Right Wing Nut House

It was a debate that almost tore the young nation apart. Where to put the Capitol city?

In 1789, Congress was charged with the difficult task of locating a Capitol city that would satisfy the concerns of the two sections, north and south. The current Capitol of New York was deemed unacceptable by most - except New Yorkers for the most part. Congress had earlier carved out some land near Trenton, New Jersey to serve as the Capitol but southerners put their foot down and refused to appropriate any monies to build anything on the site.

The Senate compromised by moving the Capitol to Philadelphia following the second session of the new Congress while the permanent Capitol would be built along the Potomac at the boundary between Virginia and Maryland. So beginning with the legislative session of 1790 until the inauguration of Thomas Jefferson in 1800, Philadelphia served as our nation’s temporary Capitol.

President Washington, ever mindful of his place in history and enormous popularity, made the journey between New York and Philadelphia something of a whistle stop tour. Every town and hamlet he entered with his impressive carriage drawn by 2 beautiful white mares became an occasion those townfolk were not likely to forget. From miles around, everyone would turn out to see him. He made few speeches, usually some words of thanks for the host and asking people to support the new government.

What the people didn’t see was the rest of Washington’s entourage. It included several wagons of trunks and furniture. It also included the 9 slaves George Washington was bringing with him to Philadelphia.

It was never officially acknowledged that Washington brought slaves with him to the new Capitol. That’s because Philadelphia was the birthplace of the Abolitionist Society and was very touchy about the issue of slavery. Therefore, it came as no surprise that archaeologists, uncovering the remains of house where George Washington (and John Adams) lived while the Capitol was located in Philadelphia, have unearthed a secret passage used by Washington’s slaves that kept them out of sight of visitors to the Presidential mansion:

Archaeologists unearthing the remains of George Washington’s presidential home have discovered a hidden passageway used by his nine slaves, raising questions about whether the ruins should be incorporated into a new exhibit at the site.

The underground passageway is just steps from the Liberty Bell and Independence Hall. It was designed so Washington’s guests would not see slaves as they slipped in and out of the main house.

“As you enter the heaven of liberty, you literally have to cross the hell of slavery,” said Michael Coard, a Philadelphia attorney who leads a group that worked to have slavery recognized at the site. “That’s the contrast, that’s the contradiction, that’s the hypocrisy. But that’s also the truth.”

Coard, a local attorney, hip-hop aficionado, and activist, led a letter writing campaign to force the US Park Service to recognize a small building adjacent to the house as slave quarters for those held in bondage by our first president. The Park Service, who is in charge of the archaeological dig unearthing Washington’s house, was originally only going to put a plaque at the site, not acknowledging its role in housing Washington’s slaves. Now, there will be a memorial at the house not only acknowledging its history but also naming the 9 slaves Washington took with him to Philadelphia.

This is all well and good. It is fitting and proper to recognize the history of the site in this manner. But great care must be taken lest perspective on the heritage of the site be lost leaving only the grim reminders of what Coard calls “the hypocrisy” of that history.

I’ve always thought what truly makes America a different place - “exceptional,” if you will - is this searing dichotomy from our past; that a nation so in love with liberty would have begun its history by holding 3 million people as chattel slaves. Is it “hypocrisy” as Mr. Coard contends? Or is it more like schizophrenia, where the afflicted have only a vague awareness that something is wrong with them? How could Thomas Jefferson write something like the Declaration of Independence -a document quoted by revolutionaries down to this day in calling out tyranny and crying for liberty - while holding hundreds of human beings in bondage?

These are questions asked since the beginning of the republic and even prior to our founding. The English literary giant Samuel Johnson was heard to remark following the Stamp Act troubles in the 1760’s, “Why is it we hear the loudest yelps for freedom from the drivers of Negro slaves?” And Jefferson, perhaps seeking to assuage his own guilty conscience, tried to blame the introduction of slavery in America on the King of England in the Declaration. It was voted down by southerners who knew better than anyone that slavery was America’s sin and blame could not be foisted on any other person or country.

Even casual readers of history know most of these things. They are certainly aware of Washington’s slave owning. But to hear Coard and others talk, one would think that American history is locked away in a closet guarded by CIA agents 24 hours a day:

Archaeologists have served as guides, answering visitors’ questions. Cheryl LaRoche, a cultural heritage specialist, said she enjoys educating people about how even a prominent statesman like Washington could own slaves.

“We’ve been striving to present a balanced view of history that stands apart from what’s been taught in history books,” LaRoche said.

That’s out and out ridiculous. There isn’t a history book that’s been published in the last 50 years which fails to highlight the slave owning of the Founders. It’s the “Ive got a secret” view of history promoted largely by racialists and “cultural heritage specialists” who probably never paid attention to history in school and therefore would be shocked to learn what they are teaching today’s kids about the Founders.

But my beef isn’t necessarily with the LaRoche’s of this world. It is with those who would sacrifice the narrative power of America’s history on the altar of political correctness and multi-culturalism. Teaching that slavery was an evil, brutal institution is easy. But supplying a little perspective on what that institution meant to the south, to the north, and how it so enmeshed the country in its cultural, economic, and even religious tentacles is a real challenge.

By the time Washington moved into the house they are currently digging up in Philadelphia, slavery had well and truly trapped our country in a hellish nightmare of violence and economic necessity. Parse it any way you would like, but the fact of the matter is that when all is said and done, freeing the slaves at that time would have impoverished the south and turned loose 3 million people to find their way all by themselves.

Many, no doubt, would have stayed on to work the fields as their grandchildren did 70 years later following the Civil War. Many more would have been lost - adrift in an unfamiliar world with few marketable skills and not many friendly faces. There may be something to the idea that living in wretched poverty while free was much preferable to the security of the slave quarters. But that idea doesn’t put food in people’s bellies or give them the skills necessary to feed themselves and their families.

It took a gigantic war to free ourselves from slavery’s iron grip. To this day, that cataclysmic event shapes our politics and our history. Its influence is seen in the controversy over Washington’s house. There is talk of not including the ruins of the House in an exhibit marking the site due to the slavery issue:

The findings have created a quandary for National Park Service and city officials planning an exhibit at the house. They are now trying to decide whether to incorporate the remains into the exhibit or go forward with plans to fill in the ruins and build an abstract display about life in the house.

Making that decision will push back the building of the exhibit, which had been slated to open in 2009. But the oversight committee won’t rush into construction, said Joyce Wilkerson, the mayor’s chief of staff.

“We never thought we’d be faced with this kind of decision,” she said. “We would’ve been happy to have found a pipe! And so we don’t want to proceed blindly or say, ‘This isn’t in the plan.”‘

The care being taken to decide what to do is commendable but I think misplaced. Clearly the site has great historical value and filling it in to erect an “abstract display” of some kind reeks of political correctness. Let’s tell the whole story of what went on in that house. Not just the fact that the first President owned slaves but also through the sheer force of his personality as well as his unquestioned personal integrity, George Washington created the office of the presidency and with it, the new nation he served so well. That’s the kind of history that is not being told in school books today. Without the “indispensable man,” the US experiment in self-government may very well have been stillborn. The forces of separation threatened several times over those first 8 years to tear the country asunder. It was only Washington’s steadfast support for the new constitution and his presence in the government as chief executive that kept the nation from flying apart at the seams.

Will that story also be told in these ruins? Can’t we find room to tell both vital and necessary stories about our first President. Should they include the fact that Washington’s will freed his own slaves upon the death of his wife? What other aspects of our first President’s life and his relationship with his slaves would be appropriate to highlight in order to give a complete picture of the man, the institution, and his times?

These are questions I’d like to see the City Council take up. Alas, in the political world inhabited by most, such questions would undermine the narrative story that the racialists and others would like the public to hear. Such perspective would leave people thinking that Washington was a great leader and flawed human being rather than a one dimensional slave owner and hypocrite.

This articile originally appears in The American Thinker

Peter Rodman, one of the architects of our military and political policy in Iraq and William Shawcross, liberal hawk now branded traitor by the left for his support of the Iraq War, have written what I believe to be an extremely important Op-Ed in the New York Times on why walking away in defeat from Iraq would be an unmitigated disaster:

SOME opponents of the Iraq war are toying with the idea of American defeat. A number of them are simply predicting it, while others advocate measures that would make it more likely. Lending intellectual respectability to all this is an argument that takes a strange comfort from the outcome of the Vietnam War. The defeat of the American enterprise in Indochina, it is said, turned out not to be as bad as expected. The United States recovered, and no lasting price was paid.

We beg to differ. Many years ago, the two of us clashed sharply over the wisdom and morality of American policy in Indochina, especially in Cambodia. One of us (Mr. Shawcross) published a book, “Sideshow,” that bitterly criticized Nixon administration policy. The other (Mr. Rodman), a longtime associate of Henry Kissinger, issued a rebuttal in The American Spectator, defending American policy. Decades later, we have not changed our views. But we agreed even then that the outcome in Indochina was indeed disastrous, both in human and geopolitical terms, for the United States and the region. Today we agree equally strongly that the consequences of defeat in Iraq would be even more serious and lasting.

So true. The only problem is, there is absolutely no way forward at present that would bring what the Democrats, the world media, the Arab Street, and the America-hating left would be willing to call “victory” in Iraq. These groups have a vested interest in an American defeat - economic, political, strategic - and will proclaim our surrender (along with Osama and his crew) no matter what the military or political situation when most of our combat troops are removed, probably before the 2008 election.

It is maddening to read the pious pronouncements from the left about how desperately they wanted American to succeed in Iraq (this despite the fact that they opposed the war in the first place) all the while deliberately undermining support for the war by the American people. And by “deliberately” I mean they had a game plan, a narrative that they have pushed for the last 4 years with the stated purpose of weakening the resolve of voters so that Democrats could ride the anti-war sentiment into power.

Readers of this site know that it hasn’t been the left alone that caused this drop off in support by the American people. Our war policies have been flawed from the get go and until recently, nothing we tried seemed to stem the violence in Iraq and indeed, made it worse in some respects. But there is a huge difference between mistakes made in planning and policy and the cold, calculated effort by the left to work to crush the morale of the American people so that they could use the Iraq War to vault back into power.

But if the left is trying to convince us that their withering criticisms of the justification for the war, its subsequent prosecution, and all the ancillary issues that have arisen because of it as well as vicious personal attacks on the President were only for the purpose of improving our policies so that we could achieve victory, only little children who still believe in Santa Claus take them at their word. Therefore, one must conclude that their stated reasons for wishing an American defeat in Iraq - that we “deserve” it or that it would teach us a lesson in “humility” - are a true reflection of their beliefs and thinking.

And that kind of thinking, as Rodman/Shawcross point out, is sheer, unadulterated lunacy. It would repeat the mistakes we made in getting out of Viet Nam:

The 1975 Communist victory in Indochina led to horrors that engulfed the region. The victorious Khmer Rouge killed one to two million of their fellow Cambodians in a genocidal, ideological rampage. In Vietnam and Laos, cruel gulags and “re-education” camps enforced repression. Millions of people fled, mostly by boat, with thousands dying in the attempt.

The defeat had a lasting and significant strategic impact. Leonid Brezhnev trumpeted that the global “correlation of forces” had shifted in favor of “socialism,” and the Soviets went on a geopolitical offensive in the third world for a decade. Their invasion of Afghanistan was one result. Demoralized European leaders publicly lamented Soviet aggressiveness and American paralysis.

How does this lesson travel across the years to become relevant in Iraq:

Today, in Iraq, there should be no illusion that defeat would come at an acceptable price. George Orwell wrote that the quickest way of ending a war is to lose it. But anyone who thinks an American defeat in Iraq will bring a merciful end to this conflict is deluded. Defeat would produce an explosion of euphoria among all the forces of Islamist extremism, throwing the entire Middle East into even greater upheaval. The likely human and strategic costs are appalling to contemplate. Perhaps that is why so much of the current debate seeks to ignore these consequences.

As in Indochina more than 30 years ago, millions of Iraqis today see the United States helping them defeat their murderous opponents as the only hope for their country. Hundreds of thousands of Iraqis have committed themselves to working with us and with their democratically elected government to enable their country to rejoin the world as a peaceful, moderate state that is a partner to its neighbors instead of a threat. If we accept defeat, these Iraqis will be at terrible risk. Thousands upon thousands of them will flee, as so many Vietnamese did after 1975.

No word from the Democrats or the left on what to do with these brave Iraqis who are constantly at risk of being assassinated for helping us and their government. In their world, they don’t exist or worse, are stupid dupes fooled by us evil Americans into helping to legitimize a puppet government. And our government has shamefully denied most Iraqis visas, setting a strict limit on the number of Iraqi immigrants who can come to this country (a total of 692 so far). While security concerns are paramount, it would seem to me that Iraqis who have served American interests should have their visa applications expedited. Indeed, Homeland Security chief Michael Chertoff has just recently put procedures in place that will do just that, allowing 7,000 more Iraqi citizens the opportunity to live in the United States.

Rodman/Shawcross conclude by pointing out the necessity for maintaining our credibility:

Osama bin Laden said, a few months after 9/11, that “when people see a strong horse and a weak horse, by nature they will like the strong horse.” The United States, in his mind, is the weak horse. American defeat in Iraq would embolden the extremists in the Muslim world, demoralize and perhaps destabilize many moderate friendly governments, and accelerate the radicalization of every conflict in the Middle East.

Our conduct in Iraq is a crucial test of our credibility, especially with regard to the looming threat from revolutionary Iran. Our Arab and Israeli friends view Iraq in that wider context. They worry about our domestic debate, which had such a devastating impact on the outcome of the Vietnam War, and they want reassurance.

When government officials argued that American credibility was at stake in Indochina, critics ridiculed the notion. But when Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait in 1990, he and his colleagues invoked Vietnam as a reason not to take American warnings seriously. The United States cannot be strong against Iran — or anywhere — if we accept defeat in Iraq.

Already, a chorus is growing on the left that Iran is not a threat, that evidence for their aggressive intentions has been fabricated “just like the evidence that got us into Iraq.” To call that kind of myopic twaddle “suicidal” gives bridge jumpers a bad name. We may very well end up going to war with Iran - or not. But to dismiss them as a threat to the United States, our friends, and our interests is childish and stupid.

Even Barak Obama sees Iran as a serious threat and has not taken the military option off the table. Nor has Hillary Clinton or any other serious Democratic candidate for President. Only those who live in their little Bush-hating cocoons and view every action taken by the government as more evidence of the President’s deviousness can possibly believe we are “manufacturing” evidence in order to justify military action against Iran. Why bother? The Iranians have supplied us with plenty of justification without us having to manufacture anything.

We must find a way through to a satisfactory ending to our involvement in Iraq. There is no alternative. Even if the rest of the world crows about our “defeat” in Iraq when our combat troops depart, governments in the region - including Iran - will know better and base their actions on what is going on in the real world and not the desperate imaginings of fanatical jihadists, the anti-American Arab street, and bitter leftists whose desire to see America humbled has so unbalanced them that it is impossible to tell the difference between the language urging the defeat of the United States used by our enemies and the rhetoric that emanates from supposedly respectable liberal quarters in Congress and on the internet.

That too, evokes memories of Viet Nam, the last time our “humiliation” was seen as a good thing by the left.

Joe Klein, reporter, author, columnist, and blogger who is currently ensconced at Time Magazine’s blog Swampland, has had a full flowing, Road to Damascus revelation about the left wing blogosphere.

After pondering the matter for however long he has been taking the slings and arrows flung his way by the rabid dog left, it has suddenly dawned on Mr. Klein that these are not very nice people. Nor are they very rational. Nor are they very “liberal” in the classical sense of the word.

Klein’s eyes were opened when he quoted Representative Jane Harmon (former Chairman of the House Intel Committee until Reverend Mother Pelosi saw fit to boot her off in favor of one of her cronies) prior to the Iraq funding vote as saying that she wanted to vote against the bill but felt an obligation to support the troops by giving them the equipment they needed to do their jobs. Harmon, as politicians are wont to do, changed her mind and voted against the bill anyway leaving Klein hanging out to dry and the netnuts went to town on the poor fellow:

The next day, I was blasted by a number of left-wing bloggers: Klein screwed up! I had quoted Harman in the past tense—common usage for politicians who know their words will appear after a vote takes place. That was sloppy and… suspicious! Proof that you just can’t trust the mainstream media. On Eschaton, a blog that specializes in media bashing, I was given the coveted “Wanker of the Day” award. Eventually, Harman got wind of this and called, unbidden, to apologize for misleading me, saying I had quoted her correctly but she had changed her mind to reflect the sentiments of her constituents. I published her statement and still got hammered by bloggers and Swampland commenters for “stalking” Harman into an apology, for not checking her vote in the Congressional Record, for being a “water boy for the right wing” and many other riffs unfit to print.

First of all, if Joe wants the job of carrying water for the right wing, he’s more than welcome to it. Somebody’s got to. Since no one in Congress seems to be stepping up to do it, it may as well be Klein.

But Joe would first have to delve into the world of moonbattery and paranoia. For he has, in fact, discovered the lefty netnuts to be a bunch of unhinged, drooling, raving lunatics:

This is not the first time this kind of free-range lunacy has been visited upon me. Indeed, it happens, oh, once a week to each of us who post on Swampland (Karen Tumulty, Jay Carney and Ana Marie Cox are the others). A reasonable reader might ask, Why are the left-wing bloggers attacking you? Aren’t you pretty tough on the Bush Administration? Didn’t you write a few months ago that George W. Bush would be remembered as one of the worst Presidents in history? And why on earth does any of this matter?

[...]

But the smart stuff is being drowned out by a fierce, bullying, often witless tone of intolerance that has overtaken the left-wing sector of the blogosphere. Anyone who doesn’t move in lockstep with the most extreme voices is savaged and ridiculed—especially people like me who often agree with the liberal position but sometimes disagree and are therefore considered traitorously unreliable.

I was just thinking about this very thing as it relates to the right side of the blogosphere the other day as I was bemoaning my loss of readership over these last few months. While many smaller and mid-sized bloggers have drummed me out of the Conservative Book Club and taken away my key to the executive washroom at Haliburton’s corporate headquarters (a turn of events I regret for the most part since a lot of those people I consider my friends), all of the largest righty blogs still link to this site on occasion and have never attacked me personally for being something of an apostate. This kind of tolerance has always been lacking on the left and bespeaks a mindset exactly described as Klein; if you don’t toe the line, we kick you in the balls.

But before we go patting Joe on the back for having the good sense to recognize the illiberality of liberal blogs, Klein descends into full blown moonbattery himself while ignoring history with a vengeance:

Some of this is understandable: the left-liberals in the blogosphere are merely aping the odious, disdainful—and politically successful—tone that right-wing radio talk-show hosts like Rush Limbaugh pioneered. They are also justifiably furious at a Bush White House that has specialized in big lies and smear tactics.

And that is precisely the danger here. Fury begets fury. Poison from the right-wing talk shows seeped into the Republican Party’s bloodstream and sent that party off the deep end. Limbaugh’s show—where Dick Cheney frequently expatiates—has become the voice of the Republican establishment. The same could happen to the Democrats. The spitballs aimed at me don’t matter much. The spitballs aimed at Harman, Clinton and Obama are another story. Despite their votes, each of those politicians believes the war must be funded. (Obama even said so in his statement explaining his vote.) Each knows, as Senator Jim Webb has said repeatedly, that we must be more careful getting out of Iraq than we were getting in. But they allowed themselves to be bullied into a more simplistic, more extreme position. Why? Partly because they fear the power of the bloggers to set the debate and raise money against them. They may be right—in the short (primary election) term; Harman faced a challenge from the left in 2006. In the long term, however, kowtowing to extremists is exactly the opposite of what this country is looking for after the lethal radicalism of the Bush Administration.

It’s the right’s fault that lefty bloggers are a bunch of pinch-faced, bile spewing half wits? And they are only aping a “tone” that was pioneered by Rush Limbaugh?

Does Klein actually believe that all this bloody “speaking truth to power” by savaging your opponent in the most vile, personal way imaginable sprang from the microphone of Rush Limbaugh in the 1990’s?

I’m sorry, but that is at best disingenuous and at worst, a calumnious lie. Let me give Mr. Klein a little history lesson to open his eyes a bit.

If modern conservatism has a beginning, it could very well have been the publication of William F. Buckley’s God and Man at Yale.. Let us examine what some of those polite, tolerant, intellectually honest liberals said about the book at the time:

The book reviewers were absolutely hostile, enraged at what they read.

“The book is one which has the glow and appeal of a fiery cross on a hillside at night. There will undoubtedly be robed figures who gather to it, but the hoods will not be academic. They will cover the face,” snarled one, ominously comparing it to a work of the Ku Klux Klan. “This fascist thesis,” angrily spluttered another, “…This…pure fascism….What more could Hitler, Mussolini, or Stalin ask for…?” Still others piled on. The book was dismissed as a series of “fanatically emotional attacks” that “succeeded in turning the stomachs of its readers.” The author drew howls of outrage, the lesser of which focused on adjectives like “rude” and “obnoxious” before descending into cries of “fascist.”

The name of the book was not Godless. And the author was not Ann Coulter. The book that drew such ferocious attention was God and Man at Yale. The author, a recent Yale graduate, was a precocious William F. Buckley, Jr.

With conservatism consigned to the outer political darkness in the 50’s and the 60’s, liberals felt more than enabled to carry out a slash and burn rhetorical campaign against them. “Nazi” and “Klansmen” were common epithets applied to conservatives - as they are today. Witness the treatment Goldwater received in the 1964 campaign:

For Goldwater, the first modern conservative to win a presidential nomination, the unending torrent of abuse verged on the apoplectic. CBS News solemnly reported the week of his nomination that Goldwater’s first act after the convention would be to travel to Germany for a visit to “Berchtesgaden, once Hitler’s stamping ground.” And what will the conservative Goldwater do once there? “There are signs,” CBS reporter Daniel Schorr said ominously, “that the American and German right wings are joining up…” Got that? Barry Goldwater, said CBS in so many words, was really a Nazi. With a presidential nomination in hand, he was literally heading to Hitler’s home to get the international Nazi movement rolling. The story, from the trip to Germany to the visit to Hitler’s estate was, of course, false from beginning to end.

Equally hysterical was a liberal magazine that published a 64-page “psychological study” of the candidate which began: “Do you think Barry Goldwater is psychologically fit to serve as President of the United States?” You guessed it — after claiming to poll over 12,000 psychiatrists across the country, the answer was no. New York Times columnist C.L. Sulzberger answered the question this way: “The possibility exists that, should he (Goldwater) enter the White House, there might not be a day after tomorrow.” In case voters didn’t get the message, Democratic strategist and LBJ aide Bill Moyers designed the so-called “daisy commercial” that saw a child counting the petals of a flower disappear in the mushroom cloud of a nuclear explosion.

The Nixonian interlude allowed the left to fully vent their hatred at one conservative who most people think deserved everything he got. But the emergence of Reagan on the national scene gave liberals the screaming meemies. Reagan himself remarked that he discovered once he crossed the Mississippi River, he grew horns and a tail. And the viciously personal and outrageous comments made by his political opponents during his terms in office were unmatched until the Clinton years. Ted Kennedy accused President Reagan of deliberately fostering policies that would starve old people and children. Representative Charles Rangel called him a racist. The vitriolic hate directed against Reagan was met with a shrug, a wink, and usually a devastating put down that always contained a little humor. Hardly the stuff of a right wing attack dog.

For Klein to blame the left’s historic, hate-filled rhetoric on the recent phenomena of talk radio and specifically Limbaugh’s broadly drawn (and at times, over the top) satire is fantastically ridiculous. The world did not begin in the 1990’s with the right’s reaction to the deliberate Clintonian strategy of personally destroying your opponent with outrageous smears and lies. It’s just that the left has now perfected the technique and uses the world of blogs to vastly amplify the tactic so that the target feels beseiged. Witness the most recent kerfluffle over a post at Six Meat Buffet that skewered recently deceased blogger Steve Gilliard.

Forgetting how they reacted every time in the last few years when a person of note on the right passed away, publishing the most outrageously disrespectful, cruel, heartless, drivel imaginable, the netnuts went ballistic I personally found the post in extremely poor taste and borderline racist. But the point wasn’t to skewer Gilliard so much as to show liberal bloggers what incredible hypocrites they truly are.

The fallout from the episode claimed a Tennessee woman - a liberal - who blogged at WKRN. She made the mistake of pasting an excerpt from the Six Meat Buffet piece and not condemning it. For her oversight, she was subjected to a withering blast of stupidity from left wing bloggers and their mouth breathing commenters. She has since quit in disgust.

Klein is already hearing it today for daring to call the liberal blogs what they are; raving lunatics who cannot tolerate an iota of dissent from their worldview. Will Joe Klein do as most other liberals do who find themselves in the crosshairs of lefty blogs and go before them with bended knee and abjectly apologize for his heresy? Or is he enough of an independent thinker to tell them to take a hike?

Should be interesting to watch…

Keith Olbermann took time out from making the world safe for Edward R. Murrow impersonators on his show Monday night to offer some interesting thoughts on the connection between bad news about the Bush Administration (and the proximity to elections) and the exposure of terror plots, the issuance of terror alerts, and government advice on how to prepare for a terrorist assault.

Showing how every time there was a terror plot uncovered or when the old Homeland Security Threat level was bumped up it seemed to coincide with what Olbermann saw as a bad news day for the Administration, the Anti-Murrow sought to prove that there is no such thing as a serious terror threat to the United States, that it is all a case of political smoke and mirrors by an evil and manipulative White House.

No, really. For instance, when the Phoenix FBI agent testified before Congress about her superiors ignoring her warnings about terrorists training in flight schools, Senator Graham remarked that her testimony had inspired other pre-9/11 “whistleblowers” to come forward.

“Just” 4 days later, Keith informs us ominously, then Attorney General Ashcroft announced the arrest of Jose Padilla for the dirty bomb plot - even though he had already been in custody for a month! (Cue Darth Vader theme.)

What Keith failed to mention is that if we had announced the arrest of Padilla before assuring ourselves that such information would not alert any of Padilla’s co-conspirators, he would have been all over the Administration for blowing an intelligence bonanza. And what is the significance of this happening “just” 4 days after the testimony of the Phoenix FBI agent? Why, none of course - unless you live in the topsy turvy, upside down world of Keith Olbermann and his drooling conspiracy minded netnuts. Why not make the announcement the day after the testimony? Or the next day? Why wait 4 days? Only a blithering idiot wouldn’t see the 4 day gap as totally disproving the idea that the Administration used the announcement to deflect attention from their pre-9/11 failures.

This idea of a political basis for announcing terror threats and raising the level of concern about an attack is a remix of an old recording that was last played all throughout the election of 2004. The netnuts went positively ballistic every time that Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge showed his face on TV.

The beauty of this critique is obvious; the left gets to have it both ways. If the Administration hadn’t said anything and an attack occurred, they would be all over the Bushies for not only failing to prevent the attack but for not warning the American people. And since the Administration did get out front in raising the threat level and warning of an attack, the left can claim that it was driven by partisan politics.

Simple. Elegant. And monumentally stupid.

Olbermann’s idea of “bad news” for the Administration is so obtuse as to be beyond belief. He cites Secretary Powell’s speech before the UN on February 5, 2003 where claims of WMD in Iraq were disproven “months later.” But just two days later, amidst the news of anti-war demonstrations around the world, Secretary Ridge raises the threat level to orange.

Excuse me but does anyone else see that particular example of the Administration playing politics with terror alerts to be out and out idiocy? What does Powell’s speech (not disproven for months) have to do with raising the threat level a few days later? And does anyone seriously believe that the Administration could have cared one whit about anti-war demonstrators in Amsterdam? Or the pitifully few 60’s holdovers who turned out in this country? So much so that they went to the trouble and huge expense of raising the threat level?

Keith Olbermann is a loon. And while he made mention of the logical fallacy argument - that just because event A and event B happen to occur at the same time, it doesn’t mean there is a connection between the two - he then descends into the outer darkness to make his point. He states the danger of logical fallacies and then goes ahead and engages in them. This kind of breathtaking stupidity is what Olbermann does best and it’s why the netnuts love him so. His thoughts mirror their paranoid worldview - that terrorism is vastly overblown as a threat to our security and that the Bushies have used the issue to convince Americans “to fear fear itself” according to Keith.

” …from the mind-bending idea that four guys dressed as Pizza Delivery men were going to out-gun all the soldiers at Fort Dix…to the not-too-thought-out plan to blow-up J-F-K Airport… here we go again…”

Yeah…and the idea that 19 guys with box cutters planning to hijack planes and fly them into the Pentagon and the World Trade Center is just plain kooky. (Note: For the record, the soldiers at Fort Dix were unarmed. Their weapons were locked up.)

It isn’t just the idea that there is always a political angle to terrorism threats in this country that makes Olbermann’s fantasies so destructive. Anyone so naive as to believe that there isn’t any political calculation in some of the things done by the FBI or DHS doesn’t know government very well. High profile investigations and raids always seem to get wrapped up around budget request time. The same goes, I’m sure, for some terrorism related investigations as well. This is the nature of the beast and trying to change it would be like trying to stop the rain.

But the thought that the Administration systematically used terrorism as a political club to blunt bad news is so outrageous as to reveal Olbermann and those who agree with him to be blissfully ignorant of reality. There is little doubt that Secretary Ridge wanted to be less aggressive in raising the threat level than the White House - not because he didn’t think the threat was bogus but because he thought that the constant yo-yoing of the color coded threat board lessened its impact. But can you chalk that up to politics? Or is there perhaps a more mundane reason such as the Administration wanting to be safe rather than sorry? CYA is a much more realistic - dare I say “reality based” - reason for the threat level rising than any Master Plan by the Bush Administration to use fear as a political weapon.

I’ve written this before half in jest but it bears repeating: Perhaps the best thing that could happen to this country’s preparedness for a terrorist attack is if we elected a Democrat as President. Not because he would do a better job than a Republican. It’s just that Republicans are far less likely to deliberately undermine our battle here at home to stay safe by positing wild, unprovable, paranoid conspiracy theories about the seriousness of the terror threat than the Democrats and their loony netnuts. I doubt very much that the left will disbelieve a Democratic Administration that announces the foiling of a terrorist plot. Nor will there be a whisper about using fear of terrorism as a political weapon.

At the very least, a Democratic Administration will keep the paranoid loons spouting their conspiracy theories relatively quiet for four years. It might be worth it just to enjoy that particular blessing.

UPDATE

Speaking of pooh-poohing the terrorist threat, Michelle has a “Gathering of Ostriches” who prove that Keith Olbermann isn’t the only one who thinks denial is just a river in Egypt.

UPDATE II

If I’d read Allah first, I wouldn’t have bothered:

You’ll note, I hope, that even Olby recognizes how dishonest he’s being. That’s why he feels obliged to mention not once but twice that coincidences do happen and, in his words, “we could probably construct a similar timeline of terror events and their relationship to the haircuts of popular politicians.” Why do it, then? Because, as the Truthers are wont to say, he’s “just asking questions.” Just “airing it,” Sullivan style. Make up your own mind.

He also doesn’t seem to grasp that just because the pipeline plot wasn’t feasible doesn’t mean no attack would have occurred. You’ve got a group of men with homicidal intent willing to travel internationally to bring off their plan. If they’re game for that, they’re probably game for walking into a crowd of people and opening up with automatic weapons and grenades. It won’t take out an airport, but you might very well top the body count from the London bombings two years ago.

Read the whole thing.

In the early days of American politics, no man would dare openly run for President of the United States, zig zagging across the country trying to drum up support. It was considered unseemly and self-aggrandizing for a politician to be seen grasping for power in such a naked way.

So the putative candidate would run what was commonly known as a “Front Porch Campaign” where party leaders and supporters from across the country would show up at the candidate’s home and appear to plead with him to accept their support. The candidate, humble and diffident, would gratefully acknowledge their activities on his behalf and usually mouth some platitudes about some issue or give a stem winding, patriotic oration about America . Of course, the more important the party leader (or his representative), the bigger what passed for a 19th century feeding frenzy by the press. It was in this way that the American people became acquainted with the major candidates.

It was all a political Kabuki dance. Everyone knew that the candidate was dying to be President. The 1896 race between William McKinley and William Jennings Bryan was a case in point.

While Bryan was on the hustings, making more than 600 speeches (If there was a man in American political history more in love with his own voice, I am unaware of him.), McKinley, after locking up the nomination appeared dormant, sitting at home entertaining Republican party luminaries looking for all the world as if he couldn’t really care if he became President. Meanwhile, a shady operator by the name of Mark Hanna was generously spreading money around he raised from his big business friends who were absolutely terrified of Bryan’s populist campaign and most especially his advocacy of basing the dollar on both a gold and silver standard (”You shall not press down upon the brow of labor this crown of thorns, you shall not crucify mankind upon a cross of gold.”).

McKinley ended up winning the election by allowing Bryan an open field to scare the beejeebees out of just about everyone except his farm/labor base. And that points up one of the oddities in politics; a sitting target is harder to hit than a moving one.

Senator Fred Thompson has developed a strategy so at odds with that of his rivals in the Republican race for President that it may be studied very carefully by future campaigns for lessons in how to win a nomination. At the moment, Thompson is third in national polls trailing Mayor Rudy Guiliani and Senator McCain and leading former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney. But the former Tennessee Senator isn’t even an official candidate yet. Just this past Friday, he formed a finance committee to raise money for his campaign. But he has yet to spend any money on advertising. He has precious few paid staff members. And his organization is light years behind those of his main rivals.

While the front runners and also-rans have been criss crossing the country and frantically working the phones trying to raise money, Thompson has set himself down on his ole’ front porch, relaxing on the settee writing a bit, blogging some, and occasionally venturing out to give a speech to the faithful. He has used the internet to generate a “buzz” about his campaign - much like sophisticated marketers today use the net to spread the word about a new product. He has no official website. But articles like this one, talking about the Senator and his campaign serve the purpose of circulating his name and getting people to think about him.

Of course, it helps that Thompson has been appearing on television for years as the no nonsense DA in NBC’s Law and Order. But in establishing a presence on the web and fleshing out his ideas through some very well placed op-eds designed to give him maximum exposure to conservative audiences, Thompson has emerged as bona fide conservative alternative to the front runners.

Thompson will not participate in this Tuesday’s Republican debate in New Hampshire. A pity, that. But no matter how you look at it, Thompson is now ready to take his campaign from his front porch into the living rooms of the American people. How he handles that transition will say much about his abilities as well as how far he might go in the race for the nomination.

C: I wish to complain about this parrot what I purchased not half an hour ago from this very boutique.

THIS IS AN EX-PARROT!!

Pardon the lengthy introduction, but The Dead Parrot Sketch is one of Monty Python’s most important contributions to the humor of western civilization. Or not. I suppose it depends on whether you like Monty Python.

Be that as it may, the sketch is also instructive regarding the imminent demise of what we used to call “The Grand Old Party” which became the nickname of Republicans back in the day when “The Grand Army of the Republic” - Union veterans of the Civil War - pretty much ran the party. Those 400,000 or so veterans elected every Republican president from Grant to McKinley. Their endorsement carried huge weight with a grateful electorate who recognized the veteran’s sacrifices and honored them even beyond the effective life of the GAR.

Now the party is run by cynical hacks and jackanapes who, despite all evidence to the contrary, insist that the parrot isn’t dead, it’s just resting. The plumage may still be pretty. But maggots have already begun to eat away at the insides.

What political conservatives and on-the-ground Republicans must understand at this point is that they are not breaking with the White House on immigration. They are not resisting, fighting and thereby setting down a historical marker–”At this point the break became final.” That’s not what’s happening. What conservatives and Republicans must recognize is that the White House has broken with them. What President Bush is doing, and has been doing for some time, is sundering a great political coalition. This is sad, and it holds implications not only for one political party but for the American future.

The White House doesn’t need its traditional supporters anymore, because its problems are way beyond being solved by the base. And the people in the administration don’t even much like the base. Desperate straits have left them liberated, and they are acting out their disdain. Leading Democrats often think their base is slightly mad but at least their heart is in the right place. This White House thinks its base is stupid and that its heart is in the wrong place.

Peggy Noonan is not some turncoat, traitorous, weak kneed Republican pantywaist. She helped put Ronald Reagan’s ideas and thoughts to some of the most beautiful rhetorical music of 20th century politics. But she, along with many of us, are tired and dispirited. We have seen the Republican party run into the ground and then stepped on by an Administration and a President who have gone beyond taking most of us for granted and instead have declared war upon those who have sustained his presidency in the face of the most vicious and determined opposition to his policies. We have been slapped in the face, kicked in the teeth, stabbed in the back. And the smug, self-righteous mountebanks who are taking the party with them to oblivion could care less.

In fact, given all that has transpired since the 2004 election (which coincided with the last time the Bushies even paid lip service to the base) one could say that this President has seemed most determined to destroy the party of Lincoln, Teddy Roosevelt, and Reagan leaving behind only a charred husk for the rest of us to live with. They have decided that Götterdämmerung is in order; if they can’t prevail, then they will destroy what is left of the grand coalition that changed the face of America and the world in the 1980’s and in a fit of either pique or ignorance, leave it for the next crew to cobble together something else.

I will say that it didn’t take much to destroy what was left of that coalition. Since the end of the cold war - the single uniting expedient of the Republican party for more than 30 years - the GOP has been adrift. Uniting against Clinton was fairly easy although that unity was a mile wide and an inch deep. It was based on the absolute worst of political bargains; the cold, calculus of how to get power and keep it. So for ten years Republicans played the special interest game, feeding the lobbyists a steady diet of earmarks and favors, reaping huge amounts of campaign contributions in return, while selling out their basic principles of smaller, less intrusive government and fiscal discipline.

And now, there’s precious little left. No ideology. Little loyalty. Less desire to help this gang of cynical galoots maintain what power and position they have remaining. Witness the news from the Republican National Committee:

The Republican National Committee, hit by a grass-roots donors’ rebellion over President Bush’s immigration policy, has fired all 65 of its telephone solicitors, Ralph Z. Hallow will report Friday in The Washington Times.

Faced with an estimated 40 percent fall-off in small-donor contributions and aging phone-bank equipment that the RNC said would cost too much to update, Anne Hathaway, the committee’s chief of staff, summoned the solicitations staff last week and told them they were out of work, effective immediately, the fired staffers told The Times.

The national committee yesterday confirmed the firings that took place more than a week ago, but denied that the move was motivated by declining donor response to phone solicitations.

“The phone-bank employees were terminated,” RNC spokeswoman Tracey Schmitt wrote by e-mail in response to questions sent by The Times. “This was not an easy decision. The first and primary motivating factor was the state of the phone bank technology, which was outdated and difficult to maintain. The RNC was advised that we would soon need an entire new system to remain viable.”

Fired employees acknowledged that the committee’s phone equipment was outdated, but said a sharp drop-off in donations “probably” hastened the end of the RNC’s in-house phone-bank operation.

“Last year, my solicitations totaled $164,000, and this year the way they were running for the first four months, they would total $100,000 by the end of 2007,” said one fired phone bank solicitor who asked not to be identified.

Not dead. Just resting.

The real danger, of course, is that come November next year GOP candidates simply won’t be able to compete in the 70 or so seats in the House that the Democrats are licking their chops to see change hands. With little available help from the national party and a base that will not only sit on their wallets but probably sit on their hands come election day, the chances are growing that a truly remarkable collapse will occur, an historic implosion that, like a tidal wave, will change the political contours of the country once it recedes. The stars are not quite aligned yet for such a disaster. But the tumblers are beginning to click into place and it remains to be seen whether anyone or any group in the GOP can alter history’s course.

Meanwhile, the Bushies continue to employ their scorched earth policy toward critics:

I suspect the White House and its allies have turned to name calling because they’re defensive, and they’re defensive because they know they have produced a big and indecipherable mess of a bill–one that is literally bigger than the Bible, though as someone noted last week, at least we actually had a few years to read the Bible. The White House and its supporters seem to be marshalling not facts but only sentiments, and self-aggrandizing ones at that. They make a call to emotions–this is, always and on every issue, the administration’s default position–but not, I think, to seriously influence the debate.

They are trying to lay down markers for history. Having lost the support of most of the country, they are looking to another horizon. The story they would like written in the future is this: Faced with the gathering forces of ethnocentric darkness, a hardy and heroic crew stood firm and held high a candle in the wind. It will make a good chapter. Would that it were true!

Indeed. The President’s famous stubbornness - a quality that held him in good stead early in his Administration - has now morphed into a pathological, ego-centric belief that since he is always right, his critics are not only wrong but evil to boot. I guess six years of enduring the unhinged, BDS paranoia and conspiracy theories of the lickspittle left can do that to a man.

The fact that this self righteousness has permeated his entire Administration as well as most supporters of his Let’s-Not-Call-It-Amnesty-Even-Though-It-Is bill only makes many of his erstwhile supporters wonder is there anything left to expend the time and energy defending. Some would say the Administration’s policies in Iraq are worth going to bat for. But given recent news that the President is about to undercut even his Iraq War supporters by withdrawing a substantial number of troops for no more reason than the Democrats have given, it would appear the betrayal of even these, his most loyal and true acolytes, will eventually be complete.

Meanwhile, world events rush forward. Iran continues to thumb its nose at everyone. Pakistan becomes more unstable by the day - with its 60 nuclear weapons poised to possibly fall into the hands of Taliban lovers. Afghanistan still bleeds despite small successes. Lebanon is in danger from a desperate Syria who seeks to undermine its government to prevent an International Tribunal from declaring President Assad a common, murderous gangster. Chavez is taking Venezuela to hell. And the terrorists continue to plan murder on a cosmic scale.

A lame duck President without much of a base, a rabid dog opposition, and a party coming apart at the seams means a time of maximum danger for the United States. I wish it weren’t so. But the palpable feeling of impending disaster that I feel to the marrow of my bones requires me to cry out in anger and despair at those who have taken us down this road and who will now reap the whirlwind for what they have sown these past few years.

UPDATE

Allah channels the parrot:

The RNC spokesman denied that there has been a falloff at all. Yup, there’s nothing wrong in the GOP family these days. Nothing at all. Nothing to see here, move along.

UPDATE II: FROM THE “HOLY CHRIST!” FILES

Michelle links to a Mary Katherine Ham post on a verbatim transcript with an RNC solicitor:

Caller: “Well, that’s not Republicans. Just the President loves that immigration bill.”

Caller: “That’s ridiculous.”

Indeed. You lost me at “hello”…

I have an Op Ed up at the Washington Examiner about earmarks and the Duke Cunningham scandal.

A sample:

Indeed, there have been many supporters of earmarks in both parties who have basically told taxpayers with questions about specific spending requests to take a hike. Here’s what Sen. Trent Lott, R-Miss., said of the Porkbusters citizens group that has exposed many of these spending outrages: “I’m getting damn tired of hearing from them. They have been nothing but trouble since Katrina.” Clearly, it is a sensitive subject for both parties on Capitol Hill.

Alas, it would seem likely our lawmakers will take such advice to heart rather than resisting the urge to feather their own nests at the expense of the people who elected them.

Noted internet thug and bully Larry Johnson - former Counter terrorism official for the Department of State, employee of the CIA, apologist for Valerie Plame, and defender of those who leak classified material (as long as it harms the Bush Administration) - is in a gloating mood today. A declassified CIA summary of Plame’s employment at the CIA reveals that the agency considered her status “covert” and that this fact should increase the jail time for Scooter Libby when the convicted Cheney aide is sentenced.

First, it should be noted that what Libby, Cheney, and that whole crew did in deliberately sabatoging Plame’s career at CIA was reprehensible. Whether she was covert or not, it was not necessary to debunk Joe Wilson’s lies by outing his wife as an employee of the CIA. I don’t care who you are in government, publicizing the name of an intelligence employee - covert or not - is wrong. It is always wrong. And to try and defend it by pointing out that Plame was not covert or that she worked at Langley and it was therefore no secret that she was a CIA employee just doesn’t cut it. We should have more respect for the employees of our intelligence agencies than that.

But I just had to post on Larry Johnson today because, in a very large sense, Johnson is what the Administration and most of us on the right have been fighting against since 2001; a mindset in the intelligence community that elevates unelected bureaucrats to positions where they can undermine or otherwise affect policies they disagree with - policies that are set by the freely elected representatives of the United States government. It is an abomination. And Larry Johnson has been an abominable figure in these dramas from start to finish.

I’ve had a run in with Mr. Johnson myself. Following a post I wrote on Admiral Inman decrying the partisan nature of the leaking of classified documents, Johnson left a comment that claimed the Admiral had been misquoted:

Hey boneheads,
I actually spoke with Admiral Inman. He said he was misquoted (Gee, what a surprise, the NRO can’t get its story straight). He’s disgusted by the attacks on Valerie Plame. You guys only got one thing right, Admiral Inman is a class act.

After a follow up post in which I basically called Johnson an idiot for a statement he made at TPM Cafe that the conservative movement was “partly born” as a result of of the efforts of Whittaker Chambers to expose Alger Hiss, Johnson shot back an email in which he overtly threatened me by bragging that he “knew the guys who killed Pablo Escobar” and that I didn’t know who I was dealing with.

If I had any doubts of who or what I was dealing with, they were laid to rest with this nauseating, over the top, severely unbalanced gloat against Plame’s critics who insisted she wasn’t covert:

Victoria Toensing, Cliff May, Byron York and the other rightwing apologists who have long insisted that Valerie Plame Wilson was not undercover have some “splaining” to do. Federal Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald’s latest filing in the Scooter Libby case leaves no doubt about Valerie Wilson’s status–she was covert and undercover and served overseas. Thanks to a heads up from McClatchy’s Jonathan Landay, followed in short order by a note from John Amato at Crooks and Liars, I got my hands on the Fitzgerald filing. [Update: David Corn posted the first piece on this Friday night. He needs to do more self-promotion.] Man, the rightwing stooges are getting their collective asses handed to them on all fronts (e.g., a bird sh**s on Bush, Wolfowitz gets bounced from the World Bank, and rightwing bloggers, Flopping Aces and Charles Johnson in particular, were exposed making fraudulent claims). As Jackie Gleason used to say, “how sweet it is!”

Perhaps Mr. Johnson should go easy on the “getting it wrong” aspect of this case. After all, there are few more spectacular examples of being wrong than what Johnson wrote in July of 2001:

Judging from news reports and the portrayal of villains in our popular entertainment, Americans are bedeviled by fantasies about terrorism. They seem to believe that terrorism is the greatest threat to the United States and that it is becoming more widespread and lethal. They are likely to think that the United States is the most popular target of terrorists. And they almost certainly have the impression that extremist Islamic groups cause most terrorism.

I hope for a world where facts, not fiction, determine our policy. While terrorism is not vanquished, in a world where thousands of nuclear warheads are still aimed across the continents, terrorism is not the biggest security challenge confronting the United States, and it should not be portrayed that way.

In case Mr. Johnson and his friends on the left may have forgotten, (And why not? They act like they’ve forgotten about it on a daily basis.) 2 months later on September 11, 2001, the most horrific attack against American citizens ever to take place on American soil occurred in New York, Washington, D.C., and over the skies of Pennsylvania when one of those bedeviling “fantasies” about terrorism actually came true. If you want the details of that attack (just to jog your memory), go here.

Johnson has since tried to furiously backtrack from that position, saying that he said that Islamic terrorism was the #1 threat and that everything he said in the article was true.

Maybe. But it takes a special kind of idiot to note that the terrorism threat was “declining” two months before 9/11 and then not acknowledge that mistake.

And that’s not the only time “Wrong Way Johnson” has been utterly and unbelievably mistaken. In fact, in what has to be considered one of the funniest, most outrageous examples of stupidity in the history of the internet, Johnson (along with most of the left) fell for the Jason Leopold story predicting that Karl Rove would be indicted in connection with the Plame Affair “within 24 hours.” Here’s Mr. Johnson’s original take on the news:

Frog March at the White House?
by
Larry C Johnson

Within the last week, Karl Rove told President Bush and Chief of Staff Joshua Bolten, as well as a few other high level administration officials, that he will be indicted in the CIA leak case and will immediately resign his White House job when the special counsel publicly announces the charges against him, according to sources.

That was on Friday, May 12, 2006. The very next day, Leopold expanded on his “scoop” by saying that Rove would be indicted within 24 hours. More gloating from Jaba the Hut:

Rove Indicted–Frog March the Bastard
by
Larry C Johnson

Will we see the following real world.
(photoshopped picture of Rove being dragged away in handcuffs)

This was only the beginning of one of the more sidesplitting episodes I can remember on the internet. Leopold’s piece appeared in Truthout on Saturday, May 13th. On Sunday with no Rove indictment apparent, Mr. Johnson was insisting that “All is well” with this post on the Democratic Underground:

Larry Johnson

They are called Truth Out for a reason. Getting the truth out.

Yes, I’m sure they did. A full week passed and still no Rove frog marching. The left, still hopeful, began to make excuses for Leopold; that he was the victim of some plot by Rove and his lawyers was a common musing by the dunces on the left. But our Larry was still hopeful:

Latest Re Rove on Truth Out

The following was posted today on Truth Out. They are sticking to their guns and justifiably so. Time will tell.

Time told alright. Nothing. Nada. Zipadeedodah. No Rove indictment. Leopold exposed as a serial exaggerator or worse. And Larry Johnson, member of the Reality Based Community in good standing? A month later, the hypocritical Mr. Johnson was still defending Jason Leopold as a brave truth teller because after Rove’s lawyer announced that Fitzgerald had sent him a letter saying he would not indict his client, Larry refused to believe it because no one had seen the letter!

Where’s the Letter Luskin?
by
Larry C Johnson

I’m with Christy Hardin Smith at FireDogLake.com. Until Patrick Fitzgerald calls off the dogs that Porcine Ass called Rove ought to worry about who he might be getting up close and personal with in jail.

AND LARRY JOHNSON IS TAKING CONSERVATIVE SPOKESMEN AND BLOGGERS TO TASK FOR BEING WRONG ABOUT ANYTHING?

This bullying guttersnipe should be eating crow, not crowing about anything at all. One wonders what this lickspittle’s track record at the CIA and State Department could have been if his powers of observation and prognostication leave so much to be desired. It’s frightening, actually, to think of this guy in a position of responsibility anywhere in government. And the “Sexion Caper” should make that clear to anyone who’s honest enough to see it.

Sexion was a blogger who lived in Norway who was deliberately and viciously targeted by Johnson, Leopold, and others in a coordinated attack that included phone calls to his home, his parents home, and not very well disguised threats against his person. The incident convinced Sexion to quit blogging so the story is best told by others since his blog has disappeared. Ace had his own problems with sock puppets posting personal information on his site about Sexion and relates them in the several posts he did on the matter. What is absolutely clear is this; Larry Johnson participated in a campaign of intimidation against a 24 year old blogger who never did him any harm.

This quote from a Sexion post about emails received from Bully Boy Johnson should chill your bones:

Perhaps most haunting was the email I received from Larry Johnson last night. He claimed I defamed him and called him a liar. I did not defame him and he did lie to me when he said that he had answered my questions when he had in fact not done so. This was not part of the story I wrote yesterday, calling him a liar for that, I simply stated the fact that he declined to answer a set of yes/no questions I posed to him, as he responded that he had already answered them, which was false.

Johnson laced the email, to a personal account of mine which I do not usually give out and which is not available through Google, with personal details about my family and me. Just like Leopold had done, Johnson repeated my mother’s name, my parents’ address, and even my birth month and year. Obviously Johnson thought this would freak me out and scare me into retracting everything. He concluded the email with:

I am willing to accept a written apology and move on. If you refuse to retract your statements about me I am prepared to ratchet this up several levels. I have not spent the last twenty years working with the U.S. military and the intelligence community to accept this kind of nonsense from a wet-nosed 24 year old coward, who is an armchair warrior but does not have the courage to enlist in the military when his country is at war.

Is that a threat, Mr. Johnson? After I responded, he fired back with this:

I know where you are living. You forget that I do work for the European Union and friends in Interpol. I’ve offered you a mature way to deal with this situation. You’re obviously too immature and inexperienced to recognize the offer for what it is. Too bad.

The reason this rings true to me is the little aside in Mr. Johnson’s email to me about “knowing” the men who killed Pablo Escobar. It’s the same kind of cowardly, veiled threat he makes to Sexion.

I don’t know if Johnson still appears as a TV analyst for terrorism anymore. If he does, producers and bookers should read this post carefully and decide for themselves whether they want this sort of fellow appearing on their network. Johnson is a despicable brat, a juvenile, a Walter Mitty who fancies himself some kind of terrorist fighting superhero and slayer of conservatives . But when the lights go down and darkness descends, he crawls out from under a rock and bullies those he thinks won’t or can’t fight back.

How very brave of you, Larry. Now, do your damnedest.

I’ll say this much for the Democratic candidates for President: At least they’re trying to address the health care issue.

And to give you an idea of why the Republicans will probably lose the presidency in 2008, I perused the sites of the top 3 contenders for the nomination to ascertain what their thoughts about the health care crisis might be.

Rudy doesn’t mention it. Not. One. Word.

Neither does McCain.

Only Mitt Romney has a blurb on his issues page about health care:

The health of our nation can be improved by extending health insurance to all Americans, not through a government program or new taxes, but through market reforms.

Governor Romney: “We can’t have as a nation 40 million people — or, in my state, half a million — saying, ‘I don’t have insurance, and if I get sick, I want someone else to pay.”
(USA Today, July 5, 2005)

Governor Romney: “It’s a conservative idea,” says Romney, “insisting that individuals have responsibility for their own health care. I think it appeals to people on both sides of the aisle: insurance for everyone without a tax increase.”
(USA Today, July 5, 2005)

As for the others, Fred Thompson has no official campaign site yet and doesn’t mention his position on any issues.

Duncan Hunter apparently has no position on the health care problem.

Jim Gilmore is for “preserving traditional values” but evidently doesn’t give much thought to health care.

Those Republicans who have given the issue some thought include Senator Brownback:

Our healthcare system will thrive with increased consumer choice, consumer control and real competition. I believe it is important that we have price transparency within our health care system. This offers consumers, who are either enrolled in high deductible health plans or who pay out-of-pocket, the ability to shop around for the best prices and plan for health care expenditures. Also, the existing health insurance market forces consumers to pay for extra benefits in their premiums, such as aromatherapy and acupuncture, which tends to increase the cost of coverage. Instead, consumers should be able to choose the from health care coverage plans that are tailored to fit their families’ needs and values. Accordingly, individuals should be allowed to purchase health insurance across state lines. Finally, I believe that consumers should have control over the use of their personal health records. I have a proposal that would offer consumers a means to create a lifetime electronic medical record, while, at the same time, ensuring that the privacy of their personal health information is secured and protected.

Over time, the socialized medicine model has shown to deprive consumers of access to life-saving treatments and is downright inconsistent with the spirit of the American people to be free from unwanted government intervention. I will continue to work at the forefront to create a consumer-centered, not government-centered, healthcare model that offer both affordable coverage choices and put the consumer in the driver’s seat.

There are some sensible elements to Brownback’s position, most notably in consumers being able to choose specifics of their coverage - choice is always better than having something rammed down your throat by the state. But sadly, from what I can see, Brownback barely scratches the surface of the systemic problems in the health care industry - insurance companies and their resistance to meaningful reform.

Tommy Thompson actually has some good market solutions to the health care crisis and has given the issue a lot of thought:

Governor Thompson believes America must strengthen its health care system if it is to remain the best in the world. He would accomplish this by 1. moving the focus to preventive from curative care; 2. accelerating the adoption of health information technology to save money and lives; 3. placing the uninsured in state-by-state insurable pools, allowing private insurers to bid on their coverage; 4. strengthening the nation’s long-term care system that robs too many Americans of their life savings; and 5. strengthening the Medicare and Medicaid programs to ensure the programs are there in the future for the millions of Americans who depend on them. Details on his proposal can be found here.

And Mike Huckabee should probably have left any mention of health care off of his site. His bullet point talking points are worse than useless.

In summary, most of the Republican candidates either have no announced position yet on healthcare reform or have offered a pastiche of options that include a heavy reliance on so-called “preventive” health care.

Ezra Klein shows why that’s a chimerical idea:

First, the impacts of preventive medicine are often overstated. It’s not that cleaning up the air or putting everyone on a gym regimen would greatly improve health — but people don’t follow gym regimens, and business doesn’t let you clean air. Furthermore, not all interventions are created equal. Better parenting might be beneficial, but it’s unlikely to be more effective — either on economic or biological grounds — than the use of statins, or hypertensive drugs, or daily tablets of aspirin. There are a lot of highly effective medical interventions which are very, very cheap. But our system is very poor at incentivizing their use.

Meanwhile, the reason doctors are constantly prescribing statins along with admonitions to exercise and eat better is because using public policy to change diet and exercise habits is really, really, hard, unless you’re prepared to be very heavy-handed (i.e, outlawing trans fats in restaurants, setting portion limits, etc). Indeed, part of the problem with preventive health measures is that, rather often, they don’t work very well. Like with traditional health care, some things really succeed (stripping lead out of gasoline, giving people antibiotics), and lots of things…don’t. And that’s to sidestep the weird reality that what drives health care politics is concern over money which, in fact, is quite rational: Folks don’t want to go bankrupt, and smart politicians don’t want the government to lose all space for spending on other priorities.

To my Republican friends, let me just say that the quickest way to warm the cockles of the American voter is to address the health care crisis. Not so much coming up with ever more expensive schemes to cover the estimated 40 million Americans who don’t have coverage. People are rightly concerned that so many are uninsured. But the problem is one of under insurance or poor insurance coverage. This is what worries most Americans and addressing this problem - along with supplying coverage to those who need it - would go a long way toward improving the quality of life for ordinary Americans.

The Democrats insist on getting in a bidding war, coming up with ever more expensive schemes to address both the uninsured and under insured while trying not to bust the bank. The latest entry in the health care sweepstakes is Barak Obama:

Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama (news, bio, voting record) on Tuesday offered a sweeping health care plan that would provide every citizen a means for coverage and calls on government, businesses and consumers to share the costs of the program.

Obama said his plan could save the average consumer $2,500 a year and bring health care to all. Campaign aides estimated the cost of the program at $50 billion to $65 billion a year, financed largely by eliminating tax cuts for the wealthy that are scheduled to expire. President Bush wants to make those cuts permanent.

“The time has come for universal, affordable health care in America,” Obama said in a speech in Iowa City, at the University of Iowa’s medical school.

So $50-65 billion a year, financed by soaking “the rich,” would make coverage more affordable and insure those who currently have none? Good news indeed - if it were possible. The Devil, dear reader, as always, is in the details:

Obama’s plan retains the private insurance system but injects additional money to pay for expanding coverage. It would also create a National Health Insurance Exchange to monitor insurance companies in offering the coverage.

Those who can’t afford coverage would get a subsidy on a sliding scale depending on their income, and virtually all businesses would have to share in the cost of coverage for their workers. The plan is similar to the one covering members of Congress.

Obama’s package would prohibit insurance companies from refusing coverage because of pre-existing conditions…

My plan begins by covering every American. If you already have health insurance, the only thing that will change for you under this plan is that the amount of money you will spend on premiums will be less,” Obama said. “If you are one of 45 million Americans who don’t have health insurance, you will after this plan becomes law.”

Obama also called for a series of steps to overhaul the current health care system. He would spend more money boosting technology in the health industry such as electronic record-keeping, put in place better management for chronic diseases and create a reinsurance pool for catastrophic illnesses to take the burden of their costs off of other premium payers.

His plan also envisions savings from ending the expensive care for the uninsured when they get sick. That care now is often provided at emergency rooms. The plan also would put a heavy focus on preventing disease through lifestyle changes.

Obama conceded that the overall cost of the program would be high.

“To help pay for this, we will ask all but the smallest businesses who don’t make a meaningful contribution to the health coverage of their workers to do so to support this plan,” said Obama. “And we also will repeal the temporary Bush tax cut for the wealthiest taxpayers.”

There are some good ideas in this plan. I don’t know how a “National Health Insurance Exchange” would work but in theory, any expansion of coverage via private companies is a good thing - even if they would be “monitored” closely. And “subsidized” health insurance makes sense to me. We subsidize housing and families. Why not health insurance?

The biggest question I have are the uninsured and their responsibility to the rest of us. Since many of the uninsured appear to be younger, employed Americans who simply don’t want to pay for coverage, how do we include them in the insurance pool? Edwards plan would mandate that everyone have health insurance. Obama is silent on the issue and I would be interested to see how the millions of uninsured Americans who fall into that category would be forced into the system.

Unfortunately, I think the bad outweighs the good in this proposal. McQ at Q & O takes a stab at critiquing what we know of the plan so far:

So instead of really doing something which would actually make insurance more affordable and easier to get - like removing it from being provided by business and letting a real insurance market (a private insurance market) develop, Obama plans on keeping these plans under employers and making all of them share the cost. Additionally, not a word about all the mandates by various state governments on minimum coverage. And all of this will somehow make insurance cheaper.

Secondly, why not, if the purpose is simply to ensure that all uninsured have access to insurance, why not fix that problem and leave everyone else alone? Instead he wants to mess with the insurance 300 million vs. the 40 or so million purported not to have insurance. Taking care of the 40 million actually might make insurance for the remaining 260 million cheaper.

Mac has a good point, although the quality of coverage among the 260 million remaining Americans varies wildly. Simply leaving that market alone won’t fix much of anything.

But Mac hits a home run here:

Again, having government “overhaul” anything is fraught with problems, the primary being cost and efficiency. It doesn’t have a good track record with either. And someone is going to pay for this overhaul. Additionally you’re looking at a mandate when you see things like “better management for chronic illnesses” and a cost increase (despite the promise of a cost decrease) when talking about government managing a “reinsurance pool for catastrophic illness”, because again, someone has to pay for that pool.

Rather than the $50-65 billion mentioned in the article it appears that the cost would be considerably higher. But most Americans would be willing to foot the bill if they thought it would actually do some good. Health care in America is a gigantic brute of a system, a trillion dollar monster that affects every man, woman, and child in America. To confidently say that even the federal government is going to “control” it in any but the grossest sense seems to me to be a flight of fancy. The only forces to my mind that would be powerful enough to affect it in any significant way would be market forces - bringing the cost down while competition improves the choices for consumers.

Now clearly, market forces alone won’t work to insure the uninsured or bring better health care options to those whose current plans are inadequate. In this case, government can act as a combination guide, referee, and burr under the saddle. Subsidizing some people will probably be inevitable as will mandating some kind of minimum coverage by large and small business. The very nature of the problems in health care means that government will have some kind of role to play. But the challenge will be to reform the system while keeping the best of the current regime in place.

And that’s a challenge that so far, not many Republicans have risen to address.

***BREAKING NEWS ***BREAKING NEWS ***BREAKING NEWS ***

MUST CREDIT RIGHT WING NUTHOUSE.

Actually, you should probably give a Hat Tip to The Prowler:

“We knew the political affiliation of every lawyer and political appointee we hired at the Department of Justice from January 1993 to the end of the Administration,” says a former Clinton Department of Justice political appointee. “We kept charts and used them when it came time for new U.S. Attorney nominations, detailee assignments, and other hiring decisions. If you didn’t vote Democrat, you weren’t going anywhere with us. It was that simple.”

In fact, according to this source, at least 25 career DOJ lawyers who were identified as Republicans were shifted away from jobs in offices they held prior to January 1993 and were given new “assignments” which were deemed “noncritical” or “nonpolitically influential.” When these jobs shifts came to light in 1993, neither the House nor Senate Judiciary committees chose to pursue an investigation.

“The difference between then and now, is that they [Department of Justice] didn’t coordinate so openly with the White House,” says a former Clinton White House staffer. “Remember, we had our own separate database that we could cross check if we had names. Everybody today forgets about the databases we created inside the White House. It’s funny no one talks about that anymore. We were doing stuff far more aggressively than this White House or the Department of Justice did.”

“The difference between then and now, is that they [Department of Justice] didn’t coordinate so openly with the White House…” and that one Administration was a Democratic Administration and this one is Republican. There’s that difference, too. And another difference is that the Clinton Administration was much more competent - at least in covering up its abuses of power. We never heard about “renditions,” begun by the Clinton Administration, until poor KSM was in the evil clutches of the CIA and being whisked around the world, staying at something less than 1st class accommodations and treated worse than a customer at a Montreal restaurant being served by a French speaking waiter.

It doesn’t matter, of course. Why, in the comments of this very post, you will have at least a dozen Clinton apologists telling us HOW DIFFERENT WHAT BUSH IS DOING COMPARED TO WHAT CLINTON DID. After all, there was no one named Monica in the Clinton Administration…Er, at least no one named Monica who worked at DOJ. And no one in the Clinton Administration paid a bedside visit to a dying AG to seek his approval on continuing a top secret anti-terrorist program. All they did was use political criteria to hire, fire, promote, and demote employees.

Will the New York Times write scathing editorials about this? Will the Washington Post give the story front page coverage? Will the netnuts come down hard on Clinton for doing the same thing the Bush Administration is accused of doing, i.e. politicizing the Department of Justice?

Don’t hold your breath…