Bill Kristol, in the print edition of this morning’s New York Times:
NBC’s Andrea Mitchell reported on “Meet the Press” that “the Obama people must feel that he didn’t do quite as well as they might have wanted to in that context. … What they’re putting out privately is that McCain may not have been in the cone of silence and may have had some ability to overhear what the questions were to Obama.”
That’s pretty astonishing, since there seems to be absolutely no basis for the charge. But the fact that Obama’s people made this suggestion means they know McCain outperformed him.
News story in today’s New York Times, print and online editions:
ORLANDO, Fla. — Senator John McCain was not in a “cone of silence” on Saturday night while his rival, Senator Barack Obama, was being interviewed at the Saddleback Church in California.
Skip to next paragraph
Senator John McCain of Arizona at a forum on Saturday with the host, the Rev. Rick Warren of the Saddleback Church in California.
Members of the McCain campaign staff, who flew here Sunday from California, said Mr. McCain was in his motorcade on the way to the church as Mr. Obama was being interviewed by the Rev. Rick Warren, the author of the best-selling book “The Purpose Driven Life.”
Bill Kristol’s desperate last-minute attempt to salvage some shred of dignity by rewriting his column for the online edition of this morning’s New York TImes:
NBC’s Andrea Mitchell reported on “Meet the Press” that “the Obama people must feel that he didn’t do quite as well as they might have wanted to in that context. … What they’re putting out privately is that McCain … may have had some ability to overhear what the questions were to Obama.”
There’s no evidence that McCain had any such advantage. But the fact that Obama’s people made this suggestion means they know McCain outperformed him.
The only indication that the column has been revised: a small note in teensy tiny light grey type at the bottom of the page which inform us that “a version of this article appeared in print on August 18, 2008, on page A19 of the New York edition.”
BONUS FUN QUOTE from news article above: “The insinuation from the Obama campaign that John McCain, a former prisoner of war, cheated is outrageous,” Ms. Wallace said.
Imaginary Nuclear Weapons Programs We Can Believe In
Sure, America’s intelligence agencies concluded last year December that Iran no longer has a nuclear weapons program. But what do they know? Surely the Democratic Party is far more informed about the situation than them, which is why the Democrats refer to Iran’s “nuclear weapons program” in their just-finalized 2008 platform:
Prevent Iran from Acquiring Nuclear Weapons
The world must prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons. That starts with tougher sanctions and aggressive, principled, and direct high-level diplomacy, without preconditions. We will pursue this strengthened diplomacy alongside our European allies, and with no illusions about the Iranian regime. We will present Iran with a clear choice: if you abandon your nuclear weapons program, support for terror, and threats to Israel, you will receive meaningful incentives; so long as you refuse, the United States and the international community will further ratchet up the pressure, with stronger unilateral sanctions; stronger multilateral sanctions inside and outside the U.N. Security Council, and sustained action to isolate the Iranian regime. The Iranian people and the international community must know that it is Iran, not the United States, choosing isolation over cooperation. By going the extra diplomatic mile, while keeping all options on the table, we make it more likely the rest of the world will stand with us to increase pressure on Iran, if diplomacy is failing.
Note also that the Democrats are going to be “keeping all options on the table.” I’ve always wondered whether this phrase includes the possibility of America and Israel giving up all their nuclear weapons. I mean, that’s an option—surely if all options on the table, that means our complete nuclear disarmament is there on the table with all the rest of them.
YUP: According to Steve Clemons, the Democratic platform was mostly written by Obama’s Senate office policy director Karen Kornbluh.
– my friend Tony Ortega has a pretty amazing story about John Steinbeck, mobsters, labor organizers, and how his graduate studies became unexpectedly personal.
– Jules Feiffer makes his second return appearance in the Voice after a ten year absence, here.
– In case you hadn’t noticed, Roy Edroso (of alicublog) is now blogging the news for the Voice, making him one of the half-dozen or so people in the country who actually make a living from this stuff.
So some things that I didn’t think would work out suddenly did work out, and it looks like I’ll be going to Denver in a week. I’ll actually be blogging it at the New Haven Advocate’s site — they’re footing the bill for this one — but I’ll post links from here to there.
Blogging will most likely remain sporadic until then.
Just want to add a thought to Greg’s post — he’s absolutely right about the abhorrent mindset typified by the “Got Ammo” and “Rope, Tree, Journalist” t-shirts you see advertised on so many right wing sites. But as he also notes, it’s too soon to jump to any definite conclusions at this point, as straightforward as they may seem.
… personally I look forward to the next round of “he could have just as easily used a knife! or heavy stones!”, from all the right wing gun nuts.
Or have we just been so thoroughly worn down by these senseless shootings that we don’t even bother with that debate any more?
Earlier today, I just got around to commenting on the recent shooting at a Unitarian church, noting :
I don’t think it’s fair to say that people like Limbaugh and O’Reilly are directly or even indirectly responsible for the shooting, but it’s pretty obvious to anyone who’s been paying attention that the limits of what’s considered acceptable commentary among mainstream conservative commentators has moved to the extreme right over the past 10-15 years. Sean Hannity has a book titled “Deliver Us from Evil: Defeating Terrorism, Despotism, and Liberalism”, Michael Savage describes liberalism as a “mental disorder” and considers us “the enemy within”, Jonah Goldberg’s latest book features a Hitler-mustached happy face under the title “Liberal Fascism”, Ann Coulter’s best sellers describe liberals as being “Godless” and guilty of “Treason”, Bill O’Reilly routinely compares liberal activists to the KKK and Nazis, Glenn Beck describes Barack Obama as a “marxist”, etc. If this is the voice of mainstream conservatism, is it any wonder that the extremists on that side would grab a gun and shoot up a liberal church?
The chairman of the Arkansas Democratic Party died Wednesday, hours after a shooting at the party’s headquarters, police said. Police block off the streets surrounding the state Democratic Party headquarters Wednesday in Little Rock.
Chairman Bill Gwatney died at 3:59 Wednesday afternoon after a gunman entered his Little Rock office and shot him several times in the upper body, Little Rock Police Lt. Terry Hastings said.
While we should reserve judgment until we know more about the shooter, when a party chairman gets murdered by a stranger who walks into his workplace demanding to speak to him, I think it’s safe to assume politics might be involved. Moreover, regardless of whether or not this guy was a crazy loner, actions like these don’t occur in a vacuum. I mean, is anybody really surprised when violent lunatics erupt from a mindset in which this passes for humor? (h/t)
This movie may literally redefine what is meant by the word “comedy”:
I’m holding a palm card that was just given out at the Heritage Foundation to promote the new David Zucker film An American Carol. If I fill out the card, I can take one of four pledges, such as “Yes, I will send the trailer to my contacts” and “Yes, I want to be AN AMERICAN CAROLER or THEATER CAPTAIN.” It’s an induction to a movement, as the slogan on the card makes clear: “Finally, a movie for us.”
By “us,” of course, the filmmakers and promoters mean conservatives. Executive producer Myrna Sokoloff has put together a “pro-soldier, support our troops, pro-America” comedy, which Stephen Hayes previews in the new Weekly Standard. In it, filmmaker Michael Malone (Kevin “brother of Chris” Farley) and his organization MoveAlong.org are trying to repeal the Fourth of July when three angels—the Angel of Death, George S. Patton, and George Washington—come to him and convince him to change his ways.
he crowd at Heritage got to see a trailer and a few minutes of clips 24 hours before either of them will be generally released. I’m a huge fan of the Zucker-Leslie Nielsen canon, and not much of a fan of Zucker’s ads for Republicans. The footage we saw floated somewhere in the middle of those two projects, quality-wise. Fat-assed Malone travels to Cuba, pledges to destroy America, and takes advantage of the invisibility granted by ghost status by grabbing a protestor’s boobs. Bill O’Reilly appears out of nowhere to slap him. “I just like doing that,” he says. Terrorists led by everybody’s favorite pockmarked tough guy Robert Davi bitch that they’re low on suicide bombers (”All the good ones are gone!”) and all answer to the name Mohammed. In a scene that Sokoloff described, but didn’t bring, Patton and his soldiers storm a courthouse that’s about to remove the Ten Commandments and start opening fire on the people trying to stop them. “You can’t shoot these people!” Malone says. “They’re not people!” says Patton. “They’re the ACLU!” At this point we see that the ACLU members are unkillable George Romero zombies.
Details about the movie were kept secret, on purpose, until this month. In February, it was reported that Kelsey Grammar would be Scrooge in the new movie. He’s actually playing the ghost of George Patton, and Jon Voight is playing George Washington. In a clip we saw, Washington takes Malone to St. Paul’s Cathedral to lecture him on freedom of religion and “freedom of speech, which you abuse.” Malone is grossed out by dust in the priest’s box, so the doors open onto the smoldering ruins of the World Trade Center. “This is the dust of 3000 innocent human beings!” bellows Washington. Malone whimpers that he’s just making movies. Washington won’t have it. “Is that what you plan to say on Judgment Day?”
“That scene,” said Sokoloff, “is hard to put in a comedy. But we had to do it.”
Matt Stoller makes some extremely important points about how Al Gore’s DC-centric, centrist instincts cause him to continue to suck at creating any progress on global warming.
Meanwhile, it looks like the summer melt in the arctic may meet or exceed last year’s, putting us on path to an ice-free summer arctic within five years. Not so long ago, it was believed this wouldn’t happen until 2070.
With Ron Suskind’s revelation about the CIA apparently forging a December, 2003 letter from Iraqi intelligence’s Tahir Jalil Habbush, Emptywheel wonders: were there any other forged Habbush letters? The answer appears to be yes.
Interestingly, there’s some suggestive material about this in the transcript Suskind released of one of his interviews with CIA Near East Division chief Rob Richer:
RICHER: …[Y]ou know, we got so much garbage that first couple—that year.
SUSKIND: Were there other things like this where we were creating product?
RICHER: You know, I don’t remember that.
He doesn’t remember? That doesn’t sound too convincing. But maybe he wouldn’t, if forging letters wasn’t a notable event at the CIA:
RICHER: Let me tell you what I know, just so before you color any of it. Is that when you first asked me about it I remember just really telling you that it was a non-event, and if you were to ask me today I would tell you it was a non-event. It came down from the seventh floor. It was part of–as I remember it, it wasn’t so much to influence America–that’s illegal–but it was kinda like a covert, a way to influence Iraqis…
To characterize it right, I would say, right: it came to us, George had a raised eyebrow, and basically we passed it on–it was to–and passed this on into the organization. You know, it was: ‘Okay, we gotta do this, but make it go away.’To be honest with you, I don’t want to make it sound–I for sure don’t want to portray this as George jumping: ‘Okay, this has gotta happen.’ As I remember it–and, again, it’s still vague, so I’ll be very straight with you on this…it wasn’t that important.
AND: This is a good example of why we should thank Jeebus every day for the internet. Without it, how would anyone be able to go back and research the other Habbush letters? And even if someone did, how would they ever tell anyone else about it?
Suskind: Bush Jeopardized Airline Terror Case and Deceived British for Political Advantage
Dean Baker: is there anything he doesn’t know?
Here’s email Baker sent out on August 10, 2006, talking about the UK Airline Bomber Plot:
So, do you think the British airplane plot is the response to Lieberman’s defeat? It certainly is conveniently timed, and we know that we are dealing with people who would have no qualms whatsoever about pulling a stunt like this. Having it down in Britain also is helpful to bush, since it removes his crew from the direct line of fire, while still providing the same benefits in terms of hyping terrorist paranoia. Needless to say, lapdog Tony would gladly do as told, if the orders were given.
I was skeptical of this perspective at the time. Yet it was almost exactly correct. Here’s Ron Suskind yesterday on Fresh Air describing what happened:
NPR: I want to talk just a little about this fascinating episode you describe in the summer of 2006, when President Bush is very anxious about some intelligence briefings that he is getting from the British. What are they telling him?
SUSKIND:In late July of 2006, the British are moving forward on a mission they’ve been–an investigation they’ve been at for a year at that point, where they’ve got a group of “plotters,” so-called, in the London area that they’ve been tracking…Bush gets this briefing at the end of July of 2006, and he’s very agitated. When Blair comes at the end of the month, they talk about it and he says, “Look, I want this thing, this trap snapped shut immediately.” Blair’s like, “Well, look, be patient here. What we do in Britain”–Blair describes, and this is something well known to Bush–”is we try to be more patient so they move a bit forward. These guys are not going to breathe without us knowing it. We’ve got them all mapped out so that we can get actual hard evidence, and then prosecute them in public courts of law and get real prosecutions and long prison terms”…
Well, Bush doesn’t get the answer he wants, which is “snap the trap shut.” And the reason he wants that is because he’s getting all sorts of pressure from Republicans in Congress that his ratings are down. These are the worst ratings for a sitting president at this point in his second term, and they’re just wild-eyed about the coming midterm elections. Well, Bush expresses his dissatisfaction to Cheney as to the Blair meeting, and Cheney moves forward.
NPR: So you got the British saying, “Let’s carefully build our case. Let’s get more intelligence.” Bush wants an arrest and a political win. What does he do?
SUSKIND: Absolutely. What happens is that then, oh, a few days later, the CIA operations chief–which is really a senior guy. He’s up there in the one, two, three spots at CIA, guy named Jose Rodriguez ends up slipping quietly into Islamabad, Pakistan, and he meets secretly with the ISI, which is the Pakistani intelligence service. And suddenly a guy in Pakistan named Rashid Rauf, who’s kind of the contact of the British plotters in Pakistan, gets arrested. This, of course, as anyone could expect, triggers a reaction in London, a lot of scurrying. And the Brits have to run through the night wild-eyed and basically round up 25 or 30 people. It’s quite a frenzy. The British are livid about this. They talk to the Americans. The Americans kind of shrug, “Who knows? You know, ISI picked up Rashid Rauf.”
NPR: So the British did not even get a heads-up from the United States that this arrest was going to happen?
SUSKIND: Did not get a heads-up. In fact, the whole point was to mislead the British…The British did not know about it, frankly, until I reported it in the book…
What’s interesting is that the White House already had its media plan already laid out before all of this occurred so that the president and vice president immediately–even, in Cheney’s case, before the arrest, the day before–started to capitalize on the war on terror rhetoric and political harvest, which of course they used for weeks to come, right into the fall, about, “The worst plot since 9/11, that has been foiled, and this is why you want us in power.”
