Bughouse Square

Links and commentary -- Thrilling!

 

Republicans Losing the GI Vote?

Joe Conason at Salon.com thinks the Republicans have taken the military vote for granted, and are now alienating veterans.  If the Democrats are smart, they have a chance to take this demographic away from their rivals.  Too bad they aren't very bright.

The narrative Conason develops begins with the release of this video:

Bullet Proof? - Click the banner on the right side

This is a later version, of course.  The original was modified in response to criticism so that it's more accurate.  When the small ad ran in Arizona, home of incumbent senator John Kyl, he reacted loudly to it, and in response so did the local press, bringing more attention to it than the producers, the political action comittee VoteVets.org, expected.  Now it seems that VoteVets is emboldened to spend more money spreading the ad around. 

Why give your enemy new weapons?  Conason suggests that it's a symptom of a growing Republican anxienty about having lost the military vote.  A generation ago, the Democrats lost the military because of all the hippies spitting on soldiers coming home from Vietnam.  In ways less cinematic, the U.S. is currently treating soldiers like crap even as the hippies won't shut up about how they support our troops.  Benefits are being cut, the looming veteran mental health crisis looks doomed to be undealt with, retired military are being dragged back in service in the 'backdoor draft' and all in a war that it becomes increasingly evident we were lied into.  Both Democrats and Republicans are bandying about the blame on the body armor issue, but if the Republicans are proving touchy on the subject, maybe they feel vulnerable. 

posted by: JohnnyAngel at 09/29/06 05:36 | link | comments (1) |

Arms and the Plan I Sing

The second half of September is proving far more interesting in the battle of rhetoric than the series of media events leading up to the fifth anniversary to 9/11.  You could say it had already started with the hubbub about The Path to 9/11, ABC's 'docudrama' which was supposed to be based on the findings of the 9/11 Commission Report.  ABC had to withdraw that claim on the grounds that it was contrary to fact, but the uproar was mostly on how the documentary placed blame for the attacks on the Clinton administration. 

But where the controversy really got hopping was the Fox News interview of Bill Clinton.  Clinton has been making the talk show circuit talking about his Clinton Global Initiative (and some would suggest setting the ground for an announcement that Hillary is running for president).  In the clip, note that Chris Wallace admits that he agreed to talk only about the Clinton Global Initiative in the first segment, but doesn't seem to acknowledge that he did anything wrong by breaking that agreement. 

Wallace Gets Chewed Out

Some people are calling this an act of sand-bagging, but I think sand-bagging is actually the use of multiple opponents in a debate to make it difficult for someone to get their opinion out.  But my own guess is that Fox News was afraid of being criticized for just talking about the Global Initiative in the first interview, and perhaps Wallace wanted to try and catch Clinton unprepared, which he did not.  When this backfired on him, we see him quickly try to prevent Clinton from answering fully and completely.

The aftermath has been split on political lines -- conservatives have been howling that Clinton flew off the handle, became enraged, and Wallace has been acting like he has no idea what his major malfunction was.  Liberals have been treating Clinton's ire as righteous and as such surprisingly restrained.  Jon Stewart addresses the disparity in coverage.

Clinton Gone Wild

Although these same criticisms of Bush have been raised by liberals for a while now, they are taking up that banner with renewed vigor. 

Hillary Stands by her Man

Keith Olberman Gets out the Soap Box

Ben-Vineste Brings in to CNN

Al Franken Playing Hardball

The questions are now being asked with a force they should have had to begin with.  How can Republicans blame Clinton from not doing what they blocked him from doing, calling his attempts to get Bin Laden "wagging the dog" and why aren't they being held accountable for that?  Why aren't questions about Bush's demotion and dismissal of long-time terrorism czar Richard Clarke being asked of the administration?  What about the bombing of The Cole, to which the Clinton administration had prepared a response to help save the Bush administration time?

Jon Stewart Weighs in

posted by: JohnnyAngel at 09/27/06 06:50 | link | comments |

Questioning the Question Mark

The Daily Show highlights the oft-used cop-out of appending a question mark to controversial claims to give an thin veneer of objectivity.  Warning:  This contains ribald discourse, including references to sexual acts.

Question Marks?  Yes!

As Crooks and Liars points out, conservative commentator Joe Scarborough used a question mark to deflect criticism for his own approach to the president's infamous mental acuity:

Is Bush an Idiot?
Is Bush an Idiot Part II: The Backpedaling

This turned out to be convenient, since he subsequently backpedaled on what appeared to be a clear 'Yes.'

Oh, and before I forget, I thought I'd add a link to this video from the archives.  This report includes an interview with a guy from Biloxi during the Katrina crisis.  Obviously he's having one of the worst days of his life, but possibly because I'm an unmitigated asshole, I think he's hillarious:

Bush Don't Need to be the President No More!

posted by: JohnnyAngel at 09/15/06 06:01 | link | comments (1) |

The Aftermath of The Path to 9/11

Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert are back on the job, and dove right into the Path to 9/11 Controversy:

Stewart and the Stages of Grief

Of course, Stewart is beating a straw man here in going on and on about ambiguity when he knows perfectly well that the notion of 'safety' admits of degree. 

Colbert on ABC's Appalling Lack of Greed

Colbert confirms what I had heard about ABC not showing commercials during the broadcast of the miniseries, which of course invalidates my assumption about ABC trying to drive up its ad rates.  However, it has been suggested that in fact ABC had trouble convincing sponsors to be associated with this piece.

posted by: JohnnyAngel at 09/13/06 06:53 | link | comments |

Speachy Keen

It just fills a cynic's heart with joy to see the season of shrill political rhetoric kicking off momentously.  Just five days short of the anniversary of 9/11, we can already hear the hissing.

Last week, Donald Rumsfeld gave a speech in which he compared critics of the administration's war efforts to the Nazi appeasers who failed to prevent World War II.  I haven't seen a video of the speech itself.  A search for Rumsfeld on YouTube.com produces mostly iterations of Keith Olberman's response:

Exsqueze me?

Olberman suggests that Rumsfeld is more like Neville Chamberlain than any of his opponents, on the grounds that Chamberlain was sure he knew what was right and tried to hush his opponents.  The huge disanalogy that Chamberlain was a peacemonger and Rumsfeld is a warmonger is a problem on the rhetorical level of Olberman's argument, but overall it's a good speech.  Meanwhile, Peter Galbraith has written a column for the Boston Globe which argues that it was actually decades of appeasement by exactly the likes of Donald Rumsfeld and other neo-cons that kept Hussein in power for so long:

Will the Real Iraq Appeasers Please Stand Up?

And just recently Condoleeza Rice has compared the opponents of the war to those who would have ended the Civil War early, leaving the institution of slavery intact:

Rice Checks

What's hillarious about this is that we now officially have the Republicans playing the race card.  Mind you, the Democrats have long been trafficing in the accusation that a pro-war policy disproportionately affects minorities, since their relative poverty means that they largely fill the ranks of the armed forces that have to actually fight the wars.  But the irony is that the Republicans often complain about the Democratic use of race as an emotional cudgel in debates.

Even more recently, Bush has given a speech attempting to reinforce the association between his opponents and the Nazi appeasers.  Again, I learned about this from Keith Olberman's response:

Shameless

Bush alludes to the fact that Hitler's plan had been evident in his book Mein Kampf, but even after he came to power in Germany, people didn't use it to anticipate his moves, for some reason.  But by making this comparison, Bush offers a convenient opening to those who'd like to remind everyone that in the lead up to 9/11, the Bush adminstration was guilty ignoring the evidence of the enemy's plans.  There was, of course, the August 6th memo, which Condoleeza Rice testified to dismissing out of hand:

Bin Laden Determined to Attack Inside United States

Then there was Pickard's testimony that in the summer of 2001 John  Ashcroft, then attorney general for the Bush administration, "didn't want to hear about terrorism."

Again with the Terrorism

Also controversial has been ABC's decision to air a 9/11 documentary that reportedly places the blame for 9/11 on the Clinton Administration, and in its promotion is only giving previews to right-wing sources.  CrooksandLiars.com has been following the story:

The Path to 9/11
The Path to the Path o 9/11
Son of the Path to 9/11

posted by: JohnnyAngel at 09/06/06 06:09 | link | comments (5) |