My law of journalism is that there are only 3 things that will garner sustained coverage:
1. scandal
2. someone making an embarrassing mistake
3. controversy, preferably nasty
4. polls
sickening, but the reason that CNN & Co. are covering the wing nuts is that it’s the only clear-cut controversy they can find at the moment, and it also involves things that “she said” that can be cast as mistakes, AND they can poll it! Meanwhile, back at the ranch, they’re counting on Burris to supply the scandal… which so far, is lacking. While they’re using Newt and Spitzer… who are truly scandalous… as commentators. And yet… I do want to preserve the press… God knows why.
As if to prove the above point, at 8:05 in the following Olberman piece (in which he discusses Sotomayor's writings and speeches in full context instead of the out of context snippets that are all the RW rage) he notices on one of his monitors that CNN just played one of those snippets out of context, and were discussing it out of context. ...
GOP targets Sotomayor May 27: MSNBC's Eugene Robinson discusses the GOP's charges of racism by Supreme Court Justice nominee Sonia Sotomayor.
Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy
Froomkin: Online Humor
The Economist's pseudononymous Lexington writes that President Obama baffles most comedians: "David Letterman, a talk-show host, describes him as 'cogent, eloquent, and in complete command of the issues' and sighs: 'What the hell am I supposed to do with that?'"
But the one exception to the rule is The Onion, Lexington writes. "Hence the headline that greeted Mr Obama's election victory: 'Black Man Given Nation's Worst Job'. The Onion News Network, an online video venture, did a segment entitled 'Obama Win Causes Obsessive Supporters to Realise How Empty Their Lives Are'."
Furthermore, "the way more serious journalists fawn over the new president offers an irresistible target. 'Media Having Trouble Finding Right Angle on Obama's Double Homicide', the Onion reported last month. '"I know there's a story in there somewhere,"' said the editor of Newsweek, after Mr Obama brutally murdered a suburban couple."
Jane Hamsher: Bernie Kerik Indicted for Lying to White House
I'm shocked, shocked I tell you:Former New York police commissioner Bernard Kerik was indicted on charges of making false statements to White House officials vetting him for the secretary's seat at the Department of Homeland Security in 2004, federal prosecutors said Tuesday.
Kerik, who served as commissioner from 1998 to 2002, allegedly gave false and misleading answers to Bush administration officials about his relationship with contractors who renovated his Riverdale apartment, according to the indictment handed up by a Washington grand jury.
Prosecutors allege Kerik received and concealed benefits of about $255,000 in renovations to his home from contractors seeking to do business with the city of New York.
Bernie adds this to his fine collection of indictments for tax fraud, corruption and conspiracy.
Not sure what my favorite Bernie Kerik story is, but it may be from Rajiv Chandrasekaran's Imperial Life in the Emerald City:
The CPA's Interior Ministry team shared a modest office in the palace with American advisers working with the Justice Ministry. They often brought in Iraqi judges, along with interpreters, for meetings.
"Bob , who are these people?" Kerik asked Gifford one day. "Who the fuck are these people?"
"Oh, those are Iraqis," Gifford replied.
"What the fuck are they doing here?"
"Bernie, that's the reason we're here."
And the war turned out badly. Can't imagine why.
Terrific interview. It shouldn't be hard to be this clear on the issue, but . . .
Changing the torture debate May 27: WSL radio host Erich "Mancow" Muller admitted that waterboarding is torture after experiencing it firsthand, yet Fox News' Sean Hannity still isn't convinced. MSNBC's Rachel Maddow discusses what it's going to take to convince the right of the horrors of this practice.
Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy
Liz Cheney -- who appears on national television so often, her mail is now sent directly to network green-rooms -- was on Fox News again this morning. She seems to be expanding her repertoire a bit, moving beyond attacking Obama over torture, and now attacking Obama over the judiciary.Benen: LOOKING BEYOND THE NARROW CONFINES OF THE LAW...."[Y[ou know, you're not supposed to make decisions based on how you want the law to come out -- how you want the results to come out," Liz Cheney argued. "If you're a judge or a Justice, obviously one would hope that you would be just strictly interpreting the law, and I think we've heard in a number of instances President Obama talk about, sort of, a results-oriented approach to the law, or you know, making these determinations based on your heart or your empathy. And I think that's dangerous. I think that moves us away from the rule of law."
There's quite a bit of nonsense here, most notably the fact that President Obama has never "talked about" a "results-oriented approach to the law." Cheney just wants to smear, but she's a little too lazy to worry about details like facts and accuracy.
But the more hilarious aspect of this was hearing Liz Cheney lecture the Obama administration about the rule of law. This is, of course, the same Liz Cheney who has spent months insisting that no one from the Bush administration be held accountable, in any way, for systematic illegal abuse of detainees, authorized and endorsed by officials at the highest levels.
Last week, when the issue was torture, Cheney was unfazed by the prospecting of "moving us away from the rule of law." This week, the issue is apparently "empathy," and Cheney feels justified in lecturing the administration cleaning up her father's legal mess about the concept of impartial application of the law.
That she has no idea how ridiculous this sounds only adds insult to injury.
In light of all the talk about "empathy" and allowing personal background to "influence" application of the law, part of me can understand why a quote like this one, from a Supreme Court nominee, might seem inappropriate to conservatives."[W]hen a case comes before me involving, let's say, someone who is an immigrant -- and we get an awful lot of immigration cases and naturalization cases -- I can't help but think of my own ancestors, because it wasn't that long ago when they were in that position.
"And so it's my job to apply the law. It's not my job to change the law or to bend the law to achieve any result. But when I look at those cases, I have to say to myself, and I do say to myself, 'You know, this could be your grandfather, this could be your grandmother. They were not citizens at one time, and they were people who came to this country.' ...
"When I get a case about discrimination, I have to think about people in my own family who suffered discrimination because of their ethnic background or because of religion or because of gender. And I do take that into account."
As has been obvious this week, the right considers this kind of thinking outrageous. Impartial judges are tasked with following and applying the law, without bias or preconceived prejudices. They are, to borrow the popular metaphor, umpires responsible for calling balls and strikes. Thinking about one's "ancestors," and feeling "empathy" for struggling defendants, is a recipe, conservatives have told us, for judicial disaster.
When a nominee says, "It's not my job to change the law or to bend the law to achieve any result," it's not acceptable, we're told, for the next word to be, "but...." The rule of law simply cannot withstand this approach to jurisprudence.
Except, the above quote didn't come from Sonia Sotomayor; it came from Samuel Alito, during his Supreme Court confirmation hearing. What's more, he was responding to a question from Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.), one of the Senate most ardent conservatives, who didn't find Alito's response controversial in the slightest.
At the time, Alito's remarks were, oddly enough, considered a selling point. He's not a cold-hearted conservative, we were told, because Alito is willing to look beyond the letter of the law and consider his own family's background when ruling on all kinds of cases.
If our surprisingly strident right-wing friends care to explain why this sentiment is a disqualifier for a Latina nominee, but a strength for an Italian male nominee, I'd sure appreciate it.
Joe Klein: Robert Gates: The Bureaucrat Unbound
A few weeks ago, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates trooped up to Capitol Hill to answer questions about the new Pentagon budget. This is an unseemly spectacle under the best of circumstances. Even reasonable members of Congress have been known to empretzel themselves shamelessly, attempting to defend weapons the Pentagon doesn't want or need, but which provide jobs for their constituents. Usually, they win, too. It is just too difficult for a Secretary of Defense to argue against shiny new weapons systems with subcontractors in 46 states, even if they are fantastically over budget and designed to counter a missile threat that the Soviets never perfected 30 years ago.
But this is a different year, and Gates is a different sort of Defense Secretary. He warned the legislators that each decision was "zero sum." Any money that went to things he didn't want would come out of programs necessary to support the troops fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan. (Read "Can Robert Gates Tame the Pentagon?)
Undaunted, the legislators pressed their case — especially the Republicans, who seemed convinced, as one said, that the Pentagon budget was part of a nefarious Obama Administration plot: "Fiscal restraint for defense and fiscal largesse for everything else." Congressman Trent Franks of Arizona was very concerned about anti-missile defense — a gold-plated pipe dream, if there ever was one — and especially a product dramatically called the Kinetic Energy Interceptor. To which Gates replied, in a manner so casually dismissive that Franks seemed to shrivel in his seat, "I would just say that the security of the American people and the efficacy of missile defense are not enhanced by continuing to put money into programs ... that are essentially sinkholes for taxpayer dollars." (Read about the troubled SBX radar.)
And as for that kinetic contraption, it was a "five-year development program, in its 14th year, not a single flight test, little work on the third stage or the kill vehicle, etc., etc., no known launch platform ..."
Rat-a-tat, Gates continued on, in that flat, unassuming Kansas twang that screams: No bull here. The next day, testifying on the Senate side, Gates performed a similar anti-missile evisceration of Senator Jeff Sessions, who responded, "I'd say you were ready for that question."
After a quietly impressive career in government that has spanned more than 30 mostly Republican years, Robert Gates is suddenly seeming almost, well, charismatic. He reeks authority. He is, according to several sources, the most respected voice in National Security Council debates. The President is said to love his unadorned manner. Much of which is attributable to the fact that, in the self-proclaimed twilight of his public career, Gates has emerged as that most exotic of Washington species — the bureaucrat unbound, candid and fearless. He tells members of Congress what he really thinks about their pet programs. He upends Pentagon priorities, demotes the military-industrial hardware pipeline and promotes the immediate needs of the troops on the front line. He fires high-ranking subordinates without muss or controversy — an Air Force secretary and chief of staff who didn't agree with him on the need to end production of the F-22 aircraft; the commandant of Walter Reed Army Medical Center, who presided over disgraceful conditions; even a well-respected general like David McKiernan, a conventional-warfare specialist unsuited for the asymmetrical struggle in Afghanistan.
When, in a recent conversation, I noted that he seemed gleefully outspoken these days, Gates offered a twinkly smile and said, "What are they going to do, fire me?"
In truth, Gates has been bulletproof ever since George W. Bush lured him from Texas A&M University to replace the disastrous Donald Rumsfeld as Secretary of Defense. His mission, Gates said, was "to put Iraq in a better place," which is a spectacular understatement. Iraq was falling apart in late 2006, and Gates found the Defense Department in paralytic denial. His nonstop effort to reform the institution — abetted by military rebels who had been cast into the outer darkness by the powers that were — is a great untold story of the war on terrorism.
"If you ever get a chance to interview Donald Rumsfeld," a retired four-star general told me in 2005, "ask him two questions and see which one lights up his eyes. Ask him what our force posture should be toward China 10 years from now. And then ask him what tactical changes we should make on the ground in Iraq as a result of the last three months of combat. I'll bet you anything, he gets more excited about China."
And that was the problem. The Cheney-Rumsfeld axis, which essentially ran national-security policy in the first half of the Bush Administration, was stuck in the Cold War. Rather than fight the enemy we had — the stateless terrorists of al-Qaeda — they sought more conventional enemies. Attention quickly — too quickly — shifted from Afghanistan to Iraq. And then, once the conventional armored push to Baghdad was completed, the ongoing war effort became — amazingly — a bureaucratic orphan. "Every time we tried to do something for the troops in the field in both Afghanistan and Iraq, we had to go outside the regular Pentagon bureaucracy to get it done," Gates recalled. "For example, there was no institutional home" for figuring out how to combat roadside bombs — but there were plenty of people working on how to counter missiles from North Korea.
On the day after he took over, Gates summoned General David Petraeus — no favorite of Rumsfeld's — from near exile at Fort Leavenworth, Kans., where he had supervised the writing of a new counter insurgency-warfare manual. Gates was about to travel to Iraq and wanted to know what the big questions were. "The biggest question is whether we have the right strategic concept to fight the war," Petraeus told him. "Instead of concentrating all our efforts on transitioning to Iraqi control, we need to go out and secure the population." (See pictures of Basra getting back to business.)
Gates seems uncomfortable talking about military intellectual stuff like counterinsurgency doctrine. He insists that logic, not doctrine, has driven everything he has done as Secretary of Defense. The highest priority was supporting the troops. "He resourced the important bureaucratic knife fights," said one senior Army officer. "He sided with us on MRAPs [mine-resistant vehicles] and unmanned drones, and increased intelligence, and more helicopters. Those should have been no-brainers, but it had been a real struggle to fund them before Gates." A military intelligence officer who was an Iraq specialist told me he had been pleading for more resources throughout the Rumsfeld years: "Iraq was Rumsfeld's fourth highest priority, after China, North Korea and Iran," he said. "But Gates called me in and asked, 'What do you need?' And he gave us everything we requested." Senior combatant commanders say these decisions, no less than the new tactics and increase in troops, helped change the course in Iraq.
And that, according to the Secretary of Defense, is the rationale for his new Pentagon budget; Bush had funded his wars outside the usual budget process, via so-called supplemental appropriations. Gates has included the war funding in his base budget, "so the programs will be institutionalized and the various services will fight for them." He insists that he is not abandoning the fancy hardware and future gizmos that his predecessors and Congress loved. "The things we've cut," he told me, "wouldn't have been in the budget even if we had $50 billion more to spend. They were programs that simply were unnecessary or weren't working."
The negotiating over the budget is likely to turn brutal, although Obama aides insist the President will veto the budget if Gates isn't satisfied with the result. And then there are the wars — especially Afghanistan, which Gates has said he hopes will turn around in the next year, but which has obviously become a more difficult enterprise than anticipated. Gates originally had planned to retire after a year or so, but he seems to have settled in, found a level of comfort and influence with the Obama Democrats that he never quite expected. "I don't do maintenance," Gates told me. "I would never do a job just to sustain the status quo. I like to go into an institution that's already good and do everything I can to make it better."
The Pentagon was good at some things, dreadful at others. It is better now, but there are lives at stake every day. Gates keeps track of those killed and wounded on his watch. He knows the exact numbers. He can get misty talking about the troops he's met downrange, young people the same age as the carefree students he supervised at Texas A&M, "which makes this all so much harder," he says. They — not future fights with China, not last week's tactics in Afghanistan — light up his eyes. He won't be abandoning them anytime soon.
No comments:
Post a Comment