vastleft*:

Many people believe the press failed to do its job in the run up to the Iraq war. Has Beltway reporting changed as a result?

Gwen Ifill:

I am not sure what you mean by “Beltway reporting.”

Do you mean the New York Times reporting that exposed the Justice Department’s wireless wiretapping?

The Washington Post reporting that exposed the poor conditions at Walter Reed Army Medical Center?  Read more 

Cross-posted from The Global Sociology Blog.

Via Context Crawler, comes this article from the Washington Post, by Shankar Vedantam on happiness surveys. We take it for granted, and it is supported by surveys, that people tend to be happier when their economic situation is more secure and overall better. That is fairly uncontroversial. And right now, the economy stinks, gas prices are through the roof, so, the mood is on the gloomy side. Straightforward as well. If the economy were better, people would be happier. What is the paradox then?  Read more 

Cross-posted from The Global Sociology Blog.

Two good pieces on Al Qaeda landed in my Newsreader this week and they both point in the same direction, albeit in different terms. The first one is from Tony Karon who questions the current relevance of Al Qaeda as the big post-9/11 bogeyman. For Karon, Al Qaeda is irrelevant and always was. In this respect, Al Qaeda is comparable to Trotsky… Huh? How does the comparison apply?

"Al-Qaeda is irrelevant, and yet U.S. hegemony in the Middle East is facing an unprecedented challenge from Islamist-nationalist groups. To understand the link between al-Qaeda’s weakness and the greatly expanded strength of groups such as Hamas, Hizballah, the Muslim Brotherhood and, of course, Iran, over the past seven years, it’s worth turning to the 20th century precedent: Leon Trotsky and his followers vs. the larger, nationally-focused parties of the left in the mid 20th century.

Trotsky rejected pragmatism and compromise by nationally-based leftist movements and insisted, instead, that they subordinate their specific national interests and objectives to the fantasy of “world revolution.” And as a result, long before his murder by Stalin, he found himself holed up in Mexico City, manically firing off communiques denouncing all compromise, and being largely ignored by the more substantial parties of the left world-wide. He had become an irrelevant chatterbox, caught up in a frenzy of his own rhetoric while world events simply passed him by. The same can be said of Bin Laden and Ayman Zawahiri — it is not al-Qaeda, but the likes of Iran, Hamas, Hizballah, and the Muslim Brotherhood that represent the future of the nationalist-Islamist challenge to Western power in the Middle East."

What makes Al Qaeda seemingly powerful are two factors: the one mentioned by Karon, that is, the fact that the United States treats Al Qaeda as this omnipresent threat of global proportion and reacts to every action as if it were the beginnings of a terrorist apocalypse. The second one, which I think is relevant here and contributes to the first, is that fact that Al Qaeda, being a non-state group, articulates itself opportunistically to nation-based movements (Algeria, Philippines, Indonesia, or Iraq).  Read more 

As it happens, (and in light of today’s endorsement) Naomi Klein has a column in the Guardian regarding Obama’s economic policies. And she’s not impressed, to say the least:  Read more 

MoveOn recently allowed members to sign a virtual get well, be well card to be delivered to Senator Kennedy that contained the message that the entire liberal/progressive community was with him in his battle against the recently diagnosed cancer he will fighting.

Today he is in surgery doing just that.

The MoveOn card allowed members to add a personal word of their own, and I decided mine would be a simple one line quote - the last line of the speech the Senator had given to the deeply divided Democratic Convention in 1980. To make sure I remembered correctly, I consulted the speech.

Reading the speech again, one of many times I’ve turned back to it, it’s relevance to the divisive primary we are currently living through fairly shouted at me.  Read more 

My blog bookmark listing is getting thinner every day. That goes along with the shrinking respect I had for some bloggers in the past. Boy has this primary been a reality check. Here is someone who used to be one of my favorite bloggers, Hilzoy, subbing for Kevin Drum at the Washington Monthly :  Read more 

By popular acclaim, we are offering for your amusement and edification the exciting new game “Obama Golf”!

The rules are simple, and any number can play: To win, change an innocuous Hillary statement into a wankfest-worthy statement in the fewest number of strokes:

Hillary says “We all remember Bobby Kennedy was assassinated in June in California.”

0. “Assassinated”

1. Black leaders have been assassinated

2. Obama is a black leader

3. She was talking about assassinating Obama

Three strokes, total. (“Teeing up” the initial trigger word does not count as a stroke).  Read more 

Cross-posted from The Global Sociology Blog.

 Read more 

It is clear that Senator Clinton did not imply an assassination attempt against Senator Obama. Listen to the clip.  Read more 

On the morning of the West Virginia primary, Washington Post Associate Editor Kevin Merida published a blockbuster story about ugly racial incidents experienced by Obama campaign workers that continues to fuel debate.

Media pundits are now using it to prove that “Clinton is willing to ride these biases to the White House.”  Read more 

I posted on it last night.

Today, both Susie Madrak and Digby join the fun.

We’re ahead of the curve, folks!

So says Gabor Steigart in Der Spiegel:  Read more 

How on earth did this Op Ed get published? That is what I want to know.

Here is Edward Luttwak, a fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies and a member in good standing of the Washington foreign policy establishment, all dues paid up, (which probably answers my opening question), speculating in this morning’s New York Times about the security implications of an Obama presidency, for Obama himself and for the country, unembarrassed to tell us that Obama’s conversion to Christianity makes him ripe for punishment by beheading, no less, or at best, by stoning or by hanging.  Read more 

Frankly, I don’t find all that much to get upset about in the Chris Bowers Open Left post to which Lambert refers here. Okay, the post has a slightly condescending tinge to its tone, but why shouldn’t Democrats be proud that now more than ever the Democratic base looks like America? Bill Clinton himself once noted the same, and pledged that his administration would too, one pledge among many, many that Clinton kept.

While I’m on this subject, I want to remind everyone that neither any particular African-American nor the African-American community as a whole needs to apologize for voting for an African-American candidate for President, or any other office, for that matter. Black folks have been voting for white folks for decades now. And it isn’t as if Obama got their support automatically. It was only when he convinced many of them that he was viable, and presented a vision they obviously found inspiring, as is true for a large swathe of the electorate, that they have flocked to him. So, we are not talking about identity politics here. Remember, it was Obama who has been running as a post-racial candidate, for which many of us here at Corrente criticized him, rightly so, in my opinion.

Back to Bowers. It’s this stunning post that should be the focus of our incredulous ire, although I do realize that in Lambert’s majestic takedown, of Matt Stoller’s chilling foray into Obama triumphalism, this Bowers post is mentioned along with the fact that Bowers starts with an admiring nod to the Stoller post.

In his post, Bowers is imagining/predicting what kind of changes in Democratic governance we might be seeing from an Obama presidency. Fasten your seat belts.

Cultural Shift: Out with Bubbas, up with Creatives: There should be a major cultural shift in the party, where the southern Dems and Liebercrat elite will be largely replaced by rising creative class types. Obama has all the markers of a creative class background, from his community organizing, to his Unitarianism, to being an academic, to living in Hyde Park to shopping at Whole Foods and drinking PBR. These will be the type of people running the Democratic Party now, and it will be a big cultural shift from the white working class focus of earlier decades. Given the demographics of the blogosphere, in all likelihood, this is a socioeconomic and cultural demographic into which you fit. Culturally, the Democratic Party will feel pretty normal to netroots types. It will consistently send out cultural signals designed to appeal primarily to the creative class instead of rich donors and the white working class.

I’m not even sure what that means. Who the hell are the creative class?  Read more 

Comment upgraded to a post as per Lambert’s request. My not-so-humble analysis of what happened to tonight with Indiana:

What happened tonight:

1. Mess with HRC’s supporters’ minds

2. Try (and fail) at some run-of-the-mill cheating

3. Delay as long as possible a call of Indiana for HRC

4. Delay contributions that normally follow a win

5. Push SDs over the fence to BO’s side

6. Up the ante on WWTSBQ

7. Major troll infestation at major HRC-supporting sites

I think my point 1 worked very well: these results were exactly what was expected after all. Actually, it’s pretty bad news for BO. His base is young voters and AAs and that’s it. Can’t win that way.

Heck, even BTD at TalkLeft took back his electability argument tonight.  Read more 

And surely, what is helping to make this primary season so hellish are all the attempts to close it down.

In case you haven’t heard, and assuming I get this up before anyone else posts on it, a superdelegate Bill Clinton once chose to head the DNC and was up-to-now a declared Hillary-supporter, has just announced today that he is switching his support to Obama, and urging all Hoosier voters to do likewise in order to end the primary process in its tracks after next Tuesday. As part of this strategy, he is also urging his fellow superdelegates to wait no longer to declare their preferences, so we can all unite behind Barack and begin to do battle with McSame.

Joe Andrew may not be a household name, but he is from Indiana and he made his statement in the state, and in a letter published on the Huffington Post.  Read more 

Orrin Hatch has written a song for McCain. It’s shallow and vapid, you can read the lyrics and barf here. But what’s really priceless is Tweety’s reaction after playing a snippet on Hardball:

I will be singing it on the pillow tonight.

I bet he will.

Obama may send a thrill up their legs (although that’s more about beating Clinton), but at night it’s McCain they dream about.

h/t Avedon

Pass me that bucket, wouldja Lambert?

I’m trying to get through this week’s “Real Time with Bill Maher,” but the interview with Chris Matthews made me start mainlining Maalox… and that was before Lord Kos showed up and convinced me that life is not worth living.

I can’t find video of the Matthews interview on HBO’s website, but I’m sure the segment will be prominently featured in the Museum of Shit, provided that they can build a large enough room for it.  Read more 

(UPDATE…JAY ROSEN, CREATOR OF PRESSTHINK AND CO-PUBLISHER OF OTB, HAS MADE IT CLEAR THAT OTB HAD NOTHING TO DO WITH THE WRITING, EDITING, OR PRESENTATION OF THE STORY IN QUESTION — and I believe him. )

“Off the Bus” is a joint venture by Jay (Pressthink) Rosen and Ariana Huffington that encourages “citizen’s journalism.” The idea is that us “little people” can attend campaign events, and report them, just as well as the corporate media.

Recently, Off the Bus made news when an Obama supporter, Mayhill Fowler, reported on remarks made by Obama at a San Francisco fundraiser — the “bitter/clinging” controversy. Rosen addressed the controversy over at Pressthink, explaining the care and attention given to Fowler’s piece.  Read more 

skdadl at pogge reminds us that certain parties regularly get away with spinning their regular wrongitude into a larger, more noble narrative of rightness.  And that those who were right never get the credit for it.

Look: the point is that Iggy and company may have been wrong in the observable, normal universe—-what you or I might call "reality"—-but they were wrong in a noble, beautiful way.  The kind of wrongness to which they fell victim is the kind of wrongness that allows one to cover ones eyes with the back of one’s hand, stretch out the other hand, and sigh, "Ah, me!"   Read more 

Elton John says so!

http://www.millan.net][IMG]http://www.millan.net/minimations/smileys/yay.gif
on another note
Caroline Kennedy to lead “women from Obama rally”, she is going to be handing out the cutesy Obama buttons “Hot Chicks dig Obama”

I’ll keep my own free stickers thanks

http://www.ingalagringa.com/items/

Oh I’ll take a few dozen one for all my friends.

From August J. Pollack:

Wright Opinions

followed by some push back:

In today’s SF Chronicle:

“In fact, before his speech Clinton had one of his famous meltdowns Sunday, blasting away at former presidential contender Bill Richardson for having endorsed Obama, the media and the entire nomination process.”

I wasn’t there, so I can’t say whether this story is true or not. But I find it suspicious that it didn’t appear until today, and only appeared in a political gossip column (Matier & Ross.) It is also anonymously sourced (“one superdelegate said.”) Sounds like a typical media hatchet-job to me.

Remember the “meltdown” the Big Dawg supposedly had in the interview with Chris Wallace? Remember when Hillary supposedly “lost it” in a debate? The video in both instances told a different story.  Read more