It’s frankly stunning and unique in American history. We’re at a transformative moment, and I think you will see the American people demand abandonment of the clearly socialist, authoritarian drive by this Administration. We’re witnessing a profound radicalization of the American middle class. They’re simply saying they won’t put up with unions, rich Democrat donors on Wall Street getting bailed out, and sweeping tax increases to fund the governing class.
So you have to ask yourself? Who’s side are you on? We have a positive program to protect puppies, bring green coal into American neighborhoods, transform and empower insurance companies to provide better brochures, and cut taxes to preserve the Reagan revolution. They want you to get sick, lose your job and then will seize all that you own, sell your family to dark Islamofascist terrorists and eat kitties in the name of stimulus. We have a great opportunity to take back the House in 2010.
Comment says
“Obama’s sky-high ratings among African-Americans make some of his positions appear a bit more popular overall than they actually are.”
~Byron York
(irony unintended)
Btw – we have heard a similar Bybee-esque weak analysis from some Obama critics we know – When Obama is greeted seemingly warmly on military bases around the world – instead of being treated the way Jesse Helms thought Clinton should be treated – we get the reply: “those were blacks troops” – as if they did not really exist, or they sort of existed, but were not really troops in a Malkin sense.
Indeed, when we sent that CQ link to some friends on the right about Obama being treated like a rock star at Langley instead of being booed for not letting them torture Moslems, we got a similar reply : oh, those cheers were from blacks cheering the not black enough guy or whatever.
Another example of the weird sub-culture that the right developed – with their own private language and definitions – almost communistic, in a small way.
Comment says
just to claify – SEC school means “south eastern conference” – since we were responding to Alex, we thought in the UK people would just think SEC refers to securities and exchange.
Comment says
Ironies of the torture debate – a right wing pal who blogs but shall remain nameless – Just a few years before he was blogging in defense of waterboarding and mocking the wus liberal jihad surrenderists – He was sending us articles about Soft Torture techniques the leftist used in the Spanish Civil War and against Cardinal Mindszenty.
That was all forgotten – he totally forgot that he hated soft torture just a few years ago.
In reality – it was just a pose – both times – He would never hurt anyone himself. He would never even get in a fight when young. He was compensating a bit – and we suspect the same of more prominent conservative writers.
For a lot of conservative pundits – it’s all projection – If JPod’s dad did not wet his pants every time he saw an Angry Brotha walking on his block in Brooklyn, then JPod would not feel the need to humiliate Arabs today.
That’s a bit over-simplified, but …
Comment says
Obama just dropped the C-Bomb (invoking Churchill against torture)
Krauthammer must have choked on his pretzel.
Comment says
Glad you agree – we had doubts when we said that because Pot/marijuana is false “sign” in the media.
Even now when they discuss it on TV – many of these media folks who used or use it – will flip on a B-roll of video
showing 60s hippies toking up at Woodstock or Berkley.
In reality , if you go to Berkley now – you will find a student body that is mostly Asian, who study and study study and work hard – And do not ‘party’ too much.
In reality, casual drug use of marijuana is far more likely at SEC school in South carolina at a frat party with Olympic swimmers like Phelps showing up.
So as a symbol – – it no longer symobolizes the ‘left’ – as it were.
Anyone who doubts that can ask the children of right wing politicians that wind up busted from time to time.
But the boomer media establishment is lazy and repeat this false symbol, so it works on a meta-level. Wearing clothes that say “hemp” is still a left wing signifier, of sorts. Conservatives would wear clothes that said “child labor” on the label if they could find them, but so far a mass market does not exist yet.
Alex says
Soft torture – somewhat ironically a modern communist creation – became the marijuana of the conservative movement.
Yes; for a lot of people it was all about a style of politics rather than content. Hence the obsession with microtrend icons and stupid cars, bad movies, unhealthy food, “truthiness” and “scienciness”. For a lot of them it was torturiness. This rendered them helpless against the few determined authoritarians who really wanted torture.
Comment says
We have not watched Chris Matthews in a while – so we missed Tweety’s reaction to Specter.
Whatever he says , he must be hurt in private for a variety of reasons.
Tweety’s show is often far more filthy and compromised than the most dank back rooms in politics – He is aslobering slothful pseud.
Comment says
We just flipped on NPR Fresh Air and we hear the host ask “so you’re saying people at the top – people even like George Tenet did not know the history of these [torture] techniques.”
Comment says
Bybee is now going public with a Soft Apology that ironically is a bit like Soft Torture – Bybee says he is sorry — correctly knowing the elite media want to moveon.
But he still is claiming torture was not torture = legally undefensible – So Bybee wants to have his cake and eat it too – to use a Bybee-level cliche.
Bybee is being mocked by Serious legal people as waaay too weak for a Serious court Judgeship.
In a way = there was an ironic affirmative action for politically connected right wing judges.
While there are many bright right wing judges – they are always the minority at the good law schools – You know = the Berensons etc.
But there just are not enough – so Bybee (who is probably at the high end of the low end) and others fill that void.
We think Bybee will regret his Soft Apology Strategy – It does not matter that Walter Isaacson wants to move on – It’s now in the machine, and Bybee would be better off STFU, for his own sake. Hanging low is always a good option.
Comment says
Yoo , ensconsed at Berkley – yelling about hippies – real and imagined – must be sweating a bit too. He wants to travel someday. He is not a low rent legal hack like Bybee (also supposedly a pious Mormon) –
The military memos disputing Yoo hurt his Kulturkampf case –
Bybee and Yoo are also victims , in a way, of the weird sub-culture that developed around the growth of the conservative movement.
Soft torture – somewhat ironically a modern communist creation – became the marijuana of the conservative movement.
Being pro waterboarding became the conservative equivalent of owning a hemp powered lamp.
Comment says
On a human level – a part of feels bad for Bybee — Bybee seems like a relentless conformist and is now in a position that he got in drip drip drip that puzzles, engrages, fumes, and confuses – He leak his regret anonymously – perhaps sincere in a weasely Wilkersonian sense. He sees Goldsmith wiping away the icky low brow nature of the torture memos, while still maintaining conservative legal standing.
Comment says
Condi Rice will likely be named in this Garzon torture investigation, according to Julian Sands.
In the media Narrative land – Condi is not a mean torturer like Cheney. She’s not even a go-along and always be forgiven man like Powell – who we all admire, supposedly,
Condi was a media creation – if she is caught up in a torture probe, it will lead to a media breakdown. Feith – neocon etc Cheney and Addington etc = But Condi?
Comment says
Put this in your “yeah right” file:
“Larry [Wilkerson] thought they had cleaned out the obvious garbage, but it turned out there was more …. Larry felt that he let down the secretary, but the job was so big in cleaning out the misinformation.”
-James A. Kelley
It is theoretically possible that a man with a highly power-point, gov-org trained minde like Wilkerson did find himself unable to sift thru the garbage – even though many of the now-forgotten howlers in Powell’s speech were discredited as they were being praised by the media at the time.
But we doubt it – if “doing Iraq” went off smashingly well – then non of this insincere wallowing would exist.
Basically – the Powell Brand has a powerful scrub team and a clean up crew that perfumed the rotten neoconish stench left behind Powell’s speech.
It’s all about the speaking fees.
Comment says
Alex – right as usual – OTOH, poor intelligence product is often popular. Fashionable Republicans like Powell are excused by the power establishment when they pretend to be tricked by neocons or evil Cheney, when they likely knew they were peddling horse-s*** to please the boss, Dubya.
From Washington Post
(1/19/06)
—-
[Lawrence] Wilkerson, as it turned out, became the point man for making the case for preemptive war against [Saddam] Hussein. He put together the task force that, during a week at CIA headquarters, vetted all the intelligence reports used for Powell’s famous pro-war presentation in February 2003 to the Security Council, where he brandished a vial of fake anthrax, played excerpts of intercepted Iraqi military chatter, and warned of mobile bioweapon “factories” and other doomsday machines, none of which actually existed.
How did it happen?
“Larry thought they had cleaned out the obvious garbage, but it turned out there was more,” says James A. Kelly, a former assistant secretary of state who’s known Wilkerson for 20 years. “Larry felt that he let down the secretary, but the job was so big in cleaning out the misinformation.”
Wilkerson won’t say outright that he and Powell were deliberately snowed by intelligence reports tailored to fit a political push for war, but he has edged closer to that view, noting, “I’ve begun to wonder.” It turns out that the administration relied on fabricators’ claims about Hussein’s illusory WMD programs and, in one case, an al Qaeda suspect whom the CIA turned over to alleged torturers in Egypt.
“I kick myself in the ass,” Wilkerson says. “How did we ever get to that place?”
The speech tarnished Powell’s gold-plated reputation, but he has never publicly pointed a finger at then-CIA Director George Tenet or the White House.
“Nothing was spun to me,” Powell told David Frost in a BBC television interview last month. “What really upset me more than anything else was that there were people in the intelligence community that had doubts about some of this sourcing, but those doubts never surfaced up to us.”
Why didn’t the doubts reach Powell? Perhaps because then he wouldn’t have given the speech at all?
“That’s right,” Wilkerson says, shooting a hard, solemn stare across the restaurant table. “That’s right.”
He also says, “I am prepared to entertain the idea that they used him.”
——-
Hunter says
I had not heard that, in fact, but then I’ve been a bit busy with what passes for real life lately. The reason you adduce as to why AmCon was significant is the same that got me reading it. I want an honest/ non-insane conservative voice to leaven the mix. I think I see why such voices will be harder to find in the next little while, but it’s still too bad. As to Pat himself, he never seems to go away. Thus, his turn to incoherence seems somehow meaningful. Perhaps not… perhaps he has always been this way and that’s how he’s survived this long.
DrLeoStrauss says
@Hunter As you likely know, The American Conservative is winding down according to reports we’ve heard. Perhaps Pat feels more free to express his inner incoherence at the end. AmCon played a ignificant role in standing up to the Old Regime by saying what many were too afraid to mutter themselves for careerism or other reasons.
Alex says
Comment is probably right, although what he describes sounds a lot like the Bureau of Intelligence & Research (motto: We were right, but who’s heard of us?), or perhaps something between Chatham House and the JIC staff before John Scarlett happened to it.
You have noticed that your friendly local Iranian agents-of-influence managed not just to help you commit the biggest policy blunder in Western history, but also to wreck the key agencies in the intelligence special relationship nations?
Comment says
What you might have to do to start a new intelligence agency is to start a new org with a neutral sounding name that will be apart from the others in all respects except reporting directly to the DNI – Call it the bureau of information. Then have the bureau of languages and translation – with satellites linked up with schools all accross the land. People can get certified and learn languages at their nearby colleges or wherever and then go to work for the Bureau if they like or if they are picked. The Bureau of Information will be like a community of scholars — sort of like an Inst of Adv. Studies – it can be left leaning FAS types or not. But the important thing is that is regarded highly by peers – And not be a semi-profit type thing like RAND etc.
Then covert and technical assistance can be added gradually – slowly supplanting the orginal and leaving the questionable stuff to the orginal org. Slowly, they link up with the FBI, I&R, etc
New buildings too – but a more traditional campus style buildings – not the Parallex View style that is de rigeur in the Imperial City. More like UVA instead.
DrLeoStrauss says
The recruitment/human capital issue at CIA continues to be a matter of national concern and urgency. Aside from the internal problems and unresolved security cultural imperatives that hamper initial intake, retaining officers still is a challenge. The best years for a D.O. officer are mid 30s to early 40s. Yet they are critical past that to help institutional memory, transmission of culture and values, and esprit d’corps.
On campus one doesn’t envy a recruiter given the wreckage of the past years and the kids’ knowledge that it is in the end just another bureaucracy, a disemboweled one at that. Faculty spotters are one presumes equally challenged. One should give them credit for finally turning to non-traditional cadre sources with more conviction.
But as we have quoted Edward Bennett Williams here and at STSOZ 1.0 before, “CIA is like a great dog that got hit by a truck. All you can say is it was a great dog until it got hit.” We truly believe those serving today would be better off if CIA simply stopped even as an institutional golem. And a greenfield entity begin. Including even new buildings. Start over. Start fresh. For good or for ill, CIA as we have all known it died. We can grieve, mourn, be honest at embracing its good and acknowledge it’s not so good aspects. It deserves that decency.
Comment says
Norm Coleman is probably kicking himself for not switching parties a while back – Now, he must be wondering if he even want to bother jamming up the works in the distant hope that lightning will strike and he gets to be a sorta liberal fella in the party of Cornryn – whose main concern in life seems to defending yahoo threats against judges and blocking the torture justice.
Comment says
Obama must have had a happy laugh looking at the pathetic optics of seeing Mitch McConnell and John Cornyn (the new Jesse Helms for liberal money) come out and respond the Specter’s defection and say it’s means nothing about the GOP becoming regional and weak in the North East — they the mutter something about that lady from Maine.
Comment says
As China and India rise – it should be easy to just staff the Agency with people – smart people – who are of Indian and Chinese ethnic.
Unless, you want to just stick with the Irish and Fordham and hope for the best.
Comment says
” The career incentive mechanisms are still wrong … ”
Leo – you have noted the stumbling blocks that many people in Ivy and near ivy and various other top schools face when thinking about the Agency.
The reasons are historic and complicates etc – And somewhat ironic.
But it’s not just drug tests and explaining that missing year and the Che posters. We have heard people mention
the Larry Johnson factor. People want colleagues they admire and are reluctant to committ to a long term career with all sorts of seeming blocks against free thinking and creative thinking and then to be stuck with folks they regard as weak – Then to top it off to know that Cheney and the evil neocons can come in at any moment and just screw their whole career up and start needless wars.
Comment says
We have not read Pat’s article on torture yet – But we imagine the least effective way to convince Pat Buchanan that waterboard is vile torture is to tell him that
it was used during the Spanish Inquisition.
Comment says
” … and American impatience still pre-eminent.”
Tonight on the NewsHour they were asking citizens to review Obama – a pro Obama guy said – “don’t be impatient” – he noted that 100 days was too short a time to judge. Then he paused and said it would take at least 365 days to restore the nation to prosperity. Then, after that very very very long time, we can judge his Presidency. LOL.
Hunter says
Pat is off his A-game lately:
http://www.amconmag.com/blog/2009/04/27/is-torture-ever-moral/
What a mess. At least we know he won’t be convincing anybody of anything for a while…
Alex says
Swine’s the word…does anyone know if nausea is a symptom?
The block-colour 80s styles of the crisis show a deeper need in this society – for a harder, clearer alternative to the coastal culture of caregiving epitomised by Obamist “health” officials’ demands that we know “What We Can Do For One Another” in that socialist way.
Dr Leo Strauss says
Pretty much yup. It will be 10-15 years until whatever entity currently residing in McLean (it’s not CIA, that’s dead, but it uses the buildings) shows whether it’s up to snuff. Too young, inexperienced, no culture transmission, etc.
The career incentive mechanisms are still wrong, the cultural ignorance too great, and American impatience still pre-eminent. The funny thing is we as a society will be surprised yet again when this situation renders us open to another strategic blind side.
Comment says
Come on people! Arabic is a hard language.
http://blogs.cqpolitics.com/spytalk/2009/04/repetitive-interrogations-reve.html
Comment says
Green Coal would make a pretty good name for an ironic band in Williamsburg, Brooklyn.
Comment says
Frankly, the mindless love for abortions and the embrace of a frankly European social model that values masturbation over raising families and cherishes suicide over manly valor makes us wonder why the late Democrat party even bothers to call itself American.