Category Archives: Politics: US

David Farber writes to the Interesting People list,

I gather that there is a report that Sinclair Broadcast ordered its ABC affiliates to preempt tomorrow's broadcast of Nightline which will air the names and photos of U.S. military personnel who have died in combat in Iraq, saying the move is politically motivated designed to undermine the efforts of the US in Iraq.

Sinclair owns 62 US TV stations.

And so there is.

Is it legal? Probably — we impose only the loosest public interest requirements on the beneficiaries of the publicly created broadcast oligopoly, and what little I know of broadcast law this doesn't come close to violating it.

Is it in good taste? I think reasonable people might differ about the good taste involved in refusing to broadcast the show, especially if those people didn't see it as honoring the dead. (Not my view at all, but people differ.) I do think that accusing ABC (of all bodies!) of what amounts to treason (in effect the old accusing them of giving aid and comfort to the enemy) is not only not in good taste, but contemptible.

Are we not allowed to talk about the costs of this war project? Especially as the goals diminish from a free and democratic Middle East, to a free Iraq, to less violence, to getting out without humiliation?

Apparently not on Sinclair stations.

It tends to be conservatives who push loudest for civility in public discourse. Given that uncivility is often part of a challenge to the status quo, and given that conservative politics tend to favor the interests of whoever is doing well out of the status quo, a strategy of cabining dissent to means that are less likely to disturb the status quo is a natural and sensible political strategy. (I happen to think civility is a good thing most of the time, but for other reasons; if that happens to dovetail with traditional conservativism, well, that's the breaks.) The strategy runs into some trouble when the conservative movement allies with have-not populists; and it founders when the leadership of the movement is taken over by corporatists and especially by nuts.

Witness the following elements of civil discourse:

• The Bush re-election campaign plans to begin running an advertisement on Friday that questions Senator John Kerry's commitment to American troops in Iraq.
• Senator Bill Frist, shielded from libel law by legislative immunity, accuses Richard Clarke of perjury, a charge now decisively rebutted by Sen. Pat Roberts, the Republican chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee. (via Mark Kleiman, who is futilely waiting for a retraction.)
• Rush Limaugh suggests that the Clintons could assassinate Sen. Kerry if it he wins the Presidency on a ticket without Sen. Clinton.

Compare to this much more civil and effective use of ridicule.

Did I hear this wrong? If I heard right, at one point Bush says that he looks forward to the election because it will give him the chance to show the American people that he has a (secret? at least currently undefined…) plan to win the War on Terror.

UPDATE1: Here's the text of this part from the AP transcript: “I don't intend to lose my job. Because I'm going to tell the American people I have a plan to win the war on terror.”

Then a few minutes later, Bush notes that people sometimes ask if you can win the War on Terror, and says that of course it's not a war that has an end.

The two statements are of course completely consistent, but it's rare to have a politician speak so frankly about his plan to lie to the public.

I must have heard it wrong. Maybe the second one was that you can win? (Although in fact it is very very hard to win a 'war' against an 'ism'. It can be done — see e.g. 'Communism' — but it takes generations.)

Update2 I heard it wrong, although in context I also heard it right: “We are in a long war. The war on terror is not going to end immediately. This is a war against people who have no guilt in killing innocent people. That's what they're willing to do. They kill on a moment's notice, because they're trying to shake our will, they're trying to create fear, they're trying to affect people's behaviors. And we're simply not going to let them do that.

“And my fear, of course, is that this will go on for a while, and therefore, it's incumbent upon us to learn from lessons or mistakes, and leave behind a better foundation for presidents to deal with the threats we face. This is the war that other presidents will be facing as we head into the 21st century.

“One of the interesting things people ask me, now that we're asking questions, is, can you ever win the war on terror? Of course you can.”

So, the War on Terror will go on through multiple presidencies, but has an end somewhere.

One thing I know I heard right — no apologies, no suggestions that any mistakes were made. Colors nailed to mast.

To be updated as necessary once the transcript is fully online.

When I was an undergraduate at Yale, more than twenty years ago, my main extracurricular activity was being a reporter for the Yale Daily News. In my second year on the news I got the coveted “Bart Beat” which made me the student responsible for covering Yale's President, A. Bartlett Giamatti, then early in his term at Yale, later Commissioner of Baseball, tragically dead far too young.

President Giamatti was a wonderful, erudite, voluble man, always very quotable. I very much enjoyed talking with him. While he often said things I might not have agreed with, there was only one subject that really seemed to make him irrational, and that was protest movements. In his heart (scarred, I thought, by his experience as a non-protestor at Yale in the late 1960's, when he had been a graduate student and aspirant member of the establishment) I suspect that 'Bart' probably did not really approve of any organized protest against the power structure of which he was pleased to be a part. Intellectually, however, he certainly recognized the legitimacy and importance of both personal and even organized protest. Bart drew the line, however, at breaches of the public norms of civility that he held to be an essential part of the academic community. To hear him tell it, one of the greater crimes in the history of Yale was committed when students gathered during the Vietnam war era and shouted obscenities at Yale and national authorities. To scream, and especially to scream four letter words, was to trash all the ideals of civilized discourse that he held dear.

I felt then, and—perhaps demonstrating that I have learned nothing in twenty years—still feel now, that Bart's rule was too encompassing. It's a good rule most of the time, but there are extraordinary circumstances, like the Vietnam War, like today, when it is proper at times to break the norms of civility because the things against which one protests are themselves so evil or even obscene.

I thought of Bart this evening because Bart's rule would forbid my linking to this painful, ugly, and true remix of a portion of George Bush's recent speech at the White House Correspondent's Dinner, for it is not a very decorous form of dissent, and will doubtlessly offend many. But we live in special ugly times, and so I commend to you—with a warning—this quicktime movie.

[Movie found via Cory Doctorow's Boing Boing (“vicious, brilliant and true”), who got it via Dan Gilmore (“slightly unfair but powerful”), who got it via Wonkette(“Zany Laff Time…helpful”).]

USDA Rejects Meatpacker's Mad Cow Plan:

The Agriculture Department has rebuffed a meatpacker's plan to test every animal at its Kansas slaughterhouse for mad cow disease.

The facts are simple, and the politics raw. A super-premium meatpacker wishes to inspect 100% of his animals for mad cow in order to be allowed to export to the lucrative premium beef market Japan.

USDA won't allow it. Why? Two reasons, one ignoble, one comprehensible if mistaken.

First, because the USDA isn't about safe food, or indeed about consumers at all. Nor is it even about the interests of small agribusiness. It's about keeping the Big Farm companies' (read 'bigtime Republican bedfellows') costs down. And they don't want the precedent of 100% testing because that's expensive.

Second, and less evil, is the USDA's desire to avoid setting a precedent that might weaken its hand in upcoming trade negotiations. The administrations claims, and I'm prepared to believe (although with any science claim by this adminstration you have to wonder), that there's no scientific reason to require testing of 100% of healthy looking animals. I can understand that (providing it's true…), although you'd think that even so a real free market administration, if we had one, would allow a system where people who wanted to offer extra safety at a price could do so.

But that wouldn't be this administration: under George Bush you can't get a license to offer certified, tested, mad-cow-free beef even if you want to and think there's a market for it.

At Explananda Chris asks, Is Dick Cheney really so powerful?:

Up until a week ago it was an article of faith for me that Dick Cheney was a powerful figure in the Bush administration: fearless and tough. I have to confess that I've been feeling pretty foolish about that recently. I mean, if Dick Cheney is so powerful and tough, then why is he afraid to appear before the Sept. 11th Commission without George W. Bush? What – does he need the President to hold his hand or something?

Frankly, this is embarrassing for all of us who have spent the last few years trafficking recklessly in conspiracy theories about the man.

See also this Luckovich cartoon on joint POTUS-Veep appearances.