Call It A Comeback
But the administration keeps trying the same things it has tried before, because it can’t admit that Iraq was an irredeemable error. As one official confided to the Times: “We’re reliving all of the issues that have been discussed since 2003. It’s like `Groundhog Day.'” Except the movie had a happy ending.
Via Americablog
More later….
Just admit it. Seriously, last week I discussed briefly the Jamil Hussein story and how some right wing blogs are out to prove the AP just made up 61 stories wholecloth. But it hasn’t been a good week for them. Glenn Greenwald has a rather long post on the Jamil Hussein affair, Khamenei’s death, and lonely John Kerry.
The thing about the Jamil Hussein story is that the story regarding the six Shia’s burned to death was corroberated by AP with other sources, it’s just the right wing bloggers that were on the crusade wouldn’t accept it and insisted they were making up the story.
I understand jumping on a story and screwing it up–I’ve done it and done it pretty spectacularly in two instances. The thing is after you realize you screw-up, you just admit it instead of trying to either continue the story as Malkin and others have tried to do. I can understand the initial response waiting for confirmation even, but at some point, when the key evidence of a conspiracy falls apart–and in fact there was never any evidence of such a conspiracy with Jamil Hussein, it’s time to give it up.
For today’s right-wing warbloggers, whose contempt for journalists is matched only by their unbridled hatred of Arabs and Muslims, the AP kerfuffle represented a perfect solution that, at least temporarily, lifted their November blues. By early this month, they had dubbed the scandal “Jamilgate,” with Malkin referring to the AP as “The Associated (with terrorists) Press.” (Get it?)
Keep in mind that in the seven days surrounding the Burned Alive story, hundreds and hundreds of Iraqis were killed in sectarian violence. Here’s a very small sampling, via Reuters, of the bloodshed that flowed around the time of the Burned Alive dispatch:
Mosul — Police said they recovered 14 bodies, including three women, in different areas of Mosul, 390 km (240 miles) north of Baghdad. [November 22]
Baghdad — Up to six car bombs killed 133 people in a Shi’ite militia stronghold in Baghdad and a further 201 people were wounded, police said. [November 23]
Baghdad — Baghdad police recovered 30 unidentified bodies around the capital in the 24 hours to late Friday, an Interior Ministry source said. [November 24]
Baghdad — Baghdad police retrieved 30 bodies of victims of violence on Friday and 17 on Saturday, an Interior Ministry source said. [November 25]
Baquba — Police in Baquba, 65 km (40 miles) north of Baghdad, found the bodies of 25 people, including seven teenagers blindfolded and each with a single gunshot wound to the head, in various parts of Baquba in the past 24 hours, police said. [November 26]
Baghdad — Baghdad police retrieved 39 bodies in the 24 hours to Monday evening. [November 27]To date, warbloggers have not raised serious questions about any of those slayings or the reporting surrounding them. Yet viewing Iraq through the soda straw that is the Burned Alive story, they insist the press, thanks to its pro-terrorist sympathies, is creating the illusion of “chaos” in Iraq.
Whereas readers like you and me might see a completely illogical obsession with the Burned Alive story, given the statistical fact that the Iraqi civil war will likely claim six more victims within the next hour, for the warbloggers the half-dozen fatalities represent something much more important — an exit strategy, a way out of their own man-made disaster that is Iraq. Because warbloggers think they can claim the whole Iraq fiasco was the media’s fault, that the press did the terrorists’ bidding, spread their propaganda, turned Americans against their fighting sons and daughters, and ruined what would have otherwise been a brilliant Bush foreign policy maneuver to spread Western-style democracy throughout a troubled part of the world.
In other words, the press lost the war. Period. And worse, the press lost the war through phony, biased reporting. My hunch is the Burned Alive excitement revolves around the fact warbloggers see an opening to try to raise doubts about, and even dismiss, all the Iraq reporting. “In short, the AP has been relying on a bogus source for much of its reporting on Shia violence against Sunnis since at least April,” right-wing blogger Jeff Goldstein wrote at Protein Wisdom.
The thing is that these fantasies do serve a purpose and a little different than Boehlert points out. Boehlert argues it’s a way out to blame the press and he’s correct in one sense, but in another the Chewbacca defense is perfect because when faced with report after report of chaos and civil war, pretending that there is a conspiracy and concentrating on one piece of evidence that might be wrong allows them to distract themselves and others from the reality that Iraq is a giant shit sandwich which we are savoring.
Never mind that there is a one in 6 billion chance that the blood could be someone else’s blood besides OJ’s on the gate at Nicole Simpson’s place, if the glove doesn’t fit, you must acquit. If we can find one instance of a reporter getting something wrong, the vast conspiracy will be demonstrated even if all the other evidence is still there and uncontested.
The distraction allows the cognitive dissonance to continue. One of the most obvious aspects of the campaign is that no evidence can prove them wrong. There are no falsifiable hypotheses, only faith based claims that look for evidence to support those claims.
Kerry isn’t being shunned by the troops as he was having a conversation with reporters, he was shunning the troops.
“I am running for president,” he told “Meet the Press” anchor Tim Russert. “I’m going to be Joe Biden, and I’m going to try to be the best Biden I can be. If I can, I got a shot. If I can’t, I lose.
Because, of course, no one can get enough Biden in their lives.
And Daily Dolt wins–it rolls off the tongue. Rich came through with it.
However, considerable acts of wingnuttery are now known as Keyes’ Company from a suggestion in comments.
It’s quite clear that I’m going to be able to fill up a daily feature on the wanker of the day, but I’d rather come up with a new title to at least pretend I have some originality.
Suggestions? Snark encouraged.
Tom Roeser could probably be the wanker of the decade as well, but today he is very special:
Ah, but one has the potential to do serious damage.
That’s the rumor, reported by Sweet that began with blogster Debbie Schlussel, a conservative talking-head on MSNBC, now carried widely by word of mouth by some political cognoscenti in Chicago bars. Right now the tale is in a decidedly phase 3 cyclonic stage as a key rumor in the bars. The rumor goes: While Barack Hussein Obama is affiliated with the Unitarian-like United Church of Christ in Chicago, he may have, at one time, been a Muslim-or at the very least was accepted as one in his early years: which, if verified, could truly be explosive and possibly disqualifying politically for the presidential nomination of a major political party in a nation at war with extreme elements of the religion. There has been no formal answer to that charge by the Obama people but the rumor gains currency.
First, his Kenyan father, Barack Hussein Obama, Sr., killed in an automobile accident, was apparently a Muslim. No big stuff so far as it goes although it’s interesting to note that Hussein, given to both father and son, is a distinctively Muslim name-derived from that of Husayn ibn Ali [626-680], grandson of the prophet Muhammad. He was killed in the battle of Karbala in A. D. 680 and is a day of mourning and religious observance for Shi’a Muslims. Let’s say if you got a kid running around named Hussein, it means something.
Second, according to best-selling lawyer-novelist, Chicago native and fervent liberal Democrat, Scott Turow in the Internet publication “Salon,” young Obama went to a Muslim school for two years in Indonesia. Third, his mother, Anna, re-married an Indonesian man (most likely a Muslim as Indonesia has the largest Muslim population in the world).
Fourth, while Junior’s affinity is for Kenya which is largely Christian, it has a fast-growing Muslim population which has engaged in a good deal of religious violence and riots against Christians. Kenyan courts apply Sharia (or Muslim) law when the participants are Muslim. Fifth, in Junior’s book Dreams from My Father, after his father died in Nairobi in 1982, Obama was working in Chicago. He met his Kenyan sister, Auma, a linguist educated in Germany who was visiting in the United States. When she returned to Kenya in 11986 to teach for a year at the University of Nairobi, Obama finally made a trip to his father’s homeland. There he fully embraced the heritage and family he’d never known and came to terms with his father whom he had mistakenly believed was a foreign prince but who now realized was a human being burdened by his own illusions and vulnerabilities: this from his best-seller autobiography.
Schlussel puts it out this way: “Even if he identifies strongly as a Christian, and even if he despised the behavior of his father (as Obama said on “Oprah”), Obama is a man whom Muslims think is a Muslim and who feels some sort of psychological need to prove himself to his absent Muslim father and who is now moving in the direction of his father’s heritage.” She asks: Is this “a man we want as President when we are fighting the war of our lives against Islam? Where would his loyalties be?” She goes further: “Is [he] even the man we’d want to be a heartbeat away from the presidency if Hillary Clinton offers him the vice presidential candidacy on her ticket (which he certainly wouldn’t turn down)?
Or, put another way: A president thought to have been a Muslim as a child and who left the faith for Christianity is the last person to “heal”-which is Obama’s favorite word applied to foreign affairs. Even a third way: a president trying to disabuse a suspicious world that he’s soft on the Muslim religion may want to use replete examples to get tough. Finally a fourth: how would a president once viewed as a Muslim who became a backslider do in the concert of world politics?
Now there has been no substantiation or denial by the Obama people of the rumor that Ms. Schussel has put forward other than for Obama people to claim it is (a) racist, (b) vindictive and (c) full of suppositions. Very well, then let them answer it. Racist? It has nothing to do with Obama’s half caste black-white heritage. Vindictive? Not any more so than the theory put forward against John F. Kennedy, when he was the Democratic nominee in 1960. Full of suppositions? Sure: so the best way to clear the air is for Obama or his staff to give out all the facts.
Besides the level of bullshit that someone said it so it must be a big deal even though there is no evidence and it’s directly contradicted by Obama’s own account of his life, Roeser is too stupid to even get the attribution of the quote right.
Karl Frisch works for Media Matters of America, not the Senator.
IOW, despite claiming the Senator’s staff ducks the question, no one has asked the Senator’s staff because everyone in their right mind knows Debbie Schlussel and Tom Roeser are fucking batty.
Rich already ranted on that–same point, but go read. Jimenez is a moron of the first caliber.
Let me add–who do you think finishes the test the fastest? Those who are better readers and have some common sense. This is exactly the kind of perverse incentive that lowers morale of good workers.
Moron. Huge Moron.
State university employees began the training in September. According to the state ethics Web site, it should have taken them “no more than one hour” to read the materials. There is no warning that employees must spend a minimum amount of time on it.
Those who finished too fast received letters from the state and the university.
“Contrary to instructions, you appear to have failed to carefully read and review the subject matter contained in the program’s introduction and three lessons,” according to the state’s letter to Zeman.
The letter also instructs employees to sign a statement acknowledging that future failure to complete the training “on a timely basis” will result in disciplinary action “up to including termination.”
Zeman, president of SIU’s Faculty Association, said he is refusing to sign the letter and encouraging other faculty members not to sign. The faculty union has filed a grievance against the university.
“Imagine what would happen to me if I failed a student because he was too quickly doing an exam. I would probably be fired,” said SIU math professor Walter Wallis, who also has to redo the ethics training after completing it in about seven minutes. “The whole thing is kind of absurd. Most of us did what is essentially the same thing, with the same training, a year earlier. Are we supposed to have forgotten it all?”
Jimenez, however, said that this year’s training included updated lessons pertinent to an election year, including a warning that employees only could engage in political activity during half of their one-hour lunch break. The other half is state-paid time when they are prohibited from doing political work.
“The reality is that somebody who works an 8-hour day all year long works 2,080 hours a year,” Jimenez said. “It does not seem unreasonable to expect state employees to take 30 minutes out of their busy work year to complete the ethics training.”
I know several professors at SIU. None of them work 2,080 hours a year. They work many more if they are still trying to get tenure and even after that most do as well.
Trying to argue with people who deal with curriculum for a living that they did not spend enough time on a ‘test’ is one sign that you are a moron. A big one.
If someone can pass your test without taking the time you think they should, the problem isn’t the test taker, it’s the person giving the test. Tests can do many things, but in this case the relevant point of the test appears to be that state employees should be able to demonstrate an adequate understanding of state ethical guidelines. If passing the test does not do that adequately by itself, then why is the test given?
You, Mr. Jimenez are wasting the valuable time of state employees and thus, the tax dollars of every citizen in Illinois. Congratulations.
Moron.
Funny that a government might deny the existence of some guy to make things look better.
Not so funny when they finally admit that the guy exists, but….they are going to arrest him. Dandy.
The right wing blogs have been running all over this story thinking they had a big story. The essential thread was that it was the AP making up a story to make things look worse in Iraq than they really were. As d over at LGM put it:
I truly fail to understand Right Blogistan’s obsession with Jamil Hussein, but I suppose if it can be proven for certain that he doesn’t exist, then everything else will arc toward a resolution — the non-existent WMD will suddently unearth themselves; the abattoir outside the Green Zone will de-escalate; the hundreds of thousands of Iraqis who fled the country last year will return and bring forth a new generation of virtuous citizens; the death squads being run by the government we ushered into power will put down their guns and drills; the execution of Saddam Hussein will be shown to be a model of due process and sobriety; the insurgency will evaporate like the morning dew; and Iraq’s infrastructure will bloom like wild prairie flowers.
It’s fine to challenge the AP, however, most professional journalists aren’t going to make up people. There are cases like Blair and Glass, but the editors checked their stories eventually and caught it. In this case, the AP pushed back hard–it wasn’t too hard to guess there was a reason for that.
But don’t let the Iraqi Government confirmation of the guy get in the way of a good conspiracy story, Confederate Yankee is trying to assert that the AP made up the fact that the Iraqi government actually identified a guy as Jamil Hussein. Malkin is skeptical of the story still because, you know, they must have made up that ethnic violence leads to horrible events.
Let me give them some advice. When you fuck up a story. Admit it. It makes it all easier in the end. I know this from experience. It might hurt your ego, but it’s a lot less hurt than if you have to do it in three weeks.
This past Election Day, the American people sent a clear message to Washington: Clean up your act.
After a year in which too many scandals revealed the influence special interests wield over Washington, it’s no surprise that so many incumbents were defeated and that polls said “corruption” was the grievance cited most frequently by the voters.
It would be a mistake, however, to conclude that this message was intended for only one party or politician. The votes hadn’t even been counted in November before we heard reports that corporations were already recruiting lobbyists with Democratic connections to carry their water in the next Congress.
That’s why it’s not enough to just change the players. We have to change the game.
Americans put their faith in Democrats because they want us to restore their faith in government — and that means more than window dressing when it comes to ethics reform.
Last year, I was hopeful that scandals would finally shame Congress into meaningful ethics legislation. But after the headlines faded, so did the enthusiasm for reform. In the end, I found myself voting against the final ethics bill because it was too weak and unresponsive to the obvious need for comprehensive reform.
This time around, we must do more.
We must stop any and all practices that would lead a reasonable person to believe that a public servant has become indebted to a lobbyist. That means a full ban on gifts and meals. It means no free travel or subsidized travel on private jets. And it means closing the revolving door to ensure that Capitol Hill service — whether as a member of Congress or as a staffer — isn’t all about lining up a high-paying lobbying job. We should no longer tolerate a House committee chairman shepherding the Medicare prescription drug bill through Congress at the same time he’s negotiating for a job as the pharmaceutical industry’s top lobbyist.
But real reform also means real enforcement. We need to finally take the politics and the partisanship out of ethics investigations. Whether or not the House ethics committee has been covering for its colleagues, the secrecy with which its members have operated has led people to question why legislators who are serving jail time were not caught and stopped by the committee in the first place. It’s led people to wonder why Congress cannot seem to police itself.
I have long proposed a nonpartisan, independent ethics commission that would act as the American people’s public watchdog over Congress. The commission would be staffed with former judges and former members of Congress from both parties, and it would allow any citizen to report possible ethics violations by lawmakers, staff members or lobbyists. Once a potential violation is reported, the commission would have the authority to conduct investigations, issue subpoenas, gather records, call witnesses, and provide a report to the Justice Department or the House and Senate ethics committees that — unlike current ethics committee reports — is available for all citizens to read.
This would improve the current process in two ways. First, it would take politics out of the fact-finding phase of ethics investigations. Second, it would exert greater public pressure on Congress to punish wrongdoing quickly and severely. Others have proposed similar good ideas on enforcement, and I am open to all options. We must restore the American people’s confidence in the ethics process by ensuring that political self-interest can no longer prevent politicians from enforcing ethics rules.
The truth is, we cannot change the way Washington works unless we first change the way Congress works. On Nov. 7, voters gave Democrats the chance to do this. But if we miss this opportunity to clean up our act and restore this country’s faith in government, the American people might not give us another one.
When you watch your college advisor vote to elect Nancy Pelosi as Speaker of the House
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