Lakin -- a Birther cause-celebre -- is facing a court martial after refusing to report for deployment to Afghanistan because he doesn't believe President Barack Obama is eligible to be President of the United States.
It's one of the more unfortunate instances of Birther Kool-Aid overdose. And now, McInerney has jumped aboard. Dave Weigel reports that McInerney is -- or at least was -- "a serious person": "He's a West Point graduate who ran the Alaskan air command during the Exxon Valdez disaster."
Of course, he also contributes to Fox News as a military analyst. Per Media Matters:
McInerney has been interviewed on Fox News at least four times in the last year, most recently on the August 29 edition of Fox News' America's News HQ. During that time, he has appeared in taped reports on five editions of Fox News' premiere "news" program, Special Report.* He has also written occasional columns for FoxNews.com's Fox Forum. Between January 1, 2002, and May 13, 2008, McInerney made 144 Fox News appearances.
McInerney's support for Lakin's cause does seem to be a bit at odds with his written contributions to Fox Forum. That is not to say he's not critical of Obama -- he is a fierce one. But none of his work belies any fascination with the Birther fetish. Here, he seems to address Obama as the legitimate leader of the country. He does the same in his most recent offering -- though it's pretty confusing piece, with grave misunderstandings about counterinsurgency strategy, that seems to argue that Obama should just fire everyone involved in the war effort and then, maybe, resign himself.
Nevertheless, McInerney is a full-blown Birther fanatic, now. Here's his statement:
For the foregoing reasons, it is my opinion that LTC Lakin's request for discovery relating to the President's birth record in Hawaii is absolutely essential to determining not merely his guilt or innocence but to reassuring all military personnel once and for all for this President whether his service as Commander in Chief is Constitutionally proper. He is the one single person in the Chain of Command that the Constitution demands proof of natural born citizenship. This determination is fundamental to our Republic, where civilian control over the military is the rule. According to the Constitution, the Commander is Chief must now, in the face of serious -- and widely-held -- concerns that he is ineligible, either voluntarily establish his eligibility by authorizing release of his birth records or this court must authorize their discovery. The invasion of his privacy is utterly trivial compared to the issues at stake here. Our military MUST have confidence their Commander in Chief lawfully holds his office and absent which confidence grievous consequences may ensue.
If you spend enough time getting to know bloggers, you'll find that plenty of them have a story or two to tell about their uneasy relationship with traditional media outlets. Most of the time, the story will be about how some obscure writer took on an under-reported story as a passion project, only to watch as weeks later, outfits with bigger megaphones pick up on the news and reap acclaim without acknowledging the folks that did the heavy lifting. Occasionally, however, you find stories like the one Bill Conroy is telling, which go a step beyond.
Conroy writes for The Narco News Bulletin, a website dedicated to covering the news of the Drug War. As Conroy describes, for six years now, the site has been covering what's come to be called the "House of Death" story. (Following on the heels of Alfredo Corchado of the Dallas Morning News, who originally broke the story.)
Here's the essentials. Ten years ago, a drug runner named Guillermo Eduardo Ramirez Peyro -- also known as "Lalo" -- became a paid informant for the Immigration And Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency. Lalo helped ICE target a drug cartel operating in the vicinity of Mexico's dangerous and anarchic border town, Ciudad Juarez. But even as Lalo played informant on the ICE payroll, his own involvement with the cartel deepened. And troublingly so: Lalo assisted the Juarez cartel in carrying out multiple murders (at the so-called "House of Death'). What did U.S. law enforcement agencies know about Lalo's participation in these crimes, when did they know it, and what have they done to cover up their knowledge? Conroy has doggedly pursued the answers to those questions.
And, years after Conroy blazed the path, other news organizations have gotten around to picking up the story. Here, for example, is an NPR report on the matter from February of this year, stepping on what Narco News had long set up on -- it was Narco News that actually coined the term "House of Death." Of NPR's appropriation, Conroy notes their failure to "acknowledge Narco News for its efforts in advancing the story, even as these media outlets borrow heavily from government documents uncovered by Narco News." But it's another reporter, Kimberly Dvorak, that had Conroy spitting fire back in March of this year. And for good reason: she's just straight up ripped Narco News off.
Of course, what makes all of this backstory interesting and current is the fact that Dvorak has been at the center at another recent bit of fabrication. In fact, if you have a passing familiarity with Dvorak at all, it probably from that time she took some hot Minuteman rumor-farts and made up an entire story about the Los Zetas gang seizing two ranches in Laredo, Texas, "in what could be deemed an act of war." But as it turns out her story could be deemed an act of total bullshit. And with the help of local law enforcement, Talking Points Memo published the
essential debunkingof that nonsense.
And Obama's nominee to head the DEA, Michele Leonhart, is all up in the Casa-de-Muerte mix, which means that if her stalled nomination gets into first gear, it'll drag that sucker with it through her confirmation hearings.
Of Dvorak, Conroy writes:
She has been "writing for ... the Washington Times and a number of smaller publications" as well as making regular appearances on a conservative talk radio shows, according to her bio on the conservative blog Red County.
Since last November, Dvorak has written about a half dozen or so stories on the House of Death, with headlines such as "House of death: U.S. Government cover-up unveiled," and most recently, "House of Death ICE Informant escapes deportation charges to Mexico." Those stories appeared in a conservative online publication called the Examiner.com.
In none of these House of Death stories does Dvorak mention Narco News' coverage, yet she seems to be quite well versed, literally, on that coverage.
How well versed? Well versed enough to appropriate as her own work. Conroy goes on to cite numerous examples, which include the following:
From a Narco News story published March 24, 2010 [emphasis added in all excerpts to follow]:
After some five years of battling in the immigration courts, ... the BIA has finally ruled in Ramirez Peyro's favor.
From a Dvorak story published March 25, 2010, by the Examiner.com:
After more than five years of battles in the immigration courtroom...The Appeal's board ruled in Guillermo Eduardo Ramirez Peyro or 'Lalo's' favor...
This murderous rampage went on for more than six months and nearly cost the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) lives as well as immediate family members.
• From a Dec. 8, 2005, story published by Narco News:
Between August 2003 and mid-January of 2004, a dozen people were kidnapped, tortured and butchered at the House of Death in Juarez...When the informant's role came to light, after his activities nearly cost the lives of a DEA agent and his family...
• Again, from the Nov. 2, 2009, Examiner.com story:
...Unfortunately for ICE the car is pulled over by a marked Juarez police car, which leads to Santillan calling Lalo to check on the identity of the occupants in the car...
The DEA agent's car was pulled over a short time later in Juarez by a marked municipal police car...Santillan wanted the informant to check out the driver, to determine his real identity, ...
• From a Feb. 2, 2010, story published by the Examiner.com:
...To this day the JAT report has been buried in Washington D.C. and the back and forth inside the judicial system and obvious judge shopping is further proof the U.S. government doesn't want Lalo to testify.
• From an Aug. 25, 2007, story published by Narco News:
To this day, a joint DEA/ICE investigation into the House of Death, called the JAT report, has been suppressed by both agencies...[ICE and DEA, both, interestingly, based in Washington, D.C.]
Typically, when you find yourself refereeing this sort of dispute, you have to take a look at the examples provided and render a judgment as to how close to the border of the strike zone the alleged offenses are. But Conroy saves the best for last -- an example that hangs fat over the middle of the plate.
...Bill Weaver, a law professor at the University of Texas at El Paso who has written extensively about the murder case, stated that a letter from DEA in December 2006 stated, "that his FOIA request for the JAT is being jammed up because some documents are in South America and due to national security concerns."
The NSWBC's Weaver, who is a university professor with a law degree, also smelled a foul deed afoot after receiving the DEA's Dec. 6, 2006, letter informing him that his FOIA request for the JAT is being jammed up because some documents are in South America and due to national security concerns.
Oh, snap. See what Dvorak did there? She didn't merely rip off Narco News verbatim, she took their reporting and used it to fabricate a quote.
Weaver told the Huffington Post, "Her work seems to be a rather bad example of intellectual laziness and a desire to get ahead without paying the freight. In the event, after reading what she and Bill have written, let me say that her quote does not reflect what I said - she seems to have just lifted it from Bill and attributed it to me. I vaguely recall that I found her to be rather unprofessional and somewhat dense. She also cites me as a 'law professor.' That would be tough to be since UTEP doesn't have a law school."
Reached by the Huffington Post, Dvorak strenuously denies either stealing or leaning heavily on Conroy's content, stressing that she's "worked with all the players involved...spent hundreds of hours with "Lalo," and was able to work with Congressional members who finally procured Lalo's release from a 6 year prison sentence." She adds (emphasis hers): "I got all my information from [Lalo] and he would be happy to tell you himself I got the information from him. He will also tell you Conroy was not entirely accurate in his stories."
So there you have it: Lalo -- the guy who is implicated as an accessory to 12 murders while serving as an ICE informant -- would tell you that Conroy's reporting is "not entirely accurate."
If you had come to me in the past couple of years and told me that you were working on a movie called "Clear Blue Tuesday," I would have said, "Wow! A movie about feminine hygiene products? That could be really cool and edgy, even gloriously feminist with the right approach!" But then, if you had told me it was actually a movie about the September 11th attacks, I would have said, "Oh, well, I'm really not sure about that." And then, if you had added, "And it's a rock musical," I would have definitely sought a way to extricate myself from the conversation.
But that's just me! If you haven't already heard, "Clear Blue Tuesday" -- which opens Friday in Greenwich Village -- focuses on the lives of eleven people, post-9/11. As Michael Wilson at the New York Times's CityRoom blog reports, as the calendar passes through the anniversaries of the attacks, an "attractive and eccentric cast of New Yorkers fall in love and split up, lose jobs, get jobs, shack up -- and sing, roughly one song per character." It's really involved!
The songs are all over the map, stylistically and thematically, and include one called "Help Me Help You," sung by an executive firing a depressed underling, and "Spank It," a hair-metal piece about playing the drums. In another song, "Reckless," the singer's character -- a harpist and science fiction fanatic -- imagines marrying an alien in space in a scene replete with twinkling stars and floating planets.
If the project has anything going for it, it's that it's heart seems to be in the right place. The actors in the movie have all written their own songs and everyone clearly believes in the power of art to heal. One of the participants is Jan O'Dell, a 73-year-old Off-Broadway actress who received a brain injury on 9/11 after she was struck by debris from the World Trade Center. Wilson says O'Dell -- who comes across as the sort of woman you'd be lucky to know -- is the "beating and wounded heart" at the center of the film.
Maybe it's just this line from the Times write-up that bothers me:
The film, often doggedly cheerful, will not please uniformly, and only die-hard fans of musicals, very earnest people and Sept. 11 completists are likely to digest it whole.
I sort of hope there's actually no such thing as a "Sept. 11 completist."
Ben Smith's been digging into whether Newt Gingrich's call -- "There should be no mosque near Ground Zero in New York so long as there are no churches or synagogues in Saudi Arabia" -- echoes a similar statement from Italian dictator Benito Mussolini. His research has yielded some edifying results. The good news, for Gingrich, is that he wasn't, technically, remixing the words of one of the world's best-known fascists. Here's the bad news:
"Newt is more to the right of Mussolini on this," emailed Victoria de Graziathe, director of Columbia University's Institute for the Study of Europe, who wrote that Mussolini positioned himself as an Islamophile "to bug the British, also because he was an anti-Semite, also because he liked Nietzsche and Nietzsche was interested in the Koran."
For my part, I've been deeply puzzled over the whole "no mosques at Ground Zero until there's a synagogue at Mecca" line, and not just because there's already a mosque in the neighborhood.
Aye, verily, all nations that aspire to be part of modern civilization should be welcoming of people of all religious faiths. But there's at least one nation that took those aspirations, put them on paper, and made it law: the United States. It makes zero sense for us to hold our principles hostage, demand that other nations that do not measure up to our standards hew to the ideals we whimsically abandon, and then pretend that that is some sort of bargain. That's the sort of thing that someone very daft or very disingenuous would say. But you have to be dafter or more disingenuous than Benito Mussolini, as it turns out!
A majority of New York state voters think that Muslims have the right to "build a mosque near Ground Zero," but 53 percent to 39 percent think "that because of the sensitivities of 9/11 relatives, Muslims should not be allowed to build the mosque near Ground Zero." I'm not sure how a majority can believe simultaneously that someone has the right to do something but that they "shouldn't be allowed" to do it, so it's not clear to me what to make of that.
The poll gets on the wrong foot with many of its questions, most notably: "Some people say that because of American freedom of religion, Muslims have the right to build the mosque near Ground Zero. Do you agree or disagree?" First, as Serwer points out, "the mosque isn't a mosque," and for what it's worth, there already is a mosque four blocks from the World Trade Center site. Second, it's irrelevant what "some people say" about religious freedom -- Constitutional rights exist. I'd be interested in knowing how respondents answer a question like, "The Constitution accords Muslims the right to build a mosque near Ground Zero. Do you agree or disagree?" to see how people answer when the "some say" Straw Men aren't there to let them off the hook.
Serwer goes on to note that while New Yorkers strongly back GOP gubernatorial contender Rick Lazio's call to have state Attorney General Andrew Cuomo "investigate the project's finances," they aren't particularly amenable to the idea of Lazio becoming governor.
Angry walrus and potential presidential candidate -- who knows? -- John Bolton has a piece in today's Daily Beast, and it really is a dilly! It's all about how President Barack Obama's stewardship of the Iraq War -- which amounts to little more than adhering to the Status of Forces Agreement agreed to by former President George W. Bush in 2008 -- will "wreck" Iraq. Along the way, we get this wonderful rewrite of history:
One of the main criticisms of President Bush's decision to overthrow Saddam Hussein was that the United States had attacked the wrong target. Iraq wasn't the real threat, said these critics, it was Iran. In fact, they argued, by eliminating Saddam -- who long advertised himself as the Arabs' defender against the Persians -- Bush had actually strengthened Iran, laying the foundation for Tehran to expand its influence throughout the Middle East.
Now there's a toxic intellectual asset for you! Insofar as contemporaneous criticism of the Iraq War held that military resources were being misallocated, the most fervent critics held that it was our enemies in Afghanistan -- not Iran -- that were the real threat. That Iraq served, largely, as a massive opportunity cost to Afghanistan, is something that Obama spoke out on before his presidential campaign even heated up, and while proponents of getting out of both Iraq and Afghanistan were probably disappointed in this, during the campaign he constantly promised to to refocus on the Afghanistan theatre. If anyone was criticizing the Bush administration for not taking the fight to Tehran, it was his overambitious neo-con allies, who believed that they possessed Green Lantern's power ring.
As to how the removal of Saddam Hussein would create a vacuum for Iran to fill, well, this is what is known as a natural consequence of going to war in Iraq in the first place. But don't take my word for it! As one Army officer, Matthew Valkovic, wrote to Thomas Ricks earlier this year, "Saddam, the Sunni, pan Arab bulwark, made sure Shia and Persian influence was kept at bay. Now, with Saddam no more, the balance has clearly shifted the other way."
And here's Iraqi Parliamentarian Khalaf al-Ulayyan, testifying before the House Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on International Organizations, Human Rights and Oversight, in June of 2008:
DANA ROHRABACHER: Maybe if you could just...if it's possible to answer with a yes or no, would you have preferred that the United States not have conducted the military operations it did in order to rid Iraq of Saddam Hussein? Would you have preferred that we not do that now, in retrospect...
KHALAF al-ULAYYAN, Member of the Iraqi Parliament: We would prefer if it didn't happen because this led to the destruction of the country.
ROHRABACHER: So you would have preferred the United States not to have gone in and got rid of Saddam Hussein?
al-ULAYYAN: The United States got rid of one person, but they brought hundreds of persons who are worse than Saddam Hussein.
ROHRABACHER: That's a fair answer.
al-ULAYYAN: And, unfortunately, now Iran is going into Iraq, and this is under the umbrella of the American occupation of Iraq.
Of course, the Iraq War ended up being a boon to every bad actor in the region. It meant de facto appeasement of al Qaeda and the Taliban -- who were allowed to reconstitute themselves in Afghanistan and Pakistan -- and it's surely done little to prevent Hamas and Hezbollah from being empowered and emboldened.
Of course, Bush's folly was the belief that deposing Saddam would lead to some grandiose regional restructuring in which these radicalized regimes collapse under the threat of U.S. intervention, paving the way for democracy to flourish everywhere. Those success stories never happened. For a long while, the Bush administration attempted to stretch its case and pretend that Libya was some sort of success story in this regard, when that nation agreed to dismantle its WMD program in December of 2003. Bush lifted trade sanctions against Libya nine months later.
But in 2009, Lockerbie bomber Abdelbeset Ali Mohmed al Megrahi was freed from prison in Scotland and returned to a hero's welcome in Libya. And that's when everyone decided it'd be best if we just forgot all about how Libya was supposed to be the ultimate example in this silly Iraq-War-begets-democracy fantasia.
Bolton now believes that it's Obama's adherence to the Status of Forces Agreement that "will leave Iran the increasingly dominant player in an ever-more-dangerous region." I'll not dispute the potential, or the potential danger, of Iran being a dominant player. But I'm sorry to inform Mr. Bolton that we crossed the Rubicon on that inevitability on March 20, 2003.
ThinkProgress's Alex Seitz-Wald has video of Hatch giving an interview to Salt Lake City's Fox 13 News, in which he offers up soft-spoken yet strong support for the Cordoba Initiative's Park51 project in Manhattan.
HATCH: Let's be honest about it, in the First Amendment, religious freedom, religious expression, that really express matters to the Constitution. So, if the Muslims own that property, that private property, and they want to build a mosque there, they should have the right to do so. The only question is are they being insensitive to those who suffered the loss of loved ones? We know there are Muslims killed on 9/11 too and we know it's a great religion. I know a lot of Muslim people who I have a very great regard for, not the least of which is Muhammad Ali. He's a great friend of mine. But as far as their right to build that mosque, they have that right.
The question is, should they? Is it insensitive not to, in the eyes of the majority of New Yorkers? It's going to come down to New York and what New York decides to do.
Hatch went on to add that as a legal scholar, "I have the tendency, when it comes to religious liberty issues, to always uphold the rights of legitimate churches... I just think that what's made this country great is we have religious freedom. That's not the only thing, but it's one of the most important things in the Constitution."
Hatch has something of a personal stake in the matter as well, and he recalls an instance in which the late Senator Ted Kennedy lent a hand to get a Mormon temple built in Massachusetts, despite some local obstruction.
Hatch also seems to have a proper grasp of geography:
There's a question of whether it's too close to the 9/11 area, but it's a few blocks away, it isn't right there. Frankly, there are a lot of people who feel, including the mayor of New York, that they should have every right to do it, and that New Yorkers should support them...And there's a huge, I think, lack of support throughout the country for Islam to build that mosque there, but that should not make a difference if they decide to do it. I'd be the first to stand up for their rights.
Back in 2008, when the military was struggling to maintain recruiting levels, the Army launched a program at Fort Jackson in South Carolina geared toward giving aspiring soldiers the chance to earn their GED while training for an Army career. The program appears to have been a success.
According to this AP report, "About 11.6 percent left before a two-year term of service was up, compared with 16 percent who earned GED certificates on their own and then enlisted." Program beneficiaries tell the same tale:
For 20-year-old Jayson Reimers of Seattle, who had a young son to support, the GED program was a ticket out of a dead-end part-time mall job. The teachers helped him brush up on subjects he missed when he dropped out of school as a senior, and he passed the GED test on his second try.
"I wanted to work on cars. I wanted a skill," said Reimers, who will head to mechanics' school here.
Sadly, this program is about to be shuttered. Colonel Kevin Shwedo, Fort Jackson's "deputy commander," says, "We're a victim of our own recruiting success."
That's one way of looking at it. Here's another way:
The GED pilot program known as the Army's prep school started here in summer 2008, when the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan left the service scrambling to find soldiers. But since then, with the economy in a downward spiral and jobs hard to come by, more people with diplomas have been enlisting.
Brooker seems to have ably availed himself of actual facts, probably because he broke with traditions and actually went looking for them, and decided to repeat them to readers, almost as if he doesn't want to insult their intelligence!
"The 'Ground Zero mosque' is a genuine proposal," Brooker notes, "but it's slightly less provocative than its critics' nickname makes it sound. For one thing, it's not at Ground Zero. Also, it isn't a mosque."
Brooker goes on to note, correctly, that the project is a "cultural centre" with a "basketball court," whose purpose is to "improve interfaith relations."
And, to repeat, it's not at Ground Zero!
Perhaps spatial reality functions differently on the other side of the Atlantic, but here in London, something that is "two minutes' walk and round a corner" from something else isn't actually "in" the same place at all. I once had a poo in a pub about two minutes' walk from Buckingham Palace. I was not subsequently arrested and charged with crapping directly onto the Queen's pillow. That's how "distance" works in Britain. It's also how distance works in America, of course, but some people are currently pretending it doesn't, for daft political ends.
Really, people shouldn't need this concept explained to them! But given the fact that so many Americans oppose something that does not exist, perhaps the fault lies with our explainers, who should be able to say with a straight face that "daft" is "daft" and not "an interesting point of view that should be elevated." Per Brooker:
Seriously, broadcasters, journalists: just give up now. Because either you're making things worse, or no one's paying attention anyway. May as well knock back a few Jagermeisters, unplug the autocue, and just sit there dumbly repeating whichever reality-warping meme the far right wants to go viral this week. What's that? Obama is Gargamel and he's killing all the Smurfs? Sod it. Whatever. Roll titles.
Oh, hello! For two weeks, we have been on vacation at a nice and quiet beach in North Carolina with limited internet access and a stack of books and an immense amount of free time on our hands. How were thing while we were gone? Did everything in the world of polidicks and politricks get sorted because men and women with wisdom finally stepped to the fore, dismissed the mental tweens who had been running the place, and rededicate themselves to building a nation with the application of stoic reason?
No? Awesome! That means I still have a job!
So, welcome to the...what the hell, let's call it the Season Premiere of your Sunday Morning Liveblog Of Regret. My name is Jason. I am rested and ready but not tanned because my wife is really, really paranoid about the damage the sun's rays can do to you. As always, you should feel free to contribute comments, or send emails. If you want to sign up for a lifetime's worth of trivial observations that don't make a lot of sense, follow me on Twitter. Let's get into it!
FOX NEWS SUNDAY
Today, Fox News Sunday kicks things off with an infomercial about Glenn Beck's "Restitching America's Hymen" Rally on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial. And only after that, will the show take on the matter of the "bad economic news." It's going to be a good morning, for mescaline!
But first, Glenn Beck is here! He is building a religion, he is building it bigger, he is widening the corridors and adding more lanes. He is building a religion -- a limited edition! -- and is now accepting callers for these pendant key chains!
Anyway, what does yesterday mean to Glenn Beck? He says that if it's "just a message for a day, it's meaningless," but we are "forty days and forty nights" away from "transforming America," which means that it's all up to Josh Hartnett now, to avoid having sex with sluts in San Francisco. And then at the end, America gets a weaponized Shannyn Sossamon, to drop on Iran.
Things turn weird in the interview almost right away. Wallace asks Beck why he's always talking about miracles, and asks if he feels if he has a "role in trying to save this country." "You don't?" Beck asks. Wallace pauses and says, "No...I just ask questions for a living." Beck quips, "Oh, I forgot I was talking to an actual journalism."
What was everyone trying to tell "our leaders?" Beck doesn't have any idea. He actually says this! he says that a lot of people came to Washington just because they aren't happy. So, politicians have a burden to make those specific Americans in attendance happy, sod all to the rest of the country. Also, he asked people to "stand in burning bushes," which will probably thin the crowd at the next one of these things.
Beck says that all he meant by "reclaim the civil rights movement" was that he wanted "people of faith" to 'reclaim" the movement, from "politics." (He also says that as someone born in 1964 and in the Pacific Northwest, he couldn't have been a part of the Civil Rights movement.) When Wallace points out that the Civil Rights movement was one about economic justice, Beck says that he doesn't agree with that "part" of it.
Wallace seems to have come prepared with actual history, but Beck's basically immune to all of this, because this whole movement of his is essentially a lot of warmed over lectures about "believing in yourself," and "having a shot." Wallace asks after Beck's famous accusation that Obama is a racist, and asks if he feels as if he has any credibility talking about civil rights. Beck reiterates that all he means by "civil rights" is that "people of faith that believe you have an equal right to justice, that is the essence, and if it's not the effing essence, then we have been sold a pack of lies." So, we can have a mosque, please, in Lower Manhattan?
As for the comment itself? Beck says that he didn't, at the time, understand the influences on Obama, and he didn't understand his theology or his viewpoint, and he "miscast it as racism," but really it's "liberation theology," which of course, Beck thinks is even worse!
Wallace points out that Beck had called Obama's faith a "perversion" and asks Beck, "Who made you the God Squad?" Beck says nobody made him the God Squad (but that the God Squad hates liberation theology!) He says, "Most Christians would look at collective salvation" as a perversion, but that he's a Mormon, so who is he to say what Christians say, except for this particular moment when he's on teevee. (Meanwhile, LOTS OF CHRISTIANS PROSELYTIZE BECAUSE IT'S SEEN AS AN ESSENTIAL PART OF THEIR OWN SALVATION.
Wallace wants to get into the subject of Glenn Beck? "What are you?" Beck says he's a dad and a "concerned citizen," and took "one class in collage" and "didn't know his butt from his elbow" and then 9-11 happened and then, something? He told people to "run for their lives?" And now everyone has responsibility to stand guard. Is he rich? Yes! But he doesn't think his money is going to be worth much in the future. (REMINDER TO FLACK GOLDLINE!)
Wallace then asks a very simple question, about how things are going since he got that eye diagnosis that hinted at some coming future health issues. Wallace intended it as sort of the beginning of a series of "quick questions," but Beck goes into some long, incomprehensible word goulash recitation where he says, he realized "I'm not seeing something because I have eyes." Essentially, at some point a doctor told him he might at some point go blind, and he laughed and said, "My mom told me that when I ran with a stick."
He doesn't want to be President! Someone else will have to be President, I guess! Some people drink Pepsi, some people drink Coke, and the wacky morning deejay thinks democracy's a joke.
On to the economy, and junk! In for Brit Hume is Romneyite Kevin Madden. Otherwise, same old stuff!
So, what happened to Recovery Summer? Kristol says that the huge Keynesian stimulus was the wrond way to go! The ghost of Keynes says, "You call THAT a huge Keynsian stimulus? That tears it, I'm haunting your ass, Kristol!" And then the rest of the spectres of sense tell the Ghost of Keynes, "Yeah, take a number." And then he just starts playing ghost racquetball with the Ghost of Hayek.
But, the economy is suck-balls! Madden says, "The cement has been poured around the economy as the number one issue." That's true! That's why all this talk of structural budget deficits is so out of touch. Williams says that people still President Bush as the problem and the GOP doesn't have any answers to the problem. Williams thinks that the Democrats will take advantage of the fact that the GOP has no new ideas, but I think that's the sort of thing that won't haunt them unless they retake the Congress and this phenomena plays out in real time." Liasson essentially agrees. The best thing you can have, in the eyes of voters, is nothing on the balance sheet.
The post-election challenge for the Democrats will not just be to help the economy, but to do so in a way that proves they, and they alone, deserve credit for it. (It's sort of too bad that Obama doesn't have his own man at the Fed!)
Kristol's advice to Obama is: don't raise taxes in a bad economy! And don't raise taxes in a good economy! (And the stance against restoring the tax rates to Clinton era levels on the wealthiest Americans may stall. Read all of this.)
Meanwhile, Iraq. I don't entirely agree that Obama "took credit" for ending the Iraq War, but the end of THE Iraq war didn't come about because Obama made a campaign promise. He stuck with the Status of Forces Agreement that was signed in late 2008 by President Bush. (One could argue that the inevitability of the Obama administration, from the summer of 2008, paved the way for that SoFA, but that's an argument for pundit types.)
Liasson points out that there are 50,000 troops that will remain in Iraq. LET THERE BE ORNAMENTAL GARRISONS, FOREVER.
Liasson also says that as far as the Israel-Palestine Peace Process, it's always a mistake to be too optimistic. But even Kristol admits that absent expectations, fortnightly meetings between Netanyahu and Abbas are "a good thing." Which...OH NO! -- means it could actually be a BAD THING?
And that's that. Let's get a little Bob Schieffer on!
FACE THE NATION
Joe Miller, Haley Barbour, Kendrick Meek, and Debbie Wasserman-Schultz, up in this piece today.
Joe Miller! He may have picked off Lisa Murkowski. Now he's trying to scare off GOP lawyers. What's going on out in Fairbanks, today? Is he the "poster boy" for the "anti-establishment" narrative?
Miller says that his success is predicated on a mix of national help -- Palin and Huckabee endorsements -- and local networks of supporters and personalities, flying well below the radar of the media.
Miller says the country is in crisis and in debt and that everyone will have to do some belt-tightening. And then he says that the answer is to return power to the states. Then he notes that Alaska is resource rich and poised to become really economically powerful, so...have fun tightening those belts, the rest of America! Will he ask then, for less Federal money? Uhm...no...we're in a "period of transition." So, Alaska will be cared for by the rest of the nation until they are ready to cut the rest of the nation off. That's cool with everyone, right?
Will it be a problem that he wants to take away Alaskans Medicare and Social Security? He doesn't think so. He does think "privatization" should be on the table. Even if he doesn't want privatization! You know, it's like we have to have nuclear strikes "on the table." It's like one of those dinner parties where you put cyanide and catbox leavings "on the table." It would be irresponsible to not consider eating those things!
That was a very brief interview (GIVE BOB SCHIEFFER AN HOUR, CBS!) and now we are down in Florida, with Kendrick Meek. He won a primary against Jeff Greene, of the vomit-caked yachting Greenes. But doesn't Meek feel TERRIBLE about taking votes away from Charlie Crist? Meek says that those people are essentially non-Floridians, and that he won a "supermajority" of Democrats! KENDRICK MEEK WILL NOT BE FILIBUSTERED!
Does Meek want Obama to campaign for him? Meek says that Obama has already supported Meek, by going to have lunch with him! Remember that time Obama had cheeseburgers with Dmitry Medvedev? That was Obama's way of saying, "Maybe you can run for the Senate in Florida?."
Haley Barbour! Is he BECOMING WILLIAM SHATNER? Look at the guy! Until he opened his mouth and let those syrupy Southern syllables slake out, I had no idea. I was like: WOO! CANADIAN ESPERANTO? YES I WOULD LIKE SOME, BOB SCHIEFFER. Also, Debbie Wasserman-Schultz is here. I will be referring to her by her Quentin Tarantino movie heroine nickname, "Debbie W-S."
Can Haley Barbour get with Joe Miller? I mean, wasn't he a Murkowski man? Barbour says that he hasn't taken a side, because the people of Alaska shouldn't have to hear about what they should do from someone from Mississippi. Debbie W-S says that there is, nevertheless, a "raging battle" underway for the "soul of the Republican party." And now, the GOP has got to deal with Angle, Buck, Lee, Paul, and Miller. Who knew that the apocalypse would have five horsemen! I guess that's one industry that's recession-proof.
Schieffer accuses Mike Buck of being the guy who thinks bicycles are the UN-Communist plot, but that's actually Colorado gubernatorial candidate Dan Maes. Although maybe Buck's got some nonsense views of his own.
Barbour says Miller is right about out-of-control spending, but that maybe he needs to say things in a different way. Debbie W-S says that the 2010 election will be a choice between a right wing that wants to -- ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ.
Barbour says that we've undergone a "lurch to the left." Debbie W-S says we have not done so. Barbour says that we cannot raise taxes during a bad economy. (And in a good economy, you can't raise taxes either.) And I'd point out that the only thing anyone plans to do with taxes is to institute a net tax cut. Debbie W-S points out that we've saved jobs and added jobs that wouldn't have been there, and that American automobile makers are back to making the cars that nobody wanted to buy in the first place because they were inferior products.
And now Bob Schieffer gives a shout out to friends of his who have fallen ill to cancer. He and his wife are both cancer survivors, and he wants to tell America that we've come a long way in treating cancer -- but that the recent stem cell decision was the equivalent of "not looking through Galileo's telescope."
"No civilization, no society, has survived if it's people came to believe they knew enough, and needed to know nothing more." That's the stuff, Bob Schieffer! (Pretty good message after this weekend's March of the Know-Nothings, too!)
MEET THE PRESS
Okay, let's take it down a few notches, shall we?
Today, Meet The Press is in Louisiana to sprinkle MEET THE PRESS BRAND GRAVITAS-LIKE SUBSTANCE all over the levees! And Brad Pitt will be there, I think! As well as everyone named Landrieu! And because this requires actual knowledge about things that cannot be learned from within the Zolofted Washington bubble, David Gregory has been sent back to the dream-opium den from the movie INCEPTION, and Brian Williams will be our host today. AND BUNK IS ON TODAY SO TUNE IN RIGHT NOW!
But first, LOTS OF LANDRIEUS. Try not to think about how politics is a crass game of nepotism and drynastic favor-trading, okay? TRY NOT TO THINK ABOUT THIS.
Anyway, why is NOLA America's problem? Why can't everyone live above sea level, everywhere? What are, we, Pakistan? Shouldn't the very land beneath our feet shape itself to the demands of American exceptionalism? Mitch Landrieu points out that NOLA is not the only place in America below sea-level.
Williams asks if Mitch's constant refrain of "I hope we make it," is nothing more than a Democrat doing expectations management. Mitch just says he's cold talkin' the troof about what's going on on the streets and junk!
Meanwhile, Mary Landrieu, she is the Senator. She is the daughter of Moon Landrieu, who was once the Mayor of New Orleans. Again: Try not to think about how politics is a crass game of nepotism and dynastic favor-trading, okay? Anyway, what is it like being one of the few people in power at the time to survive politically? Mary says, "Well, chalk it up to the fact that politics is a crass game of nepotism and dynastic favor-trading, okay?" HA JUST KIDDING. She says the Federal government has taken a lot of money out of the Gulf Coast and it's like for them to give it back. So, really, she is just the lead singer of Midnight Oil. "WHAT DO WE DO IF OUR BEDS OUR BURNING?"
Ha, remember George Bush? He's the guy that Kanye yelled at back when he wasn't yelling at Taylor Swift. Did everything in NOLA turn out just the way Bush promised? Mary says that Bush's promises were "hollow," because the federal government didn't "make things easy." Also, Mississippi did "not make out like bandits." Mary says that the truth will be told in several documentary films that members of the Academy will watch and no one else. My favorite New Orleans movie is "Down By Law," by the way. What's yours?
Would Mitch Landrieu walk unaccompanied at night through the Seventh Ward? He says yes. So, look forward to that?
Can Mary explain the "confusing" relationship between Louisiana and oil? (Williams, contra every government scientist and the White House, correctly states that there is presently, oil "sitting" in the Gulf of Mexico, so kudoes for that.) Mary is all, WHATEVS? We are all really angry at BP, she says. But the nation needs oil and so we gotta go get it. (But sure, we'll "transition" away from oil, eventuellement.) The six month moratorium has created a "blanket of fear." Filled with the smallpox of industry conflict! And sandwich shops are closing because an oil company destroyed the region no one is letting the oil companies further destroy the region drill for oil, with as little government oversight as possible, please?
Mitch says that it's difficult for him to make a comparison between he and Ray Nagin, but what the hell? Ray Nagin was the suxxy suck, says Mitch.
Okay...awkward news peg, maybe? How does Beckapalooza fit in to all of what's going on in New Orleans? Mary says that Glenn Beck's ideas aren't new, but that he's all talk, no action. She says that the government, contra Beck, has had a huge role in rebuilding New Orleans, and that Beck needs to re-examine his facts. Also, she loves Jesus, who was the son of "Moon Jesus."
Also, the New Orleans Saints success was a "cataclysmic" even for New Orleans residents. (I am not sure "cataclysmic" was quite the word he was looking for?
Anyway, now we are going to talk to Brad Pitt about flood walls and stuff. The houses they've built look really cool and are on stilts and have higher code ratings against hurricanes. But they look...what's the word I'm looking for? Oh, yeah! Expensive. Like: "IPads will save journalism" expensive.
But Pitt tells Williams that all of there houses are affordable, as well as being safer and stronger. They come equipped with the high-performance "green tech" stuff that increases energy efficiency, and Pitt says it's now the "greenest neighborhood in the world," and that last month, all but one of the homes were "producing more energy than they were eating."
"I see this place as a template for the future," he says.
I appreciate, and agree with Pitt's sentiment that 'twould have been better if everything in the Lower Ninth had been built in the first place, but the larger issue there is that the poor were living in a vulnerable area because no one wanted to develop affordable housing in the safer areas. (Obviously, it was then the fault of the poor when they all got trapped and died there! I mean, why didn't they get in their non-existent cars and flee to their second homes?)
And now we have Douglas Brinkley and Garland Robinette and Wendell Pierce!!
Robinette says to this day, he's gobsmacked by the fact that NOLA was abandoned for five days. He won't attribute it to racism, but he maintains that it was pretty senseless. He praises the presence of a police chief with a Ph.D., and warns that New Orleans is a "canary in a coal mine" as far as the rest of the nation goes.
Pierce is visibly shaken to see again the footage from "When The Levees Broke" where he sees his own flooded home for the first time. He goes on to largely unpack on the history of the Pontchartrain Park neighborhood, too detail-dense to do justice here. Suffice it to say, it's an important Civil Rights-era neighborhood for middle-class blacks that nurtured a lot of the important black figures of the region, like Dutch and Mark Morial. Pierce says that they are rebuilding in his neighborhood along the same LEED-certified lines as Brad Pitt's doing in the Lower Ninth.
Brinkley, taking up Robinette's "canary in a coalmine" statement, notes that the country has to defend the area's wetlands, as a resource, and just rooting for the Saints and Bourbon Street are not enough. Robinette revoices those concerns, "I don't know why the human animal isn't more interested in its own survival."
Brian Williams notes that NBC News was capable of meeting their staff in the parking lot of a used car dealership in Metarie, to ensure that their staff got drinking water while people in New Orleans were going without.
"We can sit here and debate what caused it," says Pierce, "but does that matter if we don't hold anyone accountable?"
I'll remind you that Pierce is talking about the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. I don't want any of you to think he's talking about the war in Iraq or the war in Afghanistan or the financial crisis or the Deepwater Horizon oil spill or [INSERT SOMETHING THAT HAS GONE WRONG IN THE PAST DECADE HERE], because it's so easy to get confused!
Those words can be applied to everything!
Anyway, that's that. We're back from vacation! (And it's nice to be back.) See you next Sunday!
[Liveblog is coming! Just wait and hit refresh in a few minutes.]
Allow me to state for the record that I have great sympathy for the dedicated professionals at the Congressional Budget Office. In Washington's partisan environment, they are everybody's fair-weather friend. When the CBO tells one tribe the precise thing they want to hear, there's no end to the hallelujahs about how a CBO confirmation is the equivalent of the Word of God. But when the CBO's estimates run afoul of the same tribe, the praise chorus abruptly stops, and is replaced by no end of angry rending and gnashing. Sometimes these shifts take place in a matter of days. It can be intensely frustrating to witness.
A less celebrated problem that the CBO faces on a daily basis is that sometimes, they have to explain their work to complete morons.
Sarabeth Guthberg at 1115.org related one such instance, today. See, Senator Mike Crapo (R-Idaho) got a wee bit confused over a matter of grade-school mathematics. So he asked the CBO to clarify: if provisions of the Affordable Care Act that the CBO projected to reduce the deficit by $455 billion (over ten years) were subsequently repealed, what would be the net impact on the deficit?
With the patience of saints, the CBO replied:
Finally, you asked what the net deficit impact would be if certain provisions of PPACA and the Reconciliation Act that were estimated to generate net savings were eliminated --- specifically, those which were originally estimated to generate a net reduction in mandatory outlays of $455 billion over the 2010-2019 period. The estimate of $455 billion mentioned in your letter represents the net effects of many provisions. Some of those provisions generated savings for Medicare, Medicaid, or the Children's Health Insurance Program, and some generated costs. If those provisions were repealed, CBO estimates that there would be an increase in deficits similar to its original estimate of $455 billion in net savings over that period.
And that's the incredibly true story of how the CBO had to explain to Mike Crapo that if x = x, then x = x.
Over at the Salon War Room, Justin Elliot has a post up about the way in which this weekend's "Beckapalooza" is being financed by a charity called the Special Operations Warrior Foundation and who the material beneficiaries are (the same charity, directly; Glenn Beck, indirectly). This parenthetical statement caught my eye:
(The event was originally billed as the unveiling of a new Beck book called "The Plan," which would outline steps to take over the next 100 years to "restore our great country." That was later scrapped for a vague focus on restoring honor.)
I've no idea if these plans were scrapped because they were, in terms of self-promotion, deemed to be a bridge too far. But whether Beck knows it or not, this was a shrewd decision. See, here in Washington, DC, "The Plan" has something of a sinister connotation.
From the October 6, 1985 Washington Post, "Does The White Return To D.C. Mean 'The Plan' Is Coming True?" by Eric Pianin and Courtland Milloy:
Almost as soon as blacks won real political power in the District of Columbia a decade ago, some began worrying that whites who had fled the city for the suburbs eventually would return to reclaim control. In this view, it was beside the point that Washington was "Chocolate City," with seven out of every 10 residents black. This theory held that whites -- particularly the Board of Trade set and the news media -- had a secret agenda for wresting control. It was known as "The Plan," and many felt it was only a matter of time before a white politician would be elected mayor and undermine much of the progress made by blacks.
In the ensuing years, the city's electorate has grown more sophisticated and discerning, yet the suspicion still lingers. Local politicians, labor leaders, academics and average residents insist that many people take "The Plan" seriously.
In their 1981 book "Perspectives of Political Power in the District of Columbia," Charles W. Harris and Alvin Thornton write that many blacks believe that at some point around the mid-1970s, whites made a decision to return to the District. "Some blacks refer to the situation as 'The Plan' -- a strategy by whites to 'repossess the city,'" they wrote. "Again, whether or not any such overt decision was made by whites in this regard, the result was the same -- a gradual uprooting of blacks, circumstantially forcing them out of the District."
"I don't think the fear of The Plan has changed a bit," says City Council member John A. Wilson (D-Ward 2), a black who represents the ward that ranges from Dupont Circle to the Southwest redevelopment district and is the city's most racially mixed. "It's an undercurrent that flows through the city. I think a lot of people fear that."
And that undercurrent may have ebbed, but it's never fully gone away. Twenty-five years on, talk of this ancient conspiracy still bubbles upin the local news. So if Beck had come to town pimping something called "The Plan" on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial on the anniversary of the March On Washington, it probably wouldn't have gone over too well.
(It would also have been rather irksome if Beck had called his rally "Revolution Summer.")
Back in late July, after a summer of struggle, the underwater oil spill caused by the explosion of the Deepwater Horizon Oil Rig was finally capped. And then, something wonderful and miraculous happened! The media started remarking that all of the millions of gallons of oil that poured into the Gulf of Mexico just disappeared! Raptured up into Oil Heaven, even!
Except: not. After absorbing the first spate of media gushing about the wonderful disappearance of all the oil, Mother Jones reporter Mac McClelland sent out a couple of text messages to contacts in the area, asking if they could find any oil, and the response she got back was, "Yes, the oil, it is everywhere."
But that's not stopped the administration from taking the line that the oil's disappearance is unalloyed good news, and that it's safe for the bon temps to roulez once more. Huffington Post's own Ben Craw has produced the essential mash-up video of White House Happy Talk, which gets downright hypnotic, in places:
When Froomkin talked to Rick Steiner, a marine conservationist who's studied oil spills since the Exxon Valdez disaster, Steiner put it pretty bluntly:
The first thing we talked about was that NOAA report. Steiner said it was obviously full of guesswork -- and bad guesswork at that. "They shouldn't have even tried to issue these numbers right now," he said. "I smell politics all over it. The only plausible explanation is they were in a rush to hang the 'Mission Accomplished' banner."
UPDATE: Contra Steiner, White House spokesman Robert Gibbs stated earlier this month: "There's a lot of reasons why there's no 'mission accomplished' banner, because there's a lot of work to do. We're not leaving the area. And, more importantly, we're not leaving behind any commitment to clean up what's been -- the damage that's been done and repair and restore the Gulf."
And Steiner suspects the 10 percent recovery rate for BP is actually overstated. The report based its conclusions on operational reports showing that 11.1 million gallons of oil were burned and 34.7 million gallons of oily water were recovered through skimming.
But Steiner said the actual amount of oil recovered could be about half what the report claims. The oil-water mix, which officials evidently assumed was 20 percent oil, could well have been closer to 10 percent, he said. As for the burned oil figures, "they are simply coming from the BP contractors out there and then put into the Incident Command reports as gospel. As far as I know, there was no independent observation or estimation of those numbers."
And there's something else the government seems to have forgotten about when it comes to burning crude oil: "That's not technically removing it from the environment." Steiner said. "It either went into the air as atmospheric emissions, and some of that is pretty toxic stuff, or there's a residue from burning crude that sinks to the ocean floor, sometimes in big thick mats."
And oil is still turning up everywhere -- here's a series of videos, posted today at Florida Oil Spill Law, documenting the presence of oil on the shores of Florida's "Big Bend."
Of course, beyond the mystery of the missing oil, there's plenty of reasons to call out the administration for suggesting there's nothing but "good news" to be had. On last night's Countdown, for example, Nicole LaMoureux, the executive director of the National Association of Free Clinics said that the influx of patients seeking care at Gulf region free clinics was so massive that it was "quite disturbing." And in Terrebonne Parish, something is killing all the birds (I'm going to warn you that the video that follows is immensely upsetting to watch):
UPDATE II: We tweaked the headline of this piece to ensure that no one mistakenly assumed that an Obama administration official had declared 'Mission Accomplished' on the Gulf spill.
Secretary of Defense Robert Gates has spent a good portion of the past two years going up against an entrenched web of military bureaucrats and defense lobbyists to try to restore rationality to the defense budget.
Pentagon officials said the measures were aimed at more than a number. Mr. Gates said he wanted to flatten a bureaucracy that had experienced significant "brass creep," swelling to "cumbersome and top-heavy proportions." He complained, for example, that a request to send a dog-handling team to Afghanistan goes through no fewer than five four-star headquarters.
Beyond that, Pentagon officials said, Mr. Gates wanted to push back against a culture of entitlement that had allowed some senior officers to pad their lifestyles as well as their commands.
Gates warned 'em: "No sacred cows." But, as the Times points out, the critters laying up in the yard are more of the canine variety:
Salaries and benefits, however, are the least of it. The biggest costs are created by the general's staffs -- including security details, senior advisers, communications teams, schedulers and personal aides. Mr. Harrison said the military's highest-ranking generals and admirals -- 40 four-star and 146 three-stars -- each had salaries, benefits and staffs whose cumulative annual costs easily exceed $1 million.
"When you have a head dog, you also have a deputy dog, then a deputy deputy dog, and a deputy deputy deputy dog," said General Punaro. "The layers are suffocating the bureaucracy."
One has to imagine that maybe, just maybe, if military commanders weren't accustomed to rolling like the cast of Entourage, General Stanley McChrystal might still have a career. But I digress! As you might imagine, those head dogs are barking back at Gates.
"We are well compensated, and we live very comfortable lives," General Eaton said, referring to the military's most senior leaders. "But when you look at all the things going on around a general, the nation is getting a very, very high return on its money."
And yet it's worth noting that even as the number of generals and admirals has increased since 9/11, the "the overall number of active duty personnel has declined from 2.2 million in 1985 to some 1.5 million today." If you're wondering how comfortable their lives are, or what their take on the bottom line is, here's Danger Room's Spencer Ackerman, recently returned from Afghanistan, with the news:
Some considered the war a distraction from broader national security challenges like Iran or China. Others thought that its costs -- nearly ten years, $321 billion, 1243 U.S. deaths and counting -- are too high, playing into Osama bin Laden's "Bleed To Bankruptcy" strategy. Still others thought that it doesn't make sense for President Obama simultaneously triple U.S. troop levels and announce that they're going to start coming down, however slowly, in July 2011. At least one person was convinced, despite the evidence, that firing Gen. Stanley McChrystal meant the strategy was due for an overhaul, something I chalked up to the will to believe.
But if there was a common denominator to their critiques, it's this: None understood how their day-to-day jobs actually contributed to a successful outcome. One person actually asked me if I could explain how it's all supposed to knit together.
It just gets to be hard to worry about the comfort of generals.
Huffington Post | Jason Linkins | September 1, 2010