Month: November 2007

Panic Artists

by digby

I don’t get this. According to Media Matters, CNN apologized for allowing General Kerr to ask that question at the Republican debates about “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell” and expunged it from their re-broadcasts because he is a Clinton supporter.

I could see it if the question itself was rude or shockingly partisan, but there is a GOP “special interest group” called the Log Cabin Republicans who actually sued the government over the same issue. One of them could have asked it just as easily. It’s obviously a salient political issue in America and I don’t see why any news organization should apologize and expunge the record just because of the political leanings of a citizen who asked a question. Apparently, after all these years of Bush’s canned Townhall meetings with sweet softball questions, the media has decided that’s the only form of legitimate debate.

As Sadly No points out here, Republicans asked questions at the Democratic You Tube debate and we didn’t have a hissy fit over it.

What a big bunch of babies. (And I’m talking about CNN as much as the wingnut bloggers.)

Update: No More Mister Nice Blog is as confused as I am and brings up this good point:

Sure, screen for affiliation if you want to limit the number of questions from opposite-party partisans, and maybe it would be a good idea to try to keep the number of such questions equal in the parties’ debates — but why not overtly allow them? Democrats are citizens. So are Republicans. You don’t lose your citizenship when you join a party or endorse a candidate. So let partisans ask questions. Or do we just want to make the partisan “He’s not my president” bumper stickers of the Clinton and Bush eras the law of the land?

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Dialing Into The Lizard Brain

by digby

Frank Luntz invited Joe Klein to a dial-in group and this is what he saw:

I attended Frank Luntz’s dial group of 30 undecided–or sort of undecided–Republicans in St. Petersburg, Florida, last night…and it was a fairly astonishing evening.

Now, for the uninitiated: dials are little hand-held machines that enable a focus group member to register instantaneous approval or disapproval as the watch a candidate on TV. There are limitations to the technology: all a candidate has to do is mention, say, Abraham Lincoln and the dials go off into the stratosphere. Film of soaring eagles will have the same effect. But the technology does have its uses.

Last night, for example, it was apparent from the get-go that Rudy Giuliani was having a very bad night. Mitt Romney clearly got the better of him in the opening debate about illegal immigration. Romney’s dial numbers hovered in the 60s (on a scale of 100) while Giuliani (40s) seemed defensive, members of the focus group later said…and they thought Romney seemed strong, even when defending his Sanctuary Mansion. (I mean, if you care about illegal immigrants–which I don’t understand in the first place, because I don”t–shouldn’t you check the people working your lawn and, if you have doubts, hire another company?)

In the next segment–the debate between Romney and Mike Huckabee over Huckabee’s college scholarships for the deserving children of illegal immigrants–I noticed something really distressing: When Huckabee said, “After all, these are children of God,” the dials plummeted. And that happened time and again through the evening: Any time any candidate proposed doing anything nice for anyone poor, the dials plummeted (30s). These Republicans were hard.

But there was worse to come: When John McCain started talking about torture–specifically, about waterboarding–the dials plummeted again. Lower even than for the illegal Children of God. Down to the low 20s, which, given the natural averaging of a focus group, is about as low as you can go. Afterwards, Luntz asked the group why they seemed to be in favor of torture. “I don’t have any problem pouring water on the face of a man who killed 3000 Americans on 9/11,” said John Shevlin, a retired federal law enforcement officer. The group applauded, appallingly.

This is interesting to me because I was pleasantly surprised that there was spontaneous applause in the auditorium for one of those questions, which I wrote about yesterday. As it happens, the McCain answer on torture also got applause from the audience:

MCCAIN: Well, Governor, I’m astonished that you haven’t found out what waterboarding is.

ROMNEY: I know what waterboarding is, Senator.

MCCAIN: Then I am astonished that you would think such a — such a torture would be inflicted on anyone in our — who we are held captive and anyone could believe that that’s not torture. It’s in violation of the Geneva Convention. It’s in violation of existing law…

(APPLAUSE)

And, Governor, let me tell you, if we’re going to get the high ground in this world and we’re going to be the America that we have cherished and loved for more than 200 years. We’re not going to torture people.

MCCAIN: We’re not going to do what Pol Pot did. We’re not going to do what’s being done to Burmese monks as we speak. I suggest that you talk to retired military officers and active duty military officers like Colin Powell and others, and how in the world anybody could think that that kind of thing could be inflicted by Americans on people who are held in our custody is absolutely beyond me.

COOPER: Governor Romney, 30 seconds to respond.

(APPLAUSE)

ROMNEY: Senator McCain, I appreciate your strong response, and you have the credentials upon which to make that response. I did not say and I do not say that I’m in favor of torture.

ROMNEY: I am not. I’m not going to specify the specific means of what is and what is not torture so that the people that we capture will know what things we’re able to do and what things we’re not able to do. And I get that advice from Cofer Black, who is a person who was responsible for counterterrorism in the CIA for some 35 years.

I get that advice by talking to former generals in our military…

COOPER: Time.

ROMNEY: … and I don’t believe it’s appropriate for me, as a presidential candidate, to lay out all the issues one by one…

COOPER: Time.

ROMNEY: … get questioned one by one: Is this torture, is that torture?

COOPER: Senator McCain…

ROMNEY: And so, that’s something which I’m going to take your and other people’s counsel on.

COOPER: Senator McCain, 30 seconds to respond.

MCCAIN: Well, then you would have to advocate that we withdraw from the Geneva Conventions, which were for the treatment of people who were held prisoners, whether they be illegal combatants or regular prisoners of war. Because it’s clear the definition of torture. It’s in violation of laws we have passed.

And again, I would hope that we would understand, my friends, that life is not “24” and Jack Bauer.

Life is interrogation techniques which are humane and yet effective. And I just came back from visiting a prison in Iraq. The Army general there said that techniques under the Army Field Manual are working and working effectively, and he didn’t think they need to do anything else.

My friends, this is what America is all about. This is a defining issue and, clearly, we should be able, if we want to be commander in chief of the U.S. Armed Forces, to take a definite and positive position on, and that is, we will never allow torture to take place in the United States of America.

(APPLAUSE)

Now, I would be open to the idea that there might have been a large number of Democratic ringers in the audience applauding for that sort of statement except for the fact that, other than the predictable Ron Paulite responses, there was no other counterintuitive evidence but for these two questions. It’s extremely unlikely that these Democratic ringers would have remained silent except on these answers pertaining to treating “all god’s children” with kindness and compassion and abiding by the Geneva Conventions. And anyway, the applause was much too loud for it to have been done by a spattering of Democrats in the audience. I think it was a reflexive response by the decent Republicans in the audience to these candidates saying the obviously correct thing.

Frank Luntz, for reasons we can only speculate about, invited Joe Klein to observe one of these (unreliable, as Klein notes) focus groups that didn’t feature any of those decent Republicans. It could easily be just the luck of the draw — there are a whole lot of them who obviously think torture is terrific and that Mexicans aren’t God’s children. It’s not unlikely that you could easily wind up with a roomful of them. But I don’t believe that they are representative of how all Republicans really felt about Huckabee and McCain’s answers. That immediate applause is exactly how you would expect normal Americans, raised with American values, to respond to such statements. That they did it publicly at a Republican function where many of their fellows apparently think that torture and punishing children for their parents’ behavior is an American value, is a testament to their decency. Those in that private little group of true believers are, as Klein writes, appalling.

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You Say Plain Wrong, We Say Basically True

by digby

So today the NY Times did some good reporting and published a story exposing Rudy Giuliani’s pompous, megalomaniacal braggadocio on the stump for what it is:

All of these statements are incomplete, exaggerated or just plain wrong . . . .An examination of many of his statements by The New York Times, other news organizations and independent groups have turned up a variety of misstatements, virtually all of which cast Mr. Giuliani or his arguments in a better light.

Now that strikes me as pretty straightforward.

Here’s the MSNBC chyron about this story:

Newspaper finds some figures wrong, but basic claims still true.

I’m not kidding. It’s like something from The Onion. It’s long been obvious that Rudy is a puffed-up blowhard — the only things he doesn’t take credit for in his speeches is writing the score for “Les Mis” and inventing the IPod. He’s a superhero in his own mind. But the NY Times did the actual spade work and proved that his claims are “incomplete, exaggerated or just plain wrong.” Apparently MSNBC considers that to be “true.”

But that wasn’t the worst of it. While that chyron was up, they had a guest named Craig Gordon who explained that since New York improved during Rudy’s tenure, “people have a gut sense that things got better so the fine print doesn’t matter.”

Setting aside the fact that in a compulsive desire to reveal the “character flaws” of certain politicians, the press spilled warehouses full of ink “explaining” the tedious details of an ancient Arkansas land deal and devoted an entire presidential campaign to exploring the supposed pathology of a man who (never) lied about inventing the internet, by what measure does this person make the broad based assumption that people don’t care how leaders “make things better?” This authoritarian mind set may be in vogue among this fellow and his fearful incontinent friends but I don’t believe this is a settled case among all Americans. And in any case, it’s likely that people do care if their president is corrupt or a little bit nuts.

The revelations about Rudy coming out just this week — his secretive big money ties to middle eastern players, his alleged accounting machinations to hide his affair with his then-mistress, his detailing a police driver for her at taxpayers expense and now this investigation into his claims on the stump should be enough to at least get the breathless, tabloid cable news media a little excited — particularly the so-called “liberal skewing” MSNBC, which has made a fetish out of “character coverage” for years. Apparently not. Unless Giuliani shows some cleavage or offends Chris Matthews and Tucker Carlson with his laugh or his clapping, this isn’t going to be a story.

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Only Time Will Tell

by digby

I tend to be a tiny bit of a skeptical sometimes, so I’m always relieved when I see clear evidence that racism plays no part in the immigration debate:

The chairman of the Republican Party of Arkansas called Wednesday for state Sen. Denny Altes, R-Fort Smith, to apologize for e-mail comments attributed to the Senate GOP leader by a television station.

[…]

In the e-mail on the television station’s Web site, the message attributed to Altes states that he’s for “sending the illegals back but we know that is impossible.

“ We are where we were with the black folks after the revolutionary war. We can’t send them back and the more we p *** them off the worse it will be in the future. So what do we do,” the e-mail states. “I say the governor needs to try to enforce the law and sign the letter of understanding… and at least we can send the troublemakers back. Sure we are being overrun but we are being outpopulated by the blacks also. What is the answer, only time will tell.”

It’s great to be living in a post racist society isn’t it?

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From The WTF Department

by digby

Military procurers make a responsible decision:

The Marines plan to buy fewer bomb-resistant vehicles than planned despite pressure from lawmakers who are determined to spend billions of dollars on the vehicles.

The Marine Corps’ requirement for mine-resistant, ambush-protected vehicles would drop from the planned 3,700 to about 2,300, The Associated Press has learned. The Marines would not comment on the decision, but defense officials confirmed the cut. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because the decision has not been announced.

About a month ago, Marine Commandant Gen. T. James Conway signaled the possibility of a new examination of the commitment to the vehicles, saying he was concerned his force was getting too heavy. “I’m a little bit concerned about us keeping our expeditionary flavor,” he said.

At the same time, an independent study by the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments in Washington questioned whether the Pentagon was buying too many of the pricey vehicles, which can cost as much as $1 million each. The study found that in some cases, the heavily armored vehicles, with their bomb-deflecting V-shaped hulls, might not be the answer that many believe they are.

Military officials and other experts have said that while the vehicles, known as MRAPs, are lifesavers in Iraq and Afghanistan, they are not as useful or mobile in some terrain.

[…]

Lawmakers on Capitol Hill, buoyed by the vehicle’s solid record — to date no troops have died in one — have consistently said the military must buy more and must buy them faster.

Now, I get why lawmakers would do this even though it is completely nuts. Pushing this stuff shows that politicians “support the troops” which is second only to worshiping Jesus as a sanctified requirement of office. It’s true that when troops were getting blown up every day by IEDs there was some need to get more of those things built quickly — or, preferably, redeploy the troops. But not the surge is allegedly working — no more car bombs. And the Marines don’t see any use for the vehicles in other conflicts down the road, so they are canceling their order. Changing circumstances, changing needs, cancel some expensive equipment. Sounds reasonable. It might even be possible that the congress would be willing to hide behind the Marine Commandant’s uniform and allow the taxpayers to be spared this useless burden.

But it’s not looking good. The Marines may be canceling a bunch of MRAPs, but that isn’t going to stop the administration from insisting that the congress appropriate even more money for them:

Q: Dana, the President is going to be meeting this afternoon with top brass, talking about, among other things, Iraq and Afghanistan, and I know that he’s going to be — you have just put out this 2007 funding — war funding by the numbers, really, taking the gloves off, coming down hard on Congress. Where do things stand at the Pentagon when it comes to them actually running out of money for the wars in Iraq and —

MS. PERINO: Well, I think the slide that you’re to is this one –talking about is this one. I don’t think it’s taking the gloves off by just pointing out the facts. They have had almost 300 days in order to debate in Congress the President’s request for the money for the troops. There are about 100,000 civilians who would be at risk of losing their jobs if this money is not appropriated.

[…]

The President will make a statement afterwards. But I hardly see that as taking the gloves off, because they’ve had the request, they’ve seen how wonderfully our troops are performing in Iraq and Afghanistan, and this money is for the day-to-day operations that is needed to fight the war on terror. And this includes bullets, body armor, the MRAP vehicles that will help protect them.

I heard Bush blathering incoherently today about not being able to “steer” the defense department “like a skiff,” which I think means he can’t move billions from one account to the other. Maybe the congress could help him hold the oars and paddle away from spending these useless billions. Or, if it’s the case that the Army still needs those vehicles, maybe they could pass a law that would allow him to transfer the money that’s already been appropriated to them.

Unfortunately, the Democrats know that if they propose it, even though the Marines have already said they are canceling part of the order, the Republicans will accuse them of heresy, so this will likely not happen. They’re just going to appropriate more piles of money for hugely expensive equipment that the services won’t need.

I guess we’ll never know how many billions this government has simply thrown away so the Republicans can keep up their sad little pretense of warrior prowess (and both parties can deliver to their military contractor contributors.) It would be a lot cheaper to put fistsfull of Viagra in their coffee and pay them off directly.

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Impotence

by digby

According to Ari Berman writing here in The Nation the anti-war Democrats in Iowa are unhappy, and for good reason, as the coverage of the “surge” seems to be taking the war off the agenda and the candidates are giving unsatisfactory answers about their plans to end the war.

It’s not that antiwar sentiment has disappeared. Iowa is less hawkish and more internationalist than most swing states. There are vigils, yard signs, meetings, sit-ins. Iraq comes up in some form at every town-hall stop. Every Democrat mentions the need to get out of Iraq in his or her stump speech. In 2006 Iowans elected two new Democratic Congressmen and flipped both the state House and Senate blue, the only state besides New Hampshire with such a Democratic tidal wave. And yet the war goes on.

Perhaps that’s why, after four and a half years of occupation and no end in sight, Iowa, like the rest of the country, is suffering from war fatigue. “They marched, wrote letters, elected a Democratic Congress and now Congress is funding the war–and Hillary is giving the President the authority to go into Iran!” says Nicholas Johnson, a University of Iowa law professor and former FCC commissioner who leans toward Richardson. “What’s a voter to do?”

There’s always a “pox on both their houses” potential third party strain running through the American electorate, but I don’t think I’ve seen one in my lifetime on the left that’s so attached to a single issue as this one. Not that the article indicates any of those Iowa anti-war activists are thinking of voting third party or staying home, but it’s that kind of frustration that lends itself to such things. (There isn’t anyone running they could pour their disaffection into anyway.) I don’t know exactly what will happen — nothing, perhaps — but I can’t help but think this feeling of impotence might be a dangerous thing for Democratic candidates to ignore.

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Debatable Tactics

by digby

I watched the debate last night with my usual mixture of shock and awe at the bloodthirsty, inane and irrelevant spew that emits from this cycle’s Republican presidential candidates and it did not disappoint. As Gail Collins wrote in her column today: “It was suspenseful, waiting for the next shoe to drop, for the next candidate to go whacky.”

Giuliani and Romney are both running as fast as they can from their liberal records on immigration so they sound like a couple of Grand Kleagles circa 1924. Tom Tancredo couldn’t be more pleased:

TANCREDO: Well, I tell you, this has been wonderful. Senator McCain may not be happy with the spirit of this debate. For a guy who usually stands on the bookend here, aside, and just listens all the time, that’s kind of frustrating, you know, in other debates. I have to tell you, so far, it’s been wonderful.

(LAUGHTER)

Because all I’ve heard is people trying to out-Tancredo Tancredo. It is great. I am so happy to hear it. It is a wonderful thing. It’s a good message, yes. We want to secure the borders.

So I was a little bit surprised that both Huckabee and McCain got applause with their relatively human responses on the interminable immigration questions. The debate was in Florida, which probably explains it, but I think it shows once again that even the Republicans are not monolithic on this question.

Here’s Huckabee:

HUCKABEE: Thank you very much.

Ashley, first of all, let me just express that you’re a little misinformed. We never passed a bill that gave special privileges to the children of illegals to go to college.

Now, let me tell you what I did do. I supported the bill that would’ve allowed those children who had been in our schools their entire school life the opportunity to have the same scholarship that their peers had, who had also gone to high school with them and sat in the same classrooms.

They couldn’t just move in in their senior year and go to college. It wasn’t about out of state tuition. It was an academic, meritorious scholarship called the Academic Challenge Scholarship.

Now, let me tell you a couple of provisions of it. And, by the way, it didn’t pass. It passed the House but got in the Senate and got caught up in the same kind of controversy that this country is caught up in.

And here’s what happened. This bill would’ve said that if you came here, not because you made the choice but because your parents did, that we’re not going to punish a child because the parent committed a crime.

That’s not what we typically do in this country.

It said that if you’d sat in our schools from the time you’re five or six-years old and you had become an A-plus student, you’d completed the core curriculum, you were an exceptional student, and you also had to be drug and alcohol-free — and the other provision, you had to be applying for citizenship.

It accomplished two things that we knew we wanted to do, and that is, number one, bring people from illegal status to legal status.

And the second thing, we wanted people to be taxpayers, not tax- takers. And that’s what that provision did.

And finally, would we give that provision to the children of veterans, personally? What we’ve done with not just the children of veterans, but most importantly, veterans is disgraceful in this country.

And that’s why I proposed a veterans bill of rights that, if anything, would give our veterans the most exceptional privileges of all, because they are the ones who have earned all of our freedom — every single one of them.

(APPLAUSE)

COOPER: Governor, you called Governor Huckabee a liberal on immigration.

ROMNEY: Well, you know, I like Mike. And I heard what he just said. But he basically said that he fought for giving scholarships to illegal aliens. And he had — he had a great reason for doing so.

It reminds me of what it’s like talking to liberals in Massachusetts, all right? They have great reasons for taking taxpayer money and using it for things they think are the right thing to do.

Mike, that’s not your money. That’s the taxpayers’ money.

(APPLAUSE)

And the right thing here is to say to people that are here legally as citizens or legal aliens, we’re going to help you. But if you’re here illegally, then you ought to be able to return home or get in line with everybody else. But illegals are not going to get taxpayer-funded breaks that are better than our own citizens, those that come from other states or those that come from your state.

COOPER: You have 30 seconds to respond.

HUCKABEE: Well, but they didn’t get something better. They had to earn it.

And, you know something, I worked my way through college. I started work when I was 14 and I had to pay my own way through.

HUCKABEE: I know how hard it was to get that degree. I am standing here tonight on this stage because I got an education. If I hadn’t had the education, I wouldn’t be standing on this stage. I might be picking lettuce. I might be a person who needed government support, rather than who was giving so much money in taxes I want to get rid of the tax code that we’ve got and make it really different.

ROMNEY: Well…

HUCKABEE: Mitt, let me finish. Let me finish, Mitt.

In all due respect, we are a better country than to punish children for what their parents did. We’re a better country than that.

(APPLAUSE)

Huckabee sounded like a pretty reasonable, decent human being on this issue and a fair number of Republicans in that hall responded to it.

Here’s McCain:

MCCAIN: I came to the Senate not to do the easy things, but to do the hard things. Mel Martinez and I knew this was going to be a tough issue, but we thought the status quo was unacceptable: broken borders; 12 million people here illegally; a need for a temporary worker program, certainly in my state in the agricultural section, certainly in this state of Florida.

And we tried to get something done. We said we’d enforce the borders. The American people didn’t believe us. They don’t believe us because of our failure in Katrina, our failure in Iraq, our failures in reining in corruption and out of control spending. So we tried and we failed. And I appreciate the president’s efforts. He comes from a border state too. And what we’ve learned is that the American people want the borders enforced. We must enforce the — secure the borders first.

But then you’ve still got two other aspects of this issue that have to be resolved as well. And we need to sit down as Americans and recognize these are God’s children as well.

(APPLAUSE)

And they need some protection under the law. And they need some of our love and compassion.

It seems to me that if you can get applause (and no boos) for a comment like that on immigration at a GOP debate then Democratic consultants should relax just a tiny bit about the breathless responses they are getting in their focus groups and tell their candidates to sound reasonable too. They aren’t going to be able to out-hate the Tancredo wing of the party so there’s no margin in helping the Republicans set the political agenda by pushing bad legislation and even worse rhetoric.

It certainly looks like the cranky old Republican creeps are once again on the rise in the GOP. But Huckabee and McCain are judged to have done well in the debates last night and those answers don’t seem to have hurt them.

Pat Buchanan ran for president partly on immigrant bashing in 1992 and he had quite a following. His speech at the Republican convention that year is infamous. The angry divisive tone of that speech was also considered to be the kiss of death for Poppy’s candidacy. Republicans should probably consider whether making Tom Tancredo happy is really in their best interest. The Democratic leadership certainly should.

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Codpiece Redux

by digby

Reporters say Baghdad too dangerous despite surge

Nearly 90 percent of U.S. journalists in Iraq say much of Baghdad is still too dangerous to visit, despite a recent drop in violence attributed to the build-up of U.S. forces, a poll released on Wednesday said.

The survey by the Washington-based Pew Research Center showed that many U.S. journalists believe coverage has painted too rosy a picture of the conflict.

A separate Pew poll released on Tuesday showed that 48 percent of Americans believe the U.S. military effort in Iraq is going very or fairly well, up from 34 percent in June, amid signs of declining Iraqi civilian casualties and progress against Islamist militants such as al Qaeda in Iraq.

But most journalists said they believe violence and the threat of violence have increased during their tenures.

[…]

The journalists gave high marks to the overall reporting effort, with 74 percent rating news-gathering as good or excellent. The highest marks went to coverage of U.S. troops and the war against insurgents.

Despite claims by U.S. officials that reporting from Iraq is negatively biased, 70 percent of those surveyed believe overall coverage is accurate, while 15 percent say the coverage makes the situation look better than it is.

Forty-four percent of journalists believe reporting has treated the Bush administration fairly, while 43 percent said coverage has been too easy on U.S. officials.

But the data also showed that 67 percent are at least somewhat concerned that the accuracy and completeness of their reports have suffered because of ongoing security problems that limit their access to the country.

President George W. Bush’s so-called surge strategy to stabilize Baghdad and its environs has been credited with a fall-off in attacks on Iraqi civilians and U.S. coalition forces over the past two months.

But 87 percent of respondents said at least half of Baghdad remains too dangerous for a Western journalist to visit, with the capital’s Shi’ite-dominated Sadr City enclave rated the most dangerous spot in Iraq. Eighteen percent said the entire city of Baghdad is too dangerous for travel.

Most U.S. journalists have traveled to danger spots such as Sadr City, either under the protection of private security guards or the U.S. military.

“Eight in 10 journalists believe conditions have deteriorated for reporters since their own first posting in the country,” the survey’s authors said.

Last night the Republican candidates, particularly John McCain, were rhetorically prancing around the stage in skin tight jumpsuits, codpieces a-pulsing, over the grand success of the surge strategy. Considering the fact that reporters still can’t assess whether the military’s claims are correct because it’s too dangerous to travel freely, these fellows ought to keep in mind what happened to the last guy who prematurely articulated “Mission Accomplished.” A little caution might be in order.

And while I’m certainly looking forward to reading all the reporters’ epic war memoirs someday, it would be really helpful for the health of the nation if they’d reveal who they believe is in the tank for the Republicans sooner rather than later.

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Pssst. Pass It On

by digby

It doesn’t matter if it’s true or not. It’s “out there”:

Foes Use Obama’s Muslim Ties to Fuel Rumors About Him

In his speeches and often on the Internet, the part of Sen. Barack Obama’s biography that gets the most attention is not his race but his connections to the Muslim world.

Since declaring his candidacy for president in February, Obama, a member of a congregation of the United Church of Christ in Chicago, has had to address assertions that he is a Muslim or that he had received training in Islam in Indonesia, where he lived from ages 6 to 10. While his father was an atheist and his mother did not practice religion, Obama’s stepfather did occasionally attend services at a mosque there.

Despite his denials, rumors and e-mails circulating on the Internet continue to allege that Obama (D-Ill.) is a Muslim, a “Muslim plant” in a conspiracy against America, and that, if elected president, he would take the oath of office using a Koran, rather than a Bible, as did Rep. Keith Ellison (D-Minn.), the only Muslim in Congress, when he was sworn in earlier this year.

No, those aren’t the opening paragraphs of a Townhall hit piece. That’s the Washington Post recycling anonymous wingnut email trash and calling it “rumors.” I guess we should be grateful that the paper allowed Obama to “dispute” and “deny” the “charge” but considering that he isn’t a Muslim, it might have been a teensy bit more responsible if they’d simply written that it’s a lie and let it go at that. Instead, it blandly suggests this will hurt him more than the Romney since the polls show that even more people won’t vote for a Muslim than a Mormon — failing to note that Romney is actually a Mormon and thus could be expected to suffer from these prejudices more than someone who isn’t actually a Muslim!

According to the Washington Post “Republicans say Barack Obama is a Muslim and Obama says he isn’t” is a legitimate story. Modern campaign journalism in all it glory.

Update: Chris Hayes actually did some real reporting on this and it’s much more informative than this piece of drivel. There is a story there if the Washington Post had cared to publish it.

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Rudy’s Got Secret(s)

by digby

Most of you have probably already read about Rudy charging the taxpayers for his booty calls when he was mayor of New York, which should get a lot of play if the kewl kidz can get their noses out of Bill and Hillary’s dirty laundry basket. But this little Rudy expose would actually be far more damaging in a more rational world:

Three weeks after 9/11, when the roar of fighter jets still haunted the city’s skyline, the emir of gas-rich Qatar, Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifah al-Thani, toured Ground Zero. Although a member of the emir’s own royal family had harbored the man who would later be identified as the mastermind of the attack—a man named Khalid Sheikh Muhammad, often referred to in intelligence circles by his initials, KSM—al-Thani rushed to New York in its aftermath, offering to make a $3 million donation, principally to the families of its victims. Rudy Giuliani, apparently unaware of what the FBI and CIA had long known about Qatari links to Al Qaeda, appeared on CNN with al-Thani that night and vouched for the emir when Larry King asked the mayor: “You are a friend of his, are you not?”

“We had a very good meeting yesterday. Very good,” said Giuliani, adding that he was “very, very grateful” for al-Thani’s generosity. It was no cinch, of course, that Giuliani would take the money: A week later, he famously rejected a $10 million donation from a Saudi prince who advised America that it should “adopt a more balanced stand toward the Palestinian cause.” (Giuliani continues to congratulate himself for that snub on the campaign trail.) Al-Thani waited a month before expressing essentially the same feelings when he returned to New York for a meeting of the U.N. General Assembly and stressed how important it was to “distinguish” between the “phenomenon” of 9/11 and “the legitimate struggles” of the Palestinians “to get rid of the yoke of illegitimate occupation and subjugation.” Al-Thani then accused Israel of “state terrorism” against the Palestinians.

But there was another reason to think twice about accepting al-Thani’s generosity that Giuliani had to have been aware of, even as he heaped praise on the emir. Al Jazeera, the Arabic news network based in Qatar (pronounced “Cutter”), had been all but created by al-Thani, who was its largest shareholder. The Bush administration was so upset with the coverage of Osama bin Laden’s pronouncements and the U.S. threats to bomb Afghanistan that Secretary of State Colin Powell met the emir just hours before Giuliani’s on-air endorsement and asked him to tone down the state-subsidized channel’s Islamist footage and rhetoric. The six-foot-eight, 350-pound al-Thani, who was pumping about $30 million a year into Al Jazeera at the time, refused Powell’s request, citing the need for “a free and credible media.” The administration’s burgeoning distaste for what it would later brand “Terror TV” was already so palpable that King—hardly a newsman—asked the emir if he would help “spread the word” that the U.S. was “not targeting the average Afghan citizen.” Al-Thani ignored the question—right before Giuliani rushed in to praise him again.

In retrospect, Giuliani’s embrace of the emir appears peculiar. But it was only a sign of bigger things to come: the launching of a cozy business relationship with terrorist-tolerant Qatar that is inconsistent with the core message of Giuliani’s current presidential campaign, namely that his experience and toughness uniquely equip him to protect America from what he tauntingly calls “Islamic terrorists”—an enemy that he always portrays himself as ready to confront, and the Democrats as ready to accommodate.

The contradictory and stunning reality is that Giuliani Partners, the consulting company that has made Giuliani rich, feasts at the Qatar trough, doing business with the ministry run by the very member of the royal family identified in news and government reports as having concealed KSM—the terrorist mastermind who wired funds from Qatar to his nephew Ramzi Yousef prior to the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center, and who also sold the idea of a plane attack on the towers to Osama bin Laden—on his Qatar farm in the mid-1990s.

This royal family member is Abdallah bin Khalid al-Thani, Qatar’s minister of Islamic affairs at the time, who was later installed at the interior ministry in January 2001 and reappointed by the emir during a government shake-up earlier this year.

There is not necessarily anything illegal about doing business with middle eastern countries. Lord knows that the a major reason why the US is as involved as it is there. But Rudy is being extremely cagey about Giuliani Partners, saying that he doesn’t have to reveal any information because nobody has suggested that there’s anything wrong with them.

Well, somebody is. This man is running almost entirely as an islamofasicst terrorist fighter. And here he is, after 9/11 kissing up to supporters of Osama bin Laden. For profit.

It’s not a sexy as hiding his and Mistress Judy’s room service expenses in the department of motor vehicles budget, but it’s actually quite a big deal. Read the whole thing. He’s been raking in millions selling “security” to terrorist sympathizers. When you think about it, it makes perfect “Shock Doctrine” sense.

H/T to bb

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