August 11-12, 2007
Aug 11 10:30 Disenchantment Growing? Aug 11 12:48 Break From Business As Usual? Aug 11 16:14 Transportation Alliance Weighs In On Transportation Aug 11 20:09 Same Woman, Same Response Aug 12 00:04 The First Shots Fired Aug 12 03:08 A Level Playing Field? Aug 12 09:34 Base Ain't Happy, Ain't No One Gonna Be Happy Aug 12 10:35 Markos: When We Leave Iraq Is "Semantics" Aug 12 14:16 Tabloid Journalism by Idiots
Prior Months: Jan Feb Mar Apr May Jun Jul
Prior Years: 2006
Disenchantment Growing?
Astute political observers had seen signs of dissatisfaction within the Nutroots movement ever since Congress didn't cut off funding for the Iraq War. Their dissatisfaction with the Democrat leadership isn't abating. In fact, it's growing. I offer as proof this article in the Nation magazine:
The voters put the Democrats in to end the war, and it's escalating. The Democrats voted the money for the surge and the money for the next $459.6 billion military budget. Their latest achievement was to provide enough votes in support of Bush to legalize warrantless wiretapping for "foreign suspects whose communications pass through the United States." Enough Democrats joined Republicans to make this a 227-183 victory for Bush. The Democrats control the House. Speaker Nancy Pelosi could have stopped the bill in its tracks if she'd wanted to. But she didn't. The Democrats' game is to go along with the White House agenda while stirring up dust storms to blind the base to their failure to bring the troops home or restore constitutional government.There's a low simmer to those words. Granted, this is the Nation, whose editorial board thinks that anyone even a tiny bit to the right of Ted Kennedy might not be liberal enough. They're known for their extremism. When I read that they're developing a laundry list like this, I know that their dissatisfaction is growing.
I don't believe that they won't vote Democrat in 2008. I suspect that they'll drag themselves to the polls by saying that the Democrats are the lesser of two evils.
Sometimes bad election results happen because too many people from a large voting bloc stay home. That's what happened last year when anti-amnesty conservatives stayed home. More often, though, bad election results happen because, though they get out and vote, they don't talk their neighbor or their co-worker of their relative into voting their way, too. I suspect that that's what will happen with Democrats in 2008.
The Nutroots' demands are pretty unrealistic. Why would a political party vote in lockstep against ending the NSA intercept program when the vast majority of voters (upwards of 70 percent) think that warrantless intercepts are just fine? That isn't political courage. That's political suicide.
Likewise, support is building for the surge. In fact, I've never bought into the notion that voters threw Republicans out because of the war. Polling showed that the biggest contributing factors behind the Republicans' 2006 defeat were their fiscal irresponsibility and their spinelessness on immigration. If the Nutroots wants to believe that the war was what drove Republicans from office, that's their right. It just doesn't square with the truth.
Just as the Democrats work tirelessly to demonstrate to the voters that it makes zero difference which party controls Congress, the political establishment forces all candidates for the presidential nomination to sever any compromising ties to sanity and common sense.TRANSLATION: Democrats were voted into the majority because they promised to be change agents. Instead, they've reverted to being the ultimate insider establishment party. There's too much deadwood for them to be forward thinking.
Last summer, I attended a fundraiser for Michele Bachmann. The special guest that day was then Speaker Dennis Hastert. After the luncheon, I had the chance to talk with Speaker Hastert. I told him that I thought it was a joke to believe that Democrats were change agents. His reply was that we shouldn't expect John Dingell, who's now been in the House for 26 terms, John Conyers, Charlie Rangel and John Murtha, who've each been in the House north of 40 years, of being anything more than establishment types. I agreed with Speaker Hastert then. I agree with his statements even more now.
Simply put, Democrats sold the voters a bill of goods. They've fallen far short of delivering on that bill of goods. That's why their approval rating is half that of President Bush's.
I'll predict this: If Democrats don't get alot of appealing things accomplished before this time next summer, they won't be the majority party in the House or Senate in 2009.
This paragraph summarizes what's happened recently:
A war people hate, Gitmo, Bush's police-state executive orders of July 17--the Democrats have signed the White House dance card on all of them. And guess what? Just as their poll numbers are going down, Bush's are going up, by five points in Gallup from early July. People are beginning to think the surge is working, courtesy of the New York Times.Ultimately, liberal activists will ask themselves this question:
So are we better or worse off since the Democrats won back Congress?How Democrats answer that question will play a big part in them retaining control of Congress. It isn't unreasonable to think that Democrats are headed for a season of disenchantment. Their electoral defeat would be well-deserved.
Posted Saturday, August 11, 2007 10:31 AM
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Break From Business As Usual?
That's what someone named T. Peter Ruane of the American Road and Transportation Builders Association says in this Strib article about Jim Oberstar's gas tax increase proposal. My question is simple: Where do they find these people to make such idiotic statements?
Here's a sampling of what Oberstar's allies are saying:
Some interested parties, such as T. Peter Ruane of the American Road and Transportation Builders Association, have lauded Oberstar's plan as a break from "business as usual."Fortunately, there are still sane people out there:
The American Society of Civil Engineers has also endorsed Oberstar's plan.
"The senior leaders of the Transportation Committee have been dreaming about raising the gas tax for years," said Keith Ashdown of Taxpayers for Common Sense, a nonprofit government watchdog group in Washington.Based on last week's KSTP/SurveyUSA poll, I'd say that Oberstar's chances of even getting this bill to President Bush's desk are slim. Likewise, I'd say that Mr. Ashdown and President Bush are on the side of the angels with this one.
Ashdown, who coined the phrase "Bridge to Nowhere" two years ago to deride the now-infamous $223 million bridge proposal for Alaska's barren Gravina Island, remains a skeptic. "I get really nervous when lawmakers say spend, spend, spend, and we'll all be OK," he said.
President Bush made things more difficult for Oberstar when he said that the Transportation committees had to do a much better job of prioritizing spending. Michael Brodkorb added to Oberstar's burden with this post that highlighted Oberstar's diverting $1.3 billion from the highway trust fund into bike trails.
If I had to bet, I'd wager that 80+ percent of Minnesotans and Americans would agree with Michael that the politicians must do a better job of prioritizing spending before asking to increase the gas tax.
I think that Oberstar thought this was a golden opportunity to increase taxes, which is what Democrats do reflexively. Like other Democrats, though, Oberstar misread the situation. He saw political opportunity where there was none. In fact, I'd say that the pendulum has started swinging in a different direction.
I'd say that there's a bigger appetite for a return to funding the basics. I'd bet that there's less appetite for funding things like LRT and bike trails because voters see those things as not being essential. I'd further suggest that people won't be receptive to building new highways via the earmark slush funds. They'll demand that politicians rebuild bridges. They'll demand that bridges and highways are safe. Bridges to nowhere will be frowned upon.
This shot across Oberstar's bow will tip the scales against increasing the gas tax:
"From my perspective, the way it seems to have worked is that each member on that committee gets to set his or her own priority first, and then whatever is left over is spent through a funding formula ," Bush said.OUCH. That'll leave tire marks on the committee members' backsides. Despite that shot, Oberstar will press forward:
Oberstar argues that his proposal would use the new money, about $25 billion over three years, only for the 6,175 structurally deficient bridges in the national highway system. It would specifically prohibit congressional or administration earmarks. "The president is sticking his head in the sand and hoping things will just work out," Oberstar said. "We need to move quickly to address these problems. They aren't going to fix themselves. The money isn't going to fall from the sky like manna from heaven."Notice to Rep. Oberstar: Increasing taxes while you shovel hundreds of millions of dollars into bike trails and bridges to nowhere is how these bridges got into such bad shape. The problem isn't that we aren't taxed enough; it's that politicians don't say no to the special interests' spending requests. Until politicians get back to basics, expect the public to oppose tax increases.
Posted Saturday, August 11, 2007 12:50 PM
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Transportation Alliance Weighs In On Transportation
An organization called the Transportation Alliance has weighed in on a variety of different transportation issues. Before I get into what they said, here's what I found out about the Transportation Alliance:
ADVOCACYThat's a different way of saying that they're transportation lobbyists. It isn't a stretch to say that they aren't concerned with tax increases because their focus is increasing spending.
The Minnesota Transportation Alliance:
- Lobbies for increased investments in Minnesota's transportation system
- Achieves results both in Washington D.C. and in St. Paul working with elected officials, staff and members of government agencies including the Departments of Transportation.
- Activates a broad-based membership to keep transportation among the top issues on Minnesota's political agenda.
- Hosts the Washington Fly-In - the most successful event of its kind, offering members meetings with Minnesota's Congressional Delegation and staff.
- Organizes the Minnesota Drive-In - an event that offers members the opportunity to discuss issues that affect the transportation industry with legislative leadership.
Now that you know what the Transportation Alliance thinks, let's hear what they think:
Rick Krueger, executive director of the Transportation Alliance, said the public will watch how policymakers such as Gov. Tim Pawlenty and legislators deal with the disaster: "If there is not a solution to this, it is going to be a pox on everybody's house. It would be ineptness beyond what the voters will tolerate."Mr. Krueger is under the illusion that taxpayers will turn on anyone that doesn't support increasing the state gas tax. Based on this KSTP-SurveyUSA poll, there's no reason to believe that there will be hell to pay for not increasing the gas tax. In fact, it's more likely that those that support increasing the gas tax will be hurt politically.
The reporter from the WC Trib obviously believes in increasing the gas tax:
The disaster focused attention on the need to increase road, bridge and transit funding.Actually, that's close to being accurate. Here's how I'd reword that sentence:
The disaster focused attention on the need to increase road and bridge funding. It also calls into question how politicians have prioritized transportation funding.
A generally accepted figure of what is needed to bring the state's transportation funding up to where it should be is $1.7 billion more a year. A bill legislators passed, but Pawlenty vetoed, earlier this year would have produced $700 million.That "generally accepted figure" is what DFL politicians, people like Rick Krueger and organizations like the Transportation Alliance have touted seemingly forever. That "generally accepted figure" isn't as accepted as this reporter would have you believe.
Posted Saturday, August 11, 2007 4:16 PM
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Same Woman, Same Response
Bryan Preston from HotAir.com called John Murtha's DC office. He recorded the call and has put it on YouTube. Here's Bryan's audiotaped 'conversation':
The woman in this audiotape who said that she doesn't "talk to the media" is the woman that I talked with Friday morning. I don't know her name but she isn't someone who should be answering the phone. In fact, she's doing more harm than good. She isn't Murtha's communications director. Murtha's communications director is a man named Matt Mazonkey.
Mazonkey won't talk to me either. I tried talking with him when Col. Ware first recommended that Gen. Mattis drop the charges against LCpl. Sharratt. I was told that he was in a meeting but that he'd call me back. Mr. Mazonkey hasn't called back, though I'm still willing to talk with him.
What I can't understand is she'd want to answer Murtha's phone. In light of the ongoing scandal, she must feel like the bloggers' punching bag. I don't think that she's used to hearing from people that question her. I'm betting that she's used to hearing from people asking for Murtha's help or to defense contractors who are looking for more earmarks.
The bad news for the Murtha camp is that the Haditha story went international:
A statement released by the Marines at their Camp Pendleton base in southern California revealed that three charges of unpremeditated murder against Lance Corporal Justin Sharratt had been withdrawn. The decision was announced in a written ruling from the commander Lieutenant General James Mattis and followed a recommendation from an investigator last month that the charges should be dropped.Now the entire world will know that Rep. Murtha, at best, was ill-informed. At worst, which I think is most likely, Murtha knew he wasn't telling the truth. Frankly, I can't be convinced that he's an honest person because this timeline shows the erratic nature of his replies.
"An independent Article 32 investigating officer has considered all the facts and determined that the evidence does not support a referral to court-martial for Lance Corporal Sharratt," Mattis wrote. "Based on my review of all the evidence in this case and considering the recommendation of the Article 32 officer, I have dismissed the charges."
It's now a statement of fact that Murtha's accusations were opinions, not facts. The facts are on Justin Sharratt's and Randy Stone's sides. It's fact that the investigating office, Lt. Col. Paul Ware, recommended that all charges be dropped. It's also fact that the man with the final say on whether LCpl. Sharratt would face a court martial, Lt. Gen. James Mattis, dropped the charges against both LCpl. Sharratt and Capt. Stone.
To refresh people's memories, here's the abridged version of Lt. Col. Ware's statement:
In a statement recommending the charges be dropped released last month, investigator Lieutenant Colonel Paul Ware said the prosecution charges were "unsupported by the independent evidence." "To believe the government version of facts is to disregard clear and convincing evidence to the contrary," Ware added.In other words, Murtha's information couldn't withstand the strict scrutiny of a trial. I wonder if Murtha's contacts, the "commanders", whom Murtha said "know what they're talking about", even exist. If they do, they need to be held accountable for leaking this erroneous information.
I suspect that they don't exist. If that's true, then Murtha hung these genuine American heroes out to dry based purely on political ambition. Based on other Murtha statements, it isn't likely that these "commanders" who allegedly gave him this information exist. We know from my timeline that the Marine Corps has verified that Gen. Hagee, then the Marine Corps commandant, briefed Rep. Murtha a week after Rep. Murtha initially accused the Haditha Marines of cold-blooded murder and of covering the incident up.
Technically speaking, Rep. Murtha is a public servant, though servant wouldn't be the first word I'd think of in a word association game. As such, he's accountable to us, first to the voters in his district, but also to Americans in general. After all, when he attempted to railroad these American heroes, he trampled on everyone's constitutional rights.
What We Know
- We know that John Murtha owes these Marines and their families a heartfelt apology.
- We know that John Murtha owes the Marine Corps an apology.
- Most importantly, we know that John Murtha's attempting to railroad these American heroes makes him unfit to serve another day in the United States House of Representatives.
Posted Saturday, August 11, 2007 8:10 PM
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The First Shots Fired
Tomorrow morning, Meet the Press's featured guests will be Rep. Harold Ford, the new chairman of the DLC, and Markos Moulitsas, the man behind the Daily Kos. Since its early days, the Netroots have looked scornfully at the DLC, thinking of it as selling out too often on progressive ideas. Based on this WSJ article by Kimberley Strassel, I'd say that the first shots have been fired:
"They'll find their way back to the middle. And if they don't, they won't win." So says a blunt Harold Ford Jr., chairman of the Democratic Leadership Council, of his party's current crop of presidential candidates. The question is just how many would-be Democratic presidents recognize the wisdom of his words.Based on who showed up to the YearlyKos convention vs. the DLC convention, the hands down winner is the Kos kids. To be sure, the Netroots are spoiling for a fight too:
The far left has found something to unify it: hatred of George W. Bush. Technology has given it the means to organize; what the right found in talk radio, liberals have found in the "netroots" Internet, from MoveOn.org to Daily Kos. Its activism has of late overshadowed groups like the DLC, which still believe in such creaky notions as ideas. Even Mr. Ford, who took over the DLC chairmanship in January, is willing to admit his outfit has been eclipsed: "The DLC and other moderate groups have struggled a bit to find not only our voice, but a way to be heard."While it's true that Kos and MoveOn.org had forced a bit of a choice, it isn't as ideologically pure as they'd like people to believe. After all, they got behind a number of the southern 'moderates' who they're now attacking for not being progressive enough. Still, the tensions between the two groups aren't imaginary. Kos currently has posted a reprint of an article first run in the National Journal. Here are the most important graphs of the reprinted article:
Making it harder is that this newly energized left is directing inordinate firepower on the DLC itself, in a crazed, purist drive to purge any group that would exert a moderating influence on the Democratic Party. New Republic scribe Noam Scheiber let loose a few weeks back in a New York Times hit piece, calling the DLC "radioactive" and "quaint," gloating that its "fading influence was good news for the entire party," and arguing that it should just get lost. Markos Moulitsas, chief flogger-blogger on the Daily Kos, this week slammed the DLC as a group that wants to "blur distinctions with the GOP," and reveling that Democrats had won in 2006 because liberals like himself had "forced" Americans to pick sides.
Here's what Moulitsas says about that comparison:"We are actually starting to build the kind of noise machine, to reward or beat up on people, that the Right has had for a long time," says Markos Moulitsas Zuniga, 33, the pugnacious founder of the popular blog Daily Kos. "We are training these politicians that they don't have to be afraid of taking courageous stands -- and that they will be rewarded or punished based on their behavior.". . . The Democratic Internet base cradling that trigger does not speak with one voice. But the emerging generation of online Democratic activists, many of them young and shaped by the bruising partisan conflicts of the past decade, seems united most by the belief that the quickest way for Democrats to regain power is to confront Bush more forcefully and to draw brighter lines of division between the Democratic Party and the GOP.Then let's see the DLC's approach:
...In strikingly similar language, Internet-generation Democratic activists from Moulitsas to Eli Pariser, the 24-year-old executive director of MoveOn's giant PAC, describe Clinton's effort to reorient the party toward capturing centrist voters as "obsolete" in a highly partisan era that demands, above all, united opposition against the GOP. Moulitsas and Pariser, like most other voices in the Internet activist base, want a Democratic Party focused more on increasing turnout among its partisans than on persuading moderate swing voters. Both, in other words, want a party that emulates Bush's political strategy more than Clinton's.[S]everal other centrist party strategists worry that the hyperpartisan turn-out-the-base strategy that many online activists demand won't work for Democrats, because polls consistently show that more Americans consider themselves conservative than liberal.
"We are more of a coalition party than they are," says Ed Kilgore, the policy director for the DLC. "If we put a gun to everybody's head in the country and make them pick sides, we're not likely to win."
Two things happened in 2006: we forced people to pick sides (by giving them a choice, imagine that!), and they overwhelmingly sides with us, the Democrats. But not just Democratic voters, which we grew (especially among young voters), but also independents.It's this tension that threatens to tear the Democratic Party into thousands of itsy bitsy little pieces. Check this graph out from Ms. Strassel's article:
We're proud Democrats, confident and secure in the belief that we're on the right side of history and Americans will side with us if we can only get our message out.
The DLC thinks this is a conservative country and we can only win if we blur distinctions with the GOP.
And there it is, in a nutshell.
The real target audience for these pronouncements is the Democratic presidential field, and the threat is clear: Touch the DLC, and you will be (to use a favorite, medieval Kos word) "punished." At least a few activists danced a victory lap, too, a few weeks back when every last Democratic candidate spurned the DLC's annual convention in Nashville, instead turning up at Mr. Moulitsas's YearlyKos event in Chicago.This is why Hillary has adopted so many different positions on Iraq. She knows that if she doesn't genuflect at the DailyKos altar, she'll lose those extremists' votes in November, 2008. She also knows that to apologize for voting for the war would sound the death knell on her candidacy. The logic is simple. If she won't stand up to the extremists in her party on the most important issue of our generation, then she isn't fit to be commander-in-chief.
Frankly, I think we're seeing signs of a serious split in the Democratic Party. Look at my post about the article in The Nation. That doesn't sound like a contented political party. There's other bits of information that tell the tale of discord. This post certainly has the sound of discontent to it:
Sen. Amy Klobuchar (DFL-MN) voted for the bill which would provide the Bush Administration carte blanche to wiretap to their fascist little heart's content. US Attorney General Alberto Gonzales will oversee the wiretapping. Thankfully, Klobuchar and the rest of the capitulators among the Democrats only approved this for 1 Friedman Unit.Like I've said elsewhere, Democrats pandered to the Nutroots last year for the steady stream of campaign contributions. I don't know that they agreed with them as often as the Nutroots would like to think. Democrats sold the Nutroots a bill of goods, then thought they could ignore them without consequence.
What I find so particularly infuriating and depressing is she doesn't get it that we sent her to Washington to hold the Bush Administration accountable . She even campaigned on it. The following is her excuse:The bill approved by the House and Senate this week provides a temporary six month extension of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. While I supported the extension as a temporary measure, I remain concerned about whether there are adequate safeguards in the bill, and will work with my colleagues to address these concerns in the next six months while we enact a permanent extension of FISA.First caving in to the Bush Administration on the Iraq War Supplemental and now this. Why won't she represent the majority of Minnesotans and oppose the worst Administration in the history of the United States. She's blown her two most important votes so far.
( MN Campaign Report)
The bad news for Pelosi Inc. is that MoveOn and Kos are thinking about running primary challengers against freshmen legislators that voted for the warrantless wiretap bill. Likewise, they'll likely run challengers against freshmen that voted for the Iraq supplemental.
This food fight has the potential to last awhile. Neither side is likely to back down because the stakes for their organizations are too high. Both sides are intense, too, which means this could get nasty. Which side wins is anyone's guess at this point.
The only thing that's certain is that Republicans will sit back and enjoy the show. At least until it's time to get fired up about our candidates.
Posted Sunday, August 12, 2007 12:05 AM
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A Level Playing Field?
In Salena Zito's latest column, an unnamed GOP operative working on a presidential campaign said something that should get every GOP activist up off their wallets. Here's what this unnamed GOP operative said:
"You have to give Dean credit...his 50-state strategy has leveled the playing field with the Republicans in terms of party organization."That's probably true but one thing Dean hasn't done is level the playing field in terms of ideas. A week ago, I was working the Benton County Republican booth at the Benton County Fair. One of the things that we did to attract traffic to the booth was to have a drawing for a flag which would be given away at the end of the fair.
Saturday night, a young man approached the booth and filled out the entry form. To be eligible, would-be contestants had to answer a question on which party they most closely associated themselves with. This young man told me he mostly identified with independents. Not content to just leave it go, I asked him if he thought that tax increases were a good thing.
His immediate response was that he didn't like the Minnesota legislature passing "$5.5 billion worth of tax increases." Mind you, I hadn't said anything about the size of the tax increases. I next asked where he lived. He said Willmar so I followed up by asking if Joe Gimse was his state senator. He is. I then asked who his state representative was. He said Al Juhnke. I told him I wasn't that impressed with Mr. Juhnke because he voted for each of the tax increases.
By the time the conversation ended, he was asking how he could get in touch with the Willmar area GOP.
The point of that anecdote is to remind people that we're still the party with a superior stand on the issues. We're still the party with the appealing agenda. The reality that we as activists need to spread is that we're confident in the power of our ideas.
When we stand on time-tested issues like national security, low taxes, sane judges and fiscal restraint, conservatism wins. Democrats' only chance at victory is in hiding what they believe in until after the elections. This time, that will be impossible. This time, they'll have records to defend.
Here in Minnesota, that means defending their votes for incomprehensible spending and tax increases. Nationally, that means Democrats defending their voting on few things that help working people in any appreciable way. From an issues standpoint, the Democrats' biggest accomplishment is something that the Netroots are furious about: the FISA reforms that codifies into law President Bush's NSA intel intercept program.
That isn't to say that we shouldn't be working to re-establishing our GOTV operations. If we want to retake the US House and Senate, keep the White House in GOP control and retake the Minnesota House, we'll need our year-round GOTV operation working at peak efficiency.
My point is that Democrats have a big weak spot, namely an unappealing agenda that won't sell in America's heartland or in the south. Here's an intriguing paragraph:
Every nominee of recent years competed in only 18 to 20 states, writing off the rest of the country. If the next candidate approaches his or her campaign in the same, predictable way, then you will see all of Dean's efforts go on a head-to-head collision course. But the Obama campaign's Alaska-to-Alabama grassroots focus is one that does fit well with Dean's view that you can't write off any part of the country.The reason that paragraph intrigues me is because Dean's feud with the Clintons is well-documented. I don't see this preventing Hillary from getting the nomination but I'll be watching to see how hard Dean is willing to work for Hillary. I also remember all the effort they made to undermine his candidacy for the DNC chairmanship. I don't think that this is an insignificant thing.
How well they work together might well determine the outcome of the elections.
Posted Sunday, August 12, 2007 3:09 AM
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Base Ain't Happy, Ain't No One Gonna Be Happy
I've written about how the Democrats have a potential problem brewing here and here. I just found another bit of proof that there's disenchantment Democrats will have to deal with. Check out these paragraphs in E.J. Dionne's column:
The episode was the culmination of a shameful era in which serious issues related to national security and civil liberties were debated in a climate of fear and intimidation, saturated by political calculation and the quest for short-term electoral advantage.Getting 200,000 negative emails on a single bill is extraordinary. I'm betting that's why Ms. Pelosi has instructed Silvestre Reyes and John Conyers to start writing new legislation to 'correct' this bill. She knows that they're in between the rock and a hard place on this issue.
Politically, Republicans won this round in two ways. They got the president the bill he wanted and, as a result, they created absolute fury in the Democratic base. Pelosi has received more than 200,000 e-mails of protest, according to an aide, for letting the bill go forward.
If they put too many strings to the bill, President Bush is sure to denounce them as tying his hands in surveilling terrorists. If Democrats give President Bush what he wants, which I think is likely, their political base will be mightily upset.
It's also important to remember that the base will be upset just because of this. That's before Gen. Petraeus testifies about the military progress being made in Iraq. After Gen. Petraeus testifies, Democrats will again be forced to give President Bush the money he needs to continue the surge. If that happens, the Netroots will be furious.
They'll see the capitulation on FISA and Iraq for what it is: the actions of a timid bunch. The nutters were expecting an end to the war and they expected the new congress to put the clamps on Alberto Gonzales. They will have failed on both of those items. Once that happens, publications like the Nation will repeat their question:
So are we better or worse off since the Democrats won back Congress?
I don't think Ms. Pelosi will want to hear the nutters' reply.
Posted Sunday, August 12, 2007 9:35 AM
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Markos: When We Leave Iraq Is "Semantics"
That's just one of the boneheaded things that Markos Moulitsas said in his appearance alongside Harold Ford, Jr. on Meet the Press. I don't have the transcript but here's a close paraphrase of what he said:
Whether we leave Iraq in 3 months, in 6 months or a year, it's just a matter of semantics.David Gregory, sitting in for Tim Russert, didn't let that go, asking him how he could say that it's just a matter of semantics. That led to another Moulitsas misstep. In explaining his statement, he said that, as a former military logistics man, he knew that they couldn't leave immediately. He did say that (again, another paraphrase) "We all would like it if we could get out now."
That's a telling statement if ever I heard one. With Dick Durbin, Carl Levin and other pacifist Democrats talking last week about the military progress being made, voting for unilateral defeat in Iraq is political suicide. House Majority Whip James Clyburn echoed those thoughts last week:
"I think there would be enough support in that group to want to stay the course and if the Republicans were to stay united as they have been, then it would be a problem for us," Clyburn said. "We, by and large, would be wise to wait on the report."With support for the war increasing, Moulitsas is putting himself on the wrong side of this issue. What he essentially said was that winning in Iraq wasn't a priority for him. Let's hope Michelle Malkin heard this and is capturing it on film forever.
Markos made another misstep, in my opinion, when he tried blaming John Breaux's writing the Bush tax cuts with the I-35 bridge collapse. He said that the bridge's collapse wasn't shocking when you cut taxes. He essentially said that cutting taxes meant not doing the necessary repairs of our nation's infrastructure.
That's utter nonsense.
Michael's post about Jim Oberstar is a perfect example of why Moulitsas' statement rings hollow:
"Oberstar wrote the legislation in 1991 that first allowed Highway Trust Funds to flow to states for bike trails. Until then, the 50 states combined for the past 20 years had spent only $40 million on bike trails.Even more damning than Michael's highlighting the wasteful spending that's typical of transportation bills was this quote from President Bush's news conference:
The 1991 law required each state to have a bicycle coordinator, funded from the Highway Trust Fund, to have a state bicycling plan, and would be given the authority to use abandoned railway grade beds as bicycle, pedestrian and in-line skating trails. In the next six years, $1.3 billion was invested in bicycling facilities nationwide, Oberstar, an avid biker, said."
"From my perspective, the way it seems to have worked is that each member on that committee gets to set his or her own priority first, and then whatever is left over is spent through a funding formula ," Bush said.In other words, the Bush tax cuts didn't have anything to do with the bridge collapse. Moulitsas is using the tragedy in Minneapolis for political posturing, which is disgusting and reprehensible. There will be politics associated with part of the solution to this disaster. I'm not decrying that. That's just part of the process.
There is a difference, though, between using this tragedy for political posturing and setting sensible policy as part of the political process. Politicians who openly attempt to gain politically will pay a price. Politicians who simply use the political process to set smart public policy will be rewarded.
Overall, I'd say that it'd be wise for Moulitsas to avoid making policy statements, especially if he's on TV. He committed several gaffes this morning. In Beltway politics, a gaffe is defined as inadvertently saying what you really think. That's what Moulitsas did this morning. The end result wasn't pretty.
Posted Sunday, August 12, 2007 10:35 AM
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Tabloid Journalism by Idiots
I've seen some monuments to literary stupidity in my life but this Washington Post article rates as the Taj Mahal of idiotic journalism. Here's a taste of what passes for journalism these days:
In the swampy soup of hopefuls for the 2008 presidential election, there is a man with a funny name. (No, not that one.)If you think that's bad writing, and you should, it gets worse:
We're thinking of the one named Fred (Thompson).
Say it out loud. Do it. Fred. Fred. In the South, Fray-ud.
Fur-red-duh.
It has the tonal quality of something being dropped on the floor, something heavy and damp-ish.
Waterlogged paper towel.
Fred.
The phonetics of the name seem integral to its image problem: On Urbandictionary.com, a "Fred" is defined as "a person who does stupid, annoying, or idiotic things" (Fred Flintstone, Fred Mertz). The best-case descriptors a Fred can hope for are terms like well-intentioned, predictable, benign (Fred Rogers).
Recent media accounts of the guy (who has not yet officially announced his candidacy) would have us believe that being a Fred means Law & Orderly sex-in-a-suit, a name exuding such flypaper pheromones that people find themselves helplessly drawn in. Chris Matthews dedicated three minutes of a recent "Hardball" to exploring Thompson's sex appeal. London's Sunday Times last month interviewed a bevy of his ex-girlfriends, all of whom have drunk the Fred-Aid: "He's majestic," said country singer/Fredophile Lorrie Morgan. "Women love a soft place to lay and a strong pair of hands to hold us."Granted that this isn't on the newspaper's front page but this is utter drivel. For the record, it's on page D1. Still, this isn't the sort of thing that an editor should let into a newspaper. If this meets the Washington Post's journalistic standards, then they need to return to the drawing board and come up with a better plan because this type of journalism won't sell.
Fred?
Why? Is there something about the craggy actor we're not getting? Maybe he's ugly-sexy, like Mick Jagger?
Or maybe the name Fred is etymologically close to obviously sexy names like Dirk, Clint, James?
At a time when their paper isn't doing well, the editors must exercise tighter control over what their columnists write. Letting this stuff into a newspaper diminishes people's opinions of that newspaper. That was possibly acceptable at some time but they don't have a big margin for error anymore.
If they want to be taken seriously, they need to eliminate this type of column. Until editors tighten up the requirements and standards, newspapers won't be taken seriously.
I'd describe this as tabloid journalism written by egotists and idiots. It doesn't get much worse than that.
Posted Sunday, August 12, 2007 2:16 PM
Comment 1 by Saul Wall at 12-Aug-07 08:16 PM
"Letting this stuff into a newspaper diminishes people's opinions of that newspaper."
I think that for anyone who would think about it that ship has sailed for the entire journalism industry. Everyone else is just giggling that they are dissing Fred. It might be time to track down a few good elementary school newspapers and take them international.
Comment 2 by David at 13-Aug-07 01:24 AM
And leftists like to complain about the Washington Times!
