The President spoke yesterday at the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association and defended his escalation plan for Iraq. As support for his argument that things are getting better, he cited bloggers with a surprisingly rosy view of life in Baghdad:

“Displaced families are returning home, marketplaces are seeing more activity, stores that were long shuttered are now reopening. We feel safer about moving in the city now.”

What Bush did not mention is that these so-called “average” bloggers were actually old friends, Mohammed and Omar Fadhil, who had met with him in the White House in 2004. Their blog is available at Pajamas Media, a conservative leaning blog network. And in an interview with Howard Kurtz of the Washington Post in December of 2004, they declared:

“Now we want to say in a loud and clear voice that we welcome American troops and consider this a liberation, not an occupation. People outside Iraq are more worried than the Iraqis themselves.”

Exactly how numb do you have to be to believe that? I don’t know about the Fahdils, but if dozens of bodies were discovered each morning in the city where I live, I would be pretty worried. But it’s not surprising that Bush would select these gleeful cheerleaders to affirm the gaiety of Baghdad. They almost make me regret living in the doldrums of Southern California and thinking about all the good times and parties I’m missing in Iraq.

The latest out of touch, fringe-dwelling loons to hop aboard the dump Gonzales bandwagon is that bastion of socialist propaganda, the National Review. [For those of you who don’t know the National Review, I was being facetious. They are caveman right wingers]

Despite their place on the political spectrum, they actually provide some of the best reasons for setting the Attorney General adrift. They point out that Democrats might eventually uncover evidence of real wrongdoing. They fret that, “he was either deceptive or inexcusably detached from the operations of his own department.” They are critical of his blaming his staff for misconduct that he concedes has occurred. And they allege that his position is hanging by a thread of concern that Democrats will exploit his ouster to for political gain. All of those points are true. But here is the part I find most interesting:

“While we defended him from some of the outlandish charges made during his confirmation hearings, we have never seen evidence that he has a fine legal mind, good judgment, or managerial ability.”

Somebody pinch me. Did the editors of the National Review just admit that, although they never saw evidence of “a fine legal mind, good judgment, or managerial ability,” they still defended him during the hearings to confirm his as Attorney General? What on earth was the basis for their support? Did he make a mean margarita? Did he offer free legal advice? Or were they just sucking up to an administration that was accustomed to having its people and proposals rubberstamped by a compliant media and Congress?

What should we take from this admission going forward? Obviously, the National Review doesn’t believe that intelligence and experience are prerequisites for service in the President’s cabinet. And if agency heads are held to such low standards, then where is the bar for under-secretaries, ambassadors, or judges? I think it’s clear that, after this, anyone looking to the National Review for endorsements has to concede that they are not interested in a nominee’s competence or qualifications. The National Review has forfeited all credibility in that regard.

However, I will gladly accept their opinion that Gonzales must go, because, in the realm of the inadequate, the National Review is unsurpassed.

George W. Bush: “If Congress fails to pass a bill to fund our troops on the front lines, the American people will know who to hold responsible.”

America: “A majority in the March 23-25 poll favor a timetable for withdrawing all U.S. troops from Iraq by fall 2008 (60% favor, 38% oppose).”

That’s right…We’ll know who to hold responsible.

Last week the House of Representatives narrowly passed a bill that endorsed a timetable for removal of American troops from Iraq. This afternoon, the Senate followed suit with a similar measure. What has ensued in the press subsequently has been a torrent of opinion, delivered as fact, that the legislation was meaningless and would never become law. That analysis illustrates the shallowness of media pundits who have disdain for the principles of democracy.

What they are trying to convey is their prediction that the President will veto the bill and the Congress will not have the votes to override him. There are two problems with that display of newsiness.

First, the President has not vetoed the bill yet. It should be further noted that he has previously issued veto threats which never came to pass. For example:

• Bush threatens veto to keep FCC changes.
• Bush Says He Will Veto Any Bill to Stop UAE Port Deal.
• Senate ignores veto threat in limiting detainee treatment.
• Bush threatens to veto patients’ rights bill.

Is there much of a likelihood that Bush will either negotiate or relent on his threat of a veto for this bill? Probably not. But there are no foregone conclusions in politics and Bush has a number of other serious problems to attend to that could weaken his hand. A president with an Attorney General who is mired in a political corruption scandal, an FBI that is illegally spying on American citizens, and an approval rating that is just north of Hades, might find it difficult to cheer on a war that is just as unpopular as he is.

Secondly, the Congress has not yet failed to override the veto that the President has not yet made. To assume that such an outcome is impossible is to ignore the reality that played out today. The bill that the Senate passed a few hours ago was defeated just two weeks ago. That shows that the positions of some members of Congress remain fluid. What appears to be a trickle now could easily snowball into a deluge depending on the pressure applied by constituents or, more ominously, the course of events in Iraq.

What’s more, the measure of whether these votes in Congress have any meaning extends far beyond their eventual fate on Capital Hill or at the White House. Even if there is a veto and a failure to override, the Democratic legislature will have made a durable statement that, polls show, will resonate with the American people. The public will know who has their interests at heart and will carry that knowledge with them well into 2008.

But the biggest problem is the arrogance of the media that pretends to know the outcome of all partisan scuffles. The lock-step conformity of their assertions that this bill will never become law is an affront to the democratic process. It dismisses out of hand the notion that it is the people to whom the reigns of power belong. The press, in reporting the events of today, might correctly include the obstacles to passage, but it is downright un-American to declare that passage is an impossibility and that the effort has no meaning. They might want to consider letting the people have their say. They might want to show some faith in democracy. They might want to listen to Patti Smith’s “People Have The Power.”

Vengeful aspects became suspect
and bending low as if to hear,
and the armies ceased advancing
because the people had their ear.

People have the power.
The power to dream / to rule
to wrestle the world from fools.

Writing at the DailyKos, Hunter has articulated an insightful and inspiring essay about the embarrassingly inadequate pundit class in American media. It really needs to be read in full, but here are a few choice excerpts:

• “What, and pardon my French, the flying baguette is going on in our media when large swaths of the pundit class, lethargic and addled, can’t figure out that the manipulation of our very system of justice itself…is not merely a political concern, but one with rather substantial implications towards the very way American democracy is practiced?”
• “…there is a special place in hell for anyone who, at any point, figured that America should elect their President according to who they’d like to “have a beer” with, or opined in the national media that such reasoning was anything but a godforsaken sophistry.”
• “…we’ve got possibly the least intelligent, most buffoonish President we’ve had in a generation (elevating all others as paragons of comportment and adroitness in the comparison), a man whose daily struggles with English are a window into a mind untarnished with complex thought, a man whose lack of understanding of foreign policy issues has knocked the wind from even those brought in to educate him on the subjects, a man whose daily pronouncements give trembling comedians ice cream headaches as they try to ingest the glory of it all.”
• “…there is little evidence that the Washington pundit media ranks any higher on the competence scale than the fool-riddled government they purport to cover. Intelligence, is, shall we say, not held in high regard, in our national debate. Intellectualism is scorned: knowledge, such as the environmental knowledge that Gore was able to rattle off with little difficulty during the millennial American campaign, is seen as pushy, or snobbish, or gauche. It is decidedly unappreciated.”

The condensed version identifies a trio of pundit shortcomings: Heatherism, bias, and stupidity. But I don’t want to spoil it for you. Go read the whole thing.

The Pew Research Center for the People and the Press released a new study that should put an end to the media fiction that liberals are some sort of fringe group that are out of touch with mainstream America. It should put an end to that, but will it?

The report reveals that the public has been growing more concerned about social programs, income inequality, and militaristic national security policies, and less interested in the so-called traditional social values promoted by conservatives. That values divide corresponds with a shift in political affiliation as well:

“In 2002, the country was equally divided along partisan lines: 43% identified with the Republican Party or leaned to the GOP, while an identical proportion said they were Democrats. Today, half of the public (50%) either identifies as a Democrat or says they lean to the Democratic Party, compared with 35% who align with the GOP.”

That’s a 15% divergence in 5 years. Following the Democratic electoral victories last November and the consistently low approval ratings of the Bush administration, one might think that the press would start to approach issues in a manner that reflects this reality. Instead, they persist in characterizing liberals as peaceniks and welfare moms. Partisans like Bill O’Reilly and Sean Hannity can’t say the word “Left” without appending “ultra-far” to the front of it. Even if they are talking about confirmed moderates like John Murtha.

Whether it’s the anti-troops leftists seeking a sane foreign policy, or the radical liberals who scotched the Fox News attempt to sabotage the debate in Nevada, or the mockery of Al Gore’s congressional testimony on global warming, or the loony netroots activists that have taken over the Democratic Party, the subtle, and sometimes obvious, defamation ought to be wearing thin. It’s the stenographers and spokesmodels who pass for the “mainstream” media who are out of touch. In poll after poll it has been shown that more Americans agree with the positions of liberals on almost every issue. That includes the economy, healthcare, the environment, civil rights, and most notably, the war. But the media continues to force their utterly misrepresentative narrative on a public that knows better.

This seems like a good time to remind and encourage people to let the press know that we know that they are being dishonest. If ABC News makes disparaging comments about “left-wing special interests,” call their newsroom. If USA Today belittles progressive congresspersons as not being aligned with their constituents, fire off an email. Do this every time you witness their bad behavior and point them to this Pew study. If we hit them over the head with the truth enough times, they might finally start to get it.

We can only hope.

A couple of weeks ago the Los Angeles Times announced that they were going to invite guests to edit their opinion section, Current. My initial response was that it was a terrible idea that trivialized the tradition of commentary in journalism. That impression was affirmed when they revealed that film producer Brian Grazer would be the inaugural guest editor. I have nothing against Grazer, but this is a newspaper (ostensibly) and its opinion pages should take that mission more seriously. If they had Bill Moyers or Peter Ueberroth launch the program, and held Grazer for a later edition, it would have given it more gravitas.

Well now the scheme has produced some Hollywood melodrama of its own. Apparently the Times’ Editorial Page Editor Andres Martinez, who selected Grazer, was romantically involved with a publicist who works with Grazer. That appearance of a conflict of interest led publisher David Hiller to scrap this week’s Current (albeit belatedly, and after denying any conflict existed). That, in turn, led Martinez to resign.

I really couldn’t care less about the management crowd at the Times who I believe to be journalistically challenged and beholden to their Chicago bosses and shareholders instead of their readers. But in a statement about his resignation, Martinez wrote the following:

“I will not be lectured on ethics by some ostensibly objective news reporters and editors who lobby for editorials to be written on certain subjects, or who have suggested that our editorial page coordinate more closely with the newsroom’s agenda.”

Martinez’ observation about the Times’ reporters, and his revelation regarding the incestuous relationship between the news division and the opinion pages, is a more scandalous affair than the one between Martinez and Mullins. But the real problem with the Times was eloquently stated by Jeff McMahon in a posted response to Martinez:

“It’s truly amazing that David Hiller has suddenly discovered the conflict of interest provisions of journalism’s codes of ethics. After all, the Tribune Company’s strategy has been to exploit situations in which interests are inherently conflicted – such as owning newspapers, television stations, radio stations, and in one truly unfortunate city, even a baseball team, in the same city, and then creating advertorial synergies between them. It’s a bit hard to believe anyone spawned by the Tribune Company headquarters is so concerned about ethics. So what’s really going on here?”

I couldn’t have said it better myself.

Update: This scandal may have more endurance than anyone currently anticipates. Bill Boyarsky, former city editor at the Times, thinks a full investigation should be conducted to ascertain whether any other conflicts may have occurred.