The Next Hurrah

A Next Hurrah Gossip Extravaganza

By DHinMI

OK, the average Next Hurrah reader probably isn't much for celebrity gossip.  But the Washington Post's Reliable Source column isn't your typical gossip column, focusing as it does on what passes for celebrity in Washington.  So occasionally the Reliable Source has something of interest.  But I doubt they'll ever again pack so much gossip interesting to Next Hurrah readers in to one column as they managed to do this morning:

• Patrick Fitzgerald is engaged
• When Valarie Plame's boss at the CIA saw her Vanity Fair glam shot, she was given "a really good chewing out."
• But best of all, a film about a Judy Miller-esque reporter thrown in jail for not divulging her source on a CIA-related story, will star...Kate Beckinsale.  Yup, when I look at Kate Beckinsale, I think Judy Miller.  This is my favorite casting decision since Nicole Kidman played a differently-named Jessica Stern. 

As a service to our readers who care about such things, you should also know that Wayne Newton canceled a gig in suburban Virginia but still managed to appear on Dancing With the Stars.  I can't tell you how he was on Dancing With the Stars, as I forgot to set my TiVo. 

"Catholics Hate Kerry...uh, Giuliani"; Repubs & Fundies to Divorce?

By DHinMI

Remember back in 2004 when the news media and the wingers were all atwitter about how John Kerry, because he supported a separation of church and state and upholding the Supreme Court decision in Roe v Wade, was supposedly a rotten Roman Catholic and was under siege by the Roman Catholic Church?  Well, the stories were always wildly overblown, and usually ignored the important fact that the few Bishops who mouthed off about denying communion to Kerry were acting as free agents, because the American Bishops voted 183-6 against adopting an official policy of denying communion to politicians who supported abortion rights or any other social policies in conflict with the Church’s teachings.  As you should expect,  this fact was almost completely ignored by the press. 

The "priests will deny communion to pro-choice politicians" story has returned, but this time with a twist: it’s about a Republican, Rudy Giuliani:

Bush Administration Only Understands Its Own Propaganda

By DHinMI

Apparently the Bush administration only understands their own domestic propaganda:

President George W. Bush's homeland security adviser said on Sunday al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden is "virtually impotent" and can do little more than send videotaped messages.

Top White House aide Fran Townsend said U.S. officials were studying bin Laden's new video tape for clues to his health or whereabouts, and whether there were any hidden meanings or messages.

But she said there was no sign of an imminent attack.

"This is a man on the run in a cave who is virtually impotent other than his ability to get these messages out," Townsend said on CNN's "Late Edition." "It is propaganda.

"Based on our experience, we have never seen bin Laden use a tape to trigger any operational activity."

Then why did Condi tell the networks not to air his tapes?:

MR. FLEISCHER: Yes. Dr. Condoleezza Rice, the National Security Advisor, this morning called a group of network executives to raise their awareness about national security concerns of airing pre-recorded, pre-taped messages from Osama bin Laden that could be a signal to terrorists to incite attacks.

It was a very collegial conversation. At best, Osama bin Laden's message is propaganda, calling on people to kill Americans. At worst, he could be issuing orders to his followers to initiate such attacks.

Townsend in right in one important respect: Bin Laden’s communiqués are propaganda.  But they’re propaganda that needs to be taken seriously, and our actions and our own efforts at shaping public opinion in the rest of the world need to be improved.  The terrorist’s credo of the propoganda of the deed is about sending a message.  The more dramatic the message AND the delivery, the more effective the terrorist will be.  As terrorism expert Brian Jenkins succinctly put it, "terrorism is theater."  Al Qaeda obviously understands this, and is adapting this dictum to the information age:

Anbar: Not a Success, and Irrelevant to the "Surge"

by DHinMI

Commander guy is making a big deal about the supposed "success" of the surge in Anbar Province.  Sure, he dropped by a film set remote military base in the vast desert that makes up most of Anbar, and tried to claim that the surge was connected to the apparent defeat of Al Qaeda in Anbar:

You see Sunnis who once fought side by side with al Qaeda against coalition troops now fighting side by side with coalition troops against al Qaeda. Anbar is a huge province. It was once written off as lost. It is now one of the safest places in Iraq. (Hooah.) Because of your hard work, because of your bravery and sacrifice, you are denying al Qaeda a safe haven from which to plot and plan and carry out attacks against the United States of America. What you're doing here is making this country safer, and I thank you for your hard work. (Hooah.)

The surge of operations that began in June is improving security throughout Iraq. The military successes are paving the way for the political reconciliation and economic progress the Iraqis need to transform their country...

Earlier today I met with some of the tribal sheiks here in Anbar. It was a really interesting meeting. And at the table were the leaders of the central government, as well. They told me that the kind of bottom-up progress that your efforts are bringing to Anbar is vital to the success and stability of a free Iraq.

Almost everything in this statement is a lie.

We Can't Wait for Bipartisan Solutions

by DHinMI

"We need a consensus."

This is what Joe Biden said a little while ago, when asked by Keith Olberman if he would appoint a Republican to head up the Pentagon or the Department of Homeland Security.  I don’t have the exact language, but he seemed to imply that nothing would work unless it had significant support from Republicans.

I was floored.

If there is anything that has been apparent since the Democratic takeover of Congress, it’s that many and probably most of the current Republican members of Congress will NEVER work with Democrats for the good of the country.  Since the rise of Newt Gingrich, the majority of Republicans in Congress have demonstrated that they don’t care about the good of the country.  Grover Norquist is inadvertently one of the most honest of conservatives, and when he referred to bipartisanship as date rape, he wasn’t revealing just his own personal view, he was describing the mindset of much of the Republican Congressional caucus and it’s allies in think tanks, among campaign hacks and activists, and in a sizeable chunk of its electoral base. 

It’s a realization many of us had come to long ago.  It’s one of the reasons many of us ended up on progressive blogs, the knowledge that George W Bush, his allies in Congress and the people who push them in to power will use unscrupulous means to attain, maintain and exercise power. They know they have to conceal their unscrupulousness from the public. While the Republican party has veered farther and farther to the right, the American people haven’t really budged.  In fact, on individual issues, the American public is more liberal today than it was 10 or 20 years ago, and far more liberal than it was when Lyndon Johnson crushed Barry Goldwater in the 1964 presidential election, which provided the mandate to enact our major civil rights legislation and the most major extension of the social welfare state since the New Deal and World War II.  Republicans involved in organizing and running elections and selling their policy positions to the press and the talking heads know that the American public is far to their left.  But they conceal their radicalism through clever marketing scams like Frank Luntz’ Contract on America and the pabulum of "compassionate conservatism." 

Jason Leopold, Sockpuppet Extraordinaire

By DHinMI

I had hoped Jason Leopold would just go away.  It's clear from his own statements in various places that he's struggled with some substance abuse and mental illness issues.  He has my sympathy for this.  But he's now become a bigger story because he's made such grandiose claims about having deep sources all through the government and somewhere among the investigators or investigated in the Valerie Plame outing.  So it's time to come forward and give you some evidence with which to assess Jason Leopold's credibility.  I'll refrain from making conclusions, but it's worth putting out there for people to assess. 

On January 14, 2006 in an excellent post emptywheel closely examined an article by Leopold in which she demonstrated his claims were not supported by his sources.  Leopold showed up in the thread, and things got interesting.  Leopold called me a pussy.  Some guy named Tom Marconi claiming to be former CIA threatened commenter jonnybutter.  Andy Gumbel, a writer at the Guardian, vouched for Leopold.  And someone named Adam Yorkshire shilled for Leopold's book. 

But here's the problem.  If all these comments came from different people, they appear to have all spent that evening together, because all those comments came from just two ISP addresses.

All eight comments from Jason Leopold came from the same ISP address.  (Typepad allows the administrator of a blog to see the ISP address comments come from, as well as ban by that ISP.)  That ISP was also the address from which we recieved all three comments by Adam Yorkshire.  And so did the second comment from Tom Marconi, the one where he threatened jonnybutter.  But the first comment from Tom Marconi, as well as the comments by Andy Gumbel and Joshua Klein, originated from a different but common ISP address.  Thus, one Marconi comment came from the same ISP address as all the Leopold and Yorkshire comments, and those are connected to the Gumbel and Klein comments by the other Marconi comment. 

One could conclude quite easily that Jason Leopold wrote all those comments himself.  It would not be out of character, for on another thread a few months later Leopold admitted to posting comments on TNH under the moniker Harry Shep.  The ISP address from which Leopold posted his mea culpa was, in fact, the origin of the comments on this thread by HS, and the comments by Harry Shep on these two posts.  But I'll only go as far as we can be sure from the evidence here, and just say that at best it's peculiar that Jason Leopold spent the evening with all these characters, and they posted on emptywheel's thread as if they weren't all together, going so far in one case to claim to have been directed to the thread by Larry Johnson. 

Does this mean Jason Leopold is wrong in his claims regarding the Plame investigation leading to an indictment of Karl Rove?  No.  Does it mean that he's a reliable source, and someone from whom one should expect credibility, integrity, and care with sources?  I think that answer is obvious, but again, I'll let you draw your own conclusion. 

Were the 527’s Really Failures?

By DHinMI

Hotline On Call tells us that AFSCME President Gerald McEntee says that the Dem-allied 527’s dedicated to get out the vote (GOTV) efforts in 2004 were "‘trounced’ by the GOP's ‘neighbor-to-neighbor strategy.’” 

I’m not so sure if you talked with McEntee in depth that he would so sweepingly dismiss the 527’s that did GOTV like America Coming Together (ACT), which received a huge portion of its funding from labor unions like AFSCME. There are two key differences between Democratic needs and funds that made ACT a good move for Democrats in 2004.

Parse This Paragraph and Win a Prize!

By DHinMI

The Financial Times has an article about George W. Bush again speaking about the need to limit the US dependency on foreign oil.  Within the article was an odd quote from Bush about elections and the Middle East.  I wasn't quite sure what to make of the excerpt of Bush's speech to the National Association of Governors, so I looked up the text of the full speech.  And it made me even more confused:

It's an interesting debate that's going to take place here in Washington, or is taking place in Washington:  Do elections cause radicalism or empower radicals?  My answer is, the status quo empowered radicals.  This notion that somehow the Middle East was a safe place for the last 30 years -- because we didn't see, kind of, the turmoil that happens with elections meant we were safe.  I just totally disagree with that, kind of the -- beneath the surface that appeared placid, the policymakers, was resentment and hatred and planning and plotting, all of which came home on September the 11th.

I've read that paragraph five times, and I still don't know what he's saying.  I realize that any time Bush invokes September 11th, it's typically to decieve and confuse.  But in this case, I think he's saying something about elections being either good...or bad...or inconsequential...or, well, something.  Is he arguing that the lack of elections are a problem, and that's one of the reasons we should allow the United Arab Emirates to operate terminals in US ports  um, threaten to cut off aid to Egypt unless Mubarak opens up the political system say bad things about Syria as long as it's a repressive regime?  Is he saying that Palestinian democracy is bad when it leads to Hamas taking control of  the Palestinian parliament democratic elections are why everything is all of a sudden so peaceful in Iraq   Or is he saying that elections in repressive states with corrupt governments will often result in strong showings by radical parties, which in the Middle East and North Africa will typically be Islamist parties? Is he saying anything that's coherent? 

If anyone can decipher that paragraph, please post your interpretation in the comments, and you'll earn my gratitude, plus a year's free subscription to The Next Hurrah.

Supreme Dereliction of Command Pt. II (The McCain Campaign Edition)

By DHinMI

It shouldn't be surprising to see a liberal opponent of the Iraq war like myself assert that the Bush administration has screwed up the war.  But now possibly the most important neoconservative publicist and sophist is making the same assertion, on Fox News no less:

BILL KRISTOL: There would not be civil war if Zarqawi had not spent the last 2 1/2 years - had ex-Saddamists with him, very skillfully going on the offensive slaughtering Shia in Karbala, now blowing up the mosque.
CHRIS WALLACE: They're there. There are going to be more mosques to blow up. What do you do about the terrorists?
KRISTOL: Kill them. Defeat them.
CHRIS WALLACE: We've been trying.
KRISTOL: We've been trying, and our soldiers are doing terrifically, but we have not had a serious three-year effort to fight a war in Iraq as opposed to laying the preconditions for getting out.
CICI CONNELLY: I think that really begs the question then: what have we been doing over there for three-plus years? You say there hasn't been a serious effort to rid that region of the terrorists. I just wonder what secretary Rumsfeld would say in response to that or all the U.S. soldiers who have been over there all this time.
KRISTOL: Secretary Rumsfeld's plan was to draw town to 30,000 troops at the end of major activities.

[Transcript via ThinkProgress; video available at Crooks and Liars]

Thank You For a Great First Year

By DHinMI

We just passed a milestone at The Next Hurrah, and we almost missed it. Yesterday I noticed it had been exactly one year since Kagro X posted “David Corn Stands the First Amendment on its Head,” our first substantive post.  In the year since, we've had plenty of good pieces, some even audacious in their ambition and desired effect. For instance, Meteor Blades garnered tremendous attention for his proposal to rebuild an Eco New Orleans. DemFromCT has pushed Bird Flu into the consciousness of so many people that he's become a recognized expert and a founder of the Flu Wiki, where experts from the WHO and other entities exchange news and ideas to track this potentially pandemic-generating virus.  And Plutonium Page has repeatedly demonstrated the evidence for and implications of global warming. 

But we've also had our eyes on American politics.  RonK broke the story that Dick Gephardt now regrets his support of Bush's Iraq policy, a mea culpa that was quickly echoed by several other Democrats, including John Kerry and John Edwards. Before just about anyone in the MSM was writing about it, Trapper John was describing the deep rifts in organized labor that resulted in several major unions splitting from the AFL-CIO.  Mimikatz has examined the effects of tax and budgetary policy and ruminated on political ethics and responsibility. 

Two of our contributors so dominated blog reportage and analysis of major stories that we had to create new categories for them.  Kagro X showed that process could be both fun and deadly serious in his pieces on the Nuclear Option, and now he's examining the justifications for and procedures to generate impeachment proceedings against the Bush administration.  And with an assist by the Bush administration (for providing her so much raw material), emptywheel's pieces required us to add a new category for Bush/Administration Scandals. 

And finally, we have what I believe is the best piece written at The Next Hurrah, James' post on the death and legacy of Ismail Merchant, and how the media still doesn't know how to talk about couples who've shared a life of love and devotion with partners of the same sex. 

Now, on the year anniversary of our founding, we're adding a new contributor, emptypockets, who among other subjects will be tracking the days of our president in his series BushWatch. 

But without our readers, none of us would have continued posting here.  So, thank you all for reading our stuffr, thank you for commenting and sharing your thoughts and impressions, and thank you for becoming our friends.