The bad, the worse, and the ham-fisted

Jim Clark tried his fumbling hand at the old Karlrovian "Straw man outrage" trick. It goes like this: Those politically-motivated scoundrels calling for a full investigation of the Kfx scandal, including the governor's role, are really just undermining the Bob Bundy's investigation ... and how dare they malign a fine, upstanding individual like Bob Bundy!!

This is pure PR, hoping to confuse public opinion until the scandal blows over. The Waste of Times will echo it as forcefully as it can, and it may get some traction ...

But it means they're a little desperate. There's something there, I think. At the least, it's a good scandal, and these buffoons were too arrogant and foolish to cover their tracks ...

more press conferences, please! More grandstanding! Now is no time to turn down the heat. How about "Coal Miners for Truth" running some ads or ginning up a state FOIA request or a lawsuit?

The crushing weight of irony

The headline says it all: "Renkes is Narrator of Ethics Video"

R-Whipped

James Walcott, ever elegant and eloquent, takes down Bernard Kerik better than the many others that are having a field day - but the contest is still rolling! Pile on, baby! Every black mark on Kerik is a black mark on Giuliani, and the less we see of that particular self-aggrandizing bloviator the better.

Of particular note in Walcott's column, though, is the following, which addresses a theme close to my heart:

I'm glad the press is having a dance party with this, because God knows the Democrats are frozen at the steering wheel. I just saw a segment on MSNBC (which has been all over the Kerik story today, bless Rick Kaplan's cyborg heart) pitting a Republican strategist against a Democratic one, and the Democratic spokesman--who goes by the name of Michael Brown--seemed to have washed down his weeny pills with warm Ovaltine. Instead of kicking Kerik and Giuliana between the uprights for three points, Brown fretted that vetting process for cabinet candidates was "going to far," and that we were in danger of discouraging people from public service. Oh no, we wouldn't want to discourage philandering, pocket-lining, deadbeat no-show bully-boys like Bernard Kerik from having the opportunity to muck around with our civil liberties in the name of "national security" and hold bigshot press conferences. I mean, if that sort of thing were to continue happening, people might start mistaking the Democrats for an opposition party and thinking that the press has an adversarial role to play, and we don't want that to happen, it might actually lead to signs of life in that mausoleum we call the nation's capital.
This Michael Brown wouldn't even criticize Alberto Gonzalez for botching the background check and vetting of Kerik. I don't understand the self-emasculation of so many Democratic strategists, what they're afraid of, why they concede so much in advance. Give them an opening, and they close it like a silk kimono, ever so demure. What are they in politics for, the professional grooming tips?

I am convinced that Bill Clinton won the White House because he had few DC Democratic operatives in his politburo, and that Al Gore managed to lose the White House despite winning the election because of his fealty to that hopeless eunch Bob Shrum and a coterie of other spineless insiders. The same is true for Kerry. It's time to clean house.

From that same comments section, a good take on the annoying gutlessness of DC Demcrats, whom I presently detest as a bunch of spineless professional losers:

You know, I find all this SS stuff really phenomenal. Really, really, phenomenal. We have no reason to trust this White House (What happened to the monthly terror alerts? How safe is our food supply? Where are the Iraqi nuclear weapons stockpiles?), yet from today's Post, the Democrats appear to be in a defensive--already! This is an opportunity, same as the Clinton Healthcare plan was for Repubs, to go on the offensive I think. The Dems ought to be starting to run commercials, sending feeders out to senior groups, even handing out flyers on the street to get the public's attention and grab the debate. The bottom line is that as the economy and dollar stand now, as our foreign affairs stand now, we have absolutely no reason to be taking on such an expensive endeavor as privatizing a portion of SS. None.
I realize we took a beating in the elections, but come on. If voters didn't trust Kerry enough because of his so-called wiffly-waffley ways, how are they going to feel about a party that bends over and takes it in the back end even before the Repubs have started their full frontal media assault on the SS program? And, what's going to be the result once the media assault starts and the Dems have not prepared the country intellectually for the outright garbage that's going to be sold as reform?
I guess we all have our issues, but having studied SS for years, I'm now feeling thoroughly disgusted with the Democratic Party. And I was already disgusted with the party for allowing Gore to use the "shore up" SS issue in the 2000 presidential campaign to get elected. I knew what the Repubs would do with the issue then, we're seeing what they're doing with it now. So much for good Dem political strategies, right? Excuse my language, but we're f'cked.

Amen.

HA!

From the Comments on "Political Animal" re: CBS recent decline as a purveyor of news:

"They're as relevent as tits on a boar. And it's a goddamn shame."

Now, that's good.

The giant sucking sound known as CBS, on the other hand, grows only more sucky. Kevin Drum has the details.

"We had to destroy the program in order to save it ..."

As usual, Paul Krugman deftly hits the nail on the head. There is not now any "looming fiscal crisis" that endangers Social Security, nor has there been for the last 20 years (since the Alan Greenspan-approved payroll tax hike). There is, however, a politcal crisis. See, it's a government program that pretty much works. This is something the ideologically-obsessed bufoons who control our government simply cannot accept. And so they will engage in their usual well-practiced game of political three-card monte to deceive people (and themselves) into destroying it.

I've never believed that Social Security would be there for my generation, but only because I have always understood that our political leadership would simply, in the end, prove too irresponsible to keep a good thing going. I had some renewed hope during the Clinton years, but responsible management has not quite proven to be a hallmark of the Bush Administration.