Crooks and Liars

Does Obama's election mean we're a center-left country?

John Amato — Tue, 02 Dec 2008 19:00:00 +0000

My last AOL Hot Seat poll was in response to the Republican talking points generated by the John Meacham's from the Village who are trying to make the case that America is a center-right nation.

The vote is very even at this point which is pretty amazing considering the AOL readership leans much more to the right.
Please click here and vote...

What is really cool about the AOL Hot Seat is that you can get a state by state break down just by taking your mouse and clicking on any state after you vote. Anyway, it's for fun and for free....

David Gregory to host Meet the Press

John Amato — Tue, 02 Dec 2008 18:00:34 +0000

NBC hasn't confirmed this yet, but the Huffington Post is reporting that NBC has tapped David Gregory to moderate Meet the Press.

David Gregory will take the reins as moderator of NBC's "Meet the Press," the Huffington Post has learned. Gregory has been a leading contender for the permanent spot since Tom Brokaw stepped in as interim moderator following Tim Russert's death in June.

In recent weeks, a short list including Gregory, Andrea Michell, Gwen Ifill, and Chuck Todd had been considered the top candidates for the position, while Katie Couric and Ted Koppel were viewed as dark horses.

I wrote this back on June 14th:

I would say that Gregory will be the fill-in host for the time being, but in my mind, he's not strong enough to take over the show full time...

{snip}

I think NBC has to either promote some local talent that we haven't had a chance to see yet or look outside their circle and find a strong personality to take over the reigns of the number one Sunday talk show that brings in at least fifty million dollars a year.

I'm sure he'll be aggressive enough, but is the talent pool so bad in TV Land that NBC had to fall back on Gregory? I do agree with Tina Brown's suggestion that Rachel Maddow would be a nice choice.

I say give Meet the Press to Rachel Maddow. She’s smart. She’s quick. She’s witty. She does her homework. And she listens to what the person she’s talking to is saying. She doesn't just go to the next question on her list. If Obama is post-racial, Maddow is post-gender—divested of hair-frosted femininity in the anchor genre and more appealing because of it. Like him, she’s a calm, unflappable new era phenomenon. Sure, she’s a lefty, and in the past week she's been swinging away at Obama's cabinet choices, but I suspect she's ambitious enough to dial it back if she had to.

But please Tina, keep Greta right where she is. And I'm sorry I have to say this, but I was hoping to squeeze out my good pal Glenn Greenwald for a spot on the round table...

Did Condi get her hands on this too?

John Amato — Tue, 02 Dec 2008 17:01:00 +0000

Why doesn't this surprise me?

The Bush administration backed off proposed crackdowns on no-money-down, interest-only mortgages years before the economy collapsed, buckling to pressure from some of the same banks that have now failed. It ignored remarkably prescient warnings that foretold the financial meltdown, according to an Associated Press review of regulatory documents.

"Expect fallout, expect foreclosures, expect horror stories," California mortgage lender Paris Welch wrote to U.S. regulators in January 2006, about one year before the housing implosion cost her a job.

Bowing to aggressive lobbying — along with assurances from banks that the troubled mortgages were OK — regulators delayed action for nearly one year. By the time new rules were released late in 2006, the toughest of the proposed provisions were gone and the meltdown was under way.

The Bush administration actually got a warning about the impending economic doom. Just like old times.

RICE: I remember very well that the president was aware that there were issues inside the United States. He talked to people about this. But I don't remember the al Qaeda cells as being something that we were told we needed to do something about.

BEN-VENISTE: Isn't it a fact, Dr. Rice, that the August 6 PDB warned against possible attacks in this country? And I ask you whether you recall the title of that PDB?

RICE: I believe the title was, "Bin Laden Determined to Attack Inside the United States."

Now, the...

BEN-VENISTE: Thank you.

Let's see Bill O'Reilly follow up on this story the way he did with Barney Frank. NOT...

Mike's Blog Roundup

Mike Finnigan — Tue, 02 Dec 2008 16:00:00 +0000

MediaBloodhound: AP trivializes Iraqi death toll, amplifies censorship

Majikthise: New National Security advisor is the darling of energy companies

Dani Rodrik: The forgotten side of FDR

Sic Semper Tyrannis 2008: "If only the intelligence..." GWB

Rolling Stone: Requiem for a Maverick

pandagon: That rascally party of Lincoln

The Bush Economy and the Myth of the Clinton Recession

Jon Perr — Tue, 02 Dec 2008 14:45:00 +0000

It's official. According to a statement from the National Bureau of Economic Research, the United States has been in a recession since December 2007. But while that conclusion from the non-governmental NEBR differs from the traditional definition of two consecutive quarters of GDP contraction, by any accounting the Bush recession will be well underway by the end of this year. And by either measure, the conservative talking point of a Clinton recession "inherited by George W. Bush" remains a myth.

The NEBR declaration is just the latest confirmation of the severe Bush downturn. Last week, the Commerce Department revised its third quarter (July through October) gross domestic product decline to 0.5% from 0.3%, while two recent forecasts predicted a Q4 drop-off of at least 3%. Two weeks ago, the quarterly Survey of Professional Forecasters by the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia concluded that the United States already entered a recession in April. Today, the NEBR's analysis, which includes a broader range of factors beyond GDP, concluded that the U.S. has been in a recession since December 2007. As CNN reported:

The NBER said that the deterioration in the labor market throughout 2008 was one key reason why it decided to state that the recession began last year.

Employers have trimmed payrolls by 1.2 million jobs in the first 10 months of this year. On Friday, economists are predicting the government will report a loss of another 325,000 jobs for November.

The NBER also looks at real personal income, industrial production as well as wholesale and retail sales. All those measures reached a peak between November 2007 and June 2008, the NBER said.

Facing the avalanche of grim news Monday, the White House still refuses to use the term "recession" to describe the economic calamity that Barack Obama will inherit from George W. Bush. Two months after press secretary Dana Perino claimed, "I don’t think anybody could tell you right now if we’re in a recession or not" and one month after he himself rejected a question as to whether the U.S. was in a recession as "irrelevant," Bush spokesman Tony Fratto today said of the slowdown, "What's important is what is being done about it."

Of course, back in 2001 the new Bush administration and its amen corner in the right-wing media weren't shy at all when it came to blaming a sluggish economy on Bill Clinton.

While the NEBR determined the George W. Bush's first recession actually began in March 2001, the history of U.S. GDP shows that the traditional definition of recession - two straight quarters of GDP decline - was never met during either the last year of the Clinton presidency or the first of Bush's tenure:

Undeterred, the Republican Party and its echo chamber have for years continued to perpetuate the myth that President Bush "inherited a recession" from Bill Clinton. As Media Matters detailed, the sound bite was introduced before George W, Bush even took the oath of office. On December 3, 2000, Dick Cheney told Tim Russert "I think so" when asked if "we're on the front edge of a recession." Within days, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich ("the Bush-Cheney administration should be planning on having inherited a recession as the farewell gift from Clinton") and House Majority Leader Dick Armey ("this new president may inherit a recession") followed suit. By August 2002, Mitch Daniels, Bush's head of the Office of Management and Budget, announced on Fox News:

"He [Bush] inherited that recession from the previous administration. Case is closed."

Predictably, the drumbeat from the Bush team was reproduced with zero distortion from the always reliable media. While Fox News' Sean Hannity made the argument during the November 2002 mid-term election "this president -- you know and I know and everybody knows -- inherited a recession," CNN made the case for him two months earlier. On September 18th, 2002, CNN's John King announced, "That's why the president, in almost every speech, tries to remind voters he inherited a recession." Five days later, his colleague Suzanne Malveaux regurgitated the same line, reporting, "[Bush] took up that very issue earlier today, saying -- reminding voters that the administration inherited the recession."

To be sure, the Republican propaganda effort worked its magic. In 2004, pollster Geoff Garin showed that 62% of Americans believed the demonstrably false claim that an "economic recession actually began during Bill Clinton's administration, before George W. Bush took office."

Now as Barack Obama prepares to assume the presidency, the right-wing noise machine is at again, though this time with a twist. Literally within hours of his election, conservative mouthpieces including Rush Limbaugh, Fred Barnes and Dick Morris began blaming Obama for the current Bush recession.

Of course, the numbers, unlike the Republicans who willfully ignore them, don't lie. By almost any measure, the American economy is (or within days will be said to be) in recession. And this time, there will be no doubt as to its paternity.

This is George W. Bush's recession.

Chris Bowers to Matthews: Obama Said He Would Govern In Bi-Partisan Fashion

Heather — Tue, 02 Dec 2008 13:30:37 +0000

Download | Play Download | Play

From Hardball Dec. 1, 2008 when asking if the left should feel betrayed by Obama's appointments Chris Bowers from OpenLeft responds to Matthews by saying:

I don't think he's betraying it. I think, I mean first of all he hasn't become President so it's difficult to see how he's failed to deliver on any campaign promises so far but he, he didn't say he was going to govern from the left during his campaign. He had some progressive rhetoric, but he said he was going to govern in a bi-partisan fashion. He repeatedly said that throughout 2007 and 2008, so I don't feel betrayed.

Matthews moves on and changes the subject. It's always nice to see someone knock him off of his talking points if only for a moment. Matthews is desperate for a fight where there is none yet and Chris Bowers is right, it is difficult to see how Obama has failed to deliver on any promises since he's not President yet. Can we at least wait until he's sworn in and see how he governs before having this conversation Chris Matthews? The Villagers are just chomping at the bit to skewer bloggers and the progressive wing of the Democratic party at every opportunity.

Open Thread

bluegal — Tue, 02 Dec 2008 04:30:03 +0000

h/t Larry. Open Thread below...

C&L's Late Nite Music Club with James

David Neiwert — Tue, 02 Dec 2008 04:00:59 +0000

James is one of my guilty pleasures. I think they were one of the real underrated bands of the '90s. This is from their best album, Seven. Unfortunately, they're better remembered for "Laid," which while fun, is a trifle of a little throwaway song, and wasn't even the best song on the album of the same title (that would be "One of Three," which doesn't seem to have a decent video available).

What's A Posse Comitatus?

Cernig — Tue, 02 Dec 2008 02:30:39 +0000

Can anyone say "mission creep"? The military always can, which is why a new initiative to give the Pentagon an ability to surge a combat-ready force for domestic security is so worrying.

The U.S. military expects to have 20,000 uniformed troops inside the United States by 2011 trained to help state and local officials respond to a nuclear terrorist
attack or other domestic catastrophe, according to Pentagon officials.

The long-planned shift in the Defense Department's role in homeland security was recently backed with funding and troop commitments after years of prodding by Congress and outside experts, defense analysts said.

There are critics of the change, in the military and among civil liberties groups and libertarians who express concern that the new homeland emphasis threatens to strain the military and possibly undermine the Posse Comitatus Act, a 130-year-old federal law restricting the military's role in domestic law enforcement.

But the Bush administration and some in Congress have pushed for a heightened homeland military role since the middle of this decade, saying the greatest domestic threat is terrorists exploiting the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction.

They can say it all they want, but that doesn't make it so. And more to the point, the Bush administration knows it. Their analysts have already given them a half dozen scenarios involving WMD level casualties without actually using WMDs, exploiting LNG tankers, blowing up a big enough bomb next to an existing reactor or using other everday aspects of the nation's industry and commerce. All are easier to pull off than smuggling a bomb, or radioactives, into the country or than gathering a sizeable store of such material from domestic sources without discovery.

And the point is that predicting and preventing such attacks should be the job of civilian agencies, not the military - and so should dealing with any aftermath. Political scientist Dr. Steven Taylor writes:

There are two key problems here. The first is that the function of the military isn’t domestic security and second, the military is already rather busy at the moment (and for the foreseeable future).

First, the military isn’t designed or trained for domestic responses. Training for a nuclear attack or an invasion is one thing, assigning an active-duty combat brigade to a specifically domestic task is yet another.

Indeed, one of the command centers the Bush administration has green-lighted, based on Hawaii, is specifically tasked with overseeing the military's response to an outbreak of human-strain avian flu. Another in South Carolina is tasked with earthquake response. No terrorists in sight.

The American Civil Liberties Union and the libertarian Cato Institute are troubled by what they consider an expansion of executive authority.

Domestic emergency deployment may be “just the first example of a series of expansions in presidential and military authority,” or even an increase in domestic surveillance, said Anna Christensen of the ACLU’s National Security Project. And Cato Vice President Gene Healy warned of “a creeping militarization” of homeland security.

“There’s a notion that whenever there’s an important problem, that the thing to do is to call in the boys in green,” Healy said, “and that’s at odds with our long-standing tradition of being wary of the use of standing armies to keep the peace.”

The military already gets the lion's share of the intelligence budget - over 80%. Back in 2005, even Saxby Chambliss was writing for the neocon Heritage Foundation that that was a bad idea. Now it seems determined, in line with Bush administration policy, to grab the domestic security portfolio too. The Dept. of Homeland Security will go right along with it too, arguing that Bush's power as the Unitary Executive Deciderer In Chief outweighs Posse Commitatus. The dynamic has been clear since the earliest days of the Bush presidency, according to an essay for the Naval postgraduate school's Strategic Insights magazine back in 2003.

America's post-9/11 obsession with securing the "homeland" shifted the domestic political landscape, including American civil-military relations. The American model of civil-military relations has been characterized by a contract according to which the military defends the nation's borders while domestic police keep order at home. "On September 11," in the words of DoD Transformation "czar" Arthur K. Cebrowski, "America's contract with the Department of Defense was torn up and a new contract is being written."

Over at Hullabaloo, DDay writes:

This goes to the other side of how this nation is changing radically - with a series of programs conceived largely by executive fiat that weakens civil liberties protections and subverts the plain letter of the law. This includes illegal wiretapping of American citizens, indefinite detention of prisoners without charges, and the dehumanizing practice of torture, which is ineffective and deeply dangerous to the lives of our troops.

And "b" at Moon of Alabama notes America's single-minded reliance on the military as the hammer for all nails and wonders, as do many of us, whether Obama and his centrist hawk national security team will really try to rollback such egregious abuses of power, or simply embrace them.

Crossposted from Newshoggers

McCain's Cabinet

John Amato — Tue, 02 Dec 2008 01:31:14 +0000

A new talking point coming from the Villagers today is that Obama's new team looks just like a McCain cabinet, God forbid. I surely doubt Hillary Clinton, Eric Holder or Samantha Power would have been named to a McCain team. It wasn't a surprise that Obama kept on Gates for the time being since we are in the middle of two wars and Gen. Jones has been a big Obama supporter so what the heck are they talking about?

There is a lot of work ahead as Obama assumes the presidency and the media really wants us to fight amongst ourselves. That is quite evident.