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The date for the constitutional convention to vote (again) on whether or not to do away with marriage equality in MA has been decided: SEPTEMBER 14.
A link to details is below, but let's cut to the chase: How can you help?
James Hormel has agreed to match every dollar given to MassEquality with $.50 of his own money. Please give to MassEquality.
Details here.
Clearly, the latest Frank Rich columns in The New York Times have hit a raw nerve of the collective conservative blogosphere. On the website Free Republic alone, comments in reaction to Rich's first column, "Someone Tell The President The War Is Over," include these telling (rich?) examples (minor typos, etc., preserved) --
"Sheehan is a vile little woman who dishonors her son who was a hero. Rich is just a vile little man."
"All I can say is that Rich's T-cells must be dying in an accelerated fashion. Yes, that innuendo means exactly what you think it means."
"This is the face of progressive democrats...A socialist/marxist Frank Rich. What he doesn' wanna believe is he is kindlin for hell,nothing more."
"I never bother to read any of the psychotic syphilitic ravings of Frank Rich. His ignorance is exceeded only by his idiocy and depravity.... and they always have to publish his repulsive sneering face alongside his columns, so I quickly just 'move on'......"
"There is no difference in the enemy we face in the Mideast and the liberal enemy we face at home."
David Sirota's column in Huffington Post is a must-read.
- Scott
Frank Rich, an Op-Ed columnist for The New York Times, has written two important columns in as many weeks--"Someone Tell the President the War is Over" and "The Swift Boating of Cindy Sheehan."
Neither of them, nor both taken as a whole, will spark an international movement that will change the course of Western Civilization, like October 31, 1517's Ninty-five Theses affixed to a church door in Wittenburg by Martin Luther; nor will they supplant January 13, 1898's "J'Accuse" written by Emile Zola as arguably the greatest newspaper article of all time.
But that might say more about the nature of the corruptions and lies operative in the U.S. today than about Rich's columns themselves. Luther was addressing the Roman Catholic Church's excesses accreted over centuries. Zola was addressing a complex web of military deceit that leveraged a centuries'-old prejudice, anti-Semitism. The specific corruptions, lies and prejudices Rich tackles in merely 3,000 words are not centuries-old (to be sure, Rich doesn't tackle some of the agruably lesser operative realities that are centuries old, such as Christian supremacism and, perhaps, Manifest Destiny). And while only some of them are international in scope and most were born here at home, virtually all of them--from Halliburton's greed and lies to deceitful intelligence "spin" by the Bush administration--have international consequences.
What is more, the number of issues and the complexity of their interaction across both political and cultural plains are as impressive as those at play in the famous words of Luther or Zola:
*the blindness of the powerful--the Bush Administration--especially when religion or religious idealism steers the way, which in this case are conservative evangelicalism and neo-conservatism;
*going to war under false pretenses--in Iraq based on deliberate manipulation of false connections between 9/11 and Saddam Hussain and erroneous claims as to Iraq's imminent threat to us;
*partisan power based on propaganda and character-assassination--which is the modus operandi of the Republican Party today;
*hypocrisy--demonstrated best by the number of war hawk politicians who finagled their way out of military service in Viet Nam or have no children in the military, or both;
*corporate greed--Halliburton being its poster child; and,
*mismanagement of foreign occupations due to inexcusable naivety and bald arrogance--a situation as old as invasion itself, and among democracies at least as ancient at the disastrous Athenian invasion and attempted occupation of Sicily in 415-413 BC, which eventually but pretty directly led to a period of Spartan conquest over Athens.
These pieces by Rich are "must-reads" and, to coin an ugly term for the digital age: "must-forwards." Highlights are below. The columns themselves are here and here. (Emphases are mine.)
From "Somebody Tell The President The War Is Over."
It was on these false premises - that Iraq was both a collaborator on 9/11 and about to inflict mushroom clouds on America - that honorable and brave young Americans were sent off to fight.
.....
[Iraq is] a war of choice, not necessity, that was conceived in politics from the start. Iraq was a Bush administration idée fixe before there was a 9/11. Within hours of that horrible trauma, [Secretary of Defense] Rumsfeld was proposing Iraq as a battlefield, not because the enemy that attacked America was there, but because it offered "better targets" than the shadowy terrorist redoubts of Afghanistan.
.....
To this day it's our failure to provide [several hundred thousand troops to secure Iraq] that has turned the country into the terrorist haven it hadn't been before 9/11 - "the central front in the war on terror," as Mr. Bush keeps reminding us, as if that might make us forget he's the one who recklessly created it.
.....
A citizenry that was asked to accept tax cuts, not sacrifice, at the war's inception is hardly in the mood to start sacrificing now.
From "The Swift Boating of Cindy Sheehan."
Cindy Sheehan[, the mother of Specialist Casey Sheehan, KIA in Iraq] couldn't have picked a more apt date to begin the vigil that ambushed a president. Aug. 6[, 2005] was the fourth anniversary of that fateful 2001 Crawford vacation day when George W. Bush responded to an intelligence briefing titled "Bin Laden Determined to Attack Inside the United States" by going fishing.
.....
Character assassination [by the Bush Administration] is especially vicious if the critic has more battle scars than a president who connived to serve stateside and a vice president who had "other priorities" during Vietnam.
.....
When the Bush mob attacks critics like Ms. Sheehan, its highest priority is to change the subject. If we talk about Richard Clarke's character, then we stop talking about the administration's pre-9/11 inattentiveness to terrorism. If Thomas Wilson is trashed as an insubordinate plant of the "liberal media," we forget the Pentagon's abysmal failure to give our troops adequate armor (a failure that persists today, eight months after he spoke up). If we focus on Joseph Wilson's wife, we lose the big picture of how the administration twisted intelligence to gin up the threat of Saddam's nonexistent W.M.D.'s.
.....
America was to yuk it up, party on and spend its tax cuts heedlessly while the sacrifice of an inadequately manned all-volunteer army in Iraq was kept out of most Americans' sight and minds. This is why the Pentagon issued a directive at the start of Operation Iraqi Freedom forbidding news coverage of "deceased military personnel returning to or departing from" air bases.
.....
The 24/7 cable and Web attack dogs can keep on sliming Cindy Sheehan. The president can keep trying to ration the photos of flag-draped caskets. But this White House no longer has any more control over the insurgency at home than it does over the one in Iraq.
Unfortunately, Corporal James McCauley in Iraq has had to update his Flickr set of fallen comrades from L Co., 3rd Bn, 25th Marines, with 11 new photos. He also recently updated his blog.
Here is a screen capture of the index of the Never Forgotten set being maintained by McCauley.
Richard Posner, a judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 7th Circuit (and lecturer at Univ. of Chicago Law School), wrote an interesting examination of the media landscape in the U.S.
Posner concluded in a compelling summary paragraph:
Thus the increase in competition in the news market that has been brought about by lower costs of communication (in the broadest sense) has resulted in more variety, more polarization, more sensationalism, more healthy skepticism and, in sum, a better matching of supply to demand. But increased competition has not produced a public more oriented toward public issues, more motivated and competent to engage in genuine self-government, because these are not the goods that most people are seeking from the news media. They are seeking entertainment, confirmation, reinforcement, emotional satisfaction; and what consumers want, a competitive market supplies, no more, no less. Journalists express dismay that bottom-line pressures are reducing the quality of news coverage. What this actually means is that when competition is intense, providers of a service are forced to give the consumer what he or she wants, not what they, as proud professionals, think the consumer should want, or more bluntly, what they want.
Pasner's essay is not without problems. It strays in places and wallows in the tired old "liberal [mainstream] liberal" baloney. (See critique here.) But, those elements of his essay don't lessen the power of some of his keen observations.
Here are some other gems from the essay:
- Scott
Bush still hasn't learned from John Kerry, not even since Dec. 2004.
From the Flickr.com site of "Nukeit1." The fallen of L Company.
In memory of Lance Corporal Christopher P. Lyons, Mansfield, Ohio. KIA July 28, 2005. 2nd Plt., L Co., 3rd Bn, 25th Marines.
In memory of Corporal David Andre L. Williams, Galloway, Ohio. KIA July 28, 2005. 2nd Plt., L Co., 3rd Bn, 25th Marines
In memory of Lance Corporal Nicholas B. Erdy, Ohio.
KIA May 11, 2005. 1st Plt., L Co., 3rd Bn, 25th Marines.
In memory of Lance Corporal Jonathan W. Grant, New Mexico. KIA May 11, 2005
1st Plt., L Co., 3rd Bn, 25th Marines.
In memory of Private First Class Christopher R. Dixon, Ohio. KIA May 11, 2005. 1st Plt., L Co., 3rd Bn, 25th Marines.
In memory of Sergeant David N. Wimberg, Louisville, Kentucky. KIA May 25, 2005. 2nd Plt., L Co., 3rd Bn, 25th Marines.
In memory of Staff Sergeant Anthony L. Goodwin, New Jersey.
KIA May 8, 2005. 1st Plt., L Co., 3rd Bn, 25th Marines.
In memory of Corporal Dustin A. Derga, Ohio. KIA May 8, 2005. 1st Plt., L Co., 3rd Bn, 25th Marines.
From the AP and AFP: On his way to and from a political fundraiser near his Texas ranch, President Bush sped past 50-100 demonstrators gathered behind Cindy Sheehan, whose son was killed in Iraq. Bush did not stop or invite her to talk with him as she has requested. Some 230 people attended Bush's fundraiser, where he was expected to raise at least $2 million for the Republican National Committee. 
Gospel of St. Luke, chapter 10, verses 31-33, 36-37, "The Good Samaritan" --
31 A priest happened to be going down the same road, and when he saw the beaten man, he passed by on the other side. 32 So too, a Levite, when he came to the place and saw him, passed by on the other side. 33 But a Samaritan, as he traveled, came where the man was; and when he saw him, he took pity on him. 36 "Which of these three do you think was a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of robbers?" 37 The expert in the law replied, "The one who had mercy on him." Jesus told him, "Go and do likewise."
As we Democrats turn our attention towards Congress' return from summer break and our upcoming battles with the dangerous power grabs, obfuscations, and excesses of the Bush Administration and a Republican Party become ultra-conservative and quasi-theocratic, it's important to look at the successes Democrats have had recently in preserving some semblance of governmental sanity, in no small part because of DISCIPLINE in the Party's ranks.
Note that: Discipline. Discipline, not "framing." Heard of framing?
(L to R: Matt Bai and George Lakoff)
Ostensibly, framing was the subject of Matt Bai's article in July in The New York Times Magazine, "Framing Wars." But the article really was about Party discipline and the value of compelling ideas.
"Framing" is a notion popularized within Democratic ranks by George Lakoff's book, Don't Think of an Elephant.
Bai:
Exactly what it means to 'frame' issues seems to depend on which Democrat you are talking to, but everyone agrees that it has to do with choosing the language to define a debate and...with fitting individual issues into the contexts of broader story lines.
Aspects of Lakoff's academic ideas strike me as shockingly commonsensical, with examples of them throughout history (i.e., the basic concept isn't original). Applied to politics, Bai describes the basic ideas this way:
The most compelling part of Lakoff's hypothesis is the notion that in order to reach voters, all the individual issues of a political debate must be tied together by some larger frame that feels familiar to us. Lakoff suggests that voters respond to grand metaphors...as opposed to specific arguments, and that specific arguments only resonate if they reinforce some grander metaphor.
Another commonsensical Lakoff idea: voters (read: people) aren't rational actors who make their decisions based entirely (or even ultimately) on facts.
Other aspects of Lakoff's thinking leave me cold, and I gloss over them here. According to Lakoff,
[M]etaphors [are] actually embedded in the recesses of the mind, giving the brain a way to process abstract ideas. In other words, a bad relationship reminds you on an unconscious level of a cul-de-sac, because both are leading nowhere. This results from what might be called a "love as journey" frame in the neural pathways of your brain--that is, you are more likely to relate to the story of, say, a breakup if it is described to you with the imagery of a journey.
Bai writes about how after a lot of Democratic leaders had read Lakoff's book, Democrats started winning battles on Capital Hill, including the Social Security and filibuster fights. And the "new" ideas the Democrats followed that led them to victory: FOCUS GROUPS and DISCIPLINE. (Gasp!) These things are anything but new. Here's your shockingly innovative focus grouping and discipline:
In January, Geoff Garin conducted a confidential poll on judicial nominations.... He was looking for a story -- a frame -- for the filibuster that would persuade voters that it should be preserved, and he tested four possible narratives.
.....
Garin then convened focus groups and listened for clues about how to make [the] case [for the winning narrative]. He heard voters call the majority party "arrogant." They said they feared "abuse of power....." Garin shared his polling with a group of Democratic senators that included Harry Reid, the minority leader. Reid, in turn, assigned Stephanie Cutter...to put together a campaign-style " war room " on the filibuster.... She used Garin's research to create a series of talking points.
......
As they would later with the filibuster fight and with the Supreme Court, Senate Democrats, under [Sen. Harry] Reid's direction, set up a war room and a strategy group [during the Social Security fight.]... In addition to keeping members focused on their talking points,...senators and congressmen [were stopped] from offering compromise plans that might drive a wedge into the caucus...."The minute we introduce a plan, we have to solve the problem" is how one senior Democratic aide explained it to me. "We are the minority party. It's not our job to fix things."
Bai lays it out this way:
In the end, the success of the [Democrats'] effort...may have had something to do with language or metaphor, but it probably had more to do with the elusive virtue of party discipline. Pelosi explained it to me this way: for years, the party's leaders had tried to get restless Democrats to stay "on message," to stop freelancing their own rogue proposals and to continue reading from the designated talking points even after it got excruciatingly boring to do so. Consultants like Garin and Margolis had been saying the same thing, but Democratic congressmen, skeptical of the in-crowd of D.C. strategists, had begun to tune them out. "Listening to people inside Washington did not produce any victories," Pelosi said.
Or, as Bai put it in a grossly caricature-laden :
"[O]utsiders" [like Lakoff] had what Reid and Pelosi and their legion of highly paid consultants did not: the patina of scientific credibility. Culturally, this made perfect sense. If you wanted Republican lawmakers to buy into a program, you brought in a guy like Frank Luntz, an unapologetically partisan pollster who dressed like the head of the College Republicans. If you wanted Democrats to pay attention, who better to do the job than an egghead from Berkeley with an armful of impenetrable journal studies on the workings of the brain?
But neither framing nor discipline substitute for ideas. Bia:
The larger question--too large, perhaps, for most Democrats to want to consider at the moment--is whether they can do more with language and narrative than simply snipe at Bush's latest initiative or sink his nominees.
.....
[It simply may be the case that] Democrats are still unwilling to put their more concrete convictions about the country into words, either because they don't know what those convictions are or because they lack confidence in the notion that voters can be persuaded to embrace them. Either way, this is where the power of language meets its outer limit. The right words can frame an argument, but they will never stand in its place. (My emphases throughout)
I also encourage you to read the fantastic summary of Bai's article by Brendan Nyhan, formerly of Spinsanity, on Brendan's blog.
- Scott
