What Elizabeth Edwards Said

I didn't watch Sixty Minutes last night. I'd like to say there was some principle to that. (Someone told me she wasn't watching because she can't stand Katie Couric. Not that it would have mattered to CBS; my friend is in the wrong demo. But my reason was that I was having too much fun with my Apple TV. There I've said it.)

But here's what Elizabeth Edwards said:

"You know, you really have two choices here. I mean, either you push forward with the things that you were doing yesterday or you start dying. That seems to be your only two choices. If I had given up everything that my life was about – first of all, I'd let cancer win before it needed to. You know, maybe eventually it will win. But I'd let it win before I needed to.

And I'd just basically start dying. I don't want to do that. I want to live. And I want to do the work that I want next year to look like last year and... and the year after that and the year after that. And the only way to do that is to say I'm going to keep on with my life."

Mickeleh's Take: I'm sorry for the circumstance that compels Elizabeth Edwards to draw so soon on her enormous courage, strength, and wisdom. But it's a comfort to know that she has all three in such abundance. I've heard commentators throw the phrase "teaching moment" a lot since we learned of the return of her cancer. The phrase sounds awfully glib and pre-packaged. But Elizabeth Edwards taught me something in those remarks. I hope I can remember them in case of emergency.

By the way, for a perspective on Katie Couric from someone who did watch, see Taylor Marsh at HuffPo.

(Tag: Elizabeth Edwards)

Attorneygate: A Slo-mo Saturday Night Massacre

When the Attorneygate story first broke, it looked to me like a slow-mo replay of a key event in the downfall of Richard Nixon, the "Saturday Night Massacre" as skewered by Herblock's cartoon with a one-word caption: "Mugging." (The cufflinks bear the initials, R.N.)

With Special Prosecutor Archibald Cox closing in, Nixon issued a simple order to his attorney general: fire Cox.

The A.G., Elliot Richardson, refused and resigned. Richardson's deputy, William Ruckelshaus did likewise.

At that point, the Solicitor General became acting Attorney General. And he carried out the order.

Who was that guy? Robert Bork, whose name became a verb when his nomination to the Supreme Court (by Reagan in 1987) was successfully challenged by the Senate.

See also: Oliver Willis: Somewhere, Richard Nixon is Thanking Bush for Making Him Look Good.

Times Scoop: White House vs Gonzales. It's starting

The Bush gang is not the the prime demographic for riding the bus. But they're starting to learn the routes. "Thrown under the bus" is fast becoming the operant phrase of the great unraveling. On Monday, the embattled A.G. (same initials for office and office-holder) tossed his own flunky, D. Kyle Sampson, under the bus for failing to make a clean getaway after replacing eight U.S. prosecutors with Rovian flunkies. "Mistakes were made here" said the A.G. without specifiying what and by whom.

According to Sheryl Gay Stolberg and Jeff Stolberg in the NY Times, some unnamed Republican insider confided, "“I really think there’s a serious estrangement between the White House and Alberto now."

From the White House perspective, there's no mistake in the firings.

• Perfectly OK to fire Carol C. Lam who successfully prosecuted Randy Cunningham and was, surely on the trail of even more Republican malfeasance.
• Perfectly OK to can Bud Cummings to make room for the Rove protege who managed the nomination of John Roberts for Chief Justice.
• Perfectly OK to can David Iglesias who resisted pressure from Sen. Pete Domenici to embarrass the Democrats before the election.
• Perfectly OK to can John McKay who wouldn't bow to pressure from a Republican operative to challenge the squeaker election of Democratic Governor Christine Gregoire with allegations of voter fraud. None of those were mistakes.

So what were the mistakes? Getting caught at it. As conveyed to the Times' reporters by another unnamed Republican: “I think Rove and Bolten believe there is the potential for erosion of the president’s credibility on this issue.”

Mickeleh's Take: What Credibility?

More on memeorandum.com

(Tags: politics, prosecutors, Bush, Rove, Gonzales, Attorney General)

Administration Warns Scientists on Mentioning Polar Bears

For a giant carnivore, polar bears are awfully cute—cute enough to help sell Coke as a secular second banana to Santa. They're also cute enough to provide one of the most heartbreaking icons of the devastation of global warming—swimming to exhaustion and death as the distances between safe, solid patches of arctic ice continue to grow.

The plight of the exhausted polar bear swimming to death packs an emotional wallop that, weirdly, hits folks harder than the disruptions to the economic and cultural life of humans, or the starving of reindeer. There's a thesis in there -- or a fine column by a writer with more time and talent than I can bring to the issue.

Oh yes, and the plight of the polar bear is also the subject of a suit by environmental groups seeking to have it listed as an endangered species.

So, naturally, the Bush administration is finally doing something about global warming: The Fish and Wildlife Service is telling scientists not to mention the polar bears. According to Andrew C. Revkin in NYT, if the polar bears are officially listed as endangered it might force action on restricting greenhouse gases.

Americablog has the memo.

“Please be advised that all foreign travel requests (SF 1175 requests) and any future travel requests involving or potentially involving climate change, sea ice and/or polar bears will also require a memorandum from the regional director to the director indicating who’ll be the official spokesman on the trip and the one responding to questions on these issues, particularly polar bears.”

More on memeorandum.com

Mickeleh's Take: It serves those ungodly polar bears right for letting Coke recruit them into the secular war on Christmas.

(Tags: climate change, polar bears, propaganda, War on Christmas)

NYT: McCain, Giuliani, Romney condemn Coulter's Remarks

Adam Nagourney reports that three of the Republican candidates for the presidential nomination have put some distance between themselves and the remarks made by Coulter at the Conservative Political Action Conference.

The Edwards campaign is asking supporters to sending him "Coulter Cash." Their goal: raising $100,000.

McCain (through a spokesperson): "... wildly inappropriate..."
Giuiliani: "... "completely inappropriate... "
Romney (through a spokesperson): "... an offensive remark..."

Even more encouraging, many conservative voices at redstate.com are chiming in to condemn the remarks. Most of them are pragmatic condemnations ("this isn't helping the cause") rather than moral outrage. But it's a start.

Mickeleh's Take: Coulter has been skating on thin ice for years. It's time she fell through.

Coulter Pulls Yucks from CPAC by Calling Edwards a "http://www2.blogger.com/img/gl.link.gifFaggot"

It's called finding the level of the room. A weak comic working bluer and bluer until finally the laughs start coming. Ann Coulter found the level of the Conservative Political Action Conference with this line:

“I was going to have a few comments on the other Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards, but it turns out you have to go into rehab if you use the word ‘faggot,’ so I — so kind of an impasse, can’t really talk about Edwards.”

Before Coulter took the podium Mitt Romney, whose strongest qualification is a square chin that makes Chris Matthews weak in the knees, said this:

“I am happy to hear that after you hear from me, you will hear from Ann Coulter. That is a good thing. Oh yeah!”

Video of both is up on Think Progress.

That Coulter makes a living from unholy hate speech, is an overplayed dog-bites-man bit of non news. What's essential to take from this event is that she makes said living from a depraved audience that applauds, approves, and draws energy from her antics.

Mickeleh's Take: That Coulter would extend her string of hate-speech for laughs is to be expected. That the conservative base eats it up is to be remembered. That Romney is pandering to this crowd is to no avail. That C-SPAN broadcast this and that Memeorandumis abuzz with it is to flip on the kitchen lights see see the cockroach infestation in our home.

Dick Cheney Brings Us "An Inadvertent Truth"

Here in the last throes of the Cheney vice presidency we're getting some unexpected treats:

First, a game of good-cop-bad-cop where Cheney plays good cop and casts the Democrats as bad cop. Yes, the Democrats, relentlessly ridiculed as softies by Cheney, Rove, and the Wurlitzer, are now cast as the tough cops.

"Cheney's message to military ruler Pervez Musharraf: Bush and I may still love you guys, but those uptight Democrats in Congress are going to kick your ass unless you get serious about stopping Al Qaeda."

Second, an official White House news release in which an unnamed "senior administration official" pierces his own veil of secrecy by speaking in the first person:

"I've seen some press reporting says, 'Cheney went in to beat up on them, threaten them.' That's not the way I work."

And now, a new wrinkle on justifying the war in Iraq. A defense of the war crowned with a nugget of actual, if inadvertent, truth. Tim Grieve plucked this gem out of Cheney's address to CPAC (Conservative Political Action Committee):

"In these circumstances, it's worth reminding ourselves that, like it or not, the enemy we face in the war on terror has made Iraq the primary front in that war. To use a popular phrase, this is an 'inconvenient truth.'"

Droll as ever, that Cheney. Cheney new line is a twist on an old favorite: We're fighting them in Iraq so we don't have to fight them in Afghanistan. But the inadvertant truth of Cheney's remark is this: The enemy of our success in the war on terror is an ideologically blinded administration that has poured resources into making Iraq a distracting front in that war, while allowing the Taliban and Al Qaeda to regroup, train, and prepare their surge in Afghanistan.

Before the towers fell, Bush was handed the famed daily brief, "Bin Ladin Determined To Strike in US." He ignored it. Fast forward to now: I wonder what bin Laden is determined to do these days. According Michael Scheuer, former head of the CIA bin Laden unit (1993-1996), "Bin Laden Determined to Strike in US with Nuclear Weapon." Alternet has video of Schuer's interview with Keith Olbermann.

Mickeleh's Take: The direct cost of the Iraq war in lives, dollars, and honor is enormous. The opportunity cost may be even higher.

Robert Greenwald: The Fox News Campaign Against Obama

Here's another fine example of the ongoing YouTubification of political discourse.

Robert Greenwald's Fox Attacks: Obama

Robert Greenwald, is extending his feature-length Fox News expose, Outfoxed with a series of short updates. This one focuses on a Fox smear campaigns against Sen. Obama (He smokes; his middle name is Hussein; he's not really black; he's madrassa educated.)

Fox is not a news organization, but is a propaganda organ of the White House and right wing. So far that hasn't dissuaded, the Nevada Democratic from working with Fox News to broadcast a presidential candidates debate. Moveon.org is petitioning the party to drop those plans.
More on Memeorandum.

Mickeleh's Take: Is there any downside to urging all Democrats to freeze out Fox and refuse invitations to appear on their shows?

Iraq: The New Strategy Is Different, says Newsweek

Atrios calls it "Iraq4Ever." According to Newsweek, strategy of Gen. Petraeus is not simply more of the same. It's definitely more. But it's different. And it isn't yet another version of "we'll fix it in six months." Says Newsweek:

To a degree little understood by the U.S. public, Petraeus is engaged in a giant “do-over.” It is a near-reversal of the approach taken by Petraeus’s predecessor as commander of multinational forces in Iraq, Gen. George Casey, until the latter was relieved in early February, and most other top U.S. commanders going back to Rick Sanchez and Tommy Franks. Casey sought to accelerate both the training of Iraqi forces and American withdrawal. By 2008, the remaining 60,000 or so U.S. troops were supposed to be hunkering down in four giant “superbases,” where they would be relatively safe. Under Petraeus’s plan, a U.S. military force of 160,000 or more is setting up hundreds of “mini-forts” all over Baghdad and the rest of the country, right in the middle of the action.

Mickeleh's Take: The word on Petraeus is that he's the top guy on counter-insurgency and that he's put together a "best and brightest" team of warrior-PhDs. Maybe he knows what he's doing. If so, why did it take so long before they gave him the assignment?

GQ Has Indictment Prepared for Cheney Impeachment

Yes, that GQ. Well, why not? I've been watching the same clip of fat, fat, Cheney in an ill-fitting wrinkled suit plonkity plonking down the stairway from his jet on Olbermann everytime they cover the Libby trial. It's been running for weeks.

You could get Cheney on fashion offences alone. But the article by Wil S. Hylton is a serious six-count indictment. And you don't even need to go to G.Q to read it. Truthout has it.

Mickeleh's Take: Add this to the "Cloud over the Vice President" that prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald described in his summation on the Libby case (see Froomkin) and the third of Ari Emanuel's Three Predictions may be a good bet.

Tools for Totalitarians? A Machine that Remembers Everything

[This article spans technology and politics, I've cross posted it in Mickeleh's Take.]

The Scooter Libby case goes to the jury today. It hinges on this question: did he lie to the FBI about how and when he learned about Mrs. Wilson, or was he innocently mis-remembering?

Apparently, we will soon have the technology to expedite trials like this. Gordon Bell and Jim Gemmell, in Scientific American, describe research they are doing at Microsoft on harnessing the technology to record everything.

Scientific American: A Digital Life [ INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY ]
New systems may allow people to record everything they see and hear--and even things they cannot sense--and to store all these data in a personal digital archive

Storage is getting cheap. Processors continue to obey Moore's law. Network access is getting ubiquitous. Sensors of various types being embedded everywhere. (Carry a cell phone? Then you're carrying a microphone and a camera that know where you are. hmmm.)

Mickeleh's Take: Feds Using Cell Phones to Eavesdrop
...feds can download software to many kinds of cell phone and then have the ability to turn on the microphone and listen in. Even when the cell phone is turned "off."

Bell has amassed 150 gigabytes of data in six years, and his descriptions of what he can do with it make it sound really cool. Without a good overlay of intelligence and analysis, however, an archive of everything in our lives might turn all of us into clones of the Borges character Funes, the Memorious, who remembered everything but understood nothing.
Bell and Gemmell acknowledge that "the prospect that identity thieves, gossipmongers or authoritarian states could gain access to such records is frightening." And, with the optimism of every scientist in a fifties sci-fi movie, they seem assured that technologies can be tamed so as to minimize potential dangers. I wonder if Admiral (Total Information Awareness) Poindexter would agree.

Mickeleh's Take: "If you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear." [EVIL LAUGH]

Jane Smiley on the Martial Law Provisions

Over on HuffPost, Jane Smiley expands on the martial law business urging support of the Leahy/Bond bill for repeal of the stealth-provisions.

To Engineer a Totalitarian Takeover, First Appoint a Clown to Be President

Coincidence or not, the NY Times editorializes, today, on language that was slipped without debate into a defense budget bill to make it easier to declare Martial law and, at the same time, Salon publishes an excerpt from Joe Conason's book, It Can Happen Here: Authoritarian Peril in the Age of Bush. The context is being carefully cultivated; perpetual war, recurring fears of attack ("over here"), erosion of Consitutional and legal rights, accusations that political opponents are "aiding," "comforting," or "emboldening" our enemies.

And the front man for all this, a goofy galoot who can't string two sentences together without creating a bit for Letterman, Maher, or Stewart. Our flavor of totalitarianism will feature not a dictator, but a decider.

Mickeleh's Take: I'd love to see an expose on how this language-slipping business actually occurs. Who is the cadre of bill-writers who sneak these bits of proto-totalitarianism into our body of law? Who pays them? Who commands them? And will it stop now that the Democrats are in charge?

Woid Asks: Where is the Actual Filibuster The Senate Can't Muster 60 Votes to End?

With visions of Jimmy Stewart's Mr. Smith talking to the point of collapse, Woid, over at DownWithTyranny! wonders how the Senate took a vote that failed to stop a filibuster that didn't seem to get started in the first place.

This past Saturday, the Republicans killed the pathetic non-binding resolution that would have told Bush that the Senate "disapproves" of his current escalation. Tut, tut, such language! The resolution was killed when Democrats were unable to muster the 60 votes to get cloture, and so stop debate.

Here’s my question: WHAT debate?

Where’s that juicy filibuster? Why didn’t we get to see Republicans standing up in opposition to the overwhelming will of the people to stop this war? (Not that the toothless resolution would have done anything like that...)

Mickeleh's Take: It's a juicy post about the lack of a juicy filibuster. Go ahead, click.

Juan Cole Gives Senate Iraq Vote a Glass-Half-Full Headline: "Senate Comes Close"

Once again, the Senate has voted not to debate a non-binding resolution that disapproves of the latest Bush escalation. Typical stress the negative: Debate Ends in Deadlock... Republicans block... GOP foils... Democrats fail... Republicans Succeed... etc. Bless Juan Cole for looking at the bright side:

The US Senate came very close to passing a resolution condemning Bush's escalation of the Iraq War. It needed 60 to pass and got 56. Several Republicans voted for the resolution. In fact, if only 4 more had, it would have passed. This vote is very bad news for Bush's Iraq policy, because it seems pretty likely that over the next few months, at least another 4 Republican senators will join the anti-war chorus.

Mickeleh's Take: The Bush and GOP strategy in the debate over ending the Iraq war is not to have it. By announcing a "surge," they've moved the perimeter and blocked the debate about "shall we end the war?" with a new debate, "shall we escalate?" And then, they work on blocking that one. They're already setting up the next debate, "shall we have a military strike against Iran?" They're being very clever. But the public is catching on. And the Democrats have not only found their voice, but they're setting the agenda in the House and Senate. The gravitational pull of the 2008 Senate elections will pull some Republicans out of the Bush orbit--or the public will pull some Republicans out of the Senate. Or both. The pull of the 2008 Democratic primaries will keep Clinton, Obama, Edwards, and all the rest focused on Iraq. (Clinton, taking heat for not denouncing her original vote to authorize the President to use force in Iraq, is trying to overcome it by proposing that withdrawal begin within 90 days.)

Meanwhile, the killing and maiming goes on.

(Tags: Iraq, Senate, War, Iraq War)

Bush still giggling and chuckling about war

This isn't new or newsworthy. But it's cringeworthy and shameful every time. Our president, leader of the "free" world continues add a few heh-hehs to his answers about life, death, war, and surge. Happened again, yesterday during his press conference.

It's a perverse confirmation of Mel Brooks' famed definition of the difference between comedy and tragedy. "Tragedy is if I cut my finger. Comedy is if you walk into an open sewer and die."

Mickeleh's Take: I'm waiting for Bush to do something really funny and give us all a laugh.

And a tip of the Mickeleh Yarmulkeh to Woid who sent me scurrying to correct the Mel Brooks quote. (Google is no good for these things, because there are as many sources who get it wrong as get it right. Above is from Kenneth Tynan in his New Yorker Profile of Brooks, Oct. 30, 1978, page 94.)

(Tags: Bush, Comedy, Tragedy, Mel Brooks)

Questions from Molly Ivins

What happened to the nation that never tortured? The nation that wasn't supposed to start wars of choice? The nation that respected human rights and life? A nation that from the beginning was against tyranny?

Where have we gone? How did we let these people take us there? How did we let them fool us?

--Molly Ivins (from her last column)

Molly Ivins was among the first to warn us about George W. Bush. While he was still the death-warrant happy Governor of Texas, she co-authored (with Lou Dubose) Shrub: the Short but Happy Political Life of George W. Bush, and then, as we went to war, Bushwhacked: Life in George W. Bush's America.

Throughout the Bush presidency she reported plainly and with sharp humor on the true and sorry state of our union. One of her themes was the Bush regime's systematic support of the powerful against the powerless. The week of her passing, Robert Pear in The Times carried forth on her mission by reporting that Bush has signed an executive order to insert political operatives into federal regulatory agencies for the purpose of hampering their ability to regulate.

Mickeleh's Take: I'll miss her voice, her humor, and her record of seeing and saying what so many journalists were unable or unwilling to report about Bush. That more and more people now see Bush for what he is and what he does is due in no small measure to Molly Ivins.

Kaplan Sketches The Dimensions of Our Current Long National Nighmare

This summary is not available. Please click here to view the post.

Technorati Found Poetry

I looked at the top tags on the Technorati home page this morning and they made more sense than usual.

Bush celebrates China
Comedy Democrats
Flickr gaming Iran
Mac money
Open-source opinion
SEO shopping Vista war
Windows, Windows, Vista
Women fashion foto

Mickeleh's Take: We may have a new doorway into the wisdom of crowds here.

(Tags: Technorati, Poetry, Tags)

Edwards Takes A Smart, Subtle Jab at Obama

John Edwards says he may have been too inexperienced to run in 2004. Hmm. Can anyone think of a prominent candidate who has even less experience in national politics today than Edwards had in 2004?

Mickeleh's Take: Watch out for the boomerang on this one. Yes, Edwards just reminded me that Obama has even less experience on the national stage, but he also reminded me that Hillary has more.

(Tags: John Edwards, Edwards, Barak Obama, Obama, Hillary Clinton, Democrats, Politics, 2008)