There was a time when there were statesmen among the GOP's elected and appointed officials. Men of academic and intellectual accomplishment, such as Dwight Eisenhower, Earl Warren, Nelson Rockefeller and yes, George H.W. Bush. Men and women who didn't brag about not having a passport (the estimable Dick Armey), misunderstand how birth control works or think French kissing was invented in Gaul.

Those were the days.

For the past generation, Republican leaders, talk-show hosts and elected officials have made it their mission to mock anyone of serious intellectual import (liberal elitist!), attack the professional class and wonder aloud about proven science on about as constant a loop as Sex In The City reruns on E!. They have fed at the trough of what the late historian Richard Hofstadter dubbed Anti-intellectualism In American Life.

These decisions have had their consequences. One of the most loyal groups to emerge among what Ruy Teixeira has called The Emerging Democratic Majority are professionals located among "Ideopolis" clusters around the country, usually major cities or college towns and their suburbs. Those who make their living with creativity that requires advanced education, such as software developers, architects and nurses, have abandoned the Grand Old Party in droves. For some reason, seeing gravity as part of suspiciously Semitic War on Christmas, or the principle of inertia as a left-wing plot to grow welfare rolls, just doesn't hold the same chant-"USA"-three-times-and don-an-American-flag-bikini cache for those post-GED.

So it should be no surprise that if you're conservative and you chew your own food, or are willing to try three syllables on for size, you might just become what Paul Krugman refers to as "a stupid man’s idea of what a smart person sounds like."

Continue reading »

DOWNLOADS: (1563)

PLAYS: (1367)

Embed

Another day and another Republican jackass trying to smear President Obama and his administration on issues of our national security. The newest member of the Peter King Fan Club style is Republican asswipe Congressman Mike Rogers from Michigan, who wrote an op-ed in the NY (f'n) Post yesterday where he attacked Eric Holder for doing the job he's actually supposed to be doing after the NYC bombing failed. Holder is the Attorney General and prosecution is his game, right? We have laws and he follows them, even if jerks like Rogers want to disregard the Constitution and our legal system. Faisal Shahzad is an American citizen.

I caught Rogers on MSNBC earlier in the morning Thursday talking to Monica Novotny early in the 7am hour PDT, and he couldn't even articulate what he wrote in Murdoch's rag. Novotny tries to understand what he's saying and gets to the heart of it.

Novotny: Meanwhile, you've written an op-ed for the NY Post in which you say that Attorney General Eric Holder, that he's just too focused on gathering evidence for a court case going forward as opposed to what you say he should be doing, gathering intelligence to prevent future attacks.

Rogers: Absolutely, when you shift to a law enforcement centered rather than a counter terrorism centered approach to this, it has restrictions and it has consequences. We can talk about all the great thing our investigators are doing after the fact, but the problem is that when you go to a law enforcement approach somebody has to commit the crime first in order for them to be successful first.

Novotny: But the fact is Congressman, that this has happened already so don't they essentially have to wear two hats at the same time because while we want to gain as much intelligence on potential future attacks, we also don't want this guy walking free either.

...

Rogers: You don't want to get this guy when he's getting on the plane to Pakistan after he's left the bomb, you want to get him on the plane from Pakistan when he's on the way to the United States. Huge difference.

Novotny: You say that the government's role should be in prevention then, but do you believe they really aren't doing everything they can to prevent these attacks?

Rogers: I do know this. This administration have made changes that mean some collection activities that we used to do we no longer do and those are classified, but they've suspended certain collection activities. When you do that and they're doing as this notion of a law enforcement centered approach, when you do that you have consequences...

Novotny: You say they are gathering less intelligence and they've made choices to do that.

Rogers: I do think there are some gaps in there that I would love to fill back in so our intelligence can do what it does best.

Rogers is telling the world that the Obama administration is making a concerted effort to gather less intelligence to stop attacks which means the president doesn't care if we get hit again because he's just interested in putting them away. He cites the Ft. Hood shootings, underwear man and Path Finder bomber as his evidence that Obama just doesn't care. What a sad sack of a politician. That was the heart at what Novotny was getting at. Bush would go on TV telling the world of how many attacks he had thwarted. So WTF is he yapping on about?

Rogers said that the Obama administration had made serious changes in the way America collects intelligence on terrorists, but he didn't know what they were because they were classified. Huh? Top Secret, like very hush-hush. Is he trying to leak secrets to the media about the way we go about gathering intelligence?

Here's his moronic piece.

He almost made Rep. Peter King look somewhat coherent. Almost.

Here's a link to his email so if you have the chance, send him your thoughts.

h/t Media Matters for the video.

Let's pretend you're CNN--the "Worldwide Leader In News"--and you want to do a news feature on Liz Cheney's new ad smearing the Department of Justice via her new group, Keep America Safe, founded by Cheney and "Bloody Bill" Kristol. Do you:

1. Point out that Keep America Safe was founded to promote the Bush/Cheney Doctrine, which…
   1. Was based on lies;
   2. Was overwhelmingly rejected by the voters in 2008;
   3. Dragged this country’s reputation into ground worldwide;
   4. Champions fear and smears, over intelligence and diplomacy;
   5. Is a violation of everything this country is supposed to have stood for.
2. Suggest that Liz Cheney is trying to paint the Department of Justice (which is still staffed with many, many Bush appointees) into a political corner that makes any future attempt at holding the previous administration responsible for their malfeasance and illegal activities look like a partisan witch hunt.
3. Tally the number of times that Liz Cheney and her partner Bill Kristol have been correct in their assessments in their hundreds of hours of airtime: which is, not to put too fine a point on it, NEVER.
4. Or like Rachel Maddow, demonstrate how their insidious and poor logic could be applied to anyone, including Liz Cheney herself, as an Al Qaeda sympathizer.

No, no, no...you silly liberal expecting journalism from Wolf Blitzer. Wolfie simply regurgitates Cheney's talking points, right down to the ridiculous name-calling (Department of Jihad? Really? You would have lost what little is left of your mind if someone said that during the Bush Administration, Lizzy. How disgusting.) for a full eight minute segment, blissfully unhampered by this little thing called reality.

As Glenzilla puts it, Murrow is spinning in his grave:

Continue reading »

DOWNLOADS: (1907)

PLAYS: (1529)

Embed

It's one thing for the Bernie Sanderses and Russ Feingolds to openly question the mission in Afghanistan. It's quite another for Dianne Feinstein to do so.

KING: Well Senator Feinstein, you're the chair of the Select Committee on Intelligence. To the question of where this ends, it is eight years after 9/11. We've paused and reflected on that just the other day. You see the things that we can't see, the intelligence. Are we winning in Afghanistan? Are we any closer to finding Osama bin Laden, and does the president have a clear strategy, in your view?

FEINSTEIN: Well, I can tell you this. A lot of the leadership has been taken out of al Qaeda. I can say and I think you would agree that Afghanistan and the Pakistani border are still the major safe haven, the major safe haven for terrorists in the world. And these are people who will, if they can, come after us, not necessarily the Taliban, but certainly al Qaeda and other affiliated groups.

So we have to consider that. We have about 60,000 troops there, another 8,000 are moving in with our allies, it about equals the force that is in Iraq. To the best of my knowledge, the president has had no request for additional troops up to this time. My view is that the mission has to be very clear. I don't believe --

KING: Has to be means it is not now?

FEINSTEIN: I believe it is not now. I do not believe we can build a democratic state in Afghanistan. I believe it will remain a tribal entity.

I do believe that clearing out Al Qaida, clearing out the Taliban is a bona fide part one of the mission. I do agree that training Afghan troops, Afghan -- Afghan police is an important piece of the mission.

I believe the mission should be time limited, that there should be no, well, we'll let you know in a year and a half, depending on how we do. I think the Congress is entitled to know, after Iraq, exactly how long are we going to be in Afghanistan.

Feinstein is actually more charitable about the presence of Al Qaeda in Afghanistan than the commanding general on the ground, Stanley McChrystal, who said this week that there are no signs of major Al Qaeda anywhere in the country.

But as far as the wariness of the viability of Constitutional democracy in Afghanistan, you need only look to their recent election, into which the opposition leader is now seeking a criminal investigation. He has accused Hamid Karzai of treason and "state-engineered fraud". Despite this, Karzai will probably win election on the first ballot, and a vote that has been horribly compromised will be made official. We saw in Iran how this can lead to violence and chaos, and Afghanistan is not nearly as stable. Without a viable partner in the government, as Feinstein says we cannot expect an endless commitment. Yet because Karzai is Pashtun the US will likely back him in this fight, alienating the other ethnic groups in the region. Kalashnikovs are flying off the shelves in the Tajik areas. Civil war is not an unlikely scenario at this point.

This further limits the mission, away from state-building and toward dealing with the elements in the country willing to deal. Otherwise we set ourselves up for a decade-long slog that will only end with more dead and more treasure squandered, to little effect. And yes, as Sen. Feinstein says, that process should have an end date.

(h/t Heather)

At 2:10: "God forbid, that while talking to sixty-thousand public school students, the President should appear smart."

Open Thread below...

The Washington Post does the most insidious form of "journalism" today: they do an "on the other hand" story about torture. "Some say" it's wrong, but "others say" it works, so the implied conclusion is, how can it be wrong?

And therein lies the problem. Why does it matter? After eight years or so of deceptive leadership and an inbred corporate media corps eager to lend its imprimatur, we have gotten to the point where we're actually arguing that torture is okay if it works.

Life is full of challenges and dilemmas, but morally aware people don't take to the low road when they have to deal with them. For instance, I'm worried about paying for my COBRA coverage. If I could rob a bank and get away with it, would that be okay? Of course not.

And can I point out again that the most useful intelligence we got from detainees was because their interrogators were kind to them?

These scenes provide previously unpublicized details about the transformation of the man known to U.S. officials as KSM from an avowed and truculent enemy of the United States into what the CIA called its "preeminent source" on al-Qaeda. This reversal occurred after Mohammed was subjected to simulated drowning and prolonged sleep deprivation, among other harsh interrogation techniques.

"KSM, an accomplished resistor, provided only a few intelligence reports prior to the use of the waterboard, and analysis of that information revealed that much of it was outdated, inaccurate or incomplete," according to newly unclassified portions of a 2004 report by the CIA's then-inspector general released Monday by the Justice Department.

The debate over the effectiveness of subjecting detainees to psychological and physical pressure is in some ways irresolvable, because it is impossible to know whether less coercive methods would have achieved the same result. But for defenders of waterboarding, the evidence is clear: Mohammed cooperated, and to an extraordinary extent, only when his spirit was broken in the month after his capture March 1, 2003, as the inspector general's report and other documents released this week indicate.

Over a few weeks, he was subjected to an escalating series of coercive methods, culminating in 7 1/2 days of sleep deprivation, while diapered and shackled, and 183 instances of waterboarding. After the month-long torment, he was never waterboarded again.

"What do you think changed KSM's mind?" one former senior intelligence official said this week after being asked about the effect of waterboarding. "Of course it began with that."

Mohammed, in statements to the International Committee of the Red Cross, said some of the information he provided was untrue.

"During the harshest period of my interrogation I gave a lot of false information in order to satisfy what I believed the interrogators wished to hear in order to make the ill-treatment stop. I later told interrogators that their methods were stupid and counterproductive. I'm sure that the false information I was forced to invent in order to make the ill-treatment stop wasted a lot of their time," he said.

Critics say waterboarding and other harsh methods are unacceptable regardless of their results, and those with detailed knowledge of the CIA's program say the existing assessments offer no scientific basis to draw conclusions about effectiveness.

"Democratic societies don't use torture under any circumstances. It is illegal and immoral," said Tom Parker, policy director for counterterrorism and human rights at Amnesty International. "This is a fool's argument in any event. There is no way to prove or disprove the counterfactual."

Of course...

According to WRAL News, sources expect former U.S. Sen. John Edwards to admit that he is the father of his former mistress' 18-month-old daughter.

Edwards confessed last August to an affair with Rielle Hunter, who worked for the Edwards presidential campaign in 2008. Edwards has denied father her daughter, saying the relationship with Hunter ended before the child was conceived.

I will reiterate again that it is my belief that the extramarital activities of any one is not of interest. However, I do think it's instructive to note the character of someone who would break so callously the promises made to those closest to him.

However, let me also say (and I do this as a former HUGE John Edwards supporter), WHEW!!!! I'm so glad his campaign blew up when it did. It's bad enough that he took his marriage vows so casually, but to be dumb enough to do so without taking precautions against this kind of eventuality does not speak well for Edwards' intelligence at all.

TalkLeft: Rosen recants on Sotomayor, Turley takes up his standard, but who will represent white males on the court?

The Pump Handle: The Climate Bill is less than ideal, but the best we're gonna get right now

The Big Picture: The back story to "Bailout Nation" (h/t swimgirl)

TPMMuckraker: A sketchy DOD report does not attempt to establish the original status of the detainees it claims "reengaged" in terrorism, and does not consider the possibility that some of the 540 men released from Gitmo just might have been radicalized during their imprisonment.

American Street: Death rattle of the cult of Intelligence?

OFF THE BEATEN PATH: Scoop44, Alien Truth, Politics In Color, Michigan Liberal

Emptywheel: Former Sen. Bob Graham says the CIA is making sh*t up. Holy Joe says they always told him the truth.  At least one Republican disagrees...sometimes. Still, I applaud the Wingnutosphere's sudden, inexplicable desire for accountabilty.

Hit & Run: Drug Czar calls for an end to the 'War on Drugs'

The Brad Blog: Rove to be questioned by Special Prosecutor on U.S. Attorney firings today

Happy Valley News Hour: The Fanboyification of the GOP

The Reaction: Does anybody really give a damn other than the "variable values" lunatics?

The Political Carnival: Scouts train to fight terrorists

DOWNLOADS: (4071)

PLAYS: (3303)

Embed

Isn't it wonderful that Dick Cheney has now taken over as the leader of the Republican Party? They've been running around headless and look who comes to save them. I'm sure many conservatives are just delighted that he's going out in public, front and center and taking care of things for them.

In his Fox News interview with Sean Hannity -- the second half of which ran last night -- he trotted out an attack narrative against President Obama, essentially agreeing with Hannity that he's installing "socialism," and calling Obama's stimulus plan "devastating" for the economy.

Evidently, he's hoping that going on the attack will make the public forget about the current economic situation, which we would only politely call "devastating."

We always knew Cheney was a con artist -- how else did he get to be vice president, after all? -- but the Hannity interviews have been a disgusting performance.

The night before, thought he was quite the smart ex-VP when he called for the declassification of other intelligence that he thinks will prove to America once and for all: Torture is grand!

“I formally asked that they be declassified now. I haven't announced this up till now, I haven't talked about it, but I know specifically of reports that I read, that I saw that lay out what we learned through the interrogation process and what the consequences were for the country.”

Obviously, Cheney's say-so is not exactly credible (after all, this is the guy who told the public "there's no doubt" Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction). But that really isn't the point. Torture is illegal, period.

I get his game, though. He's running a con on the media and the public. He's betting on the idea that certain intelligence will never be declassified for a wide variety of reasons, so he knows that by shooting his mouth off with these demands he's probably safe. They will never come to light. Very shrewd, but he's the VICE.