Money Trumps Peace

Of all the theater of the Bush years, I have always drawn a perverse pleasure from watching Junior at a press conference. Easily the dumbest president in history – making even the greatly-challenged Ronald Reagan look like a Rhodes scholar – Bush doesn’t participate in a press conference, he survives it. The look of relief on the faces of Bush’s handlers when he heads back to the shadowy safety of the inner sanctum after another embarrassing performance speaks volumes about the minor talents of their barely-passable puppet.

The attitude that Junior wants to project during a press conference is that of an impatient parent talking to annoying children. This is the tone taken by all senior Bushies, exemplified primarily these days by hired wing-nut Tony Snow. Each question is treated in a “how can you ask that?” manner, followed explanations that rarely go beyond “because we said so”. While Snow is snotty, glib and dismissive, Bush is simply ham-fisted, wrestling with words and phrases that keep bumping into each other in his empty head. All the while, he pretends to be chummy with a press corps he hardly knows.

The moments I savor in Bush pressers is when the light goes on in his head and he remembers what he is supposed to say about a given subject. At first, he puts on his “thoughtful” face. But, by the end of the sentence, he always winds up chuckling. Remembering and repeating the script they’ve given him (when he can) is a joy to Junior. He speaks as if, if he can understand things that are explained this way, what’s wrong with you? “Don’t you get it?” he wonders. “Christ, even I can figure this one out.”

You can imagine the brain-feed sessions in the Oval Office. “Mr. President, remember that big wall in Texas Stadium? What happened when balls went over the wall?” "Home run!” shouts the president. “OK, now, this escalation, uh, surge is like that big wall that we just need to get over so we can score some runs.” “Yeah, runs!” And so forth.

But, with Junior, as with all dim bulbs, a little knowledge and a clever phrase can be a dangerous thing. At his press conference on Wednesday, Bush was asked what we should say to countries that trade with Iran and that would lose an important market if that country were to be economically isolated. His off-the-cuff response was a moment of clarity rare in the carefully constructed fog of Bush Inc. No doubt it sent his handlers scurrying off to the back rooms to make sure the elite media either didn’t notice or ignored the gaffe of truth. (no need -- they ignored it)

“Sometimes, money trumps peace,” declared the president.

What a remarkable statement. Who, other than these greedheads that have run our government into the ground, talks like that? But it says a lot, opening a window into their dark souls. It explains what we are doing in Iraq.

In Iraq, money is oil. Money is contracts for Halliburton and other political contributors to provide services for our troops, security for our politicians and rebuilding the infrastructure we have destroyed. Money is the military industrial complex, that have tried to keep us stocked with bombs, tanks, guns and ammunition. Forget the maimed and dead soldiers and Iraqis, the shattered buildings and lives. The invasion and occupation of Iraq has done very well for Money in all its forms.

Money trumps peace. Of course, its so simple. If there is money to be made, then the peace be damned. And so it has been.

Thanks, Junior, for that brief, shining moment of truth.

The Smart Ones

My last post a week ago about the racist comments of Mark Belling and others after the over-hyped scuffle after a high school basketball game generated a bunch of comments. As usual, my favorites are those posted by a GOP surrogate who insists on being Anonymous. His or her last comment asked a question, and I figured I would bring the answer out in the main body of the blog so we could dissect and discuss.

"Why is it that nobody on the left can engage the arguments made by so-called Right-wing nuts without calling them racists or something? I thought you were supposed to be the smart ones..."

There are several deliberate flaws in this question/comment.

1) You can’t "engage the arguments" of wing-nuts, because they don’t make "arguments". Wing-nuts make assertions and then insist you agree and you are stupid if you don't. They tell lies repeatedly until some believe it, setting up straw-men that they then knock down with derision. They ignore the truth, even when exposed. Finally, they hide behind radio microphones and Anonymous posts so they don’t have to engage in real debate.

When is the last time Belling or Sykes (or, for that matter, Anonymous) exposed themselves to an honest public debate with anyone? Their TV shows don’t count – they drop their loud-mouthed radio personas and act as neutral moderators to the friendly panel that they construct. I would like to see, for instance, Belling show up anywhere in a public forum and spout the racist nonsense he spewed after Bradley Tech scuffle. He knows better, so he hides behind his microphone and his sanctimony. Anonymous hides for another reason. He or she won’t let me know who they are because to do so would legitimize me as a voice they have to deal with. Right-wing bloggers and radio wing-nuts only pick up lefty posts if they want to make fun of someone or show how "extreme" the Dem "base" is. And most of those posts they cite are phony, anyway.

2) I always argue against their ideas and not their person. I can and have without resorting to calling them "racist or something" – except when they are actually engaging in racist behavior. It is the supposedly-cerebral Sykes who has become so discombobulated with being wrong all the time that he has resorted to calling, for instance, Rep. Steve Kagen a "crap-weasel" and calling anything he disagrees with "crappity-crap-crap". It is they who engage in the politics of personal destruction, making up lies to belittle everyone from Pelosi to Hillary to Barak "Hussein" Obama so that they don’t have to engage them in a war of ideas.

In fact, I think I give them too much credit for trying to engage in real discussion at all. Radio wing-nuts don’t really want discussion or debate – they want GOP-friendly distraction and divisiveness. A Democratic politician once told me that he tried to call in to get a word in edge-wise on Sykes show and was told by Sykes that his show was "entertainment", and refused to put him on. I can’t imagine what is so damn "entertaining" about having Scott Walker or Alberta Darling with a direct line to the studio any time they want, but the bottom line is – they don’t care about real ideas and debate. As Limbaugh tells his listeners repeatedly, he is only interested in callers that make him look good. People like Sykes only pretend to be interested in public issues and discussion. All they really care about is the sound of their own voice and the advancement of the GOP agenda.

3) I don’t think we are necessarily the "smart ones" in the war of ideas. The construction of the wing-nut GOP echo-chamber by Karl Rove is a marvel of propagandic manipulation. Somehow, he got a whole roster – hundreds of talk-show sycophants and their enabling program directors – who were willing to do nothing all day long but repeat carefully constructed GOP talking-points. This goes right down to writing scripts for various levels (Limbaugh gets this spin, the local dudes get to talk about so-and-so in support, and the late-night ravers like Mark Levine and Michael Savage get to float trial balloons like nuking Iran). It’s quite something really, not constructed by dummies.

Liberals would never be able to construct that kind of message-discipline – nor should we ever want to. The difference between liberals and wing-nuts is moral, not mental. We have the truth on our side – and the wing-nuts and their puppet-masters are smart enough to realize that. That’s why they lie so much.

4) The question is not why I am calling out Belling for his racism. The question is: Why are he and others making blatantly racist statements and promoting division over understanding of the primary issue in Milwaukee and other cities – the legacy of slavery, segregation and poverty?

We are used to this with Belling, who withstood the use of a racist slur about Latinos several years ago and lived to brag and laugh about it. But, it appears, his entire radio station has gone off the deep end. Filling in for Belling on Thursday (who was off spreading his national nut-wings by subbing for Limbaugh), morning wing-nut Jay Weber tried and failed to counter a column by Eugene Kane of the Journal Sentinel. Kane is a favorite wing-nut lightening rod, because he eloquently focuses on racial issues in his Journal Sentinel column from (gasp!) a black perspective, making him the most important columnist in that paper and, perhaps, in the city.

Kane had the temerity, according to the undistinguished Weber, to try to explain a recent black-kids-hitting-white-guy incident on a city bus in terms that were not sufficiently outraged. Weber went off on a racist – yes, racist – rant about how the Bay View and Bradley Tech schools were being victimized by black kids being bussed-in from other parts of the city and how the inner city owes the "white and suburban community" a lot more than we owe them. It was an amazingly naked tirade by the near-amateur, trying to be Belling and finding himself way in over his head. In the middle of it, Weber recited the tired cliche: "I know this is not politically correct...." No, it’s not correct in any way. It’s racist. And it shows how far the standards have fallen for even already-bottom-feeding Milwaukee wing-nut radio.

But, what do you expect from a radio station that now proclaims itself "Your Conservative Home"? WISN is now running a promotion spot for the station that is a mock-commercial for coverage of City Conference basketball games, which, of course, the station doesn’t carry. "All the action, from center court to circuit court!" it claims. Now, that is the way that serious issues in the city should be handled -- with hate, division and mockery.

Or,as my dad used to say when he didn’t think it was: Idn’t that funny?

Rock and Roll High Schools

Milwaukee area teenagers have really lost their minds. To read, watch and listen to the hysterical coverage, there is nothing but conflict and police contacts. There's a fight, police get called, teens flee…it’s just an outrageous situation.

You probably heard about the recent events at Bradley Tech on the near south side, where cell phones, angry teens, over-involved parents and over-exuberant basketball fans have melded into quite an evil mix. All together now: Something Must Be Done. Supply your own exclamation points – I can’t do everything for you.

But other truths pop up in the strangest places. North Shore Now – a descendant of several formerly local and independent weekly newspapers, now homogenized and conglomerated by the Journal Company through their CNI subsidiary – has a story of a (gasp!) “fight” between about 40 Whitefish Bay and Nicolet High School students on January 27th outside the Jewish Community Center (!) on formerly quiet Santa Monica Boulevard.

Well! I know there weren’t any video cameras (were there?) so we could all watch our precious children battle on starved-for-footage cable news shows, but where is the outrage about these North Shore youths running amok? Where are the radio wing-nuts shouting about anarchy, bad parenting, lack of values and the break-down of societal mores?

It’s a rhetorical question, of course. North Shore kids -- hey, they're just bein' kids!

But the city kids at Bradley Tech...well, nothing exposes the naked racism of the wing-nuts like a little rumble in (certain) schools, streets and gyms by a bunch of bussed-for-integration African-Americans. Mark Belling is, as usual, the worst; just daring anyone to call him racist as he relates his own twisted history of the Tech/Bay View basketball rivalry (used to be a real rivalry, but none of the kids in the schools live there anymore, so…) and blames it all on black people acting like, you know, black people.

Belling is a vulture that lives for stories like this that he can pounce on and twist to affirm his racist view of the universe. He can deny his racism all he wants and as loudly as he can, but it doesn’t change the fact that his racist poison has inflicted this community for far too long. Others are either more subtle and supposedly cerebral (Sykes) or just lamely head-nodding, letting their too-willing audience fill in the blanks. But Belling is the worst, and he’s disgustingly proud of it.

So what about the Sharks-and-Jets North Shore dust-up? What about the fact (reported on page 19 of the ever-enlightening Now) that Shorewood High School has had to restrict the attendance at a dance to Shorewood students only. This is “because of what’s been going on with dances and guests”, according to the article. My god, what the hell has been “going on with dances and guests”? No details. Perhaps one of the local radio wing-nuts can take up the issue and random people can call in and claim to know. This is a favorite tactic of the know-nothing class – pretending to know something, anything, as long as it validates their prejudices.

I won’t hold my breath waiting for Belling and Sykes to take up teen terror on the North Shore with the same sort of breathless know-it-all-ness with which they dive into the sociology of the underclass high school student. They only explore the psyche of the suburban teen when there is a car crash, and, then, always with sympathy. Besides, admitting that suburban kids also make mistakes in the heat of passion takes the eye off their racist target. The truth eludes them once again, on purpose.

Stupid kids do stupid things – same as it ever was. This fact transcends racial and class boundaries everywhere except in Wing-Nut Land, where They are forever ruining everything for Us. After the supposed student-plus-parent conflict at Tech several weeks ago, Belling imagined what would happen if such a thing took place at Brookfield Central. I’ll tell you what would happen. Belling’s phone lines would be jammed with parents squawking about how right they were to do whatever they did. And Belling would be sitting on his lazy ass in the studio, blaming it all on the teachers.

Because Belling has been on the air since the Fairness Doctrine was revoked by Reagan in 1987, there is a certain acquiescence to the loud outrages they he gleefully foists upon the public every day. He is at his worst when he charges into racial issues, issues that demand the most sensitivity in this community, not the least. Like Republicans who still pursue Nixon’s Southern strategy, he uses code words and easy prejudice to stir the ghosts of Harold Brier’s old south side in what is still the most segregated city in America. His hate is more than a psychosis; it is a marketing tool.

McBride's Missing Marbles

There is one under the chair. Another one rolled into the fireplace and is now covered with soot. Her best steely fell in the heating vent and makes a weird clicking sound at night when the blower turns on. She wakes up when it happens and wonders what is going on.

Even though she doesn’t know they are gone and isn’t really looking for them, it is hard to deny the obvious: Jessica McBride is losing her marbles.

It started some time ago when someone had the bright idea to give her a floating spot on WTMJ on weeknights when the Brewers and Bucks aren’t playing. The formerly-respectable Journal Inc. radio station – now all-right-wing-all-the-time – apparently felt it needed a local wing-nut to lead-in to racist hate-monger Michael Savage at 11 p.m. McBride was plucked out of deserved obscurity – I guess everyone else in the GOP wannabe universe was busy.

On the radio, McBride sounds as if she can’t be bothered to open her mouth. Her attitude is of one who thinks everything she says is so obvious, it is beneath her to repeat it. She dutifully repeats the GOP talking points, but either isn’t bright or interested enough to learn the sub-points. So, for instance, if you don’t understand what is strange/funny/meaningful about Nancy Pelosi blinking 25-30 times per minute during the State of the Union – the primary and pathetic politics-of-personal-destruction bullet-point on Wednesday for every wing-nut from Limbaugh to Belling to Hannity to the deplorable Mark Levine – you are not going to get any help from McBride. Her cleverness evident only to her, McBride chuckles about the blinking in the empty studio, pleading for help from her silent producer, who leaves her twisting in her own vacant wind.

This past Monday, McBride decided to try out her strident know-nothing routine on the “issue” of Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez – a favorite wing-nut punching-bag – offering to provide help to needy people in Milwaukee. Because McBride is a third-level wing-nut, at best, she does not have the benefit of the fake lefty or seminar right-wing “callers” used by the front-line GOP surrogates to help her through the rough spots. She was challenged fairly effectively by two callers in a row, who refused to let her put words in their mouths (“So you’re saying Chavez is wonderful and Our President is evil?”, etc.) McBride tried to get by simply by repeating her own ill-informed preconceptions (the just-recently re-elected Venezuelan president was a “dictator”, she claimed) and raising her whiny voice, like someone who shouts when speaking to someone who doesn’t understand English – like that’s going to help. She was losing badly as the knowledgeable callers hung in there and called her many bluffs, a battle of wits in which McBride was decidedly unarmed. When her bullying failed, she resorted to the last refuge of the desperate wing-nut – she hung up on both of them.

But if McBride is, at least, regrettable as a talk-show host, she is even worse in her efforts at put her, um, thoughts in written form. On her WTMJ web page, McBride rambles on and on – she is a former Jurnal Sentinel reporter, badly in need of an editor. This is even more remarkable, considering she somehow got herself hired as a lecturer* in journalism at UWM. Looking at her incoherent blathering, you wonder how something like that could actually happen. You worry about the students that might come out of this particular J-school.

For instance, look at this end-or-the-year post, in which she purports to review 2006. In no less than 2,760 words (that’s eight single-spaced pages), McBride just lets her brain pour out all of her ’06 reflections, and it’s not a pretty picture. She starts with Brittany Spears and quickly segues into predictable wing-nuttiness: “Islamic fascist terrorists continued their war on our way of life, and the media, the courts, and half of America decided to give up and/or fight the administration instead…after months of the media saying we were losing the war (almost with glee), people started to believe it (which came first, the chicken or the egg?)”. Well, I think the chicken was killed in the original “shock and awe” and the egg blew up in a marketplace, but, yeah, I can see why she can’t figure these things out.

A large part of the undisciplined, sour-grapes rant has to do with the media supposedly ignoring bad Democratic behavior while trumping up Republican sins. Never mind that the exaggerated problems of, say Harry Reid or Sandy Berger (hilariously re-named “Burglar” by Limbaugh and validated by Educator* McBride) don’t really compare to Mark Foley chasing pages or prison terms for Duke Cunningham, Bob Ney and (soon) Tom Delay. Besides, the MSM covered the Reid and Berger stories anyway.

And so it goes, in fairly wacky fashion. My favorite part in the weird screed was in her choppy review of the people who died in ’06: “We lost Milton Friedman and James Brown too.” Now, there’s a pairing you wouldn’t expect. You also don’t expect the J-school lecturer* to miss the comma before the “too”, but, hey, it was posted at 1:45 a.m. – what do you expect?

More recently, McBride has come out at least three times to promote the former and new careers of her husband, former Waukesha DA Paul Bucher. It seems like a match made in heaven – the DA who used his office for various right-wing causes and the radio queen of, well, whatever she thinks she is queen of. During Bucher’s failed campaign for Attorney General, McBride promised to not to comment on the race. I don’t know why. Wing-nuts are the most compromised of political commentators, whether it’s Charlie Sykes and his right-wing funding or Sean Hannity starring at political rallies for various GOP candidates.

Now that the race is over, she has invoked her spouse in criticizing the guy who beat him for the GOP nomination for the DNA backlog. She also wrote a totally weird political obituary about him for a Waukesha paper and nominated him (along with Scott Walker, John Wayne and the Boots and Sabers blogger) for the new Milwaukee police chief. “He loves his new job. He'll kill me for writing this. (By the way, if I was actually serious, I wouldn't write this.)” Yipes. It’s embarrassing. By the way, although his “new job” is in a Waukesha law firm, Bucher is charging hard as a hired gun, taking the lead in trying to reverse the democratic process in the city by getting Michael McGee, Jr. recalled.

Finally, McBride leapt from the strange into the outright (unintentionally) comical this week, live-blogging the State of the Union address. From the first line – “Laura Bush looks good. How does she do it? So much stress...” – it is the unfiltered McBride. There is a hazy glow in her mind’s eye when she sees Junior Bush (“Bush looks good. Rested, confident.” You would too, if you had that much vacation time on the ranch.) There are the sooo predictable cheap-shots at Democrats (Kerry is “excessively tanned. Must be all that windsurfing.”; “Pelosi is standing and clapping. How does she want to take the fight to the enemy?... And I don't mean George Bush.”). McBride writing in real-time isn’t that much different than what she writes when she has time to think about it. It’s all sloppy, predictable and rambling. Funny, though -- nothing here in her real-time post about Pelosi's blinking. I guess she needed help the next day with that one.

Left to her own devices, McBride would just be another forgotten blogger, posting on Free Republic, maybe running the Sean Hannity fan club. However, WTMJ has decided to give her free air time to spread her disjointed poison. Since she is far from entertaining, McBride is on the air because the Journal Company wants more right-wing noise in the air, no matter how lame.

*Originally identified as a professor. The fact that she is only a lecturer is only a slight improvement, for UWM and for us.

The Journal Sentinel Redesign

I woke up at 4 a.m. this morning, made some coffee and took a seat in my living room, facing my front window. Scanning the snow-covered, empty pre-dawn street (no cars – this is Shorewood, after all), I sipped and waited. This was going to be good, I thought. I wanted to be one of the first to see It, to touch It. In fact, it was such a peaceful and lovely morning that, despite my best intentions, I soon nodded off.

I awoke to the light thump of a baggie hitting the door and falling to the deck outside. Breathlessly, I darted out to the porch – and there It was. Wrapped loosely in blue plastic, I could see the outline of strange design and fonts. The newly-designed Milwaukee Journal Sentinel (or so I thought) was finally here.

For weeks now, the editorial “we” at the paper had been warning, er, informing us of the redesign. A smaller paper footprint and other changes were promised, including “more local news and [wait for it] more local perspective on national and international stories”. Given the recent drift of the paper into talk-radio-driven hysteria, this is not necessarily a good thing.

As the noticeably smaller newspaper settled into my lap, my bleary eyes took in the wonder of the “new” front page. The biggest surprise was right at the top. It seems the newspaper has changed its name to the “Milwaukee Wisconsin Journal Sentinel”, with a little non-keyboard diamond between the “Milwaukee” and “Wisconsin”. Now, the newspaper with two names, apparently, has two locations. And they’re not kidding either – the two-word identifier is right there, complete with the little diamond, on the official masthead on page 5.

Editor Martin Kaiser explains the dramatic change on the front page: “We have added ‘Wisconsin’ because that’s where we’re from and that’s what we cover…” Well, whatever. But the M-W-J-S abandoned most of Wisconsin years ago, at least as far as distribution is concerned. If you don’t believe me, try getting a fresh version of the paper on your next trip to anywhere north or west of Green Bay. Putting Wisconsin in the title isn’t a commitment to the state – it’s a sop to the suburban areas where the paper imagines it can stop (or at least slow down) its dwindling subscriber and advertising base. “No,” the paper now says, “we aren’t from that nasty, dirty city, we’re from all of Wisconsin. Get it?” Is this the first step in the J-S abandonment of the city? Is this the precursor to a move of the editorial offices out of the city?

But, you have to wonder if they really serious about this. Are the reporters going to identify themselves as from the Milwaukee Wisconsin Journal Sentinel? If so, how many of the news sources will remind them that everyone knows Milwaukee is in Wisconsin? This is the first I've heard of such an ambitious reidentification of a newspaper's location. I just know I would have heard about it if it were happening elsewhere. I mean, I read the New York New York Times almost every day.

As it has in the past, by making their very name even more confusing (why not just call it the Journal or Sentinel and be done with it?), the M-W-J-S has now made their very existence more clumsy by trying to get too cute, marketing-savvy-wise. I give it about six months before they drop this ridiculous experiment in re-branding, if only because of a revolt in the newsroom. And the diamond will go along with it.

As for the new visuals, the each section of the paper takes up the top sixth of the page with a title of the section and fancy photos poking out of the bottom border. That way, you can just look at the page without reading and find out that there is a story about, say, man-chairs in women’s clothing stores or a column by suburban matron Laurel Walker inside. The font used for the headlines is lighter, thinner and, yes, friendlier. Even more death in Iraq goes down easier when brought to you with diamonds (!) instead of dots over the “i”. In fact, the headlines are so non-threatening, you can now avoid them altogether if you want, which is probably more the point.

In its re-branding and redesign, the Milwaukee Wisconsin Journal Sentinel takes another giant step backwards from the respectability and relevancy it has lost in the years since the two papers merged. The look of the paper now follows the content of recent years – desperately patronizing a suburban readership that has already moved on to other content-providers. By making its look less urgent, the paper has become more disposable.

Too Silly To Be True? It Probably Is.

A prime example of the way that talk-radio, cable-news and other discussion-polluters gin up phony controversy popped up this past week, and it says a lot about what they do to poison the dialog regarding important national issues.

This week, national and local wing-nuts pounced on the comments of a Weather Channel climate expert, Dr. Heidi Cullen, who posted on a Weather Channel blog back on December 21st, criticizing meteorologists that are certified by the American Meteorological Society (AMS) who facilitate unscientific “controversy” about humans contributing to global warming.

According to Mark Belling, Rush Limbaugh and countless other subscribers to the daily GOP talking-points memo, Cullen wrote that meteorologists who don’t “believe” in human-caused global warming should be drummed out of the AMS. This was proof, according to the wing-nuts, that Cullen was just one of many liberal thugs, who were trying to shut up anyone who dared to question the left’s global warming orthodoxy.

Both used their characterization of Cullen’s comments to go off on their usual rants about the motives of those who subscribe to the obvious and uncontroverted science of the global warming crisis. Limbaugh claimed they were Communists and Socialists who wanted to destroy American industry, for some reason. Belling called them “bigots”, although “bigoted” against whom, he couldn’t say. Sticking to the talking points, both implied there was some sort of controversy about the issue, without citing any opposing scientific research (because there isn’t any) and both, in the lamest of fall-back positions, claimed (falsely) that, even if humans caused it, there was nothing we could do about it at this point.

The wing-nuts have gone off on their global warming tirade before, usually chuckling at the supposed silliness of the concern when there is a snowstorm in Texas or something. “Hey, the fruit is freezing in Florida! Some ‘global warming’, huh?” But with the month-old hook of Dr. Cullen’s post (it must have conflicted with the right’s phony war-on-Christmas campaign back when it was actually posted), the wing-nuts were more shrill than usual about the whole thing. By twisting Cullen’s message, they got to squawk about not only the (to them) impossibly ridiculous global warming issue, but also the supposed attempt at mind-control by the dangerous liberals who (they say) try to shut down the expression all opposing thought.

Frankly, if Cullen’s comments were as presented by the wing-nuts, I might have almost agreed with them. But I knew before I even looked up the original post by Cullen this morning that the wing-nuts had twisted, interpreted, took out of context and otherwise misrepresented her intent and even the comments themselves. I knew they did because wing-nuts always raise the straw man, because they can't knock down anything else. After looking at the souce material, I was not surprised to find that they outright lied about it.

Dr. Cullen’s comments arise out of a small game of inside-baseball for meteorologists. Cullen was actually commenting on a post by a weather blogger in D.C., who heard an AMS-certified TV weatherman lend credence to the right-wing agenda by claiming that global warming may simply be part of “cyclical patterns” (a standard wing-nut cannard) and that no “generalizations” can be made from the available data. The D.C. blogger, Andrew Freedman, made the point that the TV guy would be lucky to pass a test in climate class and reminded him that the AMS itself had established three years ago – as has every qualified scientist in the world – that human activity is a “major agent of climate change”.

There is a reason for pretty-boy-and-girl TV weather geeks go out and get AMS certification. They want you to think that they speak with authority when they advise you to send Little Jimmy out with a coat tomorrow morning. Since they hold themselves out as some sort of perfect-toothed scientists, I would also say they have a responsibility not to get drawn in to happy-talk with the attractive (and decidedly non-certified) news-and-sports heads on the issue of climate change, and, if they do, they should try to get it right, according to science and not the wishful thinking of their SUV-selling advertisers. That was Freedman’s point.

Cullen took it, as she put it, “a step further”. First, she said “meteorologists have a responsibility to truly educate themselves on the science of global warming...they owe it to their audience to distinguish between solid, peer-reviewed science and junk political controversy.” Well, sure. Hard to argue with that, unless, of course, you are engaged in “junk political controversy” on a daily basis, as all wing-nuts are. Finally, she suggests, “if a meteorologist can't speak to the fundamental science of climate change, then maybe the AMS shouldn't give them a Seal of Approval.”

Notice she didn’t say AMS certification should be pulled for those ignorant of the basic facts; just that maybe (just maybe) the AMS shouldn’t give the Seal of Approval to someone spouting un-science (or, going along with those who do).

In response to the phony controversy, Cullen followed up with a post on January 18th: “The point of my post was never to stifle discussion. It was to raise it to a level that doesn't confuse science and politics.” Limbaugh played parts of the audio version of her clarification, but left out that important point. Wing-nuts never let the facts get in the way of a good poisoning.

Despite the obvious existance of global warming and its human-driven causes, the “issue” seems to be a favorite and permanent topic for national and local wing-nuts. Are they that co-opted by oil industry contributions to their GOP bosses? Is it because Al Gore had the termity to use his knowledge and celebrity to establish The Inconvenient Truth? More likely, the phony “they-are-coming-for-your-SUVs” message has replaced the old phony “they-are-coming-for-your-guns” paranoia for their angry-white-male demographic. Besides, more people have SUVs than guns, anyway.

There is an old adage that can protect you in an advertising marketplace that often promises the Moon and more: if something sounds too good to be true, it probably is. The same idea can and should be applied to wing-nut talk radio claims of outrageous liberal behavior. That is: if it sounds too silly to be true, it probably is. Such as it is with Dr. Cullen and her reasonable comments about the responsibility of those who know better (or who should know better) not to be browbeaten by political hacks into discussing phony issues in phony ways.

Bring Back the Viceroy!

In the cartoon version of the Bush administration’s Iraq “policy”, Junior Bush is Wille E. Coyote, holding on to the side of a cliff by one fingernail, his own badly-launched anvil sure to fall on his head at any moment, as the elusive Roadrunner of “Victory” scoots off into the sunset, never to be seen or heard from again.

To understand why the Bushies are holding so tight to their Iraq fiasco, you have to understand why they went there in the first place. This whole deadly adventure had nothing to do with WMD, Hussein, democracy, Bush’s father or any of the other moving-target, after-the-fact public justifications. There were three main motivations for the way-out-of-the-box-thinking neo-cons, and, unlike the public ruses, all of them still apply.

First and foremost, it is a neat place on a strategic map. Hussein's Iraq was the weakest regime amongst Israel’s neighbors and the radicals running our government wanted a reliable Arab puppet regime as a buffer for Israel and, more importantly, as a permanent military and power base for the U.S. They knew they couldn’t get away with a Shah installation like we did to Iran in the past, so we knocked off Hussein – the easiest of targets – and got ready for the Return of the Exiles. As exiles like Chalabi proved themselves to be worthless and worse, they made desperate deals with compromised leaders of the remaining tribal powers in the country and hoped for the best.

Second, oil. Who is running Iraq’s refineries these days, anyway? We know Iraqis themselves have to import gasoline and whatever they are allowed to receive from the country’s rich oil reserves has not made a dent in the cost of running their government or paying for reconstruction of whatever we blew up. The wells aren’t burning and we know the occupation made protection and continued production of the fields its first priority. The oil is flowing, alright, and not to (or for) Iraq. And you have to go all the way to Canada (via the internet) to find out that Iraq will, indeed, give its oil rights to “Western oil companies”.

Finally, private contractors like Halliburton, who have (literally) cleaned up on everything from feeding our sitting-duck troops to repairing (sporadic) electrical power grids to public relations (we are now farming-out our own lies) to providing “security” for the troops and various well-to-do official vacationers in the Green Zone. Various well-connected entrepreneurs have made a killing because of our Killing, whether they had something to offer the country or not. I was amazed by a little news nugget that didn’t make more noise – there really is a guy in the Pentagon that runs a political litmus test for contractors in Iraq. [I saw it in the Madison Capitol Times while visiting during the holidays, but I can’t find it anywhere on the internet now.]

So, it comes as no surprise that they will not let go. To lose the bases, control of the oil and all those billions of dollars to their contributors and friends is just too much. They need to string this out because the failure is all theirs. And their benefactors in the oil and private sector love this whole mess as much as the rest of America hates it. They will soak this tragedy for all it’s worth – and, to these sick bastards, it’s worth a lot.

So they trotted out Junior for a little talk to the nation last week. Bush has a strange look of serenity at this point, as if he sees the light at the end of the tunnel. He signed up to be the empty suit for these goons before he ran for Texas governor in 1994 and he hasn’t let them down. He is unburdened by pangs of consciousness or grief for the fallen because he has had nothing to do with it. He made his deal, he read his lines, like a good boy.

When Scott Pelley asked him on 60 Minutes if he knew Americans didn’t like him, he laughed like it was the silliest concern he could have. What does he care what those poor suckers think? In two years, he’ll disappear to whatever Shangri-La his handlers have promised to build for him and be done with it. Junior Bush will be the least-seen ex-president in history, and not only because no one will be interested.

Right now, all supposedly depends on the Iraqi “government”, such as it is. In his speech, Bush claimed that the Iraqis have agreed to a grand design that includes commanders, army and police “brigades” across Baghdad, patrols, checkpoints, door-to-door raids, etc. Then, virtually the next day, the New York Times reported that the Iraqis had signed off on nothing, and in fact resented the U.S. pretending to dictate a plan to them at all.

It is bound to fail because the Iraqis aren’t even going to try to satisfy Bush or anyone foolish enough to believe in this sad excuse for an end game. The question then is what’s next. I wouldn’t put it past these desperate men to try to re-impose the viceroy and the occupation and start all over. To them, it’s just strategic land, oil and profit. To the rest of us, it is the profound loss of peace, security and the American Soul.

STEVE KAGEN, RIGHT-WING PUNCHING BAG

The print, web and radio wing-nuts are really at their wit’s end these days (granted, not a far way to go). Still recovering from the November election – in which the electorate rejected not only their candidates, but also their slash-and-burn tactics – the GOP media surrogates flailed around for a month or so before returning full-time to their politics of personal destruction.

In Wisconsin, the wing-nuts seem to have settled on Rep. Steve Kagen, the new 8th District congressman for special treatment. Dr. Kagen, you’ll remember, had the temerity to beat their fair-haired boy, John Gard, for the seat formerly held by Mark Green (who?). While he was driving doomed right-wing agenda items like concealed-carry and TABOR through the State Assembly, Gard was one of the GOP politicians with a direct line to Charlie Sykes for access to free airtime and talking points. His loss was deeply felt by people like Sykes (who likes to brag about the elections he affects with his use of WTMJ’s government-provided spot on the radio dial) and Karl Rove, who poured (read: wasted) all kinds of money and energy on Gard's lost cause.

The success of Kagen apparently got under Sykes’ skin this week so much that Sykes went so far as to call the congressman a “crap-weasel”, both on his radio show and on his web site. Now, why would a sold-out pipsqueak like Sykes call out a U.S. congressman with such a strange, previously unknown epithet? It seems, like other wing-nuts desperate to set a negative tone for Kagen’s first term, Sykes forgot his usually patient (but phony) set-up and went straight to juvenile name-calling.

The event that got Sykes pretending to be offended was comments that Kagen made at a gathering in his district in December. Kagen supposedly cut loose with a story about chance meetings with Rove, Dick Chaney and Junior Bush on his orientation trip to Washington. When the apparently hyper-sensitive Sykes read selective details in a right-wing rag, well, it was just more than he could take.

Charlie Sykes used to be a real journalist, but now he is just plain sloppy as he stomps off to make his political points, whether what he is talking about is accurately reported or not. To set up his pretended indignation, Sykes took his lead from a “publication” called The Inside Scoop. The Scoop is, by all appearances, a northeastern Wisconsin GOP vanity rag, featuring many photographs of Scoop staff posing with Bush, Gard, Green and other dull-to-extinguished luminaries. A regular feature is what is supposed to be a humorous “column” by “Al Capone”, who writes about “his” fine relationship with Jim Doyle. The “yet to be indicted Diamond Jim has taken a page out of my playbook” claims “Capone”. God, it’s a riot. Stop. You’re killing me.

Knowing a soul brother when he reads one, Sykes is moved by the pretend-offense taken by whoever writes The Scoop, whose “teeth clenched” as he read about the meeting in The Scene, an “arts and entertainment newspaper”, also based in Kagen’s district. The report of the meeting in The Scene was actually pretty friendly and included several more-interesting nuggets ignored by Sykes. For instance, Kagen said he suggested to Rove that national health care means “no patient left behind” (heh-heh). Kagen also said he asked Cheney point-blank the question all of us would if we got the chance: what price he was willing to pay for the pipe-dream of stability in Iraq? (“I don’t understand your point,” said Cheney, who certainly did.) But these remarks are necessarily not included in Sykes’ rant. Apparently, taking advantage of an unusual break in the protective cocoon to challenge Bush, Rove and Cheney is impolitic or crap-weasely, or something.

Later in the week, Sykes decided that a White House denial of the encounters (reported in the Green Bay Press-Gazette) means they didn’t happen at all. Again resorting to I-know-you-are-but-what-am-I name-calling, Sykes called Kagen a liar by claiming he had the encounters that got Sykes so hot-and-heavy in the first place. So, now, if he didn’t get in Rove and Cheney’s face and didn’t diss Laura, is he still a crap-weasel, or what?

While he’s figuring that out, Sykes should check into the use of “crap-weasel” in the first place. According to the on-line Urban Dictionary, a crap weasel (non-hyphenated) is “any worthless induvidual (sic) who tries to steal credit for someone else's work; also someone who tries to pass blame on others.” This hardly applies to whatever is eating Sykes about Kagen, but certainly is a nice fit for Sykes himself, who regularly pretends that lines fed to him by GOP talking point memos are his own creation and certainly spends a lot of his time blaming anyone but himself and his Bushie friends for, oh, like the disaster in Iraq and stuff. Crap weasel, heal thyself.
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Fresh off their latest anti-Doyle spin, the Journal Sentinel’s in-house wing-nuts, Spivak and Bice, also picked up and ran with an anti-Kagen nugget from the blogosphere this week. You see, when someone on Kagen’s staff made up his official web site, they borrowed a template from a Nebraska representative and – get this! – people looking for flags are referred to the guy in Nebraska. Wow, this is big stuff, another feather in the Spice Boys’ cap for sure. As long as it makes a Democrat look bad (which this beyond-trivial matter doesn’t, anyway), the Boys are always there to help advance the GOP agenda.

And, as one hand washes the other, the Spice Boys repeat the Kagen-in-Washington, did-he-or-didn't-he story in their not-good-enough-for-the-paper blog and Sykes repeats the web-site story ("Dr. Rip-off").

SPICE BOYS TO THE RESCUE? UH-HUH!

It’s been a while since the Journal Sentinel has sent out their hatchet men, Spivak and Bice, for more blather about the feverishly-imagined sins of Jim Doyle. Belling and Sykes must have called up, looking for more material. As always, the Spice Boys and the J-S are glad to oblige.

Their column this Sunday had all the usual ingredients: Snide attitude (even a dismissive “uh-huh” in the headline), class envy (yeah, right, a lawyer charging $230 an hour is a price cut! Uh-huh.), suspiciously-timed payments (like someone would have noticed a payment on the well-known contract before the election, much less been able to make something of it), standard denials by bureaucrats (yeah, sure, uh-huh) and contributions “since 2000” from the lawyer to the governor (Matt Flynn being a life-long Democrat and (gasp!) friend, who is unlikely to contribute to anyone else).

All of that is expected from the Spice Boys. And, as it is with every S&B smear-job on Doyle, you can always see what’s missing. The column, as usual, has absolutely no proof of ill-gotten gains, dirty-dealing, quid pro quos, secret-keeping, Doyle arm-twisting or any other reason to cast aspirations on a fairly common, public and straight-up arrangement the state has made to get money owed to it by the Ho Chunk Nation (the Boys quickly gloss over the fact that Flynn’s work has already gained the state $30 million, with more to follow). But, in the world of the Spivak and Bice, who cares if you have the facts when you can pretend you do? They say politics had nothing to do with Quarles and Brady getting the work? “Uh-huh.” See how it works? The Spice Boys continue to give skepticism a bad name.

The snarky, unearned attitude of the Boys is unneeded for what they intend. All they have to do is run the information about the obvious-to-them nefarious dealing between Doyle and Quarles; run it straight in a news column, without the ‘tude. Sykes and Belling don’t need the help finding it – and if they do, their daily GOP talking-points will get them on track, probably for the next several days, if not all this week. If this is such a great “gotcha”, the facts should speak for themselves. But they don’t, do they?

The king of throwing money at legal contributors for state gigs is, of course, Tommy Thompson, who started the practice of giving state work to GOP firms after Doyle, as Attorney General, refused to handle various harebrained Thompson legal projects. Not coincidentally, there’s the J-S’s favorite Tommy, featured in another story at the end of the Uh-Huh column. Apparently Jim Klauser, Tommy’s “longtime right-hand man” (no “flack”, “henchman” or “bagman” name-calling for this crew), held a fund-raiser for Mitt Romney. Yeah, but Our Tommy’s running! Not to worry, sigh the Boys in relief. An unnamed “ally” of Klauser assures them he is in Thompson’s corner. Whew! Close call? Uh-huh.

Notice the deference granted Thompson and Klauser in all S&B columns. All their words are taken at face value, and the drama is always whether things are going to be Good for Tommy. The J-S inexplicably is treating Thompson’s “campaign” for president as legitimate, bragging that he got “commitments” of $1 million at a recent fundraiser. Wow. $1 million dollars in a presidential race. Only $99 million to go! The real, non-homer media people are holding their breath watching Thompson step in, lest they break out laughing.

The real news is that Klauser is raising money for Romney, who is the most likely to fill the Rove-managed empty-suit to be vacated none-too-soon by Junior Bush. More likely, Tommy is “in the race” (uh-huh) just in case all the other damaged Republican candidates flame out, as all of them just might. I mean, somebody has to be there in the history books with an (R) next to his name when the ’08 45-state landslide by Clinton or Obama or Edwards is documented.

IN OVER HIS HEAD

Sometimes, I can almost tolerate Mark Belling. On very rare, once-a-month occasions, his patronizing, bar-stool-level blabbering is almost charming, even if he doesn’t really think what he says he does half the time. His stoop-to-conquer routine has worked for years, if only because the alternative for the angry-white-male demographic he panders to is – ugh – Jonathan Green.

Whether he’s reading GOP talking points or making up his own nonsense, Belling is always poison, always wrong, but seldom over his head. After all, how can anyone be overcome while carping about light rail, ethanol, loony (lefty or black) aldermen or a phony War on Christmas? But Belling really got out of his shallow depth this week when he compared two retiring district attorneys -- Milwaukee’s E. Michael McCann and Waukesha’s Paul Bucher – and, blinded by shameless party loyalty, was as wrong as he could be.

I hate to swing around my own credentials here, but, here goes. I have worked as a criminal defense attorney for the better part of the last 20 years, mostly in Milwaukee County. McCann actually hired me out of law school, and I worked for him for six months in the short-lived paternity unit (!) before fleeing to the safer (for me) haven of the Public Defenders Office. He actually ended up firing me for not showing up for work after I started at the PD. He let me have it in his office for an hour and I left in tears.

As a defense attorney, I had enormous respect for McCann and his staff, especially after spending three years practicing in Racine, where everything was charged with very little thought or compassion. McCann hired talented, interesting people who were more interested in doing justice than padding their conviction or sent-to-prison stats. Sure, as in all large offices, some of them are more wrong than others. And the office (and judges) sometime responded to political campaigns – driven by people like Belling – on lock-'em-up issues like guns, drugs and drunk driving that caused absurd amounts of jail and prison time to be thrown around like candy to an electorate with a sweet tooth.

McCann was far from perfect, starting with the kid gloves with which he treated bad cops. There was no cop shooting or beating that was unjustified in his eyes, and that was wrong. He also drove some in his office crazy, refusing to update office equipment – desks, chairs, carpeting – in the decrepit Safety Building and the DAs were way behind the times in terms of computerization of basic case management. McCann was known for his sackcloth-and-ashes humility – for instance, he refused to let himself be passed-through the security screening in the Safety Building when it first started.

But McCann, everyone knew, was beyond reproach. If you came to McCann arguing anything but the straight facts and the needs of justice, he wouldn’t hear you. An old-school ‘60s (as in Kennedy) Democrat, he was totally non-political. To the last day, he treated his job as a sacred trust. He was like a damn priest about it.

Never one to let the facts get in the way of an argument he wants to make, Belling wildly defames McCann in a column this week. McCann, proclaims the know-nothing Belling, “is a longtime burnout concerned more about conviction rates than justice, who never saw a plea bargain he didn’t like and was burdened with a sense of guilt that made him better suited to representing criminals, not trying to jail them.” Man, what a load. No one who has worked in the criminal justice system in Milwaukee for the last 40 years would even think such things about Mike McCann. Burnout? The man was passionate and energetic to the end. There are ten of thousands of people doing many years in prison because McCann and his staff stuck to their charging decisions and many of them could hold their own with the best of the Milwaukee defense bar. Belling’s reckless charges are an insult not only to McCann, but to the assistants who followed his lead.

If his childish slander against McCann is bad, his lauding of Republican Bucher is worse. Bucher was a lousy, publicity-seeking hound, whose first run for Attorney General was short-circuited by his very-public botching of the Mark Chmura prosecution. He ended his term with a disgusting piece of political skulduggery, putting out the word the week before the November election that he was “investigating” the State Election Board decision about Mark Green’s dirty money, on the basis that they had a meeting in Waukesha around that time. It was an absurd bit of showboating, but the anti-Doyle Journal Sentinel was happy to run a story about it. Perhaps Belling's unjustified accolades for Bucher are caused by his oneness in spirit with Bucher's wife, the pathetic Jessica McBride, who helps poison the electorate on another radio station when the Bucks aren't playing.

Mark Belling should stick to trying to talk his listeners into supporting a war against Iran, giving more tax breaks to the rich and further restricting civil liberties. When it comes to the facts on the ground in the Milwaukee County Courthouse about E. Michael McCann, he has no idea what he is talking about.
...

I went to file something in McCann’s former office on the 4th floor of the Safety Building this week. Just like in the movies, there was a guy putting the name of the new DA, John Chisholm, on the frosted glass outside the door. Chisholm is an excellent example of the people McCann hired – tough, fair and always interested in the elusive goal of “justice”. Because of Mike McCann we have people like that – and not hacks like Paul Bucher – carrying on a fine tradition. Only, I hope, with better desks and chairs.

JOURNAL SENTINEL TWISTS THE INAUGURATION

You have to feel for the state-house reporters and editors of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. In the months before their favored candidate for governor, Anybody-but-Doyle (otherwise known as Mark Green, although you are forgiven if you forgot him already), the J-S content-providers were busy working up their front page for January 4, 2007. In their mock-up, “A New Day” competed with “A New Day in Madison” for the headline over Green’s happy, just-inaugurated face, the longer headline losing out only because it required a smaller font size.

But, despite their best efforts, such was not to be. Green was properly thumped, losing by more than 10 points. The stunned J-S-ers could hardly believe it, blaming the result on “late-deciding voters” on the morning-after, even though Doyle was ahead the whole race. After brooding about it for a week-and-a-half, state-house veteran reporter Steven Walters went off on Doyle in the opinion pages for no good reason, claiming he was poisoned by ambition, obsessed with the second term even while his poor mother watched him get sworn in the first time and urging him into retirement.

Since then, the Journal Sentinel proudly front-paged a story about contributions to the Boys and Girls Clubs for special inauguration parties, claiming that Doyle was selling access by, um, getting people to give money to the worthy charity. This drew a rebuke from the president of the Boys and Girls Clubs, who got space in the next Sunday opinion pages to let the J-S and “WTMJ (620) talk shows” (read: Charlie Sykes) have it: “Yes, it's a sad day when public servants and community benefactors are criticized and derided for doing good for their communities and for the less fortunate children in our state. Alas, none of that seems to matter for some people if there is a way to twist it into a story.”

But the Journal Sentinel, when not twisting non-stories into scandals, continues to try to twist Doyle away from the perception of success. Just last week, the J-S front-paged yet another anti-Doyle non-story about a minor violation of ethics rules for accepting and paying for football tickets, the sort of thing that sent Tommy Thompson and his former gang of ethically-challenged professionals scurrying to the law books, hoping for a lenient statute of limitations for such things, and worse. (Worry not, Tommy – not that you ever had to with the J-S “watching” during your days of pioneering pay-for-play in Wisconsin).

Now comes the inauguration of Doyle for a second term. This is the sort of thing that has always been played on the front page the day after; a journalistic ritual much like the somber coverage of a former president’s death that we just endured. But good news for Doyle, again, means bare-minimum coverage in the Journal Sentinel. The article about the inauguration and Doyle’s speech ran on the bottom of the Metro section and jumping – you guessed it – to the Obituary page. Before the article falls off the bottom of the page, a photo is included of Doyle passively watching the passing of a color guard.

But, no, the J-S will squeal – we had a color photo on the front page! And what a picture it was. The governor is shown in a shot from the rafters, behind the lectern as a small speck, dwarfed by an American flag and the LaFollette bust. If you didn’t know Doyle was bald, you wouldn’t know it was Doyle speaking.

The article on the Metro page showed the under-whelmed Walters and Stacy Forster (hardly a two-writer story) yawning at their keyboards, barely able to stay awake while they produce the bare minimum of inches for the story. “As he did four years ago…” they write, and, god, who can read anything after that? Doyle had to share the story with the swearing-in of the new legislature and AG J.B. VanHollen. In paragraph 19, deep on the obit page, the article makes its only mention of what Doyle “said” his accomplishments were in the first term. Hey, J-S, don’t hurt yourself giving Doyle his due or his say.

With a Democratic Senate and a more-friendly Assembly, Jim Doyle may well be able to get some things done in his second term. He can expect nothing in term of help or credit from the strangely hostile Journal Sentinel.

SADAAM HUSSEIN, MARTYR

Bullet points are the last refuge of the lazy writer; a cheap way to distribute ideas quickly, without the need for serious writing style or finesse. But it’s New Years, and I don’t care. Besides, the execution of Sadaam Hussein is such a predictably-bizarre episode in the four-year, carefully-designed Iraqi nightmare produced by the Bushies that, at some point, you just throw up your hands and go – wha?

• Puppet Strings: Raise your hand if you think the Iraq “government”, such as it is, had anything to do with the ritual slaying of Hussein, much less the timing. Ever since he was discovered in a rabbit-hole three years ago, the U.S. has kept Hussein in their custody, so that a show trial could take place and, eventually and quickly, the trap door could drop at a politically opportune time. Had he been delivered to the Iraqis sooner, he would have been summarily killed by rival factions earlier or, just maybe, spirited away to a safe house in Tikrit to spend his last days peacefully with his mother, or whatever. But we delivered him directly to the gallows, no doubt with troops at the ready if any upstart Iraqi decided to try some funny business.
• Legally Illegal: Wanna have some fun? Google “Sadaam indictment” and see what happens. Can you find the indictment that resulted in his execution? No? Well, what the hell was he charged with? And how did the charges fit into any Iraqi law that existed at the time of the offenses? The fact is that, if Hussein indeed committed “crimes against humanity”, these are the sort of things a) that are not against the criminal code of any nation I’m aware of (if so, let’s work up something on Junior Bush immediately) and, b) if prosecuted at all, should be run by an international court (a point made by many at the time the circus began). Milosevic’s crimes in Bosnia were not prosecuted by the ultimate victors or, in that case, the internationally-favored victims – it was left to an international tribunal to decide whether he broached the very generous outlines of strongman behavior. Letting Hussein be tried by the U.S.-approved (and trained) stooges of the Iraqi “judiciary” was like handing Bush over to a bunch of Democrats in a dark room after the 2006 elections. Sure, it would be nice to have happened, but, no, it shouldn’t. Forget whether he was guilty of anything. In the legendary words of Woody Allen (not coincidentally, in “Bananas”): “This trial is a travesty. It’s a travesty of a mockery of a sham of a mockery of a travesty of two mockeries of a sham.”
• Who ARE Those People: The news coverage of the execution was an embarrassment by all concerned. Fox News, natch, went Death Watch at the bewitching hour, hardly concealing their glee.*** But Fox wasn't alone -- all the cable and other networks got ponderous and ridiculous, playing into the Rove playbook by using the murder of Hussein as an excuse to remind us what a bad guy he was. Well, duh. Most obnoxious, though, was the “coverage” of staged celebrators, in Iraq and Dearborn, Michigan, who, once the camera lights go on, dance badly and pretend to be happy about the whole thing. If you compare footage from other such events – the falling statue, Hussein found in rabbit-hole, whatever – you will find the same well-paid actors. It’s a sectarian fight. Guess what: Shia and Kurds happy; Hussein’s Sunnis, not so much. Big deal. It's about as spontaneous as a GOP convention, and orchestrated by the same people.
• Leave It to Russia: Once again, a Bush-led outrage is met with silence by the leading Democrats. I mean, who could be against the execution of Sadaam Hussein? Well, if there were a real opposition party in this country, lots of people would be, or at least would have a voice in the Permanent Government to ask some questions about what the hell is going on. The execution should be an opportunity for righteous outrage about the whole Bush scheme, all the lies and the ultimate isolation of the United States from the norms of international community. But, no. Ask a Democratic political consultant whether you should criticize the Hussein execution and watch him roll on the floor in laughter. In the meantime, entities such as Russia stake out the higher ground by condemning the outrage. Better them than any of us…I guess…
• Who's Next?: Sadaam Hussein was the way he was because that is the way it has always been in Iraq -- ruled by the meanest son-of-a-bitch in the land. As we have seen in that grim land all this year, killing is not a crime as much as it is a way of communicating. For all the exaggerations made about Hussein to justify the war and his hanging ("hundreds of thousands" in mass graves? Well, not quite.), I hope someone's keeping score on the crimes of all the pretenders to the throne in this gruesome game of King-of-the-Hill, so we'll know who to charge with what next time.
  
  One of the sad aspects about all of this is that the violence created by the vengeance killing of Hussein is sure to cause the death toll of U.S. servicemen to rise to and above the 3,000 threshold, probably before the year is out. Sadaam’s bloody, broken neck notwithstanding, the questions remain:
  
  How many?
  
  What for?

*** I deleted a part here that I had written about Alan Colmes, and offer apologies if it was inaccurate. I wrote the phrase "the repulsive pretend-liberal Alan Colmes almost offering to put the noose on the guy himself." at the end of this sentence. Colmes himself wrote to me about this (you never know if people really are who they say they are, and it's hard for me to believe someone like Colmes is one of my seven readers, but I'll believe it if you will), and says that he was offering an opposing, anti-execution/death penalty message on that night's show. I can't say I watched all of it and, if I was stretching the interpretation of Colmes usual passive stance (at least while I was watching) as acquiescence to the rabid Hannity and their various right-wing guests, I apologize.

As for the "repulsive pretend-liberal" conclusion, although I am not the first one to challenge Colmes for his enabling of Hannity -- not to mention frequent offensive guests like Ann Coulter, Dick Morris, Ollie North, etc. -- he really does seem to be concerned that he is not taken seriously as a progressive voice on the Red Planet of Fox News. More about that later -- I am going to take him up on his offer to watch and listen to him more. Call it one of my many New Years resolutions.

PARDONING FORD

The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reached into its past today to change its collective mind (Journal’s or Sentinel’s?) on one of the most important issues of American history – should Gerald Ford have pardoned Richard Nixon? The answer was and is clearly “NO”, but the J-S blazes the Ford-friendly, phony-respect-for-the-dead revisionist trail to praise the Accidental President for the “Midwestern pragmatism” of the horrible action that prevented a clear historical record on Nixon.

Even in his own death, Nixon and his apologists continue to use the non-clarity allowed by the pardon to characterize his forced resignation as a simple loss of political support. Thus has history been muddled, and Nixon is off the hook in too many history textbooks. Not only should he have been prosecuted for his crimes, Congress should have gone ahead, impeached and convicted his ass even after he was gone, driving the wooden spike into his cold political heart. Instead, just like the famous vampire, he rose to life, rewriting history and creating a legacy that should have remained permanently stained by, oh, let’s say, five years in Club Fed.

Ford is the only president of which I have saved the Time Magazine cover from his inauguration, not because of who he was but of who he replaced. Nixon’s resignation, after he was forced by the Supreme Court to cough up the proof of his own psychotic criminality – the White House tapes – was the most dramatic and important presidential transition in this or any other time. For all the puffed-up blather all over the media this week, Ford was a mere transitory figure, a caretaker controlled by his (mostly Nixon’s) staff, easily in over his head. The point wasn’t his wisecrack that he was a “Ford, not a Lincoln”; it was that he was Ford, and, happily, not Nixon. One day, Richard Nixon was calling up cronies, putting fixes in, getting drunk and talking to the pictures on the walls of the White House. The next day, he was gone. This is nothing if not a good thing.

Ford was in that position only because Spiro Agnew, a more traditional money-in-envelopes political criminal, was cooked and had to beat a path out of town one step ahead of the law (they caught him anyway – no pardon or cover-up help for him from the disloyal Nixon). A VP resignation and conviction would have been enough for any other administration, scandal-wise, but Nixon, by actually using the mechanism of the CIA, the FBI and the Justice Department to hide facts about his illegal acts from his own government, was in a different league. Ford replaced Agnew because he was the only Republican who could have possibly been approved by an anxious Democratic congress. Just by his very friendly, non-controversial existence, Ford became the last hope for normalcy by a desperate soon-to-be loser.

The cable networks have played the clip many times this week, but the contrast between Nixon and Ford on August 9, 1974 is still stunning. On the day he left office, after (literally) cracking up in front of his staff in the early morning – blubbering incoherently about his mother and “T.R.”, the video of which is (or should be) a national treasure – Nixon strode out to his ride out of town without a care in the world, waving wildly close to the chopper blades, like he was just headed out on a campaign trip. Ford, at the other end of the dirty red carpet, looked like he had been hit by a truck. You’d think he would have seen this coming, what with Nixon’s speech the night before and all, but Ford looked like someone had just woken him up to give him the news. And horrible news, it seemed to be.

For the first month, Ford was a breath of fresh air in a White House that seemed to have its windows blackened and its atmosphere fouled by smoke, bad liquor and bad people for decades. Just buttering an English muffin was cause for the celebration of normalcy. Betty wasn’t Pat, Susan wasn’t Tricia (much less Julie) and Jerry wasn’t, er, Dick. In those days, relief was easy to come by.

But the trivial personal details only distracted from the fact that Ford was our first puppet president. Sure, he bounced some tainted Nixon hacks and then brought in other pre-approved hacks, two of them ominously named Rumsfeld and Cheney. He is being given credit this week for being engaged; for making his staff argue in front of him before deciding what they were going to decide for him anyway. As such, he comes full circle: once praised for not being Nixon, he now looks good for not being Junior Bush (who, by the way, was nothing if not a drunk party-boy throughout the whole Ford administration). But with Ford, the Silent Republican Government stumbled on the template they would perfect with Reagan and disastrously overplay with Junior. Ford, like Reagan and Junior, was simply a pretty face on ugly policies, a distraction that allowed the rich and the military-industrial to reach into the pockets of the rest of us for spare change and diamonds.

But that doesn’t take Ford off the hook for the only personal decision of his presidency, the one only he could make. When he followed through on the deal he made with Al Haig – Nixon’s resignation in exchange for Nixon’s pardon – Ford sealed his fate, and ours. He was rightly punished for his sin, stumbling from crisis-to-crisis for the rest of his presidency and eventually losing to the true post-Watergate healer, Jimmy Carter.

I used to appreciate these dead-President, half-mast, almost-royal events. The sad JFK weekend was one of the seminal events of my life (in 3rd grade). That was until the ridiculous Reagan love-fest unduly lionized the right-wing icon for what seemed like a month several years ago. Overall, I think these national transition points are interesting historically and Ford should be given his due as an important transition figure.

But to pretend the pardon of Nixon was anything but a historical atrocity does nothing for Ford’s legacy or for the nation. In the end, Gerald Ford was yet another victim of Richard Nixon, a man who poisoned every life he touched.

JAMES BROWN – BLACK AND PROUD

I remember the 45s that my high school roommates brought home from the weekends. Most of them had the familiar labels from Atlantic, Capitol, Columbia – after all, white guys recorded on those labels, too. Even Motown labels were friendly and common, growing up, as I did, with the Supremes, Stevie Wonder and Marvin Gaye records my sisters brought home from college.

But there was something about those James Brown platters. They looked and felt different, like they came from the same ghetto Brown did. He recorded for King Records – which Wikipedia says was a country label out of Cincinnati with some “race record” side projects. The labels were a dark shade of blue and a simple crown was suspended above the word “King” in silver lettering.

The 45s themselves looked subversive, and not only because the titles of the songs happened to be “I’m Black and I’m Proud” and “Sex Machine”. They looked like they were made in someone’s basement. Even the font for the songs titles was lame, as if all of the usual aesthetics of labeling and appearance of the product had been cast aside in the interest of just getting the damn things out. Add the dirty fingerprints and scratches of high school kids on the black vinyl and the whole thing seemed very, well, funky.

He might have been put out 33 rpm albums and we had some in the room (Aretha Live at the Apollo, Bill Cosby: My Brother Russell, With Whom I Slept), but our James Brown collection was all those funky 45s. Some were songs were still under the white-guy radar; follow-ups to his few cross-over hits and Black Power ghetto anthems.

As a white guy, you could dig the guitars, the horns, the screams and the splits; but you could never really understand the funk, heart and soul, the repressed rage behind the voice and that pained look on his face. James Brown sang and played for the man back home, out on the stoop, slumped on the natty couch staring at the black-and-white TV with a 40-ounce in a bag. Always real, he never devolved into a cartoon of himself, even when he took the check from The Man, put on red-white-and-blue and briefly joined the Rocky franchise for “Living in America” in 1976.

For all his dynamic stage presence and histrionics, James Brown was a band leader. Many of his albums were stocked (some would say “padded”) with instrumental, full-band work-outs, that probably only made sense for those in the studio. Even some of his hits show him directing traffic (i.e.: takin’ it to the bridge in “Sex Machine”) and he’d throw out sudden key changes just to see if the band could handle it. When I saw him live in 1981 in Madison, he drove the big band with a shake of his head and a twist of his hand.

That night, I watched him talk to children and adults backstage, and got to ask him a question about the Atlanta child murders (the reason for the benefit show he just performed). Already too old for his then-49 years, JB spoke quietly but forcefully, as if it was still Nation-time and people were still looking to him for answers. For James Brown, it seemed, the struggle was never over, either for his constituent people or for his inner soul.

In death, James Brown gave us one last gift. His passing on Christmas Day gave his fans and admirers the perfect excuse to blow out the stale residue of over-played holiday music with original funk, turned up loud on the way to and/or running from church and family events. Tired Rudolph gave way to the Good Foot; chestnuts roasted, maybe, but only on the Sex Machine. Brown may have felt like he broke out in a Cold Sweat, but his passion was always hot, always driven by inner strength and his connection to the folks back home. There are no sad, slow songs to remember James by; there is only the dig-deep riff, the funky break, the howling scream from the inner soul.

Of all the rock and soul icons we lionize – Elvis, Beatles, Dylan, Young, Springsteen – James Brown is the only one I can think of who never tried to re-create himself, never gave himself over to image-makers and false-idol-creators. He stood before us, sweat pouring down his mask-like face, and counted it off. The band, and he, took it from there. In a world and a profession where you are considered a fool if you don’t get yourself pimped, James just went ahead with his Bad Self and we’ll never see another like it.


Photo from 1981, by James Nelson, via the Daily Cardinal

"GOING MUSLIM": MARK BELLING AND THE 100 YEAR WAR

Local wing-nut Mark Belling went off on a rant early in his show Friday afternoon about Iraq, Iran and John McCain’s proposal to send even more troops. Belling was arguing with even his usual right-wing seminar and otherwise-sympathetic callers about the proposal and what we are or should be doing in Iraq.

Belling was following the GOP talking-point strategy to support Bush’s continued disaster in Iraq, a campaign that has been universally followed (isn’t everything?) by local and national wing-nuts since the November election. From beating up on the Iraq Study Group (re-titled "the Iraq Surrender Group" by Karl Rove and his lackey surrogates) to blaming their fellow countrymen for being weak and unwilling to "do what it takes", wing-nuts like Belling are happy to dig in up to their elbows in other people’s blood and tragedy.

One point that Belling made today was that, if we go in with troops somewhere to accomplish something, we should stick it out until the "job is done", "even if it takes 100 years". It didn’t seem he was interested in applying that doctrine – let’s call it the Blockhead Doctrine – to whatever it is we are still trying to accomplish by having soldiers stuck in the middle of the Iraq civil war. But, like other wing-nuts all over the country, Belling wants us to get out of the frying pan of Iraq and jump into the flames of Iran.

Like many issues that are fleshed out in the nut-sphere before the GOP sends its talking heads and politicians out to say the same things, the whole idea of invading Iran is as insane as they tell us Ahmadinejad is. Anyone who showed up on a cable show (other than Fox News) and proposed such a thing would be eaten alive, and rightly so. The whole idea is reckless and ridiculous. But one of the primary reasons for wing-nut radio is to butter-up the general populace for crazy ideas by wedging the bad ideas into the mainstream. And Belling the Lapdog is more than willing to oblige.

But Belling actually got off the plantation, in more ways than one, later in the "discussion", if you can call it that. A caller – just trying to be helpful, I’m sure – tried to say that Belling’s 100 Year War is a great idea, because success would mean no terrorism in the United States. You know, the "fight ‘em there so we don’t have to fight ‘em here" nonsense, like dedicated jihadists couldn’t do both. Instead of playing along, Belling said you can’t guarantee no terrorism in the U.S. – heck, he might go off himself someday.

It is a tenant of wing-nut radio that anything worth saying once is worth saying ten times, so Belling went on. Referring to his producer, he said this: "Even Paul might go Muslim someday."

Now, think about what it means to "go Muslim". I assume he doesn’t mean reading the Koran, praying five times a day or not eating pork. No, "going Muslim" , to Mark Belling, means blowing up buildings and cities. That’s what being a Muslim is all about. To him.

Well, what the heck. He’s already known for his racist tirades and arguments and Clear Channel has patted him on the back and encouraged his continued poisoning of the community. So now he wants to smear all Muslims with the sick crimes of relatively few fevered jihadists. It’s a game national embarrassments like WTMJ-broadcast Michael Savage and other nutbags have played for years. Maybe Belling just wants to play in the Big Leagues.

Or maybe he’s just an unnecessary thorn in the city that needs to be kicked to the curb.

DOYLE DID IT? EVEN GOOD IS BAD

When I first started squawking about the Journal Sentinel’s anti-Doyle bias in its news pages back in September, the Green-good/Doyle-bad construct was deeply entrenched at what is ever more unfortunately the Only Newspaper in Town. It was apparent during the campaign that the J-S was going to do whatever it could to parrot and provide fodder for radio wing-nut talking points and would otherwise support the GOP as much as they could. For reasons unfathomable to all but them, the news editors and statehouse reporters longed for Mark Green to be our next governor.

You would think the resulting thumping of the hapless Green in the election would bring a moment of reflection for the manipulative newsers. You would be wrong. Even without the clarifying “balance” of the pro-Green stories (where is he now? Both gone and easily forgotten, after one more predictable puff piece in the J-S), the Journal Sentinel continues on its bizarre anti-Doyle campaign. Every Doyle accomplishment has a dark cloud behind it, looming in the background, if only so the J-S can jump out and say “boo!”.

Wednesday’s paper is a perfect example. It starts innocent enough in the headline: “Median property tax bill in state up $7”. Well, that’s gotta be good news, right? I mean, most editors would have even helped you out a little by saying “only $7” and even might have added the important fact “for the second year in a row”, but, still, not bad, right? Then comes the competing sub-head: “But state's package of limits on taxes expires this year.”

Good god, not “expires”! This is horrible! Someone please make it not expire! Please, Journal Sentinel, don’t let me be foolish enough to savor (much less recognize) the fruits of Doyle’s labors. The J-S would have beat Doyle about the head and shoulders if he had dared tried to make his formula permanent, but – No! Next year! I must presume the worst about next year!

The same nonsense that rattles around in the headlines is repeated in the article itself, written, to no one’s surprise, by self-admitted Doyle-hater Steven Walters (see my November 12th post for a discussion of his post-election anti-Doyle screed in the opinion pages). As if you couldn’t figure it out yourself, Walters announces the good news in the lead and then comes the extremely trite let-down. The whole second graph? “That’s the good news.” Oh, oh.

Then comes the punch line, otherwise known as “the bad news”. The tactics that kept your property taxes in check (still good, right?), are described as “Doyle-backed” – no mention of the legislature until after you are informed that all these good things will expire next year. We just know Jim Doyle wanted it this way, don’t we? That scoundrel!

Those trolling the Journal Sentinel on-line version the day before could have seen this one coming up 5th – or, rather, Wisconsin – Avenue. In an article apparently not good enough for the printed version, Walters warms up in his beating of Doyle for his own success. To do so, he uses the voice of another quickly-forgotten loser, non-Congressman John Gard. Now, who but Steven Walters would consider calling up a washed-up punk like Gard, who couldn’t even get elected in his own Republican congressional district, to ruminate about how property taxes “would have gone up even less” if Doyle had only signed the poison-pill bill the GOP ran up to him, back when they had control of the state legislature?

Loser Gard is not even identified, at least, as “outgoing” Assembly Speaker, if not "former", since the state legislature will not meet again until someone else is sitting in his Assembly seat. So Walters plays up his source who is such a lame duck he’ll need a photo ID and a body scan the next time he tries to get into the Capitol.

The editors, apparently, gave Walters two kicks at this ridiculous cat. Maybe we can expect another of the Journal Sentinel’s brave campaigns, like the one against legislators earning sick leave for health benefits that none of them knew they had. That was good for five or six front-pagers, featuring all kinds of useless do-gooder grandstanding. Just to keep the ball rolling, maybe we can hear next from former GOP leaders of the now-Dem-controlled State Senate and how Doyle really messed up this property tax thing two years in a row and blah blah blah.

It’s hard to figure out what the Journal Sentinel or Walters get out of any of this, except a continued erosion of credibility and prestige. Doyle is going to be governor now for four more years, the Democrats are in control of the Senate and, I mean, what are they trying to start or stop? All you really need to know is that if a Republican governor had presided over two years of nominal property tax increases, they’d be putting up a statue to the dude on 4th and State. That they can’t give Doyle a little credit where it’s due shows them as nothing if not petty, partisan and as out-of-touch as Junior Bush.

RADIO: IN THE HANDS OF FOOLS

During the past sorry six years, right-wing radio has taken upon itself two primary missions: 1) define, usually by demonization, Democrats or anyone (like John McCain) with the temerity to question any aspect of Junior Bush’s administration, and 2) make excuses for Junior’s many failures. The amazingly monolithic way that national and local wing-nuts have been willing to march to Karl Rove’s talking-point orders is the only thing that stood in the way of Kerry’s election in ‘04, a serious impeachment move last year and an even sounder thumping of Republicans in the elections this year.

Given the complete shellacking applied to Republican behinds last month, the wing-nuts have been at a loss to explain what happened, perhaps even more so than the White House. I mean, there they were for years, ranting to their passive listeners 24/7 about how Democrats could not be trusted with the reigns of power; how taxes would go up; how liberal Nancy Pelosi was; how corrupt Harry Reid and Jim Doyle and whoever. What went wrong, they surely wondered. It had all worked so well before.

You’d think, after being led around the nose by the Bushies all these years, at least some of them would get off the plantation and find their own voice. But a radio wing-nut without a script is like a DJ without a turntable (or its modern equivalent). Even if they are true believers and think they might like to give original thought a try, they just are not interesting enough. Their entire careers are built on being GOP conduits. Pull that rug from under, and most of them have nothing to talk about.

Sure, some of them like Sean Hannity might have permission to go after Bush on a red-meat issue like immigration and border security. This has the benefit – in the World of Rove – of driving up angry-white-man lather and making Bush look reasonable to everyone else when he does something short of rounding up brown-skinned people in Arizona for background checks.

For the most part, the wing-nuts have stayed away from their usual blather on substantive issues since the election. But they have maintained a completely united front on the defining issue of the election and our current times: the civil war in Iraq. At a time when everyone with any sense is looking for a way out, the wing-nuts are apparently looking to spend more years in the quagmire, to spill the blood of still more brave American soldiers. They are pulling out all the stops – name-calling, treason-claiming and, like Bush himself, lying about the obvious facts to get to their insupportable conclusions.

All this would be par for the course, except that the situation in Iraq is grim and the opportunity to have a legitimate discussion about it is upon us for the first time since the invasion. This is an important time that calls for sober reflection and real-world solutions. Remarkably absent, you might notice, is squawking and I-told-you-so’s from those who were right since the beginning – the anti-war left and middle. Neo-con slugs like Ken Adelman and Richard Perle are given full berth to fuss about how they would have done it right, doggone it, and they show no hesitation to engage in intramural squabbling. But the Left That Was Right politely stands aside, hoping that establishment lackeys like Jim Baker might find a way to end the pointless deaths of Americans in a war-of-choice gone terribly wrong.

But, once again, as they did with 9/11, Katrina and various other national tragedies, the GOP wing-nuts are willing to dance on the graves of the dead to make political points. While every serious person looks for a solution, the wing-nuts talk about the Democrats and others looking for a way out "wanting the U.S. to lose" because we all just "hate Bush so much".

Listen to wing-nut radio for five minutes and you’ve got the drill. Those who want to get out are weak. We should go in and wipe them all out (the code words for nuking, say, Iran get less subtle on late night radio, where it is scarily explicit). This is why we lost Vietnam. Three thousand dead and ten of thousands wounded are peanuts; why, 600,000 died in World War II. We have lost our will to win, to do the job right.

My god, it’s pathetic. But, in a time when no thinking person would back Bush on anything, much less on what he did and is doing in Iraq, the radio wing-nuts form the Last Line. Why? What do they gain? Everyone is so damn done with the sick Bush regime, even the wing-nuttiest listeners don’t want to hear it any more.