Month: May 2005

From DailyKos:

ABC, on why it won’t take advertising from the United Church of Christ:

“The network doesn’t take advertising from religious groups. It’s a long-standing policy,” said Susan Sewell, an ABC spokeswoman, in a Religion News Service story on Wednesday.

But they aired an ad by James Dobson’s Focus on the Family. And for the unitiated, this is their mission statement:

To cooperate with the Holy Spirit in disseminating the Gospel of Jesus Christ to as many people as possible, and, specifically, to accomplish that objective by helping to preserve traditional values and the institution of the family.

ABC, NBC, and CBS refused to air this ad from the UCC. NBC and CBS claimed it was “too controversial” because it says “Jesus didn’t turn people away”. Tolerance of gays and ethnic and racial minorities is really, really controversial with the bigoted set.

ABC said it had a blanket prohibition of all ads from religious organizations. Unless, it seems, they are run by conservatives.

Read the original PR story….

After a two-year investigation, Neoconservative Pentagon policy analyst Larry Franklin (in photo on right, with Douglas Feith, left) was charged yesterday with making unauthorized disclosures to a foreign official and to members of the news media, according to the Los Angeles Times today.

This story presents us with many questions, including what allegedly may have motivated Franklin to share US secrets with Israel – and how the dots may connect from this investigation to other better known neocons, including Richard Perle, Paul Wolfowitz, Douglas Feith and even Vice President Dick Cheney.

Franklin, described as a “pro-Israel Pentagon official,” is rumored to have given unauthorized information about US plans regarding Iraq and Iran to officials from the lobbying group, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC). Last month, two AIPAC officials who were reportedly involved in the matter were fired. Steve Rosen was the group’s director for foreign policy issues. Keith Weissman was Rosen’s deputy and a specialist on Iran.

Any casual observer of the Bush Administration might wonder how a government investigation that involved Administration officials could proceed without interference from above. Not surprisingly, the charges against Franklin cover “who, what and when” but avoid mentioning motive, which is an essential element of any criminal case:

The complaint against Franklin does not allege that he engaged in espionage or that he directly shared secrets with Israel. Lawyers for Franklin and for the two lobbyists that allegedly received the classified information issued vigorous denials. And the complaint does not ascribe a motive to Franklin’s disclosures, or identify Israel as an ultimate beneficiary.

Juan Cole at Informed Comment has been following the story, and has this on Franklin’s possible motives:

Franklin was implicated last summer, but it has taken nearly a year to arrest him. In the meantime, he was, amazingly enough, still working at the Department of Defense on Persian Gulf security issues. (I know this for a fact).

Franklin was on the Iran desk of the Near East and South Asia department of the Pentagon, and was the “go-to” man for Iran issues for [former] Undersecretary of Defense Douglas Feith and [former] Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz. His tight connection to the Neoconservatives has been played down in subsequent reporting, depicting him as a low-level employee and a rogue operating on his own. [Feith and Wolfowitz both resigned this year. Feith resigned for “personal and family reasons.” Wolfowitz now heads the World Bank. ]

[Franklin] apparently was concerned that Iran would fund anti-American militias in Iraq to attack US troops, but could not get his ideas taken seriously, and was seeking support from AIPAC and Israel. In fact…some Iranian money may have come to [Iraqi militias] in Basra, but Iranians spread money around to lots of groups in Iraq. Without further details, it is hard to know what Franklin was up to, but he was probably trying to provoke hostilities with Iran by blaming Tehran for Iraqi Shiite militancy.

I first got wind of this story from Josh Marshall’s Talking Points Memo last summer. In August, Marshall wrote:

[Larry Franklin is] an important person in Feith’s operation — which isn’t surprising really since he’s an analyst on a topic — Iran — at the center of Feith’s concerns. And Iran policy is already a dicey matter since this is the same shop that used to be the main locus of Chalabism in the governmnet. And of course [Ahmed] Chalabi later ended up to have been feeding US intelligence to the Iranians.

Feith’s operation has been at the center of a number of bizarre intelligence snafus and embarrassments — at least two of which have now spawned criminal investigations. One of the more memorable ones was being in charge of post-war planning for Iraq, which didn’t pan out that well. Feith’s office is also closely tied to Vice President Cheney’s office, which is the focus of the Plame investigation.

And then in September, Marshall posted this update, based on a story in the Washington Post:

According to the Post, FBI investigators are looking at people in Feith’s office (Harold Rhode), Cheney’s office (David Wurmser) and on the Defense Policy Board (Richard Perle).

Sad story noted on allhatnocattle. Texas Republicans are dissing Willie Nelson. The link to the story in the Houston Chronicle shows even Willie, who unfurls a stage-length stars and stripes during his live show, isn’t the Republicans’ idea of a good American.

A state legislator had proposed naming a 49-mile stretch of Texas Highway 130 being built around Austin in honor of the Texas country music singer.

But two Republican senators, Steve Odgen of Bryan and Jeff Wentworth of San Antonio, said they didn’t want Nelson’s name on the road that crosses their districts, citing the musician’s fondness for drinking and smoking, and active campaigning for Democratic candidates.

While Willie is famous for smoking materials not associated with Republican senators, they do have some things in common. After all, most Republicans are busy either looking for ways to avoid paying taxes or giving themselves refunds on the few occasions they do.

“It’s frustrating, and sad in a way, but at this point, there is no reason to make this an unpleasant experience for anyone, especially Willie, so I’ll take no further action on the bill,” said state Sen. Gonzalo Barrientos, an Austin Democrat and the bill’s author.

Barrientos said he wanted to honor Nelson “for so much good music and so many good works.”

I found this interesting take on the proliferation of non-news stories, and how liberals should be dealing with them, by Steve Gilliard via Daily Kos:

If CNN basically covers this story all Saturday, it’s news. It’s not a debate. It is news, and malaria isn’t. Instead of wishing it wasn’t news, we need to subvert it. We need to discuss it in wider terms, class, race, sex. We need to bring depth to the debate. I mean this story gets weirder by the day. But if you don’t engage it, bring different perspectives to it, the media gets away clean again. When people say “you don’t cover this story” people think “liberal whiner”. If they want to talk about runaway brides, let’s talk about runaway brides, but intelligently, questioning the sex roles of men and women and the economic cost and pressure in a large wedding. There is fertile ground for smart people, but they have to seize the target and change the debate.

One of the great tricks of conservative pundits was to talk about ANY topic. No matter what it was, they had an opinion, got face time and then book deals. They saw this as fertile ground to extend the debate. We have to engage these issues and bring new perspectives on them…

There’s a sort of snobishness about news on the left. I don’t watch TV, I only read the Guardian. Give me a fucking break. Most people think Angel comes after Guardian and when you don’t watch TV, you might as well say pinko hippie. If you want to change minds, you have to speak their language and it’s in things people care about.

If you don’t have an opinion on the latest circus, your opinion on more serious matters will not count. You don’t have to spend every day repeating Eonline, but you have to understand the culture, even the vulgar parts, to change it. If you do not engage the debate at hand, you will become irrelevant. Even if the debate is not a big deal in the end. Walking away, as we did so many times before, is no longer an option.

As a news junkie who has TVs in four out of six rooms in my house (I have two bathrooms, so do the math), I think liberals should be willing to jump in on whatever the cablenewsers fixate on – especially if the topic is drawing fire from wingnuts.

In all the hundreds of hours (or so it seemed) of Schiavo coverage, I never heard anyone say what I wanted to scream: “Let that poor girl go, you monsters! Imagine being trapped in that body, chained to that bed, for 15 years. I hope she is not sentient because if she is she is in agony.”

The Runaway Bride is a different story. We all know what was going on there. The news execs smelled another Peterson case, and murder trials are cheaper and easier to cover than war and terrorism, and trials grab more attention than important topics like global warming. Relatives of missing daughters are easier “gets” for Larry King than movie stars. And while these real people may be less intriguing to TV viewers than movie stars, they’re more interesting than politicians, who tend to be inversely as easy to “get” as they are newsworthy.

The endless barrage of non-news stories produces info-pablum for the masses – it is in the news, therefore it is more high-brow than mere gossip. But the rightwing has learned to jump in on a given topic on the cable shows and infest the story with their phony morality. As the story is digested into the culture at water coolers and over lattes or manicures, the by-product has little or no reality-based, corrective opinion from the Left. Having lost our credibilityon mundane matters, our foundation on loftier issues becomes shakier still in the minds of the masses.

This is how they do it – Rove & Co. The Big Lie infects virally. It enters the discourse with dead-eyed politicians blathering about Terri Schiavo’s right to life on Fox and washes out into the culture as a fantastical new reality in which it suddenly seems logical to un-smart people that activist judges are more dangerous than terrorists and must be stopped – even killed – in order to protect the “right to life” of comatose people and microscopic zygotes.

In order to save America from theocracy, we must engage the enemy where they are winning the war – not in Washington, but in the real world where real people’s lives are embued with the popular culture. Hell, liberals invented the concept of injecting our values into the popular culture. The time has come to get back in the game.

The Bunnypants Plan for Feeding the Social Security Budget into the Coffers of Our Buddies on Wall Street isn’t catching on the way previous successful initiatives like the Bunnypants Plan for Coalitionzing Iraq’s Oil and the Bunnypants Plan for Working Up Simple-Minded Christians About Non-Existent Threats from Gays and Constitution Supporters (aka People in Favor of Separation of Church and State) did. Wonder what’s wrong?

Gallup reported this week:

The overall picture for Bush remains lackluster — only 27% of Americans would like to see Congress pass a Republican-backed plan for Social Security this year… Also, just 35% of Americans today approve of the job Bush is doing on Social Security, while 58% disapprove.

Public reaction to the centerpiece of Bush’s reform plan — private accounts — remains more negative than positive –There has been no statistically significant change in support for private investment accounts since Gallup first tested this in December.

This is particularly disturbing because Bush has been really trying on this one. Still, his 60-state and counting (do you get the joke there?) tour at taxpayer expense is a bomb, and I mean that in a bad way. Even after he got desperate enough to pull out the ultimate carrot “needs-based Social Security” no one bit.

Yesterday’s White House “Press Gaggle” given by Trent Duffy aboard the Mississippi-bound Air Force One was hilarious.

Q: Trent, some Republican senators have expressed reservations openly in the last few days about the indexing plan that Bush announced on Thursday. You have Allen, and you also have Brownback, and some of the centrist Republicans, through aides, are also saying that their bosses are not inclined to support it… how can you push it through if you don’t even have full support of all the Republicans in the Senate?

MR. DUFFY: Well, the Senate Finance Committee is just getting started. But he welcomes the discussion. It’s the exact kind of reaction that the President sought to spark when he provided his proposal.

Q: Does that mean he’s open to other ideas to replace the indexing proposal he just made on Thursday?

MR. DUFFY: The President is open to all ideas, as he said — That’s what the President is most interested in, is providing the best solution.

Q: So the final approach that’s approved by Congress does not need to include this indexing proposal?

MR. DUFFY: Well, the President has put out his proposal; the Senate Finance Committee is just getting started. And we welcome an active debate in that committee about how best to address a solution —

Q: Where do we stand on the 60-day campaign — is he going to stop going around the country and talking about it? Is that phase over?

MR. DUFFY: Well, I think our presence on Air Force One, traveling to Mississippi as we speak, is evidence that the President will continue talking with the American people —

Q: Was there a strategy shift? Thomas is now going to try and get out ahead, and get something out to the House floor by June. Previously it was Grassley that was going to take the first move, but not until July. Was there a coordinated effort to get the House moving, to give it some momentum?

MR. DUFFY: Those legislative, tactical calls are going to be decided by the members of Congress — But the bottom line is, it is moving forward in both houses, and that’s exactly the kind of momentum that the President wanted to build —

Q: And Mississippi is the 26th state?

MR. DUFFY: I believe. Let me double-check on that.

Q: Virginia was 25, and the previous —

MR. DUFFY: Do we know, Ms. Godfrey, what state Mississippi is?

MS. GODFREY: I’ll have to check.

MR. DUFFY: We’ll provide an asterisk at the end of the gaggle —

Q: One other auto question. The President has been at a BMW plant in South Carolina. Now he’s going to a Nissan plant. He’s never been, as far as I know, to GM or Ford. Is there any significance there?

MR. DUFFY: I’ll check on what plants he’s visited or hasn’t visited, but he was invited by this plant to attend. I know that he’s been working with Senator Lott on coming down and visiting — All good? All right, thanks.

Footnotes that followed indicated that Mississippi is the 26th state to fail to embrace the President’s plan and that in fact, he has never visited a domestic automaker’s plant. And while they have never been asked inside, he did invite domestic automakers to the White House lawn one time to hear him read a speech that contained big words like “hydrogen,” “technology” and “fuel-efficiency.”

AmericaBlog:

This is really outrageous. According to the NYT, ABC is running an ad from hate group Focus on the Family during the season finale Monday of the hit primetime show Supernanny. This after CBS and NBC refused to run an ad from the United Church of Christ because it dared to be welcoming of gays.

Focus on the Family is a hate group and has a history of lying and distorting facts when speaking to the media. Any org that wanted to focus on them and challenge their lies in major stories could have made this group untouchable for any respectable media outlet years ago. Ditto the Traditional Values Coalition et al. But they’re considered repsectable enough to run ads on major networks but a Christian church is not?

Contact ABC News Chief Doug Westin: support@abcnews.go.com – or 212.456.6200. fax: 212.456.4292

From the Gatecrasher column in the New York Daily News

OMG! Arch-conservative Ann Coulter is totally dating a Democrat on the down-low.

I hear the mighty righty is discreetly seeing a twentysomething country singer by the name of Rob Ryan.

And yes, Mr. Ryan is an out-and-proud Blue Stater.

The two have been spending nights together at her pad on the upper East Side.

“When they’re together they’re talking more about music than politics,” a pal of theirs told me…

Coulter, always a good sport, told me via E-mail: “I refuse to admit or deny whether Rob Ryan is a Democrat.”

Coulter, who frequently lies about her age, is in her mid-forties.