One of the next stories that will be playing at a theater near you will be the scandal surrounding the White House's use of public email addresses in order to leave no subpoena-able traces in their dealings. Rove, in particular, apparently did 95% of his e-communication on a public ISP, rather than on the government's secure email domain.
Josh Marshall quickly pointed out that the entire notion of executive privilege is called into question if they are interacting in this way, but this post at Kos points to a broader issue, namely, the fact that the use of an insecure network threatens sensitive information and opens the secure network up to easier access to hackers and other nefarious elements.
If Rove and these dunderheads got their secure IDs swiped by using public ISPs to play hide and seek from their legal requirement to log all of their correspondence, they've not only committed a felony, they may have crossed the line into treasonous negligence.
Thursday, March 29, 2007
Business As Usual
Slate runs down the awfulness of Bush's latest read, the aforementioned Andrew Robert's A History of the English-Speaking Peoples Since 1900.
The meeting at the White House that took place with the klatch of right wing nut jobs in attendance, listening to this flatulence and nodding their heads eagerly smacks of nothing so much as Nero fiddling while Rome burned.
Even Bush's throw away line at the correspondents dinner last night is illuminating. He said: "I have to admit we really blew the way we let those attorneys go. You know you've botched it when people sympathize with lawyers." Think about that. We're still untangling the web of half-truths that the justice department has spun, still coming to grips with the facts surrounding the case, and Bush has reached his conclusion. It is not the act that was in any way wrong, only the execution. They botched it, that's all. No appreciation of the fact that the highest law enforcement office in the country was compromised by petty partisanship, and lied to cover the fact that Rove and Bush replaced AGs around the country for not supporting their political agenda. Hubris defined.
Remember that I pointed out earlier in the week that John Yoo said:
Get ready folks, the party line will be laid out by Kyle Sampson when he testifies before the Senate Judiciary Committee today. Namely that partisan purposes are inextricable from performance issues when it comes to the firings, and that if in fact the President and Karl Rove felt that the AGs in question were not supporting the Bush political agenda, then their firings can be justified. It's the conclusion of the same spin cycle that they've used every time they've been accused of wiping their asses with the Constitution. Abu Ghraib, FISA, signing statements, national security letters, and now this.
1. It didn't happen
2. If it did happen, we didn't know about it.
3. We concede you have the evidence proving that we knew about it, but we don't remember.
4. Although we don't concede that we remember, if we did remember, we did it to protect us from the terrorists.
5. We are completely within our rights to do what we said we didn't do at the outset.
6. Wash, rinse, repeat.
The meeting at the White House that took place with the klatch of right wing nut jobs in attendance, listening to this flatulence and nodding their heads eagerly smacks of nothing so much as Nero fiddling while Rome burned.
Even Bush's throw away line at the correspondents dinner last night is illuminating. He said: "I have to admit we really blew the way we let those attorneys go. You know you've botched it when people sympathize with lawyers." Think about that. We're still untangling the web of half-truths that the justice department has spun, still coming to grips with the facts surrounding the case, and Bush has reached his conclusion. It is not the act that was in any way wrong, only the execution. They botched it, that's all. No appreciation of the fact that the highest law enforcement office in the country was compromised by petty partisanship, and lied to cover the fact that Rove and Bush replaced AGs around the country for not supporting their political agenda. Hubris defined.
Remember that I pointed out earlier in the week that John Yoo said:
Unless there are more clear facts of interference with prosecutors for partisan purposes, Mr. Gonzales should keep his job.
Get ready folks, the party line will be laid out by Kyle Sampson when he testifies before the Senate Judiciary Committee today. Namely that partisan purposes are inextricable from performance issues when it comes to the firings, and that if in fact the President and Karl Rove felt that the AGs in question were not supporting the Bush political agenda, then their firings can be justified. It's the conclusion of the same spin cycle that they've used every time they've been accused of wiping their asses with the Constitution. Abu Ghraib, FISA, signing statements, national security letters, and now this.
1. It didn't happen
2. If it did happen, we didn't know about it.
3. We concede you have the evidence proving that we knew about it, but we don't remember.
4. Although we don't concede that we remember, if we did remember, we did it to protect us from the terrorists.
5. We are completely within our rights to do what we said we didn't do at the outset.
6. Wash, rinse, repeat.
Wednesday, March 28, 2007
The Fundies Surround the Throne
One of the things that we heard quite often from the few on the right that even bothered to be bothered by the all too apparent ineptitude of Bush was that we shouldn't worry much that he spoke like a brain-addled simpleton, behaved like a prurient frat boy, and had the attention span of goldfish because he was surrounding himself with the best and the brightest. After the dark years of Clinton, we should be happy that we had a middling executive, an MBA president, one who would build out a strong suite of MBA advisors to run the ship of state.
Woops.
So who surrounds the President these days? Meet Monica Goodling, who lately announced that she would take the fifth rather than incriminate herself for passing along false information to Deputy AG Paul McNulty before he testified before the Senate on the attorney general purge in February. (A quick note to the editorial board of the WSJ: if she did so, she committed a felony).
And the woman who is in the AGs office, making decisions over the fate of the Attorney Generals across the land, she's a proud graduate of Pat Robertson's Regent Law School, after a distinguished undergraduate career at Messiah University.
She's one of 150 graduates of Regent University in the Bush administration
Maybe not what they had in mind when they took it as an article of faith that the idiot king would surround himself with a wise old group of advisors.
Woops.
With nearly two years remaining in his presidency, Bush is alone. In half a century, I have not seen a president so isolated from his own party in Congress -- not Jimmy Carter, not even Richard Nixon as he faced impeachment.
So who surrounds the President these days? Meet Monica Goodling, who lately announced that she would take the fifth rather than incriminate herself for passing along false information to Deputy AG Paul McNulty before he testified before the Senate on the attorney general purge in February. (A quick note to the editorial board of the WSJ: if she did so, she committed a felony).
And the woman who is in the AGs office, making decisions over the fate of the Attorney Generals across the land, she's a proud graduate of Pat Robertson's Regent Law School, after a distinguished undergraduate career at Messiah University.
She's one of 150 graduates of Regent University in the Bush administration
Maybe not what they had in mind when they took it as an article of faith that the idiot king would surround himself with a wise old group of advisors.
Monday, March 26, 2007
Pundits protecting their assets
This has been widely noted, but Glenn Greenwald's article at Salon really brings many of the various outrages of the Bush administration into focus.
One of the more powerful memes that is in wide circulation surrounds the essential liberal bias of the mainstream media, and there therefore reflexive anti-Bush prejudice (see anything by Eric Alterman for the voluminous evidence). As Greenwald deftly points out, the truth is far more insidious. When the essential motivations of the pundits and talking heads are distilled, they are transparently self-serving. As the authors of Freakonomics pointed out, we need to understand the underlying motivations of individuals to understand their behaviors. Nothing is different here. The inside the beltway punditocracy is quite rightfully fearful of a movement that they can do little to stop, namely, the continuing power of the internet to provide a DIY (do it yourself) alternative to the traditional approach to news analysis. The law of large numbers and the collective wisdom of the blogosphere is a classic "disruptive" technology that is disrupting the incumbent news gathering organizations. Clay Christensen at HBS has written extensively on disruption and innovation.
I think that the continued misreading of true American opinion by these same insiders is part and parcel of this same phenomenon. When Andrea Mitchell opines that "most americans" support a pardon of Scooter Libby and the actual number is 18%, that belies an impressive level of disdain for the actual level of public involvement and understanding of the current situation in which we find ourselves. I think that Mitchell and Russert and Matthews truly feel that the discourse on the blogs is an isolated freakshow and that they serve this unwashed NASCAR nation that they can spew their crap to, regardless of its basis in fact.
The truth, as the recent AG scandal has clearly pointed out, is that the number of people in this country that care, that are informed and are outraged is much larger than the number that the punditocracy has in their heads. 3200 dead soldiers, 25000 wounded and a petulant disdain for the Constitution will do that to a nation.
One of the more powerful memes that is in wide circulation surrounds the essential liberal bias of the mainstream media, and there therefore reflexive anti-Bush prejudice (see anything by Eric Alterman for the voluminous evidence). As Greenwald deftly points out, the truth is far more insidious. When the essential motivations of the pundits and talking heads are distilled, they are transparently self-serving. As the authors of Freakonomics pointed out, we need to understand the underlying motivations of individuals to understand their behaviors. Nothing is different here. The inside the beltway punditocracy is quite rightfully fearful of a movement that they can do little to stop, namely, the continuing power of the internet to provide a DIY (do it yourself) alternative to the traditional approach to news analysis. The law of large numbers and the collective wisdom of the blogosphere is a classic "disruptive" technology that is disrupting the incumbent news gathering organizations. Clay Christensen at HBS has written extensively on disruption and innovation.
I think that the continued misreading of true American opinion by these same insiders is part and parcel of this same phenomenon. When Andrea Mitchell opines that "most americans" support a pardon of Scooter Libby and the actual number is 18%, that belies an impressive level of disdain for the actual level of public involvement and understanding of the current situation in which we find ourselves. I think that Mitchell and Russert and Matthews truly feel that the discourse on the blogs is an isolated freakshow and that they serve this unwashed NASCAR nation that they can spew their crap to, regardless of its basis in fact.
The truth, as the recent AG scandal has clearly pointed out, is that the number of people in this country that care, that are informed and are outraged is much larger than the number that the punditocracy has in their heads. 3200 dead soldiers, 25000 wounded and a petulant disdain for the Constitution will do that to a nation.
Friday, March 23, 2007
Sly and the Family at Ohio State, 1968
This was from an NBC show that was the 'American Idol' of that period. Sly's right up there with Reuben Studdard and Sanjaya, eh?
Delbert!
Saw Delbert McClinton last night at the Keswick. He's a national treasure, but I thought he seemed a little tired, which is probably understandable. I wonder if there's a business in catering to the demographic that was in attendance last night? I'm pretty certain that the highlight of his night was Sarah and her buddy onstage, singing backup on his encore. It certainly was my highlight.
Finger in the dike....
In this absurd piece on Merrill Lynch, we learn that the greatest minds on Wall Street plan to stop the free flow of information over the internet in a brilliant strategy aimed at justifying the hopelessly outdated economic model which continues to keep the absurd salaries of analysts paid by the dim witted sell side.
It is blindingly true that the value of investment research dissipates as quickly as the information in the report is disseminated. Therefore, the logical conclusion would be to keep the dissemination of that information as small as possible. In any logical model, the consumer of the research (the buy side) would pay for the creation of that research, and not allow it to be distributed. In the upside down world of Wall Street, though, the sell side foots the bill for the creation of the product, and then attempts to distribute it only to those who will pay for the information with commission dollars, all the while realizing that as it is distributed, it becomes less and less valuable.
So, Merrill will therefore take this approach:
...and, like the music and film industries, Merrill is floundering around attempting to find a way to prop up the existing model, rather than innovating to deal with the inescapable reality that information will continue to flow freer and freer.
The buy side will not pay for the salaries of research analysts until the sell side stops doing so. It's heading inexorably in that direction, and Ms. Browning should figure that out.
It is blindingly true that the value of investment research dissipates as quickly as the information in the report is disseminated. Therefore, the logical conclusion would be to keep the dissemination of that information as small as possible. In any logical model, the consumer of the research (the buy side) would pay for the creation of that research, and not allow it to be distributed. In the upside down world of Wall Street, though, the sell side foots the bill for the creation of the product, and then attempts to distribute it only to those who will pay for the information with commission dollars, all the while realizing that as it is distributed, it becomes less and less valuable.
So, Merrill will therefore take this approach:
Candace Browning, head of global securities research and economics at the Wall Street firm, said in a memo to clients the measures would include restrictions and delays on media access to select content and limiting access to research on Merrill's proprietary site and external-vendor platforms.
Ms. Browning said "much like the music and film industries before us, Merrill Lynch research is in the throes of being Napsterized," as it was too broadly available.
...and, like the music and film industries, Merrill is floundering around attempting to find a way to prop up the existing model, rather than innovating to deal with the inescapable reality that information will continue to flow freer and freer.
The buy side will not pay for the salaries of research analysts until the sell side stops doing so. It's heading inexorably in that direction, and Ms. Browning should figure that out.
Thursday, March 22, 2007
Sobering Reality of Iraq
Juan Cole wraps up the shocking news from Iraq each day here.
Our troops are in a situation where they have very little control over their own fate. I'm obviously no military man, but my guess is that that is not a situation in which our military wants to ever be placed. The debate over the appropriations bill is dishonest in this sense: the administration and the war cheerleaders can say that setting a timetable simply gives the insurgents a reason to wait us out and plan their mayhem for after we leave, but the truth is that everybody knows we're going to leave at some point. Hillary says that it won't be in 2008, and that may be true. But we've been exposed, our troops are stretched, and without a draft, we're running out of soldiers. The idea that a timetable somehow emboldens the forces of evil is a red herring.
We'll leave, and blood will flow in the streets. That's unavoidable now. Colin Powell said it best when he warned Bush: "You break it, you own it". And then he unfathomably pushed ahead with his testimony before the U.N. What a tragic figure he is.
Our troops are in a situation where they have very little control over their own fate. I'm obviously no military man, but my guess is that that is not a situation in which our military wants to ever be placed. The debate over the appropriations bill is dishonest in this sense: the administration and the war cheerleaders can say that setting a timetable simply gives the insurgents a reason to wait us out and plan their mayhem for after we leave, but the truth is that everybody knows we're going to leave at some point. Hillary says that it won't be in 2008, and that may be true. But we've been exposed, our troops are stretched, and without a draft, we're running out of soldiers. The idea that a timetable somehow emboldens the forces of evil is a red herring.
We'll leave, and blood will flow in the streets. That's unavoidable now. Colin Powell said it best when he warned Bush: "You break it, you own it". And then he unfathomably pushed ahead with his testimony before the U.N. What a tragic figure he is.
Defining Deviancy Down
Let's make note of two statements from the Journal's editorial pages today. First, the editors themselves:
and, the nauseating John Yoo in a predictable OpEd
Josh Marshall thinks that those lines may have already been crossed:
What would be genuine grounds for outrage is if a U.S. attorney were dismissed to interfere with a specific prosecution, or to protect some crony.
and, the nauseating John Yoo in a predictable OpEd
Unless there are more clear facts of interference with prosecutors for partisan purposes, Mr. Gonzales should keep his job.
Josh Marshall thinks that those lines may have already been crossed:
It's yet another example of how far this White House has gone in normalizing behavior that we've been raised to associate with third-world countries where democracy has never successfully taken root and the rule of law is unknown. At most points in our history the idea that an Attorney General could stay in office after having overseen such an effort would be unthinkable. The most telling part of this episode is that they're not even really denying the wrongdoing. They're ignoring the point or at least pleading 'no contest' and saying it's okay.
Wednesday, March 21, 2007
President Pissy-Pants
Tbogg says it better than I ever could.
I guess we shouldn't be surprised, but I'm constantly amazed by the chutzpa. They've all but admitted that they lied about the AG purge, and Abu Gonzo's boy Kyle Sampson has already bit the bullet and resigned. There's an obvious question around whether obstruction of justice has occurred, and at the very least, Gonzo's ability to remain credible as the highest ranking law enforcement officer in the land is severely compromised. Tangentially, the FBI's use of National Security Letters further calls into question Justice's oversight and competence, and we haven't even begun to scratch the surface on that. Even the Republicans in the Congress won't go down this spider hole with Bush, and he ought to know it.
No transcripts, without going under oath, in private? You have got to be kidding. Unless Rove sees political advantage in forcing Congress to issue subpoenas, I'm not sure how this works in the White House's favor.
I guess we shouldn't be surprised, but I'm constantly amazed by the chutzpa. They've all but admitted that they lied about the AG purge, and Abu Gonzo's boy Kyle Sampson has already bit the bullet and resigned. There's an obvious question around whether obstruction of justice has occurred, and at the very least, Gonzo's ability to remain credible as the highest ranking law enforcement officer in the land is severely compromised. Tangentially, the FBI's use of National Security Letters further calls into question Justice's oversight and competence, and we haven't even begun to scratch the surface on that. Even the Republicans in the Congress won't go down this spider hole with Bush, and he ought to know it.
No transcripts, without going under oath, in private? You have got to be kidding. Unless Rove sees political advantage in forcing Congress to issue subpoenas, I'm not sure how this works in the White House's favor.
Nobody Cares about Mike Mayo
The Journal mentions that longtime Prudential bank analyst Mike Mayo is leaving that firm to join Deutsche Bank. Mayo has quite a reputation as a hard nosed analyst who has been bearish on the banking sector over the years, particularly on JP Morgan and Citi's strategy to build financial supermarkets that would service the consumer in all their banking, mortgage, insurance and credit needs. He was, of course, right. (Do you have your mortgage, your life insurance, your credit cards all with your bank?) Mayo made quite a splash when he decided to stick with Prudential after they meekly exited the investment banking business. He appeared in print ads, touting Prudential's independence, and vowed to speak his mind, in stark contrast to other Wall Street analysts, who are beholden to the corporate finance department that pays their salaries and implicitly predetermines their investment opinions.
Well, Mike's heading back to the dark side. But now, nobody cares. Sell side investment bank research has virtually no value at all in today's world. Aside from the fact that retail customers assume that their product is tainted by the inherent conflict of interest that supports the model, the analysts face a far more sinister foe. Commission dollars, the fuel that runs the research, sales and trading model have declined precipitously, as the buy side takes advantage of alternative trading networks, direct market access tools that allow the buy side to anonymously move large blocks of stock without the information leakage inherent in using sell-side brokers. Add to that the fact that the information that the analysts once had exclusive control over is now universally accessible, and you have a quickly depreciating value proposition.
Prudential exited the corporate finance business after they bought Volpe, Brown and Whelan back in 2000. They bought that boutique at the top of the market, and quickly realized that they had a pig in a poke. To much fanfare, Prudential announced that they would forgo the high margin corporate finance piece of the investment banking model and focus on the low margin research, sales and trading portion. It took Mike Mayo 7 years to figure out that nobody gives a whit about his research reports, and the same amount of time for Prudential to realize that they weren't generating enough revenue to pay for a "big-time" analyst like Mike Mayo? And these investment bankers are the smartest guys in the room, eh?
Well, Mike's heading back to the dark side. But now, nobody cares. Sell side investment bank research has virtually no value at all in today's world. Aside from the fact that retail customers assume that their product is tainted by the inherent conflict of interest that supports the model, the analysts face a far more sinister foe. Commission dollars, the fuel that runs the research, sales and trading model have declined precipitously, as the buy side takes advantage of alternative trading networks, direct market access tools that allow the buy side to anonymously move large blocks of stock without the information leakage inherent in using sell-side brokers. Add to that the fact that the information that the analysts once had exclusive control over is now universally accessible, and you have a quickly depreciating value proposition.
Prudential exited the corporate finance business after they bought Volpe, Brown and Whelan back in 2000. They bought that boutique at the top of the market, and quickly realized that they had a pig in a poke. To much fanfare, Prudential announced that they would forgo the high margin corporate finance piece of the investment banking model and focus on the low margin research, sales and trading portion. It took Mike Mayo 7 years to figure out that nobody gives a whit about his research reports, and the same amount of time for Prudential to realize that they weren't generating enough revenue to pay for a "big-time" analyst like Mike Mayo? And these investment bankers are the smartest guys in the room, eh?
Tuesday, March 20, 2007
Four years in Iraq
Will Bunch at Attytood reminds us that the crap from the Bush administration flew early and often during the shock and awe segment of your program.
Dora Farms, Jessica Lynch, Chemical Ali. The die was cast very early on. There really is no lie that they are unwilling to tell. Ask Pat Tillman's family.
Dora Farms, Jessica Lynch, Chemical Ali. The die was cast very early on. There really is no lie that they are unwilling to tell. Ask Pat Tillman's family.
Monday, March 19, 2007
The mustache of understanding.....
Matt Taibbi in Rolling Stone takes apart the loathsome Tom Friedman, but at the same time points to a disturbing trend that will worsen as the failure of Iraq becomes more apparent to the American people. Namely, the "it would've worked, but...." line of reasoning.
Taibbi says:
therefore, Friedman comes to this conclusion:
and as Taibbi notes:
I used to read the NY Times pretty uncritically, but after what David Brooks, Tom Friedman and MoDo have put us through over the past six years, I'm convinced that the gulf between David Broder and the op ed page at the NYT is not all that substantial. It's ironic that Friedman and Brooks have been outdone by Frank Rich, who was moved over from the entertainment section. His column has become the must read each week. Does this mean that the administration has left the realm of serious theater for that of farse?
Taibbi says:
What we have to remember about America's half-baked propaganda machine is that, dumb as it is, it always keeps its eye on the ball. The war in Iraq is lost, everyone knows that, but there are future wars to think about. When a war goes wrong, the reason can never that the invasion was simply a bad, immoral decision, a hopelessly fucked-up idea that even a child could have seen through. No, we always have to make sure that the excuse for the next war is woven into the autopsy of the current military failure. That's why to this day we're still hearing about how Vietnam was lost because a) the media abandoned the war effort b) the peace movement undermined the national will and c) the public, and the Pentagon, misread the results of the Tet offensive, seeing defeat where there actually was a victory.
After a few decades of that, we were ready to go to war again -- all we had to do, we figured, was keep the cameras away from the bloody bits, ignore the peace movement, and blow off any and all bad news from the battlefield. And we did all of these things for quite a long time in Iraq, but, maddeningly, Iraq still turned out to be a failure.
therefore, Friedman comes to this conclusion:
both Vietnam and Iraq failed not because they were stupid, vicious occupations of culturally alien populations that despised our very presence and were willing to sacrifice scads of their own lives to send us home. No, the problem was that we didn't make an effort to "re-evaluate tax and spending policies" and "shift resources" into an "all-out" war effort.
and as Taibbi notes:
The notion that our problem in Iraq is a resource deficit is pure, unadulterated madness. Our enemies don't have airplanes or armor. They are fighting us with garage-door openers and fifty year-old artillery shells, sneaking around barefoot in the middle of the night around to plant roadside bombs. Anytime anyone dares oppose us in the daylight, we vaporize them practically from space using weapons that cost more than the annual budgets of most Arab countries to design. We outnumber the active combatants on the other side by at least five to one. This year, we will spend more on the military than the rest of the world combined -- more than six hundred billion dollars. And yet Tom Friedman thinks the problem in Iraq is that we ordinary Americans didn't tighten our belts enough to support the war effort.
I used to read the NY Times pretty uncritically, but after what David Brooks, Tom Friedman and MoDo have put us through over the past six years, I'm convinced that the gulf between David Broder and the op ed page at the NYT is not all that substantial. It's ironic that Friedman and Brooks have been outdone by Frank Rich, who was moved over from the entertainment section. His column has become the must read each week. Does this mean that the administration has left the realm of serious theater for that of farse?
Thursday, March 15, 2007
Brazen Liars
Over at TomDispatch, Tom Englehardt wonders why Sy Hersh's piece, "The Redirection" hasn't set off more of a furor and call for investigation.
I sense a bit of outrage fatigue in the country. The brazenness of the administration's actions have led to us to a place where the latest news item, whether it be Walter Reed, the AG purge (and Gonzales' lying to Congress about the motives of that), misinformation on Iranian involvement in Iraq, etc., gets only a shrug. That is really bad news for the country, however.
Case in point. Your mother always told you that one of the consequences of lying is that folks wouldn't take your word for things once you had proved yourself deceitful. What better way to describe the reaction of even the mainstream media to the confession of Khalid Sheik Muhammad plastered all over today's paper. From the blogs to "the View", people generally assumed that this man had been tortured, that his confession was at best suspect, and at worst completely fabricated. The reality is that this is a "re-confession" and that all of this information had been released before. Whether it is a desperate attempt by the administration to deflect the news cycle away from the last days of Alberto Gonzales or not, the administration has lost the benefit of the doubt for good.
As far as I can tell, no one in the mainstream even blinked on the Iran-Contra angle or the possibility that a vast, secret Middle Eastern operation is being run, possibly illegally and based on stolen funds and Saudi money, out of the Vice President's office.....if Hersh is to be believed -- and as a major journalistic figure for the last near-40 years he certainly deserves to be taken seriously -- the Bush administration seems to be repeating the worst mistakes of the Reagan administration and of the anti-Soviet war in Afghanistan, which led inexorably to the greatest acts of blowback in our history. Given what we already know about the Bush administration, Americans should be up nights worrying about what all this means now as well as down the line.
I sense a bit of outrage fatigue in the country. The brazenness of the administration's actions have led to us to a place where the latest news item, whether it be Walter Reed, the AG purge (and Gonzales' lying to Congress about the motives of that), misinformation on Iranian involvement in Iraq, etc., gets only a shrug. That is really bad news for the country, however.
Case in point. Your mother always told you that one of the consequences of lying is that folks wouldn't take your word for things once you had proved yourself deceitful. What better way to describe the reaction of even the mainstream media to the confession of Khalid Sheik Muhammad plastered all over today's paper. From the blogs to "the View", people generally assumed that this man had been tortured, that his confession was at best suspect, and at worst completely fabricated. The reality is that this is a "re-confession" and that all of this information had been released before. Whether it is a desperate attempt by the administration to deflect the news cycle away from the last days of Alberto Gonzales or not, the administration has lost the benefit of the doubt for good.
NCLB: Conservative Plot or Not?
The debate over how and whether to renew No Child Left Behind will heat up in the months ahead. It's been five years since NCLB was enacted, and conservatives and liberals will have an opportunity to evaluate the results of the legislation, and to again debate the intentions behind it. The WaPo has this editorial on the question of whether 100% achievement of the standards is even feasible, and whether the rhetorical brilliance of "no child left behind" hamstrings us to it's renewal.
Kevin Drum and Michael Iglesias debate the editorial. Drum sees NCLBs 100% compliance requirement as a plot by conservatives to force public schools to fail, a covert attempt to push their school voucher, anti-union, pro-evangelical agenda for education. I think that Iglesias rightly finds that view a bit paranoid, but the motivation Drum mentions will have some appeal to many conservative members of Congress that will weigh in on NCLB's renewal.
Iglesias finds it more concerning that the 100% compliance requirement actually dumbs down the academic standards for achievement, and creates a floor rather than a ceiling for proficiency. I think this is the real issue. Academic achievement is a wildly variable target, and to shoehorn our extremely heterogeneous school system into a uniform standard with funding penalties attached inevitably leads to lowering the bar for success.
Kevin Drum and Michael Iglesias debate the editorial. Drum sees NCLBs 100% compliance requirement as a plot by conservatives to force public schools to fail, a covert attempt to push their school voucher, anti-union, pro-evangelical agenda for education. I think that Iglesias rightly finds that view a bit paranoid, but the motivation Drum mentions will have some appeal to many conservative members of Congress that will weigh in on NCLB's renewal.
Iglesias finds it more concerning that the 100% compliance requirement actually dumbs down the academic standards for achievement, and creates a floor rather than a ceiling for proficiency. I think this is the real issue. Academic achievement is a wildly variable target, and to shoehorn our extremely heterogeneous school system into a uniform standard with funding penalties attached inevitably leads to lowering the bar for success.
Wednesday, March 14, 2007
Truly Frightening
Glenn Greenwald picks up on the same meeting that Fred Barnes alluded to so glowingly, a white house meeting between Bush and his neo-conservative tutors. You've really got to read the entire post at Salon, which concludes
Incompetence combined with simplistic fervor, mixed with a dose of ideological fantasy is a toxic brew indeed.
One can see that dynamic powerfully at work in the interaction between these neoconservatives and the President. They have seized upon the President's evangelical fervor and equated his "calling" to wage war for Good in the world with the neoconservative agenda of endless wars in the Middle East.
Incompetence combined with simplistic fervor, mixed with a dose of ideological fantasy is a toxic brew indeed.
Tuesday, March 13, 2007
Whistling by the graveyard
This piece, by Fred Barnes, would work as a parody.
The first thing that jumped out at me was this:
What does being "pro-America and pro-Iraq war" have to do with conservatism? Pat Buchanan and George Will certainly don't support the mess we've made of Mesopotamia, but I dare say they consider themselves conservatives. These people equate their radical agenda with conservatism and the truth couldn't be further apart.
This statement:
is vivisected here.
but Barnes' wishful thinking goes overboard here:
Rush is pissed that Lt. Gen Kiley resigned today, making him the third to go in the Walter Reed scandal. He's also pissed that Gonzales' aide Kyle Sampson packed it in, rather than facing indictment over the AG purge. Gonzales will go next. Henry Waxman will methodically demand accountability from all of them, including Condi. Fred Barnes is whistling by the graveyard.
The first thing that jumped out at me was this:
Roberts is a Thatcherite. He's strongly pro-American and pro-Iraq war. Among other things, Bush and Roberts talked about the decline of Europe and the role in this played by the shrunken
influence of Christianity. By the time they broke for lunch, the president was "revved up," an aide says. His fervor was infectious. "Roberts is more conservative than I am!" a pleasantly surprised White House official exclaimed.
What does being "pro-America and pro-Iraq war" have to do with conservatism? Pat Buchanan and George Will certainly don't support the mess we've made of Mesopotamia, but I dare say they consider themselves conservatives. These people equate their radical agenda with conservatism and the truth couldn't be further apart.
This statement:
Bolten's view--and presumably Bush's--is that if you're going to do something, do it swiftly. And that, by the way, is exactly what the White House did in response to the Walter Reed scandal, instantly denouncing the poor treatment of wounded soldiers and hastily naming a commission to recommend improvements.
is vivisected here.
but Barnes' wishful thinking goes overboard here:
What has cheered congressional Republicans is the White House's eagerness to fight back on a wide range of issues, not just on Iraq and the war on terror. "They're tired [at the White House] but you don't get the sense they're giving up," a Senate official insists. "From Bush on down, they haven't stopped fighting back. If they do, it'll be trouble up here" on Capitol Hill for Republicans.
Rush is pissed that Lt. Gen Kiley resigned today, making him the third to go in the Walter Reed scandal. He's also pissed that Gonzales' aide Kyle Sampson packed it in, rather than facing indictment over the AG purge. Gonzales will go next. Henry Waxman will methodically demand accountability from all of them, including Condi. Fred Barnes is whistling by the graveyard.
Neo Conned
Glenn Greenwald over at Salon has an interesting post on the Kagan cabal that is behind the surge strategy in Iraq, and at the same time leading the cheers for the strategy in the pages of the WaPo and the Weekly Standard. He focuses on the fact that the Post and their media "watchdog" Howie Kurtz suspend all pretenses of objectivity by not revealing that the pro surge editorial they ran yesterday was written by the brother of the key architect of the strategy.
The larger question is two-fold. He hints at it here:
Is this any way to execute our foreign policy?
But even more...these neo-cons, as well as Richard Perle, who Greenwald leaves aside have been demonstrably wrong on each and every prediction they've made on our great Iraqi adventure. They took Chalabi's hook, they told us we'd be greeted as liberators, that the war wouldn't cost more than $8b, and that there would be no civil war. In short, they told Bush, Cheney and Rove what they wanted to hear. But why are we still listening to them? It was foolish to think that November changed anything. Bush will press forward, because to him, any change in strategy, any hint of withdraw equals defeat. We give the boy king the benefit of the doubt only at our peril, his imperiousness knows few bounds.
The larger question is two-fold. He hints at it here:
What is really going on here is that our media and political elite have deemed a small circle of ideologues as our "foreign policy experts." Those are the ones to whom the media turns when they want to present "expert opinion" about this war. The panel of media-designated "experts" always has been, and still is, almost uniformly composed of war advocates. And the expert panel has not changed at all, despite being exposed as the authors and cheerleaders of the greatest strategic disaster in our country's history.
Robert and all the other Kagans, along with their close comrades like Bill Kristol and Charles Krauthammer, are at the very epicenter of that incestuous expert clatch. It is imperative to the establishment-protectors like the Howie Kurtzs that their objectivity and credibility and trustworthiness remain beyond reproach.
Is this any way to execute our foreign policy?
But even more...these neo-cons, as well as Richard Perle, who Greenwald leaves aside have been demonstrably wrong on each and every prediction they've made on our great Iraqi adventure. They took Chalabi's hook, they told us we'd be greeted as liberators, that the war wouldn't cost more than $8b, and that there would be no civil war. In short, they told Bush, Cheney and Rove what they wanted to hear. But why are we still listening to them? It was foolish to think that November changed anything. Bush will press forward, because to him, any change in strategy, any hint of withdraw equals defeat. We give the boy king the benefit of the doubt only at our peril, his imperiousness knows few bounds.
Monday, March 12, 2007
Neo Nothing
Digby wraps up the whole Libby affair with this piquant indictment of the Washington press corps. He gets to the heart of the matter, which as I mentioned earlier really is the clubby incestuous relationship between the Russerts and the Libbys, rather than some high principled first amendment argument. He says:
Digby's post really fits well with the drivel that David Brooks puked onto the pages of the NYT this Sunday, in which he speaks of the end of neo-liberalism. Brooks lazily puts the left blogosphere into the category of the old paleo-liberal establishment, which in his mind refused to play by the rules, which the Blue Dog Dems, the harbinger of Brooks' neo-liberals did. In Brooks' world, the neo-liberals presaged a golden age of some sort of detente between the left and the right, where cooler centrist heads prevailed. Today's bloggers are a throwback to the angry uncompromising left of the past, and in Brooks' mind, that aint good.
The reality is far different. Great bloggers like Digby are calling out the administration for their brazen imperiousness and their tragic incompetence. Gonzalez will go next, whether it is because he's incompetent (today's WSJ), or because he is an apologist for the most absurd constitutional theory that has been posited since FDR, namely John Woo's unitary executive. The attorney general purge will snowball into another issue that fits the same pattern, just as Walter Reed has haunting parallels with Katrina.
We may have a hard time wrapping our heads around constitutional arguments about executive powers, but if there's one thing we don't like, it is a loser. We losing in Iraq, badly. Further, we don't have time for an executive who is an incompetent, and Bush has proven to be one time and again. That is a toxic mix, and I can feel the whole thing falling quickly apart. Brooks and Russert can pine for the old days, when things weren't so nasty in their little world, but it is people like Digby and the other important bloggers who are calling bullshit on this whole sordid affair.
We watched the press behave like a bunch of lapdancers for the Republicans for well over a decade. They wrapped their legs around Republican power so strongly that it finally led us into a circumstance that is killing people in large numbers. They were angry at Bill Clinton for "trashing the place" and it wasn't his place. They took out their childish pique on Al Gore and stoked the fires that demanded Bush be seated in the white house no matter what the legitimate outcome of the election in 2000. After 9/11 they put on a modern martial pageant that would have made Joseph Stalin proud.
They can weep and moan all they want about the verdict and help the Republicans twist themselves into a pretzels trying to explain why lying about the reasons for a war is less serious than lying about a blow job. Fine. But we know that these mediawhores have been exposed. They can pretend that none of this was important and they can keep the GOP spin machine going with a few more tired whirls around that pole, but the people who are getting the accolades and the pulitzers and who will be remembered for their excellent reporting during this period will be the ones who have had the chutzpah to speak truth to power.
Digby's post really fits well with the drivel that David Brooks puked onto the pages of the NYT this Sunday, in which he speaks of the end of neo-liberalism. Brooks lazily puts the left blogosphere into the category of the old paleo-liberal establishment, which in his mind refused to play by the rules, which the Blue Dog Dems, the harbinger of Brooks' neo-liberals did. In Brooks' world, the neo-liberals presaged a golden age of some sort of detente between the left and the right, where cooler centrist heads prevailed. Today's bloggers are a throwback to the angry uncompromising left of the past, and in Brooks' mind, that aint good.
The reality is far different. Great bloggers like Digby are calling out the administration for their brazen imperiousness and their tragic incompetence. Gonzalez will go next, whether it is because he's incompetent (today's WSJ), or because he is an apologist for the most absurd constitutional theory that has been posited since FDR, namely John Woo's unitary executive. The attorney general purge will snowball into another issue that fits the same pattern, just as Walter Reed has haunting parallels with Katrina.
We may have a hard time wrapping our heads around constitutional arguments about executive powers, but if there's one thing we don't like, it is a loser. We losing in Iraq, badly. Further, we don't have time for an executive who is an incompetent, and Bush has proven to be one time and again. That is a toxic mix, and I can feel the whole thing falling quickly apart. Brooks and Russert can pine for the old days, when things weren't so nasty in their little world, but it is people like Digby and the other important bloggers who are calling bullshit on this whole sordid affair.
Wednesday, March 07, 2007
The Other WSJ Editorial
The lead editorial in the Journal today will get most of the attention, as it relates to the Libby verdict, and in which it predictably calls for a swift pardon, and reiterates the editor's longstanding belief that the case itself should have never seen the light of day. For my money, though, the more egregious (but not by much) editorial is the second, which reaches their typical lows in journalistic truthfulness by recapping the exchange that took place between John Kerry and Sam Fox, the Bush administration's choice to become ambassador of Belgium. If you read the Journal's piece, you'd think that Kerry launched into a spiteful harangue against Fox simply because he wrote a check for 50K to the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth in the last election cycle. What's lost, of course, is the truth.
Kerry's question, quite appropriately directed at Fox's overall judgement, pertained to the 527 contribution that Fox made, with particular emphasis on the fact that Fox had just completed a long winded dissertation on the evils of 527s, culminating in this quote:
By leaving out this, the Journal conveniently leaves the impression that Kerry's questioning was from out of left field, and was vituperative and small. The reality, of course, was quite different.
Look, Sam Fox is a 77 year old hack who has contributed skads of money to the Bush administration and is being rewarded with an ambassadorship. That much is business as usual. The Journal's editorial, however, is another matter altogether.
Kerry's question, quite appropriately directed at Fox's overall judgement, pertained to the 527 contribution that Fox made, with particular emphasis on the fact that Fox had just completed a long winded dissertation on the evils of 527s, culminating in this quote:
" I'm against 527s, I've always been against 527s. I think, again, they're mean and destructive, I think they've hurt a lot of good, decent people."
By leaving out this, the Journal conveniently leaves the impression that Kerry's questioning was from out of left field, and was vituperative and small. The reality, of course, was quite different.
Look, Sam Fox is a 77 year old hack who has contributed skads of money to the Bush administration and is being rewarded with an ambassadorship. That much is business as usual. The Journal's editorial, however, is another matter altogether.
Tuesday, March 06, 2007
myCFO.com redux
MyCFO was an extremely high profile start up in the personal financial services space that was backed by Silicon Valley royalty. Their basic premise was to move the entire family office into an online experience, catering to the tech-savvy dot com millionaires who were being created each hour during the tech boom of the late 90s. Since we competed around that space, I was always curious as to how their model would play out. Their vision of a personal concierge service, private jet rentals, tax advice, online brokerage, and accounting all delivered via the web seemed way ahead of its time, but the vision was so bold it bore attention.
When you read about them, their revenue and assets under management seemed compelling. I cynically assumed that the only customers and assets that they had were the founders, John Doerr, Jim Clark, Jim Barksdale. When they shut down, I assumed that it was just the exhaustion of the tech bubble bursting, an idea ahead of its time, bold but too aggressive for the time.
How wrong I was. I wasn't cynical enough. It was all a big tax dodge for the founders. It's emails like this that people should never forget:
And never far from malfeasance in the Valley is Larry Sonsini, of course. He adopts the exact same position he trotted out during the recent HP fiasco, and during the options backdating scandal here:
Of course you didn't, Larry. The firm hired Wilson Sonsini, the most expensive white shoe law firm in the Valley to write their procedure manual. What a joke.
When you read about them, their revenue and assets under management seemed compelling. I cynically assumed that the only customers and assets that they had were the founders, John Doerr, Jim Clark, Jim Barksdale. When they shut down, I assumed that it was just the exhaustion of the tech bubble bursting, an idea ahead of its time, bold but too aggressive for the time.
How wrong I was. I wasn't cynical enough. It was all a big tax dodge for the founders. It's emails like this that people should never forget:
Mr. Doerr was a booster for the firm's tax strategists. In response to Mr. Doerr's 2001 email lauding the tax team for its performance -- which he sent on Sept. 11, 31 minutes before the first plane struck the World Trade Center -- the tax team's leader reported landing $4.5 million more in fees. Five days after 9/11, Mr. Doerr replied: "This is AWESOME news, particularly during a week marred by national tragedy.... Please keep me posted."
And never far from malfeasance in the Valley is Larry Sonsini, of course. He adopts the exact same position he trotted out during the recent HP fiasco, and during the options backdating scandal here:
A spokeswoman for Mr. Sonsini said his law firm did basic legal work for myCFO that didn't include reviewing its tax offerings
Of course you didn't, Larry. The firm hired Wilson Sonsini, the most expensive white shoe law firm in the Valley to write their procedure manual. What a joke.
Rudy Ascendant
Once again, Digby argues that the Giuliani candidacy is not doomed by his sordid personal life, and that the lizard brained right will respond positively to his thinly veiled signals indicating his fealty to their hot-button causes. I remain unconvinced. I think that as the campaign develops, (and we've got to remember just how early it is), the "thousand cuts" scenario is more likely. Rudy's personal life, his inherent meanness, and the disgraceful conduct that has already alienated his children from his campaign will snowball, making him completely unpalatable to the conservative right. Rudy wears thin. He wore thin on New Yorkers until the myth of 9/11 saved his bacon. But in New York, today, even that hagiography has worn thin. The more people get to know Rudy, the less that they like him. I think digby overestimates how much of Rudy's story has entered the collective consciousness of the mouth-breathing Christian fundies. My guess is that as more and more of the story seeps out, we'll see Rudy's candidacy fall apart.
Friday, March 02, 2007
Easy Reading Assignment..
This weekend's reading assignment is actually easy. Here's an interview with Evan Kohlmann, founder of globalterroralert.com, called "The Iraq Insurgency for Beginners". Fascinating Q and A that on the heels of Sy Hersh's piece brings the chaos of Iraq into a clearer view.
Money graph:
As Boehner notes (below), the Dems better figure this thing out.
Money graph:
What do you make of the recent furor over the Iran government supposedly arming the militias and killing 170 American soldiers?
It's tragic-funny. There have been over 3,000 U.S. soldiers killed in Iraq, which means more than 2,830 people were killed by Sunnis, the real insurgents. The way this has been advertised in the press is incredibly disingenuous. Money and weapons and personnel have been coming across the Saudi and Syrian borders for four years and have been directly aiding Sunni insurgents, who are responsible for the lion's share of U.S. casualties. It's the height of hypocrisy to attack Iran and not criticize Saudi Arabia.
As Boehner notes (below), the Dems better figure this thing out.
Quote of the Day
"For seven weeks Democrats have been all over the block," said House Republican Leader John Boehner of Ohio. "They have no strategy to stop the war. They have no strategy to win the war. They are the majority here on Capitol Hill. It's time for them to grow up and make a decision."
In other words, the Republicans, who controlled both houses of Congress, and the executive branch for six years bear no responsibility for the train wreck of Iraq.
Thursday, March 01, 2007
Doug Feith dot Com?
This is so strange. Doug Feith, who actually has Philly roots, has launched a website, which seems to exist only to attempt to prove that his well deserved reputation as "fucking stupidest guy on the face of the earth" is somehow inaccurate.
The site simply states that Feith and the rest of his PNAC buddies were not responsible for lying us into the Iraq mess, because the recent IGs report on pre-war intelligence does not specifically say so. Never mind that this bumbling idiot swallowed every lie Ahmad Chalabi handed him, and back channeled a known liar Manucher Ghorbanifar against the specific direction of the State Department, all in an attempt to gin up a war against Iraq that he had demanded Bill Clinton undertake years earlier.
This man is a faculty member at Georgetown, where he teaches a course on the Bush Administration's response to terrorism. Pretty weird to have this thing hanging out on the internet...
Take a look at the News Coverage page, it references a bunch of articles by folks at the National Review, the New York Sun, and the Journal editorial pages pathetically apologizing for Feith's incredible record of ineptitude.
UPDATE: Over at The News Blog, there is an amplification of Feith and why some accountability is in order.
The site simply states that Feith and the rest of his PNAC buddies were not responsible for lying us into the Iraq mess, because the recent IGs report on pre-war intelligence does not specifically say so. Never mind that this bumbling idiot swallowed every lie Ahmad Chalabi handed him, and back channeled a known liar Manucher Ghorbanifar against the specific direction of the State Department, all in an attempt to gin up a war against Iraq that he had demanded Bill Clinton undertake years earlier.
This man is a faculty member at Georgetown, where he teaches a course on the Bush Administration's response to terrorism. Pretty weird to have this thing hanging out on the internet...
Take a look at the News Coverage page, it references a bunch of articles by folks at the National Review, the New York Sun, and the Journal editorial pages pathetically apologizing for Feith's incredible record of ineptitude.
UPDATE: Over at The News Blog, there is an amplification of Feith and why some accountability is in order.
Imperial Presidency
The death of Arthur Schlesinger Jr. brings into high relief the peril of the times in which we are living as well as the importance of understanding history as a tool to regain our perspective. This review of his last book contains several relevant points that highlight Schlesinger's scathing disdain for the Bush administration's usurpation of power. It will be interesting to see whether the neocons will be so bold as to adopt Schlesinger as another of their patron saints (as they did Orwell) in the days to come.
If they do, it will be quite a contortion. From the review:
and
Historians help us to understand that the perils that we face often have precedents and analogies, and that every threat we face is not so unique that we must ignore the very foundations of the republic in order to deal with it.
Updated: Here is Schlesinger himself in The American Prospect in December 2005. He calls the 2006 midterms.
If they do, it will be quite a contortion. From the review:
Thirty years ago, Schlesinger introduced the idea of the "imperial presidency" -- the inevitable concentration of power in the hands of the executive in moments of crisis. Abraham Lincoln and Franklin Roosevelt both claimed authority not granted to them by the Constitution, and during the Cold War, "a climate of sustained and indefinite crisis, aborted the customary reversion of power" from the president to the other branches of government. Now, "the imperial presidency is born again" -- in its most dangerous incarnation yet, thanks to a threat perceived as uniquely dangerous and a war on terror that by definition has no end. "The impact of 9/11 and of the overhanging terrorist threat," Schlesinger argues, "gives more power than ever to the imperial presidency and places the separation of powers ordained by the Constitution under unprecedented, and at times unbearable, strain."
and
Our response, if it is to do more good than harm, must be forged by democratic deliberation, not presidential diktat. And thus, Schlesinger tells us, "history illuminates the true meaning of patriotism in wartime."
Historians help us to understand that the perils that we face often have precedents and analogies, and that every threat we face is not so unique that we must ignore the very foundations of the republic in order to deal with it.
Updated: Here is Schlesinger himself in The American Prospect in December 2005. He calls the 2006 midterms.
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