them from calling a lie a lie it is you adding to the rancour.

Well, it is adding to the rancor, and Thank God for that! If the Dems had just meekly registered some mealy-mouthed objection, that would have been too much to take.




It's like you said, Todd. The country needs to be divided from this crap, and if it takes some rancor, well, so be it.

Can we please get away from calling "he-said, she-said" journalism a matter of "evenhandedness"?

It is, rather, a habit of pushing false equivalencies wherein a hash of lies, innuendo and opinion is accorded equal weight with verifiable statements of fact.

And while we're at it, may we consider a more accurate description than "mainstream press?" There is nothing mainstream about a media that has jumped every time Karl Rove has snapped his fingers.

No, our media today is first and foremost a corporate media, more interested in toadying to those in power than in serving its watchdog function as the free press in a democratic society.

So here is the White House response as reported from CNN this morning:

...The White House defended Rove's remarks and accused Democrats of engaging in partisan attacks. Rove, said spokesman Scott McClellan, "was talking about the different philosophies and our different approaches when it comes to winning the war on terrorism."

These people are beneath contempt.

I want to hear both parties apologize for apologizing. Geez, no wonder folks are apathetic. Rather than solve problems and move this country forward, each party engages in schoolyard tactics. Dean needs to apologize! Rove needs to apologize! Durbin needs to apologize! Delay needs to apologize! What's the over/under on the number of Hitler references this week?

We need to articulate better ideas. We need to reconnect to the middle-class. We need to craft a vision. We need to be proactive.

Yeah, I think you're naive.  Sorry.

You suggest coming up with some policy or proposal to show our patriotism.  Why would anyone sign on to what we propose when they are being told that we are anti-American, anti-faith, and anti-anything else that 'good'?  If his comments go unanswered he, and other republicans, won't stop saying it -- they'll actually redouble their efforts.  That's their tactic -- define the opposition (us) as lower than a snake's belly.  Then anything we say can be dismissed.

They don't do what they do because it doesn't work.  In case you hadn't noticed, they have won the political argument of late.  IMO, it is not because their ideas are so compelling but rather because they have been so successful in demonizing their opposition (again, that is us) that anyone who opposes them is suspect as anti-American.

No! they rise splendidly to the level of our contempt, which we should heap on them unsparingly.

I love that guy.

There's more click on the quote.

"It is time to stop using September 11th as a political wedge issue. Dividing our country for political gain is an insult to all Americans and to the common memory we all carry with us from that day. When it comes to standing up to terrorists, there are no Republicans or Democrats, only Americans.

Why can't we seem to get this right?

Yes, we need to articulate a vision, connect with middle class white voters, without a doubt.

But we also need to step up what we've been doing pretty well for the past six months, which is win the daily message battle.
To do that, you need to find a way to push a message across the idiocy of cable tv prattling and he said/she said, "both sides" cross-firism. That is not the place for policy proposals because they get hashed to extreme oversimplification -- thats the place to jab and bloody the other side so that we get a few moments to put across our voter-connecting policy ideas.

Calling on Rove to apologize is the way you play this game; the game is to keep negative publicity on Rove. Make the cycle about "did Rove mispeak"? "Should he apologize"? "Will he apologize?" "Why didn't he apologize?"

Then you move on to "is Rove hurting the Republicans?" From there, an easy step to "why is the WH so off-message?"

Towards our goal, "the Republicans have no solutions, only attack politics."

CAlling on Rove to resign is precisely the right move and its all any Democrat who gets a microphone in front of him or her today should say.

  Let's start with an instructive concrete example.  During the 2004 election campaign, in the closing weeks as finally, after the flipflop spin had crystallized into a national cliche, John Kerry and others, like Jonathan Chait pointed out minimally (either in terms of substance or of mainstream access) that the whole thing had been cooked up from day 1.  Then, like clockwork it was -- one can literally draw a timeline in terms of days -- the campaign shifted to what I call the Bai Lie but which might just as well be called the Rove Lie.  Democrats had better not back down or reduce to mumbling on this one, or shoot themselves in the foot with another malapropism from Dean.  They must relentlessly go after the Repugs on this issue, using the counterattack to drive home what the Democrats do stand for on the issue.

          Focusing in on the timeline, On Oct 7, Chait's article in The New Republic dated Oct 18 appeared on line, finally debunking thoroughly the bogus flipflop spin in a cover story.  Where was this FIVE MONTHS EARLIER?  Chait palms it off as media herd instinct. (my butt!).  At any rate, Oct 8 in the debates, rather unforcefully, when pinned by a questioner, Kerry at least formulated an answer on the issue of the Patriot Act.  But Kerry didn't go all out on the flipflop spin -- how could he, given his virtual  silence for over 5 months on the issue?  Then on Oct 9 was the N Y Times' excellent op-ed piece by a graphic designer also belatedly pointing out how the Kerry/Edwards logo radiated, almost subliminally, a sense of weakness and confusion.  Oct 10 came the Bai Lie in The New York Times Magazine, with a juicy blooper from Kerry woven into a tapestry of portrayal of -- weakness and confusion on terrorism, precisely the notion of being 'miilitarily' soft on terror which is false and put forward by Rove.  It was an expert hatchet job, the ass-covered mark of a true professional, and was followed by what I described at the time (Oct 2004) as a veritable tsunami of daily columns repeating and then magnifying his distortions.  Today the reference would be politically incorrect, but that was the term I used repeatedly then.  Dick Morris, Krauthammer, you name it -- it was a RW media feeding frenzy across America, following exactly that line.  Where were the Todd Gitlins (and it would be unfair, as his critics fail to note, simply to single him out on this
sort of thing a lot of the time) pointing out this fraud?  It was yet another pack of hounds that didn't bark.  Herd instinct?  How about "getting with the program" and "justifying the lying" and pooh poohing any such notions as "conspiracy theory" (presumably paranoid) in one of the classic cultural defense mechanisms of the media, including its "critics" who are a part of that cultural machine, after all.  Even the blogs didn't raise the issue, as many (but not all) responsible blogs fell curiously silent about Votergate AND the media lockdown.  And speaking of memory holes, what about the media lockdown?

So if we are going to focus on the Rove lie, what about the Bai Lie, and its echoing through the media without serious response from media  OR from the Democrats and the presumably independent 527s supporting the Democratic candidacy.  Independent of the campaign or no, no one is independent from getting with the program if they know what's good for them.  It's how the smart money stays, well, in the clear.

We need to focus, systematically and not ad hominem, on the issue of not just the lie Rove propagates but the fecklessness of the Democrats and the media, not on terrorism, but on the milking of 9/11.

      For starters, a StopMilking9/11 website would be good for some progressives to start, complete with posting boards, news items etc.  Second, the slogan among the more progressive Democrats  "9/11 -- Christmas for Tories" should be loudly repeated -- FINE LET THE REPUBLICANS BROADCAST THAT IN OPPOSITION TO THE "HEY HEY  HO HO SOCIAL SECURITY HAS GOT TO GO".  See what would happen to them.  Things that are kept silent are not kept that way to help authentic progressive politics, but only to vitiated it.

The White House defended Rove's remarks and accused Democrats of engaging in partisan attacks. Rove, said spokesman Scott McClellan, "was talking about the different philosophies and our different approaches when it comes to winning the war on terrorism."


Was the natural follow-up question asked then?  Are McClellan and Bush saying that Dems didn't support him in our country's response to 9/11 with our attack on the Taliban in Afghanistan?  They can't be allowed to skate with that weak defense of Rove.  We need to ask each and every republican elected official what their stance is on Rove's statements.

Karl Rove, did you just happen to forget what happened on Sept 14, 2001? a mere 3 days after?

Congress authorized the President to protect the United States in self-defense against those who attacked us

the resolution passed 98-0 and 420-1

Poor, sad, frightened little Karl Rove.

He and his friends misunderstood. The people who preached moderation didn't do it in response to the 9/11 attacks. They did it in response to the panicky flailing of the moment by those who claimed to be our leaders. Panic caused otherwise intelligent people to seriously evaluate calls to "nuke the Middle East" and  "wipe all Arabs of the face of the earth". Panic generated far more sympathy and understanding for the perpetrators of hate crimes against middle-eastern-looking people than the victims.

Unlike those who reacted like a mob in a burning theater, some people responded with thoughtfulness beyond simply quadrupling the human body count. A precious few calm voices actually conceived that there might be smarter choices that would do more in the long run to keep us safe. [And of course, as in the burning theater scenario, there were those who also kept their heads but used it to loot the place for their own sakes.]

As for the "therapy" comment, that was Karl misunderstanding again. Nobody said anything about therapy. What we said was that anyone who responded to the mass murders by 15 Saudi terrorists by attacking Iraq needed to have his head examined.

Actually a good deal was said about therapy in the wake of 911 -- but the intended patients were the immediate survivors, the children who would need grief counseling, the families of those who died at the scene.  A good deal of money was raised to pay for it, and many organizations including several labor unions were tapped to organize the resources.  It was a major focus in the immediate post recovery period.  I think Rove should be charged with total distortion of why many people (not just Liberals) were supporting such efforts. 

I see this part of Rove's claim as a Distortion rather than a lie -- and I think this, and things like it out to be responded to with this distinction.  Done correctly, Distortion is more serious than a common political lie.  It also lets you ask the question -- when he reports facts to the President, does he have a similar pattern of distortion?