Wild Democracy Ride

bush

2006-08-11T12:25:00.000-07:00

2006-08-01T14:09:00.000-07:00

An Inconvenient Truth

2006-05-23T11:42:00.000-07:00

I saw a poster for An Inconvenient Truth the other day and for the first time noticed its clever tagline: “An Inconvenient Truth: A GLOBAL WARNING.” Yes, Al Gore’s global warming documentary, which is set for limited release in Los Angeles and New York on Wednesday, is first and foremost a warning; it’s a warning to us all to heed the signs that have been steadily accumulating for years: glaciers melting, polar bears drowning for lack of ice floes, hurricanes increasing in strength, natural habitats and hatching/feeding cycles being disrupted…all due to a steady perilous rise in global temperatures. In this remarkable film, Al Gore makes the case, with a startling clarity, for something the scientific community has known for years: that the only way to reverse global warming is to change our behavior.

Yes, we are complicit, Gore scolds us, with a gentle fatherly authority we’re not used to from him. Through his use of jaw dropping photos, charts, graphs and props, Gore educates us, he shows us how the cars we drive, the electricity we use and the trees we burn all contribute to an unprecedented level of human-related greenhouse gas emissions (CO2 most prominent among them) into the atmosphere, which leads to the thickening of the outer layer thus trapping heat from the sun inside our atmosphere that otherwise would escape. It’s an education that Gore says it’s a travesty we haven’t gotten sooner. The media has failed us, the current administration has failed us, and, on a personal level, Al Gore feels he has failed us. This film is his way of righting that wrong.

As much as An Inconvenient Truth offers a planetary SOS, it also succeeds, most improbably, as a very personal tale of a man on a journey of self-discovery; it’s the tale of a man whose life experiences, education and work have all led him to the large screen before us, his voice booming from the speakers, adding movie star to his already impressive resume. As directed, elegantly, by Davis Guggenheim, An Inconvenient Truth cuts agilely between Gore’s global warming presentation and biographical snippets of his life, with his own voiceover telling the tale. From his growing up on a farm and only realizing later in life the difference between fun and work to the influential teacher he had in college who inspired his passion for the subject of global warming; from the near loss of his son in a car accident to the aftermath of the 2000 election, An Inconvenient Truth juxtaposes Gore’s joys and tragedies with his urgent global warming message. The effect is an emotional journey that a slide show alone could never achieve.

When Al Gore talks about his son’s accident, he speaks of something dear to him almost slipping through his fingers, much as he fears the earth may. When he speaks of his loss in 2000, he tells of responding to the inevitable question “what do I do next?” with a clearer focus on his mission to spread the word about this imminent climate crisis. And when he speaks of his sister’s death from lung cancer when his father was a tobacco farmer, he speaks of unfathomable regret and of warnings left unheeded, all of which motivate him every day to make sure the same fate does not befall us. Guggenheim fashions an emotionally satisfying dramatic arc for our hero, one that takes him from quiet uncertainty to fierce focus culminating in a hypnotic final credit sequence that takes the extra step and tells us what we can do, actively in our lives, to help reverse the effects of global warming. The film both diagnoses and prescribes, even as it moves and inspires.

Finally, never fear, political partisans, on top of all of this, An Inconvenient Truth is a fiercely political film. Gore gets a few well-deserved jabs in at the Bush administration, including their refusal to ratify the Kyoto Accord, the oil industry hacks they put in charge of energy policy and, of course, Bush’s tragic response (or rather, the lack thereof) to Hurricane Katrina. And while it may come off at times as petty partisan sniping or, perhaps to some, sour grapes, the primary message we’re left with at the end of the film is not anti-Bush, rather it’s quite a positive one. Gore manages throughout the film to make the case for the U.S. as a force of progress in the world. He tells of a nation that has encountered great challenges and has risen to them with strength and moral clarity. He cites freeing the slaves, fighting fascism in Europe, granting women the right to vote, and the civil rights movement and sees the fight against global warming as our next great moral challenge. It is a fight that will be won, he tells us, by the forces of progress that have defined our history, and, by extension, that define our progressive movement whose values he sees as ascendant. It is “unethical,” he says, not to do something now about this crisis. “All it takes,” Gore says, “is political will. And luckily, political will is a renewable resource.”

This, of course, begs the question, is Gore’s political will to run for president renewable as well? Whether or not he will run in 2008 is the unspoken question that hangs over each frame of the film, but you’ll certainly get no clues as to its answer. Gore has other more pressing things on his mind here, namely, saving the world one presentation, and now screening, at a time.

An Inconvenient Truth premieres in Los Angeles on Wednesday, May 24, at the Arclight Cinema in Hollywood and the Laemmle Monica Four-Plex in Santa Monica

2006-05-16T10:12:00.000-07:00

The National Organization for Women Political Action Committee is pleased to announce its endorsement of Democratic candidate Ned Lamont for the United States Senate. The purpose of NOW PAC is to advance women's rights through electoral activity. NOW PAC is the only political action committee that bases its endorsements on a candidate's support of the full range of feminist issues, including (but not limited to):
Support for reproductive rights without restriction
Economic equality for women
Civil rights for all
Constitutional equality for women
Affirmative action
Elimination of violence against women
Our endorsements go to the strongest feminist candidates. We listen to our membership and respond to their requests for action in races in their states. Therefore, pursuant to the request of Connecticut NOW, NOW PAC is endorsing Ned Lamont for the U.S. Senate.
Ned Lamont ardently supports a full range of reproductive choices for women. He certainly understands that reproductive justice includes full access for rape victims to emergency contraception. Ned Lamont recognizes that "civil rights for all" encompasses the right of everyone to marry the person they choose regardless of gender. He acknowledges that support of the continuing war in Iraq continues to decimate our economy and our standing in the world. Finally, Ned Lamont knows that allowing Samuel Alito's Supreme Court confirmation vote to proceed in the Senate has put Roe v. Wade in extreme jeopardy.
The stacking of the courts has emboldened those who wish to turn back all progress in the area of civil rights, privacy rights, and of course reproductive rights. The attack on Roe in South Dakota was predictable and a direct consequence of the confirmation of John Roberts and Samuel Alito to the Supreme Court. The strategy to pack the courts with right-wing judges who are committed to overturning Roe is no secret. Yet, Senator Lieberman is one of seven Democrats who have promised not to filibuster any of President Bush's judicial nominees, except under "extraordinary circumstances." Well if packing the Supreme Court with abortion opponents like John Roberts and Samuel Alito is not an extraordinary circumstance, then we don't know what is.
These are precarious times for women. We cannot be satisfied with a senator who votes for women much of the time, or even most of the time. We need courageous leaders who will protect and advance all of our rights all of the time. The winner of this election will have profound influence on national policy which directly affects women and girls in Connecticut, in the nation and throughout the world. We are confident that we have found principled leadership in Ned Lamont and are proud to endorse his candidacy for U.S. Senate.

An Inconvenient Truth Release

2006-05-04T13:46:00.000-07:00

May 24:

Los Angeles

Hollywood
Arclight

Santa Monica
Monica Fourplex

New York City

Manhattan
Lincoln Square Cinemas
Sunshine Cinema

June 2:

CA

Berkeley
CAL

Irvine
University

Los Angeles
Century City

Mill Valley
Sequoia

Palo Alto
Century Cinearts

Pasadena
Playhouse

San Francisco
Embarcadero

San Jose
Santana Row

Sherman Oaks
Pacific Galleria 16

DC

Washington D.C.
E Street

Georgetown
Georgetown

IL

Chicago
Century Centre

Evanston
CineArts 6

Highland Park
Renaissance Place

MA

Boston
Embassy

Brookline
Coolidge Corner

Cambridge
Harvard Square

MD

Bethesda
Bethesda Row

NJ

Voorhees
Ritz

NY

Brooklyn
BAM Rose

Huntington
Cinema Arts

Kew Gardens
Kew Gardens

Malverne
Malverne

Pleasantville
Jacob Burns

ON

Toronto
Cumberland

PA

Philadelphia
Ritz 5

TX

Dallas
Magnolia

Plano
Angelika Film Center

WA

Seattle
Guild
Pacific Place

June 9:

BC

Vancouver
Tinseltown

AZ

Scottsdale
Camelview 5

Campbell
Camera 7

CA

Laguna Niguel
Rancho Niguel

Oakland
Piedmount

Pleasant Hill
Cinearts Plesnt Hill

Sacramento
Tower Angelika

San Diego
Hillcrest

San Francisco
UA Stonestown

Santa Barbara
Fiesta Five

Santa Cruz
Del Mar

CO

Denver
Esquire

FL

Boca Raton
Mizner

Delray Beach
Delray 18

Ft. Lauderdale
Gateway

Miami
South Beach

North Miami
Intra Costal

South Miami
Sunset

IL

Chicago
Esquire

MD

Baltimore
Charles

MI

Royal Oak
Main Art

MN

Minneapolis
Uptown

MO

Frontenac
Plaza Frontenac

ON

Ottawa
Bytowne

OR

Portland
Fox Tower

QB

Montreal
AMC Forum

TX

Houston
River Oaks

VA

Arlington
Shirlington

Fairfax
Cinema Arts Fairfax

June 16:

CA

Camarillo
Paseo Camarillo

Del Mar
Flower Hill 4

Huntington Beach
Huntington 20

La Jolla
Village

Orange
Stadium 20

Rancho Mirage
The River

San Louis Obispo
Palm

Ventura
Century Downtown

Westlake
Westlake Village

CT

Hartford
Crown City Cinema

FL

Tampa
Sunrise Cinemas

HI

Honolulu
Varsity

IN

Indianapolis
Keystone Art

MB

Edmonton
Princess

MI

Ann Arbor
Michigan

MO

Kansas City
Tivoli Manor Square

NC

Chapel Hill
Chelsea

Durham
Carolina 3

Raleigh
Colony 2

NM

Albuquerque
Century 14

NY

Albany
Spectrum 7

Clarence
Eastern Hills

OH

Cleveland
Cedar Lee

Columbus
Drexel Gateway

Mariemont
Mariemont

PA

Pittsburgh
Manor

TX
Austin
Arbor

UT

Salt Lake City
Broadway 6

WA

Bellevue
Lincoln Sqr

WI

Madison
Westgate

Milwaukee
Oriental

June 23:

AZ

Tucson
Catalina

Tucson
El Con

CO

Boulder
Village 4

KY

Lexington
Kentucky 2

LA

New Orleans
Canal Place

MA

Dennis
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N. Falmouth
Nickelodeon

Oak Bluffs
Island

W. Boylston
W. Boylston

ME

Waterville
Railroad Square

NV

Las Vegas
Suncoast 16

Reno
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OH

Holland
Super Cinema

RI

Providence
Avon Cinema

TN

Memphis
Ridgeway

VA

Richmond
Westhampton 2

VT

Burlington
Roxy

June 30:

AR

Little Rock
Market St

CO

Colorado Springs
Twin Peak

MA

Great Barrington
Triplex Mahawie

NC

Asheville
Fine Arts

NY

Ithaca
Fall Creek

SC

Charleston
Terrace

VA

Norfolk
Naro

Pledge to see An Inconvenient Truth.

Matthews Rips Bush On Imus

2006-03-24T10:42:00.000-08:00

A friend of mine sent me the following e-mail this morning:

Did you hear Chris Matthews on Imus this morning??? He was great!!! He called Bush a liar. Repeatedly.

Now, I don't listen to Imus or watch him on MSNBC. But I was intrigued. Imus holds a lot of credibility with my and my friend's Connecticut Republican parents. He has a reputation for being independent-minded, and his interviews are known for getting honest and revealing responses from his guests. And this was our very own Tweety she was talking about. Could it really be?

So I wondered, where would I find a transcript or audio of the interview? But lo and behold, before I could even search, my friend's lifelong Republican mother (although she has recently abandoned Bush) sent me some choice quotes from the MSNBC website, below. It was hard to decide what to bold, since there's so much good stuff. Matthews is unflinching in his attacks...well, attacks isn't really the right word; it's more like Matthews is unflinching in his description of reality, a reality we here at kos have been complaining about for years. What's remarkable about Matthews saying these things on Imus is that this is the sort of forum wherein conventional wisdom is cemented. Fellow Kossacks, behold the new conventional wisdom:

Imus speaks to MSNBC's Chris Matthews about the decision to go to war in Iraq:

MSNBC's Chris Matthews: "I think the president made a big mistake this week, and maybe I'm the only one that caught it, but when he came out and said he never said that we went to Iraq because of what happened on 9/11, that Saddam was never involved in 9/11, that whole mentality, the whole culture, the country music, everything, was saying this was payback. We are getting them in Iraq because of what they did to us on 9/11, and now they come out and say I never claimed that. Well you know it's in the actual language of when he said to congress, I'm now going to pick you up on that authorization to go to war, but we are going to war tomorrow, this is in 2003 in March, we are going to war tomorrow and the reason we are going is because we are going to get the countries attacked us on 9/11 we are going to get them. He clearly said all along. The Darryl Worley song remember how you felt, and you know all that stuff, the Vice President saying that Saddam was involved in 9/11 again and again. To come out now and say I never said this was payback is B.S."

Imus: "Didn't they actually say, because we were talking about that as well, because the way they left it out... didn't he actually say that they harbored terrorists, and as I pointed out the way that people pay attention to the news, which is not as much as you and I do, it was easy for Americans to infer that he meant... and by the way they did these polls, as you well know, in which the majority of the American people actually thought that the people who flew the airplanes into the World Trade Center, the Pentagon and then the field in Pennsylvania actually came from Iraq, so while they didn't specifically say that they said that they harbored terrorists and the implication was... well you are right, but did he actually say that?"

Chris Matthews: "He said in the statement he gave to Congress when he said ok boys we are going to war tomorrow morning, in that statement he said I'm operating under the authorization that allows me to go after organizations or countries that attacked us on 9/11. Many times he said we can't distinguish between the people who attacked us on 9/11, we can't separate the two. The vice president was very clear, continually talking about coordination between the Iraqi intelligence and Muhammad Atta, who was the chief hijacker, it's right there in the tapes, and then Cheney comes out and denies it even though it's right on tape. Remember Gloria Borger interviewed him, I'm not sure if she was CBS at the time, but she interviewed him and he directly lied about it, and said that he did not say that. A number of times we have showed the tape and when he actually said exactly what he was denying on tape, we got the tape of what he was denying."

[...]

Imus: "I forgot who said this, it could have been Tom Friedman or, and I always thought that after September 11th, the administration wanted, maybe they always wanted to go to war with Iraq or whatever, but they wanted to demonstrate to the Muslim community and the Muslim world that we were not going to take that and that we were going to strike back at somebody and they picked what they thought was going to be the easiest target, they thought as that moron at the CIA said that it was a slam dunk. They went in there and instead of being greeted as liberators as the Vice President told Tim Russert a week before this thing started, they got in there and the thing blew up on him and they have been there three years trying to get out."

Chris Matthews: "Well I am just going to stick to this point that the president led us in there with the background music of American culture. Everybody was led to believe that we were getting payback, we were avenging what happened on 9/11 and that we are going to get them. Vice President Cheney said we are going to attack terrorism at its base. Over and over the language was, this is where it came from, in fact most recently the President suggested that it was always the hot pursuit, like a New York police chase, we chased them back into their country. We pursued the terrorists back to Iraq and it's all nonsense. The reason there are terrorists in Iraq today like Zarqawi is we created the opening by blowing the country apart. From the beginning it's been not true. Now you can't prove motive and you can't prove somebody lies, but from the beginning everything about how they've got WMD's, they are a threat to us, they are going to bomb us with a nuclear weapon, this country is going to be an easy liberate, it's going to be a cake walk. As Cheney said as recently as ten months ago the insurgents are in their last throws. Everything that is said is not true. And right to the end here, here we are now and it's not a civil war and when Allawi the prime Minster is saying it is a civil war and here is the president quoting his own people that it's not a civil war. I mean the denial has been continuous. So you really can't count on the administration to tell you what is going on. That is just the fact. You've got to check it out. By the way, the president said this week that he wants the whole truth about what is going on in Iraq, the whole truth and that the media isn't telling the whole story. I'll tell you what we are not telling. We are not showing pictures of the twenty five hundred bodies coming back because they won't let us show the pictures. They don't want the whole truth out and that's the fact."

Pretty stunning to think that these words came out of Matthews's mouth. He's always been right on the war but he's never before to my knowledge spoken this critically about the administration, although his growing contempt has been perceptible on Hardball recently.

This whole exchange reminds me of one of the more moving plotlines of the remarkable documentary Why We Fight. If you haven't seen it yet, please go out and see it. It is a searing indictment of the U.S.'s obsession with war since the creation of the military industrial complex post-WWII. In fact this term was coined by Dwight D. Eisenhower in his farewell address to the nation in 1960 in which he warned us, with creepily prescient detail, about the merging of war and industry:

This conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry is new in the American experience. The total influence -- economic, political, even spiritual -- is felt in every city, every State house, every office of the Federal government. We recognize the imperative need for this development. Yet we must not fail to comprehend its grave implications. Our toil, resources and livelihood are all involved; so is the very structure of our society.
In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.

We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together.

What elevates the film above just another history lesson (albeit one with a decidedly anti-war bent) is the inclusion of several smaller stories, all of which, in some way, reflect the premise of the film, which is that Eisenhower's warnings have indeed come to pass. The most moving of these is that of Wilton Sekzer, Retired officer, NYPD, whose son died on 9/11. All he wanted to do was retaliate against the killers of his son. So when George Bush sold the war in Iraq as part of the war on terror, as a direct response to 9/11, Mr. Sekzer emailed all branches of the armed forces to ask if his son's name could be written on a bomb to be dropped on Iraq. The Pentagon complied and Mr. Sekzer was informed of the date that the bomb was dropped. Imagine Mr. Sekzer's surprise, then, when Bush later acknowledged that there was no connection between Iraq and 9/11 and that he had never said there was. Mr. Sekzer's disillusion is potent, the loss of trust in his commander in chief still painfully visible in his eyes. But his recognition, although he is unable to express his hurt and regret -- you see it and feel it in every word, that he leant his son's name to a lie, is the most personally heartwrenching scene in the film.

No Plan For Iraq, eh?

2006-03-20T09:47:00.000-08:00

Chris Matthews is a favorite punching bag of ours and for good reason. But you look at conversations like the one between Republican strategist Ed Rogers and Democratic strategist Hillary Rosen that took place on 3/14 Hardball, and it's clear, Matthews isn't the only problem we have.

MATTHEWS: The Democrats, what do they say we should do in Iraq?

HILLARY ROSEN, DEMOCRATIC STRATEGIST: Well the Democrats want the president to stop sugar coating this and saying over and over again that we‘re headed for victory.

ROGERS: But we are. We are headed for victory. Are we headed for defeat?

ROSEN: We have no plan. We‘re headed for prolonged trillion dollar spending, multiple casualties, and potential civil unrest. That‘s what we‘re readied for.

ROGERS: The Democrats don‘t have a plan.

Umm okaaay. So, the Democrats' plan for Iraq is that the we want the president to stop saying we‘re headed for victory? Way to walk right into the "Democrats are for defeat" talking point. As the conversation went on, it didn't get much better.

MATTHEWS: In other words, don‘t offer a strategy, just say we need new leadership. Admit that, will you?

ROSEN: Seventy percent of the American people do not know why we‘re there and think it was a mistake. To suggest somehow that is the Democrats‘ fault is just hogwash.

MATTHEWS: In terms of policy right now, where do the Democrats stand?

ROSEN: I think Democrats are on the range of Iraq. Some are still trying to be—you‘ve got a Joe Lieberman who is saying the president is right—
...
ROSEN: It doesn‘t have a policy because it doesn‘t need to have a policy.

ROGERS: It‘s a lucky thing.

ROSEN: What‘s the point of a Democratic policy. We are Americans.

ROGERS: The Democrats having a position on war and peace, what‘s the point?

Sigh. This conversation is dispiriting for so many reasons. Not only does Rosen cite Lieberman as a leader within the Democratic caucus on Iraq, but come on, even if it were true that the Democrats don't have an Iraq policy, is saying "we don't need one" or "what's the point?" really productive? Talk about asking for defeat.

It's true that the ones whose onus it is to have a policy are those who are actually waging the war, but we learned the danger of not having a coherent Iraq policy in 2004. If we want voters to choose Democrats, those running really do need to spell out what differentiates us from the Republicans on this issue. Remember, it is this issue that is cited as respondents' most pressing concern in poll after poll after poll.

Perhaps the most maddening thing about Hillary Rosen's performance last week is that the Democrats actually have been advancing a policy, consistently and repeatedly on talk show after talk show for weeks now. But why is no one noticing? And why doesn't the leadership make sure that every surrogate on every show repeats OUR talking points, not allow Republicans (and the media) to portray us as a party adrift without any productive policies other than to criticize the policies of the president?

So, what is that policy, you ask? It's simple: "Memo to Iraqis: shape up or we ship out."

Listen to what the Democrats have been saying:

This Week, 2/26:

Senator Carl Levin:

"If within the next six to eight weeks, you do not create a government of national unity, if you continue to squabble, if you continue to fiddle while Baghdad burns, then we are going to have to reassess our presence," Senator Carl Levin, the top Democrat on the powerful Senate Armed Services Committee, said. Asked, in an interview with ABC News television's "This Week" program, if this position represented a warning that the US military could be withdrawn from Iraq, Levin replied: "Exactly."

Meet The Press, 3/12:

SENATOR JOE BIDEN: If they don't have a constitution in place by this summer that is viewed as a uniting document, where everybody signs on to it, it's game over. Now, how you pull them out, where you pull them to, whether you have them over the horizon, whether you kept a containment policy that, that, that secures the region in a different way, that's a whole different question. But status quo, the way it is now, is over.

This Week With George Stephanopolous, 3/19 (self-transcribed):

SENATOR JACK REED: [Redeploying our troops] needs to be done as quickly as possible. We do that by not only encouraging but insisting that the Iraqis stand up. The president's slogan, and he's good at slogans, not good at strategy, but good at slogans, is that we'll stand down when they stand up is wrong. We're standing down, they have to stand up much faster than they're doing it right now. And then we can redeploy within the country and then hopefully begin to deploy tour troops out of the region.

GS: Picking up on what Senator Hagel has said, two of your Dem colleagues, Sen Levin and Sen Biden have said that basically this political solution has about six weeks and if they can't come together in the next six weeks, we have to reassess our entire presence. Do you agree with that?
REED: I absolutely do agree with that...I think he shouldn't be timid. I think he should send Secretary Rice over there to convene these people to insist that this is the highest level priority for the people of Iraw and also the United States...The only leverage we have is our troop presence. And I think we have to make it clear to the Iraqi political leaders that if they're not able or willing to come together with a political solution that recognizes the differences and pulls together different factions that our presence can't be definite there...We're not gonna be hostage to their feuds to their factions that we will in fact at some point determine that our presence there is not helping at all, it's disabling, not enabling. I think we have to be very clear to them and I think we have to do it publicly. The president has been very reluctant to send a strong public signal that our longterm presence there is a function of the political steps the Iraqis have taken. But that's precisely what we have to do.

And finally, on Tuesday's Hardball, a week after Hillary Rosen's poor performance, my Senator, Dianne Feinstein, impressed the pants off of Matthews with a "nuanced" Iraq policy. And yes, Feinstein continued to advance the same policy:

Hardball, 3/21

You need to say to Iraqis, you need to affect a reconciliation between Shia and Sunni. Absent that there is no united Iraq and absent that the United States is not going to stay there.

So, you may ask, does this really constitute a solid policy that Democrats can win on? I think so for a couple of reasons. First of all, it is in direct opposition to the Republicans. They have been extremely reluctant to talk about using our troop presence as leverage in an ultimatum to make the Iraqis step up. In fact, in two of the above interviews, George Allen and Chuck Hagel openly disagreed with the idea. And it is counter to Bush's own "stay the course" strategery, even as it smartly co-opts Bush's "we'll stand down when Iraqis stand up" meme.

The second reason it could work well for Democrats is that it represents a sort of tough love approach that allows us to act the disciplinarian father role, if you will, and simultaneously paint the Republicans as the more forgiving "mommie" figure, a complete reversal of the current conventional wisdom about how the two parties are perceived on this issue. In fact, this is the very strategy that Tom Friedman assigned to Dick Cheney in his March 10 column precisely because of Cheney's "mean streak" and is, as the title of his column reads: "Mr. Nasty, Brutish and Short-Tempered." Friedman urges:

...it's time for some dramatic new thinking and acting. To put it in a nutshell: It is not time for the U.S. to leave Iraq, but it is time for the U.S. to start threatening to leave Iraq.
...
We need to bring together all the newly elected Iraqi leaders for a national reconciliation conference -- outside Baghdad. We should lock them in a room and not let them out until they either produce a national unity government, so Americans will want to stay in Iraq, or fail to produce that government, which would signal that it's time to warm up the bus.

If the Democrats are going to advance this policy, as I think they should, it's about time they got credit for doing so. There needs to be some message discipline and some better coaching of our talk show surrogates. I for one am sick and tired of hearing Ed Rogers, time and time again, get away with saying things such as he did once again on last night's Hardball:

ROGERS: The Democrats are quick to go there because they can’t go anywhere else. They don’t have a plan themselves.

They keep asking what the Democratic plan is. It's about time we gave it to them!

Democratic Agenda via Barack Obama

2006-03-12T22:44:00.000-08:00

On Face The Nation today, Bob Schieffer advanced the now familiar (and, sadly, hard to dispute) narrative that Democrats have no message. Bring it on, Bob, especially if you're asking Democratic Party star Senator Barack Obama to explain the message for you. His response broke down as follows:

Energy independence. "The notion that we're sending billions of dollars to countries like Iran that are hostile towards us makes no sense...an energy policy that switches to alternative fuels and bio-deisel..."

Healthcare. "Having a serious message that says by '08 we 're gonna have every child in America insured and by 2012 we've got every American who's working has accesible health insurance."

Education. "Being serious about ensuring that our young people are competitive around issues of math and science."

Security. "Being serious about the ports, chemical plants, rail, that the 9/11 Commission says we have not adequately protected since 9/11 and has to be part of our national security apparatus."

Yep, four things that took less than a minute and a half to communicate. It's short, it's sweet but is it enough? Is this the Democrats' answer to "less government, lower taxes, and a strong defense"?

Energy independence is an issue that the Democrats would have had to themselves prior to Bush's State of the Union. It's not too late; certainly they have more credibility on the issue than someone who leads a party that doesn't seem to believe humans have had an impact on global warming. But fact is, Bush has used his position to promote alternative fuels and throw money at it. How are Democrats going to distinguish themselves?

Healthcare we do have to ourselves. The challenge? To make sure we don't sound like/are painted as socialist and to avoid (as much as possible) comparisons to "Hillary-care." Seems to me the people are coming around on this issue and Republicans may find themselves flat footed.

Education. This is taking on one of the President's pet issues and even jumping on his "competitiveness" agenda. While it's tricky, Democrats may be onto something here. They may benefit from a sort of "what have you done for me lately" mood toward Bush. No Child Left Behind seems unpopular on many levels.

Security. The Dubai port deal, if nothing else, brought port security to the fore. This is one aspect of homeland security that Democrats have been advocating for and losing for years. This is a winner because it takes on the president where he is supposedly strong but where there is now a chink in his armor.

The upshot? Get used to seeing this phrase in print: "Barack Obama, 2008 Vice Presidential candidate." On second thought, just get used to saying "Vice President Obama."

Fox News Asks The Right Question

2006-03-11T12:56:00.000-08:00

In a story on Fox News Live's Studio B today, Fox asked the important question: "the economy's rebounding, so why am I so broke?" To discuss this question, Fox trotted out Dakila Divina, Managing Editor of that hard hitting publication Parade Magazine, whose annual "What People Earn" issue comes out tomorrow. You know Parade, it's that flimsy little trifle you throw out with your Sunday paper. His conclusion: "What we found in our survey is that people on the high end of the scale...the disparity, is growing bigger and bigger, especially when it comes to celebrity salaries."

Well, you knew there had to be some agenda for Fox to actually be asking a question of substance. Yes, the entire purpose of this piece was to advance the right wing "Hollywood is out of touch with average Americans" talking point. Some choice excerpts:

"American hero vs. American Idol." Kelly Clarkson makes $3million + and Marine Sgt. Jimmy Moronta Espital makes just $22,000 a year. "It raises the question, who's the real American hero here."

"Average Housewife vs. The Desperate Houswife." Teri Hatcher makes $1.25 million and New Jersey housewife Carla Kenney makes $0. "The average housewife, very important job."

The piece also touched on the salaries of sports stars but never once talked about corporate CEO salaries.

While Fox's take on this story is not surprising, I was a bit surprised to discover that the Parade article that accompanies the story actually reads like a Democrat's stump speech:

Despite a flourishing economy American workers are less confident about their financial security than they were two years ago. The U.S. has enjoyed four straight years of economic growth, but most families have lost ground: In 2005, more than 80% of American workers saw their inflation-adjusted wages fall for the second year in a row.

While the economy has been growing since 2001, all the benefits of that growth have gone into corporate profits, says Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody’s Economy.com, a Pennsylvania-based consultant firm: “Corporate profits’ share of the national income is at a 60-year high—and that has come directly out of wages and salaries, which are at a record low.” And wages of the top 10% of earners—people making more than $90,000 a year—have risen much faster than everyone else’s. The average worker’s pay stayed almost flat at $27,000 from 1990 to 2004, one study finds.
...
Notwithstanding the low jobless rate, there’s a lot of uneasiness among workers, notes John Challenger, chief executive of Challenger, Gray & Christmas, a Chicago-based outplacement firm. “Many people have been falling behind, especially in the middle class,” he says. In 2005, for the first time since the Great Depression, Americans borrowed more than they earned. “Wages haven’t kept up with inflation, and many employers have pushed the cost of health care back to employees in the form of higher premiums and co-pays,” notes Challenger. “Added to that, there’s the higher cost of driving to and from work and heating a home.” (emphasis mine.)
It's nice to see that Parade actually attempts to answer the question that Fox News posed but never truly tackled. This is one issue of Parade we should not throw out.

Making California a National Model For Energy Independence

2006-02-22T14:59:00.000-08:00

After memorably accusing us of being a nation addicted to oil in his State of the Union, President Bush is now out on the stump putting his money where his mouth is, as it were, promoting alternative energy initiatives and sounding downright progressive. His proposals include expanding research into smaller, longer-lasting batteries for electric-gas hybrid cars, development of clean electric power sources, and proposals to speed the development of biofuels.

"Our nation is on the threshold of new energy technology that I think will startle the American people," Bush said. "We're on the edge of some amazing breakthroughs — breakthroughs all aimed at enhancing our national security and our economic security and the quality of life of the folks who live here in the United States."
He's right and it should come as no surprise that California is leading the way.

As covered by NY Times's Nicholas Kristoff, a nonprofit based in Palo Alto, CA called CalCars has converted a regular Toyota Prius hybrid into a plug-in hybrid (PHEV) that can get more than 100 miles to the gallon. And that's using technology that exists right now.

Felix Kramer, founder of CalCars, outlines its benefits:
It's like having a second small fuel tank that you always use first -- only you fill this tank at home with electricity at an equivalent cost of under $1/gallon. Another way of thinking about this: at $3 for a gallon of gas, driving a non-hybrid car costs 8-20 cents/mile (depending on MPG). With a PHEV, all-electric local travel and communting can drop to 2-4 cents/mile.
Also

Recharging is not required, but if you do so often, chances are you'll need to go to a gas station less than once a month.
Electric energy is cheaper than gas, cleaner than gas, and domestic.
Lifetime service costs will be lower for a vehicle that is mainly electric.
Fleets are interested in a vehicle with stored energy that saves them thousands of dollars for towed generators to use where grid power is unavailable.
Blackout-wary Californians welcome ready access to a car that could be hooked up via an extension cord to provide emergency backup power for a few home appliances.

CalCars is also working with local governments, businesses, cities, organizations, and community groups around the country to inform, inspire and incentivize the automobile industry to invest in this technology, and to ensure that there will be a market for these cars once they do so.

30 miles north, San Francisco has led the nation in recycling, currently diverting two thirds of its waste away from landfills (with the goal of no new landfill waste by 2020.) A recent study showed that 4% of all garbage from SF residences is animal waste. This waste not only adds unneccessarily to landfills but also contributes to the contamination of groundwater. So the city has asked Norcal, its garbage company, to start a pilot program to recycle this waste. Not only will the program reduce the amount of garbage in landfills, but it will turn the waste into a source of energy as well. Over the next few months, starting out just in one popular dog park...

The droppings will be tossed into a contraption called a methane digester, which is basically a tank in which bacteria feed on feces for weeks to create methane gas.
The methane could then be piped directly to a gas stove, heater, turbine or anything else powered by natural gas. It can also be used to generate electricity.

While hundreds of these $1 million devices are used on farms throughout Europe (and even 9 at California dairy farms), this is the first attempt at an urban application of the digesters to turn pet waste into energy.

Just a couple examples of Californian entrepreneurs and agencies working toward fulfilling the dream of making California a national model for energy independence.

City Council of Arcata, CA Urges Impeachment

2006-01-06T18:27:00.000-08:00

Last night the City Council of Arcata passed a resolution urging impeachment proceedings against Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld.
The resolution lists a series of allegedly impeachable offenses, including “the crime of misleading the American people and Congress into waging an unnecessary and brutal war in Iraq,” “the criminal failure of the president to respond adequately to the Hurricane Katrina disaster,” “torturing human beings in violation of the Geneva Convention” and “ordering the secret surveillance of American citizens.”

Councilman Dave Meserve and Councilwoman Harmony Groves penned the resolution that passed 3-2 Wednesday, joined by Councilman Paul Pitino, with Mayor Michael Machi and Councilman Mark Wheetley dissenting.

”All elected officials swear to uphold and defend the Constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic,” Meserve said. “This obligates us to act when the president violates the Constitution. We hope that other cities will join us in demanding the impeachment of Bush and Cheney.”

They've been leading the impeachment fight for months now and clearly hope that it will be taken up by a member of California's Congressional delegation. That's not terribly likely, especially seeing as the backlash against Clinton's impeachment arguably was responsible for off-year Congressional gains for Democrats, sky-high approval ratings for Clinton as he left office and the election of his wife to the Senate. But Barbara Boxer deftly floated the I-word recently after John Dean (of Watergate fame) said that Bush was the first president to admit to committing impeachable offense when he confessed to having authorized the NSA to spy on US citizens.
Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) sent a letter on Monday to four unidentified presidential scholars, asking them whether they think Bush's authorization of warrantless domestic spying amounted to an impeachable offense.

Boxer wrote that her interest was sparked after former Nixon White House counsel John Dean said the surveillance order was an impeachable offence.

"I take very seriously Mr. Dean's comments, as I view him to be an expert on presidential abuse of power. I am expecting a full airing of this matter by the Senate in the very near future," she wrote.
I'm not deluding myself that this guy's gonna get impeached; hell, I'm not even convinced it's the right thing for Democrats to pursue right now. But it can only help to subtly poke Bush with the impeachment stick whenever we can.

Congresswoman Jane Harman Trying To Redeem Herself

2006-01-06T17:27:00.000-08:00

On December 21, Congresswoman Jane Harman (CA-36) said the following:

As the Ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, I have been briefed since 2003 on a highly classified NSA foreign collection program that targeted Al Qaeda. I believe the program is essential to US national security and that its disclosure has damaged critical intelligence capabilities.

This was unfortunate since it was mere days after The New York Times originally broke the story that Bush had authorized the NSA to spy on US citizens and thus made Democratic attempts at framing the issue with a unified voice difficult. The message should have been that yes, certain members of Congress were briefed but there was absolutely no oversight and that this was just another example of executive overreach.

So, yesterday Representative Harman wrote a letter (oooh, a letter) to President Bush saying that the fact that only 8 members of Congress have been briefed on the NSA program violates the National Security Act of 1947, which allows such limited briefings only in the case of "covert action." Her problem seems to be that since the program is no longer covert, Bush is now required by law to have full Congressional briefings.

Does this strike anyone else as sort of nitpicky? Could a Democrat please approach this issue from a position of strength and not as an apparently impotent whiner? Even Senator Rockefeller's hand-written letter to Cheney putting his reservations about the program on the record (since legally he could share it with no one) was spun by the media as the actions of an eccentric.

Democrats should be spouting the results of a new report by the Congressional Research Service, an independent research arm of Congress, from every mountaintop. From The New York Times:

President Bush's rationale for authorizing eavesdropping on American citizens without warrants rests on questionable legal ground and "may represent an exercise of presidential power at its lowest ebb," according to a formal Congressional analysis released today.

Yes, that's right, it was released on a Friday afternoon -- classic. Further:

The analysis...is the first formal assessment of a question that has gripped Washington for the last three weeks: Did President Bush act within the law when he ordered the National Security Agency to eavesdrop on Americans?

While the Congressional report reached no bottom-line conclusions on whether the program is legal or not, it concluded that the legal rationale appears somewhat dubious. The legal rationale "does not seem to be as well-grounded" as the Bush administration's lawyers have suggested, and Congress did not appear to have intended to authorize warrantless wiretaps when it gave President Bush the authority to wage war against Al Qaeda in the days after the Sept. 11 attacks, the report concluded.

Representative Harman will be on Fox News Sunday this weekend. Hopefully she will not let this report get buried as surely the administration hopes it will be.

He May Have Left Congress But He Just Won't Go Away

2006-01-06T16:24:00.000-08:00

Wow, every time you think it can't get worse for Congressional Republicans (or former Congressional Republicans as the case may be), it does. Take disgraced ex-California Congressman Randy "Duke" Cunningham, who resigned in November after pleading guilty to taking $2.4 million in bribes. Time Magazine is reporting that he wore a wire in meetings with some of his colleagues at the behest of federal investigators as part of his plea. It's not yet clear who will be swept up in this net, just that he wore a wire "at some point during the short interval between the moment he began cooperating with the feds and the announcement of his guilty plea on Nov. 28." Glad to see Duke's not out of the news quite yet. Here's hoping to see a few other of his fellow culture of corruption cohorts shed a few tears of contrition themselves.

Vote on Nov 8

2005-11-04T14:45:00.000-08:00

On Tuesday, Nov. 8, California voters have a chance to repent for voting for Schwarzenegger by offering him defeats on his ballot initiatives in a special election that he called for at a cost of 10's of millions of our dollars. He's staked his term and his reputation on this election, so how sweet will it be if the initiatives he's traveled the state advocating go down in a blaze of remorseful voter glory. Polls are showing weak support for his measures. Help make their defeat a reality by voting on Tuesday.

Below is a quick rundown of the 8 initiatives on the ballot on Tuesday and the position of the California Democratic Party on each:

Proposition 73 - Waiting Period and Parental Notification Before Termination of Minor's Pregnancy - Initiative Constitutional Amendment. VOTE NO

Proposition 74 - Public School Teachers/Waiting Period for Permanent Status/Dismissal - Initiative Statute. VOTE NO

Proposition 75 - Public Employee Union Dues/Restrictions on Political Contributions/Employee Consent Requirement - Initiative Statute VOTE NO

Proposition 76 - State Spending and School Funding Limits - Initiative Constitutional Amendment VOTE NO

Proposition 77 - Redistricting - Initiative Constitutional Amendment VOTE NO

Proposition 78 - Discounts on Prescription Drugs - Initiative Statute VOTE NO

Proposition 79 - Prescription Drug Discounts/State-Negotiated Rebates - Initiative Statute VOTE YES

Proposition 80 - Electric Service Providers/Regulation - Initiative Statute VOTE YES

FYI:

Senator Barbara Boxer plans to vote as follows:

NO on 73, 74, 75, 76, 77 & 78
YES on 79

An Alliance For A Better California urges votes as follows:

NO on 74, 75, 76, 77 & 78
YES on 79 & 80

Schwarzenegger's pet initiatives are 74, 75, 76 & 77. Polls are currently showing that as he's gone on the stump for them, their support has declined. These measures represent Schwarzenegger's way of legislating without having to go through the pesky Democratic-led legislature. In the past, his star-power has been enough to sell the people on whatever he wanted. That no longer appears to be the case.

Especially precarious (and perhaps most important of all of the measures) is Prop 73. Until very recently, a majority seemed inclined to support it. Either way, it's going to be tight...all the more reason that every one of us needs to vote on Tuesday.

Don't know your voting location?

Check HERE for LA County:

Check HERE for SF:

Here's a more thorough breakdown of the initiatives on Tuesday's ballot followed by the progressive perspective on each culled from a couple of sources (what, you expected fair and balanced?):

Proposition 73 - Termination of Minor's Pregnancy. Waiting Period and Parental Notification

- Amends California Constitution, prohibiting abortion for unemancipated minor until 48 hours after physician notifies minor's parent/legal guardian, except in medical emergency or with parental waiver.
- Defines abortion as causing "death of the unborn child, a child conceived but not yet born."
- Permits minor to obtain court order waiving notice based on clear, convincing evidence of minor's maturity or best interests.
- Mandates various reporting requirements.
- Authorizes monetary damages against physicians for violation.
- Requires minor's consent to abortion, with certain exceptions.
- Permits judicial relief if minor's consent coerced.

Proposition 73 is just the latest attempt by right-wing conservatives to take away a woman's right to choose. This dangerous measure would jeopardize the health of our teenagers, when we should instead be focusing our efforts on preventing teen pregnancy. Prop. 73 unwisely tries to legislate family communication and unrealistically expects teenagers to navigate through a cumbersome and confusing judicial process. As the San Francisco Chronicle said in their editorial opposing Prop. 73, "The way to reduce abortion is not a law that requires frightened young women to either face a judge or the wrath of their parents. It's about increasing communication -- about sex, about choices, about consequences -- that prevents an accidental pregnancy in the first place."

Proposition 74 - Public School Teachers/Waiting Period for Permanent Status/Dismissal

- Increases length of time required before a teacher may become a permanent employee from two complete consecutive school years to five complete consecutive school years.
- Measure applies to teachers whose probationary period commenced during or after the 2003-2004 fiscal year.
- Modifies the process by which school boards can dismiss a permanent teaching employee who receives two consecutive unsatisfactory performance evaluations.

This measure would do nothing to improve public education or deal with the real problems facing our schools. It unfairly attempts to blame teachers for the problems in our public schools, ignoring the realities of underfunding, overcrowding, and the lack of materials and resources needed for effective teaching and learning. If this measure passes, new teachers would serve a 5-year probationary period rather than the current two years, and would lose the right to even have a fair hearing on their dismissal for a full 5 years. Current law already allows for firing teachers who are not performing in the classroom, no matter how long they've been on the job.

Proposition 75 - Public Employee Union Dues/Restrictions on Political Contributions/Employee Consent Requirement

- Prohibits the use by public employee labor organizations of public employee dues or fees for political contributions except with the prior consent of individual public employees each year on a specified written form.
- Restriction does not apply to dues or fees collected for charitable organizations, health care insurance, or other purposes directly benefitting the public employee.
- Requires public employee labor organizations to maintain and submit records to Fair Political Practices Commission concerning individual public employees' and organizations' political contributions.
- These records are not subject to public disclosure.

Proposition 75 is a deceptive measure put on the ballot by the big corporations and out of state billionaires who support Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger's destructive agenda for California. It unfairly targets teachers, nurses, firefighters, police and other public employees with restrictions that don't apply to other groups or corporations, which regularly spend shareholder money on politics without permission. Prop. 75 is designed to reduce our ability to respond when politicians would harm education, health care and public safety, effectively clearing the opposition to the Governor's education and health care cuts.

Proposition 76 - State Spending and School Funding Limits

- Limits state spending to prior year's level plus three previous years' average revenue growth.
- Changes state minimum school funding requirements (Proposition 98); eliminates repayment requirement when minimum funding suspended.
- Excludes appropriations above the minimum from schools' funding base.
- Directs excess General Fund revenues, currently directed to schools/tax relief, to budget reserve, specified construction, debt repayment.
- Permits Governor, under specified circumstances, to reduce appropriations of Governor's choosing, including employee compensation/state contracts.
- Continues prior year appropriations if state budget delayed.
- Prohibits state special funds borrowing.
- Requires payment of local government mandates.

This measure would devastate our public schools and other vital services, cutting school funding by over $4 billion every year - $600 per student, leading to more overcrowded classrooms, teacher layoffs, and fewer textbooks and classroom materials. Our schools lost two billion dollars when Governor Schwarzenegger broke his promise to repay the money he took from education, and if this initiative passes, the Governor will never have to repay that money to our schools. It also overturns the voter-approved Proposition 98, eliminating the minimum funding guarantee for education. It also cuts funding for local government -- cutting police and firefighters, as well as local health care services that protect children and the elderly. This initiative hurts our most vulnerable populations including the sick, the elderly and the young.

Proposition 77 - Redistricting

Amends process for redistricting California's Senate, Assembly, Congressional and Board of Equalization districts.
-Requires panel of three retired judges, selected by legislative leaders, to adopt new redistricting plan if measure passes and after each national census.
-Panel must consider legislative, public comments/hold public hearings.
-Redistricting plan effective when adopted by panel and filed with Secretary of State; governs next statewide primary/general elections even if voters reject plan.
-If voters reject redistricting plan, process repeats, but officials elected under rejected plan serve full terms.
- Allows 45 days to seek judicial review of adopted redistricting plan.

Prop 77 was put on the ballot by politicians who want to change the Constitution's redistricting rules and give themselves more power. They want to hand over redistricting to three unelected and unaccountable retired judges. But redistricting California, a diverse state of 37 million people, is too big and too important a job for just three unaccountable retired judges. Giving one set of politicians more power over another is no reason to change the Constitution. Say NO to the Redistricting Power Grab.

Proposition 78 - Discounts on Prescription Drugs

- Establishes discount prescription drug program, overseen by California Department of Health Services.
- Enables certain low- and moderate-income California residents to purchase prescription drugs at reduced prices.
- Authorizes Department: to contract with participating pharmacies to sell prescription drugs at agreed-upon discounts negotiated in advance; to negotiate rebate agreements with participating drug manufacturers.
- Imposes $15 annual application fee.
- Creates state fund for deposit of drug manufacturers' rebate payments.
- Requires Department's prompt determination of residents' eligibility, based on listed qualifications.
- Permits outreach programs to increase public awareness.
- Allows program to be terminated under specified conditions.

The big drug companies are going to spend millions trying to fool voters and keep them from passing the real prescription drug relief contained in the Alliance-backed Prop. 79. This phony measure says only that drug companies can enter a "voluntary" program to reduce prices.but why will they? They have no real incentive to lower the sky-high cost of prescription drugs. A "No" vote on this measure is necessary to provide consumers with real relief from soaring drug prices, because whichever measure gets the highest number of votes becomes law.

Proposition 79 - Prescription Drug Discounts/State-Negotiated Rebates

- Provides for prescription drug discounts to Californians who qualify based on income-related standards, to be funded through rebates from participating drug manufacturers negotiated by California Department of Health Services.
- Prohibits new Medi-Cal contracts with manufacturers not providing the Medicaid best price to this program, except for drugs without therapeutic equivalent.
- Rebates must be deposited in State Treasury fund, used only to reimburse pharmacies for discounts and to offset costs of administration.
- At least 95% of rebates must go to fund discounts.
- Establishes oversight board. Makes prescription drug profiteering, as described, unlawful.

Sponsored by consumer, senior, and health organizations, Proposition 79 would provide deeper, enforceable discounts to twice as many Californians than the drug industry-backed Prop. 78. Proposition 79 would use the purchasing power of the state of California to negotiate the best price for up to ten million Californians, who now pay more than anybody else in the world for prescription drugs. Prop. 79 saves taxpayers money by reducing prescription drug costs by 50% or more, and ensuring that more people can afford needed medications now, rather than get more expensive care later. Proposition 79 is supported by Consumers Union, Health Access California, Breast Cancer Action, Congress of California Seniors, the League of Women Voters of California, and many other organizations.

Proposition 80 - Electric Service Providers/Regulation

- Subjects electric service providers, as defined, to control and regulation by California Public Utilities Commission.
- Imposes restrictions on electricity customers' ability to switch from private utilities to other electric providers.
- Provides that registration by electric service providers with Commission constitutes providers' consent to regulation.
- Requires all retail electric sellers, instead of just private utilities, to increase renewable energy resource procurement by at least 1% each year, with 20% of retail sales procured from renewable energy by 2010, instead of current requirement of 2017.
- Imposes duties on Commission, Legislature and electrical providers.

The Electric Consumer Protection Initiative will create a more reliable, affordable and green energy future for California. Since California's energy was deregulated in 1996, consumers have faced rolling blackouts, rising rates, market manipulation, and continued dependence on polluter power plants. California is at a critical junction. While big business interests are calling for more experiments in deregulation and special rights for large customers, consumers across the state are standing up for their right to affordable rates and reliable and clean energy.

--------------------

For a more complete picture of the ballot initiatives, here's a link to the Secretary of State's website, which offers a side by side comparison of both sides' arguments.

For polling, check out the well-respected Field Poll.

And now, as Jon Stewart would say, for your moment of zen:

"By a 55% to 36% margin California voters are disinclined to re-elect Arnold Schwarzenegger to another term as Governor next year. The poll also finds that Schwarzenegger's call for a special election is hurting his re-election chances, with a larger proportion of voters saying his calling the election makes them more likely to oppose (46%) than support him (29%) next year. The main reasons voters give for feeling this way relates to its cost and to the view that the Governor's reasons for calling the election have more to do with his desire to strengthen his own political position than to bring about needed reforms to state government."
- Field Poll, 11/3/05

Revitalized "West Wing"

2005-10-25T16:03:00.000-07:00

I'm personally loving the fact that NBC has moved The West Wing to Sundays. I have nothing else on at that time and with Bravo airing last season at the same time, I'm able to get a double dose every week. Art is imitating life big time with the election campaign repeating some plot points from last year's election and Jed Bartlett's White House plagued by a leak scandal.

Post-9/11, my TV taste tended away from the ripped from the headlines hyper-realism of The West Wing and 24 more toward the faux realism of The Amazing Race (which back in the day conflicted with The West Wing), The Apprentice and any other reality show I could get my hands on. As much as I enjoyed the show and admire (read: worship) Aaron Sorkin as a writer, I just couldn't bring myself to watch it week after week. Now, after years of real life inhabiting stranger than fiction territory, I think I'm veering back toward TV not as escapism so much as wish fulfillment and The West Wing allows me to play make believe.

President Bartlett has served his two terms and the election to succeed him is in its final months. In fact, it's August and the Democrat, Congressman Santos (Jimmy Smits), a military man who has trouble connecting with voters, lacks a clear message and has a credibility gap on security issues, is down by 9 points. Sound familiar? Yes, The West Wing is taking Democrats all over the country down a dark path, reliving last year's election. But there is a glimmer of hope this time around. First of all, Janeane Garofalo is on board as a Democratic campaign consultant who demands that Santos fight back hard against attacks from his Republican opponent (played by Alan Alda.) And when Santos makes the apparent mis-step of talking about his faith in an answer to a question about Intelligent Design, it turns out to be a public relations coup that puts the Republican on the defensive. One gets the sense that this revisionist history serves not merely as entertainment, but as prescription as well -- a sort of "how to beat Republicans" guide for Democrats in the future. This is Hollywood after all. But that only works if the Democrat does in fact win. So I'll be rooting for Santos -- for a little bit of 2004 redemption as well as for some 2008 inspiration. It's a lot to ask of one TV show, but like I said, The West Wing this season for me is all about wish fulfillment.

The West Wing's White House leak investigation plot line is even more timely and in some ways offers a more complex dilemma for Democrats. On one hand, it serves as a sort of primer for what must be going on behind the doors of the real White House: subpoenas flying, representation being secured by high level officials, and the day-to-day political functions of the White House suffering for it. On another level, by dramatizing it among a sympathetic cast of characters, The West Wing sort of humanizes the situation, makes it accessible and de-demonizes the crime. But only to a point. In real life, some in The White House have been accused of leaking the name of an undercover CIA operative as political retribution against the operative's husband, a political enemy; in fake West Wing White House, Toby Ziegler confesses to having leaked information about a top secret military space shuttle as a brave act of defiance...to save lives. While the president does not support Toby's action and fires him in dramatic fashion, leave it to The West Wing to make a Democrat leaking top secret information to the press a moral, even laudable act. Wish fulfillment, remember?

Read my full review at Hollywood Momentum starting tomorrow (and every Wednesday.)

Hilarious Today Show "Gaffe"

2005-10-20T16:14:00.000-07:00

I don't know how it could have been a typo, but when Katie Couric was interviewing Bill O'Reilly this morning, the Chyron at the bottom of the screen read: "NO SPINE ZONE."

Ah, that's good stuff.

See the vidcap here.

Media Finally Swallows The Red Pill

2005-10-20T15:45:00.000-07:00

As my boss is out this week, I've been watching a lot of cable news and it's nice to see the so-called liberal media acting like their usually inaccurate moniker. I've often said, if the media were liberal, wouldn't I be happy with it? For the most part, I've been anything but. But ever since Katrina, the media has stepped up and they've really not relented in their criticism of the Bush administration. It seems now that there's a lot more overlap between the mainstream media and liberal blogs than ever before, as well as between the MM and The Daily Show, as they finally wake up to the abusrdity we've been seeing ever since the Supreme Court stopped the counting of ballots in Florida.

Case in point: CNN's Lou Dobbs. First of all, not only is he a self-proclaimed conservative but he had decidedly non-partisan David Gergen on to discuss the White House's problems of late.

Gergen talking point of choice: "this administration's come off its rails"

He said it literally 3 times in a minute.

CNN graphic of choice: "WHITE HOUSE MESS"

Abandoning Bush

2005-10-20T14:29:00.000-07:00

One of the pleasures of recent months, as Bush has made mis-step after mis-step, most notably his disastrous nomination of Harriet Miers as Supreme Court justice, has been the conservative on conservative sniping. For the first time ever I saw Brit Hume and Bill Kristol at each others' throats on Fox News and on Real Time with Bill Maher such putative conservatives as Andrew Sullivan and Ann Coulter ripped Bush apart. After years of nodding and smiling, coddling and excusing, more and more conservatives are through; they feel abandoned, so they're abandoning him.

Slate's Timothy Noah is keeping abandonment watch and brings us choice quotes from Margaret Thatcher and Ari Fleischer:

Thatcher:
And as a scientist I know you need facts, evidence and proof—and then you check, recheck and check again. The fact was that there were no facts, there was no evidence, and there was no proof. As a politician the most serious decision you can take is to commit your armed services to war from which they may not return.
Fleischer:
[Miers] was always pleasant, always polite, always being tough as the paper kept moving...Is that a skill you need to be a Supreme Court justice? No, I don't think so.
Sidney Blumenthal's column in today's Salon has an interesting thesis: that conservatives are railing against Bush to "hide the utter failure of their ideology":
For his second term, Bush took his narrow victory as a mandate to govern from the hard right. At last, he would begin the privatization of Social Security, rolling back the signature program of the New Deal. But he stumbled upon a dirty little secret of conservatism: Members of the public support conservative presidents so long as they leave the liberal programs that benefit them alone. The more Bush barnstormed the country to promote his Social Security scheme, the more the public became aware of it and opposed him.

Baffled and confounded, he plowed ahead, even as the Iraq war eroded his support. Then Hurricane Katrina blew the top off his administration's culture of cronyism. Meanwhile, the special prosecutor investigating the disclosure of a covert CIA operative's identity by senior administration officials has moved steadily and silently like a submarine toward his targets.

The anti-Bush rhetoric among conservatives has seriously ramped up post-Miers, her nomination being widely seen as a last straw. Conservatives stayed silent in the face of unprecedented spending and a growing deficit under Bush hoping their devotion would pay off in the end; they were counting on this nomination to be their coming out party. Instead they got Miers, an unproven jurist with an uncertain judicial philosophy. They've seen other conservatives such as Sandra Day O'Connor ascend to the court only to turn against them with so-called liberal votes. Blumenthal continues:

Bush's nomination of his White House legal counsel and former personal lawyer, Harriet Miers, for the Supreme Court was the hair trigger for a conservative revolt. Miers is demonstrably the least qualified nominee for the high court since Clarence Thomas. She has never been a judge or prominent public official and has no background in constitutional law. She appears on the White House Web site discussing how Bush plays horseshoes with his dog: "The president throws the horseshoes to Barney, and Barney runs after them."
...
Conservatives see her nomination as a rebuke to the cadres of ideologues in the Federalist Society groomed for Republican upward mobility; right-wing pundits have outdone each other in denouncing her as a crony. Frum has launched a petition drive to force Bush to withdraw her nomination. "She once told me that he president was the most brilliant man she had ever met," the Bush iconographer sneered. Yet Bush nominated Miers in place of professional ideologues because he had fallen from grace as a consequence of his stubborn adherence to conservative policies; Bush calculated that the Senate would approve her but not a right-wing judge with a well-delineated record. Had Bush's conservative policies succeeded, he might have been able to name a purebred ideologue.
...
Despite Bush's faithful implementation of conservative ideas, disloyal ideologues blame him personally to deflect attention from the failure of their ideas as they position themselves for whatever or whoever is next. Like Trotskyists for whom communism always remained an unfulfilled ideal, conservatives now claim that conservatism has not been tried, and that Bush is a "betrayer" and "impostor." In his attempt to avoid the nemesis of his father, he is reliving it.

The White House Iraq Group

2005-10-19T12:07:00.000-07:00

The thread between the Plame leak case and the administration's exaggerated case for war is a connection that is rarely made in the media.

First of all there's the claim that the administration leaked Plame's name in retaliation against Plame's husband, Ambassador Joe Wilson, who was outspoken in debunking the infamous 16 words that made it in to Bush's 2003 State of The Union address:
The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought
significant quantities of uranium from Africa.
Wilson of course was sent to Africa, apparently at the suggestion of his wife, to check on whether Iraq was seeking uranium from Niger. His conclusion: it wasn't.

Some claim that the 16 words referred to another country in Africa altogether and the statement was essentially factually true since it was qualified by the words "British government learned." But no matter the resolution of this debate, the fact is that these words, which were later retracted, made their way into the State of the Union as part of the concerted effort by a little known top level group called The White House Iraq Group to make the case for war. It is no accident that the Plame leak investigation is focusing on its members.

It was called the White House Iraq Group and its job was to make the case that Saddam Hussein had nuclear and biochemical weapons.

So determined was the ring of top officials to win its argument that it morphed into a virtual hit squad that took aim at critics who questioned its claims, sources told the Daily News. One of those critics was ex-Ambassador Joseph Wilson, who debunked a key claim in a speech by President Bush that Iraq sought nuclear materials in Africa. His punishment was the media outing of his wife, CIA spy Valerie Plame, an affair that became a "side show" for the White House Iraq Group, the sources said.

The Plame leak is now the subject of a criminal probe that has seen presidential political guru Karl Rove and Vice President Cheney's chief of staff, Lewis (Scooter) Libby, hauled before a grand jury.

Both men were members of the group, also known as WHIG.
And who else was in the group?

Besides Rove and Libby, the group included senior White House aides Karen Hughes, Mary Matalin, James Wilkinson, Nicholas Calio, Condoleezza Rice and Stephen Hadley. WHIG also was doing more than just public relations, said a second former intel officer.

"They were funneling information to [New York Times reporter] Judy Miller. Judy was a charter member," the source said.

The same Judy Miller who went to jail for 85 days for not cooperating with Patrick Fitzgerald's Plame leak investigation. The same Judy Miller who published all those articles in The New York Times that spoke confidently of aluminum tubes and WMDs in Iraq that led The Times to finally issue a Mea Culpa in May 2004, which cited such Miller classics as September '02's U.S. Says Hussein Intensifies Quest for A-Bomb Parts and White House Lists Iraq Steps to Build Banned Weapons, January '03's Defectors Bolster U.S. Case Against Iraq, Officials Say and April '03's Illicit Arms Kept Till Eve of War, an Iraqi Scientist Is Said to Assert.

Frank Rich elaborates on the WHIG in his column on Sunday:

Very little has been written about the White House Iraq Group, or WHIG. Its inception in August 2002, seven months before the invasion of Iraq, was never announced. Only much later would a newspaper article or two mention it in passing, reporting that it had been set up by Andrew Card, the White House chief of staff. Its eight members included Mr. Rove, Mr. Libby, Condoleezza Rice and the pinmeisters Karen Hughes and Mary Matalin. Its mission: to market a war in Iraq.
Of course, the official Bush history would have us believe that in August 2002 no decision had yet been made on that war. Dates bracketing the formation of WHIG tell us otherwise. On July 23, 2002 - a week or two before WHIG first convened in earnest - a British official told his peers, as recorded in the now famous Downing Street memo, that the Bush administration was ensuring that "the intelligence and facts" about Iraq's W.M.D.'s "were being fixed around the policy" of going to war. And on Sept. 6, 2002 - just a few weeks after WHIG first convened - Mr. Card alluded to his group's existence by telling Elisabeth Bumiller of The New York Times that there was a plan afoot to sell a war against Saddam Hussein: "From a marketing point of view, you don't introduce new products in August."

The official introduction of that product began just two days later. On the Sunday talk shows of Sept. 8, Ms. Rice warned that "we don't want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud," and Mr. Cheney, who had already started the nuclear doomsday drumbeat in three August speeches, described Saddam as "actively and aggressively seeking to acquire nuclear weapons." The vice president cited as evidence a front-page article, later debunked, about supposedly nefarious aluminum tubes co-written by Judy Miller in that morning's Times. The national security journalist James Bamford, in "A Pretext for War," writes that the article was all too perfectly timed to facilitate "exactly the sort of propaganda coup that the White House Iraq Group had been set up to stage-manage."

The administration's doomsday imagery was ratcheted up from that day on. As Barton Gellman and Walter Pincus of The Washington Post would determine in the first account of WHIG a full year later, the administration's "escalation of nuclear rhetoric" could be traced to the group's formation. Along with mushroom clouds, uranium was another favored image, the Post report noted, "because anyone could see its connection to an atomic bomb." It appeared in a Bush radio address the weekend after the Rice-Cheney Sunday show blitz and would reach its apotheosis with the infamously fictional 16 words about "uranium from Africa" in Mr. Bush's January 2003 State of the Union address on the eve of war.

Bush Reportedly Knew Rove Leaked Plame

2005-10-19T11:31:00.000-07:00

The NY Daily News has a pretty explosive article on the subject of Bush's knowledge of the leak:
An angry President Bush rebuked chief political guru Karl Rove two years ago for his role in the Valerie Plame affair, sources told the Daily News.

"He made his displeasure known to Karl," a presidential counselor told The News. "He made his life miserable about this."
...
"Karl is fighting for his life," the official added, "but anything he did was done to help George W. Bush. The President knows that and appreciates that."

Other sources confirmed, however, that Bush was initially furious with Rove in 2003 when his deputy chief of staff conceded he had talked to the press about the Plame leak.
If true, this could prove to be a problem for Bush since he said the following publicly:

Listen, I know of nobody -- I don't know of anybody in my administration who leaked classified information. If somebody did leak classified information, I'd like to know it, and we'll take the appropriate action. (Sept. '03)
And...

"I want to know the truth," the president continued. "Leaks of classified information are bad things."

He added that he did not know of "anybody in my administration who leaked classified information." (Feb. '04)

And check out the clasic Daily Press Briefing where Scotty tries to have it all ways with the media who seems to once again/still be actually doing...what is it?...their job:

QUESTION: Scott, is it true that the President --
SCOTT McCLELLAN: Welcome back.
QUESTION: Thanks. Is it true that the President slapped Karl Rove upside the head a couple of years ago over the CIA leak?
SCOTT McCLELLAN: Are you referring to, what, a New York Daily News report? Two things: One, we're not commenting on an ongoing investigation; two, and I would challenge the overall accuracy of that news account.
QUESTION: That's a comment.
QUESTION: Which part of it?
QUESTION: Yes, that is.
QUESTION: Which facts --
SCOTT McCLELLAN: No, I'm just saying -- no, I'm just trying to help you all.
QUESTION: So what facts are you challenging?
SCOTT McCLELLAN: Again, I'm not going to comment on an ongoing investigation.
QUESTION: You can't say you're challenging the facts and then not say which ones you're challenging.
SCOTT McCLELLAN: Yes, I can. I just did. (Laughter.)
...
QUESTION: Scott, let me come back to -- so you say you're challenging the accuracy, but you won't tell us why. Why would it be irresponsible for us to report that?
SCOTT McCLELLAN: Report what?
QUESTION: What you said --
SCOTT McCLELLAN: It's up to you what you want to report. I'm just trying to --
QUESTION: Well, if you want us to say it's inaccurate, you need to give us a reason why, or it wouldn't be responsible to report it.
SCOTT McCLELLAN: Well, there's an ongoing investigation, and as you know, our policy is not to comment on it. So that's where we are.
QUESTION: You just did.
SCOTT McCLELLAN: Go ahead.
QUESTION: Based on your personal knowledge, based on your opinion, based on your frustration with the story -- what caused you to say that?
SCOTT McCLELLAN: No, I mean, I read the story and I didn't view it as an accurate story. QUESTION: Why not?
SCOTT McCLELLAN: Again, I'm not going to go any further than that. There's an ongoing investigation. This is bringing up matters related to an ongoing investigation.
QUESTION: After you read the story, Scott, did you check with either the two people mentioned, the President or Rove, to ask them? Is that what you base --
SCOTT McCLELLAN: I don't have any further comment, Peter.
QUESTION: Well, is that what you base your guidance on, or is it just -- you know, is it just you're feeling that this couldn't have happened?
SCOTT McCLELLAN: I stand by what I just said and I'm going to leave it at that.

The Conspiracy Theorist Within

2005-10-14T13:23:00.000-07:00

Is it just me or does this administration make you want to forsake your inherent optimism, rationality and general trust in the triumph of people's better natures and become a full blown conspiracy theorist? I mean, part of me thinks, hell, they'd do anything to maintain power. I still can't buy in to the whole "the levies were bombed" thing, or "Bush and Blair conspired to bomb the London Underground" or "the plane that flew into the Pentagon was actually a missile" but Keith Olbermann puts together quite a case for a somewhat less outrageous theory -- is it really just a coincidence that 14 times in the last three years, a terror alert, a warning, an arrest...something to remind us of the ongoing terror threat (code for "Bush is a strong leader") has come directly on the heels of negative press for the president.

Olbermann sets the scene:
Last Thursday on Countdown, I referred to the latest terror threat - the reported bomb plot against the New York City subway system - in terms of its timing. President Bush’s speech about the war on terror had come earlier the same day, as had the breaking news of the possible indictment of Karl Rove in the CIA leak investigation.

I suggested that in the last three years there had been about 13 similar coincidences - a political downturn for the administration, followed by a “terror event” - a change in alert status, an arrest, a warning.
He then goes on to list all thirteen, the date of the bad news, then the date of the subsequent terror alert. Go ahead, take a trip down memory lane:

December 17th, 2003. 9/11 Commission Co-Chair Thomas Kean says the attacks were preventable. The next day, a Federal Appeals Court says the government cannot detain suspected radiation-bomber Jose Padilla indefinitely without charges, and the chief U.S. Weapons inspector in Iraq, Dr. David Kay, who has previously announced he has found no Weapons of Mass Destruction in Iraq, announces he will resign his post.

December 21st, 2003. Three days later, just before Christmas, Homeland Security again raises the threat level to Orange, claiming “credible intelligence” of further plots to crash airliners into U.S. cities. Subsequently, six international flights into this country are cancelled after some passenger names purportedly produce matches on government no-fly lists. The French later identify those matched names: one belongs to an insurance salesman from Wales, another to an elderly Chinese woman, a third to a five-year old boy.

...

July 29th, 2004. At their party convention in Boston, the Democrats formally nominate John Kerry as their candidate for President. As in the wake of any convention, the Democrats dominate the media attention over the ensuing weekend.

Monday, August 1st, 2004. The Department of Homeland Security raises the alert status for financial centers in New York, New Jersey, and Washington to orange. The evidence supporting the warning - reconnaissance data, left in a home in Iraq, later proves to be roughly four years old and largely out-of-date.

...
June 26th, 2005. A Gallup poll suggests that 61 percent of the American public believes the President does not have a plan in Iraq. On the 28th, Mr. Bush speaks to the nation from Fort Bragg: "We fight today because terrorists want to attack our country and kill our citizens, and Iraq is where they are making their stand. So we'll fight them there, we'll fight them across the world, and we will stay in the fight until the fight is won."

June 29th 2005. The next day, another private pilot veers into restricted airspace, the Capitol is again evacuated, and this time, so is the President.

Olbermann is quite measured in his analysis, reminding us of the Logical Falacy: "Just because Event 'A' occurs, and then Event 'B' occurs, that does not automatically mean that Event 'A' caused Event 'B.' But in the same breath he recalls Tom Ridge's statements of earlier this year:
On May 10th of this year, after his resignation, former Secretary of Homeland Security Ridge looked back on the terror alert level changes, issued on his watch.

Mr. Ridge said: “More often than not we were the least inclined to raise it. Sometimes we disagreed with the intelligence assessment. Sometimes we thought even if the intelligence was good, you don’t necessarily put the country on (alert)… there were times when some people were really aggressive about raising it, and we said ‘for that?’”
And Olbermann, probably the press's most reliable member of the reality-based community, leaves us with these words of wisdom:
But, if merely a reasonable case can be made that any of these juxtapositions of events are more than just coincidences, it underscores the need for questions to be asked in this country - questions about what is prudence, and what is fear-mongering; questions about which is the threat of death by terror, and which is the terror of threat.

...Make That 4 Polls

2005-10-13T17:38:00.000-07:00

OK, first thing's first. The new Pew Poll out today has Bush's approval rating down to 38% (hell, the Bushies are nostalgic for the good ole days of 40%!), the lowest of his presidency.

But check out this other statistic from the poll:
About four-in-ten (41%) say that, in the long run, Bush will be an unsuccessful president, up from 27% in January and the highest percentage expressing that view since he took office. About a quarter (26%) believe Bush will be successful down 10 points since January while 30% say it is too early to tell.
Dang. That is harsh. I almost feel bad for the poor guy.

Almost.

A Bush Event Was Staged?! Shocker!

2005-10-13T16:33:00.000-07:00

This is hilarious. The media is up in arms about this tele-conference call Bush had with troops in Iraq. The fact that it was staged is somehow news. It's been on MSNBC.com all day, now it's on Yahoo News main page and NBC Nightly News led with it tonight. Don't get me wrong, I'm glad the media is finally treating the administration with the skepticism they deserve; it's rewarding to see their finally wanting in on the reality-based community. But news? Come on, if it hadn't been staged, that would be news.

I'm reminded of Bob Herbert's column in which he marveled at the front page New York Times article about liberals feeling dismayed at the realization that perhaps all that stuff Bush promised after Katrina would never be delivered.

The article noted that some liberal activists had hoped that the extraordinary suffering caused by Hurricane Katrina might lead to a genuine effort by the administration and Congress to address such important poverty-related matters as health care, housing, employment and race...I assumed that most people watching the president realized that he was deeply embedded in a Karl Rove moment. The speech was a carefully scripted, meticulously staged performance designed primarily to halt the widespread criticism of Mr. Bush's failure to respond more quickly to the tragedy.

As the president spoke, it never occurred to me that anyone would buy into the notion that Mr. Bush and his supporters would actually do something about poverty and racism.

And the fact that Scott McClellan tried to deny it was staged in the press briefing? Again, Scotty's obfuscations are news only to the mainstream media:
Q: Scott, why did the administration feel it was necessary to coach the soldiers that the President talked to this morning in Iraq?
MR. McCLELLAN: I'm sorry, I don't know what you're suggesting...I'm sorry, are you suggesting that what our troops were saying was not sincere, or what they said was not their own thoughts?
...
Q: So you're saying this was not a staged conversation for PR purposes?
MR. McCLELLAN: This is an event where there's coordination that goes on and we work closely with the Department of Defense. They worked to pull together some troops for the President to visit with and highlight important topics that are going on right now on the ground in Iraq.

This is how it went down, according to The AP:
It was billed as a conversation with U.S. troops, but the questions President Bush asked on a teleconference call Thursday were choreographed to match his goals for the war in Iraq and Saturday's vote on a new Iraqi constitution.

"This is an important time," Allison Barber, deputy assistant defense secretary, said, coaching the soldiers before Bush arrived. "The president is looking forward to having just a conversation with you."

Barber said the president was interested in three topics: the overall security situation in Iraq, security preparations for the weekend vote and efforts to train Iraqi troops.
...
A brief rehearsal ensued.

"OK, so let's just walk through this," Barber said. "Captain Kennedy, you answer the first question and you hand the mike to whom?"

"Captain Smith," Kennedy said.

"Captain. Smith? You take the mike and you hand it to whom?" she asked.

"Captain Kennedy," the soldier replied.

And so it went.

"If the question comes up about partnering — how often do we train with the Iraqi military — who does he go to?" Barber asked.

"That's going to go to Captain Pratt," one of the soldiers said.

"And then if we're going to talk a little bit about the folks in Tikrit — the hometown — and how they're handling the political process, who are we going to give that to?" she asked.

Manipulating this event to advance an agenda without disclosing the programmed nature of it is called propaganda, Mr. President. You should know that word by now, you've engaged in enough of it. Remember this?

Armstrong Williams, a conservative commentator, had been touting the No Child Left Behind education reform law in newspaper columns and television shows. Favorable television stories about administration health initiatives carried sign-offs like "In Washington, I'm Karen Ryan reporting." In Spanish it was "Alberto Garcia." And a syndicated columnist, Maggie Gallagher, repeatedly praised President Bush's Healthy Marriage initiative. It turned out that all these favorable - and sometimes fawning - news stories and commentaries, ostensibly legitimate and independent, had been written and paid for by government agencies or by hired public relations firms.
Guess what?
The Government Accountability Office declared that many of these government expenditures were illegal.
What a shocker.

Bush Below 40% in 3 Polls

2005-10-13T09:45:00.000-07:00

Remember when Bush under 50% was a big deal?

NBC/WSJ - 10/12/05 (mid-September)

Approve 39% (40%)
Disapprove 54% (55%)

Right Track 28%

AP/Ipsos Poll - 10/8/05

Approve 39%

Right Track 28%
Wrong Track 66%

CBS News - 10/6/05 (9/2/05)

Approve 37% (41%)
Disapprove 58%

Right Track 26% (31%)
Wrong Track 69% (63%)

One could be an outlier, two could flukes, but three is a bona fide trend. Now, he is still above 40% in other polls, including Rasmussen and Zogby (44% and 43% respectively, slightly up from prior recent lows) but the overall message is that virtually everyone but his core base is losing confidence in him at best, abandoning him at worst.

So why does the approval rating of a lame duck president matter? Because there are midterm elections next year, of course, and the popularity of the president trickles down.

From the WSJ/NBC poll:
With the 2006 congressional elections a year away, 48 percent of respondents said they preferred a Democratic-controlled Congress, compared with 39 percent who said they preferred Republican leadership, NBC said.

The 9-point difference was the largest margin between the parties in the 11 years the NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll had been tracking the question, NBC said.

As a result of the waning popularity of the party as a whole, the GOP is having a difficult time attracting top tier candidates to challenge sitting Democratic Senators. Recruitment is one of the top reasons the Republicans have done so well in the last few cycles and it is seriously lacking this year.
Prominent Republicans in recent days passed up races in North Dakota and West Virginia, both GOP-leaning states with potentially vulnerable Democratic incumbents. Earlier, Republican recruiters on Capitol Hill and at the White House failed to lure their first choices to run in Florida, Michigan, and Vermont.
These setbacks have prompted grumbling. Some Republican operatives, including some who work closely with the White House, privately point to what they regard as a lackluster performance by Senator Elizabeth Dole of North Carolina as chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, the group that heads fund-raising and candidate recruitment for GOP senators.
But some strategists more sympathetic to Dole point the finger right back. With an unpopular war in Iraq, ethical controversies shadowing top Republicans in the House and Senate, and President George W. Bush getting the lowest approval ratings of his presidency, the waters look less inviting to politicians deciding whether to plunge into an election bid next year.

Gore Not Planning To Run in 08

2005-10-12T13:47:00.000-07:00

I've held out a bit of hope for a Gore run in 2008, now that in "recovery" as he calls his current situation, he's become the candidate we always wanted him to be when he was actually in politics. In a speech in Sweden, he was still coy about a possible run:
I have absolutely no plans and no expectations of ever being a candidate again.
OK, so maybe not coy at all. So I suppose I should take him at his word and give up the dream of redemption for 2000. But it's hard. Every day that goes by, I marvel at what a different country we would be living in had Florida gone the other way. Gore has some ideas about it as well:
We would not have invaded a country that didn't attack us...We would not have taken money from the working families and given it to the most wealthy families...We would not be trying to control and intimidate the news media. We would not be routinely torturing people...We would be a different country.
I think that pretty much says it all.

Democrats Stepping Up? It's About Time

2005-10-11T12:20:00.000-07:00

On Meet The Press last weekend the chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, Congressman Rahm Emanuel, began to outline the new Democratic agenda, but I'd say it got lost among his "umm"s, "uhhh"s and general incoherent stuttering (can someone replace him, please?)

According to Roll Call, it appears that there will be a formal (and hopefully competent) roll out of the new Democratic Party message this fall, earlier than the originally planned Spring '06 release. One wonders why it's even taken them this long; I get that it's in preparation for the November '06 elections, but the extreme vacuum of leadership in Washington would seem to have created the perfect opportunity for Democrats to step forward and rise to the occasion. Instead, they've been content to hang back and let the Republicans implode while successfully promoting the frame that Democrats are "the party of no" with "no new ideas." I can only hope that long lasting damage has not been done and that the strategy will be a winning one but they'll have to prove it if they want any more money out of me. In the meantime, I am cautiously encouraged by the main points of the agenda, front paged at dailyKos:

Among the proposals are: "real security" for America through stronger investments in U.S. armed forces and benchmarks for determining when to bring troops home from Iraq; affordable health insurance for all Americans; energy independence in 10 years; an economic package that includes an increase in the minimum wage and budget restrictions to end deficit spending; and universal college education through scholarships and grants as well as funding for the No Child Left Behind act.

Democrats will also promise to return ethical standards to Washington through bipartisan ethics oversight and tighter lobbying restrictions, increase assistance to Katrina disaster victims through Medicaid and housing vouchers, save Social Security from privatization and tighten pension laws.

Looks Like A Duck To Me

2005-10-07T10:08:00.000-07:00

The case against Tom DeLay is not insignificant and one sees why an impartial jury, despite the motivations of a prosecutor, which may or may not be political in nature, would issue the indictment.

Former House majority leader Tom DeLay (R-Tex.) met for at least 30 minutes with the top fundraiser of his Texas political action committee on Oct. 2, 2002, the same day that the Republican National Committee in Washington set in motion a series of financial transactions at the heart of the money-laundering and conspiracy case against DeLay.

During the meeting at his Capitol office, DeLay conferred with James W. Ellis, the head of his principal fundraising committee in Washington and his chief fundraiser in Texas. Ellis had earlier given the Republican National Committee a check for $190,000 drawn mostly from corporate contributions. The same day as the meeting, the RNC ordered $190,000 worth of checks sent to seven Republican legislative candidates in Texas.

Turns out DeLay's chief fundraiser, also indicted last week (umm, and this week), allegedly had a more direct role:

In the indictment, the grand jury accused DeLay, Ellis and John Colyandro -- then the director of Texans for a Republican Majority, an ARMPAC offshoot -- of agreeing with the Republican National Committee to conduct the offense of money laundering and set forth a sequence of key events that began on Sept. 11, 2002. It alleges that Ellis "did request and propose" on that day that an arm of the RNC make the payments to Texas Republicans once it had received the check from Texas.

The next day, according to the indictment, Ellis delivered the check to the Republican National State Elections Committee, an arm of the RNC, and also provided it "with a document that contained the names of several candidates." He also "requested and proposed" how much each candidate should receive, the indictment said.

Doesn't mean that DeLay is going down, of course.

To prove that DeLay participated in money laundering or in a conspiracy to conduct it -- the two allegations in the felony indictment brought against DeLay on Monday morning -- Earle will have to prove two things, according to lawyers who are closely following the case: The transactions involving the $190,000 were illegal, and DeLay played some critical role, by approving them or by helping to carry them out.

Harriet Miers Via The Late Night Crew

2005-10-06T09:16:00.000-07:00

"Big news this morning at the White House, President Bush defended his nominee, Harriet Miers, calling her 'plenty bright.' Not only that, but then the president said Miers has 'real purdy hair.' Then he got on a mule and headed south."
--Conan O'Brien

"She's never been a judge before...never served on the bench. This is part of President Bush's strategy of surrounding himself with people who are also in over their heads."
--Jay Leno

"Welcome to the 'Late Show,' ladies and gentlemen. It's like the Supreme Court, anyone can get in here."
--David Letterman

"As you might expect some people are criticizing the pick, especially conservative Republicans who worry that Harriet Miers is too liberal. Other critics say she's not a good pick because she hasn't been a judge before. Uh, had Paula Abdul been a judge before? Nobody had a problem when they picked her."
--Jimmy Kimmel

DeLay Indicted AGAIN

2005-10-03T16:00:00.000-07:00

New Grand Jury, new charge, this time "Money Laundering" as opposed to "Conspiracy" but it's for the same crime as his first indictment:
Both indictments accuse DeLay and two political associates of conspiring to get around a state ban on corporate campaign contributions by funneling the money through the DeLay-founded Texans for a Republican Majority Political Action Committee to the Republican National Committee in Washington. The RNC then sent back like amounts to distribute to Texas candidates in 2002, the indictment alleges.

The new charge was the first action from a new Travis County grand jury, which started their term Monday...The new indictment comes hours after DeLay's attorneys filed a motion to dismiss the case.

Fox News's little bit of editorializing at the end of their report was classic. I'm paraphrasing, but it was something to the effect of:

This second indictment comes on the heels of the defense's request to dismiss the case. It could signal the prosecutor's attempt to solidify his case.

Eating Their Own, Part deux

2005-10-03T15:19:00.000-07:00

Conservative sites seem to be coming around to Miers, especially after a release by the White House filled with what even The American Spectator calls "White House Spin."

But what made me smile was a post earlier in the day on the site calling Dick Cheney "wrong":

"Well, we've never backed off from a fight with this Congress or any other Congress. ..." This was the Vice President's response to Rush Limbaugh in discussing the perception that perhaps the Miers nomination was to avoid a fight with Senate Democrats.

The problem is, the Vice President is just wrong. The White House promised a veto of the transporation bill, then punted. The White House had an opportunity to take a more market-oriented Katrina recovery approach and turned it into the New New Deal. The White House was told by more than a dozen Republican Senators that they would fight hard for a Scalia-type conservative Supreme Court nominee this time around, and instead they get someone who looks like an also-ran in a Norma Desmond lookalike contest.

What we've witnessed here today is the dismantling of conservatives' willingness to defend BushCo at any cost. Personally, I'm having a ball watching it all unfold.

Bennett Resigns

2005-10-03T12:55:00.000-07:00

In the wake of his controversial comments on his radio show, Bennett has resigned as employee, Chairman and Board Member of K12, Inc, saying:
I am in the midst of a political battle based on a coordinated campaign willfully distorting my views, my record, and my statements. Given the controversy surrounding there marks I made on my radio show, I am stepping down from my positions at K12,so that neither the mission of the company, nor its children, are affected,distracted, or harmed in any way.
There's that trademark conservative accountability again. Mr. Bennett, you have no one but yourself to blame for the predicament you now find yourself in. But if your political opponents have taken this opportunity to milk it for all it's worth, then they are beginning to learn from the tactics of the best: the right wing smear machine. If you guys can dish it, you'd better learn how to take it.

Democrats On Board With Miers

2005-10-03T10:30:00.000-07:00

Harry Reid gave the following glowing endorsement of Harriet Miers:
“I like Harriet Miers. As White House Counsel, she has worked with me in a courteous and professional manner. I am also impressed with the fact that she was a trailblazer for women as managing partner of a major Dallas law firm and as the first woman president of the Texas Bar Association. “In my view, the Supreme Court would benefit from the addition of a justice who has real experience as a practicing lawyer. The current justices have all been chosen from the lower federal courts. A nominee with relevant non-judicial experience would bring a different and useful perspective to the Court. “I look forward to the Judiciary Committee process which will help the American people learn more about Harriet Miers, and help the Senate determine whether she deserves a lifetime seat on the Supreme Court.”

So presumably Democrats are on board. Is this a victory? That's how the liberal blogs are spinning it. And Rush Limbaugh seems to agree; he called this nomination "a sign of weakness."

That alone is a victory.

Eating Their Own

2005-10-03T10:11:00.000-07:00

George Bush has nominated his trusted advisor and White House Counsel since last year, Harriet Miers, to replace Sandra Day O'Connor on the Supreme Court. She has no judicial experience but boatloads of loyalty to Bush, which to this president is an adequate substitute for experience. But interestingly, she has also given to Democrats in the past, specifically in 1988, when she gave to the DNC, Al Gore for President, and the re-election of Lloyd Bentsen to the Senate. And one prominent conservative blog doesn't like it one bit. Finally, they're turning on him:
It appears, for what it is worth, that George W. Bush was the ultimate stealth nominee. He has acted like a true-blue conservative, talking the talk and walking the tax cut walk. But, he has expanded government, spent the future, and now nominated she who has the potential to be a female Souter.
and...
Mr. President, you've got some explaining to do. And please remember - we've been defending you these five years because of this moment.
Ahh, this is good shit. We should just sit back and let them fight it out.

I take it from the fact that (mercifully) I have not received any pleading e-mails from the left wing groups about contributing to the opposition to Miers, that she's not altogether offensive to the left, or she just wasn't on the radar and so hasn't been vetted. But it seems to me that, putting aside for a moment her lack of experience on the bench, her closeness to Bush alone is reason for concern.

Bush Team Channeling Aaron Sorkin?

2005-10-02T18:47:00.000-07:00

It certainly makes sense for an unpopular president, when up against a wall, to take cues from a decidedly more popular president. But a real president taking cues from a fake one? That's just sad.

This post on dailyKos draws the parallel between current Bush spin:
"Doing his job has always been his strongest suit," said one adviser close
to the White House. "Let Bush be Bush. Let him lead. It's what Bush does in
times like these."
...and that of fictional President Bartlett from Episode 19 in 2000:
Let Bartlett be Bartlett.

Bill Bennett Doesn't Get It

2005-10-02T17:47:00.000-07:00

On the September 28 edition of his radio show, Morning In America, Bill Bennett, former Republican Education Secretary, inveterate gambler and supposed expert on virtue, offered some quite controversial thoughts in response to the following statement by a caller (Media Matters provides transcript):

CALLER: I noticed the national media, you know, they talk a lot about the loss of revenue, or the inability of the government to fund Social Security, and I was curious, and I've read articles in recent months here, that the abortions that have happened since Roe v. Wade, the lost revenue from the people who have been aborted in the last 30-something years, could fund Social Security as we know it today. And the media just doesn't -- never touches this at all.

Okaaay. Well, in response, Bennett started out rationally enough:

BENNETT: Assuming they're all productive citizens?...Maybe, but we don't know what the costs would be, too. I think as -- abortion disproportionately occurs among single women? I just don't know. I would not argue for the pro-life position based on this, because you don't know.

But then he veered into a strange place:

BENNETT: I mean, it cuts both -- you know, one of the arguments in this book Freakonomics that they make is that the declining crime rate, you know, they deal with this hypothesis, that one of the reasons crime is down is that abortion is up. Well --
CALLER: Well, I don't think that statistic is accurate.
BENNETT: Well, I don't think it is either, I don't think it is either, because first of all, there is just too much that you don't know. But I do know that it's true that if you wanted to reduce crime, you could -- if that were your sole purpose, you could abort every black baby in this country, and your crime rate would go down. That would be an impossible, ridiculous, and morally reprehensible thing to do, but your crime rate would go down. So these far-out, these far-reaching, extensive extrapolations are, I think, tricky.

Umm, who said anything about black babies, Mr. Bennett? Freakonomics author Steven Levitt doesn't believe there's a statistical correlation between race and crime. As he tells us on his blog:

Race is not an important part of the abortion-crime argument that John Donohue and I have made in academic papers and that Dubner and I discuss in Freakonomics. It is true that, on average, crime involvement in the U.S. is higher among blacks than whites. Importantly, however, once you control for income, the likelihood of growing up in a female-headed household, having a teenage mother, and how urban the environment is, the importance of race disappears for all crimes except homicide. (The homicide gap is partly explained by crack markets). In other words, for most crimes a white person and a black person who grow up next door to each other with similar incomes and the same family structure would be predicted to have the same crime involvement.
And so consequently, on some level, Bennett is right, since

...it would also be true that if we aborted every white, Asian, male, Republican, and Democratic baby in that world, crime would also fall.
Levitt does seem to try to let Bennett off the hook a bit by asking us to remember that "this took place on an unscripted radio show in response to a caller's question. It was clearly off-the-cuff." Well, it seems to me that this only reinforces the notion that what he expressed does indeed reflect what Bennett truly believes -- that being black and being a criminal are in some way synonymous. And the expression of this hateful notion is what is so disturbing about his comments; but instead, his self-defense that came the next day on, where else, Hannity And Colmes, centered on re-assuring us that he truly doesn't believe black babies SHOULD be aborted.

I said, however, if you were to practice that, widespread abortion in the black community or any other community, it would be ridiculous, impossible, and I appreciate you putting it on the screen, morally reprehensible. So I think morally reprehensible, when that is included in the quote makes it perfectly clear what my position is. A number of the people whom you have cited as condemning me have not made the inclusion of that remark, and so they make it seem, Alan, as if I am supporting such a monstrous idea, which of course I don't.
Mr. Bennett, when I heard the words you spoke, it didn't occur to me for a second that you were actually advocating for such a horrific act. It was your unmotivated expression of a correlation between blackness and crime, as if being a criminal is race-based, that took me aback, and is the reason you are in hot water. Your self-defense shows that you really don't get it.

Your rehearsed words on Hannity and Colmes say you are not a racist; your "off-the-cuff" words say otherwise. The next time you wonder why your party has a problem getting black votes, think back to September 28.

Penguin Family Values...Except With People

2005-09-23T17:42:00.000-07:00

Perfect example of the misplaced priorities of conservatives vis a vis their penguin family values:

A 14-year-old student was expelled from a Christian school because her parents are lesbians, the school's superintendent said in a letter.
Shay Clark was expelled from Ontario Christian School on Thursday.
"Your family does not meet the policies of admission," Superintendent Leonard Stob wrote to Tina Clark, the girl's biological mother.
Stob wrote that school policy requires that at least one parent may not engage in practices "immoral or inconsistent with a positive Christian life style, such as cohabitating without marriage or in a homosexual relationship."
Look, it's a private school, they can do what they want, but depriving the girl of an education for the relationship her parents engage in seems pretty fucking outrageous to me. Especially the fact that the school's policy considers their relationship as immoral simply because it's homosexual, even though:

Clark and her partner have been together 22 years and have two other
daughters, ages 9 and 19.

Sounds like real family values to me.

Democrats On Roberts

2005-09-23T12:17:00.000-07:00

It was nice to see that both Harry Reid, Senate Minority Leader, and Dianne Feinstein, the more moderate of my two Senators, intend to vote NO on Roberts when the vote goes to the full Senate next week. It's especially good news from Feinstein whom I'd e-mailed with concern about her coddling of Roberts's possibly signifying her going soft on abortion rights.

Now, as I've said before, I see Roberts as a shoo-in and I can't get fired up about a nominee whose gravest sin appears to be being a conservative. The time to win this fight was in November and we didn't. But having said that, I do understand the value of opposing Roberts on principle, especially in view of the imminent and arguably more important next nominee. And hell, Democrats actually opposing Republicans does actually go a long way to showing us that they have some backbone and stepping up to the opposition party plate is appreciated.

This pep talk from Howard Dean is encouraging as well:
But how will we win any battle if we don't stand up for what we believe and speak the truth? More importantly, how will Americans know what to expect from a Democratic Congress and Democratic president if we don't fight for our values at every opportunity?

Democrats can disagree with Democrats in good faith -- and many do on this issue. But when political calculations silence our conscience, we have abandoned our true values. We cannot let that happen.

Our party must speak plainly and fight for the values of equality, opportunity and security that bring our party -- and the vast majority of Americans -- together.

The various reasons Democratic Senators have for voting one way or the other was outlined nicely on dailyKos today and I the main points were worth repeating:

Any Democrat considering a run for President in 2008 is going to vote "No". No one wants the next Howard Dean nipping at their heels.

Any Democrat seriously considering leading a filibuster of the next nominee and planning to keep the gang of fourteen on board is going to vote "Yes". Voting "No" on Roberts would allow, in fact almost require, the Republican G14 members to break ranks under pressure ("Come on, de Wine, this guy even voted "No" on Roberts!"). Conversely, voting "Yes" on Roberts strengthens the Democrat's argument with the seven Republicans who will matter ("Listen guys, I'm reasonable, I even voted for Roberts. But Judge Hitler really is an exceptional circumstance!").

That accounts for Clinton and Biden voting "No", and for Byrd and possibly Leahy voting "Yes" (Byrd being one of the G14, and Leahy the ranking member on the Judiciary committee, both well positioned to lead a filibuster).

Any senator genuinely concerned about Senatorial process and commity is likely to vote "Yes". That's because Roberts did appear, did answer questions (if not as specifically as some would have liked), and nothing has emerged to disqualify him from the post. The reasons for voting him down are that you believe he lied under oath (always a possibility) or you believe there is some skeleton in the missing Bush administration papers that would disqualify him but that hasn't been leaked in some form already. Those are positions that can be held by a partisan player, but not by a collegiality-oriented Senator concerned about maintaining the integrity of senatorial process. I put Feingold, and possibly Leahy in this camp.

Senators from Red States will likely vote "Yes" -- why lose their jobs over a symbolic vote?

Penguin Family Values

2005-09-23T09:40:00.000-07:00

I was interested to hear that conservatives were singing the praises of March of the Penguins as a film that promotes conservative values.

Some excerpts:

"March of the Penguins," the conservative film critic and radio host Michael Medved said in an interview, is "the motion picture this summer that most passionately affirms traditional norms like monogamy, sacrifice and child rearing."

...
Rich Lowry, the editor of National Review, told the young conservatives' gathering last month: "You have to check out 'March of the Penguins.' It is an amazing movie. And I have to say, penguins are the really ideal example of monogamy. These things - the dedication of these birds is just amazing."
...
Richard A. Blake, co-director of the film studies program at Boston College and the author of "The Lutheran Milieu of the Films of Ingmar Bergman" said that like many films, "March of the Penguins" was open to a religious interpretation. "You get a sense of these animals - following their natural instincts - are really exercising virtue that for humans would be quite admirable," he said. "I could see it as a statement on monogamy or condemnation of gay marriage or whatever the current agenda is."

Well, I finally saw the film and was even more fascinated by the revelation that conservative values have suddenly come to mean men looking after the kids while the women provide for them; having a child with a different partner every year; and abandoning the kids forever once they're old enough to fend for themselves.

Putting myself in the mind of a conservative for a moment (scary, I don't recommend it), I think what they mean by their praise is that March of the Penguins promotes that classic conservative family values notion that a family is defined first and foremost by the act of procreation -- a family in its most pure form is man, woman and child. You'll recall it from such conservative classics as Dan Quayle's condemnation of Murphy Brown and their fervent opposition to gay marriage.

The problem as I see it is that if they oppose gay marriage based on the inability of two people of the same gender to procreate, don't they have to also oppose marriage between two heterosexuals who are either unable to procreate or disinclined to? Progressives prefer love and commitment to be the only pre-requisites for the formation of a family rather than the restrictive criterion of procreation. Again, it seems to me that it would be in the interest of conservatives to expand their definition of family and to loosen gay adoption laws -- if they want people to give up children to adoption rather than abortion, one would think they would do what they can to increase the demand.

Ultimately though, it's refreshing to hear conservatives praising a movie since they trash Hollywood for sport. If they took the time to actually study mainstream Hollywood films instead of demonizing them out of hand, they'd find that most actually promote values of right and wrong that they would endorse.

As a side note, I was pleased to learn recently from a friend's father that the lead character of The Great Raid, the WWII film that came and went this summer despite heavy promotion on such conservative blogs as Michelle Malkin's (no doubt as an example of the triumph of US military might), ran for Congress as a young man...as a Democrat.

Real Time With Bill Maher

2005-09-13T15:23:00.000-07:00

Here's Bill's latest "open letter" to the President:

Mr. President, this job can't be fun for you any more. There's no more money to spend--you used up all of that. You can't start another war because you used up the army. And now, darn the luck, the rest of your term has become the Bush family nightmare: helping poor people. Listen to your Mom. The cupboard's bare, the credit cards maxed out. No one's speaking to you. Mission accomplished.

Now it's time to do what you've always done best: lose interest and walk away. Like you did with your military service and the oil company and the baseball team. It's time. Time to move on and try the next fantasy job. How about cowboy or space man? Now I know what you're saying: there's so many other things that you as President could involve yourself in. Please don't. I know, I know. There's a lot left to do. There's a war with Venezuela. Eliminating the sales tax on yachts. Turning the space program over to the church. And Social Security to Fannie Mae. Giving embryos the vote.

But, Sir, none of that is going to happen now. Why? Because you govern like Billy Joel drives. You've performed so poorly I'm surprised that you haven't given yourself a medal. You're a catastrophe that walks like a man. Herbert Hoover was a shitty president, but even he never conceded an entire city to rising water and snakes.

On your watch, we've lost almost all of our allies, the surplus, four airliners, two trade centers, a piece of the Pentagon and the City of New Orleans. Maybe you're just not lucky. I'm not saying you don't love this country. I'm just wondering how much worse it could be if you were on the other side.

So, yes, God does speak to you. What he is saying is: "Take a hint."

Bush Wants It Both Ways

2005-09-06T22:00:00.000-07:00

Conservatives are in serious damage control mode, not used to the media not spreading their talking points without question. What is going on, they wonder. They knew they didn't have the New York Times editorial page, but now it appears they've even lost Tim Russert, John McLaughlin, Matt Cooper and Chris Matthews as well. Hey, guys, at least you still have Fred Barnes and [insert attractive female blond FoxNews anchor here.] The conservative spin machine is faithfully questioning the competency and readiness of the Mayor of New Orleans and Governor of Louisiana, and to be honest that's perfectly appropriate. I too would like an answer as to why hundreds of school buses that were allotted for evacuation in such a situation as Katrina were not used to get those that could not leave on their own the hell out.

But the idea that anyone would seek to shift blame from Bush to the local authorities...that Bush and the federal government in all its manifestations can somehow be said to be blameless...might actually exceed the level of absurdity I've come to expect in the era of Bush. What is the only thing that Bush ran on in 2004? Protecting the homeland. Republicans all across the nation sang Bush's praises as a strong leader in an era of unprecedented danger to our citizens at home. The Republican National Convention was a big ole circle jerk in which Republican after Republican assured us that Bush and Bush alone will protect us...no local authorities, no state authorities, and certainly no Democrats (John Kerry least of all)...only Bush. So now that Bush has had his first test of his homeland protection mettle, suddenly he's off the hook -- it's the state and local authorities who are responsible for protecting the people...big bad federal government shouldn't be relied upon for things like that...Bush is merely the president after all.

Of course conservatives will point to the outrage at the lack of federal response to Katrina in the media and claim liberal bias. What they really need to look at is the true root of the media coup that is taking place against the administration. The delayed response by the federal government at its core represents a broken covenant with the American people and the media is simply calling the president out on it. They are giving voice to millions of Americans who, if they could, would say to the president "You said you would protect us, Mr. President, and you let us down." After making such a promise, how dare conservatives now claim that protecting those that needed protection in New Orleans last week is out of the scope of the president's command or that of his reports. Clearly I never bought into Bush's claims that we'd be safer under his leadership, but even I felt a profound sense of disappointment last week. Maybe part of me did start to believe it, or at least hoped it was true.

You can't have it both ways, Mr. President. How dare you even try.

Classic (and Sad) Statement From Barbara Bush

2005-09-05T23:01:00.000-07:00

On a tour of hurricane relief centers in Houston with her husband, Barbara Bush had this gem to offer about those that have been displaced from their homes:
What I’m hearing which is sort of scary is they all want to stay in Texas. Everyone is so overwhelmed by the hospitality...And so many of the people in the arena here, you know, were underprivileged anyway, so this--this [she chuckles slightly] is working very well for them.

MSNBC's Keith Olbermann's Two Cents

2005-09-05T22:47:00.000-07:00

[N]ationally, these are leaders who won re-election last year largely by portraying their opponents as incapable of keeping the country safe. These are leaders who regularly pressure the news media in this country to report the reopening of a school or a power station in Iraq, and defies its citizens not to stand up and cheer. Yet they couldn't even keep one school or power station from being devastated by infrastructure collapse in New Orleans — even though the government had heard all the "chatter" from the scientists and city planners and hurricane centers and some group whose purposes the government couldn't quite discern... a group called The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.

And most chillingly of all, this is the Law and Order and Terror government. It promised protection — or at least amelioration — against all threats: conventional, radiological, or biological.

It has just proved that it cannot save its citizens from a biological weapon called standing water.

Mr. Bush has now twice insisted that, "we are not satisfied," with the response to the manifold tragedies along the Gulf Coast. I wonder which "we" he thinks he's speaking for on this point. Perhaps it's the administration, although we still don't know where some of them are. Anybody seen the Vice President lately? The man whose message this time last year was, 'I'll Protect You, The Other Guy Will Let You Die'?

I don't know which 'we' Mr. Bush meant.

For many of this country's citizens, the mantra has been — as we were taught in Social Studies it should always be — whether or not I voted for this President — he is still my President. I suspect anybody who had to give him that benefit of the doubt stopped doing so last week. I suspect a lot of his supporters, looking ahead to '08, are wondering how they can distance themselves from the two words which will define his government — our government — "New Orleans."

For him, it is a shame — in all senses of the word. A few changes of pronouns in there, and he might not have looked so much like a 21st Century Marie Antoinette. All that was needed was just a quick "I'm not satisfied with my government's response." Instead of hiding behind phrases like "no one could have forseen," had he only remembered Winston Churchill's quote from the 1930's. "The responsibility," of government, Churchill told the British Parliament "for the public safety is absolute and requires no mandate. It is in fact, the prime object for which governments come into existence."

In forgetting that, the current administration did not merely damage itself — it damaged our confidence in our ability to rely on whoever is in the White House.

Politics of Katrina part 2

2005-09-05T22:22:00.000-07:00

Those of us on the left who hold this president in contempt for many documented words and deeds will be accused of merely playing politics with our criticism of the lack of federal action last week, and that's too bad. Such wearing of blinders might cause those that hold us in contempt to miss the real story, which is that our government let us down. The fact that Bush's lack of leadership was perfectly consistent with what we've come to expect of someone whose incompetence we see as epic and incontrovertible is unsurprising but, more importantly, it is truly tragic. We did not wish for this, we do not revel in this. We hold our country to a high standard and this president has failed time and time again to rise to that standard. To be honest, most people do lay blame at Bush's feet, on both sides of the political aisle. That's not to say that the left doesn't play politics and put on its own set of blinders from time to time, I just wish I could truly communicate to Bush supporters what Bob Herbert said in his column on Monday:
...this is not about politics. It's about competence.

Who's To Blame?

2005-09-05T21:16:00.000-07:00

Many people, whether administration apologists or those who merely refuse to abandon faith in their president, place blame squarely on the Mayor of New Orleans, Ray Nagin, and/or the Governor of Louisiana, Kathleen Blanco, both Democrats. Certainly I did not see a lot of leadership coming from them either in this whole ordeal, especially prior to the levee breaking, in other words, when it came to evacuating the thousands of people our leaders knew were not able to leave. Unfortunately for the Feds, however, this blame the locals game is based on false claims.

The first myth is that Governor Blanco didn't declare a state of emergency, which would have made New Orleans eligible for emergency federal assistance. Sunday's Washington Post printed the following li(n)e:

As of Saturday, Blanco still had not declared a state of emergency, the senior Bush official said.
Which is worse, that this is something being spread by an administration official or that the Post ran it not as a fact, but as a claim by an official as though it were fact? The truth is, a bit of responsible journalism would have uncovered the fact that Blanco had declared a state of emergency. In fact The Washington Post ran a retraction later that day:
A Sept. 4 article on the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina incorrectly said that Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Babineaux Blanco (D) had not declared a state of emergency. She declared an emergency on Aug. 26.

The second myth was that the local officials alone were responsible for getting people out of New Orleans, more than simply declaring a mandatory evacuation as they did, prior to the levee breach. In this letter from Governor Blanco to the President it is clear that she requested supplemental federal aid as early as August 28 in anticipation of Katrina and her aftermath:

Pursuant to 44 CFR § 206.35, I have determined that this incident is of such severity and magnitude that effective response is beyond the capabilities of the State and affected local governments, and that supplementary Federal assistance is necessary to save lives, protect property, public health, and safety, or to lessen or avert the threat of a disaster ...
But even prior to this letter, as early as August 27, in response to the Governor's declaration of a state of emergency on Aug. 26, the following statement was released by the White House authorizing FEMA to assist Louisiana:
The President's action authorizes the Department of Homeland Security, Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), to coordinate all disaster relief efforts which have the purpose of alleviating the hardship and suffering caused by the emergency on the local population, and to provide appropriate assistance for required emergency measures, authorized under Title V of the Stafford Act, to save lives, protect property and public health and safety, or to lessen or avert the threat of a catastrophe ... Specifically, FEMA is authorized to identify, mobilize, and provide at its discretion, equipment and resources necessary to alleviate the impacts of the emergency.
An example of what the federal government could have done? Paul Krugman tells us of one such example:
The Chicago Tribune reports that the U.S.S. Bataan, equipped with six operating rooms, hundreds of hospital beds and the ability to produce 100,000 gallons of fresh water a day, has been sitting off the Gulf Coast since last Monday - without patients.

Thanks to Talking Points Memo for the links and timeline.

NY Times Op Ed Page Nails It

2005-09-04T11:40:00.000-07:00

The outrages over the past week have been numerous, top among them, of course, has been the unpreparedness of this administration, an administration that we are told holds homeland security among its top priorities. It's four years since 9/11 and we're not prepared for what amounts to an attack on our homeland? What has he been doing all this time? Frank Rich draws some parallels between post-9/11 and post-Katrina.
As always, the president's first priority, the one that sped him from Crawford toward California, was saving himself: he had to combat the flood of record-low poll numbers that was as uncontrollable as the surging of Lake Pontchartrain. It was time, therefore, for another disingenuous pep talk, in which he would exploit the cataclysm that defined his first term, 9/11, even at the price of failing to recognize the emerging fiasco likely to engulf Term 2.

After dispatching Katrina with a few sentences of sanctimonious boilerplate ("our hearts and prayers are with our fellow citizens"), he turned to his more important task. The war in Iraq is World War II. George W. Bush is F.D.R. And anyone who refuses to stay his course is soft on terrorism and guilty of a pre-9/11 "mind-set of isolation and retreat." Yet even as Mr. Bush promised "victory" (a word used nine times in this speech on Tuesday), he was standing at the totemic scene of his failure. It was along this same San Diego coastline that he declared "Mission Accomplished" in Iraq on the aircraft carrier Abraham Lincoln more than two years ago. For this return engagement, The Washington Post reported, the president's stage managers made sure he was positioned so that another hulking aircraft carrier nearby would stay off-camera, lest anyone be reminded of that premature end of "major combat operations."

Well, Bush did finally make it to the scene of the disaster on Friday. And how did he do? Well, judging from one morning talk show, it may have been a little too little a little too late. On The McLaughlin Group, the panel, made up of two commentators on the left and two on the right, as well as Mr. McLaughlin, ranked the negative political fallout of Bush's delay in action last week (10 being the worst) as ranging from a low of a 7 to a high of a 9. I think Bob Herbert puts his performance last week in perspective:

Mr. Bush flew south on Friday and proved (as if more proof were needed) that he didn't get it. Instead of urgently focusing on the people who were stranded, hungry, sick and dying, he engaged in small talk, reminiscing at one point about the days when he used to party in New Orleans, and mentioning that Trent Lott had lost one of his houses but that it would be replaced with "a fantastic house - and I'm looking forward to sitting on the porch."

Mr. Bush's performance last week will rank as one of the worst ever by a president during a dire national emergency. What we witnessed, as clearly as the overwhelming agony of the city of New Orleans, was the dangerous incompetence and the staggering indifference to human suffering of the president and his administration.

And it is this incompetence and indifference to suffering (yes, the carnage continues to mount in Iraq) that makes it so hard to be optimistic about the prospects for the United States over the next few years. At a time when effective, innovative leadership is desperately needed to cope with matters of war and peace, terrorism and domestic security, the economic imperatives of globalization and the rising competition for oil, the United States is being led by a man who seems oblivious to the reality of his awesome responsibilities.

Media Unhinged

2005-09-04T11:03:00.000-07:00

As I flew JetBlue Friday night, I was blessed (or was it cursed?) with constant news coverage of the Katrina aftermath thanks to the DirecTV that the airline provides at each seat. It's actually sponsored by Fox so I was not surprised to see CNN missing from the line-up (although MSNBC and Headline News were represented). I found myself watching Fox for most of my coverage because, despite its political leanings, they're quite good at actual news coverage and Katrina has been no exception.

One thing that particularly startled me was Geraldo Riveira, whom I recall drawing war plans in the sand in Iraq during the initial invasion and being decked out in a bulletproof vest during the elections there earlier this year, bawling at the sight of the hundreds of apparently abandoned evacuees. In fact, he was among them, he spoke to them, and memorably, tears running down his face, he held up a baby and shouted at Sean Hannity demanding that these people be allowed to leave. Apparently, as an equally outraged Shepard Smith would explain to Sean moments later, a checkpoint was set up preventing people from leaving the location (no doubt in the interest of security) and passing into another parish where food and water might be available to them. Reveira and Smith, usually reliable mouthpieces of the administration, had thrown the network off message, beautifully, by doing their job.

They were in the field and, as so many other journalists who were on the scene over the past week, could not maintain an ounce of the objective detachment (or in the case of these two, the right-leaning detachment) that they were supposed to have as journalists. So Sean Hannity was left alone to try to restore the good name of the administration that essentially employs him. You thought Sean Hannity came off as cold and heartless on a given night of Hannity and Colmes, in comparison to his devastated correspondents, he was downright villainous. He kept asking that they "put things in perspective", "let's get some perspective", "keep this in perspective", in other words his usual apologist bullshit, but Smith was having none of it. "Look at these people, Sean, look at these people, this is all the perspective you need!"

Watching Fox News a day later, I was interested to see Reveira again in tears, but this time at the image of military helicopters airlifting the very people he covered the night before...it was joy this time that reduced Reveira to a quivering mass, and perhaps at the idea that his very breakdown the night before may have partially motivated the powers that be to get those very people out of there as fast as possible. In its outrage at the delayed response to the victims of Katrina, it seems the media has re-discovered its power, to affect change, to move people emotionally and to action. What's occured seems to me to be nothing short of a coup on the part of a media that up to now had, for the most part with few exceptions, treated the administration with kid gloves. Let's hope this newfound boldness will carry over long after New Orleans is dry and its former residents disappear into new and once again invisible lives.

Ray Nagin, New Orleans Mayor

2005-09-02T10:42:00.000-07:00

In an interview with Garland Robinette of WWL Radio, New Orleans Mayor Nagin had the following to say:

GR: You and I must be in the minority, because apparently there's a section of our citizenry out there that thinks because of a law that says the federal government can't come in unless requested by the proper people, that everything that's been going on to this point has been as good as it can possibly be.
RN: Really?
GR: I know you don't feel that way.
RN: Well... did the tsunami victims request? Did they go through a formal process to request? Did Iraq -- did the Iraqi people request that we go in there? Did they ask us to go in there? What is more important? I tell ya man, I'm probably going to be in a whole bunch of trouble, I'm probably going to be in so much trouble it ain't even funny. You probably won't even want to deal with me after this interview is over.
GR: You and I will be in the funny place together.
RN: But -- we authorized $8 billion to go to Iraq, lickety-quick. After 9/11, we gave the president unprecedented powers -- lickety-quick -- to take care of New York and other places. Now you mean to tell me that a place where most of the oil is coming through... a place that is so unique, when you mention New Orleans anywhere around the world, everybody's eyes light up... you mean to tell me that a place where you probably have thousands people that have died, and thousands more that are dying every day, that we can't figure out a way to authorize the resources that we need? Come on, man.

You know I'm not one of those drug addicts, I am thinking very clearly. And I don't know whose problem it is. I don't know whether it's the governor's problem, I don't know whether it's the president's problem. But somebody needs to get their ass on a plane, and sit down, the two of them, and figure this out right now."

Even Bill O'Reilly Gets It Right Sometimes

2005-09-02T10:04:00.000-07:00

I may disagree with Bill O'Reilly on most things political, but he sometimes veers into liberal territory, especially when it comes to speaking out for the common man and expressing outrage at abuse of power. Sometimes O'Reilly puts politics aside, and sometimes even do I. From his Talking Points Memo from Wednesday:
Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman should inform American oil companies not to profiteer. In fact, I think their profits should be cut back by 20 percent to spare America's pain. Any oil company that does not voluntarily comply with that should be exposed.

President Bush should ask OPEC to drop the price of oil $15 a barrel tomorrow. It costs OPEC about $4 a barrel to produce and market the crude. They're getting $70 a barrel on the open market. Do the math. This is a gouge.

Diane Sawyer asked Bush about the former proposal on Good Morning America on Thursday. This was his response:
What I'd like to see is corporate America make sure they contribute to help with these victims, that there be an outpouring of contributions for these relief efforts.
Lest we forget the oil man roots of this president.

National Geographic Saw It Coming

2005-09-02T09:33:00.000-07:00

Frighteningly prescient:

It was a broiling August afternoon in New Orleans, Louisiana, the Big Easy, the City That Care Forgot. Those who ventured outside moved as if they were swimming in tupelo honey. Those inside paid silent homage to the man who invented air-conditioning as they watched TV "storm teams" warn of a hurricane in the Gulf of Mexico. Nothing surprising there: Hurricanes in August are as much a part of life in this town as hangovers on Ash Wednesday.

But the next day the storm gathered steam and drew a bead on the city. As the whirling maelstrom approached the coast, more than a million people evacuated to higher ground. Some 200,000 remained, however—the car-less, the homeless, the aged and infirm, and those die-hard New Orleanians who look for any excuse to throw a party.

The storm hit Breton Sound with the fury of a nuclear warhead, pushing a deadly storm surge into Lake Pontchartrain. The water crept to the top of the massive berm that holds back the lake and then spilled over. Nearly 80 percent of New Orleans lies below sea level—more than eight feet below in places—so the water poured in. A liquid brown wall washed over the brick ranch homes of Gentilly, over the clapboard houses of the Ninth Ward, over the white-columned porches of the Garden District, until it raced through the bars and strip joints on Bourbon Street like the pale rider of the Apocalypse. As it reached 25 feet (eight meters) over parts of the city, people climbed onto roofs to escape it.

Thousands drowned in the murky brew that was soon contaminated by sewage and industrial waste. Thousands more who survived the flood later perished from dehydration and disease as they waited to be rescued. It took two months to pump the city dry, and by then the Big Easy was buried under a blanket of putrid sediment, a million people were homeless, and 50,000 were dead. It was the worst natural disaster in the history of the United States.

When did this calamity happen? It hasn't—yet. But the doomsday scenario is not far-fetched. The Federal Emergency Management Agency lists a hurricane strike on New Orleans as one of the most dire threats to the nation, up there with a large earthquake in California or a terrorist attack on New York City. Even the Red Cross no longer opens hurricane shelters in the city, claiming the risk to its workers is too great.

- Oct. 2004

A Right-Wing Perspective on New Orleans

2005-09-01T16:45:00.000-07:00

This could set a dangerous precedent but I said I'd post a Republican friend's response to Blumenthal and the question "How could our leaders have let the New Orleans situation get so of hand?" See below (get ready, you're entering a no-accountability zone.)

Because there isn't enough money on the entire planet to armor the entire Atlantic and Gulf coasts against a hurricane like Katrina. And armoring the entire coast WOULD be necessary ... wanna know why? Because the minute you armor New Orleans against a Cat 5 storm you have to go and armor Galveston. And Houston. And Corpus Christi. And Tampa, Key West and Miami. And Savannah. And Charleston. And Wilmington. And Norfolk. And Baltimore. And Atlantic City. And New York City. And probably Newport, Boston and Portland too.

If you really look at the sources that Blumenthal relies on, the level of his deceptive selective presentation becomes very clear. The US government had spent 10 years (starting back under Clinton, when Blumenthal was helping to run things) and half a billion dollars armoring New Orleans. A quarter of a billion dollars of projects remained, but at the rate the money was being burned (~$45 million per year) that translates into six additional years of projects.

Funding was cut in 2004 ... so we are to believe that a year and a half and $67 million would have protected NO from this storm? That's insane ... if you don't believe me go ask a civil engineer if a year and a half/$67 million would be enough to raise the protection of a sub-sea level city like NO from Cat3 to Cat5.

Couldn't See It Coming, eh?

2005-09-01T13:00:00.000-07:00

Sidney Blumenthal, former Clinton advisor, fills us in as to the warnings the administration had that just such a disaster would occur in New Orleans:

A year ago the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers proposed to study how New Orleans could be protected from a catastrophic hurricane, but the Bush administration ordered that the research not be undertaken. After a flood killed six people in 1995, Congress created the Southeast Louisiana Urban Flood Control Project, in which the Corps of Engineers strengthened and renovated levees and pumping stations. In early 2001, the Federal Emergency Management Agency issued a report stating that a hurricane striking New Orleans was one of the three most likely disasters in the U.S., including a terrorist attack on New York City. But by 2003 the federal funding for the flood control project essentially dried up as it was drained into the Iraq war. In 2004, the Bush administration cut funding requested by the New Orleans district of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers for holding back the waters of Lake Pontchartrain by more than 80 percent. Additional cuts at the beginning of this year (for a total reduction in funding of 44.2 percent since 2001) forced the New Orleans district of the Corps to impose a hiring freeze. The Senate had debated adding funds for fixing New Orleans' levees, but it was too late.

The New Orleans Times-Picayune, which before the hurricane published a series on the federal funding problem, and whose presses are now underwater, reported online: "No one can say they didn't see it coming ... Now in the wake of one of the worst storms ever, serious questions are being asked about the lack of preparation."

Difference Between Republicans and Democrats

2005-09-01T12:25:00.000-07:00

Republican concerns today:

For the last four years, President Bush and Republicans in Congress have championed a pro-growth agenda that has brought tax relief to millions of Americans. Historic legislation in 2001 and 2003 put America on the track to economic growth, and today our economic outlook is bright. There is more work to do, however, to ensure that tax-paying Americans can keep more of their own hard-earned income.

When they return from their August recess, Senators will consider a key issue: elimination of the death tax. The death tax is an unfair double taxation of income, which hurts America's small businesses and farms and
threatens job growth. Unfortunately, Senate Democrats are working hard to oppose our efforts to eliminate this unfair tax.

Will you help bring tax relief to more hard-working Americans? Call [your elected officials today] and ask them to eliminate the death tax.

Democrat concerns today:
Rep. John Conyers, Jr., Rep. Mel Watt, Rep. Jerrold Nadler, and Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee announced today that when Congress returns next Tuesday, they will introduce legislation to protect the thousands of families and small businesses financially devastated by Hurricane Katrina from being penalized by anti-debtor provisions contained in the Bankruptcy Abuse Prevention and Consumer Protection Act of 2005, scheduled to take effect on October 17, 2005.

Reps. Conyers, Nadler, and Jackson Lee released the following joint statement:"We are concerned that just as survivors of Hurricane Katrina are beginning to rebuild their lives, the new bankruptcy law will result in a further and unintended financial whammy. Unfortunately, the new law is likely to have the consequence of preventing devestated families from being able to obtain relief from massive and unexpected new financial obligations they are incurring and by forcing them to repay their debt with income they no longer have, but which is counted by the law.

Thanks to dailyKos for bringing this to our attention.

What The Hell Is Going On?!?!

2005-09-01T11:41:00.000-07:00

How can our leaders be allowing such chaos to reign in New Orleans? Are they truly powerless? CNN reports that sniper fire is now impeding the evacuation of victims from a New Orleans hospital. New Orleans's Mayor Ray Nagin has issued a "desperate SOS." CNN further reports:

"There are multiple people dying at the convention center," Lawrence said. "There was an old woman, dead in a wheelchair with a blanket draped over her, pushed up against a wall. Horrible, horrible conditions.

"We saw a man who went into a seizure, literally dying right in front of us."

In a statement Thursday, Nagin said that "currently the convention center is unsanitary and unsafe and we are running out of supplies for (15,000 to 20,000) people."

People were "being forced to live like animals," Lawrence said, surrounded by piles of trash and feces.

He said thousands of people were just laying in the ground outside the building -- many old, or sick, or caring for infants and small children.

Widespread looting and random gunfire have been reported across New Orleans. Police told CNN that groups of armed men roamed the streets overnight.
Officers told CNN they lacked manpower and steady communications to properly do their jobs -- and that they needed help to prevent the widespread looting and violence now prevalent in the city.
A police officer working in downtown New Orleans said police were siphoning gas from abandoned vehicles in an effort to keep their squad cars running, CNN's Chris Lawrence reported.
Congress intends to return to session prior to the Labor Day weekend, a few days earlier than originally planned. I wonder how they'll explain to their constituents how they allowed New Orleans flooding prevention funds to be cut and for all the pleas by Mary Landrieu over the years for levees to be fortified to go unheeded. And I wonder if Democrats will speak up about it and against the president who attempted some truly shameful pre-emptive damage control this morning on Good Morning America:
I don't think anybody anticipated the breach of the levees.

Uh, yeah they did and you know it.

Where Is The Help?

2005-09-01T10:48:00.000-07:00

Anderson Cooper, reporting from the ground in Mississippi, had this moving plea:
Person after person came up to me today and they were angry. Where is the federal government?... Where is the army? Where is the National Guard? It is a desperate situation down here. There is no food, no water, no electricity, no ice and it is deteriorating rapidly. There is looting, not only in New Orleans but even in a small town like Bay St. Louis. Where is the help?

New Orleans Disaster Editorials

2005-09-01T09:40:00.000-07:00

Well, Bush did finally make a statement about the devastation yesterday but does anyone else get the sense that his words and his demeanor and his timing perhaps most of all render him just completely irrelevant in this time of crisis?

Editorial boards across the country, right wing and left wing alike, seem to agree.

Thanks to Rachel Maddow for bringing the following to my attention:

The New York Times on the vacuum of leadership:

George W. Bush gave one of the worst speeches of his life yesterday, especially given the level of national distress and the need for words of consolation and wisdom. In what seems to be a ritual in this administration, the president appeared a day later than he was needed. He then read an address of a quality more appropriate for an Arbor Day celebration: a long laundry list of pounds of ice, generators and blankets delivered to the stricken Gulf Coast. He advised the public that anybody who wanted to help should send cash, grinned, and promised that everything would work out in the end.
The Washington Post on the failure of the political leaders in this country to prepare for such a disaster:

This administration has consistently played down the possibility of environmental disaster, in Louisiana and everywhere else. The president's most recent budgets have actually proposed reducing funding for flood prevention in the New Orleans area, and the administration has long ignored Louisiana politicians' requests for more help in protecting their fragile coast, the destruction of which meant there was little to slow down the hurricane before it hit the city.
The Manchester Union Leader on Bush's poor leadership:

Katrina already is measured as one of the worst storms in American history. And yet, President Bush decided that his plans to commemorate the 60th anniversary of VJ Day with a speech were more pressing than responding to the carnage.

A better leader would have flown straight to the disaster zone and announced the immediate mobilization of every available resource to rescue the stranded, find and bury the dead, and keep the survivors fed, clothed, sheltered and free of disease.

The cool, confident, intuitive leadership Bush exhibited in his first term, particularly in the months immediately following Sept. 11, 2001, has vanished. In its place is a diffident detachment unsuitable for the leader of a nation facing war, natural disaster and economic uncertainty.

The Politics of Katrina

2005-08-31T10:25:00.000-07:00

A co-worker asked me today, "where has Bush been on the New Orleans situation?" This guy is a smart, fairly non-political guy, just a normal guy without an agenda who wants to know where the president is in this time of crisis.

If Bush has learned one thing from his presidency it's that how leaders act in times of crisis really resonates with people and can make or break one's popularity and relevance. Something else he must know is that his numbers have been going in a downward direction, especially on the old "in touch/out of touch" spectrum. So what does he do? Goes golfing on Monday, makes a speech about Iraq for almost an hour on Tuesday in which he mentions the devastation in New Orleans for a mere 1 minute 20 seconds (and asks us merely to pray) and decides to cut his vacation short by 2 days on Wednesday while he surveys the destruction from 5,000 feet.

So whether he really is on top of this and whether he really does care, another lesson he must have taken away over the last few years is that perception equals reality. Now, not only has the left wing media predictably ranted against Bush's lack of action, but even Jack Cafferty on CNN suggested curtly that perhaps returning to work would be a good idea (don't worry, George, Wolf came to your defense!) And now my common man co-worker is wondering where he is...why hasn't he made a statement to the nation. You're losing this war too, George.

Bush, Cowboy President

2005-08-29T15:25:00.000-07:00

One way in which the Cindy Sheehan story may actually benefit the president is in the constant reference to his perennial August get-away as a "ranch," specifically as the "Crawford Ranch." Of course it's become common parlance to refer to it as such. If you Google "Crawford Ranch" you get more than 1 million results. Every time the media writes a story about Cindy Sheehan camping outside the "Crawford Ranch" it's actually reinforcing a pretty positive frame for the president, the Bush as rancher frame, one that, as salon.com puts it, gives Bush,
...who was born in New Haven, Conn., and schooled at Yale and Harvard, a chance to remind the nation that he's a Cowboy President.

The LA Times elaborates.
Bush had successfully adopted the populist cowboy persona... described as the "ultimate American male archetype of our time" and a reassuring symbol to a society that likes to divide history's figures into good uys and bad guys."

As much as people may complain that Bush is in Crawford, a lot of Americans like seeing him in blue jeans with a big belt buckle, walking down a dirt road or clearing brush," Brinkley said. "It's become a stage set for him."

For Bush, who was born in New Haven, Conn., and schooled at Yale and Harvard, the ranch has helped provide a political antidote to the Northeastern blue-blood heritage that dogged his father, George H.W. Bush, as president.

The Times also does a little digging into whether it is technically a ranch or not, but it hardly matters how many cattle are on the premises if any. The Bushes bought the "Prairie Chapel Ranch" in 1999, which in my eyes, allows it "ranch" status ad infinitum. I would just remind those on the left who enjoy complaining about how out of touch Bush is by drawing attention to the fact that he's vacationing while our kids are dying in Iraq and won't even leave his compund to speak to a grieving mother, every time you mention his "ranch," you're reinforcing the every day "in touch" quality that so many people like about him. As George Lakoff would remnd us, you can't negate a frame -- no matter the context, the second you invoke the term "ranch" in association with Bush, you immediately activate the idea that Bush is a good ole boy with the common touch.

The Angry Left

2005-08-29T13:01:00.000-07:00

Classic that our resident Republican poster "anonymous" resorts to a personal attack in the comments, even as he questions my portrayal of the angry right.

But he is correct to state that the left is angry as well. Who wouldn't be with the current political climate. It's crazy how pissed people are on leftwing radio. But the idea that "angry" would be my primary political characteristic is pretty absurd.

Now having said that, there are huge differences between the anger on the right and that on the left. First of all, it is strange to us that you all would still be so angry now that you have everything you've ever apparently wanted: control of the presidency, control of both houses of Congress and 7 of 9 SCOTUS justices appointed by Republican presidents. Perhaps the problem is that the tradition of the United States is one of liberal progress not of conservative regress, and because of that you're constantly having to prove yourselves and be on the defensive even though, hell, you guys win elections, can't argue with that.

So for all these years, as you've constantly been thwarted from really enacting a conservative agenda, you've built up resentment, years and years of resentment against some imagined class of people you call "liberals." You've even succeeded in making "liberal" a dirty word. So your anger extends to an entire set of people and goes back 30+ years to the point where I bear the brunt of anger my Uncle has against Jane Fonda. It's just irrational.

At least our anger is actually motivated by real events and facts. The anger against George Bush is very real and anyone with a clear head can see why the left would hate him so much even if you disagree that the things that Bush has done are problematic. But what it comes down to is that we're used to getting our way and now we're not. Let's face it, over the years, whether or not a president has been a Democrat, the values that we hold dear have never really been challenged or in danger...until now. Bush's administration has waged an all out assault on privacy and equality, among other progressive ideals. We're used to those ideals winning the day, we never imagined anyone would actually be able to undermine them, and Bush has begun to try. That's why we're angry. It's actually based in fear more than anything else.

But look at how we express it: sure we use heightened rhetoric, we make movies like Fahrenheit 9/11, we march and hold vigils, we erect crosses outside the president's ranch to symbolize the fallen soldiers. But how does the right express it? In addition to the rhetoric and the mad rantings of such crazed individuals as Sean Hannity and Bill O'Reilly who constantly confuse freedom of expression with treason, they destroy cds, they spit in Jane Fonda's face and run over those crosses outside Bush's ranch. If I were looking at the political culture in this country right now from the outside in, a culture by the way that is characterized by lots of anger, just by virtue of whose company I would prefer to keep, I would choose the lefties every time.

Bush Approval Plummets

2005-08-22T12:38:00.000-07:00

The right of course will downplay any bad poll numbers on Bush, saying what do polls matter, he won re-election. But if Bush's approval was up, you can be sure the numbers would be perfectly relevant (and by the same token, I most likely wouldn't be posting them, myself!) But the fact is something notable has happened in the newest American Research Group poll: after hovering just above 40% for most of the summer, Bush has plummeted to an approval rating of just 36% (38% among registered voters.)

I should say that, as Guru cautions, this poll should be taken with a grain of salt since it is significantly below any other recent poll's rating and ARG does tend to skew Democrat. It will be interesting to see if its findings are repeated in other polls in the coming weeks.

Some articles I read about Bush's approval ratings appear surprised by his dropping popularity considering his legislative victories this summer, what with CAFTA, the Highway bill and the Energy bill all signed. But the idea that legislative victories would actually translate to approval among the average voter is sadly naive it seems to me. Similarly, the pundit class may declare an economic recovery well under way but for those living the economy every day it sure doesn't feel like it. Especially with the gas prices what they are and when you add the growing unease about the war, it's a toxic mix. In other words, everything we here at Wild Democracy Ride have been saying for a year has finally reached the heartland.

So how bad is 36%? Let's put it this way: it's lower than Nixon's rating in the midst of Watergate.

The Angry Right

2005-08-22T11:39:00.000-07:00

Kos says it best:
[The Angry Left is] everywhere! So angry! Snarl! Grrr!

Though what I really want to know is why conservatives are so angry. Always snarling and snapping about evil liberals. Heck, they control everything. If something's wrong, it's their fault. Not the powerless Democrats snipping at their heels.

If Democrats had the trifecta I'd be in heaven. It'd be bliss. Everyday would be a party. Confetti, good beer, and party hats, all around.

But not them. They're still angry.

Of course, now that I think about it, if Democrats had the trifecta and they fucked shit up as bad as these jokers have, then I suppose I'd be angry. It must be hard seeing the real world make a mockery of everything you stand for.

Real Time With Bill Maher Returns

2005-08-19T12:03:00.000-07:00

Real Time is back on HBO tonight at 11pm Eastern. He was supposed to have Cindy Sheehan on live from Texas, but since Cindy has gone back to California to tend to her ill mother, it looks like they had to postpone her. Here's what to expect on tonight's episode:

Roundtable guests Chris Rock, Asa Hutchinson and Kellyanne Conway. Plus, via satellite, Paul Hackett and Phyllis Schlafly. This week's Hot Topic: Since 9/11, many in this country - including Bill - have been accused of treason. What constitutes a treasonous act these days?

The Liberal Media Myth

2005-08-19T11:30:00.000-07:00

Newsweek's latest issue contains this story titled "I'm So Sorry" about the emotional toll military deaths take on George W. Bush.

Personally, I'm glad he's tormented. He should be. But such is not the slant of the article. On the contrary, it appears designed to directly counter the opinion expressed by Cindy Sheehan that when she met with Bush shortly after her son died last year, Bush seemed to have no conscience about the war and no real feelings of empathy for her as a fallen soldier's mother. This piece seems to serve a rehabilitative function for Bush, to the extent that the Cindy Sheehan story has hurt his image.

A telling excerpt:

President Bush was wearing "a huge smile," but his eyes were red and he looked drained by the time he got to the last widow, Crystal Owen, a third-grade schoolteacher who had lost her husband in Iraq. "Tell me about Mike," he said immediately. "I don't want my husband's death to be in vain," she told him. The president apologized repeatedly for her husband's death. When Owen began to cry, Bush grabbed her hands. "Don't worry, don't worry," he said, though his choking voice suggested that he had worries of his own. The president and the widow hugged. "It felt like he could have been my dad," Owen recalled to NEWSWEEK. "It was like we were old friends. It almost makes me sad. In a way, I wish he weren't the president, just so I could talk to him all the time."
I will say that noting that Bush did meet with Cindy Sheehan once already is an important part of the story that should not be omitted, as is the statistic that he's in fact met with about 900 family members of 270 or so soldiers who have died in Afghanistan or Iraq. And to be fair the article does take some shots at the president. For example, the article suggests that perhaps some of his emotionalism is simply his "agonizing over the war he chose to start" and lists a string of complaints he hears from military families:

He has been asked about missing medals on the returned uniform of a loved one, about financial assistance for a child going to college and about how soldiers really died when the Pentagon claimed the details were classified.
But what's truly amazing about this article is that it was recommended to me by a Republican friend who constantly insists that the media is liberal but offered this article without any sense of irony. There are a few serious problems with the liberal media myth. One is that it conveniently ignores certain facts such as that more newspapers endorsed Bush in 2000 than endorsed Gore. It also ignores the current media climate in which media moguls, no matter how liberal, are pro-Republican because it means less media ownership regulation, which means more profits for them. But the real fallacy of the liberal media myth is that for Republicans it is merely a Stuart Smalley-like daily affirmation: if the media is opposed to a Republican, it's because they're partisan and liberal; if the media is sympathetic toward a Republican, then what they say must be true because they're so damn liberal. So, according to this theory, the Republican is always on the right of the issue. It's like a lullaby that rocks Republicans into a false sense of self-righteousness when the reality is that the media is full of pro-Bush pieces like this Newsweek article.

But for my Republican friend, it doesn't disprove his liberal media claim, it is simply proof that Bush is a really emotional sympathetic guy because if it weren't true the liberal media wouldn't be writing it. My Republican friend demands intellectual honesty yet refuses to exercise it himself.

Don't believe me that this is a pro-Bush propagandistic puff piece? Here, read the end of the article below. Cue the strings and get ready to swoon:

Before Bush left the meeting, he paused in the middle of the room and said to the families, "I will never feel the same level of pain and loss you do. I didn't lose anyone close to me, a member of my family or someone that I love. But I want you to know that I didn't go into this lightly. This was a decision that I struggle with every day."

As he spoke, Ascione could see the grief rising through the president's body. His shoulder slumped and his face turned ashen. He began to cry and his voice choked. He paused, tried to regain his composure and looked around the room. "I am sorry, I'm so sorry," he said.

Iraq/Vietnam, Vietnam/Iraq

2005-08-19T10:08:00.000-07:00

Is Iraq becoming the next Vietnam? Has it already? Making the comparison has become a bit of a cliche, but sadly, as the war goes on, the parallel becomes more and more apt. Newsweek columnist Howard Fineman, speaking on The Don Imus Show of a conversation he had with Jack Valenti who was a special assistant to President Lyndon Johnson, draws the comparisons:

Jack told me yesterday, 'You know I smell Vietnam all over again. It's happening at a faster time table. Vietnam went over a decade. This is happening two, two and a half years.' He said 'Here are the similarities, we don't always know who the enemy is. We don't know where they are all the time. We don't know who we're shooting at half the time. We don't know what the battlefield is. We don't have many allies. We don't really have an exit strategy. And public opinion is crumbling under our feet, or in this case the President's feet. And that's just like what happened to Lyndon Johnson.' Lyndon Johnson used to yell and scream about the intrusion of television, how television has changed the ability to fight a war. Well that was 40 years ago. Now every morning, everyday, all day, even though this is much more heavily censored than Vietnam was, you know, the American people are seeing that Iraq is a complete mess and there seems to be more terrorists than were there when Saddam was in charge and that is why Bush's poll numbers for handling the war and overall job approval are as low as Johnson's were in the 60's."
What were those poll numbers? The New York Times's Frank Rich gives us a history lesson:

A president can't stay the course when his own citizens (let alone his own allies) won't stay with him. The approval rate for Mr. Bush's handling of Iraq plunged to 34 percent in last weekend's Newsweek poll - a match for the 32 percent that approved L.B.J.'s handling of Vietnam in early March 1968. (The two presidents' overall approval ratings have also converged: 41 percent for Johnson then, 42 percent for Bush now.) On March 31, 1968, as L.B.J.'s ratings plummeted further, he announced he wouldn't seek re-election, commencing our long extrication from that quagmire.
So what lessons can be learned from the forty-year old wound that just won't heal? Paul Begala had a brilliant post on the subject in the Talking Points Memo Cafe yesterday:

[O]ne important lesson of Vietnam is, the first casualty of an unwise and unjust war are the American troops called on to fight it. Their service should be honored.

Second, what we political consultants call the "optics" matter. The popular memory of the anti-war movement calls to mind (even for those of us too young to clearly recall it) the indelible image of young Americans burning the American flag. Cops were called "pigs." Cherished American icons were trashed.

It seems to me the new anti-war movement has learned these lessons well. And it is the pro-war right that is repeating the mistakes of the past.

For me, one of the most incendiary moments of the entire Bush war in Iraq occurred when a right-wing thug ran his pickup truck over hundreds of crosses bearing the names of heroic Americans killed in Iraq. He also took out scores of American flags in the process...

Such is the hatred of the far right at the dawn of the 21st Century. And my how the optical worm has turned. Today it is the left invoking faith, flag and family, while the right destroys crosses. Today it is the left that honors the war dead, raises up a Gold Star Mother and publicly prays for our troops, while the right viciously attacks a woman who gave her country everything. Today it is the left that patiently and peacefully respects the Office of the Presidency, while the right diminishes the office by claiming it's more important for the President to go bike-riding with a sports hero than comfort the mother of a war hero.

Left Wing Wackos

2005-08-18T16:14:00.000-07:00

Check out these amazing pictures of the extremist anti-American Left gathered throughout the country yesterday standing vigil in support of Cindy Sheehan.

Moving The Bar

2005-08-18T11:16:00.000-07:00

I didn't want to let this article go by without comment. Once again, the administration is moving the bar for what constitutes success in Iraq. It became clear months ago that they would make sure that no matter what the military result in Iraq, victory would be declared, military, political and otherwise. They've always played fast and loose with language, why should the term "victory" be exempt from the Rovian blender.
The Bush administration is significantly lowering expectations of what can be achieved in Iraq, recognizing that the United States will have to settle for far less progress than originally envisioned during the transition due to end in four months, according to U.S. officials in Washington and Baghdad.

The United States no longer expects to see a model new democracy, a self-supporting oil industry or a society in which the majority of people are free from serious security or economic challenges, U.S. officials say.

"What we expected to achieve was never realistic given the timetable or what unfolded on the ground," said a senior official involved in policy since the 2003 invasion. "We are in a process of absorbing the factors of the situation we're in and shedding the unreality that dominated at the beginning."

Absorbing the factors of the situation, huh? That's good. Only took you 2 1/2 years and 1800 dead. Nice job. Of course when the war's detractors said anything resembling this they were labeled anti-American and partisan naysayers. Now that "administration officials" are admitting it's the case, will war apologists conce...apol...admi...nevermind, forget I asked.

What To Do About Roberts?

2005-08-18T10:12:00.000-07:00

It's conventional wisdom by now that John Roberts will be confirmed as the next Associate Justice of The Supreme Court. By nominating a somewhat reasonable candidate (at least on paper), Bush has in a way called the Democrats' bluff: you can't reasonably obstruct him but the activist wing of the party won't allow you to just confirm him without some fight. Which is exactly how it's playing out.

You know all those e-mails from MoveOn and People For The American Way that go on and on about Roberts's conservative views? Not even they think a defeat of Roberts is a real option, but what they do hope to accomplish was suggested last night on Hannity and Colmes by Newsweek's Eleanor Clift: they want to reduce the number of votes Roberts gets because if he is confirmed with a huge majority of Democratic votes and does become liberals' worst nightmare (anti-privacy, anti-environment, pro-corporation, etc.) the Democrats will have less credibility opposing a conservative justice in the future because the bar for what's acceptable to Democrats will have been moved so far to the right.

So the liberal activist groups have been demanding a fight and this week Ted Kennedy (D-MA) and Patrick Leahy (D-VT) obliged by making statements declaring Roberts well outside the mainstream. And as a result, articles such as Roberts Battle Adds to Democrats' Divide appear in the Washington Post.

The public tug of war among Democrats this week over the Supreme Court nomination of Judge John G. Roberts Jr. underscores the conflicting pressures facing Democratic leaders as they try to satisfy a growing cadre of activists anxious to battle President Bush while avoiding the appearance of being captives of their most vocal constituencies.

The debate over what to do about Roberts is the latest in a series of disagreements over the past three years pitting the party's Washington-based leaders against traditional liberal advocacy groups or the newer world of grass-roots activists stitched together through e-mail and Web logs.

Ah yes, there goes the old liberal media again back to one of its favorite story lines about the fractured Democratic Party. But the problem is it's not untrue. While I heartily support the activism of MoveOn.org and People For The American Way, I think Democrats would do well to take a page out of the Republican play book. When George W. Bush was essentially annointed the nominee for the 2000 election, the far right wing of the party shut the hell up for the greater good and have since been more than generously rewarded for their cooperation. It might be too much to expect the Democrats to coalesce around a certain candidate in 2008 but the benefits of the appearance of a unified party over the next 3 years could seriously outweigh the potential costs of fighting for every issue our activist wing is passionate about.

Shades of Gray

2005-08-17T10:23:00.000-07:00

A big philisophical difference between Republicans and Democrats was crystallized by the following (in)famous quotes by last year's presidential nominees (forgive the paraphrasing):

"You're either with us or you're against us."
- George W. Bush

"I voted against the $80 billion before I voted for it."
- John F. Kerry

Bush has been much maligned for his tendency to reduce things to their most simple terms -- things are either black or they're white, nothing in between. Similarly, Kerry was ridiculed for his mush-mouthed parsing of issues, unable to describe his view in a sentence, always needing a paragraph. But this difference is hardly limited to these two men; it represents a stark differentiation between the two parties (and arguably is responsible for Republican victories and Democratic losses in recent years.)

So I should not have been surprised when an old right wing friend confronted me in the comments about an apparent inconsistency on my part:
Todd posts all sorts of stuff about Cindy Sheehan, but such doesn't constitute an endorsement of her views or actions?

This was in reaction to my saying that I never accused the president of being unfeeling about the deaths of servicemembers and that in my mind I allow for the possibility that he really does mourn and he really does hurt despite the view of Cindy Sheehan and other parents of fallen soldiers to the contrary. To my friend, my embracing of Cindy Sheehan constitutes the endorsement of all of her views. How's that for a ridiculous over-simplification, typical of the "you're either with us or against us" worldview of the right.

The fact is that Cindy Sheehan's story moves me to write about it because it is bigger than just one woman. As I've written before, I'm no anti-war activist and I wasn't even fully against the war in Iraq at the outset. I didn't buy that Iraq was a threat to our national security but I did feel that removing Saddam was a noble goal if it could be done as efficiently and painlessly as we were led to believe it would be. I wondered where the humanitarian left was when it came to removing this man -- they were so outspoken against the sanctions for ruining lives of innocent Iraqis but were silent when it came to overthrowing the man who had contributed so much to their misery.

My conflicted feelings were probably typical of many on the mainstream left -- uncertain, unresolute, struggling with the shades of gray. But then I saw the very uncertainty I felt criticized by the right: anyone who questioned the war was made out to be unpatriotic and anti-American. And the administration very effectively managed to manipulate the media to glorify the war, relegating any anti-war views to the margins.

A lot has happened since then, of course. The administration's horrible mis-management of the war has led to many media mea culpas and has made this optimistic and nationalistic country of ours much more open to the anti-war point of view, a view that calls into question the decisions of the president and the actions of our military, two things that in this country are sacrosanct. It is this sea change that Cindy Sheehan's story represents and makes her a sort of hero. Her rise is a direct slap in the face to all those on the right who maligned those that spoke out against the war and for that I celebrate her.

Yes, it may be hard to believe, Republicans, but I support Cindy Sheehan and will write about her until the cows come home yet I don't agree that we should pull out of Iraq right now as she does. I respect her opinion, I even envy her resoluteness on the issue, but I am still struggling with the shades of gray.

Washington Post Backs Out Of 9/11 Event

2005-08-16T11:30:00.000-07:00

Holy crap. Remember this creepy event?

Well The Washington Post has decided to pull its support for the event in the form of free advertising because:
"As it appears that this event could become politicized, The Post has decided to honor the Washington area victims of 9/11 by making a contribution directly to the Pentagon Memorial Fund," said Eric Grant, a Post spokesman. "It is The Post's practice to avoid activities that might lead readers to question the objectivity of The Post's news coverage.".

Good for them. This is clearly a political event and, not only that, it is one that would serve to reinforce the disproven myth of a connection between 9/11 and the war in Iraq.

"The Post has a code of conduct that says employees should avoid a conflict of interest or the appearance of a conflict of interest," said Rick Ehrmann, a Local representative for the Washington-Baltimore newspaper Guild. "In this case The Post was sponsoring the Pentagon's Freedom Walk, which ties the attack on Sept. 11 to the Iraq war, and of course, The Post's reporters have proven ... that there is no connection between the two, that that link is false."
I mean, come on, Clint Black, the headliner for the DOD event, is known for his pro-war anthem "Iraq & Roll," essentially a neo-con fight song:

YOU CAN WAVE YOUR SIGNS IN PROTEST
AGAINST AMERICA TAKING STANDS
THE STANDS AMERICA'S TAKEN
ARE THE REASON THAT YOU CAN

IF EVERYONE WOULD GO FOR PEACE
THERE'D BE NO NEED FOR WAR
BUT WE CAN'T IGNORE THE DEVIL
HE'LL KEEP COMING BACK FOR MORE

SOME SEE THIS IN BLACK AND WHITE
OTHERS ONLY GRAY
WE'RE NOT BEGGING FOR A FIGHT
NO MATTER WHAT THEY SAY

I RAQ, I RACK'EM UP AND I ROLL
I'M BACK AND I'M A HIGH TECH GI JOE
I PRAY FOR PEACE, PREPARE FOR WAR
AND I NEVER WILL FORGET
THERE'S NO PRICE TOO HIGH FOR FREEDOM
SO BE CAREFUL WHERE YOU TREAD

I wouldn't exactly have expected the Pentagon to book Joan Baez but whether you agree with the war or not, there is no denying the blatant politicization of 9/11 that this event represents.

Cable's New Progressive Voice

2005-08-15T17:16:00.000-07:00

Air America's Rachel Maddow provides cable news with a fresh progressive voice and makes MSNBC's new The Situation With Tucker Carlson watchable. She consistently argues the left's point of view with charisma, humor and style...it sounds like I'm being paid to pitch her, but I'm completely serious.

And to be honest, Tucker's not nearly as annoying as he was on Crossfire; this show seems to be making the case for civil political debate, the anti-Crossfire. Not to mention the fact that Tucker, unlike the rest of the conservative cable cabal, is actually comfortable enough with himself to allow the show to be about something other than him. But unlike his ex-counterparts on the left James Carville & Paul Begala, Rachel Maddow actually speaks like a progressive, like she's proudly, shamelessly liberal. For example, on the prospect of 2008 presidential nominee John McCain:
That’s ridiculous! The Republicans basically built George W. Bush out of straw . . . They created him out of nothing so that he would owe them everything. They’re not gonna pick somebody like McCain, who has basically no friends in the Republican Party, doesn’t owe anybody anything, and is likely to make his own decisions.
But The Situation is not at all atypical in the sense that when Rachel is on, it's "to provide balance"; in other words, it's the conservative host, a conservative panelist and her. As Rachel puts it:
This idea [of] balance has shifted the idea of objectivity so far to the right that if you look at balance as a seesaw, it puts the fulcrum in a really weird place.
The Situation With Tucker Carlson is on MSNBC weeknights at 11pm Eastern.

And More From Crawford...

2005-08-14T15:04:00.000-07:00

Cindy Sheehan's Peaceful Occupation of Crawford, Texas is on its 9th day and her support and profile in the media continue to grow. From her daily update from Saturday, Aug. 13:
It was a busy morning of interviews and problem solving. I had interviews with some network shows and a photo shoot for the Vanity Fair article. Almost all of the reporters ask me if I have accomplished anything at Camp Casey and I think we really have. We have brought the war onto the front pages of the newspapers and the top stories of the mainstream media. It is really incredible that we are doing so well in the media because I keep telling all of the reporters that I am doing their jobs. I am asking the tough questions of the President that they don't ask.

Very true. Even now, the media doesn't really know what to do with her. She's being embraced as a public interest story on one hand and being covered as a political story on the other but sometimes the merging of the two makes journalists uncomfortable. On no fewer than four news programs in the past 2 days, I've heard Cindy Sheehan referred to as "that woman" or "this woman" before they talk about her more in depth, as though she's something foreign, unknowable and even worse, dismissable. But she will not be dismissed. More from Cindy:
We had a rally downtown in Crawford. Then the people caravanned up to Camp Casey. I was told to come down to the point of the triangle to greet them. While I was walking down to the point, I had a great view of Prairie Chapel Road. There was car, after car, after car!!! I started sobbing and I felt like collapsing. The cars kept on coming. It took almost a full hour for them to all get to Camp Casey, it was a miraculous sight to see. It was identical to Field of Dreams.People came from all over the country to be here. We are building a movement and they are coming...Today was George Bush's accountability moment, and he lost. Two young ladies from San Diego drove all night to get to the rally and they had to leave tonight to get back home. One of them said: "Wow, we can drive all the way from San Diego just to meet you and he can't even come down to the end of his driveway to meet with you."

So what exactly is Cindy Sheehan accomplishing in Crawford? It's clear that the president doesn't intend to meet with her. And after all, even as her story is embraced by the mainstream media, her personal beliefs and goals, specifically that we pull out of Iraq now, are still well to the left of center.

Jeffrey Feldman, a blogger who focuses on framing, or how words and images frame an issue in a certain way in our minds, has some pretty interesting thoughts on the big picture ramifications of Sheehan's protest. First of all he asserts that her success at capturing all the attention she's gotten has to do with how she is framed by the media: as a grieving mother. Google "grieving mother" and you get story after story about Cindy Sheehan's protest in Crawford. It is the fact that she is a grieving mother that is launching her onto the covers of People Magazine and Vanity Fair, and hitting home with people emotionally. As Feldman says:
In broad terms, the success of the 'grieving mom' phrase indicates that Americans are now thinking about the War in Iraq through the frame of the family, rather than thinking about Iraq through the frame of 'terrorism' or 'ideology.'

Those who follow political framing know that a common theory is that progressives and conservatives hold two differing worldviews that inform how they vote, each of which frames the world in terms of a family: progressives want their president to be a nurturant parent and conservatives want their president to be a strict father. In Bush's re-election campaign last year, Rove exploited people's post-9/11 desire for a strict father in order to win. Whereas before, war was a positive aspect of the strict father frame, here, Sheehan, the grieving mother, is accusing the father of sending our children off to die. Thanks to Sheehan, the world as family model is now biting Bush in the ass. But Feldman takes it even a step further:
The implications of this shift from 'terrorism' to family' in the country's thinking about Iraq are profound. Not only does this shift forewarn a political tidal wave soon to break on the President's foreign policy, but also of a much deeper, tectonic shift in the strategy beneath all the recent gains in the Republican party.

The great success of Cindy Sheehan's protest, therefore, is no less than the moral authority for the Democratic Party to speak for the American family.

In other words, Sheehan may be undermining not only the Republicans' political stranglehold on the "national defense" issue, but also the "family values" issue that Republicans have exploited so successfully for gains in recent years. Whether pie in the sky optimism or a real actionable game plan for Democrats, at the very least, Feldman's theory is saying there is vulnerability there on the Republican side that Democrats would do well to jump on. Let's hope they do so and fast.

New Cindy Sheehan Ad

2005-08-12T11:59:00.000-07:00

Incredibly moving.

It's being aired on Crawford, Texas cable with a $15,000 ad buy. Something tells me it's gonna get more play than that before it's done.

The Right's Misguided Campaign Against A Grieving Mother

2005-08-12T10:24:00.000-07:00

How do conservatives smear Cindy Sheehan without directly attacking the mother of a fallen soldier? By claiming guilt by association. Now Sheehan is in bed with "anti-American, anti-military, terrorist sympathizers" as Michelle Malkin , Japanese internment apologist, has characterized Michael Moore, MoveOn.org and other organizations that are against this war.

How Malkin or any conservative can claim to suppport the military while impugning Sheehan's integrity and sincerity is a mystery to me. She's always been against this war and she's never hidden that and, in fact, she has been speaking out for months and months without support from anybody but the like-minded progressive blogosphere.

But a few events converged that inspired Cindy Sheehan to take her activism to the next level: The first 5 days of August saw 30 or so US military deaths in Iraq; George Bush went on vacation but took time to assure the American people that we are there fighting for a "noble cause"; and the Veterans For Peace convention was in Dallas in early August. And so the lightbulb went off in Cindy's head to camp outside of Bush's ranch in Crawford until Bush spoke to her to explain exactly what the noble cause is that her son died for. Is the media circus that has resulted probably the best result Sheehan could have hoped for? Yes. Is it what any sane person would have expected of the media? No. The media has never shown any interest in the anti-war movement, let alone the "get out of Iraq now" perspective that Sheehan endorses. But now a majority of Americans believe that the war in Iraq has made us less safe. The mainstream of America (and the media with it) has moved toward Cindy Sheehan on this issue, she has stayed right where she always has been.

Yet she is being called a media whore by Michelle Malkin and a tool of the radical left by Bill O'Reilly. Now I do give Bill O'Reilly credit for inviting her on his show and, in her absence, inviting another mother of a slain soldier who is against the war and contemptuous of Bush. But the constant drumbeat of anti-Sheehan rhetoric being spewed on the right is merely a desperate ploy to marginalize her and the whole movement, which wouldn't be nearly as strong as it is, and hence require such effort to squash, if the war had been prosecuted in anything resembling a competent manner.

The fact that such a hawkish and nationalistic nation has turned so against the war is a tribute to just how horribly Bush and his neocon pals have fucked it up, yet for some reason, the right forgives and forgets, doesn't think Bush holds any culpability whatsoever and labels anyone who seeks to hold him accountable as anti-American. I'm no anti-war activist, but the administration lost my support for this particular war effort, a bit of which was still hanging on by a thread hoping things would improve, about a year ago and they've done nothing to win it back since. The fact is that all the war skeptics, all the doves, all the "radical left" have been correct in their pessimistic prognostications, and the war apologists, the hawks and the neocons have been wrong. And all Bush has to say is "stay the course?" Everyone knows that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over expecting a different result. The war plan is literally insane. It's about time the right acknowledges this and deals with the reality of the situation. So far all they can do is smear and attack their opponents, since, unfortunately for us and the many who have died in Iraq, day after day, the facts and the news fuel the opposing viewpoint. The best way to marginalize an opposing viewpoint is to be right and unfortunately for them, the right is so so wrong.

Iraq OpEd Round-up

2005-08-11T10:11:00.000-07:00

These always reliable editorialists are in particularly good form this week.

Maureen Dowd is back, baby:
Cindy Sheehan, a 48-year-old Californian with a knack for P.R., says she will camp out in the dusty heat near the ranch until she gets to tell Mr. Bush face to face that he must pull all U.S. troops out of Iraq. Her son, Casey, a 24-year-old Army specialist, was killed in a Sadr City ambush last year.

The president met with her family two months after Casey's death. Capturing W.'s awkwardness in traversing the line between somber and joking, and his love of generic labels, Ms. Sheehan said that W. had referred to her as "Mom" throughout the meeting, and given her the sense that he did not know who her son was.

The Bush team tried to discredit "Mom" by pointing reporters to an old article in which she sounded kinder to W. If only her husband were an undercover C.I.A. operative, the Bushies could out him. But even if they send out a squad of Swift Boat Moms for Truth, there will be a countering Falluja Moms for Truth.

It's amazing that the White House does not have the elementary shrewdness to have Mr. Bush simply walk down the driveway and hear the woman out, or invite her in for a cup of tea. But W., who has spent nearly 20 percent of his presidency at his ranch, is burrowed into his five-week vacation and two-hour daily workouts. He may be in great shape, but Iraq sure isn't.

And the indefatiguable Bob Herbert continues his series about Iraq today:

George W. Bush has no strategy, no real plan, for winning the war in Iraq. So we're stuck in a murderous quagmire without even the suggestion of an end in sight.

The administration has never been straight with the public about the war, and there's no reason to believe it will start being honest now. There is a desperate need for a serious national conversation about alternatives to the Bush approach in Iraq, which is tantamount to a permanent American military presence in that country.

The president, ensconced in a long vacation, exemplifies the vacuum of leadership on this crucial issue, which demands nothing less than the sustained attention of the wisest men and women the U.S. has to offer. They could be politicians, academics, civic or religious leaders, corporate executives - whoever. The longer they remain on the sidelines, the longer the carnage in Iraq will continue.
Mark Shields on CNN.com:

As of this writing, 1,827 Americans have been killed in Iraq -- 1,686 of those deaths have occurred since President George W. Bush landed on the deck of the USS Abraham Lincoln under a banner proclaiming, "Mission Accomplished."

Military service in wartime is not a "job." Recruitment in peacetime mostly emphasizes the benefits of valuable training, college tuition, self-improvement, pay and adventure. Combat and casualties are not part of the pitch.

Not surprisingly, the overwhelming majority of enlistees come from the lower-middle-class and blue-collar families. The affluent stand above and apart from military service, especially from the enlisted ranks -- the privates and the sergeants, from whose ranks have come more than 90 percent of the casualties and fatalities. This class exemption from service and from sacrifice produces an ethical failure that a democratic and moral people cannot tolerate.

Cindy Sheehan GMA Transcript

2005-08-11T09:42:00.000-07:00

CHARLES GIBSON: Do you really expect the president to see you?
CINDY SHEEHAN: No, I really don't. But, you know, even if he doesn't, we've accomplished so much in the few, few short days that we've been here. And the outpouring of love and support from America and the world has just been so amazing and, and gratifying to us who are staying out here in Crawford.
GIBSON: You did have a meeting with the president just after Casey had died, and he came to console ...
SHEEHAN: Right.
GIBSON: ... the family. Why didn't you make the points to him then?
SHEEHAN: Well, mostly because my son had only been dead for about nine weeks and I was in a deep state of shock and a -deep state of grief, and I didn't really know, the Dalfour weapons of mass destruction report hadn't come out, the - Senate intelligence report, the 9/11 Commission report, the Downing Street memos, and those all just proved to me that this war was based on lies and it never should have happened. (in reporters terms, that's called the "nut graf".And so I went from a deep state of shock to a deep state of anger.
GIBSON: I want to play for you a brief soundbite from a man named Jim Boskovitch who was interviewed by George Stephanopoulos this past Sunday and whose son just did die as well in Iraq. I want you to listen to what he had to say.
JIM BOSKOVITCH, SON KILLED IN IRAQ: I firmly believe, and I would echo my son's feelings on this, that it is very, very important for our country to remain steadfast and complete the mission that they set out to accomplish.
GIBSON: There are a lot of parents who feel that way, who've lost children over there. What, what do you say to them? Does what you're doing in any way disrespect their loss?
SHEEHAN: No. I don't believe so. I believe that the only way we can honor our children's memory is -by bringing the rest of them home alive. But I'd like to say to these people is, number one, I wish they could tell me what the mission is 'cause the mission changes all the time and the mission is very ill-defined. And, number two, I would never, ever question how a parent has to grieve their loss because his son came home the same way my son came home, and I honor the way he feels, and I, and I also honor that this is America and there's - differing viewpoints and we all have the right to express our viewpoints. And I reach out to every single family who, who has lost loved ones in this war because we're all going through the same pain. And I just want to say that our children are being honored, and, and a lot of them died saving their buddies and that's what we're trying to do. We're trying to save their buddies.

Cindy Sheehan, Patriot

2005-08-10T13:56:00.000-07:00

On April 4, 2004, Casey Sheehan was killed in action in Sadr City, Baghdad. Since that devastating day, Casey's mother, Cindy Sheehan, has channeled her grief into activism -- she's spoken out against the war, against the president and about the Downing Street Memo. Until recently she's remained a somewhat fringe figure, appearing often on Amy Goodman's Democracy Now and posting to progressive blogs. But that has all changed. This morning she was interviewed for Good Morning America and soon she will be appearing on the cover of People Magazine -- she is becoming the face of the grieving families of the war dead and is thrusting the anti-war movement into the mainstream.

It is a movement that the hawkish media has largely helped the conservatives to marginalize. Bill O'Reilly cut the mic of a 9/11 victim's son who started to spout anti-war rhetoric on his show; even the seemingly benign Bob Costas, filling in for Larry King, copped an antagonistic tone with the famously anti-war Vanessa Redgrave; and The New York Times front-paged Judith Miller's articles promoting the fiction that Iraq did indeed have WMDs leading up to the war (helping to legitimize whatever reason the adminstration's wheel of rationales landed on that week) leaving any coverage of anti-war marches or the like MIA.

But recently, as the fatality rate in Iraq has risen and the popularity of the war has plummetted, anti-war sentimenthas become less taboo, less traitorous despite what conservatives would have one believe. So Cindy Sheehan seems to be at the exact right place at the exact right time: outside of Bush's ranch in Crawford, Texas, a place dubbed Camp Casey, where she is waiting for the president to explain to her exactly what noble cause her son died for. She has vowed to stay throughout the month of August or until Bush speaks to her. Something tells me she should get comfortable, she'll be there a while.

Learn more about Cindy's "peaceful occupation" HERE and HERE. And read her blog entry for today HERE.

More on this ongoing story tomorrow.

9/11 Baby! Partay!

2005-08-10T11:09:00.000-07:00

What the hell are they thinking?

The Pentagon would hold a massive march and country music concert to mark the fourth anniversary of the September 11 terrorist attacks, US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said in an announcement tucked into an Iraq war briefing today.

"This year the Department of Defence will initiate an America Supports Your Freedom Walk," Rumsfeld said, adding that the march would remind people of "the sacrifices of this generation and of each previous generation".

The march will start at the Pentagon, where nearly 200 people died on September 11, 2001, and end at the National Mall with a show by country star Clint Black.
First of all, a full on celebration to commemorate 9/11? How you say...tasteless, inappropriate, desperate?

And think about it, it's a "march" on 9/11 to celebrate "freedom," presumably that of the Iraqis. So, in other words, not only does it continue to conflate 9/11 and Iraq as if they are actually related other than in a neocon's wet dream, but it also provides a physical manifestation of Bush's ultimate Iraq war mantra: "freedom is on the march." It's pure Rovian brilliance...cringe-inducing and embarrasing...but brilliant.

But if that's too subtle for some, Salon enlightens us as to the significance of Clint Black's headlining the concert:

Black is the man behind "I Raq and Roll," a country ditty that conflates Saddam Hussein with "the devil" who attacked the United States on 9/11: "We can't ignore the devil, he'll keep coming back for more ... If they won't show us their weapons, we might have to show them ours. It might be a smart bomb -- they find stupid people, too. And if you stand with the likes of Saddam, one just might find you."

Put a Progressive Back In The Big Brother House

2005-08-05T10:50:00.000-07:00

I have a problem: I love me my reality shows. Between Rock Star: INXS and Big Brother, I'm good for several nights of TV -- a perfect summer diversion since most of what airs elsewhere are repeats (although HBO, Showtime, FX and the World Series of Poker on ESPN are doing their part to keep me occupied.)

But you'll be happy to discover that my "obsession" with these much reviled reality shows is not without its redeeming moments. I've been particularly interested in how politics seeps into these shows and what I've found is that through casting choices, Viacom has been head and shoulders above the rest in bringing the Iraq War into millions of homes in a different way -- through the magic of reality TV.

First there was Iraq War POW Ron Young on The Amazing Race on CBS. Last season, he was cast with his then girlfriend to be one of the two-person teams racing around the world in a quest to win $1 million. What immediately struck one about Ron was how he constantly talked about Iraq but it was clear that that's simply what the editors focused on -- he was cast for a reason and they were going to milk it for all it was worth. While his presence and the spin of his character was certainly pro-military service, there didn't seem to be a distinct political agenda other than to derive drama from the situation. And they got it when his girlfriend, late in the race, accused him of being a quitter, saying he quits everything and when he asked her how he quit the military, she responded "by becoming a POW." That was a classic moment.

Then MTV's Real World cast an Iraq War veteran to be among the cast of its most recent edition: Real World Austin. Rachel too was clearly a proud veteran -- she was a medic and apparently saw some horrifying sights taking care of wounded soldiers in Iraq. She, however, has had a more overtly political perspective. In one episode she rails against Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 911 for being hostile toward the war (except that it's a freakin love letter to the troops, but whatever!) and in another episode she and fellow cast member Nehemiah get into it about the war: he calls it propaganda and she calls him the most ignorant person she's ever met. Not the height of intellectual discourse but hey, they're like 22. But what MTV is doing is showing the debate to its young viewers and more importantly, showing that it's OK to debate, to have disagreements, especially when the two people in question end the episode hugging it out as Rachel and Nehemiah do.

Finally, CBS is airing Big Brother three nights a week this summer and the most interesting and coolest houseguest on the show is a 24 year-old Iraqi-American Muslim named Kaysar. Well, he was until yesterday anyway...he got voted out last night.

Kaysar, being of Middle Eastern descent and an overt Muslim, was the outcast from day 1 and survived elimination the first week. After his secret partner got evicted the next week, he knew he had to upset the balance of power in the house if he was going to survive. He had the opportunity to do just that when he won Head of Household for the following week. This meant that he could nominate two people for eviction and through an ingenious sequence of maneuvers, he managed to rally a majority to his cause and oust Eric, the charismatic leader of the opposing group freakily dubbed "the friendship". Unfortunately, that also meant that he was a target and his enemies rallied to vote him out last night.

One of the things that makes Big Brother unique of course is that it happens in essentially real time -- they are in that house as we speak and in fact the Thursday eviction episodes air live. There is also an interactive element to the show -- you can watch them live on the web and there's always an "America's Choice" feature where America votes online to reward a particular houseguest. This week, America gets to vote one of the evicted houseguests back into the house.

I want you to help me vote Kaysar back in.

Why am I asking for your assistance here on a political website? Because this kid is smart, the kid is cool and from what I can tell, he is a progressive. Clearly, CBS cast him in part for the novelty of having an Iraqi-American in the house and hopefully to provide the valuable service of portraying a Muslim-American in a positive light, something mainstream America rarely has occasion to see. But in one episode a few weeks back, the Iraq War ceased to be merely subtext and came to the fore of the conversation and this time, it wasn't just debate for debate's sake. Kaysar argued forcefully against the war, talked about family members of his in Iraq who have been killed and how the country has been ravaged and full on won the argument. And when the small minded James parroted the talking point about wanting to fight them over there rather than over here, Kaysar slammed him "I thought you were an intellectual, James, but you're really disappointing me!" James listened to Kaysar and really seemed to get Kaysar's point and think twice about his own support of the war...at least that's how it was edited. Yes, that's right, CBS, Sumner "I vote for what's good for Viacom" Redstone's network, not only aired this debate, but they edited the sequence to promote the anti-war stance. Kaysar is the man and needs to get back in the house so he can continue to be a mouthpiece against the war and for other progressive values that may come up over the course of the series. We have the power to put him back in the house, back on the air 3 nights a week, so help a guy out. Vote for Kaysar HERE.

Novak Flips Out On CNN

2005-08-04T17:06:00.000-07:00

Hahaha

It's a bit anti-climactic since it happened during an inconsequential conversation about Katherine Harris's Florida Senate run, but Novak stormed off the set of CNN's Inside Politics today in response to some baiting by a snarky James Carville muttering "this is bullshit" and pulling free his microphone.

Novak has been under pressure lately, to be sure, what with his role in the Plame/Rove affair, but hey, he finally broke his silence to defend himself, so you'd think he'd be less on edge. (For those that missed his rousing defense, Novak announced that he was merely told "Joseph Wilson's wife" worked at the CIA and he looked her name up in a Who's Who reference book prior to outing her in his column.)

Anyway, this tantrum of his proves what's been clear for a long time, that he's a whiny little rightwing baby and his subsequent suspension from CNN is long overdue (although they don't seem to have a problem promoting the tantrum on the front page of their website!)

From a CNN spokesman:

Bob Novak's behavior on CNN today was inexcusable and unacceptable. Mr. Novak has apologized to CNN, and CNN apologizes to its viewers for his language and actions. We've asked Mr. Novak to take some time off.

President Jumps Into The Intelligent Design Debate

2005-08-04T11:00:00.000-07:00

On Tuesday, President Bush jumped into the debate over whether evolution should be taught exclusively in schools. It should be moted off the bat that his entire presidency has been marked by a distinct hostility toward science and he actually did utter the words "the jury is still out on evolution." Not to mention that it's always hard to pin down what Bush really thinks about an issue like this because he tries to be vague enough to placate religious conservatives while not scaring off moderates.

His comments on Tuesday were no exception.

Recalling his days as Texas governor, Mr. Bush said in the interview, according to a transcript, "I felt like both sides ought to be properly taught." Asked again by a reporter whether he believed that both sides in the debate between evolution and intelligent design should be taught in the schools, Mr. Bush replied that he did, "so people can understand what the debate is about."

Mr. Bush was pressed as to whether he accepted the view that intelligent design was an alternative to evolution, but he did not directly answer. "I think that part of education is to expose people to different schools of thought," he said, adding that "you're asking me whether or not people ought to be exposed to different ideas, and the answer is yes."
The way he puts it is quite deft. How can you really argue with "people should be exposed to all ideas." It sounds downright liberal. But the upshot is clear: he would support the teaching of Intelligent Design in schools next to evolution.

The Washington Post editorial page redeems itself today with a blistering critique of this view.

Of course the president is right that, in the context of a philosophical debate, it would be appropriate to discuss both sides of an issue before arriving at a conclusion. In the context of a religious discussion, it would also be very interesting to ponder whether the human race exists on Earth for a purpose or merely by accident. But the proponents of intelligent design are not content with participating in a philosophical or religious debate. They want their theory to be accepted as science and to be taught in ninth-grade biology classes, alongside the theory of evolution. For that, there is no basis whatsoever: The nature of the "evidence" for the theory of evolution is so overwhelming, and so powerful, that it informs all of modern biology. To pretend that the existence of evolution is somehow still an open question, or that it is one of several equally valid theories, is to misunderstand the intellectual and scientific history of the past century.

To give Mr. Bush the benefit of the doubt, he may have been catering to his Texas constituents, a group of whom, in the city of Odessa, were recently found to have turned an allegedly secular public high school Bible studies course into a hodgepodge of myth and religious teaching. But politics are no excuse for indulging quackery, not from a president -- especially not from a president -- who claims, at least some of the time, that he cares about education.

Blame The Left Sweepstakes

2005-08-04T09:43:00.000-07:00

I expect to hear blame the left finger pointing for society's ills from right wing nuts such as Senator Rick Santorum (R-PA.) Take for example what he said on a recent media appearance:
I don't believe that people should be free to do what pleases them the most. That's the difference between the right and the left. The liberal agenda is "I should be able to do whatever I want to do as long as no one gets hurt"...That is not the kind of freedom our founders envisioned...It is harming America. Look at the rampant rate of divorce brought to us by the left.
Not only is this a gross generalization that is just silly in its sweeping blame, but it ignores inconvenient facts that show that the highest divorce rate in the nation happens to occur in the Bible Belt...yes, that bastion of liberalism.

But I do not expect such anti-left rhetoric to come from the New York Times editorial page. Yes David Brooks is a conservative but I always thought he veered leftward of his nuttier brethren and didn't engage in the unproductive blame the left hate mongering that is so prominent on the right. But alas, his editorial today would seem to blame the left for terrorism.

It starts out reasonably enough, redefining our common conception of the terrorists that we are engaged in war against. For example, he cites interesting statistics:
...about 75 percent of anti-Western terrorists come from middle-class or upper-middle-class homes. An amazing 65 percent have gone to college, and three-quarters have professional or semiprofessional jobs, particularly in engineering and science.

This is counter to the cliche that
terrorists emerge from cultures that are isolated from the Enlightenment ideas of the West. They feel disoriented by the pluralism of the modern age and humiliated by the relative backwardness of the Arab world. They are trapped in stagnant, dysfunctional regimes, amid mass unemployment, with little hope of leading productive lives.
This phenomenon was portrayed interestingly on last night's episode of "Over There," in which the insurgent leaders are shown as educated, multilingual radicals dressed in "white shirts and chinos." In fact, the upper middle class look of the driver and passenger of a suspicious car that approaches a US manned checkpoint is what leads one soldier of Middle Eastern descent to conclude that they are in fact insurgents. He likens the jihadists to being a hippie in 1969 and hearing about Woodstock -- this is the event of their lifetimes they wouldn't miss for the world.

But Brooks takes the conversation in a strange direction.
In his new book "Globalized Islam," the French scholar Olivier Roy points out that today's jihadists have a lot in common with the left-wing extremists of the 1930's and 1960's. Ideologically, Islamic neofundamentalism occupies the same militant space that was once occupied by Marxism. It draws the same sorts of recruits (educated second-generation immigrants, for example), uses some of the same symbols and vilifies some of the same enemies (imperialism and capitalism).

A conservative will only stoop to siding with a Frenchman if it means blaming the left for something, eh? Now I'm certainly not saying that as a liberal I side with or relate to Marxism, although some on the right would say they are one in the same, but certainly the anti-globalist movement is on the left extreme of the US political spectrum and the likening of them to modern terrorists is just another attempt to portray the left as anti-American and aligned with the enemy. But the comparison is disingenuous at best. As DailyKos's Armando correctly points out:
Liberals believe in women's rights, civil rights generally, voting rights and, as the Extreme Right loudly states, secularism. The terrorists abhor civil rights, voting rights, women's rights and secularism.
Alas the views of our enemy are more consistent with those of the far right in this country -- the extreme faction that is pursuing a rollback in our freedoms and the destruction of the separation of church and state.

Oldies But Goodies

2005-08-03T14:58:00.003-07:00

These are some classic right-wing quotes about the way Clinton waged war in Bosnia:

"You can support the troops but not the president."
--Rep Tom Delay (R-TX)

"Explain to the mothers and fathers of American servicemen that may come home in body bags why their son or daughter have to give up their life?"
--Sean Hannity, Fox News, 4/6/99

"[The] President . . . is once again releasing American military might on a foreign country with an ill-defined objective and no exit strategy. He has yet to tell the Congress how much this operation will cost. And he has not informed our nation's armed forces about how long they will be away from home. These strikes do not make for a sound foreign policy."
--Sen Rick Santorum (R-PA)

"If we are going to commit American troops, we must be certain they have a clear mission, an achievable goal and an exit strategy."
--Karen Hughes, speaking on behalf of George W Bush

"I cannot support a failed foreign policy. History teaches us that it is often easier to make war than peace. This administration is just learning that lesson right now. The President began this mission with very vague objectives and lots of unanswered questions. A month later, these questions are still unanswered. There are no clarified rules of engagement. There is no timetable. There is no legitimate definition of victory. There is no contingency plan for mission creep. There is no clear funding program. There is no agenda to bolster our over-extended military. There is no explanation defining what vital national interests are at stake. There was no strategic plan for war when the President started this thing, and there still is no plan today." -- Rep Tom Delay (R-TX)

"Victory means exit strategy, and it's important for the President to explain to us what the exit strategy is."
--Governor George W Bush (R-TX)

"Liberal" Media Strikes Again

2005-08-02T13:31:00.000-07:00

While the conservative cable news hate spewers Hannity and Scarborough are pre-occupied with becoming the next von Susteren and Abrams by covering the Natalee Holloway disappearance ad infinitum (yes, people would rather hear you interview the girl's poor mother for the fiftieth time than distort facts to parrot Republican talking points) I'll take this opportunity to counter one of their favorite talking points: that the liberal media has nothing positive to report about Iraq and only wants us to fail over there.

Here's an excerpt from today's Washington Post editorial:
...the announcement yesterday that they intend to finish the draft document in time for the parliament to approve it by Aug. 15 -- a decision that partly reflects U.S. opposition to a postponement -- is extremely good news. As the Iraqi elections in January proved, positive steps taken toward a permanent, legitimate government boost the morale of those Iraqis who want to live in a peaceful society, even when those steps aren't taken under the best possible conditions. More important, there is evidence that the constitution-writing process is itself driving some of the violence.

The subtext of this paragraph, as Kos's Armando rightly points out, is that the Washington Post's editorial board, supposedly a pillar of the America hating left, still buys into the rosy projections of the Bush admministration after having been proven time and again that they do not deserve the benefit of any doubt. Every time another milestone is reached, we are meant to believe that the violence is going to end this time, really; democracy is on the march, people. No, the Bushies just want to be able to get out with some face as soon as possible so as not to lose in '08 because of Iraq backlash and the only way to do that with any credibility is if the Iraqi government is established and kicks our ass out. They know we won't have won, but have already begun to lower the bar of success -- after the havoc we have wrought in their land, after the death our presence there has caused to civilians and military alike, we will leave because the Iraqi government tells us to and claim that the fact that the Iraqi government has the self-determination to do so in itself is victory.

No, to call the Washington Post liberal is an insult to liberals.

This Guy Represents Us To The World?!

2005-08-02T10:45:00.000-07:00

Yesterday President Bush appointed John Bolton to be US Ambassador to the UN using a recess appointment, which avoids his having to get Bolton approved by the Senate. Pesky checks and balances, again too inconvenient for Bush. There's a reason Bolton left the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, a Republican majority committee, WITHOUT a recommendation. People of both parties dislike this guy. Now it comes out that he's a liar to boot. The State Department admitted that John Bolton did not tell the truth when he swore that he had not been questioned by the Inspector General about the false claim made by President Bush that Iraq tried to buy yellow cake uranium from Niger. Bolton's appointment is just the latest egregious reward given to the architects of the failed Iraq War -- George Tenet and Paul Bremer were awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom and Condoleezza Rice was promoted to Secretary of State. Yes, this administration is failing upward. You want to see the man who will be the face of the US to the international community, watch this Video. This is the company our president keeps.

Hurrah! The Global War on Terror Has Ended...!

2005-08-01T12:29:00.000-07:00

...And has been replaced with the Global Struggle Against Violent Extremism, or G-SAVE for short. Get it? SAVE? It's goooood. "War?", who said anything about war? A war can be lost; a war needs pesky things like stated goals, defined enemies and exit strategies, but a struggle...a struggle is much more flexible.

I first heard about this syntactical shift on The Daily Show, and as with so many things they report, I wasn't sure at first if it was real. I mean, with this administration, the line between reality and surreality is often blurred. But sure enough, there next to John Stewart's head was video of several administration officials using the term "struggle against violent extremism" in their speeches. And indeed, The New York Times reported on it last week:
The Bush administration is retooling its slogan for the fight against Al Qaeda and other terrorist groups, pushing the idea that the long-term struggle is as much an ideological battle as a military mission, senior administration and military officials said Monday.

In recent speeches and news conferences, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and the nation's senior military officer have spoken of "a global struggle against violent extremism" rather than "the global war on terror," which had been the catchphrase of choice. Administration officials say that phrase may have outlived its usefulness, because it focused attention solely, and incorrectly, on the military campaign.

Gen. Richard B. Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told the National Press Club on Monday that he had "objected to the use of the term 'war on terrorism' before, because if you call it a war, then you think of people in uniform as being the solution."

Really? I wonder why that would be. Remember this beauty?
Conservatives saw the savagery of 9/11 and the attacks and prepared for war; liberals saw the savagery of the 9/11 attacks and wanted to prepare indictments and offer therapy and understanding for our attackers.
So said Karl Rove in his memorable words to the Conservative Party of New York on June 22. Of course the impression we get is that war is the answer to terrorism because it's what the administration has force fed us for 4 years -- it's this administration's M.O. and is the only thing that got Bush re-elected. But as so many predicted, the strategy has been a failed one, so no wonder they want to make a change. But leave it to this administration to change the name but not the actual strategy.

To close, we go to always reliable Paul Krugman who states it plainly in his column today:

The "global war on terrorism" has been downgraded to the "global struggle against violent extremism" (pronounced gee-save), which is just embarrassing. Baghdad is a nightmare, Basra is a militia-run theocracy, and officials are talking about withdrawing troops from Iraq next year (just in time for the U.S. midterm elections).

"Over There" - A Review

2005-07-28T13:00:00.000-07:00

FX premiered Stephen Bochco's new Iraq War drama, Over There, last night and I have to say, the show is intense. As we've come to expect from Bochco, Over There definitely pushes the envelope. Not only do "shit" and its variations make regular appearances in the dialogue, but the show does not shy away from portraying the violence of war. In one memorable scene, an American soldier shoots an insurgent with a bazooka, shattering his entire upper body but leaving his legs intact to walk 2 or 3 steps before dropping to the ground.

Despite the fact that Over There is airing on Rupert Murdoch-owned FX, I didn't expect the show to be pro-war propaganda as some on the left feared. There seems to be a distinct separation between the news divisions and the entertainment divisions of the huge conglomerates that produce and air our television entertainment. Viacom chairman Sumner Redstone may have voted for Bush and may want Republicans to win so there will be less and less media ownership regulation, but it didn't stop CBS from airing an anti-war tirade by an Iraqi-American houseguest on Big Brother.

What I did not expect, however, was that the show would portray the war in Iraq as nothing less than hell on earth. In Bochco's hands, Iraq is a place where no one in his right mind would want to go. The young soldier protagonists of Over There confront unseen deadly enemies, constant fear of death and roadside IEDs, all within the first week of being there. An Army recruitment video this is not.

That's not to say the show lacks a pro-military point of view. One character, bright-eyed born leader Bo, is obviously thrilled to be there; at one point in the heat of battle, he goes off about how much he loves being in the Army. But as if to blunt his enthusiasm, an IED blows off his leg at the end of the episode. Another character clearly derives a perverse thrill from killing the enemy, announcing patriotically "we're not here for oil, we're here to kill you assholes!" But this character is one of the less sympathetic: the gruff sergeant nicknamed "Scream" who scolds one character "you put one of my men in harm's way again, I'll shoot you myself." A third soldier, a Cornell graduate nicknamed "Dim" (the idea being that only an idiot would end up in the Army after such an elite education), seems to rail against the war, calling himself and his fellow soldiers "monsters" for what they're doing but then his dialogue takes a strange turn...he begins to talk of the "honor" in what they're doing and the "privelege" he feels to be there. I think the point was to show the true force of the sense of mission soldiers feel and perhaps even the sense of mission one must feel in such a circumstance just to get through the day; but to me it felt forced, it felt as though the hand of the writer was in full view, perhaps even responding to a studio executive's note to make the show more evenhanded. But that was the one false note in an otherwise solid first episode.

I actually hope the show does not turn out to be explicitly anti-war -- for it to be truthful and complex, it should explore both sides of the argument; I'm not interested in watching propaganda of any stripe and it would be refreshing to see an honest debate take place in the media about this war, even if it is in the form of fiction.

Over There airs on FX Wednesdays at 10pm E/P.

Roberts Needs a Good Borking

2005-07-20T15:18:00.000-07:00

I don't know if it's ironic or just sad that the must exciting time Todd and I had covering the 2004 election was where, in retrospect, it was ultimately lost - the DNC Convention. As much as the convention was a waste for John Kerry, it was putatively more than a nominating infommercial. The leading members of the party, not just on the Fleet Center dais, but in event after event Todd and I attended, promised its members in the next four years to fight against the extreme values on the other side that (after 4 years of Bush) we now understood the Republicans were all about. If the test of that oath does not come when George W. Bush replaces a court moderate with a 50-year-old arch-conservative whose position on the most important pending legal issue of our time is all but crystal clear - when is it?

It's true, it's most likely too early to tell whether or not it is politically expedient or convenient or even winnable to fight the nomination, though all may seem dubious at the moment. That is besides the point. We know enough about Bush's candidate to know that he strongly resents our core values, and will almost surely do so for 20 years on the court. The writ he signed decrying Roe v Wade is a smoking gun. Right there he should be discarded by all Senators who consider themselves allies to women's rights and personal freedoms. His record is staunchly pro-corporate, anti-worker, anti-environment, anti-woman. He has a long history of strong political allegiances with the right wing of the party, if not the ultra-batty tip in which the Ashcrofts of the world reside.

It is not difficult to extrapolate the Rovian machinations behind this nomination: Bush lusted for a hard-core conservative white Christian male, but in his tremulous current standing needed one without a provocative mouth or a history long in memorandum. This is a cynical power play. Make no mistake Bush did not make this choice without getting the promise (whether it came in the form a wink or a nudge or signed promise made on confidential, stolen CIA stationary) from Roberts, or his people, that he would be a hard-right stooge. I'm sure Bush the First counseled the scion on sussing out the ideological bones of his man, after that disastrous experience he had nominating the free-thinking, moderate Justice Souter.

This president could not be trusted with a water gun, nevermind a supreme court nomination. He deserves no benefit of the doubt, this master of the most misbegotten, misleading foreign and domestic policy (embracing all in rhetoric, but anti-everyone who's not exceedingly rich nor a Halliburton-like entity in practice). A candidate with a clear paper trail of moderation, this is the only offering we should abide at this moment.

If the first 48 hours in opposing a nominee are the most important as experience and experts seem inclined to tell us, we must work with the facts we have now and vociferously hold the leaders of our party to the promise made to us last summer: to, if nothing less, protect the liberties the other side seeks to retract.

Todd, you don't have to give any money to Kerry, or sign MoveOn's petition. Just call Dianne Feinstein and tell her you won't stomach the confirmation of any judge who would clearly vote to overturn Roe V Wade. It's the truth, isn't it?

Another View On Roberts

2005-07-20T12:12:00.000-07:00

Thanks to Fletcher Christian for his take on the nomination of John Roberts to the Supreme Court.

President Bush's nomination of John G. Roberts to the Supreme Court of the United States was not in the least surprising. Judge Roberts is highly qualified, well-respected by his colleagues, and known for being a thoughtful jurist. Is he conservative? Of course. But did we expect this president to nominate anyone less conservative than Roberts? Only a fool would have labored under that delusion.

To those on the left who object to the nominee, I say 'tough.' Judge Roberts is not the worst person President Bush could have nominated to the Court. In fact, he is likely the best we could have hoped for given the track record of this White House.

However you feel about their politics, the men and women of this West Wing are master tacticians. They nominated the most conservative, qualified person they could find who would garner at least 50 votes in the Senate and make Senate Democrats look silly if they filibustered the nominee. This is how this White House plays every decision. They demand the absolute maximum that will garner the minimum votes necessary to win. It's no different with the case of Judge Roberts.

When the President said that he would like to nominate someone to the Court in the mold of Antonin Scalia or Clarence Thomas, he wasn't kidding. (Thankfully, he nominated someone closer to the qualifications of Justice Scalia instead of the woefully inadequate Thomas, whose legal mind is outshone by anyone you could reach at 1-800-LAWYER.) Unless Bush or any president nominates someone to the Court who rejects the very basic precepts of America jurisprudence, that nominee will be confirmed. All one need do is look at the tiny number of Court nominees who have ever been rejected by the Senate to understand this fact. The nominee must either be mentally unfit (Washington-nominated Rutledge), wholly unqualified (Nixon-nominated Carswell), or completely contemptuous of senators (Reagan-nominated Bork) to be denied a seat on the Court.

Conservative presidents nominate conservative nominees; moderates nominate moderates, and so on. The lesson for liberals is this: win elections. When you get your man or woman in the White House, you can nominate whomever you wish. Considering that this nominee is mentally competent, well-qualified, and of a pleasant demeanor, you should make your speeches on the Senate floor, vote against him, and then watch Justice Roberts take his seat on the bench on the first Monday in October.

Roberts...The Day After

2005-07-20T10:04:00.000-07:00

I'm surprised by some things I'm feeling this morning, and no, anonymous, it has nothing to do with your enlightening comments. First I should say that part of what motivated me (and so many of us to be sure) during the election last year was this issue -- the desire to prevent Bush from having the opportunity to fill a vacancy on the Supreme Court. The very prospect was chilling as he had consistently demonstrated an aggressive antagonism toward our values in his first term. We could not allow him to fill a vacancy on the highest court in the land.

But a lot has happened since last year. First of all, Democrats found their voice and, even after losing seats in both houses of Congress last year, managed thus far this year to be an effective minority party blocking both Social Security privatization and John Bolton's nomination largely by informing and controlling public opinion. Secondly, Bush's approval ratings have plummetted. The country is demonstrating serious buyer's remorse as Bush's facade of moderation has faded and more and more people see him for the out of the mainstream extremist he is. In addition, Sandra Day O'Connor retired to a fanfare of praise for her role as a swing vote, the ultimate ode to the refreshing lack of partisanship she demonstrated as a justice. And finally, 2 words: Karl Rove.

Which brings me to my gut reaction this morning, which I guess can only be described as "the choice could have been a lot worse." On one hand, the fact that Roberts has only been a judge for 2 years and so doesn't have a long record of judicial decisions is a little scary -- this guy is an unknown quantity; but that can work both ways -- Bush needs insurance against critics on the right as well as on the left so he went with the safe choice, someone with conservative credentials whose inside the beltway status and lack of controversial decisions would virtually ensure his confirmation. Let's face it: the choice of Roberts is the choice of an embattled president, a weak president, one who can not afford another bitter fight, who can not afford to lose another battle to the minority party.

Having said that, we can't ignore how the reaction to O'Connor's retiremement must have informed Bush's choice as well. In the wake of her announcement earlier this month, O'Connor was essentially deified by the media and by most mainstream voices. As a caller on the Stephanie Miller Show said this morning, this court will be known as the O'Connor court, not the Rehnquist court. Bush's desire for a long-lasting judicial legacy demands that he appoint a thoughtful evenhanded justice who will serve to moderate between the perceived divided factions that already serve on the court; the same goes for Roberts himself.

Having these thoughts running through my head this morning, I arrived to work with several e-mails from left wing activist groups in my inbox, most declaring what a disastrous nominee Roberts is; and to my surprise, all I can think is "chill the f- out." I'm sorry, Move On, I'm not going to sign your petition this time; no, John Kerry, you're not gonna get any more money out of me today; and sorry Human Rights Campaign, no nominee was going to make you happy. We need to remember that simply being conservative does not disqualify one from being appointed to The Supreme Court and I really just don't like the alarmist tone being struck by a lot of these groups, opposing for the sake of opposing, exploiting my fears of a radical rightwing judiciary to raise money.

I do recommend the Center For American Progress website, however. It's devoted to informing us about Roberts and suggesting plans of attack for the Senate to make sure that this guy is a mainstream choice. I'm certainly not advocating that the Senate rubber stamp this nominee; some of his rulings and arguments on behalf of the government have been disturbing and we do need to ask questions about his judicial temperament and demand that he answer them. But at the same time, we can not allow the Democrats and liberals to fall into the obstructionist trap that Republicans have set and we should not oppose for opposing's sake.

Bush's Nominee: Judge John Roberts

2005-07-19T16:53:00.000-07:00

Bush's choice for the Supreme Court is U.S. Circuit Judge John Roberts Jr. This is an aggressively divisive pick.

First his history, care of CNN:

Nominated by President Bush to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, Roberts joined the bench in June 2003 after Senate Democrats initially stalled his nomination. The appellate court in Washington is considered the most prestigious in the country, and several justices have moved from there to the U.S. Supreme Court, including Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas and Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Roberts has argued 39 cases before the high court. A Harvard Law School graduate, he clerked for Judge Henry J. Friendly of the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals and then-Associate Justice William Rehnquist. In 1982, Gordon served as associate White House counsel under President Reagan, leaving four years later to join the Washington-based law firm of Hogan & Hartson. He became deputy solicitor general in 1989 under President George H.W. Bush before returning to Hogan & Hartson in 1993. Gordon was born in 1955 in Buffalo, New York. Like McConnell, his relative youth may prove attractive to Bush if the president wants to leave a long judicial legacy.

Some of his legal arguments/rulings care of Slate:

On Separation of Church & State:

For Bush I, co-authored a friend-of-the-court brief arguing that public high-school graduation programs could include religious ceremonies. The Supreme Court disagreed by a vote of 5-4. (Lee v. Weisman, 1992)

On Criminal Law:

Joined a unanimous opinion ruling that a police officer who searched the trunk of a car without saying that he was looking for evidence of a crime (the standard for constitutionality) still conducted the search legally, because there was a reasonable basis to think contraband was in the trunk, regardless of whether the officer was thinking in those terms. (U.S. v. Brown, 2004)

On abortion:

For Bush I, successfully helped argue that doctors and clinics receiving federal funds may not talk to patients about abortion. (Rust v. Sullivan, 1991)

A few other tidbits include that Roberts gave $1,000 to Bush's 2000 campaign, he clerked for Kenneth Starr and he was voted to the DC Circuit Court by a unanimous Senate vote in 2003.

So he's close to Bush, his conservatism all but guarantees a fight, which will distract the media from Karl Rove yet his prior confirmation vote all but guarantees that he'll be confirmed this time and he's only 50, which means he'll be on the court forever. Sounds like it could be a political home run for Bush.

This is not good.

Meet The Press Smackdown

2005-07-19T14:29:00.000-07:00

It's nice to see Tim Russert actually get exercized about an issue, especially when it involves smacking down a Republican spinmeister. On Sunday's Meet The Press Russert addressed the Rove scandal with Chairman of the RNC Ken Mehlman and former Clinton Chief of Staff John Podesta. Here's a nice (albeit long) exchange that addressed what the White House has said in the past vs. what they're saying now vis a vis Rove's involvement in the leak:

MR. RUSSERT: Let me go through the public pronouncements from the White House. Here's President Bush on September 30, 2003, about the leak.
(Videotape, September 30, 2003):
PRES. GEORGE W. BUSH: If there is a leak out of my administration, I want to know who it is. And if the person has violated law, that person will be taken care of.
(End videotape)
MR. RUSSERT: "That person will be taken care of." A week after that, Scott McClellan talked to the White House press corps and the American people. David Gregory of NBC News asked him the following question.
(Videotape, October 7, 2003):
MR. DAVID GREGORY: You have said that you personally went to Scooter Libby, Karl Rove and Elliott Abrams to ask them if they were the leakers. Is that what happened? Whey did you do that? And can you describe the conversations you had with them? What was the question you asked them?
MR. SCOTT McCLELLAN (White House Press Secretary): Yeah. They are good individuals. They are important members of our White House team, and that's why I spoke with them so that I could come back to you and say that they were not involved. I had no doubt with--of that in the beginning, but I like to check my information to make sure it's accurate before I report back to you, and that's exactly what I did.
(End videotape)
MR. RUSSERT: "They were not involved." Is that comment still operative?
MR. MEHLMAN: Well, Tim, I know Scott McClellan very well. Scott's a smart guy. He's an honest guy. He's a very effective spokesman. And he'd love to be on this show this morning commenting. But in contradiction to what he said, attack, attack, attack is not how we'll respond to this investigation. This White House is responding by cooperate, cooperate, cooperate. And what Scott understands and all of us understand as attorneys is that the last thing a prosecutor wants to see are people out talking about the facts of his case. And so Scott is now not commenting. But the fact is--what the facts this week show is what Scott said is accurate. The facts show that Karl Rove was not the source of Bob Novak, that there was another source that, in fact, leaked the information to him, and that Karl Rove at the time didn't know her name, didn't know she was undercover and didn't provide that information to him.
...

MR. RUSSERT: Whoa, hold on, hold on. Why did Scott McClellan feel comfortable in commenting on the investigation back in 2003 when it was just going on?
MR. MEHLMAN: Well, Tim, it...
MR. RUSSERT: He said to the American people that Libby, Rove, Abrams were not involved. And we now know that, according to published reports and Mr. Rove's attorney, that Mr. Rove confirmed the Novak account and was the source for Matt Cooper, as Matt Cooper testified before the grand jury and explained this morning on MEET THE PRESS. Is that not being involved?
MR. MEHLMAN: Tim, as you know, investigations have different phases. In the very early part of an investigation, when there's less--when there are fewer witnesses testifying, and less activity is one point. Clearly now, I think, that Scott's right. And I give tremendous credit to this president, and to this White House, who is saying, "We don't care about the short-term political heat we may feel. We care about justice being done," which is why they're not commenting.
...

MR. RUSSERT: But he said they were not involved. Is that accurate?
MR. MEHLMAN: Well, according to the information that's come out this week--and, again, we're here speculating--but the information that's come out this week, that we all agree on, says they were not involved in a leak.
MR. PODESTA: Oh, well, I think that's absurd, and I think the American public sees that. The question at the time that Mr. McClellan was answering was: Was Karl Rove one of the two sources for Mr. Novak? Now, we know that he was. His own lawyers admitted that. And at least he does it off the record on background, but it's clear that Mr. Luskin's out there briefing The New York Times and others, that says that Mr. Rove was the second source. So the one thing--you don't have to be a genius to know that when Karl Rove sent Scott McClellan to the podium to say he wasn't involved, he was not telling the truth. And, I think, at this point, as he sits there as deputy chief of staff in charge of coordinating the Homeland Security Council the National Security Council, he's not serving the president, he's not serving the country. And I think that if he had an ounce of character, he'd do the right thing and resign.

Bush To Announce SCOTUS Nominee Tonight

2005-07-19T10:46:00.000-07:00

Bush is set to announce his nominee to the Supreme Court tonight at 9pm Eastern. The better to get Karl Rove off the front page...

The most persistent rumor is that his nominee will be Judge Edith Brown Clement of the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans. She is one of the class of 2001; among the eight Bush nominated appellate court justices from 4 years ago that the Senate confirmed.

Will this choice be controversial? Will it spark a fight on the left? Signs right now are pointing to no. Arlen Specter (R-PA), Chairman of the Judiciary Committe, called on Bush to appoint a moderate and word is that he is happy with this appointment. Also, the only record of Judge Clement's having given to a political campaign was in 1987 when she gave to George Herbert Walker Bush's campaign, generally considered to be a moderate Republican, possibly signaling that she's no partisan.

Slate would seem to agree with this assessment. Judge Edith Brown Clement was the only woman featured in their July 1 profile of 8 likely SCOTUS nominees. Here's an excerpt:

Age: 57
Graduated from: Tulane Law School.
She's now: a judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit
(appointed 2001).

Her confirmation battle: Clement doesn't provide much ammunition for opposition groups, but perhaps not much for conservatives to get excited about either. She hasn't written anything notable off the bench (or at least nothing that's come to light yet), and most of her judicial decisions have been in relatively routine and uncontroversial cases.

People For The American Way is less sanguine about the choice. They profile disturbing decisions of various of Bush's circuit court appointments, including Judge Clement, saying they (she included) have "confirmed our worst fears" about Bush's judges.

In fact, Senator Harry Reid's (D-NV) own analysis of decisions by the eight justices confirmed to appellate courts in 2001 points to a disturbing decision on the part of Judge Clement:
Judge Edith Brown Clement dissented from a 2-1 ruling in favor of African American plaintiffs in a civil rights lawsuit brought against life insurance companies that had maintained dual rate and dual plan policies by race, placing African Americans “in policies offering the same benefits as do policies sold to whites, but at a higher premium.”

The district court denied the plaintiff’s motion to proceed with a class action – which, in all likelihood, would have ended the lawsuit. The Fifth Circuit reversed, with Judge Clement dissenting. Bratcher v. National Standard Life Insurance Co., 365 F.3d 408 (5th Cir. 2004)

All in all there isn't much we know about how Judge Clement would lean on the more controversial topics of the day such as abortion and right to privacy issues. What do we know? Right wing RedState.org tries to appease its readers' fears:

I have been told by multiple parties that, though we know little about Judge Clement's leanings on social issues, we should make no mistake that her family background is conservative and that her husband is a "loyal" conservative. Also, I've gotten a few emails and phone calls from a few particular people who would know who all say that we should trust the President on this pick. I also know that lawyers in my home state of Louisiana like Clement and do think she is conservative.
...and addresses the probably political realities of this choice:

We don't know much else about Edith Clement. What we do know means the President has attempted to address Democratic concerns about replacing O'Connor with someone like O'Connor. We also know that Clement's background is more conservative than O'Connor's. We also know that there is a political calculus on having a photogenic female judge without any harsh statements on file, the record of an enigma, and the family pedigree of a rock solid conservative pass through the Senate without the expenditure of an extraordinary amount of political capital.
It would seem very un-Bush-like to nominate a moderate, considering all the flack he'd get from the right. But perhaps his concern now is to appease the moderates, most importantly those in the Senate who have to actually confirm his choice. Perhaps Bush is tired of defeats that have undermined his power and his popularity. Perhaps he wants this to go through nice and easy like. Well, that would all make sense if Bush were a pod person...that is to say if his body were taken over by a moderate alien life form. A more likely scenario is that Clement is indeed a conservative activist, the perfect kind -- a Trojan Horse conservative.

But yet another scenario has entered into the rumor mill fray: that Judge Clement is merely a decoy. A new rumor has it that the President plans a bait and switch: float the rumor that it's Clement then announce that his pick is actually Judge Edith H. Jones, also of the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals. If she's the pick, prepare for a serious fight. Here's a little sample of Judge Jones for ya to whet your appetite:
...if courts were to delve into the facts underlying Roe [v. Wade]'s balancing scheme with present-day knowledge, they might conclude that the woman's 'choice' is far more risky and less beneficial, and the child's sentience far more advanced, than the Roe Court knew." Judge Jones also stated that "[o]ne may fervently hope that the Court will someday acknowledge" the findings of post-Roe research on women's mental and physical health following abortion "and re-evaluate Roe and Casey accordingly." In conclusion, Judge Jones noted "[t]hat the Court's constitutional decisionmaking leaves our nation in a position of willful blindness to evolving knowledge should trouble any dispassionate observer not only about the abortion decisions, but about a number of other areas in which the Court unhesitatingly steps into the realm of social policy under the guise of constitutional adjudication.

Yikes.

Deconstructing the Rove Spin

2005-07-14T12:54:00.000-07:00

Salon's War Room does a great job of identifying and demystifying some of the Republicans' misleading statements in their attempts to defend Karl Rove:

Two years ago, the White House told the American public that "the president knows" that Rove wasn't involved with the Plame leak and that he would fire anyone who was. Now we know that Rove was involved and that Bush hasn't fired him yet. That's the reality unless the Republicans can create a new one, which explains just a little about why they're trying so hard to do so.

It explains why you're hearing claims that Rove didn't really leak anything because he didn't use Plame's name, despite the fact that Rove's lawyer acknowledges that that's a difference without a distinction.

It explains why you're hearing claims that Plame was just some kind of glorified secretary at the CIA at the same time that the Republicans are arguing that she had the authority to send Wilson off to Niger to investigate claims about uranium and Iraq.

It explains why you're hearing that Plame wasn't really undercover -- she drove her car to Langley! -- when the CIA, as an agency official once acknowledged, would never have referred the case to the Justice Department if she weren't.

It explains why you're hearing claims that this whole thing is a "tempest in a teapot" and a "partisan attack" despite the fact that a federal prosecutor appointed by George W. Bush and a slew of federal judges apparently consider the leak of Plame's identity important enough to warrant the jailing of a reporter.

AP Slams Bush On Rove

2005-07-13T17:46:00.000-07:00

Check out the first paragraph of an AP story titled Bush Passes on Public Endorsement of Rove

President Bush passed up a chance Wednesday to express confidence in senior aide Karl Rove in a political fight over a news leak that exposed a CIA
officer's identity. The lack of endorsement surprised some White House officials who had been told Bush would back his embattled friend.
It's things like this that give fuel to the "liberal media" fire but hell, if the media's gonna do the time, it would be nice once in a while if they actually did the crime.

What If This Happened Under Clinton?

2005-07-13T13:47:00.000-07:00

It's funny to watch Republicans resort to Clintonian parsing of words in their fervent defense of Karl Rove.

The President said he would only fire someone if they committed a CRIME, they will tell you, and a crime is only committed if someone KNOWINGLY NAMED an UNDERCOVER operative and not only did Rove not know Plame was undercover if she even was -- they'll claim that she was not -- but Rove never NAMED Plame, merely identified her as Wilson's wife.

Umm, OK. So it's cool then.

Rep. Peter King (R-NY) exemplified this pathetic apologist rhetoric on yesterday's Scarborough Country:

KING: It's only wrong if he knew that she was undercover and that the CIA was making every attempt to keep her undercover. He didn't give her name. He didn't know she was undercover.
SCARBOROUGH: But he said it's Joe Wilson's wife. I mean, that's the same thing, isn't it?
KING: Joe Wilson listed his wife's name in his own bio. It was on—it was in his Web site. He listed his wife's name. So, it was no secret that she was his wife. And to me...
SCARBOROUGH: Well, yes, but Joe Wilson didn't say, she's an undercover CIA agent, Peter.
KING: And neither did Karl Rove say she was undercover CIA agent. He said she worked for the CIA. She was working at the CIA headquarters. It was no secret she was working there, and he brought this out. And, to me, if you have someone who is over there, and we are—and we're in time of war and he is actually falsifying what he heard in Niger.

What's been impressive, quite frankly, is the extent to which members of the press are actually acknowledging how differently Republicans would be acting if the shoe were on the other foot -- if this was Clinton's Deputy Chief of Staff instead.

Tim Russert on The Today Show said
One Republican said to me last night. If this was a Democratic White House, we'd have Congressional hearings in a second.
Even conservatives are granting the point. Joe Scarborough, conservative host of Scarborough Country, said
A White House official should not reveal the identity of a CIA agent. And if that White House official had done it, or let's say they had done it in the Clinton administration, you and I would be calling for the resignation of that official, would we not?
And conservative blogger Andrew Sullivan shares this e-mail from a reader that nails it:
Two points, briefly:1. People need to stop hiding behind Clintonian semantics here and understand that even if no actual technical violation of the law is found in the Rove/Plame case it will still be true, based on what we know now from the Time emails, that White House actions compromised a CIA asset during a time of war. What would Hannity, Limbaugh, Scarborough and all the cable loudmouths be saying if it had been Sidney Blumenthal?
2. Scott McClellan once told the American people that Karl Rove was not involved in any way, and that the President would remove anyone found to be involved. During the Lewinsky scandal many people insisted that it was not the sex that bothered them, but it was the lying, spinning, parsing, and direct misleading of the American people that offended them, and that came to define the Clinton White House. What would the cable loudmouths be saying if instead of McClellan it had been McCurry?

Scotty On The Ropes

2005-07-13T13:33:00.000-07:00

White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan, "Puffy McMoonface" to all you Stephanie Miller fans and just plain old "Scotty" for our purposes here, has been put through the ringer the last few days regarding this Karl Rove/Valerie Plame scandal. We on the left are, of course, loving it, especially seeing the Press Corps actually doing their job, challenging the usual obfuscations perpetrated by Scotty on behalf of his bosses.

The transcript from Monday's press briefing is below but be sure to watch the video for full effect.

NBC's DAVID GREGORY: Scott, can I ask you this: Did Karl Rove commit a crime?
MCCLELLAN: Again, David, this is a question relating to a ongoing investigation, and you have my response related to the investigation. And I don't think you should read anything into it other than: We're going to continue not to comment on it while it's ongoing.
GREGORY: Do you stand by your statement from the fall of 2003, when you were asked specifically about Karl and Elliot Abrams and Scooter Libby, and you said, "I've gone to each of those gentlemen, and they have told me they are not involved in this"?
GREGORY: Do you stand by that statement?
MCCLELLAN: And if you will recall, I said that, as part of helping the investigators move forward on the investigation, we're not going to get into commenting on it. That was something I stated back near that time as well.
GREGORY: Scott, this is ridiculous. The notion that you're going to stand before us, after having commented with that level of detail, and tell people watching this that somehow you've decided not to talk. You've got a public record out there. Do you stand by your remarks from that podium or not?
MCCLELLAN: I'm well aware, like you, of what was previously said. And I will be glad to talk about it at the appropriate time. The appropriate time is when the investigation...
GREGORY: (inaudible) when it's appropriate and when it's inappropriate?
MCCLELLAN: If you'll let me finish.
GREGORY: No, you're not finishing. You're not saying anything. You stood at that podium and said that Karl Rove was not involved. And now we find out that he spoke about Joseph Wilson's wife. So don't you owe the American public a fuller explanation. Was he involved or was he not? Because contrary to what you told the American people, he did indeed talk about his wife, didn't he?
MCCLELLAN: There will be a time to talk about this, but now is not the time to talk about it.
GREGORY: Do you think people will accept that, what you're saying today?
MCCLELLAN: Again, I've responded to the question.
ABC's TERRY MORAN: You're in a bad spot here, Scott...
(LAUGHTER)
... because after the investigation began -- after the criminal investigation was under way -- you said, October 10th, 2003, "I spoke with those individuals, Rove, Abrams and Libby. As I pointed out, those individuals assured me they were not involved in this," from that podium. That's after the criminal investigation began. Now that Rove has essentially been caught red-handed peddling this information, all of a sudden you have respect for the sanctity of the criminal investigation.
MCCLELLAN: No, that's not a correct characterization. And I think you are well aware of that. We know each other very well. And it was after that period that the investigators had requested that we not get into commenting on an ongoing criminal investigation. And we want to be helpful so that they can get to the bottom of this. Because no one wants to get to the bottom of it more than the president of the United States. I am well aware of what was said previously. I remember well what was said previously. And at some point I look forward to talking about it. But until the investigation is complete, I'm just not going to do that.
MORAN: So you're now saying that after you cleared Rove and the others from that podium, then the prosecutors asked you not to speak anymore and since then you haven't.
MCCLELLAN: Again, you're continuing to ask questions relating to an ongoing criminal investigation and I'm just not going to respond to them.
MORAN: When did they ask you to stop commenting on it, Scott? Can you pin down a date?
MCCLELLAN: Back in that time period.
MORAN: Well, then the president commented on it nine months later. So was he not following the White House plan?
MCCLELLAN: I appreciate your questions. You can keep asking them, but you have my response.
MORAN: Well, we are going to keep asking them.

Rove/Plame: a Primer

2005-07-13T13:25:00.000-07:00

In February of 2002, the CIA sent Joe Wilson to Niger to investigate claims that Iraq was trying to buy uranium from the African country of Niger. Despite the fact that Wilson concluded that such a claim was unequivocally false, the following 16 words made their way into Bush’s 2003 State of the Union Address:

The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa.
Ahh, the old “the British learned it” trick. So, since the British did actually receive such intelligence, faulty as it may have been, according to administration apologists, it was technically not a lie. Hey, anything to spread the fear of a nuclear attack in the run up to an unnecessary war, right?

Disgusted with the fact that this information made it into the State of the Union, Joe Wilson wrote a blistering OpEd in the New York Times on July 6, 2003 that led to a firestorm over the accuracy of the State of the Union and was the beginning of the discrediting of much of the administration’s claims about the sort of threat Iraq actually posed. On July 14, a mere 8 days later, conservative columnist Robert Novak reported that Joseph Wilson’s wife, Valerie Plame, was a CIA operative.

Wilson never worked for the CIA, but his wife, Valerie Plame, is an Agency operative on weapons of mass destruction. Two senior administration officials told me Wilson's wife suggested sending him to Niger to investigate the Italian report.

Cut to two years later. Federal Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald has been on the trail of the leaker of Valerie Plame’s identity to the press in order to determine whether a crime was committed -- in other words did an administration official knowingly out an undercover federal agent? This trail has apparently led him to two journalists, neither of whom revealed Plame’s identity mind you, Judith Miller of The New York Times and Matt Cooper of Time Magazine. Fitzgerald subpoenaed both of them but they refused to cooperate, having promised anonymity to their sources. In fact, on July 6, 2005 Judith Miller went to jail rather than reveal her source. Matt Cooper, however, was granted a waiver by his source that allowed him to cooperate and testify before a grand jury. As it turns out, the generous benefactor of this waiver was none other than Deputy Chief of Staff to the President and re-election architect extraordinaire himself, Karl Rove.

Karl Rove does not deny having spoken to Cooper about this issue. Time released an e-mail Cooper wrote to his editors identifying Rove as his source for the information, which Rove does not dispute. But even Cooper admits that Rove did not name Valerie Plame, but merely indicated that Joseph Wilson’s wife was a CIA operative. Hardly an important distinction. The fact is that Rove leaked the information and the fact is also that the President has promised to fire anyone in his administration that is responsible for the leak. Will he keep his word?

Sounds like deja vu all over again:
Karl Rove was fired from the 1992 re-election campaign of Bush Sr. for allegedly leaking a negative story about Bush loyalist/fundraiser Robert Mosbacher to Novak. Novak's piece described a meeting organized by then-Senator Phil Gramm at which Mosbacher was relieved of his duties as state campaign manager because "the president's re-election effort in Texas has been a bust." Rove was fired after Mosbacher fingered him as Novak's source.

Post-London Poll

2005-07-12T15:14:00.000-07:00

The first poll after the terrorist attacks in London last week, the USA Today/CNN/Gallup poll reports mixed messages for Bush. As you'll recall from the LA Times's Sunday propaganda piece, Frank Newport, editor in chief of the Gallup Poll, was quoted as saying:

All our data show that Bush's greatest strength is on terrorism, as opposed to other parts of his job. These attacks will remind people … of what Bush's strength is. The most probable effect is that support for the president and his policies will go up in the short term.

Indeed, Bush's approval rating did go up slightly from early June:

Do you approve or disapprove of the way George W. Bush is handling his job as president?

July 7-10 (June 6-9)

Approve: 49 (47)
Disapprove: 48 (49)

But the news is not all good, especially as it pertains to Iraq. Thanks to Bush's constant rhetoric, which may now be biting him in the ass, people clearly connect the attacks in London to the failure of the war in Iraq to make the world safer.

All in all, do you think it was worth going into Iraq or not?

July 7-10 (June 29-30)

Worth it: 44 (46)
Not worth it: 53 (52)

And...

Do you think the war in Iraq has made the US safer or less safe from terrorism?

July 7-10 (June 29-30)

More safe: 40 (44)
Less safe: 54 (39)
No change: 5 (13)

Of Tin Foil and Terrorism

2005-07-11T13:06:00.000-07:00

Immediately after the London bombings on Thursday, the tinfoil hat brigade was in full force, announcing their latest theory: that the July 7 attacks on London were planned by Bush and Blair to hoist their flagging approval ratings. Mm hmm.

Now I'm not predisposed to conspiracy theories anyway, but this one seemed to me to be particularly problematic. First of all, the theory presumes that a terrorist attack is by definition a plus politically for those in power at the time. Yes, we've seen Bush deftly use 9/11 to his political advantage for almost 4 years now but it was most definitely a loser for the Spanish now ex-president after their subway system was attacked on his watch. In addition, neither Bush nor Blair needs to get elected ever again. They've crossed that hurdle. Now, granted, higher support among their respective electorates can only be positive for the leaders, both for Blair's longevity in power and for Bush's ability to ram through legislation and/or judges back in the US. But this attack on London took the "leader of the war on terror" spotlight away from Bush and placed it squarely on Blair. And the world knows, Bush included, that Tony is so much better at this stuff than Bush is. No, W would never go for it, he's the leader of the War on Terror, god dammit, and would never want anyone to forget it.

Now even if I grant the conspiracy theorists all of the above points, I am still troubled by one big problem that an attack in either the US or Britain would seem to cause for Bush: it proves the lie that Bush has been peddling about the Iraq War, perhaps his fifth or sixth justification for going into Iraq, that we're fighting the terrorists in Iraq so we don't have to fight them on our own streets. Hmm, turns out we ARE fighting them on our streets after all, Georgie. As Keith Olbermann so eloquently said on his 7/7 edition of Countdown:

Nine days ago, speaking of terrorists and the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, President Bush told this nation, quoting, “There is only one course of action against them, to defeat them abroad before they attack us at home.” Last October, he had said that the goals of the conflicts around the gulf—we're quoting again—“so we do not to have face them in the streets of our own cities.” Londoners, still steadying shattered nerves and inventorying family and friends, may be questioning the logic of those statements right now.
Unfortunately and unsurprisingly, Olberman seems to be the only mainstream media figure making this connection. The other end of the media spectrum is represented by The LA Times, whose front page yesterday had a "news analysis" piece that would seem to valildate the conspiracy theory rationale. The headline?

After Flagging Support, a Second Wind for Bush

But the article doesn't quote one new poll or any evidence that there is indeed renewed support for Bush or the War on Terror after the London bombings, merely speculation:

"The bombings will give both Bush and [British Prime Minister Tony] Blair a boost," said Christopher Gelpi, a political scientist at Duke University who studies public opinion in times of war. "I think the attacks may help slow the ebbing of [public] support over Iraq, because the bombings make [Bush's] point about linking Iraq and terrorism."
And...

"All our data show that Bush's greatest strength is on terrorism, as opposed to other parts of his job," said Frank Newport, editor in chief of the Gallup Poll. "These attacks will remind people … of what Bush's strength is. The most probable effect is that support for the president and his policies will go up in the short term."
Yes, in this media climate, speculation = news and the mere reporting of this speculation is enough to declare in a headline on the front page of a leading newspaper that indeed:

After Flagging Support, a Second Wind for Bush
If anything positive can be said to come out of the horrible events in London last week, it's that there may be an renewed focus on al Qaeda, the organization that actually attacked us on our soil. In addition, it will likely refocus our legislators on securing our ports and our transit systems. As Tim Russert reported on Meet The Press yesterday, the 2006 budget calls for $600 million to be spent on such security; remarkably, this is what is currently spent on Iraq every 3 days.

David Gregory: A Breath of Fresh Air

2005-06-23T13:37:00.000-07:00

All this week, NBC White House correspondent David Gregory has been guest hosting Hardball in place of Chris Matthews...and what a difference a host makes. It's almost an entirely different show. I no longer feel like taking a shower after watching it -- I actually feel as though I just learned something and that I just saw a real debate. (For those who would chide my disgust with Chris Matthews claiming he's a typical media liberal, you should know that he recently admitted to having voted for Bush "at least once.")

Last night's episode was interesting. The marquis debate of the night was between Bob Schrum, Democratic strategist (he ran Kerry's and Gore's campaigns, a real winner) vs. David Frum, former Bush speechwriter (he wrote "axis of evil.") During the debate, I of course sided with Schrum, but was most impressed by Gregory's evenhanded moderation of the debate. He would ask biased leading questions but to both guests. And while I would have liked Gregory to call Frum out on what was clearly his intention: to define those that are anti-war as "crazy" or "hysterical," what transpired was a rare unraveling of the conservative's talking points.

At one point, when talking about the Guantanamo Bay detention center, Frum was demonizing Richard Durbin (D-IL) who last week likened the treatment of prisoners there to that of oppressive regimes such as the Nazis or Russians. It was a salient point put in a manner that unfortunately allowed Republicans to liken Durbin to a traitor who is against the troops when that couldn't be further from the truth. Frum continued the anti-Durbin rhetoric:

It is a sign to which this anti-war craziness that is boiling on the fringe of the Democratic Party has infiltrated the minds of people like him.

Anti-war = crazy and fringe. Ya know, 60% of the American people are crayyyzee.

In the midst of this spinning, he managed to let his guard down because when confronted about the Guantanamo detainees, Frum inadvertently told the truth and poked a hole in one of Bush's premier first term talking points: that the Iraq War is a central front in the global war on terror. Frum said:

The Guantanamo detainees are not from Iraq. It has got nothing to do with the Iraq war. It's got to do with the war in Afghanistan and the global war on terror, which people like Dick Durbin say they support.

Whoopsie. A rare slip by the usually robotically on-message conservatives.

But the thing that truly made last night's Hardball notable was the appearance of a true anti-war voice given the time and the deference to speak her mind. In the final segment of the show, two mothers of soldiers appeared, one whose son was wounded in Iraq and one whose son was killed. The latter, Cindy Sheehan, has been a vocal anti-war activist ever since her son died and was part of the panel at John Conyers's Downing Street Memo hearing last week. Here she was on Hardball expressing true anti-war rhetoric, rhetoric that is virtually banned by the mainstream media. It was truly startling to hear these things emanating out of my television without her being cut off or argued into silence. She spoke calmly, sympathetically and intelligently. This exchange was particularly moving:

GREGORY: Cindy, do you still believe in it?
SHEEHAN: Do I still believe in the war? Is that what you just asked me?
GREGORY: Yes. That's my—that's my question.
SHEEHAN: I never—I never believed in the war. I never believed that Iraq was a threat to the United States. I didn't see why we were rushing to invade a country that posed no threat, was no danger to the United States. My son didn't believe in the war. My entire family don't believe. We didn't believe in it then and we certainly don't believe in it now, with all the proof that has come out about the lies and betrayals that our government led us into this war. And the newest thing is the Downing Street memo that just confirms what we already suspected, that this administration wanted to invade Iraq at all costs. And they would even fit the intelligence around that, around the policy of invading Iraq.

And Cindy did what Gregory didn't: she called Frum out on his attempt to marginalize those that oppose the war:

SHEEHAN: ....And I don't really like being called an anti-war crazy, like your previous—previous guest did. I think everybody should be against war, especially wars that have no basis in reality.

And the last word of the entire program went to Cindy:

SHEEHAN: This war, nobody should have been there in the first place. Not one person should be killed. And I don't believe that we support our government when they're wrong...We try and fight and make it better and make it a better place. And we need to keep pressure on the administration. They don't support the troops. You know, my son was killed doing a job he was not trained for. He was not wearing the proper body armor. He was not in an armored vehicle. And he was killed in a political mess, a political mess that our leadership made. That's not supporting the troops, as far as I'm concerned.

They have to pay for their own laundry when they're over there. They're getting killed guarding mercenaries who make $1,000 a day, when they barely bring home $2,000 a month. They're losing their homes here in America. They're not being supported by their government. I think the only way we can support our troops who are only there doing their jobs and doing the best they can to stay alive and doing their duties is to bring them home, because it is a lie.

Denzel Washington {GASP!} Supports The Troops

2005-06-21T19:26:00.000-07:00

Denzel Washington recently visited the troops at Brook Army Medical Center (BAMC) in San Antonio,Texas to little to no fanfare (the only story I could find was an outdated link to a local paper.) The forwarded e-mail I received from my conservative uncle on the subject tells the story:

BAMC is where soldiers that have been evacuated from Germany come to be hospitalized in the States, especially burn victims. They have buildings there called Fisher Houses. The Fisher House is a hotel where soldiers' families can stay, for little or no charge, while their soldier is staying in the hospital. BAMC has quite a few of these houses on base but as you can imagine, they are almost completely filled most of the time.

While Denzel Washington was visiting BAMC, they gave him a tour of one of the Fisher Houses. He asked how much one of them would cost to build. He took his check book out and wrote a check for the full amount right there on the spot. The soldiers overseas were amazed to hear this story and want to get the word out to the American public, because it warmed their hearts to hear it.
After a series of attached photos, there is a caption:

A true American and friend to all in uniform!

Sound too good to be true? Maybe it is. Snopes deconstructs the urban legend aspect to the story HERE.

OK, so maybe he didn't whip out his checkbook right then and there but the gist of it is still a great story, one that's gone unreported in the media. I'm glad this got to my uncle whose instinct it is to think Hollywood hates the administration, hates the war and by extension hates the troops. It chips away a little bit at the generality that is unfortunately reinforced by the media when they report on Sean Penn's inevitably ill-fated trips abroad or Alec Baldwin or Susan Sarandon's controversial activism that usually ends up sounding radical once the media gets through with it. This idea that lack of support of the administration or the war by definition equals lack of support for the troops is outrageous and has been a frustration of us all since this war began.

Why doesn't the media do more to undo this canard? Why doesn't the media pick up on Denzel Washington's simple act of kindness? Why is it a surprise to anyone that Michael Moore's website has the most comprehensive list of links to actually support the troops that I've ever seen. Yes, people, there is more you can do for the soldiers beyond driving around with a magnet on your car.

The fact is that portraying any celebrity as pro-soldier would shatter the narrative they love to perpetuate and add a level of complexity to the issue that is beyond them. Some of the media's greatest hits: Al Gore was an exaggerator, John Kerry was aloof and George Bush is a strong leader. The fact is that Denzel Washington's actual politics are irrelevant. The story of his expressing support for the military is symbolic of "Hollywood" expressing support for the military and it would be refreshing if the mainstream media would acknowledge it.

Denzel Washington Visits Troops at Brook Army Medical Center