A Flag Down on Hillary's Entry into The Race

Hillary's in. Terry McAuliffe, her campaign manager summarized her assets for The Sunday Times: "She has the name recognition, the money, the glitz, she’s got it all."

I don't trust her.

Friday I was having lunch with a friend. We were talking about the leaders in the field for the Democratic nominatin for president. When Hilary's name popped up, we both went to the flag issue. (In 2005, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-NY) joined with Sen. Robert Benton (R-UT) to proposed a bill that would outlaw burning the United States Flag.)

One of the reasons that I love my flag is that it stands for free speech. It's flag that stands for my right to burn it. How cool is that?

I get that burning the flag is shocking, disturbing, and repellent. That's why it's a weapon of protest. It's free speech.

But a lot of people would like to see it outlawed. And Hillary wants their votes.

I don't know how many of them she got with her flag bill pandering. But she lost mine. And she lost my friend's.

Mickeleh's Take: Hillary may have the name recognition, the money, and the glitz. But she doesn't have it all. She doesn't have my respect.

(Tags: Hillary, Hillary Clinton, Politics, Campaign, Nomination, Democratic Party)

WH Correspondents Wimp Out, Proving Moyers Correct

For the first time in memory, last year's White House Correspondent's dinner had some relevance to our national dialog thanks to the merciless skewering that Steven Colbert gave the press and the president. Video (Colbert starts about 51 minutes in) Transcript.

As if to prove Bill Moyers correct about the plantation mentality that has seized the press corps, this year the White House Correspondents Association has invited Rich Little to lay a little pablum on us.

Mickeleh's Take: The press continues to pretend that it's not the story. But in fact, it's inability or unwillingness to actually tell the story is chapter one of the story. I salute WHCA for making that clearer than ever.

More at Memeorandum.com

(Tags: WHCA, Rich Little, Media, Press, White House, Steven Colbert, Colbert)

Leahy Says Gonzales Testimony is "Alice in Wonderland"

Which is a terrible insult to Lewis Carroll.

Challenged in the Senate about the Administration's readiness to ignore the constitutional guarantee of habeas corpus, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales answered this way:

Gonzales: I meant by that comment that the Constitution doesn't say that every individual in the United States or every citizen has or is assured the right of habeas corpus. It doesn't say that. It simply says that the right of habeas corpus shall not be suspended.

Get it. All the constitution says is that the right can't be suspended. It never said who, if anybody, actually has that right.

Mickeleh's Take: Alberto (it's not torture if the president says it's not) Gonzales is a weaselly wiseguy of the highest order. (I'll refrain from saying, "in other words, he's a lawyer." I'll just say, "in other words, he's working for the Bush White House.")

More at Memeorandum

(Tags: Alberto Gonzales, Habeas Corpus)

Bill Moyers: On the Consolidation of Media and How We Can Fight It

Rich Binell emailed a Kos Diary by Delicate Monster that includes excerpts from last week's Bill Moyers address to the National Conference of Media Reform.

I've embedded the Moyers speech in this post. It's well-researched, well-reasoned, well-written, and inspiring.

Please, play it. It's worth an hour of your time.

Moyers talks about how media consolidation has fostered a plantation mentality that has turned mainstream reporting into a docile stenography pool content to parrot the propaganda of the establishment without question.

Moyers tells it straight. No pablum. He scares us. He challenges us to fight back. And he shows us the way.

I think you should hear what he has to say.

Nevertheless, it's a hopeful, inspiring speech, pointing to a future where the internet empowers us all of us become story-tellers.

"We've got to get alternative content out or this country's going to die of too many lies."

Bill Moyers at NCMR 2007 -- Part 1


Bill Moyers at NCMR 2007 -- Part 2

Mickeleh's Take: What is hopeful is that despite the drumbeat of propaganda, the public sees through the White House spin. What is terrifying is that for years following the 9-11 attacks neither the public nor the media bothered to. What happened in November was that some Republicans were defeated and some Democrats were elected. But Bush is still in the White House. The cominant media companies are still fighting to kill the badly named "net neutrality" principle. The main stream media shows signs of stirring, but it is not yet awake. There's work to do.

(Tags: Bill Moyers, Media, Net Neutrality, TV, Internet, News)

PleaseSend Money to Firedoglake If You Can

I haven't been posting here for a while, so I don't know who will see this. But I want to pass it along just in case. Jane Hamsher and the gang and firedoglake.com have proven to be the go-to resource for understanding the arcana of the Scooter Libby case. Now that the trial has started we need them more than ever.

Turns out they need us more than ever, too. If you can spare a bit, please do so.

Jack Bauer's Job Is To Keep Us Terrorized. Boycott 24

If it weren't for the blood and the stabbings, and the screaming and the killing people by biting their throats out and the children in jeopardy and the suicide bombers detonating all over the country and the killing your best friend and nuking L.A., this would be a pretty funny show.

As it is, it's just an audio-video fear extravaganza, a pumped-up version of the terror alert color-charts that used to be trotted out to keep us scared and the Bush poll numbers up.

I've watched my last four hours of this Fox propaganda fest. Bad Muslims everywhere. Even the good-guy hero Muslim is a mass murderer.

If that's your idea of a good time, you're welcome to it.

Mickeleh's Take: Bauer may work for CTU, but Kiefer works for Rupert. And I say the hell with them both. They are doing evil. Include me out.

In New York. I smell the smell. My friend Jack smells a rat

Jack emails me to ask:

Who else entertained the idea that the suspicious odor in New York air and the dead birds on the streets of Austin were just a little something--courtesy of Uncle Sam--to provide us with a jolt of fear? After all, Bush speaks of his build up tomorrow and we will all be reminded that it's better to fight them over there than over here.

Mickeleh's Take: Where I'm working today in mid-town Manhattan, people are still more worried about their email disappearing because of computer viruses. New Yorkers are hardy folks. But what the hell have we been breathing all day?

For Jefferson and Liberty. And The Koran

This one is too delicious times two. When Rep.-elect Keith Ellison, the first Muslim elected to Congress announced that he wanted to take his oath of office holding a Koran, he was pounced on as un-American by some folks whose understanding of the the Constitutional guarantee of religious freedom is tenuous at best—including Rep. Virgil Goode. First, it turns out that the Library of Congress will make available a copy of the Koran that was once owned by Thomas Jefferson. Second, it turns out that the Jefferson estate, Monticello, is in Rep. Goode's district.

We go out on that? No. We do reprise of song. That help.

Song? Yes.

In 1880, Thomas Jefferson ran against John Adams, one of Bush's predecessors in assaulting the Constitution and American ideals. In Adams's case it was the Alien and Sedition Acts.

This was, it goes without saying, pre-netroots, pre-TV, and even pre-radio. But it was not pre-jingle.

Jefferson and Liberty is, perhaps, America's first true campaign song. The Lyrics are by Robert Treat Paine Jr. In reading the opening stanza, it's hard to imagine that Paine had no knowledge of the excesses of the Bush regime and such Bush apologists as Michelle Malkin and Ann Coulter.

The gloomy night before us flies; The reign of terror now is o'er
No gags, inquisitors, and spies; The herds of harpies are no more

The song rejects the "fiery bigot's holy laws," and promises

Here, free as air's expanded space, To every soul and sect shall be;
That sacred privilege of our race, The worship of the Deity.

Chorus:

Rejoice, Columbia's sons, rejoicel To tyrants never bend the knee
But join with heart, and soul and voicel For Jefferson and Liberty.

The song is included in Oscar Brand's Presidential Campaign Songs: 1789–1996. You can hear a snip of it at Amazon.


Mickeleh's Take: Even in at the turn of the 19th century, consultants recycled limited their ideas and worked for anyone who paid them. Four years earlier, Paine had penned "Adams and Liberty" on a commission from the Massachusetts Charitable Fire Society. Well, maybe it was an honest conversion. I guess you could say that Paine was for Adams before he was against him. As for me, I look forward to singing a rousing verse or two of Jefferson and Liberty to cheer the current White House incumbent on his way. I will sing even louder when "the herds of harpies are no more."

(Tags: Jefferson, Jefferson's Koran, Keith Ellison, Virgil Goode)

BBC: Bush to send more troops; talk sacrifice

A "senior official" is doing the prep-work for the long-postponed Bush plan for the next phase of our Iraq fiasco. Justin Webb of the BBC confirms that Bush plans to escalate in Iraq. Central theme of the speech is one that Bush has strenuously avoided since the beginning of the War: sacrifice. Now that U.S. service deaths have hit the 3000 mark, the White House if finally willing to acknowledge that some sacrifice is going on. And while the public has clearly concluded that it's time to curtail the sacrifice, the White House is ready to ask for more.

Webb reports "The exact mission of the extra troops in Iraq is still under discussion, according to officials."

Mickeleh's Take: The strategy may be under discussion, but the mission is clear: they're being sacrificed in order to allow Bush to continue evading the reality of the awful fiasco he has created in the name of the United States of America. For Bush, leaving equals losing, and that he will not do. And please, it's not a "surge" or a "boost." It's an escalation. It's the McCain-Lieberman strategy.
Here are some folks who will discourse on this at greater length and with more citations:

Devilstower on Kos
Jane Hamsher on Firedoglake
David E. Sanger, Michael R. Gordon and John F. Burns in The New York Times

(Tags: Iraq, Bush, War)

WaPo: A Long List of No-Shows for Ford Rites

On Wednesday, I wondered, (along with Dave Winer) whether not attending the Ford lying-in-state would make John Edwards look bad. Nah. According to the Washington Post skipping the Ford service was a very popular choice among the Washington elite. The current President skipped it. Only three of the Supremes showed, and about ten senators and thirty-five Congress members. Rumsfeld and Baker didn't make it either. The Post said Tom Foley was there. But it also identified him as "former speaker."

As for the public:

Capitol police erected barriers to contain thousands, but by mid-afternoon yesterday, only 20 people were in line -- providing a luxurious person-to-portable-toilet ratio of 1:1.

Mickeleh's Take: This was just the prelims. The big service will be on Tuesday. With no football games competing.

(Tags: Ford, Gerald Ford)

Who's Mickeleh?

I've been getting some new visitors based on a post and some comments I made about John Edwards announcement and Scoble's coverage thereof. Thanks for dropping by, and welcome.

If you came here with more interest in technology than, you might find my other blog, Mickeleh's Take more to your taste.

This is my news and politics blog. I cross-posted the John Edwards /Robert Scoble in both blogs because it was both a tech and a political story.

Shel Israel, noted the lack of profile information here, inspiring my one and only New Year's resolution: I resolve to work on my profile. If I get very ambitious, I may get around to telling the story of how James Bond got me my job at Apple, how Groucho got me on the radio, how Robin Williams got me a gig at Paramount writing sitcoms--unbeknownst to any of them.

But for now, here's a sketch:

I'm Michael Markman. Not the only Michael Markman, so I'm blogging as Mickeleh, which is a Yiddish-style diminutive for Michael (accent on the first syllable, as in Michelob or piccolo).

Went to Bronx Science--before Dave Winer, to Columbia--with Bill Campbell.

Ran Apple creative services and worldwide corporate advertising sometime during the Jobs interregnum. (best campaign: "What's on your Powerbook")

Spent the first bubble consulting (mostly for clients that ended the century in acquisitions, in chapter 11 or under indictment.) Many of those gigs were with Michael Witlin Associates.

Was creative director at Digeo for development of the Moxi U-I. (we won two Emmy awards so far. Nominated for a third.) Though I have left the company, I contract with them to post on behalf of Moxi under the name MoxiGuy.

I've had an ongoing sideline with Peter Hirshberg doing serio-comic presentations on tech marketing, social media, which we've given at TED, AlwaysOn, The WSJ D-Conference, and the Computer Science Museum. The Long Tail video, inspired by Chris Anderson's book, is one of the artifacts of that collaboration. (Thanks to Robert Scoble for persuading me to post it to YouTube. It's now approaching 400,000 views.)

But enough about me. Let's talk about you. Happiest of New Years to you all. More peace in the world, more love in our lives, and may we grasp all the liquidity events we seek.

Larisa Alexandrovna: The Saddam Hanging in Strategic Context

Juan Cole has posted a Guest Op-Ed from Larisa Alexandrovna that puts the Saddam execution into a context of a grand strategy that's setting up our next military fiasco with Iran.

Mickeleh's Take: I hope Alexandrovna is completely cuckoo about this, but it certainly is of a piece with the strangely grim affect of the war cabinet yesterday, our detaining Iranian diplomats visiting Iraq, Lieberman's belicose op-ed in this morning's Washington Post, which mentions Iran seven times, and Sy Hersh's reporting on the Bush Iran plans in the New Yorker.

(Tags: execution, Saddam, Saddam Hussein)

TPM on the Hanging: "It's a job, for once, that these folks can actually see through to completion."

Joshua Micah Marshall finds the hanging of a piece with all of the other staged events that mark the Bush war.

This whole endeavor, from the very start, has been about taking tawdry, cheap acts and dressing them up in a papier-mache grandeur -- phony victory celebrations, ersatz democratization, reconstruction headed up by toadies, con artists and grifters. And this is no different. Hanging Saddam is easy. It's a job, for once, that these folks can actually see through to completion. So this execution, ironically and pathetically, becomes a stand-in for the failures, incompetence and general betrayal of country on every other front that President Bush has brought us.

(Tags: execution, Saddam, Saddam Hussein)

Is Bush Just Waiting For The Hanging?

You have to wonder why Bush, after all this time, is still fumbling for, er, working on a strategy for Iraq. The pre-Christmas policy announcement has been postponed. Could it be that Bush is waiting for the hanging so he can point to yet another corner turned? Does he expect that stretching Saddam's neck will give him a long-sought uptick in public approval? Not likely. We're at a point where any news from Iraq is just another reminder of the magnitude of the Bush fiasco.

Bush and advisers meet the press yesterday at Crawford. Said Bush, "I'm making good progress toward coming up with a plan that we think will help us achieve our objective." Said the advisers, nothing.

The most eloquent expressions in yesterday's press meet and photo op were the grim faces, downcast eyes, and pursed lips of the War President's War Cabinet. Bush himself, if you saw any of the TV coverage, was in his head-lowered, sighing, shruggy mode. Did not inspire confidence.

(Tags: Bush, Iraq)

The Bush Line on Iraq Morphs

Did you notice how the Bush line has shifted from "We're making progress on Iraq" to "We're making progress on a plan"?

(Tags: Bush, Iraq)

Herblock Bears Witness to Ford

THE LONG NATIONAL NIGHTMARE GOES ON

September 11, 1974

The best documentation we have of the unravelling of the Nixon presidency is Herblock's compendium of his Watergate cartoons, Herblock, Special Report.

Big thanks to poputonian for resurrecting what Herblock said at the time about Ford's pardoning Nixon. Rather than ending our "long national nightmare," the pardon ensured that "the idea of some divine right of Presidents went on." We are all suffering from the Bush administration's embrace of that notion.

Amazon has links to about fifty used copies of the long out-of-print Herblock masterpiece. And they're dirt cheap. How little we value our prophets.

The Washington Post has a gallery of Herblock online.

Mickeleh's Take: There are details which have all but evaporated from the collective memory of mainstream media. It's worth our time to read them and remember.


(Tags: Ford, Herblock, Nixon)

John Edwards, The Demo

Edwards insight into high-tech marketing is much deeper than just reaching out to Scoble and popping up on YouTube and Rocketboom. Every candidate this cycle is will be wooing bloggers and throwing campaign videos up onto the net.

Here's the brilliant innovation of the Edwards campaign: he's conducting an open, public, empirical test of his own leadership abilities. He's giving us a demo. That's a high wire act. No net. If it works, it evolves into a public beta of the John Edwards presidency.

The operational definition of a leader is someone with followers. So here's Edwards saying, hey let's get busy and start getting things done now instead of waiting until the election. If people get busy, Edwards is a leader. Kennedy famously challenged the country to, "Ask not what your country can do for you. Ask what you can do for your country." But that was in the inaugural address, not the campaign.

Edwards isn't asking for the order on election day. He's asking for it today. And the ask isn't just, "send me money." It's start making things better. If people respond, Edwards will have delivered an irrefutable demonstration of his leadership.

Unless, of course, the only actions he proposes are like the first one: "holding your own local 'Citizens' Launch' event."

(Tags: John Edwards, Edwards, Campaign 2008, PoliticsNews and Politics)

More: Memeorandum, Techmeme

John Edwards Falls into a Time Trap

Dave Winer astutely notes that John Edwards timing for his presidential bid (expected tomorrow) has run smack up against Geral Ford lying in state. Edward will be sounding his hollow "One Nation" theme on a day when there will clearly be two nations: the one paying respects to a genial former president and the other listening to a guy say, "elect me!"

The two early leaders in the run for the Democratic nomination, Senators Clinton and Obama will gain gravitas points by "not" campaigning (Nudge, nudge. Wink, wink.)

Edwards may have hoped that announcing during a slow news week would gain him an uncontested spotlight. But his timing would have been sub-optimal even without the Ford's passing. There's a reason people avoid making announcements during the week between Christmas and New Years: nobody's paying attention.

Power is back... Cable (including Broadband) is out

Downtown Kirkland is swimming in free Wi-Fi. I'm currently online at Kahili Coffee. At the table behind me is a guy who may have been completely traumatized by the blackout. He's typing on a manual portable typewriter (Smith-Corona). Clack-clack. Clack-clack-clack. To hell with electricity.

My internet connection is wireless. But I'm getting wired. Da-da-bum.

Holding good thoughts for Sen. Johnson

The latest bulletin on Sen. Tim Johnson comes from Adm. John Eisold, the Capitol attending physicisan: "No further surgical intervention has been required."

This could either be very good news or very bad news.

I'm holding good and prayerful thoughts for the Senator, his family, and the future of the Supreme Court.