There he goes again, the mouthpiece for Rove and Cheney, believing his "access" as a stenographer makes him a journalist. It doesn't. It makes him a stenographer.
Allen gussies up his source's bile with a few fig leaf sentences and a gesture from a Democratic rebuttal. But he also offers the entire Cheney statement – a classic Dolchstoss attack on the president as a traitor – in full.
I hope Allen gets his page-views. But shouldn't the Cheneys be paying him rather than Politico?
A blast from the past.
"The denizens of the left blogosphere consider themselves the Democratic Party's base. But they are not. For Democrats, as opposed to Republicans, the wing is not the base; the legions of loyal African Americans, union members, Jews, women and Latinos are. In the end, the sillier left-village practitioners are stoking the same populist exaggeration—the idea that Washington is controlled by crooks and sellouts—that conservative strategists like Bill Kristol believe will bring the Republicans back to power. The perversity of this is beyond comprehension," – Joe Klein.
"If we can’t catch a Nigerian with a powerful explosive powder in his oddly feminine-looking underpants and a syringe full of acid, a man whose own father had alerted the U.S. Embassy in Nigeria, a traveler whose ticket was paid for in cash and who didn’t check bags, whose visa renewal had been denied by the British, who had studied Arabic in Al Qaeda sanctuary Yemen, whose name was on a counterterrorism watch list, who can we catch?" – Maureen Dowd.
I am relieved that Obama has now promised "accountability at every level." I'd say firing Napolitano would be a start. Show you're different from the Bushies. Actually hold someone you know and like accountable.
Just one problem:
The regime that Boot contemplates, like the one that the Pentagon is pushing towards, is illegal. Although international law gives armed forces the right to make security detentions, it doesn’t provide the authority for prolonged detention. Either that occurs under the authority of the Geneva Conventions or the authority must be worked out in an agreement with the host country. On this point, the United States had repeatedly sought authority from the Afghan government, and they have consistently refused to grant it.
Andrew Sprung looks forward optimistically. Some tonic against too much gloom:
Poverty: "Whereas real per capita income [worldwide] increased by about one fifth per decade in the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s, it is expect to increase by about one third in the 2000s…The poverty rate is expected to continue to fall sharply from 57.2 percent in 200 to 49.7 percent in 2010 at a poverty line of one-half of the mean." (Lynge Nielsen, IMF Working Paper, Global Relative Poverty, April 2009 '
Health: Global life expectancy at birth was 64 in 1990, 66 in 2000, and 68 in 2007. Under-5 mortality rates per 1000 live births were 91 in 1990, 78 in 2000, and 67 in 2007.
From 1990 – 2006, the number of people in developing regions using improved sanitation facilities has increased by 1.1 billion; the proportion of the global population with access to improved drinking water sources rose from 76% to 86% in the same period. (World Health Statistics 2009.) War: Here is the latest tabulation of global battle deaths year by year calculated by the International Peace Research Institute. While these tabulations have been challenged in recent years, they have also been strongly defended (summary here).
Another scene of the disgusting and desperate brutality of the military junta in Iran:
Ezra builds on Weigel's critique:
One of the jobs the media does is deciding what true things count as news and what true things do not count as news. That should be easy, but since newspapers need to sell copies and cable programs need to secure viewers, there's a tension with the fact that some news is boring, while some not-news is really interesting. Palin sneaks onto the front page because she seems to square that circle: Her utterances seem like news (former vice presidential candidate and 2012 hopeful Sarah Palin says …) but actually aren't. The continuing irony of all this is that for all the enmity between Palin and the press, no one has a closer and more mutually beneficial relationship than Palin has with the media, and no equivalently powerless political figure receives anything near the free coverage that the media lavishes on her.
Lie after lie after lie after lie. Don't take my word for it. That's the analysis of Richard Fineberg, whose credentials are as follows:
For three decades he has researched and reported on economic and environmental issues related to Alaska and global petroleum development. Fineberg came to Alaska in 1969 to teach undergraduate and graduate courses in political science at the University of Alaska, leaving that position in 1971 to devote full time to freelance reporting.
He has spent much of the last four decades observing and reporting on Alaska’s North Slope oil development for newspapers, public agencies, environmental and other public interest groups and even occasional developers. He has served three governors – the first as a budget and policy analyst, the second as a senior advisor on oil and gas and the third as a consultant. The third was Sarah Palin.
So he knows what he's talking about, and knows that Palin doesn't. Money quote:
The following piece focuses on Palin’s inaccuracies and distortions in Going Rogue regarding the bill on which I consulted. That production tax measure, which she dubbed “ACES” (Alaska’s Clear and Equitable Share) was one of Sarah Palin’s three major pieces of legislation during her first year in office. Based on my first-hand experience, I can tell you that Sarah Palin is misinforming the public on ACES – as she does on so many other issues. At http://www.finebergresearch.com you can find background and documentation, as well as previous posts that will tell you about my gradual disillusionment with this maiden of misinformation.
Read the whole thing. Since Adam Bellow edited a book full of errors and lies, when is he going to take responsibility for it?
Photo: A Yemeni Al-Qaeda suspect attends a hearing at the State-Security Court in Sanaa on December 29, 2009. By Khaled Fazaa/AFP/Getty Images.
The Dish 