Minnesotans have extra incentive this year to be sure they are counted -- and counted here -- by the decennial U.S. census that will begin in March. The retention of the state's current complement of eight members of the U.S. House of Representatives is on the line.
State demographer Tom Gillaspy has been warning for months that the next census could result in the loss of one congressional seat in Minnesota. In fact, he confessed last week that, until the recession hit, he was almost resigned to the probability that Minnesotans would be allowed to elect only seven U.S. House members from newly drawn districts in 2012.
According to Gillaspy, Minnesota is one of the states that are "on the cusp" of losing a seat in the House because of population, and is generally seen to be in competition with three other states -- Texas, Missouri, and California -- for three Congressional seats. In the past, the editors of he the Star-Tribune say, Minnesota has been advantaged by "the cooperation of its civic-minded citizens." But that was before their representative was telling everyone that the Census was some sort of diabolical ACORN plot to spread socialism, or something.
Here's what the Strib has to say about that, by the way:
It's ironic that a Minnesota member of Congress, Republican Michele Bachmann, went so far last summer to declare her intention to only partially complete her census forms, and to suggest reasons for others not to comply with the census law. If Minnesota loses a congressional seat, Bachmann's populous Sixth District could be carved into pieces. She likely would have to battle another incumbent to hang on to her seat. We've noticed that her anticensus rhetoric has lately ceased. We hope she got wise: Census compliance is not only in Minnesota's best interest, but also her own.
Velma Jackson asked the council to start a weekly prayer meeting at noon Wednesdays in the atrium of Government Plaza.
"If you do this," she said, "you will be awarded the tanker contract you so diligently seek."
If Northrop Grumman and EADS win a U.S. Air Force refueling tanker contract, the planes would be assembled in Mobile, creating 1,500 local jobs.
But the tasty carrot was balanced with a sharp stick. If the city doesn't host the prayer meetings, Jackson said, "the water in the rivers will come up and flood the city."
Apparently not, because here he is roaming the streets of Washington, DC, encountering skimpily-clad PETA protesters in front of a Burger King, and using their example as the inspiration to "hilariously" urge people to save newspapers by boycotting the Internet! In case you are some sort of lichen, or moss, or bit of toenail fungus, the "joke" here is that one must create a viral video on the Internet to get people to stop looking at viral videos on the Internet and instead opt to read a newspaper, where Dana Milbank will never ever dress up in newspaper scraps and talk to you about saving newspapers.
"It was cold outside, and it was time for lunch," Milbank concluded, because somebody had already used the line, "So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past."
Anyway, yes: please save the newspapers, except for the part of the paper where they allow their reporters to play out their undergraduate art-trash confrontations with irony. That part should be dispatched, without any concern for the ethical treatment of anyone involved.
Over at The Plum Line, Politico editor John Harris attempts to explain how it came to pass that his paper spent the entire past year taking dictation from former Vice President Dick Cheney, and never challenging him on any of his broad stated contentions, which include things like "I don't think you can blame the Bush administration for the creation of [the] circumstances [that led to the financial collapse of 2008]" and "[W]e are at war and when President Obama pretends we aren't, it makes us less safe."
Harris is under fire after MSNBC host Chris Matthews confrontedPolitico's White House correspondent Jonathan Martin with the accusation that the paper just allows Cheney to "use you like he'd use Drudge or somebody."
If it were possible to, say, hog-tie John Harris with Wonder Woman's truth-compelling Golden Lasso, here's what he'd say about the Politico and Dick Cheney: the paper and the former vice president are in a co-dependent, enabling relationship. Cheney is willing to provide the paper with exclusive commentary on topics of his choosing, that Politico can then use to garner page views and attention from other media outlets, who deem the things Cheney says to be newsworthy. The cost that Cheney exacts from Politico is the promise to not apply any sort of critical thought to his ramblings. And so, the two combine to create mutually beneficial, journalism-like word salsa, contrived and calibrated for maximum attention-getting.
Then, Cheney goes back to his hidey-hole, where he can avoid confrontation. And Mike Allen can sit back in his basement and wait for his mom to send down some buffalo wings, or something, for lunch. Everybody wins!
Anyway, that is an honest characterization of this relationship. But, yeah, Harris' spin on the matter is still pretty entertaining! He mounts a three-pointed defense, couched in semi-logic:
1. I thought the Cheney comments were newsworthy, which is why they drew such notice by other news organizations and columnists. In fact, it seemed to me that the people who found Cheney's comments most objectionable were the ones who found them most newsworthy.
See: IT'S EVERYONE ELSE'S FAULT, FOR DEEMING CHENEY NEWSWORTHY. I mean, isn't this just a brilliant elocution of the whole, "Let's toss turds at the wall" approach, here? But this ignores something essential. Let's cast our minds back to December 1, 2009, and the piece of stenography that contained this paragraph:
Cheney was asked if he thinks the Bush administration bears any responsibility for the disintegration of Afghanistan because of the attention and resources that were diverted to Iraq. "I basically don't," he replied without elaborating.
What Harris neatly glosses over is that the most "newsworthy" thing about this exchange was how "objectionable" it was, from a journalistic standpoint.
2. If you look at the other stories we ran at the same time as the Cheney quote there was a Josh Gerstein piece leading the site comparing Obama's response to Bush's after the 2001 shoe bomber and debunking the notion that Obama's response was more sluggish. We also had a piece looking at GOP politicization of national security.
So, you're telling me that you RAN STORIES IN ADVANCE OF THE CHENEY INTERVIEW that could have been fodder for a substantive line of follow-up questions, that you ignored, but now want credit for after the fact? Why isn't THAT journalism privileged over Cheney stenography? What was the point of it, if it doesn't inform your reporting, going forward?
3. Trying to get newsworthy people to say interesting things is part of what we do. Also in December we had a long Q and A with the other prominent former vice president Al Gore. That story might also have looked to some like providing an uncritical platform if you viewed it only isolation.
So, it's okay to give out free passes as long as you give them out ecumenically? Also, is it really hard to get Dick Cheney to say "interesting things?" Seems like he's been mounting a pretty fulsome campaign of saying stuff without the Politico's assistance. The value that Politico offers Dick Cheney is that they won't offer up any obstacles.
I tell you what! That Gerstein piece and that Al Gore Q&A are sure doing some heavy lifting, as far as a counterbalance to Dick Cheney goes. As Alex Pareene documented, the Politico/Cheney relationship has become one of the paper's main features over the past year, including the most recent piece, in which Cheney tried to set a record for the number of times he could use the word "war" in a single article.
Anyway, it's telling that Harris cites a Gerstein piece and a Q&A with Al Gore as instances of counterbalance. To be able to say, "Here are some examples of articles where our reporters turned a critical eye to Dick Cheney's claims," his reporters would have had to have done this. Maybe they have! But John Harris sure didn't notice, and if he values his exclusive relationship with Dick Cheney, he won't start doing so now.
In the 2010 media landscape, you are nobody if you're not maximizing your brand by messaging across multiple platforms and leveraging your Twitter presence and increasing your virality and Tumblarity and crap like that. So, credit the cretinous, anti-gay misanthropes at the Westboro Baptist Church for getting with the program and extending their brand identity with a new foray into viral song parody. Via Kansas City's The Pitch comes this latest creative semi-stillbirth from Fred Phelps' crew, a parody of Lady GaGa's "Poker Face," reworked as a reminder that the Martian monkey-god they worship hates everything and everybody.
The Westboro Baptist Church sermonizes: "However questionable they may be, Lady Gaga's talents were given to her by God; in return, she defies Him with all she does. This parody puts the truth to her 'Poker Face.'"
The song, which will give you an idea of what Lady Gaga's music would sound like if it were sung by somebody who is both tone-deaf and completely dead inside, features lyrics like: "You got a whorish face, it's a whorish face," and "God hates you." It's a banger!
Remember Rex Rammell? He's the Idaho Republican who made headlines after he joked in August 2009 about hunting President Barack Obama with guns, an incident which he went on to describe as a boon to his gubernatorial campaign. In the wake of the ensuing outrage, Rammell suggested that the "country needs to lighten up."
But what he is apparently deadly serious about is how God needs to save the Constitution, in accordance with the teachings of various Mormon prophets.
Rex Rammell said recently it is time for citizens to "rise up" and defend the Constitution. He said he will spread that message on the campaign trail.
"To think that we can save the Constitution without God's help when the government of the United States is corrupt is absurdity," he said. "We are in America's second Revolutionary War to save our freedom, which we paid for with blood. We need God's help and I'm not ashamed to ask for it."
Fox News infotainer Glenn Beck returned to the airwaves this new year, outlining his own twisted spin on Birtherism. While Beck acknowledged that the whole notion of a concerted effort decades ago to plant fake Barack Obama birth records is "a little unlikely," he nevertheless wondered aloud on his radio show whether or not the left was actually behind the rise of Birtherism -- thus trading one unlikely conspiracy theory for an even more unlikely one.
BECK: So there are apparently, apparently there is and I'm just going to there's always games being played behind the scenes at a talk radio show and on television and everything else. It is really, it's very, I don't know, it's disappointing. Rush has called them on the games in radio behind the scenes, Rush has always called them seminar callers. But instead of being coy with the seminar callers or with you, I'm just going to expose the game that is going on. Today there is a concerted effort on all radio stations to get Birthers on the air. I have to tell you, are you working for the Barack Obama administration? I mean, that's the dumbest thing I've ever heard.
Yes: that would be the dumbest thing in the world, for Obama supporters to pimp Birtherism to right-wing radio hosts. But that's not what's happening! As David Weigel reports, Glenn Beck was recently flooded with calls from Birthers because the Birthers themselves coordinated the calls, in a campaign they dubbed "Operation Flood It," which, I guess, really masks their intentions!
I want Beck's phone system to crash, everyone press redial over and over.
We need at least 5,000 people to do this...
Call (888) 727-2325 at 9am EST
The left are scared to death of the Obama eligibility issue and anyone that dares to bring it up is immediately attacked and and forced to resign. Just ask Lou Dobbs...
Why is Fox afraid of this issue? This could throw Obama into jail, we are not talking about czars here. That is small potatoes compared to multiple felonies and a conspiracy to deceive 300 million Americans. The ENTIRE house of cards in the Democrat party would topple, because they were all most likely involved in this conspiracy as well.
Fox has the guts to throw jabs at Obama for 4 years, but they do not have the guts to deliver the knockout punch, Obama's ineligibility. WE have to change that...
A script of talking points for would-be Birther phone-jammers, is included.
This super-difficult-to-penetrate plan, by the way, has been afoot since December 21st, so maybe Glenn Beck should go and get a Google Alert with his name, or something, if he'd like to stay abreast of these sorts of things.
Last night, RedState's Erick Erickson defended most of his controversial Twitter posts and explained his opposition to a GOP purity test during an appearance on "The Colbert Report".
Erickson described his transformation from practicing attorney to running the "day-to-day operations" of the conservative group-blog. Along the way, he discussed how the site approaches the issue of criticizing Republican politicians for their fealty to conservative principles -- he opposes the planned "purity test" on the grounds that it's too "establishment" and that it simply allows people to take party money for checking off boxes, rather than as an honest evaluation of their actions. As Erickson notes, it's a traditional role that political blogs take on, paralleled on the progressive side of the blogosphere as well.
Discussion soon turned to some of the more interesting ideas that Erickson has put out there on Twitter, such as calling former Supreme Court Justice David Souter a "goat-fucking child molester," comparing Linda Douglass to Joseph Goebbels and referring to President Barack Obama's Nobel win as an "affirmative action quota" pick. When asked if he'd be willing to "repeat any of [those tweets] with his face on camera," Erickson replied: "The last two, yeah. The first one was not my finest moment." Apparently, the distinction was that he did not, at the time, understand that Twitter was something beyond "talking to my friends... being with my friends online," but actually a public forum where thoughts are shared with the entire universe.
One of the last things I did in 2009 was to lament the awesome stupidity of a press corps that seemed unable to do even basic fact-checking, such as using available resources to test contentions like: "Did President Barack Obama stop using the word 'terror' or 'terrorism'?" Peter King told this lie, successfully, to CNN because apparently no one at CNN has access to a computer or a television or even has a teensy bit of electrical current running through the wet membranes found in their cranial cavity.
I was able to use this thing called Google to demonstrate that King was not telling the truth when he said, "Even when the president gave his speech at West Point about the troops going to Afghanistan, he didn't use the word 'terrorism'." It's no big deal. I didn't think I deserved a medal for journalistic excellence, at the time. But I'm starting to revise that belief now that it's 2010 and Greg Sargent has a piece up at the Plum Line documenting how Jim DeMint played all sorts of journalists for fools in a similar fashion over the weekend:
CNN let Senator Jim DeMint come on the network yesterday and claim, without any fact-checking, that Obama doesn't use the word "terror," which DeMint cited as proof of the President's lackluster approach to keeping us safe:
DEMINT: There's no question that the president has down-played the risk of terror since he took office. He is investigating the CIA, rather than build them up.
GLORIA BORGER: How has he -- Senator DeMint, how -- how has he down-played the risk of terror?
DEMINT: Well, it begins with not even being willing to use the word.
BORGER: Well, aside from the semantics, aside from that.
Good morning. Yesterday I updated the American people on the immediate steps we took -- the increased screening and security of air travel -- to keep our country safe in the wake of the attempted terrorist attack on Christmas Day. And I announced two reviews -- a review of our terrorist watch list system and a review of our air travel screening, so we can find out what went wrong, fix it and prevent future attacks.
You can also see that Obama used some form of the word "terrorism" three additional times.
Everyone I've named needs to follow these instructions:
Anytime anyone claims that a public figure -- whose every important statement, by the way, is cataloged on a single online source -- never said a certain word, CHECK. Take the 60 seconds and check. Eventually, you will find out that the people telling you this nonsense are either uninformed or misleading you, and you'll just stop reporting it or allowing the claim to be made. A few of you -- the really astute ones, the ones who have fully developed cognitively -- may even realize, "Hey! This battling back and forth over vocabulary words is actually a terribly stupid, superficial matter, anyway.
Over the holidays, the troubled Washington Times began laying off staff by the metric ton and among the victims of the Moonie-family-gone-King Lear purge was the paper's entire sports section. This represents a tremendous opportunity for the Washington Post. First, there will be reduced competition for local sports stories. Second, now there are all these unemployed reporters who might do a better job at obtaining those stories -- and whom the Post can hire, if it wants!
NBA all-star Gilbert Arenas and his Washing ton Wizards teammate Javaris Crittenton drew guns on each other in the team's locker room during a Christmas Eve dispute over a gambling debt, The Post has learned.
League sources say the pistol-packing point guards had heaters at the ready inside the Verizon Center, the Washington, DC, home of the Wizards -- whose name was changed from the Bullets over gun- violence concerns.
Jeez. They even got to make the requisite "Washington Bullets" joke! Meanwhile, over at WaPo's ironically-named "Wizards Insider" blog, Michael Lee credits the New York Post as a source, but does not link to their story, which, at this point, is a little bush league.
Matt Yglesias grabs a key paragraph from Peter Baker's lengthy New York Times magazine piece, "Inside Obama's War On Terror", in which Baker finds a coven of unnamed conservatives staying mum on their support of Obama's counterterror policies out of fear and/or resentment.
A half-dozen former senior Bush officials involved in counterterrorism told me before the Christmas Day incident that for the most part, they were comfortable with Obama's policies, although they were reluctant to say so on the record. Some worried they would draw the ire of Cheney's circle if they did, while others calculated that calling attention to the similarities to Bush would only make it harder for Obama to stay the course. And they generally resent Obama's anti-Bush rhetoric and are unwilling to give him political cover by defending him.
Matt calls Baker's willingness to set aside some of the more unnecessary journalistic niceties and capture this group collectively in this way to be "a good break with convention that more reporters should engage in." He's right, and this sort of thing is welcomed. To take it a bit farther, though, one of the things that's most annoying about the most recent instance of Politico's Mike Allen taking dictation from former Vice President Dick Cheney is that Cheney is in no way attempting to influence counterterror policy or make the nation more secure. That can't be done by following his advice, which is to use the word "war" more often.
Rather, what Cheney is clearly trying to do is influence the politics, so any reporter worth his salt should be able to simply listen to Cheney and accurately report that the former vice president has been reduced to demagoguery. It's really just stupid to pretend that there's some great policy debate unfolding between the current White House and the previous White House. It's nice that Baker finds a way to acknowledge this.
Ten months ago, three American evangelicals trooped off to Uganda and, using the power of their words, helped convince officials there to create the Anti-Homosexuality Bill of 2009, that would make it illegal -- and punishable by death -- to be gay. If you hang in long enough while reading today's New York Times article on the matter, the reporter eventually gets around to naming them!
The three Americans who spoke at the conference -- Scott Lively, a missionary who has written several books against homosexuality, including "7 Steps to Recruit-Proof Your Child"; Caleb Lee Brundidge, a self-described former gay man who leads "healing seminars"; and Don Schmierer, a board member of Exodus International, whose mission is "mobilizing the body of Christ to minister grace and truth to a world impacted by homosexuality" -- are now trying to distance themselves from the bill.
At this point, that's sort of like the Velvet Underground attempting to distance themselves from "rock music."
But for his part, Don Schmierer says he feels "duped," and that he had "no idea some Ugandans were contemplating the death penalty for homosexuality" and that "some of the nicest people I have ever met are gay people."
Yes, surprise, surprise: you go off to Uganda to talk about how "the gay movement is an evil institution" and how they have an agenda of "defeat[ing] the marriage-based society" and somehow, people take this to mean that homosexuals should be killed or something. How terrible that things like this get misconstrued. Right, Scott Lively, who said this on his website?
On the positive side, my host and ministry partner in Kampala, Stephen Langa, was overjoyed with the results of our efforts and predicted confidently that the coming weeks would see significant improvement in the moral climate of the nation, and a massive increase in pro-family activism in every social sphere. He said that a respected observer of society in Kampala had told him that our campaign was like a nuclear bomb against the "gay" agenda in Uganda. I pray that this, and the predictions, are true.
Today's Times article mentions the "nuclear bomb" comparison, but leaves out the perhaps important part where Lively "prays" that his campaign is like a massive explosion that kills tens of thousands of people in a disintegrating rain of atomic fire.
Good morning and happy new year and welcome once again to your liveblog of the Sunday morning politics shows. My name is Jason, and yes, while acknowledging that the 201st ten year period since the switch from B.C. has not happened yet, because of the no year zero thing, I consider the previous decade -- as a cultural period -- to be over. We are done with the Oughts and have now embarked upon our Tweens. So good luck with that, everyone.
While casting about for a perfect cultural artifact to sum up the last decade, I was reminded of this, and it is a perfect summation of who we were in the past ten years:
Okay! Time to figure out who we are going to be in the coming decade. Making the case that we are all a bunch of freaks who are seriously going to get overperturbed by a guy with flaming underwear, here are the good people of...
FOX NEWS SUNDAY
Woo! John Brennan and Kit Bond are here! The U.S. Embassy in Yemen is closed. Brennan says that this is because there are indications that al Qaeda has targeted it...but he is speaking very very fast and very unintelligbly. Maybe he's "drunk," like Max Baucus!
Are U.S. citizens in Yemen in danger? Brennan says that they are doing everything they can to protect them. Pressed again, he says, yes they are. Of course, one is at risk when one goes to the Starbucks. Sorry we can't just all chill out inside our mother's wombs. Lord knows I've asked!
Anyway, Brennan. talking very very fast. He will protect us from al Qaeda, with his fast talking. It sounds like he's saying that Yemen is helping to "take the fight to al Qaeda" and that "al Qaeda has taken a lot of hits." As far as Captain Crotchfire goes, Brennan says there are a few hundred al Qaeda in Yemen, he reached out to them, they apparently taught him some innovative, crotch-based techniques, and voila: YEMEN! Brennan and his team are on the scour for intel. What he's not going to do, apparently, is name names on Fox News Sunday.
What about sending detainees to GITMO? Brennan says they've only sent seven people to Yemen out of the 42 people sent there. These detainees have by and large been remanded into custody. They will absolutely consider sending Yemeni prisoners to Yemen on a case-by-case basis.
Wallace wants to know why we aren't beating the crap out of Crotchfire in a secret prison. Brennan says that they got information from him before he lawyered up, and the fact that he has a lawyer doesn't stop him from talking. Wallace, though, really wants to crap beaten out of him, just for the sake of beating the crap out of him. Brennan says that they'll treat every case in the best way possible, and that this case calls for Crotchfire to be tried in court.
What was the failure that allowed Crotchfire on the plane? Brennan says that's being reviewed, but it looks like: intelligence didn't match up, intelligence didn't get passed on. No smoking gun, though. More like a puzzle that needed to get together. But, he says, so far, there seems to have been no internecine rivalry between agencies at the root of the problem.
Brennan defends Napolitano, and calls Dennis Blair and Leon Panetta "consummate professionals." The White House still backs Erroll Southers, as TSA chair. He also rejects Cheney's argument that Obama doesn't use the words "war on terror" enough. Trust me, if semantics could be weaponized, we'd have killed the terrorists by now.
Anyway, this is one of the most vapid interviews I've ever witnessed. It's like watching an Abbott and Costello routine.
What I think a lot of people are afraid to say is the reason this issue has been so easy to politicize is the fact that nobody died, that this attack is essentially non-serious. Has three-hundred people died, no one would dare do anything but rally round the flag.
From a practical, counter-terror standpoint, you wish that all terrorists could be like this. From a national security standpoint...well, this isn't a national security concern. Nothing in this attack threatens the United States existentially. That's just a fact. But the lack of seriousness is what's given everyone the opportunity to be a child about it. I read Dick Cheney's ninny-bleat to Politico, in which he attempted to set a record for using the word "war" in the space of two paragraphs, and, I'm sorry, you had to wonder what Romper Room he'd escaped from.
Let's just remember that the fact that this has gotten so politicized is the proof that the matter is not that serious, that the inactive Seriousness Glands have not been activated in man like Kit Bond.
Panel time! Brit Hume doesn't like the idea that we're not beating the crap out of Captain Crotchfire, and the whole idea that restoring our reputation of our nation is a terrible, terrible idea, and it means we're being lax. "They're treating it as a law enforcement issue!" he raves. Law enforcement professionals out there, you have my sympathies, how it came to pass that you all became thought of as pussies is beyond me. I think our law enforcement agencies are great, and have an important -- and tragically undersung -- role to play in our counter-terror efforts.
Bill Kristol, also, hates the fact that he lawyered up. "He is the smoking gun! His father tried to warn us?" Is his father trying to warn us of anyone else? He also considers the closure of the Embassy to be a "victory for al Qaeda." No, allowing this incompetent to be treated like a holy warrior is a victory for al Qaeda!
Juan Williams is trying to mount some sort of argument, but it doesn't really make a whole lot of sense. Brit Hume says that it has not convinced him. He goes on to say that al Qaeda should consider this Christmas attack one "that did succeed." THAT IS JUST MENTAL! Why is Fox News Sunday giving such aid and comfort to our enemies? Calling that a successful attack is just pure, mountain grown INSANITY.
Oh, wow. Now the panel is going to PREDICT THE FUTURE! Brit Hume says that terrorism will return as an issue. Nina Easton says that 2010 will be a "nailbiter" but that Dems will retain control of the House. In the Senate, gone will be Harry Reid and Chris Dodd and Barbara Boxer -- but the GOP won't capitalize in 2012. Bill Kristol predicts that the Iranian regime will fall -- GAH! And you know what that means! That means the Green Revolution is doomed! Damn you, Bill Kristol! Juan predicts the rise of a third party.
Hume and Easton predict that MAD MEN is a good show? Or something? Easton says that the Jay Leno Show is going away...I'm glad that Bill Kristol wasn't the one who predicts that. Juan Williams predicts that e-readers will be huge in 2010. I have a Kindle and I love it.
Brit Hume says that Tiger Woods will "recover as a golfer," and that he'd better convert to Christianity if he wants to be a great person again. And that's Brit Hume...proselytizing on my teevee this morning! I hope that viewers of EVERY OTHER FAITH don't mind Hume's contention that redemption is only really possible if you "Christ up" -- to use the lawyering up metaphor from earlier.
Juan Williams predicts that there will be offseason talk of Bret Favre retiring. Also: BRET FAVRE WILL CONTINUE TO GET OLDER. THESE ARE TWO THINGS THAT COULD HAPPEN.
Bill Kristol predicts the coming of stagflation, which is GREAT NEWS.
Wallace says that they will keep that segment on tape and use it to embarrass the panel with it later. They could do that, right now.
THIS WEEK
Sorry, folks. My connection to the network keeps cutting out. Hopefully, that will be the last time.
Anyway, hopefully THIS WEEK will not feature any attempt to religious conversion. And maybe John Brennan will slow down talking.
Today in the chair, we have Terry Moran. You know, John Brennan looks like he'd be played by John Spencer, were he still alive. I mean John Spencer, character actor from The West Wing, not Jon Spencer, of the Jon Spencer Blues Explosion. Though that would be an interesting casting choice.
Anyway, what's going on with Flight 253? Who dropped the ball? Brennan says there was no smoking gun, as before, just different "streams of information" that should have been woven together in a braid, or highlighted, with Bumpits.
Moran says, hey, isn't this the same failure of dot-connecting as 9-11? Brennan says, again, that there was no lack of sharing because of the unwillingness to share.
Moran says something odd about how Facebook is "always drawing connections." Is it? He asks why the counter-terror effort isn't as "sophisticated as Facebook." Brennan says that it is. WE ARE UP ON OUR ENEMIES STATUS UPDATES. We are SUPERPOKING the terrorists.
Brennan, once again, is all Up With Napolitano. I am amazed that reporters, even now, are struggling to understand that she was referring to the post-attack "system" which "worked."
Switch time! Brennan is out, panel is on. THIS WEEK has a staff of ninjas, that get this switch made each week.
An emailer writes in:
Not that I'm an advocate of waving the 9/11 flag, but in this case, I'm giving
myself a convenient exception: how long until some one points out the fact
that it was law enforcement personnel, no wait, UNIONIZED law enforcement
personnel who performed amazingly on 9/11? I don't remember cops negotiating
for more vacation days before running into burning towers.
Furthermore, I don't remember the Detroit flight crew demanding better dental
care before helping subdue Firecrotch. I don't remember nurses asking for
better hours before administering H1N1 vaccines. And I especially don't
remember any teachers asking for their COLA before protecting kids during
campus shootings. I'm waiting to see if anyone has the audacity to stand up to
state the obvious while pundits take potshots at organized labor.
Good points. Beyond the labor-demonizing that we saw last week, I'd point out that these layers of protection often go unrecognized. I remember being taken aback during Condi Rice's testimony before the 9/11 Commission when she cast the thwarting of the Millennium Plot as a stroke of luck. It wasn't! The plot was foiled because customs agents did their jobs. I guess it's just hard for some people to admit that our tax dollars fund anything that's good.
Anyway, today we have Susan Collins, Joe Lieberman, Pete Hoekstra and Jane Harman. We kick off with Pete Hoekstra, who I personally cannot wait to be out of the national security business. He immediately attempts to link Fort Hood and Captain Crotchfire as some awesome pair of evildoers. "The good news is that now we are all on the same page," says Hoekstra, who's been the only one in this conversation who's been far off script.
Lieberman repeats his call that we have to go to war with Yemen. The good news is that Iran seems to off of Vinegar Joe's radar.
Susan Collins says that Janet Napolitano's comments that "the system worked" were "bizarre" and "baffled" her. The news here: Susan Collins is apparently too stupid to understand that she's taking those words in the exact wrong context, even after all this time. Even after I've read people correct this misconception. So, Susan Collins is either an idiot, or her staff is filled with idiots, or they are all dissemblers. I'm inclined to believe a combination of all three. But at this point, she may as well be claiming that the Bearcats beat the Gators. THAT'S HOW INCORRECT AND/OR MISINFORMED AND/OR DUMB SHE IS. Terry Moran just sits there, saying nothing.
"Nevertheless, I believe that Napolitano is working very hard," Collins says, as if she could be trusted to evaluate hard work. Joe Lieberman makes an effort to immunize both Napolitano and Collins from criticism. He goes on to say, "We're not out to attack anybody...we're out to fix what went wrong."
"There has been an al Qaeda surge, it seems," says Moran. YES TERRY, I MEAN DUH. CHECK IT OUT.
What about sending GITMO prisoners back to Yemen? Harman says that the prison should close, but that the Yemenis should not go back to Yemen. She supports the opening of a new facility in Illinois. Al Qaeda, she says, "is a global problem...we need a global counter-terror problem." She goes on to say that the Obama administration must do a better job using the civil liberties mechanisms so that our rights do not get infringed on while stronger efforts against "the bad guys" get ramped up.
From there, things get awfully prosaic and scripted. Hoestra says there needs to be better coordination between agencies. Collins is amazed that we don't have a system in place that can detect the explosive, at airports. HOW WOULD SUCH A SYSTEM COME ABOUT SUSAN? By magic? Did you attempt to pass legislation, funding such a program? Because if you didn't attempt to fund such a program through legislation, then THAT'S WHY WE DON'T HAVE THESE PROTECTIONS.
Lieberman believes that Captain Crotchfire should have been dragged off to secret prison and beaten, because of war. He goes to advocate the retention of GITMO, on the grounds, basically, that because Obama is president, abuses will not continue. I'm afraid I don't subscribe to that belief: Oh, well, now that we have a NICE president, he can be trusted with all the unitary executive privileges that the people who voted for him complained bitterly about when Bush wielded them. OH, WELL, THE GUY I VOTED FOR...HE CAN TAP MY PHONE. Nonsense!
OH BURN. Terry Moran asks Hoekstra is he's "proud to have" raised money off the Crotchfire Bomb Attempt. He says that he is proud of who he is and that all he's trying to do is move the President in a policy direction. And that's a goddamned lie. He was attempting to raise money for a gubernatorial run, which has nothing to do with national security policy. I mean, imagine this crap: YOU FOLLOW MY POLICY, PRESIDENT OBAMA, OR SO HELP ME GOD I'LL TAKE THIS MONEY AND GO MANAGE THE PAROCHIAL CONCERNS OF THE STATE OF MICHIGAN!
So much has changed, in our attitudes about Yemen. Remember the carefree days when Yemen was a place we went to, as Americans, when we needed to avoid our ex-girlfriends?
Where did that paradise go?
Meanwhile, panel time! With George Will, David Sanger, Cynthia Tucker, and Ron Brownstein.
Will agrees that Captain Crotchfire should be beaten in a secret room, but that the attack represents an failure for al Qaeda as well, as their level of overall competence has fallen off. Which, I guess, makes it even more important that we extract information about their incompetence out of captain Crotchfire? No, I don't get it. Maybe George Will should spend more time listening to George Will.
Cynthia Tucker disagrees with Will's contention that there were too many dots to connect. She says that anyone who walks into the Nigerian Embassy and says the words "extremist" and "Yemen" should be treated as credible. She goes on to say that tomorrow's terror dad will be less likely to turn his son in if he knows that he's going to be sent to a black site.
Ron Brownstein seems to belittle our most heavily guarded prisons, calling them, dismissively, "conventional Supermax." Spend a night in one, Ron! Enjoy how "conventional" they are!
I can't wait to see what member of the panel thinks Tiger Woods needs to convert to Christianity!
Tucker says that she was pleased by Obama's "measured response." "Why allow al Qaeda to terrorize us?" She also says that "terrorism" is a better word than "man caused disasters," and she may be right, but the very fact that we have the time and space to argue over semantics with clear consciences is proof enough that either this threat isn't serious or that we are incapable of taking it seriously.
Meanwhile in Iran, the Green Revolution continues to unfold. Sanger points out that a few months ago, we might not have predicted its sustainability, but here we are, it's just not going away. Sanger notes that the internal strife complicates things for the President's effort in Iran, but I think it's pretty clear that if the Green Revolution is a problem, it's a pretty good problem to have. Will accedes that it's starting to look like "slow motion regime change." Sanger closes on a good point...got to be careful that we don't end up in a confrontation with Iran that aids the regime in tamping down the Green movement.
The panel doesn't seem too impressed with the idea that Rush Limbaugh is going to rally people behind the status quo where health care is concerned.
Wow. Circa 2010, let it be known that it's George Will noting that the current health care bill will exclude 23 million Americans, and it's Brownstein spitting the "illegal alien" talking point.
MEET THE PRESS
Well, Brennan is doing the Full Watusi or the Ful John Spencering or whatever it's called, because here he is on Meet The Press as well. Again, he mentions the Embassy closure in Yemen as a response to indications of a specific threat. However, Yemen is "not a new front" in the war on terror. Rather, there has already been "tremendous focus" on Yemen. WHY HASN'T BRIT HUME CONVERTED THE YEMENESE TO CHRISTIANITY YET?
Anyway, "the fight is being taken" to al Qaeda in Yemen. It's just not gone as far as "Nigerian underpants." But we are apparently "rolling" with those in the Yemeni government that could be called "our homies."
Dave Gregory is so super serious about this question that he gives it some trademarked journalistic ostinato: "The President said that those behind the Christmas Day plot will be held accountable. Will be held accountable. Should the American People expect military action by the United States in Yemen?" Brennan says we will take "strong action" against them. Gregory repeats: "Military action is possible?" Brennan replies: "Everything is possible." Magic is possible. We will poison their relationships. We will cancel their favorite shows. Bending the fabric of time and space is possible. Maybe we'll imprison Yemeni terrorists on a magical island.
David Gregory won't stop asking questions founded on bullshit premises until somebody makes him! "Let me talk more about the Christmas Day plot. Last week, the Homeland Security Secretary, Janet Napolitano, said the system worked." Brennan offers a new answer to this: "Every other day, the system has worked."
Did I miss the part where Abdulmutallab's father became a "prominent figure in Nigeria?" Maybe I missed it. But that feels to me like that part of BONFIRE OF THE VANITIES when the kid gets magically transformed into an honor student.
Anyway, Brennan repeats the greatest hits: threads should have been connected, Napolitano is doing a great job, he does the needed clarification ("What she was referring to, and she's clarified her remarks, the system worked after the incident"), everyone, including me, will be held accountable.
Anyway, David Gregory has a subscription to NEWSWEEK that he'd like to tell Brennan about. And in that NEWSWEEK, there was an article about the attempted assassination of a Saudi Prince, from an underoos assassin. Had Brennan heard? Yes. Brennan went to Saudi Arabia and "saw the room" where the attempt took place, and they disseminated information "broadly," but no, Brennan did not have one of those psychic flashes of insight that the guy on CSI: Miami has or anything. "There was no indication, though that Al Qaeda was trying to use that type of attack and that modus operandi against aircraft," Brennan says.
Gregory naturally, has to ask if we are "safer" than we were right after 9/11, and whether or not that sense of safety is going to run for President.
GREGORY: The-- the question of airline travel, what needs to be done to make airline travel safer?
Ground the planes. Never fly in a plane again. That will make them totally safe!
Brennan says: "There is no single silver bullet that's going to be able to allow us to have that type of assurance that we're going to able to stop individuals coming aboard planes. It has to be a package of things. It has to be technology, it has to be expertise, it has to be intelligence, it has to be cooperation with our international partners. And so, all this has to come together seamlessly. And it has to be done on a daily basis."
And it has to work perfect. And we have to ALWAYS BE LUCKY.
David Gregory is totally sick for those body scanners! But would they have detected the PETN? Brennan says that is unknown. The answer, by the way, could be "no."
Brennan goes on to reiterate his previous points that the criminal justice system is where Captain Crotchfire belongs. This is a good time to bring in a key exchange that took place during the sentencing hearing of Richard Reid, between Reid and Federal Judge William Young, that Glenn Greenwald pulled this week:
MR. REID: I further admit my allegiance to Osama bin Laden, to Islam, and to the religion of Allah. Okay? With regards to what you said about killing innocent people, I will say one thing. Your government has killed two million children in Iraq. Okay? If you want to think about something, 20 against two million, I don't see no comparison. Okay?
Your government has sponsored the rape and torture of Muslims in the prisons of Egypt and Turkey and Syria and Jordan with their money and with their weapons. Okay? I don't know, see what I done as being equal to rape and to torture, or to the deaths of the two million children in Iraq. Okay?
Thirdly. So, for this reason, I think I ought not apologize for my actions. I am at war with your country. I'm at war with them not for personal reasons but because they have murdered more than, so many children and they have oppressed my religion and they have oppressed people for no reason except that they say we believe in Allah.
This is the only reason that America sponsors Egypt. It's the only reason they sponsor Turkey. It's the only reason they back Israel. Okay? . . . .
THE COURT: There is all too much war talk here. And I say that to everyone with the utmost respect. Here in this court where we deal with individuals as individuals, and care for individuals as individuals, as human beings we reach out for justice.
You are not an enemy combatant. You are a terrorist. You are not a soldier in any war. You are a terrorist. To give you that reference, to call you a soldier gives you far too much stature. Whether it is the officers of government who do it or your attorney who does it, or that happens to be your view, you are a terrorist.
And we do not negotiate with terrorists. We do not treat with terrorists. We do not sign documents with terrorists. We hunt them down one by one and bring them to justice. So war talk is way out of line in this court.
You're a big fellow. But you're not that big. You're no warrior. I know warriors. You are a terrorist. A species of criminal guilty of multiple attempted murders. In a very real sense Trooper Santiago had it right when first you were taken off that plane and into custody and you wondered where the press and where the TV crews were and you said you're no big deal. You're no big deal.
I think that Judge Young is just the sort of leader this country would be prooud to come behind.
Meanwhile, Brennan goes on to serve Cheney:
BRENNAN: I'm very disappointed in the Vice President's comments. I'm neither Republican nor Democrat. I've worked for the past five administrations. And either the Vice President is willfully mischaracterizing this President's position, both in terms of the language he uses and the actions he taken-- he's taken. Or he's ignorant of the facts. And in either case, it doesn't speak well of what the Vice President's doing.
The clear evidence is that this President has ver-- been very, very strong. In his Inaugural Address he said, "We're at war with this international network of terrorists." We continue to say-- that we're at war with Al Qaeda. We're trying to give it some clarity. And we have taken the fight to them. We've continued, in fact, many of the-- of the activities of the previous administration.
I would not have come back into this government if I felt that this President was not committed to prosecuting this war against Al Qaeda. And every day, I see it in the President's face. I see it in the action's he's taken. And so, I'm confident that this country is in fact protected by this President's position on Al Qaeda and against-- terrorist activities. We're gonna continue to do this. We're gonna do it hard. We're gonna do it constantly.
Now, here are Michael Hayden and Michael Chertoff, for some reason. Hayden seems to attribute the rise of al Qaeda in Yemen to a single jailbreak that freed "two dozen al Qaeda members." It was like the movie CON AIR, I guess. Nicolas Cage wasn't there to stop them! Hayden goes on make mostly measured commentary in support of Brennan and Obama, only cautioning that releasing prisoners should not be decided on an "artificial timeline" and that "we made some mistakes."
Chertoff backs up the contention that this incident basically proves it's gotten harder to pull off attacks against the U.S. "And we've batted almost 100 percent." People should note that this incident is PART OF THAT BATTING AVERAGE. I mean, there are a lot of people who seem to believe this attack succeeded! That's weird!
Really, with Chertoff here, I'm waiting for one moment: is he going to get to pimp full-body scanners? And here we go!
CHERTOFF: I think that-- the-- the-- review that John's gonna undertake is gonna be very specific about that. It strikes me that what we're gonna look at are two possible areas. One is, was there a failure not to connect the dots in this incident, bringing them together, but to understand the significance of what those dots were? And I think that's an important part of the inquiry.
The second piece is, as John pointed out-- is there were scanners in the airport in Amsterdam that were not used. Why were they not used? (CLEARS THROAT) European-- the European Union has banned the use of these devices, because of privacy issues. And I think that's gonna cause another debate about where we strike the balance between privacy on the one hand and the right to life that every-- air traveler has when they get in an airplane.
Gregory wants to "come back to the issue" of scanners, and so he does, asking: " As you have pointed out numerous times-- and we talked about before, you are a consultant for a company that makes the type of body scanners that you advocate, although it's something that you advocated as Homeland Security Secretary-- as well. Would they have done the job? Would they have detected the amount of PETN that he had on board?"
Chertoff answers, "I believe that the answer is yes."
Chertoff is a former homeland security secretary and the founder of the Chertoff Group, a security consulting firm whose clients include manufacturers of full-body scanners.
I'm glad Gregory at least mentioned it.
Gregory gets into the issue of profiling with Hayden and Chertoff, neither of whom seem eager to suggest that we can racial profile our way to safety. Hayden notes that behavioral profiles are the more effective means of containing the terrorist threat, and Chertoff says that "relying on stereotypes is misleading and potentially dangerous." Gregory's handle on the issue makes it sound like it's a simple matter: " Islamic males between the age of 20 and 30 make up roughly 90 percent of that profile. Is that an inappropriate or appropriate way for law enforcement to be targeting individuals?"
The dumb thing here is that Gregory is conflating an easy task, identifying young Muslim males, with an exceedingly difficult task, identifying terrorists. One of the worst things we could do, right now, is commit a whole bunch of money and effort and time to become better at identifying Muslim males.
Chertoff points out the obvious, that al Qaeda has stepped up efforts to recruit people who "don't fit the stereotype" and who "are Western in background and appearance."
Asked about Cheney, Hayden responds: "I would ask on behalf of the community of which I used to be a part for everyone to kind of calm down a little bit. Stop hyperventilating."
Good luck! Hyperventilating is what we do best! Could you imagine how awful it would be if adequate oxygen started getting to people's brains, and they realized all at once what glittering, terrible incompetents they all were?
Anyway, Panel Time, and again, we suckle at the teat of history today, with Doris Kearns Goodwin, Tom Brokaw, David Brooks, and E.J. Dionne.
LET'S PUT THAT TIME A GUY TRIED TO EXPLODE HIS SCROTUM INTO PERSPECTIVE. Brokaw says it just goes to show that with all our awesome technology, we're still vulnerable against an enemy that's "nimble and cunning." Which sort of suggests that Captain Crotchfire was one of those two things! Brooks is all totally emo about it: the administration didn't do so well. "The country didn't do well." WHAT IS BROOKS TALKING ABOUT? The attack did not succeed! He goes on to say, though, that we're being "teenagers" if we expect our parents to succeed all the time, and that Brennan was "impressive."
I think, as a teenager, I was mad at my parents for not letting me put explosives in my pants. I think that Brooks had a weird misconception of the overall nobility of teens. Brooks says: "And if we throw a temper tantrum or start pointing fingers every time they have a failure, we're just not going to be a resilient country."
Who threw a temper tantrum, though? I really must have missed this. Peter King and Pete Hoekstra did, but most Americans celebrated Christmas and went to see Avatar and watched college bowl games and hung out in Times Square on New Years Eve while Cheney yammered "WAR...WAR...WAAARRRRRGGHHH" a billion times at Mike Allen, affecting no one but members of the media.
Jeez, David Brooks. Pop a Xanax or something!
Goodwin agrees with Gregory's powerful contention that Obama is a different president from Bush, based mainly upon a lot of stuff that neither president actually did.
Then we get to a part where Gregory and Brokaw are just spitting fancy sounding jargon at the screen. Leadership test! Threat matrix! New paradigm!
David Brooks says that in Iran, "the Obama administration has not been tough enough, especially on a moral level, in supporting the people on the streets." How does one demonstrate a "tough moral level," though? That sounds to me like a call for melodrama: chest-beating, garment-rending...if the Iranians were battling Snidely Whiplash over the rent money, maybe that would be appropriate. But I think that the regime would dearly love the excuse to just unleash hell, and that we'd be in the best position to give them one by getting all heavy-handed. Frankly, to suggest that Barack Obama needs to step in as the Green Revolution's personal source of moral authority is really condescending.
Oh, hey, BREAKING! The Obama administration, it seems, would like to get health care wrapped up as quickly as possible. If we didn't mention this every week on Sunday, maybe we'd lose sight of it. PLUS, BONUS OBVIOUSNESS: "the Democrats, for the next nine months, want to have a new two-stroke engine: jobs and fiscal responsibility."
You heard it here 43,283rd!
Dionne: "And I think that, look, if unemployment is 10 percent still in November, the Democrats are going to have a very tough time in this election." Wow. We are really cracking the Da Vinci code of politics, today!
Now they are getting into the history and the decade and some cartoon that David Gregory saw that leads him to say:
But, Doris, a lot made about the notion of this being a lost decade--lost opportunities, lost wealth not just for the rich, but for Americans all over the country with the stock market going down so far.
Not just for the rich! Why, David Gregory is concerned about how the extreme wealth of the extremely wealthy is affecting the rest of Americans who are heavily involved in the stock market! Why, that even includes the moderately wealthy! The entire MEET THE PRESS prism of humanity is refracting the bejeezus out of history!
And that leads to a ton of poetic, self-indulgent waxings about the Kennedy administration and Freedom Riders and the end of the David Tennant era on DOCTOR WHO and the Bay of Pigs and "passionate outsiders" and how the Green Revolution is like Iran's version of the "tea parties" (except that something real is at stake in Iran, and it's being fought for by adults, and oh yeah PEOPLE ARE DYING THERE) and really, WHO IS GOING TO BE BRAVE ENOUGH TO CONVERT TIGER WOODS TO CHRISTIANITY? Will it be you, Tom Brokaw?
And thus we come to the merciful end of this first liveblog of a new year. Let's close with the same lament I've made for the past few years, that this is now the eleventh year in a row that we have failed to achieve the super high-tech reality that was first envisioned by the brave creators of SPACE: 1999.
A few weeks ago, Newsweek produced a video, which condensed the major news events of the past decade into one seven-minute mashup video. This interested me! So, I merrily sat down at my desk, queued it up, and prepared to watch it unfold. At the time, I thought: "Oh, this will be fun."
It was not fun. Not at all. You know what? This past decade was pretty terrible!
The good thing about memory is that it protects you from realizations like this. And the nice thing about history is that it unfolds very slowly as you page back through it, with an emphasis on patiently allowing the reader to make sense of it all. But as I watched the decade replay itself before my eyes, it was a weird combination of warp speed images and strangely elongated memories as the "what I lived through" and the "how I lived through it" attempted to co-exist in my brain at the same time.
As the video began, the first big event was the Y2K concerns that everyone had at the beginning of the decade. This was a breezy, easy way to begin. I recall, perhaps incorrectly, that Y2K was this big concern that was rather easily surmounted, and maybe wasn't that big a deal to begin with. For an instant, I smiled inwardly. I relaxed, just a little bit. I allowed myself to lower my guard.
That was a big mistake! Because a few instants later, the decade was off and running, it's awfulness blooming anew in my face. September 11th. Katrina. Lehmann Brothers. War, collapse, ruination, privation, recession. This decade, and its relentless pummel, was coming at me hard, like a shot to the face. And as an audience to it and participant in it, I could do nothing else but take it.
And damned if after it was all over, I didn't think to myself, "Wow. This must be like how it felt to be Harry Whittington."
Let's cast our minds back to Saturday, February 11, 2006. Harry Whittington was, at the time, a 78 year old lawyer who lived in Texas, and whose life, as far as history was concerned, was largely unremarkable, save for one thing: he was an intimate of Vice President Dick Cheney. And on that day, Whittington and Cheney were members of a hunting party, casting after quail at the Armstrong Ranch in Texas. The two men were reportedly friends. Maybe even BFFs -- I do not know. What's important is that on the morning of February 11th, Harry Whittington awoke safe in the knowledge that Dick Cheney was among his well-wishers. That's not nothing! There are billions of people across this planet who Dick Cheney literally wishes to be visited with some sort of indiscriminate harm.
Now, something should be said about the "hunting" that the two men were engaged in that day. Cheney's hunting party was not actually on a painstaking hunt for elusive quail. If I recall correctly, the Armstrong Ranch was some sort of hunting facility that invited hunting parties and then provided them with quail. I seem to recall that the whole point of the enterprise was that the quail were really easy to shoot -- maybe they were drugged, or bred for stupidity, or literally placed in front of men with guns.
The point is, the task of hunting wasn't supposed to be hard. It was to be like a fishing charter, where hooks are baited with marlins, and people cheer as you heave them out of the water. These were the Y2Quail of the avian universe -- an easily surmountable challenge, that wasn't that big a deal to begin with.
Now, there are all sorts of diverging accounts about what happened, who was standing where, who was drinking what, whose fuck-up set off the whole unfortunate chain of events. The official summary of what happened goes like this: "Whittington downed a bird and went to retrieve it. While he was out of the hunting line, another covey was flushed and Cheney swung on a bird and fired, striking Whittington in the face, neck and chest."
Whittington ended up hospitalized for his wounds. On Monday, he was moved out of the intensive care unit. The following morning, Whittington suffered a small heart attack because of shrapnel that had strayed too close to his heart. He was subsequently moved back into intensive care and treated anew. With the Christmas Crotchfire attack fresh in our memories, should I point out that the Bush administration waited a day to inform the world that the second in line to the Oval Office had shot a guy? No? Okay. Moving on!
The most extraordinary thing about this whole story occurred on February 17, when the finally discharged Whittington held a press conference, and said this:
My family and I are deeply sorry for everything Vice President Cheney and his family have had to deal with. We hope that he will continue to come to Texas and seek the relaxation that he deserves.
That's right. Harry Whittington, late of being shot in the face, went in front of the press and apologized for that time he allowed his face to get in front of somebody else's bullets. Gosh! My bad!
Look, look: accidents do happen. And you have to concede the ambiguity of the incident. You just have to. What I'm saying is that no one in the wide world would have thought any less of Harry Whittington if he had declined to cast himself as the guilty party, let alone take responsibility for ensuring that the State of Texas would continue to receive Dick Cheney's tourism dollars.
But you know what? I get Harry Whittington. I really do. He was just going with the flow of the times in which he was living. By 2006, we had all become inured to the conditions this decade was setting. Whatever bad stuff had happened to us, this decade taught us one indelible thing about it: we were wrong, and it was our fault.
After September 11th, when we wanted to seek out and destroy the murderers who had greenlit the most awful attack on our country in our recent memory, we were told, after a brief, furtive attempt to do the right thing, "No, no. You're wrong. What's needed is for us to wage war against a country of people who had nothing to do with that. If you want to be thought of as serious, you'll go along." After Hurricane Katrina had devastated the Gulf Coast, when we cried that it was FLAT OUT INSANE that we couldn't adequately take care of our own fellow citizens, we were told, "No, no. You're wrong. We're actually doing a heck of a job. How dare you say otherwise! You are bad, and you should feel bad."
Did you lose your home this decade, and suspect you were taken in by some shady mortgage broker? Well, this decade told us, "Shut up, you. That's your fault. Do you want Rick Santelli and a gang of traders from the Chicago Mercantile Exchange to stab you in the eyes, with pitchforks? Because that's what will happen if you keep bitching."
Did you want some measure of justice to be meted out after all the torture and detention and surveillance and rampant immorality that occurred during the Bush administration, and you had voted for a guy who said All That Would Change? Well, you were told: "Shut up, you. Do you really want to put the country through that sort of pain? All of that happened in order to protect you, you goddamned ingrates. So if you know what's best for you, you'll shut up and Move Forward."
And tell me, after the entire economy collapsed under the weight of what could be charitably called a cascading series of interconnected, interplanetary fuck-ups at the hands of the most amoral greedheads that Wall Street had ever produced, did you want to INSIST that a pound of flesh, at the very least, be taken from all of those people responsible? Well, you know how that worked out: "No, no. You're wrong. You need to let the sage geniuses who run the show for the Bush and the Obama administration put an unbelievable amount of your money into sacks, so we can cart it off and give it to those very same interplanetary fuck-up greedheads as a burnt offering to fix the damage, because you are all too damn stupid to understand the Dark Mysteries of the Economy. How dare you act like you know better! This was all your fault in the first place!"
That was the story of this decade. We got shot, in the face, again and again, and it was always our fault, we were always wrong.
In a few hours, this decade will come to a merciful end. Maybe the Tweens (And can we all agree to call the next decade the Tweens? Because that eloquently captures where this nation is in terms of maturity level.) will be better. Maybe it won't. But the time for moving on is nigh.
Still, it's not too late to do the right thing. Why don't you all take one of these final passing moments to look this passing decade in the face before it departs, and, at long last, apologize to it?
Back in February, Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal provided the rebuttal to an address from President Barack Obama, where he would go on to express his passion for not paying attention to volcanoes. If you were watching MSNBC that night, you were treated to the sound of somebody muttering "Oh, God" as Jindal walked to the cameras. That person was Chris Matthews, who isn't exactly known for being able to keep his internal monologue from manifesting itself externally. He offered this weird explanation for his outburst:
I was taken aback by that peculiar stagecraft, the walking from somewhere in the back of this narrow hall, this winding staircase looming there, the odd anti-bellum [sic] look of the scene. Was this some mimicking of a president walking along the state floor to the East Room?
If you want to start telling me that columnists can't make inferences which you disagree with--and, you know, they want to run a campaign online to pressure newspapers into suppressing minority views on this subject--I think that's really inappropriate. It may well be that he is drawing inferences from data that most scientists reject -- so, you know, fine, I welcome anyone to make that point. But don't make it by suggesting that George Will shouldn't be allowed to make the contrary point. Debate him.
Yes! Let's have a debate between people who pursue actual science and draw conclusions from their evidence and a columnist that counters by saying, "No, no. What you really mean to conclude is the opposite, because I say so!"
Of all the captivatingly bizarre segments in which Glenn Beck indulged his paranoia gland, none were as magical as that time he went around New York City, yelling at the buildings for being socialists.
MARK WHICKER PENS THE MOST TASTELESS COLUMN OF THE YEAR
Earlier this year, Jaycee Dugard was rescued after years as the captive of her abductor and rapist, Phillip Garrido. How to make sense of her terrible privation? Well, if you are Orange County Register sports columnist Mark Whicker, you dust off that listicle of great sports moments of the decade that's been moldering in some file cabinet and use it as a disgusting framing device for human tragedy!
It doesn't sound as if Jaycee Dugard got to see a sports page.
Box scores were not available to her from June 10, 1991 until Aug. 31 of this year.
She never saw a highlight. Never got to the ballpark for Beach Towel Night. Probably hasn't high-fived in a while.
And so commences the most flat out INSANE piece of writing that was belched into this world in the past calendar year. Here's how it ends: "Congratulations, Jaycee. You left the yard." And then, you start bleeding from the brain.
O'REILLY CREEPILY STALKS AMANDA TERKEL
Here's the backstory. Bill O'Reilly was asked to deliver a keynote speech at a luncheon for an organization that raises money for victims of rape. That was strange, because previously, O'Reilly had publicly been contemptuous of rape victims. A blog called NewsHounds picked up on this and produced some pieces about it. The matter got more attention when MSNBC's Keith Olbermann picked up on the piece and took to the airwaves to repeatedly bash O'Reilly over it. Because of Olbermann's broadcasts, the matter got a lot of attention from a lot of sources. One of the many people who provided some boilerplate coverage of the matter was Amanda Terkel, of ThinkProgress.
O'Reilly was terribly aggrieved by all of the criticism, so he did what he always does: send out his creepy ambush team, led by Jesse Watters, to settle his scores for him. Here's the intoxicatingly dumb thing about this! The person who they chose to stalk WEREN'T the bloggers that originally broke the story. It wasn't anyone at MSNBC, who widely broadcast the story and garnered the lion's share of eyeballs to it. No! It was Terkel, who was one of many people to blog about it. What compounds the ridiculousness of this whole matter was that Terkel hadn't done ANYTHING to actually advance the story...until O'Reilly decided to stalk her while she was on vacation!
Why Terkel? Well, I'm guessing that O'Reilly's team had deduced that of all the people they could confront, she was of the smallest physical stature and the most female! Such bravery!
POLITICO CUDDLES WITH DICK CHENEY
Dick Cheney is an unemployed man with a lot of dyspeptic grievances to bleat out into the world. But for whatever reason, he lacks the means to type out his malingerings himself, so it's a lucky thing that John Harris and Jim VandeHei have agreed to be the webmasters of his LiveJournal, which people call The Politico. There, he can make all sorts of nonsensical assertions without ever being asked a follow-up question. This is the journalistic equivalent of watching two succubi re-enact some of the more graphic and degrading scenes from Requiem For A Dream, on the internet. I could say a lot more, but let's face it: I'd only be repeating Alex Pareene's excellent summation of this wonderful, life-giving relationship.
THE NEW REPUBLIC SMEARS SOTOMAYOR
In May of 2009, everyone was curious about the people that President Obama might end up naming to the Supreme Court, but only one journalist was willing to take a bunch of blanket assertions, anonymous quotes, and pure spin and then package that in a story that pretended to be the definitive "Case Against Sonia Sotomayor." That journalist was The New Republic's Jeffrey Rosen -- who presented this as "a series of reports...about the strengths and weaknesses of the leading candidates on Barack Obama's Supreme Court shortlist." Strangely, that "series" never really ended up materializing, and based upon the timing of it all, one wondered if that was, in itself, a little bit of pretense. But what was most preposterous was the state of Rosen's research before he attempted to write this piece, which Rosen admitted to:
I haven't read enough of Sotomayor's opinions to have a confident sense of them, nor have I talked to enough of Sotomayor's detractors and supporters, to get a fully balanced picture of her strengths.
But...but...but...I thought this was "The Case Against Sotomayor?" Maybe it should have been called, "A Collection of Rumors and Semi-Thought Through Ramblings About Sotomayor."
NEWSWEEK'S SARAH PALIN COVER
In November, Newsweek rolled out a cover story on Sarah Palin, headlined on the cover with the title, "How Do You Solve A Problem Like Sarah." Whatever "solutions" they had on offer ended up being irrelevant after they decided to run a picture of Palin, dressed in athletic gear, on their cover. The image, which previously was featured in an appropriate context as an image in Runners World magazine, immediately drew fire from Palin. Newsweek EIC Jon Meacham responded with some incomprehensible sentences, fashioned from words in the English language that he had bludgeoned to death:
"We chose the most interesting image available to us to illustrate the theme of the cover, which is what we always try to do," Meacham said, in a statement provided to Huffington Post. "We apply the same test to photographs of any public figure, male or female: does the image convey what we are saying? That is a gender-neutral standard."
And people say Palin's Tweets are a mess of word soup! What Meacham would say, if he were being honest, is: "We had so little confidence that readers would understand our substantive criticism of Palin, we were compelled to drive the point home with a pointless and superficial jab at her."
WASHINGTON POST PLANS SALONS WITH LOBBYISTS
Ugh. This was the story of the year where journalistic crapulence was concerned. Basically, the Washington Post, in search of a new revenue stream, decided it would be a good idea if they charged lobbyists between $25,000 and $250,000 to attend a series of fancy parties, with the promise of access to lawmakers, reporters, and canapes. Attendees were promised the opportunity to hobnob with members of Congress and officials from the White House. Politico caught them with their pants down, and the paper's higher-ups all pretended to not know anything about it -- or at least anything about the more seamy aspects of it. Eventually, some poor middle-manager schmuck was made the fall guy, and the Post washed their hands of the whole thing.
As I said, "Ugh." More eloquent responses came from Thomas Frank, who called it "A moment of rare, piquant hypocrisy," and Bill Moyers, who sadly gets it exactly right when he says it was "a glimpse into how things really work in Washington."
HuffingtonPost.com | Jason Linkins | January 5, 2010