Warnings about Web Nuke Plans Ignored

Shades of the summer of 2001. Plenty of pre-9/11 warnings were floating through the system. Some of them even made it to Condi's office and into Bush's vacationing hands. (Condi's job title at the time was, um, National Security Advisor. Bush was still only President, not yet War President. I'm not sure whether he had the title of The Decider at that point. But, title or no, he decided to do nothing.)

Likewise, warnings about the exposure of dangerous nuclear secrets, were sloshing around the bureaucracy.

said scientists at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California last month had protested some of the weapons papers on the site to the National Nuclear Security Administration, an arm of the Department of Energy that runs the nation’s nuclear arms laboratories. The objections “never perked up to senior management,” the official said. “They stayed at the midlevels.

Warnings about two of the most sensitive documents were taken down last month. But the rest remained publicly available until the Times blew the whistle Thursday night. The Times story lists several examples of warning raised and ignored.

The web gambit for captured docs was a calculated and acknowedged risk urged by the chairs of the Senate and House Select Committees on Intelligence, Pat Roberts (R Kansas) and Rep. Pete Hoekstra (R MI-02), . Roberts is the guy who has been keeping the lid on his Committee's investigation into pre-war intelligence. Hoekstra is the guy who stood next to Sen. Rick Santorum to proclaim they had found Saddam's WMD.

Whatever their impact on the security of the United States, at least their own seats are safe this year. Roberts is not up for re-election until2008. Hoekstra has never polled less than 60% of the vote in his district. This faces, Kimon Kotos, the same Democratic sacrificial lamb this year that he faced in 2004. The vote then was Hoekstra: 225,343 vs. Kotos: 94,040. That's 69.3% vs. 28.9% (the remainder going to third-parties). Kotos is hoping to do better this year. Maybe the GOP meltdown and these new revelations about Hoekstra's role may give him an added boost. But he's not on anyone's radar as a competitive challenger.

Mickeleh's Take: Hoekstra will hold his seat, but lose his chairmanship when the Dems sweep the house. Memo to Rahm (or his successor at the DCCC): recruit strong candidates everywhere.

(Tags: Iraq, Nukes, Hoekstra, Pat Roberts, New York Times Election, National Security)

KO: How the Republicans Gave Away the Keys to the Atomic Store to Backstop a Talking Point

Mickeleh's Take: The gay pastor story seems to be dominating the news. But this was the big one. Watch through to the interview with Joseph Cirincione. "...a text-book case of what happens when you politicize intelligence...We gave terrorists and other nations a roadmap on how to build a nuclear bomb... This is a case of congressional ideologues, of zealots thinking that they can't trust our own intelligence officials..."

(Tags: Iraq, Bush, Republicans, New York Times, NYT, Security, Nuke, Nuclear, A-bomb CIA, Politics, Election, Olbermann, Keith Olbermann)

Republican Response to Security Breach

My prediction of how the Republicans would respond to the Times' revelation that the administration posted the recipe for an A-bomb was wrong.

The correct answer is: "See, this proves Saddam was a threat! We were right to invade."

U.S. Puts Recipe for A-Bomb Online. In Arabic. (NYT)

This isn't the Onion. It's the New York Times!

Remember Condi's, "We don't want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud"?

So, why did the Bush administration post detailed notes for building a nuclear bomb in Arabic?

Why? Because the administration caved to pressure by Congressional Republicans (memo to voters: vote them out!) to post an archive of secret documents seized in Iraq, hoping to use the wisdom of crowds to uncover evidence for WMDs.

"The campaign for the online archive was mounted by conservative publications and politicians, who said that the nation’s spy agencies had failed adequately to analyze the 48,000 boxes of documents seized since the March 2003 invasion. With the public increasingly skeptical about the rationale and conduct of the war, the chairmen of the House and Senate intelligence committees argued that wide analysis and translation of the documents — most of them in Arabic — would reinvigorate the search for clues that Mr. Hussein had resumed his unconventional arms programs in the years before the invasion. American search teams never found such evidence."

Mickeleh's Take: Will this story get more play or less than the Kerry kerfuffle? Prediction: The Republican line will be "How dare the Times expose this breach of security! Do they want the terrorists to win?"

For more on this story: Oliver Wills, Christy Hardin Smith (Firedog Lake), Digby,

(Tags: Iraq, Bush, Republicans, New York Times, NYT, Security, Nuke, Nuclear, A-bomb CIA, Politics, Election

Olbermann: Bush Needs to Apologize

Halloween Kerry Takes off His Leader Costume

For Halloween, Kerry dressed up as a strong leader and spoke with strength. Today, he took off the costume, put on his flip-flops and apologized. He's back to his accustomed role of being out-spun and out-maneuvered by Bush and the fair-weather democrats.

Mickeleh's Take: Ford and McCaskill, if you win--and I hope you do--please show more spine in the Senate than you did in piling on Kerry. Hilary, I noticed and will remember the cheap shot you threw at Kerry.
Deep breath. Pep-talk time again: The upside of this incident is that it keeps Iraq in the spotlight. The other upside is that we learn early that for all his smarts and virtues, Kerry is not the guy I want carrying our banner in 2008. He might have been yesterday. But not today. Halloween is over.

Jane Hamsher to John Kerry: How to Handle a GOP Attack

Using the Kerry kerfuffle as a text, Jane Hamsher on Firedoglake offers some simple advice on how to avoid falling into the traps set by the Republican.

Mickeleh's Take: Every Dem and Dem supporter should enroll immediately in Janes short remedial brush-up in case you get asked (on or off TV).

Because of Iraq

This ad is from votevets.org. It will run on CNN and Fox through Nov. 7.

Another POV on Bush vs. Kerry's botched joke

I have second thoughts about my previous post.

Maybe the Bush interpretation of what Kerry said wasn't a calculated ploy.

On Kos, DarkSyd reminds us of the service record of Bush and his apologists.

Mickeleh's Take: Maybe when Bush thought Kerry really meant that if students aren't good in school, they'll be shipped off to war, it was simply the way Bush and his team felt about service in Viet Nam: You only go to war if you're too stupid to get out of it. No wonder Colin Powell didn't fit in with that gang.

Kerry Won Keith; Elsewhere the Snow Job Prevails

Dave Winer quotes Keith Olbermann's best quip last night about Kerry's botched joke on the White House:

"Kerry called them stupid and they were too stupid to know he called them stupid."

Sorry, but if we believe that, then we're too stupid to know that they knew he wasn't talking about the troops.

The Bush communications strategy has long been to make up false Democratic positions and then ridicule them. They make 'em up out of whole cloth: The Democrats oppose interrogating terrorists. Their strategy is to wait until we're attacked again. They'll raise your taxes across the board.

How much more so when Kerry hands them the material. The Bush communications team is venal, not stupid. They just assume we're stupid. And the media is stupid. Which it apparently is.

Mickeleh's Take: I love that Kerry promptly hit back with force and speed. But if you want to know who won this round, consider that Bush will speak every day until election day, and Kerry has canceled upcoming appearances. Looking to 2008, Kerry won himself points for hitting back fast, lost as many for once again getting his lines wrong in the first place. He needs to stick to gravitas and leave levity to the pros.

Dave Winer points out the upside to this flap: "Every time [Bush] opens his mouth and gets on TV that keeps the focus on Iraq, and the basic weakness of the Republicans..."

(Tags: Kerry, Tony Snow, Election, News and Politics, Politics, Campaign)

Comcast Knows What Liberals Watch

According to Comcast, Fox News is for conservatives, CNN is for independents, and MSNBC is (oops!) also for conservatives.

Comcast Spotlight, the ad sales division of my cable provider, is currently running a commercial to pitch candidates and issue advocates on the benefits of (you guessed it) buying time on Comcast.

To help political advertisers reach the right viewers, they conveniently provide this simple sorting:

Liberal

• TV Land
• Comedy Central
• Bravo
• Discovery
• BET

Conservative

• The History Channel
• Fox News
• MSNBC
• A&E
• CMT

Independent

• VH1
• Spike
• HGTV
• CNN
• TLC

Mickeleh's Take: It's a relief to have Comcast confirm what we already know: there is no news network for liberals. Unless you count Comedy Central. (Don't these guys know about Keith Olbermann?)

Kerry Actually Hits Back in the Same News Cycle

Yesterday, Kerry botched a line intended as a joke on the White House. Today, Tony Snow, in another example of the desperation of the GOP, deliberately misconstrued Kerry's line as an attack on the troops and demanded an apology.

Here's the man-bites-dog sequel: Kerry hit back hard, strong, and, most remarkably, fast. He got his reply out there in the same news cycle as the attack. Let's see what play TV news gives him.



Mickeleh's Take: I like these new Democrats.

(Tags: Kerry, Tony Snow, Election, News and Politics, Politics, Campaign)

Olbermann's Obit for "Stay the Course"

After a week in the archives, the Countdown staff has pulled even more clips, allowing Keith Olbermann to offer a fitting, heartfelt Eulogy for "Stay the Course." If you have Keith on Moxi or other DVR... It's at the close of the show. If not, wait a short interval and someone will have it online.

GOP Osama Ad vs. Johnson Daisy Ad: Where is the Love?

Last week, the GOP paid its own good money to rebroadcast the same Al Qaeda messages that they criticized the news media for airing in the first place. It's shameful but not surprising that the GOP would become a paid echo-chamber for Al Qaeda talking points. After all both Al Qaeda and the GOP operate under the banner, "Fear is our most important product."

People have compared the GOP ad to the seminal Daisy spot created by Tony Schwartz at Doyle, Dane Bernbach for Lyndon Johnon's campaign against Goldwater in 1964. (Watch it on YouTube.)

The GOP even borrowed the copy line, "these are the stakes." from Daisy.

But they only borrowed the beginning of the line. What Johnson actually said in the voice-over to Daisy was this:

"These are the stakes: to make a world in which all of God's children can live or go into the dark. We must either love each other or we must die."

Johnson's rhetoric was about "all God's children," and "love." The GOP rhetoric is all about naming and nicknaming enemies that only they can protect us from, (terrorists, axis of evil, Islamofascists, defeatocrats, cut-and-runners).

Furthermore, the implication of the GOP ad is this: if we don't vote for them, Osama will use the bomb. Whereas the implication of the Johnson ad was this: if we didn't vote for him, the U.S. might use the bomb.

Think about that. Imagine in today's climate that you could run on the fear that the U.S. might do the wrong thing. Democrats today are even skittish about denouncing torture lest they reinforce the Republican accusation that Dems are weak.

Copy and rhetoric aside, there's another measure of the difference between the two spots. The GOP ad ignores all of the deeper wisdom about powerful communications that makes Daisy effective. Tony Schwartz discusses Daisy in, The Responsive Chord:

I believe television spots function well as electronic posters for a candidate; i.e., they create auditory and visual stimuli that can evoke a voter's deeply held feelings. Indeed, the best political commercials are similar to Roschach patterns. They provide a context for him to express these feelings...

Many people, especially the Repubicans, shouted that the spot accused Senator Goldwater of being trigger-happy. But nowhere in the spot is Goldwater mentioned. There is not even an indirect reference to Goldwater. Indeed, someone unfamiliar with the political climate in 1963 and viewing the spot today will not perceive any allusion at all to Goldwater... The commercial evoked a deep feeling in many people that Goldwater might actually use nuclear weapons. This mistrust was not in the Daisy spot. It was in the people who viewed the commercial.

Schwartz built his advertising around resonance. He belived that the audience already had more information than an advertiser could cram into a commercial. The best strategy of a communicator is not to pour things into the audience, but to call up what is already there.

Are there any resonant Democratic TV spots today? Which ones do you think work this way?

(tags: Bush, GOP, Election, Osama bin Laden, Terror, Advertising, Campaign, Daisy, Politics)

Opposition Research

Here's a handy list of press coverage of some of our opponents. If you'd like to add something like this to your blog--and for a discussion of why you might, click over to this Chris Bowers' entry on MyDD. And this one.


--WA-Sen: Mike McGavick
--WA-08: Dave Reichert


-AZ-Sen: Jon Kyl
--AZ-01: Rick Renzi
--AZ-05: J.D. Hayworth
--CA-04: John Doolittle
--CA-11: Richard Pombo
--CA-50: Brian Bilbray
--CO-04: Marilyn Musgrave
--CO-05: Doug Lamborn
--CO-07: Rick O'Donnell
--CT-04: Christopher Shays
--FL-13: Vernon Buchanan
--FL-16: Joe Negron
--FL-22: Clay Shaw
--ID-01: Bill Sali
--IL-06: Peter Roskam
--IL-10: Mark Kirk
--IL-14: Dennis Hastert
--IN-02: Chris Chocola
--IN-08: John Hostettler
--IA-01: Mike Whalen
--KS-02: Jim Ryun
--KY-03: Anne Northup
--KY-04: Geoff Davis
--MD-Sen: Michael Steele
--MN-01: Gil Gutknecht
--MN-06: Michele Bachmann
--MO-Sen: Jim Talent
--MT-Sen: Conrad Burns
--NV-03: Jon Porter
--NH-02: Charlie Bass
--NJ-07: Mike Ferguson
--NM-01: Heather Wilson
--NY-03: Peter King
--NY-20: John Sweeney
--NY-26: Tom Reynolds
--NY-29: Randy Kuhl
--NC-08: Robin Hayes
--NC-11: Charles Taylor
--OH-01: Steve Chabot
--OH-02: Jean Schmidt
--OH-15: Deborah Pryce
--OH-18: Joy Padgett
--PA-04: Melissa Hart
--PA-07: Curt Weldon
--PA-08: Mike Fitzpatrick
--PA-10: Don Sherwood
--RI-Sen: Lincoln Chafee
--TN-Sen: Bob Corker
--VA-Sen: George Allen
--VA-10: Frank Wolf

Jon Stewart Took the Night Off

The Bush "We've never been, 'cut and run'" lie got a free pass from Jon Stewart, whose on break this week. Fortunately, it's a bit that's so easy, lots of other folks are doing the montage. Still, I miss seeing the take wehre Jon digs the heels of his hands into his eyes and goes, "Wha....?"

Polermo: What Republicans Will Be Voting For

Good piece of polemical writing nails the disintegration of the Republican coalition.

Stay the Course... Flunk the Course

Jon Stewart has me so well conditioned, that immediately when I heard Pres. Bush tell George Stephanopolous "Listen, we've never been, 'stay the course,' George," I immediately ran a Daily Show clip-bonanza in my head. "we've never been, 'stay the course," followed by cut after cut after cut of Bush being, "stay the course" and maybe the great Amen Chorus echoing."

Think Progress has assembled a rough cut, The upstairs clip is Dan Bartlet saying, it's never been "stay the course." The downstairs clip is the one that ran in my head. Bush and Snow trading choruses of "Stay the Course." Think Progress lacks the crisp comic timing we've learned to expect of the Daily Show, and we don't have Stewart's comic takes to punch it up. But it's all there. And worth watching.

So, now that obvious has already been done, what will Stewart's crew do tonight to top it?

It was no slip of the tongue, by the way. Bush, Bartlett, and Snow in quick succession claimed that Oceana has never been at war with Eastasia.

Mickeleh's Take: Looks like the White House is cutting and running from staying the course. I guess that makes 'em flip floppers. Maybe GWB is remembering back to college days, where you didn't have to stay the course if you feared flunking. Maybe GWB is remembering when it was possible to drop the course without penalty.

Gore Vidal: Two Generations to Undo Bush Damage

Lyn Davis Lear reports on a dinner conversation with Gore Vidal. His grim view is that it will take at least two generations to undo "the last six years of damage to the nation." Vidal also shared his (realistic? paranoid?) view on why the White House remains "upbeat" about the upcoming election: "the Bush-Cheney henchmen could simply call on martial law."

Mickeleh's Take: Vidal is optimistic about the recovery. The repairs won't begin in the next two years. But, if martial law is not declared and Democrats take one or both houses, the rate of damage may slow. As for the many scenarios circulating for how the Republicans will steal the upcoming election, best to ignore them (for now). If progressives believe that voting is futile, that's a guaranteed loss. If you have any time to spare, volunteer for a Democratic get out the vote operation.

(tags: Bush, Politics, Election, News and Politics)

Ask Yourself the Questions Posed by Bush

When Bush signed the Military Commissions Act into law he used, as Jeffrey Feldman points out, the frame of history. The same frame that led him to call the carnage of Iraq "a comma." Bush has faith that, ultimately, all his actions will have a good outcome, despite what temporary inconveniences they may create along the way. It's a wonderfully liberating way to look at the world. If Iraq's woes are healed any time in any distant future, then Bush can claim credit for having paved the way. I suppose Hitler could similarly claim credit for putting Germany on a path to its current democratic prosperity.

It's a completely consequence-free view of action. The way Bush sees it, the game is never lost, because it's never completed. There will always be more innings.

Bush looked back from a distant history when the U.S. will have defeated the evil-doers to justify his sacking of rights that have been part of our tradition since the Magna Carta.

Yet, with the distance of history, the questions will be narrowed and few: Did this generation of Americans take the threat seriously, and did we do what it takes to defeat that threat?

Let me propose a narrow view. Let's take those two questions out of the eschatological framework in which Bush posed them. Let's take them very literally and shine a cold light of irony on them.

It was Keith Olbermann who first called attention to the fact that those questions rightly point back to Bush himself.

We'll learn the answer on Nov. 7.

"Did this generation of Americans take the threat seriously?"

"Did we do what it takes to defeat the threat?"

Can you give more time and/or more money to defeat the Republican candidates for Senate, House, Governor, and Secretary of State?

Please, take the Bush threat seriously. And please, do what it takes to defeat it.