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You are here: Home / Open Threads / Early Morning Open Thread

Early Morning Open Thread

by Anne Laurie|  August 4, 20105:39 am| 12 Comments

This post is in: Open Threads, Good News For Conservatives, Schadenfreude

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Max Read at Gawker points out that the Pentagon is holding onto its grudge against Michael Hastings:

Defense Department spokesman Col. David Lapan told reporters that freelance writer Michael Hastings was rebuffed when he asked to accompany, or “embed,” with American forces next month.
__
The rejection came as the Pentagon ramped up an internal investigation into the circumstances behind some of the most salacious material Hastings used in his article in Rolling Stone…
__
The inspector general, an independent investigator, is considering whether officers were insubordinate and how far up the chain of command responsibility for decisions involving the Hastings interviews extended, officials said. Defense officials outlined the investigation on condition of anonymity because it is ongoing and has reached no conclusions.
[…] __
Hastings did not immediately reply to requests for comment Tuesday. He has said he did nothing wrong in chronicling the banter, profanity and jocular insults among McChrystal’s inner circle. In Twitter tweet late Tuesday, Hastings said he refused to participate in the army’s IG investigation.

In more cheerful news, Andy Kroll at Mother Jones reports that Pete Hoekstra, of “Hoekstroika” infamy, has lost his primary bid to become Governor of Michigan to venture capitalist/former CEO of Gateway Computers Rick Snyder. However pessimiticly one regards the prospect of another plutocrat buying his way into politics, anything that puts a roadblock in the path of Hoekstra’s ambitions cannot be a totally bad thing.

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12Comments

  1. 1.

    asiangrrlMN

    August 4, 2010 at 5:47 am

    Well, Hastings can’t be surprised that the Pentagon didn’t want him embedded with the troops. I say this as someone who backs him for writing what he did.

    As for Hoekstra, that is good news, indeed. I guess. Something like that. I’m just brushing up on my Taiwanese and Mandarin (I don’t know much in either language, actually) in case I get repatriated to Taiwan.

  2. 2.

    The undergroun typo stickler

    August 4, 2010 at 6:49 am

    However pessimiticly one regards the prospect

    You are not pessimistic enough!

    ETA: Shot myself in the foot!

  3. 3.

    roshan

    August 4, 2010 at 7:17 am

    And so it starts:

    Missouri voters on Tuesday overwhelmingly rejected a federal mandate to purchase health insurance, rebuking President Barack Obama’s administration and giving Republicans their first political victory in a national campaign to overturn the controversial health care law passed by Congress in March.

  4. 4.

    tom

    August 4, 2010 at 9:14 am

    Snyder is actually a sane Republican. I know quite a few people (like me) who normally vote in the Democratic primary voting instead for Snyder in the Republican one reasoning that if we are going to hav an R governor, he’s the one to have.

  5. 5.

    Sheila

    August 4, 2010 at 10:00 am

    In regard to the Hastings news, did anyone expect anything else?

  6. 6.

    Bnut

    August 4, 2010 at 10:09 am

    I don’t know if anyone reads Michael Yon, but he got the big green weenie for the same reason, getting a couple of flag officers rung up. His positions on conflict are not quit in line with most people here, but in terms of unvarnished truth there were few better.

  7. 7.

    ppcli

    August 4, 2010 at 10:14 am

    @tom:
    I felt the same way. I didn’t vote for Snyder because there were local races where I wanted to vote on the Democratic side, but I was glad that Snyder won. Some people I trust who worked with him on various projects speak well of him.

    I might add that it’s not just Hoekstra that lost, but also former attorney general Cox. Cox’s signal moment for me was after the ballot initiative against same-sex marriage. The question was crafted quite broadly, and many people pointed out that if passed it could also prohibit state organizations from offering health benefits to same-sex couples. Naturally these concerns were pooh-poohed by the other side: “this is about marriage, not benefits”, “stop with the scare tactics”, etc.

    Cox, who had been silent about his interpretation of the initiative throughout the campaign didn’t wait more than a few days after the initiative passed to take the University of Michigan to court to stop them from offering same-sex health benefits. The speed with which the suit was launched made it clear that the groundwork had been prepared long before. That lying douchebag can’t lose often enough for my liking.

  8. 8.

    tom

    August 4, 2010 at 11:55 am

    @ppcli: Agree with you on Cox. I have no use for Bouchard either. He proposed an Arizona-style immigration law, as if illegal immigration is the state’s major problem.

  9. 9.

    Xopher

    August 4, 2010 at 1:21 pm

    Hastings must have known this would be the price of writing what he did. This is usually the tradeoff between being a regular beat reporter and being a one-shot freelancer: beat reporters don’t rat people out to their bosses, because they want to stay on the beat; freelancers don’t care about that and write whatever they want. That’s why you don’t talk to freelance journalists if you can possibly avoid it, which is where the people he quotes went wrong.

    I’m not saying he was wrong to write as he did (though I have some distaste for ratting people out to their bosses), just that he knew-or-should-have-known what the consequences would be. He should pay the price with good grace, and not whine.

  10. 10.

    Uncle Clarence Thomas

    August 4, 2010 at 3:18 pm

    I don’t understand why they made Obama do this to Hastings.

  11. 11.

    Moses2317

    August 4, 2010 at 9:06 pm

    I am all for celebrating the defeat of Hoekstra. But let’s also trumpet the fact that a proud Democrat that can communicate the progressive message with passion – Lansing Mayor Verg Bernero – won the Democratic nomination for Governor. For example, check out this video of Mr. Bernero tearing into a Fox News anchor.

    We need to fire up the progressive base for the November election, and Bernero is the kind of candidate that can do so. Let’s make sure folks know about Bernero and do what we can to support his election.

  12. 12.

    Splendid One

    August 5, 2010 at 2:19 pm

    Living in Michigan, I considered voting Republican in the primary this week, so I could help Snyder fend off the two wing nuts he was running against. I didn’t. Thank goodness a lot of other people did. Completely agree: Anything that derails “Hater Hoekstra” is a good thing.

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