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Showing posts from April, 2007

for Bush, accountability is a one-way street

It seems to me that, even in 2007, the Bush Administration gets a free pass in regards to ANY benchmarks, timelines and yardsticks in Iraq. Democrats are held, by the corporate media, GOP spin, and even fellow Democrats to a very narrow standard of consistency. ie. What Barack Obama says in 2003 is a big deal. Clinton and Edwards's votes for the Iraq authorization are still subject to media scrutiny. (The AP and the mainstream press are now giving Hillary crap about her name !!) In the midst of this Harry Reid is vilified on CNN and by David Broder for stating a patently obvious and widely-held truth: Bush's war is, indeed, lost and has been for the last four years. If Bush's occupation of Iraq is not an outright failure, what is? Did the firing of Donald Rumsfeld mean anything? I guess not. Man, did they ever bury that one! The GOP loses an election and Bush fires the guy he "stood behind" for five long years regarding the build-up and dismal execution of

James Carville: US Attorney for Washington DC?

Nightprowlktty has an excellent diary on dailykos explicating the Moyers/Marshall interview . Npk highlights this passage from the transcript that gets to the heart of the US Attorney scandal, and the essence of the politicization of the Federal Government under Bush: BILL MOYERS: Marshall's case in point: Timothy Griffin. Attorney General Gonzales picked him last year to replace the fired prosecutor in Little Rock, Arkansas. Griffin's reputation was as a highly partisan operative ... first doing opposition research for The Republican National Committee and then As Karl Rove's deputy in the White House. According to an internal Justice Department e-mail ... "Getting [Griffin] appointed [as U.S. Attorney] ... Was important to ... Karl." JOSH MARSHALL: This, I think, is an example of, a lot of people say, 'Well, they're political appointees.' There's a difference, though, between being a political appointee and putting a political operative

the Iraq Supplemental and the fallacy of "implied constraint"

Big Tent Democrat at Talk Left did a breakdown of the legal and constitutional issues raised by my summary of the Pelosi "Bloggers Conference Call on the Iraq Supplemental". It is very much worth a read. I have three thoughts: First , we are very much in the midst of an ongoing constitutional conflict. I think it's critical to understand the source of this conflict. George Bush, after elections in which the voters rejected his policy in Iraq, proceded with his "surge" in direct defiance of that election and every subsequent opinion poll. Bush took the exact opposite direction the voters indicated. In my view, for as long as this situation holds... the President versus the people ...that is the fundamental conflict in American political life. Now, the fact that that conflict expresses itself in terms of "Congress versus the President" makes Big Tent Democrat's analysis even more important. The constitutional battle between Congress and the Presi

More on the Sanger NYT piece

Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates found himself pressing Mr. Maliki last week to keep Parliament from taking a two-month summer break. If lawmakers remain in Baghdad, said one senior American official who did not want to be identified because he was discussing internal White House deliberations, “we’ll have some outputs then.” He added, “That’s different from having outcomes ,” drawing a distinction between a sign of activity and a sign of success , which could take considerably longer. There's some more excellent coverage of the above-quoted David Sanger's piece in this morning's New York Times. (I 've already mentioned David Kurtz's must-read piece at the bottom of my analysis below.) Here are two more excellent analyses: Lithium Cola, a diarist at dailykos.com, has an excellent breakdown of the GOP talking points leading up to this "goal post moving" leak from the Administration. Needless to say, Republicans have consistently trumpeted the news fr

CW and the Iraq Supplemental

After watching Bill Moyers must-see Buying the War it is fascinating to read an article like this one by the NYT's veteran political reporter David Sanger: " The White House Scales Back Talk of Iraq Progress ." Sanger's article creates a powerful CW, or conventional wisdom, about the war in Iraq and the debate over that war in Washington. With this piece, you can literally watch the conventional wisdom being manufactured before your very eyes: In interviews over the past week, [...] officials made clear that the White House is gradually scaling back its expectations for the government of President Nuri al-Maliki they are now discussing suggest that the White House may maintain the increased numbers of American troops in Iraq well into next year . That prospect would entail a dramatically longer commitment of frontline troops, patrolling the most dangerous neighborhoods of Baghdad, than the one envisioned in legislation that passed the House and Senate this week.

Kelly Link

There's an interesting NYT piece by Michael Luo today about the Iraq supplemental called " Bush Eases Tone on Iraq Spending Bill ." Read it for the political rundown regarding Bush's impending veto. Part of the piece, however, features the words of Kelly Link whose brother is serving in Baghdad. She's addressing the Senators who voted to pass the Iraq Supplemental: “I would just like to take this opportunity to thank the senators for their support of the troops with the passage of this bill,” she said. “I am proud this bill will both provide the funding they need and set a plan to bring them home.” Well put.

Rush Limbaugh, Dick Cheney and George Bush

Take a gander at this post at the Horses Mouth about the racially offensive parodies that Rush Limbaugh promotes at this "members only" web site. Did your realize that President Bush appeared on Rush Limbaugh in an interview as recently as November of 2006 , and Dick Cheney as recently as April of this year ?

bring them home

It's April 27 th , 2007 and there is legislation sitting on the desk of the President, approved by both Houses of Congress, that would end the war in Iraq. As Barack Obama said yesterday: one signature will end this war . A headline on the front page of dkos , however, reads: "Senate Democratic Caucus responds to Broder ." A top recommended diary by our 2004 Presidential Candidate, Senator John Kerry reads: "Stand with Harry Reid" and calls for us to write to newspapers in Senator Reid's defense. I'm perplexed and flummoxed by this state of affairs. Let me explain. :: Our nation is in the midst of a monumental debate over the course of the war in Iraq. That debate is being shaped as we speak all over this land. As a part of this, the meaning of the 2006 election is up for grabs. The Republicans understand this fact. In an attempt to define this battle, the President, the GOP Congress and their media enablers are doing three things: 1. They are attackin

what a shame

Admissions Dean Marilee Jones of MIT resigned from the University because she had lied almost thirty years ago in her application for a low-level office job at the University. The New York Times reports that Dean Jones was a much valued and respected member of the MIT campus and that her philosophy of "Less Stress, More Success"... expressed in a book she co-authored with Kenneth Ginsberg...had made a broad impact among college applicants and their families around the nation. MIT Chancellor Phillip Clay had other thoughts upon learning, through an anonymous source, that Dean Jones had falsified her educational history in 1977 and never subsequently corrected it as she moved up the ranks to become a Dean at MIT: “There are some mistakes people can make for which ‘I’m sorry’ can be accepted, but this is one of those matters where the lack of integrity is sufficient all by itself,” Professor Clay said. “This is a very sad situation for her and for the institution. We have obvi

Barack Obama

Senator Barack Obama : " We are one signature away from ending the Iraq war ." h/t TPM

a pretty basic point

I may not have the popularity or the media presence of Ms. Malkin , but I have written any number of blog posts these last years exhorting fellow Democrats and like-minded progressives and independents to take action and get involved. Of course, the action I talk about involves debating and discussing the issues of the day with our fellow citizens, petitioning our leaders and news corporations, and using our rights to free speech and assembly to express our views. That approach seemed to work pretty well in California's 11th Congressional District and nationwide in 2006. There's a reason Ms. Malkin isn't telling her supporters to go out there and debate the issues with Americans who disagree with her conservative views. It's the same reason Karl Rove has spent the last six years gaming our government for partisan gain in Washington. A coalition of progressives, Democrats and independents are carrying the national debate, banding together, and winning elections by winnin

Josh Marshall: George Bush is Bin Laden's "biggest ally"

Josh Marshall minces no words : President Bush had bin Laden trapped in the mountains of Tora Bora. But he let bin Laden get away because Bush wanted to focus on Saddam Hussein instead. The president and the White House tried to lie about this during the 2004 election. But since then the evidence has become overwhelming . President Bush decided to let bin Laden get away so he could get ready to attack Saddam Hussein. So pretty much anything bin Laden does from here on out is on President Bush. And how about Iraq? President Bush has screwed things up so badly that he's created a whole new generation of recruits for bin Laden. He's created a whole new army for bin Laden. Not by being tough but by being stupid. And by being too much of a coward to admit his mistakes once it was obvious that the occupation of Iraq was helping bin Laden specifically and the jihadist agenda in general. After half a decade, the verdict is pretty clear: President Bush has been the biggest ally Osama

NYT: Bush guts OSHA

Must-read NYT from Stephen Labaton: Since George W. Bush became president, OSHA has issued the fewest significant standards in its history, public health experts say. It has imposed only one major safety rule. The only significant health standard it issued was ordered by a federal court. The agency has killed dozens of existing and proposed regulations and delayed adopting others. For example, OSHA has repeatedly identified silica dust, which can cause lung cancer, and construction site noise as health hazards that warrant new safeguards for nearly three million workers, but it has yet to require them. The article highlights the story of one worker in a plant that produces "buttery flavored microwave popcorn" who will need a double lung transplant due to the chemicals he was exposed to, chemicals that everyone involved knew were bad. The report is infuriating and a must-read, especially for what has become a familiar refrain from the Bush Administration: a Republican addicti

Bush: "Americans voted for the surge in 2006"

From TPM we learn this from our President: Last November the American people said they were frustrated and wanted change in our strategy in Iraq. I listened. Today General David Petraeus is carrying out a strategy that is dramatically different from our previous course. But the American people did not vote for failure, and that is precisely what the Democratic leadership’s bill would guarantee. Hmm. Let's get this straight. The American voters replaced the Republican majorities in both Houses of Congress in order for Bush to send MORE troops to Iraq and ESCALATE our occupation. In other news, up is down, right is left, and Alberto Gonzales is doing a "heckuva job." If President Bush were a capable leader, he would be able to persuade the public to sway to his side of a unpopular position. Instead, the President plays word games: Americans "did not vote for failure" hence, according to Bush and counter to all logic and polling, we Americans voted for the curren

Rep. Dana Rohrabacher, Republican CA-46

Here's a link to a must-read diary by Mardish where GOP Representative Dana Rohrabacher (CA-46) tells a panel of representatives from the European Parliament: "Well, I hope it's your families, I hope it's your families that suffer the consequences [of a terrorist attack]." Once again we have a Republican using terrorism, in this case a bus bombing, as a rhetorical device to wish ill will upon his political opponents , on people with whom he simply disagrees. (See my note on remarks by Representative Jack Kingston of Georgia for another example.) This is simply inexcusable.There is no justification for this kind of speech in the course of official House business. Representative Rohrabacher should be brought before the House Ethics Committee for this remark. That being said, there are two things to note here. First, there is so much wrong with Congressman Rohrabacher's entire statement. Representative Rohrabacher made this comment in the context of a long har

Petraeus and GOP hypocrisy

From a must-read Ann Scott Tyson interview with General Petraeus in the Washington Post: It is virtually impossible to eliminate the suicide bombings, the commanders acknowledged. "I don't think you're ever going to get rid of all the car bombs," Petraeus said. "Iraq is going to have to learn -- as did, say, Northern Ireland -- to live with some degree of sensational attacks." A more realistic goal, he said, but one that has eluded U.S. and Iraqi forces , is to prevent the bombers from causing "horrific damage." Presidential Candidate John Kerry was eviscerated for expressing a much more sane version of the same sentiment during the 2004 campaign. From a 2004 New York Times article entitled " Bush Faults Kerry on Iraq Remarks :" The senator said that for Americans to feel safe again, "We have to get back to the place we were, where terrorists are not the focus of our lives, but they're a nuisance." Mr. Kerry went on to draw

Webb, Tester, McCaskill: fighting the disconnect

Josh Marshall and Greg Sargent point to this atrocious example of media bias and ineptitude from CNN's Kyra Phillips and it raises a profound question for everyone involved in Democratic strategy in 2007: How can Democrats overcome the disconnect between the mainstream media's indulgence in GOP slurs of Democratic leaders and the results of the 2006 elections? Whether it is the slanted coverage of Nancy Pelosi's bi-partisan trip to Syria, Harry Reid's recent assessment of the war in Iraq, John Edwards' hair (for god's sakes) or Barack Obama's middle name: political coverage in 2007 is replete with examples of blatant media bias against leading Democrats. This bias runs directly counter to the results of the 2006 elections and represents a disconnect in which, despite those elections, mainstream media outlets regularly spout talking points seemingly spoon-fed to them by Karl Rove and Mat Cable news "reporters" like Kyra Phillips are annoying and, t

don't back down

Today I worked crew on a photo shoot at a facility outside Sacramento that employs a wide array of folks with developmental disabilities . What an amazing experience. We set up a white seamless and some lights and sooner than we realized there was a boisterous line of workers of all ages and ethnicities stretching far back on the shop floor ready to have their portraits taken. We played music. Our subjects danced and sang. Some of them introduced themselves. Some of them didn't. Some were shy. Many weren't. Every last one of them had a distinct personality. A shining individuality. A deeply personal voice and inquisitiveness. His or her own set of likes and dislikes...his or her own radiant identity... just like you and me. :: I thought today about a phrase I've used here once before...a line that folks told me has its roots in Unitarian Universalism : the inherent dignity and worth of every person I thought, too, of the work of Keith Haring . His radiant child...and what

excuses Gonzales

Every organization has committees and deputies and assignments and meetings and reports. It's a logical fallacy and a sleight of hand for an executive trying to defend their performance to point to those aggregated committees, deputies, assignments, meetings and reports and attempt to make them stand in for that executive's success or failure with regards to outcomes and results in a given matter at hand. Any fool can have a meeting. We assume all organizations do. Executives are charged with the ultimate responsibility for outcomes and accept that standard as a basis for judging their performance. Everyone who has ever worked in an organization knows that the "slackest" most "incompetent" and even "lying" and "corrupt" managers will be able to point to deputies who were "working on" things and committees that "considered things." Everyone who has ever sat in an organizational meeting knows the difference between a m

Imus and free speech

Our tolerance of Don Imus's "free speech" rights does not mean that we should allow him to use corporate speech to defame, debase and degrade the Rutgers basketball team on public airwaves without expressing our own free speech rights in return. In fact, the widespread political protest of Don Imus defamatory language and its sponsership and endorsement by several major media corporations is EXACTLY the kind of political free speech protected in the Bill of Rights. ie. Criticism of powerful public figures and elected officials is THE CORE of free speech. Would Imus's free speech supporters silence those who are protesting Imus? Apprently so, since they ask those of us who disagree with Don Imus to silence ourselves in the name of tolerance and free speech. Tolerance of the rights of bigots to speak does not imply that we should not make direct political protest of that speech and its consequences. In fact, exactly the opposite. Even if it causes discomfort and awkw

Imus the minstrel

The net is awash in folks making a dubious connection between Don Imus and rap music. I doubt, however, that Imus took his frame of reference for his slur of the Rutgers Women's Basketball team from the Nappy Rootz or from this lyric by the lesser known Nappy Headz . The easy equation of Imus's slurs with rap music is, in itself, a biased and ignorant point of view. If you want Imus's frame of reference read this history of white caricatures of African Americans and then peruse this excellent wiki history of the minstrel show . In short, Imus's reference is Buckwheat, not hip hop . Later in the same program where Imus called the young women of Rutgers University "nappy headed ho's", Imus's sidekick used the term "jigaboo": you can read definitions of that term, written largely from a racist viewpoint here . Folks who think that what Imus is up to has anything to do with, or is excused by "hip hop" or "rap" are basically

George Bush's artificial timetables in Iraq

On September 8th, 2003, in the face of a burgeoning Iraqi insurgency and news reports making clear that neither David Kay, nor any further official investigation would ever turn up the weapons of mass destruction upon which the White House had staked its entire case for preemptive war against Iraq, President George W. Bush addressed the nation on live television. With his September 8th speech, the President asked the nation for more money, more time, and for our forbearance as he unilaterally changed the rationale for the United States' occupation of Iraq. According to the President, our new mission...the establishment of "freedom and democracy" in Iraq...was to replace the previous task of eliminating the "grave and growing danger" of weapons of mass destruction which, six months into our occupation of Iraq, had simply proven nowhere to be found. September 8th, 2003 was 3 years 7 months and 3 days ago . :: Writ another way, it has been 1,311 days since Georg