June 27, 2005
6/27: Casual Ties Of War
The Hotline's Blogometer takes the daily temperature of the blogosphere. For more information on the thinking behind this feature, go to the end of the story.
The confluence of a few related stories helps push the situation in Iraq -- and the Bush admin.'s handling of it -- to the top of many blogs this a.m.:
- VP Cheney's criticism of Sen. Chuck Hagel (R-NE) on CNN late last week.
- Defense Sec. Donald Rumsfeld's statement on "Fox News Sunday" that the U.S. may remain in Iraq for "12 years."
- A report from the Times of London that the U.S. is negotiating with non-jihadist insurgents in Iraq.
- Pres. Bush's upcoming Iraq-related address, set for 6/28.
- The bombing deaths of 5 female Marines in Fallujah.
Meanwhile, The Huffington Post reports that a recent hospital visit for Cheney was no mere knee checkup and bloggers dig deeper on Karl Rove's 9/11 comments last week.
TRACKBACKS: Twelve Is The Scariest Number That You Ever Knew
Where the blog swarm is headed, who's taking part, and what they're saying:
- This feature typically follows the blog swarm as they seize upon this or that news story or opinion column printed in an MSM newspaper. Today we don't see any one page drawing a noticeable amount of traffic, but we did notice that Rumsfeld's "12 years" comment attracted a lot of attention. So we went looking for posts related to this figure, with a little bit of help from Technorati. Here's what we found:
>> As we expected, nearly all the commentary this a.m. comes from the left: Distance: "This is what a lot of us said from the beginning. You can not simply invade a country, destroy it and walk away. The infrastructure has to be rebuilt, and the schools need a full 15 years to have a permanent impact on the culture. They have to produce a generation of thinkers. This war has turned into a disaster, and it is now hung around the GOP and their Democratic allies who voted for the war. Informed Comment: "So now not only has there been no progress for six months, not only is there a lot of work to do, but we are not in December, 1944 of WW II at all. We are in 1963 of the Vietnam War, with 12 years to go, and we can't win." E Pluribus Unum: "Six months from now (or a year or two or five) Bush apologists will point to one of these statements to buttress their contention that Bush was right all along. Because, in the end, that's all that matters: that Bush is right and that everyone who spoke up against the war is wrong." Needlenose points out previous examples of the admin. predicting increased attacks on account of U.S. successes. And there's more: The Huffington Post; Rob's Blog; Happy Furry Puppy Story Time; The Heretik; News Hog; The War In Context; Political Animal.
>> We found exactly 1 post coming from the right: All Things Conservative: "Ask yourself this question: If you were one of the Sunni hold-outs would you negotiate if you were winning?"
IRAQ I: Are Cheney And Hagel Off For Good This Time?
At Eschaton, Duncan "Atrios" Black points out Cheney's response to on Hagel's criticism of the Iraq situation: "Since 9/11, we've had people like Chuck Hagel and other politicians and we've had people in the press corps and commentators who've said we can't do Afghanistan." Writes Atrios (verbatim): "The new strategy is criticism of iraq=criticism of afghanistan=support for taliban=support for al qaeda = cheering on crashing twin towers." A diarist at Daily Kos calls it "outright slander."
Philadelphia Daily News' Will Bunch writes at Attytood writes, "a quick check of the Nexis data base shows, possibly no senator was more strident that Nebraska Republican Hagel in insisting that the response to the 9/11 attacks should be a military one."
Matthew Yglesias, on Hagel: "We're long past the point at which it's been made clear that this sort of rhetorical warning shot isn't going to cause the president to change course. So what's Hagel going to do about it? He's a United States Senator, not just some powerless pundit. What's his plan? These are the questions people need to be asking the moderate Republicans."
IRAQ II: Can We Talk?
Lefty Billmon: "It looks like the Cheney administration isn't going to get quite as free a ride from the corporate media on negotiating with terrorists as it did on the Downing Street memos. ... Since Bush has a rock-hard policy of never negotiating with such people, the only solution is a rhetorical one. The line must be changed again. New labels must be invented and applied to those insurgents who 'don't have blood on their hands.' ... It's definitely going to be an Orwellian challenge. Even if Rummy and the gang drop the 'terrorist' and 'assassin' lingo and go back to 'former regime elements,' or 'Baathist diehards,' they still will have to explain the morality of negotiating with butchers who gas their own people and then bury them in mass graves (that is, when they aren't relaxing in their rape rooms). Such is the problem with wartime atrocity propaganda: In a rapidly shifting situation, it may have too long a shelf life."
At NRO's The Corner, John Derbyshire describes the experience of viewing Rumsfeld on "Meet the Press" 6/26: "Getting flashbacks from my working days. A project is going pear shaped. You call in the project manager to explain himself. Shouldn't he have budgeted for more people? 'Well, you know, too many people can just get in each other's way...' When can we expect the next deliverable? 'It's really, really hard to put a time frame on this...' ... That's the meeting right before the one where you dump the project and fire the project manager."
RedState's Josh Trevino argues, not for the first time, in favor of reinstating the draft.
NRO's Media Blog: "The MSM's silence on the Foley controversy is annoying, but its presentation of a one-sided picture of Iraq is having potentially devastating consequences on public opinion."
Kevin Drum sizes up Rumsfeld's appearance, and comments: "These guys still can't face the reality of what's happened to their lovely little war."
SCOTUS: Interestingly, Bloggers Rely On Anonymous Sources Quite Frequently
At least as of press time, no retirement announcements had come from the SCOTUS. Over the weekend, Erick Erickson at RedState wrote: "Sources close to the White House are telling Red State that they do expect a Supreme Court vacancy in the next ten days -- as soon as tomorrow is possible, but within the next ten days seems most likely. One source (and only one) tells RedState that there is new talk of a vacancy to come soon and one to come closer to Labor Day, making two picks this year for the President. The source says the conventional wisdom is right that the two most likely candidates will be Justice [Sandra Day] O'Connor and Chief Justice [William] Rehnquist. However, there may be a wild card due to health. Also, sources say the White House has nailed down a final list of candidates -- a short list -- but the President has yet to make his pick. Judge [Michael] McConnell is rumored to not be on it while [AG Alberto] Gonzales is rumored to be on it, but only if O'Connor resigns first. My source for that bit admits to not having seen the list, only to have heard about it."
ROVE: So What About Senator X?
Mystery Pollster's Mark Blumenthal assesses Karl Rove's claim about how liberals responded to 9/11: "[I]n the days after 9/11 overwhelming majorities of both Democrats and Republicans believed America was 'at war' and favored some sort of 'military action.' ... Yes, Democrats were a bit less supportive of waging war than Republicans, but compared to the partisan polarization we see today, the unity on these issues in the aftermath of 9/11 was far more striking than the differences." But party ID and ideology don't always match, so he puts out a call for more numbers. CBS's pollsters oblige, and Blumenthal puts down the "bottom line: Two weeks after the attacks, 84% of self-described liberals supported "military action" against the terrorists and 75% supported 'going to war with a nation that is harboring those responsible.'"
Liberal TAPPED's Asheesh Siddique called the offices of GOP sens., asking: "Does Karl Rove speak for Senator X in his recent comments on liberals and September 11?" Kay Bailey Hutchison's press officer "told us she agrees with Rove's remarks," while Rick Santorum's comm. dir. Robert Traynham said: "Karl Rove speaks for himself. He doesn't speak for the senator. On 9/11, there was no such thing as a Republican or a Democrat, and that's what the senator believes."
Daily Kos's "Plutonium Page" calls it an example of "GOP propaganda": "We were truly united as a nation back then, but the Republican rhetoric since then brainwashed the electorate to the point of believing that Democrats don't care about terrorism."
CHENEY: When No One Follows Your Scoop After Two Days ...
On 6/24 The Huffington Post reported, VP Cheney "went to the cardiac unit of the Vail Valley Medical Center on Friday afternoon. The Vail Daily reported that 'he dropped by to say hi to his favorite knee doctor Richard Steadman.' The Associated Press ran a similar story. The vice president did see Dr. Steadman, a renowned orthopedic surgeon at the Steadman Hawkins clinic. But he then proceeded to the cardiac unit of the center to see Dr. Jack Eck, sources close to the doctor told The Huffington Post. While there, Cheney had a prophylactic EKG. Neither the Associated Press or the Vail Daily have reported that the vice president visited the cardiac unit."
DEMOCRATS: Better Start Boning Up On Propane And Propane Accessories
Ed Kilgore assesses the demographics-will-save-the-party idea: "What Democrats cannot do ... is to comfort ourselves with the illusion that Latino voter growth will offset our ever-increasing weakness among white middle-class voters generally, or white married voters with kids specifically." He writes, "small percentage increases from large groups generate more votes than large percentage increases from small groups. That's why the little-recognized but central story of the 2004 presidential election was that a smaller percentage increase in ballots from non-Latino white voters more than exceeded the votes produced by near-record turnout among minority voters as a whole."
At the Washington Monthly's blog, Kevin Drum evaluates different reactions to the essay "The Stock Ticker and the Super Jumbo," which argues that Dems should pick a few big ideas and stick with them. (For more on Drum and the essay, see the 6/7 Blogometer.)
MOVEON: Nothing's Gonna Break Their Stride, Oh No, They've Got To Keep On Moving
TAPPED, on MoveOn's recent clarification of its position on the Afghanistan war: "MoveOn will have to do a much better -- and, frankly, less arrogant -- job of press management in the future. If MoveOn was going to clarify its position ... it should have done so cleanly and definitively last fall, when the issue first came up and it had an opportunity to respond in the pages of TNR, instead of waiting until the middle of a full-scale Republican attack to slowly dribble out a walk-back."
BLOGS VS. THE MSM: Poynt Taken
Left-leaning Fishbowl DC points out several media-related stories from the past week that went unmentioned at the "super-duper no-longer-as-comprehensive-as-it-once-was site" by "media news guru" Jim Romenesko. Right-leaning Mediacrity describes Romenesko as "arbitrary and politically skewed in its items, links and letters." Mediacrity also notes Fishbowl DC's observance that Romenesko has an "odd hatred of bloggers and loathes linking to blogs," and guesses at "why that is -- blogs very often beat the pants off of him, and bloggers are generally paid nothing." Centrist Andrew Sullivan, on Romenesko's reported $150K+ salary: "I don't begrudge anyone making a good salary from blogging. ... He's brought so much attention to Poynter that he deserves every cent. But he is a highly biased, left-wing blogger, who rarely links to blogs who provide media criticism from the right, and omits stories that the left doesn't like. ... His journalistic audience is skewed very left, so he's giving them what they want."
BLOGGERS VS. BLOGGERS: See You Leiter
UT-Austin law prof Brian Leiter updates his "Who is Juan Non-Volokh" post (see 6/23 Blogometer) to assert that Instapundit's Glenn Reynolds is behind the seemingly incoherent-on-purpose The Iraq War Was Wrong Blog. (The blog's primary subject seems to be itself.) Leiter removed the update, apologized for the error, explaining that the "site in question seemed to evince the same moral sensibility towards the Iraq War that Professor Reynolds typically displays."
WHITE HOUSE '08: If Websites Translated Into Votes, Bayh Would Have The Nod Wrapped Up
Americans for Bayh/Blogging for Bayh joins forces with a new pro-Bayh blog at Evan2008.com. Blogging for Bayh founder Bill Earl joins the Evan2008.com community and writes a few posts. A phrase he uses at both sites is: "Because THIS TIME we have a Democrat WHO CAN WIN."
MISCELLANY: Mother, Should I Run For President?
Power Line's John Hinderaker, one of a number of prominent blogs to join a conf. call with Live 8 organizer/Pink from "The Wall" Bob Geldof, posts a few thoughts on African political reform, and adds: "Within the next 48 hours, we will have exciting news for bloggers worldwide relating to the Live 8 concerts. Stay tuned."
9/11 Families for a Safe and Strong America has launched a blog, Take Back the Memorial, dedicated to changing NY Gov. George Pataki's (R) mind about building the "International Freedom Center." For an explanation of their objections, a 6/8 op-ed at the WSJ's OpinionJournal.com. A number of blogs are helping promote it, chief among them BuzzMachine's Jeff Jarvis.
THOUGHT OF THE DAY: Back To Iraq
Phil Carter announces at his blog, Intel Dump: "On Thursday, I received orders from the Army mobilizing me for Operation Iraqi Freedom. These orders followed an earlier set, cut on Tuesday, which transferred me from the Army's individual ready reserve into the 101st Airborne Division. It's an honor and privilege to deploy with such a storied unit -- a band of warriors who have nearly all deployed at least once since 9/11. I'm scheduled to report for active duty in a little under 3 weeks to Fort Campbell, Kentucky." Carter will keep blogging, but he is also transitioning the site into a group blog a la Volokh Conspiracy. The Left Coaster, on Carter: "He is a true patriot and his contributions on the web will be missed - quite a bit. Needless to say, the U.S. and the American armed forces are both lucky to have him."
LEST WE FORGET: I Go Crazy, Crazy, Baby, I Go Crazy
If you think the cost of gas in the U.S. is high, just be glad you don't live in Canada.
Posted by at June 27, 2005 12:48 PM
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