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Random commentary and senseless acts of blogging.
The first Republican president once said, "While the people retain their virtue and their vigilance, no administration by any extreme of wickedness or folly can seriously injure the government in the short space of four years." If Mr. Lincoln could see what's happened in these last three-and-a-half years, he might hedge a little on that statement. Blog critics Gryffindor House Slytherin House Ravenclaw House House Elves Beth Jacob Prisoners of Azkaban Muggles
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Saturday, December 16, 2006
Horse Races You would think that Hillary would be smart enough to not advertise the fact that she is every Republican's choice as the next Democratic nominee. You would think that, but you would be wrong. Meanwhile the SCLM is filling the air with discussions like this pretending that the race for the Democratic nomination is now a two person contest between Hillary and Obama. It's too early for a real favorite, but if one has to be picked, it's probably Edwards. His strong name recognition, broad acceptibility, and big lead in Iowa put him a good position. UPDATE: Since I posted this, I saw the latest McLaughlin Group - a discussion of Hillary and Obama that ran 8:18 without mentioning any other candidate. Meanwhile, this is the latest cover package for Newsweek. Thursday, October 05, 2006
Josh Marshall points to an implausible US News article suggesting that Hastert is recovering from Foleygate. What's missing from the article? A single quote from any important Republican saying on the record that Hastert still has his/her full support. When actual GOP congressmen start saying this on the record, I'll believe that he's weathered the storm. (I don't expect to see that. I expect him to leave by Sunday.) To publish the article without any such quote is absurd. It only means that either the story is simply untrue or the reporter didn't bother doing his job - probably both. Update: It appears that Hastert will hold a press conference in a few hours. It's likely that he'll either resign immediately or, perhaps more likely, announce that he will not be a candidate for a leadership position in the next House regardless of the election results. Monday, October 02, 2006
In his CNN interview with Andrea Koppel, Denny Hastert comes dangerously close to admitting that the leadership's actions on the Foley problem from the start have been about protecting the GOP: Koppel:Congressman Reynolds put out a statement on Saturday saying that he told you in the spring. Do you think he's lying? Incidentally, you should really see the video. The transcript here really doesn't do justice to how uncomfortable Hastert looked just ansering just a few questions on this topic. And Koppel asks him only a few questions, not even mentioning some potentially utterly damning areas, such as the failure to inform any Democrats when the problem came up, or the fact that pages (but apparently only GOP pages) were warned about Foley as early as 2001. No wonder that when Hastert made his statement today, he refused to take any questions at all. Friday, September 08, 2006
The righties have a gift for throwing out arguments so bizarre, so utterly divorced from anything that would qualify as an actual reasonable point, that you don't quite know whether to applaud the pure chutzpah or just vomit. A recent gem in this genre was produced by Hugh Hewitt. Critics of the program want to argue that a five hour program has collapsed eight years too brusquely. There is, by the way, zero mention in the fve hours of the allegations that Clinton let bin Laden slip through his fingers when the terror chief was offered up by Sudan. There is no Atta meeting in Prague, no suggestion of a Saddam history of terror ties unrelated to 9/11 --in short, there is no reaching by the writer/producers/director. In other words, sure there are things that never happpened portrayed in the show. But what about all the things that never happened the show doesn't include? That proves it's completely fair, right? It's not as if they put in a scene of Hillary having a three-way with Janet Reno and Saddam Hussein. Ok, they did, but the practices and standards division made them take it out. It isn't in the final cut, which clearly shows how completely fair and balanced it is. I found the following bit of wisdom researching in the faultess Wikipedia in this article. And yes, it's already been cleaned up.
Tuesday, August 08, 2006
After watching the Sunday chatfests, I suspected that the punditocracy has now gone through denial, anger, and bargaining, and is now in acceptance, or at least depression, about Joe Lieberman's upcoming defeat today. But not everybody has given up. Martin Peretz of TNR, writing in that well-known Democratic organ the Wall Street Journal editorial page, is horrified that clones of George McGovern are taking over the Democratic Party. And Mr Peretz knows all about peaceniks; he used to be one himself: Peace candidates know only one thing, and that is why people vote for them. I know the type well. I was present at its creation. You can practically hear Marty Peretz humming to himself:
And should Joe Lieberman go down to defeat, bringing down with himslef all hopes of Democratic success in the midterms (which no doubt is why people like Sean Hannity and Michelle Malkin are supporting him) Peretz knows that it is the wicked blogosphere who will be to blame: The blogosphere Democrats, whose victory Mr. Lamont's will be if Mr. Lamont wins, have made Iraq the litmus test for incumbents.... If Mr. Lieberman goes down, the thought-enforcers of the left will target other centrists as if the center was the locus of a terrible heresy, an emphasis on national strength. One of the many pleasures to being a pundit in the traditional media environment is the license to take no responsibility when you are spectacularly wrong, or even to edit your own opinions after the fact, turning your foolishness into insight. Just ask Chris Matthews, who recently said, "I‘ve been against this war from day one, and that didn‘t cost me my job." (Perhaps it didn't cost him his job because Matthews was, until quite recently, the only person who knew he was against the war. I often suspect that those pundits who whine loudest about us rude, crude bloggers aren't really furious with bloggers so much as with the internets. For them, it must be a bit like living through a horror movie, "I Know What You Wrote Last Summer". This is the end of a trilogy including the terrifying "I Know What You Wrote About Invading Iraq" and, most horrifying of all to those who pretend not to be right wing hacks, "I Know What You Wrote in 2000". For most of us in the left blogosphere, the bizarre events in 1999-2000 that originally put George Bush in the White House were central to changing the way we viewed politics. For two solid years, one of the best candidates put forward by either party in the past 50 years was universally mocked, his manhood and even sanity repeatedly questioned, all over events that never happened and quotations that were manufactured by the media. In the end, he narrowly won anyway - but then the opposition insisted that the votes couldn't be fully counted, because it might cost their guy the election - and that same media, incredibly, went along, asserting that fully counting the votes was a scheme to steal the election. For many of the youger bloggers, this was a first look at national politics. But even for a greybeard like myself, who can remember the murder of RFK, it was clear that something had gone drastically wrong. Watching these events, without any way to make our own voices heard, quite a few of us decided that progresive values, and indeed simple decency, had no voice in our national debate. And as the blogosphere emerged in the next few years, we saw an opportunity to bypass the phony 'progressives' in the national media and give our values a real voice, through our own blogs, communities like Daily Kos, and alternative media like Air America. If Martin Peretz had been as outspoken in supporting Lieberman as a wingman 6 years ago as he is in backing Lieberman today, there might very well never have been a Bush administration. Peretz was, in 2000, one of the editors at TNR, which was supposedly ground zero for pro-Gore advocacy in the media. But TNR, which did endorse Gore, was silent on the anti-Gore drumbeat in other media. Peretz himself solicited an article on the topic from the brilliant Bob Somerby - for so many of us the only real voice of sanity in that election. But TNR never published that article or any other on the subject. It has published no such article to this day that I know of. If TNR, the closest thing to an actual liberal voice that the national media still respects, had been actively reporting the falsehoods that were being spread about Gore, the outcome would probably have been different; American kids wouldn't be dying today in Iraq and the WTC towers might well be standing. But that didn't happen and the lies about Gore have long since become a mythology that even Peretz believes. Quite recently, in a post ironically entitled "OK I'm a Gore Flack" he couldn't help repeating one of those ancient lies: "Anyone who does these rounds is comfortable in his own skin, even if he once took some bad advice to wear 'earth tones' from Naomi Wolf." In the end, it's not hard to see why Lieberman is so beloved by the DC media elite. Lieberman has embraced a warped model of bipartisanship which seems to involve something just short of total surrender - go ahead and support an energy bill with billions in giveaways to the world's wealthiest corporations and nothing that will actually address what may be our most urgent problem - a few hundred Connecticut jobs have been thrown in and makes it OK. He actively supports the position that Democrats to his left, those who believe that an opposition party has the right to actually oppose, are ruining the party and of questionable patriotism. And with these values, he thinks himself above acountability and is morally offended when real Democrats, especially Democratic bloggers, call him on his crap. The 'liberal' DC pundits don't just back Joe because he's a friend, they back him because he's them. Tuesday, June 27, 2006
The War Tapes I was able last night the watch a preview showing of this new documentary. Last night's showing was the first except for some very limited appearances on the East Coast. I was able to get in because of an arrangement between the producers and WesPAC - Wes Clark has already seen and praised the movie. The movie opens in limited release on Friday. Although it really isn't an anti-war film, it opens largely in deep blue areas, which is doubtless appropriate - we are, after all, the reality based community, and this is nothing if not real. The filmmakers gave video cameras to a group of National Guardsmen from New Hampshire as they were deploying to Iraq. The soldiers recorded their own tape, recording about 1,000 hours of material which was then edited down to a movie. The movie is essentially recordings from three of the soldiers. It's difficult to summarize the movie beyond that. It doesn't really have a storyline, simply recording events as they happen, although it does reach an ending of sorts with the unit's return to New Hampshire and some material, which is powerful, about the soldiers' struggles to return to civilian life. It goes to some lengths to avoid being either pro-war or anti-war; just showing the conflict as the three protagonists see it. Of these, two are generally pro-war and pro-Bush, even though one comments extensively on the role of Halliburton in the war. The third, a Lebanese immigrant named Zack Brazzi who speaks fluent Arabic, introduces himself in his first scene as a regular reader of 'The Nation', and isn't shy about expressing opinions on the overall mission. The film shows much of the experience of being a soldier at war: the generally poor living conditions, the cynicism and humor of the troops, and the general boredom of daily life interrupted by unpredictable and terrifying spurts of violence. Mixed in with this is footage of the families at home, struggling with fear and helplessness. It also shows the power of documentary - the combat scenes, for all the shaky cameras and scratchy soundtrack, have emotional impact rarely matched in even the best made fictional war movies. The GIs come across as ultimately ordinary guys, patriots put into a situation of almost impossible stress who just want to do their duty and get back home. The movie shows the tragedy of the war. In one memorable scene, a convoy traveling at high speeds runs over and kills a young woman, and we see her remains being put in a body bag. You can understand why the tragedy happened - the convoys are targets that are forced to move at high speeds to be less vulnerable, and in other scenes we've scene pedestrians taking wild risks running across the road right in front of convoy vehicles. But the actions of the pedestrians may well not be as absurd as they appear - Brazzi talks in one scene about a time when his unit had been ordered to prevent anybody from crossing a road which had a hospital on one side. He was repeatedly forced to tell families they couldn't take their relatives to the hospital just across the road, until finally he just refused to continue translating. All footage used in the movie had to be approved. Some of the scenes I was actually surprised they were allowed to show - some conversations, especially taken out of context, make the characters sound pretty bloodthirsty. It seems the filmmakers dealt primarily with the NH National Guard rather than the Pentagon during the project, which may explain why they were able to show such unguarded footage. During a Q & A after the showing, the producers said that very few scenes were censored and none on grounds they thought unreasonable. Sunday, May 14, 2006
The Spin Cycle Two recent polls on NSA spying seem to give drastically different results. In a poll done for the Washington Post, 63% supported the NSA program; in one done for Newsweek, 53% say it goes too far in invading privacy. These apparently contradictory results can be explained by the different wording used by the polls. Look at the questions asked by Richard Morin, who, as Jane Hamsher notes, has a substantial history as a GOP spinner: Do you approve or disapprove of the way Bush is handling protecting Americans' privacy rights as the government investigates terrorism? As it conducts the war on terrorism, do you think the United States government is or is not doing enough to protect the rights of American citizens? What do you think is more important right now - (for the federal government to investigate possible terrorist threats, even if that intrudes on personal privacy); or (for the federal government not to intrude on personal privacy, even if that limits its ability to investigate possible terrorist threats)? It's been reported that the National Security Agency has been collecting the phone call records of tens of millions of Americans. It then analyzes calling patterns in an effort to identify possible terrorism suspects, without listening to or recording the conversations. Would you consider this an acceptable or unacceptable way for the federal government to investigate terrorism? Do you feel that way strongly or somewhat? In every question, the word "terrorist" or "terrorism" show up, even more than once. That wording was carefully designed to elicit the answers Morin got. By comparison, the Newsweek poll, which only asked 2 questions about the NSA program, used the word "terrorism" only once. THe moral is that if you're trying to spin in favor of expanded federal power and decreased freedom, scare people by talking constantly about terrorism. Listen to the Bush spinners and you'll notice immediately that they know this. Democrats should talk in terms of the rule of law. We should also make this an apple pie issue - assert repeatedly (and correctly) that we're defending traditional American values. Friday, May 12, 2006
Happy Days Welcome to the Roaring 20s, George. Your pal Dick can show you around - he's been there for awhile now. Friday, May 05, 2006
Goss Out Bloggers are already wildly speculating on whether there is a hidden motive behind the resignation of Proter Goss, presumably having something to do with the current investigation of sex parties at the Watergate. We don't know for sure, but in these circumstances I'm generally inclined to believe the more scandalous interpretation. That's just because it does look so dubious - if I were Porter Goss and actually did want to leave for some totally non-lurid reason, I would probably stay on at this point just to avoid the appearance that I was resigning in some sort of sleazy hookers and bribery scandal. The very fact that Goss left at a time when he had to know his departure would look suspicious contributes to it looking suspicious. Friday, April 28, 2006
Is FEMA the Problem? The leaders of the Senate Homeland Security Committee have now issued a report calling for the elimination and replacement of FEMA. FEMA must be entirely dismantled. say the Senators, because: Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine), chairman of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, said FEMA "has become a symbol of a bumbling bureaucracy" that must be dismantled, and merely "tweaking the organizational chart" will not solve failures exposed by the hurricane. How exactly did FEMA get to be so bad? After all, only a decade ago, Daniel Franklin in the Washington Monthly praised the "FEMA Phoenix" and noted that FEMA, humiliated by its failure to respond to Hurricane Andrew in 1992, was the "most dramatic success story of the federal government in recent years". Its responsiveness was widely praised by local officials as well as those it assisted. The true judge of FEMA's success lies not in the praise of Congress, though, but in the minds of the victims of natural disasters. Last year, FEMA sent 5,000 surveys to victims to ask them about the agency's performance. More than 80 percent of the respondents approved of the way the agency was doing its job--a percentage that would have been unthinkable in the dark days following Hurricane Andrew just one year before. 80% satisfaction is pretty good, but the study cited below indicates it got even higher by the late 90s: "Individual citizens and public sector organizations both receive disaster aid, and they are surveyed afterward to assess the quality of information FEMA provided, promptness, ease of access, flexibility, and overall quality of service. Depending on the question, between 89 and 97 percent of individuals give FEMA positive ratings; the numbers show some slight improvement over the past few years." When the nonpartisan Mercatus Center sought "to identify exemplary agencies that have taken the lead in clearly stating their missions and improving their performance", FEMA was chosen for an in depth case study. Reading the study, one thing that becomes very clear is when the agency turned from a failure into a success. In fiscal 1998, FEMA took an average of 8 days to get relief checks to disaster victims, down from 10 days in 1997 and a high of 20 days in 1992.... Since 1993, FEMA’s culture has changed dramatically, from a formal, bureaucratic culture focused on processes to a less formal, action-oriented culture focused on results.... Since its reorganization in 1993, FEMA has significantly improved its ability to deal with disasters... Sen. Barbara Mikulski (D-MD) complained in 1992, “I am outraged by the federal government’s pathetically sluggish and ill-planned response to the devastating disaster wrought by Hurricane Andrew in Florida and Louisiana, which has left many lives in shambles. Time and again, the federal government has failed to respond quickly and effectively to major disasters, and no lessons have been learned from past mistakes.”... The National Academy of Public Administration opined in February 1993, “FEMA has been ill-served by congressional and White House neglect, a fragmented statutory charter, irregular funding, and the uneven quality of its political executives appointed by ast presidents.... In 1993, Rep. Pete Stark (D-CA) introduced legislation to abolish FEMA. One year later, he withdrew his bill and complimented the agency on its improved performance.... When Hurricane Andrew stuck Florida in 1992, the city of Miami’s emergency director asked, ”Where the hell’s the cavalry on this one?” (Schneider 1995, p. 95) But in 1999 she commented, “FEMA didn’t have the funding system or the capabilities before Andrew. Now it’s like an assembly line…It’s just straight-forward.... Prior to 1993, FEMA had never enunciated its overriding mission. This exacerbated management problems resulting from the way in which FEMA was created.... Prior to 1993, it’s not clear what, if any, meaningful communication occurred between FEMA’s top executives and its employees. FEMA directors made little effort to promote communication; some even sought to get private elevators and bathrooms that would further distance them from the employees. It would seem that something happened in 1993 to dramatically improve FEMA's from a failure to a success, and something else happened not long after this study was published in 2000 that sent FEMA back into a tailspin. Now what might that have been? In Franklin's interesting article the key sentences are probably these: "Because FEMA had 10 times the proportion of political appointees of most other government agencies, the poorly chosen Bush appointees had a profound effect on the performance of the agency. Sam Jones, the mayor of Franklin, Louisiana, says he was shocked to find that the damage assessors sent to his town a week after Hurricane Andrew had no disaster experience whatsoever. 'They were political appointees, members of county Republican parties hired on an as-needed basis.... They were terribly inexperienced.'... Clinton and Witt demonstrated an understanding of the virtues of the patronage system. The high number of political appointees allowed the new administration to free itself of the incompetents and replace them with talented new people." FEMA is structured with more direct political appointees than most other federal agencies. Thus it became a dumping ground for incompetent party loyalists. That allowed Clinton to revitalize the agency with skilled and qualified personnel relatively rapidly. It also enabled Bush 43 to undo Clinton's work equally effectively. Even when the Senate report tries to blame state and local government, it only succeeds in underlining the decline of FEMA. The Executive Summary notes: "The Committee believes that leadership failures needlessly compounded these losses. Mayor Nagin and Governor Blanco –who knew the limitations of their resources to address a catastrophe—did not specify those needs adequately to the federal government before landfall. For example, while Governor Blanco stated in a letter to President Bush two days before landfall that she anticipated the resources of the state would be overwhelmed, she made no specific request for assistance in evacuating the known tens of thousands of people without means of transportation, and a senior state official identified no unmet needs in response to a federal offer of assistance the following day." But Franklin notes that FENA has the authority - and once had the ability - to respond even without a spicific list of needs from local authorities: "FEMA's enabling legislation, the Stafford Act, provided FEMA officials with powers that the bureaucrats didn't exercise. 'We found that without state requests, FEMA could assess the catastrophic area, assess what assistance the state needed, start mobilizing that relief, present its recommendations to the governor, and, if necessary... get in the governor's face to force the issue of accepting federal help.'" Susan Collins now wants us to believe that FEMA is hopelessly faulty. The truth is, it's simply saddled with political hacks - the hacks which the President she supports appointed. Of course those nominees then had to be approved, but I suspect that Collins - and probably Lieberman too - voted to approve every one of them. Collins is trying to avoid a basic truth: the reason why FEMA had a disastrous response to Katrina, and is apparently entirely unprepared for this year's coming hurricane season, is George Bush and his rubber stamp Republican majority. Wednesday, April 26, 2006
I went to a breakfast Monday morning where Wes Clark was speaking to raise money and volunteers for Steve Filson, a candidate in CA-11. Later in the day, Clark campaigned with Filson in the district. The situation in California 11 is a bit comparable to IL-6. Jerry McNerney got the nomination against Pombo in 2004, when nobody else wanted it, and ran an effective campaign with a lot of grass roots support. Steve Filson is one of the 'Fighting Democrats' and is the DCCC preferred candidate, but at least some activists who were involved with McNerney '04 are angry over the national party's dismissal of McNerney. A third candidate, Steve Thomas, seems to have less support and is almost certainly too far left to win in what's essentially a red district. Clark has been active in supporting many of the Fighting Dem candidates and recently endorsed Filson, although many Clark activists had been 2004 McNerney volunteers. CA 11 rarely appears on lists of hot turnover prospects, but I think is a winnable fight. It's the least red district represented by a Republican in CA, having gone to Bush in 2004 by only 8.6%. The demographics are probably moving in a blue direction, with people moving into the district from the very liberal East Bay. And Pombo is potentially vulnerable on his extreme anti-environmental positions which aren't generally known in the district; California voters, even Republicans, tend to be strong environmentalists. I watched all three Democrats speak recently at an endorsement meeting. The five minute time limit precluded much substance in any of the presentations. On style, McNerney wasn't strong, emphasizing his points with exaggerated theatrical gestures. He also failed to make clear that he has a stronger position than Filson on withdrawal from Iraq, something he should have emphasized before an audience of Democratic activists. Filson was a bit better, but stepped on some of his own lines. Thomas spoke with some passion, but seemed more interested in talking about FDR and the New Deal than in directly addressing more current issues. For Monday's audience, it was clear that Wes Clark, who got three standing ovations, was the rock star and Filson was the drummer. Still, it was a friendly crowd, and his talk came off better than the previous time I saw him. Some of his speech involves asking rhetorical questions of the audience - interestingly, he likes to paraphrase Newt Gingrich's proposed 'had enough' slogan - and it can be awkward if the audience isn't really responsive. Clark spoke very well; I've seen him criticised ocasionally as a poor speaker, but that was from the early days of his 04 campaign and definitely doesn't reflect his current skills. He focused on winning the midterms, but said absolutely nothing that would deter expectations he plans to run again in 2008. On the Filson/McNerney primary dual, which has been bitter at times as this local blog shows, I think it's a close contest. As a speaker, I think Filson is marginally better, with more likelihood of improving to real effectiveness since he's much newer to it than McNerney. Filson argues he is more electable, and it may well be true, but there's no real polling data to back it up. Neither could be rated as especially charismatic by the most generous observer. McNerney is better on issues, having taking a clear stand for withdrawal from Iraq. McNerney also has interesting ideas about making the district a center for the alternative energies industry, which is his professional background, but it isn't clear how he does that from Washington. Overall, I'd be happy with either of the major candidates. As in IL-6, some of the grass roots types have shown hostility to the candidate they see as DCCC imposed that could make it hard to unite the party in the fall if their guy loses. Wednesday, April 19, 2006
The Wrong Problem Recent shuffles in White House personnel illustrate the futility of trying to fix the wrong problem. The problem being addressed by changing spokesmen and playing around with titles is that, supposedly, the White House hasn't been getting its message out and that is the cause of declining poll numbers. In fact, the persistent suport for Bush of about 36% of the country, a poor number in most circumstances but a dazzling number for a President who has had such a mind-numbing string of failures and disasters on his watch, most caused by his own incompetence, illustrate that the political machinery still works pretty well. After all, in the face of overwhelming evidence of the failures of this President, at least 1/3 of the country, in most surveys a bit more, are still being fooled. That's the reality, but obviously one the White can't admit to in public, and probably even in private. So the pathetic Scott McClellan, having long since lost all claim or title to dignity when he simply absorbed the very public humiliation of being sent out to repeat Rove and Libby's lies about the Plame leak, is given yet another humiliation and implicitly blamed for the President's dropping poll numbers. As if the real cause weren't Katrina, the continuing failure in Iraq, the increasing exposure of Bush's lies, fiscal irresponsibility, Terri Schiavo, etc. Tuesday, March 28, 2006
Lem Recent news of the death of the great Stanislaw Lem is, regrettably, neither hypothetical, chimeric, nor mythical. It is, however, a good enough excuse to post my personal favorite passage from Lem, taken from the Cyberiad, his celebrated analysis of the non-existence of dragons: Everyone knows that dragons don't exist. But while this simplistic formulation may satisfy the layman, it does not suffice for the scientific mind. The School of Higher Neantical Nillity is in fact wholly unconcerned with what does exist. Indeed, the banality of existence has been so amply demonstrated, there is no need for us to discuss it any further here. The brilliant Cerebron, attacking the problem analytically, discovered three distinct kinds of dragon: The mythical, the chimerical, and the purely hypothetical. They were all, one might say, nonexistent, but each nonexisted in an entirely different way... Monday, March 27, 2006
Going Postal Now that the drama is over and Ben Domenech has been fired, the central question stands out more clearly than ever: why on earth did the Post ever hire him to start with? Were they out for new readers? That seems wildly implausible. There's already a rival in town that has the far-right market sown up; the Post can hardly compete with the Washington Times in that area. And Ben's work was intended to appear only on the web, where there are scores of established sites competing for wingnut eyes that don't carry the burden (for this market) of the Post's history of quality journalism. Were they pushed by existing readers? Again, this is unlikely. The Post's readership is likely far more liberal than the paper - after all, DC is one of the farthest left, and most heavily black, cities in the country. (For a paper with such a large black readership, hiring a 'columnist' who smeared Coretta King on the day of her funeral and refused to actually apologize, although he did make a statement that the Post chose to pretend was an apology, was a particularly calculated insult to its readers.) Granted, the suburbs, which are, as usual, more white and more Republican, are also important markets for the Post. But even here, there's little evidence or likelihood that Post readers were clamoring for the crude GOP fundamentalism of Domenech. Those who seek such stuff can already find it in the Times, or skip the dead tress and just listen to talk radio. Easily dismissable is the argument that Domenech actually deserved a broader audience on the merits of his writing. Of the pieces he has written for Red State this year, this is the only one which tries to do what a good column does: take a current story, examine it thoughtfully, and make it part of a larger narrative. Unfortunately, the piece is utterly worthless. The central claim made is that the Abramoff scandal is a result of the dominance of old fashioned "do as you're told" Republicans; the cure is more prominence for genuinely conservative "do what's right" Republicans. Not one piece of evidence for this thesis is advanced, and no wonder. Abramoff himself rose through the ranks of the very rightist movement that Domenech puts forth as the cure for his activities. Every member of Congress tied up in the current scandals is a movement rightist in good standing. Look at their lifetime ratings from the ACU: DeLay (96%), Ney (85), Goode (92), Duke Cunningham (95), Dolittle (95), Pombo (97), Ryun (99) Harris (90), Sam Johnson (99). Domenech's distinction is real, if unoriginal - he just wrong about which side of the line you find the crooks on. Of course, Domenech is probablhy not as ignorant of the ethical standards of the wingnut world as he pretends to be. Indeed, when he got into trouble over plagiarism, he demonstrated personal expertise in the matter, declaring that the plagiarized passages in his work had been inserted by editors without his permission. His plagiarized writings had appeared in several different publications under a variety of diferent editors, but Ben wants us to believe that all of those editors had the habit of inserting plagiarized passages into his work without his knowledge. The only plausible explanation left standing is that the Post was trying to respond to complaints of liberal bias. The obvious problem is that such complaints have long since ceased to be responses to any real, or even imagined, libeal sympathies, but just a crude attempt to bully the media. And when you give a bully everything he asks for, all you get is more bullying. The silliest game of all is to hire more rightists as an attempt to silence the criticism. It's about as smart as trying to persuade thugs to go straight by giving them new jobs hauling truckoads of cash between banks. These are people who whine about liberal bias as a modus operandi. When they get hired into the MSM, they just get a bigger megaphone to go on doing the exact same thing. What the Post got for it's trouble in Domenech's first column was exactly what any editor with two brain cells to rub together would have expected: an attack on the liberal elitism of the Washington Post. Wednesday, March 22, 2006
So we now know that Ben Domenech wrote at least two posts concerning Abramoff and the Department of Interior without ever seeing fit to mention that his own father was Abramoff's goto guy at DoI. And, oh yes, he's also a serial plagiarist - including plagiarizing the Washington Post before he conned them into hiring him. If you're a real journalist, things like not disclosing your interests and stealing other people's work can get you fired. If you're a moonbat rightie, they get you a cushy job at a once-great newspaper. Eleanor Clift asserts that Feingold's censure resolution is a gift for Republicans - yet she never makes any kind of argument that Bush's conduct doesn't, in fact, deserve censure. Nor does she make any real argument as to how censure, which polls show to be popular, is likely to harm Democrats. All she can do is quote that famous anonymous 'party strategist'. They seem to be in the media quite a lot; maybe we'd be doing better if our 'party strategists' spent less time giving out anonymous quotes and more time developing actual winning strategies. What this strategist has to say is, "If someone proposed stringing up Bush like they did Mussolini, that would have a lot of support in the base of the party, too... But it’s not smart." In other words, pay no attention to those crazy people in the blogosphere or the grass roots. We aren't angry over NSA spying because we believe in the rule of law or checks and balances, abstruse ideas that the blogosphere is far too plebian and unwashed to comprehend. We just hate Bush for inexplicable partisan reasons that have no rational explanation, but probably are connected to the facts that he's so tough on Al Qaeda and we just love Osama. Ignore those crazies in the blogosphere and stick to the strategy of having no actual position on any issue. Voters adore invertebrates; that's why we've been winning so many elections lately. What makes this even more of a joke is Clift's (not so well) hidden agenda. She has for some time been more of a CLintonista than a real liberal or Democrat, and is heavily committed to the Hillary 08 bandwagon. Feingold's resolution, and Hillary's invisibility, are both being noticed in the grass roots, so it's clearly in Hillary's interest to spread a counter-narrative that censure is hurting Democrats. It's Clift, not Feingold, who is really working to give the GOP exactly what it needs to stay unified and in power - a 2008 ticket headed by a compromised and unpopular candidate. Friday, March 17, 2006
The first poll on censure has been published, with the unsurprising result that a narrow plurality (48% - 43%) of Americans favors censure. The most surprising result is that Republicans are opposed by only a 2 - 1 margin; the oddest is that independents are opposed (47 - 42) to censure - but support (47 - 40) impeachment. The Times, which didn't bother to wait for any polling data before labelling censure as "unpopular", is crowing that Feingold has united Republicans. But mostly what's visible is Republican politicians uniting behind a leader who remains unpopular. How this hurts us in an election year is unspecified. Republicans in Congress are currently looking at a very ugly picture. Their approval ratings are low, but that's far from the worst of it. They face a very unhappy base, and can't easily take the steps their base wants, especially spending cuts, this close to an election. Unlike Democrats, the Repubs have a base that wants them to do things that are actually unpopular. It used to be that the public disliked Congress as a whole, but liked their own Rep. This may well no longer be true. A recent Pew poll showed the astonishing result that 41% believe their own Congressman has taken bribes. And it isn't going to get better over the next few months, with new indictments almost certain to come down between now and the election. Given that setting, forcing Republican Senators and Congressman to choose between being loyal to their unpopular President or going against him and ticking off their base even more is a solid strategy that puts the enemy in a lose-lose position. Wednesday, March 15, 2006
Kevin Drum suggests that Feingold's censure resolution is poor political theater. He's probably mistaken, if only because he assumes that the bill is a partisan move. Almost certainly the real reason that Feingold has gone for censure is to play to the Democratic base in preparation for 2008, and in that he's been spectacularly successful. That Feingold is pushing his own ambitions is no excuse for the Democrats who are running away from him as if he had avian flu. Censure is clearly supported by the facts - Bush has broken the law, done so repeatedly, and not offered even a hint of contrition. Instead, he's shown the usual mix of spin and outright lies, pretending that what's really at issue is whether Al Qaeda should operate free of surveillance. The evidence that censure would be a political disaster is nonexistent, given Bush's very poor approval ratings. Even if censure is a bad political move, there are times to do the right thing and damn the politics. Democrats should be willing to stand up for the rule of law, even if there are negative political consequences. If they can't do so even when the consequences are likely to be neutral or favorable, what good are they? Glenn Greenwald is also critical of Kevin in a widely linked post. Monday, March 13, 2006
Epitaph on a Tyrant With the death in captivity of Slobodan Milosevic, it sems an appropriate moment to cite his epitaph, fortunately already composed. Perfection, of a kind, was what he was after, And the poetry he invented was easy to understand; He knew human folly like the back of his hand, And was greatly interested in armies and fleets When he laughed, respectable senators burst with laughter. And when he cried the little children died in the streets. W H Auden Thursday, March 02, 2006
There's been considerable excitement in left Blogistan over Bush's lowest-ever rating in this poll. We shouldn't read too much into that one number, particularly in this poll, which does oversample Democrats. It's also fun to point to Cheney's approval rating of 18% - actually lower than Nixon's when he resigned. But the really significant number here is the -33 rating for Congress: 28% approve, 61% disapprove. That's actually lower, though not by a statistically meaningful margin, than similar ratings in 1994. And it can't be attributed to any fault in the CBS poll; the next most recent poll rating Congress, by Diageo/Hotline, was much friendlier to Bush (-7 vs -25) but gave Congress essentially the same grade (-31 vs -33). It's a long time until election day, but these early numbers do have significance: for one thing, a lot of Republicans reading them have decided this isn't the year year to try for a seat in Congress, so it's been hard to recruit challengers for most Democratic incumbents. The black hats are having such serious recruiting problems this year that it looks like in the nation's 2nd most populous state neither of the top two Demo candidates, Clinton and Spitzer, will face an A list Republican. Our side's recruitment has been more successful, for Governors, Senators and the House. Note: the other side has also noticed the same number. They point out an interesting fact: in this poll, the lowest rating given to Congress (-46) came from independents. Republicans rated Congress at -26. Democrats gave Congress the least negative score (-23) of the 3 groups! Monday, February 27, 2006
By any reasonable standard, this is a major story. It's already been picked up by Josh Marshall, Kos, and other bloggers. And yet, a Google news search shows the story has, so far, been almost completely ignored. One paper in Texas picked it up, and UPI put out an abbreviated version - note how the lede of the UPI version makes the key point simply an unsopported allegation from Texans for Public Justice. No mention of the story in today's White House briefing. The media has regained at least some nerve to challenge Bush, as shown by the whole Cheney quail hunting episode. But they still seem to prefer that the challenges be over fluff, instead of serious issues. Update: At this point, a number of Texas papers have picked up the item for one story, but none have done any follow-up stories. The NY Times has ignored it completely, as have other non-Texas national media. Wednesday, February 22, 2006
A little reminder, from the 9/11 report: At the beginning of February, Bin Ladin was reportedly located in the vicinity of the Sheikh Ali camp, a desert hunting camp being used by visitors from a Gulf state. Public sources have stated that these visitors were from the United Arab Emirates.... The next day, national technical intelligence confirmed the location and description of the larger camp and showed the nearby presence of an official aircraft of the United Arab Emirates. But the location of Bin Ladin's quarters could not be pinned down so precisely. The CIA did its best to answer a host of questions about the larger camp and its residents and about Bin Ladin's daily schedule and routines to support military contingency planning. According to reporting from the tribals, Bin Ladin regularly went from his adjacent camp to the larger camp where he visited the Emiratis; the tribals expected him to be at the hunting camp for such a visit at least until midmorning on February 11.... Even after Bin Ladin's departure from the area, CIA officers hoped he might return, seeing the camp as a magnet that could draw him for as long as it was still set up. The military maintained readiness for another strike opportunity. On March 7, 1999, Clarke called a UAE official to express his concerns about possible associations between Emirati officials and Bin Ladin.... Imagery confirmed that less than a week after Clarke's phone call the camp was hurriedly dismantled, and the site was deserted.... The United Arab Emirates was becoming both a valued counterterrorism ally of the United States and a persistent counterterrorism problem. From 1999 through early 2001, the United States, and President Clinton personally, pressed the UAE, one of the Taliban's only travel and financial outlets to the outside world, to break off its ties and enforce sanctions, especially those relating to flights to and from Afghanistan. These efforts achieved little before 9/11. Kevin Drum thinks that criticism of the deal has become a "mindless feeding frenzy", even though the company that would be operating a number of our ports isn't merely an Arab-owned company (nothing wrong with that) but directly controlled by a govenment that has a history of ties to Bin Laden, Al Qaeda, and the Taliban. Call me xenophobic, but I don't think that handing over part of our port security to people who keep thier old pal Osama on speed dial is a bright idea. Wednesday, February 08, 2006
Kevin Drum apparently believes that Heather Wilson's recent statements distancing herself from illegal wiretaps is evidence that the taps are "becoming a serious wedge issue in the Republican Party". I suspect it has a lot more to do with this. Monday, February 06, 2006
Two recent stories detail apparent attempts by House staff members to polish their bosses' profiles in Wikipedia. Particular attention was paid to the entry on local zero Richard Pombo. Staffers at the U.S. House of Representatives have repeatedly spent work hours tampering with the biographies of Rep. Richard Pombo, R-Tracy, and dozens of other lawmakers in the online encyclopedia Wikipedia, according to Wikipedia's founder. On at least seven occasions between Oct. 5 and Jan. 26, someone using a Capitol Hill computer anonymously logged on to the popular reader-driven Web site and sanitized Pombo's biography. Attributed references that connected Pombo to disgraced lobbyist Jack Abramoff or to fund-raising controversies disappeared from the Web site, which describes itself as the "free encyclopedia that anyone can edit." Other information was added or deleted to present the congressman in a more favorable light, according to a survey of the changes. All of the comments examined by The Daily Review can be traced to office computers belonging to the internal computer network of the U.S. Congress.... Someone else using a congressional computer made changes to the entry on House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi that described the San Francisco Democrat unfavorably. A sentence describing Pelosi as representing her party's liberal wing was altered to say she is part of its "extreme" wing. Another edit stated that she "villifies" the same companies she raises money from. Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales said his widely read Internet resource relies on everybody who uses it to write, edit and monitor the accuracy of its articles. And so it is not surprising, he said, that politicians or their staffers or interns make so many contributions. But he said some congressional workers "vandalized" the encyclopedia by adding libelous statements about their political opponents or anonymously removing unfavorable but verifiable information about the politicians they support.... Wales said he hopes the knowledge that they are being watched by Wikipedia's many readers keeps legislative staffers in check in the future. "It can be perfectly appropriate for people to enter the public dialogue," Wales said. "The real question is, you know, are people behaving in a mature, thoughtful manner?" Aside from the interesting political angles, this seems another indicator that wikis simply can't succeed without using some form of trusted user structure. It's a substantial accomplishment for wikipedia that it has become important enough to be worth freeping, but the ease of doing it shows the weakness of the system. Few quotes you read this year will be as naive as Mr Wales's wishful thinking that "the knowledge that they are being watched by Wikipedia's many readers [will keep] legislative staffers in check in the future". Rather obviously, the lesson taken away from this by the guilty parties will be not, "respect the integrity of Wikipedia", but "next time, use less tracable accounts". Friday, February 03, 2006
We now have an early leader in the Republican race for 2008. William Polley is one of several bloggers to have picked up this recent tidbit from an interview of George Allen: But in Washington, Bernanke] is barely on some people's radar screens. Indeed, here is what Senator George Allen of Virginia, who is considering a bid for the Republican presidential nomination in 2008, said when asked his opinion of the Bernanke nomination. "For what?" Told that Mr. Bernanke was up for the Fed chairman's job, Mr. Allen hedged a little, said he had not been focused on it, and wondered aloud when the hearings would be. Told that the Senate Banking Committee hearings had concluded in November, the senator responded: "You mean I missed them all? I paid no attention to them." This puts Senator Allen in at least a two touchdown lead in the "acting Presidential (Republican standards)" category. Even this early in the game, the lead may be unsurmountable. Senator Allen's VP pick is clear. Since McCain doesn't want the job, he'll undoubtedly go with Lynn Swann. This is in keeping with the standard GOP practice of practicing affirmative action to demonstrate that their opposition to affirmative action isn't racist, Swann comes from a swing state with plenty of electoral votes, and he's one of the few Republicans whose accomplishments Allen is familiar with. Thursday, January 26, 2006
The GOP may focus on distorting recent events, but from time to time they're not averse to a little bamboozlement over historic events, just to keep in practice. David Greenberg notes in a recent article in Slate, "John H. Taylor of the Nixon Library... pledged to make his institution's exhibit about Watergate more accurate, which, when I last saw it, accused Democrats in Congress of planning a coup against Nixon in order to make House Speaker Carl Albert president." Lest you think that's just the Nixon crowd or a historian distorting a fairer assessment, here's current Majority Leader candidate John Boehner on Watergate in his own words: "Essentially, we’re the victim of a process set up by Democrats in 1974 – who were so committed to increasing federal spending that they tried to impeach the sitting President for not spending enough." These excuses for Nixon's criminality, however, are less than impressive. They're too absurd to be convincing as spin, and, while the sheer audacity might once have merited style points, lies this blatant from the GOP nowadays barely raise an eyebrow. Today's pro-Nixon spinners should stay with the classic "they all do it" excuse, used by Nixon himself and recently revived to explain away the contempt for law of another President. |
