It’s one thing for the Weekly Standard and Rush Limbaugh to spin the “phony soldiers” flap; it’s another for the AP to uncritically accept the spin — and take it even futher.
Greg Sargent explains at the Horse’s Mouth.
The scrutiny of Hillary Clinton’s marriage has been excessive. The scrutiny of her hairstyle has been absurd. The scrutiny of her cleavage has been offensive. The scrutiny of her clothing has been almost comical.
And so I suppose it was only a matter of time before the media turned its attention to her laugh.
Last Sunday, meanwhile, she appeared on all five of the major morning talk shows. I don’t know what she had for breakfast, but her laughter was heavily caffeinated at times. Chris Wallace, of Fox News, first pressed Mrs. Clinton about why she was so “hyper-partisan,” and that drew a huge cackle. (Coming from Fox, that question is pretty funny, her aides said.) But at another point Mr. Wallace switched gears and said, “let me ask you about health care,” and she responded, “Yeah, I’d love you to ask me about health care” — and then let it rip, again, a bit quizzically.
The weirdest moment was with Bob Schieffer on the CBS News program “Face the Nation” when he said to Mrs. Clinton, “you rolled out your new health care plan, something Republicans immediately said is going to lead to socialized medicine.” She giggled, giggled some more, and then couldn’t seem to stop giggling — “Sorry, Bob,” she said — and finally unleashed the full Cackle.
Yes, four months before Iowans register a presidential preference, the New York Times is not only giving Hillary Clinton’s laugh a specific label, the paper is also capitalizing it.
Slate’s John Dickerson also devoted a whole piece to the question: “What’s with Hillary’s laugh?”
Matt Drudge posted a sound clip of it, and Sean Hannity raised the pressing question of whether Clinton’s laughter was presidential…. Liberals, always on the lookout for signs of artifice from Clinton, are concerned that the laugh is staged to make the candidate appear more lighthearted and approachable. If so, it’s certainly not working. The laugh sounds forced — tacked on to warm Hillary’s persona.
If bwah-ha-ha is a strategy, an aide should stop it now, before someone gets hurtâ¦. Clinton also needs to ditch the laugh because it has become her tell.
It’s going to be a long campaign, isn’t it?
In light of the controversies surrounding the MoveOn.org “Betray Us” ad and Rush Limbaugh slamming U.S. troops who support withdrawal as “phony soldiers,” you’d think Fox News wouldn’t publish a piece called, “Top Military Officials are a Disgrace to Those They Lead.”
And yet, as Glenn Greenwald noted, that’s the headline on the latest piece from Col. David Hunt, who wrote, “Our generals are betraying our soldiers … again”
Hunt’s argument is that the “politically correct” U.S. military shouldn’t punish troops for using tactics such as “baiting” — leaving munitions in a public area, and then shooting those who try to pick it up. Because top officials are cracking down on these tactics, Hunt is condemning U.S. generals, accusing them of “betraying” the troops.
Indeed, the rest of the Fox News piece continues in the same aggressive vein. Hunt argues that our generals “have cared more about their precious careers and reputations than their soldiers and Marines under them,” and deserve to put “on trial” for their decisions.
Given the current climate, I don’t imagine the Fox News contributor could have chosen more provocative language. As Glenn argued:
To accuse a general of “betrayal” is, in military parlance, the equivalent of accusing him of treason to his country. Yet that is what this Fox News article does in the very first paragraph with regard to many of our brave Generals risking their lives for our country in a Time of War — and it not only accuses Our Military Commanders of “betrayal,” but betrayal of their own troops.
I shudder to think what the reaction would have been from our friends on the right if this ran in an outlet other than Fox News.
When it comes to the race for the Democratic presidential nomination, national polls show Hillary Clinton with a significant lead. In New Hampshire, the latest CNN/WMUR poll showed Clinton way out in front with 43% support, followed by Barack Obama with 20%, and John Edwards with 12%. (It’s worth noting that 55% of poll respondents are still “trying to decide” which presidential candidate to support.)
But what about Iowa, which has consistently been the closest contest? A just-released Newsweek poll is bound to get some attention.
Among all Iowa Democratic voters, Clinton draws 31 percent, followed by Obama (25 percent) and Edwards (21 percent). But among likely caucus-goers, Obama enjoys a slim lead, polling 28 percent to best Clinton (24 percent) and Edwards (22 percent). Bill Richardson is the only other Democratic candidate to score in the double digits (10 percent).
Stay tuned.
There are plenty of Republican presidential candidates anxious to carry on Bush’s foreign-policy legacy — Rudy Giuliani’s vision comes to mind — but former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee is taking a different approach. He’s comparing the president to Pakistan’s Pervez Musharraf, and not in a good way.
Eric Kleefeld has the details.
The headline on the AP report on Freedom’s Watch reads, “Outsiders aim to frame political debate.” If there’s a less accurate description of the powerful conservative activists behind this new group, I can’t think of it.
Freedom’s Watch and MoveOn.org could be the left and right bookends not only on the war, but on a number of issues that will decide the 2008 elections and shape congressional debate beyond. Freedom’s Watch organizers said they are considering whether to create a political subgroup, like MoveOn has, that could directly play a role in elections.
“Bookends”? Eli Pariser, the executive director of MoveOn.org Political Action, noted, “The main difference is that MoveOn is a group of 3.3 million. Freedom’s Watch is a few mega millionaires.”
What’s more, they’re incredibly well-connected mega millionaires. The AP’s headline notwithstanding, Freedom’s Watch includes some key establishment heavy-hitters. Bradley A. Blakeman, president and chief executive officer of Freedom’s Watch, was a member the White House senior staff in Bush’s first term. Mary Matalin, Dick Cheney’s counselor until 2003, is helping set the group’s agenda. Freedom’s Watch’s chief spokesperson is Ari Fleischer, Bush’s first White House press secretary. The board and principal financiers include Bush administration ambassadors and party insiders.
Freedom’s Watch can call this a “grassroots” effort, and the AP can call the group “outsiders,” but that doesn’t make it so. As Digby put it, “Only in the Village could someone characterize that group as being ‘outsiders.’ You just have to laugh.”
I don’t want to alarm anyone, but it appears that the Bush administration is dropping the ball, intentionally, in prosecuting polluters. Who could have imagined it?
The Environmental Protection Agency’s pursuit of criminal cases against polluters has dropped off sharply during the Bush administration, with the number of prosecutions, new investigations and total convictions all down by more than a third, according to Justice Department and EPA data.
The number of civil lawsuits filed against defendants who refuse to settle environmental cases was down nearly 70 percent between fiscal years 2002 and 2006, compared with a four-year period in the late 1990s, according to those same statistics.
Critics of the agency say its flagging efforts have emboldened polluters to flout U.S. environmental laws, threatening progress in cleaning the air, protecting wildlife, eliminating hazardous materials, and countless other endeavors overseen by the EPA.
Eric Schaeffer, for example, was the director of the EPA’s Office of Civil Enforcement in the Bush administration, but resigned in protest because the administration refused to seriously pursue enforcement. “You don’t get cleanup, and you don’t get deterrence,” Schaeffer said. “I don’t think this is a problem with agents in the field. They’re capable of doing the work. They lack the political support they used to be able to count on, especially in the White House.”
Perhaps the moral of the story is that Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) would be far better off avoiding religion as a campaign issue. It’s been dogging him for years, and his fall from grace continues.
In 2000, the Arizona senator gambled that denouncing religious right leaders like Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson would pay off, and went to Virginia to condemn the TV preachers as “agents of intolerance.” The gamble failed; the GOP base was offended; and McCain’s campaign never recovered.
More recently, McCain, a life-long Episcopalian, raised eyebrows by telling a reporter, unprompted, “By the way, I’m not Episcopalian. I’m Baptist.” In context, it looked as if McCain may have claimed a new affiliation simply in the hopes it would give his campaign a boost.
The senator ran into additional religious trouble in a BeliefNet interview in which he said, “I would probably have to say yes, that the Constitution established the United States of America as a Christian nation.” This despite the fact that the Constitution, which McCain has presumably read, does the exact opposite.
And as if that weren’t enough, in the same interview, McCain suggested he wouldn’t want a Muslim president.
“I admire the Islam. There’s a lot of good principles in it,” he said. “But I just have to say in all candor that since this nation was founded primarily on Christian principles, personally, I prefer someone who I know who has a solid grounding in my faith.”
Apparently, McCain later realized he’d made a mistake, because the transcript of the interview added, “McCain contacted Beliefnet after the interview to clarify his remarks: ‘I would vote for a Muslim if he or she was the candidate best able to lead the country and defend our political values.'”
In other words, McCain was for discrimination before he was against it.
Former Bush White House aide David Kuo, now a BeliefNet contributor, said McCain was “pandering to what he thinks the Christian conservative community wants to hear” and predicted he “will have a lot of explaining to do about this interview.”
Bill Kristol on Fox News, critiquing the president’s opposition to a bipartisan bill expanding access to healthcare for children:
“[W]henever I hear anything described as a heartless assault on our children, I tend to think it’s a good idea. I’m happy that the President’s willing to do something bad for the kids.”
What a prince.
About a year ago, I was working on a Washington Monthly piece about the historical oddity of admitted adulterers running for president as Republicans. I ended up speaking with about a half-dozen prominent conservative leaders affiliated with the religious right movement — include representatives of Focus on the Family and the Family Research Council — most of whom told me that Rudy Giuliani, if he won the GOP nomination, would cause an unprecedented rift in the party.
With the former NYC mayor still leading in national polls, some of these same conservative groups have reportedly started making preparations to support a third-party campaign. Salon’s Michael Scherer has the story.
A powerful group of conservative Christian leaders decided Saturday at a private meeting in Salt Lake City to consider supporting a third-party candidate for president if a pro-choice nominee like Rudy Giuliani wins the Republican nomination. […]
“The conclusion was that if there is a pro-abortion nominee they will consider working with a third party,” said the person, who spoke to Salon on the condition of anonymity. The private meeting was not a part of the official CNP schedule, which is itself a closely held secret. “Dobson came in just for this meeting,” the person said.
If this doesn’t cause the Republican Party some anxiety, it’s just not paying attention. Indeed, this scenario made Karl Rove exceedinly nervous in 2004, when there were rumors that former Alabama Supreme Court Justice Roy Moore might make a suitable far-right candidate, who would pick up support from Dobson & Co., split the right, and throw the election to the Democrats.
And that was with Bush, who is pretty conservative. A Giuliani candidacy is obviously far more problematic, given his scandalous personal history and his previous support for abortion rights, gay rights, gun control, and stem-cell research.
Let’s also not forget that there’s already a vehicle in place for a further-right campaign — the ridiculously right-wing Constitution Party has a spot on the presidential ballot in 41 states, and a party leader was on hand for the Utah meeting yesterday.
Stay tuned.