Edgewise

Wanting to Get to the Bottom of It

The very next Q&A in the press conference xian links to below is also a prize specimen of weasel-wordedness:

Q Two questions. First, you've said in the past that, on the matter of Matt Cooper and Judith Miller that the President supports the investigation. What specific steps is the White House taking to support it? Has the President called people into the Oval Office?

MR. McCLELLAN: What I said is the President wants to get to the bottom of the investigation; no one wants to get to the bottom of it more than he does. It is a very serious matter and the President has said that if anybody has information, they ought to provide that information to the prosecutor so that they can continue forward on their investigation.

Q Has he called specific people into the Oval Office to ask them if they --

MR. McCLELLAN: What we made a decision to do was to support the efforts of the independent prosecutor to move forward on the investigation and that's what we're doing. If there are any specific questions you have about individuals, those are questions that are best directed to the special prosecutor in this matter.

There's an eerie similarity to the Unocal/PR exchange, where the indirectly stated answer was, "No, the President can acknowledge no conflict of interest imputed to a crony. He's a stand-up guy, you know?" Here, what's indirectly stated is "No, the President hasn't actually done anything to find out which of his staff members implemented the decision to punish Joseph Wilson."
I particularly like the phrase "wants to get to the bottom of the investigation," which McClellan, like a blues singer, gives us twice with minor variation. The purity of Bush's intention --- he wants to; he really, really wants to --- outweighs his actual inaction.

Schwarzenegger's popularity down to Bush levels

The Field poll says only 39% of respondents would vote for Schwarzenegger again.

Going, going, ....

Conflict, schmonflict

Thanks to John Berger on the Well, I ended up reading this interesting exchange between administration spokesweasel John McClellan and the usually prostrate White House press:

Q: When the President talks about high gasoline prices, he often cites the demand for gasoline and crude oil from China. Is the President comfortable that the company partly owned by his campaign media advisor is assisting the Chinese in their attempt to purchase Unocal?

MR. McCLELLAN: Well, in terms of that matter, we are following those reports closely. If a bid were to go through, like all foreign-based transactions, there is a regulatory process that is in place that will be followed to address any national security concerns. So in other words, there are procedures in place, and if a bid goes through, then we would expect the appropriate procedures to be followed.

Q: But is he comfortable with this company that was so closely aligned with his--

MR. McCLELLAN: I don't know about any such involvement.

Q: Well, Public Strategies out of Austin, Texas is helping CNO buy Unocal.

MR. McCLELLAN: I think you have to look at what I just said. That's the - that's the President's view when it comes to this matter.

Q: But it's just that it's a really close tie to the White House, and would the President be comfortable in using this company again for any further media strategies that he may have to engage in, or is this just part of free enterprise?

MR. McCLELLAN: The President would want to make sure that the procedures that are in place are followed, and that's what we would expect if a bid goes through.

Karl Rove prepared for war

I'm not sure Rove is prepared for the way these liberal soldiers and veterans are pissed at his divisive comments about how different Americans responded to 9/11: Take it to Karl

Public Television vs The Klan

Full disclosure: I have a liberal viewpoint. That means primarily that I believe in taxes, free speech, and that Abraham Lincoln was right. And sometimes I wish The North had let The South secede. Then we wouldn't have today a national leadership lording their prejudices over us from the legacy of a constitutional compromise. That's the compromise that allowed any decision about American slavery to be put aside as the Founding Fathers hammered out a constitution that gave equal rights to states but not to people.

My liberal viewpoint might look to some like the outcome of my personal geography. I live in California. I was raised in an urban area (near San Francisco Bay), and I have a degree from the University of California, Berkeley. But I was born in the South. My mother and all the Briggs's and Edwards's and Turners before me were born in the South. My fondest feelings and memories are attached to my mother's southern family and the places they lived and died in--north Florida and South Carolina.

But there is one memory that stands apart from the others of my beloved motherland. It is of me as a small child standing before a drinking fountain--the old fashion kind with a chrome bowl and faucet on a stand-up pipe--in the public park in downtown Jacksonville, Florida. I am thirsty and want to drink but I don't understand a sign posted next to the fountain. I can read it but I don't know what it means. "For Whites Only" it says. Does that mean I cannot drink? I ask my mother and she explains to me, for the first and last time, the meaning of the word "white" in America.

In the front pages of American newspapers this morning we are being reminded of just how far from the "whites only" sign on public drinking fountains we have not come. Maybe some will call it a victory that a member of the notorious terrorist group, the Ku Klux Klan, was convicted of "manslaughter" in the killings of three young men who were pursuing a calling to make it possible for American Negros in the South to register to vote. Two of the murdered men were "white."

Also in our newspapers, probably not on the front page, is mention of the fact that our leaders in Washington, D.C. are calling for a major cutback in public financing of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting which provides crucial funding for public television programs like Sesame Street. These same leaders have a very specific reason for wanting to cut public television funding: it promotes liberal "agendas" or ideas. And public television is what the children of America watch. The little ones. The ones that can't yet read signs like the one posted by that drinking fountain in Jacksonville, Florida.

Public television programs like Sesame Street make visual and audible to the children of America the liberal viewpoint that ALL humans--not just "white" ones--are people to be loved, respected, and treated equally. Public television is predicated on a guiding principle that prejudice--in any form--should not be a part of its programming. That's what being educational means. It means that there is a place in every home for children to see, to hear, and to feel what it is to be a loved, valued, and equal human being.

There is no other corporation in American that is committed to defeating prejudice in the hearts and minds of our children. That is why we should support Public Television. And because there is still a Ku Klux Klan

We Shall Overcome

Deep in my heart,
I do believe,
We shall overcome someday.

I sang it a hundred times. But, how sure was I really? How hard did I believe?

And have we overcome?

A lot of us on the left would answer, almost reflexively, "No!" Because there is no cause to be satisfied or complacent about where things stand today. I think about the circle. "Housing segregation--that's because of jobs. Job inequality--that's because of education. Education inequality--that's because of housing."

We put a lot of weight on the promise of education, even though it seemed intolerably distant and indirect. And it has yet to be redeemed.

I know that the social status and respect earned by people like Academy Award winners Denzel Washington and Halle Berry is in no way typical of America at large. But we still can learn a lot from them, even as paradigms.

I think we must do honor to the truth of how despicable and ugly this thing actually was. All of these things, heartbreakingly, had relevance within my lifetime:

They all look alike to me. (Who? Michael Jordan and Bill Cosby?)
The character of the doctor just happened to be black.
Would you want your sister to marry one?
Do you think you could kiss a Negro?

So, Yes. For a moment I can feel Yes. We have overcome a lot.

--David

The press gang redux

I realize the military is hard-up for recruits but I have nothing but respect for the Marines, so I was dismayed to read this article: When Marine recruiters go way beyond the call.

Do we really need to take advantage of the young and unworldy to fill our ranks? If so, we're in more trouble than I thought.

The Invention of the Zero--Part II

Before the invention of the zero, the DEA announced a policy of "Hardly Any Tolerance for Drugs."

The Invention of the Zero

Before the invention of the zero, even when something was free, you still had to pay a penny for it.

Violins

Disturbing report I heard on NPR radio. This expert said that the prevalence of violins in the media could easily lead to more violins in the street, and even to domestic violins.

He may be a loose cannon, but he's our loose cannon

Hey, I actually agree that Dean should be more careful in how he phrases his outrageous statements, and that it's not good that we're talking about Dean instead of about Bush's unpopularity or Republicans shutting down hearings on the Patriot act, but on the other hand it's about time we had a tough-talking Democrat with the courage of his convictions.

Quoting from Steve Clemons in the politics section of TPM Cafe (Howard Dean is Doing What Dems Need: Shaking Things Up):

I feel no need to defend Howard Dean because he's Chair of the DNC but rather because he's doing what the Democratic Party needs -- shaking things up.

To go directly to the comments that Josh Marshall posted from a TPM reader -- specifically about thinking about the position of an upwardly hopeful Governor of Virginia or a "wannabe Senator from Tennessee" -- these political characters should be embracing Dean's rough edges. He is taking the kind of risks and showing a bravado that the Dems haven't shown in years.

The Republican Party took weeks to finally admit that it was responsible for some of the most outrageous campaign flyers in the last election. The Washington Note was the first to post these -- and Howard Dean, on his blog, was one of the few politicians (then withdrawn from the race) to roundly attack these flyers that said Democrats would BAN the Bible and turn that respective state (Arkansas, West Virginia, Ohio, and several others) into bastions of homosexuality. And now Dean is being clobbered by his own party for asserting that the Republican Party is mostly Christian, mostly white, and mostly male?!

79 comments on this thread (over there) and counting.

Usurpation as a Life-Long Commitment

And they don't always win...
I have freely excerpted and rearranged from this LA Times piece.

"Watergate Weighs on Today's White House," By Peter Wallsten., LA Times Staff Writer, June 7, 2005

[L]ingering weaknesses remain in the executive branch's authority, officials around Bush have said.

**********
Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, a Nixon aide who also served as chief of staff to Ford, tried to stop Congress' post-Watergate broadening of the Freedom of Information Act. The act requires the government to disclose certain records to citizens.
Working with Cheney, Rumsfeld persuaded Ford to veto the legislation, according to declassified documents obtained last year by the National Security Archive at Georgetown University. Congress overrode Ford's veto.

*********
Vice President Dick Cheney, who worked in the Nixon White House and served as chief of staff to President Ford, has spoken of using his current position to restore powers of the presidency that he believes were diminished as a result of Watergate and the Vietnam War....Cheney has tried to rekindle a broad view of executive authority.

Cheney was defending his refusal to disclose information about private meetings with energy industry representatives to help formulate the administration's national energy policy. Cheney's actions were upheld by the Supreme Court, a ruling that legal experts said enhanced the powers of the executive branch.

[DKo: Still, it was only about private, non-members of the Energy Task Force that info didn't have to be disclosed. The court merely refused to affirm that they had become, de facto, members.]

**********
Critics point to other examples of the Bush White House acting to enhance or preserve executive power. For example, the White House initially refused to let then-national security advisor Condoleezza Rice testify before the commission investigating the Sept. 11 attacks. She ultimately testified.
[DKo--My italics.]

[DKo: Note too that, originally, Bush was not even going to allow the post-Vietnam "War Powers Act" to mandate a congressional vote on Iraq.]

An Encouraging Poll Result

I find this report of a US poll encouraging, and better than I'd have expected/feared:

Asked if Muslims can go to heaven only 12% said they cannot, 50% said they can and 24% said they do not believe in heaven.
Newsweek, May 2004.

"Down" the toilet? No, definitely not

A few excerpts from The Friday Flush at the Whiskey Bar:

Talk Left notes the release (in the now standard late Friday document dump) of a Pentagon report confirming at least five different cases of Quran desecration at the Guantanamo Gulag, including kicking, stepping and pissing (supposedly by accident) on the book -- but not the now notorious Newsweek allegation that it was flushed down a toilet.

There are enough fishy details in the report -- such as the "accidental" urination story -- to suspect that it hides far more than it reveals....

The toilet story, though, bears enough resemblance to the documented facts to reinforce the suspicion that Quran abuse was an occasional component of the "Pride and Ego Down" interrogation approach -- maybe not an officially authorized component, but one winked at up and down the chain of command....

This is obviously speculative, not to mention highly paranoid, but the Pentagon's decision to take the limited hangout road (to borrow a Deep Throat-era term) also reinforces my suspicion that the original leak to Newsweek might have been an attempt at information warfare -- what the old KGB used to call dezinformatsiya -- designed to discredit the Quran abuse stories before they reached critical mass in the media.

Certainly, the fact that the original leak was run past the powers that be in the Pentagon, who remained conveniently silent about the story's alleged inaccuracy, suggests somebody up high saw a chance to turn the tables -- both on the tough questions being asked about the gulags, and (as a fringe benefit) on the hated liberal media.

That doesn't relieve Newsweek and Michael Isikoff of their responsibility for blowing the story, but it does highlight the fact that the media are dealing with more than the customary level of official mendacity these days. I doubt few "mainstream" journalists are prepared to consider -- much less cope with -- the possibility that the U.S. government is waging information warfare against them (and, by extension, against the American people), even though Rummy and company long ago all but declared their intention of doing just that.

Deep Throat: The Two Major Loose Ends

Mark Felt is going to publish a final "tell-all" book soon, and Bob Woodward is also going to publish his final wrap-up on Watergate. What could conceivably come out of these?

Well, there remain at least two major loose-ends to the story, one Major and the other Huge.

Major: Thomas Eagleton. He was the vice-presidential running-mate who came out of the Democratic convention with George McGovern. At that point, McGovern's momentum was extremely high. I think McGovern was still the front-runner at the time. (I'm not going back to re-research my old files, as I suppose I really should--my apologies.)

Soon after the convention, there was a leak of Eagleton's medical records, easily available to Presidential authority--even from IRS returns and government Health Plan records. They showed that he had been treated (hospitalized?)for depression. (I remember thinking a depressed President was exactly what we do need in America: "War? I don't really feel up to it today. Try me again next week.")

The normal expectation was that Eagleton would voluntarily step down, for the good of the party. But he did not. He left McGovern twisting day after day, saying it was up to him. This forced McGovern to fire him over his somewhat mature and courageous confronting of a psychological setback in his life. McGovern's big momentum immediately disappeared.

(Curiously, Nixon and Eisenhower had had a similar contretemps. Nixon's southern-California big-money backers had been supplying him with a secret, unaccounted for, "slush fund." When this came out, Eisenhower privately urged Nixon to step down voluntarily, but Nixon refused. Instead, he went on television with his famous "Checkers" speech. The slush-fund was all frugality and innocence, and he was not going to give up his little dog Checkers, whom his daughters loved so much. This played so well, that he won a lot of sympathy, and Eisenhower publicly embraced him once again.)

Huge. Governor George Wallace of Alabama. Wallace had run as a segregationist third-party candidate in 1968, taking so many votes away from Nixon's first run for President that Hubert Humphrey came quite close to winning the election for the Democrats.

Wallace repeated this venture in the 1972 Watergate election. But he was shot by an attempted assassin, and partially paralyzed ("curiously martyred from the waist down," I wrote at the time.) He then withdrew from the race. It was the subtraction of his vote that made the difference between Humphrey's close loss in 1968 and McGovern's landslide loss in 1972.

The circumstances around this shooting were suspicious. The shooter, Arthur Bremmer, had been identified and tracked by the Secret Service as a threat, but had not been thwarted. And after the shooting, the Secret Service managed to be the first to identify, locate, and get to Bremmer's apartment--to sift for evidence--with a blinding speed that stunned and mystified the nationwide FBI and local agencies who would normally have been first on the scene.

The most cynical conspiracy theorists--myself, for example--thought Bremmer had been enabled to slip through normal security safeguards in a way that allowed him to turn a close race into a landslide win for Nixon.

Deep Throat, operating in the FBI, might not have had access to information on this, one way or the other. But, if he does happen to be saving it for his own book, it would be one last blockbuster Watergate story, even after all these years gone by.