thursday.  MAJORITY LEADER HARRY REID voted for the measure.  In an act of slight of hand SPEAKER NANCY PELOSI voted against it while letting her leadership team advance the bill.  The lip-stick-on-the-pig, meant to mollify a public demanding an end to the war, is that for the first time Bush will have to accept “benchmarks” for progress from the Iraqi government in getting control of the country.  Make that optional earmarks.  Shrub can wave them if he sees fit.

            As part of the deal, the Democrats got to bundle some spending initiatives unrelated to the bill—most of them worthwhile.  And they finally got the long treasured MINIMUM WAGE increase, albeit with tax-cut bribes for business.  Great. Just great.  By tying those measures to the bill they invite the Republicans to mock them and unprincipled pork-barrel traders and the corrupt recipients of public bribes.  It will make no difference that the corrupters and bribers are the Maladministration and the GOP (stands for Got Ours, Patsy) Congressional minorities.

            With in moments of the announcement of the “deal” by Democratic leaders earlier in the week, jubilant Republicans were claiming a total Democratic capitulation to the President’s insistence on “no surrender dates.”  They also knew that the Democrats were now full partners in the war.  By playing Tweedle Dee to Tweedle Dum Democrats were neutralizing the war as an election issue.

            There can be no question that this is both a policy and a political disaster for Congressional Democrats.  No one now believes them when they claim that they will stand fast when they tackle the subject again when the regular Defense Department funding bill comes up for consideration in July.

            So what will the vote achieve?  Can any silk purse be knit from this sows ear?  One good thing is that the vast network of anti-war organizations, websites, blogs and publications have become instantly re-unified.  Just months ago stand-fasters like DEMOCRATS.COM, CODE PINK,  and others were at the throats of  “pragmatists” at MOVEON and moderates like the COUNCIL FOR A LIVABLE WORLD when the latter went along with Nancy Pelosi’s incremental approach to a funding bill.  This week there wasn’t a dimes worth of difference in the outrage all expressed or in the intensity in mobilizing their supporters to swamp Congress with protest.

            Dozens of  Democratic incumbent Congress people and Senators who have signed on to the capitulation will now be the targets of well financed and organized primary challengers as the grass roots rises up to seize the party and not only make it a true peace party, but drive it significantly to the left.  Things look bleak indeed for “triangulators” and DEMOCRATIC LEADERSHIP COUNCIL types.

            This also will have a major impact on the Presidential race.  Marginal dark horses who have been consistently and vocally anti-war may be the beneficiaries of those now taking pledges never to vote for anyone who approves of this measure.  Score points for DENNIS KUCINICH, MIKE GRAVEL,  and CHRISTOPHER DODD.  If one of them could establish himself as a clear alternative he could suddenly find himself both funded and a real player in some of the primary states.

            Established anti-war candidates BARACK OBAMA and JOHN EDWARDS will do alright as well.  Edwards came out strongly against the temporary funding measure a few days ago in a policy speech to the COUNCIL ON FOREIGN RELATIONS, where he outlined a detailed proposal for ending the war.  Out now hardliners might not, however like the details of his plan which calls for removing the bulk of U.S. troops by the end of the year but maintaining a strong presence in Kuwait and the Gulf and even a sizable garrison in Baghdad to “protect the embassy.”  Like it or not this is version of JOHN MURTHA’S earlier proposal of maintaining a regional presence “over the horizon.”  Obama, who got to cast a vote against the measure in the Senate, has been less detailed but tends in the same direction.   And in point of fact this is how America will get out of the war, no matter how unsatisfactory to the bring-‘em-all-home-now crowd. 

            HILLARY CLINTON also voted against the funding.  Will that be enough to placate the rabidly anti-Hillary peace left?  Or will she be seen as bending to the whims of polls and thus sully the image as a “strong” leader she has carefully built.  The right already hates her.  They will take special delight in smearing her now as a “flip-lopper” and a “surrender monkey.”  She calculates that the public’s absolute rejection of the war and its sycophantic boosters that she can weather that storm.  A new CBS NEWS/NEW YORK TIMES presidential preference poll showed her picking up seven points over the past two weeks and now enjoying a wide lead over Obama.  Maybe the move can actually woo the anti-war public as opposed to the anti-war movement, which will never embrace her.

JOHN KERRY who, despite dropping out of the race following an embarrassing case of foot-in-the-mouth disease, has scrupulously maintained his campaign e-mail list and today made a point of touting his vote against the bill.  He may still harbor fantasies of the Party turning to him after the main contenders cannibalize each other.  Fat chance.

By coincidence  AL GORE launched his new book ASSAULT ON REASON, stinging rebuke to the post “reality based” trips of the Bush administration, this week.  That gave him the opportunity to pummel “failed leadership” not just in the White House, but in Congress and the Courts as well. He was everywhere from the Sunday morning talking head shows to DAVID LETTERMAN.  And while maintaining constantly (and most of his friends believe it) that he does not intend to run for President, he has lately made a point of saying “never say never.”  A hugely laudatory profile in the NEW YORK TIMES MAGAZINE by JAMES TRAUB has been circulated throughout the net by several blogs and websites and hints that Gore might be mulling a “late entry” into the race if the front runner falter and there is a “grassroots” demand.  A number of high powered political pros have refrained from signing on with other campaigns and are setting up an un-official shadow operation.  Gore growing iconic status and the yearning of many Democrats may overwhelm his desire not to run.  Were he to announce there would be a stampede of supporters deserting other campaigns for Gore.  It might not be enough to put the former vice-president over the top, but it could sink campaigns with shallow support—Hillary being the most vulnerable.

What ever happens, the anti-war movement will be tempted to jettison its attachment to the Democratic Party—a move longed for by the left militants of such demonstrations machines as THE WORLD CAN’T WAIT.  We could see an up-turn in street demonstrations, direct action, and civil disobedience and the development of a movement reminiscent of the Vietnam War resistance.  That could drain maybe tens of thousands of dedicated, motivated boots-on-the-ground troops that Democrats were counting on next year not only for the Presidential campaign, but to build solid majorities in both houses of  Congress.

            To end the war and to build a Democratic Party strong enough to advance a positive progressive agenda, Congressional Democrats must find a way to say no to the least popular President in history.  And they have to find that way fast.

            Now is the moment to raise Hell, or Hell will surely find us.

                               
              Chris Hedges                                           James Luther Adams

CHRIS HEDGES is an award winning foreign correspondent with impeccable credentials.  But he may be best known for the headlines he made in May of 2003 when he was commencement speaker at conservative ROCKFORD COLLEGE in Illinois. Recently returned from Iraq, the speech was a blistering denunciation of the war and astonishingly prescient in its projections for a dismal result.  Hedges was booed and jeered in what some observers reported was a near riot.  He persevered and delivered the speech anyway.  A national examination of freedom of speech and academic freedom followed the well publicized address.

 He followed up this experience with publishing WAR IS A FORCE THAT GIVES US MEANING, drawing on his decades of experience as a war coorespondent. 

But Hedges also was drawn to examine the rise of the religious right in America.  The son of a Presbyterian minister, he was a young student at HARVARD DIVINITY SCHOOL, where he studied under JAMES LUTHER ADAMS.  Adams gave him the intelectual tools, compounded by real world experience to analize the growing threat.

Although largely unknown to the public JAMES LUTHER ADAMS is commonaly regarded as the greatest Unitarian theologian of the 20th Century.  Studying in Germany during the rise of the Nazis, he advocated a rigourous, grounded religious humanism that could rise above empty platitudes and individual self-absorbtion to be a postitive force for good in the world.  He secretly filmed members of the anti-nazi underground CONFESSING CHURCH including KARL BARTH and ALBERT SCHWEITZERr, as well as Nazi apologists in the state sanctioned church.  Escaping the Gestapo by guile with the films, he returned to the states to sound a warning to both the nation and to complacent religious liberals.  Later also translated and intorduced to the American public the important German liberal theologians, including PAUL TILLICH.

In January Hedges published his new examination of the religious right, AMERICAN FACSISTS: THE CHRISTIAN RIGHT AND THE WAR ON AMERICA.  

In an essay first published in TRUTHDIG and which I read in TRUTHOUT.ORG, Hedges explains the importance of Adams in the development of his critique. The article is so important, I have elected to reproduce it in its entreaty below.

Christianists on the March
    By Chris Hedges
    Truthdig

 Dr. James Luther Adams, my ethics professor at Harvard Divinity School, told his students that when we were his age - he was then close to 80 - we would all be fighting the "Christian fascists."

The warning, given 25 years ago, came at the moment Pat Robertson and other radio and television evangelists began speaking about a new political religion that would direct its efforts toward taking control of all institutions, including mainstream denominations and the government. Its stated goal was to use the United States to create a global Christian empire. This call for fundamentalists and evangelicals to take political power was a radical and ominous mutation of traditional Christianity. It was hard, at the time, to take such fantastic rhetoric seriously, especially given the buffoonish quality of those who expounded it. But Adams warned us against the blindness caused by intellectual snobbery. The Nazis, he said, were not going to return with swastikas and brown shirts. Their ideological inheritors had found a mask for fascism in the pages of THE BIBLE.

He was not a man to use the word fascist lightly. He had been in Germany in 1935 and 1936 and worked with the underground anti-Nazi church, known as the Confessing Church, led by Dietrich Bonhoeffer. Adams was eventually detained and interrogated by the Gestapo, who suggested he might want to consider returning to the United States. It was a suggestion he followed. He left on a night train with framed portraits of Adolf Hitler placed over the contents of his suitcases to hide the rolls of home-movie film he had taken of the so-called German Christian Church, which was pro-Nazi, and the few individuals who defied the Nazis, including the theologians Karl Barth and Albert Schweitzer. The ruse worked when the border police lifted the tops of the suitcases, saw the portraits of the Führer and closed them up again. I watched hours of the grainy black-and-white films as he narrated in his apartment in Cambridge. 

Adams understood that totalitarian movements are built out of deep personal and economic despair. He warned that the flight of manufacturing jobs, the impoverishment of the American working class, the physical obliteration of communities in the vast, soulless exurbs and decaying Rust Belt, were swiftly deforming our society. The current assault on the middle class, which now lives in a world in which anything that can be put on software can be outsourced, would have terrified him.

The stories that many in this movement told me over the past two years as I worked on AMERICAN FASCISTS: THE CHRISTIAN RIGHT AND THE WAR ON AMERICA were stories of this failure - personal, communal and often economic. This despair, Adams said, would empower dangerous dreamers - those who today bombard the airwaves with an idealistic and religious utopianism that promises, through violent apocalyptic purification, to eradicate the old, sinful world that has failed many Americans.

These Christian utopians promise to replace this internal and external emptiness with a mythical world where time stops and all problems are solved. The mounting despair rippling across the United States, one I witnessed repeatedly as I traveled the country, remains unaddressed by the Democratic Party, which has abandoned the working class, like its Republican counterpart, for massive corporate funding. The Christian right has lured tens of millions of Americans, who rightly feel abandoned and betrayed by the political system, from the reality-based world to one of magic - to fantastic visions of angels and miracles, to a childlike belief that God has a plan for them and Jesus will guide and protect them. This mythological worldview, one that has no use for science or dispassionate, honest intellectual inquiry, one that promises that the loss of jobs and health insurance does not matter, as long as you are right with Jesus, offers a lying world of consistency that addresses the emotional yearnings of desperate followers at the expense of reality. It creates a world where facts become interchangeable with opinions, where lies become true - the very essence of the totalitarian state. It includes a dark license to kill, to obliterate all those who do not conform to this vision, from Muslims in the Middle East to those at home who refuse to submit to the movement.

And it conveniently empowers a rapacious oligarchy whose god is maximum profit at the expense of citizens. We now live in a nation where the top 1 percent control more wealth than the bottom 90 percent combined, where we have legalized torture and can lock up citizens without trial. Arthur Schlesinger, in THE CYCLES OF AMERICAN HISTORY, wrote that "the great religious ages were notable for their indifference to human rights in the contemporary sense - not only for their acquiescence in poverty, inequality and oppression, but for their enthusiastic justification of slavery, persecution, torture and genocide."

 Adams saw in the Christian right, long before we did, disturbing similarities with the German Christian Church and the Nazi Party, similarities that he said would, in the event of prolonged social instability or a national crisis, see American fascists rise under the guise of religion to dismantle the open society. He despaired of U.S. liberals, who, he said, as in Nazi Germany, mouthed silly platitudes about dialogue and inclusiveness that made them ineffectual and impotent. Liberals, he said, did not understand the power and allure of evil or the cold reality of how the world worked. The current hand-wringing by Democrats, with many asking how they can reach out to a movement whose leaders brand them "demonic" and "satanic," would not have surprised Adams. Like Bonhoeffer, he did not believe that those who would fight effectively in coming times of turmoil, a fight that for him was an integral part of the biblical message, would come from the church or the liberal, secular elite.

His critique of the prominent research universities, along with the media, was no less withering. These institutions, self-absorbed, compromised by their close relationship with government and corporations, given enough of the pie to be complacent, were unwilling to deal with the fundamental moral questions and inequities of the age. They had no stomach for a battle that might cost them their prestige and comfort. He told me, I suspect half in jest, that if the Nazis took over America "60 percent of the Harvard faculty would begin their lectures with the Nazi salute." But this too was not an abstraction. He had watched academics at the University of Heidelberg, including the philosopher Martin Heidegger, raise their arms stiffly to students before class.

 Two decades later, even in the face of the growing reach of the Christian right, his prediction seems apocalyptic. And yet the powerbrokers in the Christian right have moved from the fringes of society to the floor of the House of Representatives and the Senate. Forty-five senators and 186 members of the House before the last elections earned approval ratings of 80 to100 percent from the three most influential Christian right advocacy groups - the Christian Coalition, Eagle Forum, and Family Resource Council.

President Bush has handed hundreds of millions of dollars in federal aid to these groups and dismantled federal programs in science, reproductive rights and AIDS research to pay homage to the pseudo-science and quackery of the Christian right. Bush will, I suspect, turn out to be no more than a weak transition figure, our version of Otto von Bismarck - who also used "values" to energize his base at the end of the 19th century and launched "Kulturkampf," the word from which we get culture wars, against Catholics and Jews. Bismarck's attacks, which split Germany and made the discrediting of whole segments of the society an acceptable part of the civil discourse, paved the way for the Nazis' more virulent racism and repression.

The radical Christian right, calling for a "Christian state" - where whole segments of American society, from gays and lesbians to liberals to immigrants to artists to intellectuals, will have no legitimacy and be reduced, at best, to second-class citizens - awaits a crisis, an economic meltdown, another catastrophic terrorist strike or a series of environmental disasters. A period of instability will permit them to push through their radical agenda, one that will be sold to a frightened American public as a return to security and law and order, as well as moral purity and prosperity. This movement - the most dangerous mass movement in American history - will not be blunted until the growing social and economic inequities that blight this nation are addressed, until tens of millions of Americans, now locked in hermetic systems of indoctrination through Christian television and radio, as well as Christian schools, are reincorporated into American society and given a future, one with hope, adequate wages, job security and generous federal and state assistance. The unchecked rape of America, which continues with the blessing of both political parties, heralds not only the empowerment of this American oligarchy but the eventual death of the democratic state and birth of American fascism.

I urge all of the faithful readers of this little blog to support getting the minimum wage through the Senate unsullied  by “Poison Pill” Republican Amendments.  Senator Edward Kennedy has been a lion on the floor on this issue.  Below is his appeal.

I need your help.

For ten years, the Republican leadership has refused to let us raise the minimum wage. Even now, the bill will barely lift 13 million working Americans out of poverty -- but it's progress.

Now the Senate has invoked cloture, which means that our opponents in the Senate have 30 hours to hammer away at the bill before we can vote on it.

Armed with scores of amendments, Republicans have proposed one poison pill after another to weaken and obstruct what should be a simple raise.

What are these amendments? Republicans have proposed $240 billion in tax breaks for corporations, $36 billion in tax breaks for small businesses, and many, many more -- most of which have nothing to do with giving hard-working Americans a well-earned and long-delayed raise.

We have to ask hard questions of Republicans in the Senate: What is your price for giving hard-working men and women the raise they deserve? After lavishing billions on the wealthiest Americans and largest corporations, can't we give these workers $2.10 more an hour?

When does the greed stop?

That’s the question. That’s the issue. Make no mistake. They have piles of amendments -- we have none.

It is absolutely essential that all who care about this clear issue of conscience step up and make their voices heard now.

Show your support for a clean Fair Minimum Wage Act.                     

http://www.tedkennedy.com/raisethewage

What is it about the minimum wage that drives Republicans crazy?

Don't let them disguise their disdain for their fellow Americans by hiding it behind a pile of hostile amendments.

In the past week of debate each Senator has made $3,800 -- more than a third of what a minimum wage worker makes in a year! What is it about these hard-working men and women that they find so offensive? Why would they poison legislation on something as basic as the minimum wage?

It's time for some answers.

--Senator Edward M. Kennedy

MEMO

FROM:  NATIONAL LABOR RELATIONS BOARD

TO:       AMERICAN WORKERS

Effective immediately you will obey the following instructions to the letter:  1)  Drop trousers.  2) Spread legs. 3) Bend over.  4) Prepare to be screwed. 5) Be screwed. 6) Say “Thank You, Sir!” 7) Vote Republican.

The long war of the Corporate Oligarchy, waged on their behalf by the Republican Party, on American workers and the vestiges of their labor union protections, may at last be coming to a climax.   A series of widely anticipated rulings by the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) collectively known as the “Kentucky River Cases” are expected to be handed down in the next few days.  Almost surely the ruling will wave a magic wand and convert millions of workers in the blink of eye into “management” and thus ineligible for inclusion in union contracts under the notorious Taft-Hartley Act of 1947.

A study released by the Economic Policy Institute believes that as many of two thirds of unionized workers could become excluded form bargaining units.  How? By simply declaring that because at some point in a day they may casually supervise or direct the work of others.  Although bereft of the traditional prerogatives of management to hire, fire, discipline or make policy, millions of workers have some responsibility to direct others.  These include production workers, miners, dock and warehousemen designated as team leaders, gang leaders, or lead workers of any kind.  It also includes anyone who works with or oversees an apprentice or trainee, or any regular worker charged with instructing a temporary worker or intern.  Or, under the broadest definition, pushed by the hoards of management lawyers plying the Board, just about any senior worker who ever told another to “Go get me that left-handed flange ratchet.”

Since health care has been one of the few growth areas for the American labor movement in recent years and since nurses, hit hard by hospital reorganizations and “economies” and often heavily over worked, have been the leaders of the union movement in hospitals, this is a well aimed blow.

The 70,000 member California Nurses Association has taken a lead in opposing the expected decision and have led marches and protests at Federal buildings. 

The AFL-CIO, awakened from it torpor, has leapt into action.  As I am writing this national leaders of the organization are scheduled to demonstrate at the NLRB offices in Washington and have announced that they will commit “acts of civil disobedience.”  The vision of well fed pie-cards actually being dragged away in handcuffs highlights the seriousness with which they regard the issue. 

If the ruling has not yet come down, how, you may ask, can we be so certain it will be so damaging to workers?  Because the deck has been stacked.  That’s how we know.  Once considered at least moderately friendly to labor, starting with Ronald Regan, with only a brief respite in the Clinton years (and he only got a few of his appointments on the board) the NLRB has been stacked with right wing ideologues and actual lawyers from big time union busting firms, lobbyists from industrial trade organizations, and an assortment of GOP toadies and hacks.  The extremity of positions of new appointees has only become more marked with each passing year of Republican domination.  On top of that, successive Republican administrations have filled the ranks of the career Administrative Law Judges, who rule on NLRB cases, with the same kind of people.

And it is not the first time the Labor Department has expanded the definition of supervisor to the detriment of working people.  Last year the Wages and Hours division issued an interpretation of existing labor law that excluded millions of workers from traditional overtime benefits on precisely the same grounds—that they had “management” responsibilities.  That caused a ruckus in Congress, but went through.  It is likely that the NLRB will actually cite that interpretation to buttress their ruling in the current cases.

With the power of organized labor at its lowest point since the open labor wars of the 19^th Century, why is the administration so interested in weakening it further?  First and foremost, these guys are always at the beck and call of the Corporate Oligarchy.  They want it for the simple reason that it gives them an enormous power advantage over their workers, who they can proceed to exploit even more, thus reaping greater and greater profits as well as fatter and fatter executive compensation packages.  They paid for the government, and they damn well expect to get what they want from it.

But beyond that, the Machiavellians behind Bush—Karl Rove and the boys—see a naked political advantage to gutting unions.  Organized labor has been just about the last big, independent contributor of money and volunteers to the Democratic Party.  It has always been a Rove objective to destroy labor to strangle the Democratic Party.  Much of the assault on public education and the drive for aid to parochial schools and support for so-called charter schools is a direct result of the desire to “break the power of the Teachers unions.”

But what can an enfeebled labor movement do?  Even the Democrats, who may be the ultimate political victims of the wide spread union busting, have hardly deigned to notice.  The liberal blog-o-sphere and the activist base have hardly noticed.  Many of them think of unions as quaint relics anyway.

Only the power of working people acting in their own best interests can undo the damage that the government is trying to inflict.  Already some labor observers are foreseeing a massive wave of strikes in the health care industry demanding contracts that do not accept the new definitions.  That movement could spill over into the traditional blue collar industries as well, but only if the unions are willing to put up the fight for their own survival.  Old practices like solidarity strikes, secondary boycotts, and massed picketing—all outlawed under Taft-Hartley—will have to be taken out and dusted off.  After all the men and women who first organized the unions did not ask for permission.  They acted.

Maybe what we need to do is flood the streets in front of the NLRB, not just with a handful of sacrificial union bureaucrats, but with hundreds of thousands of used up, exploited and pissed off workers in numbers like those of the immigration marches.

Bring torches.  Bring rail. Bring tar.  Bring feathers.

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Blogger Glenn Greenwald has meticulously documented a veritable feeding frenzy among top level conservative pundits and bloggers in competition to see who can raise the biggest, meanest lynch mob for the NEW YORK TIMES. 

Hardly surprising, you say, given the yowls of administration outrage over the TIMES recent expose of its detailed tracking of fund transfers between banks internationally.  The President, Veep, Treasury Secretary, assorted Congressional puppets, and the disciplined array cable news and radio mouthpieces lined up with unusually sharp criticism.  The word treason was bandied about.  Veiled and not so veiled threats of prosecution under the State Secrets Act were uttered.

But wait, what Greenwald has uncovered is an even more virulent flap over an innocuous piece in the TIMES travel section.  You read correctly.  A well organized phalanx of top right wing opinion makers’ ire has been raised over a puff piece on the Maryland Eastern Shore village of St. Michaels, where Dick Cheney and Don Rumsfeld, among other high rollers, have vacation homes.

Starting with big name right wing ranter and highly paid liberal baiter, David Horowitz writing in FRONT PAGE MAGAZINE, the chorus asserted that the article purposefully exposed Cheney, Rumsfeld and their families to attacks by al Qaeda or domestic radicals.  The TIMES article contained, as most such articles do, a simple street map of the village which included streets used to access the big wigs’ private road.  A photo showed the end of the driveway and the mailbox of Rumsfeld’s residence.  A survey of the quaint local shops also mentioned some of Mrs. Rumsfeld’s favorite stops.

Why would the TIMES do this? Apparently, in the hope that some swarthy fanatic, unable to attain access to his targets in any other way, with his TIMES treasure map in his pocket, will waltz up to the front door of one of the residences at the precise moment one of the Big Cheeses has assembled his entire wholesome and adoring family around him, and ignite his shoe, blowing to smithereens the Flower of American Manhood and several adorable grandchildren.  The TIMES, its publisher, editors, reporters, photographers, and evidently the undocumented aliens who mop the bathrooms in the words of one post hate “…everyday Americans (who its principals have utter contempt for), our soldiers (who they despise) and our President (who they have an undying hatred of.)”

Now that we are clear on the motive, how about the timing?  The vox populi of the right asserts it was in retaliation for administration criticism of the aforementioned international bank snooping story.  That story broke on June 19^.  The Administration flame war against the TIMES (and curiously not against the WALL STREET JOURNAL and LOS ANGELES TIMES, conservative papers that also ran the story) began almost immediately and has continued unabated.  The travel article appeared in the June 30 edition.

Any one who is even vaguely familiar with how major newspapers work, will recognize that articles in feature sections are often assigned, reported and edited weeks, sometimes months ahead of publication.  It would not be difficult to identify such a time line for this story.  The special sections are also virtually independently edited with little connection to either the news or editorial departments.  It is safe to say that publisher Arthur Sulzberger, Jr. (who the right wing bloggers delight in calling by the nick name “Pinch”), or the managing editor of the paper were aware of the article much in advance.  It is also true that special sections are often printed days in advance and later inserted into the daily paper.  In other words, the timing of the story almost surely had nothing to do with the earlier flap.

Neither was the information particularly secret.  Nine months earlier the WASHINGTON POST reported that Cheney was buying a $2.9 million home near Rumsfeld in exclusive St. Michaels and identified it as a home built by one of Thomas Edison’s daughter in 1930.  Just how many of those could there be?  That is more specific than a street address, which the TIMES never published.  Ironically the conservative web page NewsMax breathlessly cited the POST article in a celebrity gossip piece when it first came out.  The same NewsMax now denounces the TIMES story as “all part of the War against President Bush.            “

All of this would be a tempest in a tea pot if not for the virulence of the attack and its obviously carefully orchestrated nature.  Reflecting the earlier calls for prosecution for, there are even more specific threats uttered in this case.  On the popular right wing blog RED STATE, a commentator insisted, “Disclosing national secrets is a criminal offense.  The AG and the US Attorneys should not only consider charges, but file charges against the individuals who participated in the publication of stories—the government employees that told the reporters, the reporters, the editors, and even Pinch himself.” 

Another writer on the same site wrote, “…since we’ve so civilized ourselves that it highly unlikely that and angry mob with torches will show up on the NYT’s doorstep.  Pity, that.”  And that was only one of the artfully veiled threats of physical violence.  Several radio talkers have advocate the execution of TIMES editors, which at least infers a trial first.  Others have been content just to say they should be shot, leaving to the imagination of the listeners just who might do the shooting.  Of course when questioned about it they will all swear that they were only speaking metaphorically.

They have been emboldened by the success of a certain media personality, always referred to as “the leggy blonde” who publicly regretted that the TIMES building had not been blown up by terrorists.  Not only did she get away with the remarks, she was rewarded with best selling books, all of the TV face time she could handle, and inch after inch of fawning coverage in the very liberal press she reviles.  If she gets away with it, why can’t they?

Another blogger posted the home address of a hapless TIMES photographer.  After removing to posting a day later, he invited readers to submit the photos and locations of homes of Sulzberger, Editor Bill Keller and the article writers.  These were his words:  “Go hunt them down and do America a favor.  Get their photo, street address, where their kids go to school, anything you can dig up, and send it to the link above.”

Now the writers of these blogs and the blowhards of the airways know that a certain percentage of their readership is not deeply tethered to reality.  Some of them, in fact, seethe with homicidal rage on their best days, are armed to the teeth with the beloved totem objects of the NRA, and don’t need a hard shove to go over the edge.  They are a part, maybe a sliver, but a part none the less, of “The Base.”  When one of them goes off the deep-end and actually stalks down some editor or reporter and puts a well placed round in their brain, the pundits will tisk tisk and deny any responsibility.

But they know what they are doing.  They are playing the game of physical intimidation to shut up the press.  If some one proves that liberals are indeed good target practice, so much the better.

The trouble is, combined with tons of expensive law suites, congressional investigation, general bullying from the administration, and threats of jail, it will have a “chilling” impact.  Hell, it will have a frigid impact.  The mainstream press, the NEW YORK TIMES included, has not exactly covered themselves in glory in recent years telling the tough stories that might embarrass the administration.  Timidity has been a by-word.  Remember it took the TIMES more than a year to work up the courage to break the telephone monitoring story, conveniently sitting on it through the election.  Neither have they been eager to explore the many documented irregularities in the 2004 Ohio vote that gave the Presidency back to George W., Cheney’s energy deals, or the reality of the War in Iraq.  Instead of being the People’s tribune, they have been the administrations enabler.

It will now be a cold day in hell before the TIMES sticks its neck out again.

Score another round for the bad guys.

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Now I’m not much on guilt by association. Particularly in politics. You know the kind. Bill Clinton used to get smeared with it all the time. He would have a picture taken with some mope, one of hundreds and thousands that were taken with citizens at all sorts of events and meetings. Two years later it would pop up when the guy turned out to be a child molester, embezzler, or a one-time Klansman. It’s a dirty game. 

I remember that during one of Representative Jack Frank’s first campaigns he was stalked at an event on Woodstock Square by a Republican staffer hoping to snap a picture of him with Roland Burris. The idea was to put the picture in campaign literature thus wordlessly tying Jack both to evil state Democrats and—gasp—to a Black. 

But some associations, and the enthusiasm with which they are embraced by the candidate, cry out for comment. 

Take, for example David McSweeney, GOP candidate for Congress in the 8th District against Democratic incumbent Melissa Bean. He was proud as a pumpkin to be seen with Vice President Dick Cheney AKA the Prince of Darkness. He was also embarrassingly grateful. 

At a Chicago fundraiser the Vice President helped suck up $200,000 from cheering fat cats for McSweeney’s flagging campaign chest. Those aforementioned fat cats, of course, were motivated only by the highest minded civic virtue when they turned their pockets inside out. They could not possibly have been hoping for an inside track on the Federal goodies that this administration doles out so enthusiastically to its friends. 

See the NORTHWEST HERALD’S account of the fundraiser.
 
I probably don’t need to get into the long list of horribles about Dick Cheney. If you need a refresher, just go by to my recent posting “Hiding the Pea.” 

And Cheney was not shy about reminding us. Brazenly, the former Halliburton chief and petroleum industry shrill par excellence spent much of the speech bragging about administration energy policy and trying to pin high gas prices on Democrats. And it would not have been a Dick Cheney speech if he did not trot out 9/11, cheer for the “War on Terrorism,” and cast his approving vampire gaze over the blood bath in Iraq.
 
So what, you say, just typical Republican politics. We should not expect any different, Why tar McSweeney simply for associating with the leaders of his own party?
 
Well, for one reason, Cheney himself was quick to pull the guilt by association trigger. He reportedly got the partisan crowd to its feet when he said, “The stakes are extremely high. This race may decide who is going to control the United States House of Representatives. If Nancy Pelosi is elected Speaker of the House, we will face higher taxes and she is going to wave the white flag on the war on terror.”
 
Nancy Pelosi—translation: “homo coddling, baby murdering, surrender monkey, tree hugging, class war advocating, pinko San Francisco LIBERAL!! For God’s sake deliver us from that evil!” 

If Dick Cheney wants to play that game, I don’t feel too guilty about turning the tables on him.
 
Now I know a lot of the folks who read this blog are less than enthusiastic supporters of Melissa Bean. I have been sharply critical of many of her votes. But as Dastardly Dick himself points out, her race is critical to Democratic hopes of recapturing the House of Representatives, one of the slender hopes we have yet of averting a complete slide in open dictatorship. 

So I’m all for letting David McSweeney take the heat for the company he keeps.

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