View From the Sky

The Carpetbagger Report has an interesting discussion of MoveOn's newest ad campaign.

I haven’t always loved every single MoveOn.org ad and/or initiative, but this one strikes me as a good idea.

Liberal activists are taking the fight over judges to the backyards of Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.) and House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-Texas) this week, running ads in the leaders’ home states asking them to repudiate televangelist Pat Robertson’s recent comments that federal judges are more dangerous to American democracy than terrorists.

As the latest salvo in the escalating partisan war over the federal judiciary’s power and Democratic filibusters of judicial nominees, the initial $50,000 ad buy — paid for by MoveOn.org’s political action committee — will run in Nashville, Tenn., Houston and Washington, D.C., on cable television starting today. MoveOn PAC officials said they hope to buy more ad time as their fundraising numbers for the project go up.

The ad script asks whether Frist and DeLay will “continue to pander to the radical fringe or will they have the guts to repudiate Pat Robertson and all the others who are threatening our federal judges?”

I think this is a winner on a variety of levels. First and foremost, Republican leaders have, for too long, cozied up to some radical characters that most Americans would find repulsive. It’s only fair to start asking these lawmakers to start repudiating the lunacy coming from their friends. If a Dem leader were hanging out with Ward Churchill, you better believe there’d be some ads calling on him or her to renounce the guy’s rantings.

What I find most interesting is that when the Bush administration sees people who force their extreme religious beliefs on a people, they are quick to attack or at least repudiate it. But, apparently that does not apply to their allies in and out of Congress. The Founding Fathers created a system where the independent judiciary was a check on the elected executive and legislative branches. Apparently, some in the Fox party feel it is better to have the judges under their control. After all, if you are doing God's work, why should a judge be allowed to disagree?

Kos links to a study from the libertarian/conservative think tank The CATO Institute. The study, which points out that spending under W has gone up from 18.5% of GDP to 20.3. The real issue, as Kos points out, is that Bush has also cut taxes, leaving no way to pay for his shopping spree.

If they want to drown the government, then drown it already. Or raise taxes and pay for popular government programs. Those are the two honest options, the two options that don't drown the nation in red ink and endless record deficits.

Back in the Goldwater days, a conservative Republican was about cutting government to cut taxes. Then came Ronnie Dearest with (as George HW Bush put it) "Voodoo Economics" which proved that it was feasible, from a political perspective to have your tax cuts and spend them too. After Bill Clinton sacrificed his party's majority for deficit reduction in 1993, the tide clearly turned. Notwithstanding the Contract on America, the Democrats became the party of fiscal sanity. What Shrub has done has only served to intensify this difference.

It will be interesting to see if, in 2006, the Dems use a Contract-style campaign to emphasize the way the GOP has deserted the fiscal interests of the voters.

Media Matters points out today that Janet Parshall went after Sen. Hillary Clinton using ficticious comedic material to paint her as a religious opportunist.

During an extended attack on Democrats who oppose President Bush's judicial nominees, radio host Janet Parshall falsely accused Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-NY) of promoting herself as an evangelical Christian. The source of Parshall's accusation was apparently a National Review Online column by "comic commentator" Rob Long, in which Long "quoted" a fake bulletin from a fictitious church that "reported" comments that Clinton was said to have made to the bulletin.

From the May 2 edition of the nationally syndicated radio program Janet Parshall's America:

PARSHALL: And our challenge is going to be able to persevere, speak the truth, doing it in a loving fashion when they take our faith and use it as a bludgeoning tool against us. Dirty politics. In the final analysis, it will work against them. How do I know that? Because Hillary's already calling herself an evangelistic -- evangelical Christian. And last time around, she was Jewish. So before it's all said and done, she will be an evangelical Jewish Muslim. Trust me.

Long's November 16, 2004, column which Parshall was apparently relying on in claiming that Clinton is "calling herself an evangelical Christian," began with a bulletin from a fictitious church in Arkansas:

From "Light the Lamp!": The monthly newsletter of the Holy Flame Pentecostal Church of Little Rock: We welcome back to the area Senator Hillary Clinton (D., N.Y.), who has been spending so much time here in Little Rock lately that she's practically joined the church choir! "I'm here spending time at my husband's library," she told the Lamp when we caught up with her after a Sunday camp meeting, "and of course, I always take time to worship God in as evangelical a way as is feasible, given time and location constraints. As you know, I consider myself an evangelical Christian, really a Christian conservative, if you want to know the truth, so it's nice to be 'home' again in the South, which I really consider my quote-unquote home even though I live in New York most of the time. Well, Washington, D.C., most of the time, actually, but if I'm not there I'm in New York, of course, but always thinking about being here, in the South, my spiritual home, where I shared so many wonderful evangelical ... moments and ... events. Can you read that back to me?"

When Long's piece appeared, numerous conservative websites published the alleged Clinton quote across the Internet, misrepresenting it as real. After realizing the quotation was fake, the authors of one website, Blogs for Bush, issued a correction: "That's what I get for not tracing the quote to the original source."

Further, contrary to Parshall's claim that "the last time around, [Clinton] was Jewish," Clinton has never identified herself as Jewish. Parshall was apparently referring to an August 1999 article in the Jewish newspaper The Forward, which revealed that Clinton's step-grandfather was a Jew.

According to an article in American Outlook, the quarterly magazine of the conservative Hudson Institute, Janet Parshall's America "reaches 3.5 million listeners five days a week." The show is syndicated by Salem Radio Network.

I find it fascinating that the right chooses to flaunt the religious bona fides of their heroes and yet will look for opportunities to mock those of the other side, even if the truth gets in the way.

In today's editorial, Politicizing Public Broadcasting, the New York Times follows on yesterday's article about how the Republican head of the Public Broadcasting Corporation has decided to bring more "balance" to public television. "Mr. Tomlinson's goal of expanding the audience for PBS does not include bolstering PBS's balance with centrist programming. It involves pushing public broadcasting over the ideological line to the Republican side, with blatantly partisan programming and the hiring of more Republican partisans to control the corporation."

At the rate they are going, the right wing will move to the point of replacing Sesame Street and Masterpiece Theatre. "(PBS) has faced criticism that much of its programming - shows like "Antiques Roadshow" and 'Masterpiece Theater' - is little different from what can be found on cable television." Of course this ignores a few key points:

• Cable networks, even the arty, liberal ones, are supported by advertising and/or subscriber fees. Public television needs to be immune from as much of the commercial pressure as possible.
• Not everyone in this country receives cable. And, the people most likely to either not receive cable or to receive only basic (broadcast channels) are the ones who are least likely to have cultural and financial exposure to the diversity that PBS endeavors to provide.
• Even those people who have cable do not receive every channel. For example, I can not (even with the full package of available channels) get a number of channels including FX (no Shield) and BBC America (the original Office).
  

Plutonium Page posted this little bit from Last Hurrah about the fact that another of Bush's extremist judicial nominees has (family) ties to the GOP network.

In their article A White House Adrift - Newsweek Politics - MSNBC.com, Holly Bailey and Richard Wolffe discuss the inability of the White House to push forward their agenda. They cite the Bolton nomination, gas prices and the Social Security debacle as primary contributors along with a more energized Republican majority at the Capitol and a surprisingly untied Democratic opposition. "The Democrats, in a lot of ways, haven't ended the campaign," says Ed Gillespie, the former Republican Party chairman. "That's new. Nobody anticipated it."

What the article fails to mention is that the Bush agenda has already had two huge "successes." The castration of the personal bankruptcy laws (No Creditor Left Behind) and the tort retardation have been wet dreams of the big business wing of the Fox party for years.

Notwithstanding these successful attacks on the American populace, it is true that the Bush "mandate" has vanished in even less time than it took for W ad Rove to create it from whole cloth. But, it will be most interesting to see how long this perfect storm of Republican incompetence can continue. The DeLay matter is already on its way to a resolution. Bill Frist will eventually either blow up the Senate or (more likely) figure out a way to move forward (even at the expense of some of the nominees) and Bush, like Clinton with health care, will eventually find new issues that are not as polarizing.

Two other analyses of this article can be found on Doctor Evil's site and on Dean's World. The Evil article has all the subtlety and and maturity of (take your pick) a third grader, Bill O'Reilly or Mike Meyers' Dr. Evil. The Dean's piece (by Joe Gandelman) does not add much to the article. But, it does frame it well.