Helping Hand
by digby
Fellow blogger and all around smart guy Gary Farber is a living, breathing reason why a decent society should have a decent safety net. He’s got some health problems and needs to raise some money in order to keep a roof over his head. If you have any to spare, he could really use it.
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Getting Rich By Being Wrong
by digby
Jebediah Reed has a very entertaining and informative piece in Radar about the elite punditocrisy in which he outlines how wrong they have been — and how rich they are getting in spite of it. And he also takes the time to examine what has happened to those pundits who were right — and have been punished for it. It’s not pretty.
Howie Kurtz meditated on this problem just the other day, admonishing those who wonder why in the hell someone like William Kristol is being offered a presumably well-paid perch at TIME when he not only already has his own magazine, but is also one of the architects of the debacle in Iraq. Howie’s answer was a thinly veiled swipe at the dirty hippies, naturally:
Should they be held accountable? Should they be pressed on whether they now admit they were wrong, and how their thinking has changed since the invasion? Should they not be able to get away with the dodge that they thought Bush would manage the war much better than he did? Yes, yes, and yes.
But should they be hooted off the public stage? Tarred and feathered? Sent to reeducation camp? I don’t think so.
(They always seem to get in the reeducation camp thing, which is funny since it’s the conservatives who are always shipping people off to camps, not us.)
Anyway, Kurtz’s argument would hold more water if anyone actually held Kristol to account for what he said and did but needless to say, nobody will. In fact, he was hired because TIME wanted to feature a roster of “stars” and Billy Kristol is a big star.
(Evidently, the difference between the Hollywood and DC star systems is that Hollywood stars’ salaries go down precipitously when they make a string of flops. In DC you get higher billing and even more money. Nice racket.)
There needs to be some discussion about how to change this incentive structure. It’s hurting the country. It’s one thing for the rightwing noise machine to do this for the sad little wingnut welfare queens like Jonah Goldberg. Their industry is designed to reward being wrong for ideological reasons. The mainstream media, however, has no such rationale. (Or does it?) A nation that rewards those who are wrong and punishes those who are right is doomed.
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More 60’s Greatest Hits
Steve Clemons sez:
Washington intelligence, military and foreign policy circles are abuzz today with speculation that the President, yesterday or in recent days, sent a secret Executive Order to the Secretary of Defense and to the Director of the CIA to launch military operations against Syria and Iran.
The President may have started a new secret, informal war against Syria and Iran without the consent of Congress or any broad discussion with the country.
Secret war? I makes you feel all nostalgic for the good old days, doesn’t it?
And anyway I thought we already knew that consultation with the congress and the people is unnecessary durin’ a timowar. Your commander in chief is doing what he thinks is best, comrades, and it’s not your place to second guess him. Carry on.
When’s “American Idol” starting up?
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Mid-Life Mulligan
by digby
For those who are partial to the historical parallel as I am, you will love this one:
This comes with a huge hat tip to a good Friend of Attytood who was born 40 years ago on this date — Happy Birthday, dude! — and as a result is more up to speed on what happened on January 10, 1967, than the rest of us.
The big news story that night? President Lyndon B. Johnson’s State of the Union address.
The topic that dominated all others: Vietnam.
I’m going to guide you to some excerpts of that address — exactly 40 years ago tonight. See how it compares to some of the excerpts from President Bush’s speech that were just released minutes ago:
Read it and weep — for our country and all the people who will die before their time.
It’s clear to me that there is something pathologically wrong with the right wing in America in their inability let go of the 60’s. (And I’m talking to you Joe Klein.) It isn’t us — it isn’t the liberals. We are not obsessed with the past or trying to relive our glory days. The liberal baby boomers are looking to the future, just as we always did, while these boomer wingnuts are mired in the their pathetic, loser youths and punishing the rest of the country because they were anachronisms in their own time.
These people are literally taking a mulligan on American history and trying to make it come out the way they wanted it to 40 years ago. (Led by the original pathological Dad, Henry Kissinger.) They are having a massive mid-life crisis and carrying a bunch of young mouthbreathers right along with them as they make the same mistakes their fathers did a generation ago. It would be a lot less pathetic (and certainly less dangerous to the world) if these people would just buy a new sportscar or get a boob job.
You can’t recapture those days and change the course the history, boys and girls, no matter how hard you try. The war was a failure, your president was a criminal and the cultural revolution and fight for civil rights were successful. There’s no putting those genies back in their bottles. As you all used to chant like a mantra: “Get over it.”
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Getting Off
by digby
Everybody is wondering just what game Bush is playing. I tend to the “go for it” model, the typical spoiled rich kind, alcoholic style that is born of someone who has never had to deal with the consequences of their actions. I think that Junior sees “history” as having already vindicated him so there is no need for caution, prudence or reason to interfere with anything he emotionally needs to do.
Cheney is trying to secure oil fields and create an imperial America that only superficially answers to the people, whom he disdains. So, for him, everything is going fine. I think they figure that they have nothing to lose and everything to gain by going after Iran and while they might get their hair mussed, at the end of the day, the oil fields will be securely under American control.
But I could be wrong. James Ridgeway doesn’t believe, as I do, that Rove would manipulate the simpleton Bush into purposefully dragging out the war to avoid responsibility for losing or that Bush himself is a psycho. He sees something else going on:
There may well be a much more sinister game at play here. That centers around the emergence of Henry Kissinger over the last year as an outside advisor to Bush and other top officials in Washington.
Gareth Porter, the historian who ran the Indochina Resource Center in the early 70s, points out in a January 11 article on Asia Online that “although he knows very little about how to deal with Sunnis and Shi’ites, Kissinger does know how to convey to the public the illusion of victory, even though the US position in the war is actually weak and unstable.”
Porter continues, “One of Kissinger’s accomplishments was to sell the news media on the Nixon administration’ s propaganda line that the Christmas 1972 bombing of Hanoi had so unnerved the North Vietnamese that it had allowed president Richard Nixon and Kissinger to achieve a diplomatic victory over the communists in the Paris Agreement. That line was a gross distortion of what actually happened before and after the bombing.” Moreover, it was Kissinger who figured out how Ford could claim a Vietnam victory and blame the whole mess on the Democrats.
So, it’s quite possible that Bush will plunge into a counterinsurgency operation in Baghdad and elsewhere in Iraq, and then amidst mass civilian carnage, declare victory and announce negotiations. Sooner or later there will have to be negotiations, and this may be his ploy.
I think it’s highly unlikely that they could get away with this ploy with a president virtually everyone now acknowledges is an idiot. Neither will it be believable in an age of mass communication and suicide bombers in the middle of a block-by-block urban civil war. But I wouldn’t be surprised one bit if that’s what Kissinger is advising. It would be so like him.
And then there’s this, from Commander Jeff Huber USN (Ret.)at Pen and Sword, who made the obvious observation the other day that the reason to put a navy man in charge of Centcom is because you anticipate a naval battle:
No one seems to seriously think Mr. Bush’s escalation strategy will work, including, one gets the distinct impression, Mr. Bush himself.
That depends, of course, on what your definition of “works” is. If you mean something along the lines of “restore order to Iraq, disband the militias, unify the government and rebuild the country,” no, that’s not going to work.
If you mean: “escalate and expand the war throughout the region,” yeah, that will work. It’s working already.
Read the whole thing. This is no joke. There are some very weird things going on. As Huber points out, even Ralph Peters gets it:
WORD that Adm. William Fallon will move laterally from our Pacific Command to take charge of Central Command – responsible for the Middle East – while two ground wars rage in the region baffled the media.
Why put a swabbie in charge of grunt operations?
There’s a one-word answer: Iran.
ASSIGNING a Navy avia tor and combat veteran to oversee our military operations in the Persian Gulf makes perfect sense when seen as a preparatory step for striking Iran’s nuclear-weapons facilities – if that becomes necessary.
While the Air Force would deliver the heaviest tonnage of ordnance in a campaign to frustrate Tehran’s quest for nukes, the toughest strategic missions would fall to our Navy. Iran would seek to retaliate asymmetrically by attacking oil platforms and tankers, closing the Strait of Hormuz – and trying to hit oil infrastructure in Saudi Arabia and the Gulf emirates.
Only the U.S. Navy – hopefully, with Royal Navy and Aussie vessels underway beside us – could keep the oil flowing to a thirsty world.
In your dreams buddy. Nobody else is signing on to this crazy shit.
Bush’s affect was completely flat last night. I think he’s now just letting all this unfold around him, secure in the belief that God is on his side and he will be bailed out by history no matter what happens in the short term, just as his Daddy’s friends always bailed him out of everything he did before he became president. (With all the blathering about character in the two Bush elections, the media gave this guy such a pass for his obvious, lifelong character flaws and we are paying the price for it now.)
It occurs to me as I read that breathless acount from Peters that we shouldn’t underestimate the pull of war addiction as a motivator either. As I pictured the wingnuts and the media getting all hot and bothered over air strikes and naval battles, I could see that they and Bush and Cheney might just need a fix that only a bright shiny new war can provide. This is the problem with wars in which individuals make no sacrifices and suffer no personal consequences. They get off on the rush and don’t have to pay the price. That’s not good.
I think they are going for it.
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I’m The Escalator
by digby
Sorry, I kind of dozed off during Junior’s speech tonight. He must have popped one of Laura’s downers before he went on because I’ve rarely seen him so somnambulent. It was catching. Or maybe it’s just that all that escalatin’ is hard work. The president, it appears, is very tie-tie.
He did say one interesting thing, or at least one thing that is very interesting to the wingnuts. In fact, they are electrified about it:
Bush Targets Iran in Speech, Implies Military Action
Though President Bush’s national address Wednesday night was about Iraq, his most provocative comments focused on her neighbor, Iran.
Early in his speech Bush raised the matter of Iran, suggesting that if U.S. efforts to secure Iraq failed, “Iran would be emboldened in its pursuit of nuclear weapons.”
Bush blamed both Syria and Iran in helping radical insurgents within Iraq.
“These two regimes are allowing terrorists and insurgents to use their territory to move in and out of Iraq,” he said.
He then singled out Iran, adding that she “is providing material support for attacks on American troops.”
Bush made an implied military threat against both nations: “We will disrupt the attacks on our forces. We will interrupt the flow of support from Iran and Syria. And we will seek out and destroy the networks providing advanced weaponry and training to our enemies in Iraq.”
The President continued in this vein, suggesting a larger U.S. goal of stopping Iran’s nuclear program:
“We are also taking other steps to bolster the security of Iraq and protect American interests in the Middle East. I recently ordered the deployment of an additional carrier strike group to the region. We will expand intelligence sharing — and deploy Patriot air defense systems to reassure our friends and allies.
We will work with the governments of Turkey and Iraq to help them resolve problems along their border. And we will work with others to prevent Iran from gaining nuclear weapons and dominating the region.”
Now look, boys. I ain’t much of a hand at makin’ speeches. But I got a pretty fair idea that somethin’ doggoned important’s going on back there. And I got a fair idea of the kind of personal emotions that some of you fellas may be thinkin’. Heck, I reckon you wouldn’t even be human beins if you didn’t have some pretty strong personal feelings about nuclear combat. But I want you to remember one thing – the folks back home is a countin’ on ya, and by golly, we ain’t about to let ’em down. Tell ya somethin’ else – this thing turns out to be half as important as I figure it just might be, I’d say that you’re all in line for some important promotions an’ personal citations when this thing’s over with. That goes for every last one of ya, regardless of your race, color, or your creed. Now, let’s get this thing on the hump. We got some flyin’ to do.
Here is your assignment, should you decide to accept it. Read this article by Sidney Blumenthal about how Bush called the Baker Hamilton report a “flaming turd” and how Condoleeza Rice was their last best hope to keep the spoiled little prince from holding his breath until he turns blue. She failed.
Your second assignment is to read these two stories about the Cheney cabal.
Then come back here and we’ll start a pool on when the Iran action is going to officially begin, ok?
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Whispers
by digby
Dana Bash really doesn’t know what she’s talking about. Media Matters caught this one today. I’ve got another on. I noted the other day that the cable babblers were all whispering that Nancy Pelosi and the Democrats had gone back on their campaign promises to work five days a week because the John Boehner had asked for the day off to go to the football game and the Dems capitulated. Here’s a transcript of one of the segments I saw:
Blitzer: Let’s go back to Capitol Hill, where something is missing this Monday. The House of Representatives is not in session despite a vow by the new Democratic leadership to work a full week like most Americans do.
We’ll turn to our Congressional correspondent once again, Dana Bash — Dana, what’s going on?
BASH: Two words — college football, Wolf.
The national championship college football game is tonight. It’s in Arizona. And Democratic leadership aides say they got a request from a Republican, the top Republican, actually, House Majority Leader John Boehner, who is from Ohio, his home state college team, Ohio State is playing in that game, not to have any votes today so that he could go.
He is there. And we understand that it’s not just him. Nine representatives and two senators bought tickets to go to this game in Arizona. And the only Democrat we know about — there could be others — the only one we know about now who is definitely going is Stephanie Tubbs Jones, also from Ohio.
Now, this is the kind of thing, Wolf, that wouldn’t have even gotten a second look or a second thought just a few minutes ago. But this is a Democratic Congress where leaders promised — they made a campaign pledge to come in and work five days a week.
So the fact that they adhered to a request, Republican or Democrat, not to work today because of a college football game, it is certainly being noticed.
A reader was upset about this when she read about it and decided to make a phone call. Unsurprisingly, this story was completely wrong:
I was so angry about this that I called the speaker’s office. I learned that something entirely different happened.
Regardless of the abbreviated excerpts of Blunt’s and Hoyer’s old-geezer bloviating on the floor last Thursday about a football game, and the smattering of media reports that portrayed the dem’s promise of a 5 day work week as DOA, here’s what was going on with the House schedule – Friday was taken up by the mandatory attendance by all freshman congress members at a seminar on House procedure. Monday was given to members specifically to read all the legislation that will be debated and voted on this week.
As far as the Blunt/Hoyer exchange in the House, Hoyer went on to qualify his remarks repeatedly (clumsily, as the game had nothing to do with scheduling). Those qualifications never made the articles that were written, though most included breathless quotes from Republicans about how the Democrats now control the calendar. And earlier in the House exchange, Hoyer was clear that no votes would be held on Monday was for an entirely different (and worthy) reason; Democrats pledged to give Republicans a full 24 hour period to read legislation before a vote
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This was validated by this video in which Nancy Pelosi is caught on camera not even knowing what the BCS was. She explained at the time that she wanted to give members a three day layover to read all the legislation the Democrats were preparing to put to a vote this week. Imagine that.
This nasty junior high GOP backbiting could have easily been cleared up with a simple phone call, as my reader demonstrates. But Dana Bash and Wolf Blitzer were too busy enjoying the delicious little bitch fest to bother to question whether these whispers were actually true.
How do rumors like this get started? You have to ask yourself — qui bono?
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Oh Please
by digby
President Bush was upset after watching the video of Saddam Hussein’s execution, comparing it to how he felt after seeing the photographs of Iraqi prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib, White House officials said Wednesday.
Yes, he’s very sensitive:
In the week before [Karla Faye Tucker’s] execution, Bush says, Bianca Jagger and a number of other protesters came to Austin to demand clemency for Tucker. “Did you meet with any of them?” I ask.
Bush whips around and stares at me. “No, I didn’t meet with any of them,” he snaps, as though I’ve just asked the dumbest, most offensive question ever posed. “I didn’t meet with Larry King either when he came down for it. I watched his interview with [Tucker], though. He asked her real difficult questions, like ‘What would you say to Governor Bush?’ “
“What was her answer?” I wonder.
“Please,” Bush whimpers, his lips pursed in mock desperation, “don’t kill me.”
Of course, there’s always the possibility that he really was upset at the sight of a former head of state essentially being lynched by his people. You can certainly understand why he’d find that a little bit unnerving.
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Taxpayer Funded Insurgency
by digby
I hate to be a killjoy and all, and I’m normally a big fan of foreign aid and helping out the less fortunate around the world, but this additional billion for reconstruction in Iraq just strikes me as the last Republican boondoggle before they retire to count their ill-gotten gains and let the Democrats try to clean up the messes they’ve created here and around the world (while they scream bloody murder about runaway liberal spending.)
I’m not sure what to do about this, but there is no doubt that Iraq is a money pit and it makes me feel sick to my stomach to watch these people sharpening their “tax and spend” rhetoric, and gettng ready to stab the Democrats repeatedly with it while they wrap themselves in the flag and throw thousand dollar bills at their massive failure.
Clay Risen in TNR spells out the Democrats’ dilemma in this passage discussing deficit reduction:
In the face of Iraq, alternative minimum tax (AMT) reform, and an already bloated budget, any meaningful cuts will take significant belt-tightening, which will leave Democrats vulnerable to angry constituents and cynical GOP attacks. This doesn’t mean deficit reduction is a bad idea. On the contrary, unless the laws of economics are rewritten, our monstrous debt will eventually come due. But it does mean that the more Democrats brag about reducing the deficit, the more they play into the clever trap that Republicans have laid for retaking the Hill . . .
“What voters do get is taxes. Which is where the cynical genius of the GOP’s return strategy becomes apparent. They realize that, thanks to their own profligacy, any serious effort to cut the deficit will require either eliminating most of the Bush tax cuts or raising taxes elsewhere . . . They’ve created a situation that Democrats rightly believe requires immediate attention, but which demands a solution that may very well make them so unpopular that voters will return to the right in 2008.”
In light of that, I’m not sure that it isn’t a good idea for the Democrats to argue that the Republicans want to keep sending good money after bad in Iraq but oppose things like allowing American seniors to get a decent deal on prescriptions. It’s a sort of ugly side of populism, but it’s not entirely irrational.
I feel for the Iraqis, don’t get me wrong — but I can’t help but believe that sending billions more into “reconstruction” at this point is akin to flushing it down the toilet. In fact, what I’m hearing today is that they plan to put the money into the hands of commanders on the ground to “hire” Iraqis — which sounds to me as if we are going to start directly funding various sides in the civil war who will spend the money on arms and bombs to kill Americans and each other.
I’m generally uncomfortable with the idea of failing to fund the “soft” side of the occupation. But I can’t see how it’s going to any more good this time than it did when they were flying in planeloads of money a couple of years ago that they never accounted for. These are people who can’t do anything right and it’s just too late for them to change now.
Update: Here’s a video from CNN on this subject. (Scroll down to the fourth paragraph from the end.)
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Extremities
by digby
White House officials are keen to portray the new policy as a compromise between two extremes. On one side are the John McCains of the world, demanding big numbers of new troops for extended periods in Iraq. On the other side are the antidependency Democrats, demanding a phased withdrawal, or a timetable for withdrawal, to shock the Iraqis into action. (The White House dismisses the third option of rapid withdrawal as simply a form of defeat.)
Those are two extremes. Except that one of them is favored by a large majority of Americans and the other is favored by three neocons at AEI and Joe Lieberman.
This is nonsense and we should not let them get away with it. Bush is adopting the most extreme position which is the McCain doctrine and he is rejecting the mainstream position which is the phased withdrawal.
And we cannot let them get away with distancing themselves from McCain either. He was the first one out of the box with this idea of escalating the war last October 27:
Republican Sen. John McCain, a possible 2008 presidential candidate, said Friday the United States should send another 20,000 troops to Iraq.
A member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, McCain said increasing U.S. forces would require expanding the standing Army and Marine Corps – a step the Bush administration has resisted. He also reiterated his opposition to a hasty U.S. withdrawal.
“If we leave … the fighting will evolve into chaos there,” McCain told reporters after speaking at an event for local Republican candidates.
Reporters asked him to elaborate on his statement last week in Iowa that more combat troops are needed in Iraq to quell a “classic insurgency.”
“Another 20,000 troops in Iraq, but that means expanding the Army and the Marine Corps,” he said.
McCain may be saying something different since then (he’s been all over the map on the exact number) but he’s the one who introduced the idea of 20,000 more troops into the debate and it’s his baby all the way. He and Junior are joined at the hip on this and they cannot be allowed to forget it.
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