Chalk one up for Atrios. There is literally nothing that a rightwinger can say that will sever him from the popular media feeding trough.
Hacktacular
John Solomon is 0-for-1 at his new gig at the Washington Post, having spun an utterly ordinary house sale by John Edwards (trial lawyer!) into a breathless page 1 story. Even by Solomon standards the story was surprisingly weak – Edwards sold the house at less than the market price value, it would have been illegal to refuse any legitimate buyer and every element of disclosure met current standards. So what was Solomon’s point exactly? Apparently John Edwards owns an expensive home (trial lawyer!) and briefly came into contact with somebody unions won’t like.
It was fun to watch bloggers correct Solomon’s vapid reporting, but only up to a point. Solomon’s old bosses at the AP regarded any buzz as good buzz, which makes the act of criticism (constructive or otherwise) kind of pointless. Will the WaPo care that their new muckraker’s very first page 1 assignment turned out to be a vapid, content-free turkey?
Surprisingly, yes. For Debbie Howell to side with the unwashed barbarians of internettia over her own man suggests that Solomon’s colleagues are not happy indeed.
Not My Bag, Baby
Tough times for the GOP:
Senate Republicans, scrambling to head off GOP defections to a resolution opposing President Bush’s war policy, are considering their own resolution demanding benchmarks to measure progress in Iraq and possibly a new diplomatic effort to end the war, senators said yesterday.
Senators from both parties began preparing for a showdown with President Bush over his plan to increase troop levels in Iraq, although that showdown may be pushed back to the week of Feb. 5. Two rival camps opposed to the additional troop deployments continued to dicker over the wording of a resolution expressing the Senate’s opposition, while GOP leaders and White House loyalists plotted a response.
Evidently the party has become fractured, rudderless and terrified of the war from which they can’t seem to get unstuck. “Scared spitless,” in the words of Sen. John Thune. For some reason I keep thinking of Austin Powers.
It’s hard to feel sorry for the GOP. They fought like hell to own this war and fought even harder to stifle adult supervision. Given how Rove’s Republicans cynically manipulated every aspect of this war for political gain it seems perfectly, inescapably appropriate to watch them suffer exactly the fate that they hoped to inflict on the hated Democrat party.
Reflect a bit more on the inept decisionmaking that led to the GOP’s sorry state. I can understand that many on the right thought that war was a good idea, even necessary. I can also get why a particularly craven group of leaders would try to tie the war to their own political fate. Hey, if everything came out as advertised (by, cough, Chalabi) the GOP-as-Churchill and Dems-as-Chamberlain narrative practically writes itself. Politicizing war is revolting, craven, practically subhuman, but a respectable decision when it comes to looking out for your tribe.
What baffles me is that once the GOP owned the war lock stock and barrel, someone (say, Pat Roberts) thought it would be a good idea to kill off the faintest hint of oversight. In free market terms that’s the same as a business sinking its resources and reputation into a project and then taking off to Maui for a few months while the contractor does his thing unsupervised. That suggests an awful lot of confidence in the contractor, n’est-ce pas? It suggests that Republicans considered their leader practically infallible, incapable of the quotidian failures that characterize ordinary humans, not unlike the leader cult barbs (Dear Leader etc) half-jokingly brought up by lefties like me. After all, assuming that the GOP Congress were rational beings with some vestigial interest in their political future, what other explanation makes any sense?
In fact, the endless Christmas morning that is the Scooter Libby trial shows that top ranks might have acted in their own interest if not for relentless pressure from the office of Dick Cheney. That provides an excuse of sorts for the Congressional leadership, after all Cheney has shot people for less. What about the rest of the party? It must have occurred to the rank-and file rightwingers that hitching their wagon to a war and then killing accountability was a recipe for trouble. Or maybe it didn’t occur to them at all. For Republicans who don’t have darth Cheney as an alibi it seems to me that we’re right back to either an infallible Leader complex or else not enough wattage to see the conflict.
The Libby schadenfreud-a-rama has left me feeling charitable, so here’s some free advice for the next generation of Republicans. Responsible oversight does more than just uncover occasional political embarrassments. It also makes sure that the things you try to do actually work. That helps because when you try something that fails you look bad. Keep that in mind while you’re trying to stem the hemorrhage in ’08.
Ya Gotta Be Kidding Me, Chuck
This made me laugh out loud:
His Republican colleagues regard him warily. The White House barely speaks to him. He is reviled by his party’s conservative base.
Looks as though Sen. Chuck Hagel is on a roll.
Both parties have their Iraq war contrarians. For the Democrats, it is Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman of Connecticut, whose steadfast support for President Bush nearly cost him his seat last year and forced him to run as an independent. The Republican version is Hagel, a career maverick from Nebraska and the only GOP senator to call for an end to the war.
Hagel’s sharp criticism of the war has placed him squarely in the mainstream of public opinion on Iraq and revived long-dormant speculation about his presidential ambitions. Hagel has been eclipsed by Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), a leading contender for his party’s presidential nomination who has vigorously endorsed the president’s war policies.
Chuck Hagel, if he ran, would not win one primary. Hell, he couldn’t even beat McCain in South Carolina, and the base hates McCain for a number of reasons (not to mention half of South Carolina still thinks he has a black baby).
One of the most amusing (depressing) aspects of the GOP’s descent into lunacy (I can say that now that I am officially a moonbat! Do I get a certificate in the mail, Misha?) the past few years has been listening to the rhetoric of the 28%er’s, who faced with the fact that their ideas (and that is a charitable name for the babble they spew) are rejected by the majority of the country and a sizable portion of the party, are now focussed on purges within the party. I was only half-joking yesterday when I wrote the silly pledge should actually read “Follow Bush over a cliff or we will make sure that we are a Southern regional religionist party with 12 seats in the Senate!” That is what some of them want. Enter Dean Barnett:
2) What is the purpose of the pledge?
It is not a loyalty oath. Nothing like it. The pledge rests on the premise that Republicans who are supporting the anti-surge resolution are doing so as a craven political play. The pledge is merely a way of showing them that it is an extremely poor political play. And since political advantage is the coin of their realm, we think it may serve to change their hearts and minds.
3) But isn’t it somehow unseemly to demand that these people sign a petition to show their loyalty to the White House?
Again, as is so often the case, you completely miss the point. We’re not asking the Senators to sign the pledge. We’re asking people who will move any Republican who votes for the resolution to the head of their s**t list to sign the petition. The pledge is merely a way for the grassroots to communicate their feelings to the Republican Party.
All well and good, but bullshit. The point of the pledge is to stop Senators from being Senators, and continue to be lackeys for this administration. The point is to stifle any dissent. What would Barnett do if they cut off funding from the troops? Aside from having an aneurysm, they would immediately fire up the stab-in-the back machine they have been warming up for months, and then work to get all these folks unelected anyway.
But cutting off funding for the troops would be irresponsible. We all know that. So what is one to do, as a Senator, if you deeply oppose this piddling surge because your recognize the futility and underwhelming nature of it, yet do not want to fully cut off the troops. Particularly when you are dealing with an extremely obstinate President and an administration in full-fledged spin mode? An administration who has screwed up EVERYTHING they have touched over the course of the past few years, and who listens to no one?
You do the only thing you can. You signal your displeasure with the current plan through a non-binding resolution. And EVEN that is too much for the authoritarians on the right, because any dissent from the Decider is not to be had. Hell, his choice of personnel was just unanimously confirmed, and even THAT pissed off the knuckledraggers:
General David Petraeus has been confirmed by the Senate. He received 81 votes. No, he didn’t get 19 ‘no’ votes. Senator Tim Johnson is in the hospital, still. But 18 others just did not bother to show up and vote.
The United States Senate cares so much about retreating from the battlefield that we’re going round and round over a negotiated non-binding surrender resolution. They care so little about prosecuting the war that 18 of them could not be bothered to show up and cast a vote for or against the general who will lead our soldiers in Iraq — for or against the general who said he needs more troops to get the job done.
Not only are they pissed that Petraeus didn’t get all 100 votes, but they are snippy because people had the unmitigated gall to vote for the non-binding resolution saying the current surge is a bad idea, but for Petraeus:
John Warner is reportedly authoring a resolution that essentially mirrors the recommendations of the bipartisanly disregarded Iraq Study Group report while disapproving of the ongoing increase of US troops in Iraq.
Yet during Petraeus’ confirmation hearing he was unabashedly in favor of the troop surge ordered by the President.
The dichotomy here is simply bonejarring. On the one hand a clear majority of this panel will vote that sending additional troops to Iraq is not in the national interest. This is an extremely strong statement, one that approaches alleging treason on the part of the president and which would clearly constitute an impeachable offense. On the other hand the panel voted unanimously to confirm as military commander in Iraq a man who supports the deployment of those troops to Iraq. In essence, the Senate Armed Services Committee confirmed to four-star rank and to the command of the most critical military effort of the United States a man who is openly not acting in the best interests of the nation.
Senators possessing even a modicum of integrity would have the moral obligation to vote against David Petraeus if for no other reason than to force the president to send a nominee who does not support the troop surge. It they are truly serious about their beliefs it is hard to see how they could act otherwise.
Make sure you read the comments in that last link. The commenters patiently tried, repeatedly, to explain to Streiff that it is possible to signal your displeasure with the current surge plan while still believing a President has a right to his personnel, but he was having none of it. Nuance, as we know, is for pussies.
And back we go to Chuck Hagel, who, as you see, has no chance at ever being President. He has committed the greatest sin- he thought for himself. Hugh Hewitt, Dean Barnett, and Red State will make sure he is punished.
The Credibility Gap
Via Protein Wisdom, this NY Sun piece titled “Turnaround in Baghdad”:
What needs to be understood is the central role that Al Qaeda — or more accurately its successor organization, a group called the Islamic State of Iraq — is playing on these fronts and the diminishing role of all the other insurgent groups.
The wider Sunni insurgency — the groups beyond Al Qaeda — is being slowly, and surely, defeated. The average insurgent today feels demoralized, disillusioned, and hunted. Those who have not been captured yet are opting for a quieter life outside of Iraq. Al Qaeda continues to grow for the time being as it cannibalizes the other insurgent groups and absorbs their most radical and hardcore fringes into its fold. The Baathists, who had been critical in spurring the initial insurgency, are becoming less and less relevant, and are drifting without a clear purpose following the hanging of their idol, Saddam Hussein. Rounding out this changing landscape is that Al Qaeda itself is getting a serious beating as the Americans improve in intelligence gathering and partner with more reliable Iraqi forces.
Hooray. Huzzah! Yippee! We’ve turned another corner!
Greats news, if you can believe it. Except as much as I would like to, I don’t. Hilzoy, writing about the SOTU address the other day, nailed it:
It was, instead, a speech that might have impressed me if I had just beamed in from Jupiter. It was well-written and well-delivered. The beginning, about Nancy Pelosi, was quite gracious. Even the parts about earmark reform and energy policy might have impressed me if I didn’t know anything about Bush’s record on these issues.
The problem, of course, is that I do know about Bush’s record. Bush is in a situation in which no speech he can give can really do the job. He has lost the confidence of the American people. People don’t really trust him at all. He says that he has a plan to win the war; he has said that any number of times before. He says he’s concerned about energy independence; Jim Webb claims that this is the seventh time Bush has mentioned energy independence in a state of the union message, and while I haven’t gone back and checked, that sounds right.
When no one trusts you, more words will not alter that fact. You need to win their trust back, and no speech on earth can do that. You need action. And nothing I’ve seen from Bush to date suggests that he has the wisdom and leadership to get it right in Iraq, or the bare minimum of interest needed to do something good in domestic policy.
And such it is with Iraq, the surge supporters, and this administration. I would love to believe that we really are ‘winning’ or making progress, but there is ample evidence that we are not, and the word of the surge supporters and this administration is no good.
How many milestones have we passed? How many corners have we turned? How many insurgent #2’s have we killed (so many that the administration no longer refers them to the #2 man, but instead call them ‘top aides’)? How many times were we told that Padilla was the greatest threat to mankind, only to watch an administration now afraid to even try him without venue shopping. How many times were we told that extra-legal surveillance was absolutely necessary, only to learn last week it really isn’t. How many times were we told the abuses at Abu Gharaib and elsewhere was the work of a few bad apples, only to learn that torture is the policy of this administration. Hell, they even went farther and legalized it after they couldn’t deny it anymore. How many times have we been told everything is great in Iraq and that it is only the liberal media and biased statistics that are misleading us?
I would love for this article to be true. Hell, if it is, let’s declare victory and GTFO now. But simple common sense and the mountain of contrary evidence keeps me from believing we are close to the elusive and ill-defined victory we all want.
And oh, by the way. The author of that NY Sun piece is the former Director of Research for Chalabi’s Iraqi National Congress (Check under scholars for his bio). Yes. That Ahmed Chalabi.
Welcome to the Stillers
With everything going on, I forgot to post about this:
Minnesota Vikings defensive coordinator Mike Tomlin accepted the Pittsburgh Steelers’ coaching job Sunday night and was working out a four-year contract he hoped to complete Monday, people close to the search told The Associated Press.
They requested anonymity because the Steelers have asked all parties involved in the search to not speak to reporters until they can make the announcement, which could come Monday or Tuesday.
Tomlin is expected to make around $2.5 million per year, the going rate of late for first-time NFL coaching hires. Former Steelers coach Bill Cowher resigned Jan. 5 following 15 seasons after apparently rejecting a $6 million per year contract extension offer earlier this year.
Tomlin’s hiring completed a frantic 2 1/2-week search in which he was initially viewed as an unlikely choice behind perceived front-runners Ken Whisenhunt and Russ Grimm, only to land the job after impressing the Steelers with his motivation, intensity, knowledge of defense and enthusiasm.
Welcome aboard, Mike.
Obama For Universal Healthcare
This is seriously good news. Obviously having another influential Dem politician behind the idea brings it that much closer to happening, and it would be nice to see the Obama campaign settle on a signature issue or two. But to me this is interesting because Obama may have the right combination of qualities to exploit the growing tension between the American insurance industry and basically everybody else. Relative to our competitors with more sensible healthcare plans (that is, virtually every other developed nation) American industry is suffocating under the financial burdens of our employer-provided healthcare system.
It might seem insensitive to set aside the concerns of citizens who can’t afford private healthcare, employees whose coverage nickels and dimes them to death (sometimes literally) and the entire categories of Americans who cannot buy health insurance at any price, and I suppose that’s true. The problem is that outside of AARP, which has Medicare, no specific organization speaks for healthcare consumers. Every politician has to answer to the voters, sure, but come election time they answer with lobbyists’ money. To get attention on Capitol hill you need money and organization. Consumers can’t do it (though it might be wrong to write off the grassroots/netroots just yet). However, if one lumps together the American industries that would quickly come off life support when a single-payer plan is sensibly implemented (auto, airlines, service, etc) it would become seriously difficult even for the insurers’ titanic K street operation to compete.
Needless to say, tossing together American industry behind universal healthcare isn’t beginner chess. Somebody will have to overcome business leaders’ instinctive mistrust of socialist-sounding ideas and Democrats in general. Then we can even start talking about problems like institutional inertia. For that reason it seems unlikely that John Edwards, career trial lawyer, will make much headway. Fairly or unfairly Hillarycare gives me shudders. Obama, though, has a knack for making unlikely friends, a pragmatic tendency to look for common ground and little to no skeletons to get in the way. The idea of marshaling American industry against American insurance may be a fool’s errand for any pol, but I have an odd feeling that Barrack Obama may have what it takes to pull it off.
***
To add, finding one encouraging quality in a candidate does not a full endorsement make. In my view every credible candidate in the Democratic field would make an fine president. I also have no doubt that if current trends continue any one of them will slaughter whoever the GOP eventually puts forward.
***Update***
Color Kevin Drum underwhelmed. Maybe I’m guilty of projecting what I want to see. It’s hard to say, he hasn’t proposed anything yet.