Hubris, Hope and Summer Malaise

Note: I’m giving you a big post today as I’m playing hooky tomorrow — save some of these for weekend reads.

It isn’t even the dog days of summer yet, and I’m played out with politics; have been for weeks — but I predicted this with the early advent of the campaigns; nobody can follow the twists and turns of this protracted season and not drop over in a coma occasionally … even the folks that get the big bucks to cover it.

That said, I have plenty of grump left in me, but no emotional resources for one more tantrum; just too much energy drain, given the particulars. I’m grumpy right now, for instance, because CNN interrupted Al Gore’s brilliant energy speech to give us Johnny McSame blustering about offshore drilling to his hand-picked faithful — oh, give it a rest!!

The up-side of a long haul on presumptive issues has been getting to know the candidates thoroughly — even if it works our last nerve. The really interesting bonus reads reflect that, with a Garrison Keillor piece and an early Obama statement that I think says what we need to know about his style — and come to terms with, here on the Deep Left.

The astrophiles among us can grok this more easily by knowing that Barack has Neptune as highest planet in his chart, in the 9th house. That Neptune is squared to his Leo Sun in the 6th; he’s not only a ’seeker’ but also the one who is ’sought’ … in other words, an enigmatic type. We project our stuff on him — while he searches for his own. Because he appears to have excellent instincts, I approve that part … he’s teachable. Hopefully, so are we. And I can’t help but think his spiritualized Neptune will inform his sixth house of hard-working organizations and groups.

We hear about how prissy he is … I think he’s gutsy; his response to the New Yorker flap gave him opportunity to respond as no Republican would ever think to … he defended Muslim-Americans. [And some think he's a Pub implant -- ha! Not on yer prayer blanket! Snort! By the way -- here's the Pub tit/tat for the New Yorker cover; pretty good.]

The reads of the day give us examples of how the cogs are still turning, even though the clank and hum of slowdown can’t be ignored — Dubby is the usual happy camper, reveling in his ‘executive privilege’ even though his bubble is getting thinner by the day … Kucinich is wearing away at it, and so is Bugliosi. You can sign on to the growing howl for impeachment here; stop and read Dave Lindorff’s article.

SOMETHING has to happen in 2009 — some grassroots insistence on accountability that sticks. I think invoking the RICO Act* might be appropriate, don’t you? Think of it as preventative medicine … something we should have swallowed down in 1974 [as we waved Tricky Dick goodbye] in order to immunize against future incidents of power-mongering and egomania resulting in illegality.

Al Gore got a big hand today when he said he’d never seen so many things go wrong at the same time — and ain’t it the truth! But it’s not like we didn’t see them all coming, freight trains from all sides rushing at one another — and all on GWB’s watch; some say at his direction. There needs to be consequences … for all our sakes, as well as the future of the Republic. But not all of us think so — the Village doesn’t, as this excellent piece from Hullabaloo exposes:

Dark deeds have been conducted in the name of the United States government in recent years: the gruesome, late-night circus at Abu Ghraib, the beating to death of captives in Afghanistan, and the officially sanctioned waterboarding and brutalization of high-value Qaeda prisoners. Now demands are growing for senior administration officials to be held accountable and punished. Congressional liberals, human-rights groups and other activists are urging a criminal investigation into high-level “war crimes,” including the Bush administration’s approval of interrogation methods considered by many to be torture.

It’s a bad idea. In fact, President George W. Bush ought to pardon any official from cabinet secretary on down who might plausibly face prosecution for interrogation methods approved by administration lawyers.

The irony here is that as the Left wants that moment of accountability with the perp’s all in a line taking their lumps, we’re told we’re “too angry” — and the nation nods its head in agreement. The absurdity of that is stunning. Our anger is incident-driven, not systemic; the Dem’s have always been the Rehabber’s as opposed to the Pub Punishers. We so seldom demand a strong bottom line that the Pub’s use that against us to point up weakness; then when we do make a demand, we’re too angry?

GOSH, I’m tired of being worked by these troglodytes. I mean, think about it. WE don’t stay up late at night plotting how to keep our women’s legs shut, our children’s minds empty and our bank accounts filled up to the brim with other peoples money! [I think that earns a grumpy Pfffft! today.]

We’ll start with the newest JibJab. Have a good weekend.

Jude

* Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act

Bush claims executive privilege in Valerie Plame Wilson case
James Gerstenzang, LA Times
7/16/08

The concept of executive privilege rings a special bell with readers of a certain age. It was relied on by the Richard M. Nixon White House seeking to shield documents and personnel from inquiring congressional committees and prosecutors during the Watergate investigations.

President Bush quietly claimed executive privilege on Tuesday, after Atty. Gen. Michael B. Mukasey requested the shield. Mukasey is seeking to avoid delivering to congressional investigators documents dealing with interviews of Vice President Dick Cheney and members of his staff regarding the unmasking of CIA covert agent Valerie Plame Wilson.

The House Oversight and Government Reform Committee has subpoenaed the accounts of the FBI interviews, as well as notes about President Bush’s 2003 State of the Union address in which he said Iraqi President Saddam Hussein was seeking uranium for a nuclear weapon — an assertion that proved wrong.

“The claim of executive privilege is ludicrous,” said the committee’s chairman, Rep. Henry A. Waxman (D-Beverly Hills).

On Wednesday, Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.), chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, joined the fray. He noted that the claim of executive privilege exempts the attorney general “from complying with a subpoena,” and wrote to Mukasey:

This executive privilege claim, and your justification for it, appears to turn the privilege on its head. The purpose of executive privilege is to encourage candid advice to the president, not to cover up what the vice president and White House staff say to investigating authorities when that information is requested in the course of congressional oversight. ++

Bush uses executive privilege to protect Mukasey from Plamegate subpoena
Amy Weiss, BuzzFlash
Wed, 07/16/2008

President Bush asserted executive privilege Tuesday to prevent Attorney General Michael Mukasey from providing transcripts of FBI interviews with Vice President Cheney and other documents pertaining to the leak of CIA Agent Valerie Plame’s identity.

Rep. Henry Waxman (D-CA), Chairman of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, had a vote scheduled for Wednesday to hold Mukasey in contempt for refusing to comply with the Committee’s subpoena. The Committee initially requested the FBI interviews of both President Bush and Vice President Cheney but then requested only Cheney’s as Waxman said it could not fall under executive privilege. When Waxman informed Mukasey of the contempt vote and urged him to comply before the vote took place he said:

The Vice President’s former chief of staff, I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby, told the FBI that it is “possible” that the Vice President instructed him to disseminate to the press information about the identity of Ms. Wilson…

The arguments you have raised for withholding the interview report are not tenable.

When the FBI interview with the Vice President was conducted, the Vice President knew that the information in the interview could be made public in a criminal trial and that there were no restrictions on Special Counsel Fitzgerald’s use of the interview…

Vice President Cheney’s attorneys have consistently maintained that he is not an “entity within the executive branch.” Whether this unusual claim is accurate or not, I am aware of no freestanding vice presidential communications privilege, let alone one that covers voluntary and unrestricted conversations with a special counsel investigating wrongdoing.

Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald has confirmed Waxman’s statements about the nature of privacy regarding Cheney’s interview. Waxman said he still believed Mukasey should be held in contempt and plans on holding a vote after his fellow committee members are briefed on the situation. +

Bush Hides ‘Plame-gate’ Testimony
Jason Leopold, ConsortiumNews
July 16, 2008

In the latest twist in the “Plame-gate” scandal, President George W. Bush has asserted executive privilege to block release of Vice President Dick Cheney’s interview with a special prosecutor about possible criminal violations in the leaking of a CIA officer’s covert identity.

Rep. Henry Waxman, chairman of the House Oversight Committee, promptly denounced the White House legal reasoning as “ludicrous,” noting that executive privilege covers advice that an aide gives the President, not responses to legal questions posed by a prosecutor about a possible crime.

Bush applied his broad assertion of executive privilege Wednesday at the request of Attorney General Michael Mukasey, who earlier had rebuffed congressional requests for interviews conducted with both Cheney and Bush about the disclosure of CIA officer Valerie Plame Wilson’s identity.

“I am greatly concerned about the chilling effect that compliance with the [House Oversight] Committee’s subpoena would have on future White House deliberations and White House cooperation with future Justice Department investigations,” Mukasey wrote in a letter to Bush on Tuesday.

Since becoming Attorney General in December 2007, Mukasey has balked at investigating crimes allegedly committed earlier by Bush administration officials – from torturing detainees to arranging political prosecutions – a “no-look-back” approach that drew criticism from the Senate Judiciary Committee.

In reaction to Bush’s assertion of executive privilege, Waxman said “we are not seeking access to the communications between the Vice President and the President. We are seeking access to the communications between the Vice President and FBI investigators.”

The California Democrat also noted that special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald told the committee in a July 3 letter that Cheney had met with the FBI voluntarily and knew his answers could be disclosed at a public trial.

“Mr. Fitzgerald told us that ‘there were no agreements, conditions and understandings’ that limited Mr. Fitzgerald’s use of the interview in any way,” Waxman said. “This unfounded assertion of executive privilege does not protect a principle; it protects a person.”

Waxman also accused Mukasey of applying a different standard for a Republican administration than was applied to its Democratic predecessors.

“Ten years ago,” Waxman said, “Attorney General Janet Reno, provided the Committee the FBI interviews of both President Clinton and Vice President Gore. Mr. Mukasey decided that a different rule should apply to Republican presidents than to Democratic presidents.”

Actually, the Bush administration’s resistance to releasing the responses from a President and a Vice President in a criminal proceeding contrasts with precedents for both parties, including the appearances of Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton before various special prosecutors.

Waxman’s committee was scheduled to vote Wednesday to hold Mukasey in contempt for refusing to comply with the Cheney subpoena. However, Waxman postponed the vote after Bush’s assertion of executive privilege.

Long-running Scandal

The “Plame-gate” affair dates back to 2003 when Valerie Plame Wilson’s husband, former U.S. Ambassador Joseph Wilson, went public with the fact that he had undertaken a fact-finding trip to Niger which had disproved President Bush’s claim that Iraq had sought to buy yellowcake uranium from the African nation.

As Wilson was going public with his knowledge of the Niger falsehood, Bush administration officials began leaking the fact that Wilson’s wife worked at the CIA and had a hand in arranging Wilson’s trip to Niger.

The leakers included Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage, White House political adviser Karl Rove and I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby, Cheney’s chief of staff.

Valerie Plame Wilson’s CIA employment was revealed in a July 14, 2003, article by right-wing columnist Robert Novak, effectively destroying her career. Two months later, a CIA complaint to the Justice Department sparked a criminal probe into the identity of the leakers.

Initially, Bush professed not to know anything about the matter, and several of his senior aides, including Rove and Libby, followed suit. However, it later became clear that Rove and Libby had a hand in the Plame leak and that Bush and Cheney had helped organize a campaign to disparage Wilson by giving critical information to friendly journalists.

In a statement Wednesday, Wilson said the “fact that the Attorney General is recommending the assertion of executive privilege reveals that this Department of Justice is as beholden to the White House as that run by former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales.”

In October 2005, Libby was indicted on charges of perjury and obstruction of justice. At Libby’s trial in 2007, his attorney, Theodore Wells, told jurors that Fitzgerald had tried to build a case of conspiracy against Cheney and Libby, and that the prosecution believed Libby may have lied to federal investigators and to a grand jury to protect Cheney.

“Now, I think the government, through its questions, really tried to put a cloud over Vice President Cheney,” Wells said.

Rebutting Wells, Fitzgerald told jurors: “You know what? [Wells] said something here that we’re trying to put a cloud on the Vice President. We’ll talk straight. There is a cloud over the Vice President. He sent Libby off to [meet with New York Times reporter] Judith Miller at the St. Regis Hotel. At that meeting - the two-hour meeting - the defendant talked about the wife [Plame]. We didn’t put that cloud there. That cloud remains because the defendant obstructed justice and lied about what happened.”

Libby also told the FBI that it was “possible” that Cheney instructed him to disseminate to the press information about Plame’s identity.

Cheney’s Notes

Copies of Cheney’s handwritten notes also appeared to implicate Bush in the leak case.

Cheney’s notes, which were introduced as evidence during Libby’s trial, called into question the truthfulness of Bush’s insistence that he had no prior knowledge of the sub rosa campaign against Wilson.

In an October 2003 note to then-press secretary Scott McClellan, Cheney demanded that the press office add Libby to a list of White House officials being cleared of any role in the Plame leak.

“Not going to protect one staffer + sacrifice the guy that was asked to stick his head in the meat grinder because of incompetence of others,” Cheney wrote. However, the note revealed that Cheney had originally written “this Pres” before crossing that out and using the passive tense, “that was.”

In other words, the original version suggested that Bush had asked Libby “to stick his head in the meat grinder,” an apparent reference to dealing with the Washington press corps.

In 2007, Libby was convicted of four counts of perjury and obstruction of justice and was given a 30-month jail sentence, but Bush commuted the sentence to spare Libby any jail time.

The still-secret interviews with Bush and Cheney took place in 2004.

According to sources knowledgeable about the Vice President’s interview, Cheney was specifically asked about conversations he had with senior aides, including Libby, and queried about whether he was aware of a campaign led by White House officials to leak Plame’s identity.

It is unknown how Cheney responded to those questions.

Waxman said Wednesday that the FBI interview report could be the “key document” that explains what Cheney’s role was in the leak.

“If there is one document that could pierce the cloud hanging over the Vice President, this is it,” Waxman said.

On June 24, 2004, Bush was interviewed by Fitzgerald for 70 minutes about the Plame leak. The only other member of the Bush team in the room during the meeting was Jim Sharp, the private lawyer whom Bush hired, according to then-press secretary McClellan.

“The President … was pleased to do his part to help the investigation move forward,” McClellan said. “No one wants to get to the bottom of this matter more than the President of the United States.”

However, with his invocation of executive privilege on Wednesday, Bush seems determined to make sure that the American public never gets to know what sits at the bottom of the “Plame-gate” scandal. ++

The Right to Know
NYT Editorial
July 17, 2008

In the face of near hysterical opposition from the Bush administration, the Senate Democratic leadership intends to take up a proposed shield law to provide journalists with limited protection against being compelled to reveal confidential sources in federal court. A similar measure won House approval last October in a bipartisan 398-to-21 landslide. But the White House, as ever, is playing the fear card, orchestrating a barrage of warnings that the law would “wreak havoc” on national security and “completely eviscerate” the ability to investigate terrorism.

Such hype and manipulation is predictable from an administration so obsessed with concealing its own abuses. The Senate must not be cowed. Only through robust reporting has the nation learned the hard lessons of President Bush’s illegal programs to eavesdrop on Americans and run torture prisons abroad.

Representative Mike Pence of Indiana, a Republican conservative, punctured the White House alarums with a blunt warning: “The only check on government power in real time is a free and independent press.” The Senate should show the same good sense and the same veto-proof resolve.

The bill has ample protection for law enforcement and national security while making sure journalists are not hounded into jail for protecting sources who point to government law-breaking and corruption.

The measure has been endorsed by the attorneys general of most of the 49 states that already extend qualified shield protections to journalists. Senators John McCain and Barack Obama have endorsed the bill. In the coming Senate debate, the two presidential contenders should lead the way in reassuring the nation that the next government will respect the value of openness. ++

Who Spread False Tales of Heroism?
NYT Editorial
July 16, 2008

Widespread — and, we suspect, self-induced — amnesia among high officials of the Bush administration and its Defense Department has made it impossible for House investigators to determine whether top officials helped spread two bogus stories of heroism used to bolster support for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

It now looks as if we may never know who kept stoking the impression that Cpl. Pat Tillman, an Army Ranger who became an icon of the administration’s war on terror, had been killed by the enemy in Afghanistan (in a battle that won him a questionable Silver Star) long after the military knew he had been killed accidentally by fire from American forces.

Nor are we apt to find out who promoted the false story that Pfc. Jessica Lynch had been captured in Iraq after a Rambo-like performance in which she emptied her weapon and was wounded in battle. In fact, she had been badly hurt in a vehicle accident during an ambush and was being well cared for by the Iraqis.

Although the administration made a show of cooperating with the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, Democratic investigators were frustrated by the professed inability of top officials to recall who knew what, and when. There was also a puzzling absence of documents that logic suggests should have existed. In some 1,500 pages of White House e-mail messages and other documents about Corporal Tillman, there is not a single mention of fratricide.

Republican staff members objected that the Democrats’ draft report drew unsupported negative inferences from faded memories and lack of e-mails. There was plenty of incompetence and negligence, the Republicans said, but no evidence that high officials manipulated information to build support for an unpopular war.

Corporal Tillman, who gave up a lucrative professional football career to join the Army, was welcomed with a personal letter from Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, who praised the “proud and patriotic thing you are doing.” Mr. Rumsfeld urged the Army to “keep our eye on” this world-class recruit.

But Mr. Rumsfeld’s own eye appears to have wandered when it comes to the circumstances of Corporal Tillman’s death. He testified that he couldn’t recall when he was told about possible fratricide, or by whom. Gen. Richard Myers, then the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said he couldn’t recall if he had told Mr. Rumsfeld or the White House.

Only after a widely publicized, patriotism-drenched memorial service implying that Corporal Tillman had died heroically, and only after it became clear that the true story was coming out, did the military hold a briefing, on the Saturday of Memorial Day weekend.

The military has conducted seven investigations and punished officers as high as a three-star general for their roles in the Tillman case.

Investigators had hoped to learn whether the White House or high Pentagon officials also misrepresented what happened. Sadly, they could not supply a definitive answer. ++

Administration Wanted Loyalist As Justice Dept. Legal Adviser
Top Officials Sought to Defend Interrogation Practices
Carrie Johnson, Washington Post
Thursday, July 17, 2008

Then-Attorney General John D. Ashcroft offered the White House a list of five candidates to lead the Justice Department Office of Legal Counsel in early 2003, but top administration officials summarily rejected them in favor of installing a loyalist who would provide the legal footing needed to continue coercive interrogation techniques and broadly interpret executive power, according to two former administration officials.

In an angry phone call hours after Ashcroft’s list reached the White House, President Bush’s chief of staff, Andrew H. Card Jr., quickly dismissed the candidates, all Republican lawyers with impeccable credentials, the sources said. He and White House counsel Alberto R. Gonzales insisted that Ashcroft promote John Yoo, a onetime OLC deputy who had worked closely with Gonzales and vice presidential adviser David S. Addington to draft memos supporting a controversial warrantless wiretapping plan and detainee questioning techniques.

Ashcroft’s refusal created a tense standoff and was the only time in the attorney general’s tenure that Bush was called upon to resolve a personnel dispute, the sources said.

The process led the White House team to introduce a compromise choice — Jack L. Goldsmith, a Defense Department lawyer then on leave from a teaching post at the University of Chicago Law School.

But Goldsmith’s tenure did not proceed as White House aides had expected. He went on to challenge the administration, rescinding or rewriting several of Yoo’s most sensitive memos after unearthing what he called numerous flaws.

The previously unreported disagreement between Ashcroft and the White House underscores the critical role that the once-obscure Office of Legal Counsel came to play in the administration’s efforts to devise a strategy to bolster its treatment of terrorism suspects after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. White House spokesman Tony Fratto had no comment yesterday.

It also offers new insight into Ashcroft’s frustrations in dealing with hard-line administration officials as they tried to use the Justice Department to defend controversial interrogation practices. Once seen by many as an extremist, Ashcroft, who left his post in 2005, is coming to be viewed as a voice of moderation on some of the most sensitive national security issues the nation faced after Sept. 11.

He is expected to address the incident today at a House Judiciary Committee hearing, the fifth in a series of explorations by Chairman John Conyers Jr. (D-Mich.) into the underpinnings of the government’s legal strategy for fighting terrorism.

In the spring of 2003, after Office of Legal Counsel chief Jay S. Bybee departed for a seat on a California appeals court, Ashcroft offered as possible replacements the names of Paul D. Clement, who later became the administration’s chief representative to the Supreme Court, and Brett M. Kavanaugh, who now sits on a federal appeals court in the District. Kavanaugh was then serving as a top aide to Gonzales.

He also recommended Adam G. Ciongoli, a onetime Supreme Court law clerk who counseled Ashcroft; M. Edward Whelan III, a longtime OLC deputy with Republican ties; and Daniel Levin, who went on to serve as acting chief of OLC and a legal adviser to the National Security Council.

But two sources who spoke on the condition of anonymity said that Card called to reject the names shortly after the list arrived at the White House.

“The message was that there was only one candidate they wanted, and that was John Yoo,” one source said.

Through a White House liaison, Ashcroft told Bush that Yoo was unacceptable. Former Justice officials have said that the attorney general resented Yoo’s close relationship with Addington and their consultations on sensitive legal advice.

Card and Gonzales “were absolutely determined to have a guy who was going to tell them what they wanted to hear,” said the other source.

The compromise selection of Goldsmith soon proved problematic when he took issue with Yoo’s opinions. Last year, he published an inside account of his stormy tenure at Justice and his disagreements with administration officials.

Since leaving office, Ashcroft, who now leads the Ashcroft Group, a consulting firm, has been tight-lipped about national security issues and internal disputes that occurred during his government service.

One famous episode that eventually broke into public view was a March 2004 showdown in which Gonzales and Card visited Ashcroft while he was in the hospital, in an apparent attempt to persuade him to reauthorize a warrantless eavesdropping program over the objections of others at Justice. The strong-arm tactics prompted resignation threats from Ashcroft, deputy James B. Comey, FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III and others.

Former Justice officials have spoken openly about disagreements with Yoo. They say he routinely avoided the chain of command at the department and held secret meetings with a small war council of lawyers who advocated for expansive presidential powers.

After he was passed over for the top job at OLC, Yoo left Justice in the summer of 2003. But he has staunchly defended his judgments on vexing questions that developed in the aftermath of terrorist strikes.

Yoo drafted secret legal briefs supporting the warrantless wiretapping program and the use of such strategies as sleep deprivation and simulated drowning in questioning terrorism suspects. The documents since have been likened to a “golden shield” that essentially offered legal immunity to contractors, CIA agents and others who interrogated prisoners in Iraq, Afghanistan and at the U.S. detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. ++

bonus

In sweet July, you can ignore the stupid stuff
GARRISON KEILLOR, BaltimoreSun
July 16, 2008

Summer nights! The fragrant dark descends, the night creatures chitter and chirrup, and we linger on the porch, a little wine in the glass, children coming and going, and we inhale the sweetness of life. In Pasadena, Calif., people are lined up outside a bank, hoping to get their money out before it goes belly-up, and Mr. McCain’s friend Mr. Gramm says we are a nation of whiners complaining about a recession that is only mental, but we are engulfed in summer and don’t notice. We’re sitting on the porch, inhaling the breeze from the trees, and we are American optimists.

We grew up with cheapo gasoline and our children won’t, and anything you hear about rolling back prices at the pump is just election-year blather. Supply is not rising to meet demand, what with China and India booming, and that drives the price up: You learned about this in the seventh grade. So our kids will have to deal with new realities, which they can manage better than we can, and when gas goes to seven and eight and 10 dollars a gallon, they’ll roll with it.

A fellow father on the porch says he’s taking his girls to Guatemala in July on a church mission, though it isn’t the Guatemalans he wants to minister to - he wants his children to spend a week in a village whose inhabitants live on a fraction of what we do and aren’t messing around with Facebook and YouTube so much because they have gardens to tend and chickens to butcher. He simply wants his girls to see this and know how privileged we Americans are. We got cheap bananas and coffee out of Guatemala by supporting a vicious regime that suppressed dissent, and for Chiquita Banana, brave people were tortured and shot, which is something that Adams and Jefferson didn’t foresee, and yet a band of Lutherans is welcome to visit a rural village and sleep on mats for a week and eat what the locals eat. What a beautiful world!

In the sweetness of July, the dumb cover of The New Yorker showing Barack in Muslim garb doesn’t matter, nor does Mr. McCain’s sweet moment when he was asked if it is fair that insurance will pay for Viagra and not for birth control pills and he stammered like a schoolboy. Politicians have powerful response reflexes that pick up on a key word in the question and play back a practiced response, but Mr. McCain blushed and winced, a lovely, vulnerable moment that in the languors of July went unappreciated.

On a lovely summer morning you read about the secretary of the Treasury’s plan to rescue Fannie and Freddie to the tune of $300 billion in federal loans. A classic Republican story - lax regulation, lavish salaries to executives, financial bungling, and rescue by the taxpayers. (Note to myself: If McCain is elected, buy gold ingots and install bars on the windows.) A whiner might wonder, where was the Current Occupant? Does the gentleman still come to the office on a regular basis? Does anybody tell him what’s going on, or is he still looking at picture books? Don’t matter. It’s July.

Same with the growling and grumbling on the left about Barack tacking to the center, adjusting positions, giving tough-love speeches to African-American audiences - what some people decry as cynical politics, some of us welcome as a sign of seriousness. Barack making overtures to evangelicals? It’s about time! Barack expressing his support of the Second Amendment? Bravo. I want to see my man excited by the prospect of victory and not shrink from it as so many Democrats do. They’ve read too many books about heroic dissenters, and it makes them nervous about being in too big a crowd.

The huge crowds that Barack draws are stunned by the fact that someone like him, with that interesting name, is - hang on now - a mainstream candidate for president of the United States and that he is, on close examination, One of Us. An earnest striver with a sense of humor. He is so much more One of Us than the privileged ne’er-do-well son in the White House, or poor Rush Limbaugh living alone with his cat in his Palm Beach compound with the cherubs on the ceiling just like at Versailles and the life-size oil portrait of himself. Imagine having to look at that as you come down to breakfast. ++

Media Coverage of Obama and McCain: “Nuts” or a “Disgrace”?
The Beltway press has become dysfunctional, failing to see news when it happens and hyping non-stories that require no real reporting.
Eric Boehlert, Media Matters for America
July 17, 2008

Journalism, by nature, is not difficult. It really isn’t. Most of the key attributes for solid reporting and editing come naturally to most people; fairness, hard work, and — most important — common sense.

News judgment, for instance, consists mostly of editors and producers using common sense to determine, based on the limited resources at hand, which breaking events and stories should be covered, and which ones can be set aside as less important.

During the slow summer months of a presidential campaign, that judgment and that common sense is usually even easier to put into practice because, traditionally, so little happens on the campaign trail with the candidates that what ought to be covered becomes self-evident.

Yet the Beltway press corps has become so borderline dysfunctional that even the simplest tasks, such as selecting which stories to cover — such as using common sense — now escape most of the major players at the mainstream news organizations.

Two events in recent days reaffirmed that sad conclusion, when entire news organizations opted to throw all sorts of time and attention at what was essentially a pointless campaign-related sideshow, while simultaneously displaying blanket indifference to what should have been the campaign story of the week, if not the month or possibly the entire summer.

Last week, after being hyped by Matt Drudge and Fox News, the Beltway press unanimously decided that Rev. Jesse Jackson’s whispered comments, picked up on a live television set mic, in which he expressed anger with Sen. Barack Obama and used some crude language to convey his sentiments (i.e. he wanted to cut off Obama’s “nuts”), represented a hugely important event. It was the most-covered campaign story of the week.

By contrast, McCain said at a campaign appearance in Denver on July 7 that the Social Security system as structured in America, in which younger people pay taxes to support the benefits of retirees, is an “absolute disgrace” — but his proclamation was mostly passed over as being irrelevant. The disconnect between the coverage was astounding.

As of Sunday morning, only 17 major metropolitan newspapers in America had reported on McCain’s “disgraceful” remark, in a total of 20 articles and columns, according to search of Nexis.

By contrast, more than 50 major U.S. dailies published a total of 126 articles and columns about the Jackson story. Several influential newspapers went back to the story ad nauseam. Combined, the Chicago Tribune, Chicago Sun-Times and Los Angeles Times published 39 different articles and columns that referenced the Jackson-Obama controversy.

By contrast, the combined number of stories and columns those three newspapers published that made reference to the McCain “disgrace” controversy? One.

On television, the disparity was even more striking. Again, as of Sunday morning there had been nearly 900 mentions of “Jesse Jackson” over the previous five days on the cable and networks news channels, according to a search of TVeyes.com.

On those same news outlets there had been less than 24 references to McCain’s “disgrace” comment. And not a single network newscast reported on the Social Security story. For reporters and pundits, “nuts” reigned over the “disgrace.” Even days after the Jackson story faded, I was still left scratching my head trying to figure out exactly what significance, if any, the episode represented. Yes, it was embarrassing for Jackson. Yes, Jackson is famous. Yes, it’s mildly amusing to hear what famous people like Jackson really think when they assume they cannot be overheard. But that doesn’t explain why Jackson grabbed approximately 900 television mentions last week, or why reporters spent an inordinate amount of time “analyzing” the repercussions from the “nuts” swipe.

I could see how it would’ve been a big deal if the person behind the hot mic had been a prominent Clinton supporter, for instance, and how the same type of crude language might have reflected a larger, possibly still-lingering rift between the two Democratic camps. Thus, the comments coming from that person would have had real political meaning.

But Jackson is a civil rights leader who often speaks for African-Americans — who, according to the polls, are among Obama’s most stalwart, unwavering supporters. I just didn’t understand how Jackson’s comments could be interpreted as representing a larger, widespread problem for the Obama campaign (i.e., actual news). Jackson, obviously speaking only for himself, said something nasty under his breath about the Democratic candidate whom he supports. That’s blockbuster news that has to be mentioned on TV 900 times in the span of just a few days?

It seems the only reasons the Jackson story got so much attention was that it was easy to cover (i.e., it required no real reporting), it included a juicy off-color quote, it did not involve any sort of public policy issue, and Matt Drudge said it was important.

Note that the exact opposite requirements were needed to address the McCain story: Some actual reporting had to be undertaken, the topic at hand was Social Security, no blue language was involved, and the Drudge Report completely ignored the “disgrace” episode.

It’s hard to downplay just how shocking McCain’s Social Security comments were. In fact, they were likely unprecedented for a modern American presidential campaign. It wasn’t just the stock GOP misinformation McCain spread in Denver about how Social Security was going bankrupt soon. (It’s not.) It was the proclamation by McCain that our pay-as-you-go Social Security itself was an “absolute disgrace.” Period.

As Josh Marshall put it at Talking Points Memo: “In other words, there’s no question that John McCain thinks that the problem with Social Security is the way it was designed at the very beginning, the way it was always designed to work.”

Does McCain think Medicare is a “disgrace” too? Our postal system, national parks, highways? What other landmark government-funded initiatives does McCain dismiss as a “disgrace”?

The campaign spin of his July 7 remarks was that McCain was referring to the fact that it’s a “disgrace” that Congress has not been able to solve future funding issues for Social Security. That represented an interesting and plausible take. But it matched virtually none of what McCain said in Denver. Or what he said on CNN that week: “[Younger people] pay their taxes and right now their taxes are going to pay the retirement of present-day retirees. That’s why it’s broken, that’s why we can fix it.”

Bloggers noted it over and over last week: John McCain, the presumptive Republican nominee for president, thinks that Social Security, widely regarded as the most effective government-run program in the history of the United States, is a “disgrace.”

What was so revealing was that not a single member of the campaign press caravan that heard McCain’s shocking swipe at Social Security immediately thought it was newsworthy.

Here’s just a partial list of print news outlets that had reporters covering McCain’s Denver event but that did not mention the “disgrace” comment — that did not consider it to be newsworthy in real time:

The Washington Times
Los Angeles Times
The Baltimore Sun
The Miami Herald
St. Louis Post-Dispatch
New York Post
Associated Press

Honestly, what’s the point of having an army of reporters follow McCain around the country if they cannot detect news when it happens, or are too timid to relay it when it does?

The Washington Post was also among the newspapers that sent a reporter to cover McCain’s Denver event and then ignored the “disgrace” story.

But how’s this for embarrassing? The day after McCain’s “disgrace” comment, the Post published a lengthy, A1 piece detailing the Social Security positions of Obama and McCain, but the newspaper did not include McCain’s shocking remarks. The Post did include a snippet of the Republican’s remarks from Denver the day before, but in an article about the candidates’ view of Social Security, not the fact that McCain thinks the whole system is a “disgrace.”

Days later, when the Post finally caught up with the “disgrace” comment, the piece included a second round of “disgrace” spin from McCain himself, who — asked at last to edify his remark — claimed he was referring to the fact that young people “are paying so much that they are paying into a system that they won’t receive benefits from on its present track that [it's] on, that’s the point.” McCain added that the Social Security trustees “have clearly stated it’s going to go bankrupt.”

That’s what he meant by “disgrace.”

The Post however, failed to inform readers that McCain’s claim that Social Security is “going to go bankrupt” and that young people won’t receive any Social Security benefits is, without question, false.

So to recap: At the Post, the paper failed to catch the “disgrace” comment when it was first made. The paper then published an entire piece about Social Security as a campaign issue and never included the “disgrace” comment. And when the Post belatedly addressed the “disgrace” remark, it allowed McCain to air unfettered lies about Social Security.

Wow.

That was also my reaction to reading the July 11 New York Times dispatch that quite belatedly addressed the McCain controversy. The Times story was startling because it presented McCain’s astounding Social Security remark right alongside a completely benign comment Obama made last week about American children needing to learn a second language. The Times presented the two quotes as being equal, as being examples of the kind of “controversies” that can arise when candidates veer off scripted remarks.

But the only reason the Obama remarks became a so-called “controversy” was when right-wing groups purposely misinterpreted the remarks to mean Obama was demanding that Americans be forced to learn Spanish.

By contrast, the McCain remarks were controversial because liberals online repeated and highlighted precisely what the candidate had said about Social Security.

Another “wow” moment came when reading the July 12-13 Wall Street Journal article that reviewed McCain’s week (from hell) on the campaign trail. And specifically, the piece detailed the missteps that occurred during Q&A sessions with voters. Yet the Journal made no mention of the fact that McCain told a voter that America’s Social Security system was an “absolute disgrace.”

That was not news, according to Rupert Murdoch’s newspaper, where common sense is clearly in short supply.

When some news organizations, shamed into action by the blogs, finally did get around to addressing the news story they completely (and willfully?) missed, reporters were careful to tiptoe around McCain’s unambiguous comment and generally act confused about what the candidate meant.

Online at USA Today, the newspaper’s blog posted an item under the headline, “Did McCain call Social Security a disgrace?” suggesting there was a deep mystery involved. The post basically provided a link to McCain’s televised remarks and left the rest to the readers: “Judge for yourself — did he misspeak?” Reporters at USA Today, apparently, were not able to make that call themselves.

Blogging at ABC News, Jake Tapper also opted for the gee-I’m-stumped headline approach: “What About Social Security Was McCain Calling a ‘Disgrace?’ ” Tapper replayed the McCain comments and included a round-up of reactions from liberal bloggers who jumped on the story and wondered why the candidate’s remark wasn’t being replayed in a cable television loop. Tapper himself made no attempt to analyze or interpret the McCain comments, to put them in context, or to suggest they were newsworthy or controversial; he simply contacted the campaign and re-printed its weak spin.

Over at Time.com, Justin Fox reviewed McCain’s whopper and announced, “This was more a case of McCain misspeaking or misunderstanding than having a secret plan to dismantle Social Security as we know it.”

The Los Angeles Times claimed that McCain “seemed to call Social Security a ‘disgrace’ “.

Dan Balz, taking part in a washingtonpost.com online chat session with readers, offered up his own cleansing interpretation: “I would suspect that the point [McCain] was trying to make in calling the system a disgrace is the fact that with fewer workers paying the cost of Social Security for more and more retirees, the system is out of balance.”

McCain’s Social Security words were unambiguous; he was absolutely clear. But the press, after belatedly acknowledging them, quickly and charitably concocted an escape hatch for the candidate — he misspoke! Or, this is what he probably meant to say.

Frankly, that’s just nuts. ++

2005: A prescient Obama addresses dissenting Democrats
Robin Elliot, SmirkingChimp
July 16, 2008

It is not uncommon to have Comment threads, here and at other blog sites, in which supposed Hillary supporters lash out against Obama supporters, and vice versa. I say “supposed” because many of us are suspicious that some, not all by any means, might be members of our lovely troll followings.

One of my regular readers, an Obama fan, linked me to an old Daily Kos post by Barack Obama himself. Smart guy. Long winded (it’s a long post), but smart, as well as wise:

How can we ask Republican senators to resist pressure from their right wing and vote against flawed appointees like John Bolton, if we engage in similar rhetoric against Democrats who dissent from our own party line? How can we expect Republican moderates who are concerned about the nation’s fiscal meltdown to ignore Grover Norquist’s threats if we make similar threats to those who buck our party orthodoxy? [...]

When we lash out at those who share our fundamental values because they have not met the criteria of every single item on our progressive “checklist,” then we are essentially preventing them from thinking in new ways about problems. We are tying them up in a straightjacket and forcing them into a conversation only with the converted. Beyond that, by applying such tests, we are hamstringing our ability to build a majority. We won’t be able to transform the country with such a polarized electorate. [...]

Let me be clear: I am not arguing that the Democrats should trim their sails and be more “centrist.” In fact, I think the whole “centrist” versus “liberal” labels that continue to characterize the debate within the Democratic Party misses the mark. Too often, the “centrist” label seems to mean compromise for compromise sake, whereas on issues like health care, energy, education and tackling poverty, I don’t think Democrats have been bold enough. But I do think that being bold involves more than just putting more money into existing programs and will instead require us to admit that some existing programs and policies don’t work very well. And further, it will require us to innovate and experiment with whatever ideas hold promise (including market- or faith-based ideas that originate from Republicans).

Our goal should be to stick to our guns on those core values that make this country great, show a spirit of flexibility and sustained attention that can achieve those goals, and try to create the sort of serious, adult, consensus around our problems that can admit Democrats, Republicans and Independents of good will. [...]

In fact, I would argue that the most powerful voices of change in the country, from Lincoln to King, have been those who can speak with the utmost conviction about the great issues of the day without ever belittling those who opposed them, and without denying the limits of their own perspectives.

In that spirit, let me end by saying I don’t pretend to have all the answers to the challenges we face, and I look forward to periodic conversations with all of you in the months and years to come. I trust that you will continue to let me and other Democrats know when you believe we are screwing up. And I, in turn, will always try and show you the respect and candor one owes his friends and allies.

I’ve said this before, and I’ll say it again. I do not agree with everything Obama has put out there, nor with a few of his Senate votes. However, I do think he’s a good candidate with superb skills and insights. He is light years better than John Sidney McAlito.

There is no such thing as a perfect candidate, just as there’s no such thing as a perfect mate, teacher, boss, or… person. People disagree, and ideally, will either do that civilly, or agree to disagree.

As I posted here, Russ Feingold voted for Ashcroft and Roberts, Wellstone and Dodd voted for the Patriot Act, and Hillary Clinton voted to authorize the Iraq War and for the Kyl-Lieberman amendment. I still respect all of them, and have supported most of their efforts. Not the ones I listed here, but as I said, nobody’s perfect.

Barack Obama is our nominee. At this point, despite my initial support of Dodd and Edwards (with whom I’ve occasionally disagreed), I wouldn’t have it any other way. ++

“So keep fightin’ for freedom and justice, beloveds, but don’t you forget to have fun doin’ it. Lord, let your laughter ring forth. Be outrageous, ridicule the fraidy-cats, rejoice in all the oddities that freedom can produce. And when you get through kickin’ ass and celebratin’ the sheer joy of a good fight, be sure to tell those who come after how much fun it was.”
~ Molly Ivins, 1944 - 2007

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