August 02, 2005
8/2: Novak Hears A Who's Who
Note for web readers: To go directly to the SCOTUS coverage (or what there is of it) click here.
Bob Novak, John Bolton, Paul Hackett, Iranian nukes, Air America, Pajamas Media, and conservatives unpopular with other conservatives all make appearances in today's edition. And don't miss our latest Blogger Spotlight, with Jeff Jarvis.
TRACKBACKS: The Day After
Where the blog swarm is headed, who's taking part, and what they're saying:
- After Pres. Bush made the recess appointment of John Bolton to the UN, political bloggers right and left weighed in:
>> From the left: At the Washington Note, Charles Brown outlines the winners, losers, heroes and villains from the Bolton fight. Among them are GOP Sens. George Voinovich (OH) and John Thune (SD), who had opposed Bolton. Writes Brown: "Amb. Bolton's tenure is half what it would have been without our work. He is so damaged and unpopular in the Senate as to make it highly unlikely that he can ever be confirmed for this or other positions in the future." · Yellow Dog writes that GOPers "delayed" Richard Holbrooke's UN Amb. nod "for 14 months," but Holbrooke "refused to bypass the Senate with a recess appointment, saying that it would introduce him to the world body with no credibility or authority." · At BooMan Tribune, Meteor Blades calls Bolton "worse than" Jeane Kirkpatrick. · Ed Kilgore, at TPM Cafe: "[T]the fact remains that Bush is insisting on the appointment of a man with at best a mediocre record in one of the country's most important national security posts." · CA Dem consultant Joe Scott writes, Bush "will never admit that while" Senate Dems blocked the nod since Mar., "enough queasy Republicans would have voted to kill it as sending a terrible image about U.S. leadership to the free world." · Crooks and Liars decides this is "a good time to bring back" Bolton's "rant at the UN."
>> From the right: Power Line: "We may be moving towards a system in which presidential appointees who have 60 votes will be confirmed and those who can't obtain that many will serve temporarily. That's not a good system, but it's where the Senators Schumer, Dodd, Leahy, Kennedy, etc. seem to be taking us." · Dan Drezner: "My views on Bolton remain unchanged -- from the Bush administration's perspective, this is an unwanted man being sent to an unwanted institution. Given the administration's attitude, it's not clear to me whether anyone else would have been more effective." · Daily Pundit's Bill Quick: "If Bush were actually in charge, Bolton would have been confirmed and serving long since. All this proves is that Bush isn't in charge -- and neither are the Republicans." · At Red Hot, RedStater "Nick Danger" highlights one reason why the U.S. needs someone like Bolton, linking to a statement by Sen. Norm Coleman (R-MN) on a "[l]ittle-known power-grab by the UN," which proposes, "terminating" U.S. authority over Internet standards boards ICANN. · Mark Coffey at Decision '08 collects the "Top Ten Leftist Reactions To The Bolton Nomination" as collected from the comment boards at Daily Kos and Democratic Underground.
OH O2 I: It All Comes Down To This
Today is election day in OH 02. Dem nominee Paul Hackett posts a diary to Daily Kos, asking readers to try some "new tactics" send a brief, BCC e-mail to "everyone you know," and have them send it to "everyone they know." He compares it to "Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon."
Duncan "Atrios" Black posts an unflattering picture of GOP nominee Jean Schmidt scowling into a microphone, plus a photo of Hackett on duty, brandishing a military rifle. Posting to Swing State Project, Tim Tagaris writes from the OH Dems' "war room," and calls the Hackett campaign a "prime example of the Howard Dean strategy of competing in all fifty states ... If we can win here, we can win anywhere." At SSP, Tagaris and Bob Brigham post multiple times throughout the day, updating readers with tales from the road, traveling with Hackett.
The last time we looked at Hackett's ActBlue donation page, Hackett raised $44.6K from 8,670 donors. SSP had previously sent a call out: To Get Out the Vote, we need to raise $30,000 today."
In an earlier post at MyDD, Jerome Armstrong reflects on a recent meeting with DCCC Stakeholder blogger Jesse Lee," exec dir. John Lapp, "among others. Sitting around the table with them, it felt decidingly different then the last gang -- that this crew actually read blogs and was engaged in what we've been trying to do, and would work with the efforts out here to win."
At The News Blog, lefty Steve Gilliard declared that Hackett's supporters had no "litmus test," just that he was a "good Democrat and he got our support." In the next post up, he reposts a commenters' remarks that they did in fact have a litmus test -- "Does he back down when the corporate press/media or Republican pundits attack him, or does he stand by his words?" -- and that Hackett passed.
This a.m., Daily Kos, Ohio 2nd and Eschaton defend Hackett from what they call one final attempt to "Swift Boat" him.
OH O2 II: Well Well, Look Who Showed Up
Liberal Chris Bowers at MyDD: "In the midst of a full-out progressive blogswarm on Paul Hackett's behalf, conservative blogs, who love to boast of their ability to swarm, have done nothing to help out Schmidt in OH-02. In fact, they aren't even writing about it. ... While the MSM cannot help but fawn over the media scalps most often associated with conservative blog influence, the fact is that outside of a select (and admittedly very capable) few, such as RedState, Captain's Quarters and Patrick Ruffini, conservative bloggers are straight up ineffective when it comes to actually influencing electoral politics."
Conservative John Hawkins of Right Wing News responds to Bowers' post, declaring that the "big bad left-wing blogswarm is going to amount to diddly squat": "So by late Tuesday, we should see who got it right: blogs like this one, that didn't waste a lot of time on the race because it's in a heavily Republican district, or the lefty bloggers who think they're accomplishing something by incessantly talking up a guy who's almost guaranteed to lose."
Linking to a Hackett TV ad hosted at Jackson's Junction, Erick Erickson introduces him to RedState readers: "Hackett is a far left Democrat using his experience in the military to beat up the President and the war. ... If you live in Ohio's 2nd Congressional District, remember to go vote today. Be sure to vote for Jean Schmidt."
Viking Pundit concurs: "I don't know how this will shake out (can't find any polls) but if history is any guide, the Republican with some political experience will defeat the anti-war Democrat."
ROVE: Butterfly In The Sky, Bob Can Fly Twice As High ...
In a new report, the New York Times' Anne Kornblut suggests Novak might have learned Valerie Plame's name from ex-Amb. Joe Wilson's entry in the "Who's Who" directory.
Talking Points Memo calls her piece "problematic," writing that she "appears to buy into Novak's absurd argument that the need to keep Plame/Wilson's identity secret was in any way related to which name she went by. ... The disclosure was identifying Wilson's wife as a CIA operative, not that he had a wife, which needless to say was not a state secret." More: "In his column yesterday, Novak suggests that anyone could have figured out Wilson's wife's name by looking him up in Who's Who. And Kornblut, perhaps not unreasonably, takes this as a suggestion that this may well have been what Novak did. That may be true. Someone could have done that. But why should we believe Novak?"
Captain's Quarters sees it differently: "This just caps an already-ridiculous meme, one started by the media and one which indicts no one but themselves. The media demanded to know who leaked Plame's name to Novak, but none of them wanted to reveal their inside sources to resolve the mystery. Now we know why. None of them can read a book or do their own research, except for Robert Novak -- which explains why Patrick Fitzgerald seems to have lost interest in him."
Righty Tom Maguire observes that there is no evidence that the CIA tried to contact Novak's editors to discourage his initial Plame column. He also notes that Novak originally only wrote that Plame "suggested" Wilson for the trip, while Matt Cooper later reported that she "authorized" it.
At The Corner, John Podhoretz writes: "Simple logic requires one to ask why he would expose her in this fashion by going public with his own authored op-ed if it might endanger her life." Liberal Demagogue: "Um, did either of those documents identify Plame as 'an Agency operative on weapons of mass destruction'? No? Then I guess that it wasn't her marriage to Wilson that blew her CIA cover -- it was Robert Novak telling everyone that she was a CIA operative. Stop pretending that you don't understand this basic point."
Lefty Bob Somerby gets into it with Armando from Daily Kos. Somerby has warned his fellow liberals to be cautious on the Rove story, in large part because he does not believe Wilson to be a trustworthy actor; Armando, for his part, calls Somerby's recent tack a "strange crusade." Somerby thinks Armando is mistaken for insisting that Novak claimed Plame "authorized" the trip. He adds: "This is exactly what I criticized in the columns of the past few days -- the natural tendency to embellish facts in the grip of a partisan episode."
INTEL: We're In The Wrong Line Of Work
A New York Times article on a CIA agent alleging he was fired as "punishment" for questioning the existence of Iraqi WMD elicits different responses. On the left, AMERICAblog states the officer "was fired for telling the truth," adding: "How many people need to come forward before the American people realize Bush lied to them? Oh, wait, the American people already do realize Bush lied to them." On the right, JustOneMinute notes the CIA claims it fired him for sleeping with a "female contact" and "diverting to his own use money" meant for informants, and snarks: the "neocons" arranged all this, yet "all they could manage with Ms. Plame was a leak of her name? How the mighty had fallen."
IRAN: I Ran So Far Away
A number of bloggers react to a report in the Washington Post that Iran may be further from a nuclear weapon than previously thought. Conservatives tend to disbelieve the report; liberals are willing to put more stock in it.
Conservative PoliBlog: "As much as I hate to say it, I must confess that my reaction to this report is that I don't have much confidence in major U.S. intelligence reviews regarding the potential WMD capability of other countries at this point." Outside the Beltway writes, "one can scarcely imagine a determined country with a few billions of dollars to spend more than a couple years away from a bomb. A decade? Hardly.
Political Animal: "Expect the Michael Ledeen crowd to be furious over this. Liberal Unfogged speculates, "maybe the Washington Post doesn't want to be complicit in another bogus case for war."
BLOGS VS. THE MSM: Hugh And Cry
Commenting on Ron Brownstein's latest Los Angeles Times column on Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-NY), the DLC and WH'08, L.A.-based righty Hugh Hewitt writes: "Which candidate does [John] McCain favor getting the Democratic nod? My guess is that it has to be Hillary as that will significantly boost the Beltway chatter about McCain's cross-party appeal. Indeed, it seems odd that this article does not mention the DLC's role in blunting a potential McCain or Rudy challenge from 'the center.' You have to wonder if Brownstein is holding back on references to McCain because of the problem his wife's employment [as a senior McCain aide] poses." Hewitt predicts she will eventually resign "because objective voices within the paper will see the iceberg the paper has already hit."
LEFT & RIGHT: Can't Get Enough Of The Lame-o-Cons
Following up Right Wing News' conservatives' least favorite conservatives poll (see 8/1 Blogometer), liberal Republic of T notices people like Pat Buchanan and Pat Robertson are among the least liked, and asks if "right wing bloggers out there aren't quite as right as the great unwashed wingnut masses out there." Meanwhile, conservative La Shawn Barber includes Bush on her list, to the ire of some readers. Betsy Newmark and the Political Teen share their picks.
Markos Moulitsas, on the same Brownstein LAT column mentioned above: "The DLC is in desperate need of relevance. ... We are far more sophisticated political consumers than in previous generations, and thus harder to be caricatured. I'm fiercely pro-balanced budgets, believe in the principle of free trade, support gun rights, and think the Democratic Party should do more for small business ... Yet I also believe in universal health care, strong worker protections, a strong social net, and government investment in education, technology, and the arts. So what does that make me?"
AIR AMERICA: Stuart Smalley Saves The Station?
Another New York Sun report moves the financial scandal surrounding Air America forward, just a bit. In particular, star host Al Franken just learned of the loans from the Gloria Wise nonprofit. Of departed Air America exec Evan Cohen, Franken says he didn't know he had brain cancer, but "referred repeatedly to it": "Brain cancer seemed to be his answer to everything."
Radio Equalizer's Brian Maloney notes that not only has most of the MSM not reported on the story, neither has the Drudge Report. Ed Morrissey: "Eliot Spitzer, where are you?"
Liberal Mahablog, a skeptic, states that there is no way of knowing if Air America received the money or not, and turns from focusing on the Air America allegation to FNC's Brit Hume, who had reported the scandal: "The point here, children, is not whether the allegations are true. The point is that by clever editing a reporter like Hume can skirt the edge of documented fact and make a report that is sorta kinda true in a limited way but implies so much more."
PAJAMAS MEDIA: To Each Their Own
Righty Dean Esmay responds to complaints about the Pajamas Media blogad deal at Althouse and Ace of Spades HQ (also see 8/1 Blogometer). Some things they dislike about the service he actually prefers: "I just don't want to be in the ad-hustling business. I don't even want to think about the subject. I just want to write. That's why I dig the Pajamas Media approach."
The original Althouse post had 65 comments when we last checked. Most interesting is her exchange with Gerard Vanderleun of American Digest, who thinks she is being overly adversarial.
The Anchoress: "Gerard makes the point, and it is very true, that the blogosphere is going to shift and shift and shift again. While I don't wish to speak for Ann, it's very clear that the free-wheeling independent nature of the blogosphere, as it has been, is something she values enormously, and will hate to see change. But change is inevitable."
INTRODUCING: You Stay Classy, Planet Earth
MO Dem consultant Roy Temple, proprietor of Fired Up! Missouri and Fired Up! Maryland, recently debuted a new political blog: Fired Up! America.
Eschaton has a shiny new logo, which may serve as a helpful reminder to anyone who thinks the website is named "Atrios."
MISCELLANY: Because A Great Nation Deserves Drunken Anecdotes
- AMERICAblog's "double super secret bar-hopping correspondent" reports on all-new wild antics by first daughter Jenna Bush at DC's Zucchabar.
- Little Green Footballs' Charles Johnson posts a photo credited "AP/CBS" which shows a man standing in front of an American flag with the Islamic crescent in place of the stars. Wondering whether it is real or a Photoshop job, he asks, "which of these two possibilities is more disturbing?"
- After exposing an Internet hoax in the making in a Slate piece, Macworld writer Cyrus Farivar notices that his self-created Wikipedia page has been defaced. Updates are available at his personal blog.
- KRT reports Bush's response to news that Orioles 1B Rafael Palmeiro tested positive for steroids: "Rafael Palmeiro is a friend. He testified in public and I believe him." At Political Animal, liberal Kevin Drum comments: "It's like listening to a small child. He doesn't want to believe it, so it isn't true. This is the man currently running our country."
- Eriposte at The Left Coaster concludes the series on the Senate Intel Cmte's Niger reports with "Uranium from Africa and the Senate (SSCI) Report: Summary and Conclusions." For the start of the series, see the 7/27 Blogometer.
BLOGGER SPOTLIGHT: Ghost In The BuzzMachine
Today the Blogometer talks to longtime newspaper and magazine journalist and media critic Jeff Jarvis, who blogs at BuzzMachine.
What is your full name?
Jeff Jarvis
What is your age?
Ouch. 51.
Where did you grow up?
Four elementary schools in three states, four high schools in three states. No, my father wasn't in the military. That was life in corporate America once.
Where do you live now?
New Jersey
What is your occupation? Have you ever worked on a political campaign or for the mainstream media?
Sold out to the mainstream media man at age 17, working for newspapers (including the Chicago Tribune, San Francisco Examiner, New York Daily News), magazines (created Entertainment Weekly, worked for TV Guide and People), and online. Now, for the first time in my career, I'm not wearing a suit and that's because blogging changed my life.
When did you start blogging and why?
I survived the attack on the World Trade Center and after writing my story for my company's sites and papers, I had more to say. I thought I would blog for a few weeks. It has taken over all available life.
What has been your favorite post, or favorite story to write about, in that time?
At last count, I wrote 8,100 of them. Even I can't remember them. I'd say that I most enjoy covering the explosion of media.
Describe your typical blogging schedule. And what is your average output?
It's not as obsessive as it appears; I'm an old newspaper rewriteman, so I'm fast. I blog on the train now; I blog in bed; I blog when I get up in the morning; I blog when something occurs to me in the day. Okay, it is obsessive.
Who is your favorite political blogger? Favorite non-political blogger?
I'll sound like an actor refusing to answer that question but I really don't have a favorite; if I did, I wouldn't be reading dozens every day.
Who is your favorite mainstream media columnist?
I have drunk the Tom Friedman KoolAid. I don't always agree, of course, but I believe he tries to use his columnist's perch to change the world and that's the kind of hubristic optimism we need.
What is your favorite television news program, either network or cable?
Conflict-of-interest answer: I like what MSNBC's connected is doing promoting bloggers (and I've been among them -- unpaid, unfortunately) and trying to have disagreement with discussion instead of dyspepsia.
What MSM-produced websites (i.e. newspapers, magazines) do you visit on a daily basis?
NYTimes.com (full disclosure: I'm consulting for them now), Guardian.co.uk, WSJ.com, Google News, Instapundit (he's mainstream, isn't he?).
What non-MSM websites (i.e. blogs) do you visit on a daily basis?
I read RSS for dozens.
How often, or do you ever, read a newspaper in its dead-tree (i.e. print) form?
I read The Times on the train.
How do you see the new media and old media affecting and influencing each other in the next five years?
In more ways than they know. Citizens' media is forcing big media to open up and listen, not just lecture. And, of course, new media has ruined old media's monopoly business.
THOUGHT OF THE DAY: Spam Is Good For You
MyDD's Chris Bowers, on those who object to sending out political e-mails (see Hackett's Daily Kos diary above): "I just can't stand it when more-internet-polite-than-thou progressives complain about email related voter contact, such as email capture and notifying your personal email list about causes or candidates, because they feel such forms of voter contact are "spam." ... Phone banking is spam. Direct mail is spam. ... Almost every single form of voter contact is spam. Yes, it's spam, but that is how politics works. You contact people who may not be paying attention in order to offer them information about a candidate or a cause. ... This is something people need to accept, so that we can all move forward."
LEST WE FORGET: Zelikow-22
Liberal Glenn Smith, at BOPnews: "The announcement that Philip Zelikow is now in charge of world peace is a little, uh, eerie. Zelikow, you see, went to high school with me. He was in ROTC. I wasn't. In 1971 or '72, the hippies, radicals, poets and layabouts in the Bellaire High School (Houston, TX) drama department recruited him for a role in Joseph Heller's play, 'We Bombed in New Haven,' an antiwar play that premiered in 1968. It's about how crazy military types create their own reality, war is peace, peace is war, et cetera. I hope Phil remembers the play. ... He somehow had himself put in charge of costuming for the play. The entire cast wore ROTC uniforms. It was appropriate, but it wasn't lost on Phil that he'd managed to dress up the anti-war crowd like the ROTC goofs we thought were losers. Now he works for Condi."
BLOGOMETER SPECIAL: Are We There Yet?
What the blogosphere is saying about Pres. Bush's pick of John Roberts for the SCOTUS:
At TPM Cafe, Josh Marshall wonders: "Is Judge Roberts just not bad enough to really fight against? ... Did President Bush just thread the needle on this one? Is Roberts not bad enough to really go to the mat over? And if not, why not? Is it a substative judgment about what we know about him? Or a pragmatic assessment that his record just doesn't provide enough grist for a successful opposition?"
At the Huffington Post, Cenk Uygur complains about "unapologetic conservative hack" Kate O'Beirne dominating "every single discussion" on the 7/31 "Meet the Press": "O'Beirne would say John Roberts is a well-qualified candidate for the Supreme Court who will be confirmed easily. The nabobs would bob their head in agreement. ... Don't you get it? They're trying to make the confirmation look like a done deal, so that when the Democrats argue against it, they will seem like whiners."
REHNQUIST: The Retirement That Wasn't
Feddie at conservative Confirm Them calls attention to the ACLU's accidentally-released statement wishing Chief Justice William Rehnquist well upon his retirement, which by the way didn't happen. Feddie also makes the statement available at Southern Appeal (PDF).
ACLU spokesperson Emily Whitfield writes in a comment at the Washington Post's Campaign for the Court blog: "This was a release drafted shortly after the O'Connor retirement that was prepared but never published. We believe that the publishing system at ACLU.org made it findable by search engines in a technical error. We've removed the page completely from our system."
Posted by at August 2, 2005 12:19 PM
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