Common Nonsense

Calling a Horse a Horse

2009-03-15T23:39:00.005-04:00

It occurs to me after the fact that the title of this piece could be construed as poking fun at Ann Coulter's face, which many people claim is horse-like in nature. I assure readers this was not intended and that while a certain part of a horse's anatomy does remind me of Ann Coulter it isn't the face.

Recently Meghan McCain had the audacity to call Ann Coulter "offensive, radical, insulting, and confusing all at the same time" - which is longhand for "being Ann Coulter." As Pandgon.net demonstrates conservatives did not take kindly to this. Even though Ann Coulter's entire schtick is to be offensive and insulting McCain somehow crossed a line by stating what everyone knows and what Coulter herself often brags about.

Jim Cramer is a clown, a literal clown with honking horns and thrown pies. But point his clownish antics out to the world and he becomes a very sad panda. Both Cramer and Coulter want to have their cake and eat it too. Make names for themselves by acting like loons then feign amazement and offense when someone calls them loony. It's an odd game.

I was very briefly a member of the Cornell Review, a college conservative paper whose alumni include both Coulter and Dinesh D'Souza. As part of my indoctrination into the world of angry white conservative males with too much hair gel I was mailed a lovely packet of information from some sort of conservative consortium. This packet included a list of dead white authors we should all be reading (no joke) as well as an explanation of conservative "journalism." And that explanation was essentially "we're rude, vicious, infantile and proud of it. We rely less on pesky facts than entertainment derived from bashing gays and blacks."

It was in no way coy. The message was loud and explicit.

Is it then wrong to call the Cornell Review infantile? Is it wrong to call Ann Coulter, who helped establish the mold for conservative college papers then turned that style into a successful career, offensive and insulting?

This site has no love for Meghan McCain. (Just do a search) She's a transparent schill for her father who bills herself as a "citizen journalist." Her website is funded and operated by her father's people and is little more than McCain boosterism. She appears less interested in politics than in keeping her name in the limelight and pretending that she's some sort of fresh new voice in conservatism. But all that said, even a stopped clock is right twice a day. Of all the things to attack Meghan McCain over exactly describing Coulter the way Coulter presents herself is a little bizzare. And calling her fat? Really Republicans? That's your retort to accusations that Coulter is rude? Really?(Insert SNL "really" skit inflection here)

If you go on TV and throw pies and honk horns you're probably a clown. If you tell jokes about how Edwards is a faggot and claim that all Jews need perfecting you're probably insulting. This is neither rocket science nor brain surgery.

My question is this: are there Republicans who honestly believe that Coulter is a serious and sober analyst full of insight? That being offensive and insulting is not part of her act? Or do they know full well that she peddles vitriol and merely feign offense at being called out?

And which of those is worse?

Ann Coulter is an offensive nitwit, water is wet and the sun is hot. Shocking.

I Remember Three Weeks Ago Like It Was Yesterday

2009-02-02T01:37:00.006-05:00

But John Yoo and John Bolton don't. Their NYT Op-Ed, Restore the Senate’s Treaty Power, is a particularly sad example of Republicans doing a 180 with the election of Obama. The piece is an attack on Obama for making an end-run around the treaty process -- something he has not actually done, but could do at some point in the future, maybe. (Clearly a compelling subject for an op-ed.) You might remember John Yoo as the fellow who argued that no treaty or law on earth could stop the President from crushing an innocent child's testicles if he felt the urge. Or perhaps you remember him as the man who wrote that "our Office recently concluded that the Fourth Amendment had no application to domestic military operations."

Yet here is that same John Yoo arguing that the power of the President should be kept carefully in check. Curious. It's almost as if his arguments were less a product of careful legal reasoning than a product of the former White House resident being a Republican.

There is a lot about the past eight years Republicans would like us to forget - including the philosophy of government they endlessly espoused. Pieces like the NYT op-ed read like the products of amnesiacs unaware of their own actions just weeks previous. Suddenly it's near impossible to find arguments that were commonplace only a month ago.

The President has essentially unlimited power during wartime, where wartime includes undeclared wars of indeterminate length against unnamed foes. Anyone remember that one?

How about that anything the President does is legal by definition? See many Republicans arguing that one these days?

Disrespecting the President is disrespecting the office, which is disrespecting America. And even if we disagree with the President it's our duty as loyal Americans to support him. If we bellyache about the actions of the President our enemies are embiggened. I seem to recall hearing that one more than a hand full of times.

The willingness to immediately cast off these arguments as soon as Obama was elected is a tacit admission that the arguments were never more than posturing. The true belief of Republicans is apparently not that the President deserves respect and power but that Republicans do. I suppose these hypocritical Republicans believe that "progressives" will immediately cast off their former arguments as well and invent an entirely different set of principles now that Obama is in office.

Perhaps on this blog I'll now argue that the Vice-President is both all and no branches of government, that the Bill of Rights is antiquated, and that anyone who criticizes the President should pipe down or move to France.

Sadly I actually believed most if not all of what I've written here, despite the change from (R) to (D) in our highest office.

Defending Sarah Palin is Hard Work

2009-01-12T02:05:00.004-05:00

If this picture isn't enough reason to support Sarah Palin you're probably a Communist.

http://www.howobamagotelected.com/

1: Conservative documentary-maker who called the media treatment of Palin a great injustice interviews her as part of a hit-piece on Obama voters and the media.

2: He posts clips of his Palin interview online in which she blames anyone and everyone for her failures and wallows in self-pity and hypocrisy.

3: The Palin people wallow in self-pity over the online clips and accuse said documentary-maker of more unfair treatment. Because the best way to fight the perception that Palin is an incessant whiner is with more whining. The GOP being the party of "personal responsibility" and all that.

Man, defending Palin is a tough gig when even a Palin super-fan is too full of insidious liberal bias to perform a proper interview.

C-SPAN recently televised a forum held late last year at Harvard where top Obama and McCain campaign officials discussed the race. When the subject turned to Palin the McCain people made the following points:
1: That the campaign needed a risky hail-mary.
2: That it doesn't matter who you choose as VP if you don't win - "you need to win first."
3: That Palin has strong positives among die-hard conservatives.

Notable was the complete absence of praise for Palin herself.

John Cole points out a similar defense of Palin, quoting Robert Stacy McCain:

Just as the conservative intellectuals once projected their hopes onto Dubya, now they project their disappointments onto Sarah. But the fault is theirs, not hers. And Sarah has something the intellectuals don’t have—an army. Brother, I’ve seen that army.

So you can take your David Frums and your David Brookses, and let Sarah take that army and, by God, we’ll see whose Republican Party this is.

Once again: Palin is popular among the hardocre Republican crowd. That's her list of strengths in total according to the McCain piece.

I keep reading the piece again and again, thinking I've missed the rousing defense of Palin's intellectual prowess and brilliant policies. Instead what I see is not one but two references to how sexy she is, including a photo of her from the rear that I gather is supposed to make proper red-blooded conservative men horny. (Shamelessly copied above)

I believe this is what's called damning with faint praise.

Ask a Stupid Question

2008-12-14T22:51:00.005-05:00

Whoever said there are no stupid questions needs to familiarize themselves with Slate.com.

In "A blueprint for the closure of Guantanamo Bay" Jack Goldsmith and Benjamin Wittes tackle a tricky conundrum: how best to close Gitmo such that it may as well remain open? According to Goldsmith and Wittes there are some truly vexing problems facing Obama if he wants to close Gitmo, chief among them how he can continue to perpetrate human rights abuses and weild pre-Magna Carta powers. For them the closing of Gitmo is only acceptable if it's a purely cosmetic change.

In order to help the readers of Slate understand how best to maintain the status quo under the thinnest veneer of change they've prepared a list of moronic questions that entirely (and purposely) miss the point of closing Gitmo. I've selected a couple of the silliest ones for our reading pleasure.

Stupid question #1:

Under what theory can detainees who are not tried remain incarcerated?
Detainees convicted of crimes will be incarcerated for the term of their sentence. But detainees not yet charged or who can't be charged must be held in some form of extra-criminal detention.

"Under what theory can detainees who are not tried remain incarcerated?" Oy. (Insert sound of hand slapping forehead) This question can be reformulated as "Bill of Rights -- huh what's that?"

"But detainees not yet charged or who can't be charged must be held in some form of extra-criminal detention."

Because, you know, they're totally guilty. So guilty that we can't possibly try them for lack of evidence. The authors don't even entertain the notion that people who can't be charged with crimes should be released -- that would make closing Gitmo something other than a meaningless symbolic gesture.

Stupid question #2:

What about acquittals and short sentences?

How about "sucks" or "them's the breaks" or "yeah, what about them?" In a working justice system acquittals happen. But that is apparently unacceptable. Because, you know, these people are all totally guilty.

Any of the trial systems above might result in short sentences for or the acquittal of a dangerous terrorist.
[...]
This conundrum gives the government an overwhelming incentive to use trials only when it is certain to win convictions and long sentences, and to place the rest in whatever detention system it creates. Should the government loosen the rules for trial to make convictions easier, or should it rely more heavily on noncriminal detention? Hard call.

Should the government railroad detainees through a kangaroo court or not even bother with trials at all? Hard call. Goldsmith and Wittes are pondering how best we can create a Justice system that maintains only the thinnest veneer of justice. The entire piece is devoted to keeping Gitmo open in spirit.

When Christopher Hitchens tackled the question "How Did I get Iraq Wrong" he answered with "I didn't." Similarly the answer Goldsmith and Wittes want to give to "What's the best way to close Guantanamo?" is "leave it open." But unlike Hitchens, who revels in iconoclasm, Goldsmith and Wittes are compelled to pay lip-service to shifting political winds.

At least the Hitchens approach is less weaselly.

Those Damn Bloggers

2008-12-07T00:41:00.004-05:00

Welcome to Season 2 of Common Nonsense.

The traditional media has long held that the job of the news is not just to inform people of facts but to help them understand them in the broader context by constructing a coherent narrative out of events -- as if reality was a tightly plotted television show. Shoehorning the chaos of existence into story lines means that ill-fitting facts are massaged and ignored. Major news outlets assured us that McCain was "honorable" even as his campaign engaged in gutter politics because that was what the imagined script called for.

When the traditional media reports on bloggers the narrative is always that bloggers are bad. Rude, uncouth, inaccurate, not beholden to the awesome standards of journalism that brought us Wen Ho Lee. They are the upstart youth threatening their respected elders. As the traditional media shifts resources away from investigative reporting and more towards online efforts that narrative has become increasingly disjointed. The message is that bloggers suck and are not to be trusted -- and oh, by the way, check out our awesome new blogs!

Case in point: A Senior Fellow at the Institute of Nonexistence. The piece is about an invented expert who has widely appeared in the news. The lynch pin of the story is this:

Mr. Gorlin and Mr. Mirvish say the blame lies not with them but with shoddiness in the traditional news media and especially the blogosphere.

This fake expert was quoted by MSNBC, The New Republic and the LA Times. But the real problem is that he was also quoted on some blogs. Which blogs?

Mother Jones. The LA Times. The New Republic.

That's "the blogosphere."

The central conceit of the piece is that while the traditional media was fooled the "blogosphere" was fooled worse -- yet all the example blogs are from corporate media outlets. The piece masquerades as a comparison between corporate outlets and independent venues, but it's really a comparison between two different pages on the same corporate website. Not a single non-corporate blog is named and the distinction drawn between news and blogs under the same LA Times logo is truly a distinction without a difference.

And oh, by the way, it was William K. Wolfrum who spent considerable time and effort exposing the invented political expert. The same William K. Wolfrum who blogs at Shakesville, a decidedly non-corporate blog, which is not mentioned by name and is the only blog in the piece that can honestly be called part of "the blogosphere."

Posting Schedule - Now With 100% Less Falsehood

2008-11-25T23:34:00.002-05:00

Moved across country, computer broke, started new job, blah blah blah. Anyway I'm ready to begin posting again starting the first week of December.

Thanks to the patient few who haven't totally give up on this.

Posting Schedule

2008-09-07T01:17:00.001-04:00

I'm in the process of moving and my computer is sitting in a truck somewhere across the country. Will post again in mid-September.

The Convention You're Not Being Shown

2008-08-25T21:21:00.005-04:00

I believe this image originated at www.demconwatchblog.com so kudos to them. The reverse side of the bag is a picture of a raised middle finger.
I was going to title this post "The Convention We're Not Being Shown" but I gave away my TV so I'm not being shown anything.

Glenn Greenwald writes a lot of good stuff. It's tempting to post every day with "read this" but I try to save my Greenwald links for his best and most relevant stuff. With that said, read this.

Last night in Denver, at the Mile High Station -- next to Invesco Stadium, where Barack Obama will address a crowd of 30,000 people on Thursday night -- AT&T threw a lavish, private party for Blue Dog House Democrats, virtually all of whom blindly support whatever legislation the telecom industry demands and who also, specifically, led the way this July in immunizing AT&T and other telecoms from the consequences for their illegal participation in the Bush administration's warrantless spying program.
[...]
It was really the perfect symbol for how the Beltway political system functions -- those who dictate the nation's laws (the largest corporations and their lobbyists) cavorting in total secrecy with those who are elected to write those laws (members of Congress), while completely prohibiting the public from having any access to and knowledge of -- let alone involvement in -- what they are doing. And all of this was arranged by the corporation -- AT&T -- that is paying for a substantial part of the Democratic National Convention with millions upon millions of dollars, which just received an extraordinary gift of retroactive amnesty from the Congress controlled by that party, whose logo is splattered throughout the city wherever the DNC logo appears -- virtually attached to it -- all taking place next to the stadium where the Democratic presidential nominee, claiming he will cleanse the Beltway of corporate and lobbying influences, will accept the nomination on Thursday night.

The post includes a video by Glenn and Jane Hamsher of FireDogLake of them trying to interview party attendees. Glenn and Jane are exceedingly polite but the attendees refuse to say anything substantial. Police / security soon intervene and force them further and further away from the guests. I imagine most people have been in a situation where authority figures attempt to enforce arbitrary rules and regulations, so at some level I think the video will resonate even with people who don't share its politics.

A private party, thrown by AT&T, for members of congress, in which the press are not allowed and at which the police prevent any interaction between the press and the attendees. That's the convention we're not being shown. And that's not the seedy underbelly of the system, that is the system. As Glenn writes:

The democracy-themed stagecraft inside the Convention is for public television consumption, but secret little events of this sort are why people are really here. Just as is true in Washington, this is where -- and how and by whom -- the business of our Government is conducted.

Reality Intrudes

2008-08-20T22:51:00.004-04:00

Something that has gotten nearly zero play in the traditional media is the recent "flip-flop" towards "appeasement" that the Bush Administration has made regarding Iran. I kept waiting for this to become a story and it never did.

Barack Obama stated that he would be willing to talk to Iran and was then attacked by McCain, Bush and the right-wing media as being a naive appeaser. Then lo and behold, the Bush Administration sends new Iran envoy William Burns to talk to the Iranians.

Burns, who as career ambassador holds the highest rank in the U.S. foreign service, will represent Washington in nuclear talks with Iran on Saturday, a sharp departure from U.S. policy that could be a launch point to reduced tensions.
[...]
Burns' mandate is to listen and not negotiate in Saturday's talks, but if Iran suspends its sensitive nuclear work, then the United States has promised to join full-blown negotiations.

Another piece on the decision to send Burns:

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice saw it as a "smart step" to depart from usual policy and send senior diplomat William Burns to Geneva on Saturday for talks with Iran along with other major powers, said Rice's spokesman Sean McCormack.

"It sends a strong signal to the world and it sends a strong signal to the Iranian government that the United States is committed to diplomacy," McCormack told reporters.

Hmm, where have I heard that before?

Sen. Barack Obama today continued to his running debate with Sen. John McCain and President Bush over foreign policy in the Middle East and whether it makes sense to have unconditional talks with Iran.

[...]

"Anything but their failed cowboy diplomacy that has produced no results is called appeasement," Obama countered. "Here's the truth: the Soviet Union had thousands of nuclear weapons and Iran doesn't have a single one. But when the world was on the brink of nuclear Holocaust, Kennedy talked to Khrushchev and he got those missiles out of Cuba. Why shouldn't we have the same courage and confidence to talk to our enemies? That's what strong countries do. That's what strong presidents do."

William Burns' talks with Iran are unconditional, literally without conditions. Here we have the entire right-wing establishment savaging Obama for a common-sense position, then adopting that same position, validating Obama's view while invalidating McCain's -- and the traditional media has been almost entirely silent on it. When Bhutto was assassinated we were subjected to endless speculation about who would be helped politically, but while Bhutto's assassination was a major event it was unrelated to the campaigns. Obama and McCain fighting over our approach to Iran has been in the news for months, yet this directly relevant action by the Bush Administration has gotten little play. Where are all the talking heads asking which campaign this helps or pointing out the obvious fact that Bush is now pursuing Obama's strategy?

It's as if the media was only interested when it was pure speculation and back-and-forth. Now that real-world action threatens to resolve the debate in favor of one candidate it's no longer an appealing story, the cameras are turned off just as the knockout punch is thrown.

I called this post "Reality Intrudes" because despite the Bush Administration's rhetoric about creating their own reality they have been forced to bend to actual reality. With North Korea we left ourselves only one option: bomb. And since we chose not to bomb North Korea acquired nuclear weapons while our "tough" talk got us nowhere. In Iran we were going down a similar road that would likely have lead to a similar outcomes To their credit the Bush Administration eventually realized that we need options between military action and absolutely nothing.

And Justice For Most

2008-08-12T21:58:00.005-04:00

The new improved justice - less sense, nicer abs.

Judge Allred, after the sentencing of Osama Bin Laden's driver to 66 months minus 61 already served in captivity (also known as a whopping five months):

Mr. Hamdan, I hope the day comes when you return to your wife and daughters and country, and you are able to be a husband and father in the best sense of all of those terms.

Well that's odd. Surely that day comes five months from now no?

Whether that day will come, of course, remains unclear. Although the Bush administration insists enemy combatants can be locked up so long as the global fight against terrorism is under way, Hamdan's continued detention after Dec. 31, 2008, when his sentence ends, will become less sustainable politically in light of last week's verdict.

Oh.

There have been many legitimate complaints about the trial process at Gitmo. It's a thrown-together mess with much lower standards of evidence and procedure, designed to find defendants guilty. But the entire process appears to be a red-herring -- whether or not the defendants are released is not dependent on the results of the trials.

Had Hamdan been found guilty of all charges and sentenced to life the Pentagon would be crowing about how the system validated its actions. But because the sentence was dissapointing the Pentagon feels free to ignore it. Keep the guilty verdicts and ignore the not-guilty ones -- that's justice?

The true justice system is guilt by decree. We pick people up, we use the parlance of "illegal enemy combatants" to declare them guilty, then the rest is an afterthought. Once we've declared someone an "illegal enemy combatant" they are too scary and dangerous to be let go, even if a rigged trial system still disagrees with that conclusion.

That's the new justice, American style.

Land of the Free, Home of the Dumb

2008-08-05T23:21:00.010-04:00

This picture is extremely relevant in that it includes a motorcycle.

There's no part of the McCain appearance at the Sturgis motorcycle rally that isn't embarrassing and idiotic. It's uncomfortable to watch the opening where McCain wears his joker death-grin while calling the entire crowd "my friend." (Singular) It's unfortunate to see the McCains using their children's military service to try to gain votes, something they'd previously sworn off. It's slightly pathetic to see McCain bashing Congress for inaction when he can't be bothered to show up and vote in the Senate. But the saddest thing of all is watching the Grand Old Party once again mocking human intellect and knowledge.

Keeping your tires properly inflated and your car tuned saves energy -- period. But because that's real knowledge based on things like math and science, because that doesn't come from our brilliant guts (the same guts that told McCain that the anthrax attacks were the work of Saddam), it's worthy of nothing but ridicule from people who are proud to be dumb. Not only do they mock the idea that science can teach us about many aspects of our world including energy conservation, they do so while revving their engines. How is this not self-parody?

It's like these guys take pride in being ignorant. They think it's funny that they're making fun of something that is actually true.

It's not "like" that -- that's it. The nation that built the atom bomb and sent a man to the moon is increasingly proud to be stupid. If you know stuff you're an effete elitist, an ivory-tower academic -- you're not a real man, math and science and knowing stuff is for womanly nerds.

It's far too easy to imagine the same crowd, transplanted in time, laughing at washing their hands after going to the bathroom or at cooking their meat. At what point did being ignorant become synonymous with being a red-blooded American?

Sadly Yes, This is our Media

2008-08-02T02:01:00.004-04:00

The traditional media thinks that Americans' primary voting criteria is how mediocre a candidate is, where more mediocre is more betterer. Guys who read and know stuff aren't like you and me - we want a lazy moron as president because he won't make us feel bad about ourselves. We can point to him and say "hey, I'm just as smart as that guy" or "hey, I could be doing a better job" and be right.

Along those lines: "Too Fit to Be President?" - Facing an Overweight Electorate, Barack Obama Might Find Low Body Fat a Drawback.

Sadly, No! has much here here and here, including a bit on the anecdotal testimonial from a message board user who was solicited by the author of the piece to produce a money quote.

Useless Democrats Excoriated

2008-07-10T03:58:00.010-04:00

Pictured above: an erudite metaphor.

Democrats have once again caved to our historically unpopular President. Politely feign shock.

In this post I revisit something I explored in Useless Democrats Explained and The Democrats' Master Plan: the false notion that Democrats have done something politically expedient, offered up as either an excuse or a rationalization to soften the blow of another Democratic failure.

Weakness is Not a Virtue

The primary narrative employed against Democrats is that they are weak-willed appeasers standing in stark contrast to tough manly Republicans. Against that backdrop it's not political savvy to take actions that predictably lead to headlines like "Senate bows to Bush, approves surveillance bill." Although media narratives of Democratic weakness are often contrived this one is entirely accurate. Once again they have "caved", "capitulated" and "rolled over."

I was looking for examples of heroic behavior to contrast against Democratic actions and remembered the "Kneel before Zod" scene from Superman 2. Per wikipedia:

With this, General Zod's revenge on Jor-El seems complete, as he commands Superman to kneel before him, take his hand, and swear eternal loyalty to him. But Superman has not lost his powers a second time; instead, he has stripped Zod, Ursa, and Non of theirs while he remained safe in the molecule chamber. As he takes Zod's hand, he crushes it and then overpowers him, throwing him into an icy crevasse, where the general disappears into the mist.

I googled "kneel before Zod"+clip for a video clip of that scene to use here. The second result? The gloating Kneel Before Zod | Redstate about the most recent FISA capitulations, which presumably casts Republicans as the menacing Zod and Congress as those who compliantly kneel.

When Democrats and Republicans go head-to-head that is nearly always the presiding tone, that Democrats allow themselves to be dominated even though they have numbers and a mandate.

Democrats Turned Strength into Weakness

A typical explanation for Democratic capitulation is that if a terror attack occurs they will be blamed -- but they will be blamed regardless of their actions. Remember that Republicans blocked Democrats from extending the Protect America Act, an act Republicans previously argued was vital to our national security. Democrats were in a good position to make political hay off of a terrorist attack. (If you're into that sort of thing) Rather than push for an extension to the PAA while portraying Republicans as dangerous obstructionists Democrats instead decided to seek a "compromise" with existing Republican plans and painted themselves as the security lollygaggers.

Politically Savvy Actions Lead to Politically Favorable Results....Right?

The most obvious problem with the argument that Democrats cave due to "political realities" is that there is no evidence that these savvy actions are producing good political results. Here is the polling data for Congressional approval ratings. A graph would make a fun sled ride. Divining meaning from those numbers is difficult but they certainly aren't evidence of success. At Salon the Editor in Chief's current blog entry is "Betrayed by Obama", which runs on the front-page as "Obama's unforgivable FISA sellout." In various places Obama is being correctly labelled a dreaded flip-flopper for saying he'd filibuster any bill with immunity and then voting for this one. Most of the Democrats invested in this issue are strongly opposed to telecom immunity; Obama's actions here have induced a strong negative buzz that threatens to reduce voter turnout, donations and positive word of mouth. Meanwhile it's difficult to imagine anyone of any political persuasion donating more money and ethusiasm to his campaign thanks to this "compromise."

It's absurd to watch people argue that constant Democratic failures are a great strategy even as they generate mountains of negative press and dismal approval ratings, both among the party faithful and among the general public.

Conclusion

Once again Democrats have validated the narrative that they are soft and weak. They've squandered a politically favorable position that made Republicans look like irresponsible obstructionists and recast themselves as behind the curve on security. They've generated negative press and tarnished the image of their Presidential nominee. And despite protestations to the contrary there is no evidence that the Democratic master plan of kneeling before Bush is winning politics.

I suppose it's possible that without these constant capitulations Democrats and Obama would be doing worse in the polls. Given how sullied the Republican brand is though it's difficult to believe that rolling over for Republicans is good politics and I've seen no evidence that it is -- and not for want of looking.

Will Post Regularly Again Starting Soon

2008-07-08T00:07:00.002-04:00

Been busy. Should start again Tuesday night.

Impossible to Parody

2008-06-23T20:47:00.004-04:00

John McCain on the gravest long-term threat to the U.S. economy:

Well, I would think that the absolute gravest threat is the struggle that we're in against Islamic extremism, which can affect, if they prevail, our very existence. Another successful attack on the United States of America could have devastating consequences.

John McCain on general economic policy:

Once we win this ideological war on radical Islamic extremism which will rage for thousands of years, then we will concentrate on the economy.

One comes from a Fortune Magazine interview, one comes from The Onion. Life imitates art.

People Who Think We're Stupid

2008-06-22T01:35:00.010-04:00

This guy... this guy is just pissing... he's pissing all over us. He's pissing on you. What does it taste like? Chief, what does it taste like, 'cause you know what, it tastes like piss to me.

But I'm pleased that in Title I, there is enhancement over the existing FISA law. Reaffirmation, I guess that's the word I'd looking for. A reaffirmation that FISA and Title III of the Criminal Code are the authorities under which Americans can be collected upon.

It restores FISA and existing criminal wiretap statutes as the exclusive means to conduct surveillance – making it clear that the President cannot circumvent the law and disregard the civil liberties of the American people. It also firmly re-establishes basic judicial oversight over all domestic surveillance in the future.

There was broad consensus in the Congress that if a suspicious pattern of communications is found and a U.S. person is targeted, there needs to be approval granted by the FISA court. And, as Nancy Pelosi insisted, it needed to be established that the FISA law was the only way to legally wiretap an individual--in other words, under this law the Executive can't just go ahead and do it.

To review: FISA legislation specifically says it "shall be the exclusive means by which electronic surveillance...may be conducted." President Bush chose to ignore that and to this day claims that nebulous Article II powers give him the ability to perform whatever surveillance he wishes, regardless of the law. Now Nancy Pelosi, Barack Obama and Joe Klein (among others) tell us that we can rest easy now that we have reaffirmed the very exclusivity that Bush ignored in the past and reserves the right to ignore in the future.

Perhaps the next time we are capture a diabolic serial killer we should remind him that murder is illegal and yes, we totally meant it when we said it the first time -- then let him go free after wagging our fingers slightly. Problem solved!

At some point laws must be enforced but this Democratic Congress has proven repeatedly that it won't enforce the law. Impeachment was off the table from day one. Private citizens are allowed to openly flaunt subpoenas. Now Bush ignores FISA exclusivity without consequence.

Why will Bush honor FISA exclusivity this time around? Not a trick question.

Is Joe Klein dumb enough to believe that simply restating the exclusivity of FISA will prevent Bush from further wrongdoing? Perhaps -- he certainly is a dope about FISA-related issues. (As I've covered previously) Is Nancy Pelosi? I doubt it. Is Barack Obama? Almost certainly not. He cannot honestly believe that "reaffirming" the exclusivity of FISA has meaning. It's just a line to feed to the dumb American public -- AKA us. Up to this point I've been impressed at Obama's willingness to treat the public as something other than rubes and suckers. But the question here is "is he that stupid or does he think we are?"

Perhaps nobody ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American public, but feeding nonsense logic-free rationalizations to that public is hardly the politics of change.

Note: Hunter at DailyKos made a very similar set of posts, but similar to how Leibniz and Newton independently invented calculus this is an example of great minds thinking alike.

Score One for the Unitary Executive

2008-06-16T21:36:00.004-04:00

You may remember that in summer/fall 2007 the Bush Administration decided that the Office of Administration would retroactively stop responding to Freedom of Information Act requests. Now a court decision has validated that action. Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, the paintiffs, explain the tortured logic of the decision:

In May 2007, CREW sued OA for records regarding missing White House e-mail and the office’s assessment of the scope of the problem. After initially agreeing to provide records, OA changed course and claimed it was not an agency and, therefore, had no obligation to comply with the FOIA. OA made this claim despite the fact that even the White House’s own website described OA as an agency and included regulations for processing FOIA requests.

[...]

OA has admitted that it functioned as an agency and processed FOIA requests until August 2007. Although CREW filed its FOIA request in April 2007 – four months before OA changed its position – the court found that OA had no duty to respond to CREW’s FOIA request because OA was never an agency in the first place.

The court found that the Office of Administation does not have "substantial independent authority" and exists solely to "advise and assist" the President. The intent of "advise and assist" is supposed to protect sensitive Presidential conversations, but in this case it was applied quite loosley:

Instead, OA’s charter documents and President Carter’s message to Congress make clear that OA’s function is to support, i.e., assist, the President indirectly [emph. in original] by providing efficient, centralized administrative services to the components within EOP.

This is a win for the theory of the Unitary Executive on two fronts. First it waters down the meaning of "advise and assist", divorcing it from its original intent. Second it further validates the notion that something that looks and acts as an agency, and is generally understood to be an agency even by its own employees, may not actually be one and can have its status changed at any time for the sake of convenience. (Or malfeasance).

According to the theory of the Unitary Executive the President is directly or indirectly in charge of the entire executive branch. Under that interpretation executive branch agencies are extensions of the President and no agency operates with "substantial independent authority" apart from the President. Currently the Department of Justice responds to FOIA requests, but if the "U.S. attorneys are emanations of a president's will" then presumably the DOJ can stop responding to FOIA requests at any time. If you accept the notion that executive agencies are merely appendages of the President then all of them can argue for exemption from the Freedom of Information Act.

Swampland Hijinks: Hail to the Queen

2008-06-06T03:16:00.005-04:00

"I'm willing to lose a friend over something I write but I'd like to know it was worth it."

Saving the best for last. Searching here for "Ana" (and "Anna" -- I'll go back and fix that at some point I swear) reveals plenty of choice quotes, so rather than rehash them I'll take a slightly different tack.

Both Ana Marie Cox and Michael Scherer possess two different critical writing styles -- normal and McCain. Normal is short, to the point and pithy; McCain is labored, labyrinthine and full of disclaimers, written in a way that turns criticism into compliments. According to Scherer the heat McCain has taken for surrounding himself with lobbyists while decrying their influence is The Downside of Doing the Right Thing -- as opposed to the downside of blatant hypocrisy. And according to Cox, the problem with McCain's Tortured Position is that sometimes McCain is slightly less awesome than his normal full-on awesomeness.

McCain's "tortured position" is that he claims opposition to torture while continuously enabling it. In Cox's typical style that would be a two sentence post, but when the subject is McCain she goes into sprawling, "fair and balanced" mode, writing six paragraphs to explain, or rather confuse, the issue. The final and longest paragraph is a gem (emph. added):

To be sure, McCain's self-scrutiny is withering. (And the estimation of others can be wrong.) If McCain is not always his own worst critic, he is still a vicious and constant one. The level of achievement, honesty and duty to his country that he sets for himself is incredibly high -- higher than most people's, perhaps even "towering." And I am sympathetic to his aides' point that he shouldn't be punished every time his actions meet "normal" standards but fail his own. (This is the obverse of Clinton's claim that since she didn't promise to, for instance, conduct a clean campaign, you can't blame her if she plays dirty.) The problem lies not in the standards themselves, but in his certainty about them, a conviction that may sometimes blind him to even the question of whether he has, even by accident or mistake, blurred them in order to meet them.

This is Cox in microcosm -- six paragraphs to explain away McCain's hypocrisy on torture while heaping superlatives on him. And one parenthetical aside to pick at Clinton while mischaracterizing her position.

Ana Marie Cox likes McCain, something she fully admits to. (In comments in this post.) She also admitted to being biased but bizarrely claimed her "transparency" counterbalances that -- in a post fessing up to the fact that she vacationed at McCain's ranch that she wrote only after commenters caught wind of it through other channels and called her out. Why are even her criticisms of McCain so glowing? She told us:

I think of socializing as part of the larger project: I get to know people and then can then write about them with more depth, and it means that when I do write something critical about them, I take EXTRA care to get it right... I'm willing to lose a friend over something I write but I'd like to know it was worth it.

When it comes to criticizing McCain she takes EXTRA care -- EXTRA parsing, EXTRA benefit of the doubt and EXTRA praise.

Swampland Hijinks: Michael Scherer Edition

2008-05-30T23:53:00.001-04:00

"In the Democratic presidential pack, the leading man is a woman and the leading woman is a man."
"May the best woman win."

Scherer's Reporting History

Scherer joined TIME and Swampland after a stint at Salon.com. Most of his pieces there were fluff, jello-journalism stories with multi-paragraph feature-style ledes or failed attempts at humor. His credibility at Salon was destroyed after a fawning profile of "citizen journalist" Meghan McCain (I laughed typing that and again editing it) and a piece on the Democratic primaries with the sub-head and final line quoted above -- quips that are not only insulting but incoherent and contradictory.

TIME's Clever Response to Reader Criticism

In early spring Scherer and Ana Marie Cox were under scrutiny. Cox was writing favorably about McCain while vacationing at his ranch while Scherer was doing his usual Scherer thing. So Cox had a brilliant idea: trot out the old "think you can do better? Well let's see you try!" gambit.

I didn't try asking about anything else "serious." Those of you who think the press fell down on the job in not using that time to query him [McCain], well... the guy holds about five hours of press conferences a day when he's on the trail. A lot of questions get asked.
[...]
Maybe we missed the ones you want asked; in which case you should keep agitating the people who have the access and responsibility to ask questions on behalf of the public...

The genius here was that Cox was being taken off the McCain beat and could thus plausibly ignore the agitations. A few weeks later, however, Scherer repeated the gambit:

Here is an experiment. Tell me here what questions you would ask McCain that are not otherwise being asked.

You Can Guess Where This is Going

Here are some of the questions commenters posed:

Could you briefly explain, as you understand it, Iran's influence in Iraq, specifically with regard to the recent conflict between the Sadrists and the Maliki government?

Please explain your attitude toward the United Nations and describe how the "League of Democracies" would support or undermine the UN.

What would you do if a pluarality of Iraqi representatives voted to insist the US get out of Iraq within a certain deadline?

As a dedicated proponent of campaign finance reform and a candidate who would like both sides to take matching funds in the general election, how do you justify your efforts to get out of the restrictions on primary spending?

A few months ago you said you didn't know much about economic policy but that were going to read Greenspan's book. Have you read Greenspan's book yet and what did it teach you about economics?

A number of readers also pointed out the rather obvious follow-up to the 100 years in Iraq flap: if it's "out of context" to say McCain is willing to stay in Iraq for 100 years if troops are out of harm's way, does that mean 100 years is unacceptable if they are in harm's way? Timetable questions have been asked before but not in the context of this 100 years discussion - either he is willing to have troops die in Iraq for 100 years or he is not.

Reader questions were submitted on March 30. Scherer on April 2:

I still have not had a chance to respond to list of questions, but hope to get some posts up over the next few days to respond to at least some of them.

Scherer on April 4:

I was with McCain for two days, Wed. and Thu., during which he did not hold a press avail or gaggle. I did not get to ask him any questions directly.
[..]
I am pursuing this. I am pursuing some of the other topics that have been raised as well. But I don't want to get into the habit of telling too much about my plans in a public forum, so you will have to wait to be pleased or disappointed.
[...]
But let me begin with this insight: The popular impression that reporters always have constant access to McCain to ask whatever they want is not accurate. (Also inaccurate: The popular view that reporters covering McCain are unwilling to ask him challenging questions, or do stories that will upset the campaign.) He has traditionally been far more open than anyone else, but right now he is campaigning in a more traditional mode. Nothing outrageous about it. But is not as simple as you sending me a question and me nailing McCain down with the question. And this has nothing to do with McCain avoiding me or the question, or me not wanting to ask it. That is just the way the game works. So hang in there all.

Here Scherer is already lowering expectations -- it's hard work and he doesn't want to divulge secret plans. The excuse that McCain is not accessible is an odd one. Above Cox wrote "the guy holds about five hours of press conferences a day when he's on the trail." And Scherer, in his piece at Salon, wrote about McCain's "endless on-the-record access". If we believe that McCain is infinitely accessible it's only because the press, including Scherer and Cox, has repeated that ad nauseam.

Scherer on April 11. At this point he has not gotten answers to any of the questions and has not made any Swampland posts about them:

Again, you all misrepresent my relationship with the campaign. There are no nightly booze and bbq fests. The campaign's relationship to reporters can be at times quite adversarial. I do not get all the information I am seeking, so some of this takes more time than I would like.

As I write this it's May 30. As best I can tell Scherer's comments on April 11 were the last time he referenced the reader-asked questions -- questions he solicited and said he would post on -- in any way. He completely stopped responding to commenters asking for followups. It's become a running joke among his readers.

I would say it's disappointing but it isn't -- it's entirely expected.

Scott the Snitch

2008-05-29T00:53:00.008-04:00

So it turns out Scott McClellan lives on planet Earth after all. You have to love it when Bush insiders tell us what is plainly obvious and it's treated as an amazing revelation:

McClellan calls Vice President Dick Cheney "the magic man" who "always seemed to get his way" and sometimes "simply could not contain his deep-seated certitude, even arrogance, to the detriment of the president."

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, who was national security adviser earlier in Bush's presidency, "was more interested in figuring out where the president stood and just carrying out his wishes while expending only cursory effort on helping him understand all the considerations and potential consequences" of war. Rice "was somehow able to keep her hands clean, even when the problems related to matters under her direct purview," McClellan says, but he predicts that "history will likely judge her harshly."

And former Bush political guru Karl Rove "always struck me as the kind of person who would be willing, in the heat of battle, to push the envelope to the limit of what is permissible ethically or legally."

And Bush is incurious and stubborn. Shocker.

The revelations are not terribly exciting but the right-wing reaction is humorous. The primary objection appears to be disloyalty. Ari Fleischer was on Larry King saying something to the effect of:

I'm afraid that what Scott doesn't realize is that he may make some temporary friends on the left who will use him and discard him after a few weeks, but he'll lose some long-standing friends on the right.

After Fleischer departed a few more right-wing talking heads came on to make similar points. "But... but... we're friends!" is the prevailing tone of the right-wing response to McClellan's book. As opposed to say "this is flat-out wrong" -- an impossible case to make at this point. Glenn Beck's show was teasing a McClellan segment with a graphic titled "Stop Snitchin'". If McClellan is a snitch doesn't that make the Bush Administration the Crips?

Addendum

I'm watching Chris Matthews rip into Fleischer for using the exact same talking points that Dana Perino and Dan Bartlett have been using. It's a little late but it's nice to see members of the media (at least on MSNBC) catching on to the fact that ring-wing talking heads robotically recite from the same centrally-managed script.

David Gregory and Mike Allen (from Politico) are bitterly complaining about charges that the press was too deferential, saying those charges come from the left -- which implicitly underscores the point that the "liberal media" is anything but.

Glenn Greenwald on the Miltary Analyst Propaganda Program

2008-05-18T23:21:00.013-04:00

Glenn Greenwald is always worth reading, but his work on the Pentagon military analyst propaganda campaign has been particularly well-done. He's gone beyond the New York Times coverage and made it more tangible and immediate by including pictures of some of the most damning correspondence. I'm going to list the pieces he's written in order, bold the ones you should read if you only have time for a couple, and reproduce a snippet or two.

1. Major revelation: U.S. media deceitfully disseminates government propaganda 2. Media's refusal to address the NYT's "military analyst" story continues 3. Interview with Aaron Brown on NYT "military analyst" story
4. Howard Kurtz on why media outlets ignore the "military analyst" story
5. Brian Williams' "response" to the military analyst story
6. CNN, the Pentagon's "military analyst program" and Gitmo
7. How the military analyst program controlled news coverage: in the Pentagon's own words
8. Larry Di Rita's responses to questions about the "military analyst" program
9. Joe Galloway blasts Pentagon and Larry Di Rita on "military analyst" claims

The best parts of the series in my view are the snippets of correspondence between the Pentagon and the military analysts. These stand on their own without any comment required. Here are a few (click for larger versions) where the "independent" military analysts report back and crow about "carrying water" for the Pentagon and putting the "best possible face" on Guantanamo Bay based on a carefully managed 3-hour tour and some government-provided talking points:

Eric - many thanks for your efforts putting together the Guantanamo trip - it was fascinating and added greatly to my understanding of detainee issues - let me know if I can help you - Don Shepperd (CNN military analyst)

Here is my first GITMO piece ran this morning on Front Page Magazine. Link:...

I did a Fox & Friends hit at 0620 this morning. Good emphasis on 1) no torture, 2) detainees abuse guards, 3) continuing source of vital intel.

Best, Gordon

[redacted] - don't know if you keep this stuff but CNN sent me a transcript. Just wanted to thank you again because the material you sent me very early this morning was very useful in trying to explain what is going on and trying to put the best possible face on it.

You are a pro...

Jeff

Let's Help the Burmese by Killing Them

2008-05-11T02:56:00.004-04:00

Thanks to pedestrian at Sadly,No! for spotting this inanity.

This is low, even for TIME Magazine. Is It Time to Invade Burma?

The disaster in Burma presents the world with perhaps its most serious humanitarian crisis since the 2004 Asian tsunami. By most reliable estimates, close to 100,000 people are dead. Delays in delivering relief to the victims, the inaccessibility of the stricken areas and the poor state of Burma's infrastructure and health systems mean that number is sure to rise. With as many as 1 million people still at risk, it is conceivable that the death toll will, within days, approach that of the entire number of civilians killed in the genocide in Darfur.

Wow, that sounds awful. So what's the solution, sages of TIME?

That's why it's time to consider a more serious option: invading Burma.
[...]
The cold truth is that states rarely undertake military action unless their national interests are at stake; and the world has yet to reach a consensus about when, and under what circumstances, coercive interventions in the name of averting humanitarian disasters are permissible. As the response to the 2004 tsunami proved, the world's capacity for mercy is limitless. But we still haven't figured out when to give war a chance.

That last line, which is the end of the piece, is a joke -- literally a play on words for chuckles. To some people war isn't hell, it's fodder for puns and flippancy. ("Give War a Chance" is also the title of a lecture Jonah Goldberg gave at the University of Massachusetts Amherst -- TIME is in poor company here) Here we are, five years into our Iraq misadventure, something most Americans agree was a mistake, and the national media is mocking those who believe war isn't something to be taken lightly.

When we invaded Iraq we created a humanitarian crisis. Millions of Iraqis lack access to uncontaminated water, proper medical facilities and electricy. Millions more are displaced refugees. So now, according to TIME, the solution to Burma's humanitarian crisis may be to go in and start shooting the Burmese.

If we bomb enough bridges, hospitals, schools, water treatment facilities and energy plants surely that will solve their problems. And no doubt the Burmese will greet us as liberators and shower our troops with flowers, gladly welcoming us even as we kill their relatives with errant strikes.

In the US media today it's nearly impossible to be too bellicose to be taken seriously. Whatever the problem it's sober analysis to suggest shooting people as the answer. To a man with a hammer everything is a nail and to a country with a powerful military everyone else is a target.

Swampland Hijinks: Jay Newton-Small Edition

2008-05-10T03:56:00.005-04:00

Kids and Jay Newton-Small say the damnedest things. "You can't invite us in and then not expect people to ask questions."

Jay Newton-Small doesn't get a lot of attention, perhaps because she isn't nearly as prolific as some of her Swampland colleagues. But her piece Lemme Eat My Waffle and her subsequent followups may have been her breakout performance:

He’d already spent more than 30 minutes glad handing the restaurant’s denizens, and with the 15+ press pool crammed behind the counter before him Obama dug in. Which is when one of the network reporters took the advantage of the close proximity to ask a question about Jimmy Carter meeting with Hamas and Obama irritably answered: “Why can’t I just eat my waffle?”
[...]
Obama hasn’t given a press conference in 10 days and the questions, some of them -- like Hamas -- rather important, are starting to build up. If he wins the nomination he'll be running again John McCain, whose philosophy is to give the press total access to the point of saturation; Obama might consider holding avails with a little more regularity. Then, maybe, reporters would let him to eat in peace.

It's fluffy, irrelevant and an example of the "act more like a Republican" advice journalists feel obliged to constantly hand out. There's also the hint of a passive-aggressive threat in there: meet our demands or we'll make you look bad compared to McCain. But overall it's not so much terrible as terribly irrelevant.

As is often the case Newton-Small finds herself in larger trouble when she attempts to engage her commenters:

It's about access: you ask the press to cram up in front of you while you eat your waffle and banter friendly jokes with you, but God forbid anyone ask anything serious -- that's trying to have your cake (or waffle) and eat it too, you can't invite us in and then not expect people to ask questions.

You can't? What if you trade the waffles for ribs? You can invite the press in, demand that they leave all recording devices behind and demand that they not ask serious question. As long as you are John McCain.

As more people commented on the story it completely fell apart. Obama had been meeting frequently with the local press, answering the questions that mattered to Pennsylvania voters. He had already weighed in definitively on Carter talking to Hamas, rendering the "important" question at the diner irrelevant -- a fact Newton-Small was apparently unaware of even though it's immediately obvious by running "Obama Carter Hamas" through google. And Newton-Small backed off her claim that McCain gives the press "total access to the point of saturation" after multiple commenters pointed out that her colleague, Michael Scherer, was complaining on the same Swampland pages that he couldn't get McCain to answer his questions after weeks of trying. (More about that in a later installment)

When you take all of that into account the original story is as follows: a reporter asked a question that Obama had addressed multiple times in the recent past and instead of addressing it again he took a bite of a waffle.

Man eats waffle, details at 11!

Swampland Hijinks Part Zero: Joe Klein

2008-05-05T06:53:00.006-04:00

Like comic books from the early 2000s this series begins with a hastily-produced can-miss post of little significance.

In this series I'm going to bash TIME's Swampland. (Motto: "hey it's a blog - what you expect quality?") But before I do that I have to give credit where credit is due: recently Joe Klein has been doing some good ~~reporting~~ ~~blogging~~ whatevering on the recent militia actions in Iraq and the Iraq situation in general. I especially enjoyed "Too Many Kagans, Too Little Knowledge." (Our foreign policy in a nutshell)

There is no more to "Read more." Someday I'll figure out how to turn that off for short posts...

Update: I have slain the extraneous "Read more" link. Huzzah!

I'm Still Alive

2008-04-28T21:43:00.003-04:00

I'll start posting again at the start of May.

I have a ton of topics prepared. Don't click on "Read More", there's nothing more to this post. See you in a few days.

Explaining Feminist Blogosphere Eruptions

2008-04-11T18:36:00.019-04:00

You can set your watch to Old Faithful and to dust ups in the Feminist blogosphere.
This is a bit of a departure from my usual stuff, but I find it an interesting to diverge occasionally from civil liberties and media criticism. I'm not going to bother to link to the blog storm in question.

There's nothing quite like a good old fashioned blog storm. What is it about Feminist blogs that makes these eruptions a common occurrence? My theory: accuracy, honesty and critical thinking are not things you can turn on and off. When dishonesty, stubbornness and intellectual laziness are accomodated by a culture it's only natural for internal disputes to display all those ugly attributes.

In this particular dust up Amanda Marcotte of Pandagon is accused of "stealing" from lesser known bloggers. According to her critics (currently centered around Feministe) Amanda is stubborn and marked by a persecution complex, unwilling to admit to the slightest wrongdoing. According to Amanda her detractors are engaged in substance-free attacks on her character. Both of these accusations are true to some degree. Why wouldn't they be? In the Feminist blogosphere substance-free attacks are commonplace and Amanda herself has always been defensive and stubborn.

Amanda is Amanda is Amanda

I should note that I generally like Amanda's writing and Pandagon is in my links on the right.

I first came across Amanda in the Salon piece Why I had to quit the John Edwards campaign. In the piece and in subsequent blog postings and comments Amanda refused to acknowledge that posting inflammatory pieces on her personal blog while working for the Edwards' campaign was poor judgement. Her persecution complex was in full display here, yet the reaction from the Feminist blogosphere was almost total and universal support.

Amanda was one of the bloggers fueling the Duke rape case frenzy. Although the Duke lacrosse players were exonerated Amanda, along with much of the Feminist blogosphere, refused to admit any error whatsoever. Many doubled-down, claiming that the lacrosse players simply had to be guilty by virtue of being white young males of privilege. This stubborn refusal to give an inch was a black-eye on the credibility of Feminist bloggers, but within the Feminist blogosphere Amanda was again applauded for her stubbornness.

Those same supporters are now shocked and outraged over her refusal to give an inch to them.

Outrage Culture Can't Be Switched Off

For her part Amanda complains that her detractors are unreasonable, vicious and outright fabricators but Amanda should expect no less.

Many of the commenters attacking Amanda rely on intellectually lazy sloganeering: "it's not about you" and "your privilege is showing." There's no retort to these claims because the claims themselves are devoid of real meaning. These same slogans are regularly employed against "white dudes" and "Nice Guys" with no objection from Amanda or anyone else in the Feminist blogosphere. It's only now that these catchphrases are turned against Amanda that she sees how vapid they are.

Amanda's detractors continue to make baseless claims, including claims that are provably false. Amanda complains but she is well aware that at Feministe baseless claims are considered acceptable. I've been called a "McCain voter" and "a rapist" by Feministe commenters, and while I'm many things I'm neither of those. Evidenceless accusations have rarely bothered Amanda when the enemy was men's rights activists or right-wingers; it's only now that she is the enemy that she objects to meritless character assassination.

Does This Look Familiar to Anyone Else?

Yes, I'm going there. The shoe fits.

1. A person is accused of something awful and subjected to vicious personal attacks.
2. That person responds with "prove it."
3. The accusers claim that having to prove it unfairly puts the onus on the victimized minority.
4. The accused conclusively proves their innocence.
5. The accusers don't apologize. Instead they argue that because the accused is a white privileged person they must be guilty of...something.
6. And finally they claim that it was never about this specific incident anyway, it was always about the power dynamic between white privileged people and women of color, and anyone harping on this specific incident is guilty of missing the big picture.

I could swear I've seen this before.

The Moral of Our Story

A culture that turns a blind eye towards distortion and dishonesty can not be switched off and will on occasion turn inwards. The stubbornness that Amanda is being bashed for is the exact same stubbornness she's been praised for in the past. The empty reactionary rhetoric that she find herself the target of is the same rhetoric her former allies have always relied on.

A recent popular mocking phrase on blogs is "it's OK if I do it." What we see here is "it's OK if I do it to you." When "you" is "white dudes" or "typical progressives" or MRAs or Republicans it's OK, but now Amanda and her detractors are set against each other and cry bloody murder at tactics they've previously revelled in. Turns out being the "you" isn't as much fun as being the "I."

Blog commenter Pinko Punko, addressing the split between Obama and Clinton Feminist camps, hits the nail right on head:

If we have previously overestimated certain individuals ability to emotionally divest themselves from particular topics, we have no one but ourselves to blame, because back when they were preaching to the choir using similar emotional and incendiary language we all sang in tune. Funny how when we now don’t agree the same tune seems so harsh to our delicate ears.

What This Post is Not About

Sadly I must add disclaimers. This post is not about any of the following things:

That women are stupid.
That feminists are stupid.
That Amanda Marcotte and the people at Feministe are stupid.
That men's rights activists, Republicans, "white dudes", "typical progressives" and Duke Lacrosse players are either awesome or terrible.
That there is some sort of direct moral equivalence between Amanda and the Duke Lacrosse players.
That dishonest rhetoric is monopolized by anyone mentioned in this post.
That anyone mentioned anywhere in this post is getting what they deserve or not getting it.

I could write a very similar post about the clash between Obama and Hillary supporting Democrats, or about the clash between various factions of Republicans split across Ron Paul or John McCain lines, or about the clash between left and right leaning libertarians. The Feminist blogosphere is merely a good example of a behavior that is hardly unique. Online communities encouraging lazy reactionary thinking are commonplace, as are the inevitable blowups when the firing squad turns circular.

Even More Equivocating

In fairness to Amanda being stubborn is hardly a rare failing and not a particularly serious one. (I myself am stubborn to a fault) And in fairness to Feministe commenters it only takes a few bad and overly enthused apples to ruin the bunch. In all these eruptions the same small set of names keeps showing up.

Limited Updates for a While

2008-04-06T20:35:00.001-04:00

Updates will be slow for the next couple of weeks, battling a cold and a pile of work.

AT&T: Your New Branch of Government

2008-04-06T17:22:00.009-04:00

For a while I've been meaning to write about the letter AT&T wrote to the House Committee on Energy and Commerce. It's a great example of how the application of State Secrets Privileges has widened to the point of absurdity:

Unfortunately, under current circumstances, we are unable to respond with specificity to your inquiries. That is because, on many issues that appear to be of central concern to you, responsive information, if any, is within the control of the executive branch.
[...]
Moreover, the United States, through a sworn declaration from the Director of National Intelligence (DNI), has formally invoked the state secrets privilege to prevent AT&T from either confirming or denying certain facts about alleged intelligence operations and activities that are central to your inquiries.

AT&T can't say anything at all to Congress because that information is just too darn secret to share with out elected representatives. That information is of course also too secret to reveal in court, even ex parte and/or in camera. (In the judge's chamber with only one party present) This is how it's supposed to work? A giant corporation mores know about what our government is up to than two of the three branches?

What We Learned From Iraq: Absolutely Nothing

2008-03-31T04:25:00.001-04:00

But what I failed to grasp is that war is also a monster...
- Andrew Sullivan

To celebrate the five year anniversary of the glorious cakewalk Slate and the NYT asked Iraq War hawks what they got wrong and what they've learned. Their answers? "Understandable mistakes anyone could have made" and "nothing" respectively.

I'm With Stupid

The most common mistake war supporters point to is some variation on "I was wrong to put faith in the Bush Administration" -- a clever transfer of responsibility. It's not that their entire thought process was wrong, that they were easily deceived, that they didn't demand any plans for the post-war occupation, that they let emotion replace reason or that their philosophy of war as a standard policy tool was flawed. Nope, the problem was that Bush and Rumsfeld were incompetent immoral dummies.

The wonderful aspect of that mistake is that whatever lesson can be learned from it expires in 2009. There's no examination of why they trusted an administration full of incompetent ideologues. They'll be happy to place the same faith in whichever not-Bush is elected, even if that not-Bush has the same foreign policy developed by the same foreign-policy advisors.

You Can't Expect Me To Listen to Hippies

Plenty of smart people made good arguments against the Iraq War that went beyond vague platitudes. But for war hawks it's much easier to pretend that only brainless hippies opposed the Iraq War and that the only "serious" voices were hawks. Many of the "What Did I Get Wrong" pieces are prominently devoted to dismissing the people who weren't wrong. Andrew Sullivan is up first:

For most of my adult lifetime, I had heard those on the left decry American military power, constantly warn of quagmires, excuse what I regarded as inexcusable tyrannies, and fail to grasp that the nature of certain regimes makes their removal a moral objective.
[...]
When I heard the usual complaints from the left about how we had no right to intervene, how Bush was the real terrorist, how war was always wrong, my trained ears heard the same cries that I had heard in the 1980s. So, I saw the opposition to the war as another example of a faulty Vietnam Syndrome, associated it entirely with the far left—or boomer nostalgia—and was revolted by the anti-war marches I saw in Washington.

To bolster his support for the war Richard Cohen visualized straw men:

I was miserably wrong in my judgment and somewhat emotional, and whenever my resolve weakened, as it did over time, I steadied myself by downing belts of inane criticism from the likes of Michael Moore or "realists" like Brent Scowcroft, who had presided over the slaughter of the Shiites.

There's no indication that Sullivan or Cohen have changed their thinking at all. They still deride those damn Vietnam-obsessed hippies and the "likes of Michael Moore." Neither of them care to deal with the fact that their "inane criticisms" were largely correct. Nor do they acknowledge the existence of Anthony Zinni, Norman Schwarzkopf and vintage Cheney, hardly stereotypical leftists. They saw what they wanted to see and they still do.

I Was Wrong But For All The Right Reasons

Many of the pieces, like the Sullivan one above, are characterized by a refusal to question basic assumptions and the dismissal of those whose do. Few of the authors reject aggressive war as a standard policy tool. Sullivan still believes that "regime change" is a fine goal and that war should be driven by a vague "moral objective." Jacob Weisberg hasn't changed his view on war at all; his main concern is not letting this war sour us on the next one:

This isn't just a matter of fessing up to error. It's incumbent upon those of us who blew the biggest foreign-policy decision of the past decade to try to understand our mistake—and to try to learn something from it. By this I don't mean that we should know to reject all proposed American military action in the future. One theme that has emerged in this discussion is the hazard that those who wrongly supported one intervention will flinch too reflexively from another that deserves our support. I share this concern. The tendency to relive the last war is as prevalent among writers as it is among generals.

William Saletan makes it specific. His fear is that the Iraq War will prevent us from engaging in the war on Iran that he's already salivating for, based on the exact same justifications he fell for on Iraq:

The problem with dumb war isn't that it's war. The problem is that it costs you the military, economic, and political resources to fight a smart war. Everything Bush wrongly attributed to Iraq turns out to be true of Iran. But we can't confront Iran with the force it probably requires, because we wasted our resources in Iraq. Americans, having been suckered in Iraq, won't accept evidence of Iran's nuclear program. Countries that might have supported us in a strike on Iran won't do so now, since we led them astray.

In the same sentence that he admits we were suckered on Iraq (on the basis of WMDs) he lobbies for attacking Iran based on the same weak claims that they have a WMD program, claims that come from the exact same sources.

William Saletan has learned nothing. Absolutely zero. He still believes the Michael Gordon stories he reads in the NYT. He still believes Bush and his cronies when they hype up WMD threats. He still believes breathless anonymous sources. Take an argument for war in Iraq from 5 years ago, replace "Iraq" with "Iran", hand it to Saletan and he's all for it, lamenting that we can't immediately enact it. It's truly amazing.

Coming in Part 2

One author bravely suggests we should listen to the people who were right about Iraq. That author is dismissed.

Our Fearless Rib Gnawers Part 3 of 700

2008-03-27T03:54:00.008-04:00

Parts one and two. Please note, although McCain is a central figure in these posts they have little to do with McCain and everything to do with the press.

Two different reporters at TIME's Swampland today linked to an op-ed in the NYT, The Maverick and the Media. The entire piece is well worth reading (though I think the connection with liberalism is a bit forced) but what is most interesting is the first line:

It is certainly no secret that Senator John McCain, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, is a darling of the news media.

That isn't the point of the piece. It's a given, treated as established fact. We're past the point of debating whether or not the press loves McCain and to the dissecting of exactly why. What's so sad about the press relationship with McCain is that nearly everyone in the press agrees that the press treats him very favorably but few see it as a problem and fewer still take any action to correct it.

Anna Marie Cox and Howard Kurtz vapidly agree that McCain reporters, including Cox herself, are "part of the bubble, part of the team." I've transcribed some of this before but the full transcript is available so I'll quote it at length:

COX: Well, you just saw it. It's true that he can -- especially -- it's almost always someone who has not -- who hasn't been with the campaign, you know, through it all that's going to make a call that makes him look bad.

I remember the lightsaber moment from 2000. That was from someone -- when he said he was going to be -- you know, fight Darth Vader.

KURTZ: But that suggests that the people who have been traveling with him regularly...

COX: Yes.

KURTZ: ... become part of the bubble, part of the team?

COX: Become part of the bubble, and also, I mean, I think what happens is that you -- if you've been covering him for a long time, there's a sense that, well, he does that all the time, it's not worth reporting, because he does -- he's a cranky old man. I mean, to be quite frank.

You know, like, and also, I've gotten much tougher terseness than Bumiller got just there. And...

KURTZ: But the cameras weren't rolling.

COX: But the cameras weren't rolling. And also, we wrote it off to, like, you know, he hadn't had his fifth cup of Starbucks today.

KURTZ: But is there a tendency for journalists to cut more slack for candidates who they have a lot of opportunity to talk, not necessarily because they like them, but because they're not just getting one crack at that person for eight minutes every three days?

TAPPER: Yes. And that's the exchange that the McCain people make now, and we'll see if it lasts until November. But, you know, they have this constant access.

I spent a couple weeks ago -- I did a couple days with each of the candidates, Obama, Clinton, McCain. And I got more time with McCain -- not just me, all of the press corps -- in one day than I had gotten with the other two candidates the entire time.

And that's the exchange. And from 80 percent of the time it's to McCain's benefit and 20 percent it's not. But two points to make about that exchange.

One is "The New York Times" is not currently his favorite newspaper. And the other point is Elizabeth Bumiller was catching him in a lie that he told in 2004. He had been lying. He said no, he hadn't had that conversation. So it was, by definition, a "gotcha" question, and he doesn't like that, but he especially doesn't like "The New York Times."

[...]
KURTZ: And McCain did hold a barbecue for the press at his ranch in Sedona, where some people were in attendance.

COX: Yes. Delicious dry-rub barbecued ribs, actually, baby back ribs.

KURTZ: Firsthand report.

Oh Cox and Kurtz you wonderful comedians. First discuss, without any remorse or introspection, how you cut McCain a break then joke about it just for good measure, a giant middle finger to the audience. It's important to note a few things here:

1. Cox is not attacking other members of the media for giving McCain a free pass. This is not criticism. She is the one giving the free pass.

2. Parse through Tapper's comments carefully. Catching McCain in a lie is somehow a "gotcha" and "he doesn't like that." Put that together with what Cox said above, that only newbies ask those "gotcha" questions; only people outside the bubble bother to point out when McCain is lying, because people who are part of the team don't want to rile up McCain -- and they don't report on it anyway because they know he's just a grump.

It appears that cozy relationships lead to poor reporting but reporters defend those relationships to death. I spoke to a reporter who attended the McCain BBQ and he/she stressed the importance of getting to know the subject of coverage. (The reporter refused to be quoted on the record, of course) Responding to reader comments at Swampland Michael Scherer makes a similar point:

Rather, in these settings, on the bus or in a press conference, the competition among the reporters is not to suck up, but to come up with the question that actually produces new information or catches the candidate off guard. There are also other times, after hours and often off the record, when relations between press and campaign staff can be more informal, but even there I think the ultimate goal is almost always professional. We build relationships with people so that they can trust that we will not unfairly treat them, which facilitates the flow of information.

The first half of that obviously contradicts what Kurtz, Cox and Tapper amiably blathered about above. The second half is the killer: even schmoozing off the record is supposedly professional as it builds relationships, engenders trust and facilitates the flow of PR. Hey, did you know that McCain is an all-American dad who shops at Cosco and makes a mean lemon rub?

In an earlier part of the transcript above Cox defends close relationships as well, speaking about the reporting of Samantha Power's comments and echoing Tucker Carlson:

Like, she doesn't have -- she's probably never going to interview Samantha Power ever again. And she probably isn't going to cover the Obama White House should there be one.

I think that a journalist who wants to continue working, I mean, you can call it a sad truth, but it is a truth that you need to keep -- you need to maintain relationships with your sources. And part of maintaining a relationship means having some kind of contract with them that you're not going to do anything unfair. And...

Remember that the "unfair" part here was reporting what Samantha Power actually said in an on the record interview.

On one hand these people tell us that they cultivate sources for the sake of accurate reporting, while at the same time informing us that they'll suppress the truth in favor of cultivating those sources. They tell us that personal relationships lead to better reporting, then admit their own relationships with McCain color their coverage of him. It can't be both.

Here is a novel suggestion for our intrepid press corps: instead of being jovial about your McCain love affair recognize it as a problem. It's not funny. Stop defending behavior at the root of the problem.

Put down the champagne glass, get out of the tire swing and put your shoe back on. Pass on the lobster or, gasp, the party entirely. Get off the bus and find your own ride. Reacquaint yourself with your duty to avoid even the appearance of conflict of interest. The next time you think about catching McCain in a lie do it and then report it, whether he likes it or not. Instead of maintaining access by producing fluff pieces about your personal ride on the wonderful tour bus or about McCain's totally hip and awesome daughter take a chance at real reporting.

It's called "journalism."

And no, it's not balance if you ride around in the Obamamobile and the Clintoncopter as well.

I'll finish with a quote from Walter Lippmann.

A long life in journalism convinced me many presidents ago that there should be a large air space between a journalist and the head of a state.

Addendum

I just visited TIME.com and saw Putting McCain to the Ethics Test by Michael Scherer. I was ready to give credit where credit was due but his (metaphorical) place on the bus is safe. It's a wonderful example of timid reporting. The first negative words about McCain's ethics come in the fourth paragraph (talk about burying the lede) and come from the mouth of Howard Dean, a source readers will ignore as obviously biased. The rest of it is standard he-said/he-said "balanced" fair with any exciting details buried beneath masses of trivia. It's not until literally the very last sentence of the piece that readers are given a clear reason to care at all. It's almost as if Scherer was dared to produce the most benign piece possible given the facts. It also curiously leaves out the very contemporary ethical and legal questions surrounding McCain's FEC shenanigans.

Simply by copying and pasting it's easy to change the entire tone of the piece into something with teeth:

In the upcoming election McCain will be in the awkward position of hoping voters will give him the benefit of the doubt that he has denied to others. He is the one who regularly breaks the Senate's code of silence by alleging corruption by his peers. But high standards are a double-edged sword. Even as McCain has railed against the system, he's worked it, sometimes creating unseemly appearances of his own.

Bam, I just turned a snoozer into a must-read. (This is why they pay me the big bucks.) But a story that began that way might mean one less scoop of potato salad at the next shindig.

Big Serious War Experts Admit It's Time to Leave Iraq?

2008-03-25T00:08:00.007-04:00

Our number one Iraq expert: Little Orphan Annie.
"Tomorrow, tomorrow, I love you, tomorrow, you're always a day away."

In August of last year I made two posts back to back about our Iraq War "experts." Time to revisit these self-styled experts and compare what they said then to what they are saying now.

In their WBUR interview both O'Hanlon and Cordesman agreed that late winter/early spring would be the time to leave Iraq if there was minimal political conciliation. Cordesman:

If this central government cannot achieve real progress towards conciliation no later than the late winter or early spring of 2008, I frankly do not see it being able to survive.
[...]
If we don't get political conciliation by the end of this winter or next spring, then we have almost no rationale for staying, because there gets to be a point at which you simply cannot wait out the Iraqi political process forever.

(Checks watch) It appears that "late winter or early spring" is also known as "now." So how is that political conciliation coming along? Petraeus: Iraqi Leaders Not Making 'Sufficient Progress'

Iraqi leaders have failed to take advantage of a reduction in violence to make adequate progress toward resolving their political differences, Gen. David H. Petraeus, the top U.S. commander in Iraq, said Thursday.

Petraeus, who is preparing to testify to Congress next month on the Iraq war, said in an interview that "no one" in the U.S. and Iraqi governments "feels that there has been sufficient progress by any means in the area of national reconciliation," or in the provision of basic public services.

Cordesman's recent glorified PowerPoints say next to nothing about reconciliation at all, instead focusing almost entirely on the military situation. Cordesman, who previously produced "The Need For Strategic Patience", has now cleverly produced "The Continuing Need For Strategy Patience."

As we saw previously, O'Hanlon's main expertise on the Iraq War is lecturing those who disagree with him about what they are and aren't allowed to say. He's at it again, castigating Democrats in his best Karl Rove voice and warning that opposition to the Iraq War is a political liability. His recent writing is much less policy than politics:

To be sure, it is understandably hard for Democrats and other administration critics to believe that a war fought so badly at first could take a turn for the better.
[...]
That said, if Democrats cannot get beyond their viewpoint, they could suffer badly in the fall as a result.
[...]
Democrats can provide such a melded approach. If Iraqis do their part, we help; if not, we leave.
[...]
As such, Iraqi leaders need to feel pressure to deliver. That is where a more conditional Democratic approach comes in. The United States stays only if Iraqis accelerate their own political efforts at reconciliation.

Do those bolded parts look familiar to anyone else? He's repeating the exact same thing he said in August. He gave an ultimatum, it was not met, and here he is again giving another one while ostensibly arguing against an open-ended commitment. That of course comes on the heels of the Congressional benchmarks ultimatum that Iraq also failed miserably.

When O'Hanlon isn't busy telling people who have been right on Iraq from the start that they should listen more to those who are constantly wrong he's observing that people have lost interest in his opinion. Is that surprising? Just open up your calendar, flip ahead six months and write "wait another six months" and you've replicated his message. He and Cordesman and all the Iraq War "experts" have been repeating that exact same message since he war began.

"Just another six months" and empty threats to pull out if certain goals are unment are tired jokes. At this point you'd figure that, if for no other reason than to avoid continued embarrassment, people like O'Hanlon would come clean and admit that they will never under any circumstances support a withdrawal from Iraq until they say we've "won."

One American Who Cares About Big Brother: Barack Obama

2008-03-20T22:09:00.005-04:00

Update: Looks like I should have called this "Three Americans Who Care About Big Brother: Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton and John McCain."

This could not be more timely. I write a post about TIME Magazine's dismissal of privacy concerns, go to bed and wake up to news that multiple people accessed Barack Obama's passport file without authorization.

This is what TIME wrote:

In all the examples of diminished civil liberties, there are few, if any, where the motivating factor was something other than law and order or national security.

And here is what we heard today:

On three occasions since January, Sen. Barack Obama's passport file was looked at by three different contract workers, said State Department spokesman Sean McCormack.

The contractors accessed information in the file in an unauthorized way, he said.

I'm going to go out on a limb and suggest that this anauthorized snooping was not motivated by law and order or national security.

Time continued:

For now, however, civil libertarians will have to continue to argue that the danger lies not in how the government's expanded powers are being used now, but how they might be used in the future.

Or maybe we can point out how even narrower, unexpanded powers are currently being abused.

The FBI spied on Coretta Scott King out of fear that in her widow grief she would attempt "to tie the anti-Vietnam movement to the civil rights movement" -- as if that were illegal. MI5 spied on George Orwell for a decade because "This man has advanced communist views ... He dresses in a bohemian fashion both at his office and in his leisure hours." (Not the US but seems appropriate) We know these powers have been and will continue to be abused.

Do American Care About Big Brother? Well, we know that one fairly prominent one does for good reason.

Update: Sorry, did I say one? But seriously folks, somehow this just proves TIME Magazine's point that the pure-hearted thousands of civil servants and private contractors with access to our personal data are simply incapable of abuse. Somehow.

You Say News, I Say Potato

2008-03-20T00:53:00.011-04:00

Click for larger version. And check ABC for tomorrow's followup: "New Revelations Could Hurt Socks with Vital 'Feline Values' Voters"

Note that the comments on the right are unaltered from the original story.

On Tuesday morning I made the mistake of watching morning news. CNN (or perhaps MSNBC) was trumpeting a "major bombshell." The bombshell? That a man slept with someone other than his wife. This man was not a moral crusader and therefore a hypocrite. He as not sleeping with a prostitute. He was not currently running for office or up for reelection. The entire news value of the story was "man has affair": a "major bombshell" according to our breathless media.

Here is some more hot-breaking "news": a woman was in the vague physical proximity of an event that was itself of dubious news value. Great work "Investigative Team." The "Investigative Team" site is a tawdry bad joke: not much investigation but a lot of hit jobs. My favorite:

The released documents also bring back reminders of scandal, as was previously reported on the Blotter on ABCNews.com earlier today.
[...]
On the day she testified before a federal grand jury investigating the Whitewater land deal, in January 1996, her official calendar says simply, "No Public Schedules."

I don't know about you but when I see a calendar entry that says "No Public Schedules" I'm instantly reminded of Whitewater.

Thank heavens our media has its priorities straight and focuses on the truly important.

TIME: Do Americans Care When We Tell Them Not To?

2008-03-19T23:06:00.008-04:00

Original Ending to Se7en, rejected by test audiences:
Mills: "What's in the box?!?"
Somerset: "I don't know, I didn't open it."
Mills: "Oh -- probably a gift basket. Let's get lunch."
FIN

In an absolutely terrible thing TIME poses the question Do Americans Care About Big Brother? When I saw this thing I immediately sent an email to TIME pointing out a factual error. No response, no correction. When I woke up the next morning I saw commenters at TIME's Swampland discussing it and that Glenn Greenwald had already taken it to the woodshed. (Scooped!) I'm not going to repeat his complaints but I will call out the most important ones and take a slightly different angle on the thing in question.

What is this thing I'm reading?

What is this? It's not news; it doesn't contain any timely information. It's not labelled as opinion and is not written in a standard opinion style. I suppose it's "analysis" -- except that it contains no actual analysis.

The primary point of the "analysis" is that Americans don't care about Big Brother. But the article doesn't include a single verifiable fact or any data to support that conclusion. There are no polls cited, no anecdotal interview with a man on the street. Nothing. This is a standard ploy that many pundits have made a career of: speak for "Americans" when the author is really speaking only for themselves.

Regardless of ideology it's just bad journalism.

The conclusion is an example of self-fulfilling prophecy

Even if we grant the dubious conclusion that Americans are eager to trade away privacy for promises of security, that in itself is not surprising or meaningful. The media influences public opinion and media outlets including TIME have spent years excusing privacy violations while dramatizing the threat of the evil terrorists. In the pages of TIME Joe Klein has repeatedly lauded the NSA spying programs, calling them essential to national security even though he knows little about them.

The mainstream media has spent years telling us that 9/11 changed everything, including apparently the Constitution. Mike McConnell, who was caught lying to Congress about these "essential" programs, is still routinely quoted unquestioningly by the media and treated as a reliable source.

For some time after 9/11 most Americans believed that Saddam was personally connected to the attacks. If that's proof of anything it's proof that the government is good at propagandizing and that the media is a credulous enabler.

This TIME article itself makes arguments that Americans should be willing to trade away privacy for promises of security. Is it some sort of revelation if Americans exhibit an attitude that has been beaten into them for years? The article is a trend story that itself perpetuates the trend.

What's inside the box is probably not a gift basket

I won't belabor this point as Glenn covered in depth but without visibility into these programs it's pointless to say that they haven't been abused (which is still false anyway) as that observation is grounded in willful ignorance. The administration has argued that executive actions should remain secret to the point that not even Congress and the Court can know their details. Our information on these programs comes almost entirely from leaks and whistle blowers, which are rare in an administration that has elevated loyalty above competence and ethics.

Before the Walter Reed reporting we as a nation were unaware of the abuse and neglect of our veterans. Before Charles Savage wrote about signing statements few realized that the President was using them to legislate. Investigations into CIA black sites and Abu Ghraib disturbed our theretofore blissful ignorance.

There's one way to know what's inside the box: open it. There's one way to know the extent of abuse in these programs: investigate them. Relying on the administration to voluntarily disclose abuses is inane, especially given that investigators in the executive branch are "emanations of a President's will" with assumedly "no substantial authority independent of President Bush."

The WSJ Briefly Remembers the Role of Journalism

2008-03-17T04:27:00.005-04:00

The March 12 edition of the Wall Street Journal filled the entire op-ed page with two columns on Spitzer: Spitzer's Media Enablers and Eliot the 'Enforcer', critical looks at both Spitzer and his media coverage. The op-eds make some great points and are well-argued, leaving one has to wonder: why don't these same arguments get made the other 364 days a year when someone other than Spitzer is the subject? The former in particular raises many points that are mainstays of this blog:

Journalism has many functions, but perhaps the most important is keeping tabs on public officials.
[...]
Mr. Spitzer portrayed himself as the moral avenger. He was the slayer of the big guy, the fat cat, the Wall Street titan -- all allegedly on behalf of the little guy. The press ate it up, and came back for more.

Time magazine bestowed upon Mr. Spitzer the title "Crusader of the Year," and likened him to Moses. Fortune dubbed him the "Enforcer." A fawning article in the Atlantic Monthly in 2004 explained he was "a rock star," and "the Democratic Party's future." In an uncritical 2006 biography, then Washington Post reporter Brooke Masters compared the attorney general to no less than Teddy Roosevelt.

What makes this more embarrassing for any self-respecting journalist is that Mr. Spitzer knew all this, and played the media like a Stradivarius. He knew what sort of storyline they'd be sympathetic to, and spun it. He knew, too, that as financial journalism has become more competitive, breaking news can make a career. He doled out scoops to favored reporters, who repaid him with allegiance. News organizations that dared to criticize him were cut off. After a time, few criticized anymore.
[...]
The press would do well to meditate on that, and consider how many violations they winked at and validated over the years. Politicians don't exist to be idolized by the press, at least not by any press corps doing its job.

And speaking of the press eating it up and coming back for more: Back in Arizona, McCain Tends the Grill.

John McCain portrays himself as an independent maverick and the press eats it up. Fawning articles and uncritical biographies have been written about McCain, Obama, Bush, Rumsfeld, Rice and a host of other political figures. (I purposely didn't list Hillary Clinton, I've yet to see a fawning article about her) Doling out scoops to favored reporters in exchange for allegiance is what got us Judith Miller's reports on Iraqi WMDs and anthrax and Joe Klein's body of work. Cutting off news organizations that criticize too strongly is standard procedure for most politicians and occurs regularly at White House press briefings and on the campaign trail. Validating and winking at violations is something the WSJ does every week regarding the Bush Administration.

"He knew what sort of storyline they'd be sympathetic to, and spun it." The "he" here could be one of hundreds of figures, from Kenneth Star to Ahmed Chalabi to "an anonymous high-ranking official." So much of our news is based on a source whispering into the ear of a reporter who then passes that on in print, gossip columns masquerading as journalism.

In one sense it's nice for someone at the WSJ to demonstrate an awareness of what proper journalism looks like. But there's nothing about these complaints that are specific to Spitzer's coverage. Shouldn't the WSJ apply their journalism standards across the board rather than only to the reporting on a Democratic corporation-busting governor?

That was the WSJ on March 12. It's now March 17 and the message of that op-ed has been quickly forgotten. Here is Peggy Noonan, a regular columnist at the WSJ, writing about McCain, a prime example of assigning lofty titles and reporting based on the subject's own preferred narrative:

He's gentleman Johnny McCain, hero, maverick. He has more knowledge on national defense in his pinky than the others will have, after four years in the White House
[...]
McCain, to McCain, is defined by his maverickness. That's who he is. (It's the theme of his strikingly good memoir, "Worth the Fighting For.") He stands up to power. He faces them down. It's not only a self image, it's a self obsession.

Noonan is also the author of "When Character Was King: A Story of Ronald Reagan", an "elegiac tribute to one of America's most beloved leaders." What was that about fawning, uncritical biographies?

The lesson appears to be that bad journalism is ok unless it favors a guy you don't like. Bad journalism that enables Spitzer should be excoriated but bad journalism that enables Republicans is something you pay a regular columnist to produce.

Guilty, Not Guilty, and Now Introducing: Totally Not Guilty

2008-03-16T01:53:00.007-04:00

Or: Why Arguments for Telecom Innocence are Irrelevant and Boring.

Proponents of telecom amnesty use the justification that telecoms are innocent. Typically I don't argue back; why should I? It's irrelevant.

These proponents have apparently invented the bold new "totally not guilty" determination. It works as follows: there are no rules of evidence and no evidence is presented. No testimony is given by any of the parties involved and there are no perjury laws in effect. The specific charges are not considered. There is no judge, no jury and no prosecutor -- only a defense advocate. This advocate may or may not have any relevant knowledge, legal background or familiarty with the case. They simply write that the defendant is totally not guilty and then they totally are, just like that. Of course, thanks to double jeopardy laws, once a defendant is declared totally not guilty they are immune from retrial in traditional court.

Sarcasm? Hardly. This is exactly what proponents of telecom amnesty believe: that it's possible to determine, without any sort of process, that a defendant is not guilty to the point where they don't have to show up in court and defend themselves to begin with.

Telecom amnesty proponents want the discussion to devolve into a confusing debate over selectively quoted and purposely misinterpreted court rulings and legal theories. These legal arguments are presented in non-legal settings to convince us that a proper legal setting is unessecary. Like the guy who's so good at crushing a whiffle ball off a tee with a little plastic bat that a major league tryout is a formality best avoided these amnesty proponents make such convincing arguments in press releases, blogs and and op-eds that they render court proceedings extraneous.

Maybe some day the totally not guilty determination will exist someplace other than in the minds of inventive authoritarians. I'll humbly suggest that until that day comes legal disputes should be resolved using a standard legal process rather than a convenient newly-invented one that amounts to trial by Wall Street Journal columnists.

Press Criticism: Process and Outcome Complaints

2008-03-11T23:38:00.006-04:00

Answering the age-old question: what if Darth Vader worked at a newspaper?
This is a good movie, you can buy it at Amazon here. Doing so will contribute exactly zero dollars to this site to help offset our operational costs.

Glenn Greenwald noted that his posting on the media devotion to access was one of his most popular recent entries. Similarly my McCain BBQ postings appear to be more popular than many others. (In the same way that liver and onions is more popular than plain liver) A reasonable explanation for this is that these posts represent complaints about a process rather than complaints about an outcome.

Many political blogs are highly partisan and offer mostly complaints about objectionable outcomes. These complaints are not necessarily invalid but they do tend to appeal only to true believers with similarly aligned objectives. Complaints about process tend to attract a more ideologically diverse crowd because they are divorced from specific outcomes.

The issue Glenn highlighted with Tucker Carlson is not that Tucker is biased or a conservative, it's that he's advocating and excusing poor journalism. Similarly the issue with the McCain BBQ is not that McCain attempted to influence reporters (something all candidates try to do) or that the press is biased towards McCain, it's that the mainstream media's standard operating procedures do not serve the public interest. That the press should avoid conflicts of interest is not a partisan complaint about outcomes, nor is that the press should report stories with real news value and operate independently.

Charlotte Allen brought down a lot of outrage for her recent Washington Post column bashing women, but the fundamental problem with her piece was not that it was "anti-feminist" or mean-spirited, it's that it was poorly researched and supported to the point of being unworthy of publication; the scant facts she used were either irrelevant or contradicted her thesis. Yes, it was "just opinion", but uninformed ill-reasoned opinion has no place in a newspaper. No matter where you stand on FISA issues any honest person should agree that writing misleading or outright false columns about them is not proper journalism. How can it possibly be appropriate to make false claims then defend them with "I have neither the time nor legal background to figure out who's right"?

Here at Common Nonsense we obviously object to certain political outcomes, but more importantly we object to certain political and media processes. Poor processes almost invariably lead to poor results.

When reporters blithely chatter without repercussion about how they are part of a certain candidate's team it exposes the rotten core of modern journalism. Stephen Glass and Jayson Blair were rightly fired for fabrication but the effects of their transgressions were localized and minor. Reports about Wen Ho Lee, Jessica Lynch, Saddam's WMDs and anthrax, Iranian IEDs and foriegn fighters, Richard Jewell and others all had major ramifications. These stories were the result of poor processes that continue today unabated.

We aren't going to get better coverage until the press fundamentally changes the way it approaches reporting. That's something we should all be able to get behind. Too many critics complain about the "Clinton News Network" or "Faux News" while ignoring the far more fundamental point that bad practices result in bad journalism.

Jon Stewart on Crossfire. Seemed appropriate.

McCain BBQ and Our Insipid Press Redux

2008-03-10T03:02:00.010-04:00

Members of the press working hard on the job.
(This picture comes from Meghan McCain's blog and is copyright Heather Brand. I'm claiming fair use -- sue me.)

More on Ethics

In the first part of this two-part series I covered the ethics of the situation, but there are a few more things to say on the subject before I move on. The Columbia Journalism Review has a good piece on the subject, Hold the Sauce:

There was this just-wait-til-Wednesday warning at the end of Michael D. Shear’s Post piece: “The lighthearted mood is likely to fade quickly if [McCain] gets enough delegates to lay claim to his party’s nomination in contests in Texas and Ohio on Tuesday. As the nominee, he will almost certainly be on, rather than overseeing, the grill.

And who will be “overseeing” that “grill?” These same rib-stained reporters?

McCainBlogette has a video of the event up. And now so do I.

This should further disabuse readers of the notion that there was any real journalistic purpose to the event.

Press Servility and the All Powerful Access

Stephen Colbert, speaking at the White House Correspondent Dinner:

Make, announce, type. Just put 'em through a spell check and go home. Get to know your family again. Make love to your wife. Write that novel you got kicking around in your head. You know, the one about the intrepid Washington reporter with the courage to stand up to the administration. You know--fiction.

We like to imagine that our press is fiercely independent but "cowed" and "servile" are usually much better descriptors. At the McCain BBQ the press was not allowed to record video or audio or to take pictures. And by "not allowed" I mean they were asked and meekly acquiesced. The BBQ was an "on the record" event yet all of the media (images, video) to come out of the event has come out on McCainBlogette. The press write ups of the event are nearly indistinguishable from the official PR as well. In essence the reporters served as rented PR people, reporting what McCain wanted them to and not reporting what he didn't want them to.

There is something fundamentally wrong when members of the press, in order to gain supposedly all-important access, agree to not use the tools of their trade or even to do their jobs at all. That's exactly the opposite of fiercely independent, our political press is fiercely dependent on access and will do anything to maintain it.

More on the Church of Access

I caught Tucker Carlson bleating about the importance of access in the context of the Samantha Powers' "monster" comment regarding Clinton and the audacity of the British press to report the truth. So did Glenn Greenwald, who provides a transcript and analysis.

Tucker Carlson: Right. But I mean, since journalistic standards in Great Britain are so much dramatically lower than they are here, it's a little much being lectured on journalistic ethics by a reporter from the "Scotsman," but I wonder if you could just explain what you think the effect is on the relationship between the press and the powerful. People don't talk to you when you go out of your way to hurt them as you did in this piece.

Don't you think that hurts the rest of us in our effort to get to the truth from the principals in these campaigns?
[...later segment...]

Lanny Davis: Most reporters in the U.S. would give you a break. That reporter...didn't seem to understand that you lose sources if you burn someone like that.

This is a very ordinary attitude made explicit by Carlson and Davis: that preserving sources is more important than reporting the truth. The more sources you cultivate the more stuff you can report -- except of course for stuff the sources don't want you to report. You mustn't report that!

Maintaining contacts is a part of journalism, but its status has been elevated to godhood because it appeals to laziness. Maintain a wide net of sources and reporting is no different from writing a gossip column. Talk to one of your sources (or have them talk to you), write down what they said (often attributing them anonymously), and voila, there's your next article on Iranian IEDs or Saddam's anthrax.

McCain's "straight talk express" is a tour bus and the press his groupies. They know if they ask the wrong thing, press too hard or whip out cameras they might stop riding on the bus and stop getting called on and stop attending picnics. So their solution is to play by the rules set out for them by the person they are supposed to be covering.

Freedom of the press is one of our most cherished rights. Yet our press could not care less, eagerly trading that freedom away in return for chumminess and rides on a tire swing. (Watch the video)

Next Time

This post was getting too long, next time I'll get into the press coverage of "character" issues. That should conclude the series on the McCain BBQ and press behavior, at least for now.

Hastily Added Addendum

Crooks and Liars has more on access and McCain reporting. Anna Marie Cox, Howard Kurtz and others discuss how reporters covering McCain get so much wonderful access that they become "part of the bubble, part of the [McCain] team." Everyone agrees that because of their access the press treats McCain better, does not report on some of his negative behavior, and that it's only people outside of "the bubble" that confront him on falsehoods. According to Cox:

It's almost always someone who's not -- who, hasn't been with the campaign, you know, through it all, that is going to make a call that makes him look bad.

That appears to be a damning indictment but everyone is all smiles, as if entirely oblivious to the words coming out of their mouths and what their role as journalists is supposed to be. For them becoming part of "the team" and going easy on McCain is perfectly acceptable; it's the campaign outsiders like Bumiller who mistakenly believe that reporting is different from public relations.

McCain BBQ and Our Insipid Press Corps

2008-03-06T01:01:00.010-05:00

Members of the press at the McCain BBQ. No, I'm not kidding.
(This picture comes from Meghan McCain's blog and is copyright Heather Brand. I'm claiming fair use -- sue me.)

This subject makes me positively apoplectic. Few events in recent memory illustrate so many poor qualities of our press corps like the BBQ Sen. McCain held over the weekend and the subsequent coverage of it. Our mainstream press is a cruel joke on all of us. There is so much wrong here it's nearly impossible to approach. But I'll try to break it down from different angles in a series of blog posts. There is no way one can cover it all.

It's Not News

There is absolutely nothing newsworthy about the McCain BBQ. (What is newsworthy is the press corps reaction to it) Every piece on it reads like pure public relations from the pen of McCain's own people.

Ribs, to be specific. He gets 'em at Costco -- the big slabs of pork ribs. And he slaps them on the grill at the lowest possible temperature. Any hotter, he says, and the meat cooks too fast.
His secret recipe is a dry-rub concoction that consists of one-third salt, one-third pepper and one-third garlic powder -- and he pours it on. But the real trick, he says, is the fresh lemon juice that he squeezes onto the ribs repeatedly. Keeps 'em juicy.

@#*$ING FASCINATING! I can hardly wait for the followup story on what he puts in the potato salad.

These are the actual headlines (with attached stories) describing this non-event:
At McCain's Ariz. Retreat, Ribs With a Side of Chi?
Chicken hawk: McCain meets grill
For McCain, a Different Kind of Grilling
Grillmaster McCain plays host in Sedona
McCain Shows Off His BBQ Skills
No news, just ribs at McCain barbecue
John McCain, grill master supreme
Back in Arizona, McCain Tends the Grill

Yes, CNN ran a story headlined "No News." But in case you didn't believe them, how about this transcript (emph. added) detailing the lack of newsworthiness?

It was definitely a news-free zone. There were no TV cameras there so we can't show you any pictures of it.
[...]
But you know, he made it very clear from the beginning. He wasn't interested in making any news. He wanted this to be a social gathering, a chance to thank the press for trudging along after him for the past however many months.
[...]
It was a lot of show and tell for the press corps. But a news-free zone, definitely. But it was very nice and very gracious, Candy.

Here's a thought: how about covering some actual news.

There is less actual news content in these reports than in an episode of Cribs. These puff pieces are something you might expect out of an MTV lifestyle show, but here they are in the Washington Post, CNN, Politico, The Boston Globe, et al. "McCain Shows Off His BBQ Skills." Oh really, CBS news?

There is an Obvious Conflict of Interest

The press is often referred to as McCain's "base." This is a clear illustration of why. One account:

The campaign booked the senator's aides and reporters into one of the only big hotels in town: the Enchantment Resort, a five-star hotel nestled so far back in the picturesque red rock canyons of Sedona that most in the group found that their cell phones were out of range. To cope with the stress of being incommunicado, people booked massages at the hotel spa and went on hikes, including one on which an instructor sought to help participants unblock their "inner chi."

A second account:

The idea, McCain said, was to allow reporters to get to know him and his staff under less stressful circumstances. (The fact that the press spent the weekend at a resort called Enchantment where many sipped wine and enjoyed lengthy deep-tissue massages probably contributed to that feeling.)

It looks like McCain paid for not only the food but for accomodations. But beyond that the real issue is that the people who are supposed to cover McCain the candidate are the same people cavorting with McCain the friendly BBQer. Does the term "professional distance" mean anything to our press corps? They are literally drinking and partying with the guy they are supposed to be reporting on.

Reading the various accounts it's clear the event was purely social, with only a thin pretense of seriousness to make it appear above-water. Reporters agreed to not videotape, photograph or record, they were discouraged from taking notes or asking political questions. The event was originally off-the-record entirely.

The goal from McCain's perspective was clear: try to present a likeable, human side in order to win friends and influence people. Here is TIME's Anna Marie Cox explaining:

I think of socializing as part of the larger project: I get to know people and then can then write about them with more depth, and it means that when I do write something critical about them, I take EXTRA care to get it right... I'm willing to lose a friend over something I write but I'd like to know it was worth it.

The whole point of the event was to help McCain turn reporters into friends, or at least friendlies, who then like Anna Marie Cox become less likely to write critically of him.

I started to write "it's not as simple as McCain grills someone a chicken sandwhich and in return they write a fawning piece about him" but that's exactly what happened: people wrote fawning stories based on McCain entertaining them. It's not that the food was literal payment for the following coverage but it did predictably result in multiple stories lauding McCain's softer side. Beyond the short term production of PR-style descriptions of the event itself is the long-term impact of cultivating friendly social relationships with press corps members.

From the Society of Professional Journalists Code of Ethics:

Journalists should:
—Avoid conflicts of interest, real or perceived.
— Remain free of associations and activities that may compromise integrity or damage credibility.
— Refuse gifts, favors, fees, free travel and special treatment, and shun secondary employment, political involvement, public office and service in community organizations if they compromise journalistic integrity.

The fact that this has to be explained at all is a terrible indictment of our press corps. If you want to fairly cover a candidate you don't go to parties at his house. This is not difficult.

Next Time

In part two I'll look at two more aspects of the BBQ coverage: journalist's insistence on (badly) covering the "character" of candidates and the embarrassing servility of the press corps.

Wiretap "Compromise" in Works - Huzzah!

2008-03-04T21:56:00.005-05:00

Ooh a compromise. Who can predict where this is heading?

The Washington Post reports that a wiretap compromise in forthcoming -- but for the life of me I can't figure out what the compromise actually is. Democrats are preparing to go along with the administration and grant amensty to telecoms while Republicans don't move an inch. That's compromise folks.

It's not hyperbole to say that for much of the beltway media words like "compromise" and "bipartisanship" have become entirely divorced from their commonly understood meanings. As David Broder made clear compromise and bipartsanship occur when and only when Democrats drop all pretense of opposition and do exactly what the least popular President in history asks.

The specific absurdity here is that the conflict is between people who seek to uphold the law and those who seek to undermine it, and the "compromise" is to wholly excuse law breaking.

A key congressional aide said that the issue is one that must be reviewed carefully, and a balance must be struck between appropriate court review and avoiding "protracted litigation."

Don't do the crime if you can't do the crime? This "key congressional aide" is arguing that a balance must be struck between enforcing the law and the rights of criminals to not be inconvenienced, let alone found guilty.

One has to wonder where else we can apply this brilliant logic. On one hand tax evasion is illegal but on the other hand fining tax evaders makes them frowny. Murder is illegal but that should be carefully balanced against the pain and suffering caused by ~~jail time~~ criminal prosecution.

It's amazing how few Democrats are willing to stand up and say "why are we comprising on following the law? Let's just follow it, end of discussion."

David Broder's Bipartisanship

2008-02-27T01:56:00.009-05:00

Many commentators, including Digby here, have observed that to our media elite "bipartisanship" is indistinguishable from acting Republican. David Broder provides a perfect example of this in his recent column "A Did-Something Congress."

The voters' message is getting through, not only in settling the fights for the Republican and Democratic nominations but in changing the mind-set of Washington.

The clearest evidence of the change is what happened last week on the economic stimulus bill. A week ahead of their self-imposed deadline, the House and Senate, by overwhelming votes, sent to President Bush almost exactly the kind of relief measure he had sought for the staggering economy. [emph. added]

It was a dramatic reversal of the gridlock that had characterized executive-congressional relations throughout 2007, and it reflects the recognition by both Republicans and Democrats of the public disenchantment with official Washington that has been one of the dominant themes of the 2008 presidential campaign.

Broder praises both Republicans and Democrats for the "bipartisan" approach but it's not clear what Republicans did to deserve praise or how Democrats doing exactly what Bush wants is an example of bipartisan action.

This is a ubiquitous theme in beltway media: that gridlock is caused by Democrats opposing Republicans and bipartisanship is achieved when Democrats drop that opposition and act exactly like Republicans. In column after column Democrats are chided for not moving enough, while Republicans get a free pass on not moving at all. Joe Klein writes repeatedly that Democrats should sign off on telecom immunity so we can move on to more pressing matters, but he never argues that Republicans should give up on telecom immunity for the same reasons.

The implicit argument in these sorts of columns is that Democrats have to be the "bigger man", that they have to act responsibly because Republicans won't. Imagine if this argument were explicit:

Bush Administration officials today argued that the expiration of the Protect America Act has left our nation at greater risk to terrorist attack. Republicans in Congress blocked the extension of the act and Bush vowed to veto it because the House rejected a separate bill that included telecom immunity. We call on Democrats in the House to agree to telecom immunity because some party has to act responsibly and it clearly won't be the Republicans. We call on voters to vote Democratic at all levels of government so that a cadre of ideologues can no longer force through bad legislation by holding American lives hostage.

This column has been written dozens of times in the last few weeks, only the parts about irresponsible Republicans has been left out. Yet that is the lynch pin of the entire argument for total Democratic capitulation: something has to give and it's not going to be those stubborn Republicans.

On Language: Conspiracy Theory

2008-02-20T00:58:00.008-05:00

"Conspiracy theory" and similar terms are often used to dismiss reasonable arguments out of hand without engaging them -- a last resort when logic and facts are insufficient. It's to the point where when I hear Bush Administration officials or media pundits label something a "conspiracy theory" it makes me much more apt to believe it. Below is a list of notions dismissed as conspiracy theories that turned out to be mostly if not entirely accurate.

Intel on Iraq WMDs was cooked

Christopher Hitchens, writing for Slate, produced a hilariously awful screed on Iraq WMDs, dismissing doubts about WMD intelligence while spinning his own elaborate and now-disproven conspiracy theory to explain the lack of WMD finds in Iraq.

So this is not just a "find" in itself—such gas centrifuges are used for the enrichment of uranium—but evidence of a larger and wider design to fool the international community and to wait for a better day to restart Saddam's nuclear program. If you find hard physical and documentary evidence, along with a complex plan to keep it under wraps, you are entitled to make a few presumptions, not including the presumption of innocence. Nobody bothers to cover up nothing.

This breakthrough, which comes quite early in the inspection process and which will not be the only one of its kind, might possibly quiet the idiotic and premature wailings of the "anti-war" side, who have been saying for weeks that the whole indictment of Saddam Hussein was a put-up job. Then again, it probably won't have that effect. The wailers will settle for nothing less than the full-dress conspiracy theory.

The "conspiracy theory" of the "wailers" was right while Hitchens' own theory of a nuclear weapons lab buried in pieces around Iraq was wrong. (Hitchens gets bonus points for employing one of the worst extended analogies of all time)

The US is looking to establish permanent bases in Iraq

These days we are openly talking about "continuing force agreements" and a "protective overwatch mission" while McCain muses about staying in Iraq for 100 years or more. Congress and the President dance around a "continuing" or "indefinite" occupation of Iraq. But as Glenn Greenwald documents, suggestions that the US would look to stay in Iraq long-term were until recently derided as fantasy.

From The Washington Times' Donald Lambro, April 28, 2003:

The [New York] Times, in a front-page story last week, reported that the U.S. military was setting up "permanent" bases in Iraq intimating, of course, that we will be occupying the country forever. I read the story and it seems as if it was cooly calculated to inflame the Iraqis. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld countered that the report was totally and completely false, angrily condemning this kind of fear-mongering, "Henny Penny" reporting. Henny is a character in the children's tale about Chicken Little, who claimed that "the sky is falling." It wasn't, it isn't and it won't.

We are going to repair the damage done to Iraq, help the Iraqi people start a government, and then get out of there as soon as we can.

From Fox News, April 21, 2003, Special Report with Brit Hume:

BAIER: The front-page story cited unnamed Bush administration sources saying the United States was planning a long-term military-to-military relationship with Iraq, one that would allow the Pentagon to operate bases inside the country.

RUMSFELD: The impression left around the world is we plan to occupy the country, we plan to use their bases over a long period of time, and it's flat false.

The Iraq War was largely planned and sold by the brainiacs at PNAC

How is this even a question? It is self-evidently true. The PNAC website is open to the public and the policy goals for Iraq and the Middle East are clearly spelled out. The statement of principles is signed by Dick Cheney, Frank Gaffney, Francis Fukuyama, Donald Kagan, Norman Podhoretz, I. Lewis Libby, Paul Wolfowitz and Donald Rumsfeld among others. The letter to President Clinton on Iraq includes many of those same names as well as Richard Perle, Richard L. Armitage, John Bolton and the other Kagan brother.

According to The Weekly Standard it's all conspiracy theory once again. Michael Goldfarb derides the following quote from Phyllis Bennis as conspiracy mongering:

I think the motive [for the administration’s lies] is that the lead people within the Bush administration were convinced from before they ever came into office, from the early 1990’s, when they began to work together when they were outside of power, when they were not in office in the Clinton years and they formed the group that later became known as the Project for the New American Century, when they were working for Bibi Netanyahu in the Israeli election. That same group of neocons had the view that the overthrow of the regime in Iraq was a crucial component of expanding U.S. power in the world…it had to do with oil, it had to do with the expansion of creating new permanent bases throughout the region, it had to with protection of Israel, it had to with a whole range of both regional and international goals.

Nothing in the above passage is false or misleading; PNAC's website alone is enough to confirm most of it. Note that while Goldfarb attacks Bennis what he doesn't do at all is attack the veracity of anything Bennis said.

Halo 3 doesn't run at 720p

I had to include this one for the sheer audacity. The theory is explicitly acknowledged as true while still rejected as the product work of tinfoil-hatters. Now that's real chutzpah!

The grand finale

Dismissing valid arguments as conspiracy theories is invariably ad hominem, an attack not on ideas but on their progenitors. Hitchen's conspiracy theorists are "wailers", Rumsfeld's are cartoonish characters, Goldfarb's are anti-Semites and Bungie's (makers of Halo) are "tinfoil hats." The term "conspiracy theorist" itself brings up images of kooks and crazies.

The common thread in the above examples is that the invocation of conspiracy theory is the main argument while facts are a distant second at best. That's why I wrote up top that such attacks only increase my credulity. If Hitchens or Goldfarb or Rumsfeld had definitive proof why didn't they simply present it? That they rely on slurs is more reason to believe that the "conspiracy theorists" are correct.

Klein and Gaffney: Twins Separated at Birth

2008-02-11T05:59:00.001-05:00

Joe Klein vs. Frank Gaffney Jr. in a battle of the beards.

Why do I keep beating up on Joe Klein? (Other than the fact that he deserves it I mean) Because Joe Klein is representative of a harmful myth in our political media: that liberal and conservative voices are equal and opposite and represent the two and only two sides of any political debate. "Liberals" like Joe Klein buy into the same authoritarian domestic and imperialistic foreign policy that has come to define modern conservatism. On many issues a liberal and a conservative (or those billed as such) do not define endpoints but a singular indistinguishable position. This subjects us, the American people, to a manufactured false consensus that purports to represent a broad range of opinion while excluding genuinely opposing views.

Joe Klein is considered the liberal columnist at Time Magazine. Frank Gaffney Jr. is a conservative commentator who believes Americans should be hanged for opposing the Iraq War. Yet they agree on a variety of issues and define a spectrum that excludes the majority of Americans. They both believe (despite Klein's attempts to rewrite his own history) that the Iraq War was a great idea and that the surge is working -- positioning the majority of Americans as the "anti-war fringe" without a strong proponent in national media. They both believe, contrary to the views of the American people, that telecom amnesty is a good idea and that consensual sexual relationships are a worse offense for a president than cronyism, incompetence and blatant lies the the public.

Reading liberal commentators like Joe Klein and Thomas Friedman opposing conservative commentators like Fred Gaffney Jr and Charles Krauthammer is similar to reading The Onion point/counterpoint following 9/11:

Point: We Must Retaliate With Blind Rage
Counterpoint: We Must Retaliate With Measured, Focused Rage

Compare that to Klein and Gaffney opining on warrantless wiretapping. Each pair of quotes below consists of one from Klein and one from Gaffney; can you tell them apart?

Klein and Gaffney (or is it Gaffney and Klein?) defend FISA legislation:

At this writing, the U.S. Senate is embroiled in the latest round of this fight. Senators Patrick Leahy and Christopher Dodd are among those trying to prevent passage of a bill that was adopted 13-2 last year by the Senate intelligence committee on a broadly bipartisan basis. While not perfect, this legislation has the virtue of: making clear the President’s authority to engage in such battlefield communications intercepts; updating and circumscribing the role of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) courts given changes in telecommunications since they were established in 1979; and providing immunity from lawsuits for companies that facilitate such legal surveillance.

The latest version of the absolutely necessary Patriot Act, which updates the laws regulating the war on terrorism and contains civil-liberties improvements over the first edition, was nearly killed by a stampede of Senate Democrats. Most polls indicate that a strong majority of Americans favor the act, and I suspect that a strong majority would favor the NSA program as well, if its details were declassified and made known.

Here they describe the noble government actions following 9/11:

In the wake of the 9/11’s deadly acts of war, George W. Bush did what one would hope any President would do: He strove to prevent follow-on strikes and brought to bear every available instrument for that purpose.

Preeminent among these was the collection of intelligence that might reveal further plots and the identity and whereabouts of those inclined to perpetrate them. Mr. Bush ordered the National Security Agency to monitor phone calls and data transmissions involving foreign nationals suspected of involvement in terror. In so doing, he exercised a well-established power of the Commander-in-Chief in time of war: monitoring the enemies’ battlefield communications. Given the nature of this particular war and of modern telecommunications, such monitoring had to include some individuals and selected intercepts in this country.

In fact, a 2002 investigation by the Joint Intelligence Committees concluded that the NSA was not doing as much as it could have been doing under the law—and that the entire U.S. intelligence community operated in a hypercautious defensive crouch. "Hayden was taking reasonable steps," a former committee member told me. "Our biggest concern was what more he could be doing."

The Bush Administration had similar concerns. In the days after 9/11, it asked Hayden to push the edge of existing technology and come up with the best possible program to track the terrorists. The result was the now infamous NSA data-mining operation, which began months later, in early 2002. Vast amounts of phone and computer communications by al-Qaeda suspects overseas, including some messages to people in the U.S., could now be scooped up and quickly analyzed.

And finally they castigate those irresponsible Democrats for not acting more like Republicans:

In time of war, our country cannot afford to have one of its two major political parties [the Democrats] at best AWOL on the major security issues of our time and, at worst, seriously wrongheaded about them. Behaving responsibly about FISA reform would be a good place to start...

The Democratic strategy on the FISA legislation in the House is equally foolish. There is broad, bipartisan agreement on how to legalize the surveillance of phone calls and emails of foreign intelligence targets.
[...]
Unfortunately, Speaker Nancy Pelosi quashed the House Intelligence Committee's bipartisan effort and supported a Democratic bill that — Limbaugh is salivating — would require the surveillance of every foreign-terrorist target's calls to be approved by the FISA court, an institution founded to protect the rights of U.S. citizens only. In the lethal shorthand of political advertising, it would give terrorists the same legal protections as Americans. That is well beyond stupid.

It should be noted once again that people opposed to warrantless wiretapping, a group which on principle should contain both liberals and conservatives, is entirely absent from the fascinating dialog above, and similarly from most media dialogs on the issue.

Stuff Unworthy of Full Posts

2008-02-05T22:12:00.001-05:00

Time for another roundup.

That Word Doesn't Mean What You Think It Means

From the State of the Union Address:

The Congress must ensure the flow of vital intelligence is not disrupted. The Congress must pass liability protection for companies believed to have assisted in the efforts to defend America. We have had ample time for debate. The time to act is now.

Believed? The most common justification given for telecom immunity is that the telecoms acted patriotically by responding to direct requests from the President. Surely Bush himself knows whether or not that is the case -- what's belief got to do with it? The answer of course is that Bush does know -- he's just not telling.

Makes you wonder though, if our belief is wrong and the telecoms didn't do anything at all then why exactly do they need immunity?

This formulation is not new. Administration officials ususally qualify their desciptions of telecom actions with "believed", "alleged" or a similar variant. They could simply tell us what the telecoms did, but that would run counter to their devotion to secrecy and misinformation.

This Sandwhich is a Matter of National Security

Three deep-cover operatives were killed bringing you this photograph of the top-secret government project known only as "Lunch Menu Item 5."

Casinos lobby government to ban internet gambling. Government complies. World Trade Organization cries foul. Government negotiates and resolves dispute. Intrepid go-getter Ed Brayton files Freedom of Information Act request to obtain copy of agreement. Administration response?

Please be advised that the document you seek is being withheld in full pursuant to 5 U.S.C. § 552(b)(1), which pertains to information that is properly classified in the interest of national security pursuant to Executive Order 12958.

In his previous post Ed Brayton wrote:

I have submitted an FOIA request for the full text of the settlement. There's no way they can legally deny that request, but given the Bush administration's secrecy fetish I'm willing to bet they'll at least try to stonewall it.

If anything he gave them too much credit. This is an administration that decided the Office of Administration was retroactively not subject to FOIA requests. The same administration that tried to retroactively classify public material. There's nothing this administration can't justify by appealing to national security concerns.

My Crystal Ball was Right on Mukasey and Waterboarding

2008-01-30T01:12:00.001-05:00

The Inquisition was full of good ideas.

A few months ago I gazed into my crystal ball and wrote the following:

Sadly the reality is that no AG under Bush will declare waterboarding illegal. You guys ever read the Ironic Times? They put it well:

"Bush Pick for Attorney General Headed for Confirmation Mukasey last piece in puzzle keeping Bush, Cheney from firing squad."

No AG picked by Bush is going to turn around and call Bush a criminal.

That was quite the limb I went out on. I'm very brave. Today I learned that my crystal ball is in fine working order.

Attorney General Michael Mukasey said Tuesday he will refuse to publicly say whether the interrogation tactic known as waterboarding is illegal, digging in against critics who want the Bush administration to define it as torture.

I haven't been this shocked since the sun rose this morning.

Mukasey had promised to report on the legality of waterboarding at his confirmation hearing. Or did he?

WHITEHOUSE: If it's torture? That's a massive hedge. I mean, it either is or it isn't.

Do you have an opinion on whether water-boarding, which is the practice of putting somebody in a reclining position, strapping them down, putting cloth over their faces and pouring water over the cloth to simulate the feeling of drowning -- is that constitutional?

MUKASEY: If it amounts to torture, it is not constitutional.

WHITEHOUSE: I'm very disappointed in that answer. I think it is purely semantic.
[...]
I want to pin you down and ask you, sir, if you would pledge to undertake some formal process of review and evaluation of those internal protocols, norms and practices so that you get a report from experienced people on what needs to be repaired.

MUKASEY: I'm going to pledge to undertake to review the practices. I am going to pledge to consult people both inside and outside the department in the course of that.

Convening a formal process is something I can't commit to now. If it is necessary, and if I find that the results of inquiry and consultation don't yield a satisfactory result, I will consider that.

WHITEHOUSE: Will you agree to keep me informed of your activities in this area?

MUKASEY: I will.

That's some clever wordsmithing by Mukasey. Although the discussion was specifically about waterboarding he never explicitly agreed to comment on waterboarding, merely on the "internal protocols, norms and practices." And because we are not waterboarding someone as I type this it doesn't qualify as a current practice.

Clever? Yes. Deceitful? Certainly. But as the Ironic Times captured so succinctly, Bush was not going nominate an honest Attorney General any more than he has going to hold a gun to his own head. Refusal to declare waterboarding torture was a prerequisite for nomination.

Joe Klein Still Doesn't Get It

2008-01-27T19:49:00.001-05:00

"I have neither the time nor legal background to figure out who's right."

When we last checked in on Joe Klein he and his Time editors were falling all over each other to correct, excuse and explain away the fact that he writes editorials without performing basic research and without understanding the relevant facts. You might think that after that embarrassment he would stick to writing about his area of expertise -- whatever that might be -- but you'd be wrong. What makes Joe Klein such a serious and respected reporter is his ability to compound errors with further errors and to bravely wade once again into issues that mystify him.

Joe Klein once again weighs in on the FISA debate. (It's worth reading the comments at the end -- his readers are on to him) His previous debacle taught him nothing about FISA but it did teach him a neat trick: instead of saying things that are misleading or outright false, he trots out others to do it for him. This way he is merely "reporting" rather than inventing.

Over the past few weeks, I’ve asked Constitutional Law professors from Harvard, Yale and the University of Chicago about the immunity provision. There are differences of opinion—no one is thrilled about immunity, to be sure—but the bottom line is, essentially, that this is a lesser issue diverting attention from the passage of an important law.

Joe Klein talks to some contacts of his and they all agree with Joe Klein. Amazing how that works out.

At the start of his piece Klein rattles off a list of issues that have "broad agreement among most members of Congress." But he never takes the next step in suggesting that Congress go ahead and pass a bill containing those broad agreements. If "no one is thrilled about immunity" Klein could write a piece admonishing Republicans for insisting on it-- but that's not the Klein we know and love. No, our Joe Klein is busy rounding up "experts" as clueless as himself who can join him in uttering a few half-hearted words against telecom amnesty before blindly supporting it.

So how big a deal is the immunity provision? In effect, it is a grandfather clause: it essentially says that telecoms should not be punished for acts that were illegal in the past but now become legal in the FISA reform bill. In other words, it would be like prosecuting a doctor in 1974 for abortions he performed before Roe v. Wade was decided. He had performed abortions when they were illegal, but they were now legal and therefore…what? None of the legal scholars I spoke with were sure how such cases had been handled in the past...[em. added]

His analogy is nonsense but beyond that look at the last line. The entire premise of his piece is that instead of offering his own uninformed opinion he will report on what his experts think -- but they are no more informed than Klein! Klein couldn't be bothered to perform his own research (didn't have the time nor legal background) and neither could his contacts. So now instead of having to listen to one ignorant and lazy pundit we have to listen to a handful. Much better. They argue that telecom amnesty is acceptable while admitting they don't know how it works.

Klein's experts aren't experts on retroactive immunity. Well surely they are experts on the immediate issues surrounding FISA right?

Barron, however, is opposed to lifting immunity for telecoms "because, going forward, you don't want to send the message that anyone has a free pass to act illegally on such a basic Constitutional question, even if they've been asked by the government to do so." Barron acknowledges that there are mitigating circumstances in this case: the country seemed under the threat of imminent attack in the months after 9/11, when these data-mining requests were made, and that such searches will now become legal under the new law. He suggests a compromise. The telecoms should not be granted immunity, but punitive damages should be waived if the cases are litigated.

How wrong are thee? Let me count the ways.

1. The warrantless wiretapping began prior to 9/11. "9/11 changes everything" is annoying enough even when it has some grain of truth, and this claim does not.

2. Klein constantly refer to "data-mining" without explaining what he means or how he knows that data-mining is all that occurred. It's hard to believe he even knows what data-mining is, given that he only speaks about it in shifting generalities.

3. "Such searches will now become legal under the new law" is entirely circular logic. Much of the debate is centered around the question of whether certain surveillance techniques should ever be legal.

4. While arguing that law-breakers should not get a "free pass" the proposed solution is just that: literally a free pass. Some compromise.

Joe Klein's experts are just repeating the same falsities and inane logic Klien himself employs to give his opinions a veneer of respectability.

Professor Cass Sunstein of the University of Chicago agrees that if no immunity is granted to the telecoms, there should be no punitive damages: "Huge damage awards would just be passed on to the consumers in any case." But Sunstein also believes that the importance of immunity has been blown out of proportion: "This is a terrible, mostly symbolic fight. The stakes are far lower than the level of noise suggests. The notion that essential civil liberties are at stake here is just an exaggeration. The important thing is to get the new statute right."

If "the important thing is to get the new statute right" then why are Klein and his allies pushing to pass a bill that includes provisions that "no one is thrilled about"? The argument that huge damages would be passed on to consumers could of course be used in defense of virtually any corporate misdeed.

So far Klein has done well in letting his experts make inane assertions on his behalf, but in true Joe Klein fashion he has to get in on the act:

But the NSA program, if operated under the legal restrictions imposed by an updated FISA law, is a crucial intelligence tool. It has the potential to prevent the next 9/11. (And indeed, it should be remembered that the actual data-mining is done by mid-level, apolitical NSA employees—political appointees of the Bush Administration have absolutely no legal access to the information and there have been, to my knowledge, no specific abuses reported so far.) If, for example, it is found that Bush administration officials were sifting through the NSA data to gain information on their political opponents, then they should tried, convicted and thrown in the clink for as long as possible....But there is no suggestion that they, or the telecoms, have done anything like that.

The Bush Administration and the telecoms in question have already demonstrated a willingness to break the law, and people like Joe Klein argue that they deserve no penalties for those illegalities; the argument that things will be swell if everyone follows the law to the letter is naive at best. Given that they already broke the law without penalty what makes this time different? A pinky-swear?

Klein pretends to speak authoritatively that only "apolitical NSA employees" are privy to data and that surveillance powers have not already been abused. How he knows these things is a mystery, especially given that he continuously gets even basic facts wrong. The reality is that nobody knows to what extent surveillance powers have been abused. The Bush Administration has repeatedly hidden behind state's secrets privledges and executive priviledge to avoid divulging information and telecom immunity would short-circuit the already difficult process of discovery through court proceedings.

Joe Klein has no idea what the administration has done so far; he has no interest in finding out and advocates policies that actively prevent those who are interested from further investigations. He's willing to see and hear no evil and wants to force us to do the same by law.

The entire thing is so disengenuos. The clueless Klein lines up equally clueless experts who all back up his opinion that we have to vote for a bill regardless of content or the terrorists will win. He writes editorial after editorial arguing that Democrats should cave and include nonsense provisions but he'll never argue that Republicans should stop politicizing national security policy and stop insisting on policies that even his own experts pay lip-service to opposing.

In Joe Klein's world it just has to be the fault of Democrats. That's his invented narrative and he's sticking to it. They should just suck it up and vote for bad bills because asking Republicans to vote for good bills is not proper decorum.

Just once I'd like to read a pro-amnesty editorial that didn't include falsehoods and purposely misleading rhetoric. I suspect it will never happen because the case for telecom amnesty is so anemic it's impossible to prop up without a relying on a loose relationship with the truth.

Anatomy of a Dishonest Editorial

2008-01-22T22:42:00.001-05:00

Instead of On Language maybe I should do On Dishonest Rhetoric. I am experimenting with a new style of commentary on written pieces that avoids breaking the original piece up into small chunks. Seems to work well but your mileage may vary.

Update: I've changed the wording slightly in response to a comment. Technically there are no outright lies in the editorial, just purposeful distortions.

What's it like to have no shame? Ask the editors of the Wall Street Journal. Their Wiretap Politics op-ed is a perfect example of purposely misleading rhetoric. Time to break out the red pen.

We're told that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid is saying privately he now won't attempt to update the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) on the wiretapping of al Qaeda suspects. Instead, he'll merely support another 18-month extension of the six-month-old Protect America Act. Among other problems, the temporary bill includes no retroactive immunity for the telecom companies that cooperated with the feds after 9/11.¹

In October, the Senate Intelligence Committee passed a bill updating FISA on a bipartisan vote led by Democratic Chairman Jay Rockefeller. It would provide a Congressional blessing for warrantless wiretaps of suspected al Qaeda communications overseas that happen to pass through U.S. switching networks², as many do in a world of packet switching and fiber optics. The bill also gives retroactive immunity to the phone companies, which have been sued by the likes of the ACLU for hundreds of billions of dollars for the crime of answering a President's request for assistance.³

1. Note that lack of amnesty for law-breaking corporations is characterized as a "problem", as opposed to "how the law works."

2. This is not what the bill actually does -- a blatant distortion. The text of the bill is freely available. The bill does not merely allow warrantless wiretaps on communications that "happen to pass through U.S. switching networks", it allows warrantless wiretaps on communications where one endpoint is a US citizen inside the US, as long as that person is not the designated target. It's right there in section 702 b.(Which includes the hilarious clause that the surveillance "shall be conducted in a manner consistent with the fourth amendment to the Constitution of the United States." Shouldn't that go without saying?)

Maybe like Joe Klein the WSJ editors don't have the inclination and legal background (AKA basic English language comprehension) to read the text of the bill and figure out what it says? Or maybe they are just cynical manipulators. Take your pick.

3. The ACLU is a favorite punching-bag of conservatives -- somehow fighting for civil liberties is anti-American these days. But the real gem here is the notion that the "crime" these companies committed was "answering a President's request for assistance" -- which is not a crime at all. Helping the President is not illegal, so why aren't these cases instantly thrown out of court? If the only "crime" here is a non-crime then why do these companies need amnesty?

The "logic" here is extraordinary: these companies have done nothing illegal, so they need protection from lawsuits, or else they might be found guilty in court of engaging in illegal activities.

Only lawbreakers benefit from amnesty.

The Bush Administration is aware of Mr. Reid's plans and is debating a response, and we hope Chief of Staff Josh Bolten and the President don't flinch now. Immunity for the telcos is not only fair but crucial. As the Senate Intelligence Committee concluded, these companies acted in response to written requests or directives assuring that their activities were authorized by the President. "The extension of immunity," wrote the panel in its conference report, "reflects the Committee's determination that electronic communication service providers acted on a good faith belief that the President's program, and their assistance, was lawful."

Even I know that ignorance of the law is no excuse for lawbreaking, which is all the above amounts to. At least one telecom company, Qwest, did not believe that participating in warrantless wiretapping was legal. Perhaps Qwest lawyers took the radical step of reading relevant laws.

Title 18 of the US Code already includes a good-faith exemption. It's right here in Section (d). Nothing prevents these companies from using that defense in court.

Who did the Senate Committee call as witnesses? What evidence did they consider? We have no idea. We have a very well-defined system for determining innocence and guilt in this country, and it does not involve the legislative branch making broad proclamations following secretive procedures.

Again, the logic at the root is that these companies need amnesty because they did nothing wrong. Curious.

Mr. Bush also has all the high political cards here. Most Americans think it's preposterous that a judge should have to approve listening to foreign enemies¹, and a fight over this in an election year is the last thing smart Democrats want.² Mr. Bush could help his successor and the public by promising to veto any FISA extension that isn't permanent and infringes too much on Presidential war powers. If this issue were such good politics for Democrats, Chris Dodd might have done better than sixth in Iowa.³

1. Here we have the common "most Americans think exactly what I think" ploy. In this case not only is it a lazy and unsupported argument but also irrelevant, as Democrats do support wireless wiretapping for "communications overseas that happen to pass through U.S. switching networks."

2. And here is another common ploy, the old "the best advice for Democrats is to act exactly like Republicans." Funny how that is always the case. We were told that Democrats were making a huge mistake by opposing the War in Iraq, followed by Democrats sweeping into control of Congress on exactly that platform. According to the WSJ the President "holds the high political cards" and it would be wise for Democrats to follow the lead of an historically unpopular President they were elected to oppose.

3. There is an obvious logical fallacy here in stating that a candidate's issues must be unpopular because candidate did poorly in Iowa, especially a candidate like Dodd that was never given any media attention. By that logic all of Guiliani's issues are unpopular as well, something you won't see the WSJ arguing any time soon. And in fact Dodd received his biggest bumps in popularity and campaign contributions when he championed these issues - it was good politics for Dodd.

The more subtle error here is that the argument has shifted entirely from what is good for US security to what is good politics for Democrats. The argument that we should violate the Fourth Amendment because it is a good career move for politicians is absurd on every level. Why should the citizens of a country or the staff of a newspaper editorial board encourage political careerism?

This editorial is not just silly or poorly reasoned, it contains blatant misrepresentations. Democrats do not oppose modernization fixes to FISA that make foreign-to-foreign warrantless wiretaps legal. That is pure fiction.

It should be scandalous when a major newspaper puts out editorials that deliberately mislead. But instead it is ordinary. Nearly every editorial and every TV pundit appearance in favor of telecom amnesty includes the same mischaracterizations of both what Democrats support and what the bills actually do. These errors have been repeatedly corrected for months -- at this point they must be purposeful. It's not in the best interests of telecom amnesty supporters to deliver the unadulterated truth -- so they don't.

I Endorse Kodos for President

2008-01-15T02:59:00.001-05:00

Kodos drools with anger at having his name spelled incorrectly in the title.

I don't do endorsements. Vote for whoever you want.

It annoys me that from the very start the Democratic race has been billed as Obama vs. Hillary, with Edwards making a cameo. The media creates a chicken-and-egg problem: a candidate does not have buzz, therefore the media doesn't cover him, therefore the candidate does not have buzz. I was saddened to see Chris Dodd depart so soon. Had he gotten the same coverage as Clinton or Obama his numbers would indisputably have risen.

None of the Democratic front-runners align well with the values I blog about.

I don't like telling people who to vote for or even what party to vote for. However I can't understand how anyone could vote for a candidate that is promising to be the next Bush, only more so. (Giuliani, Thompson, Romney and McCain.) If you loved Bush then vote for one of them I suppose. They fall all over each other to claim the Reagan mantle but when you put their policies side by side with the current Bush Administration's the differences are negligible. They are all warmongering anti-Constitutionalists. Romney wants to double Gitmo, Giuliani wants to invade Iran, McCain wants troops in Iraq forever.

I strongly endorse not voting for any of those clowns.

Will McCain win in New Hampshire tomorrow?

2008-01-07T23:39:00.000-05:00

We could pontificate on this for a while -- or we could wait one whole day and find out.

But no, since we're the media, we'll pontificate for a while. Because predicting what will happen tomorrow is a valuable service to the audience.

Oops there is no time to get into candidate policies, we've spent too long handicapping the race. Join us next time!

We Don't Drink the Kool-Aid Here

2008-01-04T19:47:00.003-05:00

Critical thinking is a foreign notion to some people, especially when it comes to analyzing their own viewpoints. Here at Common Nonsense we believe that all views should be subject to critical analysis, including and especially our own. We believe that the means to an end are important, and that a poor argument in our favor is still a poor argument.

Some people disagree. From FreeRepublic.com:

Did the weakest Dem candidate for the general election won tonight? I think so.

By sending forth Hussein Osama out of Iowa, Democrats have unwittingly weakened their general election prospects.

Hussein’s exotic mixture of radical liberalism, Kwanzaa Socialism, antipathy towards the unborn, and weakness against his jihadi brethren will all come back to destroy him against almost any Republican opponent, even the snake-grope from Hope.

I think we as Republicans should be celebrating tonight at the coronation of Hussein, in whose presence millions of Democrat women, from elementary school teachers to journalism majors to law school grads to dykes on bikes will go weak in their knees.

As defenders of this great Republic, and of the pinnacle of Western civilization that it represents, we should all come together tonight and agree on a common strategy that will keep the White House from becoming a madrassa.

How can anyone write read or write this dreck without being painfully embarrassed? First it is the too-common wishful-thinking everything-is-good-for-us variety of conservative "analysis" -- no doubt if Clinton had won a similar piece would have been written about her. Second and more importantly it's just plain stupid. Kwanzaa Socialism? Hussein Osama? Jihadi brethren? It's one empty rhetorical jab after another, cotton-candy writing at its finest.

Were I a conservative who disliked Obama I would still feel compelled to point out that the piece is poor, that "Kwanzaa Socialism" is an invention and that his name is Obama with a 'b'. The readers of FreeRepublic have no such objections. (Read the comments yourself) They agree with the general point, "grr Obama bad!", and that's good enough for them. There are no other standards in play, including basic accuracy.

Not content to let FreeRepublic monopolize stupidity for a moment RedState.com gets in on the act.

The bad news: our liberal “friends” – you know, the ones who believe so strongly in free speech and open debate – have done what they can to prevent us from making these improvements, so that our influence will be minimized just as we head into the 2008 presidential primary season.

No, our Blue State buddies haven’t succeeded in stopping us from improving our website. But they’ve made it more difficult and more expensive – which is why I’m coming to you for help.

Let me explain …

You see, when we started RedState in May of 2004, we used a website program called Scoop — the same program a lot of similar sites on the left used. But, as the number of visitors to our site grew, Scoop kept crashing on us.

If we’d been a liberal website, we would have been able to fix the problem quickly and relatively cheaply. The online left loves Scoop. Unfortunately, there weren’t really any conservative Scoop developers out there to help us. We kept crashing and were out of money. We had to close down or take drastic action.

This from people who fetishize self-reliance. (I left out the part where they beg for money) Liberals may pretend to be for free speech but since they aren't doing charity work for RedState clearly that's merely pretense. Follow the logic, if you can.

It's so absurd it's impossible to satirize. Even their own technical incompetence is somehow the fault of liberals.

Again an honest person who reads RedState should still feel compelled to point out how incredibly stupid this is, how it goes against the RedState disgust with handouts and opposition to victimhood. But again most RedStaters have no problem with it. To them there is no bad way to blame a liberal.

Crappy writing does not deserve a free pass based on ideology. Common Nonsense is not a liberal or Democratic blog. It's not about our team winning. Our team is the truth as we best understand it and policies derived from factual analysis.

We reject the notion that what you can be sloppy or deceiving in service to a greater good, one of the hallmark concepts of the Bush Administration. Accuracy and precision are themselves greater goods. The process of deriving conclusions matters more than the conclusions themselves.

Places like RedState and FreeRepublic do not attract people who like to think, they attract people who like to agree to a rigid ideology. That is not our goal. That is why we avoid in-group jargon, why we stick mostly to substantive complaints, why we make arguments based on primary-source material. We do not have to stretch the truth, outright invent, purposely misspell names or rely on cheap rhetorical tricks because unlike at FreeRepublic we don't have to. The simple facts are good enough.

On Language: Habeas Corpus and Constitutional Text

2008-01-03T00:17:00.001-05:00

I meant by that comment, the Constitution doesn’t say, “Every individual in the United States or every citizen is hereby granted or assured the right to habeas.” It doesn’t say that. It simply says the right of habeas corpus shall not be suspended except by —
Alberto Gonzales

In a way Alberto Gonzales is quite right: the Constitution does not explicitly grant Habeas Corpus.

The privilege of the writ of habeas corpus shall not be suspended, unless when in cases of rebellion or invasion the public safety may require it.

Of course, by that same logic Amendment I does not grant freedom of assembly, Amendment II does not grant the right to bear arms, Amendment IV does not grant protection from search and seizure, Amendment VII does not grant trial by jury and Amendment XV does not grant voting rights. (It's true -- read 'em!)

The completely naive defense against this clever rules-lawyering is that it sure seems strange to include passages in the Constitution with no meaning. But we are not completely naive. The Constitution is written the way it is for good reason. And if you aren't sure what that reason is Amendment IX provides a hint:

The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.

The Constitution does not grant rights to the people as much as it grants rights and places restrictions on the government. When the Constitution was written the right to Habeas Corpus had already existed for at least 500 years, having been formally written-up in the Magna Carta of 1215.

The fact that the Constitution does not expressly grant certain rights (shorthand I am guilty of using) makes a powerful statement about the nature of those rights: that they exist before and outside of our modern government. Rights granted by the government can be repealed; intrinsic rights can not be. The government does not grant us poor peasants rights as it sees fit, instead we force the government to keep it's hands off our pre-existing rights.

You don't have to take my word for it. Federalist Paper #84 explains why the original Constitution did not include a Bill of Rights at all.

The establishment of the writ of habeas corpus, the prohibition of ex post facto laws, and of TITLES OF NOBILITY, to which we have no corresponding provisions in our constitution, are perhaps greater securities to liberty and republicanism than any it contains.
[...] The observations of the judicious Blackstone in reference to the latter [Habeas], are well worthy of recital. "To bereave a man of life (says he) or by violence to confiscate his estate, without accusation or trial, would be so gross and notorious an act of despotism, as must at once convey the alarm of tyranny throughout the whole nation; but confinement of the person by secretly hurrying him to goal, where his sufferings are unknown or forgotten, is a less public, a less striking, and therefore a more dangerous engine of arbitrary government." And as a remedy for this fatal evil, he is every where peculiarly emphatical in his encomiums on the habeas corpus act, which in one place he calls "the BULWARK of the British constitution."

Gee, Habeas sounds kinda important. But we continue:

It has been several times truly remarked, that bills of rights are in their origin, stipulations between kings and their subjects, abridgments of prerogative in favor of privilege, reservations of rights not surrendered to the prince.
[...]
It is evident, therefore, that according to their primitive signification, they have no application to constitutions professedly founded upon the power of the people, and executed by their immediate representatives and servants. Here, in strictness, the people surrender nothing, and as they retain every thing, they have no need of particular reservations. [...]
I go further, and affirm that bills of rights, in the sense and in the extent in which they are contended for, are not only unnecessary in the proposed constitution, but would even be dangerous. They would contain various exceptions to powers which are not granted; and on this very account, would afford a colourable pretext to claim more than were granted. For why declare that things shall not be done which there is no power to do? Why for instance, should it be said, that the liberty of the press shall not be restrained, when no power is given by which restrictions may be imposed?

Here we see exactly why Alberto Gonzales' words were a purposeful misrepresentation of the truth that should have gotten him impeached on the spot. The Constitution does not grant certain rights because the government cannot grant that which all people naturally already have. Nor can the government restrict rights it has no power to restrict. As we see above, Hamilton believed that including rights in the Constitution only allowed for the plausible fiction that the government decides what rights we possess at all, when it is the people who grant the government its rights, not the reverse.

Sadly the Bush Administration has an antagonistic view of the Constitution and the Justice Department works not to enforce it but to actively undermine it by purposely interpreting it as exactly opposite the intended meaning. Once again the familiar question arises: are they ignorant or dishonest?

Gonzales thought (or pretended) he was on to something when he pointed out that the Constitution does not explicitly grant Habeas Corpus, as if that justified the denial of Habeas rights. Nothing could be further from the truth, a self-evident fact for any good-faith actor with a basic understanding of the Constitution and its history.

Odds and Sods

2007-12-30T23:15:00.001-05:00

Roundup of Excellent Pieces
Glenn Greenwald, always worth reading, has an excellent piece up today titled Oligarchical decay that covers a range of related topics that are favorites of this blog.

In case after case, our political establishment has adopted the "principle" that our most powerful actors are immune from the rule of law. And they've adopted the enabling supplemental "principle" that any information which our political leaders want to keep suppressed is -- by definition, for that reason alone -- information that is "classified" and should not be disclosed.
[...]
And now, our government just destroys evidence crucial both to all sorts of court proceedings and a comprehensive investigation into the worst attack on U.S. soil in our history -- part and parcel of its general pattern of destroying or "losing" key evidence -- and the Honorable, Independent Attorney General tells both the legislative and judicial branches that they have no right even to investigate. And although we know for a fact that the top aides to both Bush and Cheney were involved in discussions of whether the tapes should be destroyed, we have no idea what they said and are unlikely ever to know, and even if we did find out, it's impossible to envision anything happening as a result.

Remember folks: Republicans are "tough on crime."

Digby at Hullabaloo takes on the phony cries for "bipartisanship", more accurately known as shutting up and letting Republicans do what they want in the name of the greater good as they define it.

Isn't it funny that these people were nowhere to be found when George W. Bush seized office under the most dubious terms in history, having been appointed by a partisan supreme court majority and losing the popular vote? If there was ever a time for a bunch of dried up, irrelevant windbags to demand a bipartisan government you'd think it would have been then, wouldn't you? (How about after 9/11, when Republicans were running ads saying Dems were in cahoots with Saddam and bin Laden?) But it isn't all that surprising. They always assert themselves when the Democrats become a majority; it's their duty to save the country from the DFH's who are far more dangerous than Dick Cheney could ever be.

The Magic 8-Ball was not Available
One of the great things about reading Hullabaloo is that Digby will make predictions that quite frequently come true. As opposed to say William "Quayle's Brain" Kristol, who has been announced as a NYT guest columnist after unceremoniously parting ways with Time Magazine.

A good take down of Bloody Billy is available here, among plenty of other places. I find it hard to believe that he needs to be taken down; anyone with a brain and an honest bone in their body should be able to read and watch him and quickly realize that the omnipresent smug grin is the summation of his character.

William Kristol is a pundit in the mold of Frank Gaffney: someone who will say anything, no matter how dishonest, foul or offensive to the intellect as long as it helps their side score points. Putting party above country is something they take pride in.

In a now-famous strategy memo, Kristol warned that Republicans had to kill, rather than amend, the Clinton proposal. Its success, he warned, would “re-legitimize middle-class dependence for ‘security’ on government spending and regulation,” and “revive ... the Democrats, as the generous protector of middle-class interests.”

William Kristol was opposed to the government health care plan because it might succeed and in succeeding help the Democrats. That's a true patriot.

This bit by Bill Maher, while not the most well-sourced or comprehensive comment on William Kristol, is my personal favorite as it is both brutal and funny.

Journalistic "balance" is pure folly, a worthless goal that places keeping up appearances over delivering the truth. But if the NYT is dead-set on maintaining a perceived balance by hiring another conservative writer they could at least pick one who did something more than deliver pure marketing fluff that even he must know has no basis in reality.

The fact the William Kristol can still be found anywhere other than a local cable access channel is an indictment of our media. It seems a conservative commentator can never be too wrong, too destructive and too dishonest to be unemployable.

On Language: "Satire"

2007-12-29T01:36:00.001-05:00

Brilliant Satire? Rape Only Hurts If You Fight It (This link is the best-formatted reproduction I could find)

Rape Only Hurts If You Fight It

John Petroski
Opinions Editor

Most people today would claim that rape is a terrible crime almost akin to murder but I strongly disagree. Far from a vile act, rape is a magical experience that benefits society as a whole. I realize many of you will disagree with this thesis but lend me your ears and I’m sure I’ll sway you towards a darkened alley.
[...]
In actuality, rape’s advantages can very much be seen today. Take ugly women, for example. If it weren’t for rape, how would they ever know the joy of intercourse with a man who isn’t drunk? In a society as plastic-conscious as our own, are we really to believe that some man would ever sleep with a girl resembling a wildebeest if he didn’t have a few schnapps in him? Of course he wouldn’t, at least no self-respecting man would, but therein lies the beauty of rape. No self-respecting man would rape in the first place, so ugly women are guaranteed a romp with not only a sober man, but a bad boy too, and we all know how much ladies like the bad boy.

Dishonest speakers often use words incorrectly on purpose to take advantage of certain connotations. "Satire" is one of those words. Sarcasm, hyperbole and contrariness are similar to sarcasm in that none of them are meant to be taken at face value, but satire alone is considered valuable political discourse. So it's no surprise that hyperbolic and contrarian speakers appeal to satire in attempts to sort-of kind-of but not really disown their own writing.

The above piece was defended as satire. Satire of what? It's impossible to plausibly explain what is being sent-up. People who believe that rape is a "magical experience that benefits society" are in short supply and any satire of those few individuals is an exercise in irrelevance.

The latter excerpted paragraph reads less like satire than like the slight hyperbole of an annoying college-age Limbaugh-wannabe provocateur -- a fairly accurate description of the author. It is mean-spirited in a non-satirical manner, especially when you consider that his "satire" is similar to his serious writing and that his writings on women and humanity in general are full of contempt.

"Anyone who knows me will attest to the fact that I do not endorse, support, or condone rape. That aside, I chose to satirize rape in order to illustrate that no one pays attention to news unless it's sensational," Petroski said.

This explanation by the author is nonsense. The piece does not satirize rape, it does not satirize rapists nor does it satirize the news. His explanation, that it satirizes rape itself, is the most far-fetched of the three already unbelievable interpretations. What it even means to "satirize rape" is beyond me.

Clearly the author enjoys tweaking people and playing the provocateur, his other writing makes that immediately apparent. Unfortunately provocative hyperbole is not satire, it's petulant childishness.

This sort of writing reeks of the typical college conservative fair: mean-spirited attacks divorced from any real politics or philosophy. Which brings us to Ann Coulter, whose work at the Cornell Review helped define the template for hyperbolic gasbags masquerading as satirists.

My only regret with Timothy McVeigh is he did not go to the New York Times Building.

Editor & Publisher magazine defends Coulter as "satire."

Ann Coulter writes highly charged political commentary that's laced with trenchant satire -- satire that can be traced all the way back to Jonathan Swift's "A Modest Proposal," written in 1729. No one really believed that Swift was seriously advocating that the impoverished Irish relieve themselves of the burden of their children by feeding them to the rich.

Ann's hyperbolic style of delivery delights her conservative audience, much to the displeasure of liberals.

Ann Coulter is the next Jon Swift? Probably not. What Jon Swift wrote was an inversion of what he actually believed; what Coulter's writes is a slight exaggeration of her real views. (At best, according to her it is exactly what she believes) Had Jon Swift been a Coulter-style "satirist" he would have believed that while feeding children to the rich may be a bit much feeding their non-essential parts likes ears and feet to the rich is perfectly acceptable.

David Horowitz is also confused about what "satire" actually means:

I began running Coulter columns on my website shortly after she came up with her most infamous line, which urged America to put jihadists to the sword and convert them to Christianity. Liberals were horrified; I was not. I thought to myself, this is a perfect send-up of what our Islamo-fascist enemies believe - that as infidels we should be put to the sword and converted to Islam. I regarded Coulter's phillipic as a Swiftian commentary on liberal illusions of multi-cultural outreach to people who want to rip out our hearts.

Let's review once again the Swiftian formula: take opinions opposed to your own, exaggerate them and present them as your own opinions as a way of mocking true adherents.

Now let's feed Ann Coulter's dreck into that formula. Ann Coulter wrote that we should invade Muslim countries and forcibly convert them to Christianity. The subjects of her "Swiftian commentary" should therefore be people who honestly beleive something similar. People like Norman Podhoretz, Michael Ledeen and other neo-conservative hawks. Yet oddly enough Christian warrior hawks are a large part of her fan base, which is composed mostly of people who agree with her expressed opinions at face value.

Reading David Horowitz it's clear he has no idea what satire is. He can't decide whether it is funny or serious, taken at face-value or as the opposite. Ann Coulter said of 9/11 widows "I've never seen people enjoying their husbands' deaths so much." In the following interview Horowitz describes these and other comments as "satire" -- then defends them as accurate and "a service."

HOROWITZ: When Al Franken does satire, people understand it's satire.

RUTTEN: Do you think this was satire?

HOROWITZ: Yeah, I absolutely do.

[...]

HOROWITZ: I think this is serious. I think that Ann has done is a service.

[...]

RUTTEN: David -- David, two-thirds of this book, not about the war in Iraq. About her opposition to stem cell research, the theory of evolution, public school teachers who she accused of mass child molestation.

HOROWITZ: I agree with her.

"I agree with her."

Someone needs to explain to David Horowitz, speaking slowly and with small words, that agreeing with satirical comments is a bad thing. You cannot claim that something is satire and in the same breath claim it is serious and agreeable. Unless you are dumb like David Horowitz.

On Language: Introduction

2007-12-29T00:54:00.000-05:00

Pictured: Mitt Romney's words to live by.

Something I've touched on in some posts without addressing explicitly is abuse of language. Sloppy language is both a cause and effect of sloppy thinking. Or as George Orwell put it:

Now, it is clear that the decline of a language must ultimately have political and economic causes: it is not due simply to the bad influence of this or that individual writer. But an effect can become a cause, reinforcing the original cause and producing the same effect in an intensified form, and so on indefinitely. A man may take to drink because he feels himself to be a failure, and then fail all the more completely because he drinks. It is rather the same thing that is happening to the English language. It becomes ugly and inaccurate because our thoughts are foolish, but the slovenliness of our language makes it easier for us to have foolish thoughts. [emph. added]

In the On Language series I'm going to explore the abuse of language directly in the context of political speech, with plenty of examples to keep things interesting. With each post I'll focus on a particular word, phrasing or rhetorical device.

Introductions are boring so on to the first post.

I am not smart. Not smart at all.

2007-12-19T02:00:00.000-05:00

After struggling with custom script solutions to add labels to my posts I finally realized there is a handy "Labels for this post" entry field directly below the box I am currently typing in.

Quite the computer expert am I.

Time to go back and edit old posts.

The Case for Impeachment

2007-12-11T21:26:00.001-05:00

Keeping up with administration scandals and incompetence is a full-time job; larger than a full-time job. It's a depressingly Sisyphean task, made worse by the fact that there is no end-game.

Impeachment of the President and Vice-President would almost certainly fail to pass the Senate. Let's get that out of the way first. It doesn't matter. There are two goals for impeachment: to get the offenders out of office and to resist the normalization of outrageous behavior. The second is far more important than the first.

The fundamental question of this administration is will it be an anomaly or the definition of the new norm? We are leaning towards the latter. We have established a very dangerous precedent: that the President can blatantly and repeatedly break the law and disobey the Constitution without repercussion.

When Nancy Pelosi stated that impeachment was off the table she wrote a blank check to the administration; there is nothing they can't do. Period. Impeachment is the one and only tool we have for dealing with a runaway executive.

Every time the administration breaks the law or skirts the rules without repercussion that behavior is normalized. Spare the rod, spoil the child. At best there is some meek disagreement -- what the president did was naughty and we should send him a disapproving letter. Imprisoning and torturing US citizens without trial, without access to legal counsel and without the Constitutional right to Habeas Corpus? That deserves a polite but stern missive, nothing more.

Impeachment is more than polite disagreement. Impeachment is the recognition that things have gone horribly off-track. Impeachment is the pronouncement that what the executive branch is doing is wrong, is illegal, is bad for America and is something we must fight with every available resource.

Republicans have become masters of shifting the debate in directions that suit them by tugging hard towards the extreme rather than moving towards the center. That is why Frank Gaffney writes columns arguing that speaking out against the Iraq War is a hanging offense. The extreme ideas make the slightly less extreme ideas seem reasonable by comparison. The discussion moves from "speaking up against an unjust war is something officials are morally required to do" to "maybe speaking up against a war isn't quite a hanging offense but it sure is awful!" And hence we get stuck with oft-repeated tripe that doing the right thing is "hurting morale" and "against the troops" and "providing aid and comfort to the enemy." The spectrum, as defined by the endpoints, has been shifted.

When was the last time you heard a Democrat say that Bush should be hung for his misdeeds? If speaking out against a war is a hanging offense then certainly lying about the reasons for a disastrous war is one as well. Disobeying laws passed by Congress and using executive orders to effectively write legislation must likewise be a capital crime. Denying US citizens the Constitutional right to Habeas Corpus should be an invitation to beheading.

Compared to those options impeachment looks downright moderate. Even a failed impeachment attempt is a win in that it places executive scandal and incompetence back into the realm of impeachable offenses. That is the bigger picture that many impeachment foes miss: whether impeachment succeeds or fails at removing criminals from office it succeeds in the larger sense of drawing the lines more towards the side of lawfulness and accountability.

If as President you willfully violate the Constitution we will do everything in our power to stop you. That is the message we should be sending. The message itself is powerful regardless of the outcome.

Everything Wrong in Political Reporting Today

2007-12-02T20:01:00.001-05:00

From Raw Story, White House press secretary Dana Perino speaking to reporter Helen Thomas:

Helen, I find it really unfortunate that you use your front row position, bestowed upon you by your colleagues, to make such statements," Perino said. "This is a -- it is an honor and a privilege to be in the briefing room, and to suggest that we, at the United States, are killing innocent people is just absurd and very offensive."

Of course that suggestion is not absurd in the least, and is only offensive in that it is clearly correct and contradicts the truly absurd notion that the US is incapable of killing innocent people solely by virtue of being the US.

But more troubling is the notion that "it is an honor and a privilege to be in the briefing room" and that injecting reality into the discussion and behaving other than with total deference is an abuse of that privilege. Sadly many of our intrepid "journalists" subscribe to similar theories.

Katie Couric (emph. added):

The whole culture of wearing flags on our lapel and saying ‘we’ when referring to the United States and, even the ‘shock and awe’ of the initial stages, it was just too jubilant and just a little uncomfortable. And I remember feeling, when I was anchoring the ‘Today’ show, this inevitable march towards war and kind of feeling like, ‘Will anybody put the brakes on this?’ And is this really being properly challenged by the right people? And I think, at the time, anyone who questioned the administration was considered unpatriotic and it was a very difficult position to be in.

The "right people" -- such as the host of the 'Today' show and current host of CBS news for example?

Elisabeth Bumiller, a Washington reporter for The New York Times, was a Times White House correspondent from September 10, 2001, to 2006, on why the Iraq War press conferences was so passive:

I think we were very deferential because ... it's live, it's very intense, it's frightening to stand up there. Think about it, you're standing up on prime-time live TV asking the president of the United States a question when the country's about to go to war. There was a very serious, somber tone that evening, and no one wanted to get into an argument with the president at this very serious time.

Stephen Colbert, speaking at the White House Correspondent Dinner, nailed this:

But, listen, let's review the rules. Here's how it works: the president makes decisions. He's the Decider. The press secretary announces those decisions, and you people of the press type those decisions down. Make, announce, type. Just put 'em through a spell check and go home. Get to know your family again. Make love to your wife. Write that novel you got kicking around in your head. You know, the one about the intrepid Washington reporter with the courage to stand up to the administration. You know--fiction.

Our curageous White House reporters don't want to get into an argument with the president; instead they laugh at his jokes about the lack of WMDs in Iraq. Because challenging the president is not appropriate but laughing about false justifications for a war in which tens of thousands have died is. (Of course, I'm not suggestion that any of those tens of thousands were innocent -- why that's just absurd!)

The public includes liberals -- Republicans outraged!

2007-11-30T01:25:00.001-05:00

The gay general at the CNN/YouTube debate has turned into a major controversy (lol) among Republicans who are shocked and confused to discover that the general public includes people across the political spectrum. Here are some excerpts in the relevant threads at Politico.com:

I really question Republican Candidates agreeing to go on CNN for their debates especially after incident like last night where the questioners turn up to be Clinton and Obama supporters instead of supposedly Conservative thinkers.
[...]
At least six of the questioners were people with ties or allegiences to Democratic Party politicians, candidates, and activist groups.

Heavens no, CNN allowed Democrats to ask questions too? Somebody get Michelle Malkin on the Bat phone!

But the ISSUE is as to CNN's credibility. They presented this debate as being one to allow the public to pose via online video questions to the GOP candidates. Instead, they appear to have produced a work of theatre with a cast of predictable, sufficiently Liberal posers functioning as "questioners."

So...liberals who ask questions are not "questioners" but are merely posing as questioners...and "the public" does not include those liberals. Curious.

Perhaps the GOP has gotten a little too used to pre-screened Town Hall meetings where a "No Blood for Oil" bumper-sticker gets you ejected.

There are legitimate complaints to be made about the CNN/YouTube debate; mainly that most of the questions were stupid and uninformative, designed to trip up candidates for gotcha moments or to allow them to mindlessly pander, with a dose of pure comedy mixed in. The selection process appears designed to be maximally insulting to thinking Americans or the product of drunken monkeys with dartboards.

That questions from the general public included questions from non-Republicans is not a legitimate complaint, it is an inane and incoherent one.

A slightly more sophisticated complaint is that questions from skeptics are acceptable but that Democrats didn't receive any in their parallel debate. For your reading pleasure I will now reproduce all the questions from the CNN/YouTube Democratic debate that appear to be Republican-influenced or otherwise gotcha questions:

I have a question for Hillary Clinton. Mrs. Clinton, how would you define the word "liberal?" And would you use this word to describe yourself? Thank you.

Spider-sense tingling!

My question is for Mike Gravel. In one of the previous debates you said something along the lines of the entire deaths of Vietnam died in vain. How do you expect to win in a country where probably a pretty large chunk of the people voting disagree with that statement and might very well be offended by it? I'd like to know if you plan to defend that statement, or if you're just going to flip-flop.

This guy probably wasn't a Gravel fan. I'm just guessing here though.

This here question's for all you candidates. Mainstream media seems awfully interested in old Al Gore these days. Is he losing weight? What's it say in his book? Is he still worried about all the ice? They interpret all these as signs that he may or may not run. They really want to know if Al Gore's going to run again. Yes. Well, what we want to know is does that hurt you-all's feelings?

This guy made fun of the candidates and Al Gore at the same time. Bonus points. The Gravel guy must have been embarrassed by this clever upstaging.

(SINGING) Pay taxes on my clothes and food, pay taxes on my place, pay taxes on my moisturizer, I pay taxes on my weights. I pay taxes on my land. Every year, y'all make me pay. I pay tax on this guitar so I can sing for you today. My taxes put some kids in college I can't afford to send myself. Now, tell me, if you were elected president, what would you do to help? Also, I got a parking ticket last week. Could one of y'all pardon me?

This guy would probably make a better living if he ditched the singer/songwriter gig, it's just not working.

My name is Marcus Benson from Minneapolis. And I'd like to know, if the Democrats come into office, are my taxes going to rise like usually they do when a Democrats gets into office?

Because one question on Democrats overtaxing people clearly wasn't enough. I suspect Marcus may be a "plant" and not actually a dyed-in-the-wool Democrat.

Hi. My name is Chris Nolan and I'm a Democratic precinct committeeman from Mundelein, Illinois. And my question is for Hillary Clinton.
With Bush, Clinton, and Bush again serving as the last three presidents, how would electing you, a Clinton, constitute the type of change in Washington so many people in the heartland are yearning for, and what your campaign has been talking about?
I was also wondering if any of the other candidates had a problem with the same two families being in charge of the executive branch of government for 28 consecutive years, if Hillary Clinton were to potentially be elected and then re-elected.

Clearly a huge Clinton fan.

Hi, I'm Zenne Abraham in Oakland, California. The cathedral behind me is the perfect backdrop for this question. This quarter reads "United States of America." And when I turn it over, you find that it reads "liberty, in God we trust." What do those words mean to you? Thank you.

I already used the "It's a Trap" picture. I got nothing.

Good evening, America. My name is Jered Townsend from Clio, Michigan.
To all the candidates, tell me your position on gun control, as myself and other Americans really want to know if our babies are safe.
This is my baby, purchased under the 1994 gun ban. Please tell me your views.

That's funny. See the subtle wordplay at work? You're all like "great, this guy just lobbed me a softball" but then he's all like "psych!!! I call my gun my baby 'cause I'm craaaazy!"
I'm going to make yet another indefensible guess that this was sort of a trap question and that the questioner wasn't totally down with the typical Democratic position on guns.

---

By my count that's eight questions that were hostile to (at least some) Democrats, and most of those also exhibited a clear Republican mindset. Certainly the "liberal" question, the two taxation questions, the gun question and the Gore question at least. So Republicans please stop whining about how some mean old Democrats asked you some trick questions while Democrats got off easy. You got your trick questions in as well.

If you want to complain that the CNN/YouTube debates were vapid go right ahead, I'm right there with you. But the complaint that the debates were biased against Republicans because Democrats got to ask some questions is laughable on every level; open to the general public is the entire premise of the debates and the Democrats were on the receiving end as well.

The Artful Dodgers Debate

2007-11-28T22:30:00.001-05:00

Some disorganized thoughts on the Republican YouTube debates.

Artful dodgers is the best term. All the definitive statements collected together would span perhaps five to ten minutes, and that's only if you include the blatantly silly and pandering tangential statements. In our country we suffer from severely depressed expectations, to the point where a candidate answering a question is a pleasant surprise. How long should we stay in Iraq? As long as we need to, no more no less! How much power should the VP have? As much as he is given by the President!

The military is unprofessional. That was the implicit answer to the question about gays in the military. The question was well-phrased; to paraphrase "why do you believe that American soldiers are too unprofessional to serve alongside gays in the military without it disrupting operations?" That wording cuts to the heart of the issue: if our military is the best trained and best disciplined military in the world why would a few openly gay men throw it into turmoil? The answer is apparently that our military is composed of rampant homophobes who would drop their guns on the battlefield for some spirited gay-bashing instead.

CNN is trying to drum up some controversy by revealing that the questioner is on a Clinton committee. And? These are YouTube debates, where anyone including a devious Clinton partisan can submit questions which are then selected via some agreed-upon process. There is no conflict of interest here or misrepresentation, the rules do not state that only avid Republicans can offer submissions. The man was not posing as a reporter or faking his military service. His question was deemed valid and worthy enough for inclusion, who he is doesn't change that.

McCain was eloquent on torture. What Romney said was nonsense, his typical strategy of dismissing questions as "hypotheticals" unworthy of answer. He's for waterboarding and it's not torture but he's against stating whether he is for or against waterboarding and whether it's torture - did I get that right?

Nobody knows how to rebuild America's reputation. Did a single candidate answer this question at all? The "best" (read: most amusing) answer was that we help typhoon victims so people in Iraq, which is apparently a frequent sufferer of typhoons, should shut up and be thankful. Every answer was some variation on that: let them eat cake. Everyone loves an arrogant bully.

We would have won Vietnam if not for those rascally kids and their dog. You have to love stock Republican tropes straight out of the rhetorical equivalent of central casting.

The MSM emperor naked

2007-11-28T00:36:00.001-05:00

"I have neither the time nor legal background to figure out who's right." (But that won't stop me from writing an entire column based on definitive claims I defend.)

The background: Joe Klein writes an entire column based on something obviously false. Hilarity ensues as Klein and his editors toss out contradictory explanations and follow-ups while digging their shared hole ever deeper.

In a previous post I covered how reporters, rather than report facts, report what people characterize as the facts. This Klein incident is an excellent example of that and more generally of "everything that is rancid and corrupt with our political media." He-said/he-said reporting, opinion columns devoid of standards and fact-checking along with a generous helping of sheer laziness.

"I have neither the time nor legal background to figure out who's right."

Yet he wrote the piece. Joe Klein doesn't know if what he wrote is actually true - but that didn't stop him or his editors. The heart of journalism is verification - ha.

Others have done a wonderful job of bashing Klein. What I want to comment on is not his typically wretched "reporting" but the response to it. Ten years ago the piece would have run and the response would have been a few unpublished letters to the editor. There would be no way for the average Time reader to know that information in his column was fabricated, and no way for the informed reader aware of the fabrications to share that knowledge. To everyone without detailed knowledge of the subject matter Joe Klein would have remained an informed expert.

Mainstream journalists (including Klein here) relentlessly attack blogs while simultaneously attempting to co-opt and corporatize them. The reason is simple: blogs represent a way for people to get information and analysis from sources outside of the mainstream media, and to get negative information about the mainstream media itself.

Blogs are simply writing and information sharing, yet the mainstream media is scared to death of blogging -- because it is increasingly obvious that the mainstream media offers little over amateur enthusiasts. Across the country local coverage and beat reporting is being scaled back, as are in-depth investigations and independent reporting of all kinds. Serious journalists tell us they offer a valuable service that blogs can't provide while their organizations increasingly shuffle staff to online ventures that crudely approximate popular blogs.

The typical MSM attack on blogs is little more than "I'm in a major publication so that must mean I'm good at my job! I mean look - Time Magazine!" That emperor has no clothes.

Thanks to those meanies in the blogosphere the fact that Klein is revered by his peers as a thoughtful and serious journalist takes on a very different light. The peer of an incompetent fraud is another incompetent fraud. (This is a man who staked his credibility on the fact that he didn't write Primary Colors, so yes, fraud is the correct term.) When Joe Klein and his friends tell us that their robes are simply fabulous we no longer have to smile and nod dumbly. Instead some voice in the crowd can point out that his fabulous robes are really his wrinkled naked skin.

Happy Thanksgiving

2007-11-20T21:33:00.000-05:00

Some light turkey day reading.

President Bush, Karl Rove, and other top administration officials were "involved" in misleading the White House press corps about the outing of ex-CIA agent Valerie Plame, a forthcoming book from former Press Secretary Scott McClellan alleges.

Maybe after Thanksgiving I'll try to compile a list of all the former Bush Administration officials with extremely negative things to say after their tenures have ended. That's a long list.

Alan Dershowitz is like totally opposed to torture

2007-11-14T03:31:00.001-05:00

Alan makes a brilliant case for torture:

Recently, Israeli security officials confronted a ticking-bomb situation. Several days before Yom Kippur, they received credible information that a suicide bomber was planning to blow himself up in a crowded synagogue on the holiest day of the Jewish year. After a gun battle in which an Israeli soldier was killed, the commander of the terrorist cell in Nablus was captured. Interrogation led to the location of the suicide bomb in a Tel Aviv apartment. Israel denies that it uses torture and I am aware of no evidence that it did so to extract life-saving information in this case.

But what if lawful interrogation failed to uncover the whereabouts of the suicide bomber? What other forms of pressure should be employed in this situation?

We should torture because in Israel not torturing someone worked out great. Got it. A well-chosen example.

What does Alan mean when he says "I am personally opposed to the use of torture" in an op-ed promoting torture? Perhaps it would be better put as "I am opposed to personally torturing" or "I am opposed to being personally tortured." Either of those might make some sense.

Bush and Perino, two small children

2007-11-08T00:11:00.001-05:00

From the White House Press Briefing today.

Q Why is the President dodging a personal phone call to Musharraf?

MS. PERINO: The President has had his Secretary of State --

Q I'm asking you directly why doesn't he call him?

MS. PERINO: The President feels very strongly that President Musharraf knows exactly how he feels about the situation.

Q That isn't the point.

MS. PERINO: It is the point.

Q Dana, does the White House believe that Musharraf is now a dictator?

MS. PERINO: Look, I think that that is -- it's premature to say that. This is a President --

Q Well, why is premature when the First Lady --

MS. PERINO: -- who has worked closely with an ally in the war on terror, President Musharraf. We're doing two things with them: on the one hand, working cooperatively to take the fight to the enemy, to fight against terrorists; and on the other hand, trying to help President Musharraf and the other members of the Pakistani government to move along the path to democracy, because ultimately what's going to help solve this problem is a free society, a democratic society. And yes, President Musharraf, we believe, has made a mistake. We are gravely concerned about the situation. We are calling for an immediate return back to --

Q But wait a minute, why are you calling it a mistake? You seem to be giving Musharraf the benefit of the doubt.

MS. PERINO: -- we are calling for an immediate return to civilian rule, and we are in communication with them because we have a lot of cooperative interests. We have a broad relationship, and we cannot lose sight of the fact that we have very serious counterterrorism operations that are currently underway in Pakistan as well.

Q Why did -- the First Lady was very clear in her op-ed in The Wall Street Journal about Burma, Myanmar, saying it's a military dictatorship; what they're doing is wrong. We're not hearing the First Lady, we're not hearing the President being that sharp either on Pakistan. Why do you seem to be giving Musharraf the --

MS. PERINO: And what you have heard -- what you have heard from the President and this administration is that we were made aware that this state of emergency could possibly be declared. We have averted it before, in trying to work cooperatively with President Musharraf. This time the President of Pakistan decided that this is the direction he wanted to go in. We disagree with it. We want him to return to civilian rule. We want the normalcy of the democracy to come back. We're in the early stages of this crisis, and it's going to evolve. We're assessing the situation, and we're reviewing our aid packages.

Q But why is it evolving? It's been days that he basically said, no more constitution, and we're going to round up political --

MS. PERINO: We have condemned the action. We have condemned the action. We cannot support any means that are happening outside of the constitution. And that's why we are calling for him to return to the constitution. But remember, this is a country that we want to see democracy. There is a way to get them back on that path. It would be in the best interests of not just the Pakistani people but for people like those of us in the United States, who want to work with an ally in order to fight against terrorists.

Q But why should Musharraf believe that you guys are really serious about what you're saying from this podium when the President doesn't actually pick up the phone and call him to let him know personally? That carries a lot more weight than having Condoleezza Rice or somebody else talk to him.

MS. PERINO: Well, we disagree. The President has made his points very clear with Musharraf; he's had many meetings with President Musharraf. And Secretary Rice has delivered those messages. And we feel that we are going to keep pressuring them to get back to that rule of law, working with our Ambassador, Anne Patterson, who is in constant contact with President Musharraf.

Q It still does not carry the same weight as the President having direct contact with Musharraf -- (inaudible).

MS. PERINO: Well, I'll let you -- I'll let that be your opinion. I'll let that be your opinion.

Q But what is the tactic? I mean, what is the strategic reason for President Bush not to actually pick up the phone and talk to him?

MS. PERINO: I feel confident that the President is being well served and advised by his senior national security team. The decision has been made to have Secretary Rice be the one directed to have this communication.

Q Why shouldn't we see this as double standard? I mean, it's not the same standard as applied to Burma.

MS. PERINO: I can understand why that question would be asked, but I think everyone has to remember that we are in the early days of a crisis, looking at a country who had decided to try to move down the path to democracy in establishing freedom of the press, civil societies, improving the education system, the public health system, allowing for freedom of expression and assembly. Democracies take time to develop. It is not easy. And this is certainly a setback, and we're --

Q Well, they certainly don't have freedom of the press or assembly at the moment.

MS. PERINO: And we have called for a return to it.

Ben.

Q Dana, where does the review on aid stand?

MS. PERINO: It's still ongoing. It's early to say.

Q I mean, is there a sense of urgency to it? Do you expect any --

MS. PERINO: I can assure that people have been working on this ever since we had heard that the state of emergency may have been what he was going to decide to do, and early on -- early to mid last week that they decided to have Secretary Rice call once again to President Musharraf to make our feelings known. The aid review that you talked about is ongoing. It's interagency, and I don't have anything more on it right now.

Q And more broadly, you've outlined, again, the White House strategy of urging Pakistan to return down a democratic path, reviewing aid. But you also said yesterday that you shouldn't rush -- you shouldn't rush into a strong action.

MS. PERINO: I don't know if I said that. I said that we have to be mindful to make sure that we do not undermine any of our counterterrorism efforts. We have -- the President has to protect the American people. Pakistan is a country where extremists try to take -- are trying to take hold and have a safe haven, and we had to deny them that. And working -- we have been working with the Pakistani government, through President Musharraf, for the past several years on that.

Q What I'm wondering is, are you concerned at all of a world view that perhaps the White House response to this is too passive?

MS. PERINO: We -- I believe our -- look, our allies understand that we have -- that we have a problem here. It is difficult. The world is not tidy. It is certainly a difficult situation in Pakistan right now. But they also understand that we have counterterrorism efforts there. And I believe that the world community would understand that we would like to try to get him back on the path to democracy, to have the free and fair elections, for him to take off his uniform. And that's what we are going to continue to push to do.

Q Dana, may I quick follow, please?

MS. PERINO: I'm just going to go -- since you had a couple, I'm going to go back to others who haven't.

John.

Q Doesn't Musharraf's actions, in rounding up lawyers, judges, activists, people who have opposed him politically, doesn't that betray his stated reason for the state of emergency, which was supposedly to -- out of concern over Islamic militants? Does the White House perceive that --

MS. PERINO: Clearly we are very concerned that people who wanted to express themselves freely would have been put in prison. We would like for them to be released immediately. The common enemy that we all have are the extremists and the terrorists, and it's not just the extremists and the terrorists that want to attack Americans or other Western allies, but they have attacked the Pakistani people as well. That's the common enemy.

Q Has Secretary Rice or anybody else in the government engaged the Pakistani government on this level, saying, why are you arresting people, lawyers --

MS. PERINO: Yes, certainly. Ambassador Patterson and Secretary Rice have been very involved in it. And Steve Hadley has talked to his counterpart as well.

Q And have you had any feedback from the Pakistan government that talked about the Attorney General, about elections? Have they talked at all about --

MS. PERINO: I would say that we do not have official word, and we certainly don't have a date yet. So hesitant to say that for sure that those are going to take place.

Q But, I mean, have they talked about releasing any of those folks that have been arrested?

MS. PERINO: I have not heard that.

Bret.

Q Can you concede that the U.S. doesn't have the leverage that it once did over Pakistan? And perhaps the reason the President isn't picking up the phone is because it's easier to point out that Musharraf turns his back on Secretary Rice than it is to point out that he turns away from the advice --

MS. PERINO: No, the President feels strongly that he and Musharraf have had a good relationship in the past. They have worked well together to help prevent terrorists, as well as the President has helped him on the way to establishing a free and fair Pakistan, one that is democratic.

The United States is certainly a powerful country, and the President feels very confident that his feelings are well known by the Pakistanis, especially President Musharraf.

Q But as far as our leverage over what's happening in Pakistan.

MS. PERINO: I think that we are quite comfortable with where our leverage is. This is a situation where, look, the United States, we can be a powerful country; we can urge, we can provide aid. But Pakistan is a sovereign nation. And they made a decision that we disagreed with. We think it's a mistake. We'd like to see them move to democracy, because ultimately what they want is peace for their region and peace for their country, and that's going to come from democracy. This is a step backwards. And in order to get to that peace that they say that they want, and that we certainly would like to see, getting back on that path to democracy is the only way to do that.

This is how I used to act when my mom asked me to clean my room or eat my vegetables.

The rich thing about the Pakistan situation is that Musharraf has suspended the Constitution and is rounding up dissidents in the name of fighting terrorism; stealing a page right out of the Bush playbook. He's adpoted trademark GOP rhetoric, decrying "activist judges" while comparing himself to Lincoln.

This comes on the heels of Turkey justifying excursions into Iraq using similar logic: why surely Turkey must be allowed to defend itself from Kurdish terrorism!

The world has realized we've remodeled our house with glass. What are we going to say to Musharraf exactly? That jailing people without trial or counsel in the name of fighting terrorism is wrong? Does that admonition come with a cough and a snicker?

Turkey and Pakistan have learned from the pros. Make vague appeals to terrorism and you can justify anything.

The Ironic Times - now with 100% less irony

2007-11-06T03:14:00.000-05:00

From the wonderfully funny Ironic Times

Bush Pick for Attorney General Headed for Confirmation
Mukasey last piece in puzzle keeping Bush, Cheney from firing squad.

No attorney general under Bush is going to consider waterboarding torture -- because torture is illegal and we waterboard. Sometimes it really is that simple.

Useless Democrats explained

2007-11-05T23:29:00.001-05:00

I was going to write about something else, but this is just too good to pass up. DailyKos is a funny place. There is a reason it's not linked to the right, though I admit I read it daily. It has a lot of nice content but is also depressing in the naivete so often displayed there by certain members.

Democrats in the House and Senate are doing a lousy job, and in many ways are more compliant than the previous Republican Congress. I won't argue that in this post beyond pointing out that Democrats have supported every one of Bush's Constitution-destroying power grabs. (Though you can read previous posts on the subject)

In a previous post I looked at some explanations for the Democrats' behavior. But now I have it right from the horse's mouth, in the form of a DailyKos diary called In Defense of Nancy Pelosi. It's worth looking at both the post and the subsequent comments, as they nicely illustrate the mindsets of those who support the utter failure of the Democratic leadership.

Nancy Pelosi has the difficult and often competing tasks of not just trying to enact new legislation now but also of trying to create a climate for the election of a Democratic president in 2008. "But the majority of the people want what we want" is the frustrated cry of so many on here "Why can’t Pelosi deliver?" Yes, the majority of people want to end the Iraq war, but it is a skittish opinion and insecure in its willingness to accept the concept of defeat – even self-inflicted defeat through mal-administration.

Translation: The Democratic Congress was elected with a mandate to end the Iraq War, the majority of Americans want to end the Iraq War, but that opinion is "skittish" due to murky psychological reasons and thus not ending the Iraq War somehow makes sense. After all, that's only why the Democrats were elected.

Maybe it was just me, in my country bumpkin way in the hills of Wales three thousand miles away, that was so surprised to find, after the euphoria of taking control of Congress, that a firm minority and a stubborn President could combine to veto those policies that had suddenly seemed attainable.

Refresher: to pass bills over a veto you need two-thirds. To vote down bills you need one-half. The Democrats have one-half. (And we won't even get into filibusters and the like) This is Middle School material.

Democrats chose to affirmatively vote for FISA "fixes." They chose to affirmatively vote for more Iraq War funding time and time again. Democrats will vote to confirm Mukasey and will probably vote for telecom immunity. The President does not have the power to revive a bill that has been voted down; he does not have to power to reverse-veto failed legislation. To defeat these bills and appointments Democrats must merely not vote for them -- yet they do vote for them, and prominent Democrats, including the Democratic leadership, are often the first to cave.

Now we get to the centerpiece argument:

Since then, despite Bush, despite the solidarity of the Republican vote, much has been achieved in Congress by her. I will criticise the level of that achievement freely with many of you, I will question the effectiveness of the tactics, and I will certainly bewail some of the outcomes. That is my job as a writer on Daily Kos, that is our entire job as radicals. I will do so without having to modify those views by obscuring them with the obfuscation that is called political realities. I ask only that we do not do the Republican job for them by disparaging personally our leaders, whether they be leaders of the Senate Majority or Primary candidates struggling to enunciate our views against a GOP back-cloth of deliberate misinterpretation and a superficially influenced electorate. That is not our job on Daily Kos nor anywhere else where we are fighting for our ideas.

What is "our job" on DailyKos exactly? I wasn't aware that DailyKos paid by the hour to shill for Democrats.

Despite the pledge to the opposite, this is the ultimate invocation of "political realities" -- that we must carry water for Bush enablers in the same way Rush Limbaugh and John McCain carried water for them before the 2006 elections. McCain kept his unhappiness with the Iraq War private, jeopardizing American lives and strategic interests in a failed attempt to keep Republicans at the Congressional helm. That is what this Kos diarist is advocating: we must put a happy face on the situation and allow it to deteriorate further, in the hopes that the future will bring better things.

This thinking is wrong on multiple levels. From a strategic standpoint our failed Congress makes the election of a Democrat in 2008 less likely as that candidate will be associated with those weak-willed enablers. Further a Democrat may not be elected in 2008, or a Democrat elected in 2008 may not be a significant change. The Democratic Congress promised much and delivered little; now we are told that we should double-down on a Democratic President as well.

Fool me once, fool me twice.

The diary above includes the note "[Promoted by DHinMI]." Such a tantalizing morsel, if you are familiar with DHinMI, and sure enough he wastes no time infesting the comments section of the diary with his own brand of do-nothing defenses.

DHinMI posts are a primer in total leadership failure. Poll-driven with no imagination or affirmative agenda DHinMI is incapable of conceptualizing a drive to change public opinion rather than be dictated by it. Public opinion is based on media messages and that opinion can be changed through effort and new messaging -- a concept Republicans grasp very well while Democrats often remain oblivious.

This Two Year Period Was About Preventing...
...new damage. We aren't going to end the war with Bush in office, because the only way to do that is to completely cut off all funding, and the public is hostile to that idea, so the Dems won't even consider it.

Textbook do-nothing reasoning: polls show the public is against something, so instantly give up.

When Republicans wanted to oppose the estate tax they renamed it the "death tax." When they wanted to oppose capital gains taxes they claimed they were "double taxation." (Despite the fact that transferred assets are taxed an infinite number of times in our taxation system.) When they wanted to let Scooter Libby off the hook they claimed that Valerie Plame was a non-covert glorified secretary hen-pecking her husband while Libby was a patriotic hero with a lifetime of valuable service who had committed "no underlying crime." They did not just read the polls on those issues -- they drove the polls. They researched in front of focus groups (no joke) to hit on the right formulations and messages that would resonate with the public, then saturated op-eds and the airwaves with them to great success.

To people like DHinMI public opinion is set in stone and simply congeals from the surrounding ether without explanation or reason. If people are against impeachment today, they'll be against it tomorrow, period. If people are against cutting funding for the Iraq War today they'll be against it tomorrow, even if today they don't understand what that defunding means. This is what DHinMI has to say on Pelosi ruling impeachment off-the-table:

The Public Doesn't Want Impeachment
The Senate won't convict.
Period. That simple equation has never changed, and won't this Congress.

And again:

Oh, So Impeachment or Failure
She knows how to read a poll, and she knows how to count non-existent Republican votes in the Senate.

Those poll-reading Democrats -- gotta love 'em! God forbid attempting to change public opinion rather than be enslaved by it. You know, to "politick" for things. These people take inspiration not from The Devil and Daniel Webster but from The Secret Life of Walter Mitty.

The case for impeachment is strong and remarkably as many support it as oppose it already. Convince some of the rest. The public is tired of the Iraq War; convince it that cutting funding is safe and effective. Make an affirmative case.

Time and time again the Democrats are unable to convince the public that they are right, even when the public already agrees with them in broad scope -- and most of the time they don't even bother trying. At the same time a President with a 24% approval rating can repeatedly convince Democrats to go along with him on his major proposals using nonsensical terrorist hyperbole that was old five years ago.

What happens if a Republican is elected in 2008? We write off the last two years of Democratic control of Congress as squandered for nothing?

Addendum
This is a bit meaner than my normal stuff but I don't think there is a good way around that while still addressing the topic without relying on abstracts. DHinMI is a prominent DailyKos poster and these comments are not cherry-picked to prove a point, they are representative of a consistent worldview.
The picture is just plain silly.

Posting schedule

2007-11-05T01:11:00.002-05:00

Been busy, regular posting should resume this week.

Magical Unicorns in jeopardy, Rice warns

2007-10-30T17:11:00.001-04:00

Continuing with the theme of nonsensical titles.

Two-state Mideast solution in jeopardy, Rice warns

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said yesterday that a "two-state solution" in the Middle East is in jeopardy and described a narrow window of opportunity to push Israel and the Palestinians toward peace.

Magical Unicorns do not exist. (They died out during the Industrial Revolution) Neither does a two-state solution. A plan for a two-state solution does not exist. Things that do not actually exist cannot be in jeopardy.

The "narrow window of opportunity" for a two-state solution occurred directly after 9/11, when most of the world realized that the Israeli-Palestinian conflicts served as motivational and recruitment tools for terrorists. But like most foreign policy opportunities that brief window was left to wither on the vine, untouched. In the wake of 9/11 the Bush Administration did almost nothing, negotiating through minor diplomats in a show of disinterest.

Saying that instability in that region helps fuel terrorism or terrorism recruitment is now a faux pas. (If you listen to the Republican candidates) In our modern United States the notion of cause and effect, or even of related events, must be thrown out the window when terrorism is invoked. They hate us for our freedoms, our moms and our apple pies; a two-state solution won't change that. There is no drive towards a lasting resolution because we've completely divorced the conflict from any broader context.

The writer of the piece let Rice off the hook by pretending there is real progress and asserting that a two-state solution exists in any form. It doesn't, except in the minds of Rice and the author.

Critics say the moon is bigger than an elephant

2007-10-25T00:04:00.001-04:00

Journalists should consider reading this book.

"Critics say the moon is bigger than an elephant." Seems dumb -- the moon is clearly bigger than an elephant, the "critics" have nothing to do with it. Yet this construct is commonplace in newspaper reports like this one.

Civil liberties and privacy advocates and a majority of Democrats said the bill could allow the monitoring of virtually any calls, e-mails or other communications going overseas that originate in the United States, without a court order, if the government deems the recipient to be the target of a U.S. probe.

The paragraph above is in reference to the recent FISA "fixes" bill, the contents of which are public record. The text of what the bill allows is short and understandable and what "civil liberties and privacy advocates" say is exactly right -- that is precisely what the bill does.

The entire piece is mostly quotes from various sides -- none of which are vetted by the author in any way. This is pure stenography, know-nothing journalism where the "journalist" uncritically reports he-said/he-said without any verification of claims.

The "critics say..." construct is pervasive in media, but the logical follow-up -- "well are they right?" -- is rarely addressed, even when the statements are purely factual and verifiable. In cases where verification is tricky even the simpler "do they have any evidence?" or "is there any reason whatsoever to believe them?" is rarely asked or answered.

This construct is popular because:

It maintains a false sense of "balance" by attributing all meaningful statements to someone other than the reporter who then cannot be accused of advocacy.
It lowers the burden of what is reportable by moving from reporting the facts to reporting what some third party characterized the facts as.

According to The Elements of Journalism "objectivity" is not a goal but a method that relies on verification. Verifying facts is hard. Verifying the truth of statements is hard. So the game becomes merely reporting what is said, as if that is the story. In that case the only the verbiage of the quotes themselves need verification.

What people say is rarely in itself news, especially when the people in question are provably dishonest. McConnell in the piece above says that the NSA is overburdened with work, but he also said that FISA fixes helped lead to the arrest of terrorists in Germany then recanted when pressed. Given that the man lied to Congress is what he says to Congress still news? Bush says we don't torture. He also said there was no indication the levees would break. What he says is worth exactly nothing.

The Elements of Journalism is a tragic read. Clearly somebody out there still gets what journalism is about. Too bad few are practicing it.

Harry Reid means it this time!

2007-10-23T00:30:00.000-04:00

Bush wants another $42 billion for wars

Minutes after Bush spoke, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nevada, warned the president not to expect Congress to "rubber-stamp" the latest request.

"In the coming weeks, we will hold it up to the light of day and fight for the change of strategy and redeployment of troops that is long overdue," Reid said.

Do Reid and Pelosi really not realize that their political theater is nothing but bad comedy? Congress has given Bush a perpetual blank check. How exactly are Democrats going to "fight for the change of strategy"? They can't even be bothered to vote against funding requests.

Their strategy is to bluster "no" and vote "yes." Always. You can only cry wolf for so long. What Reid and Pelosi call "fighting" the rest of us call "sitting on the couch."

The cynics are wrong about Chris Dodd

2007-10-21T20:09:00.001-04:00

You can support Chris Dodd here.

Cynics have been quick to dismiss Chris Dodd's stand against telecom amnesty, arguing that it represents nothing but an attempted shot in the the arm for his campaign, a way to raise popularity and money -- as if that were a bad thing. It isn't.

If Chris Dodd is merely pandering it means he believes there are a number of people worth pandering to. If he is merely raising money it means he believes there are a number of people willing to donate money for this cause. Even if it is a cynical ploy, it is still an admission that these issues have legs and real support among voters.

In case you haven't been paying attention, our politicians often act in their own best interests. They vote based not on what is right but what will gain them money and votes. In this case, if Dodd believes that fighting for the Constitution will earn him money and votes that's a wonderful belief we ought to encourage.

The best message we can send our politicians is that they will be rewarded not for fear-mongering but for supporting bedrock American values. Reward them for good behavior and they'll continue that good behavior. Based on his record it seems highly unlikely that Dodd's support for the Constitution is just an assumed affectation; but what if it is? He's still supporting the Constitution just the same, and doing the right thing for the wrong reason is far preferable to doing the wrong thing.

The Democrats' master plan

2007-10-20T15:54:00.002-04:00

A video explanation of the Democratic strategy. Got it?

Democrats in Congress are a joke. Despite all their bluster and their true mandate the Democratic leadership in both the House and the Senate eagerly capitulates to the President on virtually every issue. There are many explanations circulating for why that is the case, nearly all of them false.

The Democrats don't have the votes to get past a filibuster or veto.

This is one Democratic candidates used in a recent debate. This statement is technically true but irrelevant, because Democrats routinely fail to filibuster themselves and vote affirmatively for bad bills. It may be hard for the Democrats to pass legislation, but it isn't hard for them to defeat legislation. Democrats chose to vote for the Military Commissions Act. They chose to vote for the FISA "fixes", and now they are choosing to vote for telecom amnesty. To defeat these bills all they have to do is vote against them. But not only do some individual Democrats vote for these bills, important ranking Democrats often lead that charge and the leadership itself plays along.

To stop telecom amnesty all Democrats have to do is vote against it. Chris Dodd is threatening to place a hold on any amnesty bill and filibuster it, but he shouldn't have to do either. He is filibustering against his own party and their attempts to enable Bush.

There is nothing Democrats can do to stop the Iraq War.

Again: try voting against it. Democrats will say that most Americans are against de-funding the Iraq War as a way of stopping it. This is true, but only because Democrats have actively aided Republicans in convincing the American people that de-funding the war is "irresponsible." Republicans make it sound like our soldiers in Iraq will be engaged in a firefight when they suddenly run out of ammo due to money shortages and are slaughtered -- a pure fantasy. Even if Bush was determined to "hold the troops hostage" in Iraq without equipment the military itself would never allow that to happen and any reasonable Congress would impeach Bush as soon as his plan became clear.

De-funding is unpopular with Americans only because both Democrats and Republicans have portrayed the plan as dangerous. Democrats have actively dissuaded the public from supporting their single best strategy for ending the war. De-funding is "off the table", along with every other strategy that has some chance of success.

The Democrats have some elaborate master plan that maximizes their chances of winning the Presidency.

The Democrats are hedging their bets, they don't want to be blamed if another terror attack takes place. The Democrats are giving Republicans the rope to hang themselves. Blah blah blah...

The biggest complaint against Democrats is that they are spineless losers who stand for nothing, and they are doing everything in their power to support that complaint. Nobody likes people who don't fight hard, nobody likes people who fail where they should succeed, nobody likes people who place political calculations above all else.

The American public considers fighting hard to be heroic, even when the fight is lost. John Henry is a folk hero for fighting to the death against impossible odds. In case anyone forgot we lost at the Alamo. Rocky lost to Apollo Creed. There is no shame in showing heart in the face of long odds, but there is little respect for people who barely bother trying at all. "Giving them the rope to hang themselves" looks suspiciously like "doing nothing."

Democrats can't run on a platform of change if they are willing participants. The Democratic leadership is for telecom amnesty -- how then can Democrats run on the platform that they are against the abuses of the Bush Administration? How can they run against the Administration's use of torture when they voted for the MCA?

If this is truly their plan then they are so tone-deaf you have to feel sorry for them. But I suspect there is no grand master plan at work. The simpler explanation is that some Democrats are in the pockets of lobbyists, some are frightened children who cave when threats of terrorism are invoked and some are just plain incompetent and foolish.

When Democrats voted for the recent FISA "fixes" the reasons they gave were absurd: We had to pass something, anything, regardless of what it was! We were told that the capital itself was about to be attacked and the only way to prevent that was to pass the bill! We went to secret meetings and got secret info that we can't describe in any way but that totally convinced us! We met with administration lawyers who assured us the bill was fine! We were in a hurry to go on vacation and didn't have time to read and understand the bill before we voted on it!

Some of these people are just plain gullible and not bright. Fool me once, shame on you, fool me a thousand times...then what?

It must help people sleep at night to think that the Democrats are following some incomprehensible but brilliant strategy that has the greater good in mind, because there is not other reason to believe that.

Addendum: I should point out that some people think the Democrats are following a plan but that the plan isn't good. I can buy that one.

Deciphering the Clinton Marriage

2007-10-16T00:27:00.001-04:00

Why oh why do people care? I feel like I shouldn't even link to this drivel but completeness compels me. Another screed analyzing the Clinton marriage.

I can't say it much better than Pandagon said here:

Now, for a lot of us, the idea of a couple that is (gasp!) mutually supportive, where they’re both attracted to each other intellectually, is commonplace. But for some reason, it’s still treated as an unheard-of novelty in the news media. Think of poor Maureen Dowd, who seems to really believe that it’s her ambition and not her choice in men that has left her single in middle age. The novelty of the Clinton marriage endures; maybe Barack and Michelle Obama will be spared some of the freak show treatment if he wins the nomination, having had the path carved out for them by the Clintons.

A married couple with roughly equal ambition and ability is a novelty to our media, and an affront to many conservative "traditional marriage" backers who cried "Billary" during the first days of the Clinton presidency. The same pattern is now repeating on a smaller scale with both Michelle Obama and Elizabeth Edwards, both of whom also reject the notion that wives should be seen and not heard. (Unless talking about children's literacy or other proper wifely causes) It's sad that these relationships are news to people rather than the norm.

Marriage is billed as an equal partnership but to many people "separate but equal" would be more appropriate, or perhaps "equal but different." Wife tends the house and raises the kids, husband does the work. Here's an interview you probably won't see with Bill and Hillary:

Many readers asked how you handle stress.
THE PRESIDENT: I pray daily. I exercise nearly daily, and I've got a loving wife who provides a comfortable, warm place for me to come home to.

Now that's a proper wife! (Or a comfy bed, take your pick) The questions directed at Mrs. Bush in the interview are all proper wifely questions -- about the kids and the holidays and how she comforts her husband.

That is the model of marriage our traditional media accepts unquestioningly. They never ask if the Bush marriage is a sham or imply that Laura Bush's lack of political involvement makes her a disinterested unequal partner. They never ponder why she is so incurious or attack her lack of ambition. Rarely do they ask her about her own husband's policies. The understanding is that her primary duty is to provide that "comfortable, warm place."

But the questions never end for the Clintons, because Hillary has explicitly rejected that model of marriage. Here is a transcript of a frontline show centered on Hillary and the famous "baking cookies" comment:

TED KOPPEL (VO): Meet the new political wife. She has a career, she has opinions. A partner in every way.
[...]
JUDD (VO): There's never been a candidate's wife quite like Hillary Clinton, outspoken, independent, smart, but her strengths have been used to make Bill Clinton look like a wimp, even by a president who used to be accused of wimpiness himself.

The entire thing is worth a read for how hilariously awful it is. She has a career! She has opinions! She's a partner! Scary!

Yet here we are, 15 years later, and our media still can't get over the notion that equal partnership talk went beyond wedding-day pomp into the actual marriage of two bright, ambitious people. It's so foreign and unusual to them that they've spent over a decade trying to make sense of it.

Illegal spying began before 9/11

2007-10-14T01:45:00.001-04:00

9/11 ~~changed~~ excuses everything

I have to admit this one surprised even me a little. (All emph. added)

A former Qwest Communications International executive, appealing a conviction for insider trading, has alleged that the government withdrew opportunities for contracts worth hundreds of millions of dollars after Qwest refused to participate in an unidentified National Security Agency program that the company thought might be illegal.

Former chief executive Joseph P. Nacchio, convicted in April of 19 counts of insider trading, said the NSA approached Qwest more than six months before the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, according to court documents unsealed in Denver this week.

There are a few major takeaways from this:

There is nothing we can't excuse by whoring out 9/11, even when they took place before 9/11.
Our government punishes companies for not breaking the law, while granting them immunity when they do - effectively reversing legal and illegal.
The efficacy of warrantless spying programs, which has never been evidenced in any way, now has more reason to be doubted as those programs did not prevent 9/11.
Once again, we've been misled about the nature of the NSA spying programs - surprise!

Glenn Greenwald had a great piece earlier this week on Joe Klein's defense of warrantless eavesdropping and telecom amnesty. Klein argues that the NSA programs are essential -- even though he has no idea what they do or how effective they are. There is literally no way he can argue that, so he doesn't argue it -- he merely asserts it as fact.

The current head of the NSA was already caught lying about the effectiveness of government surveillance, claiming that recent FISA changes helped catch terrorists in Germany only to retract those claims when pressed. There is no reason to believe that these programs work, or that they are limited to fighting terrorism. We don't know what they do, who they spy on, how broad they are or even what the purpose is. We don't know how many people are privy to the information gathered or whether that information is permanently archived. (Which would be yet another violation of FISA laws)

In short, we simply have no idea what is going on, and by "we" I include Congress and the courts, including the FISA court. Yet that doesn't prevent administration defenders from swearing that these programs are both vital and properly managed.

Qwest did what few telecoms had the courage to do: it asked the government to provide legal rationalization for demands that appeared illegal, and when the government declined it refused to play along and in so doing fulfilled its legal obligation. "What the President says goes" is not a law in our country. We are a nation of laws, not a nation that unquestioningly follows a supreme leader. Other telecoms chose to follow orders that appeared illegal, and now the administration is tacitly admitting their guilt by lobbying heavily for amnesty on their behalf.

They still have 0 out of 3 branches of the government working for them, and that ain't bad -- wait what?

2007-10-12T00:49:00.001-04:00

Oh state secrets, is there anything you can't excuse?

The Supreme Court on Tuesday terminated a lawsuit from a man who claims he was abducted and tortured by the CIA, effectively endorsing Bush administration arguments that state secrets would be revealed if the case were allowed to proceed.
[...]
The state secrets privilege arose from a 1953 Supreme Court ruling that allowed the executive branch to keep secret, even from the court, details about a military plane’s fatal crash.

Three widows sued to get the accident report after their husbands died aboard a B-29 bomber, but the Air Force refused to release it claiming that the plane was on a secret mission to test new equipment. The high court accepted the argument, but when the report was released decades later there was nothing in it about a secret mission or equipment.

Translation: suckers!

A quick review of how state secrets claims work:

Government claims that any trial at all will jeopardize state secrets.
Court accepts those claims based purely on faith.

That's the whole process. The court usually does not attempt to verify the claims and review the questionable evidence itself, nor does it allow the trial to continue but merely exclude the secret evidence. Instead, based on nothing but blind obedience, it short-circuits the entire justice system.

The very first invocation of state secrets that set the precedent turned out to be a sham. That is the true precedent: that the government can invoke state secrets claims to magically avoid embarrassing revelations.

Why not verify that the "secrets" are truly important secrets? Clearly the Supreme Court can be given the proper security clearance. Why not exclude only the specific evidence in question but allow the trial to continue without it? I've yet to find a reasonable explanation anywhere -- and I've looked. State secrets claims are nothing more than an exploit, a law-dodging tactic from literally day one.

In our country the courts invent legal theories that are not grounded in any laws, while ignoring actual laws including the Constitution. There is no law that states that the government can get off the hook and avoid trials by invoking unverifiable state secrets claims, for obvious reasons. Meanwhile abduction and torture violate many of our laws, including laws set forth in the Constitution itself. (Including bans on cruel and unusual punishment, the right to proper trial by jury, and that we must abide by international treaties.)

The conservatives who cry about "activist judges" are strangely silent on this one. There is no better definition of an activist judge than a judge that makes up their own pet legal theories that directly conflict with the Constitution. The Constitution is not a complex document, obfuscated with legalese and unfathomable to all but the sharpest lawyers. It is refreshingly straitforward; our Supreme Court Justices should consider reading it, and then doing what it says rather than what some invented legal precedent says instead.

We know that this administration has lied. Beyond that, our system of government is based on wariness, not blind faith and obedience. We don't take as a given that our government is composed of well-meaning, perfectly honorable people. Our system is predicated on careful controls that ensure no branch of government can abuse authority. When the executive branch can claim, without evidence, that a trial would expose state secrets and thus must be stopped there are no checks in play, it becomes a matter purely of trust.

We'd also like a million dollars and a pony

2007-10-09T01:55:00.001-04:00

File this one under things that will never, ever happen:

The demands — part of an Iraqi government report examined by The Associated Press — also called on U.S. authorities to hand over the Blackwater security agents involved in the Sept. 16 shootings to face possible trial in Iraqi courts.

The Iraqi government is corrupt and volatile. Blackwater is corrupt and volatile. The last thing any administration official wants to see is ungrateful Iraqis trying and convicting Americans in Iraqi courts. The second a guilty verdict was returned the entire right-wing media machine would erupt in unison cries of "this is how they repay us?!"

For the Iraqi government this is a chance to prove their independence and to credibly operate as something other than an American puppet. Of course we want an American puppet.

The fundamental question of our Iraq adventure has been how do we accomplish the dual goals of a free democratic Iraq and an Iraq totally subservient to US interests? The answer is wishful thinking. When Iraq threatens to try our contractors or to engage Iran this becomes quite clear -- we have no real response as it becomes increasingly difficult to pretend that Iraq is a sovereign nation while we dictate what it can and cannot do.

Just how dumb do they think we are?

2007-10-02T23:39:00.002-04:00

This is how we know they're all terrorists.

Press Briefing by Dana Perino

Q And the protests, themselves, seem to have been stilled. What do you make of that?

MS. PERINO: Well, unfortunately, intimidation and force can chill peaceful demonstrations. And reports about very innocent people being thrown into detention, where they could be held for years without any representation or charges, is distressing;[em. added] and we understand that some of the monasteries have been sealed.

It's interesting that Perino specifies "very innocent people" instead of simply "people." That's probably because when we detain people without representation or charges it's because we magically know they're guilty.* Olberman: Those Aren't Terrorists, They're Monks

And todays winner of the worst case of moral equivalence evah has to be MSNBC's resident idiot Keith Olberman for comparing Burma's Monks to terrorists being held in Guantanamo.

People being held in Guantanamo and CIA black sites are bad guys and bad guys don't have rights -- it's in the Constisomething as well as the Magna Whatsit. Maybe you've forgotten how the justice system works. Here's a reminder:

Declare someone guilty of something.

* = Except when we eventually let them go without charging them with anything.

This product contains 5% journalism

2007-09-29T20:19:00.001-04:00

Media criticism is something I want to do more of. And now that I'm taking a journalism class, I can use my blog posts to double as homework in a stunning violation of ethics.

Our media is often guilty of pure stenography. Rather than providing readers with relevant facts or background information our "journalists" perform jobs that will soon be relegated to robots, writing as though they were transcribing videotape. And when then do stray from a rote just-the-immediate-facts approach it is more often to inject inanity and personal bias than to inform the reader.

The McClatchy take on Bush's UN address: "Bush astounds activists, supports human rights"

Speaking before the United Nations General Assembly, the president called for renewed efforts to enforce the U.N.'s Universal Declaration of Human Rights, a striking point of emphasis for a leader who's widely accused of violating human rights in waging war against terrorism.

Now the New York Times coverage of the same: "Bush, at U.N., Announces Stricter Burmese Sanctions"

Mr. Bush referred repeatedly to the declaration, citing its first article, “All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights,” as well as the 23rd, 25th and 26th articles, which call for access to employment, health care and education.

The declaration, a nonbinding resolution that was negotiated in 1948, calls on countries to protect a wide array of rights, including freedom of speech, assembly and religion, while prohibiting slavery, torture and arbitrary detention.

McClatchy chose to compare what Bush said to his previous actions, while the NYT played the part of credulous observer bereft of independent thought. Perhaps that is merely a difference in journalistic styles, or then again, perhaps not:

He said that there were no homosexuals in Iran — not one — and that the Nazi slaughter of six million Jews should not be treated as fact, but theory, and therefore open to debate and more research.

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the president of Iran, aired those and other bewildering thoughts in a two-hour verbal contest at Columbia University yesterday, providing some ammunition to people who said there was no point in inviting him to speak. Yet his appearance also offered evidence of why he is widely admired in the developing world for his defiance toward Western, especially American, power.

These are the first two paragraphs of the Times' coverage of Ahmadinejad's visit to Columbia University. Here the Times abandons the blank recitation approach, instead injecting the opinions of the piece writer. Later Ahmadinejad is accused of a "dodge" (rather than a "response") and his visit to New York is described as "dramatic theater".

Let's directly compare the Time's coverage of Bush and Ahmadinejad speaking to the UN:

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the president of Iran, said Tuesday that he considered the dispute over his country’s nuclear program “closed” and that Iran would disregard the resolutions of the Security Council, which he said was dominated by “arrogant powers.”

In a rambling and defiant 40-minute speech to the opening session of the General Assembly, he said Iran would from now on consider the nuclear issue not a “political” one for the Security Council, but a “technical” one to be decided by the International Atomic Energy Agency, the United Nations’ nuclear watchdog.

Once again the Time's piece contains an immediate value judgement by the author, that his speech was "rambling" and "defiant." Note that Bush's speech was not described as "poorly enunciated" or "hypocritical."

These small darts of negative opinion are featured prominently in the Time's coverage of Ahmadinejad, immediately biasing the reader. Thank God the NYT has the "courage" to attack a man widely portrayed as the next Hitler while refusing to issue any judgements about our own country and President.

Had the Times described Bush's speech to the UN as "rambling", "nonsensical", "hypocritical" or "in willful disregard to his own conduct and policies" they would be taken to task, hoisted up as examples as what is wrong with our media. But describing Ahmadinejad as "rambling", "bewildering", "defiant" (as opposed to, say, "brave") and claiming that his remarks provided "ammunition to people who said there was no point in inviting him to speak"? That of course is perfectly acceptable because it exactly parrots the views of Washington insiders and our administration.

Surely Steven Lee Myers, who wrote covering Bush's speech to the UN, is aware of our own human-rights violations. When he wrote that Bush cited the "Universal Declaration of Human Rights" it must have occurred to him that the US may itself be violating it. (We violate numerous articles) He cannot be unaware that, as he reports of Bush's complaints with arbitrary detention, that arbitrary detention is a US policy Bush champions.

Journalists who cover specific topics for a living have a much broader understanding of them than casual readers and have a responsibility to convey that knowledge through their writing. Refusing to provide context or address obvious questions is an abdication of that responsibility. Reporting what people say while ignoring their actions, actions the journalists themselves are well-aware of, is a service only to those who speak loudest and most often.

According to the NYT that Bush spoke in favor of human rights is news; that he didn't mean it, which is not merely a matter of opinion but is evidenced by his own words and actions, is not.

Here is how the Time's reported Ahmadinejad's complaints against the US:

Without mentioning the United States by name, Mr. Ahmadinejad used his speech to carry out a full-scale assault on the country as power-mad and godless. He said its leaders “openly abandon morality” and act with “lewdness, selfishness, enmity and imposition in place of justice, love, affection and honesty.”

“Certain powers,” he said in a thinly veiled reference to Washington, were “setting up secret prisons, abducting persons, trials and secret punishments without any regard to due process, extensive tapping of telephone conversations, intercepting private mail.”

Note again the immediately biasing language, that Ahmadinejad launched a "full scale assault" (a word conveying violence) on the US, calling us "power-mad and godless" -- which is not an actual quote from Ahmadinejad. Let's re-write the above in a way that is unbiased, factually accurate and informative:

Without mentioning the United States by name, Mr. Ahmadinejad used his speech to carry out an accurate attack on the US' numerous human-rights abuses.

“Certain powers,” he said in a thinly veiled reference to Washington, were “setting up secret prisons, abducting persons, trials and secret punishments without any regard to due process, extensive tapping of telephone conversations, intercepting private mail.”

Ahmadinejad said the US runs secret prisons and abducts people, but he didn't merely say it -- the NYT has confirmed it with its own investigations. The original NYT version gives the reader no way to evaluate the veracity of the statements when the NYT knows full well that the statements are accurate.

Hypothetical questions

2007-09-27T00:13:00.001-04:00

What would you do if Tim Russert asked you some incredibly stupid questions? (Purely as a hypothetical, of course.)

Hypothetical questions make sense when the scenarios posed are realistic. In the Democratic debate tonight Russert posed the following:

Imagine the following scenario. We get lucky. We get the number three guy in Al Qaida. We know there's a big bomb going off in America in three days and we know this guy knows where it is.

How do we "know" beyond all doubt that the person is a terrorist? How do we "know" a bomb is about to go off? How do we "know" that they know -- and that they will tell us accurately?

We "knew" that Khalid El-Masri was a terrorist -- until it turned out he had the bad fortune to possess a suspicious-sounding name. (For which he was kidnapped, tortured, then finally released without charge or apology) We "knew" that Jose Padilla was a dirty bomber and we tortured him to find out the nefarious details of his plot -- only to discover that he was not a dirty bomber at all.

Simply stated, there is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction. -- Dick Cheney August 26, 2002

We know that Saddam Hussein is determined to keep his weapons of mass destruction, is determined to make more. -- Colin Powell February 5, 2003

Intelligence gathered by this and other governments leaves no doubt that the Iraq regime continues to possess and conceal some of the most lethal weapons ever devised. -- George Bush March 18, 2003

There is no doubt that the regime of Saddam Hussein possesses weapons of mass destruction. As this operation continues, those weapons will be identified, found, along with the people who have produced them and who guard them. --Gen. Tommy Franks March 22, 2003

We know where they [WMDs] are. They are in the area around Tikrit and Baghdad. --Donald Rumsfeld March 30, 2003

That's a lot of "we know" and "no doubt" claims that turned out to be totally false.

If I know that torturing a suspected terrorist will reveal the details of an imminent bomb threat then instead of torturing I'll just use my Lasso of Truth to find out the details then race to the scene in my Invisible Jet.

The rest of you should consider the fact that if you can be wrong about who is a terrorist or where bombs are then...you can be wrong about who is a terrorist or where bombs are. The premise of the question is invalid; our government has proven that what it claims to "know" is only marginally related to actual truth.

What is your favorite Bible verse?

2007-09-26T23:00:00.000-04:00

Posed by Russert in the Democratic debate.

Here's mine: no religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or Public Trust under the United States.

Whatever I was originally going to write about tonight, I can't even remember it. What an outrageously inappropriate question to ask. The questions assumes that all the candidates are religious, that questions on religion are appropriate, and that the Christian religion is the only religion worth asking about. It enforces the expectation that anyone even running for office is Christian.

It doesn't matter if all the candidates actually are Christian, the entire premise of the question is inane. It would be one thing to ask "all of you have professed to being Christians -- how do you view other religions such as Islam and how will you deal with the leaders of Islamic nations?" At least that has some political point and is not a question solely for the benefit of the Christians in the audience.

The question he posed is simultaneously a softball of no value and an incredible insult to what public office is supposed to be about. If the candidates want to bring up religious beliefs on their own that is one thing, but for a moderator to pose that as if it is a very important and relevant question is crazy.

Why not just turn around and spit on every Jew, Muslim and atheist in the audience? Especially when we are currently saddled with a delusional true-believer who can justify torture, detainment and war with God's will.

Now Chris Matthews is on TV saying that it is "interesting" that some candidates could not quote exact verses. "Interesting" how exactly Chris? Are they somehow defective, lesser candidates because they don't attend weekly Bible study?

The arrogance of that question is astounding. Again, it assumes that the candidates should know the Bible well enough to quote it, as if there is something wrong with them if they can't. Asking questions aimed at testing which candidates are most devoted to Christianity is entirely counter to the no-religious-test spirit of the Constitution.

Hitler on the Brain

2007-09-24T20:02:00.000-04:00

Regular updates begin again. Huzzah!

Kids: What's wrong with this picture?

Analogies: they aren't for the painfully stupid. Hitler was directly responsible for the Holocaust. Ahmadinejad was...related to 9/11 in what way exactly? First it was Osama Bin-Laden, then Saddam Hussein, and now most recently Ahmadinejad (who was not even President of Iran at the time) who was somehow intimately involved with the 9/11 attacks in the eyes of conservatives. Reality for them is an inconvenience. Ahmadinejad is Hitler, just as Saddam was, just as whoever is next on the list will be.

According to Lee Bollinger, president of Columbia University, Ahmadinejad "exhibit[s] all the signs of a petty and cruel dictator." Those signs apparently include not being in charge of Iran's armed forces, not having the ability to declare war, and not even being the most powerful man in his own government. There is nothing dictatorial about Ahmadinejad, and it factually accurate to say that President Bush is much closer to being a dictator than Ahmadinejad is.

Conservatives love their Hitler comparisons. Every Big Bad is Hitler and every liberal is Chamberlain. Yet in US politics conservatives play the role of Paul von Hindenburg, the German president who issuedthe Reichstag Fire Decree:

Ordnung des Reichspräsidenten zum Schutz von Volk und Staat

Auf Grund des Artikels 48 Abs. 2 der Reichsverfassung wird zur Abwehr kommunistischer staatsgefährdender Gewaltakte folgendes verordnet:

§ 1. Die Artikel 114, 115, 117, 118, 123, 124 und 153 der Verfassung des Deutschen Reichs werden bis auf weiteres außer Kraft gesetzt. Es sind daher Beschränkungen der persönlichen Freiheit, des Rechts der freien Meinungsäußerung, einschließlich der Pressefreiheit, des Vereins- und Versammlungsrechts, Eingriffe in das Brief-, Post-, Telegraphen- und Fernsprechgeheimnis, Anordnungen von Haussuchungen und von Beschlagnahmen sowie Beschränkungen des Eigentums auch außerhalb der sonst hierfür bestimmten gesetzlichen Grenzen zulässig.

Loko familiar? Conservative policies read so much better in the original German, but for those of you not German-inclined a translation:

Order of the Reich President for the Protection of People and State

On the basis of Article 48 paragraph 2 of the Constitution of the German Reich, the following is ordered in defense against Communist state-endangering acts of violence:

§ 1. Articles 114, 115, 117, 118, 123, 124 and 153 of the Constitution of the German Reich are suspended until further notice. It is therefore permissible to restrict the rights of personal freedom [habeas corpus], freedom of opinion, including the freedom of the press, the freedom to organize and assemble, the privacy of postal, telegraphic and telephonic communications, and warrants for house searches, orders for confiscations as well as restrictions on property, are also permissible beyond the legal limits otherwise prescribed.

Look familiar now? I handily bolded the parts currently applicable in the US -- nearly all of it.

The incontrovertible fact is that the Reichstag Fire Decree is remarkably similar to current US policies in both motivation and substance. Ahmadinejad-to-Hitler analogies are nonsensical past anything beyond "they are both bad people" -- but it's easy to draw direct, accurate comparisons between pre-WW2 German policy and our own. Our Big Bad is terrorism, not communism, but the rest remains largely the same.

I'll belabor the point a little and make those comparisons explicit:

rights of personal freedom [habeas corpus] - I've covered this here. Habeas Corpus, despite being ensured in the Constitution, is a right we no longer enjoy.
the freedom to organize and assemble - The continuing expansion of the oxymoronic "free speech zones" are an illustration of this, as is the Presidential Advance Manual that instructs event organizers on a variety of ways to suppress the right to assemble.
the privacy of postal, telegraphic and telephonic communications, and warrants for house searches - The PATRIOT and Protect America Act (The FISA "fixes") largely obliterate these, another example of rights specifically granted in the Constitution but no longer functional.
orders for confiscations as well as restrictions on property - According to a recent executive order various members of the executive branch can freeze the assets of those who may be planning to impede progress in Iraq, directly or indirectly.

That executive order is a good primer on how our government works. Unlike the Germans we don't explicitly suspend articles in our Constitution -- instead we ignore them:

For those persons whose property and interests in property are blocked pursuant to this order who might have a constitutional presence in the United States, I find that, because of the ability to transfer funds or other assets instantaneously, prior notice to such persons of measures to be taken pursuant to this order would render these measures ineffectual. I therefore determine that for these measures to be effective in addressing the national emergency declared in Executive Order 13303 and expanded in Executive Order 13315, there need be no prior notice of a listing or determination made pursuant to section 1(a) of this order.

Translation: pesky Constitutional rights are getting in the way of my ability to (supposedly) fight the Big Bad, so I'll ignore them. In the US these days Constitutional rights, like the rest of our laws, are mere guidelines to be discarded as needed.

Addendum:
Hitler comparisons tend to lose meaning when they are employed on a constant basis without any rationale other than "ooh scary!"

Updates begin again on Monday

2007-09-19T22:36:00.000-04:00

The trip that would not end is finally ending. While I've been occupied a lot has happened; a lot of what any reasonable person has grown to expect. The "Petraeus Report" said and meant nothing. Mike McConnell fibbed to Congress in support of warrantless wiretapping. Democrats did their best to play wallflowers. The Bush Administration abuses powers it doesn't have -- the Democrats don't bother to use powers (like the fillibuster) they do have.

About the lack of updates

2007-09-12T19:12:00.001-04:00

As mentioned earlier I'm travelling for work. Regular updates will resume when I get back, hopefully in a week or so.

Quick update

2007-09-07T21:37:00.000-04:00

Apologies if this is poorly written, typing on a laptop keyboard is hard.

By way of Raw Story:

Sometime over the weekend, White House computer technicians removed from government Web sites any references to the Office of Administration or its previous compliance with Freedom of Information Act requests.

Luckily, thanks to amazing computer technology we can compare the before and after. The "after" has a familiar disclaimer at the top about a lack of independence and the Office of Administration has shifted into the list of offices that do not respond to Freedom of Information Act requests.

This raises a couple of obvious questions: If the Office of Administration used to respond to FOIA requests and now does not, does that mean that the office itself has somehow changed? Did it used to have more independence than it does now? (Answers: no and no) What prevents other offices from becoming immune to FOIA requests at the whim of the President? (Answer: nothing)

The Bush presidency clearly believes that no executive offices possess independence. The same argument that applies to the Justice Department and the Office of Administration applies equally well to every member of the executive branch.

"Restoring" habeas corpus

2007-09-05T00:36:00.000-04:00

Restoring habeas corpus is a popular topic among civil libertarians. The conventional wisdom is that the Military Commissions Act suspended the right of habeas corpus for those designated "enemy combatants." The reality is that the right to habeas corpus still exists; it is outside of the power of Congress, the President or the Court to suspend it. (Except in cases of rebellion or invasion)

Chris Dodd gets it. On his site www.restore-habeas.org he has proposes the "Restoring the Constitution Act of 2007." It sounds silly -- the Constitution is the ultimate law of the land;, no law passed by Congress can contravene. His title exactly captures the absurdity at the heart of habeas corpus debates: you have the right to habeas corpus, a right that derives directly from the Constitution. "Restoring habeas corpus" makes exactly as much sense as "following the Constitution."

Article I, Section 9 of the Constitution states the following: "The privilege of the writ of habeas corpus shall not be suspended, unless when in cases of rebellion or invasion the public safety may require it." Any law or executive order that suspends habeas corpus (outside of rebellion or invasion) is meaningless, as meaningless as a law declaring the President the King of America. (Which is also expressly forbidden in Article I, Section 9.) The power of any branch of government to suspend habeas corpus outside narrowly defined lines is imagined.

Your rights still exist, but two branches of government have chosen to ignore them. (And the third, the Court, cannot involve itself at will) If a tree falls in the forest and nobody is around to hear it it still makes a sound -- those are the laws of physics. If the Constitution grants you a right you have it no matter what Congress and the President pretend -- those are the laws of the United States.

The discussion of restoration is evidence of how sadly broken our government is, a government that refuses to follow the Constitution itself. The executive branch refuses to enforce the law and Congress provides cover by passing new "laws" that are patently illegal and meaningless. The debate on the right to habeas corpus is merely a debate on whether or not we should follow the Constitution; the answer in government is a resounding "no."

Addendum:
From a Washington Post article "New Book Details Cheney Lawyer's Efforts to Expand Executive Power":

David S. Addington, who is now Cheney's chief of staff, viewed both U.S. lawmakers and overseas allies with "hostility" and repeatedly opposed efforts by other administration lawyers to soften counterterrorism policies or seek outside support, according to Jack L. Goldsmith, who frequently clashed with Addington while serving as head of the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel in 2003 and 2004.

"We're going to push and push and push until some larger force makes us stop," Addington said at one point, according to Goldsmith.

The quote above perfectly illustrates the primary theme of the Bush Presidency: expansion of executive power without regard for the law. What matters is not if something is legal or proper, but only if it can be gotten away with.

Update schedule

2007-09-04T01:34:00.000-04:00

I'll be out of town on business for a couple of weeks. Depending on how busy I am the posting schedule may dramatically change in one direction or the other.

Amnesty for law breakers.

2007-09-02T01:22:00.000-04:00

Bush Seeks Legal Immunity for Telecoms

The Bush administration wants the power to grant legal immunity to telecommunications companies that are slapped with privacy suits for cooperating with the White House's controversial warrantless eavesdropping program.
[...]
Republicans say immunity is necessary to protect the companies that responded to legal presidential orders to thwart terrorists in the years after 9/11.

The only purpose of this proposed legislation is amnesty for lawbreakers; if the presidential orders were legal the defendants will be found not guilty. We don't need immunity for people who didn't rob banks or didn't steal cars or didn't commit murder. Those people are already immune from guilty verdicts by virtue of not having committed an offense. The only possible parsing of the proposed legislation is that the telecom companies in question are guilty -- otherwise immunity is extraneous.

If the presidential orders were legal the telecoms and the Bush Administration should argue that in court -- something they have steadfastly refused to do by hiding behind states secrets privileges to avoid trial altogether. By now this should be a familiar tactic: make "legal" arguments everywhere but in a court of law, the one place where legal arguments are officially judged on their merits.

Bush Administration backers claim that the telecoms were simply following orders -- but following orders is not an excuse for illegal behavior. Neither is ignorance of the law, which is not a defense for average citizens let alone for corporations that employ armies of lawyers. If you take the Bush Administration claims at face value, that the telecoms are blameless because they merely followed orders, then the blame shifts (more) onto those issuing the orders. Yet the Bush Administration claims that those issuing the orders are guiltless as well.

Warrantless spying on US citizens is clearly illegal under the law, something Qwest lawyers understood:

Telecommunications giant Qwest refused to provide the government with access to telephone records of its 15 million customers after deciding the request violated privacy law, a lawyer for a former company executive said yesterday.

In a written statement, the attorney for former Qwest CEO Joseph Nacchio said the government approached the company in the fall of 2001 seeking access to the phone records of Qwest customers, with neither a warrant nor approval from a special court established to handle surveillance matters. [em. added]

Qwest did not break the law; other telecoms such as AT&T potentially did. The courts should determine guilt -- that is the purpose of the court system. Instead we are asked to accept the fact that while law-breaking occurred nobody is guilty. Not the people who issued illegal orders and not the people who followed them. Somehow, though we know exactly what transpired and who the participants were, the lawbreaking in un-attributable to anyone.

The subtext of the Bush Administration argument is a simple one: the law doesn't matter. Laws are merely inconveniences that get in the way of fighting evil and should be discarded at will. We may have issued illegal orders and AT&T may have followed them but we did it to protect you, or so we claim, so you should be grateful.

If the government can be trusted to work in the best interests of the people at all times then why bother having laws restricting government power in the first place? Of course we all know the answer: power corrupts. The Bush Administration is tacitly arguing that we should throw out this knowledge, the knowledge of our own history, and simply trust the government with unlimited power to use as it sees fit.

The meaning of "progress"

2007-08-31T01:46:00.001-04:00

The Washington Post reports that a leaked GAO draft indicates that only 3 of the 18 Iraq benchmarks have been met. Strange considering that just a few weeks ago the White House reported that "satisfactory progress" had been made on 8. You might think that "satisfactory" should be read as "will reach stated goal by time specified" -- but you'd be wrong. Like most claims of the progress in Iraq, the progress reported by the White House was not progress at all.

In his withering report "Benchmarks In Iraq: The True Status", issued soon after the White House progress claims, Anthony Cordesman wrote:

It is clear, however, that the Iraqi government has not really met the Bush administration’s benchmarks in any major area. Seen from a more nuanced perspective, actual progress as has been more limited and had often had tenuous meaning unless it can eventually be shown that a faltering legislative start will be put into practice over the months and years to come in ways that Iraq’s major factions will accept.

We've been hearing about progress in Iraq for years. Here's a good one from 2003: "WMD hunters tout progress in Iraq". Here's one about the incredible progress we made in Mosul in 2005 -- and then again in 2007.

Iraq's northern city Mosul, in Ninewa province, is a sprawling tangle of historic neighborhoods that straddle the Tigris river. With a mixed population of Sunni Arabs, Kurds and other minority groups, Iraq's third largest city is typical of many Iraqi towns that have see-sawed between periods of violence and relative calm since the U.S.-led invasion.

Is riding on a see-saw progress? It is if you describe it as "going up. Now going up again. And again, going up..."

Progress in Iraq comes in many forms:

Purely anecdotal progress that is not in any way measurable.
"Localized progress" that is not reflective of any larger trends.
Progress that occurs immediately following a regression. One step back, one step forward again.
Progress that is offset by equal regression in some other area.

At any given time in Iraq there is progress happening somewhere. Journalists go on a military-guided tour of Iraq and report that some dangerous areas are safer; progress even though formerly safer areas are more dangerous. A drop in civilian casualties is evidence of progress even as military casualties rise -- or vice-versa. Military security increases while the political situation regresses due to those security measures -- that's progress as well.

The 18 benchmarks represent an objective way of measuring total progress by defining in advance what progress looks like. Instead of retroactively picking out fleeting examples -- yesterday a swimming pool cleaned, the day before a number of insurgents killed -- the benchmarks establish goals and measures in advance. The President said in January:

A successful strategy for Iraq goes beyond military operations. Ordinary Iraqi citizens must see that military operations are accompanied by visible improvements in their neighborhoods and communities. So America will hold the Iraqi government to the benchmarks it has announced.

To establish its authority, the Iraqi government plans to take responsibility for security in all of Iraq's provinces by November. To give every Iraqi citizen a stake in the country's economy, Iraq will pass legislation to share oil revenues among all Iraqis. To show that it is committed to delivering a better life, the Iraqi government will spend $10 billion of its own money on reconstruction and infrastructure projects that will create new jobs. To empower local leaders, Iraqis plan to hold provincial elections later this year. And to allow more Iraqis to re-enter their nation's political life, the government will reform de-Baathification laws, and establish a fair process for considering amendments to Iraq's constitution.

Many of these benchmarks are easy to measure. De-Baathification laws have not been passed. Oil-sharing legislation has not been passed. The Bush Administration has touted as good news that Iraqi leaders have pledged to pass these laws -- just as they have pledged in the past without result. (It should be noted that merely passing the legislation is meaningless if it can't be enforced by a government with no power outside of Baghdad.)

Predictably the Administration is distancing itself from the benchmarks and embracing empty claims of "progress" and cherry-picked examples. Tony Snow at a press briefing:

Again, I would -- if you take a look at what Congress has mandated for this report, it says, have you met these? Have you met them in full? Well, the answer is, you're going to find in a lot of cases, of course they haven't met them. Now, the real question is, do you have progress in the right direction?
[...]
The real question that people have is, what's going on Iraq? Are we making progress? Militarily, is the surge having an impact? The answer is yes. There's no question about it. What you've had is the number of ethnic and religious sectarian killings down by 75 percent. You have a doubling of weapons cache seizures. You have a reduction in bombing violence, in bombing killings of U.S. and coalition forces. There have been a number of -- you have kills and captures way up when it comes to those who have been fighting against the government.

Weapons cache seizures. Bombing violence. Kills and captures. These are the progress metrics of today. When weapons cache seizures decline that metric will be replaced with a more convenient one. Perhaps tomorrow seizures will be down but electricity availability will be up, and that will be touted as the latest evidence of progress.

For years we've let the Bush Administration get away with refusing to define the exact end goal or what the path to it looks like. Without an ideal path, let alone a realistic one, progress is impossible to measure. If you don't know where you're going or how your getting there "are we getting closer?" is a meaningless question.

The President said "I've made it clear to the Prime Minister and Iraq's other leaders that America's commitment is not open-ended." Nothing could be further from the truth. Our commitment is by definition open-ended: no endpoint has ever been articulated. Under the Bush Administration we're staying as long as it takes -- whatever "it" is, something that has never been elucidated.

Measurable benchmarks only matter when a failure to meet them is actionable, and this Congress does not have the political will to take action. There will be some debate over how many are met, but the reality is that meeting all eighteen or none makes no difference; the report itself is busy work, as is the much-heralded "Petraeus report." Nobody familiar with Bush or Congress can expect these reports to alter our policies in the slightest, regardless of content. There is no benchmark or Petraeus report even conceivable that would lend Congress the political fortitude to press action through legislation. Bush claims that our commitment to Iraq is not open-ended when clearly it is. In the same way, for all their protestations, the Congress' commitment to Bush's war is equally open-ended. The reports of progress and the promise of tomorrow will continue, as they have continuously since the invasion began.

More brutality in Iraq redux

2007-08-29T02:32:00.000-04:00

Here is a video of the Daily Show interview described in this previous post.

Once again the sentiments expressed here, by a real expert, almost entirely contradict the sentiments of the right-wing punditocracy's self-declared experts. For them "winning hearts and minds" is an empty slogan that shouldn't obstruct a good boot to the throat. One example:

Less than two weeks after chickenhawk Dennis Miller complained on Hannity & Colmes that what’s wrong in Iraq is we’re not brutal enough to the insurgents, armchair warrior Michael Reagan, substituting for Sean Hannity, announced last night (12/20/06) that the US is too worried about “upsetting people” and should take “the gloves off of our military, let them go in and win the war the way they need to win the war.” Reagan didn’t explain what that meant or how it should be done but it’s likely he didn’t know, himself. He never served in the military. Those who have, like General John P. Abizaid and Colin Powell, advocate no such thing.

Worrying about "upsetting people" is precisely our new counter-insurgency strategy, the strategy we are being told is working.

Alberto Gonzales did a great job

2007-08-29T00:04:00.000-04:00

From a WSJ.com Feature Article defending Gonzales (all emphasis added):

With so little time left in his term, Mr. Bush needs above all an AG willing to explain and defend his policies on the vital and related areas of Presidential power and the war on terror. Mr. Gonzales was mostly a stalwart on the latter, going back to his years as White House Counsel. More recently, he has argued inside the Administration for the usefulness of Guantanamo against those at State and Defense who want to close it for reasons of public diplomacy. Mr. Gonzales understands that these detainees have to be kept somewhere, and that the criminal justice system is not up to the job of trying them.

His successor should be someone willing to engage critics on the Gitmo battle, as well as on fights over military tribunals and wiretaps of foreign terrorists. He should also be someone who understands that even a weakened President needs to act as if he's strong. That is, even a "lame duck" President still retains his powers under the Constitution and will be more effective if he's willing to use them.

Remarkable in the above is how little it has to do with the duties of the Attorney General. The text above and the piece as a whole betrays just how political the Bush Administration appointments are -- job qualifications and performance are literally not considerations. Conspicuously missing is any mention of giving sound legal advice and acting in accordance with the law other than the vague reference to the "powers under the Constitution", a Bush Administration favorite justification for any and all executive actions including those expressly illegal and unconstitutional.

It sadly does not go without saying that the role of the Attorney General is not to defend the President and his policies. It certainly isn't to claim that US laws, FISA and criminal justice-related, are "not up to the job" and should therefore be violated.

Gonzales wrote blank checks to the administration that he knew were invalid; most of his "legal" arguments were presented in briefs and press releases but tellingly not in court. The legal theories he used to justify administration actions were pure public relations fodder. He argued that the right to Habeas Corpus did not exist, but not in a legal setting, backing away from a definitive showdown in court that would have almost certainly ruled against that position. He argued that the President had the right to violate FISA laws, but when push came to shove (read: a Democratic Congress was elected) the TSP program was altered and submitted to the FISA court.

As a long-time Bush defender he had what appeared to be a sharp conflict of interest but there was no conflict -- his interest was solely in hunting everywhere for ways to justify Bush policies, including in John Ashcroft's hospital bed. In the minds of many Bush supporters that is the goal of the Attorney General, and more generally of all appointees to all positions. The distinction between political and non-political appointees is meaningless to them. All appointees are merely "emanations of a president's will" with "no substantial authority independent of President Bush."

The WSJ claims that he was "dragged through the mud for political reasons" and that he was not a "hyper-partisan political actor." Odd given that their qualifications for a good Attorney General and their praise for Gonzales are all overtly political in nature. Alberto Gonzales did a great job -- at defending the President. That isn't the job he was supposed to do, but that's the job the WSJ opinion page wanted him to do, and they are hardly alone on that. Just as Libby did a heckuva job by covering for the exposure of a CIA operative and front organization, as Michael Brown did heading FEMA while ignoring Katrina problems. The question is not "did he do a good job" but "what job did he even do?"

That some people think the Attorney General should operate as a political flack is hardly surprising. What is surprising is how openly they trumpet these views, views that are antithetical to a working government with functional checks and balances. The state of our discourse is such that writing about how "the rule of law must yield to the need for [ill-defined] energy" is perfectly acceptable. Condoning the torture of children by crushing their testicles is morally and legally valid. The window of discussion is moved only when such opinions are made public and eventually normalized. Outing a CIA operative is merely political gamesmanship; an Attorney General that subverts the law is not only proper but necessary in the battle against evil. Regardless of the merit of these positions their constant crowing deafens us to serious abuses.

That Gonzales eventually resigned is no great win for the rule of law. What happens next is critical - we will get someone who does a great job, or someone who does a great job at the job? The job defined not by the WSJ opinion writers but by the official role of the Attorney General to work in service of law and office.

Charles Krauthammer in his own words

2007-08-26T18:22:00.000-04:00

I'm going to present these nearly commentary-free. They stand by themselves, but I'll add some thoughts at the end. These are all taken from the Townhall.com archives. All emphasis is added. I've focused on the Iraq War - his opinions on pardons, baseball, Israel, etc are equally inane.

"No to nation building" in 2001

Because the American military is the world's premier fighting force, and ought to husband its resources for just that. Anybody can peacekeep; no one can do what we did in Afghanistan. Many nations can do police work; only we can drop thousand-pound bombs with the precision of a medieval archer. Peacekeeping is a job for others.
[...]
It is common sense. Americans make lousy peacekeepers--not because they are not great soldiers, but precisely because they are.
No to American peacekeepers. We fight the wars. Our friends should patrol the peace.

"Perspective on the duration of war" in 2003

With American troops at the gates of Baghdad, the plan is looking pretty good now.
[...]
The fact that but a single element was miscalibrated (without significant damage to the overall campaign) is, on the contrary, testimony to a plan of remarkable prescience.

Even more impressive was the speed of the military's adaptation to the new circumstances.

"The critics are wrong again" in 2003

Before the Iraq war even began, the critics were predicting that Iraq was going to be the Bay of Pigs (plus ``Desert One, Beirut and Somalia,'' said the ever-hyperbolic Chris Matthews). A week into the war, we were told Iraq was Vietnam. Now after the war, they're telling us that Iraq is Iran--that Iraq's Shiite majority will turn it into another intolerant Islamic republic.

The critics were wrong every time. They are wrong again.

"Rebuilding Iraq" in 2003

In Iraq, it was Saddam who turned the place to rubble. By any historic standard, the amount of destruction caused by the coalition was small. Most of the damage was inflicted upon the symbols, barracks, ministries and communication organs of the Baathist regime. The infrastructure--roads, bridges, dams, sewage systems, schools, mosques and hospitals--was barely touched.

And as for the people, one of the more unnoticed facts of this war was the absence of refugees--the Iraqi people's silent homage to their trust in the stated allied purpose of coming to liberate and not destroy.

"Chasing after Saddam's weapons" in 2003

The inability to find the weapons is indeed troubling, but only because it means that the weapons remain unaccounted for and might be in the wrong hands. The idea that our inability to thus far find the WMDs proves that the threat was phony and hyped is simply false.

"Everyone's an expert" in 2003

On the reconstruction of Iraq, everybody is a genius. Every pundit, every ex-official and, of course, every Democrat knows exactly how it should have been done.
[...]
Losing the peace? No matter what anyone says now, that question will only be answered at the endpoint. If in a year or two we are able to leave behind a stable, friendly government, we will have succeeded. If not, we will have failed. And all the geniuses will be vindicated.

There are an estimated 2 million refugees from Iraq and another 2 million internally displaced people -- out of a total population of about 25 million. Households lack electricity and water; years into the occupation infrastructure is still a disaster and a humanitarian crisis is at hand. A "year or two" has long since passed without meaningful political progress. Saddam did not have WMDs. Our war strategy was not one of "remarkable prescience" and Bush is now invoking Vietnam comparisons himself. Americans are being used a peacekeepers; according to Krauthammer the war ended in 2003. The Iraqi government is openly flirting with Iran.

This genius is vindicated. The critics were right; Krauthammer and his serious expert friends were wrong, as usual.

"Serious voices" call for regime change -- again

2007-08-26T00:36:00.000-04:00

From a recent Charles Krauthammer op-ed:

We should have given up on Nouri al-Maliki long ago and begun to work with other parties in the Iraqi parliament to bring down the government, yielding either a new coalition of less sectarian parties or, as Pollack has suggested, new elections.

The brazenness of the "serious voices" of Iraqi "experts" is truly astonishing. After years of crowing about establishing democracy in Iraq as a starting point for broad transformation in the Middle East those same voices are now explicitly calling for regime change again -- the regime in question this time a democratically elected one. Neoconservative pundits have never been able to describe how we could achieve the dual goals of democracy in Iraq and a working pro-US Iraqi government; and now that those goals conflict they are happy to cast off the former entirely.

These "serious voices" are not only undermining the Maliki government, they are undermining Iraqi governance as a whole. They quite clearly believe that the US is ultimately calling the shots, and that the democracy in Iraq is only something we'll put up with when the "right" person who suits are interests is elected. When former Prime Minister Ayad Allawi, who was voted out of office, wanted his job back he hired well-connected Washington lobbyists to influence US policy rather than campaigning in Iraq itself. He too evidently believes the US is the ultimate decision maker.

One thing the pro-war crowd could never be accused of is consistency of argument; the only consistent viewpoint is that more force is always the solution. Anything else is merely extraneous detail. It is impossible to overstate how often war proponents used democracy in Iraq as a primary justification for war, increasingly the primary justification. Yet now they openly grumble that democracy may be too ambitious; that those pesky Iraqis elected the wrong people and more US meddling is called for.

Like O'Hanlon, Krauthammer consistently plays a game defined to exclude any genuinely opposing viewpoints from the conversation entirely. The central premises are unquestionable; the only debate allowed exists at the margins. Despite the fact that Krauthammer and others like him have been wrong about virtually everything they are still the serious experts -- or so they protest repeatedly.

But the serious voices will prevail. When the Democratic presidential front-runner concedes that the surge "is working" (albeit very late) against the insurgency, and when Petraeus himself concedes that the surge cannot continue indefinitely, making inevitable a drawdown of troops sometime in the middle of next year, the terms of the Iraq debate become narrow and the policy question simple: What do we do right now -- continue the surge or cut it short and begin withdrawal?

Serious people like Levin argue that with a nonfunctional and sectarian Baghdad government, we can never achieve national reconciliation. Thus the current military successes will prove ephemeral.
[...]
Nonetheless, continuing the surge while finally trying to change the central government is the most rational choice because the only available alternative is defeat -- a defeat that is not at all inevitable and that would be both catastrophic and self-inflicted.

Krauthammer and O'Hanlon clearly read the same playbook. That the surge is working is unquestionable fact -- despite the fact that the surge strategy is to empower local governments and militias at the expense of the central government and official Iraqi forces, something O'Hanlon freely admits to. It's dreadfully unserious to point out that the surge, rather than creating space for political considerations, is making them impossible and meaningless. Similarly staying the course is the only "rational" choice; just as invading Iraq was the only rational choice at that time, according to these terribly serious experts.

From a Krauthammer Foreign Policy Research Institute speech:

That’s why the entire enterprise of changing the culture of the Arab world was undertaken. It was, as I and others had said at the time, a radical idea, an arrogant idea, a risky idea. But it was also the only idea of any coherence and consistency that anyone has advanced on how to change the underlying conditions that had led to 9/11 and ultimately to prevent the kind of conditions that would lead to a second 9/11.

When Ron Paul points to blowback from our own policies as a root cause of animosity towards the US that is unserious and not an "idea of any coherence and consistency." Killing fewer Arabs and meddling less in Arab affairs is likewise off the table, along with diplomacy of any kind. The only serious option, according to Krauthammer, is to wield American power like a hammer.

At every step along the way it is the unserious voices that have proven correct on Iraq. Time after time Krauthammer and his friends are wrong, while the people unworthy of consideration are correct.

We Americans, looking at a situation like the one that has unraveled in Iraq, immediately want to blame ourselves.
[...]
Nonetheless, the root problem is not the United States and not the tactical errors that we have made in Iraq. The root problem is the Iraqis and their own political culture.
[...]
I think that has a lot to do with Iraqi history.
[...]
But the problem, I believe, is Iraq’s particular culture and history. This after all is a country that was raped and ruined for thirty years by a uniquely sadistic and cruel and atomizing totalitarianism. What was left in its wake was a social and political desert, a dearth of the kind of trust and good will and sheer human capital required for democratic governance. All that was left to the individual in Iraq was to attach himself to a mosque or clan or militia. That’s why at this earliest stage of democratic development Iraqi national consciousness is as yet too weak and the culture of compromise too underdeveloped to produce effective government enjoying broad allegiance.

Plenty of unserious voices warned of exactly these problems well in advance; their concerns about the history and people of Iraq were ignored. The only rational choice was to invade Iraq -- who could have predicted that our efforts there would go disastrously? Who could have predicted that Shia and Sunni's violence was not "pop sociology" but a likely scenario? Who could have possibly known about the culture and history of Iraq in advance, by say reading a book or using Google? Not our serious experts.

Now these serious voices, having told us for years that democracy in Iraq would transform the Middle East, are coming to realize what the unserious non-experts warned us of: that democracy is not a panacea and that a democratic government may be ineffective and reject the US for Iran; that the country could splinter along tribal lines; that the entire enterprise of reshaping Iraq in our image was pure folly to begin with. Yet even now they are the voices we should be listening to. They told us to invade Iraq and install democracy, now they argue that we should bring down that same democratically elected government. It doesn't have to make sense -- they are the experts, and we should listen to them unquestioningly.

We Need to be More Brutal in Iraq?

2007-08-23T23:27:00.000-04:00

Right-wing war advocates constantly repeat that the Iraq War is going poorly because we aren't being brutal enough -- without explaining how more brutality would help or what that brutality should consist of exactly. Beyond thin sloganeering the efficacy of increasing brutality is never directly addressed.

The Daily Show just ran an interview with Lt. Col. John Nagl, author of Counterinsurgency Field Manual. His point can be accurately summarized as "use the minimum force required to get the job done." (Nearly but not quite an exact quote) His reasoning was logical and therefore entirely unfamiliar to the bloodthirsty right-wing war advocates. "Winning hearts and minds" is not a slogan, it's a valid strategy; hearts are not won with blood and minds not won through despair.

Treating Iraqi people with respect and kindness, investing in infrastructure, making sure only the right people are apprehended and killed while protecting the innocent -- these ideas are entirely obvious and exactly what most chicken-hawks oppose. For them the answer is always the same: more gore, more bombs, more torture, regardless of effectiveness. In their fantasy-land insufficient violence is always the problem.