We've got a new “Think Again” column called “Plummeting Press Freedom,” on press freedom in the U.S. and the rest of the world, and my new Nation column, “A Liberal Supermajority (Finally) Finds Its Voice” is here, and closes with a quote from that late great political pundit, Sam Cooke.
Alternate Universe Quote of the Day: “We are looking at the most left-wing candidate with the most radical associations since Henry Wallace in 1948, and the press has ruled out as illegitimate any inquiries into this.” -- Charles Krauthammer.
When you need your right-wing talking points accepted wholesale, who you gonna call? I'd call ABC's Charlie Gibson. From an interview with Barack Obama yesterday:
OBAMA: Well, look, there is no doubt that the amount of money that we've raised in this campaign has been extraordinary and surprised me as much as anybody -- maybe more than anybody. What I would simply point to is that the way we have raised this money has been by expanding the pool of small donors in this country in an unprecedented way.
GIBSON: But you haven't released their names.
OBAMA: We've got ...
GIBSON: We don't know who they are.
OBAMA: Well, look, the -- a whole bunch of them were out here today. I mean, you're looking the people who are giving 5, 10, $25. Ordinary folks who have gotten impassioned about this campaign in a way that is unprecedented. And that, really, is ...
GIBSON: Shouldn't we know the names of that list?
No! Gibson surely is aware of FEC regulations, which require disclosure only of donations of more than $250. It's been like that for years -- that's the law. And Obama does that -- he just doesn't release the millions of names of people who give small donations, because it's not required and would be a massive task anyhow. It's not really clear what Gibson is alleging, nor was it clear when McCain campaign manager Rick Davis recently leveled the same charge, calling them “secret donations”:
“And I only say 'secret' because I have no doubt that there are sort of -- the vast majority of those are probably legitimate,” Davis explained. “But they're being kept secret by the Obama campaign, for no good reason.”
Except for, you know, federal law. Davis knows it. Charlie Gibson knows it. But how many viewers do, after watching that interview?
(And also, anybody seen Palin's medical records yet? I didn't think so ...)
George Zornick notes: Right-wing radio has naturally been up in arms over the Khalidi tape. You know, the one on which Obama called for “common ground” and said his commitment to Israel's security is “nonnegotiable.”
Meanwhile, Pittsburgh's Jim Quinn, one of the “100 most important radio talk show hosts in America,” basically went ahead and proposed a final solution to the Palestinian question, live on national airwaves:
QUINN: Yeah, it's all -- it's all politics, all of it. And it will never change. There's only one way to settle the Palestine -- the Palestine issue --
ROSE TENNENT (co-host): Or Palestinian --
QUINN: -- Palestinian issue -- thank you -- is to level it and then salt the earth so that nothing grows for a thousand years, because that's how the Muslims would have treated each other, and did.
More here.
Last week we pointed to Gareth Porter's excellent reporting on the Iraqi-U.S. status of forces agreement, which virtually nobody is paying attention to.
Here's why we should be, from the AP: one point of contention is that Iraqis want a guarantee of no Iraq-based U.S. troops used to attack neighbors. The U.S. has not yet agreed.
McCain Suck-Up Watch: The Washington Post, The Washington Times, the Associated Press, and The Hill reported John McCain's claims that Barack Obama is “offering government-run health care” and “an energy plan guaranteed to work without drilling,” without noting that both claims are false. Obama has not proposed “government-run health care” and Obama's energy plan calls domestic oil and natural gas production “critical to prevent global energy prices from climbing even higher.” More here.
My friend Deb canceled lunch today for this. Friendship over, methinks ...
With just days left before Americans cast their votes, both candidates are still pledging “change” if elected, but can the stranglehold of money on politics be broken? Bill Moyers sits down with Joan Claybrook, president of Public Citizen, and Bob Edgar, president and CEO of Common Cause, to discuss how Beltway business as usual may stand in the way of real change in Washington.
(I'm not saying this happened, but if someone in the Obama camp had said, “Give me a series of vignettes about the dignity of struggling middle class in hard economic times just like that Bill Moyers PBS special,” they would have looked exactly like last night's show ...)
“A week ago,” begins Andrew Bacevich in his latest TomDispatch post, “I had a long conversation with a four-star U. S. military officer who, until his recent retirement, had played a central role in directing the global war on terror. I asked him: what exactly is the strategy that guides the Bush administration's conduct of this war? His dismaying, if not exactly surprising, answer: there is none.
”President Bush will bequeath to his successor the ultimate self-licking ice cream cone. To defense contractors, lobbyists, think-tankers, ambitious military officers, the hosts of Sunday morning talk shows, and the Douglas Feith-like creatures who maneuver to become players in the ultimate power game, the Global War on Terror is a boon, an enterprise redolent with opportunity and promising to extend decades into the future."
What he will also bequeath to the next president, argues Bacevich, author of the New York Times bestselling book The Limits of Power: The End of American Exceptionalism, is an expanding “global war” of remarkable incoherency -- which is actually at least three, if not four or five separate wars: “the war for Bush's legacy, better known as Iraq”; “the orphan war” -- Afghanistan; “the war-hidden-in-plain-sight,” that is, the one in Pakistan's borderlands; and, skipping past those “wars-in-waiting” in Iran and possibly Syria, “Condi's war,” the Palestinian/Israeli conflict she has so haplessly committed herself to solving.
In this striking piece of global analysis aimed toward the post-election moment, Bacevich concludes: “The next administration needs to do better. The place to begin is with the candid recognition that the Global War on Terror has effectively ceased to exist. When it comes to national security strategy, we need to start over from scratch.”
Name: Richard Taylor
Hometown: San Antonio, TX
On Obama campaign “allowing” untraceable credit cards.
Buried way down in the article near the end is this one-liner: “Sen. John McCain's campaign has also had questionable donations slip through.”
So a 2 page online story about how bad Obama is winds up basically negated by one sentence. Too bad Matthew Mosk wasn't actually trying to report the news rather than manufacture it.
Name: Larry Howe
Hometown: Oak Park, IL
Eric --
What is convicted corruption artist Tom DeLay doing on Hardball? Why does Matthews and MSNBC think that having a felon and partisan hack weigh in on the presidential race will have any constructive benefit to political discourse?
And why is it that Matthews can get all high dudgeon with a waif like Nancy Pfotenhauer on whether or not Palin has read the Constitution, but when DeLay spouts absolute nonsense about Obama planning to “rewrite the Constitution” according to Marxist principles, Matthews allows that to go by without a challenge?
And then he has the sycophantic nerve to thank DeLay and praises him as the former leader of the great Republican Congress. The man is a criminal!
George Zornick adds: Actually, he's not been convicted, only indicted ...
Mr. Zito brings up a very interesting point that I'd like to augment. Another thing that we seem to fail to grasp in this country is this; the fact that we were born here rather than having been born in one of countries he holds up as examples where the citizens live through constant war and violence was a completely random event. Our origin of birth was something we had zero influence over. Why that doesn't ever affect our views on how we should treat the rest of the world never ceases to puzzle me.
Name: J Dalessandro
Hometown: Crestwood, NY
I was struck by the air of general good humor in the Bloggingheads spot with Hitchens and Dr. Alterman; quite civilized. Since you know Hitchens better than us, I was wondering whether, if at the end of a first Obama term, if Iraq is only a painful memory and Afghanistan a winding-down commitment, do you think that Hitchens will be back in the progressive tent, irritating both sides as in days of old, but clearly on the left, and estranged from his former neo conservative companions? How's this for a wild projection: Hitchens as Friday guest host on Altercation 2011! Will there be a roll-out of Hitchens III?
Name: Ken
Hometown: Lenexa, KS
My wife and I voted last Saturday. Tuesday night, as one of the RNC's more despicable ads ran here in KC, my wife looked at me and said, “I voted. I want all this junk off my TV.” I like the way she thinks.
Name: Karl Weber
Hometown: Irvington NY
You're all wrong. There's one “in.” The other “in” is really an “if.” The lines are:
“When you were young and your heart was an open book
You used to say live and let live.
But if this ever-changing world in which we're living
Makes you give it a try . . .
Say live and let die.”
Since Thomas Beck presumes to school you about "Casino Royale," someone should remind him that in the original Fleming novel (to which he even refers), the game is not poker but baccarat, which was Bond's casino game of choice.
Much as I love watching Texas Hold 'Em tournaments on TV, I thought replacing baccarat with the newer fad-favorite in the recent movie was gratuitous. The very unfamiliarity of baccarat (to the mere mortals in the audience) is part of Bond's exotic charm.