Digby's Hullabaloo Posts

Bad Advice

If anyone is still in the dark about what is wrong with the Democratic Party, look no further than this:

I just got off the boat. For the past week my family and I have been guests on the R Family Vacations cruise created by Rosie and Kelli O’Donnell. Along with 2000 other people – gay, straight and lots of kids – we sailed to Halifax, Nova Scotia and back down to NYC through Boston and Cape Cod. And I was a cynic. Truth is, since I get both claustrophobic and seasick, I had to be brought kicking and screaming on this trip. I just wasn’t in the mood for an onslaught of gayness.

I was wrong. It was a magical vacation…But sailing in international waters gave me a different perspective to the news of the moment. The distance I felt from the hype was much akin to the everyday attitude of a majority of Americans.

Over and over people on the ship asked me why the Democrats are focusing so much attention on Karl Rove and not, instead, providing a better alternative story for the American people to hear. It is a good question.

Karl Rove won’t resign no matter how many blog posts, front page stories or speeches from the floor of Congress take place…So why are Democrats wasting the chance to talk to people about what they really care about? As long as the political conversation is about Karl Rove, the Republicans win. Sure, the President’s current allegiance to Rove is damaging but the White House has obviously made a calculation that it is better to keep Karl around than to get rid of him and have the subject changed. That alone should give Dems a clue as to how important it is for us to change the subject.

It is no sure thing that Democrats will be able to get people to focus on politics at all during these few weeks. But our only hope is to talk about something more relevant. Summer vacation is family time. It is also a time for anxiety for parents. Because instead of worrying about our jobs, on vacation, most parents worry about their kids.

[…]

(And lest anyone doubt that the gay and lesbian parents on our cruise have all the same anxieties and commitment to their children as straight parents, rest your concern. In fact, the normalcy of the conversations was soothing.)

Democrats have more answers to the problems faced by families in America today. Now is a good time to try and dominate the conversation with those concerns. When people across the country feel certain that the Democratic political leadership cares more about these issues than scoring political points, we will finally benefit from the President’s dropping approval ratings.

Hold on to your hats folks. This person is a Democratic political consultant. In other words, Democrats pay her for political advice. I’m not kidding.

First of all, her attitudes toward gay people seems to be something closer to an anthropologist finding the lost tribe of Borneo. She wasn’t ready for an “onslaught of gayness” but was eventually soothed to learn that gay people are normal. Good for her.

But, of course, the other huge sin is this fucking insane, deranged, bass-akwards, idiotic advice that we should stop talking about Karl Rove so we can swing the conversation toward child care. She actually said that as long we are talking about Karl Rove, the Republicans win.

Oh yes, by all means let’s drop this hot potato and schedule a press conference about parental anxiety. The cable shows and the papers are clamoring for that kind of copy. They can’t get enough of it. Perhaps we can get all the elected Democrats to stand on the steps of congress and sing “I’m a little teapot, short and stout” for the evening news. Meanwhile, let’s just let the criminals in the White House blow up the world. After they’re done, we’ll have a helluva parental leave policy to enact. Unfortunately we won’t have a country.

Seriously, as long as we have this white house off balance, not controlling the message and the agenda, the Republicans lose. Really. The Democrats can’t “win,” you see, because we have no power to legislate or mandate fuck-all. Our only job is to stop the Republicans from destroying the country any more than they already have and lay the groundwork for winning elections. Taking on Republicans is a vital part of that job.

I’m sure that Rosen had a lovely time with the liberals on the ship who all were parroting the conventional wisdom “but the Democrats don’t have any ideas!” or “nobody knows what the Democrats stand for” which Rosen, the professional political consultant, took for some sort of homespun wisdom. If she thinks being on a cruise with 2000 people who can afford to spend a week with Rosie O’Donnell and her family is like being an average American she needs her head examined.

Here’s a clue for the professionals who hear this shit at cocktail parties: people say this because they don’t have anything else to say. These mantras are conversational elevator music, things that people say in social situations that are uncontroversial, genteel and guaranteed to result in agreement. These political platitudes are conversational filler that are often used to obscure the fact that the speaker isn’t really conversant with the details or because they really, really don’t want to get into an argument. And it’s exactly the type of bullshit that you see among super liberals who feel they have to temper their overwhelming feelings of shadenfreude with public tut-tutting about the terrible waste of it all in light of all the real problems in the world.

I don’t understand how anyone can become a political consultant without having some instinct for the manners of even her own social class. Ms Rosen should probably re-read her copy of Pride and Prejudice and concentrate on something besides Mr Darcy this time. She’d learn something about human nature.

There is no way we will ever again be in a position to help families or do anything else as long as our politicians are being advised by people like this.

Update: I’ve been reliably informed that Hilary Rosen is gay. It’s good to know that she discovered on her trip that other gay people are normal. She must be so relieved.

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Hot Links

For those of you who are enjoying playing Nancy Drew in this Rove case, here is a great link resource to official documents related to Plame. Have fun!

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The Smoking Notes

I somewhat regrettably waded into the minutia of the Rove case last week-end and am now stuck with revising what I said everytime I become aware that I got something wrong in order to hold up the honor of the self-correcting blogosphere. So here goes.

I wrote that I thought the person who wrote the June 10th classified memo was the same INR analyst who had been quoted liberally in the SSCI report and who was evidently the one who noted that “it appeared that she [Plame] had arranged the trip” in his notes of the meeting. I won’t go into it here — if you need a nap you can read my whole post.

Anyway, I was challenged by emptywheel at The Next Hurrah (who wrote this excellent post called “Anatomy of the WH Smear defense” and this one, called “About That INR Memo”) who was working the same angle, but who concluded that the memo may have been based on this INR’s notes but that it appeared it was written by someone else. (We are interested in this because it might have been someone juicy from Bolton’s gang, for instance.) Anyway, I said I preferred the simple explanation that the one who wrote the notes probably wrote the memo.

I was wrong because I think I know who wrote the notes and he was long gone from the State Department when the memo was written. I’m pretty sure that the INR analyst was Greg Thielman, one of the good guys. He’s one of the few people who went on the record that they administration was cooking intelligence.

I had written in a draft of the post that I thought it was ironic that the INR analyst who apparently spilled the beans on Plame in his notes (which was picked up in the “work-up” later done on Wilson in May of 2003) was also the guy in the SSCI report who was most skeptical of the Niger connection and who backed Wilson’s interpretation of events. (You should read how tortured the analysis was to come up with some factual basis for the Niger connection. It’s shockingly thin.)

Anyway, here’s the gist. Greg Thielman left the State Department in September of 2002. But he left his notes behind. When Wilson’s story started to surface in the press, the white house or somebody ordered someone to put together a file on how Wilson was sent on the trip. (Although Wilson never said Cheney directly sent him, the inference was that he knew.) So the INR went through its files on the matter and put together a report. (I suspect the other agencies did the same thing.) This report contained a nugget of information that nobody else had — that Wilson’s wife had sent him on the trip.

That was seized upon as a good smear and the rest is history.

The reason I believe it was Greg Thielman who wrote the notes in question is because the SSCI report indicates that the same person who wrote the report Niger: Sale of Uranium Unlikely is the same person who noted that “it appeared” Wilson’s wife arranged the trip. Greg Thielman wrote that report.

If you are at all interested in this subject, check out this PBS interview with Thielman. Has anybody talked to him lately?

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Tangled Up In Yellowcake

Responding to my quip about Rove not being in town to “warn off” 60 Minutes from its embarassing TANG story, Lukery of Wotisitgood4 reminds me in the comments that the TANG story actually knocked off another big story that 60 Minutes had been working on for months: The Niger forgery story.

If you’ll recall, after Rathergate 60 Minutes decided to withhold the story entirely. I have been unable to ascertain if it was ever shown, but I know I didn’t see it.

Salon magazine saw a tape of the show and reported this:

The importance that CBS placed on the report was evident by its unusual length: It was slated to run a full half hour, double the usual 15 minutes of a single segment. Although months of reporting went into the production, CBS abruptly decided that it would be “inappropriate to air the report so close to the presidential election,” in the words of a statement that network spokeswoman Kelli Edwards gave the New York Times.

The real reason, of course, was that because of CBS’s sloppy reporting on the Bush National Guard story, the network’s news executives believed they could no longer report credibly on the heart of the Iraq nuclear issue, involving another set of completely forged documents: those purporting to show that Iraq had purchased yellowcake uranium from the African country Niger.

Salon was given the videotape by CBS News on the condition that we report on it only shortly before it was to air. But after the network effectively spiked its own story (which was reported by Newsweek online and by the New York Times), we sent an e-mail late last week to CBS stating that we believed that the embargo no longer applied. We received no reply and therefore feel free to report.

[…]

Whatever the case, the CBS producers apparently decided to concentrate on what could be nailed down: the Bush administration had, either intentionally or with breathtaking credulity, relied on patently false intelligence to make the case for invading Iraq.

“Two years ago, Americans heard some frightening words from President Bush and his closest advisors,” Bradley said in his introduction of the now-shelved report. “Saddam Hussein, they said, could soon have a nuclear bomb. Of course, we now know that wasn’t true.” Not only did Saddam not have a nuclear program, Bradley said, but “he hadn’t for more than 10 years. How could the Bush administration be so wrong about something so important?”

[…]

In his closing, Bradley explains how fiercely the White House fought his report. Administration officials and Republicans in Congress turned down “60 Minutes'” requests for interview. So did former Rep. Porter Goss, the Florida Republican whom Bush has appointed as the new director of the CIA.

“60 Minutes” defied the White House to produce this report. But it could not survive the network’s cowardice — cowardice born of self-inflicted wounds.

What a shame. The TANG story really was old news and the only people who still cared about Vietnam were hardline republicans who were always going to vote for Bush. This story was about a real scandal.

It is interesting, though, that the White House fought this story tooth and nail but didn’t say a word when 60 Minutes ran the story about the Killian documents past them. You can understand why these people believe so fervently in God. 60 Minutes killed the serious story about forgeries that would have fed right into the Democrats’ story line about Iraq so that they could show a senational story about Bush that was based on forgeries. God was definitely rooting for the Republicans that day.

I wonder if 60 Minutes is recovered enough from their trauma to think about finally running (or rerunning) this story. Or do they still think it’s inappropriate?

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Case Closed

We can all close shop on Rovegate. The freepers have it all figured out:

Joe Wilson already admitted she was not under cover and:

Plame was not a covert agent. She had not been covert for nine years as she was outed by Aldrich Ames prior to 1994 and then again by the Cubans. She was assigned a desk job as an analyst at that time for her own safety.

The identity of CIA officer Valerie Plame was compromised twice before her name appeared in a news column that triggered a federal illegal-disclosure investigation, U.S. officials say.

Mrs. Plame’s identity as an undercover CIA officer was first disclosed to Russia in the mid-1990s by a Moscow spy, said officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity. In a second compromise, officials said a more recent inadvertent disclosure resulted in references to Mrs. Plame in confidential documents sent by the CIA to the U.S. Interests Section of the Swiss Embassy in Havana.

The documents were supposed to be sealed from the Cuban government, but intelligence officials said the Cubans read the classified material and learned the secrets contained in them, the officials said.

Washington Times

She would have had to have been covert in the last five years for Rove to have broken the law, per former Assistant Deputy Attorney General Victoria Toensing, who helped draft the 1982 law in question.

For Plame’s outing to have been illegal, the one-time deputy AG explained, “her status as undercover must be classified.” Also, Plame “must have been assigned to duty outside the United States currently or in the past five years.”

Case closed.

So, there you go. The bizarro world version of the Plame case brought to you by the Washington Times and Newsmax.

Oh, and there’s one more interesting little bit of speculation that I think we all need to think about. (These freepers are sharp.)

And we’re to believe that Judith Miller went to jail to protect Karl Rove?

Really. I am so very interested to know what the Prosecutor knows about Judy Miller that we don’t. Is this going to end up with The Plame-Wilsons in jail?

I’ve read that elsewhere. There really is a theme on the right that Fitzgerald is actually going to indict Joseph Wilson and his wife. This is understandable. In their experience federal prosecutors are all Republican hacks who work hand in glove with Drudge and Lucianne Goldberg. In their view the rule of law says that only Democrats are criminal. (And note the derisive “Plame-Wilson.” Does Karl know his people or does Karl know his people?)

And then you have to really love this one:

and I’m sure he’ll go right ahead and shut the whole thing down.

And end his lucrative gig?

Fitzgerald’s in it for the money.

Remember, this is the base that Karl and Junior have so carefully cultivated and are valued over any other constituency in the country. Doesn’t it make the hair on the back of your neck stand up?

Question On Judy

I’m just curious about something and maybe my readers can help me out. In yesterday’s NY Times article it says:

Asked whether New York Times reporter Judith Miller might have provided information about Plame to government sources, George Freeman, an assistant general counsel of The New York Times Company told Liptak: “Judy learned about Valerie Plame from a confidential source or sources whose identity she continues to protect to this day. If the suggestion is that she is covering up for her source or some fictitious source, that is preposterous.

Has Miller ever said before that the source she’s protecting told her about Valerie Plame? She didn’t write a story, she hasn’t turned over her notes and she hasn’t talked about who or what the prosecutor wants to question her about, to my knowledge.

Certainly, it seems clear that someone else must have told Fitzgerald that Miller was a party to the information, but until now I didn’t know she had admitted it or that she had so explicitly said that she was protecting someone who told her about Plame. Am I wrong?

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Performance Blog

If you are in New York in August, plan to check out the “Year Of Living Rudely” starring everybody’s favorite dirty talker (and my personal inspiration) The Rude Pundit. Guaranteed to blow your mind. Or blow something. Bring cigarettes and bottled water.

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Mr Helpful

It occurs to me as I read the pithy Charles Pierce piece I’ve been yearning for, that it’s quite wonderful that Karl Rove makes it a practice to warn reporters off of stories he thinks will embarrass them. I guess he must have been out of town the day CBS submitted its National Guard story to the white house for comment.

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Rove Food

New detail about what Fitzgerald knows from the LA Times:

Prosecutors investigating whether White House officials illegally leaked the identity of Wilson’s wife, a CIA officer who had worked undercover, have been told that Bush’s top political strategist, Karl Rove, and I. Lewis Libby, chief of staff for Vice President Dick Cheney, were especially intent on undercutting Wilson’s credibility, according to a person familiar with the inquiry.

While lower-level White House staff members typically handle most contacts with the media, Rove and Libby began personally communicating with reporters about Wilson, prosecutors were told.

A source directly familiar with information provided to prosecutors said Rove’s interest was so strong that it prompted questions in the White House. When asked at one point why he was pursuing the diplomat so aggressively, Rove responded: “He’s a Democrat.” Rove then cited Wilson’s campaign donations, which leaned toward Democrats, the person familiar with the case said.

[…]

Activities aboard Air Force One are also of interest to prosecutors — including the possible distribution of a State Department memo that mentioned Wilson’s wife. Prosecutors are seeking to find out whether anyone who saw the memo learned Plame’s identity and passed the information to journalists. Telephone logs from the presidential aircraft have been subpoenaed; among those aboard was former White House press secretary Ari Fleischer, who has testified before the grand jury.

The source familiar with the investigation said Saturday that prosecutors had obtained a White House call sheet showing that Novak left a message for Fleischer on the afternoon of July 7, 2003, the day after Wilson’s op-ed article appeared and the day that Fleischer left with the president for Africa. Fleischer declined to comment for this article, but has flatly denied that he was the source of the leak.

Wilson said in an interview Saturday that he had known that Novak was interested in him a week or so before the column appeared. He said that a friend who saw Novak on the street reported that Novak told him, “Wilson is an (expletive) and his wife works for the CIA.”

[…]

There have been other indications of a concerted White House action against the former envoy. Washington Post reporter Walter Pincus has said that two days before Novak’s column, he was told by an “administration official” that the White House was not putting much stock in the Wilson trip to Africa because it was “set up as a boondoggle by his wife, an analyst with the agency working on weapons of mass destruction,” according to an account of the conversation Pincus wrote for the Summer 2005 issue of Nieman Reports, published by the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University.

Let’s suppose you are a straight shooting prosecutor or a grand juror. And let’s suppose an extremely powerful and arrogant asshole testifies that he thinks it’s perfectly ok to “discredit” his political opponents with derogatory information about them. Let’s assume that a whole bunch of people from the White House testify that this arrogant asshole was obsessed with smearing a critic “because he was a Democrat.”

Do you think he’d get the benefit of the doubt asbout whether he actually smeared this critic from either the straight shooting prosecutor or the grand juror?

I don’t either. If they can nail him they’re going to. He’s a pig.

Closing Ranks

Bob Novak, who is now Karl Rove’s howling bitch until the day his rotting cadaver finally admits it’s dead, says that Ed Gillespie (whom he pointedly calls a protege of Karl Rove) may be the new chief of staff. It appears they are easing Andy Card out.

He has been disloyal in the past:

I made these inquiries in part because last spring, when I spoke to White House chief of staff Andrew Card, he sounded an alarm about the unfettered rise of Rove in the wake of senior adviser Karen Hughes’s resignation: “I’ll need designees, people trusted by the president that I can elevate for various needs to balance against Karl. . . . They are going to have to really step up, but it won’t be easy. Karl is a formidable adversary.

One wonders if Karl may think he’s been disloyal more recently. After all, as Weldon Berger has been reminding us, there is still the question of who leaked to the Washington Post that the Plame leak was done “purely and simply for revenge.” I always speculated it was Andy, who’s not part of the Texas mafia.

In any case, it looks like the hankie twisting, pearl clutching Ed “political hate speech” Gillespie is being brought on to shore up Karl and “send a message.” That’s what they do. It’s only a matter of time before we see Ben Ginsberg on the scene.

When they call in James “divaaaaaahn” Baker, we’ll know the jig is up.

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