Ahead of The Curve On Lakoff

1:07 pm EST July 18th, 2005 | Politics | Comments Off

For some time now, I’ve believed that the raving over George Lakoff is silly stuff. This article further confirms that to me. Lakoff is useful to dissect the linguistic trickery of the Frank Luntz school – but his work is absolutely useless in prescribing Democratic alternatives and they tend to resemble the sort of ivory tower college liberalism that we get parodied for. I do believe that about 90% of the last election was decided on the GOP’s skill at marketing and message discipline, while the Dems were running around with chickens whose heads had been sliced off. I also reject the idea of “we need new ideas”, and instead would propose that many Democratic ideas have completely won (social security, for instance) and that’s what makes it hard to propose “new” ones.

We Have A Word For This

1:07 pm EST July 18th, 2005 | Politics | 36 Comments

“If somebody did leak classified information, I’d like to know it. And we’ll take the appropriate action.” – George W. Bush, 10/30/03

“If someone committed a crime, they will no longer work in my administration” – George W. Bush, 7/18/05

Cointelpro 2?

3:07 am EST July 18th, 2005 | Politics | 4 Comments

Evidently according the federal government, anyone who disagrees with the Bush administration is a terrorist

The FBI has thousands of pages of records in its files relating to the monitoring of civil rights, environmental and similar advocacy groups, the Justice Department acknowledges.

The organizations, including the American Civil Liberties Union and Greenpeace, are suing for the release of the documents. The organizations contend that the material will show that they have been subjected to scrutiny by FBI task forces set up to combat terrorism.

Two Thoughts On Karl Rove

3:07 am EST July 18th, 2005 | Politics | 31 Comments

1. I do not believe he is as skilled as the legend goes. This is a guy whose candidate lost the popular vote his first try out, and had to use the worst sort of smear campaign to get his guy the nomination (McCain) and to beat a bad campaigner who happens to be a good guy (Kerry). As horrible a president and a person though he might be, George W. Bush is a decent campaigner in his own right, sans Rove.

2. Does anyone really think, seriously and without partisanship, that Karl Rove was so motivated to correct possible errors in journalism that he just kept telling every reporter who would pick up a phone about Valerie Plame?

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2:07 am EST July 18th, 2005 | Uncategorized | Comments Off

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Topic: Links

It’s Interesting

1:07 am EST July 18th, 2005 | Democrats | 6 Comments

That the right-wing Weekly Standard has to keep writing articles that smear progressive blogs and deride Dems for using them as an outlet (as opposed to being shut out of the mainstream media unless they knife their side in the back). It’s as if they would prefer us to be quiet little ninnies and run away…

AP Lies

3:07 pm EST July 15th, 2005 | News | 73 Comments

Your liberal media works for you, again

In a July 15 article reporting new details in the ongoing criminal investigation into the leak of CIA officer Valerie Plame’s identity, the Associated Press distorted a remark by former ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV to falsely report that Wilson “acknowledged his wife [Plame] was no longer in an undercover job at the time Novak’s column first identified her.” In fact, Wilson merely emphasized that his wife’s cover was blown at the moment when columnist Robert D. Novak revealed her identity in a July 2003 column.

Topic: Liberal Media

Rove Broke The Law

2:07 pm EST July 15th, 2005 | Politics | 12 Comments

From Rep. Waxman’s office (PDF):

Today, news reports revealed that Karl Rove, the White House Deputy Chief of Staff and the President s top political advisor, confirmed the identity of covert CIA official Valerie Plame Wilson with Robert Novak on July 8, 2003, six days before Mr. Novak published the information in a nationally syndicated column. These new disclosures have obvious relevance to the criminal investigation of Patrick Fitzgerald, the Special Counsel who is investigating whether Mr. Rove violated a criminal statute by revealing Ms. Wilson’s identity as a covert CIA official.

Independent of the relevance these new disclosures have to Mr. Fitzgerald s investigation, they also have significant implications for: (1) whether Mr. Rove violated his obligations under his “Classified Information Nondisclosure Agreement” and (2) whether the White House violated its obligations under Executive Order 12958. Under the nondisclosure agreement and the executive order, Mr. Rove would be subject to the loss of his security clearance or dismissal even for “negligently” disclosing Ms. Wilson s identity.

Why Is The Republican Party Promoting A Hate Site?

5:07 pm EST July 14th, 2005 | Republicans | 69 Comments

Trumpeted in a press release, the Republican National Committee is quite proud of itself with the launch of its new website at GOP.com. Most notable is that the RNC has joined the blogosphere with the launch of the first official RNC weblog. On the RNC’s list of blogs it recommends reading are some of the usual suspects, including Patrick Ruffini, Powerline, Trey Jackson, Blogs for Bush, and others. But one site sticks out – Little Green Footballs (LGF), operated by Charles Johnson, is notorious for being a promoter of and haven for some of the most virulent anti-Muslim and anti-Islam hate speech on the web.

The RNC’s recommendation of the Little Green Footballs site – one of only fifteen selected – would seem to be in stark contrast to President Bush’s repeated proclamations that “Islam is peace”.

It bears asking – why is the Republican Party’s first step into the world of blogging now tainted by their support of a hate site? Perhaps you should ask the RNC at info@gop.com or Chairman Ken Mehlman at Chairman@gop.com

LGF asserts that all of Islam is evil:

“[Johnson is using sarcasm to ridicule the Bush administration's support of Islam] [I]t s just a small minority of fanatic extremists who have hijacked a tolerant, peaceful religion, and the US gives Egypt more than $2 billion a year in foreign aid.” [LGF, 11/3/2003]

LGF uses racist language talking about Arabs:

“Condoleezza Needles the Oil Ticks” [LGF, 6/21/05]

“Religious Apartheid in the Land of the Oil Ticks” [LGF, 5/29/05]

“Christmas with the Oil Ticks” [LGF, 12/26/04]

“Charles Johnson does Auschwitz — and gets it all wrong” [The Peking Duck, 1/27/05]

LGF allows and encourages racist comments about Arabs:

“Who gives a rat’s patoot what this Arab, or any of them for that matter, thinks? Actually that’s a mistake. As Muslims they are not trained or permitted to think.” [LGF, 1/16/2005]

“How can these vermin [Palestinians] have a country? How can these vermin be allowed to live?” [LGF, 6/20/02]

“Perhaps something more like targetted genocide at the religious muslims will become necesary.” [LGF, 4/30/03]

“They [Palestinians] don’t need statehood; they need sterilization.” [LGF, 2/9/03]