Thursday’s Mini-Report

March 15, 2007

Today’s edition of quick hits.

* Debate over the war in Iraq dominated both sides of the Capitol this afternoon. In the House, the House Appropriations Committee passed a Democratic measure mandating a troop withdrawal deadline of Sept. 1, 2008. In the Senate, Republicans defeated a proposal to begin a phased withdrawal within 120 days with a set goal of complete redeployment of March 31, 2008. Dems lost, 50 to 48 (the measure needed 60 votes to pass).

* After taking some heat for failing to denounce Gen. Pace’s view that homosexuality is immoral, Sens. Clinton and Obama have very clearly said, publicly, that they disagree with Pace’s comments.

* NYT: “The Bush administration, which six months ago issued a series of political goals for the Iraqi government to meet by this month, is now tacitly acknowledging that the goals will take significantly longer to achieve.” Benchmarks that were supposed to have been reached by the end of March are now hopefully going to be met by December. Remind me again about how well the so-called “surge” is working?

* House Dems had hoped Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald could shed some additional light on the events surrounding the leak of Valerie Plame’s name to the media. In a letter to Henry Waxman, Fitzgerald did not refuse to cooperate with the congressional probe but made it clear he had little to say. “I do not believe it would be appropriate for me to offer opinions, as your letter suggests the committee may seek, about the ultimate responsibility of senior White House officials for the disclosure of Ms. Wilson’s identity,” Fitzgerald wrote.

* Noah Shachtman argues that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed’s confession is “a little too tidy.”

* I’m having a tough time understanding why Dennis Kucinich would go on John Gibson’s show and say, “Fox [News] is a legitimate news agency.” That’s disappointing.

* Apparently, the major news networks don’t want to respond to Media Matters’ report about the Sunday talk-shows.

* Remember J. Kenneth Blackwell, the unhinged Republican gubernatorial candidate last year? He has a new job — Blackwell is now a “Senior Fellow for Family Empowerment” at the Family Research Council.

* A congressionally-mandated citizens health care panel has made a series of recommendations, all of which have been rejected by the Bush administration. Who would have imagined it.

* The New York Times ran a dubious piece this week about Al Gore. Grist ran an almost line-by-line rebuttal.

* The Congressional Black Caucus appears to be leaning in the wrong direction when it comes to Fox News.

* Tom DeLay apparently doesn’t think highly of his former GOP colleagues, including Newt Gingrich (“It was impossible to follow him”) and Dick Armey (“So blinded by ambition as to be useless to the cause”).

* And finally, Rep. Rahm Emanuel (D-Ill.), the Democratic Caucus chairman, apparently has some advice for new Democratic members of Congress: steer clear of “The Colbert Report.” Before participating in the “Better Know a District” series, Rep. Steve Cohen (D-Tenn.) heard from Emanuel. “He said, ‘Don’t do it … it’s a risk and it’s probably safer not to do it’,” Cohen said. Cohen went on anyway — and explained why he’s not a black woman.

If these items aren’t of any interest, consider this an end-of-the-day open thread.

I don’t understand the uproar over Hillary. Why would it be anyone’s business, especially a lawmaker’s, to comment on the morality or immorality of someone’s sexual practices?

  • Funny how people clam up with the stupidest excuses…

    Last month, the Bush administration began to spin, with the help of The Washington Post, that the Medicare prescription drug plan—which does not allow Medicare to negotiate for lower drug prices—was doing great because the private insurers were already negotiating for lower prices…

    This week, after the House Oversight and Government Reform committee requested the data from Bush’s Medicare officials so it could find out how helpful those negotiations actually were for consumers, guess what?

    They won’t release the data.

    …Bush’s Medicare administrator Leslie Norwalk, who is pressing Congress to keep the ban preventing Medicare from negotiating, responded that she just can’t tell them about it, claiming it would hurt the insurers’ ability to negotiate.

    http://www.tompaine.com/articles/2007/03/07/hiding_from_plain_oversight.php

  • I haen’t seen the demographics, but I bet Fox Network has a high percentage of black viewers which my be giving the CBC a different attitude about appearing on there.

    Kucinich can now officially go Nader himself. What is it with these guys?

    I think we should let our candidates refuse to answer a certain number of gotcha press questions. Just for instance, everyone knows that Obama and Clinton are pro-gay.

  • OT-

    I guess it’s a little late for me to comment on your post about Curveball from the other day, but the following is as good a start as any for a response:

    Ever since the months prior to the 2003 invasion of Iraq, there have been a few reports in the newspapers that the Central Intelligence Agency was casting aspersions on the intelligence the White House was relying on to justify the war. The CIA has never given a position on whether the war is needed or justified or said that Bush is wrong to go to war. But doesn’t it seem much more likely that the CIA is an extremely right wing organization than a left wing one? After all, even if the people working for them and at least a lot of the leadership really wanted a war for their own reasons, there are a lot of reasons for them to not want to tie their credibility to what they know is faulty information. They and their personnel, present and former, could use other means of promoting the Iraq war, and still be motivated to make the statements in the media. If the CIA got behind faulty information, they would have to make a choice between whether they would be involved in scamming the American people and the world once the military had invaded Iraq and no weapons were found- so: 1) Imagine the incredible difficulties involved in pulling off a hoax that weapons of mass destruction were found in Iraq. Imagine all the people you would have to be able to show the weapons to- the inspectors from the UN / the international community, the American press, statesmen, etc. Then imagine the difficulties of substantiating that story to people who would examine it- the lack of witnesses to a production plant that made the weapons or to transportation operations or storage of the weapons during Hussein’s regime of them. 2) If the story fell apart upon inspection or the CIA tried not to hoax it at all, imagine the loss of credibility they would suffer. The CIA, it is safe to bet, does not want to be known to the American people as a group that lies to them to send them to war. Even within the CIA there could be disagreement among people about how involved they should be in promoting the war or the neo-con agenda more broadly, so the CIA would have to worry about lying to and managing its own people after trying so hard to get them to trust their superiors in the agency, and perhaps there simply might be too many people in the agency who knew enough about what was going on in Iraq to know if someone was deceiving people to promote this war.

    So there is a lot of reason to be cautious against being seen as endorsing what they knew was false intelligence even if they were very strong supporters of going to war.

  • That wouldn’t be the first absurd thing Kucinich is on record believing.

    But he’s a liberal, and Fox Noise Channel tells us that liberals are always wrong, but he says Fox is News. Isn’t that a paradox?

  • Whatever small amount of respect I had for Dennis Kucinich has evaporated like dew in the desert. Has he completely lost his mind? If he was a soldier and gave aid and comfort to the enemy like that he’d end up in Leavenworth if not stood up against a wall and shot altogether.

    Whatever happens to him from this point is his own fault. He’s sold his soul to the devil and will have to live with the consequences, whatever they turn out to be.

  • Noah Shachtman argues that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed’s confession is “a little too tidy.”

    I hear he also pled guilty to being the guy who shot the deputy. But definitely not the sheriff.

  • Tom DeLay apparently doesn’t think highly of his former GOP colleagues, including Newt Gingrich (”It was impossible to follow him”) and Dick Armey (”So blinded by ambition as to be useless to the cause”).

    So that’s why he had to conspire against Newt, and didn’t Armey say the same thing about Hot Tub Tommie?

  • Jon Stewart: “Good news for the Bush administration. Just one week after the outrageous Walter Reed medical scandal, that story is gone … because there’s a new kid in town. His name is ‘Outrageous Fired Federal Prosecutors Attorney General Scandal’. Yes, in one week, it’s been revealed the administration screwed over wounded vets — the most revered people in America — and lawyers — the most reviled people in America — proving they’ve got range. … With cries for his resignation flooding the airwaves, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales plead his case. … He assured everyone that the matter was out of his hands [on screen: Gonzales saying that he serves ‘at the pleasure of the president’]. It’s kind of a lousy talking point, but it’s a great romance novel. … Mr. President, we all take pleasure in different things. I have my guilty pleasures, you have yours. Yours is apparently incompetent subordinates bungling our domestic and foreign affairs. Mine is ‘Super Nanny.’ … I remember the previous president had someone who served to his pleasure … but in retrospect, I get that” (“Daily Show,” Comedy Central, 3/14).

    Stephen Colbert: “Genealogy is a hot topic, one that we’re keeping our eye on in a new segment called ‘When Ancestors Attack’. … According to the Chicago Tribune, Senator Obama’s great-great-great-great-grandfather and great-great-great-great-grandmother may have owned slaves. It’s damage control time. I believe the only way for Barack Obama to get in front of this story is to do the right thing — the thing so many black leaders are unwilling to do — apologize for slavery. … Mitt Romney, who is a Mormon, is reeling from reports that his great-grandfather had fives wives and at least one of his great-great-grandfathers had twelve. That poor bastard had to register at Crate and Barrel 12 times. And that’s back when all they sold were crates and barrels. … The word ‘polygamy’, of course, comes from the Greek ‘poly’ meaning multiple and ‘gamy’ meaning reasons not to vote for Mitt Romney. … The NCAA Basketball Tournament has everything I like — corporate sponsorship, unpaid labor and blind-partisan allegiance. But with 64 teams, it can get a little daunting, so use these sure-fire techniques to win your office pool, or at least come in second to the boss’ six-year-old daughter. First, just toss out any schools with the word ‘Tech’ in their names. … ‘Tech’ means ‘nerd,’ and nerds suck at sports” (“Colbert Report,” Comedy Central, 3/14).

    TOP TEN SIGNS YOUR WIFE IS HAVING AN AFFAIR WITH NEWT GINGRICH
    10. When people say Newt Gingrich screwed the middle class,
    wife says, “Damn straight.”
    9. Comes home late from work smelling all newty.
    8. You find a love letter signed by the “Newt-Ron Bomb.”
    7. She starts buying black-market Vicodin for Rush Limbaugh.
    6. You find a congressional gavel floating in the hot tub.
    5. A strange voice on the answering machine asks your wife
    if she wants to “‘Newt’ it up this weekend.”
    4. During sex, she screams provisions from the 1994 Contract
    With America.
    3. She’s on the phone in the other room and all you can make
    out is “Trent Lott” and “Threesome.”
    2. No number 2 — writer still stuck on grounded JetBlue flight.
    1. There’s a photo of them on Newt Gingrich Is Sleeping With
    Your Wife.com (CBS, 3/14).

  • Remind me again about how well the so-called “surge” is working?

    What’s the problem? They gave Iraq one (1) Friedman Unit to get their act together. Since the FU is a duration of infinitely extending horizon, they are still on schedule.

  • The Congressional Black Caucus aren’t suckers. I think they would probably be trying to pull one over on Fox- either get a chance to make Fox do things their way, or, put Fox into an uncomfortable position of slighting them somehow. The thing minorities and women don’t get sometimes, however, is that especially when they’re actually grown up, racists and mysoginists aren’t really that easy to out. There are really only a few racist and chauvinist guys who are so dumb that they won’t have anything to do with a minority or they’ll have to openly disrespent a woman. They know ho to patronize people for the most part- it’s a survival skill if you’re going to be so hateful towards people like that- and women who try to get the better of mysogynist guys, and blacks who try to test racists, often end up taking the bait. It’s really not that hard for a guy like that to figure out what a black guy or a feminist woman he’s talking to wants to hear, unless he’s completely stupid.

    Upshot: If Fox dealt with the Black Caucus, their viewers would know that they didn’t really mean it, and the only people who would be fooled (I hope they wouldn’t, and they’d pull out before dealing with Fox) is the CBC.

  • I find it quite interesting that in the CB’s very same post the NYT is cited as a credible news source when it comes to Iraq but is a “dubious” source when it comes to Al Gore.

  • I find it quite interesting that in the CB’s very same post the NYT is cited as a credible news source when it comes to Iraq but is a “dubious” source when it comes to Al Gore.

    Due respect, can you elaborate a bit on this?

    Example A: NYT war correspondent writes a helpful, informative, news-based piece on Iraq on Thursday. It’s a solid article, backed by serious sourcing.

    Example B: NYT science correspondent writes a less-helpful, less-informative, analysis-based piece on Tuesday. It’s a weak article, backed by very little.

    Which part of this is “quite interesting”? The fact that a newspaper can run a good story on one day, and a poor story on a different subject on a different day?

    Help me out on this one.

  • CB: I think the problem is that you cited a credible NYT article and a dubious one in the same post. If you’d done that in separate posts, you’d have been okay. Or at least you wouldn’t have been interesting.
    ( ????? )

  • That’s telling ’em, CB. NYT can’t be expected to publish articles of exactly equal quality in every paper- it’s not the case that you have to revile or praise every single thing that appears in a particular newspaper equally. They should be criticized if they run a stupid article or employ a stupid reporter/editorialist, and praised if they run/employ a smart one.

  • I’m having a tough time understanding why Dennis Kucinich would go on John Gibson’s show and say, “Fox [News] is a legitimate news agency.” That’s disappointing. – Mr. CB

    It’s ’cause Markos has been riding and dismissing his, (DK’s), ass without mercy. So it’s his way of trying to, (very ineffectively), bug Markos by hooking up with Focks after the nice assist by DKos in taking down the Nevada Dem debates. There’s a solid streak of Nader in Dennis. It’s all about him and if Focks lets him yak on The Tube, then they’re buddies. And that’ll show Markos, huh.

  • With regard to Fitzgerald, I think it would be more accurate to say that there’s little he’s allowed to say, since he’s an ethical, non-Ken Starr-like prosecutor. However, he did clearly point them to where to get the evidence they’re looking for, as was explained by lawyer looseheadprop over at Firedoglake.

  • Swan – I think the real explanation for the CIA’s position is first, professionalism, and second, that there’s a difference between being right-wing and being a neocon warmonger. It’s certainly true that there have historically been plenty of people on the operations side of the CIA who have urged taking aggressive actions that they think will further US interests, like fomenting the overthrow of governments (though this has been less true on the analyst side.)

    But any professional intelligence analysis at the time would have suggested that starting a war with Iraq would hurt US interests, not help them. Covert action to overthrow Saddam, maybe, though I can’t imagine it being high on any rational intelligence professional’s list in the aftermath of 9/11, but certainly not war.

    Or putting it another way, the neocon agenda was never actually conservative, it’s radical. They fundamentally don’t believe in expertise and think that someone who has spent their career studying a country or other topic is “just another opinion.” Even assuming the CIA personnel are right-wing, there’s no reason to believe they would be aligned with that.

  • Per Kucinich, he has failed to put any punch into his extravagant claims of being our saviour.

    • When in 2001, the FirstEnergy nuclear plant near Toledo, Ohio was discovered to have a fist-sized 50 pound chunk of containment steel MISSING due to a decade of corrosion, Kucinich called for an investigation. After Nine-eleven, there was no followup, TMK.

    • When in 2003, Cleveland’s FirstEnergy, a major Bush-backer, caused the Eastern U.S. power blackout by not trimming the trees — Kucinich, hedged.

    http://www.counterpunch.org/dong08232003.html

    Turns out he fought FirstEnergy (in another guise) to establish his career in politics while Cleveland’s mayor — saving the city a big chunk of cash. But since becoming a Congressman?

    • When in 2004, OHIO SecState/Bush campaign chair ‘Katherine’ Blackwell refused to provide a legal recount — not a word from Kucinich, TMK.

    Our saviour doesn’t seem to be interested in the part of the car where the tires meet the road. He spins his wheels in the air, and makes some noise gunning the engine, but what exactly has he ever accomplished, since that first, and seemingly last, victory over FirstEnergy?

    He’s dealing with FOX because he has ZERO name recognition, and would suck the chrome off of Murdock’s front bumper to get some airtime.

    Wish there were more to say about it. FirstEnergy, btw, not punished for either the Davis-Beese near-nuclear meltdown disaster or their blowing out of the entire Eastern Seaboard grid so they could up CEO salaries by not trimming trees.

  • I’ve never thought much of Dennis Kucinich, and he’s my rep. However, while I don’t agree with him that Fox is a “legitimate” news agency, I have to give him credit for being willing to go on there. I’m sorry, but this whole thing of Democrats boycotting Fox is just crazy. It’s one way of reaching conservative voters, and if you’re even remotely serious — I’d say Kucinich is remotely serious — at some point you’re going to have to talk to them. What are you going to do, just talk to the people who like you and support you?

  • OT….i notice that the straight-talk express is back on the road. my guess is that everyone will have a lot of fun with that one in the days and weeks to come……

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