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Taylor Marsh has been writing on line since 1996, with the archives provided here a representation of that work.

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Rick Perry: ‘I’m running for president and `full well believe I’m going to win’

By on 13 August 2011

**UPDATED**

Perry’s announcement came during a conference call, which (of course) was then blasted across Twitter by the AP’s Beth Fouhy.

Here’s Perry’s “Why I’m Running” pitch.

So, his big announcement speech included a gafferiffic moment, when Perry called the fallen Afghanistan soldiers “Special Operators.” The second half of his speech took off on optimism, which will be very effective in the primaries. Mike Murphy tweeted that this will soon become a contest between Romney & Perry, which is an easy prediction. But if Republicans nominate Perry, Obama will be the luckiest man on earth. I simply see no way Independents and moderates will take to this Bushesque character, whose slick preacher routine will not wear very well at all.

George W. Bush isn’t that far in the rear view mirror, so morphing Perry and Bush will be a breeze.

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Scorched Earth is Nothing New for Obama

By on 09 August 2011

It’s panic at 1600. The daily Gallup is depressing by itself, but amidst the economic carnage and America losing our AAA status under Obama’s watch, which will make for a snappy negative GOP ad, everyone is girding their loins for the battle.

But really, folks, have people forgotten Alice Palmer? Remember Obama hinting Hillary was “Bush-Cheney lite”? ..and who can forget that South Carolina memo? If it takes scorched earth that’s what Obama will deliver, because he’s done it many times before.

Did people really believe Obama could get by this time on hope and change, the sequel?

I can’t believe people are shocked by the latest news, which comes in a politically titillating article at Politico:

In a move that will make some Democrats shudder, Obama’s high command has even studied former President George W. Bush’s 2004 takedown of Sen. John Kerry, a senior campaign adviser told POLITICO, for clues on how a president with middling approval ratings can defeat a challenger.

“Unless things change and Obama can run on accomplishments, he will have to kill Romney,” said a prominent Democratic strategist aligned with the White House.

The onslaught would have two aspects. The first is personal: Obama’s reelection campaign will portray the public Romney as inauthentic, unprincipled and, in a word used repeatedly by Obama’s advisers in about a dozen interviews, “weird.”

[...] The second aspect of the campaign to define Romney is his record as CEO of Bain Capital, a venture capital firm that was responsible for both creating and eliminating jobs. Obama officials intend to frame Romney as the very picture of greed in the great recession — a sort of political Gordon Gekko.

I’ve always believed that Obama would have to go hard and go dirty, whether the GOP nominee is Mitt Romney or some other guy. Romney, however, is their worst nightmare, even give his innumerable flaws. The only difficulty for Obama would be if a woman rose to the top, which isn’t going to happen now that Rick Perry and his maleness is in the on-deck circle.

Let’s also not kid ourselves that Obama and Romney are all that different. Neither are ideologues. Both believe in nothing but their own fortunes and futures. Either would sell their soul to make a deal that makes them look good. And both are willing to do anything to get to live in the White House. They’re craven egotists who believe in their own persona and the preciousness of their own man self.

As an insider Dem told me months and months ago, Obama’s never run against a competent Republican, so Mitt Romney scares the crap out of them. But now that people have seen Barack Obama in action, revealing he isn’t all his marketing says he was (as I warned), well, they’re up against it now, because the old Axelrod-Plouffe bs won’t fly this time.

Besides the fact that the entire Politico piece is a gift to Mitt Romney and assumes he’s the nominee, let’s just accept that in 2012 these two unprincipled political chameleons, no insult meant to chameleons, are perfect for the times. Maybe we’ll all get lucky and they’ll tear themselves apart, making way for something novel in 2016: an independent progressive candidate who actually stands for something, but more importantly, is willing to go down fighting for it.

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George W. Bush’s Economy was Even Worse than Obama Knew

By on 07 August 2011

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

As insults fly between political parties as well as the U.S. and S&P, with nations like China chirping in, all the rest of us are left to do is wait.

Republicans insisted on a disastrous debt ceiling deal, but it was Pres. Obama who allowed it all to play out as it did instead of demanding a clean debt ceiling and sticking to it or invoking the 14th Amendment. The White House showed no leadership at all.

But since what’s past is prologue…

It was a story entitled “Flying Blind” that drilled home the importance of funding our federal government properly to make sure lawmakers we elect have the information they need to run the place. As Lawrence O’Donnell lays out in the clip above, with help from Howard Fineman, as well as Robert Reich, when you don’t have the correct data it’s really hard to enact the proper policies. It’s what got Pres. Obama started on the economic path that is threatening to take down his presidency.

From The Economist earlier this month:

Output in the third and fourth quarters fell by 3.7% and 8.9%, respectively, not at 0.5% and 3.8% as believed at the time. Employment was also falling much faster than estimated. Some 820,000 jobs were lost in January, rather than the 598,000 then reported. In the three months prior to the passage of stimulus, the economy cut loose 2.2m workers, not 1.8m. In January, total employment was already 1m workers below the level shown in the official data.

We can’t know exactly how things would have played out in a world in which key policymakers had better data. If the true scope of the economic disaster in the fourth quarter had been clear, however, it seems certain that Ms Romer’s models would have shown a need for more stimulus, that the White House would have agreed to push for more (and perhaps a lot more), and that Congress would have been much more receptive to a bigger bill. A drop of 8.9% does seem much more terrifying, after all, than a 3.8% decline. Bigger stimulus would have reduced the economic deterioration in subsequent months. The Fed might also have been more aggressive.

[...] What’s striking to me is that as new data have revealed the true dimensions of the 2008 collapse, the public’s perception of events hasn’t much changed. Critics still jeer the stimulus for its failure to deliver promised results, despite the now-obvious inadequacy of the package. Few in Washington seem willing to discuss how drastically officials underreacted in 2009, and how the results of that underreaction are still with us, waiting for a more appropriate policy response. I don’t know which tragedy is the more troubling: the failure to see the true scope of the disaster when accurate numbers weren’t available, or the failure to see it now that they are.

Stop and re-read those numbers in bold above.

The discrepancy is not only staggering, but would cause any White House to react much differently. Obama’s people had the wrong numbers, so they were operating under a horrifically frightening misconception.

George W. Bush had left the economy in a much worse state than anyone had previously known.

Of course, Obama and Democrats came into power in 2009 not wanting to look back and because of it Bush enjoyed a sort of rehabilitation when his memoir came out. It’s a tragic mistake made by amateurs.

The disconnect, however, is that Pres. Obama, Democrats and Republicans are willing to waste the entire month of August on vacation while our country heaves and gasps for economic leadership.

The lack of coherent, determined and fearless leadership, that’s the scariest part of this entire saga and no one has the confidence this element will change any time soon.

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Bill Clinton Played Hardball and Won, Obama Paid Ransom and America Lost

By on 03 August 2011

“(Pres. Bill Clinton) beat the hell out of us first, for a year. He pummeled us for a year. … He didn’t roll over the second we walked in. … Then he out-negotiated us for a year. He brought us to our knees.” – Joe Scarborough

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Those were the days. A time when a Democratic president in the White House knew how to wage a political fight. Today, not only has Pres. Obama ceded our national economic policies to Republicans and Tea Party extortionists, but he’s managed to alter the entire debate forever.

What we have done, Larry, also is set a new template. In the future, any president, this one or another one, when they request us to raise the debt ceiling, it will not be clean anymore. This is just the first step. This, we anticipate, will take us into 2013. Whoever the new president is, is probably going to be asking us to raise the debt ceiling again. Then we will go through the process again and see what we can continue to achieve in connection with these debt ceiling requests of presidents to get our financial house in order. – Sen. Mitch McConnell

Joe Scarborough was there and explained it best back when the Gingrich revolution rolled into Washington, something I remember well. Joe also makes the Democratic argument starting at around 6:45, with the money quote at 11:45 on the video above.

Back in the ’90s, William Jefferson Clinton had many things going for him Obama didn’t have during the debt ceiling debacle. First, as Kara Brandeisky writes in TNR, there was a roaring economy, but there were also no Republicans willing to take the country over a financial cliff.

Pres. Clinton had something else too. Yes, he became a Third Way centrist hated by progressives, but Clinton drew a line in concrete on what he would accept and not accept. But more importantly, he didn’t let the Republican extortionists set the terms of goddam debate.

November 9, 1995, a senior administration official told the Washington Post, “Our position is it does not matter what they put on this legislation, we are not going to accept anything but clean bills because we will not be blackmailed over default. Get it? No extortion. No blackmail. What you hear are their screams of complaint as they realize we are not, not, not budging on this.” – How Clinton Handled His Debt Ceiling Crisis Better Than Obama

As Jonathan Chait notes as well, it’s not about looking at Bill Clinton’s centrist presidency, which was filled with compromises, with rose-colored glasses, which isn’t going to happen anyway.

Obama and his loyalists have gone overboard the same way George W. Bush did when he came in. Bush’s Anything But Bill strategy led to the demoting of the first terrorism export, then 9/11. Obama’s aversion to Bill Clinton’s politics, but also Obama’s arrogance in not learning the lessons of his presidency, especially his hardball tactics that go back to Lyndon Johnson, has now given Republican economics to America.

Worse yet, Obama has also told his adversaries that there isn’t anything he won’t do to avoid a confrontation, while simultaneously yielding the economic debate to Republicans.

Clinton may be a lot of things, but he wasn’t a political coward.

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Norway Domestic Terrorist Reportedly Influenced by Pamela Geller, Robert Spencer, U.S. Right-Wing

By on 25 July 2011

Oh, the inconvenience of facts when met with ugly reality. Pamela Geller and Jihad Watch’s Robert Spencer are cited in today’s New York Times story:

Anders Behring Breivik

Marc Sageman, a former C.I.A. officer and a consultant on terrorism, said it would be unfair to attribute Mr. Breivik’s violence to the writers who helped shape his world view. But at the same time, he said the counterjihad writers do argue that the fundamentalist Salafi branch of Islam “is the infrastructure from which Al Qaeda emerged. Well, they and their writings are the infrastructure from which Breivik emerged.”

“This rhetoric,” he added, “is not cost-free.”

[...] Mr. Breivik frequently cited another blog, Atlas Shrugs, and recommended the Gates of Vienna among Web sites. Pamela Geller, an outspoken critic of Islam who runs Atlas Shrugs, wrote on her blog Sunday that any assertion that she or other antijihad writers bore any responsibility for Mr. Breivik’s actions was “ridiculous.”

“If anyone incited him to violence, it was Islamic supremacists,” she wrote.

The tragedy of the scores murdered can only be mitigated, however slightly, if we attempt to understand the fueling of people, including lone wolf domestic terrorists, though Breivik may have had accomplices, because it’s never just them in the picture.

All you have to do is take a look at the Republican party’s 2012 roster for examples of who’s fueling this stuff. William Saletan over at Slate did that today. Herman Cain comes to mind, but he’s by no means alone.

And the hypocrisy doesn’t end with Geller. It permeates the Republican presidential field. Mitt Romney, Tim Pawlenty, and Newt Gingrich agree with Geller that no mosque should be built near Ground Zero. Herman Cain, in the style of George Wallace, just went to Murfreesboro, Tenn., to support local bigots who want to stop the construction of a mosque there. Rick Santorum told a Christian school audience: “The idea that the Crusades and the fight of Christendom against Islam is somehow an aggression on our part is absolutely anti-historical.” And Michele Bachmann defended a congressional inquiry into Muslim violence by pointing out that recently,

Two of our soldiers were gunned down in Germany, and the fellow who shot them shouted “Allah Akhbar” before he did that. And just the week before that, we had a 20-year-old from Saudi Arabia, here on a student visa in Dallas, who had accumulated all of the chemicals necessary to create a bomb on the order of the Oklahoma City federal building bombing. … If we don’t understand that there are Sharia-compliant terrorists in our midst … we will make ourselves more vulnerable.

Geller responds by calling anyone questioning her Islamaphobia and fearmongering “media assassins” against “voices of freedom.” People like Geller and others of her ilk simply think freedom is not for Muslims or anyone outside their wingnut hysteria club, with the impetus behind much of Geller’s invective style and hate speech her anti-Israeli paranoia, which is all consuming.

Charles Johnson over at Little Green Footballs has no problem writing the obvious:

There’s no doubt whatsoever that Anders Behring Breivik was seriously influenced by these people, and they know it. Their guilty consciences are showing.

But not to worry, there’s always someone willing to make excuses for these inciting wingnuts. Cue David Horowitz, writing under the title of “The Character Assassination of Robert Spencer,” which is as appalling as most of the wingnuttery from this man.

Hate is the driver, a reaction to what some right-wing fanatics see as all around them, which in Europe finds the numbers rising. From the Atlantic:

Over the last decade, the extreme right in Europe has become more palatable. The overt racism and chest-beating nationalism of previous years have been discarded. What characterizes the new far-right is a defiant, aggressive defence of national culture and history in the face of a changing world, of secularism, and even of democracy and liberty. While each has its idiosyncrasies, far-right parties are responding to genuine concerns of many voters: that modern globalization hasn’t benefitted them, that mass immigration — especially from Muslim-majority countries — is threatening local and national identity.

[...] Perhaps most important, these new far-right parties like Geert Wilders’ Freedom Party in the Netherlands or Marine Le Pen’s Front National in France expertly portray mainstream politicians as spineless, soft-boiled, venal, self-serving slaves to political correctness and orthodoxy. Recent events — such as banking bailouts, the Eurozone crisis, and the News International hacking scandal — certainly lend some credibility to the view that politicians are indeed out of touch with ordinary people.

[...] A significant chunk of European voters is clearly impressed. Le Pen is currently third in the polling for the 2012 French presidential election. Wilders’ Freedom Party is also the third-largest in the Netherlands. In Scandinavia, the True Finns, the Danish People’s Party, and the Swedish Democrats all secured their best-ever electoral results over the past 18 months. Germany and Austria’s far-right parties are resurgent, sparking atavistic European fears. Further east, the Jobbik Party is now the third largest political party in Hungary, having doubled its seats during the last election.

Right-wing “populism” is an oxymoron.

But as the Tea Party rose in America as a response to Barack Obama’s presidency, though the foundation was economic and born in the Bush era, the fuel has come from extremists questioning Pres. Obama’s Americanism. These individuals charge some bizarre otherness they feel about Obama, resembling the same paranoid fears of the Norway domestic terrorist, Anders Behring Breivik, a kinship of people who believe their future is being taken from them.

Right-wingers are having their day due to many things, including economic and cultural, but also because of feckless posturing from people who make false equivalencies under the guise of being “balanced.”

When you have someone like Donald Trump joining in on the rhetoric of birtherism it gives you the best example anywhere on earth at just how easy it is for this insidiously dangerous fearmongering to spread if even business tycoons feel comfortable repeating the most dangerous charges.

Poor Glenn Beck, he’s got to be really gnashing his teeth he doesn’t have his Fox megaphone anymore. But at least he was able to spew his “Hitler youth” invective on right-wing radio, so he shouldn’t feel he missed out.

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Compromising accountability, letting the fire go out

By on 24 July 2011

Joyce L. Arnold: Liberal, lesbian, Independent, equality activist, writer.

Holding the Electeds accountable … an absolutely fundamental job that takes time and energy and effort and thought, and basically, is really hard work. And it’s ours. George W. Bush got a second term, which for me means he wasn’t held accountable. Of course, he could still have had feet-holding-to-the-fire second term experiences, but since he seemed to plow on, happily spending the “political capital” about which he spoke so proudly, I don’t think he ever saw any reason to question his decisions, about Iraq or Katrina or Wall Street, or anything else. Of course, there’s that hope that “history” will hold him accountable, but that really won’t do any good for the people who were hurt by his decisions.

Now it’s Barack Obama’s turn to be held accountable. And though there’s certainly ample time for things to change, I continue to expect he’ll get a second term. If that happens, I also expect he’ll take that as approval and go Right ahead with no real sense of “accountability” to the people most hurt by his decisions.

The whole “holding accountable” thing is so difficult, among other reasons, because we seem almost completely stuck in the Two Party Front for the Oligarchy, lesser of two evils, you have nowhere else to go framework. Another reason is the pervasive power of marketing and spinning. And then there are the problems in accountability created by the cover of what can be called “adulation.” At least that’s what I’m calling it. As fast as those who want to hold Electeds accountable build the fires, others come along with water hoses and put them out.

This is from a couple of weeks ago, so you may very well have seen it – an article in Esquire “How Can We Not Love Obama?”, by Stephen Marche. I share the thought I’ve seen in several places, regarding this piece: I hoped it was satire. If it is, I’ve not seen it acknowledged. But if it is, it still serves the purpose of revealing how accountability is made more difficult by insistence that the guy is so fantastic, that the 11 dimensional chess, he’s-so-much-smarter-than-everyone-else claims are true. Why should he listen to grumblings and rumblings from those who see things differently? Walking on water is so much easier than through fire. March writes:

Before the fall brings us down, before the election season begins in earnest with all its nastiness and vulgarity … can we just enjoy Obama for a moment? Before the policy choices have to be weighed and the hard decisions have to be made, can we just take a month or two to contemplate him the way we might contemplate a painting by Vermeer or a guitar lick by the early-seventies Rolling Stones or a Peyton Manning pass or any other astounding, ecstatic human achievement? Because twenty years from now, we’re going to look back on this time as a glorious idyll in American politics, with a confident, intelligent, fascinating president riding the surge of his prodigious talents from triumph to triumph. …

Due to the specific nature of his political calculus, possibly not a single person in the United States — not even Obama himself — agrees with all of his policies. But even if you disagree with him, even if you hate him, even if you are his enemy, at this point you must admire him. The turning point came that glorious week in the spring when, in the space of a few days, he released his long-form birth certificate, humiliated Donald Trump at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner, and assassinated Osama bin Laden. The effortlessness of that political triptych — three linked masterpieces demonstrating his total command over intellectual argument, low comedy, and the spectacle of political violence — was so overwhelmingly impressive that it made political geniuses of the recent past like Reagan and Clinton seem ham-fisted. …

In an Atlantic article, “Don’t Romanticize Obama,”, Conor Friedersdorf, in response to Marche, writes:

In all administrations, Congress is a necessary check, as is the Fourth Estate, as are the people. Our current Congress is failing spectacularly. It is filled with Republicans who’ve no idea how to govern and Democrats whose civil liberties bona fides evaporated as soon as their party came into power.

Thus a greater burden is imposed on the media and the people. To cast Obama as the living embodiment of the zeitgeist is as absurd as imagining him to be a shadow outsider who hates America. He is a normal politician, one whose behavior in office often times conflicts with the ideals that put him there. What we ought to do, insofar as it’s possible, is be skeptical, vigilant and demand better.

It doesn’t have to be as over-the-top as the Marche piece in “romanticizing” Obama (or any other Elected – Reagan comes to mind, for some reason) for thick, fire resistant cover to be provided. And again, if Marche was writing tongue in cheek, he’s made that point.

This is kind of like Obama’s compromised strategy for compromising – if you begin by walking so far into the other side’s territory (which actually matches your ideas quite well), you leave yourself little if any wiggle room. Same for those Obama, or Reagan or whoever, supporters who are so invested in the person that both party and policy are compromised beyond recognition. And the only thing Elected feet feel are a splash in cool waters.

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Obama’s Lost Moon Shot on Energy

By on 20 July 2011

“… We choose to go to the moon. We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win, and the others, too.” – President John F. Kennedy (September 12, 1962, at Rice University, Houston, Texas)

On this date in 1969, we landed the first man on the moon, and part of this adventure concludes for the United States tomorrow, with the final space shuttle mission set to land at 5:56:58 a.m. EDT at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

I cannot begin to express the joy I’ve had in watching this American passage, remembering the wonder of this visionary journey and accomplishment. Betsy Mason over at Wired has an amazing piece and photo gallery on what NASA did to train the APOLLO astronauts. Thanks to everyone at NASA and all the supporters of this amazing feat, as we all await the next journey, provided Congress understands that investment, research and development is critical for America’s future. There’s absolutely no evidence at this point our politicians get this fact.

Thinking about the anniversary of the moon landing today, I’m reminded of what is required to make the seemingly impossible manifest.

When Pres. Bill Clinton ruminates about the wondrous explosion of economic growth in the ’90s he experienced as president, he never forgets to cite the amazing technological expansion of the internet that helped make it happen. He often says how he just put the pedal to the metal and exploited every aspect to help it work for America as he led the country to peacetime prosperity and a booming economy that left George W. Bush a record surplus.

Thinking of both Pres. Kennedy’s vision and Clinton’s initiative to harness what was happening in technology, is something that leads me to be unforgiving of the wasted opportunity for what Pres. Obama’s presidency might have meant to this country.

When Pres. Obama won the presidency things had turned sour economically, so what he inherited was a horrendous mess, including wars waged off the budget and a country whose leaders were disrespected around the world. His presidency held the hope that all that was about to change.

With the American people behind him wholeheartedly when he was inaugurated, the press cowed and the world waiting for greatness, Barack Obama had a once in a generation opportunity to do big things, really big things. Like tackle our energy challenges, which would impact us domestically, as well as our foreign policy and military priorities, a situation that has bled this country dry of resources we’ll never recover. He could have harnessed business leaders of industries, mayors and governors to commit to having their cities be bullet train depots, so we could finally get high-speech rail from New York to the Midwest to the Pacific Coast, from north to south and across this country, creating jobs by the thousands along the way, including side industries of workers and support, with the results manifesting a new way to travel, at least for America.

People in Europe have been traveling this way for years.

All of a sudden a tax on gas wouldn’t be so onerous. “Drill, baby, drill” a bad memory of bankrupt celebrity politicians and their fans.

But to imagine, implement and sell a nationwide building extravaganza focused on changing our energy focus Mr. Obama would have had to have had a vision. He did not. Instead he doubled down on military actions, reneged on campaign pledges to remove the stench of the Bush-Cheney legacy by doubling down on drone attacks, starting another war in Libya and continuing rendition and allowing “secret” prisons to continue. If you want to see the final gasp of “hope and change” read Jeremy Scahill’s article about Somalia. Our Nobel Peace Prize President now turned to ash.

So, as we all trudge into another presidential election cycle we’re stuck dealing with meager men and women running for the highest office in the land and the world, people who talk to interest groups, factions and fans, without having the core character to speak about a larger human purpose.

John F. Kennedy spoke of choosing to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard, but then he did something about it at a time when American limitations didn’t exist. When leaders dreamed of big things and stuck their own neck out to sell them for the good of the country, not because it would help them win the Independent vote.

We are still a great nation, but we are now led by smaller men. …and women, because you can’t have a country in the mess it is today without a collapse of leadership from all quarters, including We The People. At some point the American public has simply got to walk away from the current political class to say enough is enough.

Last View This image of the International Space Station was taken by Atlantis' STS-135 crew during a fly around as the shuttle departed the station on Tuesday, July 19, 2011. STS-135 is the final shuttle mission to the orbital laboratory. Image Credit: NASA


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Murdoch Global Sleaze Machine Continues to Unravel

By on 11 July 2011

… Whether or not the Mirror’s claims are verified, the allegations may raise the volume on questions about the editorial judgment and ethics employed by Murdoch titles in the U.S. “The News of the World has lots of reporters at any given time on the ground in the U.S.,” Murdoch biographer Michael Wolff tells CBS News. “Many of its stories, particularly many of its celebrity stories, are dateline here. So, I think that’s the next step.” [...] – Murdoch’s hacking woes grow; 9/11 victims eyed?

This story boggles the mind. Following it since it broke has been a stunning trip through the worst media scandals in modern times, with no parallel. The villain in this tale is a notorious conservative whose propaganda outreach includes the most popular cable TV channel in the U.S., Fox News Channel. Even after the worst was uncovered, with images of grubby people deleting phone messages from missing 13-year-old Milly Dowler’s phone, Ruppert Murdoch shows no remorse. It’s all about his enemies trying to get even with him.

What Murdoch seems most desperate about is saving his monopoly hunger from running aground. His bid to buy BSkyB is stalling since this scandal exploded, with Labour leader Ed Miliband vowing to challenge Mr. Murdoch until the bitter end.

Bloomberg’s Lizzy O’Leary mis-reported News Corp. was to bow out of the Sky bid earlier today.

Then Forbes reported that after News Corp. withdrew its pledge to spin off Sky News as a condition for acquiring BSkyB, Britain’s Competition Commission could go “for a full-scale inquiry,” which is exactly what has happened.

While the latest from the The Independent on the political targets brings in Gordon Brown:

… Brown joins a long list of Labour politicians who are known to have been targeted by private investigators working for News International, including the former prime minister Tony Blair and his media adviser Alastair Campbell, the former deputy prime minister John Prescott and his political adviser Joan Hammell, Peter Mandelson as trade secretary, Jack Straw and David Blunkett as home secretaries, Tessa Jowell as media secretary and her special adviser Bill Bush, and Chris Bryant as minister for Europe.

[...] The sheer scale of the data assault on Brown is unusual, with evidence of attempts to obtain his legal, financial, tax, medical and police records as well as to listen to his voicemail. All of these incidents are linked to media organisations. In many cases, there is evidence of a link to News International.

Scotland Yard recently wrote separately to Brown and to his wife to tell them that their details had been found in evidence collected by Operation Weeting, the special inquiry into phone hacking at the News of the World. It is believed that this refers to handwritten notes kept by Mulcaire, which were seized by police in August 2006 and never previously investigated. Brown last year asked Scotland Yard if there was evidence that he had been targeted by the private investigator and was told there was none.

Journalists who have worked at News International say they believe that Brown’s personal bank account was accessed on several occasions when he was chancellor of the exchequer. An internal inquiry by Abbey National’s fraud department found that during January 2000, somebody acting on behalf of the Sunday Times contacted their Bradford call centre six times, posing as Brown, and succeeded in extracting details from his account.

Scotland Yard involved in Murdoch’s messy and possible malfeasance, with all sorts of politicians being targeted is especially interesting when you consider what might happen if this had happened in the U.S. It puts the 2000 election finale in perspective, a time when Roger Ailes allowed the relative of George W. Bush to control the election results that fateful election. From Rolling Stone on Ailes, just to drive home the entire picture, now that we see what’s hitting the fan in Britain:

But it was the election of George W. Bush in 2000 that revealed the true power of Fox News as a political machine. According to a study of voting patterns by the University of California, Fox News shifted roughly 200,000 ballots to Bush in areas where voters had access to the network. But Ailes, ever the political operative, didn’t leave the outcome to anything as dicey as the popular vote. The man he tapped to head the network’s “decision desk” on election night – the consultant responsible for calling states for either Gore or Bush – was none other than John Prescott Ellis, Bush’s first cousin. As a columnist at The Boston Globe, Ellis had recused himself from covering the campaign. “There is no way for you to know if I am telling you the truth about George W. Bush’s presidential campaign,” he told his readers, “because in his case, my loyalty goes to him and not to you.”

In any newsroom worthy of the name, such a conflict of interest would have immediately disqualified Ellis. But for Ailes, loyalty to Bush was an asset. “We at Fox News,” he would later tell a House hearing, “do not discriminate against people because of their family connections.” On Election Day, Ellis was in constant contact with Bush himself. After midnight, when a wave of late numbers showed Bush with a narrow lead, Ellis jumped on the data to declare Bush the winner – even though Florida was still rated too close to call by the vote-tracking consortium used by all the networks. Hume announced Fox’s call for Bush at 2:16 a.m. – a move that spurred every other network to follow suit, and led to bush wins headlines in the morning papers.

[...] Dwell on this for a moment: A “news” network controlled by a GOP operative who had spent decades shaping just such political narratives – including those that helped elect the candidate’s father – declared George W. Bush the victor based on the analysis of a man who had proclaimed himself loyal to Bush over the facts. “Of everything that happened on election night, this was the most important in impact,” Rep. Henry Waxman said at the time. “It immeasurably helped George Bush maintain the idea in people’s minds that he was the man who won the election.”

After Bush took office, Ailes stayed in frequent touch with the new Republican president. “The senior-level editorial people believe that Roger was on the phone every day with Bush,” a source close to Fox News tells Rolling Stone. “He gave Bush the same kind of pointers he used to give George H.W. Bush – delivery, effectiveness, political coaching.” In the aftermath of 9/11, Ailes sent a back-channel memo to the president through Karl Rove, advising Bush to ramp up the War on Terror. As reported by Bob Woodward, Ailes advised Bush that “the American public would tolerate waiting and would be patient, but only as long as they were convinced that Bush was using the harshest measures possible.”

Fox News did its part to make sure that viewers lined up behind those harsh measures. The network plastered an American flag in the corner of the screen, dolled up one female anchor in a camouflaged silk blouse, and featured Geraldo Rivera threatening to hunt down Osama bin Laden with a pistol. The militarism even seemed to infect the culture of Fox News. “Roger Ailes is the general,” declared Bill O’Reilly. “And the general sets the tone of the army. Our army is very George Patton-esque. We charge. We roll.”

As an aside, Roger Ailes is the man who tried to save Sarah Palin from herself when she was choosing whether to wade into the Loughner tragedy, but even with Mr. Ailes’s formidable power and standing as the Republican political general, Sarah thought she knew best. Few people survive this type of arrogance in a party that considers FNC its megaphone and election death star.

Topping the already cruel cravenness is covering for Rebekah Brooks, as so many others lose their jobs.

Michael Wolff, who has written a biography on Murdoch, was a guest on Keith Olbermann’s “Countdown” all last week and though I find him an arrogant boor, he has made some interesting points amidst his mumbling pontification. With so many of those unemployed being journalistic types, this story has the possibilities of a never ending soap opera, with grudges sure to continue to pop up in salaciousness still to come.

Vendetta, anyone?

But could what happen over there hit Murdoch over here?

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Somali Interrogated for 2 Months on Navy Ship

By on 06 July 2011

Interesting development and troubling. Being interrogated secretly for two months on a U.S. Navy ship seems a little fishy to me.

The U.S. military captured a Somali terrorism suspect in the Gulf of Aden in April and interrogated him for more than two months aboard a U.S. Navy ship before flying him this week to New York, where he has been indicted on federal charges.

The case represents the Obama administration’s attempt to find a middle ground between open-ended detentions in secret prisons, as practiced by the George W. Bush administration, and its commitment to try as many terrorism cases as possible in civilian courts.

The Obama’s administrations plans to close the detention center at Guantanamo have been undermined by political miscalculations, confusion and timidity in the face of congressional opposition, sources in the administration and on Capitol Hill say.

With the capture of Ahmed Abdulkadir Warsame, the administration appeared to split the difference, with military and intelligence officials interrogating him secretly for two months before bringing in law enforcement officials to question him for purposes of an indictment. He is the first foreign terrorism suspect captured by the administration outside the United States and moved to this country for trial. …

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Senators Merkeley & Udall: ‘Let’s Not Linger in Afghanistan’

By on 05 July 2011

As a liberal who supported Pres. Obama’s Afghanistan plan when he first began it, I simply do not understand how anyone can support it today, at least not when judging what’s in U.S. interests.

From their New York Times op-ed today:

Nineteen months ago the president announced the surge strategy in hopes of stabilizing Afghanistan and strengthening its military and police forces. Today, despite vast investment in training and equipping Afghan forces, the country’s deep-seated instability, rampant corruption and, in some cases, compromised loyalties endure. Extending our commitment of combat troops will not remedy that situation.

Sometimes our national security warrants extreme sacrifices, and our troops are prepared to make them when asked. In this case, however, there is little reason to believe that the continuing commitment of tens of thousands of troops on a sprawling nation-building mission in Afghanistan will make America safer.

National security experts, including the former C.I.A. director Leon E. Panetta, have noted that Al Qaeda’s presence in Afghanistan has been greatly diminished. Today there are probably fewer than 100 low-level Qaeda operatives in Afghanistan. Al Qaeda has a much larger presence in a number of other nations.

Our focus shouldn’t be establishing new institutions in Afghanistan, but concentrating on terrorist organizations with global reach. And our military and intelligence organizations have proved repeatedly that they can take the fight to the terrorists without a huge military footprint.

It’s easy to understand why our troops being in Afghanistan is good for the Afghans, because Pres. Karzai simply isn’t doing his job and there’s no evidence he will. Women continue to suffer in Afghanistan, an issue to which Karzai is indifferent, even as real progress has been made, because the women and girls had only one way to go and that’s up.

In the past, I’ve argued with people over staying in Afghanistan, but after herculean efforts on the part of our troops, it’s simply not worth one more life, not one. I feel the same way about Iraq, too, but I felt that way from the beginning the Bush-Cheney misadventure that distracted the U.S. from getting bin Laden.

It’s also not as if we won’t continue to be involved in Afghanistan, because they’re sitting next to Pakistan in an important region. This begs the question of when regional powers, including India, China and Russia, will start doing their part? The U.S. is leaving Afghanistan, so they’d better step up.

Senators Merkeley and Udall are correct, Pres. Obama should change course, but he won’t because he’s prosecuting this war like a Republican, which is one reason why Afghanistan is starting to look like a bigger disaster than ever, because the same stubbornness that kept Bush in Iraq is keeping Obama from drawing down faster in Afghanistan.

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’1776′ John Adams: One Useless Man is Called a Disgrace; Two are Called a Law Firm; Three or More Become a Congress

By on 04 July 2011


… Lincoln saw an unresolvable tension between the Constitution of a democratic republic and the policies of aggrandizement and intemperate self-interest that lead from the manners of freedom to the slavish love of power. He spoke of the difference between the work of establishing a constitutional republic and the longer task of maintaining it. But maintaining it against what? Lincoln’s answer was always the same: against the internal pressure of greed, and the external pressure of war. The predicament of the country in 1861, he said, “forces us to ask: ‘Is there, in all republics, this inherent, and fatal weakness? Must a government, of necessity, be too strong for the liberties of its own people, or too weak to maintain its own existence?’”

We are now ten years into a policy shared by two successive administrations to plant a new understanding of the spirit of the laws in America. That policy has pretended there is a “trade-off” between liberty and security, and that in a time of crisis, security ought to have the upper hand. The Cheney-Bush and Obama administrations have accustomed us to laws and language concerned above all with the “protection” of citizens — as if there were something higher or more worth protecting than the liberty that is guaranteed by our laws and the framework of laws, the Constitution. [...]

To Maintain a Republic, by David Bromwich

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Americans Blame Bush & Wall Street for Economy

By on 30 June 2011

Pres. Obama has a lot more power and room to push Republicans than he’s using.

But Obama isn’t seen as most responsible for the bad economy, with just eight percent of Americans saying his administration is most to blame. Of those surveyed, 26 percent still say the Bush administration is most to blame for the economy, down slightly from 28 percent in March 2010. Nearly the same percentage of those surveyed – 25 percent – say that Wall Street is most to blame, while 11 percent point to Congress. – Poll: 4 in 10 see ‘permanent decline’

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Scrutiny on Bachmann Isn’t What Obama Faced

By on 28 June 2011

Politico has a piece today on Bachmann’s thin legislative record. Fair enough to cover, but let’s not pretend such things weren’t overlooked for the boys.

When George W. Bush ran for president, not only was his abysmal business record shrugged off, but the traditional press didn’t pay any attention at all regarding Bush’s very iffy National Guard record, not to mention the fact that his presidential candidacy was predicated on his father. When John Kerry was attacked by the “Swift Boat Veterans for Truth,” Fox News channel not only encouraged Sean Hannity to broadcast lies about Sen. Kerry’s hero war record, but traditional, new media and cable outlets let the Right get away with swiftboating him by allowing the false equivalency of Jerome Corsi to be taken seriously. Ronald Reagan likely had Alzheimer’s before his second term, but nobody blew the whistle on the Gipper, while letting him off the hook for Iran-Contra, because the bond the people had with him after the assassination attempt was real. Now, I realize these issues aren’t of the same variety, but scrutiny is scrutiny and when it’s not, it’s not.

The opener from the Politico piece:

Rep. Michele Bachmann is surging in the GOP presidential polls and barnstorming Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina, but as she sprints toward the front of the Republican pack, there’s a major hole in her political résumé: legislation.

Now in her third House term, Bachmann has never had a bill or resolution she’s sponsored signed into law, and she’s never wielded a committee gavel, either at the full or subcommittee level. Bachmann’s amendments and bills have rarely been considered by any committee, even with the House under GOP control. In a chamber that rewards substantive policy work and insider maneuvering, Bachmann has shunned the inside game, choosing to be more of a bomb thrower than a legislator.

Candidate Barack Obama had the thinnest of records out of Illinois, but that didn’t bother anyone when I was writing about Obama’s flyover of the first debate in Carson City, NV, or when he came to the health care forum in Las Vegas saying he’d have a plan in 3 months, totally whiffing the moment. Voting “present” in the Illinois state senate innumerable times didn’t bother the breathless cable yakkers either. Women found out just how committed Pres. Obama was to our freedoms in the Affordability Care Act, as well as his decision on abortion recently in his decision to sell out D.C. women.

But then again, considering the lousy Democratic leadership record Pres. Obama has had in his first term, making private insurance deals, big Pharma compacts, channeling Bush on war and plotting assassinations around the globe, not to mention endless parroting of the Republican economic message, perhaps Politico is correct. Records do matter.

Let’s just not pretend this isn’t a double standard if Michele Bachmann is judged less than a man who’s done absolutely nothing worthy of note before running for president.

Unless, that is, one anti-war speech convinced you that candidate Obama was a progressive fighter, which in that case your hopeless to begin with.

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Pres. Obama’s Idea of Negotiating

By on 28 June 2011

The White House, seeking an agreement to raise the nation’s $14.3 trillion debt ceiling by Aug. 2, on Monday said it would not insist that any deal include an end to former President George W. Bush’s controversial tax rates on the wealthy. [...] The White House said the president is pushing the GOP to agree to eliminate some tax breaks for businesses and loopholes for wealthier taxpayers, but is not seeking to eliminate the across-the-board rates introduced by President Bush. That means taxpayers who earn more than $250,000 annually have gotten a reprieve. – Bush rates are kept safe in debt-limit talks

Pres. Obama plays golf with Speaker Boehner and Gov. John Kasich, so you can’t expect him to understand what his moral economic cowardice means to middle class Americans looking on at this spectacle.

I’m beyond appalled that Pres. Obama and the Democrats continue handing Republicans the economic argument, because they’re too scared to make the case Sen. Bernie Sanders has made innumerable times, the latest Monday on the Senate floor.

Shared sacrifice doesn’t exist in any meaningful way if you’re afraid to rescind the Bush tax cuts, while allowing Medicare tinkering and cuts, as Sen. McConnell is insisting in order to keep Sen. DeMint from jumping his leadership job.

The current rumblings leaking out of negotiations are indefensible from a Democratic, progressive or liberal perspective.

The immediate goal is to find upward of $2.4 trillion in 10-year savings and revenues to help offset what would be an almost equal increase in the federal debt ceiling to be voted prior to Aug. 2 — the deadline set by the Treasury Department. Thus far, the Biden talks have identified an estimated $1.5 trillion to $1.7 trillion in spending reductions — two-thirds of the final goal. The challenge is to either close the gap with some mix of savings and revenues or retreat to settling for a shorter-term debt increase equal to the lesser savings figure. – Revenue vs. cuts in debt debate

I certainly hope this turns out differently than it’s currently playing in my mind, because right now the willingness of Pres. Obama and the Democrats to offer so much on spending reductions without Republicans having any skin in this game is making me nauseous.

Remember, however, that what’s happening is because Pres. Obama wants it to be this way. What’s happening in the debt talks is coming down to decisions he approves of and is negotiating himself. You can’t blame this disaster on Republicans; well, you can, but then you’d be lying like the partisan hacks who are covering for Obama amidst this travesty he set up in the first place.

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The Great Equivocator

By on 26 June 2011

With each equivocation, the man in the Oval Office shields his identity and cloaks who the real Barack Obama is. – Maureen Dowd


In a dead on devastating piece, I still have to say… Come come, Ms. Dowd, surely you jest.

Barack Obama is The Great Equivocator. It’s who he is.

Nate Silver provides important perspective:

But the type of leadership that Mr. Cuomo exercised — setting a lofty goal, refusing to take no for an answer and using every tool at his disposal to achieve it — is reminiscent of the stories sometimes told about with President Lyndon B. Johnson, who had perhaps the most impressive record of legislative accomplishment of any recent president.

It’s also a brand of leadership that many Democrats I speak with feel is lacking in President Obama.

This screen capture of the White House homepage, which has been live until recently, is representative of Barack Obama. When I visited the White House site and this image came up I found it jarring. Just why did Obama reelect pick this photo of Obama looking upward (an image they’ve used before), making it appear he’s got his head in the clouds and his nose in the air? It’s the oddest, most out of touch photo possible, aloof, but it does have a regal air to it reflecting the hubris of the man and his presidency. Someone who doesn’t so much care about people’s concerns as he does about projecting an image he finds presidential, even if it makes him look unreachable, out of touch, which it remains, with his “leadership” more in the minds of his speechwriters than in evidence through his actions.

As for Dowd invoking Catholic clergy, because of his two-faced political marketing he’s actually worse than New York’s Archbishop Timothy Dolan she mentions in her column, who as a representative of the Catholic Church is predictably reprehensible on marriage equality. Remember that the Catholic Church won’t give women power either and they actually might have been able to save these corrupt men from raping and pillaging the youth of the young boys under their charge.

More from Dowd:

The man who was able to beat the Clintons in 2008 because the country wanted a break from Clintonian euphemism and casuistry is now breaking creative new ground in euphemism and casuistry.

Obama is “evolving” on the issue of gay marriage, which, as any girl will tell you, is the first sign of a commitment-phobe.

Maybe, given all his economic and war woes as he heads into 2012, Obama fears the disapproval of the homophobic elements within his own party. But he has tried to explain his reluctance on gay marriage as an expression of his Christianity, even though he rarely goes to church and is the picture of a secular humanist.

While picking up more than three-quarters of a million dollars from 600 guests at a gay and lesbian fund-raising gala in Manhattan on Thursday night, the president declared, “I believe that gay couples deserve the same legal rights as every other couple in this country,” even as he held to his position that the issue should be left to the states to decide.

I don’t know what people like Ms. Dowd have to see in order to understand that Pres. Obama is taking the stance on gay marriage equality, because he’s trying to protect the part of his base, including people beyond the Democratic Party, that he cannot survive 2012 without, including African American and Hispanic churchgoers, a serious segment of the Dem base, but whom he feels cannot be lobbied or convinced to change their minds.

Andrew Cuomo is a corporate Democrat in the great tradition of our two-party duopoly, but he made Pres. Obama look like a mouse.

It’s not about Obama’s own religious beliefs. This is about Obama’s craven political opportunism, which mimics most every other ordinary politicians seeking reelection. His problem is he now is to the Right of New York Republicans.

It’s completely understandable that people don’t want to believe Barack Obama is who he is. I gladly voted for the man in ’08 and don’t regret it at all given the alternative. John Aravosis wants to believe the best, which I appreciate.

However, I’m not in the business of partisan fan politics anymore. I simply say it as I see it.

Pres. Obama is voting “present” on marriage equality.

While taking the LGBT’s money, he proves this community is too trusting and refuses to understand he’s only your friend when he’s got cover (see DADT). Like any president who wants a second term he’s thinking of himself and Obama reelect simply believes marriage equality will cost him the 2012 election, so they won’t fight for it, because he rarely fights for anything but Bushesque wars, proving Barack Obama is an old style mediocre politician from our 20th century past, contrary to his herculean marketing hype.

Perhaps it’s time for the LGBT community to take a lesson from Richard Trumka. Sure, he will likely land in Obama’s court come 2012, but he’s not going to play the sucker for nothing.

The Great Equivocator has spoken. “Evolving” is simply a word to keep people hanging on and it’s working, as Obama reelect knew it would.

But now that Republican New Yorkers have broken the LGBT community’s way, isn’t it time this community decoupled itself from Pres. Obama to see what can be accomplished beyond him, especially since Pres. Obama’s clearly not an ally on marriage equality?

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Obama Loses Dems as Reports of Gadhafi Assassination Plan Surface **UPDATED**

By on 24 June 2011

From Josh Rogin, a statement from the Congressional Progressive Caucus Peace and Security Taskforce (update, 6.25.11):

The Co-Chairs of the Congressional Progressive Caucus Peace and Security Taskforce call on Congress and the President to immediately end our war in Libya. The US has been engaged in hostilities for over 90 days without congressional approval, which undermines not only the powers of the legislative branch but also the legal checks and balances put in place nearly 40 years ago to avoid abuse by any single branch of government.

We call on our colleagues in Congress to exercise their legitimate authority and oversight and immediately block any funding for this war. Before the Executive branch further weakens the War Powers Resolution, and before we attack another country in the name of our “responsibility to protect,” we must recommit ourselves to our Constitutional duty and obligation to hold the purse strings and the right to declare war. For decades, the House recognized the need for appropriate checks and balances before another war was waged. We must do the same. We call on Congress to exhibit similar foresight by promptly ending this war and pledging to uphold the laws that characterize America’s commitment to democratic governance.

This statement makes a mockery of the obsequiese White House stenography in the Politico piece entitled “Libya vote a rebuke the White House can live with.”

____________original column below____________

Congress proved its ineptitude, with David Dayen having a perfect description of Speaker Boehner’s incompetence, which cost him the votes of Ron Paul and Michele Bachmann. Say what you will about Nancy Pelosi, but she wouldn’t bring up such a critical vote if she didn’t have the numbers.

To sum up House preferences on Libya: we don’t like POTUS not asking us for permission, but we don’t want any responsibility either. – Daniel Drezner

Politico has the rundown on the arm twisting, with three dozen Dems voting to rebuke Pres. Obama, ignoring Sec. Clinton’s campaign for him, while stopping shy of using their power of the purse:

It appears that a last-minute White House lobbying effort to stave off Democratic defections worked — at least on the spending-limitation bill. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton asked House Democrats to back their president in a closed-door meeting in the Capitol Thursday, and National Security Adviser Tom Donilon summoned a small group of liberals to the Situation Room at 7 a..m. Friday morning for a classified briefing that may have influenced a handful of votes.

Still, the House rejection of a one-year authorization of the use of force in Libya earlier on Friday represented the most serious congressional challenge to the president’s war-making authority in more than a decade. It was a symbolic vote, but one that was felt on the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue.

Now comes Josh Rogin with an “exclusive” confirming what was said on the audio here by “Buck” McKeon (h/t BF), with Rogin naming the man making the assassination allegations.

So, regardless of the Obama administration saying they are not trying to assassinate Libya’s Gadhafi that’s exactly what’s going on, to no one’s surprise. From Rogin:

House Armed Services Committee member Mike Turner (R-OH) told The Cable that U.S. Admiral Samuel Locklear, commander of the NATO Joint Operations Command in Naples, Italy, told him last month that NATO forces are actively targeting and trying to kill Qaddafi, despite the fact that the Obama administration continues to insist that “regime change” is not the goal and is not authorized by the U.N. mandate authorizing the war.

“The U.N. authorization had three components: blockade, no fly zone, and civil protection. And Admiral Locklear explained that the scope of civil protection was being interpreted to permit the removal of the chain of command of Qaddafi’s military, which includes Qaddafi,” Turner said. “He said that currently is the mission as NATO has defined.”

“I believed that we were [targeting Qaddafi] but that confirmed it,” Turner said. “I believe the scope that NATO is pursuing is beyond what is contemplated in civil protection, so they’re exceeding the mission.”

Now, I’m not squeamish in the least about killing Gadhafi in a declared war where our vital interests are at stake, providing Congress weighs in to approve the funding and the action.

But Pres. Obama waging a “kinetic military action” with NATO as a fig leaf for an assassination plot to effect regime change is something else, especially when the President is doing it on the fly, without oversight and by lying to the American people about what he’s doing.

Pres. Obama has chosen a path that pretends we’re not at war or that “hostilities” don’t exist, as he tries to dance around the War Powers Act. The Pentagon blew this out of the water by giving “imminent danger” pay to “service members who fly planes over Libya or serve on ships within 110 nautical miles of its shores,” as reported by the Washington Post.

All of this kabuki while NATO targets Gadhafi for assassination, because Pres. Obama waved his commander in chief wand.

There goes the republic.

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Obama’s Afghanistan Pitch Doesn’t Pass the Smell Test

By on 22 June 2011

ThinkProgress has assembled the following graph showing that if the reductions are carried out as planned, the United States would still have far more troops in Afghanistan than it did when Obama came into office and more than at any point during former president George W. Bush’s administration… – Think Progress

At the end of the evening we will all be faced with the realization that Pres. Obama’s Afghanistan “surge” will take until after Election Day 2012 to complete. It will then leave around 70,000 U.S. forces inside a country on the cusp of a civil war.

So where does the New York Times get these headlines?

As the Think Progress graphic reveals, the United States would still have far more troops in Afghanistan than it did when Obama came into office and more than at any point during former president George W. Bush’s administration.

The smartest person in the room on Afghanistan isn’t Barack Obama and it’s not Hillary Clinton or Bob Gates. For a very long time it’s been V.P. Joe Biden.

From Huffington Post’s David Wood, which you really should read:

President Barack Obama’s decision to withdraw troops from Afghanistan signals the beginning of the end for the ambitious counterinsurgency strategy that Army Gen. David Petraeus designed and has single-mindedly pursued in Iraq and Afghanistan.

His strategy, which embraced the concept of “winning the people” rather than simply killing the enemy, has attracted a growing number of critics — including Vice President Joe Biden, senior members of Congress and even veteran military officers — who contend that it didn’t work in Iraq and hasn’t worked in Afghanistan. Within the ranks, COIN has become known disparagingly as “armed nation building.”

While Tim Pawlenty doubles down on John McCainisms, which reveals a reinvigoration and reinvention since his debate collapse against Romney. Jon Hunstman’s to the left of Pres. Obama on Afghanistan, Libya and interventionism in general, as I wrote this morning.

So, Pres. Obama’s in between Pawlenty and Huntsman, two Republicans?

This drawdown doesn’t mean squat in the scheme of things.

We’ll still neck deep in Obama’s war in Afghanistan.

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Comes a Worrisome ‘Gentleman’ Candidate

By on 22 June 2011

If anything, it’s McCain and Graham who are nurturing a rebirth of isolationism by going for the easy insult. Isolationism is an actual doctrine, with a rich and complicated intellectual history on the left and the right. It is not an adjective that can be accurately applied to anyone who disagrees with a specific course of action or who is simply weary of a decade of war. But, if wanting to be done with Libya and Afghanistan is now the measure of what isolationism means, then a lot of Americans are going to say, “Hey, that sounds pretty good to me.” – Jonah Goldberg

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Barack Obama has gone so far right channeling his inner Republican, especially on big presidential decisions like war and military, but including his timidity on economic issues that borrow from the Republican model, that he’s actually set himself up to be challenged from the left by Republicans. It’s got to be confusing to a lot of Democrats and progressives, starting with Rachel Maddow.

It was an unremarkable announcement, except perhaps for the Easter egg dress choreography of the Huntsman family women, which was lovely, and of course, the Statue of Liberty in the background commemorating a Reagan moment. So, it was very interesting to see Rachel Maddow give Jon Huntsman the full slam, complete with pitch perfect beatnik opener.

It all came to a screaching halt when her guest, a Utah reporter, offered up anecdotal evidence that Jon Huntsman is a quirky former governor with a decent record and resume, someone who’s considered a gentleman, and is so nice his Democratic opponent hugged him after having lost a race to him. It caught Ms. Maddow up short coming after her blistering critique of a campaign announcement that committed the crime of boring.

It came on a hot Tuesday afternoon, when nobody was watching Jon Huntsman but the press. That’s the real beef Maddow had. The D.C. press have a new darling, with Obama reelect also a bit worried about the gentleman who’s got a serious resume, including on foreign policy, whose a Republican calling for less inteventionism and he’s not Ron Paul.

When Maddow tried to make the case that Obama announcing a drawdown in Afghanistan today blew one of Jon Huntsman’s campaign positions out of the water she couldn’t have been more wrong. Huntsman has been saying since he went public after leaving the Obama administration, that he believes we need to get out of Afghanistan, but also that he wouldn’t have engaged in Libya as Obama, because it’s “not core to our national security interest,” and that we need to be less involved in Middle East wars.

Coming from Pres. Obama’s former ambassador to China makes these ideas doubly intriguiging.

Obama’s announcement on Afghanistan was expected to come any time in the next few weeks. It’s just they surprised everyone by moving it up. As hard as Maddow was making the case that Obama’s announcement supposedly big-footed one of Huntsman’s main platforms of his presidential campaign, it’s just as easy to say Obama moved the decision up to the day after Huntsman’s announcement to step on his message and take him out of the news.

The motocross ads were causing a lot of buzz, but there are just as many people who think they suck. Joe Scarborough asked if Huntsman was trying to appeal to the “stoner” crowd.

The urgency in Maddow’s dressing down of what she saw as a bad roll out for Huntsman didn’t come close to matching the moment. Amateur mistakes from Huntsman, including the misspelling of his name, are beyond stupid. But nobody cares.

There’s no evidence yet Jon Huntsman can overtake slick Mitt, who’s raising money and keeping a low profile. There’s no evidence the wingnuts that make up the primary Republican voters will let Huntsman survive, which is why he’s betting it all on New Hampshire. Huntman’s moderate stance on civil unions, at least for a Republican, is balanced by his right-wing stance on women’s freedoms and a number of other things typically Republican, including austerity. But Mr. Huntsman has also said he won’t sign Grover Norquist’s tax pledge, while Romney will.

For the first time in decades tax increases could come back on the table. I’m so heady about this possibility I’m fighting the vapors.

Fred Davis’s off beat ad campaign style is a hoot, but the real treat is that Huntsman and other Republicans are actually taking conservative positions on military intervention for a change.

Huntsman’s comments on Obama’s Libya intervention are on target and important for the debate, because it pushes Obama to defend his militarism. With Huntsman’s seasoned foreign policy voice, Republicans have another player pushing Obama from the left on interventionism, while Congress presses Pres. Obama on Libya. It’s enough to make me giddy.

The George W. Bush doctrine of preemptive war is dead and Pres. Obama is looking more militaristic than the Republicans.

David Plouffe said he was a “wee bit queasy” about Jon Huntsman way back in 2009 and it wasn’t because he was a lightweight.

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Kennebunkport Republicans Choose Huntsman

By on 20 June 2011

Tomorrow from Jon Huntsman Jr. on Vimeo.

Mark Halperin is the Republican establishment’s most accurate weathervane:

This is the first, but by no means the last, of eye-catching endorsements Huntsman will get from the GOP Establishment, including many with ties to Ronald Reagan and Bushes 41 and 43. Gray’s endorsement will be a semiotic dog whistle for a lot of big-time bundlers. …

C. Boyden Gray is reportedly readying to become Huntman’s policy team leader.

The discontent in the blue blood branch, also keepers of Ronald Reagan’s torch, just don’t buy that flip-flopping, vulture capitalist Mitt Romney is a genuine GOP conservative.

There’s no doubt he’s the frontrunner, but I’ve been sensing for a while just watching Mr. Romney, whether through his announcement or last week’s debate, that he’s forcing the point in a way that seems rooted in more insecurity than surety. Yes, he’s more relaxed than last time, but that’s not a high bar. His dodging questions on culture is a slick trick for the purposes of the general election, but he’s got to get through the primaries first, something Hillary Clinton could warn him about.

Republican establishment ego demands a man who is as smart as they think they are, even if there’s no evidence that the Tea Party and right-wingers have any interest in their upper crust branding or things that might make Republicans appealing to a larger electorate.

I won’t say something as trite as establishment Republicans are fighting for the soul of the GOP, even as Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum prove they don’t have one. But there clearly is a wing of the Republican Party who thinks smart is cool and is willing to bet on losing to get behind Jon Huntsman, who announces tomorrow, if only to pave the way for 2016 and the big Republican battle, at a time the GOP establishment hopes the Tea Party has lost its strength.

Yesterday on Fox News Sunday, Jon Stewart admitted he’d voted for George H.W. Bush over Dukakis.

There hasn’t been a Republican that Democrats could vote for in twenty years.

As for Huntsman being that guy, the motocross pitch will certainly get my husband’s attention.

After the announcement, Huntsman and his charter plane – including family members and a few dozen journalists – will fly to New Hampshire, where he’ll have a rally with about 300 folks. He’ll return to New York City for a finance reception and dinner. On Wednesday morning, Huntsman’s charter will take off for Columbia, S.C., where he’ll tour a factory and hold a media availability, then attend a meet-and-greet with activists and file candidacy papers. After that, it’s off to Miami. On Thursday, he’ll open his campaign headquarters in Orlando, with some senior staffers seeing them for the first time. Then it’s on to Nevada, Utah, California, Texas, Illinois, Michigan, Massachusetts – and the amazing, draining adventure of running for president. – Mike Allen

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E. J. Dionne’s Nostalgia for Bush Meets Enemies List

By on 16 June 2011

A former senior C.I.A. official says that officials in the Bush White House sought damaging personal information on a prominent American critic of the Iraq war in order to discredit him. Glenn L. Carle, a former Central Intelligence Agency officer who was a top counterterrorism official during the administration of President George W. Bush, said the White House at least twice asked intelligence officials to gather sensitive information on Juan Cole, a University of Michigan professor who writes an influential blog that criticized the war. – Ex-Spy Alleges Bush White House Sought to Discredit Critic



E.J. Dionne has written a whopper today by trying to be clever, but just comes off as daft analysis combined with negligence for uttering such blather. His a weird little column about his nostalgia for George W. Bush seems instead like a love letter to encourage Republicans. It’s all predicated on this week’s GOP debate, because he’s scared of Michele Bachmann, forgetting that Obama and the Democrats helped create her, while the Tea Party started as a reaction to George W. Bush on his watch.

That’s why I felt nostalgia for Bush, especially the guy who was a candidate for president in 2000. Unlike this crowd of Republicans, Bush acknowledged that the federal government can ease injustices and get useful things done.

At least he admits Bush’s debacle in Iraq is “why Bush nostalgia takes you only so far.”

This is the kind of stuff that’s written when you don’t hold a president accountable for his unspeakable acts, starting with war in Iraq and Abu Ghraib, but also allowing his vice president to run the show, while the man who killed over 3,000 people got away. A man who kept wars off the books and broke our economy with tax cuts, which Pres. Obama embraced with both arms. This man Mr. Dionne is nostalgic for was a failed businessman, prodigal son and duty dodging Guardsman, ran a race-baiting campaign in South Carolina against John McCain, all of while conspiring with Roger Ailes and one of his relatives on the Fox payroll who was primarily responsible for the Bush won theme that developed on election night.

From Rolling Stone magazine, a president who used Roger Ailes as an adviser, that’s who Mr. Dionne is getting wistful about today:

[...] After Bush took office, Ailes stayed in frequent touch with the new Republican president. “The senior-level editorial people believe that Roger was on the phone every day with Bush,” a source close to Fox News tells Rolling Stone. “He gave Bush the same kind of pointers he used to give George H.W. Bush – delivery, effectiveness, political coaching.” In the aftermath of 9/11, Ailes sent a back-channel memo to the president through Karl Rove, advising Bush to ramp up the War on Terror. As reported by Bob Woodward, Ailes advised Bush that “the American public would tolerate waiting and would be patient, but only as long as they were convinced that Bush was using the harshest measures possible.”Fox News tilted the electoral balance to George W. Bush in 2000, prematurely declaring him president in a move that prompted every other network to follow suit. It helped create the Tea Party, transforming it from the butt of late-night jokes into a nationwide insurgency capable of electing U.S. senators. …

Bush ignored warnings about Al Qaeda and bin Laden, with the list of economic incompetency lingering in a legacy that has us still suffering from it economically today.

Mr. Dionne conveniently forgets there was a set-up for all this and it began with Pres. Obama and Democrats not making their own case for what the Democratic Party believes government can do, but instead adopted Republican economic theory that got us into this mess in the first place.

Now we find, unsurprisingly let me add, that George W. Bush wanted to target Juan Cole because of his effectiveness at criticizing the Iraq war.

Suck on that morsel from Mr. Dionne’s nostalgia pie.

However, the pathetic part about E.J. Dionne’s nostalgia is that it’s not his fault. This absurd nostalgia for Bush should be laid at the door of Congress, when Speaker Pelosi refused to strip the bark off a president whose malfeasance and recklessness was the worst since Nixon. When a president turned the C.I.A. into his own personal misinformation center on a war that we’re still fighting in a country that never attacked us.

It’s this same presidential hubris that inspired Barack Obama to bomb Libya and many other things he’s done to mimic the imperial presidency of George W. Bush. Glenn Greenwald keeps a running list if you’ve forgotten.

That Pres. Obama had to tape Afghanistan back together because of Bush’s negligence, which evolved into a nightmare scenario of unending occupation is another example of why nostalgia for anything George W. Bush is simply a pathetic case of selective amnesia. Bush’s Pakistan strategy part of the disaster that allowed the ISI to likely shelter him all these years.

But Bush nostalgia really owes a debt of thanks to the Democrats. They’re the ones who allowed former Pres. Bush to ride into the sunset and set up his rehabilitation tour that never should have been allowed, let alone have history rewritten by he and Rumsfeld, with Cheney’s tome about to drop.

E.J. Dionne adds his piece of rewriting history to make 2012 Republicans look bad, by positing that George W. Bush was not a nightmare. His case falls apart as he ties himself in knots trying to prove a case that only could have been suggested by one of his Republican bosses trying to save the GOP from themselves.

I wish the gods could save us from amnesiac political writers in the traditional press and the partisan hacks who suck it up, but it seems people are suckers for stupidity.

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