Revealing: Dan Barlett is shrill:
Think Progress » The do-over presidency.: Fox News’ John Gibson to Dan Bartlett today: “A lot has happened obviously in the Bush presidency, and there are undoubtedly things that, in private thoughts, people say, I wish I’d done that differently. What would you take as a do-over?” Bartlett: “Well, there’s too many to count now.”
Too bad it’s for the wrong reason. He’s not upset that Lewis Libby and whoever else might have been involved did the crimes, he’s upset that Libby will now have to do the time. Bruce Barlett reports:
Bush & Loyalty, by Bruce Bartlett: …Today, Bush's willingness to let Lewis Libby go to jail by failing to give him a pardon has become the tipping point for at least one very prominent Bush supporter who said this:
So much for loyalty, or decency, or courage. For President Bush, loyalty is apparently a one-way street; decency is something he's for as long as he doesn't have to take any risks in its behalf; and courage--well, that's nowhere to be seen. Many of us used to respect President Bush. Can one respect him still?
The author of that remarkably bitter statement is Bill Kristol, editor of the Weekly Standard. It can be found here.
When Bush loses people like Bill Kristol, who has slavishly defended him day after day after day, one wonders whether there will by anybody left not on a government payroll who will be willing to defend him in the future. For Bush, this is bad, very bad.
Yes! We now have a new Shrill One! And he ullulates to the dead uncaring stars: "THERE'S MORE TO CONSERVATIVE GOVERNANCE THAN THE FAILURES OF GEORGE W. BUSH!!"
In a midnight ceremony last night here at the Miskatonic University World Headquarters of the Ancient and Hermetic Order of the Shrill--those who have been driven into loud unearthly unsanity by the mendacity, malevolence, disconnection from reality, and sheer incompetence of George W. Bush, his administration, and his tame flacks, journamalists, gibbons, sloths, and other creatures--there was installed a new Grand Heresiarch of the Order: Ross Douthat!
It has been a long time coming for Ross, who spent year upon year on the journey. But welcome! Lead us well!
Ross Douthat: The Lessons of Bushism: [T]he failures of this Administration are therefore something that reformist conservatives of every stripe - whether they're crunchy, Brooksian, Salam-Douthatian (there's a mouthful) or what-have-you - are going to have to live with going forward. They're arrows in the quiver of the Reagan-plus-nothing crowd: Any time someone says that "conservatism needs to adapt to cope with the challenges of X, Y or Z" from here on out, someone else will be able to sneer and say "that's the attitude that gave us the prescription drugs benefit and the Bridge to Nowhere!"
And yet in a broader sense... [that] argument... attributes a deep ideological consistency to an Administration that's rather obviously been making things up as it's gone along. Yes... small-government conservatives knew - or should have known - that Bush was no Phil Gramm. But the content of that accomodation has been driven more by expedience than by any kind of intellectually-consistent revision of conservatism. In 2000, you'll recall, Bush campaigned on the theme of "compassionate conservatism" and made tax cuts and education reform his signature issues. "Compassionate conservatism" gave us very little... the people associated with it, from John DiIulio to David Kuo, soured on the Bush Administration long before a lot of small-government conservatives did.... Education reform gave us No Child Left Behind, the only major Bush-era policy innovation that actually attempted to use federal power to advance conservative ends, which was what the boosters of "big-government conservatism," notably Fred Barnes, claimed the Bush era was all about.... [N]either Rod Dreher nor David Brooks were begging for steel tariffs, or the prescription-drugs benefit, or the energy bill or the transportation bill. These were attempts to buy off swing voters... and reward the party's interest groups....
Indeed, insofar as Bush emphasized an ideological theme... it was the "ownership society," not "compassionate conservatism"... that led to the signature domestic-policy push of Bush's second term, the politically-disastrous quest to reform Social Security, as well as various attempts to woo the mythical "investor class" with dividend tax cuts and HSAs. Then of course came immigration "reform," which is... ideologically-unclassifiable... unites free-market absolutists... [and] evangelicals... while taking fire both from cultural conservatives like Rod and a collection of empiricists....
There's more to conservative governance than the failures of George W. Bush, and I fail to see how (to take a personal example) "Sam's Club Republicanism" is descredited by the transportation bill, steel tariffs, or Medicare Part D, when the only thing they have in common is that they aren't libertarianism...
Ah. We remember the early days, when the Order of the Shrill was so small that its Grand Conventions consisted of Paul Krugman talking to himself while warming a can of baked beans over a can of sterno while he huddled from the rain beneath a New Jersey turnpike overpass...
It asks: What have the Kagans been wrong about now?
Rising Hegemon: What have the Kagans been Wrong about Now?: let us focus on the more dapper [Robert] of the Kagan's again, besweatered brother who puts the uh... WAR in the 'Carnegie Endowment for International Peace' where he
worksdraws a paycheck.As mentioned on Saturday, Bobby had a column in the Washington Post in which he said: "By far the biggest problem, and the source of most of the violence reported every day, has been al-Qaeda in Iraq." I pointed out that was a blatant lie then, but I think it is important to demonstrate just how hard some of these people are working to just knowingly act as war lovers that will just knowingly toss out bullshit to keep the calamity going.... This isn't Al Qaeda, it's sectarian. Shiia militias are not Al Qaeda Bob and when they act against Sunni, not every reprisal comes from the hand of Osama bin Laden. As long as these simplistic and simplifying maroons are in charge of things (and Robert is an original PNAC member) we are going from one disastrous adventure to another.
It's Mike Allen this time:
Glenn Greenwald - Salon: Mike Allen, consummate Beltway "journalist": The Politico's "Chief Political Correspondent" Mike Allen (until recently Time's White House Correspondent") has a characteristically hard-hitting, insightful new article on Rove protegee Dan Bartlett and his departure from the White House. The 1,150-word article relies upon an impressive constellation of four different sources -- Bartlett, Bartlett's lawyer, Bartlett friend and former Bush aide Michael Gerson, and George W. Bush. The headline -- "Bush's 'truth-teller' leaving president's side" -- may actually be the least obsequious aspect of the article.
Even someone hired to serve as Bartlett's publicist would be embarrassed to churn out something this adoring and one-sided. But not Mike Allen, who very well may be the single most obedient, right-wing-power-worshipping reporter in Washington, a distinction for which there is a crowded and heated competition.
This is what we learn from Allen's article this morning: Bartlett was "an uncomfortable truth-teller in the system" who was "willing to tell the president hard truths" (Gerson). Bartlett was one who "could take the heat that sometimes resulted from the boss's decisions," and he "made an 'immeasurable' contribution and [the President] and first lady Laura Bush will miss him" (Bush). He was "a voice for calm, balance, reasoned discourse" and he is seen "not just having good press judgment, but good judgment, period" (Gerson).
"The trigger [for Bartlett's leaving] was 'a third child, and a realization that [his] commitment to [his] family, after 13 years of commitment to the Bush family, now has to come first" (Bartlett). But Bartlett's departure has not created any tensions, because "Bush, 'more than anyone,' understands the constraints White House service puts on a family," and "there's an incredibly experienced and gifted staff around this president, and a clear path forward for this administration and this president to accomplish more things on behalf of the American people" (Bartlett).
The reason Bartlett and the president were so close is that "they share a Texas view of life," which includes their mutual "casual manner and a manly humor" (Gerson). But now, Bartlett's wife, who "has enjoyed their White House years . . . is ready for a little more Dan at home" (Allen).
Allen tell us that "many people over the years have speculated that Bartlett will run for governor of Texas" and that he has had to hire a lawyer to "sift through job offers." The world is his oyster, because "he has the respect of the media, the Congress, the political world and the business community. That's a rare confluence for people coming out of White Houses" (Bartlett's lawyer).
Imagine calling yourself a journalist and producing tripe like this on a regular basis. It's more of a tongue-wagging hagiography than a standard Pravda item announcing the retirement of a long-term Politburo official. But that is what Allen does. He has numerous close associates in the Bush circle, and his "reporting" consists almost exclusively of running to them, writing down what they say, and then printing it uncritically.
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Here is but one example of how this works. Last month, actual journalist Murray Waas obtained a secret internal DOJ document in which extraordinary hiring and firing authority was delegated by Alberto Gonzales to two young and inexperienced Gonzales aides -- Kyle Sampson and Monica Goodling.
As TPM Muckraker's Paul Kiel noted at the time, that story provided "further convincing that Kyle Sampson and Monica Goodling -- the two young Justice Department aides who have resigned due to their roles in the U.S. attorney firings -- were major players at the Department." Pat Leahy -- who, as Senate Judiciary Committee Chair, was unaware of the memo -- described the revelation as both "troubling" and "disturbing."
But the following morning, Allen wrote about the story, first belittling it by calling it "a late-afternoon/early evening frenzy [] stirred up" by Waas, and said that Senate Democrats see it as "a new chance to poke the attorney general." Allen's sole contribution to the story, as usual: relaying "what the administration told [the Politico] about the development."
Allen then copied a long anonymous quote from the White House which asserted that there was nothing secret about the order because "it was published in the Federal Register," and blamed the story on "Chairman Leahy's creative imagination and thirst for perceived scandal." Allen proceeded to pass on a variety of other statements from the White House -- all anonymous -- claiming that there was nothing unusual at all about this delegation of hiring powers.
Were the White House's claims about this revelation true or false? One would have no idea reading Allen's piece. Investigation and reporting on whether the White House's statements are true is not his role. That's what a journalist does. Allen's role is to shape stories in accordance with the version of his White House sources and dutifully to pass along those claims with no effort whatsoever to determine if they are true.
In fact, the White House's principal response to Waas' story, copied so efficiently by Allen, appears to be factually false, as the order unearthed by Waas does not seem to have been published in the Federal Register at all. Indeed, the memo itself prominently bears the designation: "Internal Order -- Not Published in F.R." And the only seemingly relevant Federal Register entry does not remotely constitute publication of that delegation order. Did Allen even look at the memo or the Federal Register to see if the White House claims which he mindlessly repeated were true? It's hard to believe he did.
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Both of these stories vividly illustrate the role Allen eagerly performs in our Beltway system. He is a mindless disseminator of government statements, at least insofar as the government is in the hands of right-wing operatives. And it undoubtedly was Allen's love affair with right-wing Beltway sources which generated one of the most politically tone-deaf and misguided articles of all of 2006: his October piece in Time -- entitled "Campaign 2006: The Republicans' Secret Weapon" -- all but predicting a GOP victory engineered by "uberstrategist Karl Rove":
The polls keep suggesting that Republicans could be in for a historic drubbing. . . . But top Republican officials maintain an eerie, Zen-like calm. They insist that the prospects for their congressional candidates in November's midterms have never been as bad as advertised and are getting better by the day. Those are party operatives and political savants whose job it is to anticipate trouble. But much of the time they seem so placid, you wonder whether they know something.
They do. What they know is that just six days after George W. Bush won re-election in 2004, his political machine launched a sophisticated, expensive and largely unnoticed campaign aimed at maintaining G.O.P. majorities in the House and Senate. . . . The Republicans are, after all, in the enviable position of being able to lose a lot. As long as they end up keeping control of both houses, they still come out the winner on Election Day. That was preceded by an equally prescient Allen article back in August -- entitled "Why the Republicans are Loving the Lieberman Loss" -- which argued, following along with the standard GOP talking points, that the primary loss of Joe Lieberman would spell doom for Democrats: "the Democrats' rejection of a sensible, moralistic centrist has handed the GOP a weapon that could have vast ramifications for both the midterm elections of '06 and the big dance of '08."
To Allen, every story, every scandal, helps Bush and the Republicans, because that is what his Rovian friends tell him. In January 2006 -- a mere month after the NSA scandal first began -- Allen wrote a Time article (headlined "Losing his Script and Finding his Voice") claiming that the revelations of Bush's lawbreaking would be politically beneficial for Bush, as it will "turn out to offer a foothold" for Bush to recover from his declining approval ratings.
Just as Mark Halperin conclusively unmasked himself with his now-iconic appearance on the Hugh Hewitt Show, where he literally begged Hewitt to recognize that Halperin agrees with almost everything Hewitt said, Allen had a similarly revealing appearance with the Politico's principal benefactor, Matt Drudge, back in March.
When Drudge began mocking the subpoenas served on administration officials by the Congress, Allen remarked: "Democrats are like a dog that bites someone, right? They taste blood and they won't stop." Then, literally out of the blue, after Drudge asked him about a completely unrelated topic, Allen had a voluntary outburst of intense homage paid to both Drudge and Fox News, so worshipful that it was actually cringe-inducing to hear: Matt, congratulations on -- as you are day after day, year after year -- being ahead of the curve, on the Al Gore story. . . .
Fox -- aside from being a great journalistic story -- and I think that their insight about looking at stories differently than other people do -- basically looking though the other end of the telescope -- is complete genius.Drudge had been mocking Al Gore that week as Gore prepared to testify before Congress on global warming. Allen assured Drudge that the real purpose of this testimony was to launch Gore's presidential bid, and lauded Drudge for his derision of Gore's global warming activism, telling Drudge that there "might be a Gore eclipse" that week. Allen then proceeded to spew the standard anti-Gore cliches which virtually all Beltway reporters spout as a matter of course (exactly as Allen did days earlier when he joined with Glenn Beck in standard anti-Gore mockery):
People may like the idea of Al Gore better than Al Gore. Is it possible that it's not a coincidence that he's so popular now that people have not really been seeing or listening to him -- and is it possible that he will come across as grim and dogmatic and preachy?
Al Gore has been all over the media this year, and his book just debuted as #1 on the New York Times Bestseller list.
At the end of the clip, Drudge wanted to tell Allen about an item on the Drudge Report and said: "I don't know if you have been to the Drudge Report tonight," and Allen interrupted immediately to say: "Are you kidding? Are you kidding?" and tried to assure Drudge of how frequently he visits. But, by that point, even Drudge was annoyed at Allen's oozingly eager attempts to please, and sternly cut him off.
These are the people we are supposed to think are our objective political journalists. Worse still, even as the most influential establishment journalists like Halperin (of ABC News and Time) and Allen run around lavishing the most embarrassing praise on the likes of Hugh Hewitt and Matt Drudge, and churn out articles which can only be described as White House press releases, the myth of the "liberal media" persists in most circles. Halperin and Allen themselves embrace that myth (hence Allen's statement to Drudge that Fox, as compared to the rest of the media, looks "through the other end of the telescope," and Halperin, of course, repeatedly assured Hewitt that he recognizes, and is deeply sorry for, the towering bias of the liberal media).
One can ask seriously how Allen's articles cited here would be any different, at all, if they were written (overtly) by Karl Rove. With political journalists like Allen and newspapers like The Politico, who needs Tony Snow? UPDATE: One point worth adding: Dan Bartlett's entire career has been shaped by his close association with one of the most controversial political operatives in the country's history. He has spent the last six years loyally serving one of the most unpopular presidents in the country's history, a president whom most Americans believe deliberately deceived the country into war. And Bartlett himself has been at the center of all sorts of controversies and been accused of all kinds of dishonest conduct -- from his shifting defenses of the Iraq war to his role in the story of the President's National Guard service.
The notion that he is some kind of universally respected figure who merits obituary-like, criticism-free homage upon leaving is just absurd. But Allen and his circle of Beltway journalists do love and admire Bartlett, just as Halperin and David Broder previously acknoweldged their great respect for his boss, Karl Rove. And Bartlett, along with Rove, are almost certainly key sources for Allen's GOP-bolstering "reporting." Thus, to Allen, Bartlett -- like most White House officials -- is a man of sterling honor and integrity and thus Allen's reporting reflects only that view.
Matthew Yglesias tells us that over at the New Republic website, the estimable James Judis has been driven into shrillness by the unqualified James Kirchick:
Matthew Yglesias: It's good New Republic versus bad New Republic and I'm afraid that while it's not much of a competition it's certainly fun to watch.
Here is James Judis:
The Plank: A TWO-STATE SOLUTION: Readers of The Plank might be interested to compare the Nation editorial that James Kirchick excoriates with the positions on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict that The New Republic has taken over the years. The two magazines have often disagreed on particulars, but like The Nation, The New Republic has long been on record supporting a two-state solution to the conflict. While harshly criticizing PLO leader Yasir Arafat and the current leadership of Hamas, the magazine has also recognized that the mainstream of Palestinian as well as Israeli opinion backs a two-state solution. That includes the leadership of Fatah. Even Uzi Arad, former foreign policy advisor to Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyhu, wrote in these pages in 2005 that "by now, even most Palestinians--who, in previous decades, rejected a two-state solution--have recently come to accept the formula."
Kirchick also cites Christopher Hitchens's opinion about The Nation. I would suggest that readers treat with care and circumspection Hitchens's claims about what people have privately told him while looking instead at the actual public statements that Hitchens and the editors of The Nation made about the invasion and occupation of Iraq. What one find is Htichens applauding and The Nation criticizing a foreign policy that has turned into an unmitigated disaster.
A final word: Writers at The New Republic have consistently criticized left-wing blogs for taking a sectarian take-no-prisoners attitude toward publications and organizations on the center-left or center with whom they disagree, including The New Republic and the Democratic Leadership Council. This statement by Kirchick exemplifies the same kind of behavior, although from the right toward the left.
Mark Kleiman notices that Mickey Kaus finally deigns to admit that Fox News doesn't do "journalism":
The Reality-Based Community: Immigration and the fear-and-greed coalition: Footnote Kaus has even done the unthinkable: criticizing one of the GOP's tame publicity outlets instead of bashing the "mainstream media." It seems Fox News is reflecting the views of its greedy owner rather than its fearful viewers, backing Bush rather than siding with Limbaugh, and Mickey is shocked — shocked! — to discover that Fox News isn't doing honest journalism. It's It's "Pravda-like." [See May 26.]
Yes, Mickey, Fox News is like Pravda: they don't do journalism, they merely propagandize for the ruling party. If youda ast me, I coulda toldja. That's why some of us are grateful for the admittedly imperfect performance of all the legitimate journalistic outfits whose demise you tirelessly predict and try to bring about.
Here's Kaus:
Fox Weekend: Anything But Amnesty! I've now watched a couple of hours of Fox News Channel coverage, and Bush loyalists worried about anti-amnesty anger on the right will be pleased: The network's Pravda-like, immigration-bill blackout continues! Lots of discussion of Iraq, and Rosie, and old WWI munitions in Surf City, N.J., and Rosie. And Rosie! My favorite was the thumbsucker: "Can You Hurt Your Career Defending President Bush?" Not on Fox. Even if it means abandoning the network's traditional role as a voice for conservatives shut out of the MSM.... Any minute now I expect them to start playing somber classical music...
Brian Beutler wishes he could laugh:
Brian Beutler: Almost daily Corner bashing: One of the nicer things about being a liberal is that we don't have to waste our time with medieval debates about whether or not it's plausible that God intervenes right at the moment when one species is about to become two species and does all the heavy lifting himself. Nicer still is that we don't have to be quite so embarrassed about the idiocy of our most powerful elected representatives. Now if only we could get their stone-aged hands off of related matters of sex and education policy, we could passively enjoy spectacles like this one for the fun little circuses that they are.
And here's the raw data:
The Corner on National Review Online: John Derbyshire: Here is Sam Brownback talking about evolutionary biology. That's a bit like saying: "Here's Paris Hilton talking about partial differential equations"... from which you can deduce that I don't feel much inclined to offer a detailed critique of Brownback's position. I would though like to draw attention to the following bit of weaseling. "If belief in evolution means simply assenting to microevolution, small changes over time within a species, I am happy to say, as I have in the past, that I believe it to be true. If, on the other hand, it means assenting to an exclusively materialistic, deterministic vision of the world that holds no place for a guiding intelligence, then I reject it." What's going on here is that Brownback has got a whiff of the notion that living species indisputably do change over time. This is so well established that the old creationist position—that species do not change over time—has had to be abandoned. Creationists have retreated to this new position: "Yes, OK, a given species does change over time, but never into a new species." You could summarize this as "micro-evolution yes, macro-evolution no." It's a common creationist line of argument...
The Corner on National Review Online: Jonah Goldberg: I wonder whether there couldn't be a different or at least additional interpretation of Brownback that is equally plausible?... I'd guess you're right that he's trying to slip something past the reader with the use of "microevolution" and "within a species."... As one of those people who believes in evolution, macro and micro, but who also believes that such belief doesn't rule out the existence of God, I agree with Brownback's complaint even if I reject his argumentation. He's setting up a strawman, it seems to me, by saying that if you believe in anything more than "microevolution" you're buying into a cold, godless, materialistic universe. But he's certainly on defensible ground when he suggests that some want to use evolution as a tool to dethrone God and religious faith. Obviously, that's not the case with many others — but those folks aren't the ones Brownback's concerned with. And his op-ed isn't about the science, but about how faith and science interact...
A clown suit would fit Lou Dobbs really well:
Truth, Fiction and Lou Dobbs - New York Times: The most common complaint about him, at least from other journalists, is that his program combines factual reporting with editorializing. But I think this misses the point. ... The problem with Mr. Dobbs is that he mixes opinion and untruths.
Robert Scheer is shrill:
Worse Than Watergate, by Robert Scheer, AlterNet: …But don't blame Gonzales; he's just another lightweight zealot exploited by the Cheney White House. Not that Gonzales isn't a thoroughly loathsome character deserving of Senate rebuke and worse. He has been party to dragging this nation down in the eyes of the world, ordering and justifying torture while shredding the limitations on imperious governance that have been the hallmark of American liberty.
Yet while the man has been associated with a pernicious assault on our freedoms, he has never been the independent actor, but rather a dutiful toady carrying out the wishes of a tightly monitored White House with the blessings of the president.
It writes:
Rising Hegemon: Maximum Wanker: William Kristol and Fred Kagan ladies and gentlemen, together in what can only be described as the ickiest long-term companionship ever!
Congressional battles calling into doubt our commitment to winning in Iraq have been the major threat to progress since the president began pursuing the right strategy in January. The president, supported by congressional Republicans, has beaten back that threat. Now he needs to deal with his own administration, which has not made up its collective mind to support the president's strategy wholeheartedly. Mixed messages from Bush's advisers and cabinet undermine the efforts of our commanders in the field.
Here is Duncan:
Eschaton: Deep Thoughts From Tom Friedman: 05/30/03 on Charlie Rose: I think it [the invasion of Iraq] was unquestionably worth doing, Charlie.... We needed to go over there, basically, um, and um, uh, take out a very big state right in the heart of that world and burst that bubble, and there was only one way to do it.... What they needed to see was American boys and girls going house to house, from Basra to Baghdad, um and basically saying, "Which part of this sentence don't you understand?" You don't think, you know, we care about our open society, you think this bubble fantasy, we're just gonna to let it grow? Well, Suck. On. This.O kay.That Charlie was what this war was about. We could've hit Saudi Arabia, it was part of that bubble. We coulda hit Pakistan. We hit Iraq because we could.
And Duncan comments:
Ladies and gentlemen, America's premier foreign policy columnist. I'm sure there's more there, but there are limits to the sacrifices I will make for blogging. (thanks to Janeane the Acerbic Goblin)
And comments further:
When I was a younger lad man, there was no one around to tell me that Tom Friedman was an utter buffoon. I'm sure someone I knew thought he was a buffoon, maybe many people, but as Tom Friedman unsurprisingly wasn't the central subject of many conversations it wasn't too likely to come up. Obviously he must be a very serious person, as he writes bestselling books on very serious things, has a very influential column in the New York Times, is treated reverentially when he goes on the teevee, etc... I'm not quite sure when I realized that little Tommy was a buffoon. I did force my students to read one of his books (among others of course) and by the end I think we'd all decided he was a buffoon. I think that if there's one contribution to humanity that liberal blogs have made it's the fact that they have greatly increased the number of people who understand that he is a buffoon.
NY Times: "We Have Grown Accustomed to This President’s Disconnect from Reality" -- The ITT List: From the NY Times editorial “War Without End”: Never mind how badly the war is going in Iraq. President Bush has been swaggering around like a victorious general because he cowed a wobbly coalition of Democrats into dropping their attempt to impose a time limit on his disastrous misadventure. By week’s end, Mr. Bush was acting as though that bit of parliamentary strong-arming had left him free to ignore not just the Democrats, but also the vast majority of Americans, who want him to stop chasing illusions of victory and concentrate on how to stop the sacrifice of young Americans’ lives. And, ever faithful to his illusions, Mr. Bush was insisting that he was the only person who understood the true enemy.
[...]
[W]e have grown accustomed to this president’s disconnect from reality and his habit of tilting at straw men, like Americans who don’t care about terrorism because they question his mismanagement of the war or don’t worry about what will happen after the United States withdraws, as it inevitably must.
The really disturbing thing about Mr. Bush’s comments is his painting of the war in Iraq as an obvious-to-everyone-but-the-wrongheaded fight between the United States and a young Iraqi democracy on one side, and Al Qaeda on the other. That fails to acknowledge that the Shiite-dominated government of Iraq is not a democracy and is at war with many of its own people. And it removes all pressure from the Iraqi leadership — and Mr. Bush — to halt the sectarian fighting and create a real democracy.
Don't be worried. Some viewers were shocked when you changed shape before their eyes and grabbed the Bush-defending guests with your suckers and rent them into shreds and gobbets with your parrot-like beak. But ratings are up:
Crooks and Liars » Matthews Gets Fired Up: On yesterday's "Hardball" Chris Matthews was in rare form and fired up about Iraq, Immigration and fact-free Republican Presidential candidates. During his interview with Democratic Presidential candidate, Senator Joe Biden (D-DE) he slams President Bush for his Iraq rhetoric and playing the terror card when it suits him, but his main target was Republican Presidential candidate, Rudy Giuliani. Matthews questions why Giuliani has been allowed to spout off the wall , fact-free talking points and nobody has stepped up to challenge him. I think this quote to Biden after watching a clip of Giuliani says it all: Matthews: "Absolute B.S., Senator. Absolute B.S."
UPDATE: John Dickerson and "Jerry" protest that Dickerson is not parodying himself, but trying to maintain a nuanced position: to the extent that children inject themselves (and to the extent that Bush and Cheney inject them) into the echo chamber, they lose their zone of privacy.
John Dickerson could drive anybody shrill:
John Dickerson: Political families: The president and Dick Cheney should have a wide zone of privacy when it comes to their families. Their daughters didn't ask to enter the political echo chamber, and so they shouldn't be forced to live in it. (Though, the Bush twins did speak at the 2004 Republican convention, and a Cheney daughter worked at the State Department.)
Brian Beutler succumbs:
Allow me to suggest that the Bush twins weren't forced to speak at the Republican convention against their will and that Liz Cheney probably had some "help" getting the job that she "asked for" at the "State Department". And that, on top of all that, Mary Cheney has worked publicly on behalf of her father, who heads what some might call an atypical family (vice-president and whatnot)...
John Podesta, establishment Democrat, is shrill!
Bill Clinton's former chief of staff says "Congress must oppose toothless supplemental": ThinkProgress, the blog for the Center for American Progress (CAP), the organization run by President Clinton's former chief of staff John Podesta, published a stern commentary today in opposition to the Iraq war supplemental agreement negotiated by Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi. ThinkProgress notes that "this victory for President Bush is a defeat for the American people." They go on to say that congressional leaders, including Nancy Pelosi, "need to live up to their word," and that "anyone who supports accountability for President Bush’s Iraq policy must reject this blank check for war."
ThinkProgress wouldn't take this bold a position on the most important legislation in America today, in opposition to the Democratic leadership in the House and Senate, without the Center for American Progress's approval. And you'd better believe that the Center isn't going to approve of such an important statement of policy without John Podesta personally signing off. The man was the former White House chief of staff - we can assume he doesn't miss details. Things get even more interesting when you consider that inside the beltway CAP is perceived by many, rightly or wrongly, as a front for Hillary's presidential run. And there is no way, in my view, that CAP's position on the supplemental helps Hillary (who would prefer to remain perpetually obtuse when it comes to Iraq).
Podesta is a big deal in Washington. If he's not happy with this "compromise," to the point of publicly challenging Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid, and putting Hillary in an awfully uncomfortable position, then that means discontent with the way the Democratic party leadership is handling Iraq goes far deeper than a few "crazy" bloggers or the party's supposedly-liberal base.
Five years, *Washington Post.* Five years:
Ashcroft's Complex Tenure At Justice - washingtonpost.com: the account of a nighttime hospital confrontation between Ashcroft and Bush aides -- provided Tuesday by Thompson's successor, James B. Comey, to the Senate Judiciary Committee -- prompted something of a reappraisal of Ashcroft by some on the left last week. Sen. Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) praised his "fidelity to the rule of law." The Wonkette Web site posted the headline: "Ashcroft Takes Heroic Stand." Under a similar headline, "John Ashcroft, American Hero," Andrew Sullivan expressed astonishment on his Atlantic magazine blog that "John Ashcroft was way too moderate for these people. John Ashcroft"...
Unbelievable.
He's shrill in a right-wing Neanderthal conservative-Republican way, but it's still shrillness, and it's still impressive:
David Frum's Diary on National Review Online: Immigration Thoughts: With the immigration * compromise * in the Senate, President Bush and the Senators have detonated the slow-motion trigger on a Republican debacle in 2008. Let's count the ways:
- The typical (median) American worker has seen his income stagnate under George W. Bush. Immigration is not the only reason for this wage stagnation, but it is certainly one of the reasons. With this immigration bill, the GOP is telling hard-pressed workers: Go look to somebody else to help you.
- As complicated as this immigration deal is, it rests on a simple compromise: The Democrats get the amnesty they want - in exchange for the Republicans getting the guest-worker program they want. By identifying the guestworker program as the GOP's highest immigration priority, the deal also identifies the GOP as a party that in the crunch puts employers' interests first.
- Even before the deal, Democrats entered the 2008 cycle unified and energized; Republicans, divided and demoralized. The president and the senators have now managed to divide and demoralize their party even further.
- The deal scrambles the 2008 race, in ways deeply unhelpful to the party. The deal has wounded all three of the GOP front-runners: McCain because he is deeply implicated in it; Giuliani because he has tacitly endorsed it; Romney because it has added one more flip-flop to his already too lengthy list of reversals. The deal helps the two undeclared Republicans, Gingrich and Thompson - both of whom, alas, are much less electable on a national ticket than the three declared front-runners
- The White House/RNC defense of the deal only enrages Republican voters. When Tony Snow delivers a speech to the Council on National Priorities arguing that George W. Bush has been tougher on illegal immigration than any president ever... well, he invites jeers and derision. Of the 35 million foreign-born people in the United States, some 8 million have arrived since 2001. Of the 12 million estimated illegals in the United States, some 4 million have arrived since 2001.
- As we have seen in both the Harriet Miers fight and the Dubai ports deal, this White House's first instinct when faced with dissent in the ranks is to insult and abuse its strongest supporters. "Sexist"; "elitist"; "registered bigots" were some of the terms cast during the previous fights. Brace yourselves for much, much worse. This is no way to win friends and influence people. And triggering an internecine party conflict on the eve of a difficult and dangerous election is no way to re-elect a damaged incumbent party.
- And unfortunately the White House's second instinct when confronted with dissent is to revert to incompetent spin. Unlike the Clinton administration, which lied with a fluency and bravado that will impress PR hacks for decades to come, the Bush administration stumbles, flusters, and eventually disheartens even its staunchest supporters. Or, as my friend Bill Walsh puts it, they cannot even tell the truth convincingly.
- The deal will worsen Republican prospects among Hispanic voters. Over the years, the Republicans have done not too badly with Hispanics, typically winning about 35%-40% of the Hispanic vote as compared to under 10% of the black vote.
Republicans have done so well because until now, the highly diverse Hispanic population has not voted as an ethnic bloc. Now we ourselves are forcing that to change. It's as if this Republican president and these Republican senators have said, "Hmm. Can we invent an issue that will teach Cuban-American doctors, Honduran day laborers, and Mexican-American army officers to think of themselves as a unified ethnic group? Can we then provoke a fight that all of them (whatever their diverging practical interests) will treat as a symbol of acceptance in American society? And can we then stage-manage this fight to ensure that two-thirds of our party will have no choice but to fall on the wrong side of it?" Nice work, guys.
We should pursue whether, next year, we can get David Frum out here at the West Coast satellite campus of the Ancient and Hermetic Order of the Shrill--halftime at the Hoover Institution and halftime here at U.C. Sunnydale.
It's the fault of CNN's John King:
The Media Hides Iraq Reality [Oliver Willis: Like Kryptonite To Stupid]: CNN's John King. “If we showed people the full extent of what we see every day in Iraq, we would either have no one watching us because they couldn’t stand to see the pictures, or we would get so many letters of complaint that some organization would come down on us to stop.” If you're not doing your job, you're complicit.
Atrios reminds us of one of the *New York Times's* many fine, fine moments:
Eschaton: Mission Accomplished Day: Another look back.
Elisabeth Bumiller: WASHINGTON, May 1 -- President Bush's made-for-television address tonight on the carrier Abraham Lincoln was a powerful, Reaganesque finale to a six-week war. But beneath the golden images of a president steaming home with his troops toward the California coast lay the cold political and military realities that drove Mr. Bush's advisers to create the moment. The president declared an end to major combat operations, White House, Pentagon and State Department officials said, for three crucial reasons: to signify the shift of American soldiers from the role of conquerors to police, to open the way for aid from countries that refused to help militarily and -- above all -- to signal to voters that Mr. Bush is shifting his focus from Baghdad to concerns at home.... "This is the formalization that tells everybody we're not engaged in combat anymore, we're prepared for getting out," a senior administration official said...
