GOING DOWN

The Democrats are winning the Social Security fight in a big way right now, and all they have to do to win decisively is refuse to pull the Repubs out of the mess they’ve created for themselves. Despite his promises to offer up a plan, Bush won’t be the first to make a concrete proposal that includes either benefit cuts or payroll tax increases (and no workable proposal is possible without them). Congressional Republicans won’t move first without Democratic cover, and they aren’t getting that. And no one wants to talk honestly about what this will cost in a budget already exploding in red ink despite all of Bush’s phony accounting numbers

http://dailykos.com/story/2005/2/27/135326/413
[Matt Yglesias] Josh Marshall hints that some dastardly Democrat is contemplating a deal with Lindsey Graham wherein "current payroll tax revenues are left in place for now and private accounts are funded in whole or in part from new payroll tax revenues generated by raising or even lifting the payroll tax cap." This is a moderately bad idea on policy terms, and a simply terrible political idea.

Most crucially, the House Republican leadership has already ruled it out. Thus, the only possible effect of brokering a compromise of this sort with moderate Senate Republicans would be to create a conference committee in which whatever concessions the GOP makes to turncoat Democrats will be purged from the bill. Then, having already conceded the high ground on the need to "do something" and on the point that the "something" ought to involve private accounts, turncoat Democrats will be forced to argue that the only problem with the conference report on the phase-out is that it doesn't raise taxes. This will, at best, transform a political winner for the Democrats into a political loser and, at worst, lead to the passage of a bad phase-out bill.

Democrats are winning this fight, and should accept nothing less than surrender. Once the GOP has given up on phasing out the plan, we can either start a serious conversation about finding a balanced approach to Social Security reform, or else move on to addressing more pressing fiscal issues. Until then, trying to compromise with a party that knows no procedural or ethical restraints on its conduct and that's led by a president who's apparently hell-bent on destroying Social Security is a losing deal.

http://yglesias.typepad.com/matthew/2005/02/no_mercy_no_ret.html
No Mercy, No Retreat, No Surrender
[Matt Yglesias] Republican legislators are stuck between the hard place of their donor base and the rock of public opinion. As the Post article details, they're looking for a face-saving compromise, an "exit strategy," and some bipartisan cover. It would be absurd for Democrats to offer this to them. The party's goal should be to smash the stuck members. Once, in Maine, I went to a big lobster cook on the rocky coast where you had to break the shells by putting the cooked crustacean down on the rocks, then picking up a smaller rock and slamming it into the lobster. Bam! Bam! That's how it should be.

http://blogs.salon.com/0003379/2005/02/26.html#a596
[David Johnson] You know a television show is on its last legs when it adds a cute child actor in a last ditch attempt at ratings. It happened to "The Brady Bunch." It happened to "All in the Family." It happened to "Different Strokes," "The Cosby Show" and "Family Ties.". . . And now it's happening to President Bush's travelling road show for Social Security reform (or, as Josh Marshall likes to call it, "Bamboozlepalooza"). . .

Postscript: Tbogg reminds us that Dennis Prager once claimed that the "politicization of children" was a symptom of the liberal disease. . .

http://yglesias.typepad.com/matthew/2005/02/when_to_comprom.html
[Matt Yglesias] When I argue that Democrats shouldn't compromise on the question of Social Security privatization, keep in mind that what I mean is that "Democrats shouldn't compromise on the question of Social Security privatization." If and when Republicans, having been beaten into a bloody pulp, decide to surrender on the question of Social Security privatization, there are three other issues in the neighborhood of Social Security privatization that it would be excellent to find compromises on.

More: http://billmon.org/archives/001729.html

Talk about “smokin’ em out” – after the Republican “it’s a crisis” ploy failed, after the “we’re just trying to save it” ploy failed, after the “it won’t cost any money and everyone’s benefits will go up” ploy failed, after the “why won’t the Democrats spell out their alternative first” ploy failed, they have been reduced now to the necessity of admitting what they were really about all along: eliminating Social Security

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2005_02/005737.php
[Kevin Drum] It's true that some conservatives believe that creating a country of stockholders will also create a country full of people dedicated to corporate growth, and therefore a country that's more sympathetic to the goals of the Republican party. But I think that misses the forest for the trees.

The truth is simpler, although it's not something that any savvy conservative will admit these days: they just don't like Social Security and they want to get rid of it. They didn't like it in the 30s when FDR first proposed it; they didn't like it in the 50s when Eisenhower made his peace with it; they didn't like it in the 60s when they nominated Barry Goldwater for president; and they didn't like it in the 80s when David Stockman briefly tried a frontal attack on benefits but then retreated to a strategic hope that rising payroll taxes would eventually inspire a workers revolt against the whole system. (It didn't work.)

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2005_02_27.php#004929
Phase-out "hits a wall" in Texas, reports the Houston Chronicle. Rep. DeLay says he's "very disappointed" that only a third of GOP reps. held meetings in their districts last week.

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2005_02_27.php#004934
Brennon Morioka, Hawaii GOP chairman: "I think Social Security as it is has served its purpose."

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2005_02_27.php#004932
"Former U.S. House Majority Leader Dick Armey said Friday that Social Security should be phased out rather than saved."

[NB: Perfect! Now let’s have a debate about the true Bush/GOP agenda, and make the 2006 elections a referendum on that proposal]

How badly is the USA Next attack on AARP backfiring? Very, very badly

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-outlook28feb28,1,4741916.column
[Ron Brownstein] As synonyms for the word "vile," my thesaurus offers some of the following: offensive, objectionable, odious, repulsive, repellent, repugnant, revolting, disgusting, sickening, loathsome, foul, nasty, contemptible, despicable and noxious. . . Any of those words would aptly describe the advertising attack launched last week against AARP, the largest advocacy group for seniors, by the conservative interest group USA Next. But there's one word that unfortunately can't be applied: surprising.

http://mathewgross.com/blog/archives/001239.html
[Howard Fineman] A well-funded conservative group called USA Next posted a Web page with two pictures: a camouflage-clad American GI with an X painted on him; two men in tuxedos kissing, with a checkmark on them. The caption: "The REAL AARP Agenda." The ad was justified, the group argued, because the Ohio branch of AARP had opposed an anti-gay-marriage referendum in the state. (The national body has taken no position on that or other cultural issues.). . . White House insiders insist that the attack wasn't their idea. . . Next up: an attack on what Jarvis sees as AARP's "support" for gun control.

http://msnbc.msn.com/id/7038359/site/newsweek/
AARP prepares to punch back on Social Security

Biden pummels Santorum: “a minor masterpiece of counter-bamboozlism”

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2005_02_27.php#004935

Full text: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/7041426/

Okay, maybe it’s time to change the subject: how about that glorious victory for freedom and democracy in Iraq?

http://atrios.blogspot.com/2005_02_27_atrios_archive.html#110952570867555616
[Atrios] Okay, have we had enough distance between now and the Iraqi elections that the patriotically correct police won't freak out if I suggest that the violence in Iraq isn't exacty getting any better?

http://www.juancole.com/2005/02/8-dead-in-mosul-uia-visits-sistani.html
The Christian Science Monitor points out that the American idea of making Iraqis in parliament come up with a 2/3s majority to form a government may create permanent gridlock. The religious Shiites, who have 54 % of the seats in parliament, must now find a way to compromise with the Kurds.

[NB: Thought experiment time -- what would it do to the US political system to require that legislation needed a 2/3 majority to pass each house of Congress?]

More: http://dailykos.com/story/2005/2/27/135326/413

Oooh, ouch. Okay, how about Bush’s good pal “Pooty-poot,” a good man in his soul, Bush tells us

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2005_02/005740.php
Russia agreed today to provide fuel for an Iranian nuclear reactor and sought to assure a wary world that tough safeguards would prevent any diversion of the fuel to build weapons. . . It came only three days after President Bush, who has sharply denounced the Iranian program, expressed his trust in President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia and joined with him in saying that Iran should not have nuclear weapons.

John McCain suggests a different approach: http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=584&e=1&u=/nm/20050227/pl_nm/nuclear_iran_usa_dc

Okay, not so good. How about Bush’s stance on gays?

http://www.first-draft.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=2289&mode=thread&order=0&thold=0
[Athenae] At least President Bush is now on tape saying he won't "kick gays." He leaves that to surrogates. It's gay people and teenagers being denied potentially life-saving sex education who ultimately are the real victims of the larger agenda of the decency crusaders, which is not to clean up show business, a doomed mission, but to realize the more attainable goal of enlisting the government to marginalize and punish those who don't adhere to their "moral values."

Ecch. Well, at least everyone can agree that NCLB is a great success, right?

http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/ssistory.mpl/metropolitan/3059865
[Texas!] Gov. Rick Perry, one of the most stalwart backers of President Bush's No Child Left Behind education policy, said Sunday that he nevertheless backs the Texas education commissioner's challenge to the federal law over standardized testing of special-education students. . . Texas exempted nearly 10 times the desired number of students from regular standardized testing, even after its request for a waiver to do so was denied by the U.S. Department of Education, which is led by former Houstonian Margaret Spellings.

More Bush (Philosophy) 101

http://bestoftheblogs.com/2005_02_28_bestof.html#110955573071538825
Before the dawning of the age of George Walker Bush, I had always thought the notion that objective truth does not exist was the premise of a silly parlor game invented by wacky French philosophers to amuse a small group of tenured, Volvo-driving, American-Express-card revolutionaries at America’s finer land-grant institutions. . .

[NB: Hey! I don’t drive a Volvo!]

Wow

http://bestoftheblogs.com/2005_02_27_bestof.html#110956065543072638
From bondage to spiritual faith.
From spiritual faith to great courage.
From great courage to liberty.
From liberty to abundance.
From abundance to selfishness.
From selfishness to complacency.
From complacency to apathy.
From apathy to dependence.
From dependency back again to bondage.

-- Alexander Tyler, professor at the University of Edinburgh, 1750

Women who blog

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2005_02/005739.php

What you DIDN’T see at the Oscars

http://talkleft.com/new_archives/009868.html
Robin Williams....censored tonight at the Oscars. ABC has refused to let him sing a cartoon ditty that made fun of Rev. James Dobson and his SpongeBob SquarePants criticism. Then it refused his proposed changes. . .

Overnight, Mr. Shaiman and his partner, Scott Wittman, dashed off a mock exposé of the dark underbelly of cartoonland for Mr. Williams to deliver, over a gospel-music groove, as if he were a full-throated preacher inveighing against other newly-discovered sinners in the nation's midst:

"Pinocchio's had his nose done! Sleeping Beauty is popping pills!/ The Three Little Pigs ain't kosher! Betty Boop works Beverly Hills!". . . "Fred Flintstone is dyslexic, Jessica Rabbit is really a man, Olive Oyl is really anorexic, and Casper is in the Ku Klux Klan!". . . "Chip 'n Dale are both strippers," "Bugs Bunny's a sexaholic," and "Josie and the Pussycats dance on laps.". . . "The Road Runner's hooked on speed" and "Pocahontas is addicted to craps."

Bonus item: Ann Coulter gets so unspeakably filthy that even her own syndicate rewrites her stuff

http://talkleft.com/new_archives/009870.html

Double bonus: more filth. Read, laugh, shake your head

http://bestoftheblogs.com/2005_02_28_bestof.html#110958969502880907

***If you enjoy PBD and support what we are doing, you can help by forwarding a copy of this issue to your friends (using the envelope link below) or by sending them a copy of its URL (http://pbd.blogspot.com).

I don't get anything personally out of this project, except the satisfaction of doing it (I don't run ads, etc). The credit really all goes to the people whose material I copy and redistribute. But if I do have a "mission," it is to get this information into the hands of as many people as I can.***
- posted by Nick Burbules @ 6:08 AM

 
DISCONTENT IN THE RANKS

Right now, the Democrats are winning on Social Security, leading for 06

http://www.boston.com/news/nation/washington/articles/2005/02/27/a_top_democrat_takes_up_cudgel/

http://dailykos.com/story/2005/2/27/04259/5929

Not only is Bush not backing off S.S. -- he wants to accelerate the process (be our guest, George)

http://www.cnn.com/2005/ALLPOLITICS/02/26/bush.radio/index.html

http://www.salon.com/news/wire/2005/02/26/bush/
"We need to act now to fix Social Security permanently," he said Saturday in a radio address aimed at Congress.

Meanwhile, all around the country, GOP officials are getting an earful from their local constituents (if they dare to meet with them at all) – a cross section of the many examples listed recently by Josh Marshall

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2005_02_27.php#004927
Rep. John Mica (R) of Florida phones in to the Associate Editor of The St. Augustine Record from his phase-out bunker.

Mica, who is holding no meetings on Social Security this week or apparently even in his district this week, tells Margo Pope that "the details are sketchy," and he'll wait for more before taking a position. As for private accounts, said Mica from his undisclosed location, "I am concerned about making any investments (of Social Security) funds in speculative funds."

Apparently he was even more concerned two years ago when he responded to an AARP questionnaire by pledging: "I do not support replacing any part of the current Social Security system with individual accounts.”

Mica's district has the 12th highest numbers of retirees of any in the country and he wouldn't even show his face in his district last week.

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2005_02_20.php#004918
In a townhall meeting on Social Security in Beverly Shores this week, Rep. Chris Chocola (R) of Indiana got a question many members have been getting this week. . .

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2005_02_27.php#004925
Rep. Capito (R) of West Virginia feels the heat in the district on Social Security, says she'll urge fellow Republicans to "be really cautious about what we do."

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2005_02_27.php#004924
Rep. Tom Davis (R) of Virginia -- he of the dry powder -- apparently got an earful at his townhall meeting in Fairfax today. . .

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A56464-2005Feb26.html
President Bush is still in the opening phase of a campaign to sell the public and Congress on his ambitious plans for Social Security, but some Republicans on Capitol Hill have decided it is not too early to begin pondering an exit strategy. . .

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2005_02_27.php#004926
Sen. Chuck Grassley (R) of Iowa tells the Times, in so many words, that unless the president can pull off a major turnaround in public opinion on this issue, it's over. He goes on to say: "I think 90 percent of the lifting is with the president. That process is starting, but it's starting very slow because too many Republicans and Democrats - how would you say it? - don't have the confidence that this issue is ever going to come up."

Thanks to David Meyer, a list of the corporate sponsors and other front organizations lining up to kill Social Security

http://fugop.blogspot.com/2005/02/right-wing-social-security-network.html

And an update on O’Neill/USA Next ties: http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2005_02_27.php#004923

More Bush 101: it’s not the product, it’s the ad campaign

http://politicalwire.com/archives/2005/02/26/bush_administration_spends_more_to_control_message.html

Keep it up George: this is a REALLY great idea (using a nine-year-old spokesman for his Social Security plan)

http://fugop.blogspot.com/2005/02/progress-for-america-manipulating.html
[NYT] Progress for America, which spent almost $45 million backing Mr. Bush last year, plans to lay out $20 million on Social Security this year. It has spent $1 million on television commercials and is working to send experts around the country. Among them are Thomas Saving, a trustee of the Social Security Trust Fund; Rosario Marin, a former United States treasurer; and one really, really young Republican. Noah will not be eligible to collect Social Security for nearly 60 years.

Noah will travel to a handful of states ahead of visits by the president and will go on radio programs, answer trivia questions and say a few words about Social Security. Though he is obviously not an expert (and not really a lobbyist, either), officials say the effort is a lighthearted way to underline Mr. Bush's message. . . "What I want to tell people about Social Security is to not be afraid of the new plan," Noah said. "It may be a change, but it's a good change."

The trip was a brainchild of Stuart Roy, a former aide to Representative Tom DeLay, Republican of Texas. . . Mr. Roy knew Noah because the boy lives in suburban Houston, part of Mr. DeLay's district, and the House majority leader has met him. "We'll have Noah there as the face of Social Security reform," Mr. Roy said. "It's about the next generation."

And while we’re all focused on Social Security, as my colleague Jan Pieterse points out, let’s not forget about the other horrible domestic policies Bush is sneaking through: class action suit restrictions (aka “tort reform”); bankruptcy limits (if you’re a poor shlub and not a big corporation); and MEDICAID cuts

http://yglesias.typepad.com/matthew/2005/02/and_now_for_som.html
For all the talk about Social Security, we haven't heard much about the other entitlement on the Bush chopping block -- Medicaid. The plan here is, in many ways, the very apotheosis of the Bush method of governance. Medicare and Medicaid are very different programs, but they both face rising costs for basically the same reason -- the development of new health care technologies leads spending on health care to go up. Medicare is hard to cut thanks to the fact that it's beneficiaries (middle class old people) are politically powerful. Medicaid, whose beneficiaries are poor, is easier to take the ax to.

Governors revolt: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/02/27/politics/27govs.html

What the Shiites are telling us, and what they are telling their own countrymen

http://www.needlenose.com/node/view/1152

In Iraq, as in Afghanistan, we publicly condemn warlords and regional militias, while secretly encouraging them when their tribal conflicts reinforce our policy aims (i.e., the insurgents we like versus the insurgents we don’t like)

http://www.needlenose.com/node/view/1155

More: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/02/27/international/middleeast/27militia.html

Chalabi - never quit, never concede

http://www.tnr.com/blog/iraqd?pid=2568
[Ahmed] Chalabi, who appeared at the news conference with [United Iraqi Alliance nominee for prime minister Ibrahim] Jafari, said he had ended his candidacy "for the unity of the alliance."

--Los Angeles Times, February 23

Frustrated and worried, 30 supporters of Ahmad Chalabi met yesterday at the home of their candidate for prime minister and formed a caucus that may vote against the United Iraqi Alliance which just nominated Ibrahim Jafari for prime minister, on key issues such as the drafting of the constitution. . . One of the organizers of the meeting, UIA delegate Mudhar Shawkat, told The New York Sun yesterday that he expects to pry at least 50 total legislators from the 140-person UIA slate for his caucus. He said yesterday that he expected the new group to nominate its own secretariat and meet weekly inside the new 275-person transitional Assembly to discuss legislative strategy distinct from the dictates of the UIA slate. Mr. Chalabi could not be reached for comment.

--New York Sun, February 24

Another entry in the “stories you won’t see in U.S. newspapers” dept: Why Colin Powell was forced out (thanks to Juan Cole for the link)

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2004/11/21/wpow21.xml

CIA in trouble: waning power and autonomy, handy scapegoats for Bush failures

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A56278-2005Feb26.html

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/02/27/international/27intel.html

More: http://dailykos.com/story/2005/2/26/182612/025

Practical ethics. Thoughtful AND funny reflections on how progressives should handle GannonGate: is it anti-gay to “out” him for prostitution and pornography?

http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2005_02_20_digbysblog_archive.html

http://thepoorman.net/gl/article.php?story=20050225120811336

http://suburbanguerrilla.blogspot.com/2005/02/beltway-buzzlots-of-interesting-stuff.html
An absolute non-issue with the American print and TV media is the control by very powerful gays of the top policy levels of the White House. Growingly pointed comments inside the Beltway social clubs, homes and watering places about Karl Rove’s “good friend” ‘Jeff Gannon’ are being very thoroughly ignored by the mainline press.

There are two reasons for this crashing silence. One is the fact that a large number of powerful and wealthy Republicans are gay and do not want their wives and children to discover that. . . Karl Rove was seen by one of my people entering a private homosexual orgy at a five-star Washington hotel over the Mid-Atlantic Leather (MAL) weekend last year. . . Karl used to hang out at JR’s, which is on 17th between P&S, before he became so well-known. This is a “respectable” gay bar for discreet people who do not wear mesh panties, high-heeled pumps and wear terrible wigs. How many people know about these activities? In Washington, a hell of a lot of the prominent. But very few of them dare to open their mouths because of their own small problems. . .

When I get back a report I loaned to someone, I will be happy to discuss the background and current activities of Ken Mehlman, the head of the Republican Party. . . and others. Many others. And there are letters, too, and confidential reports. And more people to discuss with you and your readers.

[NB: This is a tough issue. I’m all for “outing” hypocrisy and networks of cronyism, gay or otherwise. GannonGate per se is all fair game, as far as I’m concerned. But there is a meanness and sensationalism to these kinds of (anonymous) reports that is a bit too gleeful – and of course, also casts doubt on their credibility. Still, as Susan Madrak points out, there is a serious dimension to this that could, and should, be investigated – but the “serious” press is scared to death to do so.]

Boxer, Clinton press election reform

http://dailykos.com/story/2005/2/26/204031/168

Still fighting in Ohio: http://suburbanguerrilla.blogspot.com/2005/02/still-goingheres-update-on-ohio.html

Fascinating: conservative commentary on how whacked-out the CPAC conference was

http://billmon.org/archives/001727.html

Sunday talk show line-ups

http://dailykos.com/story/2005/2/26/153445/863

Bonus item: Bush quotes Camus (oh, this is rich)

http://bestoftheblogs.com/2005_02_26_bestof.html#110943348320290522

***If you enjoy PBD and support what we are doing, you can help by forwarding a copy of this issue to your friends (using the envelope link below) or by sending them a copy of its URL (http://pbd.blogspot.com).

I don't get anything personally out of this project, except the satisfaction of doing it (I don't run ads, etc). The credit really all goes to the people whose material I copy and redistribute. But if I do have a "mission," it is to get this information into the hands of as many people as I can.***
- posted by Nick Burbules @ 8:17 AM

 
THESE BOOTS ARE MADE FOR WALKING

Why the assault against AARP could still work

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/02/25/opinion/25krugman.html?
[Paul Krugman] But before the anti-privatization forces assume that winning the rational arguments is enough, they need to read [What’s the Matter With Kansas?]

The message of Mr. Frank's book is that the right has been able to win elections, despite the fact that its economic policies hurt workers, by portraying itself as the defender of mainstream values against a malevolent cultural elite. The right "mobilizes voters with explosive social issues, summoning public outrage. . . which it then marries to pro-business economic policies. Cultural anger is marshaled to achieve economic ends."

In Mr. Frank's view, this is a confidence trick: politicians like Mr. Santorum trumpet their defense of traditional values, but their true loyalty is to elitist economic policies. "Vote to stop abortion; receive a rollback in capital gains taxes. . . Vote to stand tall against terrorists; receive Social Security privatization." But it keeps working.

And this week we saw Mr. Frank's thesis acted out so crudely that it was as if someone had deliberately staged it. The right wants to dismantle Social Security, a successful program that is a pillar of stability for working Americans. AARP stands in the way. So without a moment's hesitation, the usual suspects declared that this organization of staid seniors is actually an anti-soldier, pro-gay-marriage leftist front. . .

So it doesn't matter that Social Security is a pro-family program that was created by and for America's greatest generation - and that it is especially crucial in poor but conservative states like Alabama and Arkansas, where it's the only thing keeping a majority of seniors above the poverty line. Right-wingers will still find ways to claim that anyone who opposes privatization supports terrorists and hates family values.

Their first attack may have missed the mark, but it's the shape of smears to come.

USA Next a “junk mail and spam operation”

http://www.thereisnocrisis.com/node/3076

Fox News signs up as their publicist wing

http://mediamatters.org/items/200502250004

New developments on the focus group ads, claiming to be from the Social Security Administration to market-test pro-privatization propaganda. If it IS someone from SSA, that’s illegal. If it’s someone POSING as being from SSA, that’s illegal too. Which is it?

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2005_02_20.php#004909

Outrage #1: SSA Trustee signs on to become advisor and spokesman for pro-privatization group

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2005_02_20.php#004908

Outrage #2: Deputy Social Security Commissioner too

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2005_02_20.php#004915

“Bait and switch” -- Bush’s betrayal of red-state voters

http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2005/02/25/sellout/index.html

Ugh

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-social26feb26,1,1746749.story
After several months of relatively civil debate over President Bush's proposal to restructure Social Security, the gloves are coming off. . .

Double ugh

http://blog.dccc.org/mt/archives/002251.html
Meanwhile, a Jewish Republican group greeted [Dean's] election with an ad campaign that depicted him as a supporter of terrorism.

The full-page ads placed by the Republican Jewish Coalition in the Washington newspaper Roll Call and in Jewish weeklies around the country featured a picture of Hamas members in costumes resembling suicide bombers. Above the photo, referring to a long-recanted 2003 quote by Dean, was the statement: "DNC Chairman Howard Dean says, 'It's not our place to take sides.'"

Beneath the photograph, the ad features critical quotes from Democrats, including Sen. Joseph Lieberman of Connecticut and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi. At the time, Dean explained that he meant to say the United States needed a president who would be seen as an honest broker in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. . .

http://jameswolcott.com/archives/2005/02/lipstick_fascis.php
[Ann Coulter] "Press passes can't be that hard to come by if the White House allows that old Arab Helen Thomas to sit within yards of the president."

I wonder what would happen if a writer, say me, were to refer in a Vanity Fair column to "that old Jew Norman Podhoretz" or, naughtier still, "that old Jewess Lucianne Goldberg."

Why the media doesn’t want to talk about GannonGate

http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2005/02/25/gannon_coverage/index.html
"It's stunning to me that there are questions about the independent press being undermined and the mainstream press doesn't seem that interested in it," says Joe Lockhart. . .

More: http://www.prospect.org/weblog/archives/2005/02/index.html#005577

The conspicuous silence of the Christian Right on the Gannon affair (thanks to Doug Kellner for the link)

http://www.workingforchange.com/article.cfm?ItemID=18628

Others on the Right are talking about it, but their dishonesty and hypocrisy are pretty tough to swallow

http://yglesias.typepad.com/matthew/2005/02/powerline_on_gu.html

Digby waxes eloquent on the tribal divide in American society, and how the culture of Right Resentment leaves no quarter for compromise or acceptance of other points of view

http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2005_02_20_digbysblog_archive.html#110936080468434241

Bush proves a pushover for “Pooty-Poot”

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A53535-2005Feb25.html

http://badattitudes.com/MT/archives/000747.html

http://jameswolcott.com/archives/2005/02/gomer_says_hey.php
[James Wolcott] [O]y is it embarrassing watching him act like Andy of Mayberry with world leaders, praising Putin as an honest "fella," sorta inviting Chirac to visit the Crawford ranch since he's always "lookin' for a good cowboy," and referring to the members of the press as "a nice bunch of folks." It's wonder he didn't send in Aunt Bea to present the Russian premier with homemade chicken pot pie. Bush was less gauche and aggressive this trip, yet more of a sagebrush rube, playacting the part as if he thought it had made him a beloved character at home. The most interesting aspect of the press conference was how unamused and uncharmed Putin looked as Bush did his John Denver thank-God-I'm-a-country-boy shtick. He refused to play along. Unfortunately, the questions from the reporters present were so rambling and shambling that they didn't penetrate Bush's strawman act and throw him off script. Reporters seem to have forgotten how to ask brief, pointed questions that elude easy deflection; they talk out the clock. If the American reporters had anything other than rubber-tipped arrows in their armory, they would ask the president where this administration gets off lecturing other countries about human rights abuses and rollbacks of civil liberties when it's flying suspects to other countries to be tortured, abusing prisoners in Guantanamo, and running its own far-flung gulag archipelago. Lecturing Putin is an exercise in hubris when American liberty itself is under such rapid assault and decay.

More: http://www.salon.com/politics/war_room/archive.html?blog=/politics/war_room/2005/02/25/absurd/index.html

Bush on democratic values

http://www.discourse.net/archives/2005/02/bush_v_facts.html
It was an amazing moment: After the introductory comments, Andrey Kolesnikov, a correspondent for the Russian business newspaper Kommersant, got up and said -- albeit not so succinctly, and not in English -- Hey, no wonder you guys see eye to eye! You're both authoritarians. This prompted Bush to launch into a possibly unprecedented defense of himself as a democratic leader. He did it by describing his view of the country. . . [read on]

Lindsey Graham, everybody’s favorite Republican, speaks truth in Iraq

http://www.first-draft.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=2282&mode=thread&order=0&thold=0
"The Iraqi people are more empowered but the security situation is worse," he said. "We had a lot less freedom to move around. In many ways in terms of security it is not better off than [sic] all.". . . [more]

Serious business: Marine suicides up nearly one third last year. Man, how awful do things have to get for these tough guys to start packing it in?

http://www.first-draft.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=2273&mode=thread&order=0&thold=0

Halliburton’s $10 million “bonus” (no kidding). . .

http://www.first-draft.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=2279&mode=thread&order=0&thold=0
Bonuses are awarded based on, among other factors, how efficient and responsive the company is to requests from the Army, she said.

. . . and $1.5 billion in new contracts

http://majikthise.typepad.com/majikthise_/2005/02/halliburton_up_.html

Is the CIA turning into the all-purpose scapegoat for broader Bush policies? Does Goss care?

http://dailykos.com/story/2005/2/25/145344/760
CIA officials are increasingly fretful about being saddled with this secret prison network at a time of intense pressure from lawyers and human-rights activists. The CIA's anxiety only deepened last week when President Bush named John Negroponte, his ambassador to Iraq, as the country's first director of national intelligence. Negroponte, a demanding career diplomat, will take over the coveted president's daily brief, or PDB, from Goss. Bush sought to reassure the CIA that it would still be welcome in the Oval Office. But Bush also signaled that Negroponte would preside over a major shift in power in intelligence gathering. "John and I will work to determine how much exposure the CIA will have to the Oval Office," the president told reporters.

While it battles for influence in Washington, the agency is also fighting a rear-guard action against critics at home and abroad. Some CIA officials fear the White House is now exposing them to legal peril. New Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, under pressure while he awaited his confirmation hearings late last year, repudiated a controversial August 2002 memo that CIA officials carefully solicited from the Justice Department for legal authorization on renditions and the agency's treatment of Qaeda prisoners. Today the CIA has dozens of detainees it doesn't know how to dispose of without legal procedures. "Where's the off button?" says one retired CIA official. "They asked the White House for direction on how to dispose of these detainees back when they asked for [interrogation] guidance. The answer was, 'We'll worry about that later.'

Sistani blesses Jaafari

http://www.juancole.com/2005/02/5-us-troops-die-sistani-blesses.html

New ethics charges against Tom DeLay (is there ever a tipping point?)

http://rawstory.com/news/2005/index.php?p=129

Mitt Romney polishes up his talking points for 2008

http://www.first-draft.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=2271&mode=thread&order=0&thold=0
“Today, same-sex couples are marrying under the law in Massachusetts. Some are actually having children born to them. It's not right on paper. It's not right in fact. Every child has the right to have a mother and a father.”

New law defines bloggers as “representative[s] of the news media.” (I can’t figure out if this acknowledges our influence, or subjects us to new legal restraints)

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2005_02/005727.php

Bonus item: Condi’s boots – fashion reviews of Rice’s outfits in Europe

http://slate.msn.com/id/2114103/fr/rss/

***If you enjoy PBD and support what we are doing, you can help by forwarding a copy of this issue to your friends (using the envelope link below) or by sending them a copy of its URL (http://pbd.blogspot.com).

I don't get anything personally out of this project, except the satisfaction of doing it (I don't run ads, etc). The credit really all goes to the people whose material I copy and redistribute. But if I do have a "mission," it is to get this information into the hands of as many people as I can.***
- posted by Nick Burbules @ 7:21 AM

 
B.S. AND LIES

Tracking Rumsfeld’s pathetic lies about what he does and doesn’t know (thanks to Juan Cole for the link)

http://www.tomdispatch.com/index.mhtml?pid=2210
Rummy Dropped from the Loop?
What Didn't He See and When Didn't He See It?
By Nick Turse

The Frank Luntz playbook is full of things the GOP DOESN’T want people to know about: here’s a list so we can remind them (thanks to Kos for the link)

http://thinkprogress.org/index.php?p=319

The Social Security battle: this is going to get real ugly before it’s over

http://www.salon.com/politics/war_room/archive.html?blog=/politics/war_room/2005/02/24/aarp/index.html

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/02/24/opinion/24dowd.html

Snow job

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2005_02_20.php#004901
"If you are 20 or 30, the system cannot deliver those benefits, it can't afford them. In other words, it can't deliver on the promise."

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2005_02_20.php#004902
Snow said there are also economic benefits to the proposed changes. Businesses would not have to compete with the government to borrow money that might be needed to cover a Social Security deficit, there will be an infusion of investments to fund business expansion and job creation and payroll taxes wouldn't be raised.

[NB: This is what Harry Frankfurt means when he says, Bullsh-t is worse than lies: http://demagogue.blogspot.com/2005/02/bullshit-presidency.html and http://www.jelks.nu/misc/articles/bs.html]

Why the Democrats only have to maintain a united front to give Bush one of his most humiliating defeats (and what price they will pay if they don’t). A little reminder of what “responsible bipartisanship” has gotten them in the past

http://dailykos.com/story/2005/2/24/133415/554

More on tracing the roots, funding of “USA Next”

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2005_02_20.php#004897

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2005_02_20.php#004891

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2005_02_20.php#004888

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2005_02_20.php#004890

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2005_02_20.php#004892

http://www.prospect.org/weblog/archives/2005/02/index.html#005572

Arlen Specter still making trouble for the Bush judicial steamroller

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-specter25feb25,1,1539825.story

Probe of torture, prisoner abuse doesn’t include the guy who developed the new interrogation policies and “migrated” them from Gitmo to Iraq

http://www.boston.com/news/nation/washington/articles/2005/02/25/probe_leaves_out_ex_commander_at_guantanamo

In Iraq, chaos reigns (though you wouldn’t know it from the lack of press coverage) – and now Allawi (no doubt with US encouragement) threatens to tear the new govt apart

http://slate.msn.com/id/2114066/fr/rss/
Nobody fronts a surge in attacks in Iraq, where about 30 people were killed yesterday, including about a dozen by a suicide car bomb at a police station in Tikrit. . . Two GIs were killed in separate attacks. Just south of Baghdad, a bomb went off outside a local Shiite party HQ killing five, and bomb in the key northern city of Kirkuk killed two. Also, gunmen in Baghdad opened fire on a bakery, killing another two.

Yesterday's Christian Science Monitor included a dispatch from one reporter traveling with Marines near Fallujah saying the police forces of most towns in the area appear to be "completely compromised by the insurgents.". . . Today's CSM says many of the town councils created post-invasion "no longer exist." The paper profiled one council member last year; he's since been assassinated.

http://www.needlenose.com/node/view/1149
[Must-read]

After the European trip, everyone is talking about Bush’s newfound “flexibility” on Iran. Don’t buy it. He may like to talk about “listening” and “shared goals,” but his only view of internationalism remains “you join us” not “we’ll join you”

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A50242-2005Feb24.html

http://www.prospect.org/weblog/archives/2005/02/index.html#005563
Despite what Hadley says, the president is still resolutely opposed to actual American participation in the negotiations for reasons that, once again, he won't explain publicly. Nevertheless, "The Europeans say one reason is Mr. Bush's staunch opposition to rewarding what he considers bad behavior by having the world's superpower at the same negotiating table with a nation he sees as a rogue," which would seem to indicate that the Hadley Plan is not, in fact, going to be adopted. When asked at a press conference whether incentives would work, Bush "sidestepped the question." On Tuesday he did say that "This notion that the United States is getting ready to attack Iran is simply ridiculous," but then he added that "all options are on the table." Yesterday he further muddied the waters by offering: "yesterday I was asked about the U.S. position, and I said all options are on the table. That's part of our position. But I also reminded people that diplomacy is just beginning. Iran is not Iraq."

Last but by no means least, Bumiller reports that Bush doesn't seem to understand what the Non-Proliferation Treaty says. This is too bad, because what he seems to think it says is probably what it should say, and it would be a big step forward in combatting nuclear proliferation if the United States could try and lead a global coalition to revise it. It would also be nice to think that as the president of the United States tries to sort out a dispute within his own administration that may or may not lead the country into war, he would be paying pretty close attention to the relevant issues, but we're used to his odd management style by now.

A June attack after all?

http://www.salon.com/politics/war_room/archive.html?blog=/politics/war_room/2005/02/24/ritter/index.html

How the rest of the world views the dollar (thanks to Jan Pieterse for the link)

http://feeds.bignewsnetwork.com/?sid=916ebc2046ada2ba

Christopher Hitchens takes a serious look at the evidence of vote fraud in Ohio (thanks to Jessica Wilson for the link)

http://makethemaccountable.com/articles/Ohio_s_Odd_Numbers.htm

The Swifties re-emerge: now arguing that John Kerry and other Democrats have actively assisted Iran in developing nuclear weapons (and preparing for a Senate challenge to Kerry in 08)

http://www.salon.com/politics/war_room/archive.html?blog=/politics/war_room/2005/02/24/corsi/index.html

Connecting the dots: a fascinating exercise in creative speculation concerning Gannon, Rathergate, Plame and Karl Rove (thanks to Mathew Gross for the link)

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2005/2/23/213119/698

The redistricting wars: next up, Georgia (when will the Dems start getting aggressive on this? – they control some state legislatures too)

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2005_02_20.php#004893

Good sense on educational policy: but is there any chance Bush will heed it?

http://www.salon.com/politics/war_room/archive.html?blog=/politics/war_room/2005/02/24/nochild/index.html
The task force makes four key recommendations:

(1) Remove obstacles that stifle state innovations;

(2) Fully fund NCLB and provide states with the financial flexibility they need to meet its goals;

(3) Remove the "one-size fits all method" for measuring student performance and replace it with "more sophisticated and accurate systems" that measure the growth of individual students; and

(4) Recognize that some schools have it harder than others, and that there are differences between schools in rural, urban and suburban areas.

The Bush administration is not amused. Ray Simon, Bush's assistant secretary for education, told USA Today that the report "could be interpreted as wanting to reverse the progress we've made." He said that kids "must be challenged to reach their full potential, not told to settle for someone else's lowered expectations. No Child Left Behind is bringing new hope and new opportunity to families throughout America, and we will not reverse course."

States' rights? What states' rights? For the Bush White House, Washington knows best. . .

Texas gets racial profiling backwards

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A51613-2005Feb24.html
A study commissioned by minority advocacy groups released Thursday found that police throughout Texas stop and search black and Latino drivers at higher rates than whites but that officers are more likely to find drugs, guns and other contraband on whites.

You know, that “disciplined, well-organized” Bush team looks like a bunch of unruly kindergarteners sometimes

http://politicalwire.com/archives/2005/02/24/white_house_aides_resist_job_moves.html

More efforts to tap into abortion clinic records

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A51799-2005Feb24.html

http://talkleft.com/new_archives/009830.html

Wead and Weed: why is the big story the release of the tape recordings and not what’s on them: Bush’s admission that he did marijuana, and probably cocaine, but refused to admit it when asked?

http://talkleft.com/new_archives/009824.html

The Right’s ongoing effort to eliminate or colonize every source of independent, critical thought continues: higher education is the latest battleground (thanks to Graham Larkin, Matthew Davidson, and A.G. Rud for the links)

http://discoverthenetwork.org/

http://aaup-ca.org/larkin_morethanastretch.html

Quote of the day (thanks to Salon for the link)

http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,5744,11989861%5E25377,00.html
[Outgoing Deputy Sect’y of State Richard Armitage] "The biggest regret is that we didn't stop 9/11. And then in the wake of 9/11, instead of redoubling what is our traditional export of hope and optimism we exported our fear and our anger. And presented a very intense and angry face to the world. I regret that a lot."

Bonus items: who knows where that hand has been?

http://politicalwire.com/archives/2005/02/24/another_foreign_affairs_faux_pas.html

http://politicalwire.com/archives/2005/02/25/quote_of_the_day.html

***If you enjoy PBD and support what we are doing, you can help by forwarding a copy of this issue to your friends (using the envelope link below) or by sending them a copy of its URL (http://pbd.blogspot.com).

I don't get anything personally out of this project, except the satisfaction of doing it (I don't run ads, etc). The credit really all goes to the people whose material I copy and redistribute. But if I do have a "mission," it is to get this information into the hands of as many people as I can.***
- posted by Nick Burbules @ 7:42 AM

 
MERITOCRACIES, REAL AND IMAGINARY

The Koufax award winners have been announced, and it’s an incredible lineup of winners. PBD did not win its category, but I want to thank all of you who voted for this blog and helped it reach the finals in its first year of existence. It’s a strange thing to be in a category like this (Most Deserving of Wider Recognition) and to want to do well, while realizing that there are so many good blogs out there who are also deserving of wider recognition. Several of the nominees in this category are among my own favorite blogs – so how could I really wish to do better than they did? Anyway, congratulations to all!

http://wampum.wabanaki.net/archives/001748.html

What a prince. So Bush schedules a “meet der people” session in Germany during his visit, but when his handlers find out they can’t script and control it as they are used to, they just go ahead and cancel it

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2005/2/23/13530/4955

More on W’s winning ways

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A47038-2005Feb23.html
Amid the smiles, the backslapping and cheerful joint statements coming out of President Bush's European trip, some troubling international fault lines are also coming into focus:

• Some Europeans are clearly suspicious that Bush is already gearing up to attack Iran. And when Bush passionately denied that yesterday -- but then immediately said he couldn't rule anything out, either -- the audience at the European Union's headquarters literally laughed out loud.

• In an overt show of teeth, Bush expressed "deep concern" over Europe's plan to lift the arms embargo against China, warning that any action that could threaten Taiwan might enrage the U.S. Congress.

• And Bush meets tomorrow with Russian President Vladimir Putin, who by some accounts is prepared to respond to any further criticism of his rollback of democratic institutions by raising his own concerns about American torture of Iraqi prisoners -- and Bush's own contested 2000 election.

http://www.prospect.org/weblog/archives/2005/02/index.html#005554
America's Iran policy may be failing, but the president wants to make clear that it's not his fault:

"The reason we're having these discussions is because they were caught enriching uranium after they had signed a treaty saying they wouldn't enrich uranium," Mr. Bush said in the southern city of Mainz on the banks of the Rhine. "They're the party that needs to be held into account, not us."

Well, yes, and crimes are caused by criminals, not ineffective police chiefs, but we still try to hire effective ones, don't we? Obviously, if Tehran would just agree to stop trying to build nuclear weapons all on its own, that would solve the problem. But wishing is hardly a policy. It's not clear whether the Bush administration's apparently principled objection to finding negotiated solutions to anything is pushing in the direction of letting Iran go nuclear (see also, North Korea) or of pushing us into a disastrous military confrontation (see also, Iraq), but this kind of finger-pointing helps no one.

Begin as you plan to continue. USA Next, Bush’s proxy in the AARP-bashing contest, brand themselves as liars right out of the gate. The good news is, they seem to be extremely bad liars

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2005_02_20.php#004883
CHARLIE JARVIS, CHAIRMAN, USA NEXT: We receive our funds from our base of 1.5 million individuals. Also we aggressively go after the support of very strong pro-free market businesses, business groups, associations, we're pretty aggressive about looking for free market supporters.

. . . But is it true? A May 2004 article in The Washington Monthly says that though

USA claims a nationwide network of more than one million activists ... [it] listed zero income from membership dues in its most recent available tax return

More: http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2005_02_20.php#004885

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2005_02/005714.php
After some blustering [from Jarvis] about how AARP is the "largest left liberal lobbying organization on the planet" and "we are going after them very aggressively," Judy Woodruff asked why the ad had suddenly disappeared:

WOODRUFF: Charlie Jarvis, is USA Next going to run this ad some more? Why did you only have it up for one day?

JARVIS: We were testing to see whether left liberal groups would overreact. And they did. The hypothesis was that they would focus on one single tiny image on one Web site.

WOODRUFF: And it worked.

JARVIS: It worked. By the end of yesterday, to show you how crazy the left liberal groups are and that they have a death wish on Social Security, they literally were having people call television stations all over the country to pull the ad that didn't exist. Remarkable.

You betcha, Charlie! You were just testing to see if us lefties would overreact. How sneaky of you.

Trying (badly) to cover-up the USA Next/GOP nexus. If it’s any reassurance, this group is off to an entirely feckless beginning – they sound like a bunch of complete goofuses, though admittedly goofuses with an awful lot of money to spend

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2005_02_20.php#004884

Part of the Bush plan, leaving full Social Security benefits in place for current recipients, is clearly intended to buy off their opposition. The Bush gang is relying on the assumption that old folks think like they do: “hey, screw the other guy if you want, just as long as you leave me alone.” Guess what – they don’t

http://www.prospect.org/weblog/archives/2005/02/index.html#005553
In part, I think, that's because America's retired and near-retired people aren't nearly the jerks that Republicans think they are. Nobody understands the value of Social Security -- not just for themselves, but for everyone -- better than the people who are actually retired, and many senior citizens seem to care about the well-being of future generations.

More: http://www.prospect.org/weblog/archives/2005/02/index.html#005561

Here’s another way Social Security can become Bush’s downfall: using SSA personnel and resources to promote partisan policies. Now originally, this was justified as part of SSA’s responsibilities to “educate” recipients about the program (though they were only “educating” in one direction). But actually, it’s even worse than that. Tell me if this sounds like “education” to you

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2005_02_20.php#004880
The Social Security Administration Communications Division is organizing a series of focus groups to solicit feedback from the public on preliminary marketing/communications materials, particularly those related to the privatization or partial privatization of Social Security.

[NB: Now education is one thing – but doesn’t this sound a lot more like SELLING?]

[NB: Update -- after being disclosed, the ad has now been pulled: http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2005_02_20.php#004882]

Oh, and by the way, it happens to be illegal

http://atrios.blogspot.com/2005_02_20_atrios_archive.html#110917214876056905
Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) filed a complaint against the Social Security Administration (SSA) in the District Court for the District of Columbia for failing to produce documents pursuant to Freedom of Information Act Request (FOIA). CREW had asked SSA to produce any records relating to contracts SSA may have entered into with any public relations firms.

NCLB gets trashed by bipartisan report (admittedly, this is my domain, but why Bush’s utter failure in educational reform isn’t as big a national scandal as his failure in Medicare reform, etc., is yet another example of how our rhetorical commitment to educational quality and equality doesn’t really match our actual level of effort and interest)

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/02/23/education/23cnd-child.html
A bipartisan panel of state lawmakers that studied the effectiveness of President Bush's No Child Left Behind initiative assailed it today as a flawed, convoluted and unconstitutional education reform effort that had usurped state and local control of public schools. . . It found that the law undermined other school improvement efforts already under way in many states, and it said that the law's accountability system, which punishes schools whose students fail to improve steadily on standardized tests, relied on the wrong indicators.

Yet another chapter in this administration’s continual willingness to distort and rewrite history when it inconveniently conflicts with their agenda

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A45323-2005Feb22.html
At the National Security Council's request, the White House excised a full chapter on Iraq's economy from last week's Economic Report of the President, reasoning in part that the "feel good" tone of the writing would ring hollow against the backdrop of continuing violence, according to White House officials.

The decision to delete an entire chapter from the Council of Economic Advisers' annual report was highly unusual. Council members -- recruited from the top ranks of economic academia -- have long prided themselves on independence and intellectual integrity, and the Economic Report of the President is the council's primary showcase. . . "This is extraordinary," said William A. Niskanen, a CEA member in the Reagan White House and the chairman of the libertarian Cato Institute. "The council has been unfortunately weakened."

Outgoing CEA Chairman N. Gregory Mankiw declined to comment.

Think Progress is producing a series of choice snippets from the 160-page Frank Luntz strategy document prepared for the GOP. Here is just a sampler

http://thinkprogress.org/index.php
President Bush likes to credit his massive tax cuts for the mega-rich for turning around the economy. According to Luntz, it’s time to cut it out. In his playbook, he writes, “Don’t assert that the tax cuts caused the economic recovery…we have never found a Republican who has effectively made the case for strong economic growth as a result of the tax cut. It has been tried and tried and tried and it just doesn’t sound credible.”

More: http://slate.msn.com/id/2113945/fr/rss/

Dems get aggressive in calling for a GannonGate investigation

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2005/2/23/143647/421

http://www.first-draft.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=2244

http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2005/02/23/more_gannon/
White House press secretary Scott McClellan originally told reporters that Guckert was properly allowed into press briefings because he worked for an outlet that "published regularly." But that's when the questions were about Talon. More recently McClellan offered up a new rationale. Asked by Editor and Publisher magazine how the decision was made to allow a GOPUSA correspondent in, McClellan said, "The staff assistant went to verify that the news organization existed.". . . That, apparently, was the lone criterion the press office used when Guckert (aka Jeff Gannon) approached it in February 2003 seeking a pass for White House briefings. . .

This is not how the White House press office has traditionally worked. "When I was there we didn't let political operatives in. It was completely contrary to what the press room should be used for," says Joe Lockhart, who served as White House press secretary to President Clinton during his second term. Asked what would have happened if a reporter from a clearly partisan operation, say "Democrats Today," had requested a White House press pass, Lockhart said that if the chief of the Democratic National Committee were attending an event at the White House, then perhaps the Democrats Today reporter might be allowed in for that one day. "But to be admitted as a reporter and sit in a chair and act like a reporter" for months on end the way Guckert did? "No," said Lockhart, "that's not within the realm of what [is] proper."

Giving new meaning to the term “wh-re”

http://americablog.blogspot.com/2005/02/thu-washington-post-gossip-piece-on.html
Trolling for a date: James Guckert (aka Jeff Gannon) is angling for an invite to the gala White House Correspondents' Association Dinner in April, saying his recent notoriety qualifies him as a great guest. "There is still time," he told Editor & Publisher this week. "There is always someone there trying to make news. Maybe this year it is going to be me." He also revealed that he's trying to line up paid speaking gigs, telling the trade mag: "There are people who are definitely interested in some of my behind-the-scenes work in the press room."

Yes, this is the same guy who, after being linked to gay escort sites a couple of weeks ago, posted on JeffGannon.com: "In consideration of the welfare of me and my family I have decided to return to private life."

Can’t stand the light: “Talon News” disappears

http://americablog.blogspot.com/2005/02/talon-news-go-dark.html

Sibel Edmonds: like many other sites, we’ve wondered for months why this story hasn’t taken root as a bigger national issue than it has. Well now some cracks are starting to open up. . .

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2005_02/005712.php

The fight for PM in Iraq isn’t over yet

http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2005/02/23/jaafari/index.html

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/02/23/international/middleeast/23cnd-iraq.html
Maneuvering over the makeup of the new Iraqi government intensified today after the interim prime minister, Ayad Allawi, confirmed that he would form a coalition to challenge the victorious Shiite alliance and the doctor it has selected as its candidate to become Iraq's prime minister.

More: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/02/24/international/middleeast/24iraq.html

http://www.juancole.com/2005/02/were-shiites-cheated-and-what-does.html
If the Daily Telegraph is right that Iyad Allawi hopes to form a government without either the Kurdish Alliance or the United Iraqi Alliance, then this whole bid of his for the prime minister post is a stalking horse for some other purpose. The UIA and the Kurds between them have 78 percent of the seats in parliament! And Allawi would need 66 percent to form a government. He says he will work with small parties, but aside from the Sunni Iraqiyun with 5 seats and the Communists with 2, most of the rest are Shiite and have already formed a coalition with the UIA. Allawi's only hope is to detach delegates from the United Iraqi Alliance in such numbers as to put into question that list's ability to dominate parliament. Even then he has no chance of becoming prime minister. He almost certainly is simply angling for a cabinet position, and using the threat of creating disunity in the UIA ranks by seducing some of its members as leverage.

Did the US jimmy the vote totals?

http://www.juancole.com/2005/02/were-shiites-cheated-and-what-does.html
Al-Hayat has a long interview with an "informed Iraqi source" who is close to US officials in Iraq. He maintains that the US officials there were astounded that the United Iraqi Alliance did so well, and that they felt helpless and resigned as the process unfolded. He says that they are now asking privately if the US shed so much blood and treasure in Iraq to help fundamentalist Shiite allies of Iran take over Baghdad.

Al-Hayat also today repeats the allegation that the US or the electoral commission somehow cheated the United Iraqi Alliance of an absolute majority in parliament. (Note that this argument completely contradicts the interview they did, which speaks of US helplessness before the results.) The argument that the Iraqi elections were fixed is, however, implausible. It is sometimes alleged that the Shiites should have done better than they did, given the Sunni Arab absence. But when the smoke cleared, the UIA did have a majority in parliament, so the allegation makes no sense.

Correction on the weeping Hakim photo

http://www.nytimes.com/ref/pageoneplus/corrections.html
The caption on Feb. 14 for a picture by Reuters with the continuation of an article about the Iraqi elections misstated the reason Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, a Shiite cleric, was weeping. He was participating in a mourning ritual as part of Ashura, a holy Shiite festival - not reacting to results showing that his political alliance had won a slim majority of seats. A second caption for a Reuters photo misstated the reason a Shiite was shown flagellating himself in a Baghdad procession. He was taking part in the same mourning ritual, not celebrating the election outcome.

Pentagon (surprise, surprise) seeks new powers to send Special Ops forces secretly into other countries

http://slate.msn.com/id/2113949/fr/rss/
The Post fronts word that the Pentagon has been pushing permission to send commandos into countries without giving U.S. ambassadors a heads up. That would break with long-standing tradition, and the State Department and CIA are both fighting the plan. Recently departed Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage said he ordered an aide to move against the proposal: "I gave [him] instructions to dismount, kill the horses and fight on foot—this is not going to happen." The Post says (deep down) that the battle has been smoldering for two years and "reignited" last month when Secretary of State Rice came on board. Rice apparently hasn't offered her opinion yet.

More: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A48522-2005Feb23.html

News from Mars

http://www.needlenose.com/node/view/1146
A US marine, captured on film killing a wounded Iraqi at point blank range during November's assault on Fallujah, will not be formally charged due to lack of evidence.

Bush’s America: the emergence of a military-theocratic coalition (thanks to Kos for the link). Churches used for military recruitment

http://shlonkombakazay.blogspot.com/2005/02/efficient-version-holy-st-its-fascist.html

[NB: For God and country: http://www.commondreams.org/headlines03/1016-01.htm]

Wead plans to give tapes of recorded conversations back to Bush

http://www.salon.com/politics/war_room/2005/02/23/wead/index.html

http://politicalwire.com/archives/2005/02/23/the_real_bush.html
Howard Fineman thinks the no-longer-secret tapes show a secret side of President Bush. "Far more revealing are the glimpses into the combative, even arrogant heart of Bush’s character -- and that of the Bush Clan. . . "

But Howard Kurtz says the tapes actually make Bush look good, "in the sense that there's very little separation between the Bush we hear in private, unaware that his pal has the recorder going, and the George W. Bush we have come to know in public."

[NB: Both are right]

Howard Kurtz’s unreliable moral compass

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2005/2/23/121551/278
TODAY

Howard Kurtz:
I'm not a fan of secretly recording conversations with a friend and then releasing them to the world.

THEN

Kurtz speaking of Linda Tripp's secret telephone recordings of Monica Lewinsky:
"I would have listened to those tapes in a heartbeat," Howard Kurtz, The Washington Post's media critic, told me months later.

GOP, shameless as always, comes up with a new line of argument to nullify the governor’s race in Washington state: suggesting with no basis of evidence that too many felons voted for the Democratic victor

http://www.cnn.com/2005/ALLPOLITICS/02/23/election.challenge.ap/index.html

Watch it, Buster! Yet another voice of independence, PBS, gets bullied and colonized by conservative voices (and the brainless Tucker Carlson continues his inexplicable rise to ubiquity)

http://www.first-draft.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=2253&mode=thread&order=0&thold=0

http://www.prospect.org/weblog/archives/2005/02/index.html#005555

Fox News, enemies of “political correctness,” are not beyond rewriting even other press reports to coincide with their in-house linguistic code

http://mediamatters.org/items/200502230006

Bonus item: now that torture is a legal tool of policy, maybe we can find new ways to make it work for us

http://dailykos.com/story/2005/2/23/231549/040

***If you enjoy PBD and support what we are doing, you can help by forwarding a copy of this issue to your friends (using the envelope link below) or by sending them a copy of its URL (http://pbd.blogspot.com).

I don't get anything personally out of this project, except the satisfaction of doing it (I don't run ads, etc). The credit really all goes to the people whose material I copy and redistribute. But if I do have a "mission," it is to get this information into the hands of as many people as I can.***
- posted by Nick Burbules @ 7:34 AM

 
WHILE WE SLEPT

PBD breaks real news. You all know that in October of last year a court ruling barred Rumsfeld and the Defense Dept from continuing to inoculate soldiers with anthrax vaccine without informed consent

http://washingtontimes.com/upi-breaking/20050215-104609-5442r.htm
A 1999 executive order by then President Bill Clinton required "informed consent" before administering the vaccine

http://proliberty.com/observer/20041102.htm
The upshot of the court's ruling on October 27, 2004, is that the anthrax vaccination program violated federal law from 1998 forward, at a minimum. Any order to submit to anthrax vaccination during the entire existence of the program was illegal. . . The soldiers that DoD discharged for refusing to take the shots are entitled to back pay and allowances from the date they were removed. . .

[NB: Someone working in a deployment readiness clinic told me that after this ruling the military continued routinely administering the shots: THEY JUST WEREN’T TELLING THE SOLDIERS WHAT THEY WERE]

Chalabi out, Jaafari in as PM

http://www.boston.com/news/world/middleeast/articles/2005/02/23/iraqi_shiites_pick_nominee_look_for_wide_support

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/iraq/la-fg-shiites23feb23,0,2966698.story

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/02/23/international/middleeast/23iraq.html

http://slate.msn.com/id/2113901/fr/rss/
Jafari, who lived in London until 2003, has talked plenty about respecting all groups in Iraq. And as the LAT notes, he was also behind a "move last year to make Islamic law Iraq's legal basis for dealing with issues such as marriage, divorce and inheritance.". . . The NYT sees the Jafari pick as setting the stage for a "potentially polarizing battle." Secularists, such as the Kurds and the still-in-the-game Iyad Allawi are "intent on sharply curtailing Jafari's powers or blocking him and his clerical-backed coalition." The other papers don't see a big showdown. The LAT notes that Allawi's "own party members give him virtually no chance" of taking on Jafari. . . USAT paints a more complex picture of Jafari. It cites one expert who said that for all the talk about his party's buddy-buddy relationship with Iran, Jafari actually left Iran for London in 1989 in order to be "less dominated by Iranian views."

http://www.prospect.org/weblog/archives/2005/02/index.html#005542
Though the Dawa party has long advocated a religious government, Jafari insisted it did "not aim to establish an Islamic state to apply the Islamic sharia," or law. Instead, it would establish a government "respecting human rights and applying justice and respecting the rights of women."

http://www.juancole.com/2005/02/breaking-news-jaafari-pm-candidate-for.html
Nic Robertson at CNN is saying that Jaafari was seen as a more unifying figure. You could interpret that statement in a lot of ways, but it is certainly true that Jaafari has a rhetoric of inclusion that stretches even to the people of Fallujah, whereas Chalabi wanted to punish all the Sunni Arabs who had had anything to do with the Baath Party (a lot of them).

http://www.juancole.com/2005/02/jaafari-slams-hilary-stephen-farrell.html
I take it that Hilary is laying out a Democratic Party strategy for the 2008 elections, which may well argue that Bush lost Iraq to Iran through his incompetence. The argument probably implies that Jaafari as a Muslim fundamentalist is not only close to Iran but will pursue policies and legislation that hurt women. . . These points are not without some validity. But maybe Baghdad just after the elections wasn't the best time and place for her to criticize positive feelings toward Iran on the part of Shiite politicians (which, I have pointed out, is sort of like criticizing the Irish for feeling positively about the Vatican). Jaafari is an Iraqi patriot and he has a right to be offended at the idea that he might be a puppet for Tehran. Still, it does seem inevitable that some canny Democrat will figure out that the US public has severe doubts about the Iraq adventure, and find a way to parlay that into political advantage.

http://www.juancole.com/2005/02/chalabi-is-prevailed-upon-to-withdraw.html
It turns out that the other members of the United Iraqi Alliance prevailed on Ahmad Chalabi to drop his bid to become candidate for prime minister. It is not clear if Jaafari, the winner, promised him anything in return for stepping down. AP suggests he might be a deputy prime minister for security and economic affairs. I'd say, keep that man away from money and security. . .

Charles Clover of the Financial Times, who has done some excellent reporting from Iraq, points to a cloud on the horizon. He says that Jaafari is committed to a vigorous de-baathification program, despite his commitment to reaching out to Sunni Arabs, and that the prospective prime minister may not understand the contradiction in his stances.

http://www.needlenose.com/node/view/1142
As I wrote a couple of weeks ago, the essence of Chalabi's approach was to make inflated claims of support in hopes of creating a self-fulfilling prophecy, so it's no surprise that he backed down in at the end. The question, as I raised yesterday, is what ransom his erstwhile Shiite allies had to pay to get him to stop holding their government-building effort hostage. . . If the rest of the United Iraqi Alliance's leadership is smart, whatever deal they've made with Chalabi, they'll renege on it as soon as the choice of a prime minister is final. As long as he holds a post of any influence whatsoever, Chalabi will spend all of his time maneuvering for more -- and forcing the UIA to waste much of its time trying to contain the damage.

How the U.S. press coverage STILL bends over backwards to be solicitous toward Chalabi

http://www.needlenose.com/node/view/1144

Iraqi election results: not good for women

http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2005/02/22/women/index_np.html

More fraud and corruption in Iraq: not only did the CPA badly mishandle U.S. funds, they also plundered Iraqi oil revenues that belonged to the Iraqi people (thanks to David for the link)

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2005/feb2005/oil-f22.shtml
Ginger Cruz, one of the US government auditors charged with monitoring coalition finances, told the BBC that in one instance $1.4 billion—which weighed 14 tons and was shrink-wrapped into bricks of $100 bills—was flown by helicopter from Baghdad to Erbil in the last days of the CPA’s rule. The money was then driven to the Central Bank where it was deposited without any receipt being issued.

Bush tries hard to make nice in Europe – even goes out of his way to praise their “french fries” (which is only slightly less dumb than making an issue by calling them “freedom fries” in the first place)

http://www.first-draft.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=2242&mode=thread&order=0&thold=0

I’ll bet this had ‘em rolling in the aisles in Brussels

http://bestoftheblogs.com/2005_02_22_bestof.html#110908458335642962
"We must always remind Russia, however, that our alliance stands for a free press, a vital opposition, the sharing of power, and the rule of law."

[NB: Everywhere but in the United States!]

Unfortunately, the strain of being civil just was too much for Bush, and he couldn’t let the day pass without sticking his thumb in their eye (again)

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A44219-2005Feb22.html?nav=rss_politics/administration/whbriefing
Not quite halfway through his European tour, President Bush was asked this morning: Is there anything to his visit beyond a charm offensive? What will make the second-term Bush presidency less dictating and unilateralist than the first? . . . Bush's answer, in short: Nothing. It's Europe that needs to get over the Iraq issue and move on. . . Here's how he put it:

"The major issue that irritated a lot of Europeans was Iraq. I understand that. I can figure it out. And the key now is to put that behind us, and to focus on helping the new democracy succeed."

But Bush himself isn't exactly putting Iraq behind him. He's still trying to justify it.

Meanwhile, the European leaders were polite to Bush; but behind the scenes. . .

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2005/2/22/11511/6400

http://suburbanguerrilla.blogspot.com/2005/02/mending-fencesnews-itemiraq-war.html

As for the European people, what they think about Bush was pretty evident

http://www.first-draft.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=2238&mode=thread&order=0&thold=0

Bush’s deficit spending puts the entire economy at risk: Bank of Korea pulls out of dollar, switches to Euro – a few more reports out of Asia like this and we really are screwed

http://www.first-draft.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=2240&mode=thread&order=0&thold=0
The dollar fell sharply in the foreign-exchange markets today after the Bank of Korea disclosed plans to step up its purchases of securities denominated in other currencies. . . The steep decline highlighted the continued weakness of the dollar, which stabilized early this year after hitting a record low of $1.3666 against the euro on Dec. 30 and raised the possibility that the American currency could fall further at any time.

http://atrios.blogspot.com/2005_02_20_atrios_archive.html#110913095636629196
The fact that quite a few central banks intend to perhaps slowly increase the proportion of other currencies in their pile of reserves isn't necessarily that big of a deal. At the very least we're probably beginning a period in which an advantage that the US has held for quite some time begins to unravel. Our position as the world's reserve currency gives us a little bonus. . . But, the fact is that China and Japan in particular have a real interest in propping up the dollar and treasury prices. A slow move a way from dollar dominance in central bank reserves on the whole isn't such a big deal -- but a decision by China and Japan to stop digging would be.

Bush’s big Saudi blind spot

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2005/2/22/122219/025
President Bush earlier this month dispatched top White House official Frances Fragos Townsend to head an official U.S. delegation attending an "anti-terrorism" conference in Saudi Arabia -- a conference that aired vile anti-Semitic and anti-Zionist canards. Saudi Cleric Aed Al-Qarni noted at the conference that "The first to kill and use terrorism in the world were the Jews". . . According to White House press secretary Scott McClellan, President Bush spoke with Saudi Crown Prince Abdallah on February 14th and "complimented the Crown Prince on last week's successful counter-terrorism conference in Saudi Arabia.". . .

Throughout and surrounding the conference, various Saudi clerics noted that "Jews and the Christians are Allah's enemies," and that Jihad -- including attacks by insurgents in Iraq -- is appropriate. In a poem read before Saudi Defense Minister Prince Sultan, it was noted that Osama bin Laden "was sent by the Jews."

A new code: when Bush says “having said that,” everything up to that point has been a lie

http://www.first-draft.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=2241&mode=thread&order=0&thold=0
And finally, this notion that the United States is getting ready to attack Iran is simply ridiculous. And having said that, all options are on the table.

[NB: so, which is it - “ridiculous,” or “still an option”? I think we know the answer. It's both!]

http://www.first-draft.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=2194&mode=thread&order=0&thold=0
Asked about reports of putting women closer to land combat, the president said: "There's no change of policy as far as I'm concerned. No women in combat. Having said that, let me explain. . .”

The Blink President

http://politicalwire.com/archives/2005/02/22/the_blink_president.html

“Torture by Proxy”

http://www.salon.com/politics/war_room/2005/02/22/rendition3/index.html

http://slate.msn.com/id/2113871/fr/rss/
Is the CIA running a "ghost" prison system in foreign countries?

Rape investigations in Iraq

http://www.first-draft.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=2243&mode=thread&order=0&thold=0

Pentagon to launch its own “news and information” cable channel

http://feeds.bignewsnetwork.com/?sid=4272a7ec26944f6c

Lieberman still playing fast and loose on Social Security

http://atrios.blogspot.com/2005_02_20_atrios_archive.html#110910397951890135

http://atrios.blogspot.com/2005_02_20_atrios_archive.html#110908099084335946

Look, it’s very simple: (1) No decent Social Security proposal can come out of this process, given the stance of the House GOP; (2) Therefore, any attempt to forge a “compromise” simply gives life to Bush’s dishonest and wrongheaded initiative; (3) The thing to do is to let the GOP twist in their own hypocrisy until they either admit their true agenda and put forth a proposal to gut Social Security, then hammer them for it, or watch them concede defeat in the face of their own manufactured “crisis.” This is leverage the Dems must use for 2006. GOP AARP-bashing makes it even easier.

http://atrios.blogspot.com/2005_02_20_atrios_archive.html#110911181255832005

http://www.prospect.org/weblog/archives/2005/02/index.html#005548

http://www.mydd.com/story/2005/2/22/173612/540

Well, the Republicans, at least, understand what this issue is all about

http://atrios.blogspot.com/2005_02_20_atrios_archive.html#110912524867948371
"Hey-hey, ho-ho, Social Security has got to go"

Bill Bennett gets involved in AARP-bashing (man, are there any of these guys who DON’T have nationally syndicated radio shows now?)

http://www.mydd.com/story/2005/2/22/185016/717

USA-Next, the GOP front organization assigned with trashing AARP, doesn’t even pretend to keep its funding and leadership separate from party hacks (of course, the Swifties didn’t either, and it never seemed to cost THEM)

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2005_02_20.php#004877

http://www.prospect.org/weblog/archives/2005/02/index.html#005547

Those "gay-lovin' soldier hatin' AARP" ads get pulled (gee, you think their sponsors had second thoughts?) The key is, not to let them erase the memory

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2005_02_20.php#004865

http://www.theleftcoaster.com/archives/003763.php

Bush’s antipathy to scientific evidence (when it doesn’t confirm his prejudices)

http://mathewgross.com/blog/archives/001229.html

What is really behind the malpractice insurance “crisis”

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2005_02/005703.php

Democratic strategies

Playing the redistricting card
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2005/2/22/135013/657

The Philosophy Gap
http://www.prospect.org/web/page.ww?section=root&name=ViewWeb&articleId=9215

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2005_02/005707.php

An overeliance on 527’s?
http://www.prospect.org/weblog/archives/2005/02/index.html#005541

Democratic ambivalence about their “grass roots”
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2005/2/22/132118/975

Meanwhile, the GOP knows its message, and sticks to it

http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2005_02_20_digbysblog_archive.html#110901276047047117
“The whole mainstream of the party is engaged in an effort that is a betrayal of America, what they care about is not winning the war on terror...I don't think they care about the danger to us as Americans or the danger to people in other countries. They care about power.”

[NB: Hint – this is the GOP talking about the Democrats. When is the last time you heard someone in the mainstream say anything like this about the Republicans?]

Internal GOP strategy document (no I haven’t read it yet – but stay tuned for upcoming analyses)

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2005/2/23/3244/72156

Remember Hinderaker’s “apology” yesterday for his profane and hate-filled screed? Well, on closer review it wasn’t much of an apology – as is typical for the “Responsibility Society” crowd, when they screw up it always seems to be someone else’s fault

http://www.crooksandliars.com/2005/02/21.html

Does the Right have no rhetorical boundaries at all? Will they ever be held to what they actually dare to say out loud?

http://seetheforest.blogspot.com/2005_02_01_seetheforest_archive.html#110909138824507896
Is there enough going on to make you nervous yet? The Vice President of the United States was the keynote speaker at a conference where other speakers called for "a new McCarthyism" to bring "terror" to intellectuals, saying "let's oppress them [liberals]," and "the entire Harvard faculty" are "traitors." A Congressman said, "America's Operation Iraqi Freedom is still producing shock and awe, this time among the blame-America-first crowd," ? Then he said, "We continue to discover biological and chemical weapons and facilities to make them inside Iraq."

Meanwhile, right-wing commentators talk about killing American journalists, their premier blogs talk about former president Carter as being on the side of the enemy and leftists have "seamlessly taken up the cause of Islamic fascism". I have provided only a few examples. . . [M]ore and more people are becoming concerned that the Right's rhetoric is growing ever more violent and totalitarian. . . [read on]

http://www.mydd.com/story/2005/2/22/17212/5188

http://talkleft.com/new_archives/009801.html

The Rovean anticonstitutionalist agenda (long, and very frightening) – thanks to Jessica Wilson for the link

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2005/2/22/111240/237

Blogging and “outlaw journalism” (thanks to Susan over at Suburban Guerrilla for the link)

http://stevegilliard.blogspot.com/2005/02/outlaw-journalism-and-blogs.html
Bloggers are not some new creation, but the newest set of the barbarians at the gates. They are the people who don't trust the system and it's artifacts. It is to writing, what rap is to music, the coming of democracy to a trade. What Thompson and his peers did in the 60's and 70's, we do today. But free of the constraints of editors and publishers and the need to hustle up work.

Women and blogging

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2005_02/005705.php

http://majikthise.typepad.com/majikthise_/2005/02/women_bloggers_.html

Ever since the “serious” national media told the blogosphere to “step aside, young ‘un, we’ll take over investigating the Guckert scandal now,” we have heard NOTHING about it. It’s just been swallowed up: local papers, on the other hand, are keeping it alive

http://mediamatters.org/items/200502230003

60 Minutes continues to pay the price for its Bush National Guard story: now Bill Burkett, the source of the forged memos, threatens to sue (though, again, it doesn’t seem that he should want to be forced to testify under oath about it)

http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2005/02/22/burkett_letter/index.html

Will there ever be an investigation into how Burkett got those documents, and whether they might have originated in a GOP “sting” operation?

http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2005_02_20_digbysblog_archive.html#110913550656176287

Unfortunately, the argument about vote fraud in 2004 will never be settled

http://www.inthesetimes.com/site/main/print/1970/

Bonus item: Don’t say you haven’t been warned (thanks to Best of the Blogs for the link)

http://www.adcritic.com/interactive/view.php?id=5927

***If you enjoy PBD and support what we are doing, you can help by forwarding a copy of this issue to your friends (using the envelope link below) or by sending them a copy of its URL (http://pbd.blogspot.com).

I don't get anything personally out of this project, except the satisfaction of doing it (I don't run ads, etc). The credit really all goes to the people whose material I copy and redistribute. But if I do have a "mission," it is to get this information into the hands of as many people as I can.***
- posted by Nick Burbules @ 7:30 AM

 
NOT QUITE ACCORDING TO PLAN

Yesterday we heard that the charmers who brought us the Swift Boat attacks on Kerry were locked and loaded to go after AARP for daring to disagree with Bush’s Social Security plan (yes, the same AARP who saved Bush’s Medicare plan) – well, we all know loyalty lasts only as long as the latest marriage of convenience for Bush and his gang, so today the attacks begin. You won’t believe it, but it isn’t a joke: the AARP hates our troops, supports gays

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2005/2/21/164929/948

Kos responds: http://www.dailykos.com/comments/2005/2/21/164929/948/225#225

Analysis: http://mathewgross.com/blog/archives/001228.html
This is likely to go down as one of the stupidest political moves of our lifetime. How do you spell b-a-c-k-l-a-s-h?. . . If the Dems play their hand right. . . they're likely to have legions of those gay-loving, military-hating AARP members pulling the lever for them in 2006.

http://yglesias.typepad.com/matthew/2005/02/vast_gay_old_pe.html
Now that word is out that the AARP is a bunch of Army hating fags, surely someone should point out that the president felt pretty damn good about the man-kisser in chief not long ago when Bill Novelli was invited to participate in the Medicare bill signing ceremony and getting appointed to a presiential commission.

Brilliant: inferring from the file name (“2.gif”) that there were other ads in preparation, an enterprising webster found the NEXT ads in the planned series

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2005_02_20.php#004862

Who are the people behind this nonsense? Josh does some digging

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2005_02_20.php#004855

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2005_02_20.php#004857

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2005_02_20.php#004863

Desperately Seeking an Analogy: the more the GOP flails around looking for a way to make their Social Security lies stick, the sillier they sound

http://yglesias.typepad.com/matthew/2005/02/conservatives_f.html

http://www.tnr.com/etc.mhtml?pid=2565

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2005_02_20.php#004864

Two explosive claims from Scott Ritter (based on. . . ?). One is that Bush has already signed off on a June attack on Iran. The other is that the US jiggled the vote numbers in Iraq to reduce the United Iraqi Alliance totals from 56% to 48% (they were expected to get close to 60%), to force them into dependency on the (pro-US) Kurds and other fragile coalitions. Now, I have no trouble believing these, but it would be nice to get it nailed down. The latter claim, apparently, will be forthcoming in a Seymour Hersh New Yorker piece (thanks to Jan Pieterse for the link)

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2005/2/20/221619/711

[NB: This puts a new spin on this photo of Hakim weeping after the results were announced. It was typically described as “tears of joy” – but perhaps it was “tears of frustration” http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6958807/0]

Chalabi wreaking havoc in the Shiite coalition (hey, he wants to be a uniter, not a divider)

http://www.needlenose.com/node/view/1139

[NB: Will he settle for Finance Minister? Fill in your own joke here]

Now, if you can believe it, Allawi is back in the mix too! Juan Cole tries to explain it all

http://www.juancole.com/2005/02/uia-will-hold-secret-ballot-chalabi.html
The strength of Chalabi's challenge, and Allawi's sudden hopes, need to be explained, and if readers will bear with me, I'm going to engage in a heuristic exercise (i.e. a thought experiment). I can't get exact enough data to simply say what the situation is, but I think I can lay out a scenario that is at least broadly plausible.

Another report that Mahdi (who dropped out and threw his support to Jaafari) is ALSO getting back in. It sure all looks like a frantic ABC (Anybody But Chalabi) effort is going on. What. . .a. . . mess

http://www.needlenose.com/node/view/1140

The disaster of Iraq reconstruction funds: what little has been spent has been spent corruptly and to little benefit (thanks to Jan Pieterse for the link)

http://www.ariannaonline.com/columns/column.php?id=758
By even the most charitable standard, the effort to rebuild Iraq has been an unmitigated disaster. A cornucopia of waste, fraud, ineptitude, cronyism, secret no-bid contracts, and profiteering cloaked in patriotism. There is the $9 billion the U.S.-led occupation government can't account for; the over 70 investigations into potential criminal cases involving U.S.-funded projects; the ongoing billing disputes with Halliburton, which despite having repeatedly ripped off taxpayers, continues to receive billion-dollar contracts; the $20 billion in Iraqi oil money kept track of by a single accountant; the study showing that up to 30 percent of reconstruction funds are being lost to fraud and corporate malfeasance. . . On top of the corruption is the fact that, because so little of the $24 billion in taxpayer money that Congress has earmarked for reconstruction is reaching ordinary Iraqis, two years after we cakewalked over Saddam, the Iraqi people are still facing massive food shortages, energy shortages, and woefully inadequate water and sewage systems. According to the Center for Strategic and International Studies, only 27 cents of every dollar spent on rebuilding Iraq has gone to actually improving the lives of its people, with the rest going to security, waste, overhead and fattening the bottom line of big U.S. corporations.

Despite this abysmal track record, Congress has all but relinquished its historic — and constitutionally mandated — role as government watchdog, one of the keys to our system of checks and balances. Instead, these days, our watchdogs have turned into lapdogs.

The state of Iraq

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2005_02/005699.php
The New York Times has the Brookings Institution's semi-annual "State of Iraq" summary in today's paper. Here's a summary of the summary (I know you're busy people):

• Oil and electricity production: getting worse.

• Car and telephone use: getting higher.

• Public opinion: moving against us.

• Number of trained Iraqi security forces: getting better.

• Strength of insurgency: about the same.

The most striking data point is (presumably) a result of more cars and less oil: the average length of gasoline lines is now one mile (the same as it was six months ago, but ten times as high as 18 months ago). At a guess, that means the average line is about 300 cars long and the average wait time is at least five hours — and probably more. Ouch.

Movin’ on up. How the glorious democratic victory in Afghanistan has improved the lives of people there

http://www.first-draft.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=2235&mode=thread&order=0&thold=0
In a new report examining Afghans' security, welfare and ability to control their own lives, the world body ranked the country 173rd out of 178 surveyed, with only five states in sub-Saharan Africa faring worse.

Secret prisons, secret torture, secret rendition, secret trials – and now, secret legal arguments

http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A40624-2005Feb20
ATTORNEYS FOR the Justice Department appeared before a federal judge in Washington this month and asked him to dismiss a lawsuit over the detention of a U.S. citizen, basing their request not merely on secret evidence but also on secret legal arguments. The government contends that the legal theory by which it would defend its behavior should be immune from debate in court.

Comment: http://talkleft.com/new_archives/009793.html

Bush “reaches out” to European leaders – but of course it’s all still, “join me on MY terms”

http://www.needlenose.com/node/view/1134

http://news.independent.co.uk/europe/story.jsp?story=613151

Funny. How GOP ideologues change their tune when they become governors and have real responsibilities

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2005/2/21/125229/962

More from the Powerline dust-up: Hinderaker apologizes

http://talkleft.com/new_archives/009789.html

But, as Digby asks, the underlying question is, What is the Right doing to political discourse?

http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2005_02_20_digbysblog_archive.html#110901276047047117
Like I said before, there is something very strange going on in rightwingland. The more power they have the madder they get. Any psychologists out there care to weigh in on this strange psychosis?

For example: http://www.salon.com/comics/tomo/2005/02/21/tomo/index1.html

Susan over at Suburban Guerrilla may be onto something: retabulating US death totals in Iraq to see if the govt is systematically undercounting

http://suburbanguerrilla.blogspot.com/2005/02/in-memoriamtoday-im-going-to-do.html

Wead’s tapes apparently have even more explosive Bush comments, if he ever chooses to release them

http://slate.msn.com/id/2113572/fr/rss/

I seriously doubt this story (from the British tabloids), but it’s all over the blogosphere, and its almost crazy enough to be believable: Bush tells Camilla she isn’t welcome to stay at the White House

http://www.sundaymirror.co.uk/news/news/tm_objectid=15209578&method=full&siteid=106694&headline=camilla-banned-from-white-house-name_page.html
Insiders point out that hosting a lavish Royal dinner for Charles and Camilla would be bad PR for President Bush because while Princess Diana is still much loved by many Americans, her ex-husband is seen and dull and aloof - and both he and Camilla are widely blamed for the break-up of his marriage.

Bonus item: Bush’s trademark smirk – a photo essay

http://www.first-draft.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=2232&mode=thread&order=0&thold=0

***If you enjoy PBD and support what we are doing, you can help by forwarding a copy of this issue to your friends (using the envelope link below) or by sending them a copy of its URL (http://pbd.blogspot.com).

I don't get anything personally out of this project, except the satisfaction of doing it (I don't run ads, etc). The credit really all goes to the people whose material I copy and redistribute. But if I do have a "mission," it is to get this information into the hands of as many people as I can.***
- posted by Nick Burbules @ 6:41 AM

 
OUR GUY, AND THEIR GUYS

A wonderful WP profile of George McGovern, now 82. If you can allow me this: McGovern was my first chance to vote, the first campaign where I worked for a candidate, the only Presidential candidate I ever heard speak live. I look back on my own ideals, and the spirit of his campaign, as pretty naïve today – and of course we got trounced, terribly, by Richard Nixon even AFTER Watergate stories had already started to come out. And yet. . . it is good to remember a time when someone could run for President whom you didn’t have to hold your nose to vote for, a person of real principle and conviction, a person who truly believed in – and appealed to – the basic goodness of America (though he turned out to be wrong about that). If you weren’t around during the 70’s, here’s your chance to meet a good man

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A27100-2005Feb15.html

Chalabi CLAIMS to have the votes to cinch the PM position. Here are my reactions, in no particular order:

1. No way. This is just classic polishing the electorate and making yourself look like the inevitable winner, while laying the groundwork for some other Cabinet position

2. If he does win, then almost every site I’ve been following – except good ol’ Bob Dreyfuss – has some s’plainin to do. Because no one else saw this coming

3. So those SOB’s in the Wolfowitz/Feith/Perle/Rubin cabal got what they wanted after all, and all that US “distancing” from Chalabi, and his distancing from the US, was just a posture to give him credibility in Iraq. Did he actually sell US secrets to Iran? Was there ever really a warrant out for his arrest? Was he our boy all along?

4. Or is this one of those “be careful what you ask for” scenarios? Has he really turned against his handlers? Will he be a polarizing, ineffective, and corrupt leader?

5. What the hell happened to the vote tallies in Iraq to set up this outcome?

6. Is there ANY way that Sistani and his supporters are going to sit still for this?

http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Iraq.html

http://www.juancole.com/2005/02/chalabi-interviewed-by-stephanopoulos.html
When Mr. Stephanopoulos asked if he was in the good graces of the US again, Dr. Chalabi responded: “I hope to be a friend. I'm a friend of the United States, and I continue to be a friend of the United States. And I am grateful, as are most Iraqis, to the American people for helping liberate Iraq and also, young and old men and women of the United States Armed Forces in Iraq who have done a great job in helping us have elections, and also for the leadership of President Bush.”. . . When Mr. Stephanopoulos asked if he thought he would be the next Prime Minster of Iraq, Dr. Chalabi responded: “That's up to the United Iraqi Alliance parliamentary bloc, and they will decide on that through a democratic process. . . I believe I have a majority of the votes on my side right now.”

[Juan Cole] What all this tells me is that Ahmad Chalabi still has a highly vindictive, almost violent attitude toward the Sunni Arab community, many of whom were Baath Party members even though most were not guilty of actual crimes. I personally can't imagine a process through which Chalabi emerges as prime minister from the United Iraqi Alliance, or at least not a process that did not involve a lot of bribery. But if such a disaster occurred, it is obvious that he would throw the country into further chaos immediately.

It is absolutely outrageous that Chalabi blames US policies for the guerrilla war. He was the one who pushed for punitive policies toward the ex-Baathists and for dissolving the Iraqi military, and he and his Neoconservative cronies in the Pentagon bear a great deal of the responsibility for the mess in Iraq today.

Chalabi or no, Iranian influence in Iraq is strong

http://msnbc.msn.com/id/7000174/site/newsweek/
Fresh intel suggests that Tehran is trying to expand its influence over whatever government emerges in postelection Iraq. According to U.S. officials, the Iranian government has been secretly directing its agents inside Iraq to plant themselves in influential positions throughout the Iraqi government—into agencies that handle economic affairs, like the Ministry of Oil, as well as departments, like the Interior Ministry, that handle national security. The Iranians are also directing their agents to infiltrate Iraqi security agencies on the "working level" by taking jobs in regional or local government offices and particularly local police forces. According to the most pessimistic U.S. analysts, the ayatollahs' ultimate goal: "Taking over the government of Iraq."

U.S. is carrying out independent negotiations with Sunni insurgents (so much for no negotiating with “terrorists,” eh?). Thanks to Jan Pieterse for the link

http://olympics.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=topNews&storyID=7681569
U.S. diplomats and intelligence officers are conducting secret talks with Iraq's Sunni insurgents on ways to end fighting there, Time magazine reported on Sunday, citing Pentagon and other sources. . . The Bush administration has said it would not negotiate with Iraqi fighters and there is no authorized dialogue but the U.S. is having "back-channel" communications with certain insurgents, unidentified Washington and Iraqi sources told the magazine.

What does Chalabi think about that?

http://www.juancole.com/2005/02/chalabi-interviewed-by-stephanopoulos.html
When Mr. Stephanopoulos asked about a “Time” magazine report on US military officials negotiating with former Saddam regime elements leading the insurgency, Dr. Chalabi responded: “I know nothing about such negotiations. Those negotiations will in no way bind the elected government of Iraq because it's not part of them. And I don't know whether the report is accurate or not. But the issue here is not negotiating with the killers who are killing the Iraqi people and who are murdering tens of Iraqis on their most religious occasions like this, like what happened yesterday and the day before.

Newsweek gets the flight logs of the plane used for “extraordinary rendition” (outsourcing torture to other countries)

http://www.warandpiece.com/blogdirs/001716.html
NEWSWEEK has obtained previously unpublished flight plans indicating the agency has been operating a Boeing 737 as part of a top-secret global charter servicing clandestine interrogation facilities used in the war on terror. . . The Boeing flights are part of a detailed two-year itinerary for the 737 obtained by NEWSWEEK. The jet's record dates to December 2002 and shows flights up until Feb. 7 of this year. The Boeing 737 may have served as a general CIA transport plane for equipment and supplies as well. Among the stops recorded are Libya, where the U.S. government has been dismantling Muammar Kaddafi's clandestine nuclear program, and Jordan, where the Israeli newspaper Haaretz has reported that high-level Qaeda detainees, including 9/11 mastermind Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, were being held. (A Jordanian spokesman did not respond to a request for comment.) The Boeing also landed at Guantanamo.

Ironically, many U.S. officials say, the CIA secret facilities have proven very effective for quietly interrogating a handful of known Qaeda suspects. But when such rough practices "migrated" to Iraqi war detainees and bigger facilities like Abu Ghraib prison—under the direction of the Defense Department—the public backlash compromised the CIA's intel-gathering efforts. Today the agency's cover has been blown and critics are questioning why no full-time CIA employees have been prosecuted despite several cases of serious abuse linked to the agency.

[Laura Rozen] On the eve of Bush's arrival in Germany, Newsweek further reports, German media plan to air a news report about the CIA's recent illegal snatching of a German citizen in Macedonia who was flown aboard the CIA 737 to Afghanistan where he was beaten while interrogated by the CIA. Then they must have found out he was innocent after all, so they dropped him back in Macedonia. I'm sure it's a story that will go a long way to endearing Bush to the public and authorities in Germany, where a Munich prosecutor is investigating the case as a kidnapping.

[NB: One of the countries they use for these purposes: Syria (http://www.newyorker.com/fact/content/?050214fa_fact6). Yes, the Syria we are now making out as our enemy (http://www.cnn.com/2005/ALLPOLITICS/02/17/bush.ap/)]

Army recruiting ‘way down

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A40469-2005Feb20.html

Fascinating. 60% of the public, including 25% of REPUBLICANS, want the Dems to be more aggressive in exercising a moderating counterbalance to Bush’s policies

http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2005_02_20_digbysblog_archive.html#110893310604274610

Social Security: after failing once, “privateers” regroup for the next round

http://yglesias.typepad.com/matthew/2005/02/trouble_in_phas.html

Swifties prepare to take on AARP, for daring to oppose Bush’s Social Security plan (“ruthless”? that isn’t even a strong enough word - this is like the mob: you f-ck with us, we kill you)

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/02/21/politics/21social.html
"They are the boulder in the middle of the highway to personal savings accounts," said Charlie Jarvis, president of USA Next and former deputy under secretary of the interior in the Reagan and first Bush administrations. "We will be the dynamite that removes them.". . . Though it is not clear how much money USA Next has in hand for the campaign - Mr. Jarvis will not say, and the group, which claims 1.5 million members, does not have to disclose its donors - officials say that the group's annual budget was more than $28 million last year. The group, a membership organization with no age requirements for joining, has also spent millions in recent years vigorously supporting Bush proposals on tax cuts, energy and the Medicare prescription drug plan.

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2005/2/20/222414/627
The GOP hit punks are back. The same people who promoted the "Swift Boat Veterans for Truth" racket have been picked up by an anti-AARP group called "USA-next".

http://bestoftheblogs.com/2005_02_20_bestof.html#110895406132689363
Remember how W claimed he knew nothing, had nothing to do with the Swift Boat ads? Presumably he knows nothing about this either.

“Tax reform” = a national sales tax? What a TERRIBLE idea that would be

http://yglesias.typepad.com/matthew/2005/02/watch_those_num.html

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2005_02/005692.php

Remember the great environmental fight with Bush over opening up drilling in ANWR? The oil companies don’t even WANT to drill there

http://mathewgross.com/blog/archives/001224.html
Others who advised Mr. Bush on his energy plan said including the refuge was seen as a political maneuver to open the door to more geologically promising prospects off the coasts of California and Florida. Those areas, where tests have found oil, have been blocked for years by federal moratoriums because of political and environmental concerns. . . "If you can't do ANWR," said Matthew R. Simmons, a Houston investment banker for the energy industry and a Bush adviser in 2000, "you'll never be able to drill in the promising areas."

One of the more interesting lines in those Bush interview tapes was his firm commitment not to exploit gays as a divisive election issue. As Matt Yglesias points out, the fact that the statement was probably quite sincere when he made it makes his later reversal all the more hypocritical

http://yglesias.typepad.com/matthew/2005/02/closet_tolerant.html

Funny, sad

http://bestoftheblogs.com/2005_02_20_bestof.html#110893086452842787
"I have always believed in the Mr. Magoo factor with Bush," said Marshall Wittmann, a senior fellow at the Democratic Leadership Council and former aide to Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz. "Everything seems to be falling down around him, but he always seems to get by and things work out."

Howard Kurtz, apparently thinks that poor James Guckert’s “privacy” has been violated: HEY HOWIE – when you run a prostitution ring on the Internet (which is, the last time I checked, illegal) and post nude photos of yourself online, you have no claims to “privacy”

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2005/2/20/235251/725

The number of cases on the other (Democratic) side: Clinton, Gary Hart, Dick Morris, where “personal” shenanigans were blown up into national scandals, can hardly be counted. (Read more about Howie’s delicate sensitivities in THOSE cases, below.) And the irony is that the real scandal about Guckert isn’t about any of that, but about how he got privileged access to the WH and who was leaking classified information to him (of course, THAT story, which is a serious matter by any standard, may have something to do with the gay sex angle, mightn’t it?). This is another example, mentioned a few days ago, that the more explosive a story is, if it might hurt the Bush machine, the less the media wants to touch it. Didn’t Bush just admit yesterday that, in so many words, he had done marijuana and cocaine (and lied about it)? Hello?

http://atrios.blogspot.com/2005_02_20_atrios_archive.html#110895638197744712

Guckert threatens to sue – a ridiculous notion, of course, since no one wants to testify under oath any less than he does

http://americablog.blogspot.com/2005/02/newsweek-gannon-is-considering-suing.html

Another interview in which Guckert, by carefully tip-toeing around the question, makes it pretty obvious that he DID receive classified info about the Plame story

http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2005_02_20_digbysblog_archive.html#110892717780353516

How they play it (part #462)

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2005/2/21/2114/62594
The chairman of a Senate committee that oversees environmental issues has directed two national organizations that oppose President Bush's major clean-air initiative to turn over their financial and tax records to the Senate.

Sen. James M. Inhofe (R-Okla.), who heads the Environment and Public Works Committee, asked for the documents 10 days after a representative of the two groups criticized Bush's "Clear Skies" proposal before a Senate subcommittee. Inhofe is the leading sponsor of the administration bill, which is deadlocked in his panel. . .

On Jan. 26, John Paul, an environmental regulator from Ohio, testified on behalf of both pollution control organizations. He told the Senate subcommittee that "Clear Skies" "fails on every one of our associations' core principals," was "far too lenient" on polluters and would undermine "states' abilities to protect air quality."

After the testimony, several senators sent a letter to Paul with follow-up questions; Inhofe included a request for financial statements, membership lists and tax returns for the last six years for both groups. Paul is the vice president and incoming president of the local air pollution group. Inhofe's request was first disclosed by Cox News Service on Friday.

How the GOP won the GOTV (get out the vote) contest

http://www.mydd.com/story/2005/2/20/23565/6684

“Powerline” – a right-wing blog that some people take seriously (thanks to Kos for some of the links)

Time magazine calls Powerline “The Blog of the Year”
http://talkleft.com/new_archives/009789.html

Powerline calls Jimmy Carter a traitor to his country
http://powerlineblog.com/archives/2005_02.php#009594

More delicacies from Powerline
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2005/2/20/12138/1038

http://powerlineblog.com/archives/2005_02.php#009616
The American left has been guilty of many contemptible actions over the past twenty years, but few are so deeply offensive as its treatment of Jim Guckert, aka Jeff Gannon (His real name is Guckert, but he adopted Gannon as a pen name). Gannon is, apparently, a homosexual with a rather sordid past, including stints working as a gay escort. He is now trying to make a career for himself as a reporter. . .

The presence of a Bush-friendly journalist in the White House press corps was taken by the left as a deep affront. . . So liberals began “investigating” Gannon. They found that he was a homosexual and started posting photos of him on their web sites, along with vicious personal attacks. Gannon, stunned by the virulence of the left’s attack on him, quit his job at Talon. Subsequently, a low-life named John Aravosis who is a gay activist and has a web site, found nude photos of Gannon and posted them online. . . The bottom line is that there isn’t any story here, other than the bottomless depravity of liberals in America. How any of their purported “grievances” against Gannon justifies posting nude photos of him is inexplicable. . .

There is, I guess, a story here. But it has nothing to do with Jeff Gannon, a poor guy who thought he could put his past behind him and pursue a career as a reporter. No, the story has to do with the depth to which the Democratic Party and the American left have fallen. Desperate to change the subject in the wake of the Eason Jordan debacle, they seized on poor Mr. Gannon, made silly, baseless accusations against him, denounced him for being a homosexual, and, in the ultimate indignity, tracked down and published nude photographs of him. All to distract attention from Jordan, and to punish Mr. Gannon for the “sin” of being a Republican. Rarely have I seen such deeply contemptible conduct.

Powerline writer John Hinderaker shows his respect for civil discourse
http://minnpolitics.blogspot.com/2005/02/jd-guckert-and-powerline.html
You dumb sh-t, he didn't get access using a fake name, he used his real name. You lefties' concern for White House security is really touching, but you know what, you stupid as-hole, I think the Secret Service has it covered. Go crawl back into your hole, you stupid left-wing sh-thead. And don't bother us anymore. You have to have an IQ over 50 to correspond with us. You don't qualify, you stupid sh-t.

More right-wing flailing to try to turn the Guckert affair into something else

http://bestoftheblogs.com/2005_02_20_bestof.html#110896094398860751
[CNS] "Make no mistake, Jeff Gannon, or James Guckert, or whatever his name is, is no conservative. Anybody who publishes sexually explicit photos of himself on a website in hopes of making money as a hooker is no conservative. Not in this lifetime. Not on this planet. The person in those photos is a pig and a pervert. . . But Gannon did rile up the Left, and it's because they felt betrayed, certain that the only reliable, no-questions-asked, no-strings-attached home for such individuals is in the liberal wing of the establishment media or Democratic Party. . . .The Left wants this controversy to be about a Republican White House letting in a ringer to ask questions and get access to sensitive information so he could write up favorable stories on the Talon News website. But if Jeff Gannon was a heterosexual, I suspect his questions for the president would have drawn scant attention. He wouldn't have made many friends in the White House press room, but almost nobody would have cared."

Fox News blatantly rewrites a Clinton quote

http://atrios.blogspot.com/2005_02_20_atrios_archive.html#110892850411420694

Bonus item: I guess this one has been around for a while, but it was new to me (thanks to Bill McInerney for the link)

http://ariannaonline.com/forums/showthread.php?p=242658#post242658
Dear Abby,

My husband has a long record of money problems. He runs up huge credit card bills and at the end of the month, if I try to pay them off, he shouts at me, saying I am stealing his money. He says pay the minimum and let our kids worry about the rest, but already we can hardly keep up with the interest.

Also he has been so arrogant and abusive toward our neighbors that most of them no longer speak to us. The few that do are an odd bunch, to whom he has been giving a lot of expensive gifts, running up our bills even more.

Also, he has gotten religious in a big way, although I don't quite understand it. One week he hangs out with Catholics and the next with people who say the Pope is the Anti-Christ.

And now he has been going to the gym an awful lot and is into wearing uniforms and cowboy outfits, and I hate to think what that means.

Finally, the last straw. He's demanding that before anyone can be in the same room with him, they must sign a loyalty oath.

It's just so horribly creepy! Can you help?

Signed,
Lost in D.C.

Dear Lost,

Stop whining, Laura. You can divorce the jerk any time you want. The rest of us are stuck with him for four more years.

***If you enjoy PBD and support what we are doing, you can help by forwarding a copy of this issue to your friends (using the envelope link below) or by sending them a copy of its URL (http://pbd.blogspot.com).

I don't get anything personally out of this project, except the satisfaction of doing it (I don't run ads, etc). The credit really all goes to the people whose material I copy and redistribute. But if I do have a "mission," it is to get this information into the hands of as many people as I can.***
- posted by Nick Burbules @ 6:18 AM

 
ERASING THE PAST

One of the defining characteristics of this administration is its persistent effort to rewrite history, to cover-up or eliminate documentary evidence, and to deny the events of their personal pasts. This is one more reason why the Internet is important: because the dispersal of information makes it very hard to centralize and eliminate evidence (see, for example, The Memory Hole). But the effort never ends, does it?

Army destroys Abu Ghraib photos

http://www.discourse.net/archives/2005/02/yata_coverup_ept.html

http://rogerailes.blogspot.com/2005_02_13_rogerailes_archive.html#110870418294699970
This is not America. . . This is the Bush Administration.

Torture: a blot that can never be washed away

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/02/19/opinion/19sat1.html
Of all the claims of an electoral mandate made by President Bush's supporters, none were as bizarre as the one offered by John Yoo, a former Justice Department lawyer who helped draft the cynical justifications for the illegal detention and torture of "unlawful combatants." "The debate is over," Mr. Yoo told The New Yorker, adding: "The issue is dying out. The public has had its referendum."

It's hard to know what is most outrageous about those comments - that Mr. Yoo actually believes Americans voted for torturing prisoners or that an official at the heart of this appalling mess feels secure enough to say that. Certainly the worst possibility is that the public has, indeed, lost interest.

The White House has done everything it can to bury the issue. Nearly a year after the Abu Ghraib scandal broke, the administration still drags its feet on public disclosure, stonewalls Congressional requests for documents and suppresses the results of internal investigations.

But the issue is as urgent as ever. . .

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A36621-2005Feb18.html
"It is clear to us that the events at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, as well as the allegations of abuse at the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, must be thoroughly addressed, and reforms enacted. Any attempt to "play cute" with international, domestic or military laws inevitably puts our own troops at risk, leaving our armed services personnel vulnerable to the same type of treatment if captured. It has been proved that torture or other inhuman conduct as a technique of information-gathering is flawed and often produces unreliable information."

[NB: Lindsey Graham (R-SC) and Jane Hartman (D-CA)]

Will Negroponte’s past come out during his confirmation hearings?

http://talkleft.com/new_archives/009773.html

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/02/19/politics/19intel.html

Bush interviews taped, from before his run for President

http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2005_02_13_digbysblog_archive.html#110886103619069682
Mr. Bush, who has acknowledged a drinking problem years ago, told Mr. Wead on the tapes that he could withstand scrutiny of his past. He said it involved nothing more than "just, you know, wild behavior." He worried, though, that allegations of cocaine use would surface in the campaign, and he blamed his opponents for stirring rumors. "If nobody shows up, there's no story," he told Mr. Wead, "and if somebody shows up, it is going to be made up." But when Mr. Wead said that Mr. Bush had in the past publicly denied using cocaine, Mr. Bush replied, "I haven't denied anything.". . .

Early on, though, Mr. Bush appeared most worried that Christian conservatives would object to his determination not to criticize gay people. "I think he wants me to attack homosexuals," Mr. Bush said after meeting James Robison, a prominent evangelical minister in Texas.

But Mr. Bush said he did not intend to change his position. He said he told Mr. Robison: "Look, James, I got to tell you two things right off the bat. One, I'm not going to kick gays, because I'm a sinner. How can I differentiate sin?"

Later, he read aloud an aide's report from a convention of the Christian Coalition, a conservative political group: "This crowd uses gays as the enemy. It's hard to distinguish between fear of the homosexual political agenda and fear of homosexuality, however."

"This is an issue I have been trying to downplay," Mr. Bush said. "I think it is bad for Republicans to be kicking gays.". . .

[NB: Well, THAT principle didn’t last long, did it?]

More: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/02/20/politics/20talk.html
He refused to answer reporters' questions about his past behavior, he said, even though it might cost him the election. Defending his approach, Mr. Bush said: "I wouldn't answer the marijuana questions. You know why? Because I don't want some little kid doing what I tried."

He mocked Vice President Al Gore for acknowledging marijuana use. "Baby boomers have got to grow up and say, yeah, I may have done drugs, but instead of admitting it, say to kids, don't do them," he said.

Bill Maher on Gannon/Guckert: don’t miss it

http://onegoodmove.org/1gm/1gmarchive/001948.html#001948

Raw Story documents WH links via BRUCE (related to BOBBY) Eberle

http://rawstory.com/news/2005/index.php?p=104
Bobby and Bruce’s “relations” are nebulous–they have been reported not to be blood relatives by a conservative website, though Bruce himself says they are members of the same “clan.” Bobby works out of Texas; Bruce’s firm is based in Virginia

[NB: Man, you know something shifty is going on when they don’t even explain their connection: brothers? not brothers?]

More on a potential Rove/Gannon connection (indirectly cited yesterday, here’s the full piece from CBS). It doesn’t prove anything, but. . .

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2005/02/18/opinion/lynch/main675050.shtml

Jeff or James?

http://americablog.blogspot.com/2005/02/gannon-didnt-tell-truth-about-when-he.html
According to Editor & Publisher [Gannon/Guckert] began using a pseudonym in 2001:

He began using the [Jeff] Gannon name in 2001. . .

He actually began using the pseudonym "Jeff" in 1999:

Gannon/Guckert started using the name "Jeff" by September 1999 at the latest. Gannon told Paul Leddy, the man who built his escort Web site, that his name was "Jeff," and several of the photos on the escort site are named variations of "Jeff.jpg". . .

Gannon told E&P in the same interview cited above:

GANNON: I use a pseudonym, because my real name is very difficult to pronounce, to remember and to spell. And many people who have been talking about me on television have yet to pronounce it correctly.

But. . . if Guckert only uses the pseudonym to make it easier for folks to pronounce, remember and spell his name, why was "Jeff" a better name than "James" to give the Web developer?

Not to mention, this doesn't answer the question of WHY he changed his first name at all. Anderson Cooper hit Gannon on this on CNN. . .

GANNON: I use a pseudonym, because my real name is very difficult to pronounce, to remember and to spell. And many people who have been talking about me on television have yet to pronounce it correctly.

COOPER: But I mean, your real name is James and you used the pseudonym Jeff.

GANNON: Yes.

COOPER: How is James so much harder than Jeff?

GANNON: No, no, I meant my last name.

More from the Cooper/Guckert interview

http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0502/18/acd.01.html
COOPER: There are those who have said that the reason perhaps you are using a different name is that there is stuff from your past that you did not want people to know about or find out about.

GANNON: How I'll address that is that I have made mistakes in my past. And these are all of a very personal and private nature that have been -- that have been all brought to the surface by people who disagreed with the question I asked at the presidential press conference several weeks ago. And is -- the effect of this has been that we seem to have established a new standard for journalists in this country, where if someone disagrees with you, then your personal life, your private life, and anything you have ever done in the past is going to be brought up for public inspection. . .

COOPER: Let me give you a chance just to respond to what you want to respond to. You had previously stated that you had registered a number of pornographic Web sites for a private client. That's what you had said publicly. You said the sites were never activated. A man now has talked to "The Washington Post," who said that you had essentially paid him to create some Web sites for an escort service, and you are yourself offering yourself as an escort.

GANNON: Well, like I said, there's a lot of things being said about me out there. A lot of things that have nothing to do with the reporting I have done for the last two years.

COOPER: Your critics bring up your past, that whether or not you did work as an escort as going to your credibility, that you know, should somebody who perhaps was working as an escort was getting access to the White House and being passed along through the Secret Service. Was your employer aware of your past activities?

GANNON: My employer was never at any time aware of anything in my past beyond the writings I did, because, frankly, it isn't relevant to the job I was asked to do, which was to be a reporter.

COOPER: Was anyone at the White House aware of your private activities?

GANNON: I would say that -- I would say no, absolutely, categorically no.

[NB: Do you wonder what he started to say? I do]

GANNON: . . . As a matter of fact, how I came to be at the White House is I asked to attend a briefing. I asked the White House press office. They gave me a daily pass to get in.

COOPER: When was that?

GANNON: I don't recall, but it was -- I think somewhere in the neighborhood of two years ago.

COOPER: Because in -- was that for Talon News?

GANNON: At the time, it was called something else, but it -- the name was changed to Talon News shortly thereafter.

COOPER: What was it called at the time?

GANNON: It was called GOPUSA. . .

COOPER: But GOPUSA is not a news organization.

GANNON: Well, we were -- we were -- we had established a news division, and it was later renamed Talon News. . .

COOPER: But you weren't even publishing anything. You weren't reporting anything.

GANNON: Well, actually, I was at the time.

COOPER: When was the first article you ever published?

GANNON: Well, you're -- I don't know that, because I'm here in your studio here. And I don't know the answer to specific dates. All I can tell you is that -- and frankly, all these questions about Talon News and GOPUSA, you need to ask them about that, because I don't represent them any longer.

COOPER: Yeah, we've asked them. They refuse to talk about it. . .

COOPER: This liberal group, Media Matters, which I'm sure you know well about. They have been very critical about you, really looked into this probably closer than just about anybody. They say that essentially, you are not a real reporter. And it's not even a question of being an advocate, that you have directly lifted large segments of your reports directly from White House press releases.

GANNON: All my stories were usually titled "White House Says," "President Bush Wants," and I relied on transcripts from the briefings, I relied on press releases that were sent to the press for the purpose of accurately portraying what the White House believed or wanted.

COOPER: But using the term "reporting" implies some sort of vetting, some sort of research, some sort of -- I mean, that's called faxing or Xeroxing, if you are just lifting transcripts and putting them into an article.

GANNON: If I am communicating to my readers exactly what the White House believes on any certain issue, that's reporting to them an unvarnished, unfiltered version of what they believe.

Getting even a “day pass” isn’t easy

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2005/2/19/121442/332

Guckert/Plame questions still haven’t been answered

http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2005_02_13_digbysblog_archive.html#110887576770336801
"What I said was no more than what was reported in The Wall Street Journal a week before," he said.

In none of those statements does he simply say, "I got the information from the WSJ story." Look how he dances around it. No "special" information. "What I said was no more that what was reported." He has been coached to parse his answers this way.

Mainstream media starting to take notice of this story

http://rawstory.com/news/2005/index.php?p=103

Remembering the women of Iraq – the ones we are supposedly “liberating”? (if you aren’t already aware of “Riverbend,” I am happy to introduce you to her)

http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2005_02_13_digbysblog_archive.html#110884544544795601

Juan Cole on Jaafari/Chalabi

http://www.juancole.com/2005/02/shiites-have-majority-iraq_110867151708965021.html
Ibrahim Jaafari of the Dawa Party seems almost certain to win the prime minister slot. In my view the persistent reports that Ahmad Chalabi is still in the running are baseless propaganda coming out of Chalabi's formidable but empty PR apparatus. I take it he wants an important cabinet post, and this is his way of staking claim to it.

Note that if there is a disagreement among the Shiite religious parties on who should be prime minister, they say they will take it to Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, who will resolve it. Sistani would certainly choose Jaafari, an old-time Dawa operative from Karbala close to the ayatollah.

Interestingly, Sistani would informally be playing a role here similar to that played by the monarch in the UK. Sistani as Elizabeth II. It certainly wasn't what Bush had been going for with this Iraq adventure.

http://www.juancole.com/2005/02/at-least-55-dead-over-100-wounded-in.html
Al-Hayat reports that a decision on the new prime minister will not be announced until at least Wednesday. The decision was postponed in part because of Ashura, and in part because of the difficulty in getting a "green light" from Washington in the wake of Ambassador John Negroponte's appointment as intelligence czar. (US news sources have not spoken as openly of the need for a green light from Washington, but al-Hayat's sources are frank about it. This frankness agrees with the comment made by one embassy official that Iraq cannot select a prime minister who is unacceptable to Washington.)

[NB: Oh-oh]

Is Lieberman going to screw his party on Social Security?

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2005_02_13.php#004847
Sen. Joseph Lieberman, D-Conn., is undecided about the concept of using payroll taxes to fund private Social Security accounts, bringing to three the known number of Senate Democrats who have yet to publicly rule out the idea. President Bush has made the accounts the centerpiece of his domestic agenda. But other than Rep. Allen Boyd of Florida, no congressional Democrats have formally signed on. While Lieberman has concerns about the idea, he is continuing to study it while hoping for more details on Social Security from the president, a Lieberman aide said today. "He's still in a listening and learning stage and is keeping an open mind, but he does have concerns about private accounts as carve-outs that would potentially undermine the guaranteed minimum benefit and worsen our fiscal health and debt load," a Lieberman aide said today.

http://www.mydd.com/story/2005/2/19/203336/070
As we've said from the start, the key to saving Social Security is Democratic unity. . . At the moment. . . the trend of the Social Security story is all running against the president. He can't get the seats filled in New Hampshire, the polls are bad, the Republicans in Congress are increasingly worried, scurrying for cover. . . .Give him Lieberman and suddenly the President is making headway. . .

Why the GOP refusal to consider raising the FICA cap doesn’t even make sense from their standpoint

http://yglesias.typepad.com/matthew/2005/02/fica_cap.html

Bush cares about Black Americans – he just doesn’t care about POOR Black Americans

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A36311-2005Feb18.html

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-briefs20.4feb20,1,5708732.story
Denouncing President Bush's plan for Social Security reform as one that would disproportionately hurt blacks, NAACP leaders have asked to meet with the president to discuss the issue. . . "This proposal is extremely dangerous to us," said Hilary O. Shelton, the National Assn. for the Advancement of Colored People's Washington bureau chief.

More from the CPAC conference

Santorum: Gays to blame for unmarried pregnancies in poor communities
http://suburbanguerrilla.blogspot.com/2005/02/um-frothysalon-goes-to-cpac-and-heres.html

Giuliani, Rice lead for 2008
http://www.mydd.com/story/2005/2/19/20453/7550

Bonus item: Peggy Noonan on why blogs matter (she gets it). Thanks to A.G. Rud for the link

http://www.opinionjournal.com/columnists/pnoonan/?id=110006302&ojrss=frontpage
1. They use the tools of journalists (computer, keyboard, a spirit of inquiry, a willingness to ask the question) and of the Internet (Google, LexisNexis) to look for and find facts that have been overlooked, ignored or hidden. They look for the telling quote, the ignored statistic, the data that have been submerged. What they are looking for is information that is true. When they get it they post it and include it in the debate. This is a public service. . .

2. Bloggers, unlike reporters at elite newspapers and magazines, are independent operators. They are not, and do not have to be, governed by mainstream thinking. Nor do they have to accept the directives of an editor pushing an ideology or a publisher protecting his friends. Bloggers have the freedom to decide on their own when a story stops being a story. . .

3. Bloggers have an institutional advantage in terms of technology and form. They can post immediately. The items they post can be as long or short as they judge to be necessary. Breaking news can be one sentence long. . .

4. Bloggers are also selling the smartest take on a story. They're selling an original insight, a new area of inquiry. . . They're all selling their shrewdness, experience, depth. This too is a public service. . .

5. And they're doing it free. That is, the Times costs me a dollar and so does the Journal, but Kausfiles doesn't cost a dime. This too is a public service. Some blogs get their money from yearly fund-raising, some from advertisers, some from a combination, some from a salary provided by Slate or National Review. Most are labors of love. Some bloggers--a lot, I think--are addicted to digging, posting, coming up with the bright phrase. . .

6. It is not true that there are no controls. It is not true that the blogosphere is the Wild West. What governs members of the blogosphere is what governs to some degree members of the MSM, and that is the desire for status and respect. In the blogosphere you lose both if you put forward as fact information that is incorrect, specious or cooked. You lose status and respect if your take on a story that is patently stupid. You lose status and respect if you are unprofessional or deliberately misleading. And once you've lost a sufficient amount of status and respect, none of the other bloggers link to you anymore or raise your name in their arguments. And you're over. The great correcting mechanism for people on the Web is people on the Web. . .

***If you enjoy PBD and support what we are doing, you can help by forwarding a copy of this issue to your friends (using the envelope link below) or by sending them a copy of its URL (http://pbd.blogspot.com).

I don't get anything personally out of this project, except the satisfaction of doing it (I don't run ads, etc). The credit really all goes to the people whose material I copy and redistribute. But if I do have a "mission," it is to get this information into the hands of as many people as I can.***
- posted by Nick Burbules @ 7:42 AM

 
A SENSE OF DESTINY

Moving up the charts: today we lead with the Gannon/Guckert scandal, and more evidence that this wasn’t just a guy who wandered in and picked up a day pass. He clearly had inside contacts and sponsors who were providing him feeds and actively promoting him. Who were they?

http://atrios.blogspot.com/2005_02_13_atrios_archive.html#110875323666665162
One of Gannon's "scoops" was that CBS producer Mary Mapes was the person who had originally received the documents. . . One wonders how JimmyJeff knew that. . . Fascinating. . .

[NB: I assume that what Atrios is pondering here is whether his sources knew BECAUSE THEY HAD FED THE MATERIALS TO HER]

http://mathewgross.com/blog/archives/001222.html
A news producer for a major network just told me that Gannon told the producer the "shock and awe" campaign launching the Iraq war was about to happen four hours before President Bush announced it to the nation. . . According to my source, Gannon's insider tidbits were always on the mark. "Gannon's stuff was always golden," the producer says. My source says they kept asking themself, "how does this small news outfit get this info?"

http://suburbanguerrilla.blogspot.com/2005/02/chatty-isnt-hemore-on-guckertgannonsan.html
San Antonio radio producer Susan Farris could always count on James Guckert, a.k.a. former White House correspondent Jeff Gannon, to pitch an appearance on the shows she produces at conservative talk station KTSA.

He was not only anxious about pushing his story of the day, but seemed to always have some kind of inside knowledge about the White House, as well.

"I said, 'How do you have such great sources?' and he just laughed it off," she told E&P Friday. "Now we all know how."

http://mediamatters.org/items/200502190003
Former Talon News Washington bureau chief and White House correspondent Jeff Gannon (aka James D. Guckert) attended at least two invitation-only events in Washington, D.C.: the 2003 and 2004 White House press Christmas parties. . . So the question arises: who invited Gannon to these exclusive events?. . . [I]n past years, the White House press secretary has played a significant role in arranging the guest list for the Christmas parties.

A new story from Scotty about how Guckert got his WH pass

http://www.first-draft.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=2225&mode=thread&order=0&thold=0
Former Talon News reporter James Guckert obtained his first White House press credentials as a representative of the pro-Republican Web site, GOPUSA, not as a Talon News reporter, as previously believed, Press Secretary Scott McClellan told E&P today.

McClellan said White House Press Office staffers considered the openly partisan site to be a legitimate news organization when they gave Guckert, a.k.a. Jeff Gannon, the first of numerous day passes in February 2003. . . "He faxed a letter in on his [GOPUSA] letterhead, they checked that it was a conservative news Web site he worked for," McClellan explained, referring to his staffers who handled such credentialing at the time. "There was a check to make sure it was a news organization and a news Web site. There was a determination made at that point [that it was legitimate].". . .

However, [Talon/GOPUSA funder and founder Robert] Eberle has told The New York Times that he later created Talon to build a news service with a conservative slant and "if someone were to see 'GOPUSA,' there's an instant built-in bias there."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A35093-2005Feb18.html
[Keith Olbermann] Today, the key, slim, rationale for his admittance to the briefing room -- that the 'vanity website' for which he 'reported,' Talon News, was created four days before 'Jeff Gannon' got his first White House pass -- collapsed. . . "It was a bad enough that somebody let in a guy with no media experience, an alias, and a background as an on-line escort -- but why did they let him in if he wasn't even pretending to represent a news organization of any kind?"

http://www.first-draft.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=2217&mode=thread&order=0&thold=0
Eberle claims that, although GOPUSA is clearly partisan, Talon offers unbiased news "without the liberal filter" that he believes mainstream media contain. . . The two sites, though, are inextricably linked. Talon News contains only blurbs of stories. Users who want to read more are directed to GOPUSA.

"Talon News is not designed to be a destination Web site," Eberle said, explaining that Talon provides content for other Web sites, including GOPUSA. "The GOPUSA site is designed to be a destination site.". . .

The three stories posted on the Talon site Thursday had no bylines or datelines and seemed to involve no original reporting, taking quotes from televised news conferences and news releases.

[Holden] Now, to the subject of the Houston Chronicle's Rachel Graves shortcomings as a journalist. How could anyone interview Eberle without asking any of the following questions:

Why did you hire "Jeff Gannon"?

When did you hire "Jeff Gannon"?

Did you know that "Jeff Gannnon" was a pseudonym?

Did you know that "Jefff Gannon" was a prostitute?

Have you ever met George W. Bush, and how would you characterize your relationship with the president?

Have you ever met Ari Fleischer?

Have you ever met Scott McClellan?

Have you ever met Karl Rove?

Why did you remove all of "Jeff Gannon's" writings from the Talon News website?

Why did you remove all links to the biographical sketches of GOPUSA directors and officers from the GOPUSA website after the Gannon story broke, including the biographical sketch of GOPUSA board member and former policy advisor to Texas Governor Rick Perry?

Those are just a few of the questions that leap to my mind when I think of interviewing Eberle. Unfortunately, Rachel Graves failed to ask any of them.

A Rove connection?

http://suburbanguerrilla.blogspot.com/2005/02/what-team-is-karl-oncbs-newss.html

Gannon/Guckert defends himself in today’s Washington Post (among other things, he says, they’re going after him because he’s a “Christian”)

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A36733-2005Feb18.html

John Aravosis deconstructs the lies
http://americablog.blogspot.com/2005/02/gannonguckert-talks-to-wash-post-and.html
http://americablog.blogspot.com/2005/02/more-on-that-washington-post-interview.html

The media’s suddenly newfound puritanism about probing WH sex scandals

http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2005_02_13_digbysblog_archive.html#110868059649694162
That would be the liberal media who were duped by Republicans into cruelly exposing to the entire world the sex life of a White House intern whose only crime was talking to that shrieking harpy Linda Tripp. They have learned their lesson and now feel squeamish about exposing the sex life of a gay Republican prostitute who widely advertised his services on the internet and somehow gained unprecedented access to the family values White House in spite of having no credentials whatsoever. . . It's good to know that they've finally got their priorities straight. Monica Lewinsky must feel awfully relieved about that.

This story has potential. Don’t give up on it now

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2005/2/18/145046/864
ABC News' The Note hasn't been a friend of the Gannon investigation, being snarky about it from the beginning. So why this today?

Anne Kornblut finds that Ari Fleischer had doubts about Jeff Gannon and said he stopped calling on the man after a while. . . Why is it that most savvy Democrats think this story is going away, while some pretty plugged in Republicans say the opposite?

What do those plugged in Republicans know that hasn't been dug up yet?

The best man for the job? Negroponte, fourth choice

http://www.americanprogressaction.org/site/pp.asp?c=klLWJcP7H&b=100480&lftnav=progressreport#2
John Negroponte was looking for an excuse to leave Iraq. A senior administration official quoted in the New York Times said Negroponte "made clear to everyone every time he came back that 'I've got to get out of there.'" According to the official, Negroponte said, "I want to get out of Baghdad as soon as possible. They want me to come back for something, but I want to do the private sector." Just 10 months ago, in accepting his ambassadorship to Iraq, Negroponte said our success in Iraq required "resolve, constancy and unity of purpose." Now, at this critical juncture, Iraq is without an ambassador – and the administration has yet to nominate a successor.

One of Negroponte’s chief qualifications: he can read

http://www.first-draft.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=2221&mode=thread&order=0&thold=0
From what President Bush said yesterday, John Negroponte, the man farthest removed from substantive intelligence analysis—not to mention the background and genesis of the briefing items chosen for a particular day—will be the president’s “primary briefer.” I am told that President Bush does not read the President’s Daily Brief, but rather has it read to him.

http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2005/02/18/negroponte/index_np.html
Melvin Goodman, a former CIA official, pointed to Negroponte's role as ambassador to Honduras in the 1980s, when he blocked reports to Washington of human rights abuses by the Honduran government, a U.S. ally in a covert war against Nicaragua's left-wing Sandinista government. "I think of the Negroponte of the 1980s covering up humans rights abuses, and then I think of the role of intelligence in telling truth to power, and it doesn't fit," Goodman said.

While in Baghdad, Negroponte is also reported to have disagreed fiercely with pessimistic CIA reports from Iraq on the strength of the insurgency, and he sent more optimistic views back to Washington. Goodman claimed Negroponte had tried to block cables from CIA station chiefs in Baghdad.

“The Shiite sense of destiny”

http://www.needlenose.com/node/view/1129
[K-R] A top leader in the United Iraqi Alliance gave a speech to a crowd of thousands of Shiites in downtown Baghdad that underscored the Shiite sense of destiny after elections and the role that partisan Islam may play in Iraq.

"You are here today in the new era of Iraq, writing the epic story of Iraq and. . . your commitment to the instructions of the marja'iya (the ruling council of Shiite clerics), especially his excellency the Grand Ayatollah al-Sistani," [Abdul Aziz al-] Hakim said. "Yes, yes, we are with you, Sayyid Ali," he said, referring to Sistani.

The exchange that followed filled the air with screams and chants.

The crowd: "Yes, yes, we are with you, Sayyid Ali."

Hakim: "All the people are with you, Sayyid Ali."

The crowd, at fever pitch: "A crown, crown for the head of Sayyid Ali al-Sistani."

Why they can’t wait to get us out of Iraq

http://www.first-draft.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=2222&mode=thread&order=0&thold=0
The men who were killed, Naib, and Rasul, also 22, were cutting firewood beside the road at 5 p.m. when a car of Afghan National Army soldiers drove past, followed by Special Forces soldiers in a black sport utility vehicle. At the sight of the S.U.V., the two men dropped their work and fled across the field toward the village, said two witnesses, Taj Muhammad, 22, and Hamidullah, 22. . . They said they saw four American soldiers with weapons get out of the vehicle. Two of the Americans fired on the fleeing men, cutting them both down, the witnesses said. The two friends said they watched as the Americans approached Rasul, picked him up and then dropped him. "He fell down, and then we realized he was dead," Mr. Muhammad said. . . The Americans then approached Naib who was still moving. "He was lying face down, and his hand was out to the side," Mr. Muhammad said. "When they approached, he moved it and tried to put weight on it. The Americans came and shot him."

I really don’t understand why folks over here jump up and bark whenever the Chalabi PR machine tries to resuscitate his prospects as PM in Iraq. I suppose anything can emerge from the endless machinations over there, but HOW could this outcome be acceptable to Sistani et al?

http://suburbanguerrilla.blogspot.com/2005/02/same-as-old-bosssee-look-how-well-that.html
Ahmed Chalabi is likely to emerge as Iraq's leader, as originally envisioned by the US, Dan Senor, the former spokesman for the US occupation government in Iraq, told The Jerusalem Post on Thursday. . . "He has a good chance of getting the job," said Senor. . . According to Senor, Jaafari would probably have been assured of the post if Chalabi had not pushed – and succeeded – to get an internal vote of all the list members. Originally, the top leaders of the parties within the list were going to decide between themselves. . . "Chalabi believes that if there's an up or down vote of the 141 members he has a better chance of winning," said Senor.

[NB: LIKELY? I’m not buying it]

More: http://www.boston.com/dailynews/049/world/BAGHDAD_Iraq_AP_Ahmad_Chalabi_:.shtml

More signs of progress in Iraq

http://www.mydd.com/story/2005/2/18/133048/291
More soldiers have already died in February of 2005 than in February of 2004.
More soldiers died in January of 2005 than January of 2004.
More soldiers died in December of 2004 than December 2003.
More soldiers died in November of 2004 than November of 2003.
More soldiers died in October of 2004 than October of 2003.
More soldiers died in September of 2004 than September of 2003.
More soldiers died in August of 2004 than August of 2003.
More soldiers died in July of 2004 than July of 2003.
More soldiers died in June of 2004 than June of 2003.
More soldiers died in May of 2004 than May of 2003.
More soldiers died in April of 2004 than April of 2003.

“Will you walk into my parlor?” said the spider to the fly

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6980160/
President Bush appealed to members of Congress to make suggestions of their own for changing Social Security on Thursday, and said they need not fear political retribution.

“It used to be in the past people would step up and say, ‘Well, here’s an interesting idea,’ “ Bush said at a news conference at the White House. “Then they would take that idea and clobber the person politically.” The president, who has repeatedly called for bipartisanship on the volatile issue, said he won’t do that.

“What I’m saying to members of Congress is that, ‘We have a problem, come together and let’s fix it, and bring your ideas forward, and I’m willing to discuss them with you.’“

The real story here is that, while having initiated this issue on his own, and having PROMISED to deliver a plan, Bush now wants others to put forward proposals that he can then play off

http://www.nysscpa.org/home/2005/105/2week/article15.htm
[January 11] President Bush promised to offer an ambitious plan for overhauling Social Security soon, pledging to provide the political cover for nervous lawmakers. . .

[NB: Now it looks like he expects THEM to provide political cover for HIM]

Even GOP members are wary: http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-social19feb19,1,2533185.story
"The situation is fluid, but it has the potential to blow up," said Rep. Thomas M. Davis (R-Va.). "I'm going to keep my mouth shut."

Well, that newfound spirit of bipartisanship didn’t last long: As predicted here, House GOP leadership rejects any Bush attempt to “compromise” on Social Security

http://www.salon.com/politics/war_room/2005/02/18/dissent/index.html

Boy, that Bush suggestion that raising the cap on taxable income was on the table for – what? – all of six seconds before it got whisked away after conservative complaints

http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Rove-Conservatives.html
Members of Congress are debating whether Social Security taxes for the wealthiest Americans should be increased, but Cheney seemed to suggest that was not an option. . . ``We cannot tax our way out of this problem,'' Cheney said to cheers from some of the administration's core supporters at the CPAC meeting. ``We must not increase payroll taxes on American workers. . . ''

[NB: “American workers?” These guys crack me up!]

Redefining “privatization”

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2005_02_13.php#004845
Rep. Jeb Bradley (R - NH) says he flatly opposes 'privatization'. But the fine print now says that by 'privatization' he means a plan in which the "system is wholly administered through a private entity or corporation as opposed to public administration of the system that occurs today."

So the question: Can Bradley point to any individual or institution that has proposed this policy? If not, is there any reason he has continued to prominently make this promise other than to fool his constituents into believing he opposes private accounts?

Rove’s Grand Vision (thanks to Jan Pieterse for the link)

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/02/18/politics/18conserv.html
Karl Rove, the political adviser to President Bush who recently became chief of staff for policy, said on Thursday that Mr. Bush had helped transform conservatism from "reactionary" to "forward looking" . . . "We are seizing the mantle of idealism."

http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Rove-Conservatives.html
“Republicans cannot grow tired or timid,'' he said. . . ``Conservatism is the dominant political creed in America,'' Rove said, adding that more needed to be done.

More examples of Rove’s “idealism” (follow the links)

http://www.warandpiece.com/blogdirs/001711.html

Notes from the Conservative Political Action Committee conference: another reality

http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2005_02_13_digbysblog_archive.html#110878577416291307
California Rep. Chris Cox. . . "America's Operation Iraqi Freedom is still producing shock and awe, this time among the blame-America-first crowd," he crowed. Then he said, "We continue to discover biological and chemical weapons and facilities to make them inside Iraq." Apparently, most of the hundreds of people in attendance already knew about these remarkable, hitherto-unreported discoveries, because no one gasped at this startling revelation.

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2005/2/18/201239/199
Today, while teaching an Internet Activist Seminar, Mike Krempasky told his conservative youngens, "Daily Kos is a site built by the hard-left. There is no doubt, they are effective - they are freighteningly effective...It's probably bigger than the Washington Times right now.". . . He was less sparing about Atrios: "Atrios is a raging left-wing blogger. He actually hates America. He hates apple pie, he even hates his own mother."

The prospects for serious electoral reform: not great

http://www.prospect.org/weblog/archives/2005/02/index.html#005529

Coming attractions: the next Supreme Court nominee

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2005/2/19/12922/9173

Coming attractions (2): contested Senate seats in 06

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2005/2/18/141128/522

Govt’s own Comptroller General warns against Bush Co’s use of fake “news” videos

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/02/19/politics/19gao.html

More about the conservative attacks on PBS

http://www.americanprogressaction.org/site/pp.asp?c=klLWJcP7H&b=100480&lftnav=progressreport#1

Bonus item: Rush explains, “We don't retract anything we do here because we never lie and make things up on this program." (Here’s a list)

http://mediamatters.org/items/200502180006

Extra bonus item: the Koufax Awards have a category for most humorous blog posting. Here is my favorite: “Paying Poker with Dick Cheney” (don’t miss it)

http://www.thepoorman.net/archives/002789.html

***If you enjoy PBD and support what we are doing, you can help by forwarding a copy of this issue to your friends (using the envelope link below) or by sending them a copy of its URL (http://pbd.blogspot.com).

I don't get anything personally out of this project, except the satisfaction of doing it (I don't run ads, etc). The credit really all goes to the people whose material I copy and redistribute. But if I do have a "mission," it is to get this information into the hands of as many people as I can.***
- posted by Nick Burbules @ 8:21 AM

 
[NB: Last day to vote for PBD as the blog “Most Deserving of Wider Recognition” at http://wampum.wabanaki.net/archives/001725.html]

GANG OF LIARS

Negroponte: “I did not believe that death squads were operating [in Honduras].”

http://billmon.org/archives/001700.html

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2005/2/17/171120/554
He was confirmed by the Senate for the earlier jobs by large margins, in 2001 and 2004, despite questions about his performance two decades ago as ambassador to Honduras, where critics said he had turned a blind eye to human rights abuses.

http://counterpunch.org/hassan06042004.html
Who is John Negroponte?

http://msnbc.msn.com/Default.aspx?id=3449870&p1=0
John Negroponte: See No Evil

http://www.pnionline.com/dnblog/extra/archives/001464.html
Negroponte sure knows a lot about terrorism

More: http://thinkprogress.org/index.php?p=263

http://www.prospect.org/weblog/archives/2005/02/index.html#005520

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/02/17/politics/17cnd-inte.html
After a prolonged search in which several others turned down the job, Mr. Bush turned to Mr. Negroponte. . .

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2005_02/005676.php
As near as I can tell, the new position of "director of national intelligence" was rendered pretty close to meaningless after the job was successfully neutered by the Pentagon during congressional negotiations last year. The fact that George Bush's choice for the job is John Negroponte therefore inspires in me mostly a yawn.

Except for one thing: Negroponte has been ambassador to Iraq for the past seven months and will be leaving Baghdad (and its forthcoming billion dollar embassy!) to take the new job. What's up with that? It's hardly plausible the Negroponte was literally the only person Bush could find for the job, so this means that Negroponte must have made it clear that he was anxious to leave. . . Not that I blame him, mind you, but we sure do have a hard time finding people willing to spend more than a few months in Iraq, don't we?. . .

Food for thought, anyway. On the bright side. . . we're certain to get confirmation hearings for Negroponte in which questioning about death squads will figure prominently.

http://slate.msn.com/id/2113705/fr/rss/
The key passage in the final bill was a provision that the national intelligence director will not "abrogate the statutory responsibilities" of any existing agency handling intelligence matters. . . In other words, the NID can't strong-arm the Department of Defense, whose "statutory responsibilities" involving intelligence are considerable. . . they include the personnel, operations, and spending authority for not just the Defense Intelligence Agency (and the individual services' spy branches) but also the National Reconnaissance Office (which controls spy satellites), the National Imagery and Mapping Agency (which picks the routes for those satellites), and the National Security Agency (which handles electronic intercepts and code-breaking).

All told, as a result of these statutes, the Pentagon controls about 80 percent of the U.S. intelligence community's budget. This control is what Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and his longtime ally Vice President Dick Cheney insisted on preserving. Thanks to that key passage written into the intelligence "reform" bill, the new national intelligence director cannot "abrogate" that arrangement.

President Bush said at his press conference this morning that Negroponte would have budgetary control over the intelligence community. You can bet that someone from Cheney's office or the Pentagon quickly reminded the president that this explicitly isn't so. . . [NB: Read on – a good analysis of Negroponte’s prospects for success and failure]

http://slate.msn.com/id/2113740/fr/rss/
"When the intelligence briefings start in the morning, John will be there," promised Bush. One "administration official" told the LAT that won't be good enough, "Where's his political backing? In Congress? No. From the Republican Party? No. He's not in the Cabinet. Are Cabinet officers really going to report to him on anything?"

http://www.salon.com/politics/war_room/archive.html?blog=/politics/war_room/2005/02/17/negroponte/index.html
In announcing Negroponte's nomination this morning, Bush said that it comes at a "historic moment for our intelligence services." Bush called intelligence the nation's "first line of defense," and said that his administration is working hard to "stop the terrorists before they strike."

What Bush didn't say is that he and his administration dragged their feet on every step of the process that led to today's announcement. The creation of the job of national intelligence director was one of the primary recommendations of the 9/11 Commission. Bush originally opposed the creation of that commission, then supported it, then said later that he had never opposed it at all. He refused to testify before the commission, then agreed to "meet" with its members but only if Dick Cheney could come, too. He tried to keep Condoleezza Rice from testifying -- recent revelations suggest why -- before finally caving in.

When the 9/11 Commission issued its recommendations in July, Bush stalled and equivocated. While John Kerry and many others endorsed the recommendations out of the box, Bush took two weeks before coming out in favor of a watered-down version of the commission's call for a national intelligence director. Bush called on Congress then to act quickly and suggested that the matter come up for a vote in September. But despite the fact that Bush's party controls both the House and the Senate, Congress didn't get around to acting until mid-December. The White House blamed the delays on a few recalcitrant Republicans in the House, but it was also clear at the time that Pentagon staff -- and even, at times, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld -- were fighting the intelligence reforms on the same grounds that those renegade members of Congress are pushing.

A few more weeks will pass before Negroponte comes up for confirmation in the Senate. As Bush made his announcement this morning, Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Pat Roberts said that he will schedule a confirmation hearing for Negroponte "as soon as his duties in Iraq are completed."

Abrams: He's "the guy who lied and wheedled to aid and protect human rights abusers”

http://slate.msn.com/id/2113690/fr/rss/

Rice: "I have to say that I have never, ever, lost respect for the truth in the service of anything. . . I really hope that you will refrain from impugning my integrity."

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2005/2/17/184320/505
Rep. Henry A. Waxman; Congresswoman Carolyn Maloney are calling for new hearings to ascertain EXACTLY who knew what, when, and whether this administration has continued to lie about warnings involving 9/11.

Ridge: “We don’t do politics in DHS”

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2005/2/17/12522/9159
[AP] Former Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge met privately with Republican pollsters twice in a 10-day span last spring as he embarked on more than a dozen trips to presidential battleground states, according to records obtained by The Associated Press.

Ridge's get-togethers with Republican strategists Frank Luntz and Bill McInturff during a period the secretary was saying his agency was playing no role in Bush's re-election campaign were revealed in daily appointment calendars obtained by the AP under the Freedom of Information Act.

"We don't do politics in the Department of Homeland Security," Ridge told reporters during the election season.

His aides resisted releasing the calendars for over a year, finally providing them to the AP three days after Ridge left office this month.

More: http://www.salon.com/politics/war_room/archive.html?blog=/politics/war_room/2005/02/17/ridge/index.html

Guckert: Here’s how bad it was – ARI FLEISCHER didn’t think he belonged in the press room, and wouldn’t call on him

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2005/2/17/1874/11865
"I found out that he worked for a GOP site, and I didn't think it was my place to call on him because he worked for something that was related to the party," Fleischer said in a phone interview. "He had the editor call me and made the case that they were not related to the Republican Party. He said they used the GOP name for marketing purposes only."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,12271,1416370,00.html
"In this day and age," said press secretary McClellan, waxing philosophical about the Gannon affair, "when you have a changing media, it's not an easy issue to decide or try to pick and choose who is a journalist."

“Journalist” worked as a GOP operative in the Daschle/Thune campaign

http://www.crooksandliars.com/2005/02/17.html

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2005_02_13.php#004836

So, how easy is it for just anyone to get a WH press pass? (And not just a “day pass,” but a permanent “hard pass”) WHO HELPED HIM GET ONE?

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2005/2/16/221922/283
Jeff Gannon's response to LucyJo:
Not likely! There are many obstacles for admittance.

What exactly were those obstacles, and how did Guckert overcome them? Remember, Guckert wasn't with Talon News when he first got into the press pool. Who was he with?

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2005/2/17/125328/435
Scotty and friends have thus far attempted to justify Guckert's presence at press briefings by noting that the latter "only" received so-called "day passes," which are allegedly issued to a variety of individuals without the more thorough clearing process (and assigned seat) that come with a "hard pass.". . . One might wonder, indeed, how someone who doesn't work for a news organization at all, but instead a (to put it charitably) right-wing think tank, whose journalistic qualifications consist of a $50, 2-day seminar with the right-wing leadership institute, and who hadn't even published any "news" article until about one month beforehand, can manage to get a hard pass to the WH Press Room, while NY Times columnist Maureen Dowd cannot.

In any case, C-SPAN's video from the March 3, 2003 press briefing (from which the above stills are taken) proves that Guckert was in the Press Room, with a hard pass, before Talon News was created as a "spinoff" to GOPUSA, Guckert's original employer.

http://199.249.170.220/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1000807442
Washington Post staff writer Dana Milbank. . . said on Keith Olbermann’s MSNBC show last week that he thought he had seen Guckert/Gannon with a hard pass. Both the disgraced ex-reporter for Talon News and White House press Secretary Scott McClellan have denied this.

But Milbank affirmed, in an interview posted today at the popular blog Daily Kos, “A hard pass has your photo and news org and name on it. A daily pass is just a brown and white striped pass that says, ‘Press,’ on it and comes on a dog-tag style chain. Note that the one Gannon wears in the footage on TV is a blue lanyard - not the sort of thing a day pass comes on.”

Or, was his “hard pass” a FAKE?

http://atrios.blogspot.com/2005_02_13_atrios_archive.html#110867403706713909

Who did it? Looks like some poor shlub is going to take the fall

http://www.ericumansky.com/2005/02/quote_of_the_da.html
"The credentialing is all handled at the staff assistant level," White House spokesman Scott McClellan said.

http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2005/02/17/gannon/index.html
[T]he newest revelation raises the central question: Who broke the rules on Guckert's behalf to give him access to the White House? Despite administration claims that Guckert simply followed established protocol in order to routinely slip inside the White House briefing room, it now appears clear that Guckert . . . benefited from extraordinarily preferential treatment, likely granted by someone inside the White House press office.

Thanks to the continued digging by online sleuths, there's now documented evidence that Guckert attended White House briefings as early as February 2003. . . Guckert would have needed to prove that he worked for a news organization that, in the words of White House press secretary Scott McClellan, "published regularly," in itself an extraordinarily low threshold. . . But what's significant about the February 2003 date is that Talon did not even exist then. . .

President Bush called on Guckert during a Jan. 26 press conference. "It is a huge deal for Bush to pick on you at a press conferences," says a member of the White House press corps. "There are people in the press room who have covered Bush for four years and haven't had a chance to ask him a question.". . .

The question about credentials remains key. The vast majority of reporters covering the White House have what's called a "hard," or permanent, pass. To obtain one they have to verify they work for a recognized news organization with job responsibilities covering the White House. They have to submit to a lengthy security background check conducted by the FBI, which can take months to complete and requires being photographed and fingerprinted. Journalists also must verify to the White House they already have credentials to cover Capitol Hill. Without them, the White House won't complete a hard pass request.

In late 2003 Guckert applied for a Capitol Hill pass and was denied because Talon, which enjoys close ties to GOPUSA.com, was not deemed to be a legitimate, independent news outlet.

More: http://talkleft.com/new_archives/009750.html

http://www.thewashingtonnote.com/archives/000326.html

http://www.thewashingtonnote.com/archives/000324.html

The blog dimension to this story

The Daily Show: http://www.crooksandliars.com/2005/02/17.html

http://199.249.170.220/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1000807442
Asked if the media was now under pressure from blogs, Milbank responded: “I don't think we feel pressured. But it does drive the agenda in a sense that stories pop up in the blog ether and, because people start talking about them, they need to be addressed or debunked. The Kerry mistress story comes to mind.

“The web is both the salvation and the demise of print journalism. Proliferating blogs make it more unlikely that an important story will be missed or slip through the cracks. Even a large news organization like the Post has only 40 or 50 national reporters; there are zillions of bloggers.

“The downside is the web is contributing to the decentralization of information so that people can choose their own news, and facts, based on their ideology. I can see us reaching a point where conservatives get their news exclusively from Free Republic and liberals get it from World-o-Crap, and we're living in parallel universes.”

Asked if this meant mainstream outlet now faced continuing falloff in viewers/readers, Milbank said: “I think it's an inevitable result of the proliferation of news outlets, not just blogs but cable news, talk radio, etc. Newspapers (and newsmags, and the nets) can slow the decline but it's probably out of our power to reverse it.”

What about the mainstream and blogs somehow joining forces? “I think there will have to be convergence. I'd like to know how you, and your readers, think this could best be done. Some of us have thought about the idea of doing a daily blog report, summarizing what the top blogs are saying and assessing the accuracy/significance, but that's just a small item.”

[NB: Hey!! Great idea. . . and we could call it. . . ]

ACLU: torture “widespread and systematic”

http://suburbanguerrilla.blogspot.com/2005/02/whole-orchardaclu-freedom-of.html

Ugh. Soldiers use web site to post graphic photos of war dead, often with “humorous” captions

http://mparent7777.blog-city.com/read/1036870.htm

In Iraq, Shiites hold a majority in the Assembly; soon their guy (Jaafari) will be the PM; and Ayatollah Sistani maintains his status as the final arbiter of disagreements (hey, the trifecta!)

http://www.juancole.com/2005/02/shiites-have-majority-iraq_110867151708965021.html

http://www.juancole.com/2005/02/shiite-iraq-al-hayat-muhammad-husain.html
In a startling development to which the Western press is paying little attention, the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq has won the provincial governments in 8 of the 18 provinces in the country, including Baghdad. Over-all Shiite lists won 11 of the 18. . .

[Time magazine] Jaafari is a “Shiite modernist,” according to an AFP profile carried in the Tehran Times. He has signaled a moderate Islamist position on questions of religion and the state, advocating that Islam be constitutionally recognized as Iraq's official religion and a source (but not the sole source) of legislation, and that no laws will be passed that contradict Islamic values. At the same time, he favors protection of minority religious and ethnic groups, and insists that the first priority of a new government is not only to be as inclusive as possible of those who participated in the election, but also to draw in those who stayed away — almost half the eligible population (42 percent), including the vast majority of Sunnis . . . The U.S. is now faced with negotiating a relationship with a new government that reflects limited U.S. influence, and whose leaders enjoy historic ties with Iran.

The Kurds: a BIG problem just waiting to happen. . .

http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2005/02/17/mosul/index.html

http://yglesias.typepad.com/matthew/2005/02/kurdistan_risin.html
The Kurdish List's demands are now on the table, and boy are there a lot of them.

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/02/18/international/middleeast/18kurds.html

Chalabi: like a bad penny

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,7374-1489391,00.html

Halliburton: like a LOT of bad pennies

http://www.salon.com/politics/war_room/2005/02/17/halliburton/index.html

http://www.boston.com/news/world/articles/2005/02/17/rice_moves_to_name_senior_advisers?mode=PF

Bush may not want to call lifting the cap on taxable income a “tax increase,” but conservatives certainly do

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-social18feb18,1,2074431.story

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A33033-2005Feb17.html

Bush on Social Security: yesterday, a tax increase that isn’t a tax increase; today, a benefit cut that isn’t a benefit cut

http://www.salon.com/politics/war_room/archive.html?blog=/politics/war_room/2005/02/17/social/index.html
Asked if benefits will have to be cut to pay for his privatization plan, the president said: "'Benefit cuts' is an interesting word. [NB: I think it’s two words] Benefits are scheduled to grow at a certain rate, and one of the, one of the suggestions, for example. . . was they grow at a, they grow, but not at a rate as fast as projected. You can call it anything you want. I would call it an 'adjustment to reality.'"

Want to figure out your likely benefit cuts? Use this calculator

http://democrats.senate.gov/ss/calc.html

Bush’s plan “in trouble”

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2005_02_13.php#004842
[LAT] "President Bush's push to transform Social Security is in trouble, despite intense salesmanship designed to build support in Congress and with the public."

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2005_02/005681.php
Democrats are resolutely opposed to George Bush's Social Security plans, conservatives are blowing their stacks over the possibility of raising the payroll tax cap, no one wants to talk about benefit cuts, and the public is slowly turning against private accounts. In other words, things aren't looking good for the prez.

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2005_02_13.php#004835
So it seems the president's New Hampshire Bamboozlepalooza stop didn't pan out so well. . . A piece in Tuesday's Union Leader announced that there were still plenty of tickets available for the president's event. In the event, however, only about half of the 2,000 free tickets got snatched up. Before the president hit the stage, White House aides had to scurry around collecting empty seats to avoid images of the president speaking to a half-empty room. . .

As the rather-less-than-liberal Boston Herald headlined it: "Bush strikes out in N.H. on Social Security."

Krugman on Greenspan’s duplicity

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/02/18/opinion/18krugman.html
In 2001, Mr. Greenspan offered a convoluted, implausible justification for supporting everything the Bush administration wanted. This time, he offered no justification at all.

Meanwhile, while Bush dithers over Social Security, Medicaid is in real and imminent trouble

http://www.prospect.org/weblog/archives/2005/02/index.html#005524
With the marquee battles over Social Security and tort reform claiming the bulk of the headlines, this year’s sleeper domestic issue could turn out to be Medicaid, which is in greater peril now than perhaps ever before. As rising medical costs and increasing numbers of people pushed out of employer-based medical coverage put an ever-greater strain on state Medicaid financing. . . Bush's helpful solution is to cut back federal Medicaid funding even more. Much has been said about the illusory quality of the White House’s assurances that $60 billion can be saved from the federal portion of the program by eliminating “waste, fraud, and abuse” (ah, the old reliable) -- a phoniness that Health and Human Services secretary Mike Leavitt only further underscored by his evasive testimony before the Senate Finance Committee yesterday.

But the bigger issue could turn out to be as-yet unspecified plans to give states more flexibility in funding and administering the so-called “optional” components of Medicaid, which encompass about one-third of all beneficiaries and (since they tend to involve patients with more chronic needs) two-thirds of all expenditures.

Bush had proposed transforming the entire Medicaid program into a capped block grant system in 2003, but immediately ran into the opposition of most governors and the promise of a filibuster from Democrats. Leavitt and the White House have made a big show of promising that no such block grant proposal is being revived now. But. . . most observers think their intention is to turn at least the optional portions of Medicaid into a capped grant, with the deal sweetened for the states by the offer of greater “flexibility” to cut back on services and eligibility rules. A filibuster threat is likely not an option, because Republicans will push such changes through the budget reconciliation process. It’s important to remember who the new Senate budget committee chairman is: Judd Gregg, an entitlement hawk who’s made no secret of his intention to tackle Medicaid. He’s gunning for the program. Social Security's not the only -- nor the most vulnerable -- entitlement in the GOP's crosshairs this year.

In the GOP-controlled House, key bills rushed to the floor with no committee review or hearings at all

http://www.salon.com/politics/war_room/archive.html?blog=/politics/war_room/2005/02/17/hardball/index.html

Dems try to fix a badly broken election system

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-vote18feb18,1,7067877.story

http://www.salon.com/politics/war_room/2005/02/17/reform/index.html

A coordinated assault on PBS: one more step in their long-term plan to eviscerate every source of skeptical, independent news and opinion

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-pbs18feb18,1,2935622.story

http://mediamatters.org/items/200502170007

Bonus item: Here is what passes for vigorous investigative journalism these days: sit on your ass and wait for someone to tell you something interesting

http://mediamatters.org/items/200502170004
BRIGITTE QUINN (FOX News Live anchor): I really haven't heard anything negative about John Negroponte for the hour that I've been sitting here.

***If you enjoy PBD and support what we are doing, you can help by forwarding a copy of this issue to your friends (using the envelope link below) or by sending them a copy of its URL (http://pbd.blogspot.com).

I don't get anything personally out of this project, except the satisfaction of doing it (I don't run ads, etc). The credit really all goes to the people whose material I copy and redistribute. But if I do have a "mission," it is to get this information into the hands of as many people as I can.***
- posted by Nick Burbules @ 7:12 AM

 
IN CONTEMPT

Holding Donald Rumsfeld in contempt: well, that’s not news but this time it’s a judge speaking

http://www.prospect.org/weblog/archives/2005/02/index.html#005507

Hey Don, how’s that “faster, leaner, more efficient” Army coming along?

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&e=4&u=/ap/20050216/ap_on_go_ca_st_pe/war_costs
With military costs since Sept. 11, 2001, now expected to exceed $300 billion, the Pentagon is spending more per soldier to fight in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere than it did during earlier conflicts.

http://www.house.gov/schakowsky/iraqquotes_web.htm
[Rumsfeld] “Well, the Office of Management and Budget, has come up come up with a number that's something under $50 billion for the cost. How much of that would be the U.S. burden, and how much would be other countries, is an open question.” [Source: Media Stakeout, 1/19/03]

Vintage Rumsfeld arrogance

http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A30800-2005Feb16?language=printer
Two dozen members of the House Armed Services Committee had not yet had their turn to question Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld at yesterday's hearings when he decided he had had enough.

At 12:54, he announced that at 1 p.m. he would be taking a break and then going to another hearing in the Senate. "We're going to have to get out and get lunch and get over there," he said. When the questioning continued for four more minutes, Rumsfeld picked up his briefcase and began to pack up his papers. . .

With the Bush administration asking Congress this month to write checks for half a trillion dollars for the Pentagon, you might think the secretary of defense would set an accommodating posture on Capitol Hill. But. . . Donald Rumsfeld doesn't do accommodating very well.

Asked about the number of insurgents in Iraq, Rumsfeld replied: "I am not going to give you a number."

Did he care to voice an opinion on efforts by U.S. pilots to seek damages from their imprisonment in Iraq? "I don't."

Could he comment on what basing agreements he might seek in Iraq? "I can't."

How about the widely publicized cuts to programs for veterans? "I'm not familiar with the cuts you're referring to."

How long will the war last? "There's never been a war that was predictable as to length, casualty or cost in the history of mankind."

Rumsfeld's blunt manner was seen as refreshing four years ago, but these are different times. . .

Shifting war rationales. Brilliant: it can’t be laid out any better than this!

http://www.billdanceoutdoors.com/cgi-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic;f=4;t=002200

Women in combat: just what the hell IS our policy?

http://www.first-draft.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=2194&mode=thread&order=0&thold=0
Asked about reports of putting women closer to land combat, the president said: "There's no change of policy as far as I'm concerned. No women in combat. Having said that, let me explain. . .”

Rumsfeld quote: you couldn’t make this stuff up

http://www.first-draft.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=2197&mode=thread&order=0&thold=0
Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld refused to estimate the size of the insurgency facing US and Iraqi forces in Iraq. . . "I am not going to give you a number for it because it's not my business to do intelligence work," Rumsfeld said.

Even the govt’s own experts admit that the Iraq war is encouraging the growth of terrorism

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A28876-2005Feb16.html?nav=rss_nation
The insurgency in Iraq continues to baffle the U.S. military and intelligence communities, and the U.S. occupation has become a potent recruiting tool for al Qaeda and other terrorist groups, top U.S. national security officials told Congress yesterday.

The “Salvador option” (paramilitary death squads): reported in Newsweek (http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6802629/site/newsweek), vehemently denied by the administration, and before the ink on the lies is even dry, now coming to an Iraqi neighborhood near you

http://www.needlenose.com/node/view/1117
"We don't call them militias," Major Chris Wales. . . "Militias are. . . illegal."

Miller and Cooper threatened with jail to reveal Plame sources: but why not Bob Novak (who started it all)?

http://slate.msn.com/id/2113610/fr/rss/

http://atrios.blogspot.com/2005_02_13_atrios_archive.html#110861357561975013
Miller said she didn't feel she and Cooper were being targeted unfairly, but she found it curious why the prosecutor in the case, Patrick Fitzgerald, had chosen to go after only them and not other journalists who had received subpoenas.

Gannon/Guckert: the real story starts to emerge – no thanks to any major news organization

http://www.observer.com/pages/conason.asp
What Mr. Guckert seems to have been is not a journalist but a Republican dirty trickster. He was schooled at the Leadership Institute—an outfit run by veteran right-wing operative and Republican National Committee member Morton Blackwell. (It was Mr. Blackwell who distributed those cute "purple heart" Band-aids mocking Mr. Kerry’s war wounds at the Republican convention last summer.) His former employers at Talon News include leading Republican fund-raisers and former officials of the Texas Republican Party who have been active in partisan affairs for the past two decades. . .

http://atrios.blogspot.com/2005_02_13_atrios_archive.html#110858859888190647
A reader sends in this tip. According to E&P, Gannon claims to have attended his first WH press conference in April 2003, "just weeks after starting with Talon News.". . . But, the Intelligence Squad (don't know who they are) points us to a "Jeff Gannon" posting in the comments of Winds of Change on March 5, 2003, referring to a February 28, 2003 press conference:. . . So, if this was before he was working for "Talon News," under what organization was he credentialed?

“Talon News” web site scrubbed (nothing to hide, boys?)

http://r-lucian.dailykos.com/story/2005/2/13/22235/3796

Where is the press?

http://www.observer.com/pages/conason.asp
Imagine the media explosion if a male escort had been discovered operating as a correspondent in the Clinton White House. Imagine that he was paid by an outfit owned by Arkansas Democrats and had been trained in journalism by James Carville. Imagine that this gentleman had been cultivated and called upon by Mike McCurry or Joe Lockhart--or by President Clinton himself. Imagine that this "journalist" had smeared a Republican Presidential candidate and had previously claimed access to classified documents in a national-security scandal. . . Then imagine the constant screaming on radio, on television, on Capitol Hill, in the Washington press corps--and listen to the placid mumbling of the "liberal" media now.

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2005_02_13.php#004832
But if it turned out that any other president -- doesn't even have to be Clinton -- had a ringer 'reporter' stationed in the press pool to serve up soft-serve questions, and the same folks had already been caught paying off or buying or otherwise subborning other 'journalists' several times in recent months, AND evidence mounted that the ringer 'reporter' turned out to be a ringer 'reporter'/GI Joe-style male prostitute with what Sid Blumenthal rightly calls "enormous potential for blackmail", don't we figure that this would have ginned up a bit more big time press razzle-dazzle and gasps and awwws by now?

John Aravosis cuts loose over media hypocrisy on the Gannon/Guckert story

http://americablog.blogspot.com/2005/02/sanctimonious-bullshit-for-hotline_16.html

One fine exception: Frank Rich

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/02/20/arts/20rich.html?8hpib=&pagewanted=all&position
By my count, "Jeff Gannon" is now at least the sixth "journalist" (four of whom have been unmasked so far this year) to have been a propagandist on the payroll of either the Bush administration or a barely arms-length ally like Talon News while simultaneously appearing in print or broadcast forums that purport to be real news.

Howie Kurtz, maybe there’s hope for you yet

http://www.thewashingtonnote.com/archives/000321.html
The contretemps sparked questions about why the White House had regularly cleared him for briefings, especially since he had been denied a press pass on Capitol Hill, where reporters control the credentialing process.

Yes, yes, yes. Why was he given a pass 'regularly' when Capitol Hill credential officials refused? Was there an insider helping him?. . . Kurtz is wrong, by the way, that Gannon's nude pictures are what is keeping this story going. What is important is the revelation that the "leaker" in the White House pushed the Valerie Plame story on Gannon.

Maureen Dowd: an issue perfectly suited for her acid pen

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/02/17/opinion/17dowd.html?hp
I am very impressed with James Guckert, a k a Jeff Gannon. . . How often does an enterprising young man, heralded in press reports as both a reporter and a contributor to such sites as Hotmilitarystud.com, Workingboys.net, Militaryescorts .com, MilitaryescortsM4M.com and Meetlocalmen.com, get to question the president of the United States?

Who knew that a hotmilitarystud wanting to meetlocalmen could so easily get to be face2face with the commander in chief?

It's hard to believe the White House could hit rock bottom on credibility again, but it has, in a bizarre maelstrom that plays like a dark comedy. How does it credential a man with a double life and a secret past?. . .

I was rejected for a White House press pass at the start of the Bush administration, but someone with an alias, a tax evasion problem and Internet pictures where he posed like the "Barberini Faun" is credentialed to cover a White House that won a second term by mining homophobia and preaching family values?

At first when I tried to complain about not getting my pass renewed, even though I'd been covering presidents and first ladies since 1986, no one called me back. Finally, when Mr. McClellan replaced Ari Fleischer, he said he'd renew the pass - after a new Secret Service background check that would last several months.

In an era when security concerns are paramount, what kind of Secret Service background check did James Guckert get so he could saunter into the West Wing every day under an assumed name while he was doing full-frontal advertising for stud services for $1,200 a weekend? He used a driver's license that said James Guckert to get into the White House, then, once inside, switched to his alter ego, asking questions as Jeff Gannon.

Mr. McClellan shrugged this off to Editor & Publisher magazine, oddly noting, "People use aliases all the time in life, from journalists to actors."

I know the F.B.I. computers don't work, but this is ridiculous.

Whiskey Bar does due diligence

http://billmon.org/archives/001692.html

Right-wing “Accuracy in Media” tries to pooh-pooh the Gannon story by finding a similar case of a “liberal activist” getting into the WH Press Briefing room. But of course, the cases aren’t parallel at all — and even if they were it has nothing to do with defending or explaining the real scandal

http://tomcoburnisabigfatjerk.blogspot.com/2005/02/radicals-try-to-counteract-gannon.html

Why are government officials removing years-old documents from the Henry “Scoop” Jackson archives in Washington State? This site suggests it could be to eliminate evidence pertinent to the ongoing Franklin/AIPAC probe: but in any event, since the FBI wasn’t there, it certainly appears that SOMETHING is being covered up (thanks to Atrios for the link)

http://www.pnionline.com/dnblog/extra/archives/001462.html

No big deal? http://www.warandpiece.com/blogdirs/001700.html

Bush’s Social Security road show: an avalanche of lies, recycled through hand-picked, sycophantic audiences. No wonder Josh Marshall calls it “Bamboozlepalooza”

http://www.first-draft.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=2195&mode=thread&order=0&thold=0

http://www.first-draft.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=2196&mode=thread&order=0&thold=0
Q If the goal is to convince people who have doubts about the problem of Social Security, why do, it seems like we go to these rallies where people mostly seem to agree with the President. Why not -- is there some question as to whether the President's base of support is doubting the plan? Or at what point will you --

MR. McCLELLAN: I disagree with your characterization. One, the President is reaching out to all Americans. This is an issue that affects all Americans. So he's reaching out to all Americans in that regard. Now, the American people expect us to solve problems and not pass them on to future generations. So I think it's important to highlight the problems facing Social Security and have a discussion with the American people about those problems. That's what the President's doing.

(It ain’t working)

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2005_02_13.php#004829
[WSJ] Moreover, the poll shows that the values and priorities the public brings to the debate make it an uphill fight for the president. By 61%-32%, Americans say Congress should emphasize "guarantees for the future" rather than "more responsibility and personal control" in addressing Social Security.

A (very rare) moment of actual candor

http://www.salon.com/politics/war_room/archive.html?blog=/politics/war_room/2005/02/16/social/index.html
Bush admitted that the private investments accounts will not, in fact, fix the Social Security "crisis.". . . "Certainly," Bush said, "the personal account doesn't fix the system. There needs to be better reforms, more meaningful reforms than that."

Having said repeatedly that he will not raise taxes to pay for his Social Security plan, Bush has not made clear whether raising the cap on income subject to the payroll tax would count in his view as “raising taxes” (it’s the right thing to do, but it CLEARLY IS “raising taxes”). Well, now Bush has explicitly put it on the table as an option

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A28866-2005Feb16.html?nav=rss_politics/administration/whbriefing

Bush keeps claiming the “Trust Fund” either doesn’t exist or contains nothing but IOU’s: but surplus revenue from payroll taxes IS being invested in T-bonds (In fact, under the 1983 bailout plan, even more of them SHOULD be. But Bush is spending them right now on what his tax cuts don’t allow him to pay for -- this is the REAL reason why Social Security is in trouble, and no other)

http://mediamatters.org/items/200502160005

So what does Alan Greenspan (key architect of the 1983 bailout plan) think about all this?

http://www.j-bradford-delong.net/movable_type/2005-3_archives/000371.html
Greenspan said it was ‘imperative to restore fiscal discipline’ in the United States to help narrow its huge current account deficit.

http://www.prospect.org/weblog/archives/2005/02/index.html#005505
On the Hill today, Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan offered equivocal comments on Social Security. He thinks the program (despite the Trust Fund created at his behest in 1983) is in some kind of dire trouble. . . He also thinks privatization is a good idea in principle. On the other hand, he concedes privatization won't help close the funding gap, won't raise the national savings rate, and will lead to unacceptably high transition costs.

Earlier this afternoon I was on a conference call with Sen. John Corzine, Rep. Sander Levin, and Nobel Prize–winning economist Joseph Stiglitz to talk about the Greenspan testimony. The tactic on display was basically to try and spin Greenspan as an opponent of the Bush plan. And that's right -- if you take the transition costs problem seriously, you have to oppose the Bush plan, no matter what else you may think.

I’m sure the WH will try to spin this as some kind of endorsement of their plan, but it’s pretty weak tea

http://slate.msn.com/id/2113686/fr/rss/
"If you're going to move to private accounts, which I approve of, I think you have to do it in a cautious, gradual way," said Greenspan, who also warned against borrowing would-be trillions to fund the change.

Greenspan is no friend of Social Security (thanks to Josh Marshall for the link)

http://www.tcf.org/4L/4LMain.asp?SubjectID=4&ArticleID=873

More purges of those members and staff of the House Ethics committee who think it actually has something to do with investigating corruption

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2005_02_13.php#004820
Now, according to this story in CQ Today, new Chairman Doc Hastings' first order of business was to fire two top members of the committee's professional staff. . . Pioneering new ground in understatement, Hastings (R) of Washington told the remaining committee staff he is “headed in another direction.” And apparently there may be more firings to follow.

More about rethinking the politics of abortion

http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2005_02_13_digbysblog_archive.html#110860006095764716
The birth control issue is an excellent example. I would imagine that most of those pro-life married women who voted for Bush are in favor of women having easy access to birth control. Indeed, I would expect that they have no idea that the pro-life movement us run on the institutional level by people who think that birth control is a form of infanticide in some cases and an invitation to female promiscuity in others. They would be very surprised to learn that under all the high flown pro-life rhetoric about abortion there lies a movement that is based upon a belief that it is wrong for women to control their reproductive capabilities. Back in the day, people understood this but it's been lost in all the pearl clutching about partial birth abortion and the like. It's never really been about reducing the number of abortions. It's always been about feminism.

http://www.tnr.com/etc.mhtml?pid=2558
Easily the most tactically brilliant flourish in Hillary's Roe speech a few weeks back was her suggestion that people on both sides of the abortion debate can agree that abortion is a tragedy, that they all want to reduce the number of abortions, and that the best way to do that is to reduce the number of unwanted pregnancies. This doesn't exclude promoting teen abstinence, as Hillary concedes. But it clearly includes guaranteeing access to birth control.

What makes this tack so brilliant is that, in addition to being true, it obviously puts anti-abortion groups on the defensive: Their preferred solution to lowering the number of unwanted pregnancies is, I suspect, for fewer people to have nonprocreative sex (at least fewer unmarried people)--which is not exactly what you'd call a winning position.

Still, I didn't appreciate just how vulnerable anti-abortion groups were on this point until I read the following in today's New York Times:

. . . For example, in this week's edition of the conservative Weekly Standard, Naral placed an advertisement asking abortion rights groups to "please, help us prevent abortions" by increasing access to birth control. . . But Carol Tobias, political director for the National Right to Life Foundation, dismissed the invitation as an effort "to get the pro-life movement into a debate over birth control," on which her organization takes no position. Ms. Tobias called the Democrats' talk "pulling the wool over the eyes of voters."

Despite Bush’s hasty renomination of his slate of wacko judges, Senate GOP is in no hurry to take on what will surely turn into one of the most vicious bloodbaths in Congressional history

http://www.prospect.org/weblog/archives/2005/02/index.html#005503

Yikes! Even Sean Hannity thinks the Freepers have become too extreme (how far right can you go before you fall off the ledge?)

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1344622/posts

http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2005_02_13_digbysblog_archive.html#110858944102360084

Bonus item: Center for American Progress targets campuses (pretty slick – and funny!)

http://www.prospect.org/weblog/archives/2005/02/index.html#005502

***If you enjoy PBD and support what we are doing, you can help by forwarding a copy of this issue to your friends (using the envelope link below) or by sending them a copy of its URL (http://pbd.blogspot.com).

You can also help by voting for PBD as the blog “Most Deserving of Wider Recognition” at http://wampum.wabanaki.net/archives/001725.html

I don't get anything personally out of this project, except the satisfaction of doing it (I don't run ads, etc). The credit really all goes to the people whose material I copy and redistribute. But if I do have a "mission," it is to get this information into the hands of as many people as I can.***
- posted by Nick Burbules @ 7:31 AM

 
KOUFAX SITE OPEN AGAIN

The Wampum site was down for a couple of days, so you may have tried to vote and couldn't get through. Friday is the deadline for voting, and Progressive Blog Digest is still in the running for a “Koufax” award for the lefty blog “Most Deserving of Wider Recognition.”

For those of you who know me, you know this isn't about personal recognition or credit. I don't sell advertising or receive anything personally from doing PBD. But if the BLOG receives this award, it would help it reach a wider audience. That is my only goal.

So, please take a minute (if you are so inclined), and add your vote to the category. You can vote through the Comments section of the Koufax award web page located at:

http://wampum.wabanaki.net/archives/001725.html

(You don’t need to add comments, just your vote.)

OR, what is even easier, just send an email to wampum@maine.rr.com - be sure to mention the category and the name of the blog:

Most Deserving of Wider Recognition
Progressive Blog Digest

Thanks for your support!
- posted by Nick Burbules @ 8:53 AM

 
CRYING WOLF

U.S., as expected, starts building the case to give them “options” with Syria. And is it too cynical to suggest that their claims of a link with the Hariri assassination in Lebanon are – based on their track record with WMD and Saddam/Al Qaeda – a bit less than compelling?

http://www.tompaine.com/articles/target_syria.php
The Bush administration’s crosshairs shifted east decisively yesterday, from Iran to Syria, and that country is now the chief target for the neocons and their friends. With Iraq now firmly in the anti-Syria camp and under U.S. tutelage, it seems like the time has come for implementation of part two of the grand design laid out in the famous “A Clean Break” memo, written by Richard Perle, Douglas Feith et al., which you can read (if you haven’t read it lately) here.

The assassination of Rafik Hariri, the Saudi-connected billionaire, could have been carried out by any number of factions—from personal, business enemies of Hariri’s, Hezbollah, other Shiite factions, Syrian intelligence, Israeli intelligence, Iran and even some factions in Iraq. To believe that Syria did it—thus making itself is the instant target of U.S. wrath—seems ludicrous. More likely, to speculate, it seems that the murder was carried out specifically as a provocation to embarrass Syria and to provide Washington with a pretext to do what it wants to do anyway: Regime Change II.

http://yglesias.typepad.com/matthew/2005/02/the_trouble_wit_2.html

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2005_02_13.php#004814

http://www.first-draft.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=2189&mode=thread&order=0&thold=0
Q The fact that the U.S. has recalled Ambassador Scobey from Syria, is that an indication that you believe that Syria was involved in yesterday's attack in Beirut?

MR. McCLELLAN: Well, Ambassador Scobey met with Syrian officials, I believe, yesterday, and delivered a very clear message about what our concerns are. Secretary Rice has decided to recall Ambassador Scobey for consultations and that's what will be taking place. She will be leaving Syria and coming back for consultations here.

[snip]

Q But, sorry, again, just to pursue this a little further -- you don't recall an ambassador unless you're showing displeasure with the country in which that ambassador is stationed. So what sort of displeasure are you demonstrating here with Syria by recalling Ambassador Scobey?

MR. McCLELLAN: We've had a number of serious concerns about Syria's behavior. We want to see Syria change its behavior and play a constructive role in the region.

In Iraq, Mahdi out, Jaafari emerging as likely PM nominee. Who is he?

http://www.juancole.com/2005/02/jaafari-takes-lead-reuters-is.html
“I personally look at Iran as part of the geographical entourage of Iraq and a friendly state which stood by Iraq's side in time of crisis: It harbored Iraqis when Saddam Hussein killed, displaced and harmed many of them. It is a state like all Iraq's other neighbors, which has common interests with us. I look forward to seeing Iraq's relations with Iran and all its other neighboring countries rise to the level of advanced countries.”

http://www.juancole.com/2005/02/jaafari-islam-to-be-source-of.html
USA Today called Jaafari a "secularist," by which it apparently means that he wears Western business suits and is married to a physician. He is not a secularist. He is the leader of an old-time revolutionary Shiite party that has for 48 years worked toward an Islamic republic in Iraq. In an AP interview he said,

“Islam should be the official religion of the country, and one of the main sources for legislation, along with other sources that do not harm Muslim sensibilities . . . “

http://www.tnr.com/blog/iraqd?pid=2556
Michael Rubin, formerly of the Coalition Provisional Authority and a Chalabi proponent, painted Jaafari as "a politician who advocates theocracy, accepts money from Iran, and seeks to marginalize the political and social role of Iraq's women." Jaafari, as noted above, rejects that characterization, but there's little question that under Jaafari Iraq would move far away from secularism. He's framed governance as essentially a way to spare Sistani the trouble of running the country: "Politicians might ask Sistani's advice on general issues, but from now on there will be a parliament that will write the constitution and form the government. He does not want to get involved in all the minute details."

Chalabi becomes odd man out – or is there still another twist to come?

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/02/15/international/middleeast/15cnd-iraq.html
Even if Mr. Chalabi's effort were to fail, he could take a large number the alliance's candidates with him, possibly to join the large coalition of secular leaders, including the Kurdish parties and the current prime minister, Ayad Allawi. Depending on how many Shiite candidates would be willing to follow Mr. Chalabi, his defection could give the Kurds and Mr. Allawi enough to votes to the form the new government.

http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2005/02/15/iraqvote/index.html
Another big winner was former neocon fave turned slick Shiite operator Dr. Ahmed Chalabi, who now considers himself a front-runner for prime minister. Or so he said on CNN. But Chalabi cannot be considered a viable candidate. For starters, he will insist on equal rights for women in Iraq and immediate diplomatic relations with Israel. Both conditions seem like an unlikely platform for election among Shiite religious figures with ties to Iran.

Covering the coverage

http://www.needlenose.com/node/view/1115

The utter and complete failure of training an Iraqi defense force, documented in Bush’s own budget documents (it’s even worse than we’ve heard)

http://slate.msn.com/id/2113575/fr/rss/

http://talkleft.com/new_archives/009724.html

Torture in Iraq was reported to “Senior Pentagon officials,” but ignored (thanks to Holden for the link)

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/wn_report/story/280282p-240219c.html

ACLU asks Gonzales for Special Counsel (well, you can ASK, right?)

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A27222-2005Feb15.html?nav=rss_nation

CIA getting out of the business

http://slate.msn.com/id/2113600/fr/rss/
CIA folks [say] they're looking to get out of the detention business, a feeling that was recently "heightened" when now Attorney General Gonzales and others "seemed in public testimony to sidestep responsibility for shaping interrogation policies.". . . One former "senior intelligence official" said, "No one has a plan for what to do with these guys, and the C.I.A. has been left holding the bag."

Bush’s Secret Plan to Phase Out Social Security (there’s only one way to read his refusal to give out details – he knows how they will be received!)

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2005_02_13.php#004817
"The tendency in Washington is, ‘OK, Mr. President, you play your cards now and we’ll decide if we’re going to play ours. I’m not going to do that. I’m keeping them close to the vest."

Conservatives test-marketing outrageous policy analogies: how about “Social Security is like slavery”?

http://www.prospect.org/weblog/archives/2005/02/index.html#005496

Court rules that Miller and Cooper must testify on what they know about Plame leaks. Of course, there will be appeals and more to come (this case ain’t breaking any time soon)

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A25744-2005Feb15.html

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/02/16/national/16profiles.html

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2005_02/005661.php
Were laws broken? Was national security compromised? That's still to be decided, but three circuit court judges seem to think that Patrick Fitzgerald has a pretty good case so far. That's bad news for the conservative apologists who keep pretending this is just a partisan witch hunt.

What happens when you put political operatives in charge of national policy positions: you carry over the us/them thinking of campaigning into the administration of government supposedly “for all the people”

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2005/2/15/191229/173
New secretary of education Margaret Spellings:

Ms. Spellings said that Senator Orrin G. Hatch had invited her to Utah and she expressed eagerness to visit there. "These are Republicans," she said. "These are our people."

Laziness or. . . ? Govt-funded “news” web site recycles CNN photos “proving” Iranian and North Korean nuclear weapons sites. Problem is, it’s the SAME PHOTO

http://www.bradblog.com/archives/00001189.htm

The Senate Democratic Policy Committee, their new investigative unit (sans subpoena power). How are they doing so far?

http://www.salon.com/politics/war_room/archive.html?blog=/politics/war_room/2005/02/15/plame/index.html

http://www.salon.com/politics/war_room/archive.html?blog=/politics/war_room/2005/02/15/cpa/index.html
At the hearing -- called by Democrats who lack the numbers to hold actual congressional investigations -- a lawyer for two whistleblowers said that the Coalition Provisional Authority paid the Republican-friendly security firm Custer Battles $15 million to provide security for civilian flights at Baghdad International Airport. . . The catch, according to today's Washington Post: No planes actually flew during the contract term.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A24511-2005Feb14.html
Still, the Democrats might get others to take their events/hearings more seriously if they did so themselves. Only two senators bothered to attend the nearly two-hour event -- Dorgan and Senate Minority Leader Harry M. Reid (Nev.). . .

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2005_02/005663.php

http://www.prospect.org/weblog/archives/2005/02/index.html#005497

How to play a scandal for maximum effect: what the right knows, and the left has yet to learn

http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2005_02_13_digbysblog_archive.html#110849435828569255
[Digby] Finally, the biggest reason to pursue this story is because we are creating a terrible moral hazard if we don't. The Republicans have no incentive to stop the politics of personal destruction if we don't hold them to their own standards and they continue to be rewarded. Pitchers, batters and Republicans understand this instinctively. So should we.

In the bizarro world of some right-wing pundits, the depth of deception has no discernable bottom. Now Hannity and Coulter are denying that Kerry ever saw combat in Viet Nam (something even the Swifties never stooped to suggest)

http://mediamatters.org/items/200502150010

60 Minutes execs aren’t going quietly, may sue

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2005_02_13.php#004815

“America: Land of the Free? Not If You’re Muslim” (thanks to Jan Pieterse for the link)

http://www.onlinejournal.com/Commentary/011405Shaw/011405shaw.html
A recent Cornell University survey found that almost half of all Americans believe that the U.S. government should restrict the civil liberties of Muslim Americans. . .

One of the interesting phenomena in the blog world is when a story is judged by the Powers That Be of sufficient importance and credibility to migrate from the blogosphere over into the “official” media. The latest “Jeff Gannon” disclosures aren’t quite there yet (and they REALLY don’t want to touch the gay porn and prostitution aspects), but this is becoming too serious of a story to ignore much longer

http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2005/02/15/guckert/index.html

http://www.thewashingtonnote.com/archives/000319.html
Timing is everything. Had this story broken before the election, well. . .you know the rest of that story.

More on the FEC’s interest in limiting political blogs

http://www.mydd.com/story/2005/2/14/164335/880

Bonus item: interesting report, if true. Google is apparently de-emphasizing blogs in their search ordering (making blog news harder to find)

http://majikthise.typepad.com/majikthise_/2005/02/google_says_tri.html

***If you enjoy PBD and support what we are doing, you can help by forwarding a copy of this issue to your friends (using the envelope link below) or by sending them a copy of its URL (http://pbd.blogspot.com).

You can also help by voting for PBD as the blog “Most Deserving of Wider Recognition” at http://wampum.wabanaki.net/archives/001725.html

I don't get anything personally out of this project, except the satisfaction of doing it (I don't run ads, etc). The credit really all goes to the people whose material I copy and redistribute. But if I do have a "mission," it is to get this information into the hands of as many people as I can.***
- posted by Nick Burbules @ 6:26 AM

 
STRANGE BEDFELLOWS

“Mission accomplished” in Iraq

http://www.j-bradford-delong.net/movable_type/2005-3_archives/000353.html
[Max Sawicky] As any fool knows, the U.S. went to war in Iraq to combat the spread of anti-democratic Islamic fundamentalism, typified by that charter member of the Axis of Evil, Iran. We also went to war to bottle up a potential source of nuclear technology to fundamentalist-inspired terrorists. To that end, we destroyed a secular, tyrannical government and continue to do battle with its social base in the country, the Sunni Muslims, and we have sponsored an election that brings to power allies of Iran, an Islamic-fundamentalist dominated state with an active program to develop nuclear technology.

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2005/2/14/114015/049
[WP] When the Bush administration decided to invade Iraq two years ago, it envisioned a quick handover to handpicked allies in a secular government that would be the antithesis of Iran's theocracy -- potentially even a foil to Tehran's regional ambitions.

But, in one of the greatest ironies of the U.S. intervention, Iraqis instead went to the polls and elected a government with a strong religious base -- and very close ties to the Islamic republic next door. It is the last thing the administration expected from its costly Iraq policy -- $300 billion and counting, U.S. and regional analysts say. . .

And the winning Kurdish alliance, whose co-leader Jalal Talabani is the top nominee for president, has roots in a province abutting Iran, which long served as its economic and political lifeline.

"This is a government that will have very good relations with Iran. The Kurdish victory reinforces this conclusion. Talabani is very close to Tehran," said Juan Cole, a University of Michigan expert on Iraq. "In terms of regional geopolitics, this is not the outcome that the United States was hoping for."

http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2005/02/14/iraqi_leaders/index.html?source=RSS
Three rivals within the Shiite-dominated coalition that triumphed in Iraq's election moved swiftly Sunday night to bid for the job of prime minister. Ibrahim al-Jaafari and Adel Abdul Mahdi are barely known outside the country, and Ahmad Chalabi is more infamous than famous. Yet one of them is expected to become overnight a crucial player in the Middle East.

http://www.tnr.com/blog/iraqd?pid=2551
I'm not sure I agree with Juan Cole that Allawi took a pummeling. It's true that his "Big Brother" campaign didn't enable him to retain his dominance. But against the UIA that goal was never realistic. With 40 seats, Allawi is positioned favorably to champion secularism, unity and security. (Watch him argue that because the UIA can't provide the first two, Iraq under the UIA can't achieve the third.) Whether that can form the kernel of an effective opposition politics is uncertain, but every non-UIA element in the next government desires at least security and worries about the UIA's ties to the Najaf clerical establishment. Not for nothing is Allawi meeting with Massoud Barzani of the Kurdistan Democratic Party.

http://www.tnr.com/blog/iraqd?pid=2552
Sunnis in Mosul are communicating to a top Sunni affiliated with the dominant United Iraqi Alliance that unless the next government can counterbalance Kurdish muscle in the disputed city, it should expect "a lot of violence that some could describe as a civil war." While elements within the Sunni minority have shown signs of accepting Iraq's current ethnic and political balance--with the Shia and the Kurds on top--the sense of besiegement among Sunnis appears very high.

More: http://www.needlenose.com/node/view/1108

http://www.prospect.org/weblog/archives/2005/02/index.html#005478

Finally, this contrarian analysis by Bob Dreyfuss sets my head spinning: could it POSSIBLY be right? If so, the political alliances over here are shifting even faster than the alliances over in Iraq

http://www.tompaine.com/articles/cheney_the_shiites_etc.php
The results, of course, show the utter futility of the elections in Iraq. In Anbar Province, turnout was 2 percent, and similar miniscule showing among Sunnis proliferated in other provinces, too. By no stretch of the imagination can the Iraqi parliament be considered legitimate. That won’t stop the American-installed regime from naming a Kurd as Iraq’s president: Jalal Talabani, the wily, Iran-connected veteran of decades of intrigue who will become the first non-Arab president of an Arab country.

Writing in the Post, poor Robin Wright gets it totally wrong. She argues—in an article headlined: “Iraq Winners Allied with Iran Are the Opposite of U.S. Vision”—that it went all wrong. Pro-Iran candidates such as Talabani and the Shiite list under (Iranian-born) Ayatollah Sistani’s pals and such militant Islamists as Al Dawa and the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI), she says, give Iran a strong hand in Iraq and foil U.S. plans. Maybe that’s true, if by “U.S. plans” she means the plans of the realists, the CIA and the State Department. But the neocons are ecstatic: not only does the new Iraq threaten Jordan, Syria and Saudi Arabia, but it will be people by Kurds (many of whom have secret ties to Israel’s Mossad), Ahmed Chalabi (an Israeli-connected Shiite), and other doubtful Iraq’s of Iranian provenance.

At the Hudson Institute on Friday, I listened to a representative from Chalabi’s Iraqi National Congress blister Jordan and Syria for supporting the Iraqi resistance. He said not a word about Iran, one of the original members of the “axis of evil.” Sitting next to him, nodding was Richard Perle, the dark prince of neoconservativism. The INC rep actually accused the State Department and the U.S. embassy of collaborating with terrorists and Baathists—and Perle endorsed the view with a tut-tut comment about how he is no longer surprised at anything the State Department does.

Chalabi may or may not get the prime minister’s job, but the Times on Sunday used its front page for a piece promoting Chalabi’s candidacy. The nugget of the piece is that Chalabi hopes to emerge as a compromise, Sistani-backed candidate—and that his main support is coming from none other than Iran-linked, terrorist-minded Muqtada al-Sadr, the Shiite fanatic. The one who kills Americans.

Over and over I’ve said in this space that the real mystery of the Iran-Iraq complex is the tangled relationship between the neoconservatives, Israel, Iraq’s Shiite right and some Iranian factions. The INC has told me that, in Iran, they have always been working with the Iranian hardliners, not the reformers. Now, Iran’s Badr Brigade and the Kurds’ pesh merga paramilitary thugs will rule Iraq. It might not happen—it is like herding cats, only worse—but it’s clear that Perle and Co. would love to see an axis linking Israel, Iraq’s Shiites and Kurds, and Iran.

Meanwhile, the mainstream US news coverage and analysis is almost incomprehensible

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/02/14/international/middleeast/14assess.html
The razor-thin margin apparently captured by the Shiite alliance here in election results announced Sunday seems almost certain to enshrine a weak government that will be unable to push through sweeping changes, like granting Islam a central role in the new Iraqi state.

[NB: Razor thin?!? (thanks to Lindsay Beyerstein for the link) http://uggabugga.blogspot.com/2005/02/2005-iraqi-parliment-pie-chart-from.html]

One thing for sure: watch for Bush Co. to start dramatically distancing themselves from the new Islamist govt (hey! it has nothing to do with us!)

http://www.boston.com/news/world/articles/2005/02/15/us_hints_at_a_lesser_role_as_iraq_eyes_new_leaders/

http://www.needlenose.com/node/view/1111

Bush to Gulf War torture victims: it was okay to sue Iraq when they were the bad guys, but you can’t recover claims against them now

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-pow15feb15,1,3324248.story

More scandals for the Coalition Provisional Authority cash bath

http://atrios.blogspot.com/2005_02_13_atrios_archive.html#110840921051147807
“I wish that I could tell you that the Bush Administration has done everything it could to detect and punish fraud in Iraq. If I said that to you, though, I would be lying. In our case, the Bush Administration has not lifted a finger to recover tens of millions of dollars that our whistleblowers allege was stolen from the Government.”

The bigger picture: Republicans in Congress abandon oversight responsibilities, Democrats acting more aggressively to pick up the slack

http://www.prospect.org/weblog/archives/2005/02/index.html#005485

Waxman calls for hearings on suspicious timing of release for report that showed Condi LIED to Congress

http://www.salon.com/politics/war_room/archive.html?blog=/politics/war_room/2005/02/14/rice/index.html

Republican spine? A possible investigation into CIA handling of prisoners (which, if it ever really happens, will make Abu Ghraib look like a birthday party)

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2005/02/13/MNGDBBACPF1.DTL

More kissy-face: Lieberman to replace Rumsfeld?

http://politicalwire.com/archives/2005/02/14/lieberman_to_replace_rumsfeld.html

http://www.apfn.net/messageboard/02-04-05/discussion.cgi.1.html

Bush’s “time bomb” budget

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2005_02/005652.php
In the Washington Post today, Jonathan Weisman and Peter Baker note that the latest George Bush budget is a "budgetary landmine that could blow up just as the next president moves into the Oval Office."

Indeed it is. Despite heroic efforts such as limiting forecasts to five years instead of the traditional ten, it's painfully obvious to anybody with a pulse that Bush's policies explode into massive deficits starting right around....2010.

That's not a coincidence, either: George Bush has shown considerable fondness for policies that have big benefits while he's in office but whose costs don't become clear until he's safely retired to Crawford.

You probably recognize the dishonesty of the $80 billion supplemental budget “for the Iraq and Afghanistan wars” as a way of hiding the true size of Bush’s deficit spending – but it’s even worse than you think (comments by Holden)

http://www.first-draft.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=2176&mode=thread&order=0&thold=0
Q Scott, the Iraq and Afghanistan supplemental, is that indeed, as you said, going up today? And, if so --

MR. McCLELLAN: Yes.

Q -- can you remind us of why it is necessary to do this as a supplemental, outside the budget process and outside the deficit --

MR. McCLELLAN: Sure. A couple of things. One, we don't know what the cost will be going forward in Iraq and Afghanistan. That, to some extent, depends on -- or to a large extent, depends on circumstances on the ground.

[Wait a minute, Scottie. The normal budgeting process routinely includes programs for which we do not know what the cost will be "going forward". Take FEMA as a furinstance - do we know how many natural disasters will strike the U.S. when we budget for FEMA's needs? Did Georgie know in 2003 that Florida would be hit by four hurricanes in 2004? "Circumstances on the ground" effected FEMA's operations last year but your administration kept it in the budget proposal for 2004.]

Also, when you're looking at the war on terrorism, it's not a cost that I think most people who understand budgeting think should be built into the baseline because it's not going to be considered a permanent ongoing cost, some of those activities. Like I said, it depends on circumstances on the ground.

[The War on Terra is not going to be a "permanent ongoing cost"? Wake me when you eliminate terrorism from the face of the earth.]

But the supplemental will address the needs we have in the war on terrorism and make sure that our troops have all the resources they need to complete their mission in Iraq and Afghanistan.

[Gee, you mean we didn't give the troops "all the resources they need to complete their mission" in the last two emergency supplemental requests? Why was that?]

Q One other question, if I can, on that. As I understand it, it also includes a new Baghdad embassy. We build new embassies all the time. Again, why does that have to be outside the deficit --

MR. McCLELLAN: The State Department will be talking to you more about some of the specifics relating to the State Department, and I'll let them brief you later today.

[Well, a gold-plated, $660 million embassy (the largest U.S. embassy in the world) is certainly deserving of an emergency appropriation. Hey, maybe Chimpy can ask for even more money when the Islamic Republic of Iraq over-runs the new embassy and burns it to the ground.]

But wait! It’s even worse than that

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/chi-0502150213feb15,1,4022913.story?coll=chi-newsnationworld-hed
The president's supplemental request seeks $42.5 billion that would pay for military activities in Iraq and Afghanistan through September, the end of the 2005 federal fiscal year, as well as $12 billion more to refurbish and replace worn-out vehicles, weapons and equipment used in those operations.

The request includes $3 billion that is unrelated to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and $19 billion more that is not directly related to U.S. military costs there. . . Among the extras is $5.3 billion to pay for a restructuring of the Army and, to a lesser degree, the Marine Corps. The administration chose to not include those items in the $419.3 billion defense budget for 2006 that Bush submitted to Congress last week.

That omission has raised bipartisan concerns among members of Congress, who criticized the president for using the supplemental request to further bolster an already escalating defense budget, and to fund programs that are unrelated to military operations.

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/sns-ap-bush-iraq-afghanistan,1,1622805.story?coll=chi-news-hed

The remaining money in the supplemental request includes:

* $2.242 billion to counter drugs, pay for security, and support democracy and reconstruction in Afghanistan.

* $950 million to help areas affected by the recent tsunami in the Indian Ocean.

* $660 million for construction of a U.S. embassy in Baghdad.

* $400 million to reward nations that have taken political and economic risks to join the U.S.-led coalitions in Iraq and Afghanistan.

* $242 million for the Darfur region of western Sudan where a two-year civil conflict has left tens of thousands of people dead and more than 2 million displaced.

* $200 million in education and border security aid for the Palestinians.

* $200 million for economic and military aid in Jordan.

* $150 million in military aid for Pakistan.

* $100 million for southern Sudan where a treaty recently was signed to end a 22-year civil war.

* $60 million for Ukraine, which recently elected Viktor Yushchenko president.

The decline of NATO (another casualty of Bush unilateralism?)

http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2005/02/14/nato/index.html?source=RSS

http://www.iht.com/articles/2005/02/14/news/munich.html

ANOTHER failure for missile defense (all the more devastating when you know all they go through to try to make every “test” a success)

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/02/15/politics/15missile.html
The nation's fledgling missile defense system suffered its third straight test failure. . .

Sub rosa, part one: rushing through a renewal of the Patriot Act

http://talkleft.com/new_archives/009713.html

Sub rosa, part two: rushing through a recycled list of unacceptable court nominees

http://talkleft.com/new_archives/009712.html

http://politicalwire.com/archives/2005/02/14/extra_value_quote_of_the_day.html

Senate Dems make some noise about an acceptable Social Security compromise. I remain adamant however that (a) no decent plan can make it through the House and (b) Bush didn’t initiate this process to sign a Democratically (and democratically) engineered compromise. (But it does help to avoid the “what’s your alternative?” comeback)

http://www.prospect.org/weblog/archives/2005/02/index.html#005488

http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2005/02/14/social/index.html?source=RSS
But as bad as things may look for Bush, Ornstein and other opinion makers don't believe that Social Security reform is toast. Indeed, if Bush plays his cards right, they point out, and reshuffles his proposal with ideas long endorsed by centrists on both sides of the aisle, the president could actually emerge with some good legislation –- a plan that doesn't privatize Social Security, as his current proposal does, but instead fixes long-term problems with the retirement program.

It's true that right now the White House seems unlikely to adopt a more palatable plan. But a law that institutes actual reforms to Social Security would be pretty good for the country, and would be seen as a win for Bush and probably a loss for Democrats. Which is exactly why, if the political outlook for the current plan remains dim, Democrats should begin to worry that Bush may become uncharacteristically reasonable.

[NB: I’ll believe that when I see it]

More: http://www.prospect.org/weblog/archives/2005/02/index.html#005484

It also allows them to say to Bush “where’s YOUR bill?”

http://www.prospect.org/weblog/archives/2005/02/index.html#005476
Appearing yesterday on Tim Russert's Meet The Press, Charlie Rangel got asked the question that's on the lips of every member of the Beltway media elite. "If you oppose the president's plan, what is your plan? What would you do?" Rangel's answer was just right: "What a question. What president's plan? The president has not presented us a plan."

The president has been earning plaudits both publicly and (based on some emails I've seen) privately from journalists and others for showing the courage to tackle Social Security reform. The reality, however, is that he's tackled nothing. He's been running around the country talking about his ginned-up crisis, how wonderful it would be if you had a private account, and how he'll never raise taxes on anyone ever for any reason. Reading between the lines, we can all tell what that means -- benefit cuts. But without the president putting an actual plan on the table, no one can say exactly whose benefits will be cut and by how much. And that, of course, is the point of keeping the Republican plan secret. Publicly releasing it would subject it to criticism and Social Security's friends could point out the particular weaknesses in the proposal.

Bush is hoping to round up enough public commitments to privatize Social Security that he can release the details at the last minute and then jam it through Congress without any public debate (remember Medicare "reform?"), but Democrats should follow Rangel's lead. Bush is the one who put this on the agenda, so the onus is obviously on him to put something on the table: a bill containing an actual proposal to accomplish what the president says he wants to accomplish. Then we can have a debate. Then Democrats and moderate Republicans might be able to negotiate with the White House. Then it will be reasonable to ask liberals what their alternative is. For now, though, "where's the bill?" should be the question of the hour. If privatization is so great, surely the White House shouldn't be trying to hide its plan from the public.

More: http://www.prospect.org/weblog/archives/2005/02/index.html#005482

The 600 pound gorilla on Social Security: Alan Greenspan

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-greenspan15feb15,1,3227691.story

The blog world is all agog with the disclosures about “Jeff Gannon’s” hidden (pornographic) past. But I’m less interested in that than in the media coverage: how the resignation of CNN head Eason Jordan is described as a “victory” for (conservative) bloggers and a sign of their newfound relevance -- ditto Dan Rather -- while Gannon’s fall, also driven by blog disclosures, is pooh-poohed as dangerous interference in serious news matters by amateurs

The new Gannon gay porn (skip if this stuff bothers you)
http://americablog.blogspot.com/2005/02/man-called-jeff.html

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/02/14/technology/14cnn.html
Resignation at CNN Shows the Growing Influence of Blogs

http://americablog.blogspot.com/2005/02/so-what-is-story-howard.html
SCHECHNER: This is so fast. So absolutely quick. The other one we wanted to talk about was the Jeff Gannon story. Something that you're very familiar with. Now, he had originally -- let me show you first the trend. Let's look at that. You can see here it's the yellow line. Now there's a spike today and the reason why is because he had told you that some of these sort of racier sites that he had allegedly been a part of didn't exist.

KURTZ: He had registered the addresses, he said the sites never actually went up.

SCHECHNER: Well, we found it. Or actually, one of the bloggers found it. We found it through the blog Americablog.com [sic - it's. org] which is a liberal site found it. Now we would show you that but the pictures on that site are actually kind of racey. . .

KURTZ: Although what this has to do with Jeff Gannon's job at the White House -- whether was criticized on the substance is debatable.

[NB: Can you BELIEVE that he actually said that?]

http://www.salon.com/politics/war_room/archive.html?blog=/politics/war_room/2005/02/14/righty_blogs/index.html
So let's see if we have this straight: The "Gannon" affair boils down to embarrassing but inconsequential sexual behavior -- not the fact that a fake journalist representing a fake news organization funded by the GOP was gaming the system (undoubtedly with the Bush press team's knowledge), masquerading as a legitimate member of the White House press corps and serving regularly as a Bush yes-man.

http://atrios.blogspot.com/2005_02_13_atrios_archive.html#110844296428498594
But, as for the basic question -- why do right wing bloggers manage to hound people into retirement and left wing bloggers don't? Well, one reason is that right wingers and the people who employ them have no shame.

The larger issues about Gannon (there could be something VERY explosive here)

http://americablog.blogspot.com/2005/02/conservative-web-site-gets-it-right.html
I say it to mean that considering most mainstream journalists have so-far dropped the ball on this story, it took a conservative Web site to understand the real-world and serious implications of this story:

The bigger question is how did “Gannon” gain inside access to the White House only five days after Talon News Service was established? Was that long enough to run a background check? Did he have inside help? Did an earlier background check only turn up the problem that it would not look good if he were reporting for GOPUSA?

Finally there are the blackmail questions which exist for gays who are not “out of the closet”. Was Guckert blackmailing someone associated with the White House? Was somebody blackmailing Guckert or using Guckert’s services to blackmail someone else?

“Gannon” definitely got special treatment from the White House. So far the White House has denied this, saying anybody in a similar position could get daily press passes. Refusing to acknowledge his special treatment only leads to speculation that blackmail is somehow involved.

http://suburbanguerrilla.blogspot.com/2005/02/sex-in-white-house-oh-myso-americablog.html
RAW STORY has been told that the White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan visited a gay bar in Austin, Texas, on March 19, 1995. The date was placed exactly as a local memorial service was held on the same day.

The source, who would only comment on condition of anonymity, reserved comment on whether McClellan was actually gay, but said he was frequently seen at gay clubs. Another source also confirmed this account.

“He was often seen in gay clubs in Austin, Texas and was comfortable being there,” the Texan said.

http://suburbanguerrilla.blogspot.com/2005/02/keeping-eye-on-johnseverybodys-waiting.html
"I'm a 20 yr military retired and I know Special Forces guys when I see them. I'd bet a new ten spot that "Jeff" is an active duty officer being paid by the military and assigned to counterintelligence."

[NB: Remember? http://archives.cnn.com/2002/US/02/19/gen.strategic.influence/]

Gannon and Faux News

http://blogs.salon.com/0000014/2005/02/14.html#a838
[Scott Rosenberg] It seems simple to equate that whoop with the glee on the left that preceded it, as bloggers unraveled the strange tale of "Jeff Gannon" -- a fellow who mysteriously leaped from the obscurity of a right-wing Web site into the heart of the White House press corps, where he became a ringer for the Bush administration's press secretary, who regularly turned to him for "questions" that hilariously echoed the Bush party line. . .

Let's remember that, while its press secretary is calling on the Jeff Gannons of the world for cover, the Bush administration is also offering under-the-counter payoffs to columnists and sending out video press releases in which PR people masquerade as reporters. This isn't a simple matter of a gaffe here and there; it's a systematic campaign to discredit the media, launched by an administration that desperately needs to keep propping up its Potemkin Village versions of reality (We'll find weapons of mass destruction! We'll cut the deficit! We'll save Social Security by phasing it out! Really!). When you're pursuing an Orwellian agenda, your first target must be anyone who has the standing to point it out. Messengers are a pain -- but if you shoot enough of them (figuratively speaking!), and send out enough impostors, you can have any message you want.

Journalism, of course, has done so much on its own to discredit itself that the administration's assault has an easy path; the timbers it's battering are often rotten already. But while those of us who cherish the freedom, the liveliness and the free-for-all energy of the blogosphere -- and I happily include myself -- sit in our conferences and muse in our postings about the finer points of the transformations around us, the machinery of realpolitik is grinding away. It doesn't care about the ethics of transparency or the abstract debate over "who is a journalist?" It simply seizes an opportunity to reduce the supply of what Ron Suskind calls "honest brokers."

While we discuss how the "end of objectivity" means we have to find new ways to earn the public's trust and pursue the goals of accuracy and fairness, the White House is laughing at its new opportunity to mess with the American people's heads. While we consider the implications of an era in which everyone has access to a virtual printing press and anyone can be a reporter, the people in the White House press office are busily figuring out how they can dragoon more pseudo-reporters into the front row. While idealists post and fiddle, realists in power are burning down the house.

Accountability is a grand principle. The Eason Jordan story shows us how journalists are still having a hard time getting used to the fact that they are being asked to follow it, too. The Jeff Gannon story shows us how easy it is, once the journalistic establishment has begun its self-destructive implosion, for public officials to engineer a reality that suits their own agenda. To me, that's the bigger story.

And on Gannon and Plame. . .

http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2005_02_13_digbysblog_archive.html#110840940766271543
And has it ever been logical that this nobody from a vanity web site would get access to the Plame story? Why him? JimJeff claims that he never actually saw the Plame memo, yet he clearly knew of it. Could it have been pillow talk?

I don't have a clue. But, I do know that if this were 1998, we'd be knee deep in congressional investigations into the gay hooker ring in the White House. Every news crew in the DC area would be camped out on JimJeff's front lawn. A wild-eyed Victoria Toensing and panting Kelly Ann Fitzpatrick would be crawling up on the Hardball desk rending their silk teddies and speaking in tongues while Matthews' exploding head spun around on his shoulders.

But, it isn't 1998 and it will probably not even be mentioned. And I'm not a Republican so I don't think, as they would, that it's necessary to dig into every single White House staffer's sex life to find out who leaked a confidential memo to a gay hooker.

As a Democrat, however, if gay hookers are running around the White House I do find it somewhat frustrating that we have to put up with this shock and horror bullsh-t from the right wing about average Joe and Jane gay person wanting to get married and have a family. Please.

And yes, I do think that Patrick Fitzgerald's boys will probably be paying JimJeff another visit. Sadly, I think it's entirely likely that they didn't know about this until today. It is impossible to believe that the secret service and the FBI would allow a known prostitute to have access to the White House after 9/11. If they did, then our national security is in very deep sh-t. Come to think of it, it's also pretty scary that they didn't know. What's up with that?

More on “pillow-talk”: http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2005_02_13_digbysblog_archive.html#110845862659672928

http://mediamatters.org/items/200502140009
The Editor & Publisher article stated that Gannon "threw into question media accounts suggesting that he had seen a classified CIA document critical to the Plame case, saying he had made references to the 'internal memo,' but adding, 'I never said I had it or had seen it.' But when asked if he had in fact seen it, he declined to say."

More: http://americablog.blogspot.com/2005/02/god-bless-steny-hoyer.html

Wow

http://suburbanguerrilla.blogspot.com/2005/02/breaking-newsyou-knew-this-was.html
The Federal Election Commission next month will begin looking at tightening restrictions on political activities on the Internet, ROLL CALL reports Monday.

Bonus item: Harry Frankfurt’s classic essay “On Bullsh-t” now reissued in book form. This suggests so many commentaries and jokes, but I can’t do better than this

http://www.crookedtimber.org/archives/003235.html
Matt Yglesias should be pleased to hear that Princeton University Press has re-issued Harry Frankfurt’s well-known essay, “On Bullsh-t,” as a small book. You can buy it at Amazon. There’s a nice piece in the Times about it, distinguished by the fact that the newspaper’s stylebook forbids the word “bullsh-t” — though of course its pages are filled examples of the stuff — so it’s referred to throughout as “[bull]” instead. As I think Matt’s also observed, journalism would be serving its readership much better these days if it were possible to write headlines like “More Bullsh-t from White House on Social Security Reform.”

***If you enjoy PBD and support what we are doing, you can help by forwarding a copy of this issue to your friends (using the envelope link below) or by sending them a copy of its URL (http://pbd.blogspot.com).

You can also help by voting for PBD as the blog “Most Deserving of Wider Recognition” at http://wampum.wabanaki.net/archives/001725.html

I don't get anything personally out of this project, except the satisfaction of doing it (I don't run ads, etc). The credit really all goes to the people whose material I copy and redistribute. But if I do have a "mission," it is to get this information into the hands of as many people as I can.***
- posted by Nick Burbules @ 8:21 AM

 
TACTICAL MANEUVERS

Assessing the Iraqi elections. The inestimable Juan Cole sums up: Shiites win, Bush loses

http://www.juancole.com/2005/02/shiites-kurds-win-big-bush-loses.html
Although Allawi's list is among the three with more than two digits, in fact he lost big. Allawi had all the advantages of incumbency. He dominated the air waves in December and January. He went to Baghdad University and made all sorts of promises to the students there and it was dutifully broadcast, and there were lots of photo ops like that. Allawi's list also spent an enormous amount on campaign advertising. The source of these millions is unknown, since Paul Bremer passed a law making disclosure of campaign contributions unnecessary (the Bush administration's further little contribution to "democracy" in the Middle East). Despite these enormous advantages, clear American backing, money, etc., Allawi's list came in a poor third and clearly lacks any substantial grass roots in most of the country. It seems to have been the refuge of what is left of the secular middle class.

Allawi's defeat (he will not be prime minister in the new government) is a huge defeat for the Bush administration, though it will not be reported that way in the corporate media.

The system is set up so that a two-thirds majority is necessary to form a government. The United Iraqi Alliance needs to pick up 18 percent or about 50 seats to go forward. The easy place to get those 50 seats is from the Kurds, who have 70 or so. This step will require that substantial concessions be made to the Kurds, who want the presidency, a redrawing of the provincial map of Iraq to creat a united Kurdistan province, and substantial provincial autonomy or "states rights."

The US now hopes to use the Kurds to blunt the push for Islamic law from the UIA. This is the significance of Allawi's visit to Jalal Talabani of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan and his support for Talabani as president. The Kurds and Allawi together control nearly 40 percent of seats in parliament. They can be outvoted on many issues, but they can't be ignored. Allawi is trying to ensure that Talabani's position is unassailable and to pressure the UIA to give up its own candidates for president, so as to block any rush to Islamic law.

Ironically, Talabani is extremely close to Tehran and has been a client of the Iranians for many years. His alliance with the UIA will ensure warm relations between the new Iraq and Iran. The US, in pushing for Talabani for Iraqi domestic reasons, is creating a Baghdad-Tehran axis in regional politics.

Although a two-thirds majority is required to form the government, it is not clear that it is required for anything else in ordinary parliamentary life. Most measures can probably be passed with 51 percent. The only other situations for which the interim constitution specifies that more than a majority is needed are in over-ruling a presidential veto and in removing and replacing the president. This stipulation would mean that on some laws and other measures, the United Iraqi Alliance could have its way in parliament by just picking up 3 percent of the seats via an alliance with smaller parties such as the Sadrists. So although they need the Kurds at first, they may not always need them subsequently.

The United Iraqi Alliance will press hard for implementation of Islamic law. Although this move will be a hard sell in the national parliament because the Kurds don't want it, one possible compromise would be to let individual provinces make the decision, as in Nigeria.

More: http://www.dailykos.com/story/2005/2/13/103335/574

http://yglesias.typepad.com/matthew/2005/02/the_votes_are_i.html

http://www.mydd.com/story/2005/2/13/134358/892

Shiites, in final totals, DO have a simple majority, so only need the Kurds long enough to get their own PM in — then they can govern pretty much on their own

http://www.juancole.com/2005/02/shiites-take-absolute-majority-in.html
Robin Wright of the Washington Post points out that an electoral victory of the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq and the Dawa Party, both of them close to Tehran, is not what Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and the Neoconservatives had been going for with this Iraq adventure. The United Iraqi Alliance is led by Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, a Shiite cleric who lived over 2 decades in exile in Iran. I point out that the likely coalition partner of the United Iraqi Alliance is the Kurdistan Alliance, led by Jalal Talabani, who is himself very close to Tehran. So there are likely to be warm Baghdad-Tehran relations.

Likewise, it is worth pointing out that the new Shiite government in Baghdad will support the Lebanese Shiites, including Hezbollah.

One of the Neoconservatives' goals had been the installation of a pro-Israel government in Baghdad. But at Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution rallies and Friday prayers services, crowds have been known to chant "Death to Israel!"

More on Hakim: http://www.juancole.com/2005/02/platform-of-al-hakims-leader-of-united.html

There is an alternative theory that says the Shiites will try to form a “national unity” government, with representatives of all the other major groups

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/02/14/international/middleeast/14assess.html

The weird world of Iraqi politics: Sadr backing Chalabi for PM?

http://www.warandpiece.com/blogdirs/001691.html

WWIP 2: Allawi thinks he still has a chance (?!)

http://www.boston.com/news/nation/articles/2005/02/14/in_choice_of_new_leader_possible_shift_from_us/

Who are the Kurds? What do they want?

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/02/13/international/middleeast/13cnd-kurds.html

The mysterious disappearing Sunni vote totals (I was wondering this too)

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2005_02/005646.php

Investigation opens into the unbelievably corrupt and profligate cash bath that was the Coalition Provisional Authority

http://www.first-draft.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=2168&mode=thread&order=0&thold=0
U.S. officials in postwar Iraq paid a contractor by stuffing $2 million worth of crisp bills into his gunnysack and routinely made cash payments around Baghdad from a pickup truck, a former official with the U.S. occupation government says.

Because the country lacked a functioning banking system, contractors and Iraqi ministry officials were paid with bills taken from a basement vault in one of Saddam Hussein's palaces that served as headquarters for the Coalition Provisional Authority, former CPA official Frank Willis said.

Officials from the CPA, which ruled Iraq from June 2003 to June 2004, would count the money when it left the vault, but nobody kept track of the cash after that, Willis said. . .

Describing the transfer of $2 million to one contractor's gunnysack, Willis said: "It was time for payment. We told them to come in and bring a bag." He said the money went to Custer Battles of Middletown, R.I., for providing airport security in Baghdad for civilian passengers. . . [Read on!]

More on the investigation: http://talkleft.com/new_archives/009704.html

More on “Custer Battles” from last October’s PBD:http://pbd.blogspot.com/2004_10_01_pbd_archive.html#109750270238122786

Training the Iraqi forces to defend themselves: How’s it going? (not well at all – but you won’t hear this on U.S. media)

http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/story.jsp?story=610574
Training of Iraq's security forces, crucial to any exit strategy for Britain and the US, is going so badly that the Pentagon has stopped giving figures for the number of combat-ready indigenous troops, The Independent on Sunday has learned.

Instead, only figures for troops "on hand" are issued. The small number of soldiers, national guardsmen and police capable of operating against the country's bloody insurgency is concealed in an overall total of Iraqis in uniform, which includes raw recruits and police who have gone on duty after as little as three weeks' training. In some cases they have no weapons, body armour or even documents to show they are in the police.

The resulting confusion over numbers has allowed the US administration to claim that it is half-way to meeting the target of training almost 270,000 Iraqi forces, including around 52,000 troops and 135,000 Iraqi policemen. The reality, according to experts, is that there may be as few as 5,000 troops who could be considered combat ready.

WH getting more aggressive with North Korea

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/02/14/politics/14korea.html

More WH lies on Social Security, given credence by the Washington Post

http://www.j-bradford-delong.net/movable_type/2005-3_archives/000349.html

The financial services industry stands to make out like bandits under Bush’s privatization plan, so they are ponying up massive contributions (ANONYMOUSLY) to help pass it

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A19782-2005Feb12.html

More: http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2005_02_13.php#004796

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2005_02_13.php#004797

Kevin Drum: How to do private accounts right

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2005_02/005649.php

Specter’s plans for hard-right judicial nominees

http://talkleft.com/new_archives/009699.html

Against bipartisanship

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2005/2/13/20363/1581
[James Wolcott] I wonder if Dems are learning the wisdom imparted by Bull Moose, that there's mischievous and useful fun to be had in being the opposition party, particularly when the party in power is as flatulent with hubris and corruption as the fiefdom of Tom DeLay. Dems should resist the temptation to be statesmenlike and bail out Bush should he stumble, the way they shamefully rescued Reagan in his second term. Bipartisanship has gotten Democrats nowhere for four years, has earned them nothing more than a fine spittle of contempt falling like a constant drizzle. They should let a smile be their umbrella as they enjoy the spectacle of House and Senate Republicans promoting Social Security privatization as if they'd been ordered by their commander in chief to suck lemons.

Can the Democrats turn Bush’s deficit against him?

http://www.mydd.com/story/2005/2/13/174448/403

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/02/14/opinion/14mon1.html?hp

Republicans: the party of Big Government

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/02/13/weekinreview/13stolb.html

Rumsfeld rushing ahead with plans to expand Pentagon intelligence ops (in direct opposition to the recommendations of the President’s own commission) – hiring has already begun

http://www.warandpiece.com/blogdirs/001692.html
"You are the unseen and hear the unspoken," said one advertisement placed in the Army Times and other newspapers with large military readerships. "You could be anybody, anywhere. You are Intelligence. Be DIA."

Bonus item: Laura Bush retools for second term, plans to be more active (in planning parties). Plus a little snarky gossip about the fired WH chef

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/02/14/politics/14letter.html

***If you enjoy PBD and support what we are doing, you can help by forwarding a copy of this issue to your friends (using the envelope link below) or by sending them a copy of its URL (http://pbd.blogspot.com).

You can also help by voting for PBD as the blog “Most Deserving of Wider Recognition” at http://wampum.wabanaki.net/archives/001725.html

I don't get anything personally out of this project, except the satisfaction of doing it (I don't run ads, etc). The credit really all goes to the people whose material I copy and redistribute. But if I do have a "mission," it is to get this information into the hands of as many people as I can.***
- posted by Nick Burbules @ 6:34 AM

 
PBD A "KOUFAX" FINALIST!

It has just been announced that, based on your earlier voting, Progressive Blog Digest has been identified as a FINALIST for a “Koufax” award for the lefty blog “Most Deserving of Wider Recognition.”

The finalists are the top ten vote getters from the semi-final round. Thank you!

Now I am asking you to vote again (it’s a separate ballot from the first round). It would be great for the blog to get this recognition and it would help PBD attract and reach a wider audience.

So, please take a minute (if you are so inclined), and add your vote to the category. Voting closes on Friday, so please do it today. You can vote through the Comments section of the Koufax award web page located at:

http://wampum.wabanaki.net/archives/001725.html

(You don’t need to add comments, just your vote.)

OR, what is even easier, just send an email to wampum@maine.rr.com - be sure to mention the category and the name of the blog:

Most Deserving of Wider Recognition
Progressive Blog Digest

Thanks for your support!
- posted by Nick Burbules @ 11:37 AM

 
THE NUMBERS RACKET

As voting results in Iraq are due out today, rumors abound that Allawi has pulled off an electoral coup (which, if true, couldn’t be achieved by anything other than massive fraud – well, whose boy is he?)

http://www.juancole.com/2005/02/sciri-sweeps-provincial-elections-in.html

[NB: Actually, I don't see how this happens. Sistani and the Shiites, counting on victory, aren't going to accept being shut out now.]

UPDATE: Shiites win plurality, can form ruling coalition with the Kurds
http://www.abc.net.au/news/newsitems/200502/s1301835.htm

More: http://www.tnr.com/blog/iraqd?pid=2550

And, by the way, how is Bush’s pursuit of democracy in Saudi Arabia going (can you guess?)

http://yglesias.typepad.com/matthew/2005/02/saudi_elections.html

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2005_02/005645.php

Bush’s crocodile tears over Black life expectancy

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/chi-0502120293feb12,1,5530243.story?coll=chi-newsnationworld-hed
President Bush and his supporters, as part of their all-out effort to push Social Security reform, have been quietly making the argument that African-Americans would particularly benefit from Bush's proposals--a message that is proving highly controversial. . . Blacks, on average, die younger than whites, Bush's argument goes, so they have fewer years to collect Social Security benefits and are getting a raw deal. That means they have even more to gain than other Americans from private retirement accounts, the president's supporters say. . . That message has ignited anger among some black leaders, who say Bush and his allies are exploiting the tragedy of the shorter black life span for political purposes, rather than trying to do something about it.

http://news.ncmonline.com/news/view_article.html?article_id=9b9b5406a6ff54ecf15ecaae19e53d58
“On first review of President Bush's budget proposal, I find it extremely disappointing,” Rep. Mel Watt (D-NC), chairman of the Congressional Black Caucus, said in a statement. “The proposed budget neglects suggestions offered by the Congressional Black Caucus for ending disparities that exist between African Americans and white Americans in every aspect of life.”. . .

Some black Republicans sided with Bush, arguing that the administration had to make tough decisions to bring the rising budget deficit under control -- even though Bush’s budget still worsens federal deficits by $42 billion over the next five years. . . “They did the best they could do,” Renee Amoore, deputy chair of the Pennsylvania Republican State Committee, told BlackAmericaWeb.com Tuesday. . . Amoore, who attended a recent meeting with Bush at the White House with black ministers and business leaders who supported the president’s reelection, said political tactics by Democrats are designed “to make us look mean and bad.”

In the clearing stands a Boxer. . .

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2005_02_06.php#004788
So clearly, Social Security is not in crisis, is not bankrupt, and is not collapsing.

Yes, there is a challenge we should address.

Have we ever faced a similar Social Security challenge before? Yes. During the Reagan presidency in 1983. Working together, Democrats and Republicans, we resolved the challenge then just as we can do now. So why would an otherwise optimistic George Bush turn into a prophet of pessimism on Social Security?

Because, his initiative is not about meeting the challenges of Social Security to keep it sound; it is not about bringing together Democrats and Republicans as Ronald Reagan did to ensure that full benefits will be there for all Americans. It is about one thing and one thing only: destroying Social Security.

How do I know that? Am I being partisan? Am I being unfair by stating in a very clear way that I believe the true goal here is to destroy Social Security? Not at all. I am simply telling the truth as told by this very White House.

On January 6, 2005, the White House wrote a Social Security memo. Although marked “not for attribution,” fortunately, we have it.

The most telling sentence in the entire memo is this: “For the first time in six decades the Social Security battle is one we can win – and in doing so, we can help transform the political and philosophical landscape of the country.”

Great photo: http://www.j-bradford-delong.net/movable_type/2005-3_archives/000344.html

In the clearing stands a Schumer. . .

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2005_02_06.php#004791
Our goal as Democrats is to keep Social Security the way it is, with as few changes as possible, while still making sure it is there for future generations.

For this to happen, some changes will need to be made. The question is, what sort of changes?

Does Social Security need fine-tuning, as most Democrats believe? Or does it need to be replaced with something completely different, as the president wants to do?

The fundamental “sloppiness” of the Bush Social Security proposal

http://yglesias.typepad.com/matthew/2005/02/thinking_things.html

http://yglesias.typepad.com/matthew/2005/02/white_house_on_.html

Doing the real math: Bush proposal means sacrificing up to 2/3 of current benefits

http://www.j-bradford-delong.net/movable_type/2005-3_archives/000340.html

Bush refuses to offer a specific plan on Social Security, so congressional GOP says “get out of the way, we’ll do it” (of course he’ll still take credit)

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2005_02_06.php#004787
[Josh Marshall] What this means is pretty clear. The House Republicans have seen the Bamboozlepalooza Tour and they don't think it's working. They have to run next year; the president doesn't. And as long as their fate is tied to the Social Security phase-out freight train, they want their hands on the brakes. That gives them control over the tempo and content of the legislative process and the freedom, if and when they want, to simply let the whole thing die.

This development raises a point, which has been lurking in the background through this debate, but has received too little attention. As usual for the president, this battle over Social Security was a war of choice. No one in Congress chose it; he chose it. But once the issue was joined, the White House and the Democrats had a paradoxical commonality of interest in how it would play out.

Let me explain what I mean.

The Democrats didn't choose this fight. It was thrust on them. Because of their core values as a party, the stakes were extraordinarily high. Lose Social Security and the loss is staggering, almost total, given the role it plays in American society. Columnists talk about Roosevelt and legacies and the like. And there's some of that, to be sure, particularly on a sentimental level. But the crux of the matter isn't who created Social Security. It's what the program is and what the Democrats' values are, even if sometimes they need reminding. It's that important.

At the same time, if they could turn back the president's phase-out crusade, the upside would be almost as promising as the downside would be bleak. As it did with health care, a major defeat for a president on privatization could put the policy on ice for years, possibly for the rest of our lifetimes. And the political benefits of defeating the president are too obvious to require explanation.

The White House is in a similar position. If the president could privatize Social Security he would become a truly transformative president, for good or ill. Few presidents get to work on the very architecture of society and state. It's a legacy on steroids.

On the other hand, if the president failed he would have started his second term with his first major political defeat as president and one that came after winning reelection and expanding his majorities in both chambers of congress. It would likely shape the rest of his presidency.

For the White House and the Democrats it's really close to all or nothing, all the chips on the table, with very big upsides and very big downsides.

The odd man out here is the congressional GOP. For them, the calculus is entirely different, particularly in the House.

They've got a good thing going -- seemingly durable majorities, K Street disciplined and incorporated into the DeLay Machine. Sure, many Republicans, all things being equal, believe in privatization. But if it happens it'll be the president's victory, not theirs. It won't expand their majorities or bring them campaign cash they don't already get. A win on this issue, in the most hardboiled terms, is really pretty much a wash. There's just not much in it for them.

Losing, on the other hand, all comes out of their hide. Though a defeated president might be weakened, he'd still be president. Some of them would be out of a job. Their very majorities could be in danger.

A few years ago the congressional Republicans may have had enough ideological fire to yearn for this fight and run the risk. But no more.

These dynamics, I think, shape the structure of the whole debate, the whole contest. And if the Democrats can play it correctly, it's the president's achilles heel.

The trap Repubs are trying to lay for the Dems on Social Security

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2005_02_13.php#004793

It’s been said, but bears repeating

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2005_02/005640.php
[Paul Glastris] In 2018, Social Security will begin paying out more money than it takes in. This is what Dennis Hastert calls the "crisis point." But the entire federal government is paying out more money than it takes in right now. Indeed this has been the case for four years, thanks in no small measure to GOP tax-and-spending policies. And it will continue to be the case indefinitely under the president's own supposedly-tough budget. Why is it that a modest deficit in Social Security that won't begin for almost a decade and a half requires immediate radical action, while a vastly greater overall federal deficit occurring right now doesn't?

Bush’s REAL budget deficit

http://www.j-bradford-delong.net/movable_type/2005-3_archives/000341.html
[Nouriel Roubini] Realistic and sensible assumptions imply that the 2009 deficit will be close to $600b (or 4.0% of GDP). . . and the deficit will reach over $1,100b (or about 5.5.% of GDP) by 2015. . . So, how do we get the difference between the administration lies and the true figures?

Molly Ivins

http://www.workingforchange.com/article.cfm?itemid=18527
[W]hat a sham, what a rotten, phony, fake document this 2006 budget is.

A complete list of what Bush proposes to cut (thanks to Buzzflash for the link)

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/news/archive/2005/02/11/national/w163008S18.DTL

More information leaks out on Pentagon secret ops unit: head of program (George Waldroup, profiled here: http://pbd.blogspot.com/2005_01_01_pbd_archive.html#110657240981533948) resigns

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A19785-2005Feb12.html?nav=rss_nation
On the condition of anonymity, two Republicans said Cambone did not adequately answer some of the questions about the plans, legal basis and operations of the Pentagon's new intelligence arm. One Republican committee member said Rumsfeld is rushing to create independent capabilities before the arrival of a director of national intelligence, a position created by Congress in December to oversee the 15 U.S. intelligence departments and agencies. Democratic colleagues echoed that sentiment.

As regular readers know, I am obsessed with the evil policy termed “extraordinary rendition” (viz., outsourcing torture): so what the HELL is the Washington Post thinking here?

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2005/2/12/1051/10924
[WP] As unfair a Catch-22 as that may sound, the government may actually have a claim here, legally speaking. Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge and Deputy Attorney General James B. Comey have filed sworn declarations in the case, saying that litigating Mr. Arar's major allegations would require disclosing information that "reasonably could be expected to cause exceptionally grave or serious damage to the national security of the United States and its foreign relations or activities." This may well carry the day in court.

More: http://talkleft.com/new_archives/009689.html
http://atrios.blogspot.com/2005_02_06_atrios_archive.html#110826929029661070
http://www.newyorker.com/fact/content/?050214fa_fact6 (linked before, but a must-read)

Germany WON’T pursue war crimes charges against Rumsfeld: but before he breathes a sigh of relief. . .

http://talkleft.com/new_archives/009686.html

Another devastating 9-11 report may be about to be declassified (again, AFTER the election)

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/02/13/national/nationalspecial3/13FBI.html

In Texas, state legislature wants to pass a law saying it can decide which cases District Attorney Ronnie Earle can pursue and which he can’t (any particular case in mind, folks?)

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2005_02/005643.php

Bonus item: Bush, Card, want more members of administration to voluntarily quit (well, they could start by setting an example, couldn’t they?)

http://politicalwire.com/archives/2005/02/12/bush_wanted_more_to_quit.html

***If you enjoy PBD and support what we are doing, you can help by forwarding a copy of this issue to your friends (using the envelope link below) or by sending them a copy of its URL (http://pbd.blogspot.com).

You can also help by voting for PBD as the blog “Most Deserving of Wider Recognition” at http://wampum.wabanaki.net/archives/001725.html

I don't get anything personally out of this project, except the satisfaction of doing it (I don't run ads, etc). The credit really all goes to the people whose material I copy and redistribute. But if I do have a "mission," it is to get this information into the hands of as many people as I can.***
- posted by Nick Burbules @ 6:46 AM

 
ONE THE ONE HAND, ON THE OTHER HAND

Eason and Coulter: moral equivalence?

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/02/11/business/media/11WIRE-CNN.html

http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2005_02_06_digbysblog_archive.html#110817546185703373

The election, and after: Bush poll numbers keep dropping

http://atrios.blogspot.com/2005_02_06_atrios_archive.html#110812415347900675

Red and blue budgeting

http://www.boston.com/news/nation/washington/articles/2005/02/12/bush_cuts_hit_democratic_states_analysis_finds

Black and white: Scotty has now taken to simple lies and denials of easily documented facts

http://www.first-draft.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=2161&mode=thread&order=0&thold=0
Q Scott, why -- why did the President cut down on food stamps and child care and a thousand other -- well, not that many -- social causes, and so forth, and give huge tax cuts to the rich again?

MR. McCLELLAN: He didn't.

Q He didn't cut down on food stamps and child care, and so forth?

MR. McCLELLAN: In terms of the President's compassion agenda and providing a safety net for those in need, we have made a strong commitment to helping those who are in need. And I think you should look at our budget and look at what we've done, because I disagree with your characterization. You might want to look at our budget to see the specifics. We've continued to support those programs that are providing aid to those in need.

Q And everyone who has been getting food stamps --

MR. McCLELLAN: If you've got a specific, I'm glad to talk about it, but you should go back and look at the briefing earlier this week by our OMB Director, and he addressed these issues. And your characterization is just --

Q In such a vague way and he didn't really hit them.

MR. McCLELLAN: Go ahead, John.

[Holden] Yes, Scottie is lying as Paul Krugman demonstrated today: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/02/11/opinion/11krugman.html?hp

Gannon and Plame: as mentioned yesterday, this is one dimension of the story we will stick with. Watch how Gannon turns a question about how he got classified CIA materials into an opportunity to recycle a lie about Joe Wilson

http://mediamatters.org/items/200502120003

Mark Kleiman usefully clears up two different meanings of “extraordinary rendition”

http://www.markarkleiman.com/archives/torture_/2005/02/a_note_on_extraordinary_rendition.php

Condi Rice for Sect’y of State: can we revote her confirmation? No? Oh.

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/02/12/politics/12clarke.html?ex=1265950800&en=0dbccf63a825885c&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland

http://www.salon.com/politics/war_room/archive.html?blog=/politics/war_room/2005/02/11/faa/index.html

Denny Hastert, statesman, calls Social Security a “Ponzi scheme,” quickly retracts

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2005_02_06.php#004779

http://home.nycap.rr.com/useless/ponzi/

More from Hastert

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/chi-0502110241feb11,1,1729146.story?coll=chi-newsnationworld-hed&ctrack=1&cset=true
Despite President Bush's intensive public campaign to revamp Social Security, House Speaker Dennis Hastert said Thursday that voters are not yet persuaded that the retirement program is in crisis or that it needs a dramatic overhaul to save it. . . As Bush travels the country promoting his plan, Hastert cautioned in his first extensive interview on the president's top domestic priority that much selling needs to be done and a hard fight in Congress lies ahead, because "you can't jam change down the American people's throat."

Bush’s new “trust fund” assault

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A16984-2005Feb11.html?nav=rss_politics/administration/whbriefing
[Dan Froomkin] President Bush slipped something new into his Social Security pitch on Wednesday. And it was there again twice yesterday. . . He says Social Security's $1.8 trillion trust fund doesn't really exist.

Even in Washington, that's a lot of money to go missing. . .

Pelosi attacks the fraud that is GOP “ethics” in the House

http://www.first-draft.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=2164&mode=thread&order=0&thold=0

The Democrats and the Republicans (from The Note)

http://www.prospect.org/weblog/archives/2005/02/index.html#005473
One party has political elites who revere and respect its recent presidential candidates; one party can't even be bothered to stop chatting and, err, partying to listen to its candidates speak.

One party has a clear programmatic agenda that has been relentlessly pursued in a well-organized fashion for five years; one party is still trying to build a credible war room (both materially and culturally).

One party never apologizes and never shows weakness; one party is on its fourth day of cry-babyish "defense" of its Senate Leader, after a run-of-the-mill GOP "attack."

One party is already organizing for 2005/6/7/8; one party is still trying to figure out what changes a yet-to-be-elected chair will make on the Wisteria Lane of politics — Ivy Street, SE.

One party would know that electing a national chair with a net negative approval rating is at a minimum problematic; one party thinks it's a virtue.

One party can whenever it wishes take off-the-shelf opposition research (video and text) and turn it into talking points that drive the friendly and (sometimes) mainstream media; one party considers 36 hours to be "rapid response."

One party will air its dirty laundry to whatever lowest-common-denominator media outlet comes a-sniffin'; one party engages in cock-fight-style drag-'em-outs in their headquarters' basement.

One party is on offense; one party is on . . . something else.

On party learned the lessons of the '90s; one party unlearned them.

One party knows the press is its "enemy"; one party mistakenly thinks the press is its "friend."

One party is expending resources to expand the base and broaden the tent; one party says it is planning to do those things, but is distracted defending demographic and geographic turf.

One party owns national security; one party can't figure out how to own health care or the environment in a way that would help win elections.

One party figured out how to keep its "extreme" party platform on abortion and still make electoral gains; one party hasn't.

One party is trying to use its general unity to hold together and pass Social Security reform; one party is trying to figure out how to extend and build on its unity over opposing personal accounts to a general strategy.

One party has been taking the long view for a long time; one party can't see past yesterday.

One party has members who will take these words to be gospel; one party is dominated by people will quickly dismiss it as mean-spirited.

One party would agree with what we wrote above; so would the other one.

The U.S. Dems and the Labour Brits: watch how the game should be played

http://www.prospect.org/weblog/archives/2005/02/index.html#005474

http://www.labour.org.uk/home

http://www.democrats.org/

More: http://www.prospect.org/weblog/archives/2005/02/index.html#005472

http://politics.guardian.co.uk/labour/story/0,9061,1410740,00.html
Labour reveals election pledges

The six pledges:
1. Your family better off
2. Your family treated better and faster
3. Your child achieving more
4. Your country's borders protected
5. Your community safer
6. Your children with the best start

http://www.prospect.org/web/page.ww?section=root&name=ViewWeb&articleId=9166
First Principles
What constitutes necessary rethinking, and what constitutes selling out?
By Michael Tomasky

The Supreme Court fight ahead: two kinds of conservatives (thanks to Jeralyn Merritt for the link)

http://www.lrb.co.uk/v27/n04/acke01_.html
[Bruce Ackerman] There are two very different kinds of conservative. The worldly statesman, distrustful of large visions and focused on the prudent management of concrete problems has long been familiar. But Bush has more often relied on neo-conservatives with a very different temperament. They throw caution to the winds, assault the accumulated wisdom of the age, and insist on sweeping changes despite resistant facts. Law is a conservative profession, but it is not immune to the neo-con temptation. The question raised by the coming vacancies to the Supreme Court is whether American law will remain in conservative hands, or whether it will be captured by a neo-con vision of revolutionary change. The issue is not liberalism v. conservatism, but conservatism v. neo-conservatism.

The coming struggle over the Supreme Court has been gathering momentum for almost twenty years: the nomination battles over Robert Bork in 1987 and Clarence Thomas in 1991 were harbingers. But times have changed since these bitter contests. Bork was a cutting-edge neo-conservative of the 1980s, but his successors may well go far beyond him, striking down laws protecting workers and the environment, supporting the destruction of basic civil liberties in the war on terrorism, and engaging in a wholesale attack on the premises of 20th-century constitutionalism. Or then again, Bush may hesitate. Despite his professed admiration for neo-con jurists such as Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas, he may offer up genuine conservatives, such as Sandra Day O’Connor, who reject radical change as a matter of principle.

The job of the Senate is to make it clear to the American people which path the president is taking. . .

***If you enjoy PBD and support what we are doing, you can help by forwarding a copy of this issue to your friends (using the envelope link below) or by sending them a copy of its URL (http://pbd.blogspot.com).

You can also help by voting for PBD as the blog “Most Deserving of Wider Recognition” at http://wampum.wabanaki.net/archives/001620.html

I don't get anything personally out of this project, except the satisfaction of doing it (I don't run ads, etc). The credit really all goes to the people whose material I copy and redistribute. But if I do have a "mission," it is to get this information into the hands of as many people as I can.***
- posted by Nick Burbules @ 7:52 AM

 
LIARS, BIG AND SMALL

WH re-writes history, claims Jefferson, Madison, Monroe, and Adams among the great “Republican” Presidents (even though the Republican party didn’t even EXIST until 1854). I know, you think I’m exaggerating – even the WH of Karl Rove couldn’t be so brazen, so dishonest. . . well, read on my friends

http://atrios.blogspot.com/2005_02_06_atrios_archive.html#110808046627563469

Condi Rice, a world-class liar

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2005/2/10/194520/107
Although then national security adviser Condoleezza Rice wrote a March 22, 2004 column in The Washington Post that "No al-Qaeda threat was turned over to the new administration," a newly declassified document tells the story. . . U.S. media haven't got this yet, but Australian papers have. . .

http://www.salon.com/politics/war_room/archive.html?blog=/politics/war_room/2005/02/10/rice_911/index.html
No one could have predicted it. . . That’s what Condoleezza Rice said about 9/11. Yes, George W. Bush received a Presidential Daily Brief on Aug. 6, 2001, and yes, that brief was headlined, "Bin Laden Determined to Strike in U.S." But Rice and other administration officials have long maintained that no one could have predicted that terrorists would hijack a plane and try to use it as a weapon. "I don't think anybody could have predicted . . . that they would try to use an airplane as a missile, a hijacked airplane as a missile," Rice said at a press briefing in May 2002.

Well, that's not quite true. Someone could have predicted it, and someone actually did. As we mentioned last night, today's New York Times brings news of a previously undisclosed report from the 9/11 Commission. According to the Times, the report says that the Federal Aviation Administration "had indeed considered the possibility that terrorists would hijack a plane and use it as a weapon," and that it actually warned U.S. airports in 2001 that terrorists might hijack an airplane in order to "commit suicide in a spectacular explosion."

Rice didn't see fit to mention any of this in her sworn public testimony before the 9/11 Commission last year. Asked about her pronouncement about the unpredictability of a planes-as-missiles scheme, Rice backtracked a bit, saying that the idea actually had been raised in reports within the "intelligence community" in 1998 and 1999. She didn't mention that the FAA had issued a warning about such an attack in the spring of 2001, just months before 9/11.

The Times says that the Bush administration "blocked" the public release of the newly disclosed 9/11 Commission for "more than five months" -- against the wishes of 9/11 Commissioner members -- but finally "provided both the classified report and a declassified, 120-page version to the National Archives two weeks ago."

Two weeks ago? Two weeks ago would be 'round about Jan. 27, and Jan. 27 would be the day after the U.S. Senate confirmed Condoleezza Rice as secretary of state. Maybe the timing is a coincidence, and we certainly wouldn't want to suggest otherwise. That might amount to "impugning" Rice's "integrity" and "credibility." And that would be wrong, wouldn't it?

More: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A13203-2005Feb10.html?nav=rss_nation

[NB: Let’s not miss the significance of this: DOZENS of warnings, several of a very specific nature, and we are only learning about it now because the report was held for five months (post-election), then quietly turned in to the National Archives.]

Bush gets schooled, drops his “there is no trust fund” line – though he is still hinting that Treasury bonds are worthless

http://www.first-draft.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=2154&mode=thread&order=0&thold=0
“Now, some of you probably think there is a kind of -- a bank, a Social Security trust bank. But that's not what's happened over time. Every dollar that goes into Social Security has been paid out, either to retirees or government programs. It is a pay-as-you-go system; it is a flow-through system. There is no kind of -- there are empty promises, but there's no pile of money that you thought was there when you retired. That's not the way the system works.”

[NB: "Empty promises." Read more quotables from this North Carolina event]

Scotty tries to explain Bush’s “principles” on Social Security

http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2005/02/20050210-6.html
Q On Social Security, yesterday, the head of the AARP said that although they still will fight the partial privatization accounts of the President, they are suggesting now that to shore up Social Security, they would go along with a gradual increase in payroll taxes, raising from -- the taxes on $90,000 up to $140,000. The President has said no increase in taxes. Is that etched in stone? Is that non-negotiable?

MR. McCLELLAN: I think he's made very clear the principles. . .

Q And the principles are, no increase in payroll taxes, right?

MR. McCLELLAN: That's one of the -- yes, that is --

Q So that's really non-negotiable.

MR. McCLELLAN: But he's essentially said that he's open to all other ideas, with the exception of increasing payroll taxes. . .

Q . . . Does the President view lifting that $90,000 cap as a tax increase?

MR. McCLELLAN: I think we've addressed this issue on a number of occasions. What -- the President made it very clear early on that we're not going to get in the business of ruling things in or ruling things out. He stated his principles. His principles are very clear. One of them is no increase in the payroll taxes. . .

[NB: I think that’s ruling something out]

Q Just to be clear, there are no non-negotiable proposals. This isn't a non-negotiable thing, a payroll tax increase, it's just something that it's his principle, he says --

MR. McCLELLAN: No, he does believe we should not increase payroll taxes.

Q But it's not --

MR. McCLELLAN: He said he's open to all ideas. Remember, just recently, he said he's open to all ideas with the exception of increasing payroll.

Q With the exception of that, okay. . .

Q Is raising the cap under the category of things that he wouldn't rule in or out?

MR. McCLELLAN: No, this is -- let me repeat. This goes back through what we've answered previously -- I think what he's answered, what administration officials have answered. He's stated his principles. You all want to try to get us into negotiating with ourselves. We're not going to do that. We stated our principles and made clear what his views are. He's made clear what his views are. And we're going to listen to all ideas that are out there for solving this problem. . .

Q Raising it to $140,000, does he view that as a tax increase?

MR. McCLELLAN: I think I've answered it, Roger.

Q I'm not clear on it.

MR. McCLELLAN: You're asking me to negotiate with ourselves, and we're not going to do that. . .

Q It would be wrong to say -- it would be wrong to say that any item, including a tax increase, is non-negotiable. It would be wrong to say that -- for us to say that.

MR. McCLELLAN: Again, I will repeat what the President said. . .

Q No, it's just --

MR. McCLELLAN: I know, John, but --

Q Earlier you said all -- everything else is on the table but tax increases.

MR. McCLELLAN: And that's what our position is.

Q Okay, so --

MR. McCLELLAN: That's what our position is.

[NB: Quite a performance, eh? So their position is, we won’t rule anything in or out, but we’re ruling out tax increases. We won’t tell you whether lifting the cap on taxable income counts as a tax increase in our view, because that would be negotiating with ourselves. But nothing is non-negotiable. . . except for the things we won’t negotiate. Got it?]

Scotty mixes apples and not-apples

http://www.first-draft.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=2152&mode=thread&order=0&thold=0
[Scotty] You have a poll in the paper today -- in Mr. Fletcher's paper today -- that points out that 73 percent of the people recognize that Social Security is either in crisis or faces major problems.

[Holden] Scottie was talking about this question and its various responses from the latest WaPo poll.

Which of the following statements comes closest to your own view of the Social Security Program?
The program is in crisis: 27%
The program has major problems, but it is not in crisis: 46%
The program has minor problems: 22%
The program has no problems: 4%
Don't know: 1%

UPDATE: Anonymous points out that. . . Scottie is indeed a liar.

27% of those polled think the program "is in crisis." 46% think there are "major problems, but not a crisis.". . . The two categories are mutually exclusive. One is crisis, one is something other than crisis.

[NB: As Holden points out, it is more valid to interpret this poll as indicating that 73% of those polled say that Social Security is NOT in "crisis"]

More on the heightened risk people will have to face under Bush’s plan (isn’t this program called Social SECURITY?)

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2005_02_06.php#004770

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2005_02_06.php#004766

The National Review runs such a dishonest and inaccurate editorial on Bush’s plan that no one is even willing to put their name on it

http://www.prospect.org/weblog/archives/2005/02/index.html#005459

What people don’t know about Social Security, and about Bush’s plan (scary)

http://www.prospect.org/weblog/archives/2005/02/index.html#005453

Now the good news

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2005_02/005627.php
From a purely practical perspective, it looks like the following anti-privatization arguments are the ones most likely to resonate with the public. . .

A bad time to be the Little Guy:

Losing bankruptcy protections
http://atrios.blogspot.com/2005_02_06_atrios_archive.html#110809654349861438

Losing class action protections
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2005_02/005631.php

Bush’s class war
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/02/11/opinion/11krugman.html?hp

Iraq: the election will fix nothing

http://www.tompaine.com/articles/iraqi_democracy.php
Those noted experts on Islam, Cheney and Rumsfeld, told TV audiences yesterday that people worried about Islamic fundamentalism in Iraq ought to, as Cheney put it, stop their “hand-wringing.” Rumseld, ever astute, noted: “The Shia in Iraq are Iraqis, they’re not Iranians.” (Someone needs to tell Rummy that Sistani is an Iranian.)

http://www.juancole.com/2005/02/over-50-dead-in-iraq-carnage-as.html

Cheney and Rumsfeld: more powerful than ever

http://www.warandpiece.com/blogdirs/001682.html

North Korea has nukes, withdraws from multilateral talks – that would be the multilateral talks Bush slammed Kerry for questioning the effectiveness of, during the debates

http://www.salon.com/politics/war_room/archive.html?blog=/politics/war_room/2005/02/10/north_korea/index.html

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/3705948.stm

Trade deficit soars to new record high

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/02/10/business/10cnd-trade.html?ex=1265778000&en=badb1946c4cbd30e&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland

A single, integrated chart that shows what a complete mess Bush policies will make of our economy

http://fugop.blogspot.com/2005/02/declining-fiscal-situation.html

Trying to get accurate Defense Dept budget numbers, war costs

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-defense11feb11,1,7718575.story?coll=la-headlines-nation

Ken Blackwell, Ohio Sect’y of State, and maestro of one of the worst electoral frauds in history, refuses to appear before a REPUBLICAN House committee hearing – even though he was in Washington DC at the time – suggesting that it was somehow not worth his time

http://www.salon.com/politics/war_room/archive.html?blog=/politics/war_room/2005/02/10/blackwell/index.html
"'I am disappointed that they are not here," said the committee's chairman, Ohio Rep. Bob Ney. "We can have disagreements, but you can't run and you can't hide.". . . Blackwell said that he'll send somebody to appear before the committee, suggesting that the somebody won't be him.

More on the provision that would exempt the Department of Fatherland Security from ALL laws in order to facilitate the building of border outposts – and even bar judicial review of the laws they have been exempted from

http://atrios.blogspot.com/2005_02_06_atrios_archive.html#110808458745728902
“If this provision, the waiver of all laws necessary for quote improvements of barriers at the border was to become law, the Secretary of Homeland Security could give a contract to his political cronies that had no safety standards, using 12-year-old illegal immigrants to do the labor, run it through the site of a Native American burial ground, kill bald eagles in the process, and pollute the drinking water of neighboring communities. And under the provisions of this act, no member of Congress, no citizen could do anything about it because you waive all judicial review.”

More: http://www.prospect.org/weblog/archives/2005/02/index.html#005461

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2005_02/005632.php

The politicizing of science

http://www.salon.com/politics/war_room/archive.html?blog=/politics/war_room/2005/02/11/science/index.html
It looks like it's time to add one more species to the "endangered" list at the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service: scientific facts. . . When asked to respond anonymously to a survey regarding their work that was conducted by the watchdog groups Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility and the Union of Concerned Scientists, some scientists received memos from higher-ups ordering them not to answer, even from home and on their personal time. . . The results of the anonymous survey suggest why certain agency leaders might not have wanted the scientists' opinions to become public.

Democrats more unified, more aggressive (well, they’ll NEED to be)

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-dems11feb11,1,3538100.story?coll=la-headlines-nation

Gannon/Guckert round-up. OK folks, I’m only going to do this once, because this guy has had ‘way more than his 15 minutes of fame already. Leave it to our twisted media environment to turn a lying, stupid, hyper-partisan hypocrite and purveyor of internet sleaze into a victim who can count it all as a smart career move. Soon to appear on a Fox News station near you. . . . “Jeff Gannon”

His softball interview with Wolf Blitzer (get ready to take a shower afterwards)
http://mediamatters.org/items/200502110002

Count the outright lies in that interview
http://atrios.blogspot.com/2005_02_06_atrios_archive.html#110807887420657258
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2005/2/10/184759/717

A sampler of his absurd, tendentious questions
http://www.first-draft.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=2156&mode=thread&order=0&thold=0

A sampler of his journalistic oeuvre
http://mediamatters.org/items/200502100008
"Kerry's Alleged Intern Identified"
"Kerry Could Become First Gay President"
Swift Boat Vets focus on "Kerry's bitter legacy that haunts many Vietnam veterans"
Put Abu Ghraib "in proper perspective"

Whiney little SOB, isn’t he?
http://www.salon.com/politics/war_room/archive.html?blog=/politics/war_room/2005/02/10/gannon/index.html
In the interview, Gannon says what happened to him should serve as a wake-up call for serious journalists everywhere. "I asked a question at a White House press briefing and this is what happened to me," Gannon told the News Journal. "If this is what happens to me, what reporter is safe?". . . "They tried to intimidate me, punish me," he says. "Then they tried to embarrass me, and they've done a pretty good job of that.". . . Presumably, the embarrassment comes not from Gannon/Guckert's suck-up questioning of the President -- how can you deal with Democrats who "seem to have divorced themselves from reality?" -- but from the connections bloggers have drawn between Gannon/Guckert's name and Web sites like hotmilitarystud.com, militaryescorts.com and militaryescortsm4m.com.

HOW did he get a WH press pass?
http://atrios.blogspot.com/2005_02_06_atrios_archive.html#110806798926945032
http://atrios.blogspot.com/2005_02_06_atrios_archive.html#110805356169508354

Scotty tries to explain
http://www.first-draft.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=2151&mode=thread&order=0&thold=0

How the media’s extremely Gannon-friendly coverage is partly due to the fact that blogs, and not mainstream media, did the digging that uncovered his phony name and background: therefore it CAN’T have been legitimate scrutiny
http://bestoftheblogs.com/2005_02_10_bestof.html#110806981687750683

A note of sanity
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2005/2/10/142055/587

And another
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A14148-2005Feb10.html?nav=rss_politics/administration/whbriefing
The saga of James D. Guckert, AKA Jeff Gannon, is either:

- Yet another example of the White House's attempts to avoid scrutiny, undermine the free and independent media, and use fake news and propaganda to manipulate public opinion.

- Yet another example of the liberal domination of the mainstream media.

- Yet another example of the blogosphere's ability to out-investigate the mainstream media and force it to pay attention to stories that otherwise would be ignored.

- Yet another example of the blogosphere's bloodlust and mob-rule mentality crossing normal boundaries of propriety.

- Yet another distraction from more important things -- such as President Bush saying yesterday that the $1.5 trillion Social Security trust fund doesn't really exist.

And, finally, REAL news about Gannon/Guckert: how did a clown like him get access to classified reports (about Plame)? Is there a link to Rove? THIS part of the story we’ll be sticking with

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2005_02_06.php#004774

http://americablog.blogspot.com/2005/02/karl-rove-linked-to-gannon-story.html

More: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/02/11/politics/11gannon.html

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2005/2/10/224122/709

The F word -- no, a different one (thanks to Megan Boler for the first link and Cookie for the third)

http://www.kontraband.com/show/show.asp?ID=1843

http://www.mydd.com/story/2005/2/10/131522/916

http://www.amconmag.com/2005_02_14/article.html

Ann Coulter, sweet thing. In what world does a person get to say this on television and EVER be given a public platform again? (As usual, imagine any left-wing equivalent, and what would happen.)

http://mediamatters.org/items/200502100010
LAWRENCE KUDLOW (host): We got a couple of seconds before the break when you guys are all going to come back, but, Ann, I just want to give you first whack at this. Eason Jordan, top news executive at CNN -- I mean, to me, this is absolutely incredible -- this guy says at a big conference in Davos that the U.S. military is deliberately targeting and assassinating American journalists. . .

COULTER: Would that it were so!

KUDLOW: Would what were so?

COULTER: That the American military were targeting journalists.

Bonus item: I know I usually end these with something lighter and humorous, but read this item (too long to clip) – Digby gives voice to what many of us feel: that our country has been hijacked by people of no principle and turned into something foreign, something ugly, something horrifyingly wrong. It must have been what people of good will felt during the McCarthy era – that the very ideals of America are being cast aside, that what makes us love this country and its freedoms are under sustained assault by people too ruthless and cynical to care about what they are leaving in their wake

http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2005_02_06_digbysblog_archive.html#110806884562266181
“I keep thinking I'm going to wake from this awful dream. . . “

***If you enjoy PBD and support what we are doing, you can help by forwarding a copy of this issue to your friends (using the envelope link below) or by sending them a copy of its URL (http://pbd.blogspot.com).

You can also help by voting for PBD as the blog “Most Deserving of Wider Recognition” at http://wampum.wabanaki.net/archives/001620.html

I don't get anything personally out of this project, except the satisfaction of doing it (I don't run ads, etc). The credit really all goes to the people whose material I copy and redistribute. But if I do have a "mission," it is to get this information into the hands of as many people as I can.***
- posted by Nick Burbules @ 7:11 AM

 
FEAR FACTOR

Has there ever been an administration which has governed so ruthlessly by the creation, and then cynical manipulation, of irrational fears among the public? Not satisfied with claiming (falsely) that the Social Security program is soon to become “insolvent,” “bankrupt,” and finally, “doomed,” Bush is now hinting, darkly, that he is prepared to default on the government’s own Treasury Bonds. How much – and how many -- is he prepared to damage and sacrifice for the sake of advancing his political aims?

No trust

http://www.first-draft.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=2139&mode=thread&order=0&thold=0
[Bush] “Some in our country think that Social Security is a trust fund -- in other words, there's a pile of money being accumulated. That's just simply not true. The money -- payroll taxes going into the Social Security are spent. They're spent on benefits and they're spent on government programs. There is no trust.”

[NB: No trust, indeed. And WHY are current payroll taxes, collected for the purpose of funding Social Security, being spent on other government programs?]

What is a Treasury bond? Is it “just an IOU”?

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2005_02/005622.php
[Kevin Drum] The trust fund consists of U.S. treasury bonds. These bonds have been purchased with excess payroll taxes collected since 1983.

Fine. But what is a treasury bond? Easy: it's a call on the future general fund revenue of the United States. People who buy bonds are receiving a promise that they will be repaid (with interest) by U.S. taxpayers in the future.

Who then are the purchasers of the bonds in the trust fund? Answer: the people who paid payroll taxes between 1983-2018.

And who is required to pay them back? Answer: the bonds will be redeemed by the general fund between 2019-2042 (on current estimates, anyway). Since the general fund is financed mostly by personal and corporate income taxes, that means that the people required to pay back the bonds are income tax payers between 2019-2042.

So: are these bonds merely IOUs from one branch of the government to another? Not really. They are IOUs between one set of citizens (payroll tax payers between 1983-2018) and another set of citizens (income tax payers between 2019-2042).

What this means is that the United States really does have a moral obligation to pay back those bonds. Bonds are always paid back by future taxpayers, not all of whom had any say in selling the bonds in the first place. The fact that it's a burden on these future taxpayers is not reason enough to pretend the bonds don't need to be repaid — or don't exist at all.

And make no mistake: redeeming the trust fund will be a burden on future taxpayers — in the same way that paying excess payroll taxes is a burden on current workers. There's no free lunch. The only way to pay back the bonds is either to increase the federal deficit or to increase taxes. . .

The bottom line is this: the trust fund is not an accounting trick. It's a genuine obligation, both morally and legally. . . The president of the United States, of all people, ought to understand that.

Why Bush’s statement is one of the biggest lies ever told by a President

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2005_02_06.php#004758
[Josh Marshall] We and many others had predicted that the president's angle here was to default on the Treasury bonds sitting in the Social Security Trust Fund. And now we can be pretty confident that he plans to do just that since today he said that the Trust Fund doesn't even exist.

Now, here's the thing.

Alan Greenspan headed up the 'Greenspan Commission' (aka the National Commission on Social Security Reform). The Greenspan Commission didn't create the Trust Fund -- it dates back to 1939. But it was the reform package devised by the Greenspan Commission and issued in their January 1983 report that led to the intentional building up of a large surplus in the Trust Fund which would provide excess revenue to help pay for the retirement of the babyboomers in the early decades of the 21st century.

Setting aside all the actuarial and financial gobbledegook, the basic idea was that the boomers and others would start paying not only their own taxes but also advance paying to cover the costs of their own retirement. The Social Security Adminsitration used the monies in the Trust Fund to purchase bonds -- debt that otherwise would have had to have been purchased by private individuals, pensions, foreigners, all the parties that buy US Treasury bonds. (The majority of the US government's debt is in the hands of those folks; and you can be sure they're going to get paid back.)

So if you've paid Social Security taxes in any of the years from 1983 until today, you've been advance paying. And now President Bush just said that that money is gone. So, you thought you were advance paying to cover part of the future expenses of your generation's retirement. But it seems you were just a sucker since President Bush is now saying the money ain't gonna be paid back. You're just fresh outta luck, you could say.

So here's our question: Does Alan Greenspan think there's a Trust Fund? Does he believe those bonds are backed up by the full faith and credit of the United States government? Does he think they will and should be paid back? If he doesn't, he's got a hell of a lot of explaining to do since it was under his guidance that we came up with this whole idea.

Or how about Sen. Bob Dole? He was on the Commission too. What does he think? Does he agree? Or the recently-retired House Ways and Means Chairman Bill Archer (R). He was on it too.

Let's ask all of them ...

(More: http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2005_02_06.php#004763)

http://www.prospect.org/weblog/archives/2005/02/index.html#005451
[Matt Yglesias] Changing the law so as to no longer honor the commitment made by Ronald Reagan and the congressional leadership in 1983 would be a dangerous indication that today's president and Congress don't take such commitments seriously. That would be a poor signal to send at the exact same time the president asks the central banks of China and Japan to loan him a few trillion more dollars to cover the costs of the transition. After all, if bonds are "just IOUs," who's going to pay perfectly good yen for them?

[NB: Matt puts his finger on the real crime here: for the sake of his domestic agenda, Bush is jeopardizing the full faith and credit of the U.S. at just the time when international investors are already skittish about his deficit, rampant tax cuts, etc. What happens if those investors start pulling out of these “worthless” government bonds?]

Two good questions from Josh Marshall: (1) if T-bonds are so worthless, why does Bush have most of his personal wealth tied up in them (and if he defaults, what happens to his own money – oh, I think we know the answer to that one: http://www.thenation.com/failsafe/index.mhtml?bid=2&pid=126) and (2) isn’t this statement a violation of his – recently renewed – oath of office?

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2005_02_06.php#004759
That would be the Constitution which reads (Am.XIV, Section 4): "The validity of the public debt of the United States, authorized by law, including debts incurred for payment of pensions and bounties for services in suppressing insurrection or rebellion, shall not be questioned."

Why Treasury Sect’y Snow was fired, then retained, and will soon be fired again

http://www.salon.com/politics/war_room/archive.html?blog=/politics/war_room/2005/02/09/snow/index.html
[Tim Grieve] When George W. Bush was asked over the weekend how his plan for private investment accounts would strengthen the long-term fiscal health of Social Security, he gave an answer that started with "Because the -- all which is on the table begins to address the big cost drivers," and ended with Bush promising to "keep working on it."

Bush's treasury secretary has now said what the president's stumbling made obvious. When pressed to provide details about the president's plan to shore up Social Security's fiscal health, John Snow said Tuesday: "The president at this point doesn't have a plan."

It wasn't the only time that Snow seemed to veer from White House talking points Tuesday. While the White House isn't calling the Social Security situation a "crisis" anymore, the president can't seem to open his mouth without warning that Social Security is going to be "bankrupt" in 2042. Snow seems to disagree with that characterization, too. "There is a major difference between not being fully funded and being bankrupt," Snow told the House Ways and Means Committee Tuesday. Perhaps he should tell the president.

http://www.tnr.com/etc.mhtml?pid=2545
[Noam Scheiber] So my question is, doesn't it seem a little suspicious that the administration has thought in tremendous detail about what their private accounts would look like, but not at all about how to bring the Social Secrutiy system into actuarial balance, which is (or at least was) ostensibly the point of creating the accounts?. . . If I didn't know better, I'd be tempted to say the White House has a plan, it's just not sharing it in public.

Is even today’s media getting fed up with the cynical lies and misrepresentations being foisted by the Bush gang?

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2005_02_06.php#004755

Meanwhile, Brit Hume doesn’t even pretend to maintain standards of journalistic integrity and truth – but then he really isn’t a journalist any more, is he?

http://mediamatters.org/items/200502040010
HUME: In a written statement to Congress in 1935, Roosevelt said that any Social Security plans should include, quote, "Voluntary contributory annuities, by which individual initiative can increase the annual amounts received in old age," adding that government funding, quote, "ought to ultimately be supplanted by self-supporting annuity plans."

http://atrios.blogspot.com/2005_02_06_atrios_archive.html#110797954969642730
Hume turns this completely on its head. He pulls two unrelated bits out of the FDR quote, and adds the words “government funding” between them. Because it’s so carefully done, it’s clear that it’s deliberate. And it’s a nasty form of dishonesty. Hume is manipulating Americans’ trust of FDR in order to build support for dismantling FDR’s legacy.

More: http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2005_02/005619.php

Remember when Bush’s Medicare plan was passed, by a razor-thin margin, only because of solemn promises that it wouldn’t cost more than $400 billion? Remember that the story came out that behind the scenes officials were threatened with being fired for wanting to tell Congress at the time that they knew this number wasn’t accurate? Remember that within days of passing the bill, a much higher figure ($534 billion) was released? Current costs: $720 billion, and counting (And these are the people whose fiscal integrity and promises we’re supposed to trust in revamping Social Security?)

http://www.first-draft.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=2130&mode=thread&order=0&thold=0

More: http://www.salon.com/politics/war_room/archive.html?blog=/politics/war_room/2005/02/09/medicare/index.html

http://www.prospect.org/weblog/archives/2005/02/index.html#005447

Scotty tries to explain

http://www.first-draft.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=2140&mode=thread&order=0&thold=0

A (suppressed) report from the 9-11 Commission is finally coming out (post-election) and the level of evidence available before the attacks that an assault by Bin Laden on U.S. aircraft was even stronger than you have heard – and the lack of any kind of preventative response by the Bush administration even more criminally incompetent. Just thought you’d like to know

http://www.salon.com/politics/war_room/archive.html?blog=/politics/war_room/2005/02/09/911_report/index.html
[NYT] "In the months before the Sept. 11 attacks, federal aviation officials reviewed dozens of intelligence reports that warned about Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda, some of which specifically discussed airline hijackings and suicide operations.”

More: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/02/10/politics/10terror.html?ex=1265778000&en=ae668333cc97a4f2&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland

Iraq: one week (ONE WEEK!) after the historic, epochal vote

http://www.prospect.org/weblog/archives/2005/02/index.html#005448
MISSION (STILL) NOT ACCOMPLISHED. As Knight-Ridder puts it, "with violence having picked up again, U.S. and Iraqi officials are trying to puzzle out whether the voting had any significant effect" on the insurgency. It certainly appears that it did not. The fundamental problems are still in place, and the administration still doesn't have a real strategy for dealing with them.

More: http://www.juancole.com/2005/02/post-election-violence-and-maneuvering.html

Voting results. . .er. . . um. . . well. . . “delayed”

http://www.tnr.com/blog/iraqd?pid=2546

[Chalabi!!??!! http://www.warandpiece.com/blogdirs/001672.html]

The “plain meaning” of torture: even though I’m more of a linguistic nominalist than a realist, there are times when I want to say IT REALLY IS TORTURE!

http://slate.msn.com/id/2113314/fr/rss/

New debates over abortion policy: rethinking the politics of “choice”

http://www.salon.com/mwt/feature/2005/02/09/choice/index.html

National ID bill – as usual, the devil is in the details (boy, is it EVER)

http://talkleft.com/new_archives/009659.html#009659

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-immig10feb10,0,3154088.story?coll=la-home-headlines

Why you aren’t hearing much about Enron and Halliburton any more – and what it is you aren’t hearing (thanks to Doug Kellner for the link)

http://www.niagarafallsreporter.com/hanchette147.html

More “science-based” Bush environmental policy

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-scientists10feb10,1,5431799.story?coll=la-headlines-nation

“Swifting” Hillary: why the slime campaign about to be launched against her is going to make the Swift Boat ads against Kerry look like child’s play

http://www.salon.com/politics/war_room/archive.html?blog=/politics/war_room/2005/02/09/swift/index.html

Popular action alert: it worked with Sinclair – are people ready to go after Fox News?

http://wilsonhellie.typepad.com/for_the_record/2005/02/boycott_fox_new.html

Bonus items: Turtles piled upon turtles -- what do you make of pundits whose idea of credible evidence involves citing “Talon News”?

http://mediamatters.org/items/200502100001

Rehabilitating “Jeff Gannon.” Howard Kurtz, media watchdog and “ethicist,” manages to turn the revelation that (a) Gannon was operating under a bogus name and (b) that he has ties to Internet sites or domain names advertising gay “escort” services – all openly obtained facts – as a major invasion of his “privacy” and an effort by “liberals” to destroy him (meanwhile, his ties to GOPUSA are written off as in no way compromising his journalistic ethics) – nice work, Howie

http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2005_02_06_digbysblog_archive.html#110799068088523077

And how did a phony news reporter get WH credentials in the first place?

http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2005/02/10/gannon_affair/index.html

http://www.louise.house.gov/HoR/Louise/News/Press+Releases+By+Date/2005+Press+Releases/WH+Briefing+Room+Scandal.htm

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2005/2/10/3624/16968

***If you enjoy PBD and support what we are doing, you can help by forwarding a copy of this issue to your friends (using the envelope link below) or by sending them a copy of its URL (http://pbd.blogspot.com).

You can also help by voting for PBD as the blog “Most Deserving of Wider Recognition” at http://wampum.wabanaki.net/archives/001620.html

I don't get anything personally out of this project, except the satisfaction of doing it (I don't run ads, etc). The credit really all goes to the people whose material I copy and redistribute. But if I do have a "mission," it is to get this information into the hands of as many people as I can.***

- posted by Nick Burbules @ 7:07 AM

 
NOT HYPERBOLE

“Extraordinary rendition” What’s extraordinary is that the perpetrators of this despicable policy were returned to office. A vote for Bush REALLY WAS a vote for torture

http://newyorker.com/printable/?fact/050214fa_fact6
On January 27th, President Bush, in an interview with the Times, assured the world that “torture is never acceptable, nor do we hand over people to countries that do torture.” Maher Arar, a Canadian engineer who was born in Syria, was surprised to learn of Bush’s statement. Two and a half years ago, American officials, suspecting Arar of being a terrorist, apprehended him in New York and sent him back to Syria, where he endured months of brutal interrogation, including torture. . .

Ten hours after landing in Jordan, Arar said, he was driven to Syria, where interrogators, after a day of threats, “just began beating on me.” They whipped his hands repeatedly with two-inch-thick electrical cables, and kept him in a windowless underground cell that he likened to a grave. “Not even animals could withstand it,” he said. Although he initially tried to assert his innocence, he eventually confessed to anything his tormentors wanted him to say. . . A year later, in October, 2003, Arar was released without charges. . .

Rendition was originally carried out on a limited basis, but after September 11th, when President Bush declared a global war on terrorism, the program expanded beyond recognition—becoming, according to a former C.I.A. official, “an abomination.” What began as a program aimed at a small, discrete set of suspects—people against whom there were outstanding foreign arrest warrants—came to include a wide and ill-defined population that the Administration terms “illegal enemy combatants.” Many of them have never been publicly charged with any crime. Scott Horton, an expert on international law who helped prepare a report on renditions issued by N.Y.U. Law School and the New York City Bar Association, estimates that a hundred and fifty people have been rendered since 2001. Representative Ed Markey, a Democrat from Massachusetts and a member of the Select Committee on Homeland Security, said that a more precise number was impossible to obtain. “I’ve asked people at the C.I.A. for numbers,” he said. “They refuse to answer. All they will say is that they’re in compliance with the law.”

Although the full scope of the extraordinary-rendition program isn’t known, several recent cases have come to light that may well violate U.S. law. In 1998, Congress passed legislation declaring that it is “the policy of the United States not to expel, extradite, or otherwise effect the involuntary return of any person to a country in which there are substantial grounds for believing the person would be in danger of being subjected to torture, regardless of whether the person is physically present in the United States.”

The Bush Administration, however, has argued that the threat posed by stateless terrorists who draw no distinction between military and civilian targets is so dire that it requires tough new rules of engagement. This shift in perspective, labeled the New Paradigm in a memo written by Alberto Gonzales, then the White House counsel. . . Five days after Al Qaeda’s attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, Vice-President Dick Cheney, reflecting the new outlook, argued, on “Meet the Press,” that the government needed to “work through, sort of, the dark side.” Cheney went on, “A lot of what needs to be done here will have to be done quietly, without any discussion, using sources and methods that are available to our intelligence agencies, if we’re going to be successful. That’s the world these folks operate in. And so it’s going to be vital for us to use any means at our disposal, basically, to achieve our objective.”. . .

Perhaps surprisingly, the fiercest internal resistance to this thinking has come from people who have been directly involved in interrogation, including veteran F.B.I. and C.I.A. agents. Their concerns are as much practical as ideological. Years of experience in interrogation have led them to doubt the effectiveness of physical coercion as a means of extracting reliable information. They also warn that the Bush Administration, having taken so many prisoners outside the realm of the law, may not be able to bring them back in. By holding detainees indefinitely, without counsel, without charges of wrongdoing, and under circumstances that could, in legal parlance, “shock the conscience” of a court, the Administration has jeopardized its chances of convicting hundreds of suspected terrorists, or even of using them as witnesses in almost any court in the world. . . “It’s a big problem,” Jamie Gorelick, a former deputy attorney general and a member of the 9/11 Commission, says. “In criminal justice, you either prosecute the suspects or let them go. But if you’ve treated them in ways that won’t allow you to prosecute them you’re in this no man’s land. What do you do with these people?”. . .

Dan Coleman, an ex-F.B.I. agent who retired last July, . . . worked closely with the C.I.A. on counter-terrorism cases. . . Coleman is a political nonpartisan with a law-and-order mentality. His eldest son is a former Army Ranger who served in Afghanistan. Yet Coleman was troubled by the Bush Administration’s New Paradigm. Torture, he said, “has become bureaucratized.” Bad as the policy of rendition was before September 11th, Coleman said, “afterward, it really went out of control.” He explained, “Now, instead of just sending people to third countries, we’re holding them ourselves. We’re taking people, and keeping them in our own custody in third countries. That’s an enormous problem.” Egypt, he pointed out, at least had an established legal system, however harsh. “There was a process there,” Coleman said. “But what’s our process? We have no method over there other than our laws—and we’ve decided to ignore them. What are we now, the Huns? If you don’t talk to us, we’ll kill you?”. . .

The Bush Administration’s redefinition of the standards of interrogation took place almost entirely out of public view. . . Chief among the authors was John C. Yoo, the deputy assistant attorney general at the time. . . Soon after September 11th, Yoo and other Administration lawyers began advising President Bush that he did not have to comply with the Geneva Conventions in handling detainees in the war on terror. . . The State Department, determined to uphold the Geneva Conventions, fought against Bush’s lawyers and lost. In a forty-page memo to Yoo, dated January 11, 2002 (which has not been publicly released), William Taft IV, the State Department legal adviser, argued that Yoo’s analysis was “seriously flawed.” Taft told Yoo that his contention that the President could disregard the Geneva Conventions was “untenable,” “incorrect,” and “confused.”. . .

“Lawyers have to be the voice of reason and sometimes have to put the brakes on, no matter how much the client wants to hear something else,” the former State Department lawyer said. “Our job is to keep the train on the tracks. It’s not to tell the President, ‘Here are the ways to avoid the law.’” He went on, “There is no such thing as a non-covered person under the Geneva Conventions. It’s nonsense. The protocols cover fighters in everything from world wars to local rebellions.” The lawyer said that Taft urged Yoo and Gonzales to warn President Bush that he would “be seen as a war criminal by the rest of the world,” but Taft was ignored. This may be because President Bush had already made up his mind. According to top State Department officials, Bush decided to suspend the Geneva Conventions on January 8, 2002—three days before Taft sent his memo to Yoo.

The legal pronouncements from Washington about the status of detainees were painstakingly constructed to include numerous loopholes. For example, in February, 2002, President Bush issued a written directive stating that, even though he had determined that the Geneva Conventions did not apply to the war on terror, all detainees should be treated “humanely.” A close reading of the directive, however, revealed that it referred only to military interrogators—not to C.I.A. officials. This exemption allowed the C.I.A. to continue using interrogation methods, including rendition, that stopped just short of torture. Further, an August, 2002, memo written largely by Yoo but signed by Assistant Attorney General Jay S. Bybee argued that torture required the intent to inflict suffering “equivalent in intensity to the pain accompanying serious physical injury, such as organ failure, impairment of bodily function, or even death.” According to the Times, a secret memo issued by Administration lawyers authorized the C.I.A. to use novel interrogation methods—including “water-boarding,” in which a suspect is bound and immersed in water until he nearly drowns. . .

In a recent phone interview, Yoo was soft-spoken and resolute. “Why is it so hard for people to understand that there is a category of behavior not covered by the legal system?” he said. . . Yoo also argued that the Constitution granted the President plenary powers to override the U.N. Convention Against Torture when he is acting in the nation’s defense—a position that has drawn dissent from many scholars. As Yoo saw it, Congress doesn’t have the power to “tie the President’s hands in regard to torture as an interrogation technique.” He continued, “It’s the core of the Commander-in-Chief function. They can’t prevent the President from ordering torture.” If the President were to abuse his powers as Commander-in-Chief, Yoo said, the constitutional remedy was impeachment. He went on to suggest that President Bush’s victory in the 2004 election, along with the relatively mild challenge to Gonzales mounted by the Democrats in Congress, was “proof that the debate is over.” He said, “The issue is dying out. The public has had its referendum.”

[NB: Read that last paragraph again. A vote for Bush REALLY WAS a vote for torture – that isn’t hyperbole. And one of the principal architects of this system was just confirmed for Attorney General, despite the fact that he disavowed NONE of these policies (indeed, reasserted them). Shame on us all]

Regular readers of PBD know that Kurdish unrest is one of the chief flash points in Iraq: now the elections are over, and they want their due

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/02/08/international/middleeast/08cnd-iraq.html?ex=1265605200&en=fc9e51d908a1396c&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland

Folks, meet Josh Bolten, Director of OMB (“the worst OMB Director in history” – nope, that’s not hyperbole either)

http://atrios.blogspot.com/2005_02_06_atrios_archive.html#110787250941654798
Describing why costly items were left off the budget:

"The budget went to bed . . . before the president's proposals were announced."

Or sometimes:

"But, it wouldn't be responsible for us to take a guess at what those costs are."

In the same briefing, describing why proposals which add revenue or reduce costs were added to the budget (and the amounts guessed):

"Well, the budget is the right place to present the entirety of the president's policies, so all of his proposals are reflected in there."

[NB: Except, that is, a massively expensive Social Security proposal and $80 billion for the war in Iraq – and still counting. And, according to Slate, there’s another $40 billion hiding in Defense spending that hasn’t been disclosed: http://slate.msn.com/id/2113274/fr/rss/ and http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2005_02/005614.php]

http://www.j-bradford-delong.net/movable_type/2005-3_archives/000306.html
From everything I've heard, Josh Bolten is the worst OMB Director in the history of the office--worse than David Stockman, worse than Mitch Daniels. Stockman and Daniels at least understood that the OMB Director was supposed to be the voice in the government for fiscal responsibility, even if they decided to ignore their proper role. Bolten doesn't even understand what the job is.

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2005_02_06.php#004730
Back in the day (you remember the day, right?) every time a president came forward with a budget, reporters would pore over the thing. And any line item or provision or assumption that wasn't based on the most rock-solid accounting or didn't take into account the most pessimistic prognostication was instantly given that most infamous of DC budgeting sobriquets: the dreaded "smoke and mirrors."

Nowadays I guess you could say things have changed. How else can it be when an OMB Director can simply state that borrowing a trillion dollars doesn't count as new debt?

"Transition financing does not represent new debt," OMB chief Josh Bolten said yesterday.

And while we're at it, it would be stingy not to recognize that the White House has now given new meaning to phrase 'unified budgeting'. In the Bush White House lexicon that would refer to a budget that included not only the president's 'budget' but also his major new spending proposals.

More on Bush’s phony budget numbers: http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2005_02/005611.php

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2005/2/8/122711/8569
Remember when Bush promised to cut only those federal programs that were "ineffective" or "duplicative"?

Abstinence-only sex education programs have had "little impact" on Texas teenagers' behavior, according to an ongoing study funded by the Texas Department of Health and presented to state officials last week. . . "We didn't find strong evidence of program effect," Pruitt said, adding, "We didn't find what many would like for us to find.". . .

If the budget is approved, abstinence education would get $206 million, an increase of $39 million.

Meanwhile, here is a successful education program that IS being cut

http://slate.msn.com/id/2113311/fr/rss/
Doing some crackerjack reporting, the NYT's Elisabeth Bumiller covers Bush giving a speech lauding his proposed cuts. Referring to the Even Start program, which serves kids with illiterate parents and is penciled in for elimination, the president said, "After three separate evaluations it has become abundantly clear that the program is not succeeding." Bumiller quotes an Event Start lobbying group official crying foul, and leaves it at that. But how hard would it have been to track down those three purported evaluations or to get an independent assessment of the program? TP, using such obscure tools as Google, found a study, commissioned by the government, concluding, "On the whole, Even Start projects are meeting their legislative mandate. They recruit and serve needy families. And, a high percentage of families take part in core services and receive an amount of service that compares favorably with other existing programs."

More garbled, incoherent nonsense from the President on Social Security. You think he doesn’t understand his own proposal? (No, that’s not hyperbole either)

http://www.first-draft.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=2123&mode=thread&order=0&thold=0

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2005_02_06.php#004739
"Detroit Economic Club officials said Monday the traditional question and answer period after the speech has been dropped for Bush's visit."

[NB, Well, DUH!]

Beware “back-door privatization”

http://www.tnr.com/etc.mhtml?pid=2543
In the last week or two, as Republicans have become more pessimistic about the prospect of privatizing Social Security, conservatives have begun suggesting an alternative tack: "compromising" with Democrats to create "add-on" accounts--i.e., personal accounts that supplement, rather than partially replace, Social Security. At first glance, this seems like a pretty reasonable solution. Both Democrats and Republicans agree on the benefits of stock ownership. Democrats don't want accounts "carved out" of the current Social Security system. Republicans think everyone should have personal accounts. So we simply agree to give everyone a personal account on top of what they'd already be getting from Social Security. . . But once you look more closely at these proposals, it turns out they're just another way to do Social Security privatization--only through the back door. . .

No, Bush’s proposal is nothing like the Thrift Savings Plan

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2005_02_06.php#004749

Predictably, as their plight becomes more desperate, WH rhetoric becomes more extreme: this is what you might call “over the top”

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2005_02_06.php#004744
Social Security scare-talk vocabulary enters baroque phase! Treasury Secretary Snow says the program is "doomed."

[NB: Well, it is if they have their way]

It ain’t working. Bush is fighting a (losing) battle to line up support for his plan within his own party

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2005/2/8/124249/6178
In fact, Republicans up for reelection next year must be wondering just what, exactly, Bush and Rove must be thinking. They've launched an all-out assault on social security while making 2/3rds of their budget cuts in education. That's not the sort of thing Republicans want to be explaining to their constituents in a year.

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2005/2/8/231458/7679
"The Congress doesn't have to stick to these (White House) priorities," said Senate Budget Committee Chairman Judd Gregg, a New Hampshire Republican.

http://www.first-draft.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=2125&mode=thread&order=0&thold=0
MR. McCLELLAN: [T]he President will be meeting with some Republican members of the House to talk about the importance of strengthening Social Security and acting to address it this year. That's part of his ongoing discussions that he's having with members of Congress to get this important priority done this year.

Q Who?

MR. McCLELLAN: We'll try to get you names later today. . .

Q -- leadership, or is it just --

MR. McCLELLAN: It's some House Republican members. We'll work on giving you names later. . .

Q What about the category of them?

Q Are they people who are skeptical about Social Security?

MR. McCLELLAN: Well, he's had a number of meetings. He's going to continue to have a number of meetings. And these are some House Republicans that -- we'll try to get you the list later today. . .

Q How did you pick them, just by height, or by name?

[Ouch!]

And let’s just segue into the next topic, same press gaggle:

Q Is the President going to ask the RNC to back off of Harry Reid at all?

MR. McCLELLAN: I'm sorry?

Q Is the President going to ask the RNC to back off --

MR. McCLELLAN: I think the President has made it very clear that he intends to work closely with members of Congress, Democrats and Republicans alike, on our common priorities. And the President wants to work closely -- that includes working closely with Senator Reid. The President has reached out to him and will continue to do so on ways we can work together to advance common priorities.

[snip]

Q Is he finding it constructive, though, what the RNC is doing? Is that helping him at all in his effort to reach --

MR. McCLELLAN: Again, the President's focus is on reaching out to all members who want to work together to advance our shared priorities. And that's what he will --

Q Does the letter --

MR. McCLELLAN: -- and Senator -- well, you can talk to the Republican National Committee about what they did. I'm not familiar with all the aspects of what they're doing.

Q It's not like they do what they do in a vacuum --

MR. McCLELLAN: I can tell you -- I speak for the President -- I can tell you that the President has made it very clear time and time again that he is interested in working together to accomplish the people's business here in Washington, D.C. . .

Q Does he or does he not support the letter from the RNC about Senator Reid?

MR. McCLELLAN: I think I addressed -- I think I've addressed the issue.

Q You just dodged the question.

[Ouch again!]

Reid responds

http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/20050208/ap_on_go_co/reid_gop_criticism
Bush repeatedly has said he wants work with Democrats, most recently during his State of the Union speech last week, Reid noted in a speech on the Senate floor. . . "Why didn't he stand and tell the American people last Wednesday that one of the first items of business we were going to do in Washington is send out a hit piece on the Democratic leader?" Reid said.

How Senate Repubs will kill the filibuster rule on judicial nominees: by hiding it behind the race card

http://www.prospect.org/weblog/archives/2005/02/index.html#005442

“Bush’s Brain” gets bigger

http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2005_02_06_digbysblog_archive.html#110789109045318124
President Bush's senior adviser, Karl Rove, will take on a wider role in developing and coordinating policy in the president's second term, the White House announced on Tuesday.

Rove, who was Bush's top political strategist during his 2000 and 2004 presidential campaigns, will become a deputy White House chief of staff in charge of coordinating policy between the White House Domestic Policy Council, National Economic Council, National Security Council and Homeland Security Council.

[Digby] Funny, I thought that's what the president did.

More: http://msnbc.msn.com/id/6934839/

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-rove9feb09,1,5669801.story?coll=la-headlines-nation

Not hyperbole - the vast Right Wing conspiracy. Why it’s real, how it was built, and what progressives can do about it (thanks to Kos for the link)

http://www.alternet.org/mediaculture/21192/

GOP operative convicted of electoral dirty tricks in New Hampshire

http://talkleft.com/new_archives/009645.html

The GOP’s favorite news anchors, stations: We (heart) CNN!! (thanks to Josh Marshall for the link)

http://www.usnews.com/usnews/issue/050214/whispers/14whisplead_2.htm
While Fox News Channel remains the favorite network of Republican lawmakers, NBC's new anchor, Brian Williams, is the one turning GOP heads. Message guru and former MSNBC contributor Frank Luntz says in a confidential memo to Hill leaders that Williams has emerged as the "go-to network anchor" because of his brains and "lack of detectable ideological bias." Luntz credits NBC Executive Producer Steve Capus for "a flawless transition to a new generation of news anchor." Still, Fox and CNN lead the nets when it comes to GOP loyalty.

[NB: But even the current degree to which they have CNN cowed isn’t enough: http://talkleft.com/new_archives/009648.html]

The So-Called-Liberal-Media

http://www.prospect.org/weblog/archives/2005/02/index.html#005446

Bonus item: J.D. Guckert, we hardly knew ya

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2005/2/8/174746/7900
"Jeff Gannon", the White House press propagandist "correspondent" for the fake "Talon" news service, turns out to be using a nom de plume. . . A group of dKos diarists have been peeling away the layers of Gannon's fake persona, summarized by World O'Crap. In one of those diaries, this revelation is made by Radically Bitter: Among the domains owned by Gannon/Guckert are these:

jeffgannon.com
Hotmilitarystud.com
Militaryescorts.com
Militaryescortsm4m.com

[Kos] In case this isn't clear enough, those last three are gay sex-themed names. Suddenly, his picture looks appropriately in character.

http://members.aol.com/jdg17/

[NB: No, I don’t think this is an anti-gay thing – it’s an anti-duplicity thing]

And, now, this morning

http://www.first-draft.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=2129&mode=thread&order=0&thold=0
“Because of the attention being paid to me I find it is no longer possible to effectively be a reporter for Talon News.”

***If you enjoy PBD and support what we are doing, you can help by forwarding a copy of this issue to your friends (using the envelope link below) or by sending them a copy of its URL (http://pbd.blogspot.com).

You can also help by voting for PBD as the blog “Most Deserving of Wider Recognition” at http://wampum.wabanaki.net/archives/001620.html

I don't get anything personally out of this project, except the satisfaction of doing it (I don't run ads, etc). The credit really all goes to the people whose material I copy and redistribute. But if I do have a "mission," it is to get this information into the hands of as many people as I can.***
- posted by Nick Burbules @ 7:25 AM

 
THE ILLUSION OF COMPETENCE

Of the many myths that have grown up around the Bush gang (that is, foisted by them upon a pliant media) one of the most inexplicable is their reputation for competence. Read this story about the stunning failures of the Department of Homeland Security, and see if you don’t agree. But the deeper story is the willingness of other Bush Cabinet officials to undermine the effectiveness of DHS for the sake of their own bureaucratic prerogatives, and the unwillingness of Bush to crack some heads together and make things happen. As a result, we are much less secure than most people imagine

http://newyorker.com/talk/content/?050207ta_talk_finnegan
The newborn agency was gawky and formless, but one of its core missions, at least, was clear. D.H.S. would, the President said, “review intelligence and law-enforcement information from all agencies of government and produce a single daily picture of threats against our homeland.” This mandate, it was hoped, would help prevent the kind of intelligence failures that allowed the September 11th attacks to succeed: two of the hijackers, for example, had been on a C.I.A. watch list that wasn’t shared in time with other agencies. Indeed, the government kept a dozen separate lists of suspected terrorists. Such information clearly needed to be collated in a single command center.

That hasn’t happened. The Administration, responsive to the claims of the big intelligence-collecting agencies—the Pentagon, the C.I.A., and the F.B.I.—quietly scaled back the intelligence function of D.H.S. to the point that fifteen qualified people who were asked to become its intelligence chief turned down the job. The department was unable even to attract a full team of analysts. . . Tom Ridge, the department’s secretary, proved no match for his Cabinet rivals, Donald Rumsfeld and John Ashcroft. The Defense Department simply pursued its own homeland-security programs, while the Justice Department absconded with D.H.S.’s authority to investigate terrorist financing. Last spring, when Ashcroft announced a major new terror threat, he seemed to catch Ridge by surprise.

The department h