King Felix and Dice-K

If you don't understand the title of this post, don't bother reading on.
If you do, I wish every fan could have seen that ballgame. The Fenway Faithful literally rocked their house in anticipation...but King Felix 'reigned' on their parade. A one hit masterpiece. He's now gone 17 innings, 18 strikeouts, four hits, four walks, no runs, and only five balls hit out of the infield. He's not Koufax--but right now he looks exactly like Bob Gibson.

diderot

Bob Woodward

Like a lot of young journalists in the 70's, Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein were heroes to me because of their work meticulously piecing together the Watergate crimes. So it was particularly disheartening in the first half of this decade to see Woodward take on the role of commentator/courtier for the Bush administration in his two mostly glowing books describing preparations for the Iraq invasion.
Improbably, he became a confidant, calmly reporting all the grandiose claims and little white lies that built The Grand Mistake. What in the world happened to him?
Well, it looks like one of two things. Either he was duped by those people and now wants to salvage his reputation; or he slyly used the first two volumes of his Bush At War trilogy in order to gain their confidence so that he could write the third: State of Denial.
As a book, it reads like an endless newspaper article--and I mean that in a good way. There is a shocking void of judgement in his account. Instead, he uses quotes and anecdotes from all of the principals involved to simply let them savage themselves. The roles become pretty clear: Powell is the scorned 'appeaser' for suggesting anything other than full scale warfare; Tenet is well meaning but sometimes bumbling, allowing himself to fall on the sword of both misused and misguided intelligence; Rumsfeld is petty, domineering and in the end incompetent; Rice is unflatteringly described by almost everyone, including one who calls her "clearly the worst National Security Advisor in modern times". And of course, Bush himself, who apparently has long since ceased talking to Woodward directly, is the parenthetical pseudonym for the title of this final volume.
For those like me who have long wondered how this administration could get so many things dead wrong, Woodward paints what seems to be the most plausible explanation. Bush believes in his heart that if he shows any wavering, any doubt whatsoever, everyone underneath him will 'go wobbly' on him. Thus, he never expresses doubt, never admits a mistake, and takes whatever steps necessary to remain a positive force field at all times. (And we all saw how well that leadership style worked for the followers of Jim Jones). In response, his staff feels reluctance and even fear to bring him anything to upset his vision of victory and perfection.
The consequence, of course, is denial. A refusal to consider reality. One misguided decision piled on top of all the previous ones. In the end, resolute does not trump wrong.
If you want to know what it's been like on the inside, I don't know that anyone will offer a better analysis any time soon.

diderot

Chicago Story: Spring Training

For the Three Guys, it's impossible to go through March without talking about what spring training meant when we played high school baseball together.
First of all, 'practice' in Chicago always started as a fresh coating of sleet was falling on the five inches of dirty snow still on the ground. So into the gym we went.
It is somewhat possible to successfully play catch across a basketball court, but not much else. We would take faux infield practice on the gym floor...a surface that created bounces so true that they were of absolutely no use once the real season began, since we never played on an infield without pebbles...and rocks...and sometimes, downright boulders.
We would spend endless hours on sliding practice--on a gym floor. There were some 'sliding pads' available, but they were generally of no use. As Oketo (our stolen base king) always comments, during the regular season he would only attempt a steal if he knew he could swipe the bag standing up. His haunches were still pocked with strawberries that never seemed to heal until fall.
We would run pretend infield cutoff plays indoors, with the second baseman intercepting a throw to second in order to return it to the plate before a runner could score from third. On one of these plays, Oketo was felled by a peg to the head--with no helmet to intercede. On another, a throw glanced off the tip of my webbing and cost me half of my left front tooth.
Hitting practice? That was a hoot. Think of a basketball court, and someone hitting live fastballs from one corner. When someone like Hortense was up, this was like trying to dodge live AK-47 rounds. Most of the fielders hid behind the gym mats hanging along the walls, and none of us will ever forget the sound of those line drives pounding against the leather. One day, evicted from the full gym, we retreated up to the 'girl's gym' on the second floor, where we pummeled the ceiling tiles of that little room with fly balls. On a reunion trip back last summer, we confirmed that the dents and divots are still up there.
Eventually, of course, we did get outside. No small number of our early games were played in snow flurries. I still fondly remember getting two line drive hits in a game where the snow flakes were so thick you could hardly see across the infield. (Unfortunately, I didn't hit nearly as well in the sunshine).
And if every dirt surface in the area were underwater, we would finally retreat to a place called LaBagh Woods, where we could set up a field on the all-grass pasture of a Forest Preserve. True, there were no puddles, but the grass was so mushy that it would often take half a minute just to run to first base.
These are conditions that were miserable. Unbearable. Sometimes almost inhumane.
And every spring...we wish we could go back. Even for a day.

diderot

Elizabeth Edwards

During any presidential election, we get the chance to draw conclusions, based on almost no facts, about the candidates' spouses. In 2004, we had the Bushes, the Cheneys, the Kerrys and the Edwards. Among those eight humans, I wonder if other people had the same reaction I did: the best human being of the bunch--not necessarily the best politician--was clearly Elizabeth Edwards.
The news about her recurring cancer? Man, what do you say?

diderot

Unraveling (continued)

1. Bush claims he can't let his people testify under oath, because that would prevent them from giving him 'unvarnished' counsel
2. His spokesman today said Bush has 'no recollection' of them ever having discussed the Attorney General issue with him
3. Therefore, why can't they testify? What are they afraid of if they never talked to him?

diderot

Starbucks

Howard Schultz founded Starbucks. When he was seven, living in a subsidized apartment complex in Brooklyn, one day his mother suddenly called him back to their apartment. There lay his father, a deliveryman, who had fallen on the ice and broken his ankle.
Instantly fired--no job, no paycheck, no health care. Schultz' mother couldn't work--she was seven months pregnant.
For months, they lived hand-to-mouth, borrowing from friends, fending off bill collectors.
Today Howard Schultz employs 140,000 people. Not one of them is paid just the minimum wage. Even working 20 hours a week, those employees are eligible for full health benefits.
Howard Schultz is who he is because of what he learned as a child.

What are our children learning?

diderot

Barack's Problem

Very simple. He's tired. Dog tired.
Pulled-an-all-nighter tired.
Drank with the boys until dawn when I knew I had an 8am meeting tired.
He's off his game. On Larry King Live tonight, there were too many 'uhs', too many, 'wells...'.
The guy has got to take four or five days off. Recharge. But how do you do that without the press immediately asking what took him away from the campaign trail?
The most impressive guy at the party...isn't very impressive right now.

diderot

It's a Crime

The ability of the Bush Administration to frame an issue is beyond reproach. All politics aside for a moment, this is truly a skill honed to a fine edge by its practitioners both inside and outside the White House. If there were not so much at stake, it could even be called a marvel. In my mind, it's certainly something the historians will cite as a hallmark of these eight years...long after we're all gone.
The current uproar over the firing of the eight U.S. Attorneys has been countered with three standard answers from the right wing, each designed to reframe the argument:
-- Those are political appointments--they serve at the 'pleasure of the President'
-- Thus, no law was broken
-- Clinton did it too
(Yes, that last one is pretty much a standard response to anything, and a proven winner in that it never fails to distract the media).
However, the real issue has nothing to do with politics. The point is not what Bush did--but why he did it. And when you fire a U.S. Attorney for refusing to pursue political opponents on charges he does not think are justified...or when you fire another for pursuing charges against political cronies who she does think warrant presecution...that's called obstruction of justice.
And it's a crime.

diderot

Four More Years?

Today is the fourth anniversary of the invasion of Iraq. Today the clueless Condi Rice was on the Today Show attempting to explain what has gone well. Saddam is gone--that was her key message. Yes, he was a maniacal nut job. But so is her boss. The invasion has left at least 60,000 Iraqis dead--and maybe multiples of that. Anyone Iraqi with enough money to afford it has left. Would you stay there and risk you family's safety?
The need to get out by next year is now a majority opinion in America. Except in Congress. Except inside the Beltway, where the right wing manipulators continue to sway the pundit class.
How much longer will it take for the obvious to be acted upon? Four more years?

diderot

The Great Unraveling

You can argue all night about the best baseball player, the best actor, the best tuba player. But in my mind, there is no argument about who possesses the single best insight into the crimes of the Bush administration--Sidney Blumenthal (who does Chicago proud).

His latest, on what may well be the final unraveling of the Bush era (courtesy of Salon.com)...

All roads lead to Rove

The White House political director was clearly at the center of the partisan plot to fire U.S. attorneys, despite the administration's clumsy attempts to pretend otherwise.

By Sidney Blumenthal

Mar. 15, 2007 | The Bush administration's first instinct was to shield Karl Rove from scrutiny when Congress began inquiring about the unusual firings of eight U.S. attorneys. Among the replacements, the proposed new U.S. attorney for Arkansas happened to be one of Rove's most devoted underlings, his head of opposition research, Tim Griffin, who boasted during the 2000 presidential election about the effectiveness of the negative campaign against Al Gore: "We make the bullets!" Griffin also posted a sign in his department at Bush headquarters: "Rain hell on Al!" A letter written by the Department of Justice in late February informed Congress: "The department is not aware of Karl Rove playing any role in the decision to appoint Mr. Griffin." Despite this categorical disavowal, a sheaf of internal Justice Department e-mails released this week to Congress under subpoena revealed Kyle Sampson, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales' chief of staff, writing in mid-December 2006, "I know getting him appointed was important to Harriet, Karl, etc." Harriet, of course, was Harriet Miers, then the White House legal counsel.

The Justice Department's statement on Karl Rove was simply one part of its coverup. The department's three top officials -- Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, Deputy Attorney General Paul J. McNulty and William E. Moschella, principal associate deputy attorney general -- all testified before Congress under oath that the dismissed U.S. attorneys had been removed for "performance" reasons, not because they had been insufficiently partisan in their prosecution of Democrats or because they would be replaced by those who would be. Yet another Sampson e-mail, sent to Miers in March 2005, had ranked all 93 U.S. attorneys on the basis of being "good performers," those who "exhibited loyalty" to the administration, or "low performers," those who "chafed against Administration initiatives, etc."

The day before the e-mails were made public Sampson resigned, offering a classic fall-guy statement, claiming that he was the one who failed to inform Gonzales and other officials about the firings. Sampson, who was Gonzales' closest aide, accompanying him from the White House Counsel's Office to the Justice Department when Gonzales was appointed attorney general, had sought to become a U.S. attorney himself through the purge. And Sampson was considered to be politically adept enough to be considered a stand-in for the supposedly indispensable Rove. When it was rumored that Rove might be indicted in the Valerie Plame case, the Washington Post reported that Sampson was likely to replace him.

Sampson's abrupt departure was followed by Gonzales' bizarre press conference on Wednesday. Speaking in a passive voice that "mistakes were made," he pleaded ignorance of "all decisions" at his department, explained that it has 110,000 employees, appealed to his modest origins, and promised to oversee the investigation of his own misfeasance. His defense was the very grounds used to fire the U.S. attorneys: poor performance. He used his failure as a shield.

But the day before, Gonzales' ignorance defense had already been punctured. A White House spokeswoman, Dana Perino, acknowledged that the U.S. attorneys' dismissals were preceded by a conversation between President Bush and Gonzales last October in which Bush complained that some prosecutors were not pursuing voter fraud investigations. These were, in fact, cases that Rove thought were especially important to Republicans.

Rove was the conduit for Republican political grievances about the U.S. attorneys. He was the fulcrum and the lever. He was the collector of information and the magnet of power. He was the originator, formulator and director. But, initially, according to the administration, like Gonzales, he supposedly knew nothing and did nothing.

Even after the administration alibis had collapsed, the White House trotted out Dan Bartlett, the cool and calm communications director, to engage in a bit of cognitive dissonance. There was no plot, and maybe Rove was involved in the thing that didn't happen. "You're trying to connect a lot of dots that aren't connectible," Bartlett said, adding, "It wouldn't be surprising that Karl or other people were receiving these complaints." Thus the "dots" are invisible and Rove is at their center.

To the extent that the facts are known, Rove keeps surfacing in the middle of the scandal. And it is implausible that Sampson, the latest designated fall guy, was responsible for an elaborate bureaucratic coup d'état. Nor is it credible that Gonzales -- or Harriet Miers, who has yet to be heard -- saw or heard no evil. Neither is it reasonable that Gonzales or Miers, both once Bush's personal attorneys in Texas, getting him out of scrapes such as his drunken driving arrest, could be the political geniuses behind the firings. Gonzales' and Miers' service is notable for their obedience, lack of originality and eagerness to act as tools. The scheme bears the marks of Rove's obsessions, methods and sources. His history contains a wealth of precedents in which he manipulated law enforcement for political purposes. And his long-term strategy for permanent Republican control of government depended on remaking the federal government to create his ultimate goal -- a one-party state.

"We're a go for the US Atty plan," White House deputy counsel William Kelley notified the Justice Department on Dec. 4, 2006, three days before seven of the eight U.S. attorneys were dismissed. "WH leg[islative affairs], political, and communications have signed off..."

From the earliest Republican campaigns that Rove ran in Texas, beginning in 1986, the FBI was involved in investigating every one of his candidates' Democratic opponents. Rove happened to have a close and mysterious relationship with the chief of the FBI office in Austin. Investigations were announced as elections grew close, but there were rarely indictments, just tainted Democrats and victorious Republicans. On one occasion, Rove himself proclaimed that the FBI had a prominent Democrat under investigation -- an investigation that led to Rove's client's win. In 1990, the Texas Democratic Party chairman issued a statement: "The recurring leaks of purported FBI investigations of Democratic candidates during election campaigns is highly questionable and repugnant."

A year later, Rove received a reward. Gov. Bill Clements, a Rove client, appointed him to the East Texas State University board of regents. Appearing before the state Senate's Nominations Committee, a Democratic senator asked Rove about how long he had known the local FBI chief. "Ah, Senator," replied Rove, "it depends. Would you define 'know' for me?"

Rising to the White House as Bush's chief political strategist, Rove well understood the power of U.S. attorneys to damage Democrats and protect Republicans, and he paid close attention to their selection. When U.S. senators, who recommend the U.S. attorneys for their districts, wanted a more independent-minded professional, Rove leaned on them. In 2001, he instructed Sen. Peter Fitzgerald, R-Ill., to sponsor a safe choice from within Republican state circles. Rove "just said we don't want you going outside the state. We don't want to be moving U.S. attorneys around," Fitzgerald told the Chicago Tribune on March 12. But Sen. Fitzgerald would not relent, and his nominee, Patrick Fitzgerald, an assistant U.S. attorney from New York, became the U.S. attorney in Illinois, where he successfully prosecuted Republicans, including the incumbent governor, George Ryan, for corruption, and went on to be appointed special prosecutor in the Plame case. "That Fitzgerald appointment got great headlines for you, but it ticked off the base," Rove told Sen. Fitzgerald.

In 2002, the first midterm elections of the Bush presidency, Republicans systematically raised charges of voter fraud involving Native Americans in the hotly contended U.S. Senate race in South Dakota. Though the accusations were never proved and the GOP failed to depose the Democratic senator, Tim Johnson, the campaign served as a template.

By the election of 2004, Rove became a repository of charges of voter fraud across the country, from Philadelphia to Milwaukee to New Mexico, all in swing states. In the campaign, unproven voter fraud charges, always aimed at minority voters, became a leitmotif of Republican efforts.

In Washington state, when the Democrat won the governorship by 129 votes, the state Republican Party chairman, Chris Vance, demanded that U.S. attorney John McKay tell him the status of his investigation. At that time, Vance was in constant contact with Rove. "I thought it was part of my job, to be a conduit," Vance told the Seattle Times. "We had a Republican secretary of state, a Republican prosecutor in King County and a Republican U.S. attorney, and no one was doing anything." McKay refused to have any conversation about an investigation. And he found no basis for charging anyone with voter fraud. In a Sept. 13, 2006, e-mail, Kyle Sampson identified McKay as one of those "we should now consider pushing out" -- and he was among the eight attorneys fired.

In 2006, Rove addressed the Republican Lawyers Association on the "growing problem," as he put it, of voter fraud. Every instance he cited was in a swing state. New Mexico was one of them.

Rove had heard complaints from the New Mexico Republican Party chairman, Allen Weh, about David Iglesias, the state's U.S. attorney, for his supposed refusal to indict Democrats for voter fraud. Iglesias appeared to be a dream figure for local Republicans -- the model for the movie "A Few Good Men," Hispanic and evangelical. "Is anything ever going to happen to that guy?" Weh asked Rove at a White House Christmas party. "He's gone," Rove replied. Indeed, Iglesias' firing was already a done deal.

In California, it was time for payback against U.S. attorney Carol Lam, who had prosecuted Rep. Randy "Duke" Cunningham in the most flagrant corruption case involving a member of Congress. Her probe was expanding to encompass the dealings of Rep. Jerry Lewis, another California Republican. On May 11, 2006, Sampson e-mailed the White House Counsel's Office regarding "the real problem we have right now with Carol Lam." Soon, she was axed, one of the eight.

Those fired were not completely "loyal," as Sampson's e-mails emphasized. But to what policies should a prosecutor be "loyal"? Two academics, Donald C. Shields of the University of Missouri and John F. Cragan of Illinois State University, studied the pattern of U.S. attorneys' prosecutions under the Bush administration. Their conclusions in their study, "The Political Profiling of Elected Democratic Officials," are that "across the nation from 2001 through 2006 the Bush Justice Department investigated Democratic office holders and candidates at a rate more than four times greater (nearly 80 percent to 18 percent) than they investigated Republican office holders and seekers." They also report, "Data indicate that the offices of the U.S. Attorneys across the nation investigate seven times as many Democratic officials as they investigate Republican officials, a number that exceeds even the racial profiling of African Americans in traffic stops." Thus what the 85 U.S. attorneys who were not dismissed are doing is starkly detailed.

If the Democrats hadn't won the midterm elections last year there is no reason to believe that the plan to use the U.S. attorneys for political prosecutions -- as they have been used systematically under Bush -- wouldn't have gone forward completely unimpeded. Without the new Congress issuing subpoenas, there would be no exposure, no hearings, no press conferences -- no questions at all.

The replacement of the eight fired U.S. attorneys through a loophole in the Patriot Act that enables the administration to evade consultation with and confirmation by Congress is a convenient element in the well-laid scheme. But it was not ad hoc, erratic or aberrant. Rather, it was the logical outcome of a long effort to distort the constitutional framework for partisan consolidation of power into a de facto one-party state.

This effort began two generations ago with Richard Nixon's drive to forge an imperial presidency, using extralegal powers of government to aggrandize unaccountable power in the executive and destroy political opposition. Nixon was thwarted in the Watergate scandal. We will never know his full malevolent intentions, but we do know that in the aftermath of the 1972 election he wanted to remake the executive branch to create what the Bush administration now calls a "unitary executive." Nixon later explained his core doctrine: "When the president does it, that means it's not illegal." Karl Rove is the rightful heir to Nixonian politics. His first notice in politics occurred as a witness before the Senate Watergate Committee. From Nixon to Bush, Rove is the single continuous character involved in the tactics and strategy of political subterfuge.

diderot