The Banal Beltway Media and Democratic Ignorance

As I think we all knew, it is becoming clear that the Pelosi in Syria "scandal" was trumped up by the White House. Josh Marshall does some legwork on the Israeli "clarification:"

Ron Kampeas of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency is another person who follows these issues closely and knows a lot about them -- that is to say, he doesn't approach these issues through the prism of reading Drudge or what the Vice President said on the Rush Limbaugh show. In any case, Kampeas takes a look at the story. It's a lengthy piece with a lot of important detail. But let me excerpt this section which touches on the issue of, again, what happened?

If that was the case, why did Olmert need to make a clarification, as Israelis were not speaking on the record. Lantos suggested there was pressure from the White House. "It's obvious the White House is desperate to find some phony criticism of the speaker's trip, even though it was a bipartisan trip," said Lantos, a Holocaust survivor who is considered the Democrat closest to the pro-Israel lobby. "I have nothing but contempt and disdain for the attempt to undermine this trip." The White House had no comment on the allegations by Lantos that it pressured Olmert to offer a clarification.

This was obvious to anyone with a brain I thought.

I understand what Josh is doing, trying to gin up a sort of scandal of his own. In this case, the scandal is a real one, the utter ineptitude of the Beltway Media; the sheer ignorance and stupidity exhibited on that story. They won't cover that Josh.

Two pieces published this morning make this clear. First, here is Atrios making fun of CNN's John Roberts:

In What Universe?

CNN's John Roberts:

This was a rare occasion when "The Wall Street Journal" and "The Washington Post" both agreed on something.

Yes, Fred Hiatt is anti-Iraq Debacle. Riiiight, John Roberts. Clueless.

And this from Paul Krugman:

Four years into a war fought to eliminate a nonexistent threat, we all have renewed appreciation for the power of the Big Lie: people tend to believe false official claims about big issues, because they can’t picture their leaders being dishonest about such things.

But there’s another political lesson I don’t think has sunk in: the power of the Little Lie — the small accusation invented out of thin air, followed by another, and another, and another. Little Lies aren’t meant to have staying power. Instead, they create a sort of background hum, a sense that the person facing all these accusations must have done something wrong.

. . . Before 9/11, however, the right-wing noise machine mainly relied on little lies. And now it has returned to its roots.

The Clinton years were a parade of fake scandals: Whitewater, Troopergate, Travelgate, Filegate, Christmas-card-gate. At the end, there were false claims that Clinton staff members trashed the White House on their way out.

. . . This is the context in which you need to see the wild swings Republicans have been taking at Nancy Pelosi.

First, there were claims that the speaker of the House had demanded a lavish plane for her trips back to California. One Republican leader denounced her “arrogance of extravagance” — then, when it became clear that the whole story was bogus, admitted that he had never had any evidence.

Now there’s Ms. Pelosi’s fact-finding trip to Syria, which Dick Cheney denounced as “bad behavior” — unlike the visit to Syria by three Republican congressmen a few days earlier, or Newt Gingrich’s trip to China when he was speaker.

Ms. Pelosi has responded coolly, dismissing the administration’s reaction as a “tantrum.” But it’s more than that: the hysterical reaction to her trip is part of a political strategy, aided and abetted by news organizations that give little lies their time in the sun.

. . . Even Time’s Joe Klein, a media insider if anyone is, wrote of the Pelosi trip that “the media coverage of this on CNN and elsewhere has been abysmal.” For example, CNN ran a segment about Ms. Pelosi’s trip titled “Talking to Terrorists.”

The G.O.P.’s reversion to the Little Lie technique is a symptom of political weakness, of a party reduced to trivial smears because it has nothing else to offer. But the technique will remain effective — and the U.S. political scene will remain ugly — as long as many people in the news media keep playing along.

This is a great piece by Krugman but almost irrelevant. What everyone is missing is that Iraq trumps all and the Bush Administration, the GOP and the Media are utterly untrusted right now. They are irrelevant in how the American People feel about the Debacle, and how the Debacle is the most important issue by far.

They can write trumped up stories about Pelosi's scarves and Carl Levin can act a fool but as long as Democrats are trying to end the Iraq Debacle they will be who the American People trust. Not the Media.

And that is the great danger I think, that Democrats do not realize where their political power is coming from. You feel that they think they have done some great political work when basically they just happened to be there, on the other side.

We'll see what they have learned soon.

Read The Full Article:
http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/TalkleftThePoliticsOfCrime/~3/107693279/19398

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Iran's Nuke Program and the Chicken-Little Hawks

Another day, another gaseous announcement from Iran's president - and another round of "the sky is falling" from anti-Iran hawks who won't let the facts get in the way of a good dose of scaremongering.

The AP reports

Iran announced Monday that it has begun enriching uranium with 3,000 centrifuges, defiantly expanding a nuclear program that has drawn U.N. sanctions and condemnation from the West.

President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said at a ceremony at the enrichment facility at Natanz that Iran was now capable of enriching nuclear fuel "on an industrial scale."

Asked if Iran has begun injecting uranium gas into 3,000 centrifuges for enrichment, top nuclear negotiator Ali Larijani replied, "Yes." He did not elaborate, but it was the first confirmation that Iran had installed the larger set of centrifuges after months of saying it intends to do so. Until now, Iran was only known to have 328 centrifuges operating.

The BBC reports pretty much the same thing but injects a note of caution.

He did not say how many centrifuges - the machines that spin uranium gas in order to enrich it to levels needed for fuel - were now operational at Natanz. Iran announced in February that it had set up two cascades of 164 centrifuges each at Natanz. It said it planned to have 3,000 centrifuges by the end of last month. Ali Larijani, Iran's chief nuclear negotiator with the West, said at Natanz on Monday that Iran had begun injecting gas into many of the centrifuges, without specifying the number.

However, the AP's report also quotes a sceptic:

Michael Levi, a fellow for science and technology at the Council on Foreign Relations, was skeptical of the Iranian claims. He said by his calculations, the capabilities Iran has just announced would provide 10 percent of the material needed to run its plant.

"To me, that's not industrial scale," Levi said. "An industrial-scale facility is a facility that can support your industry."

On the other hand, "from a political perspective, it's more important to have them in place than to have them run properly," he explained since the announcement stirs up support and patriotism at home, and the international community has almost no way to verify how well the program is working.

"Iran looks to be moving its nuclear program along on a political schedule rather than a technical schedule," Levi said.

Levi marveled that Iran has the power to cause such a stir with an announcement. He noted that most of the time, world leaders complain they can't trust Iran, "except when they say something really scary, we take them at their word."

Yet none of this scepticism, so usually forefront when the hawks evaluate Iranian claims to be peaceful and un-machieavellian, was in evidence today in their opinions. Taking their lead from the Bush administration who said that they ""don't believe Iran's assurances that their (nuclear) program is peaceful in nature," and that "Iran continues to defy the international community", the rightwing pundits were out in force.

Michael van der Galien (who would be very rightwing in his home country but is a moderate in US terms in much the same way as I am seen as very Left in the US but pretty centrist back in the UK), says "As I have always said, if necessary the West should be prepared to use force. Iran cannot be allowed to have a nuclear weapon". And it is pretty obvious that he thinks the time has come to use force.

Hot Air says that

the vaunted international community is letting one of the most pernicious regimes on the face of the earth obtain nuclear weapons. Everyone knows what?s going on. No one is willing to do much about it. We stand villified for stopping Saddam Hussein, and would be villified all the more if we act any time soon to stop Mahmoud. When he gets the nuke and blows up a city somewhere, we?ll be villified for not stopping him. That?s how the international community works.

Sister Toldjah agrees and adds:

it doesn?t take a rocket scientist to figure out why the left (and the mediots) who have already accused the President of deliberately overstating the case against Iran ?just like he did Iraq?, would prefer the UN ?handle? foreign policy matters of grave concern to the US: because, like the UN, the left would rather just look like sound tough (sic) than actually be tough.

While The Corner, as ever, looks for a political advantage while banging the war drum.

On balance, I think the Iran issue will help the Republicans during the campaign. My concern is that by the time a new president comes in, of whatever party, it will be too late to stop Iran.

Even Andrew Sullivan, who you would think would be once burned twice shy, gets on the bandwagon. But the scaremongering prize goes to Gina Cobb for the OTT headline "Guess who's Getting Ready To Nuke America?"

The Right, collectively, needs to take a Valium and remember that it isn't the size of your cascade that counts, it is what you do with it. If Levi's words above don't help calm you, then try The Arms Control Wonk, Jeffrey Lewis - a real expert - just three days ago. Lewis points out that "they have to work to be scary".

Iran still cannot operate its current cascades on a continuous basis. Instead, the IAEA reports that Iran continues to feed UF6 ?intermittently? into single, 10-, 24- and 164 machine cascades.

David and Jackie Shire recently did a really cool calculation based on Iran?s UF6 consumption to show that the centrifuges are only operating about 20 percent of the time (say 5 hours a day).

Lewis then repeats those calculations - go look, they're fun - and concludes that Iran's centrifuges are either working too hard - and crashing regularly - or hardly working, perhaps for diplomatic reasons or perhaps because they have a vimited supply of feedstock gas. Either way, the 20% efficiency rating stands.

So a 20% efficiency rating on an unknown number of centrifuges actually in operation but likely nowhere near the 3,000 installed. Which means you can multiply any worst-case estimate for Iranian nukes by at least five. That's the scientific basis for the Chicken Little scaremongering. The real basis is that the hawks want war with Iran and don't much care about facts getting in the way.

Read The Full Article:
http://cernigsnewshog.blogspot.com/2007/04/irans-nuke-program-and-chicken-little.
html

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Carl Levin, Screwing It Up Again

I don't know what's up with Carl Levin.  After the election, he started making noise about military action against Syria and Iran.  And he started talking about how setting up withdrawal conditions was interfering with the military commanders[...]

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http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/mydd/~3/107693112/45896

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Say Hello to...

A great place to get politically and socially cynical/comical/right on material at CafePress for Dems and Progressives and, oh yes, Liberals .Media, Politics, United States, World, War, Terrorism, Propaganda, Constitution, Vermont, US.

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http://cut-to-the-chase.blogspot.com/2007/04/say-hello-to.html

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Guantanamo

To America’s everlasting shame, the Bush/Cheney regimes continues to incur almost universal condemnation for its lawless and inhuman policies towards those captured/seized in Afghanistan, Iraq, and elsewhere and thrown into US-run prisons. There[...]

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http://www.firedoglake.com/2007/04/09/8339/

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Barbara Comstock, Monica Goodling's old boss, is
in Mitt's Inner Circle. What does she know about the U.S. Attorneys scandal

In "The Fix" today, Chris Cilizza highlights Mitt Romney's "inner circle" including one, Barbara Comstock:

Barbara Comstock: Comstock is a household name inside the Beltway as a former head of the Justice Department's Office of Public Affairs and research director at the Republican National Committee. Comstock rose to prominence as a master of the art of opposition research; in a 2001 profile of Comstock, Post reporter John Mintz wrote that Comstock had "done more than any other GOP operative to skewer Bill Clinton, Al Gore and their congressional allies."

Ms. Comstock's was the boss and mentor to Monica "Fifth Amendment" Goodling, we learned from "The Next Hurrah" (thanks to Atrios):

" 2002 ... 2002 ... What happened in 2002? Well, for starters, that's when Monica Goodling came over to DOJ with Barbara Comstock:

Goodling quickly won Comstock?s trust for her hard work and talent for digging up information on tort litigation and judicial nominations. And when Griffin left in 2001, Goodling became Comstock?s deputy. They helped prepare Ashcroft and Theodore Olson for their confirmation hearings to be attorney general and solicitor general, respectively.

When Comstock became Ashcroft?s spokeswoman in 2002, she brought Goodling along as her deputy. Goodling stayed for three years. In no time, Goodling became ?indispensable? to the office, says Corallo, who became Ashcroft?s spokesman in 2003. ?I have never known anybody that works harder or does better work than her.?

What does Mitt Romney's top adviser, Barbara Comstock, know about the U.S. Attorneys firings? And, what did Comstock do to politicize the Department of Justice? Maybe Mitt should explain how he'll run the DOJ.

Read The Full Article:
http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Americablog/~3/107750231/barbara-comstock-monica-g
oodlings-boss.html

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Barbara Comstock, Monica Goodling's boss, is in
Mitt's Inner Circle. What does she know about the U.S. Attorneys scandal

In "The Fix" today, Chris Cilizza highlights Mitt Romney's "inner circle" including one, Barbara Comstock:

Barbara Comstock: Comstock is a household name inside the Beltway as a former head of the Justice Department's Office of Public Affairs and research director at the Republican National Committee. Comstock rose to prominence as a master of the art of opposition research; in a 2001 profile of Comstock, Post reporter John Mintz wrote that Comstock had "done more than any other GOP operative to skewer Bill Clinton, Al Gore and their congressional allies."

Ms. Comstock's was the boss and mentor to Monica "Fifth Amendment" Goodling, we learned from "The Next Hurrah" (thanks to Atrios):

" 2002 ... 2002 ... What happened in 2002? Well, for starters, that's when Monica Goodling came over to DOJ with Barbara Comstock:

Goodling quickly won Comstock?s trust for her hard work and talent for digging up information on tort litigation and judicial nominations. And when Griffin left in 2001, Goodling became Comstock?s deputy. They helped prepare Ashcroft and Theodore Olson for their confirmation hearings to be attorney general and solicitor general, respectively.

When Comstock became Ashcroft?s spokeswoman in 2002, she brought Goodling along as her deputy. Goodling stayed for three years. In no time, Goodling became ?indispensable? to the office, says Corallo, who became Ashcroft?s spokesman in 2003. ?I have never known anybody that works harder or does better work than her.?

What does Mitt Romney's top adviser, Barbara Comstock, know about the U.S. Attorneys firings? And, what did Comstock do to politicize the Department of Justice? Maybe Mitt should explain how he'll run the DOJ.

Read The Full Article:
http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/Americablog/~3/107750231/barbara-comstock-monica-g
oodlings-boss.html

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Belated Happy Easter/Passover/Whoopeee Day

Sorry, I've been suffering with a nasty headache for several days so I haven't been posting.

Unfortunately, there's a LOT out there to write about, too. So I'll see what I can get written between holding my head between both hands and crying, "If only Bush had anything in HIS head to hurt!"Media, Politics, United States, World, War, Terrorism, Propaganda, Constitution, Vermont, US.

Read The Full Article:
http://cut-to-the-chase.blogspot.com/2007/04/belated-happy-easterpassoverwhoopeee
.html

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Is Pat Robertsons law school changing America

One of the problems with public perceptions about crazed TV preacher Pat Robertson is that most perceive him as just a crazed TV preacher. He’ll go on his crazed daily television show (The 700 Club), offer crazed commentary just about everything, and then make crazed rationalizations for his lunacy. The media marvels at his madness, [...]

Read The Full Article:
http://www.crooksandliars.com/2007/04/09/is-pat-robertson%e2%80%99s-law-school-ch
anging-america/

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Bush Disapproval Over 50% for Two YearsA Big Fat
Slob

According to the latest USA Today/Gallup survey, 62% of Americans disapprove of the job that the Bush regime is doing. The poll was taken March 23 through 25; when the same survey was taken March 21-23, 2005, the disapproval rating was "only" 49%. [...]

Read The Full Article:
http://www.abigfatslob.com/2007/04/bush-disapproval-over-50-for-two-years.html

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