Fact-esque

And So It Begins

Watch the corporate media coverage of the Dems' plan to expose the Republicans' obstruction in the Senate and you will know deep in your heart of hearts why impeachment of any but the most wildly non-establishment Republican is simply not a realistic option at this time in our history.   That said, getting the public more comfortable with the idea of impeaching BushCo and Cheney is a brilliant, noble and absolutely vital thing to do.  As long as impeachment stays out of the hands of what Digby calls The Village and the loathsome Gatekeepers of that Village, then it will be an effective way to raise public consciousness of the volumes of crimes this administration has committed.   It is, perhaps, the only way to do that. 

UPDATE:  The TPM team will be following the coverage of GOP's successful filibuster of Reed-Levin.   So far:

Since the media hasn't been able to bring itself to use the f-word (filibuster) in describing the GOP's procedural maneuvering, I'm not optimistic that the coverage of the defeat of the Democrats' proposal for a withdrawal timeline will be much better.

We've already picked up on some doozies. The vote to end debate and proceed to a vote on the Democrats' withdrawal amendment was 57-42, with 60 votes needed for passage. So that's 57 senators voting to end debate and proceed to a vote. How does FOX News report it? The Democrats proposal failed 57-42, as if only 42 votes could be mustered for the Democrats' position.

Busy Backson

It's closing down as of June 27, but I hope that the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services "blog summit" on pandemic flu stays up for a long time.   The sections on the Need to Prepare and Making it Happen look especially interesting.

It looks like Alt Hippo is gunning for Harry Shearer's job.

Clammyncy looks into the Neocon economic petry dish that is Iraq. 

Some level of pillaging was already obvious.  The "private militia" that is now sanctioned under US contract via Blackwater USA has become a bigger issue over the past year.  The forced labor and poor treatment of other foreigners brought into Iraq by companies associated with this administration and the republican party not only completes the cycle, but also accomplishes other objectives: 

To keep work out of the hands of Iraqi citizens, under the guise of "they may be insurgents", and in the hands of foreign nationals who are exploited and put in dangerous situations – all to enrich those who are ensuring that the system stays rigged against Iraqis, basic labor standards and practices to their (and their cronies’) benefit.

The wonderful BAGNews points to a BBC slideshow of Putin's sleepover at BushCo's parents' house and wonders at the images.  I can't get past the captions, which seem to have been written by a ten year-old putting together a scrapbook or by a children's book author:

Russian President Vladimir Putin is visiting US President George W Bush at his family's retreat in Maine. He was picked up from the airport by former President George Bush Snr.

Back at the house at Walker's Point the current president and the first lady waited on the drive to greet their guest.

Mrs Bush made sure that Mr Putin's collar was straight before he was taken to meet the rest of the clan.

The Russian president had brought bouquets of flowers for both Laura Bush and her mother-in-law, former first lady Barbara Bush.

Then the Russian leader was introduced to members of the Bush family, including the pet dog.

US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice also joined the party.

Once the introductions were over President Bush and his father took Mr Putin on a speedboat tour of the coast.

Although the talks are informal there are important issues to discuss, so Mr Bush Snr has ordered that the two leaders be given lots of time alone.

Maybe it was dog whistle journalism.  Secret message:  Reporting on photo-ops is beneath us and you, our readers.

Dahr Jamail points to Tom Englehardt's look at the numbers behind The Surge, which are predictably horrifying.

Is it July 8 already?   What are your plans for Underlying Crime Day? 

Need a Summertime Country Improvement Project?

Get your local governing body to support a resolution calling for the impeachment of President Bush and Vice President Cheney.   Thomas Nephew shows how it's done.  He helpfully includes an answer to the standard opposition to any effort to get municipal government involved in federal issues.  From one of the council members whomThomas addressed his co-speakers:

...I think that we can see that Congress has been intimidated by the president and by the whole national security apparatus, and that it's the place of local governments like Takoma Park, who don't suffer the same intimidation, to stand up and create some groundswell so that Congress understands that the people are behind this.

That's the right idea.

Aggregation

It'd be just keen if, in this time of raging devotion to religion and cowering aversion to accountability, we all paid more attention to the oath that the Vice President, members of Congress and other government officials swear to before their gods and with their hands resting on the holy Word of one of them.

I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter: So help me God.

The president's oath is shorter but the part about upholding the Constitution survives the edit.  (inspired by)

The rest of the world is finally and very slowly beginning to show signs of catching up to a big part of what the Downing St. Memos revealed: the Brits knew that they were crawling into an about to be very shitty bed with people who had no idea how to run a war.  This comes courtesy of Blair's imminent departure and that of what's left of the troops he sent to kill and die in the disaster he helped create.  Maybe we'll experience a similar revelation when BushCo rides off into the sunset.   Of course, such a revelation would require the corporate media to ring the necessary bells and for the opposition party to, you know, exist.  I'll be right here holding my breath.

You can learn from this pro-insurance industry blog about the Medicare Advantage Program and where we can find at least $50B to pay for health insurance for poor and middle class children (hint: the money is in the Medicare Advantage Program).   You can also read about the issue at the less biased Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.  This is part of the larger American health care crisis but thanks to Pay/Go and some enterprising activists, this story is heating up on its own in Congress now so watch for the lines to be drawn around the same old debate between privatizing the government in the name of enriching corporations and funding the government to be able to provide for crucial human needs programs.

Shameless

I haven't read through all the Scooter Libby love letters available on Smoking Gun, but I did read Mary Matalin's since I had a feeling that, as a woman, she'd be called on to write the tear jerker devoted to a favorite theme of the Republans when it suits them: Family Values.   

We saw it when Mrs. Alito was trotted out to boo hoo in public about the mean questioning her Sammy was forced to endure on his way to the Supreme Court.  We heard the GOP's favorite variation on that theme until we were nauseas during the constant airing of details from Clinton's sexual escapades with Monica Lewinsky: Won't Someone Think of the Children?!   We hear that same song now whenever there's a report on the prevalence of oral sex - or any sex - among teens.  The power of the Clenis to destroy the morals of a generation knew no bounds.   

And so it fell to Mary Matalin, woman, to tell the judge what a wonderful family man the man her children know as "Mr. Scooter" is and how his love for families is "universal."    This love of family is universal, of course, up until the point where it would include the Wilson's family and the families of the people her public exposure endangered and, of course, any of the families of the people who are dying and suffering daily in the war of aggression he was instrumental in planning.   All of those families can, I suppose, fuck off, to use a favorite term of Mary's Family Values-loving boss.

But read Matalin's letter anyway.   You'll find out how Mr. Scooter saved Halloween and how when field trips to undisclosed locations became family affairs, he always "planned ahead and discovered the most fun and interesting activities" for the unfortunate children of this insane and dangerous cabal.  And you'll see that Matlain's children are suffering the effects of Scooter's prosecution, if not his crime - remember, that suffering is reserved for other families:

They are old enough to intellectually comprehend the facts of the case but associating these "facts" with "Mr. Scooter" remains a complete disconnect to them.

Matalin, founding member of the White House Iraq Group, must be so proud.  After all, the inability to accept "facts" that don't suit their purposes is a good first step to cultivating that special mental illness that will make them ready for careers in a GOP White House of their own one day.

"They Can No Longer be Trusted with the Lives of Our Service Members"

The title of this post is a quote from Peter Granato, who took part in the VideoVets project at YouTube.   Go watch.  Don't miss John Bruhns' video.  He captures the message in a nutshell:  "I feel that my willingness to fight for this country has been used and exploited."

And that's a crime.

Rats, Meet Sinking Ship

My congressman, Mike Fitzpatrick, is, not surprisingly, cutting and running from his formerly unwavering support for Dear Leader's War on Iraq.   He recently released a statement that said that although BushCo was bold and brave and totally filled with good intentions, he dropped the pooch when it came to actually executing the most awesomest plan ever to spread Freedom's Libertudinous Flames.  As a result, we need a "new strategy for success in Iraq."   

In other words, the politics of failure have failed and we must make them work again. 

Toward that end, he advanced his plan to acheive a new strategy for success in Iraq:

<crickets> Plan goes here </crickets>

Okay, so he has no ideas.  But what he did make clear is that his "youthful opponent's precipitous plan to cut and run" is not the way to go because it would mean that all our losses have been in vain and that terrorism would come to our shores.  Sounds like he hasn't quite kicked that BushCo habit.   But he wants to tell the truth to voters.   Along those lines I made this suggestion:

The truth about BushCo’s War in Iraq is that it is the greatest strategic blunder in recent American history.   Telling voters the truth about that would require a statement something along the lines of this:

President Bush was enabled by a rubberstamp, Republican Congress, deceived and terrified by the dirty tricksters in a criminal Executive Branch run amuck. The best way to see a “new strategy for success in Iraq” would be to vote out anyone who continued to support BushCo’s disaster after it became obvious that he and his henchmen lied to both Congress and the American people to get his war on.

While there are no good choices left for us to make now that we have allowed the President to jeopardize our national security in this way, a carefully considered drawing down of US troops from what has clearly become a civil war, is something that the American people should be debating openly. Futher, the meaningless and inflammatory term “cut and run,” which preys on psychological vulnerabilites that have nothing to do with smart military planning and does nothing but further endanger our brave troops in Iraq should not be part of that debate.

The truth hurts.

Go read Above Average Jane, who wrote about this before I did and reached a beautiful conclusion for the voters of the PA-08 to think about.

If I Were Writing a Movie Pt. 5

From Laura Rozen:

I hear that agency folks are worried this is the end of the Agency as they know it -- Pentagon role over intelligence will only increase. "I think there's another shoe to drop," said one source.

If I were writing a movie about a president who was the son of a living president, with whom he had a turbulent relationship filled with unresolved Oedipal issues, I'd make the president's father the former head of the CIA and the son hellbent to destroy the credibility of the organization his father loves.  And I'd have hookers in the story too.

If You Can't Beat'em, Join'em

The latest memo showing what a mess U.K. and U.S. thinking were before the two invaded Iraq is already old news - really old news if you consider that this latest memo story was in the U.K. papers five weeks ago.   Still, there's good coverage of it here from Ron and here from Tas.

The NYT is excited enough about the story to have front paged it.  I'm guessing that's because they can act as if they broke something significant.  They always like to do that:

Since then, The New York Times has reviewed the five-page memo in its entirety. While the president's sentiments about invading Iraq were known at the time, the previously unreported material offers an unfiltered view of two leaders on the brink of war, yet supremely confident.

It's taken all this time to read a five-page memo. 

The January 2003 memo is the latest in a series of secret memos produced by top aides to Mr. Blair that summarize private discussions between the president and the prime minister. Another group of British memos, including the so-called Downing Street memo written in July 2002, showed that some senior British officials had been concerned that the United States was determined to invade Iraq, and that the "intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy" by the Bush administration to fit its desire to go to war.

The latest memo is striking in its characterization of frank, almost casual, conversation by Mr. Bush and Mr. Blair about the most serious subjects. At one point, the leaders swapped ideas for a postwar Iraqi government. "As for the future government of Iraq, people would find it very odd if we handed it over to another dictator," the prime minister is quoted as saying.

"Bush agreed," Mr. Manning wrote. This exchange, like most of the quotations in this article, have not been previously reported.

It's not only that the story is old news, it's also that the story, as reported in the NYT, is unreasonably hard to piece together.  Anyone who hasn't been following it very closely is bound to get lost.   It  needs charts and timelines like you can find on DowningStreetMemo.com.  Either this is a big deal or it isn't.

But this story has never been a favorite of Bill Keller.  Just for laughs, look back at where the fearless NYT was on this when the story of the Downing Street Memos broke.  There was the first story, Prewar British Memo Says War Decision Wasn't Made, in which David Sanger told us that the memos proved that "no political decisions" had been taken to invade Iraq.  That was fun.  And then there was the follow-up, written by Todd Purdom, which tells us to calm down, the Downing St. memos don't tell us anything we don't already know.   

These memos were the story of 2005 and the NYT did its best to bury them.   There aren't enough disjointed,isolated front page strories in the world to make up for that. 

I bet you didn't know I had a policy against swearing here at Fact-esque. I'm tinkering with it.

In 2003, an E&P editorial described the NYT problem with anonymous sourcing this way:

One inescapable conclusion from this scandal is that the Times has developed an addictive tolerance for anonymous sources, the crack cocaine of journalism. The Times could not go cold turkey even in its extraordinary Mother's Day cataloging of Blair's journalistic sins, an occasion that cried out for 100% on-the-record reporting. For no apparent reason other than habit, an entirely innocuous e-mail message was attributed to "one fellow reporter."

The Times appears to have been shocked out of its complacency. After first trying to lay all the blame on Blair, the paper's executives last week promised to implement what the Times needs most: a coherent system to keep fabrications and plagiarism out of the paper.

In February of 2004, we got the official Confidential News Sources policy, which even Dan Okrent noticed was was violated regularly.  (I'm looking at you, Ms. Bumiller and Mr. Nagourney)  In the wake of the second big scandal to rock the NYT in as many years, Brian Calame, the latest  NYT ombudsman, wrote about anonymous sourcing in the Paper of Record:

Acting on recommendations from the independent committee created in the wake of the Jayson Blair fiasco, the paper announced a revamped policy for the use of confidential news sources in February 2004. One major change: Before a confidential source makes it into the paper, at least one editor has to know the source's name.

After an internal committee on credibility came up with more recommendations early this year, Bill Keller, the executive editor, further tightened the guidelines for the use of anonymous sources in June. The most notable change, at least for me: Readers are to be told why The Times believes a source is entitled to anonymity - a switch from the previous practice of stating why the source asked for it.

Oh, by all means, give Keller credit for tinkering with the policy.   We can't get enough tinkering.   I'm put in mind of a line from a Chameleons song:

She's annoyed and she doesn't know why
  By the neighour who's fixing his car
  He's spent so many hours underneath it now
  The bloody thing should fly.

We've been down this road before with the NYT - it looks a lot like the road Keller kicked the little Iraq problem down.   Calame notices too:

There clearly is work to be done. A Page 1 article just three days ago, for instance, offered no explanation for attributing to "a senior administration official" the assurance that President Bush and two other White House officials hadn't told Bob Woodward about Valerie Plame Wilson. Mr. Woodward had disclosed earlier in the week that a current or former Bush administration official had told him Ms. Wilson worked at the C.I.A.

I don't know about you, but I've had more than enough of tinkering and dawdling and kicking issues around.  There's nothing new in this column.  But if Calame wants to make some ground on the issue of anonymous sources and why they're so dangerous, he can look at this brewing controversy that centers on  a front page NYT story filled with anonymous sources:

David Albright, President of the Institute for Science and Interational Security (ISIS) (right), recently criticized a New York Times story by Bill Broad and David Sanger, on the grounds that it contains a “a deep and misleading flaw.”  Broad and Sanger, Albright explained, “repeatedly characterize the contents of computer files as containing information about a nuclear warhead design when the information actually describes a reentry vehicle for a missile.”

This made it sound like the US had proof Iran was designing a nuclear weapon, which it does not. Look at it this way: Just because Ford puts seat-belts in its automobiles, doesn’t mean they know how to build people.

Everything old is new again.