Copyright © 2008 Frank Lynch.
Copyright © 2008 Frank Lynch.
Me: Frank Lynch Home These are my mundane daily ramblings.
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"Dear Diary. My President's popularity declined further today, and I found myself looking for new ways to feel big." What makes people plagiarize other people's work? Tim Goeglein has a good job, even if it's for the White House. So what gives? What would make him want to plagiarize for his newspaper columns, in an arena as important as the Fort Wayne (IN) Journal-Gazette? Laughable, of course. Sad, of course. It also makes you think twice about alternative endings for Winesburg, Ohio, doesn't it? ht Atrios.
Tough to gulp. All things considered — the outlays, opportunity costs, and so on — the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq are costing us $3 trillion. If this is George Bush's idea of a 'comma,' we'd better be in the final chapter of Ulysses, because there's no way to really diminish the impact of that. Squandered opportunities, squandered lives.... It would be one thing if we'd kept our nose to the ground and finished the job in Afghanistan, but we didn't. I'm sure that the extended payment plan is making Afghanistan cost us a lot more than it would have otherwise, and it's become like that credit card balance that increases when you only make the monthly payments.
National security shenanigans. I don't know of any other way to characterize this, but it looks, to me, as if the Bush Administration is putting us at risk with its shenanigans over FISA and telecom immunity. It's apparent that Bush and his partners in Congress were willing to let laws lapse in order to get telecom immunity, all the while claiming that it was the Democrats who weren't concerned. Attorney General Mukasey and Intelligence Director McConnell sent a letter to Congress on how important it was to get their way, and it was grist for Powerline, where they concluded that the "letter also blows away the claims that liberals made a couple of years ago that FISA in its original form was perfectly adequate, and didn't require supplementation by executive order." As Kevin Drum noted, M&M changed their tune within hours: "We learned last night after sending this letter that, as a result of these efforts, new surveillances under existing directives issued pursuant to the Protect America Act will resume, at least for now." You'd be forgiven for wondering whether or not M&M had overstated their case. Wrote Drum, "In other words, it was just the usual partisan fearmongering from our supposedly nonpartisan intelligence pro Michael McConnell. At least now we know how seriously to take him the next time he says something like this." When I first read Powerline's post on this I was immediately skeptical, because this was the "next time" Drum is warning us about now. See, McConnell already pulled a similar stunt just last September, when he credited wiretapping without warrants to foiling a terrorist plot in Germany. He was using the German case to persuade the Senate that warrantless wiretaps needed to continue. But as shortly became apparent, the intelligence was gathered under the terms of the prior law requiring warrants, and had lied to the Senate. Now, lets put this in perspective: we already know that after having invaded Iraq for unsubstantiated reasons has made other countries chary of joining us so readily in even condemning other countries. It's the "boy who cried wolf" thing, and you know something? There are really bad leaders out there who, if they could get WMDs could kill a lot of people. Trust isn't something you can safely abuse. McConnell's now done it twice, and Mukasey is fairly new to the game. And our lives are at stake, and these guys won't be able to sell a genuine threat when it's really here. They all need to ratchet it down, because the amplifiers only go to eleven, there is no twelve. (In related news, White House spokesperson Dana Perrino insisted that retroactive immunity for the telecoms is necessary, but at the same time, says "nobody broke the law." So our national security is so important that they will endanger it in order to get a pointless clause into the law.)
Oh, but don't step on St. John! Time Magazine's "Blog of the Year" (you know who...) was quite upset about the New York Times' article on John McCain this week, and used it as an opportunity not only to defend McCain but also to smear the Times. While they didn't hesitate to trumpet McCain's categorical denials of the article, so far as I can tell they've been willfully oblivious of reports that in a sworn deposition McCain contradicts his denial. I'm not sure how much time I should spend talking about how, while whipping the Times for what they see as unmerited innuendo, they don't bring up the Times' witch hunt of Clinton over Whitewater. I guess they never heard of that scandal in Minnesota, maybe? Anyway, it does seem as if they get some news from New York, because they noticed an article in the Times (why do they keep reading?) about a small businessman who, concerned about the possibility of getting stiffed over the bill for catering a Clinton campaign event, took the campaign to court. Really. Let's be serious about this, because there are a lot of questions which the schmucks at Powerline don't seem to think about. First, it's not news that a campaign runs in the red. Not every campaign, but it's a common enough occurrence. Aren't we used to hearing stories of politicans struggling to pay off campaign debts? What fairy tale land are the good people at Powerline living in? So basically, I'm saying this: Powerline takes a story about one campaign and jumps on it because it's Clinton's, and does no leg work to consider whether or not it's unique. Second: why would any small business, where cash flow is important, not protect themselves in a situation such as this? Why wouldn't they insist on half up front? (I'm not suggesting that being stiffed is a bad thing, I'm just saying that a savvy business, wanting this market, should have done its homework; and if it had done its homework there would be no story. Got it?) Small businesses do this all the time. They protect themselves, they want half the cash up front for your wedding. They do, for Chrissakes. If the Times ran an article about a caterer who failed to protect themselves ("Caterer Bilked Over Banquet Fees") would that be news? I'm not sure why it's news in the Times. And I'm not sure why the good people at Powerline chose to write about a business man who abandoned Standard Operating Procedures. But then again, I'm not the Times. And I'm not Time magazine's "Blog of the Year." Powerline seems as if they should take a myopic piece from the Times to use it jump on Clinton, rather than bring their broader, educated perspective to bear.
"Comically inadequate." Are you reading Philip Shenon's book The Commission, on all the back stories surrounding the 9/11 Commission? Well you should. Here's a gem on the White House's intransigence over sharing the Presidential Daily Briefs with the investigators... (Page 215): the White House has refused access to the PDB's, and offered a "briefing" on their contents as a compromise.
Of course, we know about that Agust 6 2001 PDB, titled "Bin Laden Determined to Strike in the United States." The WH got that warning loud and clear, and the brains and non-brains shunted it aside. Rice suggested it was only "historical" information, and Ari Fleischer glibly omitted the preposition "In" when talking about it: "Strike the United States." (If you read Ron Suskind's book, you also know that Bush was dismissive to his briefer: "Great, you've covered your ass," essentially, and then failed to act.) Obviously the White House was stonewalling the commission; the White House never wanted the commission, and it was only due to political pressure that Bush signed the independent board into existence. We, of course, know in retrospect not just about the contents of the PDBs, but we also know how Bush refused to talk to the commission without Cheney as his chaperone... Of course it might have been the reverse, that Cheney insisted on being the chaperone over the protestations of the prom senior. I haven't gotten to that part of the book yet. It's a pretty damning book when it comes to Zelokow, and his intimacy with the White House. Sure, a lot of it is unverifiable "inside gossip," but it's not a great argument for Zelikow when he chooses the "shoot the messenger" arrow from his quiver: here he takes time to point out Shenon's prior reporting of the unmerited "Able Danger" claims. Of course, if we eliminated every journalist for reporting what a politician had told them (without further investigation and counterbalancing comments), with whom would we be left? It would be great to have budgets where journalists could independently investigate the veracity of the day's news, but newspapers, even the NY Times, are eliminating staff right and left. Duh. Zelikow is arguing for a standard of journalism which would be great. Fantastic. I hope the wing-nuts would accept such skepticism as journalism, and not an agenda. But it's not going to happen, not soon enough. Newspapers are corporations. In the meantime, Shenon's book will be well worth your time, and you'll love the structure, a bunch of chapters about ten pages each, each one easily read over your Rice Krispies or on the Lexington Avenue Express.
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