My Kingdom For A Functioning Media

One thing that drives me mental is trying to understand why political pundits become political reporters, when they clearly just want to be sports reporters. In politics there are vital issues and ideologies and competing interests to sort through, but all establishment media reporters want to write about is how issues help or hurt a various candidate or party. And when that horse-race stuff becomes boring, due in some part to their incessant babbling about it, they feel inclined to move on, but not to policy considerations or drawing differences between candidates, but to relentlessly personal and meaningless pieces of information.

The Washington Post's Howard Kurtz has weighed in with a long piece today on the fact that the press is lavishing a huge amount of attention on Hillary's laugh.

Kurtz explains this phenomenon thusly:

"The subtext here is that the media have collectively decided that the wife of the 42nd president is the inevitable nominee and a good bet to become the 44th Oval Office occupant. Lacking much of a horse race, since Clinton has maintained a 20-point national lead over Barack Obama all year, journalists are resorting to a classic general-election question: Are Americans ready to have this woman in their living rooms every night for four years? Are they comfortable with her personality? Do they like her voice?

Plus, examining her personality quirks is more fun than deconstructing her stance on Iraq."

It may be "more fun," but determining the leader of the free world isn't a fucking sandbox. "More fun" is less critical than "more important." Furthermore, the absolute smugness of a media collectively deciding that Hillary Clinton will be President (and therefore it's time to tear her down personally) is a bit too much to bear. There's a chicken-or-the-egg argument here: did the media decide this because of Hillary's ascendence in national polls, which are of dubious value anyway, or did the insistence of the media that Hillary's nomination is inevitable lead to that ascendence?

There's no question that Hillary Clinton is the frontrunner for the nomination. There's no question that the national polls have been static. But these facts don't give the media carte blanche to spin off into deconstructing her LAUGH because they're bored. What are they, 6? In this time of global turmoil, you're telling me there's nothing more compelling to write about?

Apparently, Jon Stewart slammed Chris Matthews last night about his book, which applies this stupid gamesmanship to actual life. I haven't seen it yet. But I do know that we can't afford another election cycle with a media that acts like a bored adolescent at the mall. Something tells me that Pravda would be better than this.

Military Deification of America, Cont'd

Almost three years ago I wrote a post about the deification of the American military that generated a fair amount of controversy when I crossposted it around the blogosphere.

The United States obviously has enemies in the world, and enemies sometimes must be engaged militarily. But I see too many signs that the pendulum in this country is swinging away from Athens and toward Sparta. Our soldiers are not just heroes anymore, but infallible gods who are only on the side of righteousness. Such belief, the endless replaying of "support the troops" over and over again, complicates the relationship between military policy and military action. If the troops are always right, it's a slippery slope to the belief that the policy is always right, and if you're not on the side of the policy, you're against the troops. And in such moral anarchy, you end up in places like Abu Ghraib, or in the mosque with Kevin Sites, watching the downed insurgent being shot at point blank range. And then you get the rebuke from the faithful truth-supporters, that "you don't know what it's like over there" and "you don't know what these kids are going through" and "you hate the very soldiers that guarantee your freedom." These are the very people who would never consider the fact that doctors help guarantee life, the law enforcement officers help guarantee liberty, that teachers and social workers help guarantee the pursuit of happiness. But nobody worships at their collective altars. Soldiers are heroes, not gods, and the difference is crucial.

The difference is crucial because societies that deify the military find it hard not to also deify militarism, and it leads to more war, more death, and more destruction. All societies that laud state power in this way become imperial. There simply is nowhere else to go. It wasn't too long ago that the Founders of America were wary of a standing army, which if you think about it, is the very basis of the Second Amendment. They almost certainly would frown at the thought of a "volunteer" army that preys on the poor who have no other outlet if they want to seek higher education or a decent job. In the words of Thomas Jefferson, "Where there is no oppression there will be no pauper hirelings." But today we not only perish the thought of abolishing the Army (and consequently have every citizen ready to serve if needed), we see that as heretical as abolishing religion. There are three organizations in this country that display the same hierarchial, top-down, just-follow-orders-or-be-expelled structure: the military, the church, and the Republican Party.

In 2007 we are seeing the fruits of what we have been sauntering toward for years. Because the soldiers are indisputably good warriors on the side of truth and light, and any small dissent from that universal goodness is tantamount to treason, then anybody dressed up in camos simply must be telling the truth, even when those people are essentially political operatives who are running a PR offensive to absolute perfection.

I've been thinking about the whole David Petraeus issue for the past couple of days, and what I've been thinking about is how badly the liberal blogosphere and the liberal establishment have been outplayed here. While we've spent the last six months snarking about Friedman Units and complaining aimlessly about spineless Democrats, Petraeus has been slowly and methodically carrying out an extremely disciplined military campaign with a very precise goal: gaining support for David Petraeus and the surge.

In retrospect, this is hardly a surprise. Petraeus is a four-star general, by all accounts a brilliant man, and a professional student of counterinsurgency. He's keenly aware of the value of both the media and public opinion, and he did what any counterinsurgency expert would have counseled in his circumstances: he unleashed a hearts-and-minds campaign aimed at opinion makers and politicians. For months the military transports to Baghdad have been stuffed with analysts and congress members, and every one of them has gotten a full court press of carefully planned and scripted presentations, tightly controlled visits to favored units, and assorted dollops of "classified" information designed to flatter his guests and substantiate his rosy assessments without the inconvenience of having to defend them in public.

And it's worked. Even though there's been no discernable political progress, minimal reconstruction progress, and apparently no genuine decrease in violence, he's managed to convince an awful lot of people that the first doesn't matter, the second is far more widespread than it really is, and the third is the opposite of reality.

This includes reports on military progress completely at odds with the truth, and the continued recitation of that progress without any facts or figures to back it up. This includes sliming Democratic members in the Green Zone, and denying them anything but the most tightly controlled access to reality. This includes playing the media to such a degree that they know they're being played and yet report through the same rose-colored glasses anyway. And this is all, in my view, because the words are coming out of the mouth of a General and not some actual PR flack like Dan Senor. We know that GOP lawmakers are untrustworthy; they could get shot at in Iraq and still declare the surge a success - literally. But Petraeus has been prepping for this PR offensive for 5 months, knowing that he could manipulate America's love affair with the troops and essentially make himself unassailable. Watch the Democrats pull punches when he testifies on Capitol Hill. Watch for the news item that "Democrats were weary of attacking Petraeus' views too strongly for fear that they would be seen as anti-military."

David Petraeus is a partisan Republican. He may be brilliant, and so is John Roberts. His reputation depends on filling the shoes of savior that have been created for him by the Republican Party and the Bush Administration. If he can pull it off, or at least make it somehow seem like the war could have been won if only the Democrats didn't pull the plug (books on that narrative have probably already been written) there could be an Oval Office waiting for him. It's not like there's anyone else on the horizon. And his military credentials give him the leeway to say the nuttiest, most partisan things without anyone batting an eyelash. He also can say the exact opposite to antiwar Democrats and come off as credible, too. And we're all to blame for making ridiculous qualifiers like "even General Petraeus says" like he has the wisdom of Solomon. We never acknowledge his self-interest in reporting from Iraq in a biased way.

The military provides a great service but they are not gods. They make mistakes and cover things up and have an agenda that serves the defense contracting industry to an uncomfortable degree. They should never be seen as preferable to policymakers, or even as more trustworthy than them. It lays the groundwork for the kind of thing we're seeing with the Petraeus PR surge, right before our eyes.

UPDATE: Make me puke. Why do I need to hear about some student's field trip with Petraeus? Is this in a national newspaper or a military press release?

An Inconvenient Bitch

I know it's progressive blogosphere dogma to claim "why didn't this story get the attention it deserved," and a lot of times that's true, but the New York Times op-ed in question is being discussed quite a bit on Hardball today (in two segments, in fact), and Hardball also did a long story on the couple that was arrested for wearing anti-Bush T-shirts to a Bush rally, complete with an interview with the couple. Plus, it should be mentioned that the editorial appeared in, you know, THE NEW YORK TIMES, not exactly the Bumblefrick Ohio Daily Shopper.

(Tucker did a segment on it too - and of course it's being framed along the lines of "Is it good to have active military members writing editorials?", but it's still getting out there.)

Priorities

There's a war on, troops are dying every day, and W.'s reading fashion articles about himself and complaining to the author?

Harper received a phone call that morning from White House deputy press secretary Dana Perino, who, Harper told friends, said the president read the article and was unhappy about the way he was portrayed.

Will you all stay online with me while I take the cyanide pill? I don't want to die alone.

Breaking!!!! NASA Temperature Reading Infinitesimally Different!1!!! Must Credit D-Day!!1!!!

Wingnuts have got themselves in a good lather over a .03 degree change in the US temperature reading for 1998. Not the entire globe, but just the United States. This somehow proves that global warming isn't real. For a time there was a major wingnut attempt to look for other reasons for recent temperature increases (like sunspot activity), a tacit acknowledgement that the Earth is indeed getting hotter. Now they've swung back to denying its existence altogether, with "facts" that are the thinnest of gruel:

But how big an error was it? Well, 1998 went from being listed as 0.01 degrees warmer than 1934 to being listed as 0.02 degrees cooler. That means 1934 is back to being the "official" hottest U.S. year on record, although it's still a statistical tie. Some of the other U.S. years in this decade were also downgraded slightly. This all had virtually no bearing on the global temperature record, in which 2005 still appears to be the hottest year on record, and Al Gore's claim that nine of the ten warmest years in history have occurred since 1995 is still operative. Check out RealClimate for some graphs.

Nothing's really changed. But there are a few things to note here. One, I'm not sure what the "fraud" is. Conservatives keep claiming that (James) Hansen is being secretive about his "algorithms," although the methods for NASA's analysis are all laid out in painstaking detail here. Two, it's interesting that Hansen himself--the man who apparently needs to be "frog-marched out of his office"--doesn't seem to have ever claimed that 1998 was unequivocally the hottest U.S. year ever.

You're of course assuming that the right-wing blogosphere is interested in facts instead of just having something to whine about. This is illustrative of what Matt Yglesias has called the Hack Gap, the willingness for wingnuts to obsess over completely meaningless bits of information and to turn them into quelle scandal! while the progressive blogosphere doesn't usually get so wrapped up in such minutiae. The problem is that these kind of scandals are ready-made for the traditional media, who can just say "bloggers are on fire about X" and invite some maniac to yell about it for a while and provide instant drama without having to do a lot of work. This is why they jumped on "Macaca," because it was easy, but those of us on the left just don't sustain outrage over things that are meaningless with the same fervor (I would argue that Macaca wasn't meaningless because it spoke to a candidate's real views. Point-zero-three changes in temperature, um, are meaningless.)

The nature of two-party democracy is that elections are decided by the small minority of the public too confused or too ill-informed to realize that there are persistent, substantial differences between the two federal political parties. As a result, the issues (or, more likely, pseudo-issues) that are most important in deciding elections tend to be the issues that are least important in substantive terms.

As a writer, though, I'd rather spend my time writing about things that I think are important or at least interesting. Harping away on haircuts, Bykofsky's appalling column, the way George W. Bush lied to the American public about what kind of cheese he likes on his cheesesteak (really!), etc. doesn't seem like an appealing way to spend my time. But the fact that the right has an army of people willing to pretend that this sort of thing is the most important thing in the world is a massive, massive impediment to having sensible policies about national security, taxes, health care, global warming, etc.

Indeed.

Proudly Fighting The War On Gibson

Who says something like this?

JOHN GIBSON: The war on Gibson is real. It is pursued every day by the people who just can't abide what you hear on this radio program.

ANGRY RICH: David Brock is listening 24 hours a day.

JOHN GIBSON: I know.

I remember John Gibson being the blow-dryed, contentless sap on MSNBC, and then suddenly he got to Fox and decided he had to fall in line with the rest of those pathetic windbags, and he's really taken it to its parodic extreme. I thought Bill O'Reilly had reached the most extreme point, but Gibson obliterates him.

The War On Gibson?

Are there eight people in the country who know who John Gibson is?

Get over yourself.

Media Hearts Huckabee

The flip side of the media having a problem with or being dismissive of some of the Democratic candidates (see Edwards, John) is their open rooting for a guy like Mike Huckabee who gives them good soundbites.

A final thought: The political press is absolutely head over heels for Huckabee. (There were high-fives all around when it became clear he'd finish second.) He's a genuinely endearing guy who can banter with the best of them--watching him with reporters brings to mind the old black and white footage of Babe Ruth jawboning with sportswriters. When you add that to the political media's general affinity for underdogs, you can see how Huckabee's about to enjoy some serious media afterglow, which will only further boost his profile.

Noam Scheiber later clarified that there weren't ACTUAL high-fives, which I guess makes it all better.

This is a situation where the political media is slowly turning into the sports media. Sports reporters are very open about giving favorable coverage to those who grant them a lot of access and good soundbites. Mediocre players or non-stars who are affable and jokey are quoted more often than their surly counterparts. This appears to be the same seduction that Huckabee is doing to the media, only they're not disclosing it and furthermore claiming that this jocularity is what's winning him supporters out in the country rather than just winning them over. On the stump, Huckabee is making a full-on populist pitch, along with a heaping helping of social conservatism and the occasional bold rhetoric on subjects like prison reform.

In actuality, it's unclear whether or not Huckabee is actually appealing to working-class Republican voters who took him to second place in the Ames Straw Poll, or if the FairTax people pushed him there (which is far more likely). But clearly, Huckabee is winning the all-important (to Washington insiders) media primary for none of these reasons: it's just because he knows how to wield a one-liner.

It Should Be Noted

That while Erin Burnett didn't deserve on-air sexual harrassment, her statement that Chinese toys with lead and food with poison are good for the US economy shows that she's just another let-the-buyer-beware free-market bot without an ounce of concern for, you know, the people that die from ingesting poison or lead.

One can take it a step further and suggest that if we weren't such food wimps and if we had stronger stomachs, the Chinese could make bread from algae and excrement and sell it for a penny and a half and we'd all be rich rich rich!

The boss in charge of selling the toys with lead hanged himself, which according to Ms. Burnett was just stupid because he was an economic warrior king.

How Very Centrist Of You

I just participated in a discussion with thereisnospoon and hekebolos from Daily Kos about the terms "moderate" and "centrist" and how they played out in yesterday's debate on Meet the Press between Markos Moulitsas and Harold Ford (there's a good writeup of that here). You can listen to the discussion via podcast over at Political Nexus.

I thought Markos did a great job against a fairly stacked deck. David Gregory (sitting in for Tim Russert) framed the debate as an ideological battle between liberals as represented by the blogosphere and centrists as represented by Ford. It was an imprecise way of describing it. Markos himself is pretty moderate, and the opinion on the blogosphere ranges over a whole series of policy stances. There are plenty of "moderate" Democrats, as defined by an ideological stance on policy positions that is in the middle of the extremes on the left and the right, that have earned the support of the blogosphere. "Centrist" is actually a code word that means the type of person determined to preserve the status quo and suck up to the Beltway establishment elites, the Broders and Ignatiuses and Slaughters and Quinns of the world. This "centrism" is more about blurring the lines between the parties completely and arguing for "bipartisan solutions," which really means "shut up all dissent and do what we, your sensible elite overlords, tell you to do." Adversarial democracy demands vigorous debate in public so that a well-informed citizenry can make choices between a range of alternatives. "Centrists" do not want the people to have those choices, and would rather make the choices for them. The debate between the DLC and the blogosphere for the soul of the Democratic Party is not one about liberal versus moderate; it's about inside versus outside, about a few oligarchs versus a panoply of voices.

I also think that this insistence by the elites who rule our discourse for "sensible bipartisan solutions" ends up narrowing the bands of opinion, at least on the left. The belief from these elites is that we live in a fundamentally conservative country where "real Americans" can only be found in the center of the nation, literally and figuratively, and that voices on the far left represent some sort of fringe element instead of the mainstream of America on many issues (health care, getting out of Iraq, etc.). The nutjobs on the right can literally advocate anything and it isn't met with as much fervor, because they are typically arguing for an entrenchment of the status quo. Where anyone argues for REAL change, the elites see them as unserious and silly and unfit for public discourse (see Kucinich, Dennis).

It was a pretty good discussion, go have a listen at Political Nexus.

UPDATE: Thereisnospoon has further thoughts on this here. And yes, Harold Ford did make a real cheap shot calling Daily Kos an anti-Semitic site, then turned around and said he would appear at the NextGen Yearly Kos Convention. Harold Ford: pro anti-Semitic sites! (and to be clear, Daily Kos is most certainly NOT that.)

The Trouble With Tweety

Chris Matthews does appear to be going off his rocker. After pining over "big, beefy" Democrats and suggesting that to him, looks matter over policies, he then goes out and outright harasses a woman reporter on the air (h/t Digby).

BURNETT: Well, they were part of the biggest increase in home ownership in this country that we've ever seen. I mean, home ownership's ticked up a few percentage points over the past few years, thanks to low interest rates --

MATTHEWS: Yeah.

BURNETT: -- and all those creative types of mortgages. And you could say that's a good thing, but, you know, Chris, I guess just to throw it out there and, you know, be provocative, but also ask a fair question -- you know, maybe not everybody is able to own a home. We like to think of owning a home as a right in this country.

MATTHEWS: Yeah.

BURNETT: It might not be.

MATTHEWS: Could you get a little closer to the camera?

BURNETT: My -- what is it? Is it zooming in strangely?

MATTHEWS: Come on in closer. No, come in -- come in further -- come in closer. Really close.

BURNETT: What are you -- what are you doing?

MATTHEWS: Just kidding! You look great! Anyway, thanks. Erin, it's great to -- look at that look. You're great.

BURNETT: I don't even know. I'm going to have to go look at the tape here. I'm in a strange location.

MATTHEWS: No, you're beautiful. I'm just kidding. I'm just kidding. You're a knockout. Anyway, thank you, Erin Burnett.

BURNETT: All right, Chris. See you later.

I think what Tweety would say that he was referring to was the fact that the lens was a little fish-eyed, and so her moving closer distorted her features somewhat. It's a lame excuse made ridiculous by the "just kidding, you're beautiful" comment afterward.

I saw it live and was completely offended as well. Glenn Beck did exactly the same thing to Erica Hill, who is a former co-worker of mine, on the first day of his shitty show. Him and Tweety are cut from the same cloth. A lot of these shows set up these power relationships with the white male host and the young chippy correspondents, who usually know plenty more than the hosts but are consistently demeaned by them. The execs doing the hiring are all a bunch of sexists, and so they thrust these pretty girls into these situations, and the old hosts are of the same mindset as the execs. I've been in enough newsrooms to know that this is a far more serious problem than anybody wants to admit.

Surging Toward Propaganda

I would call this Glenn Greenwald interview with Michael O'Hanlon nothing short of devastating. In it, Greenwald gets O'Hanlon to admit that he was not a "critic of the war," as practically every media outlet characterized him when he and Ken Pollack wrote their "the surge is working!" op-ed for the New York Times. In fact, as O'Hanlon says, "I was not a critic of this war. In the final analysis, I was a supporter," which you thought would have merited a mention on any of the television appearances they made.

Greenwald also gets to the truth about the "fact-finding" trip that O'Hanlon and Pollack took to Iraq that served as the evidentiary basis for their op-ed, a trip that was planned entirely by the US military:

GG: I just want to ask you some questions about the trip that you just took. Whose idea was that trip? How did that trip arise and who planned it?
MO: Well, I have wanted to go back to Iraq for a long time. I feel it’s- I've been there once in September 2003 - it behoves anybody who's working on this issue a lot of the time as I've been for a few years trying to get some on-the-ground experience and observations. And so I've been trying to get back for a couple of years and I started putting in these requests a little bit more assertively -

GG: Who did you put them in with?

MO: To the military, starting in about the spring.

GG: And then, at some point they accepted and said that they would organize a trip for you?

MO: Yeah. I think the trip was ultimately originally scheduled for other people as well. I think it's public knowledge that Tony Cordesman was also on our trip, and I think he had plans to go before Ken and I managed to get ourselves invited as well, but --

GG: Why did you need the permission of the U.S. military in order to go? Why couldn't you just go yourself?

MO: I suppose I could have, but I was hopeful that someone could help take care of my security, for one thing. I'm not going to try to sound more heroic than I am. And also I wanted to talk to a lot of military personnel and get their impressions.

The itinerary was developed by the DoD, and it's not unlike the itineraries developed for visiting dignitaries like Congressmen, which Jim Webb has rightly called "dog and pony shows." I don't know if the group had air cover and tank cover like John McCain did in his Baghdad stroll, but any implication that O'Hanlon and Pollack saw the real Iraq is dubious. What's more, there was another member of the delegation, Anthony Cordesman, and he was not nearly as impressed about the success of the surge:

From my perspective, the US now has only uncertain, high risk options in Iraq. It cannot dictate Iraq’s future, only influence it, and this presents serious problems at a time when the Iraqi political process has failed to move forward in reaching either a new consensus or some form of peaceful coexistence. It is Iraqis that will shape Iraq's ability or inability to rise above its current sectarian and ethnic conflicts, to redefine Iraq's politics and methods of governance, establish some level of stability and security, and move towards a path of economic recovery and development. So far, Iraq’s national government has failed to act at the rate necessary to move the country forward or give American military action political meaning.

The reasoning for the military buildup was to make room for a political solution. That hasn't happened at all, and so I don't see how you can characterize the overall mission as anything but a failure. The military is doing a fine job in a situation beyond their control with a mission that they are helpless to complete. And certainly, the words of a couple of war supporters who spent eight days with a handpicked group of military and personnel shouldn't sway anybody. It's shameful that the media allowed this fiction to perpetuate.

UPDATE: British Parliament jumping ship as well. It's so clear that the current policy is unable to meet whatever goals the Bush Administration has set out.

Gimme Drudge, Man

An LA Times reporter begs for a Matt Drudge link.

Every day, journalists and media executives in newsrooms across the land hope they'll have something that catches Drudge's fancy — or, as he has put it, "raises my whiskers." Most keep their fingers crossed that he'll discover their articles on his own and link to them. Others are more proactive, sending anonymous e-mails or placing calls to him or his behind-the-scenes assistant.

This is not at all surprising when you see how the profit motive has grown far greater in stature than creating decent journalism. As papers move onto the Web, individual reporters must get eyeballs for their stories, and Drudge links are the way to get them. This is not an indictment of one reporter, but of the whole system.

Your Media

This was the Sunday headline in the Chicago Sun-Times, supposedly a newly-minted "liberal" paper.

Is she black enough.

What's next, "Is Black Black Enough?"

(Incidentally, this new-found focus on Presidential spouses is a bit irrelevant. Has Laura Bush's presence really done anything? Did Hillary's, for that matter, in the 7 years after her health care plan crashed?)

Yearly Kos: Everything You Need To Know

OK, I'm finally getting around to posting about Yearly Kos. Well, at least the second half of it. I was pretty good at posting about the first half and then trailed off. So let me just bullet-point some random thoughts. I'm going to go more in-depth on the Presidential forum and the Edwards break-out session afterwards.

• The Netroots candidate event was one of my favorite events, and the Teamsters barbecue was the other. The true spirit of Yearly Kos (which next year will be called Netroots Nation) is found in these mass social events where you can talk to a large group of people from all parts of the blogosphere. There were over 30 candidates for 2008 at the Convention, and among my favorites were Congressional candidates Gary Trauner (WY-AL), Darcy Burner (WA-08) and Scott Kleeb (NE-03); and Senate candidates Jay Buckey (NH) and Steve Novick (OR). My night of drinking with Scott Kleeb really deserves its own post, but I should mention that Steve Novick is kind of awesome. A lawyer and activist in the Paul Wellstone mold, Steve was the lead counsel on the Love Canal case. He's also a short man with a hook for a hand, and instead of shying away from that, he discusses it proudly. Votehook.com is his website, and he refers to himself as a "fighter with a strong left hook!" It's great to see someone with a disability running for Senate and offering that kind of perspective. He rocks.

• We actually sucked the hotel bar dry. On Sunday night they were out of beer. Completely out. (This is mainly because McCormick Place is nowhere near anything and so the hotel bar became the meeting place) On Friday and Saturday Drinking Liberally held some patio parties, and Saturday night's was marred by intermittent thunderstorms. I noticed that less and less people would run in from out of the rain after each re-occurrence.

• During the Presidential forum, Mike Stark calmly sat with a sign in the front row that said "Hillary: Stop Lying." She had to look at it for two hours. I should note that I spent a couple hours on Saturday helping out Stark with a controversial video of him confronting Bill O'Reilly at his house. You can see it at Brave New Films' blog.

• My friend Paul Hogarth has written an incredible article about Hillary Clinton's experience at the event which is far richer and deeper than most of the Big Media thumbsuckers I've seen. His thesis is that Clinton's performance has endangered her hopes at the nomination, and I don't know if he's right, but certainly her ringing defense of DC lobbyists at the debate didn't help her, and Hogarth's amazing question in a breakout session about her stance on the worst legislation of her husband's tenure - welfare reform, the Telecommunications Act, DOMA, and NAFTA - left her tongue-tied. But Hogarth didn't report the best part: late on Saturday night, two Hillary supporters accosted him and tried to get him to change his mind about her!

• Digby (who I can sort of count as a friend now. Weird.) is right in part. There was far more diversity at this year's event, the gender ratio was almost even, and the black and Latino communities were more represented (though not as much as I'd like). The under-representation of these communties in the general blogosphere is a function of class, which is why we need to wire poor and rural communities as sure as we needed rural electrification in the 1930s. It's also an expensive convention to attend, which is why I hope Kid Oakland's amazing grant program, which paid to bring 17 poor and rural men and women from all over the country to the convention, continues to expand.

• Ezra Klein thinks that the netroots represents a bunch of policy wonks because that's the convention HE went to. I saw a lot of local blogging panels so I think it's about local empowerment. There was enough material here for 4 or 5 conventions, and I'm turning around a bit on this. Maybe it's good that you can customize your experience, as long as there are enough unifying moments as well.

• This post by Rick Jacobs made me very proud to be a part of this community. Key graf:

And that's the real learning here. The "movement" is growing up fast. People want to build from the ground up, taking the best of ideas, research and activism to lead on local and state issues. That's what the right wing did for decades. They worked slowly but inexorably on issues. The candidates they ultimately elected carried those issues for them and contorted America. The online communities are embracing the slow work necessary to build and win, aware that working locally can, and always does, lead to national success, aware too that online activism is transparent and increasingly the bedrock of democracy.

The MSM actually got a good bit of this convention right, but as usual the bloggers had the best perspectives.

• There was one event that the Right picked up on at Yearly Kos, a shouting match between Jon Soltz of VoteVets and a pro-war soldier. The soldier was wearing his uniform and violating military policy by engaging in politics while wearing it, that was the entire subject of the feud. He knows this, because in a far less-attended Iraq Veterans Against The War panel on Sunday, the same soldier came in and said "He (Soltz) violated the law too," essentially admitting that he did break the law with his actions.

And yes, Ezra's right about this:

SO let's be clear here: No one at the Kos panel searched out the questioner's wedding registry, no one at the Kos panel dug up his old poetry to embarrass him, no one at the Kos panel speculated on what a terrible soldier he is and how much he must have slowed his unit down, no one at the Kos panel unearthed his MySpace page, no one at the Kos panel said "he'd better watch his ass."

And yet, merely a week after the Right did all that to Private Beauchamp -- whose story has been proven true in virtually all respects, with the singular error misremembering the location of one of the stories -- they have the audacity to accuse members of YearlyKos of proving insufficiently supportive of the troops. And they're doing so over an argument that was not between a room of people, or a conference of people, and a soldier, but between -- and limited to -- two soldiers.

• One of my favorite panels was "Creating A New News" with SusanG from Daily Kos, Andrew Golis of TPM, Will Bunch of Attytood and Jay Rosen of PressThink. This was really about the distributed model that the Internet affords journalism to use, which allows citizens to become engaged in their media. Plus, it included my favorite quote of the weekend, by Joel Connolly of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer: "I'm sorry that those of you on the left side can't see some of our panelists. But the podium, like David Broder, is immovable." Heh. Andrew Golis also had a great line: "Do what you do best, and link to the rest." I'll try to remember that.

I'm sure I could continue to fill a book with this, but I'll stop. Here, though, are some pics.

Me and clammyc:



S.R. Sidarth ("Macaca"), Lane Hudson, Mike Stark:



The panelist's-eye view from the California caucus (name mispelled):



California Congressional candidates Charlie Brown, Ron Shepston, Steve Young and Russ Warner:



Howard Dean:



Late night:



Wes Clark:



Me and Ned Lamont!



The netroots candidates:



Ron Shepston up front, Digby in the back:

Well, That Clears That Up, Right?

So Kitty Seeyle clarified her ridiculous statement about Yearly Kos "booing Mother Teresa":

Just to address some confusion, we want to offer a belated but much-needed explanation about the booing of Mother Teresa that I should have provided earlier in the original post from the Kos conference: It was a passing reference to a light remark made by the emcee of a trivia quiz.

It was meant to be funny.

One of the quiz questions was to identify three people in the 20th Century whom Congress had named as honorary United States citizens. When the emcee, Adam C. Bonin, offered her name as one of the correct answers, there was some booing and groaning because almost no one had guessed it. Mr. Bonin laughed that this might be the only crowd to boo Mother Teresa, but he was making appropriate light of the unusual circumstance that booing was taking place in conjunction with a mention of Mother Teresa. The crowd was not dissing Mother Teresa herself.

I'm sure that will stop it from becoming part of wingnut mythology like Philadelphians throwing snowballs at Santa Claus (The guy wasn't, you know, the REAL Santa Claus, but a drunken idiot). The problem is that the remark fit this false pattern of "angry bloggers" that the traditional media pushes at every opportunity. And so the vicious and angry blogger meme, the zombie lie, carries ever onward.

Yearly Kos: Friday Sessions

The panels and discussions on this day could be spread out to an entire week. You kick yourself for missing certain things that are all happening at the same time. But here's a snapshot of what I saw today so far:

• Wes Clark was on fire in the morning keynote. He implored the President to stop hiding behind David Petraeus, screaming "This is YOUR war!" He put his emphasis on engaging our so-called "enemies" instead of isolating them, saying that the problem is the failure of leadership in the region, which leads us to spending $100 billion dollars a year in Iraq when bridges are falling down in Minneapolis.

• The panel on "Evolution & Integration In The Blogosphere" was illuminating. Instead of just being a self-regarding session about how to break out and become a big-time blogga, yo, it was a productive session about expanding reach through state and local blogging, as well as reaching out to other blogospheres (mommy bloggers, food bloggers, even gossip bloggers) that aren't necessarily political but have ideas that the progressive movement can plug into. In addition, there was good discussion on increasing access to broadband (which would open up poor and rural areas) and increasing diversity in the progressive blogosphere, as well as innovating technology.

• I saw Rick Perlstein speak on framing the debate. He essentially read a review of his that he wrote about an FDR book, which had a lot of good stuff in it, but wasn't a panel discussion so much as a book reading. Key quote: "There are more people who have bosses than who ARE bosses."

• The "Future Leaders" panel featured 7 Democratic candidates who lost by a hair in severely red areas in 2006, and who are all running again: Charlie Brown, Darcy Burner, Larry Grant, Eric Massa, Scott Kleeb, Dan Seals, and Gary Trauner. Massa in particular has been generating a lot of buzz on the convention floor, but I thought all of them were excellent. I spoke briefly with Gary Trauner (WY-AL) and was very impressed by his passion and his belief in progressive values, particularly on tax fairness.

• The lunchtime keynote was Andy Stern of the SEIU in conversation with Harold Meyerson. I've seen Stern speak a couple times before and have read his book, so much of it was familiar. But he's really a must for working people to listen to. He's whip-smart and he understands the revolutionary economic changes that have unsettled working people. Look him up, buy the book.

• The "Blogs vs. MSM" was certainly the panel of the day. Mike Allen of the Politico and Jay Carney of Time were matched up with Jill of Feministing and the great Glenn Greenwald. Allen and Carney were going out of their way to blow smoke up Greenwald's ass ("What Henry Waxman is to Congress, Glenn Greenwald is to the blogosphere"), and Greenwald would sit there stone-faced, and then launch into a relentless attack on the facts of how the traditional media conducts the discourse of the country. In other words, he ignored the niceties and focused on the facts, which is what all of the journalists being assailed by him should do as well. He mentioned that 70% of Americans in 2003 still believed Saddam Hussein was personally involved in 9/11, and how recently 44% of Americans could identify John Edwards as the guy who got a $400 haircut, and the reasons involved with those perceptions. He mentioned how in 2006, after the NSA wiretapping scandal was advanced, the media would not declare that the situation was a violation of the law, but they would discuss the issue in political terms, discussing how this would be "a good issue" for Republicans. What we need are journalists who are referees, willing to confront those who they report, willing to be adversarial and skeptical. Bloggers do NOT want the media destroyed, or to become partisan. We just want them to do their job better.

My issue was one of resources. The media is being forced to do more with less, and because they are general assignment reporters and generally not experts on subjects, they cover for this by opening up that well-worn rolodex. And by and large, that rolodex reflects a range of opinion from The New Republic to Free Republic. They laud the blogosphere for its expertise (expertise that Jay Carney said he "didn't know" about), but never use that expertise in their articles, preferring to have bloggers gnash their teeth on the sidelines. Why aren't the bloggers part of the expert rolodex if they are so good on particular issues.

I do give Allen and Carney credit for coming into the lion's den, but Greenwald definitely got the better of them. The guy's a master.

• I saw my friends hekebolos and thereisnospoon in discussion with George Lakoff about the "Overton Window," the idea of setting up fully progressive positions to move the debate to the left. Lakoff began by dismissing the entire idea, which made for a really interesting discussion. Personally, I think the best way to think about these ideas is to not think about them at all. I think Democrats worry too much about HOW they should act instead of just acting. It's the Hamlet complex.

• Right now I'm in an Israel/Palestine and Middle East policy discussion featuring Juan Cole of Informed Comment and a writer for Bill Maher. "Intellectual mountaintop air so high I had to keep swallowing to keep my ears popping," to quote one of my favorite writers, Peter DeVries.

Sabotage

Good God dammit. I knew this would be the result of that awful O'Hanlon/Pollack op-ed:

Just about every Republican in the Iraq debate on the House floor today has cited and read from the O'Hanlon/Pollack op-ed to argue that we are making significant progress in iraq. Many Republicans have called them "left-wing scholars", as in "even lefties O'Hanlon and Pollack say we are winning."

Just sayin'......that is the political effect of that op-ed......which makes it even more infuriating given that both O'Hanlon and Pollack have walked it back since it was published.

This is made all the more infuriating by what was referred to in the above blockquote, O'Hanlon's complete disavowal of what he wrote:

In an interview on Wednesday, Mr. O’Hanlon said the article was intended to point out that the security situation was currently far better than it was in 2006. What the American military cannot solve, he said, are problems caused by the inability of Iraqis to forge political solutions. “Ultimately, politics trumps all else,” Mr. O’Hanlon said. “If the political stalemate goes on, even if the military progress continued, I don’t see how I could write another Op-Ed saying the same thing.”

Then why did you write this one? The entire point of the "surge" was to provide breathing space for a political reconciliation. On that score, the political situation in Iraq is worse than it's ever been. No progress has been made whatsoever. The temerity of these two, writing a sunny portrait of Iraq in a giant megaphone like the New York Times, but trying to tamp down the sunniness when challenged by the progressive blogosphere, is inexcusable. What a huge propaganda victory for the right. These two are admitting that they essentially lied in their op-ed. Somehow I don't think this will disqualify them from writing another one.

YKos '07: 3 People Who Changed The Congress

I'm in a session with S.R. Siddarth (a.k.a. "Macaca"), Lane Hudson (who broke the Mark Foley story) and Mike Stark (provocateur, George Allen bugbear, and blogger). One moment was EXTREMELY revelatory. A traditional media guy asked a question, claiming that the Ryan Lizza article in The New Republic set the table for the George Allen incidents (the Lizza article was great, but it wasn't exactly front-page news to most Americans). The reporter then said, "Well you can't just go up to George Allen and ask him about his racist past," when that's EXACTLY what Stark did throughout the campaign. There's this risk aversion by reporters to "make" news through holding elected officials accountable, that bloggers simply don't have. Until that moment, the "Daou triangle" will never be closed. Instead, the media wants to play "he said/she said" rather than refereeing on the side of truth.

Lane Hudson also mentioned something about the NSA using National Security letters to investigate Democratic donors. I didn't know about that, but we did learn yesterday that the IRS is tracking political information.

WASHINGTON – As it hunted down tax scofflaws, the Internal Revenue Service collected information on the political party affiliations of taxpayers in 20 states.

Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., a member of an appropriations subcommittee with jurisdiction over the IRS, said the practice was an “outrageous violation of the public trust” that could undermine the agency’s credibility.

IRS officials acknowledged that party affiliation information was routinely collected by a vendor for several months. They told the vendor last month to screen the information out.

“The bottom line is that we have never used this information,” said John Lipold, an IRS spokesman. “There are strict laws in place that forbid it.”

Oh, that settles it. There are LAWS in place. We've never seen this Administration break LAWS.

Hudson's point is well-made, though. So many stories slip through the cracks unless they are pushed forward by the blogs.

"Do you understand English?"

Ted Stevens got pretty testy with Dana Bash on CNN. She played an audio tape where he refused to answer anything about the raid of his house, and when questioned further, he snapped: "Do you understand English?"

It occurs to me that this is the first time I've seen CNN take an interest in this issue at all, even though it's been brewing for quite some time.

Michael O'Hanlon and Kenneth Pollack Have No Credibility

Far from being war critics, they have consistently agreed with practically every Bush Administration policy for Iraq in every public forum. Pollack's book The Threatening Storm was subtitled "The Case For Invading Iraq," fer Chrissakes. So when these two pen a New York Times editorial talking about how totally awsom things are going in Iraq, citing facts and figures that contradict his own think tank's "Iraq index," which HE OVERSEES...

When the likes of these propagandists write about Iraq they should be shunned, not listened to, laughed right out of the arena of public opinion. This being America, they are welcomed on every talk show and in elite newspapers.

Electricity output is so abysmal in Iraq that the State Department has stopped updating the statistics. The political situation is completely stalemated and now the Parliament is taking off for a month. The only people who would believe this nonsense that Iraq is suddenly moving toward the Best Democracy Evah are the kind of people who are personal friends of General Petraeus... oh, never mind.

The real problem here is that war supporters like this, who have been discredited by any meaningful standard for the past 5 years, are still listened to in Democratic circles, and are still given plenty of airtime on television and column inches in newspapers. In fact, O'Hanlon has advised none other than John Edwards on foreign policy issues in the recent past.

This is something we have to wrap our heads around.

UPDATE: 1 in 3 Iraqis need emergency aid, either food or water. 8 MILLION people. But don't worry, things are going great, tell us those who supported the war from the beginning!