Dude, This Thing Is Just Getting Started

GeeBus, is it possible that Armando is wrong again, as usual? He really needs to go back to strictly law blogging and leave the purely political analysis to someone who knows WTF they're talking about.

Believing McCain has more or less jumped the shark with his reverse swift boat maneuver on Wes Clark and Jim Webb, here's the latest wisdom from on High Atop the Big Tent, believing the faux outrage vis-a-vis "Ace" McCain's tendency to crash jets being a qualifier for the White House backfired, or at least it will.

The more I think about it, the more I think McCain may have lost all chance to win the election this week.

Me, I tend to be a bit more inquisitive before making pronouncements based on no more evidence than what emerges from my rectum, pointing at it and saying, "Eureka, a cure for cancer!" For instance, those who read tea leaves would be well advised to check out exactly what significance McCain's new campaign manager, a veteran smear merchant from the Rove/Atwater/Machiavelli school of goonery, might have on the tone of the campaign.

One might also ponder whether hitching up with the actual Swift Boat boys is a feature, not a bug, of the new direction McCain & Co. is going.

Ironically, Armando notes that McCain has no choice but to go seriously negative to have a hope. I agree, and evidently so do the Republicans. After all, it's what they do. But reading the tea leaves is not what Armando does well in any way whatsoever. Last February 10th, the very same day Hillary Clinton changed campaign managers, Armando had some Theories about how the nomination would play out. Maggie Williams taking over the campaign did not play into those predictions

Note that at that point, when Patti Stolis Doyle was ousted from the Clinton campaign and Obama was already ahead in the delegate count -- never to look back -- and in the middle of streak of eleven straight unanswered wins, Armando said, "Clinton is still the favorite for the nomination."

Fail!

Clinton was in trouble, and she knew it -- and went negative. McCain knows he's in trouble and just like he did when his primary run looked doomed he, like Clinton, changed campaign managers. He's doing it again and there is no doubt he'll be going more negative than Clinton did.

I'm not saying that going negative will win McCain the election. Boy I hope not. But it will serve, as it did Clinton, to keep him competitive. It's a desperate act to be sure, but it's been successful in the past.

I will put down my tinfoil hat long enough to say that the last week's distractions may have been more about keeping the rubes from really analyzing McCain's dismal military record than the start of the real mudslinging. There's no way they want to talk about McCain's tendency to crash planes and blow up aircraft carriers, and have his daddy the Admiral bail him out -- or his tendency to sing like a songbird whenever his captors fed him a cracker.

The GOP may have figured that the Democrats just don't have the stomach for a messy fight, and with this latest assault ensured that real scrutiny of McCain's military career is also "off the table" since it will make what they did to John Kerry seem even more outrageous -- if that's possible.

Even more amusement: Armando also predicted on February 10th that in 2012, Clinton will lose her reelection bid, after passing universal health care (What? Backlash for not waiting until the end of her second term like she promised?) to Bobby "The Exorcist" Jindal.

Interestingly enough, this came only two days after Jindal's name was first put out there by Rush Limbaugh as a possible VP choice for McCain. Now we know where Armando gets his talking points.

Feith, Rove, Just Full Of It

There are those who think that life has nothing left to chance
A host of holy horrors to direct our aimless dance

A planet of play things
We dance on the strings
Of powers we cannot perceive
'The stars aren't aligned
Or the gods are malign...'
Blame is better to give than receive


You can choose a ready guide in some celestial voice
If you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice
You can choose from phantom fears and kindness that can kill
I will choose a path that's clear
I will choose freewill
Rush ~ Freewill

A tautology for the ages from the master of Teh Stupid:

A lot of poor commentary has framed the Iraq war as a conflict of "choice" rather than of "necessity." In fact, President George W. Bush chose to remove Saddam Hussein from power because he concluded that doing so was necessary.

Heh. Nice word play. Lemme see if I can do as well.

How about this: "In fact, President George W. Bush chose to conclude that it was necessary to remove Saddam Hussein from power." See? Easy and I used fewer words too!

After all this time, they're still offering up bullcrap arguments to justify the worst decision in American history. This ain't flying at all, and BooMan does an admirable job of explaining why.

Feith pushes a false narrative on us, but it's a familiar one. We had no reliable intelligence in 2001 that suggested that Saddam Hussein was reconstituting his biological, chemical, or nuclear weapons programs. His armed forces were weak, disloyal, ill-paid, ill-equipped, and totally unable to project force towards any of his neighbors. Insofar as the Intelligence Community worked on the issue of Iraq, they were mainly concerned with an international disinformation campaign to heighten the threat from Saddam in order to maintain support for a crumbling sanctions regime. Belief in Iraq's WMD's was nothing more than a convenient case of believing our own hype. How many times did the Bush administration point to misinformation put out by the Clinton administration to bolster their case for war (and to justify their decision after the fact)?

But there is a key difference between the lies of the Clinton administration and the lies of the White House Iraq Group (WHIG) of Douglas Feith. Clinton administration lies were intended to keep Saddam Hussein from rearming and/or slaughtering internal dissidents. Bush administration lies were intended to justify actions that have now cost over 4,000 American soldiers and hundreds of thousands of Iraqis their lives, created over 2 million refugees, and cost a trillion dollars.

That was a choice that George W. Bush made. He chose to lie in the service of a policy that created all this tragedy and waste. And to think that Feith would quote Rumsfeld's concern about the loss of a single pilot as justification for the necessity of doing this! No wonder General Tommy Franks said of Feith, "I have to deal with the fucking stupidest guy on the face of the earth almost every day."

As for Karl "The Math" Rove, well . . . other than still being worshiped by the likes of one of the most self-deluded bloggers in Reich Wing Blogistan, he not only fails completely of offer any analysis in his long-winded and tiresome essay other than how McCain and Obama are spending their money -- cuz it's all about the cash of course -- he can't even get the simple facts right about who's spending what, when.

Honestly I don't know if this is a deliberate fake-out, willfully ignoring the dynamic shifts in the electorate as a direct backlash against the dismal failures of Rove's former boss's administration because of their complete politicalization of public policy due mainly to Rove's own advice and advancement within the White House.

That or maybe Rove is just stupid too.

GPS Cells and Jumping the FISA/Telecom Shark.

I gotta agree with Nick Beaudrot at Cogitamus. This is a dumb battle.

Kevin Drum picks up the story from TChris at the Big Tent of Perpetual Outrage that the ACLU and the EFF folks have filed a FOIA suit to find out if and when and how often the government has used the GPS tracking information in your cell phone to monitor our locations.

(Okay, if that's too many abbreviations for you, then don't worry, you don't need to care.)

It's like this. Every modern cell phone has a little GPS transmitter (or something) and they can triangulate your position between cell towers (I guess). The ACLU and EFF and Kevin Drum want them to get warrants to find out -- where you are.

Drum must be a bit punchy from all the FISA/TeleGiant fighting lately, because frankly, he's better than this.

That cell phone tracking should indeed require a warrant hardly seems disputable. That the Department of Justice refuses to explain its policies hardly seems defensible. Good luck to the ACLU and the EFF.

Uhhm, nope.

It's not only disputable, it's dismissible and defensible.

Now just calm down and think for a minute.

• They could follow you without a warrant.
• They could ring your doorbell to see if you answer without a warrant.
• They can set up a stake out across your street and monitor your coming and going without a warrant.
• They can check your garbage and find out where you picked up the take out you had for dinner without a warrant.

If you leave your home, you are by definition "out in public." Where's the expectation of privacy when you are in public? If you're not out in public, you must be at home or where-ever you went when you left home and went out in public to get there.

Location is a status, not a thing to be seized or a conversation that can be intercepted. You don't need a warrant to find out someone's status: alive or dead, male or female, felon or clean record, physical description, valid or suspended license -- home or roaming the public streets.

If you do have an expectation of privacy when you are traveling around, in public, then you must be sneaking around -- so ditch the phone with the fancy chip in it that is probably eating your brain anyway.

Two Faces and No Brains

I wonder if the Village Gasbags will be able to figure out who is demeaning whose service?

“I can't speak for them, but we all know that General Clark, as high-ranking as he is, his record in his last command I think was somewhat less than stellar."
-- Orson Swindle, John McCain Campaign

Just in case there’s still some question what actually demeaning a war veteran’s service looks like:

Louis Letson: "I know John Kerry is lying about his first Purple Heart because I treated him for that injury."

Van O'Dell: "John Kerry lied to get his bronze star...I know, I was there, I saw what happened."

Jack Chenoweth: "His account of what happened and what actually happened are the difference between night and day."

Admiral Roy Hoffman: "John Kerry has not been honest."

Adrian Lonsdale: "And he lacks the capacity to lead."

Larry Thurlow: "When he chips were down, you could not count on John Kerry."

Bob Elder: "John Kerry is no war hero."

Grant Hibbard: "He betrayed all his shipmates...he lied before the Senate."

Joe Ponder: "He dishonored his country...he most certainly did."

Bob Hildreth: "I served with John Kerry...John Kerry cannot be trusted."

The plain fact is, the Gasbags have no moral or rational authority to judge the matter, they relinquished their credibility and responsibility to do so four years ago.

[Cross-posted at E Pluribus Unum]

Clark v. McCain: McCain's Losing & Here's Why

I like Chuck Todd (and his posse of deputies Mark Murray and Domenico Montanaro) but I think they're off in the tall grass on this:

[...[D]oes this entire episode remind anyone else of John Kerry’s botched joke before the 2006 midterms -- when Kerry’s mangled swipe at President Bush got twisted into a slap at US troops?

That's a misreading of what's happening here because Clark's point was made with far more intelligence and articulation than Kerry's (despite Obama calling it "inartful" but that's another story).

Here's how I see it:

McCain, trailing badly by most meaningful metrics, wants the Obama camp to hit him hard. Why? Three reasons:

1. So that he can get as much free media as possible, but more importantly...


2. So he can play the aggrieved victim, which leads to...


3. Drawing the Republican base closer to him (McCain) in his defense.

That's it. So how's he doing? Not so good.

Obama is not the candidate that will lash out at his opponents. McCain should know this by now -- Obama is preternaturally cool (for a national politician) -- it is McCain who is the hothead. Instead of lashing out, Obama has repeatedly stated how much he honors McCain's sacrifice, but...that isn't enough to qualify McCain to be president. The longer McCain strikes back, the weaker and more petty he looks.

I think I know what McCain is trying to do: he (consciously or otherwise) is trying to take a page out of Richard Nixon's campaign playbook circa 1967. Back then, Nixon was perceived as a has-been, a loser that no one in their right mind would listen to. But Nixon figured out that if he could goad LBJ into lashing out at him personally, he could elevate his stature to that of the sitting president. And (more importantly) he could paint himself as a victim/outsider being picked on by the bully/insider. Nixon understood the simmering resentment against Johnson and knew that as soon as Johnson struck back it would draw the Republican base closer to him. It worked for Nixon back then.

But it won't work for McCain today because Obama isn't a bully and McCain isn't an outsider. Oh, he'll draw the Republican base closer to him because these are the same people that give Bush a 60% approval rating and they'll believe just about anything. But as far as getting the independents and disaffected Democrats...not so much.

Furthermore, the free media thing isn't working out so well either. For one thing, Wesley Clark has made his point with clarity ... and humility: Clark honors McCain's sacrifice, but will not concede that it automatically makes McCain the superior candidate for president. In my book, this makes him a decent candidate for Secretary of Defense or Chariman of the Armed Services Committee ... but not Chief Executive of the United States. Of course, McCain's camp simply won't accept that and continues to play the "sacrifice card" and the "military experience" card. But that misses the point and gives Clark yet another chance to repeat his point.

And you know what? Every day that this story stays alive cuts against McCain by allowing Clark's argument to be discussed in greater detail. It gives Sen. Webb a chance to weigh in. It gives McCain another opportunity to screw up by bringing in the bad actors from the Swiftboats for Slime -- the guys who trashed Kerry by trashing his military career.

Bad move Senator McCain: now YOU look like the bully. Can't you see? No one is trashing your military career. Not Clark, not Webb, not Obama. They are simply making a simple case: Being a hero yesterday does not punch your ticket to the Presidency...tomorrow.

Everyday that this issue is discussed AGAIN is another day where we get to consider whether we elect a president based on his judgment instead of his sacrifice. Hillary tried to frame her fight with Obama in a similar way -- experience versus judgment. She lost. If McCain wants to fight that battle again, he's going to lose just like Hillary did.

Elections are about the future, not the past. If McCain doesn't know that by now, he's doomed.

(cross posted at E Pluribus Unum)

Playing by the Rules

I’ve always thought that one of the main reasons the Village Press hated the Clintons and Al Gore was because it was so obvious that Bill, Hillary and Al were much smarter people than them all. With egos at least as ginormous as any politician, that cleverness gap had to stick in their craws in a way that it never would, for obvious reasons, concerning any Republican. But, smart as they may have been, the Clintons and Vice President Gore never understood the new rules that were being invented just for them. They were playing a fool’s game – and the Clintons still managed to beat the Village at it – because they were playing as though there were still liberals in the corporate press and that reason and truth would prevail.

Which brings us to today’s campaign. Am I the only one who thinks that the Obama campaign is winning big here and that the media is being played badly? The conversation has begun – “it’s out there” as they say – does McCain’s record as a (not-very-good) fighter jock and POW more than thirty years ago in some way qualify him to be Commander-in-Chief? At the same time, Obama “rejects the statement” and “honors and respects Senator McCain’s service.” How is Obama hurt by this? How is McCain?

And now we can let the bloviators compare this honest question to what was done to John Kerry. Remember how Kerry’s record was fair game because he brought it up and Bush and Rove pretended like they had nothing to do with the SBVT? Democrats didn’t make them up but Obama seems to have learned the new rules. As Ara likes to say, if I were having any more fun, I’d have to be twins.

[Cross-posted at E Pluribus Unum]

Poor, Stupid Joe

“I don’t think getting in a fighter plane and getting shot down is a qualification to become president.”
-- Gen. Wesley Clark

"Clark is just plain wrong when he says that "getting shot down" doesn't qualify as foreign policy experience."
-- Joe Klein

I’m not sure what to comment on here, that Joe Klein thinks that getting shot out of the sky and imprisoned in another country counts as “foreign policy experience,” or that he thinks that “experience” is the same thing as the qualification to be president.

Same result, I guess.

[Cross-posted at E Pluribus Unum]

Running To and From Their Base

Digby really, really nails it tonight. I've been saying for years, as has Digby, that the Republicans' real enemy are liberals, and that they will fight terrorism (and as she points out, any threats to national security, or crime or assaults on "family values") when convenient and advances their anti-liberal agenda.

Repudiating liberalism is a symbolic gesture required of Democrats by the political establishment to prove that they are not elitists. And it goes beyond mere posturing on gay marriage or abortion. The national security challenge is always not to appear to be "an appeaser." The way you prove that is by refusing to appease the Democratic base. The economic challenge is to walk very carefully on taxes because it "costs jobs" for the hard working man and the struggling businessman alike who are in this thing together against the liberal elites. The cultural challenge is to not appear to be too friendly to blacks or too unfriendly to socially conservative religion in order to prove that that you are not beholden to the "extremists." The entire construct is based upon Democrats distancing themselves from their most ardent supporters (which is quite convenient for Republicans.)

We do their dirty work for them. This puts a political straight-jacket on someone like Barack Obama, who must prove that he's not beholden to where he came from. Indeed, it's the very reason someone like Obama can exist at all. As he mentioned in his books, he's not one who is ideologically driven, never was. If he were, he would have been much more easily dismissed by those who are most threatened by him.

In talking about the swiftness with which Obama will break our hearts as progressives, Miles Mogulescu at HuffPost admonishes:

Progressives should not give Obama an easy pass on his FISA turnaround. We must continue to stand for the 4th Amendment protections against warrantless wiretapping, criticize Obama's turnaround, challenge the constitutionality of the FISA legislation in court, and if Obama is elected, continue to build a movement to pressure Obama and a Democratic Congress to amend the FISA act to restore Constitutional protections.

And we won't. True liberals won't anyway. I cannot for the life of my conceive of what it would take for me to simply say, "Okay, go ahead and listen to every conversation everybody has, monitor every email and text message, keep track of every detail of every purchase and bank transaction -- I trust my government and every individual who works for it to do the right thing with this information, and anyone who objects must have something to hide."

Preposterous.

It would be easier for me to give up smoking than give up the idea that the freedoms we Americans supposedly cherish would remain intact under such a regime, many of which are already a thing of the past when airport screeners can order a strip-search on a whim and border agents clone your laptop's hard drive, legally, without even a pretense probable cause could be shown.

I honestly don't think conservatives set out to create a police state. It's just the nature of the beast they chose to fight. Appeals to personal liberty is a mighty powerful tool politically, and speaking up, shouting down "the man" and talking truth to power is just what we liberals pride ourselves on doing. If we're for it, they have to be against it -- especially if in our zeal and honest conviction that we're doing the right thing we could gain credibility in the political as well as social/cultural arenas.

Backed by the wealth of the corporate interests they serve, the conditional responses of the god-fearful's obsequiousness to authority, and their willingness to exchange integrity for a pity slogan -- their attempt to control nearly every aspect of society is merely a byproduct of how they define themselves, anti-liberal, and the tenuousness of their coalition whose demands must be met in their entirety or doom the movement.

We on the other hand, suffer from Bullworth Syndrome, (see also: Bullworth Factor) See this quote as well:

Angry black woman: Are you sayin' the Democratic Party don't care about the African-American community?
Bullworth: Isn't that OBVIOUS? You got half your kids are out of work and the other half are in jail. Do you see ANY Democrat doing anything about it? Certainly not me! So what're you gonna do, vote Republican? Come on! Come on, you're not gonna vote Republican! Let's call a spade a spade!
[Loud, angry booing]

I submit the world conservatives envision is unnatural, that more social consciousness and egalitarian principles are our natural state of being. That fact is why they work so damn hard in both over and subversive ways to defeat it by any means possible. The problem is that Democratic politicians can play into that game without consequences. That's why it's imperative that you understand you can vote for Barack Obama and loudly object to him of all people succumbing to the Bullworth syndrome. Don't let him forget who brought him to the dance.

The truth, you see, has a natural, liberal bias.

So Who Takes McCain's Place?

Now we find out he and Cindy are tax deadbeats?

Wow, just wow.

This has got to go down as the worst Presidential campaign by a major party since Herbert Hoover's reelection motorcades were pelted with eggs and rotten fruit. McCain must know how he feels, and the hecklers will only get worse the longer he waits to definitively say George Bush is the Worst President Ever and that he really doesn't like the guy or anything he did. Unless he does, and that may be impossible if not improbable, they might as well hang a sign over his headquarters that reads, "Abandon hope, all ye that enter here."

Inept and feckless are descriptors that barely scratch the surface of what a joke the GOP has put up as their sacrificial lamb.

By the time it becomes obvious to the Republican Convention Delegates that they can't possibly win with this guy, who do you think will be the lucky winner that get's to take his place, starring as the candidate who will lose in the worst landslide in the history of landslides?

By the way, this might win the prize for the biggest "No Duh!" headline of the year: A Win by McCain Could Push a Split Court to Right. The villagers must be on vacation at the Washington Post, and left their idiot in charge. Dumb, just dumb.

Lemme Get This Straight

Despite having a postponement for the Independence Day recess giving hope to freedom loving bloggers, when the Congress gets back in session the Senate will be proceeding on the FISA revisions that gives President Bush exactly what he wants, no doubt capitulating to his demand that we won't be safe and can't fight terrorists unless the Telecommunication Giants are given immunity for spying on Americans illegally.

This move was in no small part deemed a procedural requirement by the Democratic Leadership, Mr. Ried and now you Mr. Obama (yes you ... ), due to the necessity of getting other business done without more GOP obstructionism:

• like Senator Dodd's housing bill (which will be vetoed) and,
• the new GI bill (which will be vetoed) and,
• attaching Gulf Coast and Midwest flood recovery funds to the usual off-budget War Supplemental (which will be vetoed) and,
• attaching an extension of unemployment benefits to the War Supplemental (which will still be vetoed) and,
• fixing Medicare so doctors don't get a pay cut (which might just become law)

We give up on FISA's repudiation of the Fourth Amendment, and in exchange the Republicans will still call us weak on terror and the GOP Congress Critters can blame President 23% for no GI Bill, no relief for flood victims, no more unemployment benefits and maybe see doctors throughout the land re-bill their Medicare patients for lost fees and up their rates to everyone else to make up the difference -- giving what's left of the Republicans in Congress (the few, the proud, the very afraid) a legitimate means of distancing themselves from Still POTUS Bush.

Feh! The Potomac Village is a place where only lies have any currency whatsoever. The powerful and their entourage trading in what can be foisted on rubes who have no clue and zero interest in their world.

You know, for all my frothing at the infuriating way Washington has been so completely ass-backwards about so much for so long, with what's coming down the pike economically it really doesn't matter what those pompous pontificators do, and it's sadly clear that Cheney's oil gambit in Iraq, the one Rupert Murdoch ventured would bring $20/barrel crude has failed, miserably.