MotherJones.com | MoJoBlog - Social Issues and Political Commentary: October 22, 2006

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October 27, 2006

NBC changes "Shut Up & Sing" to "Shut Up"

According to distributor Harvey Weinstein, NBC is refusing to air a promotional spot for the Dixie Chicks' new documentary, "Shut Up & Sing," because it is "disparaging of President Bush." The ad, which can be seen here, contains clips from the documentary that are familiar to many people. Dixie Chicks singer Natalie Maines tells a London audience that she is ashamed that Bush is from Texas, and Maines also pronounces Bush as dumb.

According to Weinstein, the CW rejected the spot, too, saying "We do not have appropriate programming in which to schedule this spot." A representative from the CW disputes this version of the story and says he was told that the Weinstein Co. was not going to make a national buy for the Dixie Chicks spot.

Justice For Pinochet Takes the Weekend Off

A Chilean judge ordered the arrest of General Augusto Pinochet today, charging the former dictator with 36 kidnappings, 23 counts of torture, and a murder. As part of an ongoing investigation, Judge Alejandro Solis met with Pinochet at his home earlier this month. The 90-year-old reportedly denied involvement in the torture and disappearance of political prisoners during his 17-year dictatorship. But Solis came away doubting Pinochet's claim that he suffers from dementia, saying he did not observe any symptoms of mental illness during his visit.

Judge Solis’ announcement is the most recent development in what has seemed like an endless series of court proceedings aimed at prosecuting Pinochet for human rights abuses. But the saga isn’t quite over yet. The arrest isn’t expected to take place until Monday.

In the meantime, check out some of Mother Jones recent stories about the quest to bring Pinochet to justice, including this recent profile of torture survivor and crusader Hector Salgado and this 2004 profile of Baltasar Garzón, the Spanish judge who tried to extradite Pinochet in 1998.

—Celia Perry

White House Recants on Cheney Water Boarding Confession

So now the White House is saying that Dick Cheney wasn't really talking about water boarding when he said that water boarding is "a no-brainer" Tuesday. As Tony Snow explained, "You know as a matter of common sense that the vice president of the United States is not going to be talking about water boarding. Never would, never does, never will. You think Dick Cheney's going to slip up on something like this? No, come on." Put aside the laughable notion that Cheney never slips up for a moment. What's Snow really saying? That we don't waterboard or we just don't talk about it? If it's the latter, does this mark the first time in six years that Cheney has leaked something the administration doesn't want the public to know about?

Meanwhile, if you're wondering what waterboarding really looks like, check out this video in which a gutsy young journalist endures 24 minutes of near-suffocation (and talking with Alan Dershowitz) to find out if it really is torture. Not easy to watch.

Companies in China Ask... What's In a Name Anyway?

Chinese companies, popping up all over Shanghai and Beijing, bare a striking resemblance in name and/or logo to overseas companies, as reported by the Wall Street Journal. See below a picture of a Chinese local coffee shop called Shanghai Xingbake Cafe Corp.

Look familiar? And the logo is not the only similarity. The word Xingbake means Starbucks in Chinese. Although Starbucks appears to be dealing with the most egregious copycat company, the American corporation is not alone. Here is a list of Chinese brands side by side their overseas predecessors.

Advertising and branding experts excuse the Chinese companies saying the copycatters simply lack ingenuity and funds to pay for branding but others aren’t willing to be so generous. Many companies are suing their mimics. Honda won a case against the Motorcycle company Hongda and GM and Chery, a Chinese car company, have recently reached a settlement. Most entertaining of all though are the excuses created by the copycatters. Chery claims its English name is based on the sound of Quirui, the Chinese name, which means “unusually lucky” and Shanghai Xingbake Cafe Corp claims its name is based on the character Simba in “The Lion King,” which in Chinese is Xinba.

Hmmm…

For more branding wars and naming games, see Mother Jones’s “What’s in a Name.”

Hacking Democracy

“The American electoral system is rotten and we need to deal with that,” Ion Sancho, supervisor of elections in Leon County, Florida, told Mother Jones Radio. Sancho and Bev Harris, founder of Black Box Voting, point out the vulnerability of our voting system in an HBO documentary, Hacking Democracy, airing November 2.

The film follows Harris and Sancho as they stumble upon Diebold’s software on their FTP site, dig through trash and find illegally discarded voting records, and stage a mini-election with a computer hacker. In that election, the outcome of the vote is opposite the votes cast: 7:1 instead of 2:6.

As Sancho points out, this is not just a Diebold problem. It is a problem with all electronic voting machine companies: “The other companies are just much better at keeping secrets.” Hacking Democracy should cure anybody of trusting electronic voting machines that do not have a paper trail.

When It Comes to Press Freedom, We're Number 53!

Reporters Sans Frontières recently released its annual ranking of press freedom around the world, and it's not good news for the United States. Our ranking's been steadily dropping since the survey started in 2002, when we were in the index's top 20. Now we're at a dismal 53rd place, down from an undistinguished 44th last year. That puts us in the same league as tiny democracies like Botswana, Croatia, and Tonga. To be sure, we're a long way from the atrocious rankings of Iran, China, Burma, Cuba, and North Korea. But it's nothing to write home about.

The United States' poor showing is largely to blame on the excesses of the war on terror. As RSF explains, "Relations between the media and the Bush administration sharply deteriorated after the president used the pretext of 'national security' to regard as suspicious any journalist who questioned his 'war on terrorism.'" And then there's the journalists we've got locked up, such as a Sudanese Al-Jazeera cameraman being held in Guantanamo, and Associated Press photographer Bilal Hussein, who's been in U.S. custody in Iraq for 6 months without charge. That's just the official hostility to the press. During the past year, right-wing commentators debated whether the editor of the New York Times should be sent to the gas chamber or the firing squad for revealing a program to track terrorist funds. It's not clear whether this episode figured into RSF's rankings, but it was another sign of why, when it comes to freedom of expression, we've got a long way to Number One.

[Ed. Note: This week's Sports Illustrated carries an excellent column on Mark Fainaru-Wada and Lance Williams, the San Francisco Chronicle reporters who used leaked grand jury testimony to blow the lid off the steroid scandal. They'll be heading to jail soon for failing to reveal their sources, and may still be in the big house when Barry Bonds, documented to have commited several crimes in Fainaru-Wada and Williams' reporting, breaks baseball's all-time home run record.

A detail from the column, which unfortunately is subscription-only: The Chronicle has received 80 subpoenas of reporters over the last 18 months, compared with five over the previous 18. That's the world's strongest democracy, leading by example.]

Jane Pauley Sues the NYT for Duping Her into an Advertorial

Jane Pauley is suing the New York Times for fraud. Pauley claims that the paper misled her an interview where she discussed her struggles with bipolar disorder for what turned out to be a pharmeceutical company-funded advertisement. In the lawsuit filed Tuesday seeking unspecified damages, Pauley charges that the Times interviewed her last fall for what she believed was a news article on mental health issues. The interview came out in October as part of a “special advertising supplement” (complete with a full-page photo of Pauley) that was funded by Eli Lilly and other drug companies. Smoking Gun has a copy of the lawsuit, here.

October 26, 2006

Our Landlord the Torturer

Over at Harper's, Ken Silverstein reports that the U.S. government is paying $17,500 a month to a rent one of its overseas embassies from a known torturer. The torturer in question is Manuel Nguema Mba, the security minister of Equatorial Guinea, a tiny, oil-rich West African nation that, as Peter Maass wrote in an investigative story in Mother Jones last year, seems like a "parody of an oil kleptocracy," where "a dictator, awash in petrodollars, enriches himself and his family while starving his people." In his article, Maass disclosed the rental deal with Mba (who's the uncle of the country's despot, Teodoro Obiang), but Silverstein adds some new wrinkles to the story. Despite reliable documentation from the U.N. and the State Department, our ambassador to E.G. has pled ignorance of Mba's human-rights record. The Clinton-era ambassador is calling for an investigation into the deal.

Sadly, it's not surprising that we're giving $210,000 a year to a man who has overseen the torture of dissidents. Pay-to-play is the name of the game in E.G.—it's a game that several American oil companies have played in order to get access to the country's crude. (In one egregious—but not atypical—instance, Amerada Hess paid $445,800 in rent to a 14-year-old relative of Obiang.) And apparently it's a game that the Bush administration doesn't mind playing, either.

Green Groups Get Local

Seems long overdue, but this is apparently the first year that national environmental groups are directing substantial campaign contributions into state-level races. Outfits like the Sierra Club and the League of Conservation Voters have traditionally made all their donations at the federal level, but are now realizing that much of the action is in state capitals. Surprise favorite: Arnold Schwarzenegger, a Republican who imposed caps on industrial greenhouse gases. OK, the guy has a pretty good record on the environment, but does he really need this help more than, say, Green Party candidates?

Tennessee RNC Attack Ad Pulled: Blame Canada?

What got that racist anti Harold Ford attack ad pulled off the air? Was it complaints from NAACP? The DNC? Or was it our neighbors to the north? This, from a Canadian news station:

It's not often Canadians care about who's running for the U.S. Senate. But when we figure prominently in one of those quintessential American-style attack ads, nearly everyone on this side of the border sits up and takes notice.

A fierce fight between a Tennessee Republican candidate and his Democratic opponent has gotten personal - and Canada is right in the middle of it.

The controversial commercial from right wing candidate Bob Corker attacks a man named Harold Ford. It features supposedly ordinary citizens commenting on the Democrat, indicating he'll increase taxes and take guns out of the hands of residents, two huge issues in the south. There's also a shot of a rather questionable young woman who claims she's spent time with Ford at "The Playboy Club". But it's the next statement that seems to have rankled many. It comes from a comment made about some recent controversial nuclear tests.

"Canada can take care of North Korea," a man who resembles a young Wilfrid Brimley jokes. "They're not busy." The suggestion that we aren't pulling our weight in the world - and the fact that we've lost 42 soldiers in Afghanistan - is never mentioned.

The commercial, which has already been part of an equally nasty campaign between Ford and Corker, has been the subject of a protest by Canada's Ambassador to the U.S. And that complaint has apparently led to action.

Officials in Tennessee have agreed to pull the offending advertisement. But the U.S. Ambassador to this country has a response to our anger. He notes Canadian ads during the last election treated U.S. President George Bush with far more contempt and no one really issued any major complaints about those.

Michael J. Fox: He's Our Man

Much has been said and written about Rush Limbaugh’s extremely off-color comments about Michael J. Fox. But few have mentioned just how much of a chord that Limbaugh may have struck by lashing out against the former teen idol.

For those of us who grew up as children of the 80s, there are certain things that are sacred—relics and remembrances of the past that are cherished and protected like national treasures. These include the Atari video game system, Transformer toys, and Back to the Future and Teen Wolf star, Michael J. Fox.

And in the minds of those 80s kids who grew up watching the hit TV sitcom, Family Ties, Fox is the cute, offbeat, and likeable Alex P. Keaton. Ironically, Keaton was the staunch conservative Republican on the show who paraded around the house in a suit and tie, rebelling against his hippie parents with strange antics. The guy even had a picture of President Ronald Reagan displayed above his bed.

According to Wikipedia, “the character of Alex P. Keaton became a symbol of America's move towards more conservative political thinking in the 1980s.”

There is no denying that Fox is a truly likeable guy, even AskMen.com says so. Despite being out of the Hollywood spotlight for half a decade now, Fox still has a few fansites. But for a whole generation, he is so much more than that. With his comments, Limbaugh has possibly estranged himself from an entire age bracket of listeners and supporters. Well, at least we can hope.

In the meantime, I suggest buying a Teen Wolf T-shirt on Amazon.com and wearing it prominently in the next few weeks to display your support for Fox and his cause.

-- Caroline Dobuzinskis

While the Administration Struggles with Spin, USIP Forecasts Iraq's Potential "Descent into Hell"

Folks in the Bush administration just can't seem to get their stories straight. Bush says "we are winning" but has recently abandoned his tagline "stay the course" although he does say his administration will "complete the mission." Rumsfeld, on the other hand, claims the administration is "not backing away from staying the course." And, almost simultaneously, White House press secretary, Tony Snow, jumped on the "abandon the phrase 'stay the course' bandwagon" claiming Bush has only uttered the words 8 times.

But while Bush and company struggle with how to talk about the war in Iraq, the United States Institute of Peace, a nonpartisan think tank, has been doing research on how to actually handle it. Their new report documents the research they have been doing over the past six months which forecasts outcomes for the insurgency in Iraq. And, it doesn’t look good. (See this excerpt from the recommendations and conclusions section.)

The administration's ambitious goals ("an Iraq that is peaceful, united, stable, democratic, and secure, where Iraqis have the institutions and resources they need to govern themselves justly and provide security for their country"), if possible at all, are attainable only in the very long term. Instead, avoidance of disaster and maintenance of some modicum of political stability in Iraq are more realistic goals—but even these will be hard to achieve without new strategies and actions and the cooperation of Iraq's neighbors.

Yikes. In fact, US News and World Report calls the USIP report "unremittingly grim." It does, I am afraid, appear to live up to this description. There is even a section called "Descent into Hell." Read the full report here.

Nicaragua to Ban Abortions - With Sandinistas' Support

Here's news to squash whatever vestigial remnants of good feeling ageing lefties (like me) might still harbor for Nicaragua's once-revolutionary Sandinistas: they're now supporting legislation to ban all abortions, even in cases where a woman's life is in danger. The law, expected to win parliamentary approval today, imposes prison sentences of up to 30 years for women who have abortions and for the doctors who perform them.

Not that current Nicaraguan law makes it easy to terminate unwanted pregnancies. Ipas, a US-based reproductive rights group, reports that only 24 women and girls have been allowed legal abortions in Nicaragua in the last three years - including a nine-year-old rape victim - leaving some 32,000 woman to abort their pregnancies illegally.

Sure, the Sandinistas have long since shed many of the egalitarian ideals that won them so much support at home and abroad when they overthrew the US-backed Somoza dictatorship in 1979. But this is an especially depressing rowback from a party that used to trumpet the advancement of women's rights as one of their great victories.

RNC Plays Up Prejudice in Ads Against Harold Ford Jr.

In a desperate and vulgar attempt to thwart an increasingly intense senate race in Tennessee, the Republican National Committee released a racially provocative ad last week against Democratic challenger Harold Ford, Jr.

The television ad features several people in mock interviews meant to show Ford as a liberal out of step with average Tennesseans. One of the people “interviewed” is a young blonde white woman with bare shoulders (it is unclear if she is actually wearing anything since the camera only shows her from the collarbone up) who claims she met Ford at a Playboy party. At the end of the ad she says “Harold, call me” while winking at the camera.

Ford, who is 36, single and African American, admitted he attended a Playboy party at last year’s Super Bowl but critics have pointed to the ad’s obvious racist overtones.

Ford is attempting to become the first African American senator from the south since Reconstruction. His opponent Bob Corker, who has already spent more than $2 million of his own money on the race claims to have nothing to do with the television spot (though he did approve a spot this week that plays tom-tom drums every time Ford's name is mentioned).

John Greer, a political science professor at Vanderbilt University says the Playboy ad “is playing to a lot of fears” and “frankly makes the Willie Horton ad look like child’s play.”

--Amaya Rivera

Cheney Calls Waterboarding a "No-Brainer"

In a radio interview on Tuesday Vice President Dick Cheney acknowledged that the U.S. has been using waterboarding techniques in interrogations of suspected terrorists.

According to the interview transcript, released by the White House yesterday Scott Hennen of WDAY Radio in Fargo, N.D. told Cheney that listeners had asked him to "let the vice president know that if it takes dunking a terrorist in water, we're all for it, if it saves American lives."

"Again, this debate seems a little silly given the threat we face, would you agree?" Hennen asked. "I do agree,” replied Cheney. “And I think the terrorist threat, for example, with respect to our ability to interrogate high-value detainees like Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, that's been a very important tool that we've had to be able to secure the nation."

Hennen then asked Cheney, "Would you agree that a dunk in water is a no-brainer if it can save lives?" The Vice President's response:

"It's a no-brainer for me, but for a while there, I was criticized as being the vice president 'for torture.' We don't torture. That's not what we're involved in. We live up to our obligations in international treaties that we're party to and so forth. But the fact is, you can have a fairly robust interrogation program without torture, and we need to be able to do that."

Waterboarding simulates drowning by repeated dunking or running water over cloth or cellophane placed over the nose and mouth. It has been recognized by national and international law as “cruel, inhumane and degrading treatment" and just last month the DoD released revised guidelines on interrogation techniques (see page 97) that explicitly prohibit the use of waterboarding by U.S. military personnel.

So if Cheney sees the technique as part of a robust interrogation program then who exactly does he see doing it? A spokeswoman denied that Cheney endorsed the practice by U.S. interrogators which basically spells out that yes, it's happening, and we're paying non-military personnel (read: contractors and the like) to do it.

Governor Blanco Stands Up To Feds--Round 1 Goes To Louisiana

In July, Louisiana governor Kathleen Blanco filed a lawsuit against the federal government, in an attempt to stop a scheduled offshore lease sale. The suit alleged that the federal government's environmental assessment of the sale failed to include damage done by Hurricanes Katrina and Rita. Blanco had already threatened to stop any lease sales until the federal government began paying royalties to Louisiana, something it has never done.

On Tuesday, Blanco announced that the suit had been settled, thereby avoiding a November trial. A federal judge dropped a big hint that Louisiana was going to win the lawsuit, so the federal government conceded and is going to do an up-to-date assessment of the environmental impact of the sale.

That assessment will include:

...mitigation measures that should be taken to limit damage from offshore oil and gas exploration. In turn, that should lead to more money for the state to help offset the damage. Such measures could include, for example, more money for a key highway, Louisiana 1, to offset increased offshore-related traffic on the two-lane road to Port Fourchon.

"It means that we actually now know that we can halt (drilling) activity if necessary to demand mitigation," Blanco said.

Unfortunately, Congress--busy approving rape and torture in detainee facilities--did not have time to come to an agreement about paying Louisiana its long-awaited oil and gas royalties. Both the House and the Senate have versions of a bill that would do just that, and the next step is for a compromise to be reached. That could be difficult, however, because the conflicting versions are significantly different from one another.

October 25, 2006

U.S. Seeks To Restrict Attorney-Client Communication At Guantanamo Bay

Inmates at Guantanamo Bay will have significantly less communication with their attorneys if the U.S. government has its way. Government officials claim that attorneys are providing prisoners with "inflammatory information," e.a., reports of abuse at Abu Ghraib prison.

Approval is being sought for new rules that would restrict attorneys to only four visits to their Guantanamo Bay clients, and would restrict the topics under discussion and the information that can be shared. A federal appeals court in Washington, D.C. is currently reviewing a Guantanamo Bay case, and the court's ruling on that case will affect all detainees.

According to an attorney with the Center for Constitutional Rights, none of the attorney actions objected to breaks prison rules or violates prison security.

George Washington Refuses to Divest, Grants Scholarship Instead

Earlier this month, George Washington University created a scholarship that will grant a $200,000 4-year scholarship for a student from Sudan, reports Inside Higher Ed. On first glance, it appears merely a generous act though in reality it is a concession to its campus group Students Taking Action Now: Darfur which had asked the university (as they have done at their nearly 150 chapters on campuses nationwide) to divest completely from companies that invest in Sudan.

Now I don't want to take away from the good that will come from the scholarship but aren't we talking about apples and oranges here? Investing in one student per year (and the scholarship is not new, it has traditionally been reserved for D.C. students) is quite different than divestment. Students at GW and across the nation have their suspicions as well. Chad Hazlett, the leader for divestment in Sudan at Harvard, had this to say:

"This scholarship is situated as if it's a tradeoff, and alternative, to divestment." "It isn't. I think the scholarship is a great idea. But it doesn't substitute for putting pressure on the government of Sudan, nor does it satisfy the moral obligation of those who made the decision to be doing all they can to end genocide."

School divestment is not a pipe dream for students involved with STAND. Over the past year, 3 schools have divested completely and more than 20 schools have begun "pulling the plug on deals that sent aid and comfort to Khartoum," as we reported in Mother Jones in September. And history shows us just how effective wide-scale divestment can be. Divestment from South Africa by 180 universities played a key role in devastating the South African economy in the late 1980s, which ultimately brought apartheid to an end.

Kean, Menendez, and the Same-Sex Marriage Ruling

Today’s New Jersey Supreme Court decision in favor of same-sex marriage may well be a factor in galvanizing conservative voters to turn out for Tom Kean Jr., the GOP’s candidate for Senate. Interestingly, both Kean and his opponent, Senator Bob Menendez, have basically the same stance on the issue. Both are against gay marriage but in favor of domestic partnerships.

Kean is in a tight race against Menendez, with polls showing the democrat slightly ahead. The Dems ought to take New Jersey, but Kean, a well known name in the state (his father was governor and most recently head of the 9/11 Commission), is running uncomfortably close. As in many tight races this year, this campaign has turned nasty, with both candidates running attack ads. And Menendez may have been somewhat tarnished by the recent disclosure of a secret tape recording, made 7 years ago, that shows a former close political advisor urging a Hudson County contractor to hire a certain individual as a favor to Menendez.

Kean has voted against the minimum wage, offered tepid criticism of Bush on Iraq, wants to get rid of the inheritance tax, and has supported some sort of privatization of Social Security. He is for stem cell research but voted against using tobacco tax monies to support such research.

Menendez wants a phased withdrawal from Iraq.

It's 11 a.m. Do You Know Where Your Dinner Is?

Americans are increasingly second-guessing the costs and benefits of industrial agriculture. But, as Michael Pollan wrote in his book, The Omnivore's Dilemma, excerpted in Mother Jones this summer, not all solutions to the problem are equal. Pollan profiled Joel Salatin, a trendsetter in the local food movement who makes hash of Whole Foods, comparing its business model to Wal-Mart's. (Whole Foods CEO John Mackey fired off a sardonic letter to the editor, asking whether Pollan's book was sold only in Berkeley.)

Now, as today's New York Times reports, Whole Foods is introducing an "animal compassionate" label to identify meat from animals that were raised humanely (if industrial agriculture, among other human mores, hasn't rendered the word meaningless). The good news is Whole Foods will be flexing its substantial muscle to ensure that its suppliers comply with the standards it has established, which demand, for instance, that animals be raised outdoors. The bad news is, consumers will now have to choose among an even larger array of labels that sound good, but are hard to decipher and are not enforced by the USDA, thanks to the agency’s belief that organic and animal-friendly agriculture amounts to no more than a "marketing program".

Fatter Americans, Hotter World

American's ever-expanding waistlines aren't just bad for our national health - they're bad for the atmosphere too. A new study from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign found that the extra drag on car engines caused by their drivers' increasing weight means that Americans are using at least 938 million more gallons of gas annually today than they were four decades ago, when they weighed an average of 24 pounds less.

Pombo Supporters Digging For Deeper Pockets

Now that Richard Pombo’s race for the 11th district seat is heating up supporters are calling in the big guns.

Literally.

On Friday, Safari Club International sent a letter to its members urging them to donate as individuals to Pombo’s re-election now that their SCI PAC has spent the maximum amount, $9,999, on his campaign. The letter stresses the need for cash because of attacks on Pombo from “a cabal of extremist environmental groups.”

The Safari Club International, which counts Richard Pombo and George H.W. Bush among its elite membership promotes itself as a “Non-profit organization dedicated to the conservation of wildlife” but has been involved in numerous lawsuits over the importation and trophy hunting of exotic animals. As House Resources Committee chairman, Pombo has been a consistent “friend and supporter” of SCI, attempting to re-write the Endangered Species Act eleven times.

The group, whose most recent annual convention featured a booth offering the chance to “hunt” African Bongo Antelopes in an enclosed Texas ranch for $20,000, is clearly worried about losing a powerful ally in Congress. They write, “This situation is dire…If Pombo is defeated, years of hard work will go down the drain.”

Indeed.

--Amaya Rivera

Medical Groups Recommend the Transfer of Fewer Embryos in Fertility Treatments

Yesterday the American Society of Reproductive Medicine and the Society for Assisted Reproductive Technology released revised guidelines for the number of embryos transferred during assisted reproductive therapies, recommending the transfer of no more than two embryos during a single procedure for women younger than age 35. In 1999, the ASRM had released guidelines recommending the transfer of only two embryos for women younger than age 35 with a "healthy" prognosis and three embryos for women with a poorer prognosis for successful implantation. The recommendation rises to as many as four embryos for patients aged 38 to 40 and to five embryos for women over the ago of 40.

Today more than a third of pregnancies conceived using assisted reproductive technology result in a multiple birth. Multiple embryo transfer has also contributed to what are now more than a half million frozen stored embryos awaiting: future use, “adoption,” stem cell research or, for most, destruction.

Liza Mundy writes about couples facing such decisions and the ways in which the nation's embryo glut is changing the choice debate in the July/August issue of Mother Jones.

October 24, 2006

More Sex-Obsessed Republicans

Oh, it's not just those GOP attack ads accusing various Democrats of being phone-sex fans and pedophiles that I blogged about the other day. The sharp-eyed folks at Whiskey Bar have a list of several more extraordinarily stretched sexual slurs being lobbed from the Republican side in various races around the country, including
a commercial in Wisconsin's 8th Congressional District that links the Democrat to a child rapist, another in the same state accusing the Dem of "voting to fund studies of Vietnamese prostitutes and the mastubatory practices of old men," and a Tennesse Senate race where the Republican National Committee is sponsoring an ad in which a blond white "woman cooing into the camera that she met [African American Democrat Harold Ford Jr.] at a party sponsored by Playboy magazine."

The Nixon Factor

Memories of Nixon loom large in the minds of Republican political pros as Bush tosses and turns on Iraq. "GOP operatives are encouraging party leaders to echo Richard Nixon’s 1972 re-election strategy for restoring his popularity despite the 20,000 American soldiers killed in Vietnam during his first term,’’ writes Craig Crawford of CQ. "In that campaign, Nixon softened his hard line on the fighting and began talking up negotiations with the enemy.’’

Nixon came to the presidency in 1968 promising to get the US out of Vietnam. But the war continued. Protests mounted, and in 1972, in the campaign against George McGovern, Nixon tried to turn the tide by running as a peace candidate. The President halted bombing the north in mid October of that year, and just before the election Kissinger made his famous statement that "peace is at hand." That was the death knell for the McGovern campaign, although there had been little hope for his election from the very beginning.

During the ensuing peace negotiations after the election, the Nixon government said the North Vietnamese negotiators were duplicitous, using Kissinger’s pre-election announcement to mock the President and weaken the US negotiating position. To bring the North Vietnamese into line, Nixon ordered a resumption of the B-52 bombing of the North, including Haiphong and Hanoi.

Could Bush pull off something similar? In recent days he seems to be suggesting a change of course in Iraq, raising possibility of an exit. At least that what various commentators and politicians read into his odd interview with George Stephanopoulos on ABC. Will that defuse the war issue in the campaign? If it does, and the Republicans manage to keep control of Congress, Bush will be in a strong position to increase the levels of fighting in Iraq, and perhaps argue Iraq can be straightened out by attacking Iran and Syria.

To date the winning Republican Iraq strategem entails, on the one hand, arguing vaguely for an end to the war in Iraq, but at the same time making sure never to set a date, all the while attacking the Dems for cut and run tactics that endanger American troops. Last night in New London, Connecticut in their last debate Joe Lieberman was setting out the Republican line, calling for an end the fighting but attacking Ned Lamont’s demand for a m