Sunday, August 27, 2006

Out lesbian Patricia Todd wins at Alabama state Democratic executive committee

The removal of Patricia Todd from the Democratic slot on the ballot for the Alabama statehouse by a committee of the Alabama Democratic Party has been reversed by the party's executive committee.

Todd's victory today all but assures her election as Alabama's first out elected official. The Birmingham district she hopes to represent is overwhelmingly Democratic and the Republican party has not fielded a candidate for the seat.
Todd, associate director of AIDS Alabama, won the primary for a seat in the Alabama state legislature by 59 votes. Following a complaint by her opponent's mother-in-law, Todd and her opponent were both disqualified from the race. The complaint maintained that Todd had turned in a financial report form late. In the course of the hearing over the complaint it was learned that no candidate for state office had turned in such a form on time, including Todd's opponent and the party's current gubernatorial candidate. The committee voted Thursday to remove both candidates, as neither had filed the required form on time.
With today's executive committee vote, the committee vote from Thursday was dismissed. "Finally, the voters have prevailed. We are enormously proud of the courage and tenacity Patricia showed throughout this ordeal, and equally proud of her supporters in Alabama and beyond who stood by her unfailingly," said Chuck Wolfe, President and CEO of The Victory Fund.

Out lesbian Patricia Todd wins at Alabama state Democratic executive committee

The removal of Patricia Todd from the Democratic slot on the ballot for the Alabama statehouse by a committee of the Alabama Democratic Party has been reversed by the party's executive committee.

Todd's victory today all but assures her election as Alabama's first out elected official. The Birmingham district she hopes to represent is overwhelmingly Democratic and the Republican party has not fielded a candidate for the seat.
Todd, associate director of AIDS Alabama, won the primary for a seat in the Alabama state legislature by 59 votes. Following a complaint by her opponent's mother-in-law, Todd and her opponent were both disqualified from the race. The complaint maintained that Todd had turned in a financial report form late. In the course of the hearing over the complaint it was learned that no candidate for state office had turned in such a form on time, including Todd's opponent and the party's current gubernatorial candidate. The committee voted Thursday to remove both candidates, as neither had filed the required form on time.
With today's executive committee vote, the committee vote from Thursday was dismissed. "Finally, the voters have prevailed. We are enormously proud of the courage and tenacity Patricia showed throughout this ordeal, and equally proud of her supporters in Alabama and beyond who stood by her unfailingly," said Chuck Wolfe, President and CEO of The Victory Fund.

Wednesday, August 23, 2006

Bush Gets Terror Boost, But...

CBS News

The dismantling of the London terror plot hasn't helped President Bush with U.S. voters, according to a new CBS News/New York Times poll. The survey shows that while the president received a modest boost for his handling of terrorism (55 percent approve) in the wake of the plot, concerns about Iraq, the economy and the Mideast neutralized that advantage.

The Truth about the "Terror Plot"

The Truth about the "Terror Plot".... and the new "psuedo-terrorism"

By Nafeez Mosaddeq Ahmed

http://www.opednews.com


I am disappointed to say that so far there has been very little serious critical discussion, grounded in factual analysis, of the alleged "Terror Plot" foiled on the morning of Wednesday, 10th August 2006. Except for a few noteworthy comment pieces, such as Craig Murray's critical speculations published by the Guardian last Friday, the mainstream media has largely subserviently parroted the official claims of the British and American governments. This is a shame, because inspection of the facts raises serious problems for the 10/8 official narrative.No Imminent PlotOn the basis of the "Terror Plot", Prime Minister Tony Blair is planning "to push through 90-day detention without charge for terror suspects." Home Secretary Dr. John Reid has ordered the draft of new anti-terror legislation that would suspend key parts of the Human Rights 1998, to facilitate the indefinite detention of terrorism suspects in the UK without charge or trial. The law is planned to apply also to British citizens. And since 10th August, Britain was on its highest "critical" state of alert, which indicates the threat of an imminent terrorist attack on UK interests. Only in the last few days was it lowered back down to "severe".The stark truth is that the "Terror Plot" narrative has been thoroughly, hopelessly, politicized. There was never any evidence of an imminent plot. A senior British official involved in the investigation told NBC News on 14th August that:"In contrast to previous reports... an attack was not imminent, [and] the suspects had not yet purchased any airline tickets. In fact, some did not even have passports."If British security officials knew that an attack was not imminent, the decision to raise the alert level to critical, indicating an imminent threat, was unjustified by the available intelligence -- this was, in other words, a political decision.Other British officials told NBC News that many of the suspects had been under surveillance for more than a year, since before the 7th July 2005 terrorist attacks. "British police were planning to continue to run surveillance for at least another week to try to obtain more evidence" -- as it was clearly lacking. But: "American officials pressured them to arrest the suspects sooner." An American official also confirmed the disagreement over timing.Brits Opposed Arrest and Torture of Key InformantThe NBC News report further reveals, citing British security sources, that British police did not want to yet arrest Rashid Rauf, the alleged mastermind, al-Qaeda facilitator and key informant on the details of the plot: "British security was concerned that Rauf be taken into custody 'in circumstances where there was due process,' according to the official, so that he could be tried in British courts. Ultimately, this official says, Rauf was arrested over the objections of the British."However, the arrest of Rashid Rauf is at the crux of the case, as it purportedly triggered the ensuing wave of arrests, with Rauf providing in-depth details of the plot to his interrogators in Pakistan. Among the details attributed to Rauf is the idea that the plotters intended to mix a "sports drink" with a gel-like "peroxide-based paste" to create a chemical explosive that "could be ignited with an MP3 player or cell phone."The problem is that several Pakistani newspapers reported on 13th August that "Rauf had 'broken' under interrogation." The reports were described by a Pakistani human rights group "as confirmation that he had been tortured." According to the Guardian, "Asma Jehangir, of the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan, said that it was obvious how the information had been obtained. 'I don't deduce, I know -- torture,' she said. 'There is simply no doubt about that, no doubt at all.'"That most of the details about the plot came from Rauf, who has been tortured and "broken" while under interrogation in Pakistan, raises serious questions about the credibility of the story being promoted by the British and American governments.Torture Precedents: the "Ricin Plot"The revelation bears hallmarks of a familiar pattern. It is now well-known that the interrogation of terror suspects using torture was responsible for the production of the false "Ricin Plot" narrative. In much the same way as Pakistan has done now, Algerian security services alerted the British in January 2003 to the alleged plot after interrogating and torturing a former British resident Mohammed Meguerba. We now know there was no plot. Police officials repeatedly claimed they had found plastic tubs of ricin -- but these claims were false. Four of the defendants were acquitted of terrorism and four others had the cases against them abandoned. Only Kamal Bourgass was convicted, but not in connection with the "Ricin Plot", rather for murdering Special Branch Detective Constable Stephen Oake during a raid. Indeed, the "rendition" of terror suspects orchestrated by Britain, the United States, and other western states, attempts to institutionalize and legitimize torture as a means for the production of fundamentally compromised information used by western states to manipulate domestic public opinion.It is perhaps not all that surprising then to learn that, according to a Daily Mail headline, the Pakistanis have found "no evidence against 'terror mastermind'", despite two weeks of interrogation under torture and forensic combing of Rauf's home and computer. The plot "may not have been as serious, or as far advanced, as the authorities initially claimed", observes the Mail somewhat sheepishly, and belatedly. "Analysts suspect Pakistani authorities exaggerated Rauf's role to appear 'tough on terrorism' and impress Britain and America." I wonder if the paucity of evidence has something to do with why, as the Independent on Sunday reported: "Both Britain and Pakistan say the question of Mr Rauf's possible extradition [to the UK] is some way off." Indeed. A spokesman for Pakistani's Interior Ministry gave some helpful elaboration, telling the Mail that extradition "is not under consideration."The extradition to Britain of the alleged chief mastermind of a plot to kill thousands of Americans and British citizens by simultaneously blowing up multiple civilian airliners has, in other words, been ruled out indefinitely.Er, Still No Evidence...All the evidence now suggests that the Americans wanted immediate arrests without proper evidence. It seems, there was no imminent necessity of such immediate action, nor was there sufficient evidence of an imminent plot, other than the claims of an informant under torture. There are only two further possibilities. Either there was no real evidence of any plot at all; or these premature arrests could have seriously compromised a long-term surveillance operation against suspects who may have been involved in a wider network involved in terrorist-related activity, an operation that has now been scuppered -- meaning that we may never know for sure what they were actually planning.Meanwhile, reports of material evidence in the UK have been unnervingly threadbare. Only eleven out of the 24 suspects arrested over the alleged airliner bomb plot have been charged, largely it seems on the basis of police findings of "bomb-making equipment and martyrdom videos". Out of the other thirteen, two have been released without charge. But the "bomb-making equipment" discovery of "chemicals" and "electrical components" is ambiguous at best, especially given that police descriptions of the alleged bomb construction plan is to mix a sports drink with a peroxide-based household gel (the chemicals), and detonate the mixture with an MP3 player or mobile phone (electrical components). If possession of such items makes you a terror suspect in possession of potential bomb-making equipment, then we are all terror suspects. As Craig Murray observes:"Let me fess up here. I have just checked, and our flat contains nail polish remover, sports drinks, and a variety of household cleaning products. Also MP3 players and mobile phones. So the authorities could announce -- as they have whispered to the media in this case -- that potential ingredients of a liquid bomb, and potential timing devices, have been discovered. It rather lowers the bar doesn't it?"Yes -- clearly, it lowers the bar to potentially include millions of perfectly normal British citizens. The police story is also, simply, scientifically absurd, as Murray further notes: "The idea that high explosive can be made quickly in a plane toilet by mixing at room temperature some nail polish remover, bleach, and Red Bull and giving it a quick stir, is nonsense." Citing US chemistry experts, Washington-based information security journalist Thomas C. Greene similarly concludes that "... the fabled binary liquid explosive -- that is, the sudden mixing of hydrogen peroxide and acetone with sulfuric acid to create a plane-killing explosion, is out of the question... But the Hollywood myth of binary liquid explosives now moves governments and drives public policy. We have reacted to a movie plot."CIA, MI6 and ISIA report by Asia Times Pakistan Bureau Chief Syed Shahzad citing Pakistani intelligence sources confirms that the British-born Pakistanis arrested in Lahore and Karachi were active members of al-Muhajiroun, the banned UK-based extremist Islamist group currently directed by Omar Bakri Mohammed from Lebanon. Moreover, they had been penetrated by Pakistani intelligence services. "I can tell you with surety", said one Pakistani source, "that the boys [recently] arrested in Pakistan have long been identified by the Pakistani establishment." They had come to Pakistan and "interacted with a few officials of the Pakistani army" with a view to stage a coup against the Musharraf regime. Omar Bakri has repeatedly issued fatawas calling for the assassination of Musharraf. In fact:"Pakistani intelligence -- coming from a strong military background -- penetrated deep into them... The closeness of the Pakistani intelligence with some boys with a Muhajiroun background was a known fact, but at what stage it turned out to be their 'London terror plot', we are completely in the dark. However, I safely make a conjecture that those highly motivated boys were exploited by agents provocateurs. A religious Muslim youth in his early 20s is undoubtedly full of hatred against the US, and if somebody would guide them to carry out any attack on US interests, there would be a strong chance that they would go for that. And I think this is exactly what happened... they were basically [en]trapped."I have no doubt that these individuals could have been associated with extremist groups. But while it may be possible they were involved in terrorist-related activity, it is now indisputable that there was no evidence of an imminent plot, and the specific claims about the details were obtained from an informant under torture. We should therefore be very cautious in accepting the "Terror Plot" official narrative, as there is clearly a continuing danger of political interference compromising ongoing intelligence investigations for political expedience.But the deep involvement of the Pakistani ISI in penetrating the very group that was subsequently arrested and tortured, raises serious questions about what was going on. Moreover, the Asia Times also notes that the Pakistani intelligence operation against these groups was coordinated on the initiative of the CIA and MI6. Indeed, MI6 had also ensured that a deep undercover British intelligence operative had "infiltrated the group, giving the authorities intelligence on the alleged plan", according to several US government sources.The revelation that the arrestees were associated with al-Muhajiroun also raises serious intelligence issues. Omar Bakri Mohammed, the leader of the group, which recently operated under the names of the Saved Sect and al-Ghuraaba, was recruited by MI6 in the mid-1990s to recruit British Muslims to fight in Kosovo. Despite being implicated in the 7/7 London bombings, the British government exiled him to Lebanon where he resides safely outside of British jurisdiction, and thus effectively immune from investigation and prosecution. One inevitably wonders about the nature of Bakri's corrupt relationship with British intelligence services today.P2OG: Stimulating ReactionsSo what were the CIA, MI6 and ISI doing? Given the disturbing context here, in which the entire "Terror Plot" narrative has obviously been deeply politicized and to some extent even fabricated, a balanced analysis needs to account precisely for the stated new "counter-terror" strategies of western intelligence services. In August 2002, a report by the Pentagon's Defense Science Board revealed the latest strategic thinking about creating a new US secret counterintelligence organization -- the Proactive Preemptive Operations Group (P2OG) -- which would, among other things, conduct highly clandestine operations to "stimulate reactions" among terrorist groups, by infiltrating them or provoking them into action in order to facilitate targeting them. In January 2005, Seymour Hersh revealed in the New Yorker that the P2OG strategy had been activated:"Under Rumsfeld's new approach, I was told, US military operatives would be permitted to pose abroad as corrupt foreign businessmen seeking to buy contraband items that could be used in nuclear-weapons systems. In some cases, according to the Pentagon advisers, local citizens could be recruited and asked to join up with guerrillas or terrorists. This could potentially involve organizing and carrying out combat operations, or even terrorist activities."Hersh refers to a series of articles by John Arquilla, a professor of defense analysis at the Naval Postgraduate School, in Monterey, California, and a RAND terrorism consultant, where he elaborates on this strategy of "countering terror" with Pseudo-Terror. "When conventional military operations and bombing failed to defeat the Mau Mau insurgency in Kenya in the 1950s," muses professor Arquilla, "the British formed teams of friendly Kikuyu tribesmen who went about pretending to be terrorists. These 'pseudo gangs', as they were called, swiftly threw the Mau Mau on the defensive, either by befriending and then ambushing bands of fighters or by guiding bombers to the terrorists' camps." He goes on to advocate that western intelligence services should use the British case as a model for creating new "pseudo gang" terrorist groups, purportedly to undermine "real" terror networks. "What worked in Kenya a half-century ago has a wonderful chance of undermining trust and recruitment among today's terror networks. Forming new pseudo gangs should not be difficult." He then confidently observes about John Walker Lindh, the young American lad who joined the Taliban before 9/11: "If a confused young man from Marin County can join up with Al Qaeda, think what professional operatives might do."Hmmm....I'm thinking about it, and I'm looking at the deep intelligence penetration of al-Qaeda affiliated networks like al-Muhajiroun by the CIA, MI6 and ISI, and unfortunately I'm not experiencing the same sense of elation as Arquilla. Is the 10/8 "Terror Plot" connected to the post-9/11 P2OG strategy?Whatever happened on 10/8, it is not the majestic "success story" that it has been painted by the British and American governments. It is symptomatic of something far worse, the mechanics of which will never be truly understood in the absence of a full-scale independent public inquiry focusing on the 7th July bombings, but including associated British and western "security" policies which see Psuedo-Terrorism as a legitimate tool of statecraft.

http://www.independentinquiry.co.uk
Nafeez Mosaddeq Ahmed is the author of The London Bombings: An Independent Inquiry (London: Duckworth, 2006). He teaches courses in International Relations at the School of Social Sciences and Cultural Studies, University of Sussex, Brighton, where he is doing his PhD studying imperialism and genocide. Since 9/11, he has authored three other books revealing the realpolitik behind the rhetoric of the "War on Terror", The War on Freedom, Behind the War on Terror and The War on Truth. In summer 2005, he testified as an expert witness in US Congress about his research on international terrorism
Contact Author
Contact Editor
George Bush and the Politics of Terror
By Larry Johnson

As George Bush said, "Fool me once, shame on me. Fool me --- you can't get fooled again." Or, how about the old saying, "if it walks like a duck, talks like a duck, it's a duck." Why the snark? Just watch the Keith Olbermann's brilliant presentation - which shows conclusive, indisputable evidence that George Bush and his minions have used bogus terrorist threats to distract public attention from embarrassing political news - and you too will become a member of the reality-based community (thanks to John Amato at Crooks and Liars for posting this up).
Ten. Count em. Ten separate incidents where the Bush administration issued public warnings of imminent attacks that subsequently turned out to be non-existent or misleading. George Bush is the boy who cried Wolf, Wolf, Wolf, Wolf, Wolf ... and no end is in sight.
Olbermann deserves an Emmy and a Pulitzer for this report. He's done a public service. He has blazed a trail the rest of the media, print and electronic, ought to follow. Just as Edward R. Murrow confronted the red-baiter Senator McCarthy, Olbermann has performed a similar service to America by standing up to the fearmongering of Bush. Please ensure your friends and relatives see this piece.
Larry Johnson has his own blog, NoQuarter: www.NoQuarter.typepad.com

Monday, August 21, 2006

Buchanan: gay marriage is inevitable

Buchanan: gay marriage is inevitable
Conservatives will likely lose the 'culture war'


In a recent interview with TIME magazine, right-wing pundit and former presidential candidate Pat Buchanan weighed in on gay marriage, the culture wars, and why he's not running for president.
In the following exchange, Buchanan tells the magazine that gay marriage is inevitible, conservatives can't likely win the culture wars, and that he's not running for president because "the American people have spoken on that issue."
#
TIME: Do you think legal gay marriage is inevitable?
BUCHANAN: Traditionalists still have the upper hand, but there's no doubt which way the trend is going. And it is not going the conservative way.

TIME: Can conservatives win the culture wars?
Buchanan: Those of us on the right have been losing ground since the 1970s and '80s. Can we ultimately win? I think you would need a reconversion of the country to a traditionalist, Christian point of view--and I don't see that coming.

TIME: You ran for President three times, most recently in 2000. Will you again?
BUCHANAN: The American people have spoken on that issue. But I loved campaigning. Everywhere you go, people are saying, "Go, Pat, go!" It's like the NFL play-offs, and you're captain of one of the teams. But as [British politician] Enoch Powell once said, "All political lives end in failure."

Sunday, August 20, 2006

Ditch US in terror war, say 80percent of Britons





A majority of British people wants the Government to adopt an even more "aggressive" foreign policy to combat international terrorism, according to an opinion poll conducted after the arrests of 24 terrorism suspects last week.However - by a margin of more than five to one - the public wants Tony Blair to split from President George W Bush and either go it alone in the "war on terror", or work more closely with Europe........While there was strong support for a hard line on terrorism at home, the survey exposed deep-seated distrust of the foreign policies championed by Mr Bush since September 11, 2001. Only 14 per cent believed Britain should continue to align itself with America.
Source

News Roundup

Old Senate Lion Robert Byrd endorses Ned Lamont

Senator Robert Byrd (D-WV), who is running for re-election himself, has endorsed Ned Lamont over Joe Leiberman. What's interesting is that Robert Byrd is the first of the Senate "Gang of 14" to do so.

Republicans losing "security moms"
Married women with children, the "security moms" whose concerns about terrorism made them an essential part of Republican victories in 2002 and 2004, are taking flight from GOP politicians this year in ways that appear likely to provide a major boost for Democrats in the midterm elections, according to polls and interviews.

Bush Signs Sweeping Revision of Pension Law
President Bush yesterday signed the most extensive revision of the nation's pension law in three decades as the federal government moved to shore up often-shaky private retirement programs for 44 million Americans and head off a crisis like the savings-and-loan bailout of the 1980s and 1990s. But critics said it was not aggressive enough.

NYT Editorial: Court was correct to strike down illegal wiretapping
Yesterday, a Detroit federal court judge declared, "There are no hereditary kings in America and no powers not created by the Constitution" and promptly ruled against Bush's illegal wiretapping program. The New York Times Editorial page applauded this decision

Tuesday, August 08, 2006

The Media's Out and Out Lies

False storylines pervade media coverage of upcoming elections



We've focused lately on detailing the widespread and damaging false storylines about Democrats and progressives that the media have promoted in recent years: that Al Gore was a liar, that John Kerry was a flip-flopper, that Hillary Clinton is "inauthentic," that Howard Dean is crazy, that Democrats are disorganized, and on and on. It's important to understand how the media promoted these storylines not only in order to understand the role they played in presidential elections and decisions about war and peace, but also because the national political media continue to peddle baseless storylines that are harmful to progressives -- and to the nation.
Following are some of the dominant anti-Democrat, anti-progressive media narratives that are already shaping coverage of this year's midterm elections, many of which seem to be getting a trial run in coverage of the Connecticut Senate primary.
Progressives -- particularly anti-war progressives -- are "fringe" and "extreme"
A standard Republican talking point is that Democrats and progressives are fringe extremists. Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist recently claimed, for example: "The truth is that an extreme liberalism has seized the Democratic Party. ... Given such extremism from my colleagues across the aisle, how can we move America forward?"
Coming from a man who diagnosed Terri Schiavo (incorrectly) via videotape to support his deeply unpopular stance in favor of government intervention in the Schiavo case, Frist's criticism of Democratic "extremism" is a little like the pot calling the sun black.
But a politician calling his opponents extremists is not that surprising. What's troubling is that journalists and pundits regularly join in.
While we take no position on the Connecticut Democratic Senate primary race between Joseph Lieberman and Ned Lamont on Tuesday (and couldn't even if we wanted to), the media's efforts to spin those results in advance have produced several statements about the state of the Democratic Party vis-รก-vis the American public that are flatly contradicted by the available data. On July 6, the New York Daily News editorialized:
Hillary Clinton has gone out of her way to rule out backing her colleague and longtime friend from Connecticut, Joe Lieberman, should Lieberman lose next month's Democratic primary and attempt to run as an independent. Clinton has endorsed Lieberman, who is in danger of being dumped by the Democratic Party's lunatic wing because he has steadfastly supported the war in Iraq. But in the event that anti-war zealots push challenger Ned Lamont to victory, Clinton wants it known now that it's bye-bye to Joe. And bye-bye to good sense. And bye-bye to Democratic centrism. And a great big hello and shout-out to the abandon-Iraq crowd, who are quite pleased that Clinton chose, prematurely and unnecessarily, to profess her fealty to party purity.
The Daily News -- among the nation's largest newspapers -- contends that those who oppose the Iraq war are "zealots" who constitute the Democratic Party's "lunatic wing," while those who support the war exhibit "centrism" and "good sense." Yet, regardless of who prevails in Connecticut on Tuesday, the most recent polling (PDF) finds that clear majorities of the American people have anti-Iraq war opinions:
62 percent disapprove of President Bush's handling of the war, while only 32 percent approve.
63 percent think the war with Iraq was not "worth the loss of American life and other costs" while only 30 percent think it was.
57 percent think things are going very or somewhat badly for U.S. "efforts to bring stability and order to Iraq" while only 41 percent think things are going very or somewhat well.
53 percent think "Iraq will probably never become a stable democracy" while only 4 percent -- four! -- think it will occur in the "next year or two."
56 percent think the U.S. should "set a timetable for the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq," compared to 40 percent who oppose such a timetable.
72 percent think the Iraq war has made the United States' image in the world worse, 69 percent think it has hampered U.S. diplomatic efforts, and 41 percent think continued U.S. presence in Iraq makes the region less stable; only 25 percent think it makes the region more stable.
In other words: The anti-Iraq war position is the "centrist" position, not the "extremist" position.
An August 2 Washington Post article contained the same false assumptions about what constitutes "the center":
No matter what happens, the Lamont surge looks and sounds like a towel snap at the status quo. This is not merely about the war, say strategists with both camps, but the larger question of what Democrats should do to regain power -- and in the absence of power, how they should behave in opposition. Should they move to the center and accommodate the red-state voters who have sidelined them two elections in a row? Or move to the left and fight, consequences be damned?
The Post doesn't explain what phrases like "move to the center and accommodate the red-state voters" and "move to the left ... consequences be damned" even mean. And for good reason: Contrary to the Post's suggestion that the "center" lies to the right of current Democratic positions, the Post's own polling shows that the public has a clear preference for Democratic congressional candidates, that more people trust Democrats than Republicans to "do a better job in coping with the main problems the nation faces over the next few years." The current CBS/New York Times poll (PDF) finds that 75 percent of Americans think the Bush administration should "take into account the views of U.S. allies before taking action" while only 20 percent think it should "do what it thinks is right no matter what U.S. allies think."
Why, then, would the Post portray a move by Democrats "to the left" as having dire consequences? Putting aside the Lieberman/Lamont race, polling seems to suggest that Democrats in general might face far more disastrous consequences if they were to move to the right. Indeed, we should be seeing media speculation about whether Republicans will move towards the center or whether they will maintain their out-of-the-mainstream positions, "consequences be damned." Whether Republicans will move towards the center -- and, thus, against the Iraq war -- or maintain their extremist positions.
Instead, as Bob Somerby and Eric Alterman have noted, the pundit class continues to portray opposition to the Iraq war as a fringe position. Somerby wrote this week:
To what extent is the Washington "press corps" really a slumbering fraternal order? Several observers noted the closing paragraph of David Broder's column last Sunday. The Dean, discussing the Lieberman race, made a puzzling comment:
BRODER (7/30/06): Democrats everywhere are looking to Connecticut for clues about the party's direction. The primary will probably point them leftward, toward a stronger antiwar stand. But often in the past, the early successes of these elitist insurgents have been followed by decisive defeats when a broader public weighs in. That is why this contest is so consequential for the Democratic Party.
Say what? Lamont's supporters are "elitist" in taking their "antiwar stand?" In fact, as Eric Alterman (and others) noted, "the 'elitist' position on Iraq to which [Broder] refers has the support of 56 percent of Americans." Strange, isn't it? In Broder's hands, the majority view now became the elite.
On the other hand, it's fair to note what Broder said near the start of this same column. The Dean must have dozed off at some point between his start and his finish:
BRODER (pgh 3): One night last week the party establishment, led by former president Bill Clinton and Connecticut's other Democratic senator, Chris Dodd, whipped up an orchestrated show of enthusiasm for the three-term incumbent, whose support of the Iraq war and friendship with President Bush have put his nomination in jeopardy. But none of them -- including Lieberman -- made any effort to deal with what Clinton called "the pink elephant in the room," the massive public revulsion in this state for Bush's war in Iraq.
In paragraph 3, Broder notes the "massive public revulsion" in Connecticut for the war in Iraq. But uh-oh! By the time the Dean got done -- seven paragraphs later -- you were an "elitist" if you had taken such a stance.
How to explain such puzzling work? In fact, this pundit corps has long been a slumbering elite -- a snoozing, detached, puzzling cohort.
We recently argued that political reporters and pundits don't yet realize that this is no longer 2002; that the public is no longer with the Republicans on issues of security. Broder's column suggests that he doesn't yet realize that this is no longer 1972:
The people backing Lamont are nothing if not sincere. But their breed of Democrats -- many of them wealthy, educated, extremely liberal -- often pick candidates who are rejected by the broader public. Many of the older Lamont supporters went straight from Eugene McCarthy and George McGovern in the 1960s and '70s to Howard Dean in 2004. They helped Joe Duffey challenge Sen. Tom Dodd in Connecticut for the 1970 Democratic nomination on the Vietnam War issue, only to lose to Republican Lowell Weicker in November.
Lamont's campaign manager, Tom Swan, is also director of Connecticut Citizen Action Group, a populist organization founded in the 1970s by Toby Moffett, a Ralph Nader protege and anti-Vietnam activist who was one of the "Watergate babies" elected to the House in 1974. Moffett's political career also was ended by a loss to Weicker, who stayed in the Senate until Lieberman finally beat him in 1988.
Democrats everywhere are looking to Connecticut for clues about the party's direction. The primary will probably point them leftward, toward a stronger antiwar stand. But often in the past, the early successes of these elitist insurgents have been followed by decisive defeats when a broader public weighs in. That is why this contest is so consequential for the Democratic Party.
New York Post columnist Deborah Orin is similarly stuck in the 70s:
Sen. Joe Lieberman's bitter primary battle is the biggest race in the country because it's a naked test of how much clout the MoveOn/Deaniac angry left holds in the Democratic Party.
[...]
For centrist Democrats, it's vital that Lieberman win to keep the party from lurching to the left and risking a repeat of George McGovern's 49-state loss to Richard Nixon in 1972.
[...]
Republicans are smiling. They say the activists hurt the whole Democratic Party by making it look too nasty and too far left.
"The liberal fringe may end up costing Democrats control of Congress this fall," said Republican pollster Jim McLaughlin.
"It's the best thing we have going for us as Republicans."
Orin and Broder shouldn't suggest that Democrats risk a McGovern-sized defeat if they oppose the Iraq war; they should suggest that Republicans run such a risk if they support it.
As Cox Newspapers columnist Tom Teepen explained on July 10:
Republicans -- theatrically aghast, aghast -- and their talking-head heralds have it that Lamont's candidacy and the consequent "abandonment" of Lieberman are evidence that the Democratic Party is falling to its supposedly kook fringe.
[...]
The prospect in the Connecticut primary is hardly one of leftists amok. The GOP is building a backfire against a possible Lamont victory by casting even his success to date as evidence of Democratic extremism, supposedly typical. The game is to keep voters everywhere from noticing that Lamont, if he wins, would actually be in step with about half of the electorate.
Yet leading pundits like Stuart Rothenberg persist in describing progressives as "crazies":
Lamont's victory, however, would not be without its downside for Democrats, since it would only embolden the crazies in the party, a consideration not lost on other Democratic elected officials and strategists.
Lieberman's defeat is likely to add to the partisanship and bitterness that divides the country and Capitol Hill, and to generate more media attention to grassroots bomb-throwers who, down the road, are likely to make the party less appealing to swing voters and moderates.
Rothenberg bills his Rothenberg Political Report as "a non-partisan analysis of American politics and elections." And yet he's somehow so out of touch with the mood of the country that he thinks that people who hold majority views are "crazies" are "likely to make the party less appealing to swing voters and moderates."
Apparently to Stuart Rothenberg and David Broder and many of their journalist-pundit colleagues, "moderate" means "whatever the conservatives say" and "extreme" means "anyone who dares disagree with conservatives." If that's the case, there are an awful lot of extremists these days.
Progressives are angry and vitriolic
ABC's Jake Tapper wrote on his blog this week:
Fierce opposition to a person's politics are what America is all about. But some of the vitriol on the Left will no doubt help the Right win over some voters. Case in point: Republicans are trying, however fairly, to slam Democratic Senate candidate Jon Tester with various comments from his supporters on the blogosphere....
No one is questioning the Huffington Post's God-given right to publish anything its writers want... but no one should be surprised when conservatives try to stab Democrats with those same sharp words or images.
Tapper's suggestion that it is the left that will alienate voters by being too vitriolic is simply a jaw-dropper. Tapper's examples of liberal "vitriol" consist of a few bloggers who are unrecognizable to the vast majority of the electorate. Meanwhile, the right features such high-profile vitriolic hate-mongers as Ann Coulter (who Tapper has described as having "a perfectly acceptable argument, a perfectly intelligent argument in her book Godless") and Bill O'Reilly and Rush Limbaugh ... and Tapper thinks it's "the Left" who will "no doubt help the Right win over some voters" through their "vitriol." Perhaps -- but only because Tapper and his media cohorts insist on pretending that it is progressives, rather than conservatives, who are angry and mean, even as conservatives advocate actual physical violence against reporters.
Democrats are weak -- and politically vulnerable -- on national security
We've dealt with this many times -- the journalist-pundit class seems to assume that, in terms of both policy and politics, Republicans are strong on security issues and Democrats are weak. We won't rehash the many reasons why, as a matter of both policy and politics, this is a flawed assumption.
But, since reporters and pundits seem to believe GOP spokespeople more than they believe facts and polling data, perhaps this statement by National Republican Congressional Committee spokesman Carl Forti will help them see the light: "House races aren't about national security. ... House races are about pocketbook issues."
If a national Republican spokesperson is downplaying the impact national security issues will have on House races this fall, doesn't that suggest that perhaps the GOP doesn't have the advantage on the issue that the media thinks it does? Put another way: If the Republicans really did have such a huge advantage on security issues, wouldn't they try to make it the central issue, as they have in previous years?

VIDEO NEWS WIRE

Politico 44 President's Calendar

AlterNet.org: Video




Days Since Michael Steele Said He Won't Resign

23 Days, 23 Hours, 32 Minutes, 38 Seconds.

"The Playa" said he wouldn't resign as head of the RNC ("Not me Baby! Nuh-uh. Not happening. No way, no how.")

Followers

ShareThis

http://feeds.salon.com/salon/greenwald_podcast_rss

The Real News Network

  

Learn more about the Neighborhood Volunteer Program

John McCain

The 50 State Strategy

Buy a Democracy Bond

My site was nominated for Best Pop Culture Blog!

Politics on HuffingtonPost.com

MSNBC.com: Countdown With Olbermann

RawStory.com Headlines

The Nation: Top Stories

Evri Skyscraper Widget

YouTube :: Videos by politicstv

Contributors