Fact-esque

Calvin Woodward Comes Through With a Good Story

Calvin Woodward has a very good column out now about the GOP Platform and its position on gay marriage and abortion rights. Not surprisingly, the platfrom "strongly supports President Bush's call for a constitutional amendment that fully protects marriage." It also allows no room for pro-choice views regarding a woman's right to choose or in the area of stem-cell research. But here's the money quote:

Eli Allagoa, managing director of Republican Youth Majority, said, "We have not asked anyone to compromise their values or change their positions. We have simply asked that our platform reflect the same diversity of opinion as our lineup of prime-time speakers."

Yeah, that would be nice if the platform reflected the stage show that will be produced for voters' consumption.

The language the groups want in the platform reads: "We recognize and respect that Republicans of good faith may not agree with all the planks in the party's platform. This is particularly the case with regard to those planks dealing with abortion, family planning, and gay and lesbian issues. The Republican Party welcomes all people on all sides of these complex issues and encourages their active participation as we work together on those issues upon which we agree."

But it was left out and so we know that their "big tent" is staying it's same, cramped size.

Woodward mentions Cheney's seeming support for states' rights in the question of gay marriage, but doesn't mention how Big Swingin' Dick picked now to make conciliatory noise about the issue just as his party platform was closing the door on conciliation. And that's okay, Mr. Woodward isn't supposed to mind-read. As usual, I want to see the same restraint when he discusses Dems. By the way, Atrios has a good post up about Dick's comments and what they really mean here:

If Big Time Dick wants to argue a legal critique, that's fine. But, he hasn't - he's just thrown out some red meat for the bigots, while exploiting his daughter in the process.

Calvin Woodward Shares His Notes with Mickey Kaus

Since I started watching Calvin Woodward, I have thought a few times about dropping him and concentrating on Ms. Bumiller, who is always good for a laugh with her WH Letters. And the rest of the Times campaign crew is equally horrible so I wouldn't run out of material. Although Mr. Woodward can be counted on to reguritate whatever factesque narrative the corporate media is currently pushing, his columns are just enough behind the news to be a chore to read and the AP style he must be forced to use doesn't help on that score. But then he got the Plan of Attack scoop and I'm not a quitter so I hung on. But now it looks like Mr. Woodward can be credited with restarting a smear of a "news story" that hadn't been around since Nixon tried it on John Kerry back in the day. Where did Kerry sleep during the big protest on the Mall??

Roger Ailes, the non-evil one, has the Kaus story. And when he describes Kaus as "hate-filled", he hits the nail on the head. The sarcasm in the story is surprising even for Kaus. Fans of Mr. Woodward though, who's a gentleman of the first order in comparison to Kaus, remember that he trotted out this tired non-story in January during one of his fact checks of the DemCan debates.

John Kerry, a Vietnam veteran who addressed his days as a protest leader against that war, talked about how ``we camped on the Mall underneath the Congress,'' although accounts of that April 1971 demonstration had him staying in a friend's Georgetown town house while the masses stayed in tents.

Kerry spokesman David DiMartino said Kerry did sleep on the Mall and used the Georgetown house for protest organizing during the day.

I didn't know at the time that Mr. Woodward was recycling the trash from thirty years ago. And now Kaus is recycling that. He must be so proud.

Calvin Woodward Calls the Kettle Black

Recently Daniel Okrent took up space in the NYTimes to explain that the paper is not a roll model and has no interest in the job. They're officially the Charles Barkley of journalism. Sadly for Mr. Okrent and the rest of the country, the paper casts a long shadow even if they want to pretend not to notice.

Read The Daily Howler today to see how a meme (the peanut butter sandwich) is born. Actually the sandwich nonsense is a trigger so we all remember how wealthy and helpless Sen. Kerry is. Just like the medal/ribbon non-story is a trigger so we all remember that he's a liar. I will say this - the BushCo CREEP knows psychology. Triggers work. People love triggers. It makes us feel clever and in on the story. That's how advertising works - no long explanations - just tag lines that start the associative dominoes falling.

The Howler also links to Richard Cohen at the pro-war WaPO, who leads with peanut butter and wants us to believe that Kerry is his candidate. But he spends his column blaming Kerry for not getting the joke - the joke being the press - as BushCo does. Cohen can't pretend not to know that Kerry's dour personality, just like Gore's boring, socially inept one, is a creation of the RNC and number three on their hit parade.

I say that with a total lack of levity. My candidate is a dour man. At least that's the way he seems on TV. Sometimes he seems angry, which is not good, but most of the time he just seems gloomy. It does not help that he has a face that hardly needs to be enlarged for Mount Rushmore, but what really matters is that he seems as if he is no fun.

Cohen has a point in that there is an element of America that likes clowns. They want leaders who pose as action heroes that dole out death with snappy one liners like "Bring it on". But even if we are all idiots, it's no excuse for the press to feed that beast, which Cohen is doing and hoping that Kerry do as well. After all, Cohen suggests, it's bad form to take the world more seriously than the president or the press does.

The point of the Howler today is to make it clear how dangerous it is when a country's press refuses to do it's job. As he points out, while bin Laden plotted, we were hearing about Gary Condit. What important election issues are we missing now as we hear about medals/ribbons and body men - to say nothing of the less obvious wastes of time like stories about campaign strategies that mindlessly reguritate talking points and call it reporting.

Calvin Woodward, gives us a good example of that kind of empty journalism in his latest column. It's the way Vietnam has become an issue in the campaign and does nothing more than recap the he said-she said. He's also careful to get Karen Hughes' lies about Sen. Kerry in print even though they have already been debunked.

The tone of the piece is chastising. It's shameful the way the candidates use Vietnam to score points. But at the end, Mr. Woodward is quoting Bob Dole, disabled vet, sharply criticizing Sen. Kerry in response to a direct question about Vietnam and Sen. Kerry:

Former Republican presidential candidate and Sen. Bob Dole, whose injuries from that war cost him use of his right arm, proudly showed them around.

But when he was asked about Vietnam and Kerry, his answer was sharp.

``I'm very proud of my medals,'' he said. ``I think I earned them and I wouldn't throw them away.''

It's just awful, isn't it, the way the candidates won't move past Vietnam, when the press is so obviously interested in more important things.

Woodward-a-Rama

The AP has snagged an exclusive with the new Bob Woodward book and Calvin Woodward and Shioban McDonough are dropping the bombshells. Here's more confirmation of what we've always known about BushCo's Excellent Iraqi Adventure.

Woodward's account fleshes out the degree to which some members of the administration, particularly Vice President Dick Cheney, were focused on Saddam Hussein from the onset of Bush's presidency and even after the terrorist attacks made the destruction of al-Qaeda the top priority. ''

The story doesn't gild the lily and they don't pull any punches as far as I can tell. The cold facts of BushCo's/Cheney's obsession with Iraq and how key members of the administration were out of the loop are daming enough on their own to a president who has said that he can't make good decisions if he isn't given good information. The revelation about the attempt to assassinate Saddam before the 48-hour deadline had been reached was particularly startling to me:

Franks was against it, saying it was unfair to move before a deadline announced to the other side, the book says. Rumsfeld and Rice favored the early strike, and Secretary of State Colin Powell learned that way.

(For the love of Pete, why hasn't Powell resigned?)

Also on the plus side, Mr. Woodward and Ms. McDonough don't give BushCo any cover with talk about rape rooms and mass graves, which is a relief. This is a straightforward preview of some of the most shocking aspects of Bob Woodward's book. I hope somebody picks up that what it reveals about the way this White House is minding the security of all Americans is in stark contrast to whatever they are trying to prove by stunts like announcing the possible creation of a National Intellligence Director. All the security people in the world aren't going to matter if they're locked out of the room.

Press Conference Wrap-Up

There are so many insightful, hard-hitting and relevent blog wrap-ups of the BushCo job interview last night.
There's my favorite by DHinMI at Kos.

Whenever asked about the effects of his actions, Bush answered by affirming his virtuous motives.  When asked about a situation or development, Bush answered by referencing himself, often with strange third person-like observations of himself.  He failed to give even an approximation of an answer to all but a couple of the questions.  And most damning, despite being given numerous opportunities, Bush showed he's constitutionally prohibited from accepting responsibility--not blame, responsibility.

And there's the accurate and brillliantly funny recap at Norbizness.

4. Q: You said we'd be liberators, that oil revenue would pay for it, and that we knew where the WMD were located. What's up?

A: SEPTEMBER 11th, DAMMIT! Oceans will not protect us! Not even lakes! He's a threat! WMD on own people! I went to the UN, but they crapped out! I had to call their bluff! Empty words embolden terrorist (oh shit, we're in trouble). There's interrrrrresting findings coming out of the survey group. They're deceptive at hiding things! Abilities to produce! Long-range missiles! Danger! Threat! The oil revenues are bigger than we thought they would be. Praise Jesus! We got rid of Saddam, so the liberator part of your question doesn't apply. They've all got post-traumatic stress disorder, that's all. (moment of truth) They're not happy they're occupied.

Billmon has a great comment thread that ran during the primetime extravaganza.

And there's David Sirota's fact check. Scroll down to Claim vs Fact: Bush's Press Conference Tonight.

Having read those makes reading the mainstream press painful. But I soldier on.

Knight Ridder

Here's the antidote to Calvin Woodward's What-do-people-think piece about the war in Iraq. The headline and first paragraph are enough to make it worth a link.

As fighting continues, quest to bring democracy to Iraq nears failure
By Warren P. Strobel
Knight Ridder Newspapers

WASHINGTON - President Bush invaded Iraq hoping to spread democracy across the Middle East, but after the worst week of violence since Saddam Hussein was overthrown, he's now struggling to avoid a costly, humiliating defeat.

Later in the story, Strobel uses a conclusion drawn from an incomplete poll, which I've never seen a reporter do and I don't endorse. But he also quotes the same Charles A. Pena from the Cato Institute that Mr. Woodward did. Unlike Mr. Woodward, Mr. Strobel explains what the Cato Institute is:

Charles Pena, of the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank that opposes most U.S. entanglements abroad, said the United States should cut its losses, leave Iraq and refocus on the al-Qaida terror network and other threats to the homeland. Washington could threaten that U.S. forces will return if U.S. interests are threatened, he said.

"This (war) is no longer about U.S. national survival - if it was to begin with," said Pena. He said a chaotic Iraq wouldn't necessarily pose a threat to U.S. vital interests. And while Iraq might descend into chaos if the United States leaves, "our staying doesn't guarantee that it won't."

Calvin Woodward - Two for One Friday Here at Factesque!

Calvin Woodward has been cranking out the columns lately. The most recent one is a he said/he said look at some of the misleading ads that both Sen. Kerry and BushCo's campaigns have run so far. The article reads as if both the RNC and the Dems use misleading attacks equally, but according to one of Mr. Woodward's sources, that isn't the case. He uses Factcheck.org as a source, but if you go to their site, you'll see that they have found more problems with BushCo ads than they have with ads from and for Sen. Kerry. That's misleading too.

The other column is an incomprehensible list of personal opinions from people on the street about how the war in Iraq is going. Mr. Woodward also drops in a single pessimistic sentence from someone at the Cato Institute and a longer, more positive analysis from a military analyst at the Lexington Institute. He stayed away from any progressive think tanks, like the Center for American Progress.

I think that Mr. Woodward was trying to get behind recent poll numbers that show slipping support for Dear Leader's Big Iraqi Adventure. I suppose that would be a good idea, if we had an honest government and an honestly informed electorate. Failing that, what are we really seeing? And wouldn't the answer to that be a better column? One part of the piece is interesting though. Mr. Woodward ends with this quote:

Francisco Ybarra, 46, of Marietta, Ga., whose Air Force son served in the Afghan and Iraqi wars, declared, "We're taking on too much" in Iraq.

But it will have been worth it, he went on, if American aims succeed. "If it becomes a democracy, of course it was."

So invading Iraq was a bad idea unless, of course, it wasn't. You couldn't find a better example of how well Team BushCo's propaganda has worked. That would have made an interesting article too and since polling data suggests that around a third of America believes that Saddam had something to do with the attacks on 9/11, there's plenty of research for Mr. Woodward to use. (scroll down to the CBS News Poll)

Calvin Woodward Looks at Ken Thorpe's Look at John Kerry's Healthcare Plan

Calvin Woodward turns in a piece that does its best to confuse the issue of the cost of Sen. Kerry's health care plan while also miring in doubt the new report that says the plan will cost roughly a quarter less than previously reported.

Calvin Woodward Lowers the Bar - What a Shock

During the DemCan debates, Calvin Woodward took it on himself, with help of Kathleen Hall Jamieson, of the Annenberg Public Policy Center, to fact check every word out of the candidates' mouths. He took exception to John Kerry saying that he slept on the Mall during a famous demonstration against the Vietnam War. He kept on Howard Dean's use of statistics to criticize the BushCo tax cuts as weighted to favor the rich. He accused Sen. Kerry of oversimplifying the issue of Medicare reform and the imminent costs ahead to seniors.

Based on the standards he set for political campaigning then, you would guess that he'd be all over Team BushCo's recent ad about Sen. Kerry supporting a 50-cent per gallon gas tax increase. You'd be wrong.

Woodward - Wilgoren

Calvin Woodward runs down a brief bi-partison history of open-mike blunders. It's a better job than what we get from Jodi Wilgoren today on the more narrow but related topic of Sen. Kerry's latest observation about the character of the current committee to elect the president.

Ms. Wilgoren's story wanders all over the place after it gives Dennis Hastert and Tom DeLay free time to badmouth Sen. Kerry. It reminds me of sports reporters that run back and forth between lockers tattling about what each said about the other to get a rise out of someone. Charming.

UPDATE: typo