Deny, Deny, Deny

In a dishonest and disingenuous speech before the New York Conservative Party, Karl Rove attacked liberals and democrats for their response to 9/11. Faced with a torrent of criticism, Rove and conservatives tried to revise what he said and thanks to a compliant media they have succeeded.

According to the Daily Howler, Chris Wallace on Fox News Sunday toed the party line, saying "Rove did go after in his speech liberals, not Democrats. But a lot of Democrats on Capitol Hill reacted as if they personally had been attacked and insulted, and demanded that Rove apologize or be fired."

Because Rove's speech received limited attention, many may have relied on transcripts of the event to decide if Rove was over the line. In a perfect world that would be no problem as, for example, a White House supplied transcript would provide accurate reflection of what was said.

However, in this case, the White House has apparently decided not to supply a transcript, yet there are supposed "transcripts" out there.

In the text of the speech on the Washington Post, Rove allegedly said "Moderation and restraint is not what was called for. It was a moment to summon our national will - and to brandish steel. MoveOn.Org, Michael Moore and Howard Dean may not have agreed with this, but the American people did."

See, the word Democrat wasn't used, conservatives say. Right. Except that wasn't what Rove said. During an interview with Howard Dean on Hardball, Chris Matthews played the actual tape of what Rove said. Unfortunately, the transcript of the show did not include Rove's remarks, but this is what Rove said.

MoveOn.Org, and Michael Moore and Howard Dean may dominate the Democratic party and liberalism, but their moderation and restraint is not what America felt needed to be done and moderation and restraint was not what was called for and acted upon. It was a time to summon our national will and to brandish steel.

Without a true transcript, people at places like Redstate.org can claim "Rove did not say Democrat. Rove said "liberal." Rove did not say progressive. Rove said liberal."

Now some may split hairs and still say Rove was talking about liberals but it's pretty clear, that with Bush's popularity plummeting, conservatives have decided to go into attack mode. The galling thing is that Bush has been so eager to go to war when he avoided one, yet he and his administration feel free to criticize others lack of eagerness to enter into a war unconnected to the 9/11 attacks on America.

Red stater wins in Iran

One of the strangest things about watching and listening to all of the news coming out of Iraq was how much their recent election, in a sense, followed the recent US elections. In Iran a religious conservative defeated an intellectual politician, in part by going after value voters.

(Of course the other comparison is that there was funny business going on in the election balloting, matching our own problems back in the state.)

In Iran Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the conservative mayor of Tehran, beat his relatively moderate rival Ayatollah Hashemi Rafsanjani and was declared Iran's next president.

In a sense, Ahmadinejad has George Bush to thank as it was Bush's election eve criticisms of the Iranian election that push people to vote for Ahmadinejad. Bush denounced Tehran's theocracy for manipulating the vote by eliminating candidates and ignoring the "basic requirements" of democracy.

One has to wonder if Bush did that on purpose with the expectation that a hardliner would be elected and that would either lead to the people working to overturn the system or if he is just plain stupid and didn't realize the impact his words would have on the Iranian people.

While Bush may say he is not happy with the election, he may find a soul mate in Ahmadinejad as they both share religious conservative views, won elections by appealing thanks to negative campaigns, and an interest in seeing issues only in black or white. The problem may be that they are too much alike, stubborn and uninterested in the wishes of the electorate.

Missing the Point of the Downing St. Memo

In an effort to prove that they didn't blow off reporting on the Downing Street memo, the media has attempted to say that the memo doesn't saying anything that the press hadn't previously reported, i.e. that the Bush Administration was planning for war against Saddam Hussein.

And if that wasn't enough, Howard Kurtz of the Washington Post added that Critics, however, note that the memo by Richard Dearlove, then head of British intelligence, offered no specifics about any cooking of the intelligence books and could easily have been drawn from ongoing news accounts about the administration gearing up for war.

That the facts were being fixed was only one part of the memo. As Slate pointed out there were three points to the memo, that the Bush administration:

• Knew Saddam Hussein didn't pose a threat
• Decided to overthrow him by force anyway; and
• Was "fixing" intelligence to sell the impending invasion to a duped American public.

The media and Republicans have decided that the first two points are unimportant and that the third was false. Yet here is a memo describing minutes of British intelligence meeting and as Michael Smith, reporter for the Sunday Times of London, whose coverage broke the story, said It is one thing for the New York Times or The Washington Post to say that we were being told that the intelligence was being fixed by sources inside the CIA or Pentagon or the NSC and quite another to have documentary confirmation in the form of the minutes of a key meeting with the Prime Minister's office.

When faced with this truth, conservatives argue that "fixed" doesn't mean fixed, it means focused. Unfortunately, that also is false, Smith pointed out. This is a real joke. I do not know anyone in the UK who took it to mean anything other than fixed as in fixed a race, fixed an election, fixed the intelligence. If you fix something, you make it the way you want it.

But how was the public to know they were lying? If only someone in the U.S. had actually pointed out the lies in real time surely the media would have looked into it. Wouldn't they?
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These guys are the most crooked, you know, lying group of people I've ever seen," John Kerry - March 10, 2004.

Media's E-ZPass Double Standard

One of the major reasons for the "successes" of the Bush Administration, and the difficulty facing Democrats, is the disparate treatment they receive from the media.

Republican's have been able to institute policies, which a majority of Americans don't support, without serious questioning by the media while anytime a Democrat says anything questionable a full front attack is undertaken by the media.

One only has to look at the latest Beat The Press incident on Sunday, June 5, to see how host Tim Russert and his lack of follow-up allowed RNC Chairman Ken Mehlman to escape serious questioning.

But when Arianna Huffington of the Huffington Post commented that host Tim Russert is fast becoming journalism’s answer to the “E-ZPass,” those electronic tags that allow drivers to go through toll booths without having to stop, Media Critic Howard Kurtz of the Washington Post snidely commented How dare Russert not act as a Democratic debater!

Kurtz apparently believes in the E-ZPass treatment for GOP guests, however when journalists actually do their job and ask intelligent questions of Democrats and liberals, he thinks that's just great. On Wednesday Kurtz highlighted the thorough questioning on "Fox News Sunday" by Chris Wallace of Amnesty's U.S. chief, William Schulz and called the resulting answers "quite revealing."

See Wallace kept asking Schulz questions until he got to the bottom of the story, providing comments that were "quite revealing." This is the very type of journalism liberals are begging people like Russert and Kurtz to engage in. Instead Russert, just like he gives his GOP guests, received the E-ZPass treatment from Kurtz.

Apparently asking pointed follow-up questions of Democrats is expected but to do so with Republicans means you are a "Democratic debater."

Is it really any wonder with this type of double standard that Democrats face obstacles in getting their message out while the GOP gets an E-ZPass on questioning on their policies.

Beat the Press

George Bush must throw good parties because the way the press treats him and his groupies one must think that they are worried that if they ask too many questions they will be crossed off future guest lists.

On Sunday Tim Russert of NBC NEWS' MEET THE PRESS interviewed Ken Mehlman, Chairman of the Republican Party and time after time Russert had Mehlman on the ropes, only to let him go without deep questioning, you know, the type he went on the offensive with when Howard Dean was running for president.

First, Russert pointed out that John Danforth, former Republican senator, and Bush's man.. at the United Nations had written in The New York Times that By a series of recent initiatives, Republicans have transformed our party into the political arm of conservative Christian...By a series of recent initiatives, Republicans have transformed our party into the political arm of conservative Christians.

Mehlman waived it off, like he would do so many other questions this morning. The problem is that Russert didn't treat Mehlman like Dean. Some have said that Russert was correct to go after a possible future president. Fine, but why roll over once in office?

Mehlman got away it time after time. Russert would ask a probing question, Mehlman would respond with a stupid or ridiculous answer and Russert would move along to the next question, like a police officer moving people away from a crime scene. "Move along, nothing to see here."

One can only assume when Mehlman got back to his office he was received congratulations for "Beating the Press."

Bush's real plan for Social Security

In his efforts to change Social Security from a social insurance program to an investment program George Bush has said he wants to give people more control over their money.

In reality he wants to give Wall Street more control over American's money, with limited oversight. This was made clear on Thursday with the appointment of Rep. Christopher Cox as head of the Security and Exchange Commission.

Cox will replace William Donaldson, a moderate who worked to restore the integrity to the SEC after the short, but turbulent term of Harvey Pitt, who may be best remembered for not telling other commissioners that former FBI director William Webster, who had been selected to head a new five-member panel charged with overseeing the accounting industry, had served on the board of directors of a company accused of fraud.

Pitt decided that the allegations about the firm, U.S. Technologies, were not worth relaying to other commissioners, or to the White House, before Webster's selection, according to USA Today. Hey, why should fraud allegations be important on someone named to oversee an industry facing numerous ethical clouds.

While Donaldson worked to restore integrity to the SEC, the problem was that as the New York Times pointed out, in Republican and business circles, William H. Donaldson has been viewed as the David Souter of the Securities and Exchange Commission, a disappointingly independent choice who sided too frequently with the Democrats. (i.e. the people's voices were heard.)

On the other had Cox is view as GOP lackey, who helped to steer through the House a bill making investor lawsuits more difficult.

That measure, the Times pointed out, which Congress adopted over President Bill Clinton's veto, was hailed by business groups, which say it has reduced costly and frivolous cases. It has also been criticized by consumer and investor organizations. They say its adoption in 1995 contributed to an unaccountable climate that fostered the big accounting scandals at companies like Enron and WorldCom a few years later.

So what does this have to do with Social Security? With a flood of money potentially available to the investment community, one should expect new scandals, however those scandals won't be investigated. William Lerach, a prominent shareholder lawyer in San Diego, told the Times not to expect Cox to be an investor's friend.

"I would expect that Cox will use his authority for an across-the-board assault on investor protection," Mr. Lerach said. "In my experience with him, I found him to be virulently anti-investor and unrestrained in his desire to gut the securities laws. It's hard to think of a worse choice for the S.E.C. This is a world-class payback to the corporate world."

Guess whose going to win? Wall Street and the rich. And who will lose? Everyone else. I guess we can thank the 51% of Americans who voted for Bush for making the U.S. a worse place to live.

Watergate vs. Whitewater

One of the interesting aspects to the unmasking of Mark Felt as Deep Throat is that well after 30 years a great deal of the public still views Watergate as an important historical event and probably one where there was an abuse of power.

The Watergate investigations led to the resignation of Richard Nixon as president, in part because of fears that he would not survive impeachment procedings. Fast forward approximately 25 years and there was another set of impeachment hearings, except this had little to do with governmental actions by a president, rather personal activities.

So it was with no surprise that barely five years after the hearings that were started by the investigation of Whitewater, a long ago failed real estate venture, few people remembered or cared. In fact, most people were probably just as embarrassed by the impeachment hearings as they were with President Clinton.

In the midst of the hearings, the Democrats uncharacteristically regained seats in Congress, a slap in the face to Republicans, which lead to Newt Gingrich resignation as Majority Leader.

The long term legacy of Whitewater is one that few will talk about. While the investigations were a failure, they may have played enough of a role in making the 2000 election close enough to allow George Bush to steal the presidency.

And in the end that may have been the sole purpose, putting a Republican back in the White House, fairly or not.