Posted 7:23 PM by Scoobie Davis

I'll post either tonight or tomorrow.

Posted 8:07 PM by Scoobie Davis

Sorry about the dearth of posting
Got a new gig and doing some blog and film related stuff.

Posted 3:48 PM by Scoobie Davis

Posting
1) I have some computer problems so I'm fixing the problems.
2) Since I'm receiving a lot of hits from Google searches of "Sean Hannity," I updated and revised the post the Google search is referencing.
3) I will have a huge post later in the week.
4) I changed the color in the title.

Posted 2:27 PM by Scoobie Davis

Must Read
Secretary of the Navy in the Reagan administration James Webb on Swift-boating:

Purple Heartbreakers by James Webb

It should come as no surprise that an arch-conservative Web site is questioning whether Representative John Murtha, the Pennsylvania Democrat who has been critical of the war in Iraq, deserved the combat awards he received in Vietnam.

After all, in recent years extremist Republican operatives have inverted a longstanding principle: that our combat veterans be accorded a place of honor in political circles. This trend began with the ugly insinuations leveled at Senator John McCain during the 2000 Republican primaries and continued with the slurs against Senators Max Cleland and John Kerry, and now Mr. Murtha.

Military people past and present have good reason to wonder if the current administration truly values their service beyond its immediate effect on its battlefield of choice. The casting of suspicion and doubt about the actions of veterans who have run against President Bush or opposed his policies has been a constant theme of his career. This pattern of denigrating the service of those with whom they disagree risks cheapening the public's appreciation of what it means to serve, and in the long term may hurt the Republicans themselves.

Not unlike the Clinton "triangulation" strategy, the approach has been to attack an opponent's greatest perceived strength in order to diminish his overall credibility. To no one's surprise, surrogates carry out the attacks, leaving President Bush and other Republican leaders to benefit from the results while publicly distancing themselves from the actual remarks.

During the 2000 primary season, John McCain's life-defining experiences as a prisoner of war in Vietnam were diminished through whispers that he was too scarred by those years to handle the emotional burdens of the presidency. The wide admiration that Senator Max Cleland gained from building a career despite losing three limbs in Vietnam brought on the smug non sequitur from critics that he had been injured in an accident and not by enemy fire. John Kerry's voluntary combat duty was systematically diminished by the well-financed Swift Boat Veterans for Truth in a highly successful effort to insulate a president who avoided having to go to war.

And now comes Jack Murtha. The administration tried a number of times to derail the congressman's criticism of the Iraq war, including a largely ineffective effort to get senior military officials to publicly rebuke him (Gen. Peter Pace, chairman of the Joint Chiefs, was the only one to do the administration's bidding there).

Now the Cybercast News Service, a supposedly independent organization with deep ties to the Republican Party, has dusted off the Swift Boat Veterans playbook, questioning whether Mr. Murtha deserved his two Purple Hearts. The article also implied that Mr. Murtha did not deserve the Bronze Star he received, and that the combat-distinguishing "V" on it was questionable. It then called on Mr. Murtha to open up his military records.

Cybercast News Service is run by David Thibault, who formerly worked as the senior producer for "Rising Tide," the televised weekly news magazine produced by the Republican National Committee. One of the authors of the Murtha article was Marc Morano, a long-time writer and producer for Rush Limbaugh.

The accusations against Mr. Murtha were very old news, principally coming from defeated political rivals. Aligned against their charges are an official letter from Marine Corps Headquarters written nearly 40 years ago affirming Mr. Murtha's eligibility for his Purple Hearts - "you are entitled to the Purple Heart and a Gold Star in lieu of a second Purple Heart for wounds received in action" - and the strict tradition of the Marine Corps regarding awards. While in other services lower-level commanders have frequently had authority to issue prestigious awards, in the Marines Mr. Murtha's Vietnam Bronze Star would have required the approval of four different awards boards.

The Bush administration's failure to support those who have served goes beyond the smearing of these political opponents. One of the most regrettable examples comes, oddly enough, from modern-day Vietnam. The government-run War Remnants Museum, a popular tourist site in downtown Ho Chi Minh City, includes an extensive section on "American atrocities." The largest display is devoted to Bob Kerrey, a former United States senator and governor of Nebraska, recipient of the Medal of Honor and member of the 9/11 commission.

In the display, Mr. Kerrey is flatly labeled a war criminal by the Vietnamese government, and the accompanying text gives a thoroughly propagandized version of an incident that resulted in civilian deaths during his time in Vietnam. This display has been up for more than two years. One finds it hard to imagine another example in which a foreign government has been allowed to so characterize the service of a distinguished American with no hint of a diplomatic protest.

The political tactic of playing up the soldiers on the battlefield while tearing down the reputations of veterans who oppose them could eventually cost the Republicans dearly. It may be one reason that a preponderance of the Iraq war veterans who thus far have decided to run for office are doing so as Democrats.

A young American now serving in Iraq might rightly wonder whether his or her service will be deliberately misconstrued 20 years from now, in the next rendition of politically motivated spinmeisters who never had the courage to step forward and put their own lives on the line.

Rudyard Kipling summed up this syndrome quite neatly more than a century ago, writing about the frequent hypocrisy directed at the British soldiers of his day:

An' it's Tommy this, an' Tommy that, an' anything you please;

An' Tommy ain't a bloomin' fool - you bet that Tommy sees!

Posted 1:08 PM by Scoobie Davis

DVD: Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room
I didn't see Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room when it was in the theaters, even though some people had recommended that I see it. At the time, the thought of seeing it was too depressing--depressing for the investors, the consumers--the Grandma Millies, and the working people who lost their life savings, jobs, and pensions after the big fish cashed out. Depressing because, while Lay et al have or will be getting their just desserts, their political allies--most notably George W. Bush--remained relatively unscathed by the scandal a politician whom can best be described as a victim--like Gray Davis--were unceremoniously unseated by a man who met with Ken Lay in 2001--something I didn't know until I saw the film. (Disclosure: I supported Al Checchi for governor in 1998, Davis in 2002, and opposed Davis' recall).

Nevertheless, I saw the DVD last night and I give it my highest recommendation. It was a masterful presentation of the facts. The filmmakers used an array of footage and blended them well with photographs and motion graphics. The editor has a keen sense of pacing, both in terms of the rhythm and when to linger on a topic. I don't think it was a stretch when the filmmakers cited Stanley Milgram's famous obedience study to explain the callousness of the Enron traders--though I think the callousness of someone like Bush is due to a sense of entitlement.

I recommend the film not just because it is a very good film but because the Enron saga is one whose lessons progressive should remember. The American right certainly haven't forgotten them--unfortunately they learned the wrong one. They learned that if they ramp up the their noise machine to send the message that a largely GOP scandal is bipartisan, enough of the legitimate media will parrot these talking points and the issue will be a wash with Americans. The loyal Republican media was largely successful (though they got a lot of help because this occurred right after 9/11). Talk radio, Fox News, the Moon-run Washington Times, and even some people in legitimate journalistic enterprises provided cover for Bush by portraying Enron as a bipartisan scandal. This was achieved with lies--such as the false meme that Ken Lay slept in the Lincoln bedroom in the Clinton White House (click here for a transcript of my confrontation of Matt Drudge for starting this rumor).

We see the right revamp this strategy with their attempt to promote the false GOP talking that Jack Abramoff gave to both Republican and Democratic members of Congress. Again, the same usual suspects are involved: Fox News, the Moonie Times, and talk radio, even some of the supposed mainstream media like Washington Post ombudsman Deborah Howell. Progressive sources have been more diligent and focused and are doing an excellent job of responding to GOP-orchestrated disinformation. Howard Dean aggressively countered CNN's Wolf Blitzer's claim that Abramoff gave to Democrats--and the exchange has been highly publicized on the Internet. More recently, when Deborah Howell, the Washington Post's ombudsman--of all people--spread the same misinformation, the response was swift and decisive. I think the lesson has been learned.

Posted 12:29 PM by Scoobie Davis

Democratic Plantation?
For those Republicans who have their panties in a bunch about Hillary's plantation remark, I wrote about Andrew Sullivan's comments a while ago. Final thoughts on the issue: comparing Democrats and Republicans to plantation owners is not the same: many in the contemporary GOP identify with the antebellum plantation culture.

Posted 10:59 AM by Scoobie Davis

DVD Recommendation
Last night I watched Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room. I will write more about it later today.

Posted 10:18 AM by Scoobie Davis

Real Talk Radio in Action
Kudos to KLSD's Stacy Taylor. Today on Taylor's morning radio show was David Thibault, an operative for the Cybercast News Service (CNS), the right-wing political operation that poses as a journalistic outlet (e.g., one of the latest headlines on CNS's web site--"Democrat [sic] Lawmaker Linked to Katrina Charity Controversy"--adhered to the the common wing-nut practice of using the word "Democrat" as an adjective). The topic was the recent CNS smear that attempted to raise questions about whether John Murtha earned his war medals in Vietnam. I only heard the last part of Thibault's appearance but the guy had his head handed to him.

Posted 4:36 PM by Scoobie Davis

Shocking--Even For Fox News: Neil Cauto Invites Demented Loon to Discuss Life-or-Death Issues
I like David Corn's work (disclosure: I link to his blog) but I disagree with his and other progressives' decision to go on Fox News and give legitimacy to this pro-GOP political operation. Doing this gives many uninformed and/or casual viewers the unwarranted impression that Fox News is a journalistic outlet. My view was underscored yesterday. Corn appeared on Fox's Your World with Neil Cavuto and it was surreal. The issue was the situation in Iran and Cavuto paired Corn with John Hagee--whom Cavuto called "an expert on Iran."

The problem is that Hagee isn't an expert on Iran or geopolitics; he's a complete whack job; I've been familiar with Hagee for over a decade--having watched his television show on the Trinity Broadcasting Network (run by Paul Crouch and his Tammy Faye wannabe wife Jan) in the 1990's (Hagee's fire-and-brimstone sermons are not as unintentionally entertaining as Jack Van Impe's show but they are less dry than Jerry Falwell's dour lectures). I have written about Hagee briefly in the past--he is the kind of person Richard Hofstadter was thinking of when he wrote The Paranoid Style in American Politics.

Hagee has several books that address foreign policy--the only one I was familiar with before today was Beginning of the End: The Assassination of Yitzhak Rabin and the Coming Antichrist. Here's a brief abstract of the book (which is kind of unnecessary because the title itself doesn't exactly indicate the basis for it was sober empirical analysis):

John Hagee explorers the eschatological implications of the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin and the peace process Israel is heading towards. Hagee continues with a long series of citings that show that Jesus is the Messiah and that he will come again. The last part of his book is dedicated to his interpretation of prophetic literature in the Bible. With his interpretation he creates a sequence of events that he believes will come to pass that will ultimately lead to the creation of a New Heaven, New Earth, and New Jerusalem.

It's scary that an international platform would be given to someone who believes that if a catastrophic nuclear exchange occurs then he and other true believers will be magically whisked into heaven (leaving people like me to remain on Earth to dodge the suddenly unmanned cars of born again drivers on their way to their reward).

What should Corn have said? I don't know. I only know what I would have said had I been in his position: "Having a raving loon like Hagee on to discuss deadly serious policy issues is just one more reason out of thousands not to trust Fox News."

Postscript: Cavuto's guest today is Ann Coulter. Go figure.
Update: Newshounds discusses Coulter's appearance.

UPDATE: Orcinus has more on Hagee. Also, Talk to Action has the scoop on Hagee's anti-Catholicism and the inaction of the Catholic League under William Donohue.

Posted 11:53 AM by Scoobie Davis

Mishmash
I hope everyone has a great MLK Day yesterday. . . I want to thank Joe from San Diego Blog and others for a couple great events yesterday. . . The Alito post I was working on is yet to be posted because it is a giant stream-of-consciousness post that has become unwieldy. . .Gotta love Al Gore. . .Gotta not love (with good reason) Alberto Gonzalez. . .I will post on the surreality of Fox News today.

Posted 12:02 PM by Scoobie Davis

Apology Retracted
I Googled the phrase "Diana Banister" to see if the flack whom I tricked into getting me an interview with Ann Coulter is still working. When a reporter from PRWeek interviewed me about the incident, I expressed pity for Banister because dealing with an angry chupacabra like Coulter was certainly not a day on the beach.

I formally retract this pity and regret. After Googling Banister's name, I discovered an entry for her firm Shirley & Banister on SourchWatch and found that they promoted Sun Myung Moon apologist Carlton Sherwood's libelous film Stolen Honor. Call Diana Banister toll-free at 1-800-536-5920 and tell her she's wrong.

Posted 9:43 AM by Scoobie Davis

Last night on Faux News
I was watching a Fox News show and the main operative (i.e., host) said that Democrats took money from Jack Abramoff. The thing is that I got an important call and forgot to log this. Did anyone else catch this? E-mail me with the info or a link of someone who did. Gracias.

Posted 9:00 AM by Scoobie Davis

Cult Briefs
Eric Scheibeler--who wrote the earth-shattering expose of Amway, Merchants of Deception--is being sued by an Amway Diamond distributor and has received threatening letters from two law firms representing another distributor. . . Merchants of Deception is being used by former Moonie Steve Hassan to help those exploited by cult indoctrination tactics. God bless Steve Hassan. . . Thanks to all of you who have been a part of the Amway/Quixtar Google bomb. It has been a huge success. . . Yesterday, I went to The Magazine Scene on University Avenue to find some hard-to-find articles (read addendum) and I found a funny-but-sad article. It was from the October 1977 issue of Mad magazine. The article--written by Lou Silverstone and illustrated by George Woodbridge--is titled, "Mad's 'Religious Cult Leader' of the Year" and features Mad reporter Mike Malice (who looks a lot like Mike Wallace) interviewing the Reverend Sun Set Loony, the head of the Loonification Church. Now I realize Mad magazine's brand of satire falls short of the subtlety of Moliere and Jonathan Swift but there's a lot more truth in the article than a typical issue of The Washington Times. Unfortunately, the article is not on the Internet and I won’t scan and put it on the net because I’m afraid of being sued by Mad’s parent company Warner Brothers (which, by the way, was nicknamed “Werner Brothers” in the 1970’s because so many of its executives were devotees of self-help guru Werner Erhard's est). Here's a funny panel in the story:

[In the foreground is a clear-cut recruit of Reverend Loony; in the background are Mike Malice and Reverend Loony]

LOONY RECRUIT: Candy! Flowers! Candles! Please! Won't you help the poor orphans? Candy! Flowers! Candles. . .

MIKE MALICE [to Reverend Loony]: Do the proceeds from your street sales really go to orphans?

REVEREND LOONY: Why, of course! I'M an orphan!!

. . . On the top of my list of films that I love not because they're great cinematic achievements but because they're fun to watch and have characters you want to root for are A Knight's Tale and Drop Dead Gorgeous. Another one is Go. It's a shame that Go star Katie Holmes didn't take the film's advice to disdain cults (there's a hilarious scene in the film that blasts Amway; the scene features William Fichtner--who was also in The Chumscrubber, a film that I and others suspected of being backed by The Church of Scientology). . .

Addendum: If you're in San Diego and you need a hard-to-find back issue of a magazine, go to the Magazine Scene at 1643 University Ave. Yesterday I also found the November 1999 issue of Brill's Content that has the article by Michael Colton on Jack Chick. A couple doors away is On Comic Ground where you can find the latest comic books (yesterday I bought Eightball #19).

Posted 8:58 AM by Scoobie Davis

Quick note
I'll have the Alito/CAP post up today.
UPDATE: I'll have it up Sunday.

Posted 3:18 PM by Scoobie Davis

Congressmen John Murtha on the Attempted Swiftboating by a Scaife-Funded Group
Cybercast News Service (formerly Conservative News Service) is a one of Brent Bozell's Scaife-funded political operations and not a legitimate journalistic outlet.
Click here

Call the phony journalistic outlet CNS News toll-free at 877-CNS-NEWS (that's 877-267-6397) and tell them they're wrong.

UPDATE: Murray Waas has more.

Posted 2:44 PM by Scoobie Davis

Sorry
Due to technological reasons, I couldn't finish the Alito post I promised yesterday. My home computer is down. I'll do it over the weekend.

Posted 4:49 PM by Scoobie Davis

Must Read
Cover story in this week's The Nation: "The Impeachment of George W. Bush" by Elizabeth Holtzman.

Posted 4:23 PM by Scoobie Davis

E-mail me . . .
If you know how to do an RSS feed.

Posted 1:22 PM by Scoobie Davis

Alito Post Later Today

Posted 3:51 PM by Scoobie Davis

Moonie Times Tries to make it a Bipartisan Scandal
From the story:

A Justice Department investigation into influence-peddling on Capitol Hill is focusing on a "first tier" of lawmakers and staffers, both Republicans and Democrats, say sources close to the probe that has netted guilty pleas from lobbyist Jack Abramoff.
Law-enforcement authorities and others said the investigation's opening phase is scrutinizing Sens. Conrad Burns, Montana Republican; Byron L. Dorgan, North Dakota Democrat; and Minority Leader Harry Reid, Nevada Democrat, along with Reps. J.D. Hayworth, Arizona Republican, and Bob Ney, Ohio Republican.

This reminds me of the phony meme that Ken Lay slept in the Licoln Bedroom at the Clinton White House (click here, here, and here)

UPDATE: Josh Marshall has more.

Posted 3:08 PM by Scoobie Davis

Phony Phony Phony
Ed Schultz is correct about his assertion today that the GOP is doing a coordinated campaign to portray the Democrats as being nasty to Samuel Alito at his confirmation hearings. Right as I'm writing, Hugh Fuckwit is interviewing Senator John Kyl and promoting this meme.

This reminds me of how the GOP tried to accuse John Kerry of outing Mary Cheney during the last debate--even though everyone and his mother knew she was a lesbian and she was being paid for it.

Posted 2:30 PM by Scoobie Davis

Five Little-Known Facts About Me
Shannon over at A La Gauche tagged me to write five little-known things about myself and to pass the tag along to to other bloggers. Here goes:
1) I love jazz and rock and roll but I prefer live jazz to jazz on CDs and I prefer rock on CDs to live rock. Don't ask me why--perhaps it's the improvisational nature of jazz.
2) When I was in my mid-20's, I was lifting weights big time. I was ripped. I planned to try out for the Arena Football League but forgot about the tryout date.
3) I told my mom that the reason I decided to go to Miami University was that it was the choice of school that would allow me to become more well-rounded. I lied.
4) I taught college at the community college level for a while but I never slept with any of my students--and I'm proud of that fact. Sleeping with your students is bad form--but very tempting (you should have seen a student in one of my classes named Mandy).
5) One of the things I've been working on is a total revamping of this blog. I'll give details over the weekend.

I haven't decided who I am tagging.

Posted 2:04 PM by Scoobie Davis

Sorry No Posting
Technological problems. I will post later today.

Posted 11:27 AM by Scoobie Davis

Buh Bye, Tom
DeLay is gone as Majority Leader

Posted 3:41 PM by Scoobie Davis

What Are They Doing?
Yesterday I told you that there was a lot of traffic from Ada, Michigan on my Google bomb blog--obviously because I targeted Amway/Quixtar for a Google bomb. Today I noticed on Statcounter that one computer in Ada was on the site for 23 hours and 19 minutes! E-mail me if you think you know what they might be up to.

Posted 3:38 PM by Scoobie Davis

New Look
No, it's not your imagination: I added some blue to the blog's title.

Posted 1:09 PM by Scoobie Davis

Amway Knows About My Google Bomb
I was checking my Statcounter stats for the Google Bomb Blog and found that the city with the most recent hits for the site are from Ada, Michigan which is the home of Alticor, which is the parent company for Amway and Quixtar. The most recent Google Bomb on the site targets Amway and Quixtar--which are nothing but Republican cults that scam people who want to make better lives for themselves. I'm glad they know about me.

Posted 1:02 PM by Scoobie Davis

LOL
Too bad I missed this: David Letterman to Bill O'Reilly, "60% of what you say is crap." Click here to watch the clip.

Posted 9:17 AM by Scoobie Davis

Posting Later
BTW, Media Matters is posting again.

Posted 10:53 AM by Scoobie Davis

From Freedom Toast to Just Plain Toast
Bob Ney is done (Via Atrios).

Posted 10:51 AM by Scoobie Davis

Liar, Liar
Click here

Posted 1:39 PM by Scoobie Davis

Blogging The Fiesta Bowl: Ohio State V. Notre Dame
Go Buckeyes!!
UPDATE: 12:59 in the first quarter: Notre Dame 7, Ohio State 0. The Irish went through OSU's run defense masterfully.
UPDATE: 10:02 in the first. Ted Ginn, Jr. was all alone for a TD. OSU 7, ND 7.
UPDATE: OSU Quarterback Troy Smith fumbles the football inside the OSU 15 yard line. ND recovers.
UPDATE: OSU sacks the QB on 4th down. Stops the ND drive inside the ten.
UPDATE: 14:16 in the 2nd quarter: Ted Ginn, Jr. has a 68 yard TD reception. OSU 14, ND 7. Woo Hoo!
UPDATE: OSU had a strong drive but ND recover a bad handoff.
UPDATE: With 2:21 in the 2nd quarter, Santonio Holmes has a TD reception. OSU 21, ND 7.
UPDATE: With 4 seconds in the first half, Josh Huston missed a 28-yard field goal attempt. It is now halftime with OSU leading 21-7. Ohio State is dominating with 392 total yards to Notre Dame's 15.
UPDATE: During halftime, they did a PSA for Ohio State. They had some shots of the inside of Flying Pizza on High Street. I could really go for a couple slices right now. Also, I don't know if I can live blog anymore. My housemate just got home and she might need the computer.
UPDATE: in the 3rd quarter, ND blocked another Josh Huston FG attempt--a 46 yarder. The score is still Ohio State 21, Notre Dame 7.
UPDATE: ND Drives for a TD but misses the extra point. OSU 21, ND 13.
UPDATE: Josh Huston hits a 40 yard FG with 2:20 in the 3rd quarter. It looked as if OSU had lost a fumble in the previous play but after a review it was shown that the OSU receiver didn't have possession. OSU 24, ND 13.
UPDATE: End of 3rd quarter OSU 24, ND 13
UPDATE: With 10 minutes left in the game, Huston gets another FG. OSU 27, ND 13
UPDATE: With 4:55 in the game, ND touchdown. OSU 27, ND 20. Uh oh
UPDATE: With 1:46 left in the game, Antonio Pittman has a 60 yard run for a TD. WOO HOO!!! Ohio State 34, Notre Dame 20.
UPDATE: Ohio State wins 34 to 20!!!!!!!! Scroll down to my 12/27 prediction which was Ohio State 34, Notre Dame 22. Am I hot or what?

Posted 1:02 AM by Scoobie Davis

The New And Improved Google Bomb Blog
A while ago, I was having problems with the template for my Google Bomb blog. For some reason, the template from Blogger.com was causing the sidebar to go to the bottom of the page. Shannon, who runs A La Gauche and Le Googlebomb blog, sent me a link to this template web site. Merci beaucoup. Click here for the new and improved Google Bomb Blog.

Posted 5:30 PM by Scoobie Davis

I Agree
The Rittenhouse Review: "Impeach Bush"

Posted 9:43 AM by Scoobie Davis

Film Work
Sorry about the dearth of posting but I'm doing some film writing.

Posted 1:01 AM by Scoobie Davis

Happy 2006!
Whatever.