The Media Circus

Atrios:

One of the things which constantly amazes me is the willingness of the mainstream media to give platform to people who hate them.

...

I suppose the reasons for this are very simple - by bringing on these idiot critics they placate the right wing frothers while simultaneously confronting cartoon criticism, letting themselves avoid confronting actual criticism.

Sunday Talk

I was watching This Week, and one of the guests was John Kasich, a former Republican congressman. They were not really arguing with each other, but it was interesting to see the disconnect between Kasich and Stephanopolous, a former Clintonite, in that Stephanopolous posed arguments and questions framed in "liberal" terminology, but Kasich always responded in Lakoffian terms, coming back to values based arguments and the government as head of family metaphor in his iteration of "if this is what we would teach our children, what kind of message does it send when government acts differently?"

I think it is very telling that so many politicians and other prominent members on the left still do not understand the kind of discourse they need to engage in to properly argue with the right, and to motivate and inspire people. Take a hint: read Don't Think of an Elephant, and if you have the time, Moral Politics.

Memo to the NYT

Stop being so stupid. When your headline reads "Bear Hunting Caught in Global Warming Debate," you are giving credence to the idea that there is a debate. This is not true. There is no debate over whether it is happening, just on how to mitigate it. Stop giving life to untruthful right-wing narratives and do your job as journalists.

High Profile Republican Donors

They've always been crooks. Now they're guilty crooks.

A U.S. jury convicted Kenneth Lay and Jeffrey Skilling of orchestrating the fraud that destroyed Enron Corp., giving prosecutors a victory a case that came to symbolize corporate crime sparked by the stock market bust in 2000.

Lay, 64, and Skilling, 52, face at least 25 years each in prison after being convicted of using off-the-books partnerships to manipulate Enron's finances. Skilling faces additional jail time over his conviction for using inside information to sell Enron stock. Lay was also convicted on bank fraud charges after a trial that U.S. District Judge Sim Lake held without a jury while the panel in the main case deliberated.

Enron, once the world's largest energy trading firm, had more than $68 billion in market value before its December 2001 bankruptcy filing wiped out thousands of jobs and at least $1 billion in retirement funds virtually overnight. Investors suing over the company's collapse claim accounting fraud at the Houston-based firm caused at least $25 billion in losses.

This situation is sort of similar to what the Bush administration is doing to the country. Anyone care to bring a lawsuit against them?

Loving the Hypocrisy

I have not seen anyone blog this NYT article yet, but it caught my eye:

As the United States runs short of nurses, senators are looking abroad. A little-noticed provision in their immigration bill would throw open the gate to nurses and, some fear, drain them from the world's developing countries.

...

Senator Sam Brownback, Republican of Kansas, who sponsored the proposal, said it was needed to help the United States cope with a growing nursing shortage.

He said he doubted the measure would greatly increase the small number of African nurses coming to the United States, but acknowledged that it could have an impact on the Philippines and India, which are already sending thousands of nurses to the United States a year.

I find it interesting that conservative Republicans are railing against "illegal immigration" but are totally fine with making certain "illegal immigration" perfectly legal.

If Republicans are angry about the economics of immigration they are hypocrites. If you are worried about globalization, which puts Americans out of jobs because there are more people willing to work the same job for a lower price, then why implement a measure that makes it easier for just that to happen? It is not like there are not enough people in this country who are qualified to be nurses or are not willing to take the job. This is a move to secure lower-wage labor.

If Republicans are angry about the legality of immigration they are hypocrites. This brings me back to the point that I made in brief above, which is the notion that "illegal" immigrants need to be sent back or punished simple because they entered the country "illegally" is baseless - the definition of an immigrant as legal/illegal is one that is designated by the law, but has no real meaning past a nominal one. Since this is the case, all that needs to happen is for the law to change, and all of a sudden "illegal" immigrants become perfectly "legal." This is what Republicans are doing. Changing the law to suit their own needs, and all of a sudden the immigrants are untouchable because they are "legal."

What Republicans are really angry about - I should first note that not all Republicans see eye to eye on this; the corporatists would rather have cheap, immigrant labor, so when I refer to Republicans above I am referring to the loud, anti-immigrant base and members of Congress - is that non-white skinned people are coming into the country and the demographics and cultural makeup of their communities is changing. Just see John Gibson's comments for reference. This immigration controversy is nothing more than the latest form in which racism is raising its ugly head. They can dress it up any way they like, but publicly advocating shooting people who come into the country illegally and having white supremacist groups at the forefront of these minutemen gives them away.

Republicans who publicly bash illegal immigration but at the same time support measures like the one quoted above are nothing more than depraved hypocrites. If their base wants meat, they should offer up themselves.

zzzzZzZZZzzzz....

nngh?

History has shown that the Senate is not the best launching pad for a presidential run, but no fewer than 11 members of the world's greatest deliberative body are weighing 2008 bids. The latest is Christopher J. Dodd (D-Conn.), who told the Hartford Courant on Monday that he had "decided to do all the things that are necessary to prepare to seek the presidency in 2008."

mmfrrnkkk... zzzZZzzzZZZZZZZzzzz....

Looking Out... for Whom?

Themselves, of course.

House Majority Leader John Boehner (R-OH), on what Speaker Hastert might do to "protect the interests" of the legislative branch.

Well, I have got to believe at the end of the day it is going to end up across the street at the Supreme Court. I don't see anything short of that.

He continued, later, speaking of the executive branch:

"They take the same oath, so somebody better start reading the Constitution down there."

If Boehner cared about the Constitution and not only his own ass, he'd have delivered that line the second Bush was handed his presidency by the SC. He and Hastert are making noises now because they know if a member of Congress is fair game, so are they, and chances are they have just a few more skeletons in their closets than Jefferson does.

GOP Plug Piece

WaPo.

Entire piece on GOP strategy and outlook, not one Democrat quoted, paraphrased, or referred to otherwise.

Woohoo liberal media!

State of Fear

The U.S.

Asked whether he was open to the possibility that The New York Times should be prosecuted for its disclosures in December concerning a National Security Agency surveillance program, Mr. Gonzales said his department was trying to determine "the appropriate course of action in that particular case."

"I'm not going to talk about it specifically," he said. "We have an obligation to enforce the law and to prosecute those who engage in criminal activity."

We have officially become a banana republic where people can be prosecuted and thrown in jail for publishing information potentially 'damaging' to the government's image. These are the kinds of abuses many people came to the U.S. to avoid, and now they are happening in our very lives. We need to win big in November and put and end to this.

Update: Glenn Greenwald is much more eloquent than I am. I will read and review his book soon.

Joe is Going

Feel the Nedrenaline!

1509 votes count
Ned Lamont - 505 (33.4%)
Joe Lieberman - 1004 (66.5%)

Ned only needed 15% of the votes to officially enter the primary without needing any signatures. He actually came in line with Lieberman's expectations, which were set artificially high to play the expectations game.

Let's elect a senator who will make us proud to be progressives and Democrats.

Time to Go Joe

Lieberman.

Klein.

Were They Lying?

Between yesterday and this morning there was much speculation as to whether the telcos were lying about giving the administration access to all their data. All that speculation has now been put to rest. Via think progress:

Ordinarily, a company that conceals their transactions and activities from the public would violate securities law. But an presidential memorandum signed by the President on May 5 allows the Director of National Intelligence, John Negroponte, to authorize a company to conceal activities related to national security. (See 15 U.S.C. 78m(b)(3)(A))

There is no evidence that this executive order has been used by John Negroponte with respect to the telcos. Of course, if it was used, we wouldn’t know about it.

Trust us. We're the Bush administration. We're acting in your best intersts all the time.

New Lows in New Polls

Mr. 33 in the WaPo/ABC poll.

The spin: Bush can only go up!

The reality: The media can only keep going down on him.

Fighting the Conventional Insider Wisdom

Howard Dean.

Mr. Begala:

"What he has spent it on, apparently, is just hiring a bunch of staff people to wander around Utah and Mississippi and pick their nose." -- Dem strategist Paul Begala on DNC Chair Howard Dean's spending, CNN, 5/11

This statement hitting on the eve of our convention, where we are about to nominate Congressman Jim Matheson for re-election, is not helpful. And, the "pick their nose" comment is hurtful to Democrats who are truly on the frontline. An apology to my hardworking staff is in order.

By leaving the GOP unopposed in places like Utah, it frees them up to concentrate on making inroads in marginal districts. Congressmen in tough places deserve support, too. Jim Matheson, Stephanie Herseth (keynote speaker at tonight's pre-convention dinner) and even a potential pick-up like Gary Trauner in Wyoming deserve the support they are getting from the DNC.

...

I wish I had more time today to be thoughtful. But this fight is disheartening, and not productive. Chairman Dean is not going to change what he has started. Too many DNC members appreciate it. (And, they are Dean's electorate.) I encourage you and Congressman Rahm Emmanuel to move on, and find a way to make it work for the DCCC.

We will win not by fighting in an ever-narrowing middle, but by being competitive everywhere, all the time. Unlike all the gatekeepers of the inside-the-beltway wisdom, Dean fully understands this where they do not. This is the way to prove to people all over the country that we care about all of them and all of their support - not by only appealing to a small percentage of them a small percentage of the time.

The insiders can act all offended because Dean has ruffled their feathers by rejecting their way - and therefore implicitly, them - but it is not going to solve anything. If they want to publicly disagree with Dean, fine, let them, because their words cannot affect Dean and his strategy. But to take shots at individual states and organizations is unnecessary and unproductive, like the head of Utah's Democratic party remarks above.

Big Brother

Is watching you.

A senior federal law enforcement official tells ABC News the government is tracking the phone numbers we call in an effort to root out confidential sources.

"It's time for you to get some new cell phones, quick," the source told us in an in-person conversation.

ABC News does not know how the government determined who we are calling, or whether our phone records were provided to the government as part of the recently-disclosed NSA collection of domestic phone calls.

Other sources have told us that phone calls and contacts by reporters for ABC News, along with the New York Times and the Washington Post, are being examined as part of a widespread CIA leak investigation.

Holeeeee crap. Would Big Brother ever do something not so nice? I'll leave that

Justice is Blind

Not in that she doesn't discriminate between one person or another and instead looks at the facts, but rather because she has intentionally blindfolded herself to avoid looking at the truth:

An investigation by the Justice Department ethics office into the conduct of department lawyers who approved the National Security Agency's domestic surveillance program has been closed because investigators were denied security clearances, according to a letter sent to Congress on Wednesday.

Oversight is dead! Long live the Bush dictatorship! If this ain't fascism, I don't know what is.

Score One for Us!

On C-Span right now, Rep. Kendrick Meek (D-Fl) is carrying an enormous stamp - it must be twice as wide as he is - with "Rubber Stamp Republican Congress" printed on it.

YES!!!!!!!

The World's Stupidest Pundit, Again

He's baaaack!

But the message in this case truly is the medium. The e-mails pulse in my queue, emanating raw hatred. This spells trouble -- not for Bush or, in 2008, the next GOP presidential candidate, but for Democrats. The anger festering on the Democratic left will be taken out on the Democratic middle. (Watch out, Hillary!) I have seen this anger before -- back in the Vietnam War era. That's when the antiwar wing of the Democratic Party helped elect Richard Nixon. In this way, they managed to prolong the very war they so hated.

The hatred is back. I know it's only words now appearing on my computer screen, but the words are so angry, so roiled with rage, that they are the functional equivalent of rocks once so furiously hurled during antiwar demonstrations. I can appreciate some of it. Institution after institution failed America -- the presidency, Congress and the press. They all endorsed a war to rid Iraq of what it did not have. Now, though, that gullibility is being matched by war critics who are so hyped on their own sanctimony that they will obliterate distinctions, punishing their friends for apostasy and, by so doing, aiding their enemies. If that's going to be the case, then Iraq is a war its critics will lose twice -- once because they couldn't stop it and once more at the polls.

They all endorsed a war??? Maybe against you, Richard Cohen, but not Iraq. Richard Cohen is being a whiny ass titty baby because some people had the nerve to get angry about the way this country is being run and we let him know about it, but by doing so we obviously made the taste of that cocktail weenie he was eating at his "bipartisan ball of love and friendship" go ever so slightly sour. Richard Cohen does not like it when his cocktail weenies go bad, and he is going to throw a mean ass temper tantrum in return.

By the by, if you're wondering what would happen if we took Cohen's sage, inside the beltway, conventional wisdom advice and made nice to Republicans - "ethics problems? Who doesn't have them?!" "Everyone starts a war and kills hundreds of thousands of people on false premises one or two times in his life" and who can't forget "They'll give you a reacharound and rub your belly if you bend over far enough" - see the years 2000-2004. The fact that anyone can keep swallowing this tripe is enough to make your blood curdle.

No reason to be angry? Only real whackjobs don't like the president? Well, Little Richie, they don't call him Mr. 31 for nothing. It's nice that you like to believe that the emperor is wearing clothes and they are the finest you've ever seen - but that doesn't make those of us who can prove that he's naked a part of a feverswamp. It just lets us know that we are correct, and we will continue to shout it as long as we have air to breathe - even if it makes your cocktail weenie shrivel up.

Atrios and Digby both weigh in.

Dropping Like...

CIA Agents?

[A] source has told NEWSWEEK that [CIA #3 Kyle "Dusty"] Foggo had acknowledged to associates that he may have tipped off [childhood friend, briber, poker-party-thrower and former defense contractor Brent] Wilkes that CIA contracts were coming up for bid -- an activity which, according to the source, Foggo said was neither improper nor illegal.

Hosenball also reports the CIA has made an internal announcement that Dusty will retire.

I sure hope Hayden does not take over.

Kos Writes

It's never too early to start fighting for the leadership and the soul of the party. Two things that Hillary will wreck if given the chance. Kos correctly states:

While Republicans spent the past four decades building a vast network of small-dollar donors to fund their operations, Democrats tossed aside their base and fed off million-dollar-plus donations. The disconnect was stark, and ultimately destructive. Clinton's third way failed miserably. It killed off the Jesse Jackson wing of the Democratic Party and, despite its undivided control of the party apparatus, delivered nothing. Nothing, that is, except the loss of Congress, the perpetuation of the muddled Democratic "message," a demoralized and moribund party base, and electoral defeats in 2000, 2002 and 2004.

Hillary still represents these interests and politics, which have been fatally damaging to the Democratic party. This is why, like Kos, I do not support Hillary, instead I would rather back someone who has demonstrated some backbone and leadership, like Senator Feingold. Such a candidate is electable because standing by your values counts for something, even if people disagree with them. On the other hand, being bland and trying to sell out to everyone does not go very far with anyone, except if you subscribe to the "must appeal to 100% of electorate to win." And even then, as Kos points out, Clinton never won more than 50% of the vote.

Here's an interesting point that just came to my mind. Although we love to, and I am guilty of this as well, praise Bill for his charisma, he never won more than 50% of the vote, AND look at his opponents: George H.W. Bush and Bob Dole. Wow. If that was all we could scrounge up with Clinton against those guys we should have realized in 1992 that there was something seriously wrong with the way the Democratic party was working. Better late than never I guess.

Doubletake

Almost missed this:

Seated next to President Bush in the Oval Office, Goss, a Republican congressman from Florida before he took over the CIA, said he was "stepping aside" but gave no reason for the departure. Bush, who did not name a successor, said he had accepted the resignation and thanked Goss for his service.

Do you suppose it could have something to do with this?

I've learned from a well-connected source that those under intense scrutiny by the FBI are current and former lawmakers on Defense and Intelligence comittees -- including one person who now holds a powerful intelligence post.

Plus there's been some speculation the hookers in the above are gay. Oh man, just when I think the Republicans can't surprise me any more.

On another note, sorry posting has been light. Will try to get back to normal soon.

Truthiness

For all of you who missed Colbert at the WH Correspondents' dinner, C&L has the video up.

All I can say is a tip of the hat to Ted Hitler - I mean Stephen Colbert.

Global Warming

Bush: "The science isn't there."

A scientific study commissioned by the Bush administration concluded yesterday that the lower atmosphere was indeed growing warmer and that there was "clear evidence of human influences on the climate system."

I guess that's the same thing as saying "I want to know who this leaker is, and when I find out he will be brought to justice." Way to sleep and drink on the job, sheriff George.

I predict the Republican strategy on global warming will be to abandon the denial line - but keep enough deniers around to make them look comparatively sane - and to switch to the "it's happening slowly enough that we can keep polluting at will" line.

At least the real president gets it.

Link.

The Deficit

WOOHOO!!!!