February 2008 Archives
Senator Larry Craig is looking for interns for his staff. Seriously, I'm not kidding.
If you've ever wanted to be a fly on the wall in Sen. Larry Craig's office, now's your chance.The Idaho Republican has just announced he's taking applications for summer internships in his Capitol Hill office, which has been the brunt of gossip and many a colorful "wide stance" joke ever since last summer, when Craig was busted in a Minneapolis-St. Paul airport men's room sex sting.
"Interns have the chance to be an essential part of a working congressional office," Craig said in a press release issued Tuesday. "They participate in the legislative process as well as ensure that constituent services run smoothly. For those interested in politics, it is an incredible opportunity to get a behind-the-scenes look at how our government functions while serving the people of Idaho."
Craig is giving preference to "Idaho applicants attending Idaho schools who are in their junior or senior years of college (including graduating seniors)."
The interns Craig seeks are "expected to fulfill some administrative duties such as answering phones, sorting mail and greeting constituents."
Better hurry, kids. This will likely be your last chance to be a summer intern in Senator Craig's office. Craig, who was rebuked by the Senate Ethics Committee this month for his bathroom conviction, says he's retiring next January when his term expires.
So, if you are a self-hating gay person who is looking for an internship where your self-loathing will be understood, hidden, AND supported secretly, you know where to go for a job.
And if you aren't, and you do happen to get the intern job, I'd seriously rethink the whole "toe tapping as sign of impatient behavior" thing.
I wanted to share here this list of corrupt Bush Administration officials who either have resigned or need to. The research was done by some of the staff at Talking Points Memo. Since the list could be endless, they narrowed it down with a requirement that there had to have been a criminal probe or had completely corrupted the office they held. So these people are bad, since Karl Rove didn't even make the cut. They also had to be political appointees or such insiders that they may as well have been.
Indicted / Convicted/ Pled Guilty
* Eric G. Andell - deputy undersecretary of newly Office of Safe and Drug-Free Schools - pleaded guilty to one count of conflict of interest for using government travel for personal causes
* Claude Allen - Assistant to the President for Domestic Policy- resigned, pled guilty to shoplifting from Target stores.
* Lester Crawford - Commissioner, FDA - resigned after only two months on the job. He pleaded guilty to two misdemeanor counts, making a false writing and conflict of interest.
* Brian Doyle - Deputy Press Secretary, Department of Homeland Security - Resigned in wake of child sex scandal. He pleaded no contest to seven counts of use of a computer to seduce a child and sixteen counts of transmitting harmful material to a minor. He is to register as a sex offender.
* Steven Griles - Deputy Secretary at the Interior Department - is the highest-ranked administration official yet convicted in the Jack Abramoff scandal.
* John T. Korsmo – Chairman of the Federal Housing Finance Board – pleaded guilty in 2005 to lying to the Senate and an inspector general. He swore he had no idea how a list of presidents for FHFB-regulated banks were invited to a fundraiser for his friend's congressional campaign. On the invites, Korsmo was listed as the "Special Guest."
* Scooter Libby - Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff - resigned after being indicted for lying to a grand jury and investigators in connection with the investigation stemming from the leak of Valerie Wilson’s covert CIA operative's identity. President Bush commuted Libby's sentence by removing the thirty months in prison he was to serve.
* David Safavian - Office of Federal Procurement Policy at the Office of Management and Budget - convicted of lying to ethics officials and Senate investigators about his ties to lobbyist Jack Abramoff.
* Robert Stein - former comptroller for Coalition Provisional Authority, Iraq - pleaded guilty to conspiracy, bribery, conspiracy to commit money laundering, possession of a machine gun, and being a felon in possession of a fire arm.
* Roger Stillwell - desk officer, Interior Department - pleaded guilty to failing to report Redskins tickets and free dinners from Jack Abramoff.
Resigned Due to Investigation, Pending Investigation or Allegations of Impropriety
* Philip Cooney - chief of staff, White House Council on Environmental Quality - oil industry lawyer with no scientific expertise, resigned after it was revealed he had watered down reports on global warming.
* George Deutsch - press aide, NASA - resigned amid allegations he prevented the agency's top climate scientist from speaking publicly about global warming.
* Michael Elston - chief of staff to Deputy Attorney General McNulty - announced his resignation. Despite allegations that he’d threatened at least four of the eight fired US Attorneys, McNulty said Elston had served the Justice Department "with distinction for nearly eight years."
* Kyle Dustin “Dusty” Foggo - appointed executive director of the CIA - resigned and was ultimately indicted on bribery charges related to the Duke Cunningham scandal.
* Alberto Gonzales - Attorney General - resigned without explanation amidst investigations of the firings of U.S. Attorneys, the politicization of the Justice Department, warrantless surveillance, and the torture and mistreatment of detainees.
* Monica Goodling - senior counsel to Attorney General Alberto Gonzales - resigned amidst investigation of firings of U.S. Attorneys.
* Michelle Larson Korsmo - deputy chief of staff, Department of Labor - Helped her husband with his donor scam. Left her Labor plum job before news broke that she and her husband were the targets of a criminal probe.
* Howard "Cookie" Krongard - State Department inspector general -- accused of not properly investigating State Department contractor fraud in Iraq and Afghanistan; retaliating against whistleblowers; not telling the truth about his brother's ties with Blackwater.
* Julie Macdonald - former deputy assistant secretary at the Interior Department - resigned after an she improperly leaked information to private organizations, bullied staff scientists and broke federal rules."
* Paul McNulty - Deputy Attorney General for the Department of Justice – resigned, after questions about his involvement in the U.S. attorney firings and his testimony to Congress about the firings.
* Richard Perle - Chairman, Defense Policy Board - resigned from Pentagon advisory panel amid conflict-of-interest charges.
* Susan Ralston - assistant, White House - resigned amidst revelations that she had accepted thousands of dollars in gifts from Abramoff without compensating him, counter to White House ethics rules.
* Janet Rehnquist - Department of Health and Human Services - resigned in the face of an investigation into her alleged efforts to block a politically dangerous probe on behalf of the Bush family.
* James Roche - secretary, U.S. Air Force - resigned in the wake of the Boeing tanker lease scandal, after it was revealed he pushed for Boeing to win a $23 billion contract.
* Kyle Sampson - chief of staff for Attorney General Gonzales - resigned amidst the investigation of firings of U.S. Attorneys.
* Joseph Schmitz - Inspector General, Defense - Resigned amid charges he personally intervened to protect top political appointees.
* Bradley Schlozman - resigned from the Justice Department after actively politicizing the department. He's currently under investigation by the Department's inspector general.
* Thomas Scully - Administrator, Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services - after Scully resigned, Department of Health and Human Services inspector general found Scully pressured the agency's actuary to underestimate the cost of Medicare reform bill by $100 billion until after Congress passed the bill.
* David Smith - deputy assistant secretary for fish, wildlife, and parks, Interior Department - resigned after shooting a buffalo and accepting its skeletal remains and meat as an illegal gratuity.
* John Tanner - Voting Rights Section Chief, Justice Department - resigned and moved to the Office of Special Counsel for Immigration-Related Unfair Employment Practices. Under suspicion for aiding efforts to politicize the voting section,he angered lawmakers with his comments that such voter protection laws discriminate against white voters because "minorities die first".
* Sara Taylor - Deputy Assistant to the President and Director of Political Affairs, Karl Rove´s top aide - resigned amidst the U.S. attorneys investigation and other probes of Rove´s alleged politicization of the government.
* Ken Tomlinson - Board Chairman, Corporation for Public Broadcasting - resigned at release of an inspector general report concluding he broke laws in spending CPB money to hire politically connected consultants to search for "bias". A separate investigation found he was running a "horse racing operation" out of his office.
* Carl Truscott - Director, Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives Bureau - resigned. A report by the Justice Department's inspector general found that Truscott wasted tens of thousands of dollars on luxuries, millions on whimsical management decisions and violated ethics rules by ordering employees to help his nephew with a high school video project.
* Paul Wolfowitz - World Bank President - resigned after a committee report found that he broke ethics rules by giving his girlfriend a substantial raise.
Nomination Failed Due to Scandal
* Linda Chavez - nominated, Secretary of Labor - withdrew her nomination amidst revelations that an illegal immigrant lived in her home and worked for her in the early 1990s.
* Timothy Flanigan - nominated, Deputy Attorney General withdrew his nomination amidst revelations that he'd worked closely with Abramoff when he was General Counsel for Corporate and International Law at Tyco, a client of Abramoff's.
* Bernard Kerik - nominated, Secretary, Department of Homeland Security - withdrew his nomination amidst a host of corruption allegations. Pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor relating to improper gifts totaling tens of thousands of dollars while a New York City official in the 1990's. Kerik was indicted on sixteen counts for bribery, tax fraud, and false statements.
* William Mercer - the former associate deputy attorney general and US Attorney for Montana - withdrew his nomination to be the permanent number three official at the Department of Justice due to his role in the U.S. attorney firings.
* Hans von Spakovsky - Commissioner, FEC - nomination to another term after his recess appointment failed due to allegations that he'd worked at the Justice Department to suppress minority voter turnout.
Under Investigation But Still in Office
* Stuart Bowen - Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction (SIGIR) - was admired for successes investigating allegations of waste and fraud in Iraq, but now allegations prompted four government investigations into Office of the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction (SIGIR).
* Lurita Doan - Administrator of the U.S. General Services Administration - still in office, despite investigations by both the Office of Special Counsel and the House oversight committee that found that Doan had "crossed the line" by suggesting that the GSA use its resources to help Republicans get elected.
* Alfonso Jackson - Secretary of Housing and Urban Development - following reports that Jackson told a business group he once canceled a contract after the contractor criticized Bush, an investigation by HUD inspector general found that while Jackson told his deputies to favor Bush supporters, there was "no direct proof that a contract was actually awarded or rescinded because of political affiliation."
Rats have left the sinking ship but it's still infested. We need to run the bums out.
Mike Huckabee says that he got into the race at the instruction of God. As they say, the Lord works in mysterious ways. The New York Times has just broken a story that has to be at least a partial answer to Huckabee's fervid prayers.
Seems that back in John McCain's 2000 presidential campaign, his staffers became so alarmed that he might be having an affair with Vicki Iseman, a 32-year old lobbyist, that they intervened with him, and one of his highest ranking aides met with the woman and told her to stay away from McCain.
And for someone who has gotten up pretty high on the high horse of ethics and rectitude, McCain carried all kinds of water for telecommunications bills that explicitly benefitted companies that were clients of Iseman's lobbying firm.
Read of the Times piece. I have heard that the Times had this story BEFORE this year's Iowa caucuses, and sat on it after mega-lobbyist-lawyer Bill Bennett met with Times editors. What is it with these people at the Times? In 2004, they sat on the story about Bush's illegal wiretapping for months before the November election, knowing perfectly well that the story would blow a big hole in Bush's re-election campaign,Just how cynical do you have to be to have even the slightest chance of understanding what's really going on in the land of big media and lobbying?
Ever since I began blogging, Josh Marshall has been my hero and my mentor. He has courage and integrity, intelligence and wit, talent and dedication that is rare in any profession, let alone journalism. He is modest. He is humble. He is kind. I could go on, but he would hate that, so I won't.
Instead, what I will say is this--today, Josh Marshall was awarded the George Polk Award for Excellence in Journalism, Legal Reporting. It was awarded to him for his work, along with Justin Rood and Paul Kiel, in leading the national news media on the story of the politically motivated firings of the US Attorneys.
From the Polk Awards announcement press release:
The Polk Award for Legal Reporting will go to Joshua Micah Marshall, editor and publisher of the widely read political blog, Talking Points Memo. His sites, www.talkingpointsmemo.com and www.tpmMuckraker.com, led the news media in coverage of the politically motivated dismissals of United States attorneys across the country. Noting a similarity between firings in Arkansas and California, Marshall and his staff (with his staff reporter-bloggers Paul Kiel and Justin Rood) connected the dots and found a pattern of federal prosecutors being forced from office for failing to do the Bush Administration's bidding. Marshall’s tenacious investigative reporting sparked interest by the traditional news media and led to the resignation of Attorney General Alberto Gonzales. http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/us-attorneys/2007/03/
We extend our personal and professional congratulations to our friend Josh, who is not only a deserving reporter and editor, but a real leader in the field of journalism. Real journalism. The way it used to be practiced--with grit and guts, intelligence and hard work.
The Polk Award is not merely prestigious, it is coveted and its list of winners reads like a who's who of real journalists. I know that others love their Pulitzer Prizes. Leave them to it. Who knows, Josh may win that, too, but for my money, the Polk Award is for the reporters who have displayed courage and an unrelenting resilience in their work. And I'm not the only one that thinks so:
Mass communication turns election campaigns into sound bite contests and makes millionaires of impudent paparazzi. But it also offers the press more opportunity to live up to the billing William Hazlitt gave the British journalist William Cobbett more than 175 years ago as "a kind of fourth estate." By unearthing myriad forms of scandal and deceit in the last half-century, reporters have assumed an increasingly vital role in alerting and, ultimately, protecting the public.Nowhere is this phenomenon more evident than in the list of winners of the George Polk Awards. Established by Long Island University in 1949 to memorialize the CBS correspondent slain covering a civil war in Greece, the George Polk Award has become one of America's most coveted journalism honors -- and probably its most respected. Russell Baker and Bill Moyers, among others, say the George Polk Award means more to them than any other prize. When Washington Post reporter Ronald Kessler won a George Polk Award for national reporting some years ago, his boss, Ben Bradlee, was taken aback because the Post hadn't even submitted Kessler's stories. "I can't believe it," Bradlee said on learning of the award. "We thought it was far and away the best thing we printed all year, but we didn't enter it because we felt it was not the kind of work that wins awards."
Some of the biggest names in journalism have won George Polk Awards -- Christiane Amanpour, Roger Angell, R. W. Apple, Homer Bigart, Jimmy Breslin, Walter Cronkite, Gloria Emerson, Frances FitzGerald, Thomas Friedman, David Halberstam, Seymour Hersh, Marguerite Higgins, Chet Huntley, Peter Jennings, John Kifner, Ted Koppel, Charles Kuralt, Joseph Lelyveld, Tony Lukas, Mary McGrory, Edward R. Murrow, Jack Newfield, Roger Rosenblatt, Morley Safer, Oliver Sacks, Harrison Salisbury, Sidney Schanberg, Daniel Schorr, Eric Sevareid, Howard K. Smith, Red Smith, I. F. Stone and Nina Totenberg.
And now we add Joshua Micah Marshall's name to that list.
It looks good there. It's right where it belongs.
Now isn't it amazing we have gotten to this point again, already headed toward the convention and no nominee? I was 15 years old and ironing clothes for money as I watched the 1968 Democratic convention. (I was already working for the Eugene McCarthy campaign in South Dakota - "Be Clean for Gene" "The Children's Campaign" etc.) Now I'm reading "Boom: Personal Reflections of the '60s and Today" by Tom Brokaw (a fellow South Dakotan) and it's all coming back. I remember seeing Mayor Daley's police (his son is still Mayor of Chicago) bashing the heads of even delegates outside the convention center! This summer's Democratic Convention will be the 40 year anniversary of the infamous 1968 convention. The issues are not quite the same, yet similar enough to give some of us profound feelings of deja vu. So this is a refresher for those who remember, and a primer for those who have come after, in the hopes that we don't repeat the mistakes of yesterday!
History
John Kerry (who had returned from Vietnam and backed RFK) once said he'd wanted to write a book called "1968". He returned to a country divided, which was reflected in what happened in the election that year. In 1968, the press and polls were skeptical about McCarthy's antiwar platform, yet young people flocked to help him. Thousands left school and work to sleep on floors, phoning voters for primaries. RFK was his major opponent, but was assassinated in June before the convention, which followed the assassination of MLK in April. RFK had a similar platform and the primary competition had been intense! Had RFK lived and beat McCarthy in the primaries, could have been the nominee. McCarthy actually won 42% of the popular primary vote, and beat LBJ soundly enough in the New Hampshire primary to cause him to pull out of the race. (LBJ had favored reduction of force only after the Paris Peace Talks were completed.)
In 1968, winning primaries did not necessarily result in delegate votes at the national convention, as the delegate selection process was heavily controlled by state party honchos. McCarthy therefore received only 23% of the votes at the convention and Vice President Humphrey (who replaced LBJ as the candidate of the party establishment) got the nomination on the first ballot with 67%, to run against Nixon in the general election and lose by a razor-thin margin.
The convention itself was chaotic, with clashes between protesters and police. TIME magazine did a cover story on breakdown of police discipline. The whole thing was a media circus, followed by a flood of magazine and books about how and why it happened. Some historians contend that the party fragmentation has never been completely repaired, and return to war and economic strain tax it further. The Democrats did reform the nominating process (with a Commission headed by McGovern, another South Dakotan) after the 1968 fiasco, to increase the role of primaries and decrease the power of party delegates. Primary votes counted for more in terms of delegate selection, and African Americans, women and youth were better represented at the convention. More recent reforms since then have resulted somewhat in return of relative power to the party delegates (aka "superdelegates".)
Deja Vu
The Superdelegates are seated automatically, based on their status in the party. They are free to support any candidate they choose, so are also known as "unpledged delegates." They make up approximately 1/5 of the total delegates. If the race is close enough, they make act as kingmakers and "broker" the Democratic convention. Such a scenario is being talked up, given the closeness of the race between Hillary Clinton (who would need 86% of the remaining pledged delegates to win the nomination outright) and Barack Obama (who would need 80%). Approximately 300 superdelegates have not publicly announced who they will support. Former Vice President Al Gore and a number of other senior Democrats plan to remain neutral for now in the presidential race in part to keep open the option to broker a peaceful resolution to what they fear could be a bitterly divided convention. If it came to pass, it could be the first time since 1952 that there has not been a nominee on the first ballot.
Here is a List of 2008 United States Democratic Party Superdelegates (by endorsement, subject to change) The list is Clinton-leaning, as far as the House and DNC, but glancing through it, it is apparent that some on the list have shifted to Obama as he gains momentum. There also does not appear to be a distinct pattern of support by race or gender, with minorities and women both split, just as with the electorate. Delegate counts given by various media outlets do not match, nor on the candidates' websites. The Republicans have a projected nominee, but issues of their own in attaining party unity. As usual, the Democrats are a little harder to herd into the tent, which keeps things dynamic. Each superdelegate has to consider that they or their friends may be up for re-election and factor that in to their decision.
"If there is no struggle there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom and yet depreciate agitation…want crops without plowing up the ground, they want rain without thunder and lightening. They want the ocean without the awful roar of its many waters…. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will."
Frederick Douglass, 1857
I have been thinking--and talking with some of you--about what we ought to be focusing on as the rest of the blogosphere takes off after the presidential race over the next few months. Of course, we still have the same concerns we had back in 2004, when we began this blog and the journey to do whatever we could to restore democracy: voting concerns, media reform, and occasionally, healthcare, torture, free speech, etc.
But while I know the issue of the extraordinary powers of the executive under Bush has been discussed all over the blogosphere, (48,500 hits on Google, for one), I am still not clear on what we can or should be doing about it.
I have had a suspicion that the Democrats in Congress (some of them, anyway) want those powers for themselves and will not address them if and when one of them makes it into office. I would like to think that a few of them feel differently about that, and are willing to cede back to the people those certain inalienable rights. And I am not talking 'bout guns either.
Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness: what does that mean, operationally?
If we think about the Declaration of Independence as a vision statement, or even a mission statement, it becomes clear we have drifted. Read through and see what you think:
I have been a torturer.
That's an unusual claim for anyone on this blog to make, but I can back it up.
Check out this video, which features an interview with Michael Ratner of the Center for Constitutional Rights. The Center is involved in defending some of the detainees at Guantanamo. The feds just announced that they were indicting 6 detainees on charges that could bring them the death penalty, with the "trials" to take place in the kangaroo courts set up by the Military Commissions Act.
My experience as a torturer came a little while ago, when the Senate Judiciary Committee was considering the nomination of Michael Mukasey to be Attorney General, despite his repeated unwillingness to acknowledge that water-boarding was torture.
I agreed to participate in a demonstration of water-boarding in front of the Justice Department, which you can see a little clip (at 1:14 into the clip) of in the Ratner interview. I'm the guy pouring the water.
That was just a demonstration, a public relations stunt.
And that's what we had intended it to be. The victim was an actor who had agreed to play the part. We'd done a "wet-through," and he was fine. Underneath the cloth, there was a hidden piece of plastic that was supposed to keep the water out of his mouth and nose.
But something went wrong with the placement of the plastic, and it slid down.
The victim was putting up a terrific struggle. Just what an actor would be expected to do.
Unknown to us, he was actually getting water-boarded; without the plastic in the right place, the water was pouring down his nose and throat.
Thank god the container I was using only held one gallon.
It wasn't until after we started to get the victim up off the board that we began to realize that something had gone terribly wrong. He was coughing and coughing, and was clearly deeply upset.
Even in the play-acting phase, I found there was something disturbing in even pretending to commit such violence on another person. As part of the skit, the four torturers were yelling at the victim to confess, to give us the names of his comrades.
But discovering that we had actually been torturing, the real thing, made me want to throw up, and filled me with feelings of great shame.
Now comes our government saying that water-boarding is just fine, it's not torture, and we can even use evidence extracted under torture in the upcoming trials.
There's a reason that everyone outside the Bush junta who's ever looked at water-boarding thinks it's torture. Because it is. I've seen what happens to someone who was subjected to the real thing, even if only for a minute, and there's no doubt in my mind that water-boarding is torture. I am ashamed for my country that our country is in the hands of such a lawless rabble. Watching the Democrats in the Senate roll over yet again for Bush and absolve the telcoms for their participation in Bush's unconstitutional wiretapping only adds to the sense of shame.
And what about the next president? Think of all the powers, the signing statements, the executive orders that Bush has put out there. Will the next president systematically go through this filthy legacy and clean it up? Or will the temptation to hold onto the power that exists when he or she takes office be too demonic? I have no hope for McCain. We should be asking Obama and Clinton, while there is still time to get them on the record.
A National near-death experience
(Thanks to Judith, from her friend's blog Calhoun's Cannon, excerpted from original in LA Times)
We’re getting closer to the light – the one at the end of the George Bush tunnel. One year from this very moment, someone other than George Bush will be sliding behind that antique desk in the Oval Office. In embassies and outposts that fly the Stars and Stripes, photographs of a face other than Bush’s will be going upon the walls.
At long, long last. It is seven years since Bush plopped down behind that desk, seven years when hope and honor and good faith and goodwill died a little for me, for many other heartsick Americans who love this country, and for millions around the world who looked up to this country. I say “died,” and I mean that. The psychiatrist Elisabeth Kubler-Ross laid out the basic states of grief and coming to terms with loss. And Kubler-Ross’ five stages track almost perfectly the arc of how we’ve grappled and grieved over the sickening power crusade of the Bush administration gains the nation for these last seven years.
Denial: It can’t be happening. Who could expect that the man who had to win election in court, not at the polls, would instantly, arrogantly go on the attack – wiping out environmental protections unmatched since Teddy Roosevelt, throwing out scores of health and safety and accountability and privacy rules and protections that made life better for typical Americans and making “caveat emptor” the only motto of U.S. business? There must be some mistake, doctor.
Anger: It’s not fair. How dare they? How can they practice retrograde isolationism abroad and rapacious cronyism at home? How can they dishonor 9/11 by exploiting the nation’s fears to justify upending the Constitution and creating a metastasized secret government? Threatening librarians with prosecution? Arresting people wearing anti-Bush T-shirts, thus conflating protest with sedition? Sneaking and peeking on us without warrants – at the same time they’re wrapping the White House in impenetrable secrecy in the name of national security? I went to bed at night raging against the outrages – Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo, Katrina, Blackwater, Terri Schiavo – and woke to fresh ones with the morning’s news.
Bargaining: If they stop now, I’ll make my peace. OK, they have the Supreme Court, and the war they lied to get – maybe that’s enough. Maybe it’s enough that the war will bankrupt our children, justplease don’t let it bankrupt our grandchildren too. He went to war with terrorism, so if he goes to war against global warming and failing levees the way he did against terrorism, I live with a “Clear Skies” initiative that pollutes the air and a “Healthy Forests” initiative that whacks more trees. Promise me it won’thappen again, and I’ll let it go.
Depression: I can’t even lift my head to pay attention. Saddam Hussein had WME? Sure, fine, yeah. Dick Cheney doesn’t want to submit to a mandatory archive inspection, so he claims he’s not part of the executive branch? Naturally. The administration decides what it wants to do, then makes up its own facts to justify it. Reality, like history, is written by the victors. Take the science out of NASA and the Interior Department and the earth is suddenly in great shape; species are no longer endangered. Declarer “mission accomplished” with 150 dead American soldiers, and five years later, when the numbers are more than 20 times that, observe offhandedly that the U.S. could “easily” be in Iraq another 10 years. Whatever. I’ve pulled the shades.
Acceptance: Ready for whatever comes. Game over, peace out. I thought I was at the acceptance stage, but not yet.
For your amusement, DCPers, I am sharing my analysis my university put out last week, picked up by apparently no one, so it is here for us to discuss. Anyone have a different perspective or insight?
Judge the Presidential Match-Ups by the Fancy Footwork, Say Experts
Ahead of Super Tuesday, a non-verbal communication expert at the University of ____ offers an unusual perspective on the potential presidential match-ups in the election next November: by reading the candidates’ gestures and movements.
“It’s not how they run, it’s how they dance,” says Karen Bradley, a visiting associate professor of dance at the University of ___.
Among the observations offered by Bradley and her colleague, Karen Studd, an associate professor of dance at _____ University: Clinton vs. McCain “may look more like wrestling than waltzing,” while an Obama-McCain match would resemble a nimble, virtuosic dribbler vs. a “tight end,” with a “stolid and relentless ability to keep pushing back and through.”
Here’s their complete analysis and contact information. Both are certified movement analysts:
* * *
Judge the Presidential Match-Ups by the Fancy Footwork
By Karen Bradley and Karen Studd
Forget the polling data on how the remaining presidential contenders might fare against each other in November. You can get a visceral sense of what the match-ups may produce by the way the candidates move. As certified movement analysts, we see campaigns as elaborate dances and, sometimes, athletic confrontations.
Clinton vs. McCain: Flat-Footed Flamenco
Both of these candidates are running as solid, experienced, grounded leaders; both have a touch of high-mindedness. But while Mrs. Clinton showed some softness and accommodation and Mr. McCain showed a small moment of actual enjoyment in New Hampshire, expect this dance to be brutal and tough. Neither of these two is likely to “follow” the other. Both can have set jaws and we can imagine the grit with which they may face each other. And both are capable of holding their ground and digging in their heels. In fact, the contest may look more like wrestling than waltzing.
Obama vs. McCain: The Basketball Player and the Tight End
This one would be interesting. Do the American people prefer the one who can dribble for a while until making the shot? Or do we want the solid immovable guy who will hunker down and block the pass? Barack Obama’s short spurts of flow, coupled with his ability to almost levitate when he gets going on his oratory, contrast with John McCain’s stolid and relentless ability to keep pushing back and through. Watch the difference in how they stand behind a podium and deliver a message: Obama seems to be dancing back there, turning this way and that, while McCain holds onto the sides of the podium and occasionally stares down his opponents.
Clinton vs. Romney: The Realist and the Optimist
This could turn into a movie musical, with the relentlessly upbeat Romney tap dancing his way into the hearts of millions, while Hillary Clinton tries to transcend her dark, somber modern dance. Or, viewed from the opposite side of the stage, it might look like Hillary Clinton dancing circles around the always-erect Mitt Romney. Nobody would make her seem more down-to-earth than the oddly cheerful Mr. Romney and no one would make him seem more optimistic and hopeful than the grounded, pragmatic Mrs. Clinton.
Obama vs. Romney: The Cakewalk Competition
In this scenario, Obama would come off as the virtuosic mover, while Romney would keep it simple. They would not even pay a shred of attention to each other. We are not sure that even eye contact would ensue. In competition dances, this may be best. It would remain to be seen who has the best moves and who “takes the cake.” And yes, that is, in part, a race reference: the Cakewalk was a competition dance between slaveholders of slaves out-performing each other, with the winning dancer taking the cake. Such competitions produced an evolution of dance steps the world had never before beheld, blending African, Irish, and English contra-danse. But in the Romney-Obama competition, we would not expect much blending to take place.
Obama vs. Huckabee: Liturgical Dance of the American Spirit
Here you would see two men who do well from the pulpit, taking a higher road – perhaps a more lyrical one to boot. Both men have rhythm and game and a connection to their hearts. Both are highly relational and attuned to the audience, and both perform with grace. Gov. Huckabee often spreads his arms and then brings the conclusion of his message straight to his chest, with a gesture to and from the heart. Sen. Obama often turns from one side to the other with a gesture of the hand from the heart to the audience, a reaching out and across.
Clinton vs. Huckabee: The Arkansas Two-Step
Mrs. Clinton would have to channel her ability to be a little softer, more southern, more mobile, and surely she will need to listen and attune more. Mr. Huckabee will need to get a little tougher and become more a paragon of strength in addition to being a paragon of compassion. Expect a lot of trading off between meandering and straight pathways, between zooming in and stepping back to take in the whole. This competition is complex and full!
The season promises to provide an extravaganza of opportunities to assess the abilities of these candidates to perform, respond, interact and reveal who they truly are. And as the music changes constantly, with new beats and tunes required, steps are easy to change, if one is listening and responsive to the music. It’s not how they run; it’s how they dance.
We have all known for a long time that many lies were told, but now it has been quantified. During the last two elections, the Center for Public Integrity had a feature called "Buying of the President," which told how much various campaigns earned and spent. As far as I know, their studies have been reputable, so it was amazing to finally see this in print. Here is The War Card, from their website. Sparrow has posted references to this at least twice since the study came out, and some of you may be aware enough, but we need to keep spreading the word.
A study by two nonprofit journalism organizations found that President Bush and top administration officials issued hundreds of false statements about the national security threat from Iraq in the two years following the 2001 terrorist attacks. The study concluded that the statements "were part of an orchestrated campaign that effectively galvanized public opinion and, in the process, led the nation to war under decidedly false pretenses." It was posted on the Web site of the Center for Public Integrity, which worked with the Fund for Independence in Journalism. White House spokesman Scott Stanzel refused to comment on it.
The study counted 935 false statements in the two-year period. It found that in speeches, briefings, interviews and other venues, Bush and administration officials stated unequivocally on at least 532 occasions that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction or was trying to produce or obtain them or had links to al-Qaida or both.
"It is now beyond dispute that Iraq did not possess any weapons of mass destruction or have meaningful ties to al-Qaida," according to Charles Lewis and Mark Reading-Smith of the Fund for Independence in Journalism staff members, writing an overview of the study. "In short, the Bush administration led the nation to war on the basis of erroneous information that it methodically propagated and that culminated in military action against Iraq on March 19, 2003."
Named in the study along with Bush were top officials of the administration during the period studied: Vice President Dick Cheney, national security adviser Condoleezza Rice, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, Secretary of State Colin Powell, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz and White House press secretaries Ari Fleischer and Scott McClellan.
Bush led with 259 false statements, 231 about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and 28 about Iraq's links to al-Qaida, the study found. That was second only to Powell's 244 false statements about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and 10 about Iraq and al-Qaida.
The center said the study was based on a database created with public statements over the two years beginning on Sept. 11, 2001, and information from more than 25 government reports, books, articles, speeches and interviews.
"The cumulative effect of these false statements — amplified by thousands of news stories and broadcasts — was massive, with the media coverage creating an almost impenetrable din for several critical months in the run-up to war," the study concluded.
"Some journalists — indeed, even some entire news organizations — have since acknowledged that their coverage during those prewar months was far too deferential and uncritical. These mea culpas notwithstanding, much of the wall-to-wall media coverage provided additional, 'independent' validation of the Bush administration's false statements about Iraq," it said.
Center for Public Integrity
Fund for Independence in Journalism
BREAKING: Richard Clarke wrote an article for the Philadelphia Inquirer called "Setting a Standard in Fear Mongering." Clarke is former head of counterterrorism at the National Security Council. He left government primarily because of the administration's misleading rhetoric in taking us to war. He discusses untruths and distortions in Bush's final State of the Union Address. Bush overstated success in Afghanistan, painted a rosy future for Iraq, touted unfinished domestic projects, and used his fear tactic to scare Congress and the American people, particularly with respect to FISA. There is more at the link, highly recommended reading, as Clarke is one of the few people for whom I have bothered to turn on television, as I shudder to think what he has witnessed.
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all photos by D. Grieser & R. Schlaugh Silenced Majority Portal
So last night I watched the Hillary-Barack lovefest and I was happy.
And happy is not a word I use often, lately. Times being what they are and all, I really have to think about the things that I do feel happy about.
Kittens. Godiva hot chocolate. My two friends who are in love, at ages 51 and 44 respectively and at last.
But last night, I was happy because I saw and heard the choices the American people have. And those choices are getting clearer and the lights are coming on.
Illumination always makes me happy. Without all the noise (and ignoring Wolfie), the two Democratic candidates got to elaborate on their views and demonstrate their respective styles, as did the Republican front runners the evening before. I analyzed the movement and I saw what I think we need to be paying attention to.
In terms of content, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama are not that dissimilar, and now that we, the people, have made our concerns ever-so-much clearer, they are listening to the will of the voters and not so much to the will of the consultants. I hope this trend continues and the policies evolve to include some rational ideas about how we can get through this mess, take care of people, and end this war nonsense.
But in terms of style, OH, so different! Let's go to the videotape:
Obama gestures close to his body, in movements that connect and bridge to others. His head floats above it all, nodding and looking around with an open focus.
Clinton opens by advancing her case, with gestures that lay out the agenda, her focus is softer than it often is, but she gets into some long, repetitive phrases. She spends time laying out her policies, stating the facts, and she is quite serious.
Obama is relating to her, opening up to her. She is closed off to him for much of the debate.
Clinton presses forward with her proposals. Obama is a comprehensive thinker and we can see him considering. She has already made up her mind.
Hillary comes across as competent and a deal-maker. Her hand gestures in a palm-down, elbow-bent tamping down movement as if she is putting down any other suggestions.
Barack is laying it all out reasonably. He explains, he weighs options, he references his own experiences and presents the pathways to his conclusions.
Hillary operates within highly defined space, drawing boundaries around the ideas. When she speaks of her own experiences, she places them as if on a table or desk in front of her, asking us to look at them.
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