Monday’s Mini-Report

January 7, 2008

Today’s edition of quick hits.

* I wonder what the whole story is here: “Iran’s Foreign Ministry said Monday that a confrontation between Iranian boats and U.S. Navy ships in the Persian Gulf over the weekend was ‘something normal’ and was resolved. It suggested the Iranian boats had not recognized the U.S. vessels. The Pentagon said that in the incident early Sunday, five small Iranian boats repeatedly ‘charged’ U.S. warships in the Gulf’s Hormuz Strait and dropped boxes in the water. The boats warned the U.S. ships that they would set up ‘explosions,’ a U.S. Defense Department official said…. But Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Mohammed Ali Hosseini played down the incident, suggesting it was an issue of mistaken identity.”

* Some have trouble remembering that he ever entered the race for the Republican nomination, but Duncan Hunter announced today that he’s not going to withdraw: “Underdog GOP presidential candidate Duncan Hunter lashed out at ‘knucklehead media executives’ who did not include him in this weekend’s New Hampshire primary debates, telling reporters he was staying in the race despite widespread expectations he would announce his withdrawal.” Hunter announced, “I’m not going to quit. I’m staying in.”

* The Republicans’ culture of corruption is poised to lose one of its more notable culprits: “The California Majority Report reports that Rep. John Doolittle (R-CA), one of the long-time subjects of the Jack Abramoff investigation, “will announce that he will not seek re-election.” That could come as soon as this week, reports John Bresnahan of The Politico. Back in September, Doolittle proclaimed ‘I am running again. Period.'” The Justice Department is still reportedly building a criminal case against the California Republican.

* William Kristol is off to a great start: his inaugural column includes a quote attributed to Michelle Malkin, which was actually delivered by Michael Medved. It seems like the kind of thing a writer might want to get straight before publishing in the New York Times, but then again, if the NYT were concerned about standards and accuracy, it wouldn’t have hired Kristol at all.

* Newsweek: “Attorney general Michael Mukasey’s decision to launch a full-scale FBI probe into the destruction of CIA interrogation tapes has sent several alarmed agency employees scrambling to find lawyers. To lead the probe, the A.G. named John Durham, a hard-nosed veteran prosecutor who is assembling a team of deputies and FBI agents. Some CIA veterans fear the move is tantamount to unleashing an independent counsel on Langley. ‘A lot of people are worried,’ says one former CIA official, who asked not to be identified talking about sensitive matters.”

* In case there were any doubts about the still-dangerous conditions in Iraq: “Two suicide bombers struck in a Sunni Arab district of Baghdad on Monday, killing at least 14 people including the leader of a U.S.-backed neighborhood security patrol, police said. The strikes were the latest in an apparent stepped-up campaign of suicide bombings that has seen major attacks nearly every day for the past two weeks, even as overall levels of violence in Iraq have fallen.”

* Time to retire, Andy Rooney.

* Was Frank Luntz’s pro-Romney focus group on Fox News last night orchestrated? There are some interesting questions being raised.

* Former Sens. Trent Lott (R-Miss.) and John Breaux (D-La.) are opening up a bipartisan lobbying shop along with their sons, Chet Lott and John Breaux Jr. This comes as a surprise to … absolutely no one.

* BBC: “The average UK person will this year have a greater income than their US counterpart for the first time since the 19th Century, figures suggest…. Analyst Oxford Economics said the UK’s GDP per head of population will reach £23,500 – £250 higher than in the US.”

* The latest on Sibel Edmonds.

* George McGovern makes the case for Bush’s impeachment. And Cheney’s.

* Mike Huckabee’s tax policy is still remarkably, breathtakingly dumb.

* And finally, I think I’m ready to make an endorsement: Ralph Wiggum for President.

Anything to add? Consider this an end-of-the-day open thread.

Andy Rooney lost my ear when he got irate with Kurt Cobain for committing suicide. Guess he’s never heard about how debilitating depression can be.

Too bad no one listens to George McGovern any more. His arguments for impeachment sound so reasonable.

  • Michelle Malkin. Michael Medved. Eminem. It’s an easy mistake to make. Cut poor Kristol some slack. He’s just made the move from the Bush leagues to the Bigs at the New York Times. Just a rookie mistake.

  • There is a racist rant that circulates on the internets which is falsely attributed to Andy Rooney, and which he has condemned. However, this piece is an embarrassment that is going to be impossible for him to deny.

    Too bad. Andy made some good TV in his day.

  • That post you linked to about Andy Rooney was too heavy-handed. You know that he’s not racist and that he’s okay, right?

    I think some things he says get misinterpreted by people who are a little too thick-headed sometimes, because Andy is very shrewd and tries to be diplomatic (in this case, he just carefully backed up into a pot-hole) and keep all his friends. It sounded to me like he is either a Clinton or an Edwards supporter and was trying to give an oblique push to one of them by way of their more classic-sounding names– it has nothing to do with ethnicity (it’s not Andy’s fault that people place more emphasis on these “soft” factors, he was just trying to hekp his candidate win- and even you, CB, a person who likes everything to be safe, simple, and happy, must admit that some names sound more funny that others, some sound more aesthetic than others). He’s just so old that he’s a little out-of-touch with how ultra-sensitive and ultra-PC people are nowadays, that they would take it as racism even though they know he’s proven to be not-a-conservative. Anyway, people who don’t know what he’s like could have been watching, so he shouldn’t have tried it like that anyway. But he’s not some SS-marching, gestapo-loving scumbag, and it’s really unfair for the snooty-class person who wrote the TNR article to characterize him that way. It’s a heavy charge to level at someone over something like that, especially an old man.

  • George McGovern makes the case for Bush’s impeachment. And Cheney’s.

    Last time I looked, there were more than 2,500 comments on the WaPo site in response to McGovern’s op-ed. Even at this late date, remarkable.

  • Trent Lott’s son is named Chet Lott? I guess Trent Lott Jr.would have really pushed them into dochebaggery.

  • Anyway, for all you kids reading at home, don’t say that there is anything wrong with Barack Obama’s name, or with any similar-sounding name. It’s not nice or right.

  • I’m trying to imagine what one would mistake a US warship for. . .

    and that McGovern piece was great, and were there any justice in the world, he would be considered the perfect messenger for it. sadly, i know better.

  • It’s pretty clear Andy Rooney is an anti-Bush hippy if you watch his segment every week. There is no way he is not basically okay with people of different ethnicities.

  • [Sibel Edmonds] has given evidence to closed sessions of Congress and the 9/11 commission, but many of the key points of her testimony have remained secret. She has now decided to divulge some of that information after becoming disillusioned with the US authorities’ failure to act.

    Looks like she’s found out the same thing the DFHs have. Pelosi and Reed are stooges.

  • Swan, Rooney is not “basically ok” with anybody. He isn’t a racist, he’s a misanthrope. And his comparisons are wrongheaded. Look at the names of the states and cities. He needed to write something and wrote something stupid. It happens to everyone but it’s been increasingly normal for him.

  • Instead of Andy Rooney, CBS should air reruns of Roseanne Rosannadanna. She’s funnier and at least you know it’s a parody. Andy, unfortunately, keeps us guessing whether it’s parody or senility at work.

    There are four kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, statistics and the statistics Frank Luntz pulls out of the butts of his focus groups.

  • I am about as un PC as a person can be. My yap gets me into trouble more than I’d care to admit. But I don’t find Andy Rooney’s rant particularly funny, appealing, amusing, or right. You can’t hide racism under the guise of satire or comedy.

    As for Sibel Edmonds, I am honestly surprised that she’s still alive. Something this sensitive and damning…it surprises me that this fascist government hasn’t done something about the SE problem. And as Cheney has said about leaving written word, it scares me that all the screw ups that this admin has done is just learning material for someone worse down the road. As is evidenced too often, we Americans do not remember or value history and repeat the same mistakes simply by being one of the most ignorant populations in any developed country.

  • Josh, I believe it’s called being “curmudgeonly.” Everybody isn’t required to be a nice, pleasant person. We are of various types that can still be included for acceptance in the community. People who try to push orthodoxy and conformity too far don’t know people.

    And, show me one black guy who has never said something that was interpreted differently than he wanted it to be taken, and then maybe I’ll start to be a little upset about what Andy Rooney said.

    And another thing: if Andy Rooney wasn’t “basically ok” with lots of people, so much care for his society and the people in it wouldn’t show through in the segments he does that are public-spirited, as opposed to the ones he does that are merely concerned with minutiae and trivia. This guy does segments about that stuff because he cares about this society and everyone in it and wants the society to get better.

  • Attorney general Michael Mukasey’s decision to launch a full-scale FBI probe…

    Not much of a punchline, but still worth a good chortle.

  • Here’s another thing:

    Maybe Rooney was thinking of something that’s important to think about, but that a lot of us don’t want to mention because we’re scared of getting caught in the same trap as Rooney. Maybe Rooney was concerned that, although Obama is polling well now, once the Republican anti-Democrat propaganda machine heats up, all those midwestern moderates, independents and Democrats who think they are not racist will discover they are not comfortable with a black man in the White House, or at least not like they are with a man (the media has portrayed as) a moderate Republican, and Rooney is just trying to make sure we elect somebody.

  • I have to admit that Obama is probably the best test-subject we could hope for: he’s really smart, really classy, makes a good impression, and is a really nice guy with a good history. But there’s just no way to tell whether or not the country is ready to elect a black man until after he’s exposed to the increased scrutiny and attention, and everybody comes out to vote. In that way, either Hillary or Edwards is a safer bet for us. Remember, this country gave all kinds of rights to white women before those same rights were given to blacks.

  • CB, GREAT Fair Tax article.
    Quite an eye opener about how high incomes must be to make up for such a staggering sales tax.

    I know it could work and be made progressive but Salon said the same thing I did when I gave up on it.
    In fifteen years it’ll be riddled with the same exemptions the current tax code is and if it ever was progressive, lobbyists would chip away at it until it resembled the current system.
    It’s a band aid at best.

  • …Obama is polling well now, once the Republican anti-Democrat propaganda machine heats up, all those midwestern moderates, independents and Democrats who think they are not racist… -Swan

    Given that Iowa is in the Midwest and Obama did well in, not a poll, but a caucus and given the anecdotes from several of the regular readers here about how many Independents and Republicans jumped ship to support Obama, I think the concern is misplaced.

  • Is Swan through yet? Okay let me turn my words sideways so they’ll fit in here. 🙂

    What the hell is going on over at TPM. For one thing their headline writers are acting like Fox News ?? writers (what’s the word for scrolling text under pictures. I learned it here but forgot) Some of the headlines are needlessly misleading such as:

    Edwards to Hillary: Don’t Be A Crybaby

    Then the articles use the Fox technique of characterizing what people say rather than letting us read the words they say. Sloppy reporting at the very least.

    It’s been raining here in sunny Southern California. But right now the setting sun has slipped below the cloud line and lit up the palm trees with “mashed banana sunlight.” Nice.

  • Swan, I thought black men were given the franchise in the 1870’s? Not that they were particularly allowed to act on it. Maybe I’m wrong about the date.

    And, I cannot be the only thinking person who wondered why in hell Bhutto stood up in the sunroof of her car? I mean, I’m not really “blaming the victim” here, as Mushareff is doing in his comments, but for someone who had survived two assasination attempts since she arrived back in Pakistan in September, I’d assume she’d have been smart enough to keep herself INSIDE the fucking car!

  • I wonder what the whole story is here:

    The issue isn’t the full story, I fully expect that the IRG was doing the equivalent of shouting “Yo mama” jokes. BFD.

    The issue is, what will some arse puppet down at the White House try to make out of this story?

    “The good news is, US forces are leaving Iraq. The bad news is they’ll be moving to Afghanistan. Via Iran.”

    Oy vey.

  • We’re going to gamble everything on electing a black man named Barack Hussein Obama when we haven’t even had a Jewish or woman president! We haven’t even had a Jewish vice president, and as we all know, Jews are very successful in business and in the professions in this country. The closest we got was John Kerry, who has a Jewish background, but he lost a popular election to Bush in the last election. At least Gore, a Southern WASP with an accent, no matter how you interpret the numbers, got within spitting-distance of Bush and actually had to have the election stolen from him.

    Doubtful, you’re overlooking that things change a lot as an election approaches.

    Phoebes, blacks were all bought and-sold-slaves while white women were free. A lot of restrictions on blacks’ civil rights- how they could participate in public life and deal in property- hampered blacks while women had less such restrictions on them. Black men may have gotten the right to vote before white women, but black women still couldn’t vote, and the vote is one of very few rights that black men got before white women did. Roving bands of terrorists, the KKK, were out killing black men and terrorizing them while white women were voting and not facing nearly as much, or nearly as organized, terrorism and violence. In fact, lest we forget, the restrictions on blacks lasted in public policy and the law until the ’60s!

  • Oh, one more thing- the only reason black men got the right to vote was because it was necessary to keep the ex-rebel white Southerners in line after the Civil War ended, and after very few years when it was decided it was no longer necessary, the Southerners were allowed to make all sorts of horrible laws to negate the black man’s right to vote, and this regime of disenfranchising laws was never totally stopped until the 1960s.

  • “It’s a band aid at best.” (re: fair tax)

    it is also (even in spite of it’s “prebate” or “exemptions” or whatever they want to call it) a very regressive tax, as opposed to our current (relatively, but george keeps trying to change that) progressive income tax.

    this is a matter of opinions over tax policy, but i’ll take a progressive tax over a regressive tax any day. (full disclosure here, i make a pretty good salary so it’s not like i’m making out like a bandit with an income tax)

  • What? Written only 30% of the comments on this thread so far? Look’s like someone’s been slacking off around here.

  • There was mention of Edward Muskie’s crying episode today.
    It rankled my curiousity.
    Couldn’t find much on youtube about it.

    But the wikipedia has mention of this utterly incredible episode.

    Here is the nickle version:

    The 1972 Iowa caucuses significantly altered the race for the Presidential nomination. Left-wing dark horse candidate, South Dakota Senator George McGovern, made a strong showing in the caucuses, giving his campaign national attention. Although Muskie won the Iowa caucuses, McGovern’s campaign left Iowa with momentum.

    The collapse of Muskie’s momentum early in the 1972 campaign is also attributed to his response to campaign attacks. Prior to the New Hampshire primary, the so-called “Canuck Letter” was published in the Manchester Union-Leader. The letter claimed that Muskie had made disparaging remarks about French-Canadians – a remark likely to injure Muskie’s support among the French-Canadian population in northern New England. Subsequently, the paper published an attack on the character of Muskie’s wife Jane, reporting that she drank and used off-color language during the campaign. Muskie made an emotional defense of his wife in a speech outside the newspaper’s offices during a snowstorm. Though Muskie later stated that what had appeared to the press as tears were actually melted snowflakes, the press reports that Muskie broke down and cried shattered the candidate’s image as calm and reasoned.

    Evidence later came to light during the Watergate scandal investigation that, during the 1972 presidential campaign the Nixon campaign committee maintained a “dirty tricks” unit focused on discrediting Nixon’s strongest challengers (see Ratfucking). Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) investigators revealed that the Canuck Letter was a forged document as part of the dirty-tricks campaign against Democrats orchestrated by the Nixon campaign.[4]

    Incredible stuff…

  • What about the fact that Barack Obama’s name is a Muslim name? Barack Hussein Obama, in a country where people don’t like foreigners, and don’t like Eastern foreigners even when we didn’t have a huge terrorist war against us during the past few years, and didn’t just depose a fascist dictator named Hussein.

    How about those Hillary staffers- who she used to trust- who just betrayed her, and did something that must tend to put a drag on her poll numbers, by leaking to the press their “opinions” that she can’t win. What’s going to happen a few months down the line when some friend or advisor of Obama comes to the media and claims he saw Obama wearing a kufi around his own home? What’s Obama going to say then? All he’ll be able to say is “No, I wasn’t really wearing a kufi.”

    We’ve got a lot of badguys around this country now.

  • I was struck by the timing of the confrontation with the Iranians. I wrote the following on my blog shortly after the story broke this morning.

    We don’t really know what happened here, but, given the Bush/Cheney administration’s track record, I am more than a bit skeptical that this was really a confrontation initiated by Iran. I am more inclined to see it as Bush/Cheney agitprop designed to grease the wheels as Bush makes his case against Iran during his Middle East trip.

    In fact, it is just as likely that the US intentionally wonder into Iranian waters or was intentionally headed toward Iranian water in order to provoke such a confrontation and the radio transmission from the Iranians might have been a warning about the presence of mines rather than a threat and the boxes may have been meant to mark the mines

    Support for this scenario came latter when Juan Cole posted news reports from the Iranian press which stated that the Iranian Navy had engaged in exercises last month which entailed, in part, the laying of mines.

  • Libra, there are a few. Mostly white guys from what I’ve seen. Not a rainbow coalition.

  • The confrontation at sea with the Iranians stinks of the Tonkin Gulf Incident. Part of the problem is that the boundaries of a nation’s territorial waters in that part of the world have been a subject of dispute for decades. The other part of the problem is that the Bush administration will only release those items that support their narrative. If the Iranians were intent on sinking US vessels, why would they tell them so in English? More likely they were laying mines, as veblen @33 mentioned, in what they considered their territorial waters and attempting to warn the Navy away. The Iranians have a large arsenal of Silkworm anti-ship missiles and five very stealthy diesel-electric subs – if sinking a US vessel was their intent then they would have done so.

  • libra – I was listening to POTUS 08 on XM Radio tonight, and they were talking about the Paul supporters. They mentioned one woman from Pittsburgh, who organized 300 supporters to make the trek to NH – it wasn’t mentioned how many of them were women, but I thought it was interesting nonetheless.

    And does anyone know whether Swan is serious with all the stuff he’s said tonight, or “just kidding?” If he’s serious, it’s pretty bad, and if it’s “kidding,” it’s not funny.

  • And does anyone know whether Swan is serious with all the stuff he’s said tonight, or “just kidding?” If he’s serious, it’s pretty bad, and if it’s “kidding,” it’s not funny.

    Anne, I was most definitely not kidding, and you must be a Republican troll if you want to try to con us out of considering real considerations we have to think about. It’s your m.o. to use racism, to try to divide liberals against each others, and to character-assassinate our people.

    Anybody want to help me with the Top Ten List of Republican deceptions and traitors?

    1) Zell Miller betrays Democrats at the Republican convention, as recorded in Al Franken’s book Lies

    2) Republican poltical activists who all work directly under Republican polticians show up at a Florida state office to pretend they are Florida citizens rioting because they are unhappy with the state recount in the 2000 presidential election

    3) White Republican political activists dress up as counter-culture liberals, including women wearing tank tops and “Daisy Duke” shorts, and stand outside of polling places in heavily black, heavily Democratic voting districts in Florida, holding up signs that would be provocative to socially conservative blacks, such as signs identifying themselves as San Franciscoans and thanking the voters for helping them defend abortion and homosexual rights

    4) Hillary Clinton’s aides mysteriously leak to the press in between the Iowa and New Hampshire caucuses that “they don’t think she can win,” effectively scuttling her campaign by making it sound like Hillary’s own people concede it’s not worth voting for her

    5) . . .

  • Just like all the trolls who try to use bargain-basement psychological tricks to try to bully me out of writing my substantive, smart, helpful comments.

    Why is it that continually after I write smart comments that would help Democrats get smarter in ways that would help them, someone who holds him/herself out as a liberal writes a comment saying that I write too many comments?

  • Well, I don’t know what to make of this:

    “China planning to secure North Korea’s nuclear arsenal: report”
    http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20080108/wl_afp/usnkoreachinapoliticsnuclear

    I’m kind of perplexed by this sentence:
    “The measures are intended ‘to clean up nuclear contamination resulting from a strike on North Korean nuclear facilities’ near the Sino-North Korean border and ‘to secure nuclear weapons and fissile materials.'”

    Whaaaa…? Do they know something that we don’t?

  • 6) The New York Times turns out to be a right-wing bitch, having hired Bill Kristol of all people, and put Bob Herbert and Paul Krugman behind a for-pay firewall for months.

    7) The entire mainstream media, which merely seemed a little silly before September 11, turns out to be a vast right-wing handmaiden- inlcuding CNN and C-SPAN. Right-wing figures and politicians get much more access to political talkshows, and even C-SPAN devotes more time to the right-wing than to the left.

    8) . . .

  • Anne, I was most definitely not kidding, and you must be a Republican troll if you want to try to con us out of considering real considerations we have to think about. — Swan, @41
    Just like all the trolls who try to use bargain-basement psychological tricks to try to bully me out of writing my substantive, smart, helpful comments. — Swan, @42

    Swan, seriously… you must be the only person on this blog who thinks that your comments are “substantive smart and helpful”; all they are is “frequent”. As for Anne — Anne, of all people !!! — being a troll, you must have lost your cotton-picking mind; probably left it behind somewhere on HRC’s campaign trail. And it’s no wonder you have little use for Obama’s feel for language; your own usage is woefully inadequate. “Considering real considerations”, indeed. Gaah.

  • Why is it that continually after I write smart comments that would help Democrats get smarter in ways that would help them, someone who holds him/herself out as a liberal writes a comment saying that I write too many comments?

    I hate to pile on late (or at all really), but, Swan, many times you DO write too many comments. Not every colloquy in which you engage with yourself is that fascinating (or substantive or helpful). Today was one of those times.

  • Wow, Swan, you may be able to get away with mouthing off to me, but trust me, there is not a person on here, save you, that would side with you over Anne.

    I’m not sure I have seen such an astoundingly arrogant, tone-deaf post in my life, and that you offer it in defense of the really over the top racism and Rove-like repeated invocation of Barak’s middle name all day is even more astounding.

    It is sad to admit, but I actually cringe and question my support for Hillary every time you post in support of her. As several others have pointed out, you respond to any post that disagrees, challenges, or tries to politely offer constructive suggestions with ad hominem attacks – calling Anne a troll being one of the most absurd. Not a terribly productive way to have a discussion. No wonder you are so often left to spend 6 posts in a row having a “dialogue” with yourself. At this rate it will get harder and harder to get anyone else to bother with you.

  • one of the nice features about cb’s new format is you can see who the poster is at the start. it makes it easy to skip certain posts……. 🙂

  • Last night, as I was reading over the comments, and getting increasingly disturbed over what I was reading on Swan’s, I considered responding to the points being made in them, and then remembered how often others have done so, only to have Swan chime in that he was actually kidding. By 11:00 pm, it just seemed easier to ask whether Swan was serious.

    When I read his response to my question, I actually laughed out loud – I’ve been described in many ways, but never as a “Republican troll;” that was a first for me.

    What I was reading seemed less a primer on how the Dems can win and what their weak points are, than thinly disguised – and I mean, really thin – racism across the board – blacks, Jews, Muslims – and I guess, women.

    I won’t lie and say that I’ve never had concerns that the GOP wouldn’t whip up a campaign designed to appeal to the worst in people – but then I realized that they always do that; there is no aspect of someone that the GOP cannot exploit for that potential. Race, gender, ethnicity, religion, military service – it’s all a gold mine for them.

    I have more concerns about the compressed nature of a primary process that will likely lock us in to a nominee by mid-February. Then, we have six months to what will be an irrelevant convention, and another 2 1/2 to 3 months to the actual election. I’d prefer to see this be a real contest until at least April – with primaries spread out enough that there is time, if we get buyer’s remorse, to pick someone else. All this fervor for Obama concerns me because falling in love is the easy part – it’s living with someone and discovering all their flaws and foibles and buried issues, that can kill the love – and then what do we do? Or will it be too late to do anything? And if people fall out of love when the media are so bored they start bombarding us with crap, what will that mean for turnout, for down-ticket momentum?

    Lots of questions, no answers.

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