Missing the Point, Intentionally

I'm not going to make the obvious crack that Meghan McCain, daughter of the late senator John McCain, is herself a vile, abhorrent, pig. Because she is no pig

El-Sayed is an absolute vile, abhorrent, PIG.

Usha Vance is a beloved figure in our country and in my opinion Vice President Vance's most powerful secret weapon. Women in America truly love her - attack her at your own peril democrat psychopaths. It will backfire. https://t.co/8HvbXuWI9d

— Meghan McCain (@MeghanMcCain) August 24, 2026

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Democratic senatorial nominee Abdul el-Sayed here remarks

She's like, 'damn, I have to sleep with him?'  I mean, like, I guess she's pregnant, so, so I guess something is happening... Yeah, like, you gotta imagine, like, truly zero charisma. Like, Usha, get out, O.K.?

It's a little tasteless. And unlike most of his critics, I don't believe Vance is completely lacking in charisma. Further, we should recall a Vice President who was a presidential nominee in 2000 who garnered more popular votes than his Republican opponent and did so with less charisma than has a cadaver, or Vance (though a great public servant/activist). 

However, that's not Madame McCain's argument. Meghan  She argues of Usha "women in Amrica truly love her- attack her at your own peril democrat psychopaths".

It would be unfair to suggest that if McCain is intersted in "psychopaths," she should look in the mirror. So I won't. But the object of her ire are "Demoratic" psychopaths, not "democrat," and should be preceded by a comma. What were they teaching in the early 2000s at Columbia University?  Fortunately, the reference to "democrat psychopaths" was a tell that she was being hysterical. (And, yes, men also can be hysterical. But for McCain it is all too common.) 

Nonetheless, as John Oliver would say, "the point is" that the Senate candidate from Michigan was not talking about Usha Vance.  He was talking about J.D. Vance. the "I have to sleep with him," who has "truly zero charisma," might have been a clue.

Republicans did the same thing with Jon Ossoff's criticism of Donald Trump when they pretended that he was slamming Natalie Harp instead of her mentor, Donald J. Trump.  Although they'd never admit it, and Democrats would never accuse them of it, there is a whole cadre of woke Republicans. They evidently don't understand that "believe women" means to take a woman's testimony seriously, not to defend a woman against nonexistent criticism, a fine means to deny agency to women.  

There is, however, a greater sin committed by the nepo baby. She made me defend Abdul el-Sayed. That cannot be forgiven. 

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4.5, At Least

The people at fivethirtyeight analyzed factors which may have contributed to Hillary Clinton's defeat. They include: Russian intervention; the Comey letter; media obsession with emails; hostility toward cultural change: never-ending coverage of Trump; resentment inspired by Fox News; sexism/misogyny; Clinton fatigue; Bernie Sanders; Clinton's Midwest strategy.

There was one more. As described in a snarky,lengthy tweet by an anti-Clinton Washington Examiner reporter, "the problem started with history. It was exceedingly difficult for either party to hold onto the White House for more than eight years in a row."

Nate Silver, who on fivethirtyeight's 1 to 5 scale assessed this at 4.5, remarked

It’s not clear to me whether a party is actually at a disadvantage after holding the White House for two straight terms. But it’s certainly not at an advantage either, and Gore lost in 2000 under highly similar circumstances to Clinton.

The parallels go beyond Clinton and Gore both winning the national popular vote while losing in the electoral college, and both being decidely more qualified and clearly less charismatic than their opponents.

Coal: On November 5, 2000 The New York Times quoted a West Virginia logger, alienated by Al Gore's emphasis on environmentalism, remarking of a possible Democratic victory: "'There'd be a lot more new laws, All the guys who work up on the mountain think he'd be bad.''  Strip mining did not fit into Al Gores' prescription for climate change, and he narrowly lost both West Virginia and Ohio.

President Obama was responsible for (as the industry termed it) "a wave of environmental rgulations" which, according to Politico "conservatives contend is the reason 40,000 coal miners have lost their jobs"  and which they absurdly termed "the war on coal." Candidate Clinton did not help herself in West Virginia and Kentucky (where she was shellacked), in Ohio, or in Pennsylvania (where she lost narrowly) when she backed this approach by seemingly accepting the loss of thousands of additional jobs.









Cuba:  The Clinton Justice Department approved a raid, extremely unpopular with Cuban-Americans, in which on April 22, 2000 young refugee Elian Gonzalez was seized.  Candidate Gore fumbled the issue, which could only have hurt him anyway, and he lost the election by narrowly losing Florida.

In both cases, the approach of the Democratic president was good policy but bad politics for his would-be successor.

Of course, Al Gore did not have to deal with a propaganda campaign directed by Russia to undermine a presidential election.  By late September 2016, President Obama was aware of  the Kremlin campaign to defeat Hillary Clinton. But the President wanted a buy-in from GOP congressional leaders- which he didn't get, Donald Trump was claiming the election was rigged, and the President who had spent 7+ years being intimidated by Republicans wasn't about to change course abruptly.

Nor did Al Gore have to explain away health plan premium increases averaging 25 percent announced the month before the election and an increasing number of health insurers dropping out of exchanges established by the Affordable Care Act, ridiculed as "Obamacare."

In July, 2013 a wise Megan McArdle estimated that, given the Democrats would be asking in 2016 for a third term, the 2016 GOP presidential nominee would have a 75% chance of being elected.  In September 2016 an "ex-Obama aide" unironically slammed Mrs. Clinton's book as "the Hillary Show, 100 percent. A lot of us are scratching our heads and wondering what she’s trying to do. It’s certainly not helpful.”

They are loathe to point their finger at an individual who was elected twice to the White House. However, McArdle, Silver, and some others have a sense that the last eight years played a major role in the victory of a guy who irresponsibly and ridiculously- but brilliantly- called President Obama "a racist" who "has done a terrible job" and "will go down as perhaps the worst president in the history of the United States."








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Sigh And Sniff

Congratulations, Donald Trump. You lost the first debate by demonstrating inferior ideas, knowledge, temperament, and logic, but not in one important aspect: media reaction.

The media could have reacted as it did to the first Bush-Gore debate of 2000, moderated by PBS' Jim Lehrer.  The New York Times last Sunday quoted Lehrer remarking

After the debate I walked out with my family, and one of my daughters said something I’ll never forget. She said, “Oh Dad, isn’t it something, what Gore did?” I stopped and said, “What do you mean?” Because as a rule, I only look at the candidate who is speaking. She said, “All that huffing and puffing and eyerolling and sighing.” I said, “My God, I didn’t know anything about it.” And she said, “Well, Dad, that’s going to be the lead of the debate stories.” And she was right. That night proved beyond any shadow of any doubt that body language is truly important in a presidential debate.

It shouldn't have.  Whatever the reaction of viewers to the Al Gore Sigh, most polls indicated that they believed Gore was more impressive than Bush in the debate, presumably because he had the knowledge of issues Bush lacked. These were not the Internet polls of today, when Trump supporters, as they clearly did, Monday night, voted repeatedly for their candidate, before legitimate polling found overwhelmingly that Clinton had  decidedly defeated her opponent.

Gore's advantage was not overwhelming but it was undisputed at that moment. Promptly, however, the media began talking about "all that huffing and puffing and eyerolling and sighing" Gore exhibited, notwithstanding the agreement there would be no reaction shots of the candidates.   Substance was ignored; affect and appearance prevailed.

Thus, in one sense Trump has prevailed. He was criticized because he was unprepared, offensive, rude, ignorant, and unashamed of it, the first three to an unprecedented degree. (Ronald Reagan was actually proud of his lack of knowledge.)  But he has largely escaped criticism- or even examination- of his debate style, so roundly critized of Al Gore.

This was reflected in response to the tweet "notice Trump sniffing all the time. Coke user?"of former Democratic governor Howard Dean of Vermont.

Other than uncharacteristic silence from the Trump campaign, reaction was as expected.  CNN sniffed "Howard Dean claimed, with no evidence, that Donald Trump's sniffling at the debate could be due to cocaine use -- a comment that's being ripped as way out of bounds, even by those in his own party." It noted Obamite David Axelrod, unlike Dean not a fan of Mrs. Clinton, tweeted "I love @GovHowardDeanBut this is nuts."

Tuesday morning Dean explained

....he sniffs during the presentation, which is something that users do. He also has grandiosity, which is something that accompanies that problem. He has delusions. I'm not talking about being crazy, but for example, when he told everybody it was very smart not to pay taxes and then denied he said it, after he said it in front of 100 million people. It's not that he's delusionary about it; it's that he thinks somehow he's going to not get caught. That is delusional. He has trouble with pressured speech. He interrupted Hillary Clinton 29 times. He couldn't keep himself together.

He also is rarely inhibited and frequently agitated.  Trump also seems to have lost weight, common among cocaine users, but give him credit there, for he demands a slim body for many of his female employees.   "No  evidence at all," according to CNN.

Dean conceded "So, look, do I think at 70 years old he has a cocaine habit? Probably not" before adding "I think it would be interesting to ask him and see if he ever had a problem with that."

Don't hold your breath, Governor. Donald Trump is no Al Gore, and there is no liberal smear machine to compete with the right-wing media establishment.













Update: Dean has apologized. (That's what Democrats are expected to do.)



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Maureen Dowd, Still Creeping Around

If not for the reference to "cyberbullying," you would think this was a column from fourteen-plus years ago.  Maureen Dowd, who against all logic and journalistic sense still is employed by The New York Times, writes

The turquoise tranquillity of the Côtes d’Azur was rocked a couple of times during the Cannes Lions Festival, the advertising world’s rosé-soaked answer to the Cannes Film Festival.

Al Gore snubbed Monica Lewinsky. Lewinsky, who was giving a speech for Ogilvy & Mather about how she became “patient zero” in the cyberbullying epidemic, was slated to sit in a V.I.P. box with the former vice president, who got an award for being a good brand.

But her invite got yanked.

The contretemps was a reminder that Gore’s prissy attitude toward l’affaire Monica helped cost him the election, because he was so angry at Bill Clinton that he leashed the Big Dog, curtailing the president’s campaigning, even in the South. If Al had been less eager to put baby in a corner, there would have been no phony action on Iraq and plenty of action on melting glaciers.

Steve M. quotes this and more from the piece, in which Dowd targeted primarily the Clintons.  In the course of taking Dowd apart for her treatment of the Clinton-Lewinsky affair, SM observes

All this leads me to ask: Why is Maureen Dowd still at The New York Times? Why hasn't she joined the likes of Dick Morris and Judy Miller and become the regular Fox contributor she's obviously qualified to be?

Her fixation on the Lewinsky scandal would make her perfectly at home in Wingnuttia, where old scandals are endlessly rehashed and grievances are nurtured for decades. What's more, Dowd's specific focus on the moment when Team Clinton tried to tarnish Lewinsky's reputation is strikingly similar to the right's obsession with the relatively brief timespan when Hillary Clinton's State Department downplayed the true nature of the Benghazi attack. In both cases, it just doesn't matter. The truth about Benghazi became obvious very quickly in the fall of 2012, and was soon acknowledged by the administration. In early 1998, the public wasn't fooled by Bill Clinton's denial of an affair, and didn't care -- a CBS poll taken within weeks of the Lewinsky revelations, in February 1998, showed that nearly three in four respondents thought Clinton was hiding something, and yet he had a 66% job approval rating. Seventeen years after the fact, Dowd is still fixated on a coverup, that didn't work.

But at least Bill Clinton got to the White House, and Hillary Clinton to Secretary of State. Although he outpolled George W. Bush nationally and in Florida,  Al Gore wasn't as lucky.  In October, 2007, Vanity Fair's Eugenia Peretz reviewed the 2000 presidential campaign and noted early in the campaign

Maureen Dowd boiled the choice between Gore and Bush down to that between the "pious smarty-pants" and the "amiable idler," and made it perfectly clear which of the presidential candidates had a better chance of getting a date. "Al Gore is desperate to get chicks," she said in her column. "Married chicks. Single chicks. Old chicks. Young chicks. If he doesn't stop turning off women, he'll never be president."

"I bet he is in a room somewhere right now playing Barry White CDs and struggling to get mellow," she wrote in another.

Meanwhile, though Dowd certainly questioned Bush's intellect in some columns, she seemed to be charmed by him—one of the "bad boys," "rascals," and a "rapscallion." She shared with the world a charged moment between them. "'You're so much more mature now,' I remarked to the Texas Governor. 'So are you,' he replied saucily." And in another column: "You don't often get to see a Presidential candidate bloom right before your eyes."

Gore's habit of talking issues didn't go down well with the media establishment, such as

for the environment, while Gore was persuaded by his consultants not to talk about it as much as he would have liked, whenever he did, many in the media ignored it or treated it as comedy. Dowd wrote in one column that "Al Gore is so feminized and diversified and ecologically correct, he's practically lactating." In another, referring to his consideration of putting a Webcam in the Oval Office, she wrote, "I have zero desire to see President Gore round the clock, putting comely interns to sleep with charts and lectures on gaseous reduction."

Gore remained relatively unflappable and

The notion that he was prickly or unpleasant to reporters doesn't jibe with what Tipper witnessed. From her viewpoint, he remained gracious with the reporters—even at an event during the campaign, when Maureen Dowd sidled up in the middle of a conversation he was having with two other reporters. "He stood up and got her a chair and said, 'Please, join us.'" After Dowd had written about him "lactating," he agreed to an interview with her, answering questions about his favorite this, his favorite that. According to his staffers, she was a fact of life that would have to be endured.

Joining in were other members of the media, such as the New York Times' Katharine Seelye, Time's Margaret Carlson, Newsday's Elaine Povitch, MSNBC's Chris Matthews and Brian Williams, Newsweek's Howard Fineman, and especially, The Washington Post's Ceci Connolly.  But most of those have moved on, and The New York Times- from which Dowd still opines in her uniquely snarky manner- still is remarkably influential.  As Steve M. puts it, "Give it up, MoDo. Go over to the dark side. We're sick of you here;" or to paraphrase Gore from 1992 (from Steve Liss for Time, below), it's time for her to go.

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Hillary Clinton Endorsed The Sixth Amendment. John Kerry Won't Go That Far.

It has been only a few hours but at least as of now, there is no response from Hillary Clinton or John Kerry to the article in today's Washington Post in which Barton Gellman reports

Ordinary Internet users, American and non-American alike, far outnumber legally targeted foreigners in the communications intercepted by the National Security Agency from U.S. digital networks, according to a four-month investigation by The Washington Post.

Nine of 10 account holders found in a large cache of intercepted conversations, which former NSA contractor Edward Snowden provided in full to The Post, were not the intended surveillance targets but were caught in a net the agency had cast for somebody else.

Many of them were Americans. Nearly half of the surveillance files, a strikingly high proportion, contained names, e-mail addresses or other details that the NSA marked as belonging to U.S. citizens or residents. NSA analysts masked, or “minimized,” more than 65,000 such references to protect Americans’ privacy, but The Post found nearly 900 additional e-mail addresses, unmasked in the files, that could be strongly linked to U.S. citizens or U.S.residents....

The material spans President Obama’s first term, from 2009 to 2012, a period of exponential growth for the NSA’s domestic collection.

Taken together, the files offer an unprecedented vantage point on the changes wrought by Section 702 of the FISA amendments, which enabled the NSA to make freer use of methods that for 30 years had required probable cause and a warrant from a judge. One program, code-namedPRISM, extracts content stored in user accounts at Yahoo, Microsoft, Facebook, Google and five other leading Internet companies. Another, known inside the NSA as Upstream, intercepts data on the move as it crosses the U.S. junctions of global voice and data networks....

The NSA treats all content intercepted incidentally from third parties as permissible to retain, store, search and distribute to its government customers. Raj De, the agency’s general counsel, has testified that the NSA does not generally attempt to remove irrelevant personal content, because it is difficult for one analyst to know what might become relevant to another.

Nearly lost in the controversy over the relatively trivial matter of the wealth of Bill and Hillary Clinton provoked by the latter's interview with ABC News, and then the Guardian of the UK, were comments the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee made about Edward Snowden.

Mr. Snowden remains in asylum in Russia while his attorneys try to work out a deal which would allow him to return to the U.S.A.  Thirteen months ago The New York Times explained he "has been charged with violating the Espionage Act and stealing government property for disclosing information to The Guardian and The Washington Post."

This would come as a surprise to Mrs. Clinton, who told the Guardian during a recent interview. (Relevant portion begins at 13:22 of video.) "I have no idea what he's been charged with."  Still, if Clinton chooses to feign ignorance about the charges against Snowden, she clearly knows her U.S. Constitution. Asked whether Snowden should have the right to mount a defense based on the public interest, Clinton deftly dodged the question, instead stating "In any case that I'm aware of, as a former lawyer, uh, he has a right to mount a defense and he certainly has the right to mount both a legal defense and a public defense, which of course can affect the legal defense."

A former First Lady, United States Senator, and Secretary of State, Mrs. Clinton has clearly and forthrightly determined that Snowden should not be stripped of his rights under the Sixth Amendment, in which

In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the state and district wherein the crime shall have been committed, which district shall have been previously ascertained by law, and to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation; to be confronted with the witnesses against him; to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor, and to have the assistance of counsel for his defense.

Clinton questioned Snowden's motives, contending he had added little to the debate on national security and privacy, should return to the USA without any promises, and should not have sought asylum in Russia- though with the USA State Department having revoked his passport, he had little choice.

But at least Mrs. Clinton  maintained a rough approximation of objectivity, unlike the current Secretary of State, who told CBS News "This is a man who has betrayed his country.  He should man up and come back to the US.”  Were the infantile macho man on the playground, his preferred wording would have been "Don't be so gay." That would have been condemned as "man up"should have been.  (And good luck on that fair trial thing, Edward.)

Come back to the land of the free and home of the brave, the former and the current secretaries of state say. But as Kerry and probably even Clinton know

Snowden's legal team have stated that lack of recourse to a public interest defence is a key obstacle to the whistleblower returning to the US.

Ben Wizner, a lawyer with the American Civil Liberties Union, said: "The laws would not provide him any opportunity to say that the information never should have been withheld from the public in the first place.

"And the fact that the disclosures have led to the highest journalism rewards, have led to historic reforms in the US and around the world – all of that would be irrelevant in a prosecution under the espionage laws in the United States."

Fortunately, somebody gets it right.  Asked whether the former private sector contractor to the NSA is a traitor or a whistleblower, the man elected President in 2000 refused to

put him in either one of those categories. But I'll be candid and give you want you want. If you set up a spectrum... but I would push it more away from the traitor side. And I will tell you why. He clearly violated the law so you can't say OK, what he did is all right. It's not. But what he revealed in the course of violating important laws included violations of the US constitution that were way more serious than the crimes he committed.

In the course of violating important law, he also provided an important service. OK. Because we did need to know how far this has gone. 







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No Trip To Charlotte



Senator Joe Lieberman hasn't been invited to the Democratic (or Republican) National Convention this year and a few people are offended.

The Hill's Alexander Bolton reports

Some Democrats think keeping Lieberman away is a mistake. After all, he served as Al Gore’s running mate in 2000, becoming the first Jewish American to run atop a major party’s ticket.He also presided for several years as chairman of the Democratic Leadership Council, which helped transform the ideology of the Democratic Party and laid the groundwork for Bill Clinton’s election in 1992.

“Even though he’s no longer a member of the Democratic Party, he caucuses with the Senate Democrats and provides a vote for their majority. It would be a good thing to invite him,” said Tad Devine, a Democratic strategist who served as a senior adviser to Gore’s campaign. “He doesn’t have to be invited to give a speech. He doesn’t have to have Clinton’s time slot."...

“Joe Lieberman is a victim of polarization. He’s another person cast aside by people who aren’t interested in centrist views,” said Professor Ross K. Baker, a professor of political science at Rutgers University, who has worked as a scholar in residence in the Senate.

Dan Schnur, director of the Jesse M. Unruh Institute of Politics at the University of Southern California, said Lieberman’s approach is out of step with the times.

“Given how polarized the political process has become, my guess is that Joe Lieberman is taking this, appropriately, as a tremendous compliment,” said Schnur. “If there were a convention being held in the days between Tampa and Charlotte that was devoted to bridging partisan gaps and moving forward on the country’s challenges, Joe Lieberman would probably be the keynote speaker.”

In response, Hullabaloo's David Atkins (with a deserved swipe at Bill Clinton) explains

Holding contradictory partisan views doesn't make one a "centrist." Supporting lower taxes on the wealthy while supporting action on climate change isn't "centrist." A hypothetical candidate who wanted to ban abortion entirely while supporting single-payer healthcare wouldn't be a "centrist," either. A centrist is someone who supports milquetoast, inoffensive positions on a variety of issues: say, simplifying the the tax code while raising taxes slightly on just the richest incomes. Or advocating toothless carbon exchanges as a "solution" to climate change. Or decrying abortion but wanting to make it "safe, legal and rare." Or converting welfare programs into work programs.

You know, the mainstream positions of the modern Democratic Party. That's centrism. It's not the voters' fault if centrism has been wholly adopted by one political party while the other sits squarely in crazyville. That's just the breaks.

Like Baker and Schnur, Bolton is perturbed that such a deserving, open-minded guy like the Democratic-turned-Independent senator from Connecticut is being being denied what he appears to believe is a constitutional right of being invited to a party convention.   He writes

Lieberman made a memorable attempt to bridge party divides in 2008 when he endorsed Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) over then-Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.), a move that infuriated many Democrats and nearly cost him a top committee slot.

“I am here tonight because John McCain’s whole life testifies to a great truth: Being a Democrat or Republican is important, but it is nowhere near as important as being an American,” he said in the 2008 speech.

He went on to praise McCain for taking on “corrupt Republican lobbyists” to reform campaign finance law and for trying to reform the nation’s immigration laws and “actually do something about global warming.”

In 2000, Joe Lieberman pulled the rug out from under Al Gore and did his part to make George W. Bush president.    Not content with helping one Republican enter the Oval Office, in 2008 he didn't merely endorse the G.O.P. candidate for president.  He spoke at the party's convention, slamming both the Democratic nominee for allegedly being unwilling "to take on powerful interest groups in the Democratic Party" and by implication, those very "interest groups." That would be those selfish minorities, women, public employees, members of unions.

Lieberman didn't only endorse the GOP presidential nominee, he campaigned for him.   And in so doing, he implied the Democratic nominee was unfaithful to American soldiers, accusing him of "voting to cut off funding for our troops on the ground."   Not a mention from the paragon of bipartisanship and independence, however, that, as Media Matters noted in 2008, John McCain "voted against legislation to fund the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq or that Obama has voted in the past to provide funds for troops stationed there."

Joe Lieberman is entitled to support actively anyone he wants for any office and to advocate for what he believes in.  But when those views are antithetical to the causes central to the Democratic Party and he works strenuously to defeat a Democratic nominee for president, it would be political malpractice to invite him to the gathering which will renominate that individual he found so repugnant in 2008.




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Of Edwards And A Critic


Following the decision of the jury in North Carolina to find him not guilty of one count while being unable to decide on the other five counts of the indictment, John Edwards issued a statement, though he did not answer questions.    Others may assess his sincerity in proclaiming love for members of his family or speculate about whether he will get involved in public service. Here, however, we evaluate the sincerity of an apology, which may be the most ubiquitous factor in modern politics.     In that portion of his remarks, the former North Carolina senator and presidential contender stated

I want to make sure that everyone hears from me and from my voice that while I do not believe I did anything illegal or ever thought I was doing anything illegal, I did an awful, awful lot that was wrong. And there is no one else responsible for my sins. None of the people who came to court and testified are responsible, nobody working for the government is responsible. I am responsible. And if I want to find the person who should be held accountable for my sins, honestly, I don't have to go any further than the mirror. It's me. It is me, and me alone.

Given that the jury was "hung," there is still a small chance that the Justice Department will try the defendant again, and Edwards therefore would have been (figuratively) insane not to have proclaimed his innocence of the charges.      Nor did he have to cross his fingers when he maintained "I do not believe I did anything illegal" because he probably did not.

Nearly everyone who issues an "apology" proclaims himself "responsible" and a public assumption of responsibility usually is unimpressive and virtually meaningless.

Not so, however, in this case.    Edwards preceded his admission of responsibility by asserting "I did an awful, awful lot that was wrong,"    Rarely does a public figure, politician or otherwise, actually admit he or she did something that was "wrong."    It is, at base, the litmus test of an apology.    Typically, an individual blames someone or something else or says he/she is "sorry" for how someone reacted to what was said or done.    The offender laments the impact- usually not the incident itself, and certainly not because it was WRONG.

Typical was the "apology" of former New York City police commissioner Bernard Kerik (as related here) who had to withdraw from consideration for the position of Director of Homeland Security under President Bush.     Mr. Kerik, who had neglected to tell White House representatives that he had failed to pay the required taxes for the housekeeper he had employed, said "I owe an enormous apology to the president for whatever distraction this may have caused.  This is my responsibility.   This is my mistake."

Kerik did not specify what "mistake" he was referring to- cheating the federal government, or simply keeping the information from the Administration.     He apparently believed he owed an apology to the Mr. Bush not because he did anything wrong but because it caused a "distraction."   And he did not acknowledge even having caused the distraction; instead, his remark was for whatever distraction it may have caused.

Edwards, however, was clear.    He did not give a pass to "everybody" who may have been caught up in it.    He specified "the people who came to court and testified" and individuals "working for the government."     Caught with his pants down (pun intended), Edwards could more easily have been vague.   But he was not, and thrice pointed the finger at himself:     "And if I want to find the person who should be held accountable for my sins, honestly, I don't have to go any further than the mirror.   It's me.   It is me, and me alone."    People who believe the decisiveness of the apology was for public consumption fail to realize that Edwards could have delivered a vaguer, more standard, apology to the same effect.

Some people were not as impressed.    Arguing the former presidential candidate  has "so veered off into the land of creepy self-delusion," Howard Fineman contended on Hardball (transcript here)

I`m watching a car crash of craziness here. And I know there`s second lives in American politics. But the notion that he took this occasion to weave the story of his children, of all his children, including the one that he had with the mistress, that he was having relations with while his wife was dying of cancer, that he`s going to weave the story of those children into the story of the poor people of America and the world.

And thus I am going to be the pied piper leading the Americas and the children together in a new public role for myself, that was so beyond any level of self-awareness as to be almost pathological. Did I make myself clear? 

Failing to be clear never has been his problem.    It was back in November, 1999 that Fineman was psychoanalyzing another Democratic candidate.    Bob Somerby in November 2011 described Fineman then telling Brian Williams

The fact is, Al Gore has been changing his clothes and his persona in public ever since I’ve known him, which goes back 15 years, Brian. I covered his last presidential campaign in 1988. One day he was in the conservative blue suit, the next he was playing lumberjack at the VFW hall in New Hampshire. This is a guy who, because of his upbringing and his attitude toward politics and maybe something about his life story, just doesn’t seem always to be of one piece, doesn't really always know who he wants to be in public.

Fineman noted that Gore "had worn conservative suits to some events, and casual clothing to to others" but nevertheless "was played off as a nut.    Everyone who followed Election 2000 knows the spin which Fineman was offering.   Al Gore doesn't know who he is.   It was recited over and over by amateur shrinks..."

Two years almost to the day after Fineman joined in the media's effort to delegitimize the Vice-President, he would be far more generous to another public official, the successor to President Clinton.   Somerby quoted Feinman on msnbc.com gushing  

So who are the Bushes, really? Well, they’re the people who produced the fellow who sat with me and my Newsweek colleague, Martha Brant, for his first interview since 9/11. We saw, among other things, a leader who is utterly comfortable in his role. Bush envelops himself in the trappings of office. Maybe that’s because he’s seen it from the inside since his dad served as Reagan’s vice president in the ‘80s. The presidency is a family business.

Dubyah loves to wear the uniform—whatever the correct one happens to be for a particular moment. I counted no fewer than four changes of attire during the day trip we took to Fort Campbell in Kentucky and back. He arrived for our interview in a dark blue Air Force One flight jacket. When he greeted the members of Congress on board, he wore an open-necked shirt. When he had lunch with the troops, he wore a blue blazer. And when he addressed the troops, it was in the flight jacket of the 101st Airborne. He’s a boomer product of the ‘60s—but doesn’t mind ermine robes.

A heck of a judge of character, that Howard Fineman.    Also in November (2010), as the journalist began at The Huffington Post, Salon's Alex Pareene explained

You can always count on Howard Fineman for a clear distillation of whatever the new conventional wisdom is. Unlike those who seek to drive coverage, Fineman was always content to sway with the prevailing winds. Each election season, he announces that Democrats need to signal that they’re moderate centrists and fight back against the unions. He was equally enthusiastic about candidate McCain in 2000 and candidate Obama in 2008. He defines “the mainstream” as whatever the pundit class currently thinks.

This is not to suggest that Fineman is a mere hack or that Edwards was sincere throughout his remarks yesterday.     But the latter, who never should have been prosecuted, offered that most unusual of public statements:    a genuine apology.    And this isn't the first time Howard Fineman has suggested that a prominent Democrat is unstable.    Fortunately, in this instance it will not assist the election to the presidency of someone who so arouses him.





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At Most, An Obama Network



Progressive blogger and (Hilary) Clinton enthusiast Taylor Marsh explains today why Barack Obama never has been a shoe-in for re-election.    One problem, she notes, is

That Obama hasn’t made solid relationships inside the Democratic Party and in the progressive community, beyond his die hard fans and supporters, makes it rougher for him. I don’t know anyone who thinks Obama runs the Democratic Party, with more evidence today that he doesn’t. He’s the un-Lyndon Johnson, a man who gets by on his own steam, not through relationships inside Democratic or progressive circles. The attitude of Robert Gibbs is brought to mind and just what a bad beginning the Administration made toward their base. Obama is another in a long line of presidents who don’t feel compelled to build the political party that made his rise possible. The feeling is Pres. Obama’s a one man ego band.

Tuesday, however, Marsh had slapped The Atlantic's Conor Friedersdorf, who had mistaken MSNBC's Chris Matthews for an objective journalist and therefore was aghast at Matthews' criticism of Mitt Romney over his Bain Capital involvement.   Marsh similarly criticized Politico's Dylan Byers because he had naively slammed Matthews for exhibiting "partisan loyalties" when he "accused the Obama surrogate of 'sabatoge' and 'betrayal' of the campaign."

Matthews, Marsh argues, lost his journalistic credentials when he became an enthusiastic cheerleader for Obama's 2008 campaign, most infamously for his "thrill going up my leg" comment.        Marsh observes "Chris Matthews has been a die hard Barack Obama supporter for over four years now, which is his choice."   Then, however, she draws a false parallel, claiming

Fox News Channel is a ratings juggernaut doing partisan coverage. Are Friedersdorf and Byers really the only ones who don’t know MSNBC is now the bookend to Fox News Channel? 

Friedersdorf and Byers may be confused about MSNBC but, to a lesser degree, so is Marsh. MSNBC is not the Democratic alternative, nor is it the liberal or progressive alternative- that would be Al Gore's Current TV, especially with the Young Turks' Cenk Uygur. With little more than two exceptions (staunch liberal/progressive Chris Hayes on weekend mornings, populist Dylan Ratigan on weekday afternoons),  MSNBC is the pro-Obama network.     That is hardly synonymous with "liberal," "progressive," or (as Marsh obviously understands better than most) even "Democratic."  

Matthews' pro-Obama slant during the 2008 campaign was far more noble, with far more benevolent effect, than his approach to the 2000 presidential campaign, when he functioned as an unofficial surrogate for the Republican.   Bob Somerby describes Matthews' role in the Bush-Gore campaign:

Of course, it was Matthews’ remarks about Campaign 2000 which provided the comic relief. “I think he ran a terrible campaign in 2000,” Matthews said, skillfully keeping his straight face. Just last Friday, we gave you a small idea of what this big nut-case meant (see THE DAILY HOWLER, 6/17/11). What made Gore’s campaign so “terrible?” For one thing, he wore a three-button suit—and those buttons had Freudian meaning. Beyond that, he had hired a woman to teach him how to be a man. He was “today’s man-woman,” “a man-like object;” he “didn’t have his gender straight.” He would lick the bathroom floor to be president. Over and over and over and over, he was “Bill Clinton’s bathtub ring.”

Matthews behaved like a genuine demon for the campaign’s twenty months, offering ugly, bizarre complaints about Gore’s “terrible campaign.” He told Gennifer Flowers how hot she was when he dragged her out on the air; she then spent a full half hour denouncing the Clintons’ murders. Presumably, Matthews did this to serve the pleasure of Welch; his salary was $1 million in 1999, but it soon went up to $5 million. (This type of largesse cannot be explained by Hardball’s ratings, though the show was influential at that time within the mainstream press.)

Somerby typically is too harsh toward Matthews, who conducts some searing interviews which would (or should) put nearly everyone else on TV news to shame.    Still, Somerby's suggestion (there and elsewhere) that the host was doing the bidding of his corporate sponsor has its parallel in today's MSNBC.  

After the network's Rachel Maddow defended Obama's recent remarks about Bain Capital, she interviewed Newark Mayor Cory Booker, who had criticized the campaign (though, significantly, not Obama himself).      Maddow served as public relations flak for Booker, one of Wall Street's favorite Democrats, arguing that he had been misunderstood.    Fawning over Booker (whom Somerby says is a buddy of hers from Stanford), she chose not to emphasize the impact of the Bain Way upon the employees of the companies it took over.     Somerby commented

If Maddow would stop her absurd attempts to defend her appalling friend, maybe she could report on what Romney actually did at Bain! Maybe she could report the looting of those pension funds, in ways her viewers could grasp and pass on.

Or is she keeping her trap shut too? Despite what your lizard brain is saying, corporate-picked multimillionaires may not always be on your side.

Rachel Maddow does, at times, question corporate power, as does Ed Schultz.     (O'Donnell does so infrequently and Sharpton is little more than Obama's mouthpiece.) Other hosts, especially Matthews, on the network are hardly reticent about criticizing Democrats, a wise tactic for a pro-Obama operation intent on avoiding being typecast as "pro-Democrat." MSNBC surely is not impartial, and does not claim to be, but neither is it the partisan counterweight to the cable network representing the public relations wing of the Republican Party.

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The Republican Media- No. 31


We all laughed.

No doubt a howl went up from the crowd when Mitt Romney quipped in Spartanburg, South Carolina "Congressmen taking responsibility or taking credit for helping create jobs is like Al Gore taking credit for the Internet."       Vice-President Gore had stated on CNN

During my service in the United States Congress, I took the initiative in creating the Internet.       I took the initiative in moving forward a whole range of initiatives that have proven to be important to our country's growth and environmental protection, improvements in our educational system.

The claim that Al Gore claimed he took credit for the Internet has been thoroughly debunked more than once, in this case by snopes.net, which explained Gore

was not claiming that he had "invented" the Internet (in the sense of having designed or implemented it) but that he was responsible, in an economic and legislative sense, for fostering the development (of) the technology that we now know as the Internet.,,,


Gore never used the word "invent" and the words "create" and "invent" have distinctly different meanings- the former is used in the sense of "to bring about" or "to bring into existence" while the latter is generally used to signify the first instance of someone thinking up or implementing an idea...


If President Eisenhower had said in the mid-1960s that he, while president, "created" the Interstate Highway System, we would not have seen dozens and dozens of editorials lampooning him for claiming he "invented" the concept of highways or simply lying that he personally went out and dug ditches across the country to help build the roadway.   Everyone would have understood that he meant he was a driving force behind the legislation that created the highway system and this was the very same concept Al Gore was expressing about himself with his Internet statement.

Romney's biggest critic, Newt Gingrich, once stated "In all fairness, it's something Gore had worked on a long time. Gore is not the Father of the Internet, but in all fairness, Gore is the person who, in the Congress, most systematically worked to make sure that we got to an Internet, and the truth is -- and I worked with him starting in 1978 when I got to Congress."       Of course, the former House Speaker now apologizes for agreeing with Nancy Pelosi about climate change and said about Paul Ryan's Medicare plan "any ad which quotes what I said Sunday is a falsehood."      So, admittedly, Newt Gingrich is not the best source- on anything.

But the Internet myth played a major part in the War on Gore (as the Daily Howler's Bob Somerby terms it) conducted by the nation's print and broadcast journalists.     Though the media in its initial reports never suggested that Gore had claimed to have invented the Internet, once the Republican National Committee went to work ginning up its propaganda machine, the mainstream media went into action.

Al Gore, however, never will become president, nor was he allowed by the U.S. Supreme Court to take office twelve years ago after he was elected president.      But Barack Obama would like to be re-elected and Mitt Romney is determined to prevent him from being so.      Yet, after Romney re-invented history in Spartanburg, the news media, perhaps because it is invested in its enduring and false narrative, stayed silent.

And not only about Al Gore but also in response to Romney, leading in to his "joke," alleging "Government doesn't create jobs.    It's the private sector that creates jobs."

Mitt Romney's Repub Party itself (indirectly) acknowledges that government creates jobs- when the GOP argues for yet more income tax cuts.        Private sector job growth continues in this economy partly in response to the President's stimulus package.     And teachers, police officers, FBI agents, and clerical workers throughout the land testify to the fact that government creates jobs.    Mitt Romney' job itself as governor of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts was "created" by government.     But the leading and likely Republican candidate for President of the United States- a government job!- says "government doesn't create jobs."     And the media goes collectively silent.

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Good Joke, Truth Optional

There is no reason to debate who won last night's GOP presidential debate at the Reagan library. Through roughly 2004, the rule of thumb for such gatherings might have been said to be: whomever gets in the first shot at Jimmy Carter is the victor.

That may now be replaced by 'whomever gets in the first shot at Al Gore' is the victor. Extra point for doing it as a joke; a second extra point for making it up.

By that measure, Mitt Romney is nearly nominated.

Answering Rick Perry's charge that the Texas governor "created" more jobs in Texas than Romney did as governor of Massachusetts, Mitt maintained that it was an unfair comparison because Texas is a conservative utopia. He quipped

States are different. Texas is a great state. Texas has zero income tax. Texas has a right to work state, a Republican legislature, a Republican Supreme Court. Texas has a lot of oil and gas in the ground.

Those are wonderful things, but Governor Perry doesn`t believe that he created those things. If he tried to say that, well, it would be like Al Gore saying he invented the Internet.

Ha, ha. We all laughed. And NBC's Brian Williams and Politico's John Harris said not a word in response, presumably enjoying the little joke themselves. Members of a fraternity and sorority that always has despised Al Gore (in contrast to what Gore currently stands for, which they tolerate), they wouldn't think to correct this slimy accusation.

On CNN's Late Edition on March 9, 1999, Al Gore told Wolf Blitzer

During my service in the United States Congress, I took the initiative in creating the Internet. I took the initiative in moving forward a whole range of initiatives that have proven to be important to our country’s economic growth, environmental protection, improvements in our educational system.

On December 3, 2002, Bob Somerby (in a topic he'd return to repeatedly) explained

How was Gore made into a liar? Gore made his comment on March 9; after two days of silence from the press corps, the RNC swung into action. At mid-day on Thursday, March 11, a story written by Michelle Mittelstadt appeared on the AP wire. “Republicans pounce on Gore’s claim that he created the Internet,” the headline said. But had Gore really said he created the Internet? A new GOP press release said that he had—and so did the new AP headline. Indeed, showing off her writerly skills, Mittelstadt began her crucial report with a second tendentious paraphrase:

MITTELSTADT: Vice President Al Gore’s claim that he is the father of the Internetdrew amused protests Thursday from congressional Republicans.

But had Gore really said he was father of the Internet? The language was entertaining—and highly tendentious—but it wasn’t drawn from Gore’s actual statement. No matter—on the morning of March 11, GOP leaders had released statements in which they’d attacked Gore’s remark. Mittelstadt began with Dick Armey:

MITTELSTADT: House Majority Leader Dick Armey, R-Texas, said that even under the time-honored tradition of politicians taking credit for everything, Gore’s statement is an “outrageous claim.”

Gore, who is widely credited for coining the term “information superhighway,” raised eyebrows with a pronouncement he made Tuesday during a CNN interview.

As we’ve seen, that last statement by Mittelstadt was wildly misleading. Gore’s “pronouncement” hadn’t “raised any eyebrows” with Blitzer, for example; Blitzer said nothing when Gore made his statement. Nor had it “raised any eyebrows” at the AP itself; on March 9 and 10, the service had filed several reports on the interview, none of which mentioned Gore’s comment. No, Gore’s “pronouncement” had only “raised eyebrows” among his Republican political rivals, several of whom Mittelstadt now quoted. For example, she quoted Rep. James Sensenbrenner, who said, “Gore taking credit for creating the Internet certainly gives new meaning to the term ‘March madness.’” The next day, the AP quoted a press release from RNC chairman Jim Nicholson. “Al Gore the father of the Internet?” he asked. Gore was “claim[ing] credit for other people’s successes,” according to the RNC chief. (Nicholson, of course, would play the press corps for fools throughout the election. Revisit his tour of the fancy hotel. Links are provided below.)

In her influential report, Mittelstadt committed one of the press corps’ most common sins; she took an unremarkable statement by Gore and paraphrased it in the most tendentious way possible—which also happened to be the way Gore’s political rivals were spinning it. Had Gore ever claimed to be “father of the Internet?” The language didn’t appear in his statement, but it now led Mittelstadt’s AP report. And now, the press corps—having ignored Gore’s remark for two solid days—began to file excited reports uncritically adopting the GOP’s spin-points. Indeed, some of the GOP’s most tendentious language was simply adopted, word-for-word, by major members of the press. On March 11, for example, Sensenbrenner’s press release carried this headline: “DELUSIONS OF GRANDEUR: VICE PRESIDENT GORE TAKES CREDIT FOR CREATING THE INTERNET.” On March 12, Lou Dobbs cribbed from the statement on Moneyline, his nightly CNN program. Dobbs called Gore’s remarks “a case study tonight in delusions of grandeur,” just as Sensenbrenner had done. And Gore “apparently thinks he’s the Father of the Internet,” Dobbs said, using a key phrase from Nicholson’s statement! That’s right, kids! Dobbs took “delusions of grandeur” straight from Sensenbrenner, and “father of the Internet” straight from Nicholson; like Mittelstadt, he directly adopted the GOP’s tendentious accounts of what Gore supposedly said. But there were a few things Lou Dobbs didn’t do in his report, in which he trashed Gore for his “delusions.” He didn’t describe Gore’s important work in the Congress—and he never quoted Gore’s actual statement. But so it would go throughout this election, as RNC-scripted spinners like Dobbs ginned up nasty campaigns against Gore, confounding ideas about who runs the media. On March 11, the GOP said that Gore had “delusions of grandeur.” The next day, CNN—which said nothing about Gore’s remark in real time—went ahead and used the nasty phrase too.

But then, Dobbs’ cutting-and-pasting about the Net pointed to what was to come. In three easy steps, Gore’s completely unremarkable comment was turned into something “delusional.” First, his explicit reference to the congressional context was dropped from standard press accounts. If Gore was quoted at all, his sixteen words were pared down to eight: “I took the initiative in creating the Internet.” Then, eight words were whittled to three—Gore said he created the Internet (this, of course, was the formulation which led Sensenbrenner’s release). Finally, the word “invented,” which Gore never used, became the press corps’ verb of choice. All over the press corps—all over TV—citizens were told a remarkable story: Al Gore said he invented the Internet!!! The absurd presentation was in place almost instantly, with worried pundits wracking their brains about why Gore had made such a puzzling statement. Here, for example, are early passages from just one paper—that very same paper, the Washington Times, to which Gore referred last week:

John McCaslin, 3/16/99: [T]he Gore 2000 campaign…office has already gotten a taste of what it’s in for after Mr. Gore recently took credit for inventing the Internet.

Ralph Z. Hallow, 3/16/99: Relaxed and ready to enjoy his second and better-prepared go at the GOP nomination, [Steve Forbes] joked in an interview yesterday about Vice President Al Gore’s claim of having invented the Internet.

Rowan Scarborough, 3/16/99: “This one is going to stick,” said William Kristol, editor and publisher of the conservative Weekly Standard. ‘Al Gore. Inventor of the Internet.’”

Editorial, 3/18/99: Mr. Gore has some explaining to do to parents. As everyone now knows, Mr. Gore invented the Internet, which means the vice president is responsible for making hard-core pornography available to elementary schoolchildren at the local library.

Robert Tyrell, 3/19/99: Did you hear Trent Lott is claiming to have invented the paper clip? Some think he is making a joke at the expense of Al Gore’smegalomaniacal claims about inventing the Internet.

A powerful propaganda campaign had begun. “[E]veryone now knows,” the Times said sarcastically, that Al Gore invented the Internet. Strangely, the paper had said no such thing on March 10 and 11, when it first reviewed the Gore-Blitzer session. Amazing, isn’t it? Al Gore said he invented the Internet—and the aggressively anti-Gore Times failed to notice! But then,no one in the press corps noticed this “statement” by Gore—until the RNC gimmicked it up.

The Times, of course, is a conservative paper; it battered Gore for the next twenty months over matters large, small and invented. But with startling speed, the notion that Al Gore said he invented the Internet became mainstream press dogma too. Pundits ran to recite the new story—pundits who hadn’t said a word until the RNC spoke. How quickly was Gore chided for saying he invented the Internet? USA Today used the phrase on March 15 (editorial headline: “Inventing the Internet”). That same day, Al Kamen used the phrase in his Washington Post column (he quoted a joke by a GOP spokesman). On March 16, Hardball’s Chris Matthews mocked Gore for saying he “invented the Internet.” On March 17, Judy Woodruff, hosting CNN’sInside Politics, chided Gore as “inventor of the Internet.” The embellished phrase reached the Los Angeles Times on March 18; the Boston Globe on March 20; the Associated Press on March 22. With blinding speed, the corps had invented a thrilling new story: Al Gore said he invented the Internet! And none of these news orgs had mentioned this “fact”—until the RNC scripted the spin.

With remarkable speed, the tendentious claim became Standard Issue. All over the press corps, pundits accused Gore of having said he invented the Net. The high (or low) point in this growing burlesque came in a June 2 USA Today story. In a report about problems with Gore’s early campaign, Mimi Hall penned this laughable—but completely inexcusable—account of what Gore had said:

HALL: A couple of Gore gaffes, including his assertion that he “invented” the Internet, didn’t help.

And yes, incredibly, that’s the way Hall wrote it; the one word Hall put inside quotes was the one word which Gore never said! It’s hard to know how scribes can be so inept, but Hall was hardly alone in her blunder. On June 16, as Gore formally launched his campaign, Elaine Povich—also deriding Gore’s alleged “gaffes”— matched Hall in the pages of Newsday:

POVICH: It was another gaffe in a series of missteps so far in Gore’s campaign—including…his widely mocked assertion that he “invented” the Internet.

Incredible, isn’t it? But in Campaign 2000, it happened routinely: Tendentious paraphrase was transformed into a “quote” as the press corps embellished the news to push spin-lines. For the next two years, the press corps’ embellished account would be the statement of record, passed on, inside quotes, as if Gore really said it. Millions of voters would come to believe that Gore really had made the odd claim.

Povich was actually right on one point. By the weekend of March 14, Gore was, in fact, being “widely mocked” for saying he invented the Internet. From this point on, Gore’s congressional achievements would rarely be mentioned; his unremarkable statement would be deftly transformed. The Washington press hadn’t said a word when Gore made his actual statement. Now, the corps was off and running on a two-year attack on Gore’s character. But so it went as the Washington press corps made a joke of your White House election. Such spin campaigns would be ginned up all through the 2000 race. For the record, the “farm chores” hoax began on March 16, five days after the Internet nonsense. It also began with an RNC press release. See below for links.

Invented the Internet? Gore’s recent statement to the New York Observer referred toprecisely this kind of press coverage. Invented the Internet is an obvious case in which “Republican talking points” were deftly “injected” into the work ofthe mainstream press. No one—no one!— said a word about Gore’s remark at thetime it was made. But when the RNC sent out its points, pundits simply ran to recite them. And so it went, throughout the campaign, as the RNC scripted your hapless press corps. Indeed, there’s long been a phrase for such work of this type. As the RNC sent out its points, the press corps became useful idiots.

Somerby, as he has on other occasions, addressed also the false claims regarding Al Gore pertaining to the hotel in which he grew up, Willie Horton, Love Story and Love Canal, and the chores he performed on his family's farm. These, too, helped form the narrative that Al Gore was a congenital liar, though history has demonstrated that his sense of honesty far exceeded that of his opponents.

But nothing dies as hard as the fable about Al Gore and the Internet. Gore did as he claimed, having taken the lead in Congress in fostering its development. The Internet was first utilized not in the private sector, but in the public sector, by the Defense Department. Given, further, the impact of the Internet on American society and across the globe, the individual arguably most influential in Washington in its birth ought receive a little credit, rather than ridicule. If some other individual supported Gulf War I, opposed Gulf War II, and warned us long ago about the impact of climate change, he would be queried as to how it feels to be prophetic.

It is not only debate moderators and the bulk of the mainstream media during election 2000. In post-debate analysis, MSNBC's Rachel Maddow interviewed Steve Schmidt, who ran John McCain's 2008 presidential campaign. Schmidt blithely and casually repeated the Al Gore/Internet charge and Maddow, a prime-time host on the reportedly "liberal" news network, said nothing. Which tells us something about Steve Schmidt, MSNBC, and Mitt Romney's ability to remember an effective joke he was programmed to repeat.

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Keep 'Em Barefoot, Pregnant- And Ignorant


At the Games for Change Festival on Monday in New York City, Al Gore displayed dangerous radicalism, remarking

One of the things we could do about it is to change the technologies, to put out less of this pollution, to stabilize the population, and one of the principal ways of doing that is to empower and educate girls and women. You have to have ubiquitous availability of fertility management so women can choose how many children to have, the spacing of the children. You have to lift child-survival rates so that parents feel comfortable having small families. And most important, you have to educate girls and empower women. And that's the most powerful leveraging factor, and when that happens, then the population begins to stabilize and societies begin to make better choices and more balanced choices.

It must be dangerous radicalism because Rush Limbaugh remarked

"'You have to have ubiquitous availability of fertility management so women can choose how many children to have, the spacing of the children.'" He has acknowledged that he has no interest, no intention of controlling any sexual urges, so women better be prepared to deal with guys like him -- and they better be able to have access to abortion or what have you. There's much more to this. This is descent, folks, into inanity. Algore is doing Paul Ehrlich now: Overpopulation. The key is women. Women must be made to do the right thing, in order to save the planet.

Ignore the ad hominem attack upon Al Gore by a guy who himself appears to have enjoyed a sexual escapade or two. More critically, the guy just makes things up: "they better be able to have access to abortion or what have you." The tipoff that Gore never mentioned abortion would be the "or what have you." Limbaugh then claims Gore urged "women must be able to do the right thing, in order to save the planet."

What part of choice does Rush Limbaugh claim not to understand? The former Vice President mentioned "choose" or "choices" three (3) times and suggested that we "empower and educate girls and women" so that "the population begins to stabilize and societies begin to make better choices and more balanced choices." A radical idea, that.

Limbaugh calls "overpopulation" a "theorem that has been totally debunked.' As with everything he claims has been disproven, he does not tell us who and how his worldview has been confirmed. In this case, we know it's not the United Nations, which has noted that there were 1 billion people in 1804 and only 2 billion individuals 123 years later, in 1927. But 72 years later, in 1999, the world's population had tripled to 6 billion and is projected to reach 10 billion by 2100. Yes, it took approximately 7,000 years since Adam and Eve reportedly showed up for the world to reach 1 billion people- and fewer than 200 years for it to increase sixfold. No pattern there.

The latest attack on the guy elected President in 2000 might have been prompted by the right's obsessive Gore-hatred or by its obsessive hatred of environmentalists. But it is probably primarily a part of the increasing war on family planning, which has found its latest iteration in the effort in Kansas to legislate abortion out of existence. (Fat chance, that; coat hangers are still inexpensive.) Ultimately, it's not about abortion but about family planning as suggested (video, below) by Texas State Representative Wayne Christian, who spilled the beans:






Conservatives everywhere used to be exorcised about teenage and out-of-wedlock pregnancy. Upon discovering that Bristol Palin, an unwed teenager, was pregnant, conservatives uttered nary a gasp- not only because she was the daughter of a conservative Republican, but because there would be a live birth, unhindered by family planning. When a Democrat recommends that women become educated and empowered so they are able to make choices freely, and the right gets in an uproar, it ought to give the rest of us an inkling that it's not just abortion anymore.

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For The Moment, Romney Standing Tall(er)


There are several reasons to criticize Mitt Romney. His reaction to the assassination of Osama bin Laden, however, is not one of them.

The remarks of potential GOP presidential candidates are interesting, if not telling. Rick Santorum, Michelle Bachmann and Mike Huckabee emphasized the evil of Islamic terrorism. Huckabee commented "Welcome to hell, bin Laden. Let us all hope that his demise will serve notice to Islamic radicals the world over....," though Huckabee welcoming someone to hell is rather curious, unless Mike figures he himself already is there. Bachmann expressed her "hope that this is the beginning of the end of Sharia-compliant terrorism," neglecting to offer endorsement or support to non-Sharia-compliant terrorism.

But enough nitpicking. Sarah Palin found time to congratulate the military, the intelligence services, the Special Ops forces, the American people, and America, but somehow not President Obama:

Americans tonight are united in celebration and gratitude. God bless all the brave men and women in our military and our intelligence services who contributed to carrying out the successful mission to bring bin Laden to justice and who laid the groundwork over the years to make this victory possible. It's a testament to the hard work and dedication of these brave Americans who relentlessly hunted down our enemy.
This is a victory for the American people, for the victims who were heartlessly murdered on September 11 and in Al Qaeda's other numerous attacks, and for all the peace-loving people of the world.

May God bless our troops and our intelligence services, and God bless America!

Newt Gingrich was more generous, praising President Bush but especially President Obama, the latter for having "continued and intensified the campaign in both Afghanistan and Pakistan." Gingrich giving credit to a prominent Democrat harkens back to his explanation on September 1, 2000 about then-Democratic presidential nominee Al Gore:

In all fairness, it’s something Gore had worked on a long time. Gore is not the Father of the Internet, but in all fairness, Gore is the person who, in the Congress, most systematically worked to make sure that we got to an Internet, and the truth is—and I worked with him starting in 1978 when I got [to Congress], we were both part of a “futures group”—the fact is, in the Clinton administration, the world we had talked about in the ’80s began to actually happen.

But the sleaze award goes to former Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty, who used the occasion to credit Bush:

This is terrific news for freedom and justice. In the hours after the 9/11 attacks, President Bush promised that America would bring Osama bin Laden to justice - and we did. I want to congratulate America's armed forces and President Obama for a job well done.

This was, unlike the statement of Gingrich, an effort to imply that the former President was the commander-in-chief most responsible for bringing bin Laden to justice. The praise for Obama was grudging, for his predecessor effusive (and misleading): "President Bush promised that America would bring Osama bin Laden to justice." He just forgot to add that it would occur only after he relinquished the presidency.

Donald Trump and former Utah governor Jon Huntsman generously praised the Obama. But Trump is a sideshow, entertaining though he is, and Huntsman, as an appointee (ambassador to mainland China, a post from which he now has resigned) of this president, is as likely to be the next Repub presidential nominee as I am.

That leaves us with Mitt Romney (and Herman Cain, but why bother?). The former Massachusetts governor stated

This is a great victory for lovers of freedom and justice everywhere. Congratulations to our intelligence community, our military and the president. My thoughts are with the families of Osama bin Laden's many thousands of victims, and the brave servicemen and women who have laid down their lives in pursuit of this murderous terrorist.

Yes, that's right. He commended the incumbent, Democratic president with no reference to the previous, Republican president. Hopefully, Romney will not "walk back," "clarify," or otherwise dilute his comment. Assuming he stands firm- or probably even if he doesn't- he'll need to expend much of his energy watching his back.

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