It all goes back to 9/11?

Read this piece by NY Times columnist Frank Rich. But pay special attention to this part:

In [NY Time's reporter Jane Myer's] telling, a major incentive for Mr. Cheney’s descent into the dark side was to cover up for the Bush White House’s failure to heed the Qaeda threat in 2001. Jack Cloonan, a special agent for the F.B.I.’s Osama bin Laden unit until 2002, told Ms. Mayer that Sept. 11 was “all preventable.” By March 2000, according to the C.I.A.’s inspector general, “50 or 60 individuals” in the agency knew that two Al Qaeda suspects — soon to be hijackers — were in America. But there was no urgency at the top. Thomas Pickard, the acting F.B.I. director that summer, told Ms. Mayer that when he expressed his fears about the Qaeda threat to Mr. Ashcroft, the attorney general snapped, “I don’t want to hear about that anymore!”

I've often wondered why Cheney and crew were so hot to throw out the Constitution in the immediate aftermath of 9/11. Now sure, this crew was never that fond of the Constitution to begin with. Cheney never liked the weakening of Presidential authority following Watergate. But even a latent desire to trash the Constitution never really explained, to me, why they approached the project with such relish.

But if, as suggested here, this crew was so anxious because they knew they had fucked up badly prior to 9/11 and they thought they had to do something, anything to redeem themselves... Well, that might give yet another reason why they considered Constitutional guarantees and international law to be "quaint".

God's Holy Rangers

Iran releases new missile test photo

(context here)

Get A Life

You see things like this posted on the internet and they inevitably draw out the assholes who enjoy nothing more than belittling people who put their heart and souls into something (sample: "NERD!", "clearly a freak and social reject", "How about you paint it a fag color") And, of course, the inevitable "get a life".

Maybe it's because I'm a father of a kid about the same age. Maybe because my son has Aspergers and has, on more than one occasion, devoted an inordinate amount of time and energy to some equally silly projects. Maybe it's because I faced similar derision when I was a kid. But all I can think is that the people who really need to "get a life" are those who think they elevate themselves by belittling little kids.

Sure, it's just a video game. But so the fuck what? He obviously enjoys it and had a lot of fun making these toys. And some of them are pretty clever (the rocket launcher was impressive). And all these fuckwads can think to do in response is prop of what little self-worth they have by trying to score points.

Great work kid! I hope your parents are proud of you. They should be.

Don't want to donate to Obama? Donate to the DNC!

All the news reports about fundraising are combining the candidate totals with their respective party campaign committees. There are rumors that (Obama + DNC) for June will be coming in at less than (McCain + RNC) for the same time period. This may be true. It will certainly become true for July if people, in protest of Obama's FISA vote, decide to withhold donations.

I fully support the right of people to send a message by withholding their donations to Obama. But lets not feed the "Democrats in trouble" narrative in the process. By donating to the DNC you can boost the overall totals without giving money to the guy who "broke your heart".

So go show Howard Dean some love already.

Political Expediency II

Alex Koppelman of Salon's War Room addresses the "sellout" question with respect to Obama's vote on FISA. I tend to agree with him that a simple "sellout" narrative doesn't explain Obama's vote. Alex suggests that the only explanation he can think of is that Obama was never that hot on this issue to begin with (his previous promise to fillibuster not withstanding).

I stand by my previous contention that the biggest factor in his decision was that he simply decided it wasn't worth the time and effort it would take to defend the vote. I just don't see Obama as fitting the image of Dems cowering in the face of accusations of being terrorist appeasers. And I agree with Alex that Obama really doesn't need the support of the telecoms, thus ruling out the idea of a simple financial sellout. All I have left is either (1) he actually supports the bill in principle or (2) he just didn't want the debate to derail his overal campaign strategy.

Right now I'd be much happier if it was the latter instead of the former.

Political Expediency

I think one of Obama's reasons for not fighting harder against the FISA capitulation was political expediency. But not the kind of expediency many are accusing him of. Obama just doesn't strike me as the type who would quail at the prospect of Republicans accusing him of being soft on terrorism. His resolute opposition to the war in Iraq demonstrates this as clearly as anything.

So what, besides actually agreeing with the bill, explains his support for it? The problem for Obama is that, while he can certainly make an argument that would convince the American people that working against the bill would have been the right thing to do, doing so would have taken time and a considerable amount of energy. Time is limited in this campaign and I think he just made a calculated decision that spending time on this debate just wasn't worth it.

I disagree with that decision. Not only because of what was given up but because this fight is one that needs to be made if Obama is going to be a real agent for change (if not now, when?) But Obama apparently feels different and he's the candidate. Not me.

And thank God for that.

23 million. A few hundred thousand. What's the diff?

Swampland actually fact-checks the McCain campaign's economic rhetoric and finds it wanting, to say the least.

It's nice when establishment media actually questions a candidates assertions. Let them know you appreciate it.

Mission Accomplished!

(hat tip Political Irony and Ted Rall)

Bad Consequences

My off-the-cuff take on this: The first step towards dealing with those who make bad decisions is to make sure the consequences of those bad decisions are restricted to those who made them. But doing so sometimes requires providing assistance to help out the very people who made the bad decisions. Why? Because if you don't then the consequences of their actions can spread into the community of those who don't make bad decisions (no man is an island, blah-de-blah-de-blah).

Now some argue that we shouldn't burden the non-bad decision makers with the consequences of those who make bad decisions by making them pay (through taxes, for example) for the cleanup. I agree. We shouldn't. But sometimes we have to.

For me, helping out those who fuck up is not a matter of morality. It's a matter of self-preservation. Bad consequences are never isolated just to those who fuck up. Ever. That's simply a matter of reality. If you try to live as if this is not the case you are making a bad decision. YOU are fucking up.

Politics often gets bogged down into questions of morality. I frankly think politics is a lousy mechanism for dealing with those questions. Politics should be focused on dealing with consequences. Leave morality to the philosophers and priests.

Living with Fox News

A journalist, David Carr, tries to explain what is like to live, as a journalist, with the presence of Fox News in the same business. It ain't a pretty story.

Mr. Carr manages, along the way, to point out some aspects of Fox News' methods that are both admirable and tragic as well as being despicable.

On the admirable front:

Part of me — the Irish, tribal part — admires Fox News’s ferocious defense of its guys. I work at a place where editors can make easy sport of teasing apart your flawed copy until it collapses in a steaming pile, but Lord help those outsiders who make an unwarranted or unfounded attack on me or my work. Our tactics may be different, but we, too, are strong for our posse.

The despicable:

As crude as that sounds, it works. By blacklisting reporters it does not like, planting stories with friendlies at every turn, Fox News has been living a life beyond consequence for years. Honesty compels me to admit that I have choked a few times at the keyboard when Fox News has come up in a story and it was not absolutely critical to the matter at hand.

And the tragic:

But it cuts both ways: Fox News’s amazing coup d’état in the cable news war has very likely been undercovered because the organization is such a handful to deal with. Fox is so busy playing defense — mentioning it in the same story as CNN can be a high crime — that its business and journalism accomplishments don’t get traction and the cable station never seems to attain the legitimacy it so clearly craves.

Fox News is a pox on the news business. But "good" journalists don't want to point this out. Usually. I expect Mr. Carr is now #1 on the enemies list.

Gee, now they tell me

Things They Don't Tell You

(Despite everything, I am an optimist. I really am. Really. ... Stop sniggering.)

Throwing dust in our eyes

I think Josh Marshall has it exactly right

This is the only backdrop against which to understand the current jousting over the semantics of the Iraq debate.

We have two candidates with starkly different positions. Barack Obama is for an orderly and considered withdrawal of all US combat forces in Iraq, a process he says he will begin immediately upon taking office. John McCain supports a permanent garrisoning of US troops on military bases in Iraq -- a long-term 'presence' which he hopes will require a constantly-diminishing amount of actual combat and thus an ever-diminishing toll in American lives.

This is, I believe, a fair and even generous description of each candidate's essential position. And the recital makes the key point clear: McCain's position is squarely on the wrong side of public opinion -- in fact, to an overwhelming degree.

This is why the McCain campaign spends what seems almost literally to be all its time (with tractable reporters in tow) scrutinizing the rhetorical entrails of Obama's every statement trying to find some movement or contradiction or frankly anything that can be talked about to keep everybody's attention (press, commentators, citizens, precocious teenagers) off the fact that McCain's position on Iraq is wildly unpopular and even more what McCain's position actually is.

Because of this, on Iraq, McCain's entire campaign is based on a strategy of constant obfuscation -- a strategy that has become much more aggressive in the wake of what the McCain campaign is calling last week's "relaunch" with a new staff based around Rove proteges from President Bush's 2004 reelection campaign.

John McCain cannot hope to win if the voters actually think there is a clear difference between his and Obama's positions on Iraq. It is essential for him to obscure the difference. However, since the difference is so obvious, his distortions are blatantly ridiculous on their face. The only way he and his campaign can get away with it is by relying on the compliant media not to take sides in this "debate". He is relying on them to report the McCain's campaigns assertions that Obama is switching to McCain's positions without the smirk such a statement should produce.

And the media, beholden to their notions of objectivity and balance, are going along with the program.