The topic below was originally posted on my blog, the Intrepid Liberal Journal, as well as the Independent Bloggers Alliance, the Peace Tree, the Out of Iraq Bloggers Caucus, the Wild Wild Left and Worldwide Sawdust.

In 2007, the Democratic Party was a self-gelding machine of ineptitude. Activists such as myself worked feverishly in 2006 to retake congress and end America's occupation of Iraq. Instead the Bush Administration implemented a "surge" as Democrats retreated from flexing their constitutional muscle. They continued to fund military operations, never invoked the War Powers Act and impeachment was taken off the table.

Remarkable considering how unpopular both the Iraq occupation and President Bush had become. Cracks even appeared in the façade of GOP unity as their Senate Minority Leader, Mitch McConnell warned the Bush Administration that congressional Republicans would not allow Iraq to harm their electoral prospects in 2008. Indeed, on June 26th the Washington Post quoted McConnell as saying,

"I anticipate that we'll probably be going in a different direction in some way in Iraq. And it'll be interesting to see what the administration chooses to do."

McConell was anticipating the September testimony of Army General David H. Petraues. Yet as 2007 ends there is no denying that the unpopular Bush Administration successfully thwarted both the Democratic majority and the will of the people. How did this happen?

Based on falling congressional approval ratings, Republicans have been publicly implying that Americans don't like Congress since the Democrats gained control in January. In fact, congressional Republicans have far lower approval ratings than Democrats.

Given the recent polling data, Republicans should stop speciously pointing fingers and start asking: 1) why do most Americans view us negatively, and 2) what can we actually do to change that?

Last week's Gallup poll found that more American's trusted Democrats over Republicans to do a better overall job and to handle national security and prosperity. The new Washington Post/ABC poll results contain similarly bad news for Republicans.

The topic below was originally posted in my blog, the Intrepid Liberal Journal as well as the Independent Bloggers Alliance, The Peace Tree, the Out of Iraq Blogger's Caucus and Wordlwide Sawdust.

Political schemes are afoot as congress anticipates the report to be delivered by David Petraeus this Monday. Our pitiful and pathetic democracy has been reduced to outsourcing its national security policy to a general with a history of erroneous assessments about progress in Iraq. This is what Petraues wrote in his opening paragraph for an op-ed in the Washington Post on September 26, 2004:

"Helping organize, train and equip nearly a quarter-million of Iraq's security forces is a daunting task. Doing so in the middle of a tough insurgency increases the challenge enormously, making the mission akin to repairing an aircraft while in flight -- and while being shot at. Now, however, 18 months after entering Iraq, I see tangible progress. Iraqi security elements are being rebuilt from the ground up."

Sometimes you can't make things up.

Under the title "Fact Check", Andrew Ferguson starts his Washington Post OPED

You can't really blame Al Gore for not using footnotes in his new book, The Assault on Reason.

Ferguson is absolutely right ... and, amazingly arrogant in his disdain for common understanding of "truth" ...

Like almost every academic / scholarly work published nowadays, Assault on Reason does not have footnotes ... rather it has endnotes.

The topic below was originally posted in my blog the
Intrepid Liberal Journal.

Democratic Party strategists must be salivating. An ABC News-Washington Post survey reports 8 out of 10 Americans favor changing the U.S. mission in Iraq from direct combat to training Iraqi troops and significant majorities prefer withdrawing nearly all troops by 2008. The ABC/WAPO Survey also indicates increased support for diplomatic initiatives with Iran and Syria.

Since the Bush Administration has opted to essentially reject the Iraq Study Group's bipartisan recommendations, Democrats have received an early Christmas present: they can embrace the report to appear responsible and allow Iraq to continue dragging down the Republican Party heading into 2008.

In Sunday's Washington Post, Zach Goldfarb reviews the political staff's prognostication skills.  The article makes some good points, but raises serious doubts about their ability to analyze data.

In July, the [Post] political staff came up with a list of eight questions that would frame the campaign. Over the past four months, individual articles -- which remain online here -- looked at races where the bellwether questions were most vividly on display.

I give the Post credit for intellectual honesty.  Unfortunately, it appears they have trouble reconciling the data with their preconceived notions.  They also have trouble counting to eight, so maybe we shouldn't expect too much too soon.

 Here's the point they keep dancing around:  We have a mandate.  Unlike the "moral mandate" of 2004, this mandate for change is broad, but not deep.  If we deliver real change, we can make this durable.   Since this is Sunday, I will stick to clickable graphics.   This one is from The New York Times and shows the Senate victory adjusted for population.  There are plenty more below the fold....

The diary below was originally posted in my blog the Intrepid Liberal Journal on October 14th.

FDR was singularly responsible for defeating Nazi Germany's brutal anti-Semitic regime. Yet sixty-one years after his death, FDR's legacy is entwined with allegations he was anti-Semitic and disinterested in the Holocaust.

As a liberal Jewish American I was always conditioned to regard FDR with an asterisk. Many times I've heard my predominantly liberal family say, "FDR was a great President, but ..." And they proceed to indict him for being unsympathetic to European Jewry during the Holocaust. In particular, FDR's critics cite the SS St. Louis, which arrived in Havana Harbor on May 27, 1939 with 936 European Jews seeking asylum, but were turned away. There was also FDR's failure to fire Breckinridge Long. While serving in FDR's State Department, Long obstructed and delayed visas, causing the deaths of Jews desperate to escape Europe.

In a "News" story in The Washington Post this morning
"An Estate Tax Twist Reverses Party Roles On Minimum Wage" Staff Writer Jeffrey Birnbaum leads with one of the most disingenuous paragraphs I have read in a major newspaper in awhile:

For years, organized labor has worked hard to raise the minimum wage, while business groups have campaigned to block such a change. This week in the Senate, however, the AFL-CIO is pushing to kill the wage increase while practically the entire business lobby is demanding that it pass.

The diary below was originally posted in my blog, the Intrepid Liberal Journal on May 11th.

I was an avid reader of Bill James' annual Baseball Abstract while growing up in the 1980s. As both a nerd and baseball fanatic, his methodical statistical analysis and incisive prose influenced me almost as much as listening to the Beatles. Perhaps the most memorable essay of James' career was in his 1983 abstract when he wrote about, "The Law of Competitive Balance." Twenty-three years ago I copied words of wisdom from that essay into the spiral notebook I was supposed to use for algebra:

"The Law of Competitive Balance: There develop over time separate and unequal strategies adopted by winners and losers; the balance of those strategies favors the losers, and thus serves constantly to narrow the difference between the two."

Crossposted from MY LEFT WING

 A couple months ago I got a cryptic email from someone claiming to be a reporter from the Washington Post; he asked me to call him in regard to a story he wanted to write.

I looked up the reporter on the Internet... turns out David Finkel is a Pulitzer-prize nominated reporter for the Washington Post. Still, easy to write an email and use someone else's name, right? So I called him.

It was for real. Finkel said he got my name from an email someone sent him, which led him to My Left Wing. He'd never been to a blog before (gasp! I thought EVERYBODY read the blogs!), and was intrigued not only by the medium but by my particular 'blog voice,' if you will.

And he wanted to write a piece about me. For the Style section, no doubt, I guessed.

Nope. Front page, baby.

So yesterday the Washington Post reported that the "mobile biological weapons" touted to have been found in Iraq, giving the country the illusion of Bush's legitimacy, were in fact proven not to be so even before the President asserted that "we have found the weapons of mass destruction."

Today, Bush has sent his minion McClellan out to chastize the news world for "reckless reporting."

But shouldn't the administration be pointing the finger at themselves?

but we can't let up - demand that they post a real abramoff piece!

and just because it told me I had too few words, tuck yourself in with "Say Goodnight, Karl!"

still not long enough...ok...one of my Senators has come out with a "NO!" to Alito - what are yours doing?  if you have one senator voting no and the other one on the fence, throw this at them:  "well, i'm your constituent as well - how can my senators have two completely different senses of what the state wants?"

Conversely, how mainstream can he be if Frist describes him as a liberal's "worst nightmare"?

and just to pre-empt the "too short" message, keep this interview with Paul Craig Roberts handy for the gabfests tomorrow morning.

First, The Washington Post mistakenly thinks itself a member of a sanctified priesthood.

Second, The Post blew smoke out its journalistic ass to confuse readers throughout the Nov. 20 "mea culpa" self-examination article by ombudsman Deborah Howell - and assumed we wouldn't notice.

Third, despite the confessional, breathless language employed in Howell's faux contrition piece, there is no recognition that there truly is a serious institutional, systemic problem that needs to be addressed, either at the Washington Post specifically or by mainstream media generally.

The Language and Sanctimony of the Priestly Caste

Let's take a look at some of the language Howell used to explain Bob Woodward's withholding of vital information from Patrick Fitzgerald, Post editors and (oh, yeah, the afterthought) the public.

Bob Woodward's upcoming appearance on Larry King tonight is not likely to produce any earth-shatteirng revelations.  King is hardly known as a hard hitting interviewer (what he is known for, other than eight marriages, I've never quite been able to figure out), and Woodward is hardly likely to offer a confession.  However, given the arrogance with which Booby has approached things thus far, he may inadvertently let slip a new piece of information.

Thus, perhaps a very quick roundup of analysis and what we do know (or think we know) might be in order.  I'll give a few items for starters, and other folks can add to this in the comments:

* As spiderleaf noted here, and John Aravosis has noted several times (and I'm sure other folks have as well), Woodward's insistence that he did not tell Downie originally because he was afraid of being subpoenaed by Fitzgerald is chronologically untenable.  That is, since Woodward's conversation occurred several months before there was an independent prosecutor.  And John A. also notes they weren't subpoeaning reporters until May 2004, meaning Booby had almost a full year to fess up before the fear factor could have possibly entered in.

* For a thorough review of exactly what may have caused Woodward to "come forward" in the first place, see emptywheel's encyclopedic piece.

Cross-posted at DailyKos

There's an editorial in today's Washington Post on the brouhaha surrounding Bob Woodward.

And as with the NYT did with Judy Miller, they just don't get it.  

Excuse me, but nobody is vilifying Bob Woodward for protecting the identity of his source.  They are vilifying him for being a part of the story, and using his 'vaulted' experience to undermine the investigation.

More.....