McChange: GOP Wants To Pretend The Past Seven Years Didn’t Happen

[Cross-posted at Firedoglake.]

That stampeding sound you heard last night at the Republican National Convention? That was the sound of conservatives running away from their own record.
Says John McCain:

“Change is coming! Change is coming! Change is coming!”
“We need to change the way government does almost everything.”

Says Sarah Palin:

John McCain and I are ready to shake up Washington, ready to challenge the status quo, to serve the common good, and to leave this nation better than we found it.

Right. But as Peter Baker adroitly observes, it’s pretty tough to claim to be the agent of change when your party has been in power for the past eight years.

Actually, Digby predicted this some time ago: That Republicans would begin claiming that Bush failed because he wasn’t a “true conservative.” But the stark reality is that – Bush’s timid and eventually short-lived resistance of the GOP’s nativist elements on immigration notwitshstanding – every single policy enacted under the Bush administration was done with not merely the full blessing but the adamant support of movement conservatives.

No doubt about it – John McCain and Sarah Palin would govern differently than George W. Bush and Dick Cheney. They might even govern more competently.

But at the end of the day, their governance will be conservative governance.

We’ve just had nearly eight years of that. And here’s what we’ve gotten:

• Foreign-policy debacles in Iraq and Afghanistan.
• A nation less secure and at greater risk of terrorist attacks than ever.
• A sinking economy.
• An expanding gap between rich and poor.
• Utter inaction on global warming.
• $5-a-gallon gasoline.
• An unresolved immigration problem.
• A debacle in public-school education testing and funding.
• Declining food and consumer-product safety standards.
• A government that spies on its own citizens.
• A government that tortures prisoners held in their detention facilities.

These messes weren’t the result of George W. Bush being too liberal and straying too far from the movement-conservative party line. To the contrary – they’re the direct result of him toeing that line to the millimeter. They are all the direct product of conservative governance.

That will not change if John McCain and Sarah Palin gain the White House. And no matter how
much they want us to forget that, well, we can’t. And we won’t.

FBI Wanted Obama Plotters Charged, But A Rove Appointee Said No

[Tharin Gartrell, 28; Shawn Robert Adolf, 33; and Nathan Johnson, 32]

-- by Dave

We noticed last week that it was awfully peculiar that Colorado’s U.S. Attorney, Troy Eid, had so airily dismissed conspiracy charges against the three white-supremacist tweakers who were caught planning to assassinate Barack Obama at last week’s Democratic National Convention in Denver.

Now it turns out that those suspicions were fully warranted:

KUSA - 9Wants to Know has learned three men in Denver planned to assassinate U.S. Senator Barack Obama during the Democratic National Convention in Denver by sneaking into one of his events and shooting him with a gun hidden inside of a camera, according to federal court records.

Nathan Johnson's girlfriend, whom 9NEWS is not naming because she's a juvenile, said it would have to be a suicide mission.

The plot is similar to that in the 1992 movie "The Bodyguard" starring actors Kevin Costner and Whitney Houston. In the movie, Costner stops an assassination attempt against Houston by spotting a weapon hidden inside a gutted-out TV camera.

Johnson, Shawn Adolf and Tharin Gartrell all thought that Obama had a suite in the third floor of the Hyatt hotel, where they were staying. In fact, the Senator was staying in another Denver Hotel.

The men were doing methamphetamine inside the hotel with two women on Aug. 23 discussing the plot to kill Obama, according to federal records.

Adolf said "it would not matter if he killed Senator Obama because police would simply add a murder charge to his pending charges," according to the records. There were seven outstanding warrants for Adolf's arrest.

The underage woman told law enforcement that Adolf also talked about using "a high-powered rifle 22-250 from a high vantage point" to shoot Senator Obama during his acceptance speech at INVESCO Field at Mile High during the DNC.

Even more significant, beyond the details of the plot, was the fact that, as the Colorado Independent notes, the FBI asked for more serious charges to be filed and were turned down.

Former FBI Agent and ACLU Counsel: St. Paul Police Behavior Is ‘Frightening’

Michael German

[Cross-posted at Firedoglake.]

Yesterday afternoon I caught up with my longtime acquaintance Michael German, the ACLU’s National Security Counsel. I first met German in the 1990s when he was an FBI agent, and I knew he would have some insights into the descent of St. Paul into a virtual police state.

Here’s our conversation:

DN: Mike, I assume you’ve been watching event in St. Paul closely. What are you seeing there?

German: I have been following the policy that has enabled this sort of activity. It just stuns me that it’s gotten to this level where they’re actually targeting iWitness Video, when they’re so clearly engaged in journalistic work, it just stuns me.

Do you find this kind of behavior unprofessional on the part of the police in St. Paul?

It’s hard for me to know, not being there. Clearly, they are spending a lot of effort on people who are not a threat. And there may be people there who are a threat, and if they focus their activities on those people and not on people who are simply wanting to go to a political convention wanting to have a say and to express themselves – you know, that is a wasted effort. It’s not going to help them find the people who are going to do bad things by impeding the rights of the people who are there to express themselves. And so much seems to be focused on people who are simply trying to have their say and document what happens.

The part that really bothers me is the focus on people who are simply documenting what is happening. That is troublesome, because there is guidance being published by the Los Angeles Police Department, which has since been endorsed by the Department of Justice, called “suspicious activity reporting,” that essentially endorses targeting anyone who would document police activity as potential terrorist threats. Let me read it to you:

It is the policy of the Los Angeles Police Department to make every effort to accurately and appropriately gather, record and analyze information, of a criminal or non-criminal nature, that could indicate activity or intentions related to either foreign or domestic terrorism.

Now, the idea that it would be the policy of the Los Angeles Police Department to collect information on non-criminal behavior is outrageous. They should be focused on people intending to do harm.

It lists 65 behaviors that they say are behaviors related to terrorism, and the one that pertains here is “takes pictures or video footage.” [The entry on p. 40 reads: “Takes pictures or video footage (with no apparent esthetic value, i.e., camera angles, security equipment, security personnel, traffic lights, building entrances, etc.).”] “No apparent esthetic values?” So apparently they’re going to be sending police officers to art school to understand esthetic values.

But it actually mentions taking video footage of taking video footage of security personnel. So the mere taking of photographs or video footage of law enforcement – even law enforcement doing something improperly – they’ve identified that as a precursor to terrorism. So now you might understand why these police officers are focusing on people with cameras. It’s because it’s actual policy to do so.

It has the appearance of being very indiscriminate. They’re arresting legal observers, reporters, threatening to arrest kids, that sort of thing.

And the reporters are engaged in protected First Amendment activities. For the police to be impeding their ability to do their job is ridiculous.

When there are things for them to look at – you know, there are reports of people breaking windows, that sort of thing – sure, go chase those guys. You don’t have to have all these police on the street impeding activities of people who are just engaged in free expression. Spraying pepper spray into a crowd of people who are simply trying to get out of the way of police is not an effective way of policy.

What about the raids that took place Sunday? These were strictly preemptive raids, and they used some warrants that seemed questionable at best. Have you gotten a look at that?

I’ve just seen what’s been reported. And just from what’s been reported, it’s a mess – it was reported that one of the warrants even had the wrong address. Which kind of shows the level of unprofessionalism that you’re dealing with there. Again, it’s hard for me to say, not knowing exactly what’s there, but I understand that items to be seized included cameras and cell phones. That seems pretty outrageous – journals and things like that are being seized.

I would imagine from the ACLU’s point of view that that’s treading well over into areas of free speech.

Right. And the frustrating thing about it is that, like, the New York Police Department just paid over $2 million for the events surrounding the Republican National Convention four years ago to the protesters they arrested there. I don’t understand what it is that the police just don’t get – that impeding the rights of the people is not an appropriate way of stopping bad things from happening.

I don’t pretend that there aren’t people out there who have bad intentions on their minds. But if you can’t distinguish someone whose program is about videotaping protests as opposed to somebody whose program is going out and lighting things on fire, that’s problematic for the rest of us. Because if the police aren’t distinguishing between those two in their use of force, then none of us are safe.

To somebody observing it from the outside, it looks like something that would take place in a Banana Republic – the police using thuggish tactics, threatening and intimidating ordinary citizens. Ripping the press credentials off of Amy Goodman. It’s just outrageous.

And then there’s the excessive force in these raids, where you’re going in with machine guns. Police have a right to defend themselves, but the idea that you’re going in with that much firepower in a situation where there’s nothing to suppose that that sort of thing would be necessary — it’s frightening. It’s not what policing is all about. It’s a military raid, it’s not a police action.

But it is very police-state like, which is the most troubling aspect of it all.

Right. And you know, so much of it too – in the last number of years there has been an excessive of SWAT teams to service warrants where there really is not an expectation of hostility. It’s been well documented. And just the uniforms these police wear, where they’re increasingly looking like military uniforms rather than the peace officer on the street serving the community.

It’s the professionalization of the police on steroids. With the’ roid rage.

The idea that just because someone is pointing a camera at you, you have the right to take the camera away or destroy the film or the tape – which is something we’ve had documented – you know, that’s not part of policing. That they would feel they have the power to do that is troubling.

And again, with this type of order going out, and being endorsed by the Justice Department, is even more troubling.

You mentioned the $2 million paid out by the NYPD. And the other lesson of that is that these kinds of actions can be very costly for the civic entities that are responsible for them happening. At some point you would think the city of St. Paul would rein this kind of stuff in because they may be facing a big fat bill at the end of this road.

It’s interesting. We’ve seen this all over. We’ve seen it recently in Maryland, where the Maryland State Police were spying on antiwar and anti-death penalty groups, where the law enforcement agencies aren’t able to distinguish between what is a real threat and what isn’t. It’s not just the invasion of privacy and civil liberties, but what a complete waste of resources. And now the scandal has played out, and I’m sure it’s taken quite a portion of the leadership of the Maryland State Police. I’m sure if you asked them now whether it was worth it, investigating this peaceful group so you have this intelligence collected about them, and that intelligence itself showed that they were not doing anything improper, was worthwhile, I’m sure they would say, ‘No, I wish we could do it all over and not do this sort of stuff.’

Yet one police department does not seem to learn from the mistakes of another. Quite the contrary, they learn the techniques, but they don’t learn the ultimate costs.

The AP’s Lame-Ass Excuses For Ron Fournier

[Cross-posted at Firedoglake.]

 

Michael Calderone at the Politico blog managed to get ahold of the talking points that the Associated Press is circulating to managers trying to deal with readers and service subscribers angry over Ron Fournier’s ongoing battle with his journalistic bias. Here they are.

Nearly everything in them has already been noted by Fournier’s critics; the talking points natter endlessly about his career, and downplay the significance of his dalliances with the McCain campaign and Karl Rove, taking Fournier’s own lame apology, such as it was — "I regret the breezy nature of the correspondence" — at face value. Like Fournier himself, AP refuses to recognize that the "breezy nature of the correspondence" revealed an inappropriate familiarness with Rove, just as the willingness to talk to the McCain campaign about a position with a campaign he’s covering reveals a partisan inclination inappropriate for anyone covering the campaign generally — and in both cases, the very clear appearance of a conflict of interest.

The essence of the talking points’ would-be refutation is contained in one sentence:

The analysis was similar in perspective, tone and content to what other journalists for major news organizations were writing or saying.

If they worked for Fox News or Town Hall, perhaps. It’s hard to tell: A search for "obama biden ‘lack of confidence’ " comes up with 38,300 hits — and a run through the first 20 pages indicates that every single one of them links in some fashion to Fournier’s hit piece. So if someone else said this, their influence was wildly overmatched by the massive reach of Fournier’s piece.

Which is the point here: If AP’s standards for "analysis" include producing unbalanced propaganda for one side of a political campaign, then those standards have indeed fallen mightily since the reign of Walter Mears — who would never have been caught dead indulging such crap as emerges from the laptop of Ron Fournier. Especially because the AP’s reach is so deep and so powerful.

This is an abuse of their monopoly on newswire service, and their member-papers’ editors ought to be outraged.

Go here to sign our letter to the AP seeking Fournier’s removal from the presidential-campaign beat.

Live Blogging Obama's Speech

-- by Sara

My Group News Blog co-blogger Lower Manhattanite and I are in the press box at Mile High Stadium for Obama's speech and all the related festivities.

We're having a liveblogging party over at www.groupnewsblog.net. Come on over and join the fun.

The Obama Plotters: The Republican Double Standard In Law Enforcement Made Manifest

A 'serious threat'

[Cross-posted at Firedoglake.]
 

It seems there may be a reason federal law-enforcement officials are not interested in pursuing serious charges against the white-supremacist tweakers who were caught this week in Denver: The man making the decision is a Republican operative. And when it came to a threat against John McCain by a black man, he had a completely different approach.

The AP story describing the official pooh-poohing of the threat gives us a clue:

"We’re absolutely confident there is no credible threat to the candidate, the Democratic National Convention, or the people of Colorado," U.S. Attorney Troy Eid said in a statement.

But when a black man in prison sent John McCain a threatening letter containing baby powder, it was another story altogether:

The man accused of sending a threatening letter to John McCain through McCain’s Colorado headquarters office detailed the contents of his letter in an exclusive interview with 7NEWS Friday.

Marc Ramsey, an inmate in the Arapahoe County Jail, admitted that he sent the letter.On Friday afternoon, the US AttorneyTroy Eid announced Ramsey will be charged with knowingly threatening to harm or kill through the U.S. mail. The charge is punishable up to five years in federal prison and up to $250,000 fines.

"We won’t stand for threats of this kind in Colorado," Eid said. "A death threat is not a legitimate form of political expression," Eid said.

Hmmmm. Let’s see: Men with rifles, a caches of other guns and ammo, all talking about killing Obama … they’re not a "serious threat." But a man in jail sending baby powder, well, that’s a "serious threat."

So, who is Troy Eid?

Looks like Colorado needs to create another pair of binoculars (or a microscope) to look into the political agenda of US Attorney Troy Eid. The veil of secrecy has been lifted and it turns out that Eid’s appointment may have had much less to do with competency as a prosecutor than his reliability as a partisan political operative in the eyes of Karl Rove (with the almost certain glowing endorsement of Rove’s "mini-me" Dick Wadhams).

Today’s Rocky Mountain News report, Allard: Nominee’s rejection ‘strange’ Link fills in a picture of the Rove machine rejecting Allard’s firm endorsement of William Leone to stay in the job. He was a veteran prosecutor who had earned Allard’s praise as "…an effective federal prosecutor."

Eid feigns ignorance as to why he was selected by the Rove – Harriett Miers justice as political theater team. But, that doesn’t hold water under the degrees of separation test. Connecting the dots between Eid, Wadhams and Rove provides a "well, duh!" explanation.

Of course, this is the same administration that has ascertained that eco-terrorists who set houses on fire are the most serious domestic-terror threat facing us … while abortion-clinic bombers and racist-right thugs have fallen off the radar.

[H/t to cinnamonape.]

Would-Be Obama Plotters: Everyone’s Eager To Minimize The Threat

Robert Gartrell

[Cross-posted at Firedoglake.]

Law-enforcement officials are dismissing the apparent plot by white-supremacist tweakers to shoot Barack Obama in Denver because it’s clear that they weren’t competent in the least.

And of course, that means the wingnutosphere is even more eager to dismiss it, as Nitpicker reports. This includes some faux-macho posturing about guns that actually only demonstrate the wingnuts’ base ignorance about them.

Well, we’ve already observed that we were fortunate that they weren’t very competent. But where there’s smoke … well, let’s just say we shouldn’t be quite so eager to just toss this off.

Especially considering that the chief reason for dismissing any concern is that they were tweakers. This rationale was touted by the cops and seized upon by the wingnuts. But even Rachel Maddow applied this logic:

“Know how you can tell a crime isn’t going to be successful?” (Rachel) Maddow asked her new friends. “Crystal meth.”

There’s some legitimate basis to this reasoning, but it’s not wholly accurate, either — because tweakers, while innately unstable and scattered, still are capable of wreaking extraordinary harm. Example No. 1: Tim McVeigh.

The Oklahoma City bomber and his Arizona buddy Michael Fortier were prodigious tweakers. At one point, McVeigh even exchanged some stolen guns for methamphetamine. As this 2001 piece about the relationship of meth to criminal behavior notes:

In fact, McVeigh’s lawyer made an argument during the trial that his client was a practicing, paranoid, delusional "tweaker," or meth addict, whose judgment had been irreparably impaired by his drug use.

The bottom-line issue is not whether these men were actually capable of killing Obama — considering the levels of security in Denver this week, any plot would have had only an infinitesimal likelihood of succeeding in the first place, and the plotters’ apparently addled state would have reduced that to nearly nothing. Yet it seems not to have crossed anyone’s minds that even if Obama was never at risk, any number of innocent bystanders stood in harm’s way.

No, the issue remains that there is an unusual level of visceral hatred towards Obama already extant because of his race. And that hatred is being whipped up to feverish levels by the dog-whistle race-baiting that is endemic to the right-wing attacks on Obama, as well as the general levels of violent rhetoric they have been deploying for the past decade and longer and rising in recent months.

These crazies don’t act in a vacuum. And the problem is one not just for their immediate targets, but for all of us.
 

When Wingnuts Attack Each Other … They Blame Liberals

[Cross-posted at Firedoglake.]

 
All the wingnutosphere is gaga today over St. Michelle Malkin’s mugging at the hands of Alex Jones’ thugs. The Ole Perfesser, Gateway Pundit, Little Green Nutballs … you name it, they’re all over it like stink on shit.

That white-supremacist plot to kill Obama? Yawn.

But here’s the funny thing about it: Alex Jones is a far-right nutcase. I know it’s hard to imagine, but the guy actually manages to make Malkin look sane, decent and normal in comparison.

I used to write about Jones when he was heavily into "New World Order" and "Y2K Apocalypse" conspiracy theories in the 1990s. He only hates people like Malkin because they’re not far enough to the right for his tastes. Malkin, you see, is a"neocon," which the far right loathes almost as much as it despises mainstream Democrats.

You’d think that the wingnuts would figure out that these people are protesting Democrats. They’re not on our side. And many of the protests are of the right-wing fringe variety.

But that would ruin their neat little storyline about how Denver is full of fringe cases this week because Democrats just naturally attract them. Yeah, they’re here — and most of them are on Malkin’s side of the aisle. Some of them are even packing around guns.

No doubt, when these same fringe cases show up in St. Paul for the GOP Convention, that storyline will flip to where just the protesters themselves are to blame. Because in the right-wing Bizzarro Universe, that’s how it always works.

Dan Rather: ‘Straight With No Chaser’

[Cross-posted at Firedoglake.]

Dan Rather gave a talk today at the Big Tent, and it was an impressive and genuinely important one. When the video is available I’ll put it up here so you can watch the entire thing.

Much of it was a critique of modern mainstream media, as well as the business of conventions. This in particular stood out for me:

I’m sure the broadcast and cable-news outlets will do a couple of short pieces here and there about how the real story of these conventions is the vast sums of money being raised at private parties all around town. But aside from, in most cases, simply mentioning this fact, they don’t follow up on just what that money is going to do to our political system now.

As one reporter, I think the best story here is who gives the big money to whom, expecting to get what. Now maybe the coverage does not for the most part center on this, because the larger news organizations — of which I was part for a long time, it’s important for you to understand that I do not except myself from the criticism inherent in some of the things I’m going to say today — it may be, in terms of the larger news organizations, that they don’t cover stories such as who gives the big money, to whom, expecting to get what, because after all they are part of the system. The money raised by the parties and the campaigns for advertising doesn’t go to charity.

And that’s why I’m glad to see all of you here today. Those of you in the new media are afforded a great opportunity to tell the story straight with no chaser. Because your bottom line is not tied to the status quo in ways you won’t see with those running the evening news. I hope you take advantage of the freedom this gives you to report news that is worthy of the name.

There is nothing more important, more vital, to the democratic process than an independent — a truly independent press.

 Dang, you’d think the guy was reading Jane Hamsher and Glenn Greenwald or something.

user The Crazies Start Coming Out Of The Woodwork

[Cross-posted at Firedoglake.]

I got back to our hotel late last night and put on CNN as I was getting ready to fall over into my bed, when the report came on about the three men arrested in the Denver area for suspicion in a plot to assassinate Barack Obama:

The action started around 1:30 a.m. Sunday when police in the eastern suburb of Aurora stopped a truck that was swerving erratically. The driver, 28-year-old Tharin Gartrell, had a suspended driver’s license, and the truck was rented in the name of another person, said Aurora police Detective Marcus Dudley.

In the truck, officers found two rifles, including one with a scope; a bulletproof vest; boxes of ammunition; walkie-talkies; and suspected narcotics, Dudley said.
Aurora police, on edge because of heightened security surrounding the Democratic
convention in Denver, alerted federal authorities.

Three hours later, at 4:30 a.m. Sunday, federal agents arrested Johnson, 32, at a hotel in Denver. He was being held on drug charges, Dudley said.

A half-hour after that, 33-year-old Shawn Robert Adolf jumped from a sixth-story window when authorities tried to arrest him at a hotel in suburban Glendale, police said.

Adolf was hospitalized and was being held on $1 million bond for several outstanding warrants involving drug charges.

Dudley didn’t say what tied the men together but said more arrests were possible. One of the rifles was stolen, and authorities had traced it to Kansas, Dudley said.

We’ve already discussed here the likelihood that a looming Obama presidency would drive the far-right wingnuts completely over the edge and back into the realm of violence. Fortunately, these men — if they really were plotting to kill Obama — were neither very competent nor much of a serious threat to Obama, though I would wager they’d have wound up hurting someone had they not been caught.

The report on CNN occurred during the Larry King Live convention wrapup. Immediately after the report, who should show up on the screen but Michael Reagan, as part of King’s show, which featured a regular phalanx of right-wingers who then got their shot at telling viewers why the Democratic convention sucked. (Side note: Gotta wonder if King will do the converse for the Republican convention.)

Yes, that Michael Reagan. The one who on his radio talk show two months ago attacked the "9/11 troofers" by telling his listeners repeatedly that someone should "take them out and shoot them." This is the kind of speech that, if spoken by a liberal, would earn them permanent banishment from the ranks of pundithood. But Reagan’s hate speech made barely a ripple — and there he is on CNN.

Obviously, the 9/11 troofers have nothing to do with Obama. But violent speech like this raises the cultural temperature enough that people start believing that shooting the people they disagree with is a legitimate expression. Especially when the people telling them it’s OK to shoot the people they hate are showing up on CNN.

And then when the violence breaks out, of course, the Larry Kings of the world host programs wondering why things like this could happen.

An Open Letter To The Associated Press

[Cross-posted at Firedoglake.]

Before I joined the ranks of dirty foulmouthed hippie bloggers, I was your basic mainstream journalist. I started in newspapers in 1978 at small towns in the Northwest, where the rule of thumb is that most everyone in the newsroom is a jack of all trades. I was a news reporter, a photographer, a music and movie critic — but more than any other job, I was a news editor.

I started out ripping newswires back when it was fed to us by ticker tape, and by the early ’80s was pulling news from the wires by computers. In those days, there were two competing news  services — United Press International and the Associated Press. But about the same time UPI was in serious decline, and most of the newsrooms where I worked did not carry their services. By the 1990s UPI for all intents and purposes was nearly dead (and when Rev. Sun Myung Moon bought them up in 2000, it was a fait accompli) leaving the field to the AP.

In all those years ripping wires, I and the editors I worked with operated with at least a modicum of confidence that the AP was providing them with balanced, evenhanded and reasonably accurate news. Sure, it was bland work, and far too often relied on simplistic "he said/she said" journalism as a means of achieving a facsimile of balance. There wasn’t a lot of great investigative work, but there was some. Mostly, we counted on AP to provide us with the news like a basic meat-and-potatoes diet.

Which is why Ron Fournier’s unimstakable bias in his reportage on the 2008 presidential campaign is such a profound betrayal of the AP’s mission. As a monopoly — every single daily newspaper in the country now relies on the AP for its basic news services — the AP has a profound and unmistakable duty to avoid even the appearance of bias. Fournier’s reportage some time ago began reeking of bias, made worse by his dalliance with the McCain campaign last year and his footsie-playing with Karl Rove. And his recent work attacking Barack Obama makes the stink worse than meth lab’s.

Our protest of Fournier’s work, and our demand that he be removed from the presidential campaign, isn’t simply a matter of crying because our ox has been gored. Rather, it’s about recognizing the profound impact that biased reporting like Fournier’s has on the nation’s political discourse — and how seriously it damages the AP’s reputation as a reliable source of solid reportage.

Every one of those little papers I used to work at runs Fournier’s work. Indeed, every paper in the country, from the New York Times to the Sandpoint Daily Bee, runs it. The editors, the reporters, the publishers, and especially the readers of those papers can no longer rely on AP to be fair in its handling of the news — and because AP is a virtual monopoly, that is a serious problem.

It’s not, as some have suggested, that we want Fournier fired. But the conflict of interest his reporting represents is unacceptable. Every other news operation in the country, faced with such a conflict, typically will keep reporters with such conflicts from reporting on stories related to it. And that is what AP clearly must do in this case.

Perhaps AP doesn’t care enough about those editors who use their product each day with almost blind reliance on their journalistic standards. But it ought to care about its own reputation and standing in the news business to act now, and act decisively.

Off to Denver

-- by Dave

Will be in Denver for the DNC. Hope to drop in some posts, but I can never be certain about these things.

Leave John McCain’s Houses Alooooooooone!

[Cross-posted at Firedoglake.]

Hey, ask any Republican: John McCain is just a good ol’ average Joe Six Pack. Ask the Assrocket dude:

I can relate, though. For example, if a reporter asked me how many ties I own, there’s no way I could answer. Just like McCain, I’d tell him he has to ask my wife. Likewise if someone wants to know how many Wii games my kids have.

Because, you know, most of us just change our houses like we change our ties. Toss around the domiciles like so many video-game cartridges.

The truth is that McCain isn’t out of touch with "ordinary people" because he’s rich, he’s out of touch with his own domestic arrangements because he cares little about material things, and for many years has devoted his extraordinary energies not to enjoying his wife’s money, but to serving the American people.

I’m sure this is true. In fact, mebbe we ought not to go so hard on McCain.

After all, he doesn’t own any of the houses. He never has owned any of the houses. His wife is the one with the money, she’s the one who owns everything. She is the business man in the family. She wears the pants in the McCain family.

John has never had to make business decisions, buy a house, know what gas costs, or really know anything about managing money; his wife takes care of all that for him. I’m sure that it’s tough to keep track of all those houses under those conditions.

Like I say, just an average Joe Six-Pack.

UPDATE: The media (experts in Joe Six-Packdom themselves) want you to leave him aloooooone, too.


[H/t to bmaz.]

When Progressives Fight Back: Object Lesson In Washington

[Cross-posted at Firedoglake.]

 For years, progressives have been at a singular disadvantage when it comes to the money/media infrastructure needed to wage effective political campaigns. Here in Washington state, we’ve seen that manifested in the free ride afforded the building-and-development industry’s lobbying arm, the Building Industry Alliance of Washington, which has run amok waging negative smear campaigns against Democratic candidates and bolstering their own hand-picked Republican, Dino Rossi.


This year, progressives are fighting back. They’re armed with $2.4 million in cash.

And oh, the mewling that’s resulting makes Doug and Wendy Whiner sound thick-skinned.
Today’s Seattle P-I carried a report about it:

Independent from Gov. Chris Gregoire’s campaign, the newly formed Evergreen Progress PAC is flooding the airwaves with attack ads designed to tear apart Rossi’s carefully crafted public image.

"We have a pretty hard-hitting message about Dino Rossi, about what he’s done in the past, what his record is and what we think that translates into in terms of policy on issues that people care about," Evergreen Progress Committee Chairman Rick Desimone said.

Up to now, the Building Industry Association of Washington’s committee ChangePAC has been the major force behind gubernatorial independent expenditures, but with $2 million contributed thus far this election cycle, it is a runner-up to Evergreen Progress.

"It makes us look like a Chihuahua," BIAW spokeswoman Erin Shannon said.
Desimone said Evergreen Progress is a direct response to the BIAW’s independent political actions — nonstop attacks on Gregoire.

Evergreen Progress is funded with money from the Service Employees International Union, the state employees union and the state teachers union, among other sources.

It’s the union’s involvement that has the right up in arms. Because, you see, whoever is governor is going to be negotiating state labor contracts.

Nevermind, of course, that whoever is governor is also going to be setting environmental standards, revising tax codes, and handling a multitude of issues that are the BIAW’s meat and potatoes too.
It’s only when their interests are at stake that negative campaigning is allowed, evidently.

The best thing about the Evergreen Progress ads: They’re not nasty — unlike the BIAW’s ads. They’re factual (which also distinguishes them from the BIAW). And they’re effective. (Ditto.)
When progressives fight back — and especially when they do it well — they win. As we saw in Tuesday’s primary, Rossi is not gaining on Gregoire at all, but rather losing it. And these ads probably have a lot to do with it.

One’s heart bleeds for the BIAW, too. Couldn’t happen to a nicer bunch of folks.

So much for that 'respectful campaign'

-- by Dave

One thing I, in all my travels here -- Americans want a respectful campaign. They do, they want it. Now, people say, well, negative ads move numbers. They may. But do we have to go to the lowest common denominator? I don't think so.

John McCain, July 2008

So the latest WSJ/NBC poll (the same one showing Barack Obama's lead slipping away) also shows that Americans think John McCain is running a negative campaign:

By a nearly six-to-one margin, voters say Republican presidential candidate John McCain is running a negative campaign against his Democratic rival, Barack Obama, according to the latest Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll.

Nearly three in 10 voters, 29%, pointed to McCain as the candidate running a negative campaign, compared to just 5% who said Obama is running a negative campaign. McCain’s 29% rating is the highest of any one candidate in the previous two presidential elections according to the WSJ/NBC News survey.

Know what? They're right. It's not just their opinion. It's a quantifiable fact.

The other week the Boston Globe created a word pile (click on the graphic to see it full size) analyzing the words being used by the two campaigns and teasing out which were used the most, and in what connotation. Obama's campaign, as you can see, is largely about Obama, and it's overwhelmingly positive. McCain's campaign, like a mirror image, is likewise all about Obama, and it's overwhelmingly negative.

It wasn't exactly by accident that his high-school classmates dubbed him "McNasty."

[H/t to Silent Patriot.]

[Cross-posted at Firedoglake.]

Good signs for Darcy Burner

-- by Dave

Photo by Karen Ducey/P-I

Darcy Burner didn't quite get the victory in Washington's primary election last night she was hoping for -- but it was close: Dave Reichert outpolled her only 48-45 percent.

Two factors were at play here, and both are good signs for Burner's campaign going forward:

• This was a low-turnout primary, and in those conditions, Republicans have traditionally outperformed the general-election results in this district.
• There were more total votes cast for Democrats (Burner had two opponents) than for Reichert.

Indeed, it has to be deeply discomforting for any incumbent congressman -- especially one in a district that has never elected a Democrat to Congress -- to look at those results. Anything under 50 percent in a primary means that he's losing serious ground.

Indeed, out of the 94 congressional races in this kind of primary in the state between 1982 and 2002, incumbents missed the 50 percent mark only 10 times. Out of those 10, seven went on to lose in November.

As the P-I reported this morning, all signs point to another razor-thin margin in the 8th District this year.

On the other hand, the fact that Burner didn't outpoll Reichert clearly tells her -- and everyone -- that she has her work cut out if she wants to win in November. It will be an uphill battle, and it'll take a supreme (and supremely smart) effort on everyone's part to get her on the winning side of that thin margin.

Go to Darcy's Blue America page to help if you can.

‘Audacious’ Is The New ‘Presumptuous’, Formerly 'Uppity'

[Cross-posted at Firedoglake.]

A few weeks ago it was "presumptuous." Now we’re seeing "audacious" as the new word of choice among the wingnuts to describe Barack Obama.

It’s kind of clever, really — take a keyword from the title of one of his books and use it to call him "uppity" without actually saying it. But then, the dog-whistle components of this campaign, as we’ve seen, are becoming increasingly sophisticated.

David Fredosso at The Corner uses it to counter Obama’s attack on the smear merchants peddling the "Obama is a baby killer" theme. Evidently, he’s "audacious" for calling a pack of liars exactly what they are.

Even better was James Taranto’s wielding of the term in his attack on Obama in today’s WSJ. According to Taranto, Obama showed "amazing chutzpah" in his effort to call on John McCain to reel in his vicious attacks on Obama’s patriotism and acknowledge that both of them have worked over the years for America’s security and place it atop their priorities. Here’s what Obama said:

I have never suggested that Sen. McCain picks his positions on national security based on politics or personal ambition. I have not suggested it because I believe that he genuinely wants to serve America’s national interest. Now, it’s time for him to acknowledge that I want to do the same.

And Taranto?

Of course, if Obama were to accuse McCain of picking his positions on national security based on politics or personal ambition, everyone would laugh, because it obviously is not true.

Oh, we’re laughing all right. I’m sure last week’s display of McCain’s militarism — particularly the "We’re all Georgians now" speech — had nothing whatsoever to do with politics or the Georgian lobbyists with whom McCain surrounded himself.

Chutzpah indeed.

Hannity Thinks Those Evil Liberals Think Conservatives Are Evil

[Cross-posted at Firedoglake.]

 We’ve already gotten a preview of David Zucker’s attempt at right-wing humor in the form of the fall movie American Carol. If the preview at right is anything to go by, it’s going to be about as funny as Mallard Fillmore. Or cancer. Take your pick.

It’s also a preview of the main theme we’re going to hear come October, just in time for the election: liberals hate America, Democrats can’t be trusted to stand up for the country. In fact, they just oughta be slapped silly at every opportunity. Or perhaps worse.

So last night Zucker was on Fox’s Hannity & Colmes program, whining about how liberals all think conservatives are bad people — because evidently this somehow justifies making a film depicting liberals as bad people. And out of Sean Hannity’s mouth came this nugget of wisdom in response:

HANNITY: I think — I think they think we’re evil. You know, I mean, if you read, you know, the things — it’s funny because there is this double standard out there in both radio and television.

You know, if I were to say on my 530 radio stations or right here on the FOX News Channel half the stuff that liberals say about me, lies told on a regular basis — and I don’t really pay attention to it because I don’t care — I would be probably thrown off the air, targeted for boycotts.

Quoth the author of Deliver Us From Evil: Defeating Terrorism, Despotism and Liberalism.

Quoth the guy who thinks it’s just peachy for right-wing rock stars to announce death wishes for liberal politicians from the stage.

Quoth the host who agrees when his guests compare Obama’s black church to the KKK.

Quoth the man who called Harry Reid a "propaganda minister for our enemies."

Well, I could go on all day, but you get the idea. Sean Hannity thinks liberals think he’s evil, though he’d have to go dig up some anonymous e-mails to prove the point (and we’re sure he will).

Meanwhile he authors a book, and spends every one of his Fox broadcasts, declaring liberals evil.
Projection: Not just for theaters anymore. Indeed, as we’ll see this fall, it’s a concrete political strategy.

Who Is Orson Swindle And Why The Hell Should We Believe Him?

[Cross-posted at Firedoglake.]

The exquisitely named Orson Swindle has stepped up to claim that he remembers John McCain telling the "cross in the dirt" tale back in the early ’70s, even though the earliest appearance of it in any speech of McCain’s is in 2000. The wingnutosphere invariably is describing him as "a fellow POW." But as usual, he’s much more than that.

Of course, this is all about people claiming to be eyewitnesses to certain events, and the only evidence is their say-so, which makes their credibility paramount.

How credible, exactly, is Orson Swindle? Well, consider, for instance:

Swindle served as executive director of "United We Stand, America", and spokesman for Ross Perot‘s 1992 presidential campaign.

Swindle is a Senior Policy Advisor at the lobbying firm of Hunton & Williams in Washington, DC. …

Swindle is also on the board of Citizens Against Government Waste (CAGW), an independent political advocacy group that seeks to eliminate waste, mismanagement, and inefficiency in the federal government. Throughout its history, CAGW has been accused of fronting lobbying efforts of corporations to give them the appearance of "grassroots" support. In part, this is because CAGW has accepted donations from Phillip Morris, the Olin Foundation, the Bradley Foundation, Microsoft, Merrill-Lynch, and Exxon-Mobil. CAGW also has ties to convicted lobbyist Jack Abramoff. While CAGW describes itself as non-partisan, it has endorsed John McCain for president and donated $11,000 to his campaign or groups controlled by him.

OK, so here we have a lobbyist — one of many on McCain’s support team — who’s also a right-wing Republican operative with a history of setting up sham "grassroots" organizations that do the bidding of business and corporate interests. He’s pouring thousands of dollars into McCain’s campaign and lining up thousands more.

And you want us to take his story backing up McCain at face value?

Sure we will.

This sort of "eyewitness account" brings to mind Bill Calhoun. You may remember him: He was the former Alabama National Guardsman who claimed to have spent time with George W. Bush in the early 1970s; it turned out, of course, that Bush wasn’t at the base at all at the times Calhoun claimed to have met him.

It’s possible John McCain really did have the "cross in the dirt" experience exactly like Alexander Solzhenitsyn’s. It’s also possible that little fairies encapsulated in lightly scented bubbles fly out his ass when he farts.

But until the McCain campaign comes up with a more credible witness, you’ll have to pardon us if we choose not to swallow this one. Because the scent suggests otherwise.

UPDATE: Andrew Sullivan notes that Swindle had quite another version of their discussions in May. 

Meanwhile, another former POW who served with McCain writes that he won’t be voting for McCain, and why.

Why Democrats Face An Uphill Battle In The Suburbs

[Cross-posted at Firedoglake.]

Matt Stoller has been out canvassing in my onetime stomping grounds, the suburban precincts of the greater Seattle area’s Eastside — specifically, Mercer Island — trying to help get out the vote for Darcy Burner, who’s running against Republican Rep. Dave Reichert in Washington’s 8th District.

He came away with a keen insight into the uphill fight Democrats face on the ground this year, despite their many surface advantages:

All of this is to say that walkable neighborhoods and public spaces are very good for politics. As most of the country is suburban, it is very hard to find public spaces where politics can be conducted. Robocalls, TV ads, radio ads, direct mail, and phone banks are all proxies for a lack of civic culture, in which pestering voters with jackhammer-like messaging screaming IRAQ or TAXES takes the place of engaging with people in real conversations. This kind of politics is literally built into the fabric of the suburbs, which is one reason why certain types of authoritarian messaging works really well in both the Democratic and Republican parties. The web functions differently, based on varying levels of trust, but that is not how relating to the general electorate operates.

One of the realities I recall from my years of working on the Eastside as a reporter and editor (at the old Bellevue Journal American, where I was the news editor) was that it was not unusual to send a reporter out to talk to neighbors of someone who had made the news (usually through some tragedy or crime) and come away empty-handed. Neighbors often did not know each other at all; the preferred lifestyle in many of the suburban neighborhoods was simply to roll into their fortresses at the end of the workday, roll the garage door behind them, and retreat to their little patches o’ heaven.

And as I explored a bit in my book about a slice of the Eastside’s history, Strawberry Days, suburbs like these were essentially founded as exclusively white enclaves, and predicated on providing homeowners personal security, away from the crime of the cities. So making political appeals in these districts entails finding ways to break through the barriers they build around themselves — while still reassuring them that you intend to help keep their "way of life" intact.

For Democrats, it takes a special awareness and finely tuned framing. You have to speak in their language. Candidates like Burner have their work cut out for them — especially when their opponents are paternalistic authority figures like the former sheriff.

Tomorrow is Washington’s primary election. Burner has built up terrific momentum so far — she’s out-raising Reichert by a wide margin (inspiring a certain desperation on his part) and closing the gap in the polls. She’s even managed to overcome the loss of her home to fire, thanks to the outpouring of support from around the country and her district.

But on Tuesday it will be up to voters on the ground in the 8th District to make that momentum real. Getting a majority of the votes in the primary won’t mean anything concrete, but it would provide an important psychological boost, as well as change the narrative in the campaign.

Once again, regional media are pretending that Reichert is a "moderate Republican," and Darcy is being dismissed as a netroots darling. It hasn’t been pretty. A primary win could alter that narrative for good.

So for those of you who are voters there, remember at the least to make sure you make it to the polls today. And for those who can, sign up to volunteer for Darcy today. You can make a difference in getting out the vote.