October 29, 2003 by s.z.

Many very good blogs have very good stories about the "Mission Accomplished" Banner (I especially liked Weapons of Mass Detraction, No More Mister Nice Blog, and The 18½ Minute Gap). So, I won't revisit that story.  But here's my contribution to show the spinning and poor grammar coming from the White House.  First, from the press conference yesterday Bush on Guerrilla Strikes: 'Desperate Attacks on Innocent Civilians Will Not Intimidate Us': Q. In recent weeks, you and your White House team have made a concerted effort to put a positive spin on progress in Iraq. And at the same time, there's been a much more somber assessment in private, as with Secretary Rumsfeld's memo. And there are people out there who don't believe that the administration is leveling with them about the difficulty and scope of the problem in Iraq. A. I can't put it any more plainly: Iraq is a dangerous place. That's leveling. It is a dangerous place. What I was saying is there's more than just terrorist attacks that are taking place in Iraq. There's schools opening; there are hospitals opening. The electricity, the capacity to deliver electricity to the Iraqi people is back up to prewar levels; where nearly two million barrels of oil a day are being produced for the Iraqi people. I was just saying, well, we've got to look at the whole picture; that what the terrorists would like is for people to focus only on the conditions which create fear. . . . The tactics to respond to, you know, more suiciders driving cars, will alter on the ground: more checkpoints — whatever they decide — how to harden targets will change. And so, we're constantly looking at the enemy and adjusting Now, from last week's Newsweek (Bush's News War): Yet reporters who covered the war say that some of the Coalition’s achievements are less impressive than they sound. Paul (Jerry) Bremer, the U.S. civilian administrator in Iraq, proudly announced the reopening of Iraq’s schools this month, while White House officials point to the opening of Iraq’s 240 hospitals. In fact, many schools were already open in May, once major combat ended, and no major hospital closed during the war.  But that didn’t stop a group of Republican senators from tearing into American reporters covering Iraq earlier this month. “I was not told by the media... that thousands and thousands of Iraqi schoolchildren went back to school,” said Larry Craig of Idaho, who recently toured Iraq. The senator neglected to mention that he slept both nights of his trip in Kuwait, not Iraq. But hey, at least the tactics to respond to suiciders driving cars will alter on the ground and harden targets and stuff. 9:12:57 AM

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Hercules Vs The Moonman --By Scott "Fire in his eyes, iron in his thighs" C. Harold Meyerson raises an interesting point regarding Arnold Schwarzenegger in his piece New Age Arnold, Old Testement GOP: In California, the governor-elect is hailed as the Republicans' Great White (or, through the miracle of modern tanning, Orange) Hope. The first Republican gubernatorial candidate to proclaim himself pro-choice, anti-assault weapon, and anti-homophobic, Schwarzenegger exhibited a crossover appeal that the GOP hadn't seen since Ronald Reagan invented the Reagan Democrats. . . .Imagine his discombobulation, then, to find himself in the capital city, where his party is busy at work ensuring that the 2004 election turns on the question of banning gay marriage. According to a report from The Post's Mike Allen, Republican National Committee Chairman Ed Gillespie predicts that the party platform will proclaim that the sacrament of marriage is for straights only. But party strategists and right-wing activists aren't content to stop there. "We're going to help it become a front-burner issue at the state and national level," Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research Council, told Allen. House Republican staffers said that they were planning to draft a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage next year. You can understand the Republicans' concern. With polls showing more than half the American public now doubting the president's capacity to handle both foreign and economic policy, the administration needs an issue to distract the disgruntled. More pointedly, as Karl Rove himself has noted, 4 million Christian evangelicals did not bestir themselves to vote in the election of 2000. At the rate things are going, Bush will need every one of those votes next year. Time, then, to unveil the real risk to our security. No, not al Qaeda fanatics plotting the deaths of Americans at home or abroad. The administration's credibility on military and security matters generally may not be a whole lot higher than the Democrats' when the election rolls around. . . .Yet here -- bewilderingly and perhaps somewhat bewildered himself -- comes Schwarzenegger, a Republican whose cultural politics range from the libertarian to the libertine, who came of age on Venice's Muscle Beach, where gay sex was somewhere between normal and normative. And Schwarzenegger is no mere journeyman Republican, or even a Republican curiosity (though he is that), but arguably the second most prominent Republican in the land. So, just what WILL Schwarzenegger do if his party's national platform includes a plan to amend the constitution to ban gay marriage?  And what are his views on gay marriage, and how are they informed by his religious views.  Just what ARE his religious views?  And would Arnold dare stand up to the all-powerful RNC if he doesn't agree with their position on this matter? To find out, we turn to . . . The Schwarzenegger Project!  Specifically, a movie from very early in Arnold's career, Hercules in New York. From this film we learn that Arnold's religion is Greek Myth (Reformed), a faith which takes the ancient Greek pantheon, adds gods from Roman mythology, stirs in some theology from the WWF, and wraps it up in the  esthetics of a lowbudget '70s porn movie.  The Greek Myth (Reformed) church does not disapprove of homosexuality -- it's liturgy actually involves muscley-men who have oiled up their bodies in honor of the gods, publicly embracing other men on the sacred wrestling mats of Smackdown.  It promises the faithful an afterlife in which lovely maidens wear filmy garments and present themselves for your fondling pleasure.  (Well, maybe that's not the afterlife so much as an alternate universe or a movie set -- the theology is a bit unclear on this point.) It defines marriage as "a union between a man and a woman; or a man and a bear, or other large mammal," and teaches that the mighty hero Hercules himself was the product of a relationship between a male mortal and a male god -- making it the most gay-marriage friendly religion practiced by any major Republican politican. And as for standing up to evil but powerful organizations, such as the Mafia or the RNC, it encourages its followers to do so, even if that involves riding around NYC in a chariot or fighting with Fred Flintstone in a warehouse. [To read the Subliminal Cinema summary of Hercules in New York, go here:  Herc in NY] 7:32:37 AM

Well, here's Mickey Kaus again, still being fair and balanced about the Terri Schiavo case: How to Prove You're Not Vegetative... while listening to them debate whether to kill you: NPR vs. NPR:  I was just growing more sympathetic to the cause of those who want to pull the plug on Terri Schiavo--then I heard an eye-opening interview on NPR's Day to Day with a woman who says she was near to being diagnosed as being in a "persistent vegetative state" and was trying desperately to signal her doctors and nurses while they debated the most convenient time to kill her--sorry, I mean, exercise her "right to die."  If she tried to make repetitive letter motions with her hand, they sedated her. ... She was finally saved by one nurse who suspected she "was in there." ... Her case may not be Terri Schiavo's case--but it's enough to make one very wary of the wonderful ethical/legal consensus, obediently trumpeted by All Things Considered and Slate's Dahlia Lithwick, that has established the PVS/plug-pulling protocol. ... Yes, Ms. Cooper-Dowda's case may NOT be Terri Schiavo's case.  In fact, it isn't--it's an entirely different case (here's a widely-publized print version of her story: When I Woke Up; it's basically an expanded version of what she said on "Day to Day"). And while her story is indeed compelling, we don't have any confirmation that it happened the way she recalls it.  Nothing from her doctors about her diagnosis of PVS and the plans to take her off life support; nothing from the hospital about one nurse having to heroically fight the doctors to secretly communicate with Ms. Cooper-Dowda; no confirmation of the "gossip" which she claims to have overheard and to have memorized while thought to be comatose; nothing about that final medical conference before "pulling the plug" during which she proved she was aware by spelling out that she wanted to divorce her doctor husband who was so eager to get her out of the way.  And without confirming evidence, this story is just an anecdote which may or may not be any more relevant to the Schiavo case than the stories about people waking up in hospitals with a stitched-up wound and a missing kidney.  Sure, it's something to think about and talk about, but not enough to make any informed person "very wary" of the "PVS/plug-pulling protocol."  (While Ms. Cooper-Dowda, who has written extensively on the Schiavo case from a pro-Schinlder persepctive, sounds like a good person and a caring spokesman for the disabled, her story about the Kiss-Kiss Bear forThe Advocate, which involves a Hallmark clerk telling her that "no gay bears will leave the store," has been discussed as a probable hoax on the alt.fan.cecil-adams message board.  And call me overly suspicious, but I find her story of that "last conference" and the spelling out of "D-I-V-O-R-C-E Y-O-U!" to save her own life, just a little too good to be true.)   How does a) the number of innocent people who will be executed under death penalty procedures compare with b) the number of innocent, live patients who will be killed under a tendentious diagnosis of PVS? I'd guess the ratio is probably one to 100, maybe 1 to 1,000. Since we're just guessing here, it could be anything at all, couldn't it?  That's why it's so much more fun than actually doing research. But the American left makes a huge (and legitimate) fuss about the former while it actually promotes the latter. ... Um, let me make sure I'm following you here, Mickey.  You're saying that the left is against executing innocent people, but is in favor of "killing" people "under a tendentious diagnosis of PVS."  I won't comment on your choice of the word "kill" other than to say that removing a feeding tube, which is an intrusive, artificial life-sustaining measure, has little equivalency with any of the execution methods practiced in America.  But on to "tendentious"-- since my dictionary defines it as "marked by a tendency in favor of a particular point of view," I'm assuming that what you're trying to say is that the "left" is guilty of accepting "the diagnosis of PVS" that comes from the particular point of view of neurologists who are experts in PVS?  And that since "the left" is against executing innocent people, then should also be against accepting medical diagnosis's from experts before allowing people (who have allegedly said they don't want to be kept alive in such a state) die?  Well, heck--that doesn't make much sense!  Or are you saying that the left, which is anti-executing innocent people, should be pro-forcing innocent people to accept life-sustaining measures on "the tendentious diagnosis of non-PVS" from family members?  Either way, I think this is the kind of statement that needs a little more thought, Mickey.  Or is this just another case of needing to be angry about something and coming up short, and so pulling a topic off the radio and not daring too think too hard about it for fear you'd realize your points were stupid and ending up with nothing at all?  If so, I can sympathize -- but maybe you could blog about what you had for lunch or something else that doesn't require much thought.  [Conflict note: I do occasional bits for Day to Day, which has a relationship with Slate.] Then maybe you could ask them just how much fact-checking they did regarding Ms. Cooper-Dowda's story before putting her on the radio.  Or do they have the same philosophy about research that you apparently do? 6:08:54 AM