Rove fired from Bush Sr’s ’92 campaign over leak to Novak. Karl Rove was fired from the 1992 re-election campaign of Bush Sr. for allegedly leaking a negative story about Bush loyalist/fundraiser Robert Mosbacher to Novak. Novak’s piece described a meeting organized by then-Senator Phil Gramm at which Mosbacher was relieved of his duties as state campaign manager because “the president’s re-election effort in Texas has been a bust.” Rove was fired after Mosbacher fingered him as Novak’s source.
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Ted
“They were careless people, Tom and Daisy — they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness, or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made…”
F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby
Haedro: Socrates, it hurts when I do this.
Socrates: Can I suggest that you don’t do that?
Plato, Philosophy Phunnies
Chris has done a good job of capturing much of the commentary on the London bombings, but I’d like to point out one more ignoble classification. I’m going to pick on Michelle Malkin. It’s certainly not an exclusively right-wing thing, but she’s a professional writer who really ought to know better.
I’m going to assume that Ms. Malkin would have heard about the attacks around breakfast time. By lunch, she had worked through sorrow, anger, grief, and gotten to the healthy point of dumpster-diving. She had taken the time to troll the comments at Democratic Underground and Daily Kos to collect the most appalling, indefensible comments by such pillars of the left as “plcdude”, “talex”, “pyewacket1”, and “TheSnorp”. (Et tu, TheSnorp?) This post was helpfully titled “THE 7/7 ATTACKS: REACTIONS FROM THE AMERICAN LEFT”, and earned her 36 trackbacks.
What’s the point of this? I understand that there are plenty of chuckles to be had by visting Bedlam at Free Republic or Democratic Underground, and occasionally there’s a geniune point to be made. (For example, I thought that No More Mister Nice Blog wrote an interesting post that isn’t just a freakshow.) But I’d suggest that the exact same post (“DERANGED RANTERS RANT”) has been written enough times by now. On a slow day, it’s just hackish and unconvincing; the response, “what about FR/LGF/DU?” always remains the same. But on a day of tragedy, it’s really inappropriate, and it would do us good if we would just knock it off.
UPDATE: I almost forgot Roy Edroso’s response to Michelle Malkin: “DU-oh! I’ma run out and gather me some Free Republic quotes in retaliation. That’s the secret of the blogosphere: it’s self-incorrecting.”
With the decline of the tech boom, we saw the death of a number of remarkably good professional comedy sites, such as Suck.com, Modern Humorist and Timmy Big Hands (no link, alas). (I still email around MH’s preview of Radiohead’s Kid A every once in a while.) Gelf Magazine has conducted a funny meta-interview with two of the founders of Modern Humorist, possibly better known from the VH1 show Best Week Ever. They’ve interviewed John Aboud, then let his co-founder, Mike Colton, mockingly comment over it, Mystery Science Theater-style. Check it out.
My latest Poorman Central Station column is up.
Shortly after September 11th, 2001, Andrew Sullivan wrote:[1]
The terrorists have done the rest. The middle part of the country – the great red zone that voted for Bush – is clearly ready for war. The decadent Left in its enclaves on the coasts is not dead – and may well mount what amounts to a fifth column. But by striking at the heart of New York City, the terrorists ensured that at least one deep segment of the country ill-disposed toward a new president is now the most passionate in his defense. Anyone who has ever tried to get one over on a New Yorker knows what I mean. The demons who started this have no idea about the kind of people they have taken on.
I thought of this quote when I came across something on Lifehacker: a map of US military casualties in Iraq by hometown. From the maps, it didn’t immediately appear that the Democratic-leaning coastal states had avoided their share of casualties. But, of course, the coasts have a heavy share of the population.
Have states with a high percentage of Bush voters suffered a larger share of casualties per capita? If Sullivan’s statement had been true, I might expect to see that I could predict the rate of military casualties per capita by looking at Bush’s support in 2000 and 2004. [click to continue…]
If I had all the time in the world, I’d have more to say about these links that I’ve been sleeping on:
Recently the Cleveland Plain Dealer reported that the (Ohio Bureau of Workers Compensation) continued to allow another fund manager, Alan Brian Bond, to manage $50 million for eighteen months after the New York money manager had been indicted in a high-publicity kickback scheme. This prompted Democratic State Senator Marc Dann to craft a bill requiring BWC administrators to Google the investment managers once a month to make sure they haven’t been indicted.
John Cole has tagged me with his own book meme:
What fiction did you read as a teen/young adult that you have re-read as an adult (or would like to)? What pieces of fiction meant something to you? Put up your list, and pass it on to 2-3 people.
(via Carpetbagger Report.) So, there was a state-sponsored display of the Ten Commandments in front of the Gibson County Courthouse in Princeton, Indiana. Some citizens brought it to court, arguing that it was unconstitutional, and won.
Indiana Republican Representative John Hostettler introduced an amendment to a spending bill that would “prohibit funds in the Act from being used to enforce the judgment of the United States District Court for the Southern District of Indiana in the case of Russelburg v. Gibson County.” Says Benen, “In other words, Hostettler would prevent the federal judiciary from enforcing its own court order. Gibson County could refuse to comply with the law and the judge couldn’t send marshals to resolve the problem.”
WHAT HIS FELLOW REPUBLICANS SHOULD HAVE SAID:
“John, I’m sorry. I agree with you on the merits; that Ten Commandments display isn’t hurting anyone. But this amendment isn’t the way to deal with it. We can’t micromanage in this way, picking court orders that we don’t want enforced. Everyone in this room could point to a court order that they wished had gone another way, but we’re not allowed to make those decisions. It’s a blatant violation of the separation of powers, and a terrible precedent to set. I’m sorry, but I can’t support this.”
WHAT THEY ACTUALLY SAID:
“Aye.”
Yes, the amendment passed. 91% of voting Republican representatives supported the amendment, versus 19% of voting Democratic representatives. I really don’t believe that 91% of the House Republican caucus didn’t know better. I don’t understand these people.
On any given day, the odds are pretty good that Obsidian Wings will be the best blog in existence. Take this post by hilzoy.
Members of Congress say they receive a negligible number of letters and calls about the (torture) revelations that keep coming. ”You asked whether they want it clear or want it blurry,” Senator Susan Collins, a Maine Republican, said to me about the reaction of her constituents to the torture allegations that alarm her. ”I think they want it blurry.” “
“Wanting it clear” means wanting an honest, open debate about what we want interrogators to do in our name. In the course of that debate, those who favor torture would have a chance to make their case. Is it useful in interrogations? Do ticking time bomb scenarios actually occur, and if so, how often? How much actionable intelligence have our “stress positions” and our “Fear Up Harsh” and “Pride and Ego Down” tactics actually yielded? Those who oppose torture would have a chance to ask: do these benefits, if they exist, outweigh the dangers of adopting a policy that seems to invite abuse? Do they create more terrorists than they allow us to capture or thwart? Have they made enemies of people who might have supported us? And are these methods consistent with our values as a nation, and with our noblest aspirations? When both sides had made their case, we could then decide openly what we want to do, and decide it as a nation.
“Wanting it blurry” means wanting to avoid that debate. It means caring less about considering the extremely serious issues at stake and getting them right than about being able to duck the uncomfortable knowledge that debating those issues might force on us. It means caring less about our country, its ideals, and its honor than about our own peace of mind, even when we have reason to think that that peace of mind might be undeserved. It means being willing to let taxi drivers whom we know to be innocent be beaten to death, detainees be sodomized with chemical lightsticks and have lit cigarettes stuck in their ears, and fourteen year olds be “suspended from hooks in the ceiling for hours at a time” while being beaten, in order to preserve the illusion that our own hands are clean.
Wanting it clear is for adults. Wanting it blurry is for children, who hope that problems they don’t attend to will go away. And it is unworthy of citizens of a great democracy.
Susan Collins thinks that her constituents “want it blurry”. Apparently, other members of Congress agree. As citizens of a democracy, we cannot react to this insulting idea by bemoaning the apathy of some unspecified group of other people. We are the people Collins is talking about, and it is up to us to prove her, and those who agree with her, wrong. So let’s do it.
She goes on to lay out exactly what we ought to do.
I don’t think much of most conspiracy theories which require that an improbably large number of people to keep a lid on some explosive piece of information forever. However, I could just be the victim of availability bias. Obviously, in the event of a successful conspiracy, I’d never hear about it.
I point this out, not to rip anything from today’s headlines, but as an excuse to quote this jewel from a book full of jewels, David Fromkin’s A Peace to End All Peace. Lord Kitchener, the general beloved by the British people for his successes in extending the empire in Egypt and India, had done a poor job directing British military strategy in World War I. Since his popularity made him impossible to fire, he had been sent on a trip to Russia. Kitchener was among the casualties when the ship hit a German mine. It shouldn’t have happened:
The departure route of the Hampshire had already been plotted, but should have been changed. Naval Intelligence, which earlier had broken the German radio code, intercepted a message to the German minelaying submarine U75 in late May. It indicated the the submarine was to mine the passage that the Hampshire intended to follow. Two further intercepts confirmed the information, as did signtings of the submarine. In the confusion at British headquarters at Scapa Flow, Admiral Sir John Jellicoe, the British naval commander, and his staff somehow failed to read or to understand the warnings that Naval Intelligence sent to their flagship. (At a court of inquiry that convened later in 1916 to look into the matter, Admiral Jellicoe succeeded in hiding the existence of these intelligence warnings, which were revealed only in 1985.)
The Poor Man has produced the finest PowerLine parody this side of paradise.[1] However, as Brad R. notes in the comments, there’s no beating the masters at their own game:
The Senate is poised to apologize for its failure to enact anti-lynching legislation between 1890 and 1952. Why didn’t the Senate act?
In the past, efforts to pass such legislation fell victim to Senate filibusters despite pleas for its passage by seven presidents, among others, between 1890 and 1952.
I suppose Senator Robert Byrd, widely known then as a former Kleagle, better known today as the “conscience of the Senate,” participated in some of those filibusters. Do you suppose he will oppose the current resolution, and explain that the filibuster is a pillar of democracy? No, probably not. I suspect the Senate Democrats will keep their “conscience” under wraps for this one.
UPDATE: As several readers have pointed out, Byrd isn’t quite that old–he was first elected to the Senate in 1958. So his personal involvement with the filibuster didn’t begin until the Civil Rights era. The point, of course, remains valid nevertheless.
I recently had a good time with some old friends on an email list sharing stories of the athletic humiliations of our youth. I’ve posted my favorite story under the fold.
Most bloggers and blog junkies are, of course, diamond-hard triatheletes jotting off a few lines between reps. For those of us who aren’t, share your funniest athletic embarassments as a young person. You’ll feel better.
When I learned that Ohio Republicans had (cough) “invested” $50 million of public funds in rare coins and collectables controlled by a highly connected Republican fundraiser, I thought, this doesn’t look good. When it turned out that $10 to $12 million was missing from the rare-coin kitty, I had similar thoughts. Then, when I saw that the Ohio Bureau of Workers’ Compensation had agreed to turn their long-bond fund into a highly-leveraged hedge fund, which ended up losing $225 million out of $350 million, I thought, this is a real problem. The fact that Governor Taft’s office had been informed in October, and was apparently waiting for the $225 Million Fairy to fill the hole, didn’t help. I found myself agreeing with Atrios that it was maybe time for some new leadership in Ohio.
Luckily, I caught myself in time. What was I doing wallowing in this kind of negativity? Heck, I might as wear a “Party of No” T-shirt and march down Main Street! After all, my guys lost. The voters of Ohio supported the positive Republican agenda of pissing away hundreds of millions of dollars of taxpayer funds. What ideas do Democrats have? Just leaving the money in secure investments? Wow, guys, way to fire up the electorate. I must record new-age music for Windham Hill, cause I’m getting all yawny.
If there’s one thing that I’ve learned from the helpful Democratic strategists at the GOP, it’s that America hates negativity. So I’m hoping that the brain trust here can help come up with a positive agenda about how the Democrats should deal with this. A Democratic proposal for bake sales and bikini car washes will do a lot more to turn those frowns upside down than loose talk of “resignations” and “basic oversight”. I’m going to get started on my self-esteem boosting pamphlet, “So You’ve Lost $235 Million of Other People’s Money”, right after I deal with this crack in my desk that I somehow caused with my forehead.