The Facts Machine

CBS Poll

2008-10-15T20:00:00.001-07:00

Uncommitteds believe Obama won the debate by a 53-22 margin.

UPDATE: CNN has it Obama 58%, McCain 31%

Live-blogging tonight's debate

2008-10-15T17:48:00.001-07:00

I usually spend these debates watching them, while following various live-blogs of them. This time, I'm gonna take a crack at it.

PRE-GAME... All Obama needs to do here is run out the clock, keep it consistent, sound knowledgeable and reassuring, etc. Basically, do exactly what he's done in the first two debates. He will hammer McCain on policy no doubt, but anything he uses against McCain besides that will most likely be in response to whatever McCain brings up. And that's where the drama is.

McCain still needs that "game-changer". He didn't get it in the first debate: repeatedly saying Obama "doesn't understand", followed by repeated instances of Obama responding to questions as if he clearly understood the issues at hand, didn't work. He didn't get it in the second debate: Obama was equally unflappable, and McCain looked conspicuously unpresidential with his "that one" comment. Sooo here? We can look forward to McCain possibly invoking some of the trumped-up Obama bogeymen: Ayers, Rezko, ACORN and, though highly unlikely, Wright. Problem is, three of those four things were thoroughly pored over by reporters during the Primary campaign, and McCain is as closely related to ACORN as Obama is. (watch for McCain to lie that ACORN is about "voter fraud", a serious crime, when the actual issue is "voter registration fraud", a substantially less dire issue)

The reason he's gonna bring up that stuff is, well, Obama/Biden have baited him to do so, and he's a proud, proud man. He might look bad bringing that stuff up. McCain's hope, then, is that the moderator, Bob Schieffer, brings it up for him. Which he might. We'll see...

6:00 Hofstra University. In Hempstead, NY. I used to live on Hempstead Avenue. In Goleta, but it was still Hempstead!

6:02 Please let Schieffer not be such as horrible a stickler for the rules as Brokaw was last week.

6:03 A friendly welcome, with niceties exchanged. How far we've come.

6:05 "Fannie & Freddie Mae". Oops.

6:06 McCain going on about his government-buy-mortgages plan, the one he didn't consult with his advisers about before announcing in the second debate. Please keep talking about it, since nobody likes it.

6:07 McCain did not mention the words "middle class" in his response to the economic-plan question. Obama has jumped on this, good.

6:10 The use of the phrase "small business" in political discourse can include so many things, but the vast, vast majority of small businesses do not fall into the Republican fantasy of what they really are, and thus the vast majority of them won't see their taxes increase under Obama's plan. By the way, if you had "Joe the plumber" in your drinking game, you are probably on the floor by now.

6:18 There's the "across the board spending freeze" again. One of those phrases that sounds good but means nothing. He has identified, in interviews, minor programs he wouldn't cut, so if they're on the bottom end of the priority list of things he wouldn't freeze spending on, it's a meaningless idea.

6:19 Line-item veto? Wasn't that deemed unconstitutional after the Gingrich congress gave it to Clinton?

6:23 Obama is smacking down the $42,000 tax lie. "Even Fox News disputes it."

6:26 Here we go. Hahaha the town hall meetings! He wouldn't have had his campaign say "palled around with terrorists?" if they had more debates?

6:30 Notice that McCain had a chance to talk about Ayers etc, but didn't do it. First chance: wussed out on. See if he tries it again later.

6:33 When given the choice, McCain has chosen to insult some of his own supporters. At a time when his supporters are expecting him to bring up Ayers et al. Whoops!

6:40 And there he goes. That was a lot of bullshit in 4 minutes. I could have watched that new Britney video instead. Nothing big though, nothing but the vague bullet-points of McCain's ads.

6:42 And Mr McCain, as your reward for saying the Ayers stuff (sort of) to Obama's face, you shall now be subjected to 2 minutes of trying to explain why Sarah Palin would make a great President! "A breash of freath air"

6:45 My sense of the Ayers/Acorn/etc exchange is that McCain wanted to say his one or two bits and then get out of it as fast as he could. He seemed uncomfortable.

6:46 If this was a closer race, we would have seen Obama go after McCain's current associations as pertaining to his policy advisers.

6:54 Did I just see an eye-roll? I'm pretty sure I just saw an eye-roll from McCain. On the issue of Colombian free trade, no less!

6:58 The CNN independent voter dials really love Obama's health care answer. They don't like McCain's, especially the women.

7:04 After seriously out-classing McCain on the health care question, Obama gets to watch McCain morph his simple small-business plumber "Joe" into a "rich" man ("congratulations!") to try to defend his taxing of health benefits.

7:07 "Supreme Court nominees based on qualifications". But not for VP nominees, John?

7:08 Whoa, some mega cognitive dissonance there from McCain. His line about support of Roe V Wade being a disqualifier will make its way into an Obama ad.

7:12 Watching the pundits' and the independents' reactions to McCain's abortion attacks in real time is an interesting window into the alternate reality in which cable news personalities seem to live. Also, McCain had essentially nothing to say to Obama's Lily Ledbetter answer. Just a throwaway line of unpresidential snark.

7:16 Obama: "Just say no to cavalier sexual behavior". Cough cough Bristol cough cough.

7:22 Obama just played the "The Greatest Love Of All" card. (:

7:26 Yes, it was an eye-roll!

7:27 Hey closing statements! Last chance!

McCain: Serve serve serve record etc.

Obama: Middle class sacrifice work for you etc.

Nice joke from Bill Bennett just now: "Not since the Nixon years have we hears so much about plumbers".

RECAP: McCain had a nice start, but lost the last 60 minutes. Particularly on health care, abortion, education, and pretty much everything after his brief (and quickly aborted) Ayers exchange. As Nate puts it in the 538 liveblog: "Congratulations, President Obama".

And the winner is...

2008-10-09T08:29:00.000-07:00

...Ayers web ad!?!?

Pathetic.

Obama to Charlie Gibson yesterday:

Well, I am surprised that, you know, we've been seeing some pretty over-the-top attacks coming out of the McCain campaign over the last several days that he wasn't willing to say it to my face.

But I guess we've got one last debate. So presumably, if he ends up feeling that -- that he needs to, he will raise it during the debate.

Somehow, I don't think a web ad helps out McCain very much.

Uh oh

2008-10-08T21:55:00.000-07:00

The Troopergate report will be released on Friday.

The McCain campaign will be "making news in the morning" tomorrow.

Ruh roh! Incoming distraction stunt!

Our options are:

-Some big economic proposal. (This is my guess. It's the only thing he might do that would make his former allies in the media re-swoon.)

-Some change in his tax plan (Akin to Bob Dole's "I'm giving you money!" ploy in '96)

-A one-term pledge. (Not likely. That would be akin to telling voters that he wants Caribou Barbie to be president in no more than 4 years.)

-"Barack Obama was a card-carrying member of ___________." (I kinda doubt this. At this point I don't think the McCain people want the big smears coming straight from the candidate himself. All their Ayers insinuating has only helped Obama in recent days.)

-An endorsement. (Powell? Not likely. Bloomberg? Dunno. There just aren't that many high-profile undecided political figures out there right now.)

-Cabinet announcements. (He'd have to include a center-left person who wasn't Holy Joe.)

-The Bristol-Levi wedding date announcement. (Please let this be the one, hahaha)

-That Michelle Obama "whitey" video? Ha.

VP Debate review, a couple days late

2008-10-04T22:00:00.000-07:00

I think the biggest news on VP debate day, at least pertaining to the race, was the story that the McCain campaign was pulling out of Michigan. That story broke on Thursday morning, hours before Palin and Biden squared off. The McCain campaign seemingly concluded that no matter what positive effect came out of that night's debate, Michigan -- a swing state for the last several election cycles -- was out of reach.

Michigan: epicenter of the "Reagan Democrats".

Michigan: where there was supposed to be a large population of white middle-class suburbanites who weren't warming to Obama that quickly.

Michigan: where Obama was supposed to have a disadvantage because of the controversy during the Democratic primary season when the state's delegates were not initially seated in full.

Michigan: supposedly a test-ground to measure the extent of the so-called "Bradley Effect".

All gone, off McCain's radar. So what does this mean? It means the McCain campaign knows that public opinion has turned irrevocably against Sarah Palin, and even the most capable debate performance possible from her wasn't going to change that.

And it hasn't.

At best, the debate was an absolute wash.

Palin: If there was a list of things she had to do to stay afloat, she did all of those, and came across as not a rambling flub-machine. Unfortunately for her, though, she came off as a robotic slogan-machine, retreating to stale McCain/GOP talking points on every single question, regardless of what questions were being asked. "I'm not going to answer your question, I'm going to talk to the American people." But Sarah, this is a debate, the whole point is to answer the questions you're given. And they weren't exactly curveballs (Gwen Ifill kept her questions very simple and straightforward). She reveals herself (haha) as a decent 2nd-tier McCain surrogate, but did nothing to improve her ticket's chances with undecided voters. Of course, there's always Rich Lowry of National Review, whose take on her performance reeks of KY. Ew. But to quote Homer Simpson, "[She] card read good!"

Biden: All he needed to do was not make any major gaffes, and not say anything that could be misconstrued as bullying or sexist regarding his debate opponent. Check and check. One of the things Biden noticed was that Palin was not departing from her scripted talking points during the debate, so he could go after McCain with relative impunity.

Key moment of the debate: Biden chokes up a bit when talking about his son and the tragedy that hit his family, and Palin doesn't acknowledge this at all.

Impact on polls: Like I said, probably a wash. On to New Hampshire this Tuesday!

Workity work work

2008-10-03T04:05:00.000-07:00

VP debate recap Friday during the day most likely, been too busy with work this week to blog much, er, at all.

One last link

2008-09-27T00:48:00.000-07:00

Nate Silver: Why voters thought Obama won tonight.

-Obama talked to the voters, McCain talked to the pundits.
-Obama 'won' on the issues that matter most to the voters (namely the economy).
-Obama closed the readiness and leadership gaps.

Conventional Wisdom

2008-09-26T22:54:00.000-07:00

Two of the bigger CW-molders from Time, Joe Klein and Mark Halperin, give the debate to Obama.

First Debate Wrap-up

2008-09-26T21:27:00.000-07:00

First of all, let's all agree that Jim Lehrer did an admirable job as moderator, mostly in a less-is-more fashion. He'd ask a question, then he'd let the candidates pretty much have at it, without butting in with warnings about time limits and so on. My lone complaint, though, was his Russert-ian question about what plans the two candidates would cut back on because of the giant banking bailout. Both candidates believe that all their respective plans are important, and neither was going to admit to making a real commitment to not pursuing something they've claimed to be a high priority to them for months/years, no matter how many times Lehrer pressed the question (4 times). McCain wildly proposed a "spending freeze" gimmick (a dumb idea), while Obama steered clear of the bait altogether.

All the talk on the network wrap-ups as to who "won" the debate, on "points" or whatever (boxing metaphors abound), is somewhat misplaced. The main issue here is with expectations, particularly for Obama. He has the "change" mantle, and people want to vote for him, but his big assignment for tonight's debate -- the foreign policy debate -- was to come across as a credible leader on international issues. Someone who spoke with demonstrable knowledge and expertise on the issues of the world (as opposed to, say, mentioning his home state's proximity to Russia). To do this, he didn't have to 'beat' McCain on what's supposed to be the old man's issue; he merely had to hang with him. And nobody who watched that debate could conceivably argue that Obama didn't do that tonight. In other words, Obama passed that "commander in chief test" Hillary put forth all those months ago during the primary campaign.

This was the night McCain was supposed to have a decisive victory, and that simply didn't happen. It doesn't matter if Obama won by a little or McCain won by a little. The only result that would have helped McCain would have been a clear win, or a mega gaffe on Obama's part, and neither of those things happened.

I didn't recall any one comment on Obama's part that was hissy-fit-caliber for the right wing echo chamber. I recall the first of the Bush-Kerry debates in 2004; the general consensus was that Kerry won handily that night, but the right-wing media seized on an abstract comment of Kerry's about how America's actions need to pass "the global test", interpreting it literally as some sort of international veto on the American military. I didn't hear anything from Obama's responses tonight that could be isolated like that. Certainly the McCain surrogates I saw on TV after the debate couldn't come up with anything.

Except for a stupid video montage of Obama expressing agreement with McCain at various points in the debate, but that's not really anything of importance, given that it was a deliberate disarming rhetorical tactic on Barack's part.

(Rachel Maddow, just now, made a good catch on MSNBC: McCain, in an almost throwaway manner -- "sure" -- said that yes, he would vote for the Wall Street bailout)

One superficial, but revealing discussion coming up... For those of you who watched the debate on a channel that kept the two candidates on a split-screen -- NBC did this for most of the debate -- you probably saw what I saw. McCain was, for lack of better words, rude and churlish. A variety of pundits noticed that McCain never once looked at Obama through the entire debate. His awkward and disrespectful smirk returned, sometimes coupled with a snicker. Let me put it this way: If Chris Matthews has to ask about McCain, "Do you think he was too troll-like tonight?", that pretty much seals the deal, doesn't it? I think McCain's posture gave us a preview of what we'll soon be seeing on Saturday Night Live.

And McCain's repeated talking-point-driven mantra that Obama "doesn't understand" and is "naive" is one of those things that falls apart when the very next thing an uncommitted voter sees is Obama explaining his position on a foreign policy issues in detail, with clear command of the facts and a full recognition of the stakes at hand.

Tonight's polls...

CNN: Obama wins on all fronts

CBS: Obama wins among undecideds

MediaCurves: Obama wins debate 61-39

No link, but longtime GOP pollster Frank Luntz's focus group on FoxNews leaned Obama as well.

But again, he didn't need to win this debate, he just needed to hold is own, and he did that and then some.

LATE THOUGHT: I wonder if the GOP's concerted attempt to ridicule Obama for not being able to talk without a teleprompter might have been the wrong tactic to employ.

Thought of the day

2008-09-26T07:32:00.000-07:00

If McCain does indeed give in and get his butt to Mississippi tonight for the debate, when I think he'll do, then this whole drama was about something else, too:

Lowering the expectations for his debate performance to a level somewhere between Earth's mantle and outer core.

UPDATE (10:45): Debate back on!

I are serious candidate. This is serious suspenshun.

2008-09-25T11:40:00.000-07:00

So John McCain is supposed to be Mighty Mouse, coming in to save the day on the bailout plan, which is something only he can do.

Yet as of Tuesday (the day before his "suspension"), he had not yet even read the Paulson bill? It's only three pages long.

A THREE-PAAAAGE BILLLL

Like I said, this is about the debates.

UPDATE: Jake Tapper has more on today's Bush-McCain-Obama meeting:

The White House's official list of those planning to attend the hastily-convened meeting called by President Bush this afternoon to discuss the Wall Street bailout bill includes a senior policy adviser to the campaign Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., Douglas Holtz-Eakin.

Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., had been told not to bring any campaign staff. He will be bringing a member of his Senate staff, Ian Solomon, a legislative assistant focused on economic issues.

His campaign adviser's presence notwithstanding, McCain announced Wednesday that he was suspending his campaign activities to focus on getting the people's business done.

Obama brings a Senate aide, McCain brings a campaign adviser. Remind me who's claiming that their campaign is 'suspended' again?

Chicken?

2008-09-25T01:32:00.000-07:00

Nate Silver of the invaluable fivethirtyeight.com has a post on McCain's suspension stunt in which he faults McCain for wanting to put off (or even cancel) one or more debates:

Let me digress for a moment. One of the reasons I probably turned out to be a Democrat is because of Ronald Reagan and Bugs Bunny. When I was a kid, once every now and then, they had Bugs Bunny specials scheduled for prime time ... I looked forward to these for weeks. But invariably, invariably! -- or so it seemed when I was six years old -- they'd be preempted by Ronald Reagan giving a speech. I was sure what Mr. Reagan was saying was very important ... but I absolutely hated him as a result.

Americans feel about the debates they way I felt about Bugs Bunny. The cumulative audience between the three Presidential debates will likely significantly exceed that of the Super Bowl. They like watching them, and look forward to them. If McCain denies them that pleasure, they are likely to be angry with him, perhaps in ways they have difficulty expressing.

I will admit, that's about right. I felt the same way about Pee Wee's Playhouse when I was eight years old, and when CBS interrupted it to show live coverage of the Tienamen Square massacre, I was practically in tears. But look at me, now I'm digressing.

My problem with this analysis is the following graf:

Imagine instead if McCain had called on Obama to return to Washington, and also called on him to meet him at Georgetown University on Friday night for a "civil discussion" (a.k.a. a High Noon showdown) on leading America's economy forward. That could have been brilliant. Obama would probably have had to agree to the change of venue and subject matter. McCain would have needed to follow-through by actually winning the debate, but if he had, that would almost certainly have been a game-changer. But that's not what McCain did.

And of course this could have happened... but it's not a matter of what McCain did, it's a matter of who McCain is. The simplest explanation tends to be the correct one, and when you sift through everything that happened today, only one conclusion can be drawn:

McCain wanted out of the debates, at least for the time being, and he wanted out at any cost. This was his way of trying to get out of them.

Yes, some of this move was about attempting to "white knight" the Congress on the big banking bailout (ahh, malignant narcissism), but in the eyes of the campaign that was little more than a potentially positive by-product of his greater need. The economy itself -- something he has repeatedly confessed he "doesn't understand as well as [he] should" -- was little more than a useful circumstance to help him try to accomplish his wussification.

McCain and his people made a calculation very similar to the one that produced Caribou Barbie: Running Mate.

Status Quo: 100% odds of losing by 2-5%
Do Something Crazy: 90% odds of losing by 6-10%, but 10% odds of somehow pulling it out.

It was this calculation that gave us Sarah Palin, which looks pretty dumb now -- did you hear about her interview with Couric? -- but people could understand why he picked her from a political standpoint at the time.

What's absolutely startling about today was that McCain and his campaign decided that the status quo of the rest of the race meant certain defeat, and this included holding a debate, which are supposed to be his chance to change the game, put the young and inexperienced Obama on his heels.

But nope, that's not what happened. Instead we have McCain concluding that any debate right now is a huge political loser for him. If his people felt confident that he could best, or even hold is own with, Obama in a debate setting, today's events would not have occurred.

And you can't really blame them, can you? McCain has been on a different side of the economic crisis issue every day since Lehman's collapse. (First he said the economy was still strong, then he called for a commission, then he called for the firing of the SEC head, then he suddenly became a pro-regulation populist, and now we have today's silliness) McCain's actions do not suggest either the seriousness or readiness required to support his own position in verbal sparring. On the latter issue, remember a couple a days ago, McCain was railing against the so-called "golden parachute" severance packages received by disgraced CEO's, but when confronted with a question about the $42-million parting gift his top economic advisor, Carly Fiorina, received when she was booted by Hewlett Packard, the Senator's response was essentially a non-response, as if he had no idea that this ever occurred.

McCAIN: I don't think so. ... Because I think she did a good job as CEO in many respects. I don't know the details of her compensation package. But she's one of many advisers that I have.

Q: But she did get a $45 million dollar golden parachute after being fired while 20,000 of her employees were laid off.

McCAIN: I have many of the people, but I do not know the details of what happened.

This could have come up in a debate about the economy. It seems like the simplest thing to prepare for, the most obvious question that could be posed to McCain were he to take a strong stance against giant severance packages for CEO's. Couple this episode with McCain's recent confusions in areas ranging from Iran's relationship with Al Qaeda to what continent Spain is on, and the reasons why the McCain campaign is chickening out of the debates begin to come into focus.

And as an added bonus, this could give McCain an out for the one person who could perform worse in a debate environment than him: Sarah Palin.

He'll have to come around though. America likes debates, America wants them. We just need to find someone to perform the Heimlich Maneuver on McCain's dog, so the candidate can have his homework back.

We now have an answer

2008-09-24T13:34:00.000-07:00

A massive Wall Street crisis, and an equally-massive bailout proposal, are what it takes to get John McCain to actually consider doing his day job for the first time since April.

Well, that, and today's polls.

Dispatch from Bizarro World

2008-09-21T00:29:00.000-07:00

A piece from Associated Press writer Charles Babington, released Saturday:

Obama looks to regain momentum in debate series

For Democrat Barack Obama, the three presidential debates that begin Friday are a chance to halt John McCain's momentum, re-establish his image as a refreshing political force and make his case against a third straight Republican presidential term.

For McCain, they provide an opportunity to reinforce voters' doubts about Obama's experience and readiness, and to demonstrate that he's still on top of his game at age 72.

With polls showing the race tight, and the debates expected to draw millions of TV viewers, they could tip the balance on Nov. 4.

Now I understand that the wire services put out bland "expectations" stories in advance of major events in the campaign (the debates, in this case). But nowhere in this article is there any hint of what has transpired in the past week (the bank failures, the government bailouts, McCain's streak of telling gaffes on the economy, the precipitous decline of Sarah Palin's favorability ratings in the polls, and the steep increase in Obama's standing in the polls vis-a-vis McCain). Surely being in the middle of the largest financial crisis in America in a generation (perhaps longer?) would serve to alter the dynamic of the campaign somewhat?

This article could've been written last week. Hell, it might've been. I'll score this as "lazy" over "mendacious".

Still, the "expectations" tidbits in the article are very telling:

Sen. John Thune, a South Dakota Republican who backs McCain, agrees that Obama carries a heavier burden. Obama has not been on the national stage as long as his opponent, Thune said, and voters have a flimsier grasp of who he is.

"Obama really has to score a punch," Thune said. "He hasn't closed the deal with a lot of American people."

Thune thinks McCain may benefit from low expectations, because Obama is seen as a great orator, a skill that some voters might associate with televised presidential forums even if the comparison is questionable.

Obama's less-than-overwhelming performances against Hillary Rodham Clinton and other Democrats during the primary season showed that the format "was not his strength," Thune said. On the other hand, he said, McCain "is wily, he's effective, he carries questions well," and may exceed many viewers' expectations.

Emphasis mine. Uh, John? I wonder if you have it backwards. Isn't the idea of massaging expectations to scale back those or your own candidate and inflate those of your opponent?

Add that to the phenomenon of Republicans and their ilk frequently mocking Obama for supposedly being teleprompter-dependent, and you wonder if these people have any plan at all.

One-Stop Shopping Friday

2008-09-19T15:45:00.000-07:00

Today's campaign news roundup:

--Obama says in a speech today that McCain's attempts to blame him for the current Wall Street meltdown are are signs that McCain is "panicking". Funny, I thought his panicking started on the morning of August 29th, when he threw out his entire campaign's message by putting Pain on the ticket. Note that he's trying to revive his "country first" message, but at this point how could such a concept, when ascribed to his actions in the last two weeks, not do anything other than collapse under the weight of its own inanity?

--Obama gets buzzed.

--Sarah Palin frequently makes the claim on the stump that, while mayor of Wasilla, she took a pay cut. The numbers, though? They tell a different story.

--California's Proposition 8, the Constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriages, is now trailing in the polls by a 55-38 margin. The Mormons are going all-in on this one, it appears. I know some of you out there are living in swing states but originally hail from California. It's a tough call on this one, but either choice of where you want to be registered seems like a wise one.

And two quotes to mull over.

John McCain, Wednesday, on Sarah Palin's experience with energy:

MCCAIN: Hahahaha, you know, that’s what happens when you throw two mavericks together. So, I’d, listen, I, she, you know, we talk about experience. What’s one of the major, if not the major challenge to America? Energy independence. Who knows more about energy than the governor of the state that provides 20% of America’s energy requirements?

Sarah Palin, Thursday, on energy:

"Of course, it's a fungible commodity and they don't flag, you know, the molecules, where it's going and where it's not. But in the sense of the Congress today, they know that there are very, very hungry domestic markets that need that oil first. So, I believe that what Congress is going to do also, is not to allow the export bans to such a degree that it's Americans who get stuck holding the bag without the energy source that is produced here, pumped here. It's got to flow into our domestic markets first."

Wizzle wazzle?

Click the link above to see the full CNN video, including Wolf Blitzer's attempts to interpret what he just heard. And hey, Palin got herself a YTMND page out of it!

(And by the way, that "Alaska provides 20% of our energy" claim? Not by a longshot.)

Poll

2008-09-17T10:04:00.001-07:00

The Gallup daily tracking poll goes from McCain +5 to Obama +2 in six days.

As I said before, if Obama is doing any better than behind by 2% when the debates begin, he wins in a landslide.

Late-Night Link Dump

2008-09-16T01:22:00.000-07:00

--Sarah Palin will not meet with investigators, as she had promised, as part of the 'Troopergate' investigation (she pressured the Public Safety Commissioner to fire a trooper who was in a custody battle with his ex-wife, Palin's sister, and when the Commish didn't fire the trooper, Palin fired the Commish). Note that this announcement comes from a McCain campaign spokesman, not someone of Palin's. This reminds me of that time a couple months ago when the US Army trotted out Iraqi PM Maliki's spokesperson and had him pretend that Maliki didn't express support for Obama's 16-month withdrawal plan. Hmm, doesn't seem that honest to me! As Olbermann put it earlier tonight, “It is like installing a giant neon sign over her head saying, ‘I’m hiding something.’”

--This whole McCain-is-a-liar thing is catching on! Even the insufferable longtime McCain suckup Richard Cohen of the Washington Post has turned on him. Ouch.

--Like I said, catching on: The DNC has put together a one-stop warehouse of McCain's lies debunked. (h/t ae)

--David Brooks writes a column causing me to simultaneously pat him on the back for valuing prudence over lipstick and want to gag myself for his almost epidemic need to classify people. (almost?)

--I'll leave it to others much more qualified than I to sift through the wreckage of this week's banking implosions, but the obvious silver lining here is that maybe -- just maybe! -- this will shift both the campaign, and more importantly the coverage of the campaign, back toward the issues, particularly the economy, certainly not where Mr. "I don't understand the economy as well as I should" wants it to be. Especially since top McCain economic adviser Phil Gramm played a central role in enacting the deregulations that allowed the mortgage crisis and banking implosions to occur in the first place. And they're the ones who are supposed to reform the economy? If you believe that, I've got a Bridge to... er, Somewhere to sell you.

--One last Palin link, then I'm off the Mooseburger beat for a couple days.

Sarah Palin: "All babies want to get borned! All babies want to get borned!"

Palin takes lying to a whole new level

2008-09-13T22:15:00.001-07:00

Palin tells her "Bridge to Nowhere" lie over 30 times, then gets called on it during Charlie Gibson's interview and has no choice but to backtrack a bit. As I blogged about yesterday, she left it out of the speech she gave yesterday in Alaska.

Today she returned to the campaign trail in the Lower 48, in Carson City, Nevada... and she brought the lie right back!

CARSON CITY, Nev. -- In her first solo campaign rally outside of Alaska, Gov. Sarah Palin drew an enthusiastic crowd at the Pony Express Pavilion Saturday and returned to a familiar refrain about the “Bridge to Nowhere.”

Palin has come under fire in recent days for misleadingly saying she told Congress “thanks but no thanks,” refusing an earmark for a bridge to a sparsely inhabited island in her home state. Independent groups and media fact-checkers have said Palin advocated for the federal earmark before opposing it, only ended after Congress had essentially killed it, and kept the $223 million for the appropriation after the project was killed.

Palin had cut the refrain from her speech during her three-day visit to Alaska. But she came back to it today, citing it as an example of earmark reform she and McCain would push for in the White House.

“I told Congress thanks but no thanks to that Bridge to Nowhere -- that if our state wanted to build that bridge, we would build it ourselves," she said.

Unbelievable. What does this say about her character?

UPDATE: Ooh, extra super bonus lie from Nevada's Lt Governor, who was at the rally:

Nevada Lt. Gov. Brian Krolicki said on stage that 10,000 people were in the crowd, but parks officials said the pavilion held only 3,500 people.

This is not an isolated incident for the McCain types.

I'll believe it in the Lower 48

2008-09-12T19:31:00.000-07:00

From the NY Times:

In speech after speech to crowds in Ohio, Pennsylvania and Virginia in recent days, Gov. Sarah Palin, the Republican candidate for vice president, has made sure to mention the so-called Bridge to Nowhere, the Alaska project that has become the symbol of earmarks, and what she portrays as her “thanks but no thanks” position on it.

When she landed in Fairbanks in her home state on Wednesday night, though, the bridge was notably absent from an (otherwise mostly similar) speech she made inside an airplane hangar before her homestate crowd.

(...)

On Thursday, a campaign aide said Governor Palin’s decision not to mention the so-called Bridge to Nowhere as she was welcomed home inside the hangar here had no broader significance. Governor Palin had changed other elements of her speech here too, the aide said, in the interest of time. Whether she returns to the theme outside Alaska remains to be seen.

Let's make this simple: Palin wouldn't say her "thanks but no thanks" line in Alaska because they already know it's bullshit, since her support for the Bridge To Nowhere was a major plank of her 2006 gubernatorial campaign.

Her incessant lying about the Bridge was (and will continue to be?) aimed at all of us here in the Continental USA. The test is when she comes back here and does her rallies with McCain. And frankly, I wouldn't put it past her.

(Speaking of rallies, have you noticed that ever since McCain tapped Palin to be his running mate, suddenly being a popular celebrity is a good thing again? Oy)

Planned Parenthood gives McCain a spanking

2008-09-12T15:58:00.001-07:00

I'd like to see the phrase "say anything to get elected" worked into the ads of the Democratic ticket itself in the near future.

Stop worrying, Obama supporters!

2008-09-12T14:55:00.000-07:00

Democrats can be such drama queens sometimes!

What have we seen these last couple months?

Obama wins series of primaries in late Winter, early Spring, polls go up.

Democrats: Cool!

Obama plays defense as media goes on and on about Reverend Wright, etc.

Democrats: What's wrong with this guy, why doesn't he assert himself?

Obama wins primary campaign, gets lots of coverage, polls go up.

Democrats: Yay! He's going to win! I can finally relax for once in a campaign.

McCain campaign throws a bunch of trivial crap at Obama, Obama plays defense, polls go down.

Democrats: Omigod he's gonna looz! This is Kerry/Gore/Dukakis all over again!

Obama delivers DNC acceptance speech, polls go up.

Democrats: Wow! That was inspiring and surprisingly full of policy details too! I can finally relax for once in a campaign.

McCain campaign, now armed with an unqualified governor from Alaska, throws a bunch more trivial crap at Obama, Obama plays defense, polls go down.

Democrats: Omigod he's really gonna looz! This is Kerry/Gore/Dukakis all over again! Hell, Mondale too!

...

Guys. Relax. Have some dip.

Fast forward a few weeks...

Obama debates McCain, shifts discussion to issues, polls go up.

Democrats: He's going to win! I can finally, finally, finally relax for once in a campaign.

...

Look, it's simple. When the American people hear Obama talk, without a filter, they support him. When the American people are talking about the issues that matter to people, rather than stupid sideshow drivel, they support Obama.

Those two elements will converge in the upcoming slate of Presidential debates.

In 2004, John Kerry's support grew substantially after the debates, and the only reason he didn't win then was because he was starting from a lower level of support before those debates. The worst it will be for Obama is behind by 1-2 percent.

Now do you see why McCain is throwing not only the kitchen sink, but a kitchen sink backed up with sewage, at team Obama?

McCain knows that he's going to start losing ground in a hurry once the debate season kicks in. And if the best he can do right now is pull to a tie, or maybe the slightest of leads, then he is going to find himself making a call of congratulations to the Senator from Illinois on November 4th.

So stop worrying, Obama supporters!

Palin & the "Bush Doctrine" (UPDATED)

2008-09-12T12:26:00.000-07:00

Look, it's not as much that Sarah Palin clearly didn't know what the Bush Doctrine was when asked a simple, straightforward question about it per se. It's deeper than that.

The point is that Sarah Palin lacks a greater personal context in terms of understanding the world, and this makes her unqualified to be vice president, or president god forbid.

Go to any university and ask any senior in its political science department about the Bush Doctrine, and they will A) know what you're talking about and B) have a stance on it. They have a basic level of background knowledge about the general foreign policy narrative of the last decade. They know that the run-up to the Iraq War included a discussion of preemptive war (striking a nation when there's an imminent threat) and preventive war (striking a nation before they could become an imminent threat). The former has been part of our foreign policy framework for a long time, but the latter is what Bush promoted in those heady days of 2002-3. This is interesting because Charlie Gibson got it a little wrong himself, thinking the doctrine was more preemptive than preventive.

But that's beside the point, which is that Palin had zero idea of the nature of this discussion at all until Gibson spelled it out for her. And that's unacceptable.

It's not enough to have a week's worth of cram sessions with McCain's neocon advisers, Joe Lieberman, etc. There has to be something beneath that, an informed worldview. It's not that Palin has a view I disagree with, it's that she has no view. She's basically a slogan-machine, and not even a very good one. Serious conservatives in the foreign policy establishment understand this.

Obama picked Biden because he thought Joe would be a good Vice President. McCain picked Palin because he thought Sarah would get a few more votes.

UPDATE: No, no, no, Washington Post. While it's true that there is legitimate disagreement about the Bush Doctrine and the legacy of his foreign policy, etc, the fact is that Sarah Palin simply had no idea what the heck it was, and had probably never heard of it before. On WaPo's part, this is the equivalent of crediting a broken clock for being right about the time twice a day.

Palin: War with Russia!

2008-09-11T14:56:00.000-07:00

Via Marshall, I see that ABC has posted the initial transcripts of Charlie Gibson's interview with Sarah Palin. These are partial, of course. Not that I'm holding out hope that he'll ask Sarah about forcing women to pay for their own rape-kits while mayor of ~~Blaine~~ Wasilla.

Anyway, from the interview excerpts provided by ABC, we find that Palin and McCain are two peas of the same bellicose pod:

GIBSON: And under the NATO treaty, wouldn't we then have to go to war if Russia went into Georgia?

PALIN: Perhaps so. I mean, that is the agreement when you are a NATO ally, is if another country is attacked, you're going to be expected to be called upon and help.

But NATO, I think, should include Ukraine, definitely, at this point and I think that we need to -- especially with new leadership coming in on January 20, being sworn on, on either ticket, we have got to make sure that we strengthen our allies, our ties with each one of those NATO members.

We have got to make sure that that is the group that can be counted upon to defend one another in a very dangerous world today.

GIBSON: And you think it would be worth it to the United States, Georgia is worth it to the United States to go to war if Russia were to invade.

PALIN: What I think is that smaller democratic countries that are invaded by a larger power is something for us to be vigilant against. We have got to be cognizant of what the consequences are if a larger power is able to take over smaller democratic countries.

And we have got to be vigilant. We have got to show the support, in this case, for Georgia. The support that we can show is economic sanctions perhaps against Russia, if this is what it leads to.

It doesn't have to lead to war and it doesn't have to lead, as I said, to a Cold War, but economic sanctions, diplomatic pressure, again, counting on our allies to help us do that in this mission of keeping our eye on Russia and Putin and some of his desire to control and to control much more than smaller democratic countries.

His mission, if it is to control energy supplies, also, coming from and through Russia, that's a dangerous position for our world to be in, if we were to allow that to happen.

This is certainly in line with the McCain platform of More Wars. Just what this country needs!

Says Marshall, "[This] sort of shows the consequences of taking a freshman governor with no experience in foreign policy and giving her a ten day crash course with Randy Scheunemann and the rest of John McCain's neocon brain trust that got booted from the Bush inner circle for being too nutty."

In this way, Palin is something of a political blank slate, a Manchurian Candidate meets Chance Gardener: a dress-up doll for rabid neoconservatives. Obviously the campaign thinks McCain's bellicose bravado in the aftermath of Russia's recent incursion ("We are all Georgians now") is a political winner, and they're doubling down on that with Palin, whom they hilariously argue is some sort of expert on Russia because Alaska is near Siberia.

Obviously I'll have much more to say about Palin, and the man at the top of the ticket (you know, the guy who can't get people to come to his rallies without her) in the coming days.

Why is this old blog back?

2008-09-11T14:42:00.000-07:00

If you watch enough cable news, you get a pressure-cooker phenomenon in your brain, and the following 54 days are the evacuation of said head.

I'll be blogging primarily about the 2008 campaign, including the Presidential election, statewide elections around the country (Senate, etc), and California (my home-state) and local issues, including the slate of ballot initiatives up for a vote in November. An added focus here will be on the media's coverage of the various races, notably television and print media.

I'm an Obama partisan, but I will do my best to be an objective voice in the middle of all this madness.

Aaaaaand we're back!

2008-09-11T14:32:00.000-07:00

The Facts Machine returns for the duration of the 2008 Election campaign!

All posts below this one date back to 2006 and earlier, so disregard all that.

More to come soon!

2008-08-24T13:22:00.000-07:00

Hey! Stop coming here! I haven't posted here in 2 years. Bye!

2006-06-15T21:02:00.000-07:00

"Does this guy deserve a $3,300 pay raise?"

2006-06-09T17:22:00.000-07:00

The beginning of the end for the internet as we know it?

Let's hope the Senate doesn't sell us out too.

2006-06-08T23:10:00.000-07:00

BYE TOM

Remember: Kick someone's ass on the first day.

2006-06-08T13:37:00.001-07:00

WINGNUT BLOGGER MAKES FOOL OF SELF

First of all, Zarqawi = dead = A Good Thing. This is a good thing that could have happened in 2002, but it's still a good thing today. Will it change conditions there? Well, probably not, but we can hope.

But anyway... Jeff Goldstein, author of the blog Protein Wisdom, is one of the dimmer bulbs in the right wing blogosphere. Today, in blogging about Zarqawi's demise, Jeff removes all doubt. Check out Update 2:

update 2: From a comment over at Club Atrios, we get some sense of who the real enemy is...
Was never quite sure why we didn’t go after him when we had the chance.

Oh, I don’t know--maybe because he’s imaginary ?

Forget Bin Laden--I want Goldstein next.
Cakesniffer | 06.08.06 - 10:23 am | #
Make sure when you do it, you try to take out my wife and kid, too. Wouldn’t want them polluting the world with what remains of my stink, after all. But be careful, brother. I have a secret weapon on my side.

Got that? Apparently Jeff Goldstein thinks that the "Goldstein" referenced by the Atrios commenter is him. Three commenters at Jeff's blog, Carin, Karl and Drew, seem to agree.

Oy.

Anybody want to help our conservative friends out with the identity of the referenced "Goldstein"?

Maybe the word "imaginary" would help?

Whether or not reading 1984 is a prerequisite for discussing politics and current affairs, the sheer self-importance of this stupidity is astounding.

On the plus side, though, the YouTube video to which Jeff links is rather funny.

UPDATE: Jeff amends his update to read:

Be careful, brother. Because if it’s me you’re talking about, I have a secret weapon on my side.

No notice that the post was altered.

UPDATE II: And then he tacks on,

WE HAVE ALWAYS BEEN AT WAR WITH EURABIA!

Guess he finally got the memo.

2006-06-06T22:13:00.000-07:00

WHOLLY UNSERIOUS CALIFORNIA ELECTION ROUNDUP

Did you notice that the Republican nominee who will challenge DiFi for her Senate seat is named Richard "Dick" Mountjoy?

2006-06-05T22:11:00.000-07:00

You know what? Screw this, I'm writing in Warren Beatty. Who's with me?

2006-05-02T13:29:00.000-07:00

Ping has the Colbert links you'll need for his amazing, 100%-BALLS-TASTIC performance at the White House Correspondents Dinner.

The thing is becoming the viral internet phenomenon. More from Morford.

It's reached the point where some on the right feel they have to do something. To wit, Drudge:

FLASH: Colbert averaging just over one million viewers year to date (1,077,000 to be exact] on COMEDY CENTRAL, which is less than FOXNEWS's 6-11pm line-up...

Gee. I'm trying to remember when Colbert's show is on... oh, yes, 11:30 PM. Anwyay...

The Facts Machine will return soon...

2006-04-05T11:25:00.000-07:00

BYE, TOM

--"There's nothing worse than a woman know-it-all"

--We should all be grateful that DeLay's final act as a Congressional candidate was one of mercy: Disenfranchising Republican voters, for a change.

--Also nice to know that a lot of contributed money that would have otherwise gone into his campaign will instead go to his legal defense fund.

--Ha!

2006-03-29T13:31:00.000-08:00

GRRR-EENFIELD

I expect to see something about Jeff Greenfield's segment just now from The Situation Room on Media Matters tonight.

In one of those all-too-common edit pieces about how Democrats have, for the past 40-some years, been seen as weaker on national security than Republicans, Greenfield described the usual stuff -- Dems won the 64 election on national security, 'Nam split them, Carter weak, Reagan strong, Cold war end, Clinton win, yadda yadda -- until finally arriving at the present. In doing so, he commits the same offense I faulted Wolf Blitzer for last week, only worse:

GREENFIELD: ...Now, Democrats believe they can use the bungled federal response to Katrina, the Dubai ports deal and the difficulties in Iraq to reclaim the security issue on competence grounds. Republicans, unsurprisingly, have a different notion, that they can continue to paint the Democratic opposition as soft on terror. Here, for instance, is how the President described the Democrats' rejections to warrantless wiretaps.

PRESIDENT BUSH (video): They ought to take their message to the people, and say "vote for me, I promise we're not going to have a terrorist surveillance program." (end clip)

Yes, he quickly snuck the word "warrantless" in there before the clip, but immediately after the clip would have been a good time to address the charge made by the President on some, or any sort of contextual grounds. But instead...

GREENFIELD: It is a measure of just how much the Democrats have been hurt by the security issue that, at a time when the President's approval ratings are low and polls say voters would prefer that Democrats control the Congress, they are looking to define themselves on the security issue more than seven months before the midterms, apparently believing that if voters don't trust them on the security issue, the others wont matter much. Wolf?

Look, I know the main point of Greenfield's segment was to describe the political posturing by the two parties on national security. But there's spin, and then there are outright lies about your opponents' position, and passing along these blatant mischaracterizations uncritically is beneath the mission of the news media.

2006-03-29T11:01:00.000-08:00

SHORTER BUSH AT FREEDOM HOUSE

LOUD NOISES!!!

Basically the same stuff he's said for three years, only louder.

Someone asks a question. He stammers around aimlessly for around 2 minutes, then find something to yell about.

"You've been waving, yelling, stomping your feet. It's a free society! That's what happens! Yes?"

"Hello Mr President, I am an Iraqi citizen and an Iraqi mother..."

Uh oh.

2006-03-29T10:08:00.000-08:00

WRONG CITY, WRONG COUNTRY... WRONG CONTINENT

Now this was an amusing story to wake up to.

Howard Kaloogian, conservative Republican Congressional candidate to replace convicted felon Duke Cunningham, puts up a picture of a busy urban street on his bio page, claiming that it's of a street in Baghdad, taken during a recent trip to Iraq which he took.

The point of the picture, as you can guess, is to demonstrate how things in Baghdad/Iraq are much better than the LIBRULZ in the media are telling us.

And he has a point.

Er, he would have a point... if the picture was really of Baghdad.

People who have analyzed the photo noticed that much of it was rather fishy. Lots of writing not in Arabic, but instead in Turkish (including the "C with a squiggly line under it"). Western tourists in western garb (notably the girl in the tanktop on the left), and western billboard ads like the Oakley Sunglasses ad on the right. Most of this stuff has led those who've seen the photo to believe that it's from Turkey, specificially Istanbul.

...AND WHADDYA KNOW? The link goes to a picture of the very same street, in Bakirkoy, a suburb of Istanbul.

If the Bushatarians want to convince me that the media is misrepresenting the state of things in Iraq, this wasn't the best way to start.

2006-03-28T12:22:00.000-08:00

Mmmmmm, nothing like a shriiiiiil UCSB alum. (:

2006-03-28T10:21:00.000-08:00

Andy "Labor Day" Card has resigned as White House Chief of Staff.

Card said this about his replacement, current OMB head Joshua Bolten:

Mr Card on Tuesday lauded the president as "good man" who has done "great things", but said: "It is a different season, and Josh Bolten is the right man for that season."

Translation: I liked this job a whole lot more when the guy was at 80%.

And what of Bolten? Well, since he took over at OMB...

2006-03-24T01:46:00.000-08:00

PRECIOUS, IN A WAY

This has the ring of somebody who hasn't read the charges. How sweet, I suppose.

UPDATE: BYE!

UPDATE II: Kudos -- rare kudos -- to Michelle Malkin for dealing with this (somewhat) seriously. Apparently our recently-departed wingnut man-boy edited one of her books at Regenry. Huh?

2006-03-24T00:22:00.000-08:00

FOREVER?

Forever ever? forever ever?

From Friday's LA Times:

Even as military planners look to withdraw significant numbers of American troops from Iraq in the coming year, the Bush administration continues to request hundreds of millions of dollars for large bases there, raising concerns over whether they are intended as permanent sites for U.S. forces.

Questions on Capitol Hill about the future of the bases have been prompted by the new emergency spending bill for military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, which overwhelmingly passed the House of Representatives last week with $67.6 billion in funding for the war effort, including the base money.

Although the House approved the measure, lawmakers are demanding that the Pentagon explain its plans for the bases, and they unanimously passed a provision blocking the use of funds for base agreements with the Iraqi government.

"It's the kind of thing that incites terrorism," Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas) said of long-term or permanent U.S. bases in countries such as Iraq.

Paul, a critic of the war, is co-sponsoring a bipartisan bill that would make it official policy not to maintain such bases in Iraq. He noted that Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden cited U.S. military bases in Saudi Arabia as grounds for the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

The debate in Congress comes as concerns grow over how long the U.S. intends to keep forces in Iraq, a worry amplified when President Bush earlier this week said that a complete withdrawal of troops from Iraq would not occur during his term.

Hmm.

Associated Press, March 20:

The concrete goes on forever, vanishing into the noonday glare, 2 million cubic feet of it, a mile-long slab that's now the home of up to 120 U.S. helicopters, a "heli-park" as good as any back in the States.

At another giant base, al-Asad in Iraq's western desert, the 17,000 troops and workers come and go in a kind of bustling American town, with a Burger King, Pizza Hut and a car dealership, stop signs, traffic regulations and young bikers clogging the roads.

At a third hub down south, Tallil, they're planning a new mess hall, one that will seat 6,000 hungry airmen and soldiers for chow.

Are the Americans here to stay? Air Force mechanic Josh Remy is sure of it as he looks around Balad.

"I think we'll be here forever," the 19-year-old airman from Wilkes-Barre, Pa., told a visitor to his base.

The Iraqi people suspect the same. Strong majorities tell pollsters they'd like to see a timetable for U.S. troops to leave, but believe Washington plans to keep military bases in their country.

What follows is a discussion of the semantic differences between "permanent" and "long-term". One relevant similarity seems to hold: "as long as Bush is calling the shots".

2006-03-23T15:29:00.000-08:00

UNDAUNTED COURAGE

Oh, it's just the classic story, isn't it?

Washington Post hires wingnut man-boy to write "Red America" blog.

And then we find out that he's...

...a plagiarist...

...a plagiarist...

...a plagiarist...

...and finally, a plagiarist.

Whoopsydaisy!

Maybe the Post should hire this guy. (:

2006-03-22T12:56:00.000-08:00

WAITING FOR THE BIG MOMENT

Over at Dkos, mcjoan quotes Joe Lockhart, who says the following about Feingold's censure resolution:

[Lockhart] sees no political downside to Senator Feingold's proposal--and likewise sees much desperation in the Republican spin that it would be another self-inflicted Democratic wound that would haunt the minority party in the fall elections. All the G.O.P. bluster about an early vote on the Feingold proposal to smoke out weak-sister Democrats for elimination in November, Mr. Lockhart said, "is complete nonsense."

He said: "One simple rule of politics is that the more ferociously you're pushing your talking points, the less you believe in them. The Republicans jumping so hard on this tells you that they believe they're in a really vulnerable position--that this issue is not the winner they thought it was."

Exactly. Perhaps the words "cornered, wounded animal" have some meaning in this situation?

But the problem is bigger than that. Every time a Democrat or group of Democrats does something aggressive -- Reid shuts down the Senate, Feingold calls for censure, opposition to Alito's confirmation, even Murtha calling for withdrawl from Iraq -- it's a sure bet that there will be a cadre of self-styled "sensible Democrats" (the Klein/Kaus/Beinart/DLC/BullMoose sort) ready to tell us via TV, print and the internet that such aggressive tactics are tantamount to political suicide for the party.

If a prominent Republican is about to be indicted (as is often the case these days!), they are the ones with their ears to the ground, ready to bleat about whatever bits of glee or schaudenfraude they think they hear. Ready to lecture us about how "bad for the country" they think we are.

And where does this leave us? Well, most of the Senate minority runs for cover in precisely the sort of situation as the one Joe Lockhart talks about. Fear in the face of aggression.

I'd like to talk, for a minute, about how this is caused, and how the dividing lines on how elected Democrats react to fiery Republican rhetoric are more blurry than just "liberal" and "moderate".

The problem for many Democrats is that they've bought into "The Myth of 'The Moment'", the idea that in a favorable political climate, they have one, and only one chance to use this climate to their advantage with the American people.

Everyone, from Kucinich to From, agrees that the current political conditions are favorable for Democrats, and are comparably unfavorable for Republicans and, especially, President Bush. The President's numbers are in the mid-to-low 30's, and the generic congressional polls are giving the Democrats a double-digit edge over their GOP counterparts. Iraq is a mess, and the American people know it. Government corruption has reared its ugly head more prominently lately, and the vast majority of its shadow is cast over the elephant and not the donkey (Abramoff, DeLay, Cunningham, and a whole host of supporting characters).

And yet, in spite of such a preponderance of evidence that the political tides are turning, there still exists a feeling that the opportunity for the Democrats to capitalize is both fragile and fleeting, as if they think they have only one shot to fully capitalize on the situation, and if they don't it's all for naught, defeatism sinks in, and Unka' Karl squeezes another 51% out of the electorate in November.

It's as if the bulk of the party has a deep, primordial fear of premature ejaculation.

----

"Should we try to block John Roberts' confirmation?"

"No, our scorched-earth battle should be saved for someone else"

"Should we try to block Samuel Alito's confirmation? He's worse than Roberts, and he's taking over for the abortion swing-vote, so...?"

"No, that would distract the public from... (insert other issue here)"

"But you said..."

"I know what I said, but we can't blow our wad YET"

"Should we go to the mattresses for John Murtha?"

"No, because the President equates leaving with losing. Remember you guys need to look strong and security-minded for the midterms"

"Should we go to the mattresses for Russ Feingold?"

"No, that would energize the Republicans. Remember, you guys are supposed to be afraid of them"

----

...And so on.

The Democrats need to understand something: Just as Republicans are sometimes adept at tweaking the "official narrative" of a political issue in their favor, there are other things that develop in spite of their actions, or those of the Democrats or even the media. The American people turned on the Iraq war, and the President's handling of it, all on their own, even though there were very, very few voices in the media openly expressing displeasure with the war, even though the media continues to sugar-coat the situation on the ground there. The American people, by and large, made up their mind on the source of the vast majority of official corruption in our elected officials, in spite of GOP attempts to wishywash the issue by bleating "Abramoff gave money to both parties!" over and over (which he didn't btw).

My point is, these public sentiments aren't going anywhere, even if Feingold or any other Democrat tries some sort of political tactic, like the censure resolution, only to see it fall flat.

To continue the "premature ejaculation" metaphor, the American people will remain horny for a long time, if you catch my drift.

Elected Democrats who would otherwise be more aggressive should remember the following whenever a DLC'er suggests they should back off: They didn't consider 2004 to be a proper time to "blow their wad", so to speak, so if they didn't then, when would they ever? They're not being sincere. And you shouldn't be afraid because of it.

The Democrats don't need a magic bullet, or a perfect, force-assisted shot into a relatively-unguarded thermal exhaust pipe to blow up the Death Star. What they need is a long-term frontal offensive. For example, just because they stayed on the sidelines, in large part, during the debate over Dubai controlling operations in six American ports, that should not stop them from hitting the GOP over the head with this.

It is not about capitalizing on a moment, or saving up for a single chance at achieving a political goal. The Democrats have the long-haul public sentiments on their side, and they need to know that those aren't going to fizzle away just because some Republicans accuse Joe Biden of being a "bully" or say that Russ Feingold is being "too partisan". And they really shouldn't listen to the SSS's (Self-Styled Sensibles) say the same thing, only in sheep's clothing.

Be aggressive.
Be-e aggressive.

2006-03-21T13:00:00.000-08:00

A COUPLE ISSUES FROM BUSH'S PRESS CONFERENCE TODAY

Not late, am I?

--Bush had a press conference today. A what?? BUSH!?!? Yup. Drudge's screaming headline is "BUSH TAKES ON PRESS AND HELEN THOMAS TOO". Apparently covering every president since JFK means you aren't part of the "press". Cute. Still, Josh Marshall notices that Bush's exchange with Thomas included a very blatant lie on his part:

I also saw a threat in Iraq. I was hoping to solve this problem diplomatically. That's why I went to the Security Council; that's why it was important to pass 1441, which was unanimously passed. And the world said, disarm, disclose, or face serious consequences ... and therefore, we worked with the world, we worked to make sure that Saddam Hussein heard the message of the world. And when he chose to deny inspectors, when he chose not to disclose, then I had the difficult decision to make to remove him. And we did, and the world is safer for it.

(emphasis added)

--Fox News' Carl Cameron: Whore. Though if you saw Outfoxed, this comes as no surprise.

But let's expand on that... The goal of that talking point has nothing to do with honest debate; it only has to do with confusing the issue, and pretending that the debate is about whether or not suspected terrorists should be wiretapped, and not the legality of Bush's warrantless (and widespread, nearly arbitrary) wiretapping. The goal is satisfied when our depth-challenged media goes along with it. Sure, Carl Cameron and his buddies at Fox are happy enough to do so. But then there's Wolf Blitzer, in a classic example of how this media strategy works, on The Situation Room.

Here's the Tivo-assisted transcript:

BLITZER: He was asked about Senator Russ Feingold's resolution censuring him for authorizing wiretaps without court warrants.

Okay, so far so good, a reference to the fact that the wiretaps were warrantless. Hopefully that point will find its way into the context of this report. Right?...

(VIDEO) BUSH: I think, uh, during these, uh, difficult times -- and they are difficult, when we're at war -- the American people expect there to be an honest and open debate, without needless partisanship. And that's how I view it. I did notice that nobody at the Democratic party has actually stood up and called for the, you know, getting rid of the terrorist surveillance program. You know, if that's what they believe, the people in the party believe, then they ought to stand up and say it. They ouught to stand up and say the tools we're using to protect the American people shouldn't be used.

Confusing the issue. Will Wolf unconfuse it, or will he take the bait?

BLITZER: Senator Feingold fired back just a short while ago, accusing the president of playing politics by implying that Democrats don't want to wiretap terrorists.

Now would be the time for context, dude... but instead we get...

BLITZER: Adding to the partisan heat, the Republican party is running a new radio ad in Feingold's home state of Wisconsin, accusing the Senator of being more interested in censuring the president than in protecting freedom.

...And Wolf moves on to another topic.

There you have it. A factual argument is boiled down by our brain-dead press into a he-said she-said tennis match. And sad to say for the Dems, but the Republicans simply do a better job of exploiting this condition. It all comes down to artificial objectivity. Obsoive...

To the media, an issue has three things: The facts, Side A and Side B.

You'd think that the negotiable portions of the issue would be the Sides, right?

Not to the media: To them, the facts are negotiable.

How?

Ask Goldilocks. Because her view of "tasty pourridge" is pretty close to the media's view of "objectivity". Obsoive foither...

On an issue (the NSA stuff), the facts are "Bush approved numerous instances of warrantless (and thus, not legal) wiretapping of (spying on) American citizens, even though there was a specific legal framework (FISA) designed for precisely this sort of stuff."

The Democrats take Side A, "Warrantless wiretapping is illegal".

The Republicans--understanding how the media works--take a ridiculous Side B that doesn't directly correspond to side A at all, "Democrats don't think we should wiretap terrorists."

The media, then, mistakes splitting the difference for achieving objectivity. The end result? The he-said-she-said out of Wolf Blitzer's mouth today. To him, the pourridge is just right. The facts are negotiable, defined as the midpoint between one side of the debate and another ridiculous side to a completely different debate.

The Democrats are either reluctant or unable to play this game well. Perhaps because it requires blatant lies and obvious strawmen. Hmm, obvious strawmen... who uses those a lot?

Anyway, good to be back.

2006-03-12T01:53:00.000-08:00

"Okay, campers, rise and shine! And don't forget your booties 'cause it's cooooold out there today!"

(back Monday, I think)

2006-03-09T20:42:00.000-08:00

Okay, okay, my hiatus is almost over.

Perhaps you were wondering when this saga revolving around a Dubai company getting a US contract to oversee security at six major American ports would reach sheer farce.

I think this would be that moment.

Anyway, I'll be back soon.

2006-01-31T16:23:00.000-08:00

I'm in the middle of a grueling job-training process, which A) has kept me from blogging this week, and B) will keep me from watching Bush's address tonight, at least live. Just checking in.

2006-01-26T12:59:00.000-08:00

UNDER THE SPREADING CHESTNUT TREE,
I SCRUBBED YOU AND YOU SCRUBBED ME

Jones, Aaronson, Rutherford, Abramoff, Bush.

2006-01-26T12:01:00.000-08:00

SOMETIMES I DON'T GET IT

Why would a sitting senator -- Rick Frothy Mixture, in this case -- tell a lie that's so easily refuted by prior media accounts?

This can't end well. And by "can't", I mean "shouldn't".

2006-01-26T10:33:00.000-08:00

HAMAS

As we all woke up to find out today, Hamas won a strong majority of seats in the other day's Palestinian parliamentary election. Naturally this will be a test of the administration's committment to its sweeping pro-democratic rhetoric. Abu Aardvark has a lot more.

UPDATE: An informantive Q&A from Aljazeera.net

2006-01-23T00:54:00.000-08:00

THE FUTURE OF THE INTERNETS

JMM is right, this is serious: Take a moment to read this WaPo piece on the increasingly prominent issue of "network neutrality" and how it relates to the future of your internet access. I might have more to say on this during the day, but the short version is that it would be a shame if the internet devolved into just another telecommunications oligarchy.

2006-01-22T19:01:00.000-08:00

BUSH, THE ADVENTURE

This is hilarious. (via kleiman)

2006-01-22T18:10:00.000-08:00

ROE 33 YEARS LATER

--Via Georgia10 of DKos, be sure to read this January 9 column from former NARAL president Kate Michelman, on how the anti-abortion crusade fits snugly into the general conservative narrative about returning to some magical, traditional time that never existed.

--President Bush declared today "National Sanctity of Life Day". Pandagon's Pam Spaulding has some thoughts on this.

--From NOW: In Remembrance: Women Who Died from Illegal or Unsafe Abortions.

2006-01-22T15:49:00.000-08:00

HILLARY 1, DURBIN 0

By the way, a week later do you hear anyone in the mainstream media clamouring for Hillary Clinton to apologize for her comments on Monday?

Let that be a lesson to you, Senator Durbin. Don't give in to these goofballs. Their professed outrage is almost always of the mock nature. Consider Hillary: It goes beyond the fact that right-wing pundits and politicans alike are fond of using the "plantation" metaphor (including noted 40-something pundit Ann Coulter). Consider that right at the time they were calling for a Clintonian apology, Trent Lott announced that he will run for another term in the Senate. Remember, to them he is too racist to be Majority Leader, yet not racist enough to be kicked out of the Senate. Principle.

2006-01-22T15:40:00.000-08:00

WELCOME!

We at The Facts Machine are pleased as punch to see that Katherine Harris is now the GOP's Florida Senatorial candidate by default.

Just what the GOP needed for midterm season: The dovetailing of Tom DeLay's culture of corruption, and the 2000 election. Good luck!

Of course, the connections were already there...

2006-01-18T00:42:00.000-08:00

Welcome back, Hitchypoo. And by all means, have a drink!

2006-01-16T15:11:00.000-08:00

A recap of Al Gore's speech earlier today, from Glenn Greenwald.

Look for the usual suspects to find their way onto the cable news nets to tell us that that Gore is "off his meds", or something to that effect.

2006-01-16T11:16:00.000-08:00

VACATION!

As I asked last week, since Tom DeLay isn't trying to regain his Majority Leader post anymore, why are House Republicans still not going back to work until February?

It appears the answer is of a more mundane, but still amusing variety.

House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert turned down a White House request to elect a permanent successor to Tom DeLay as majority leader in advance of President Bush's State of the Union address on Jan. 31. Republican House members simply did not want to return early to Washington after their winter vacation.

Mark it down on your calendars, folks. On Monday, January 16th, 2006, the President thought others were vacationing too much.

2006-01-14T13:03:00.000-08:00

ANOTHER NATIONAL SECURITY LEAK!

I don't know what America-hating America-hater in the bowels of the Homeland Security bureaucracy allowed Jose Padilla's Al Qaeda application to be leaked to the media. We need a DoJ investigation now!

2006-01-13T14:44:00.000-08:00

THE SWIFT-BOATING OF MURTHA

Oh please, not again.

2006-01-13T11:41:00.000-08:00

THE OLD LINE STATE JUST GOT A LITTLE HEALTHIER

Cheers to the Maryland State Legislature for overriding Ehrlich's veto of their Wal Mart health care bill.

Maryland has become the first state in the nation to require Wal-Mart to spend more on employee health care or pay the difference into the state's Medicaid fund. Similar laws may be coming elsewhere.

The measure approved Thursday requires companies with more than 10,000 Maryland employees to spend at least 8 percent of their payroll on employee health care or pay the difference into the state-supported Medicaid program. Of the state's large employers, only Wal-Mart spends less than 8 percent on health care.

Labor unions, who heavily pushed for the bill, said they would pursue similar legislation in at least 30 other states, focusing first on Colorado, Connecticut and Washington.

"The tide is turning because working people are not just fed up — they are ready to get active to set our country in a different direction, one state at a time," AFL-CIO President John Sweeney said in a statement.

Maryland's Democratic-controlled Legislature overrode a veto by Republican Gov. Robert Ehrlich.

Critics of the legislation called it a dangerous precedent that ultimately would cost Maryland jobs.

The company employs about 17,000 Maryland residents at more than 40 Wal-Mart and Sam's Club stores, and about 1.3 million people nationwide.

A Wal-Mart executive called the bill a poorly worded mandate for a single company. Mia Masten, a director of corporate affairs, said the bill "could be the beginning of a slippery slope."

"We believe everyone should have access to affordable health insurance, although this legislation does nothing to accomplish that," said Masten, who said the retailing giant may partially pull out of the state if the bill becomes law.

She said Wal-Mart was unfairly singled out because of "partisan politics" and that Medicaid's problems go beyond the behavior of one company.

Cost the state jobs? Somehow, I have my doubts that Wal Mart will be closing any stores over this.

California had a chance to be on the leading edge of this campaign, via a ballot initiative in 2004, but it was narrowly defeated.

Anyhow, we can look forward to a bullshit press release from everyone's favorite corporation about "the need to stay competitive".

TBogg has more, including some early whining from the Club for Growth.

2006-01-13T00:46:00.000-08:00

The incomparable quote-gatherer Billmon presents, "A Bipartisan Scandal".

And an amusing Rueters photo to sleep on, via Holden at First Draft.

2006-01-11T12:35:00.000-08:00

Ha! DiFi just nailed him. More soon...

Meanwhile, whatever the truth is about Alito's CAP membership, it appears we will indeed get to the bottom of it.

2006-01-11T08:38:00.000-08:00

ALITO WILL OVERTURN ROE

Not being willing even to say that Roe is "settled law" -- something Roberts, who may vote to overturn it, was willing to say -- clinches it for me.

Dick Durbin exposed him at the hearing, now it's up to him, the other Democratic Senators, and other progressive voices to make sure the country knows about it.

2006-01-10T19:13:00.000-08:00

SHORTER ALITO HEARINGS

From Ping:

A Democrat gets up to ask questions and says, "Judge, i'm very disturbed by this opinion so-and-so, which you wrote in year so-and-so, because it suggests to me that you don't believe in principle X, which is important to me (e.g. the constitution, limits on executive power, civil rights, women’s rights)."

Alito says, "Oh, no. I do care about principle X. That case was N years ago, so i don't remember it that well, but — you misunderstood the case, you see — the case was not about principle X, it was about principle Y. And let me explain how my decision in that case was a perfectly reasonable judgement about principle Y. ..."

Then a Republican gets up to ask questions and says, "Judge, i am very impressed by you, and it upsets me that some people here are trying to distort your record. I think you are extremely well qualified to serve on the Supreme Court, and while i'm at it, let me quote aloud these N other important people who have also said that you are an absolutely fantastic person. ..."

Alito says, "Thank you."

...Or, the Republican gets up and says, "I want to know how you feel about X. And by the way, before you answer, let me tell you my opinion — i feel very strongly such-and-such, and i hope you do too."

Alito says, "Oh yes. I agree with you."

Heh. We're lucky if we get even those responses from Alito, as he can always pull out the old John Roberts Special: "I'm not going to answer that, because that issue could come before the court and my answering it here at the hearing my place some prejudice on my future opinions", or something. Then again, in the logic department, I file that one right next to "revealing our warrant-free spying program aids the enemy."

2006-01-10T15:38:00.000-08:00

ALITO ROUNDUP

Hmm, I think posting a roundup would be a useful distraction from having to watch John "Box Turtle" Cornyn point to his deeply misleading charts as he lobs softballs to Strip Search Sammy.

Reaction to the hearings, and other Alito-related tidbits...

--Chris Bowers at MyDD thinks Alito's story about not remembering just what it was that Concerned for Princeton was doing, even though he pimped his membership when applying for work with the Reagan administration, is not truthful. Yeah. I'd forget that I was a member of UCSB Campus Democrats if I didn't have that link on the right side of this blog.

--Via TalkLeft, USA Today's Jonathan Turley, in the process of making the case against Alito's confirmation, laments the air-sucking effects of the abortion debate on confirmation hearings:

The obsession with abortion in American politics has had an anaerobic effect on past confirmation hearings, sucking the air out of other issues. For Alito, this may have the welcomed effect of obscuring a more troubling question from his past writings and cases: Alito's extreme views of government authority over citizens' rights.

I agree... halfway. In the hearing room, this is simply not true; it really wasn't until Senator Feinstein's 30 minutes earlier this afternoon that any Democratic or pro-choice Senator really went after Alito on the issue (though Specter tiptoed through Griswold for a moment this morning, and Schumer went after him a little bit). The media, as well as the rest of the peripheral debate on the nominee, including the efforts of issue advocacy groups, are the factors that make the abortion debate seem like the center of every Supreme Court confirmation process.

Personally, I think the executive power issue is the most pivotal one when it comes to this nominee, but the difference between it and the choice debate is that the latter is always pre-packaged and ready to go, with the combatants on both sides clearly identified, while the former is much more ad hoc and issue-specific. Remember, in the late 1990's we had a mutated version of an executive power debate centering around blowjobs. Now we have one dealing with illegal domestic spying, indefinite in prisonment without access to any legal framework, torture, extraordinary rendition, black sites, manipulation and cherrypicking of intelligence, and so on, and so on. Obviously the "sides" in this debate are very different from what they were seven or eight years ago.

Abortion on the other hand, in the eyes of the media, is always ready to go. I say "in the eyes of the media" because they tend to paper over the centrist, Clintonite stance of "safe, legal and rare", rather promoting an either/or debate that allows the anti-choice side to argue that pro-choicers are just pleased as punch when a woman gets 17 abortions in a year or something. It's also an emotionally charged debate, for reasons of which I'm sure we're all aware. Abortion is a very important issue, no doubt about it, but it's prominence as an issue in the media over the other pivotal aspects of the Alito nomination is as much a prodcut of media laziness than it is of anything else.

--Related to the Alito hearings is, of course, the FISA-free "King Bush" domestic spying. On that note, fucking CNN/Gallup:

A CNN/USA Today/Gallup poll of 1,003 adults found that 50 percent of those polled believe it's OK to forego warrants when ordering electronic surveillance of people suspected of having ties to terrorists abroad.

Another 46 percent said the policy is wrong, and 4 percent said they had no opinion.

"Forego warrants". Argh, what will it take for a poll question to mention directly that warrantless surveillance is illegal? When you phrase it as "forego warrants", your average poll respondent, who's probably seen one too many episodes of 24, will think that time is of the essence! We need info on potential terrorists! We can't wait for some bureaucratic process when lives are at stake! ...Of course, there's no mention in the poll that FISA warrants can be obtained legally after the fact, up to 72 hours later, if the need for surveillance is that vital. The media failed to properly inform the public on the non-existent Iraqi "threat", and they continue to fail us now.

2006-01-09T14:00:00.000-08:00

HE DID WARN US

"The legislature's job is to write law. It's the executive branch's job to interpret law." —George W. Bush, Austin, Texas, Nov. 22, 2000

And you thought it was just a Bushism.

2006-01-09T11:37:00.000-08:00

LIVEBLOGGING THE HEARINGS

Redd Hedd of Firedoglake is doing just that, just click and scroll.

2006-01-09T11:22:00.000-08:00

ALITO HEARINGS

Watching Lindsey Graham bloviate and bloviate and bloviate is a numbing experience. But then when I hear him utter the words "litmus test", I wonder if the rightward half of the Judiciary Committee has resolved to pretend that their de facto filibuster of Harriet Miers didn't happen.

2006-01-08T14:32:00.000-08:00

THE DR. IS IN, AND BLITZER GETS 'TREATED'

Stuff like this is what I was hoping for when Howard Dean ascended to the DNC Chair. (Here's the CNN transcript)

Dean politely listens to Wolf pass along the GOP misinformation on Jack Abramoff's money, and then hammers it unequivocally. The stunned look on Wolf's face will make your day. He even sighs!

I can imagine an alternate universe where a MacAuliffe or a Frost getting bogged down in relativist nonsense, even as the facts support Dean's position.

2006-01-07T18:08:00.000-08:00

QUICK QUESTION ABOUT DELAY STEPPING DOWN

As everyone has heard by now, the big news in Washington is that Tom DeLay has permanently stepped down as House Majority Leader.

But remember this? From the AP writeup:

Speaker
Dennis Hastert, his own grip on power secure, said he expects elections to be held when lawmakers return to the Capitol the week of Jan. 31.

(emphasis mine) Here's the irony: The reason the House was originally scheduled to reconvene in late January, as opposed to earlier, was in the hope (among Hastert & co.) that DeLay's legal troubles would be over by then, allowing him to retain his leadership position. This was reported by Roll Call back in December.

Sooooooo... now that DeLay won't be Majority Leader either way, is there any reason the House of Representatives can't open its doors at a more conventional time?

2006-01-05T14:15:00.000-08:00

PAT ROBERTSON IS IN A PERSISTENT VEGETATIVE STATE

Hey Pat, can't a 300-pound man in his 70's just have a stroke without it being the terrible retribution of God?

See also: Amy Sullivan's amusing take on Pat's latest nutcasery.

2006-01-04T10:05:00.000-08:00

The Facts Machine will be getting back into the swing of things this week.

Watching Anderson Cooper interview that woman and her two children outside the church in West Virginia last night was the most heartwrenching thing I've seen on the news in a long time.

I feel really awful for the people in the eastern half of the country, who went to bed thinking a miracle had taken place.

2005-12-20T22:51:00.000-08:00

20% FULL OF SHIT

Drudge goes 0 for 2 in attempting to show an equivalence between Bush's illegal spying program and the actions of his two Democratic predecessors.

2005-12-19T11:57:00.000-08:00

KING BUSH

Okay, I'm busy today, plus it's my birthday, so I didn't get to see Bush's press conference earlier today in which he defended his "king me!" program of illegal, unconstitutional, warrantless eavesdropping of American citizens. But reading this makes my irony meter asplode:

U.S. President George W. Bush said on Monday he presumed a Justice Department leak investigation was underway into who disclosed a secret NSA eavesdropping operation.

"My personal opinion is it was a shameful act for someone to disclose this very important program in a time of war," Bush told a news conference at which he was questioned repeatedly about the controversial operation disclosed on Friday by The new York Times.

"There's a process that goes on inside the Justice Department about leaks. I presume that process is moving forward," Bush added.

Because if anyone has respect for process, it's this president. The main reason that so many people have problems with King Bush's eavesdropping program is not that he's spying on American citizens, it's because there's a process by which he could have legally done so -- the FISA Court -- and he chose not to do so. If the people he was spying on have, as he put it, "clear links to Al Qaeda", there wouldn't have been any problem getting the necessary warrants approved.

This is about unchecked executive power. This is about adding chapters to the Political Science 12 textbook at UCSB. This is Fujimori shit.

And what have Bush and his apologists done? They've tried to steer the issue away from a checks and balances issue, and towards a debate they think they can win, or at least fight to a draw. They're attempting to file it next to the secret prisons issue as a "unpatriotic leaking" debate, while at the same time they're making the "bad for national security to oppose this" argument. Because we've already had similar debates, and because it's easier to shoehorn a new issue into an old debate than start a new and unique debate, the media has been lethargically slow to address the presidential power issues inherent to warrantless syping.

Bush defends America! Democrats say we shouldn't defend America! That story is easy to write, but it suffers from the obvious affliction of not being the truth.

UPDATE: And sometimes, the media simply doesn't understand the issue.

2005-12-13T20:47:00.000-08:00

Happy holidays!

2005-12-13T11:54:00.000-08:00

The Rude Pundit on Ahhnuld: "Who's been indirectly responsible for more violence since the early 1980s, Tookie or the Terminator? Tough question, no?"

2005-12-12T23:23:00.000-08:00

"My only regret with Stanley 'Tookie' Williams is that he didn't go to the Southern Poverty Law Center"

Look, not to be a flower-eyed librul idealist about this, and not to come off as naive in the eyes of older, wiser, colder people and those frenzied about by the likes of Nancy Grace and her guilty-until-proven-guilty ilk, but I'm sick and tired of people who express opposition to the death penalty offering a threshold for when the death penalty would be justified, in spite of their personal, general view. To me, capital punishment is just like torture: either it's okay, or it's not. It's not contingent on the person and their crimes or their interrogative value, it's contingent on our action.

And we wonder why general, hypothetical opposition to the death penalty among a large segment of the population doesn't result in the waning of the practice.

2005-12-09T17:20:00.000-08:00

WORLD CUP DRAW ANNOUNCED

Groups and game schedule here.

I think the World Cup is as good an excuse as any to revive TFM's "Iraq Coalition Vs." international athletic scorekeeping system.

Such a system was employed here (and then swiftly adopted over at TigerHawk) to compare the medal totals for countries that supported the Iraq invasion and those which did not. The idea goes back to an op-ed piece by neoconservative LA Times columnist Max Boot, in which he bemoaned what the end of the Cold War has done to the Olympic Games: It's made them boring, because there is no longer an underlying "us vs. them" context to the various events. I was amazed that such a strident supporter of the Iraq war -- Boot is a proponent of the "we should flex our muscles there" viewpoint -- couldn't see the opportunity to both reclaim the us/them mantle and to bash the French at the same time! Sacre bleu!

Anyway, didn't we have a grand time in 2004 with all that? I don't remember who won, but I do remember that it was mighty close. So now that the draw for the World Cup has been announced, how does it stack up?

Coalition* teams in the 2006 World Cup:

Australia
Czech Republic
Italy
Japan
South Korea
The Netherlands
Poland
Spain
USA
England
Ukraine
Portugal

(* - Going by the list of countries who suppoted the original invasion)

Non-coalition teams in the 2006 World Cup:

Germany
Costa Rica
Ecuador
Paraguay
Trinidad & Tobago
Sweden
Argentina
Ivory Coast
Serbia & Montenegro
Mexico
Iran
Angola
Ghana
Brazil
Croatia
France
Switzerland
Togo
Tunisia
Saudi Arabia

Of the coalition teams, four (England, Netherlands, Italy, Spain) are probably locks to make the second round. Three of the four teams in the United States' bracket are coalition teams, counting the USA itself. The other problem for the US is that even if they reach the quarterfinals, they're likely to do so as the 2nd seed from group E, meaning a probable matchup with defending Cup champ Brazil. Meanwhile, from the looks of it, both Iran and Saudi Arabia have decent shots at the second round.

2005-12-09T17:06:00.000-08:00

The Facts Machine is on ~~Christmas~~ ~~Holiday~~ ~~Season's~~ uh... Regis vacation. Occasional posts between now and New Year's are possible (probable?).

Merry Christmas!
Happy Holidays!
Season's greetings!
Save Tookie!

2005-11-24T12:31:00.000-08:00

Awwww, poor Bushypoo needs a 7-mile radius to eat his turkee.

2005-11-23T11:51:00.000-08:00

HACKERY

-- This is just your common tale of congressman posts online poll about an Iraq withdrawl, Freeper hijacks poll with a computer program, poll skews artificially against congressman, World Net Daily writes about poll results, e-mailer tells WND's Joseph Farah about the Freeper bot, Farah sees no problem. Details here.

-- But for the real choice hackery, where else but Fox?

FOX News is refusing to air an ad critical of Supreme Court nominee Samuel Alito, citing its lawyers' contention that the spot is factually incorrect.

I'm curious what the 2004 Kerry campaign staff would think if they heard about this new "factually correct" standard of Fox's. And I find it somewhat hard to believe that Fox -- a network employing Bill O'Reilly, Sean Hannity and Brit Hume -- has suddenly become a stickler for the truth.

2005-11-23T01:16:00.000-08:00

THOUSANDS STILL MISSING

Very distressing news from the Gulf Coast:

The whereabouts of 6,644 people reported missing after Hurricane Katrina have not been determined, raising the prospect that the death toll could be higher than the 1,306 recorded so far in Louisiana and Mississippi, according to two groups working with the federal government to account for victims.

Most of those who remain listed as unaccounted-for 12 weeks after the storm probably are alive and well, says Kym Pasqualini, chief executive officer of the National Center for Missing Adults. She says they are listed as missing because government record-keeping efforts haven't caught up with them in their new locations.

However, Pasqualini says those counting the victims are particularly concerned about an estimated 1,300 unaccounted-for people who lived in areas that were heavily damaged by Katrina, or who were disabled at the time the storm hit. The fact that authorities haven't been able to determine what happened to them suggests that the death toll from Katrina could climb significantly.

2005-11-22T11:37:00.000-08:00

Democrats Demand No-Pardon Guarantee For Thanksgiving Turkey
Flightless Bird Allegedly Woodward's, Novak's Source in CIA Leak Scandal

Washington (TFM Press) - The Democratic leadership in both the House of Representatives and the Senate today called on President Bush to not pardon the White House Thanksgiving Turkey, citing the ongoing investigation into the leaking of a CIA operative's identity to members of the media in 2003.

The turkey, named Marshmallow, is among those rumored to be the secret source of Washington Post celebrity journalist Bob Woodward, who revealed last week that he was contacted by a White House official in June 2003 who told him that the wife of Ambassador Joseph Wilson, a critic of the decision to invade Iraq, worked for the CIA.

"Pardoning Marshmallow would send a very bad message to the American people about the administration's belief in justice being served," House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) told reporters at a hastily-thrown-together press conference. "The turkey may be flightless, but we do not yet know whether he is guiltless."

Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) was equally adamant, albeit more glib than his colleague. "To pardon the Thanksgiving turkey in the middle of an ongoing espionage investigation would surely ruffle the feathers of the rule of law!"

Following an extended, unamused silence, Reid continued. "Um, Schumee, you wanna finish this up for me?"

Media Conflicted

While the Democratic leadership remains united in their opposition to a Presidential poultry pardon, members of the media have differing views as to the relevance of Marshmallow's potential testimony to Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald's grand jury.

"Marshmallow would be unique from the other major witnesses in this case because, unlike Matt Cooper or Judy Miller, you can draw him by tracing around your hand," ABC's Jeffrey Toobin said on Monday's edition of World News Tonight. "Surely his being allowed to testify would send a positive message to America's sketch artists."

"It is outrageous that a turkey would be forced to testify in a criminal investigation," CNN's Howard Kurtz said on this weekend's Reliable Sources. "Americans are tired of turkey and, frankly, they've had a little bit too much turkey for one day, and they're tired of it... tired... and sleepy..." Kurtz was then nudged awake by his producer. "We'll be right back! Coming up on Reliable Sources: Ninety percent of members of a certain profession want Al Qaeda to win! We'll tell you what profession right after this."

Woodward, Novak source?

Since the news broke of a possible Presidential pardon for him, speculation has been rampant in the media, as well as the halls of Congress, that Marshmallow was the secret White House source who talked to Bob Woodward on June 23rd, 2003.

"They must have spoken to each other," political commentator and blogger Arianna Huffington told TFM Press over the phone. "After all, Marshmallow is one of the few people at the White House who speaks in a way that Woodward really understands."

Added Huffington, "You don't believe me? Check out this passage from Maestro:

Gobble gobble gobble gobble gobble gobble Greenspan gobble gobble gobble gobble gobble gobble gobble gobble Ayn Rand gobble gobble gobble gobble gobble gobble gobble gobble gobble love tryst gobble gobble gobble...

You see?"

While Huffington is confident that the turkey gobbled to Woodward, others speculate that Marshmallow was actually the as-yet unknown second source of conservative columnist and perennial People Magazine's Sexiest Man Alive runner-up Robert Novak.

"It's really quite plausible, when you look at it," Howard Fineman writes in a column for this week's Newsweek. "Novak describes the source that gave him Valerie Plame's name as 'not a partisan gunslinger', and there is no less plausible gunslinger than a large, flightless bird with no hands."

When reached for comment, a representative for Novak told TFM Press that the columnist has fully cooperated with the investigation, adding, "Damn you, Matthew McCognahey!"

The turkey pardon controversy was fodder for a contentious White House Press Briefing this morning.

"Helen, I reject the premise of your question," Press Secretary Scott McClellan told the assembled press. "The President has stated repeatedly that forcing a turkey to testify would severely hamper its chances of full membership in the European Union. Helen, stop groaning, he's been clear and unequivocal about this."

A spokesman for Talon News could not be reached for comment, depriving this news organization of the chance to construct another bad bird-related pun. ***

2005-11-22T11:15:00.000-08:00

GET OUT!

Haven't seen this on CNN yet:

CAIRO, Egypt (AP) - Leaders of Iraq's sharply divided Shiites, Kurds and Sunnis called Monday for a timetable for the withdrawal of U.S.-led forces in the country and said Iraq's opposition had a "legitimate right" of resistance.

The final communique, hammered out at the end of three days of negotiations at a preparatory reconciliation conference under the auspices of the Arab League, condemned terrorism, but was a clear acknowledgment of the Sunni position that insurgents should not be labeled as terrorists if their operations do not target innocent civilians or institutions designed to provide for the welfare of Iraqi citizens.

(emphasis mine) This, uh, does not bode well, particularly as long as George W Bush equates withdrawing with losing. (It also doesn't bode well for hawkish Democratic presidential candidates in 2008, such as Hillary Clinton or Joe Biden, who both have made similar verbal equations, though I imagine that at least the former of those two will eventually jump ship.)

John notes that the plan called for by the communique is so similar to John Murtha's proposal that we should probably expect Jean Schmidt to start picking off Iraqis with a rifle from a clock tower.

2005-11-22T00:27:00.000-08:00

2 QUICK LINKS

--As I mentioned the other day, I think it's unlikely that Richard Armitage, Colin Powell's former deputy at the State Dept, was Woodward's pre-Libby PlameGate source. However, I find it much more plausible (and likely?) that Armitage was the anonymous whistleblower in Dana Priest and Mike Allen's Post story from September of 2003, as Steve Clemons speculates.

--I didn't blog the developments in the House of Representatives following Rep Murtha's call for a redeployment/withdrawl of US troops from Iraq. You may remember on Friday seeing Ohio Congresswoman Jean Schmidt bring shame upon herself by calling Murtha, a decorated Vietnam veteran, a "coward" on the House floor. But wait, she was quoting somebody else, a Marine! That's what Rummy told Wolf Blitzer on Sunday's Late Edition. Well then, that makes it all better then: Schmidt was merely taking the pulse of the military and not slandering a Nam-vet colleague on the House floor. Except... the person she quoted isn't exactly what we'd call typical. At HuffPo, Max Blumenthal gives us plenty of background on just who Mean Jean's letter-writer, one Danny Pubp, really is. (UPDATE 11/22: Or is she a liar?)

2005-11-20T11:50:00.000-08:00

No Exit Strategy - LOL.

UPDATE: Video of President Gary Larson.

2005-11-20T10:53:00.000-08:00

WOODWARD'S SOURCE

Ever since Bob Woodward testified to Fitzgerald's grand jury last Monday that someone told him about "Joe Wilson's wife" way back in June 2003, even before Libby went on his leak-fest, everyone has been atwitter as to the mystery of who Woodward's source was.

(And for the reality-impaired, the Woodward revelation does nothing to mitigate Scooter Libby's legal jeopardy. Libby told a bullshit story, repeatedly, to Fitz's grand jury, and he got indicted for it.)

Over at Newsweek, Evan Thomas and -- uh oh -- Michael Isikoff speculate as to the source's identity, and the guess they offer up is...

So who is Novak's source—and Woodward's source—and why will his identity take the wind out of the brewing storm? One by one last week, a parade of current and former senior officials, including the CIA's George Tenet and national-security adviser Stephen Hadley, denied being the source. A conspicuous exception was former deputy secretary of State Richard Armitage, whose office would only say, "We're not commenting." He was one of a handful of top officials who had access to the information. He is an old source and friend of Woodward's, and he fits Novak's description of his source as "not a partisan gunslinger." Woodward has indicated that he knows the identity of Novak's source, which further suggests his source and Novak's were one and the same.

If Armitage was the original leaker, that undercuts the argument that outing Plame was a plot by the hard-liners in the veep's office to "out" Plame. Armitage was, if anything, a foe of the neocons who did not want to go to war in Iraq. He had no motive to discredit Wilson.

Color me highly skeptical. With it already being proven that Libby and Rove were involved, and with a series of reporters told first-hand by senior administration officials about Plame in 2003, the Armitage scenario doesn't add up. It increasingly doesn't add up given the exact qualifiers offered up by the report; it's counterintuitive to the point where it's most likely wrong. Armitage's greatest loyalty (for many years) was to Colin Powell, his immediate boss.

Frankly, given that all we're going on is a "no comment", this strikes me as more Isikoff stenography, just as his "Rove's in the clear!" reporting a few weeks ago was.

On the other hand, there's the London Times, which reports that "lawyers close to the investigation" say Woodward's source was Stephen Hadley, which makes a little more sense.

We'll see.

UPDATE: Raw Story called Hadley's spokesman, who issued a denial as to whether Hadley "[met] Woodward on the dates in question."

2005-11-18T10:24:00.000-08:00

"I THINK I'LL MAKE A LEMUR TODAY"

Via John at AmericaBlog, we see that Charles Krauthammer has a column today which rips Intelligent Design to shreds:

Let's be clear. Intelligent design may be interesting as theology, but as science it is a fraud. It is a self-enclosed, tautological "theory" whose only holding is that when there are gaps in some area of scientific knowledge -- in this case, evolution -- they are to be filled by God. It is a "theory" that admits that evolution and natural selection explain such things as the development of drug resistance in bacteria and other such evolutionary changes within species but also says that every once in a while God steps into this world of constant and accumulating change and says, "I think I'll make me a lemur today." A "theory" that violates the most basic requirement of anything pretending to be science -- that it be empirically disprovable. How does one empirically disprove the proposition that God was behind the lemur, or evolution -- or behind the motion of the tides or the "strong force" that holds the atom together?

In order to justify the farce that intelligent design is science, Kansas had to corrupt the very definition of science, dropping the phrase " natural explanations for what we observe in the world around us," thus unmistakably implying -- by fiat of definition, no less -- that the supernatural is an integral part of science. This is an insult both to religion and science.

Whoa... wait, bacdafucup, CHARLES KRAUTHAMMER???

Yep. In fact, this shouldn't be a surprise. In July, Krauthammer was among 15 prominent conservatives surveyed by TNR's Ben Adler on the subjects of evolution and ID. The article is now behind TNR's subscriber wall, but if I recall, Digby posted some of the responses. Here's Krauthammer's:

Whether he personally believes in evolution: "Of course."

What he thinks of intelligent design: "At most, interesting."

Whether intelligent design should be taught in public schools: "The idea that [intelligent design] should be taught as a competing theory to evolution is ridiculous. ... The entire structure of modern biology, and every branch of it [is] built around evolution and to teach anything but evolution would be a tremendous disservice to scientific education. If you wanna have one lecture at the end of your year on evolutionary biology, on intelligent design as a way to understand evolution, that's fine. But the idea that there are these two competing scientific schools is ridiculous."

There you have it. Of the conservatives surveyed, only a couple of them are as unequivocal as Krauthammer regarding their acceptance of evolution and the rejection of ID as science (Richard Brookhiser gets a gold star, and William F Buckley and Jonah Goldberg each get a solid B+).

2005-11-17T13:01:00.000-08:00

NEWS FROM MY 3RD FAVORITE COLLEGE PROF

Associated Press:

One Arabic linguist was discharged from the military for violating its "don't ask, don't tell" sexual orientation policy in fiscal year 2004, according to records obtained by an advocacy group.

In the first 10 years of "don't ask, don't tell," the military discharged 54 Arabic and nine Farsi speakers for violating the policy, according to the Center for the Study of Sexual Minorities in the Military. In fiscal year 2004, however, there was just one Arabic and no Farsi speakers discharged, the center said Wednesday. That compares to at least three enlisted personnel discharged the previous year.

"The military does not like to admit firing gay Arabic linguists during a dire shortage because the public doesn't understand why we would rather fire gays than have enough Arabic linguists to translate intercepted cables," said Aaron Belkin, director of the center based at the University of California, Santa Barbara.

In 2004, the 9/11 Commission found the government "lacked sufficient translators proficient in Arabic and other key languages, resulting in a significant backlog of untranslated intercepts."

(I'm a proud member of the "I <3 Belkin" Facebook group)

"Don't Ask Don't Tell" has always been a stupid compromise policy, but beyond that, there's the irony of catering to religious fundamentalists at home, and how doing so in this case impedes our efforts in the war against... religious fundamentalists elsewhere.

What a great moral statement it would have been for, in the aftermath of 9/11, when the American people would have lit their own farts if Bush told them to, if the President had ended that policy in favor of inclusion. But alas, that was never going to happen. I don't know what the Vulcans were thinking with that Nixon/China proverb.

2005-11-15T00:34:00.000-08:00

WITHOUT DELAY!

Hmm. I wonder if this...

An attorney for Rep. Tom DeLay (R-Tex.) said Monday that he will request an early December trial date for the former House majority leader, if the case gets that far.

Lawyer Dick DeGuerin said in a letter that "time is of the essence" in the case that has forced DeLay to temporarily step down from his House post.

Judge Pat Priest has set a hearing for next Tuesday to consider requests to drop the charges against DeLay and his co-defendants. Defense attorneys have asked that the charges be dropped for various reasons, including alleged misconduct by a prosecutor.

"Should the indictments survive the hearings of November 22, we will request a trial date in early December," DeGuerin wrote in his letter to Priest.

...might have something to do with stories like this one:

In a stunning breakdown of Republican unity, House leaders failed Thursday to muster enough votes to pass $50 billion in budget savings, their ranks torn between moderate and conservative wings that rejected pleas for party discipline.

The GOP leaders, faced as well with unified Democratic opposition, were forced to pull the budget bill off the House floor rather than see it defeated.

At the same time, rebellion by Sen. Olympia Snowe, a moderate Republican from Maine, blocked the Senate Finance Committee from approving a $70 billion tax-cut package, another Republican priority.

The disruptive rifts in Republican ranks in Congress underscored the changing political landscape in Washington, as President Bush's popularity is waning and the governing party faces mounting public opposition on everything from the war in Iraq to sky-high gasoline prices.

"Don't worry, Donovan, I'll be back in time for the Super Bowl. And besides, if we lose our majority in the midterms, I'll just blame my teammates!"

(Sorry, I was determined to see that analogy through. And it isn't really appropriate anyway.)

2005-11-14T21:53:00.000-08:00

CHECKING IN

President Bush, as you may have noticed, has been speechifying lately on Iraq, trying out a few new lines of rhetorical attack, and dragging out a whole host of old ones for good measure. (The old ones don't seem to pack the same punch when your approval rating is in the mid 30's.)

Slate's Fred Kaplan goes over Bush's new round of carefully-worded assertions and finds them, well, all stem and no cell.

(And if you have any interest in not developing a stye, you'd be well advised to steer clear of Chalab-o-phile Christopher Hitchens' useless, lazy drivel on a related matter.)

2005-11-11T00:43:00.000-08:00

Fair and Balanced.

But if they're really asking, I'll answer their question: Because doing so creates more of them.

2005-11-09T13:37:00.000-08:00

A TKO FOR FRANKEN

If you're going to attack a guy who says your people are liars, it would be well-advised not to build your case upon lie after lie.

Also at Media Matters: Loofah strikes again!

2005-11-09T12:20:00.000-08:00

Kevin gives a spanking to the latest wingnut (Old Man Pod) defending the administration on its WMD claims.

2005-11-09T11:13:00.000-08:00

BLAIR'S TERRORISM PACKAGE GOES DOWN

Quite the spanking across the pond.

Tony Blair has suffered his first defeat after MPs rejected his plan to allow police to detain terror suspects without charge for up to 90 days.

MPs rejected the plans by a bigger than expected margin of 322 votes to 291, before later backing a 28 day limit.

The defeat came despite Mr Blair saying MPs had a "duty" to support the police.

Tory leader Michael Howard said Mr Blair should resign after failing to "carry his party" but Downing Street says it was not a confidence issue.

Another part of that legislation, you may remember, was a highly problematic proposed law banning, among other things, the "glorification of terrorism". If passed, it would surely have precipitated a hilarious public debate about what constitutes both "glorification" and "terrorism". I was wondering if Downing Street would post a wiki-style webpage to that effect. Oh well.

2005-11-09T00:35:00.000-08:00

HOWARD DEAN SPEAKS

Statement released tonight on statehouse victories in NJ and VA:

"The resounding victories tonight by Jon Corzine and Tim Kaine have sent a powerful message that when Democrats stand up for what we believe in, we win. They showed that the values and priorities of the Democratic Party are the values and priorities of the American people.

"Jon Corzine and Tim Kaine were strong candidates who offered vision and leadership based on the shared values and priorities of the voters of New Jersey and Virginia. They worked hard to earn the trust and the votes of the people in their states by not taking a single vote or voter for granted.

"Also tonight, voters all across the country delivered a resounding message: Americans are tired of the politics of hate and divisiveness, and voted for strong Democratic candidates who offered true leadership for their states and communities. These candidates showed exactly what our party is going to do to stand up and win in 2006."

It will be up to Chairman Dean to build on these successes around this time next year. The special election victories for Ben Chandler and Stephanie Herseth in 2003/early2004 did not translate into Bush's ouster or Congress changing hands, so there are no guarantees.

2005-11-08T23:59:00.000-08:00

NEW ELECTION RESULTS POST

Elsewhere around the country:

--Tim Kaine wins the gubernatorial race in Virginia.

--Senator John Corzine easily wins the gubernatorial race in New Jersey.

--Electoral reform initiatives in Ohio appear to have failed this time around.

--A victory for gay rights in Maine.

--A victory for science in Dover, PA, as the school board was purged (electorally) of intelligent design apologists.

And on a personal note,

--Santa Barbara County voted FOR prop 75!?!? This is cuz I left, isn't it.

2005-11-08T20:50:00.000-08:00

WATCHING THE PROPS

You can watch the results of the California special election as they come in by clicking here.

8:51 PM . . . Just over 12% in, 73-75 are winning (ugh), the rest are losing. As of right now, no precincts in Los Angeles and San Francisco counties have reported.

9:22 PM . . . 73 (abortion) and 74 (teacher tenure) are getting very tight, as more precincts from the Bay Area and LA are getting counted.

9:36 PM . . . Prop 74 just switched from Yes to No, with 22.7% reporting. Only 73 and 75 are currently passing, and the margins for both are dwindling.

9:48 PM . . . Prop 73 moving into a dead heat. Meanwhile the No column for 74 has breathing room, at 51.1%.

9:59 PM . . . Booyah. Prop 73 just flipped, with "No" leading 50.2%. 75 (Arnold's anti-union prop) once had an 11% advantage, and now it's down to 52-48.

10:35 PM . . . Prop 75 is at 50.9% Yes, 49.1% No, with 42.5% reporting. To give you an idea of the movement here, with 15% reporting the split was something like 55-45.

11:10 PM . . . Prop 75 just flipped to "No" (50.1-49.9), so for the moment, Arnold is just plain PWN3D. It could flip back, yes, but it's starting to look like we're exiting the operatic portion of "Bohemian Raphsody", and beginning to bang heads.

11:54 PM . . . "No" is pulling away for each and every ballot initiative. Frankly, I was neither optimistic about 79 and 80 passing, nor was I really that into them, and hey, small price to pay for derailing Arnold's crusade against firefighters, teachers, nurses, organized labor, as well as the Xian right's crusade against women. Earlier tonight at Drudge's place he was pimping the possibility that some of the Arnold-backed propositions might win ("Arnold 2-2?" and later "Arnold 1-3?"). Now that all four of his initiatives are tanking, there is no mention of them on Drudge's site. Sorry!

Hopefully The Editors won't mind if I borrow this:

2005-11-08T14:05:00.000-08:00

HAHAHA

Frist and Hastert suddenly become huffy and puffy about the leaking of classified information. Hilarity ensues.