Fri, May 16, 2008

Slacker Friday

We've got a new "Think Again" column called "The Fire Next Time?" and I did a Nation column called "Good Night and Good Luck."

The Bronx is up and the Battery's down, and Paul McCartney gets to ride in an elevator unmolested. (P.S.: I was once at the beach and I stopped at a stop sign. Across the street, on the other side, was a fancy purple pickup driven by the very same ex-Beatle. All I had to do was "accidentally" allow my car to swerve wildly out of control and into his truck, and we would have been bonded for life. And my little Corolla wouldn't have done much damage. But of course, McCartney hasn't written a decent song since I was in junior high, and so I let him pass ...)

Also, people, I need a new subtitle for the paperback edition of Why We're Liberals. I put the "post-Bush America handbook" thing in there to try to put everybody in a good mood. This too shall pass, and all that. But the paperback needs a long life, and so we need a new subhead. Winner gets thanked in the acknowledgements. (Oh, and thanks to those who sent me recommendations for Jerusalem and Tel Aviv. I'm thinking maybe a couple of days in Eilat. Any ideas on that, anyone?)

Name: Charles Pierce
Hometown: Newton, MA

Hey Doc --

"You say my kisses are not like his/This time I'm not gonna tell you why that is."

Weekly WWOZ Pick To Click: "Junker's Blues" (Champion Jack Dupree with King Curtis) -- Once again, I failed to devise a potion that would cause Brit Hume to descend a staircase in a diaphanous gown like one of the DuBois sisters as a tribute to how much I love New Orleans.

Short Takes:

Part The First: Can't think. Can't read. Can't write. Pity, really. Of course, his lead paragraph is the great zombie lie of my career. And they didn't even have the decency to invite me to their banquet to accept my award. Quite simply, Mr. Graham is a liar and a coward in the pay of cowards and liars.

Part The Second: It appears that the tradesman's entrance at NRO may be jammed up for a while. This is the equivalent of all those conservatives who praise the heartland -- That means you, Andrew, and you, Annie -- but who never seem to move to Omaha where they obviously would be much happier.

Part The Third: Note to Salon -- stop running pieces by crazy people, OK? Vince Foster? "Mellow Yellow" was a "major album" in 1967? "Deserted Cities Of The Heart," which makes "Tales Of Brave Ulysses" sound like "Tutti Frutti"? Does this woman ever remember what the rails looked like back there?

Part The Fourth: Audience participation! You folks pick the joke. I can't decide among the several million that sprang immediately to mind.

Part The Last: A nightmare in so many ways beyond the obvious. It scared my running mate Bateman -- a professional soldier -- so badly that he left the country.

Watching Hardball the other night, I was put in mind of The Wages Of Fear, the great old Clouzot film about guys hauling nitroglycerine through the mountains in rickety trucks. (In 1977, William Friedkin directed a very underrated remake of it called "Sorcerer," starring the great Roy Scheider.) Anyway, sitting there beneath his second hair color of the month, Chris Matthews was beginning to sweat just a little as Pat Buchanan started talking about Barack Obama, and race, and the 2008 election. Somehow, Buchanan's apparent avuncularity almost has erased completely his long, sincere, and bone-deep sympathy with the institutions of American apartheid. (His barely concealed anti-Semitism is another boiling kettle of offal entirely.) However, it is now completely plain that, if MSNBC continues to call upon him for commentary on an election in which one of the two major candidates is an African-American, then they shouldn't be surprised what happens when one of the wheels comes off the truck halfway down the mountain. The guy's a proud public bigot and he always has been. (That quote about how "some people" thought Dr. King was the devil incarnate makes his statement the other night that he wants to live in Dr. King's America enough to gag a maggot, as the late Molly Ivins once said.) His upcoming book argues that World War II was unnecessary, and won't that be fun? Anyway, it was very alarming to watch Matthews there with his hands barely on the wheel. However, this is worse crackpottery than the Rev. Meacham's hiring Karl Rove at Newsweek. Ol' Pat's going to say something very soon that makes Don Imus sound like W.E.B. DuBois. Shouldn't someone at this network care? How people like Keith Olbermann and Rachel Maddow manage not to vomit while cashing checks they earned by sitting next to this antediluvian homunculus is beyond me.

See for yourself.

Name: DrSteveB
Hometown: New York, NY

Regarding those (at least) two weapons caches not attributable to Iran per your Think Again column. In addition to failure to control Saddam's weapons stores at the time of the invasion and our own weapons distribution during the occupation, the other unmentionable source for weapons flowing into Iraq is of course from the Saudis and others who are presumably arming the Sunnis. No doubt some of whatever they are sending in winds up in both intended (Sunni) and unintended (Shia) hands.

But of course the Bushies cannot complain about the Saudis because they're on our side ... when they are not funding Al Qaeda and Sunni fundies to kill us (19 of 20) or keeping up the price of oil.

Name: Jason
Hometown: Santa Rosa, CA

Dear Dr. Alterman,

Can someone in the MSM please start questioning the Republican Party's promotion of terrorist groups influencing our political processes? Osama bin Laden "endorses" Kerry and they go wild. Hamas "endorses" Obama, and they go wild. Now Bush is pushing the Democrats' 'appeasement' of terrorists ... "we want to destroy them, but until then, we'll give them more press than they could ever buy."

This two-faced promotion is absolutely disgusting, especially in light of the boost President Bush's and the Republicans' policies have given to the development (as you've noted) of these very organizations!

Name: Morey Garelick
Hometown: San Francisco

From the Kathleen Parker column:

"As Condi Rice has noted, it wasn't long ago in this country that blacks needed guns to protect themselves when the police would not. "

I must have missed this -- Condi Rice reminisced about the Black Panthers?

Name: Stephen A. Brown
Hometown: Santa Cruz, CA

Eric,

The McCain campaign and pundits such as Charles Krauthammer, think that having Rev. Wright as a pastor for 20 years is evidence of lack of character. I suggest that such opinions show a lack of awareness of the nature of what many (I suspect many in Rev. Wright's church) think of as a community of believers. Their commitment is not to the pastor but to a community. It is a serious commitment and that it has lasted for 20 years or more is evidence of character.

Seeking out the political endorsement of a man with opinions you claim to disagree with and want not to be accused of supporting suggests political opportunism and naked self-serving ambition more than character. That McCain only sought an endorsement from the man and was not a member of his church for 20 years does not cast McCain in a more favorable light.

Name: Kirsten
Hometown: Sacramento

It is quite amusing that while the media seem to love the idea of the Maverick brand for McCain, that is perhaps partly responsible for the Republican base being so suspicious of him. Even though he's voted with the party line 83% of the time, the people he needs to vote for him just see the "Maverick" title and get the heebee-jeebees. It puts him in a tough spot trying to placate them while maintaining the brand. Poor guy.

Name: Chuck
Hometown: Kansas City

With apologies to Jeff Foxworthy, you might be an elitist if ...

You went to an elite, east coast prep school, like Phillips Academy (Bush), or Episcopal (McCain)

Your father was president, your grandfather a senator (Bush), or both your father and grandfather were Navy admirals (McCain)

You have a private plane at your disposal, thanks to your wealthy spouse (McCain)...

In researching McCain, it appears he had his own Karl Rove in Arizona in the early 1980s, a guy named Duke Tully, who was publisher of the Arizona Republic and seems to have had the same type of man crush on McCain that Rove had on Bush. He is also McCain's daughter Meghan's godfather, and the beauty part is he went around telling everyone his invented war stories(Korea and Vietnam, said he was an Air Force pilot), until he was found out in 1986, after he had helped launch McCain's political career. I'm sure he'll be asked to renounce Mr. Tully any day now...

Name: Thomas Beck
Hometown: East Windsor, NJ

This is not getting any attention at all, let alone as much as it deserves. And it's truly scary.

Even Dr. Tilman Jolly, associate chief medical officer for medical readiness in DHS's Office of the Chief Medical Officer, told HSToday.us at a conference in Washington, DC that "surge is an issue we're not going to have our arms around for a long time. It's a huge problem "We're dealing now every day with routine closings of emergency rooms because they're all full."

"We're already over-extended" without having to worry about surge, said former NFTC chairman, Dr. Ron Anderson, President and CEO of Parkland Health & Hospital System in Dallas.

"Our [national] surge capacity is shallow," said Dr. Susan Penefield, manager of the Texas Department of Health's Infectious Disease Control Unit.

"During the past decade, emergency department visits have increased by 26 percent, while the number of emergency departments has decreased by nine percent," HSToday.us was told by Democratic Rep. Ed Markey, a senior member of the House Homeland Security Committee. "In 2003, [emergency room] diversions [to other hospitals] occurred more than half a million times - an average of once per minute, and the problem is not getting better.

A recent CDC-backed NFTC study found that of the 175 Level 1 and Level II trauma centers that participated in the NFTC survey, only "a small number" are "highly prepared" for a catastrophic terrorist attack."The results also show a number that report below average preparedness scores five years after 9/11..."

It's now almost 7 years after 9-11, and things are getting worse. ERs and trauma centers are less prepared now to handle the medical aftermath a major terrorist event than they were in 2001. And no one is talking about it.

Name: Paul in NC
Hometown: Charlotte

Tell Chuck from Kansas City that Ford pardoned Nixon before he was ever indicted or convicted of any crimes. However, this pardon was never tested in the courts. So it probably remains an open question, albeit with some precedent.

Name: John
Hometown: Kinnelon NJ

Said Specter: "...Walsh detailed how the Patriots used videotaped signals to their advantage: an offensive player would memorize the signals, watch for them on the sideline and pass them on to assistant coach Charlie Weis, who would then inform quarterback Tom Brady." If the Patriots could process this information in less than 45 seconds and call a play, AND Tom Brady could process the call, evaluate the expected defensive alignment based on the information AND remember his 3 to 4 receivers' routes, which could change based on coverage, AND give some blocking direction at the line of scrimmage, AND hope the defense doesn't audible its alignment or coverage, AND drop back, make a 2-3 second read, THEN throw an accurate pass in the face of 300 lb men trying to batter him, then perhaps he IS the Superman many make him out to be.

Name: Steve S.
Hometown: Bellingham

I'll take your word for it that Tony Kornheiser is an "excellent sportswriter." As an announcer he is an abomination's abomination. He has all the annoying qualities of Howard Cosell without any of the intelligence or capability of getting the likes of Muhammad Ali and John Lennon in the booth with him.

Name: Rod Hoffman
Hometown: Boston

According to Wikipedia on Zubaz pants:

"The pants are now regarded as a trend that has ended, and they are referred to as a 'bad fad' by www.badfads.com. Despite the decline of its popularity, it is not uncommon to spot a rabid fan wearing Zubaz pants at a professional football game...."

How perfect is that metaphor?

1:53pm EST | Permalink | | Digg this!

Email Eric Alterman

You must have javascript enabled to use this form


The opinions voiced in these columns are those of the individual authors and do not represent the views of Media Matters for America or any other organization or institution with which any author may be affiliated.

Thu, May 15, 2008

The time has come today ...

We've got a new "Think Again" column called "The Fire Next Time?" and I did a Nation column called "Good Night and Good Luck."

It's an unhappy day at The Washington Post and for journalism generally. Tony Kornheiser, the excellent sportswriter, is taking a buyout and leaving. David Broder is cashing in his staff job but retaining his self-parodic-font-of-conventional-wisdom -- or, as Tom Edsall calls him, "Voice of the People" column. He explains: "The column you have been running will not change at all, and you will continue to receive it from The Washington Post Writers Group. I will continue to write from the same office in the Post newsroom and will continue to travel the country to wherever politics is happening. You will find me at the Democratic and Republican conventions this summer and on the campaign trail this fall, just as I have been this winter and spring."

This is bad news indeed.

Also unhappily for the Post, Robert Novak is not retiring. Rather, he is proudly proclaiming 45 years in a business that apparently has no standards for facts, accuracy, or patriotism. Recall that not only is Novak's information frequently false, he specifically refused the CIA's request that he not out CIA agent Valerie Plame because he did not care enough about the national security of his country -- and the lives that might have been endangered -- to withhold his tawdry scoop. The fact that he was never disciplined for this by his editors is a sad commentary of the values of the paper and, indeed, of a political establishment that long ago lost its moral and patriotic compass. Novak's presence on the page for all these decades is a useful illustration of the values of our political elite but a damned shame for the rest of us. He brags here, remaining unrepentant about his betrayal of his country's interests and of the well-being of those who regularly put their lives on the line for it.

Things I hate about bloggers: I don't know if I actually met this guy (or whoever wrote this post). I'm terrible about remembering names. I'm pretty sure I wasn't talking to him, though; I certainly wasn't focusing my attention on him. So even if I was -- which, as I say, I doubt -- the dude is snarking about a private conversation without asking my permission or even mentioning it. Nice.

Things I hate about right-wingers: Note that in the post itself, the guy makes an explicit equation between the sale of something by a private company (bandages) and the provision of a government service (postal rates), and not only that, it's one that the founders and many legal scholars and historians recognize as crucial to the health of the marketplace of democracy. But if you follow the logical thrust of this post, I am "whining" because I care about the quality of democratic debate, as I explicitly included National Review together with The Nation in the example I gave. Sorry, bub, I don't know you, and I never heard of you, but if this is the only interaction we ever have, I'll consider myself awfully fortunate.

I actually really enjoyed the seminar and learned a great deal, and particularly appreciated the generous remarks of Reihan Salam, whom I've never met before, and with whom I do not exactly agree, but still. ... (My panel was written up here.)

I neglected to mention yesterday that it was the 60th anniversary of Israel's birth. This is a cause both for celebration and for mourning, depending on one's focus and, I suppose, one's identity. I don't have anything profound to say about it right now and so I will say nothing.

I will, however, ask my readers if they can recommend nice, reasonably priced and centrally located hotels in Tel Aviv, Jerusalem, and Haifa. I'm planning on doing a two-week reporting trip there in late June and early July and have not been there in forever and could use the recommendations.

Thanks.

George Zornick adds:

"A full-blooded American"? That's what Kathleen Parker, nationally syndicated columnist, says she wants in the next president. She quotes a 24-year-old from West Virginia saying so, and expands: "Whether Mr. Fry was referring to Mr. McCain's military service or Mr. Obama's Kenyan father isn't clear, but he may have hit upon something essential in this presidential race."

The column proceeds on a rant about the ravages of multiculturalism, "heritage ... being swept under the carpet," "new demographics," along with the importance of "blood equity," "bloodlines," and "roots." "White Americans primarily -- and Southerners, rural and small-town folks especially -- have been put on the defensive," she writes.

This only barely coded call to reject Obama because of his race is the stuff of obscure hate websites -- but this column appeared in, among other papers, the Baltimore Sun, The Indianapolis Star, The Charlotte Observer, the Oakland Tribune, the Arizona Daily Star, and The Denver Post. One wonders what the editors of these papers were thinking in putting calls for "blood equity" on the opinion pages.

McCain Suck-Up Watch: "While discussing John Hagee's apology for his controversial remarks concerning the Catholic Church, MSNBC's Contessa Brewer stated that Sen. John McCain 'has pointed out' that Hagee was not his personal pastor for 20 years, 'and says, "Look, I'm not going to repudiate the endorsement of this man. I don't like the comments that he made, but I'll take his endorsement if he wants to give it." ' However, Brewer did not mention that McCain has admitted that he sought Hagee's endorsement." More here.

As pointed out by a faithful reader, an additional development that would demonstrate the weakness/incompetence of the president of the United States were s/he a Democrat, is the charges that were just dropped against a 9-11 suspect because the government broke a lot of rules while interrogating him.

Here are the details, from The Washington Post:

U.S. authorities have long considered Mohammed al-Qahtani one of the most dangerous alleged terrorists in U.S. custody, a man who could have been the 20th hijacker in the Sept. 11, 2001, plot if he had not been denied entry into the country.

But yesterday, amid concerns about using information obtained during abusive military interrogations, a top Pentagon official removed Qahtani from the military commission case meant to bring justice to those behind the vast Sept. 11 conspiracy.

[...]

Prosecutors reserve the right to charge Qahtani again, and the military says it can hold him without trial for the duration of the counterterrorism wars. But his defense lawyers and officials familiar with the case say it is unlikely that Qahtani will face new charges because he was subjected to aggressive Defense Department interrogation techniques -- such as intimidation by dogs, hooding, nudity, long-term isolation and stress positions.

Now imagine if charges were dropped against a 9-11 suspect due to the incompetence and lawlessness of a Democratic president. They'd be savaged, and rightfully so -- even small-town district attorneys lose their jobs for such things ...

From TomDispatch:

In the wake of 9-11, the Bush administration rushed to create a Maginot Line of "homeland security" in the U.S., marking every major building, landmark, amusement park, and even petting zoos, flea markets, and popcorn stands as potential terrorist targets in need of protection. According to the 2006 National Asset Database, compiled by the Department of Homeland Security, the state of Indiana would be designated the most "target-rich" place in the country. And everywhere, even in rural areas, politicians were strapping on their armor and preparing to run imminent-danger, anti-terror campaigns, while urging their constituents to run for cover.

Meanwhile, the Bush administration was heading the country into an age of homeland insecurity. As Tom Engelhardt writes in his latest post at TomDispatch: "Osama bin Laden and his scattering of followers may be credited for goading the fundamentalist leaders of the United States into using the power in their grasp so -- not to put a fine point on it -- stupidly and profligately as to send the planet's 'sole superpower' into decline. Above all, bin Laden and his crew of fanatics will have ensured one thing: that the real security problems of our age were ignored in Washington until far too late in favor of mad dreams and dark phantoms."

The heart of Engelhardt's piece is a gathering (with brief explanations) of 15 numbers that offer a striking collective picture of just where American energies did and did not flow in these years; and, in the end, just how much less safe we are now than we were in January 2001, when George W. Bush entered the Oval Office. These numbers range from dollars in the military budget (536,000,000,000) to air force "missions" since 2001 (1,000,000) and include the number of temporary trailers still occupied in New Orleans long after Hurricane Katrina, the number of dollars it takes to buy a barrel of crude oil, the number of convicted felons accepted into the U.S. Army in 2007, the number of countries that have had food riots in recent months, the number of suicide bombings last year, and so on.

Behind these figures lurks a potential world of insecurity with which this country has not yet faintly come to grips.

This week on Moyers:

A Democratic house divided: Bill Moyers interviews Berkeley Law professors Christopher Edley, Jr. and Maria Echaveste -- he's for Obama and she's for Clinton. They met working in the Clinton administration and now, having been married for nine years, Edley and Echaveste are both advising their respective candidates. Edley serves as dean and professor of law of UC-Berkeley's Boalt Hall School of Law, where Echaveste is a lecturer in residence. Also on the program, independent journalist Melody Petersen talks about the dangers of a market-driven pharmaceutical industry, and a Bill Moyers essay on recent resignations of executive appointees.

Correspondence Corner:

Name: Brian Geving
Hometown: Minneapolis, MN

Here are more things that would demonstrate the weakness/incompetence/wimpiness/out-of-touch-ness/elite effeminism, etc., of the president of the United States were he a Democrat:

1. Promoting "abstinence-only" sex education that doesn't reduce sexual activity in teens, and wasting taxpayer's money doing so.

2. Getting the military bogged down in 2 wars, thereby preventing them from responding to any future threats effectively.

3. Misjudging former Russian president Vladimir Putin's commitment to democracy.

4. Coming out against expanded education benefits for our veterans.

5. Underfunding the VA in the midst of a war, thereby forcing injured veterans to wait months for treatment.

6. When people are dying in New Orleans from a massive hurricane, going on a vacation to Arizona to celebrate a senator's birthday.

Name: David Joyce
Hometown: Fremont

20) Criminal Negligence, in that given a $40 billion/year system that was "blinking red" and filled with hard working people who were waiting for a leader to act, and which gave him astoundingly detailed and repeated warnings, he subsequently did absolutely nothing. Furthermore, it was in effect a conspiracy, and federal officials, among others, lost their lives, resulting in SPECIAL CIRCUMSTANCES.

21) Fraud, in that a concerted campaign of lies were told, in his official capacity, that cost many lives and much property. Again, a conspiracy, and again, federal officials and others lost their lives. And again, Special Circumstances.

22) Criminal Negligence again, in that the massive conventional weapons, ammunitions and explosives were negligently not guarded, and all fell into the hand of criminals. This is the most depraved act of official negligence that has ever occurred in human history, and these supplies will kill many thousands of people over many, many years. They are also the supplies that have been used for most so called IEDs (which should be named LMAEs: Looted Munitions And Explosives). And again, special circumstances.

Name: Karl W.
Hometown: Bloomfield, CT

20) Add your own here ...

Failed coup against winner of a real election, in an oil-exporting country which (unlike many of 'em) doesn't have an inborn reason to hate the USA. Recasting winner of said election as the next big, bad enemy after bin Laden and Castro.

Name: Martin Brandt
Hometown: San Jose, California

20. "Giving up golf" for the troops.

21. Mountain-biking.

22. Doing ridiculous soft-shoe routine while waiting for another guy in a limo.

Name: Bill
Hometown: New York

Add to the list the mistreatment and release of Mohammad al-Qahtani, who might have been a valuable source of information were he not in the hands of childish criminals. The list literally does get longer every day.

Name: Fred Roberts
Hometown: Decatur, GA

More evidence of a feckless president, if s/he were a Democrat:

Failure to grant visas to Iraqi translators in mortal danger at the hands of insurgents. NYT: "...a White House spokesman[ ] said the government's hands were initially tied by the lack of federal legislation allowing special visas for interpreters." Funny, I thought absence of authorization by the legislative branch was a mere nuisance, to be brushed off with a signing statement or a secret Yoo memorandum.

Name: Timothy Waldron
Hometown: Cazenovia, NY

Thanks for linking to Boehlert's column on the parroting of the phrase "maverick brand" by so many in the media. It certainly appears that all were paraphrasing the same McCain-camp press release.

What amused me most was that the phrase "maverick brand" is purely oxymoronic. Samuel Maverick was a rule-breaker precisely because he refused to brand his cattle, allowing him to claim all unbranded livestock as his own. The irony of McCain's campaign claiming in effect that "Loose Cannon Party" is a banner to rally around is delicious and horrifying at the same time. This calls for a Stewart/Colbert smackdown, featuring choice phrases such as "gored by his own oxymoron" and "all hat and no cattle."

Name: Merrill R. Frank
Hometown: Jackson Heights, NYC

Dr.

Former Bush wordsmith Michael Gerson, while chiding liberals for their supposed lack of patriotism, comes up with this Peggy Noonan-like nugget:

"A president is expected to be a patriotic symbol himself, not the arbiter of patriotic symbols. He is supposed to be the face-painted superfan at every home game; to wear red, white and blue boxers on special marital occasions; to get misty-eyed during the most obscure patriotic hymns."

After 8 years of an administration who behave like inhabitants of the Meadowlands drunk tank during a Jets game, the last thing the country needs is another administration where the obnoxious lout shouting USA while wearing flag patterned underwear is the norm. Hopefully Sen. Obama can continue to articulate a less shallow version of what it means to be a patriot.

Name: Chuck
Hometown: Kansas City

I read Pierce's piece in Esquire about Obama, and while I agree with him about the need for those in this administration to be held accountable for their actions, I don't see why this issue reflects directly on Obama's candidacy. To my knowledge the only candidate that brought it up as an issue was Kucinich, and my guess is there aren't enough cynics/realists to make this a winner in November.

One of the pluses of Obama's candidacy, to me, is his focus on positive themes of hope and change, greatness of America, etc. The Repubs have been successful selling this for years (and we all know how well that's turned out for most of us), and I say more power to Obama's staff for recognizing and co-opting these themes. You have to be elected first before you can accomplish anything.

Is preemptively issuing Presidential pardons really possible and legal? I always thought this was done for people convicted or at least charged with a crime. Legal scholars, please advise -- and on the off chance John Yoo is reading this (ironically enough, a story about him is in the same Esquire as Pierce's latest), please don't weigh in. We already know what your answer would be anyway, and you could be a beneficiary of this if it is possible.

2:08pm EST | Permalink | | Digg this!

Email Eric Alterman

You must have javascript enabled to use this form


The opinions voiced in these columns are those of the individual authors and do not represent the views of Media Matters for America or any other organization or institution with which any author may be affiliated.

Wed, May 14, 2008

Only in dreams

Things that would demonstrate the weakness/incompetence/wimpiness/out-of-touch-ness/elite effeminism, etc., of the president of the United States were he a Democrat:

1) Gas prices

2) The dollar

3) Iran thumbing its nose at the international community

4) North Korea thumbing its nose at the international community

5) What used to be Burma thumbing its nose at the international community

6) The deficit

7) The housing crisis

8) Hamas winning the Palestinian elections and taking over Gaza following a failed, U.S.-directed coup

9) Israel building more settlements

10) Bin Laden, still partying like it's September 10, 2001

11) The Taliban, ditto

12) Pakistan, cutting deals with the above, saying "screw democracy"

13) Failure to pass a presidentially supported immigration bill

14) Failure to pass the Colombia free-trade bill

15) Russia thumbing its nose at the international community

16) China refusing to cooperate in Darfur, North Korea, wherever the hell else it doesn't feel like cooperating

17) Record-setting vacation time

18) Vice president actually running country

19) Botched prosecutions of a supposed terror cell in Miami, of Jose Padilla, etc.

20) Add your own here ...

John Edwards by Francis Bacon, $4.5 million.

I'm about a year late on this, but did you know that, as part of the same affirmative action program that brought you Cathy Young and Jeff Jacoby, the Boston Globe editorial page is making itself available for free personal ads from gay conservatives? We're happy to help out here at Altercation as well. Please send all responses to Kirchick/Peretz, The New Republic, Boston , MA ...

Eric Boehlert writes: John McCain's all-around maverick-ness is being elevated by the media into an iconic brand status, right alongside Ford and Nike. Read more here.

George Zornick adds: More details are emerging about the Pentagon's "message force multipliers" program exposed by The New York Times, where retired military officers were used by the Bush administration as "a kind of media Trojan horse -- an instrument intended to shape terrorism coverage from inside the major TV and radio networks." (Read our recent Think Again column for more.)

Media Matters has done an impact study that demolishes any remaining justification major media outlets may have been clinging to in not commenting on the story: The military officials appeared more than 4,500 times on ABC, ABC News Now, CBS, CBS Radio Network, NBC, CNN, CNN Headline News, Fox News, MSNBC, CNBC, and NPR. The scope of this coordinated propaganda program is stunning -- and any shred of an excuse the aforementioned outlets may have for not covering the story extensively and disclosing their own role is gone. Many of them haven't given it a single word.

This lamentation from Donald Rumsfeld, contained in the "document dump" associated with the program, is also eye-catching:

DELONG: Politically, what are the challenges because you're not going to have a lot of sympathetic ears up there.

RUMSFELD: That's what I was just going to say. This President's pretty much a victim of success. We haven't had an attack in five years. The perception of the threat is so low in this society that it's not surprising that the behavior pattern reflects a low threat assessment. The same thing's in Europe, there's a low threat perception. The correction for that, I suppose, is an attack. And when that happens, then everyone gets energized for another [inaudible] and it's a shame we don't have the maturity to recognize the seriousness of the threats...the lethality, the carnage, that can be imposed on our society is so real and so present and so serious that you'd think we'd be able to understand it, but as a society, the longer you get away from 9/11, the less...the less...

I won't say there's any wistfulness on the part of Rumsfeld there, it just looks like a candid assessment, but didn't it occur to him there may be a relation between the lack of an attack and the actual level of the threat? Also, President Bush will be called a lot of things in the coming years, but "a victim of success" surely ain't one of them.

Also: you can see here that Zubaz pants are part of the official clothing line of the 2008 Republican National Convention. As the proud owner of said apparel -- along with, I think, a majority of Buffalo Bills fans -- I have to say, it's a shocking choice. There is nothing conservative about Zubaz pants.

Correspondence Corner:

Name: Rajesh
Hometown: Cherry Hill, NJ

George Bush in an interview today about the sacrifice he made for the war:

"US President George W. Bush said in an interview out Tuesday that he quit playing golf in 2003 out of respect for the families of US soldiers killed in the conflict in Iraq, now in its sixth year."

When in 2003?

"The US president traced his decision to the August 19, 2003 bombing of UN headquarters in Baghdad, which killed the world body's top official in Iraq, Sergio Vieira de Mello."

Interestingly enough, he played golf 3 months later:

"Bush's last round of golf as president dates back to October 13, 2003, according to meticulous records kept by CBS news."

The decision was tough that he made his decision in August 2003 and continued to play until October 2003. Now, that, that's sacrifice.

Name: Beth Harrison
Hometown: Arlington, VA

Mark from Dover: you just DON'T GET IT. Once again, we get the "we just didn't anticipate the number of soldiers that would be cremated" (or need psychological care, or prostheses, or body armor, or armored vehicles, or car bombs, or the insurgency,or clean water, etc., etc., etc.). If you aren't outraged by this, YOU AREN'T PAYING ATTENTION. This sort of thing has been going on now for FIVE YEARS. Did you not read Dana Priest's Pulitzer-winning series about outpatient care at Walter Reed? Frankly, nothing surprises me anymore about what the government is doing in Iraq. All I see is the further embarrassment and disgrace of the United States around the world.

Thanks Ralph!!!

Name: Robert Bateman
Hometown: Washington, DC

Dear Mark D,

Please send your mailing address, as I will now need psychological counseling of the deepest and most profound sort, and as you are the cause, you can foot the bill. There is not enough single malt in all of Scotland to solve this problem.

He may be my running mate and all, but, "it is amusing to contemplate: Pierce and provocative attire" is entirely beyond the pale.

(Ahhhh, good lord, get it out of my head, Pierce on a Victoria's Secret runway... awwrghhgggg...GET IT OUT OF MY HEAD! GET IT OUT!! Aaaaaggggghhhh...)

12:37pm EST | Permalink | | Digg this!

Email Eric Alterman

You must have javascript enabled to use this form


The opinions voiced in these columns are those of the individual authors and do not represent the views of Media Matters for America or any other organization or institution with which any author may be affiliated.

Make a Donation

Links

Recent Columns

Bookmarks