It Looks Like This (sorry, no ice cream) 

What the hell were they thinking?

I don't know if you in the rest of the country can appreciate just how embarrassing it is to live in a state that just elected as its governor a man whose only apparent qualification...oops, my bad...he has no apparent qualification.

The administration, the press, and the state of our union

There is a widely held belief that the discrediting of virtually all of the reasons offered by the Bush administration in the lead up to the war in Iraq is really unimportant because the war, for whatever reasons it was putatively waged, still brought about the greater good of removing Saddam from power. I can't argue that removing Saddam from power was not a worthy goal, or a worthy outcome. It remains to be seen if the Iraqi people and the mideast as a whole will be safer and better off with whatever government eventually fills the current void, but it is likely that they will not be worse off than they were under Saddam.

Of greater concern to the American people is the effect that this administration's campaign had and will continue to have on our political discourse. Most of what they told us now seems to be untrue. It may be that the Administration believed it to be true and, relying on good faith but bad intelligence or judgment (or both), told America and the world what it believed to be true. It seems more likely, however, that the administration knew there was at best weak proof of what it was alleging but sold this reason, that Iraq had advance chemical and nuclear weapons programs and the ability to either transfer such weapons to terrorists or launch them at us, because, particularly in the wake of 9/11, preying on our fears is a pretty effective marketing tool. 'We don't want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud" is a darned good line, even if it isn't based on reality. It is awfully hard to conjure up similar images and draft lines as catchy if you are trying to appeal to our humanitarian concern for people living a half a world away. It is also an approach and a motivation that this particular crowd, those currently holding the reins of power in this Administration, has historically rejected. Jimmy Carter was famously derided when he made concern for the human rights records of other countries the hub of his foreign policy. Typically, human rights in foreign countries have been a concern of the likes of Rumsfeld and Cheney only when those countries have been communist controlled. Appealing to that motive and trying to sell it to the American people goes against their grain. It most probably is also not their real motivation, anyway.

What we end up with, then, is a government leading its people to war under false pretenses. Not a fresh idea; Jackson Browne sang about it 20 years ago, the Johnson Administration did it 40 years ago. But perhaps never before, in this country, at least, has the selling of a war been so carefully orchestrated, with every significant administration spokesman, from Cheney, Rumsfeld, Powell, Rice, Fleischer on down on the same page (usually). When contrary facts popped up to undermine the message, these facts were not commented on; the message was just repeated louder, with more vociferousness. Those who questioned the message were called unpatriotic and cowardly. And many people, most significantly and disappointingly the mainstream press, were cowed. Despite our recent history, despite the lies of the Johnson and Nixon administrations about Viet Nam, despite Watergate, despite the Iran-Contra scandal, despite all the inconsistencies between the words coming out of the White House and the observable facts, the press was mostly quiescent. Even now, as they leap on the Plame scandal, in the wake of the "16 words" brouhaha, the press is slow to sniff out the story. Indeed, they have to be led to it, and, as with the horse led to water, are still reluctant to drink. The instincts of most journalists covering the White House, or maybe of their editors, is to not get out ahead of the pack. Don't say or write anything that will bring the focus of the White House or the right wing pundits upon yourself. Wait until somebody else (thank you David Corn of the Nation and Paul Krugman of the Times) breaks a story, lay low awhile to see which way the wind is blowing, then leap on it if there is enough cover.

The result of this is that we have a "national discourse" on matters of ultimate concern to all of us that is fraught with poor information from its sources that is not questioned by the conduits that provide it to the people. It may be that the press feels it is being "unbiased" when it doesn't tell us that the words coming out of the mouth of the president or a presidential candidate do not match the observable facts. In fact, it is probably more a symptom of timidity, ignorance and laziness. They are afraid to rise out of the pack lest they be slapped back down, they are too often too ignorant of the facts and their implications to call them to our attention and they are too lazy to do the leg work to gain the sophistication to understand what they are reporting on. So we are left with lies from the source, amplified by the pundits and talk radio hosts and those of us on the ground, the news consumers, the voters, either get distorted information or have to work darn hard to get any kind of balance, let alone truth.

This is no way to run a democracy.

Iraqi Oil

One more tonight...

Today's paper brought news that, despite knowing of a Pentagon report prepared last fall (yes, well before the war) that Iraq's oil production capacity was severely reduced by a decade of trade embargoes, Cheney, Rumsfled, Wolfowitz, et al, continued to tell the American people and Congress that Iraq'a post war oil production would pay for Iraq's reconstruction. So, reduced by 25% before the war, damaged and disrupted by the war, and this industry was supposed to pay for the reconstruction? What kind of fantasy land do these people inhabit back there in D.C.?

Rush, once Again

I'm intrigued at how clean ESPN has come out of this whole Rush Limbaugh affair. Rush seems to have taken all the heat, and he really shouldn't have. Rush was just being Rush. In fact, Rush was just doing, as he noted, what he was hired to do; stir up some controversy. He didn't say anything worse or more outlandish than he says every single day on the radio and I imagine that he and his legion of dittoheads are truly mystified at the ruckus.

So why has all the focus been on Rush and not on his employer, ESPN? Is it because "they did the right thing" by constructively firing him? Sorry, that doesn't cut it. If they thought that was the right thing, they'd have done that by last Monday, at the latest. It was only after the controversy over his remarks sprouted legs that ESPN realized that it was time to cut their losses and cut lose Rush. From all indication, though, the other on-air "talent" found nothing offensive about his remarks and I imagine that initially the executives at ESPN were smiling. And oddly, they still are. A week later, they seem to have gotten away without getting any on their suits.

Dirty Deeds in the White House

Am I the only one wondering about the timing of this Justice Department Investigation into the blowing of Valerie Plame's cover? Let's recap, shall we? The Novak column ran in mid July. Within the last week or so we have found out that George Tenet wrote a letter to the Justice Department requesting an investigation by the end of July. And then, for seven or eight weeks, nothing happens. Now, all of a sudden, the letter becomes public and we are told that the investigation will begin immediately. Hmmmm. Why, now, after all these weeks, the sense of urgency? What's happened in the meantime? Perhaps time to destroy the evidence? Time to identify, isolate, and/or neutralize the leakers?

Think about it. You're George Bush, or any executive, and there are allegations that one or more of your senior staff members has engaged in serious wrongdoing. Does any believe that even the most incompetent executive would do nothing for all these weeks in that situation? If you are that executive and you are personally innocent of any wrongdoing and you have any scruples, you will launch an investigation immediately. You want to find out what happened and if there really was serious wrongdoing you are going to want to purge the evildoers. And you are going to do this publicly, to limit the damage to the reputations of yourself and the other scrupulous people working for you. Anybody around here remember any such thing happening at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue in the last month and a half?

If you are that executive and you have no scruples, you are still going to want to know what happened, but you're going to do it on the QT, and once you have gotten to the bottom of it and shredded some documents and erased some tapes and gotten things pretty well cleaned up, you will have your own people conduct an investigation, and you will cast the net as broadly as possible (say, 2000 executive branch employees), so that an investigation that lasts past the next presidential election will be plausible (despite the fact that the leakers have been identified as "senior officials," a much smaller group).

Does anybody out there believe the the crew that doesn't want us to know of Saudi Arabia's involvement in 9/11 is going to want us to know of there own involvement in this sordid affair?

Hanging with Arnold

God, I hope Schwarzenegger doesn't become governor; that name is just too hard to type.

It's depressing how predictable and predictably hypocritical all the reactions to the relevations of Arnold's pecadillos have been. People who wanted to lynch Clinton on alleged consensual behavior on less evidence flock to support Arnold. I don't get the sense that this flap will change the minds of any voters, it will just further polarize people. Those who wouldn't vote for Arnold anyway now say there is no way they would vote for him and question the parentage and sanity of anyone who will vote for him. Those who supported him are calling these stories "dirty tricks."

The most interesting, and cynical, reactions have come from Arnold's people. While admitting that at least some of the revelations are true (though they won't specify which), they say they are politically motivated. My reactions to that are "huh?" and "so what?" If they are true, what difference does it make if they are politically motivated? As for the timing, what can we do about that? It was a short race to begin with and Arnold shortened it even more by playing Hamlet for weeks, so the L.A. Times had no reason to start researching this article earlier than it did. Arnold could have avoided all of this by coming clean about this kind of behavior when the whispering started at the beginning of the campaign.

The truly most bizarre reaction came from one of Arnold's people when it was revealed that one of the women charging Arnold with this misconduct is a member of a union that has opposed Arnold's election. According to this advisor, this proves that the Democrats are behind the whole thing. Of course, acting on that kind of logic, Arnold is now free to grope half the women in the state. If they object, he can turn it around and say their charges are politically motivated.

The real loser in all this is Maria Shriver. She has lost all credibility as a Kennedy, as a Democrat, and whatever slim thread of dubious credibility she might have had as a "journalist."

Over at ESPN

ESPN's hiring of Rush Limbaugh to join its Sunday morning "analysis" team intrigues me. It seems to have been sparked by the same type of thinking that prompted MSNBC to hire Mike Savage last winter and that is the interesting facet. MSNBC was a struggling network trying to find a niche, or at least to attract attention. To accomplish the latter it hired a hate spewing blowhard and sat back to wait for the firework, which sure enough, arrived right on schedule. MSNBC got wonderful (which is not to say favorable) publicity as a result of the flap.

ESPN didn't need that kind of publicity, but sought it anyway. People who want football analysis have several choices on Sunday morning. Although the network might wish to pretend otherwise, adding Limbaugh to the team did nothing to enhance the level of its football expertise. Limbaugh apparently knows nothing more about football than the average fan. We all can find that kind of analysis in any number of places. What Limbaugh brought to ESPN is his dittoheads. What Limbaugh drove away from ESPN are those people who loathe him, who will deliberately not watch ESPN on Sunday mornings because doing so would be akin to flaying their arms and pouring vinegar on them. The dittoheads might have found ESPN anyway. Those of us who have been encouraged by ESPN to watch CBS or FOX won't be back.

More chicanery in the White House

Ever notice that whenever Condi Rice tries to show that she is not lying she paints herself instead as incompetent? She pulled this off first with the incident surrounding Bush's famous 16 words in the State of the Union address, when she claimed to have not read or forgotten the memo discounting the alleged attempted sale of uranium from Niger to Iraq, as well as her failure to note the mention in the October White Paper casting doubts on stories that Iraq was attempting to buy weapons grade uranium from Africa.

Now she is doing it again, this time relative to the blown cover of Joseph Wilson's wife. This story broke more than 2 months ago, yet this late in the game she claims to not know of any effort by the White House, officially or unofficially, to have blown Valerie Plame's cover. She then goes on to lay the whole thing off on anonymous media sources. Hmmmm, you would think that the White House would be aware that Robert Novak is the primary source of this story; he has hardly sought anonimity here. This has been well-known since the start. And why did it take a request from George Tenet to the CIA to launch this investigation? Why didn't such an investigation start in the White House? Wouldn't you think they'd have an interest in ensuring that "senior administration officials" are not leaking confidential information to the press? And how can the National SECURITY Advisor be so blissfully ingorant about the whole thing? Wouldn't it be part of her job to know about blown CIA operatives? Particularly an expert on weapons of mass destruction? I seem to recall the White House having a particular interest in this area in the last year or so.

If the whole Bush administration is as corrupt and morally bankrupt as the large and growing body of evidence indicates it is, I can see why they would downplay this incident. What baffles me is why the Republican Party does. Do Republicans in Congress have no sense of responsiblit left? Have they no respect for the fact that they are in an entirely separate branch of government, and that this separation of powers was instituted just to keep one branch from becoming too powerful, too imperial? Can they be ignorant of that? And why does the press keep letting these things slide? Have they belatedly come to grips that they, as an institution, were played like fools by the Republicans throughout the phony scandals of the Clinton years, scandals which they apparently never understood, and are now gun shy and afraid to grapple with the real McCoy?

Fair and Balanced? Russert...Fox is calling

One of the refreshing things about the criticism being leveled at VP Cheney for his performance on Meet the Press, aside from the visible firming of the National Press Backbone, is the implied criticism of Tim Russert that went along with it. For some reason, while Russert has been a loyal lapdog for the Bush people since before the 2000 election, he has somehow maintained a reputation for being hard-hitting and unbiased. In fact he is not unbiased and appears to be hard hitting only with those interview subjects he doesn't like. He hammered Dean earlier this year for not knowing precise answers to questions of the type that Russert had fed to Bush in 2000.

Now, with other journalists asking the hard questions that he didn't and pointing out the inconsistencies that he skated over, the clear implication is that Russert doesn't measure up to his reputation. The curtain is being pulled away, revealing an interviewer who would feel quite at home on Fox.

Repeal the Tax Cuts

Now that some degree of honesty has somehow crept out of the White House with last Sunday's admission that this occupation is going to cost at least $87 billion in the next year, Congress and the American people can debate where that money will come from. Anybody who is not dedicated to the complete collapse of this government's ability to continue in the future to provide anything other than a blanket of cover for the continuing corporate rape of the American public and to wage wars of aggression in the name of the great American corporate empire has to acknowledge that we cannot continue to fund this adventure by going further into debt. I don't think this government has any intention of cutting the remaining fat (corporate welfare) in the federal budget, so the only remaining alternative is to start rolling back the tax breaks. Can we look our children in the eye and do anything else?