BushCo hates bloggers in the name of national security

The Bush Administration strenuously opposes Sen. Arlen Specter’s media shield law. Why?

Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff said the bill would erect roadblocks to gathering information “from anyone who can claim to be a journalist, including bloggers.”

The legislation gives an overly broad definition of journalists that “can include those linked to terrorists and criminals,” wrote Attorney General Michael Mukasey and National Intelligence Director Mike McConnell.

Defense Secretary Robert Gates said the nation would be more vulnerable to “adversaries’ counterintelligence efforts to recruit” those shielded by the bill.

Bullshit, bullshit, and bullshit.

We know the real reason they’re saying this is the same reason Mukasey took top blog Talking Points Memo off the AG’s daily e-mail news summary mailing.

They hate bloggers.

Why?

TPM got former AG Alberto Gonzales canned over partisan firings of district attorneys.

Bloggers got House Democrats to stiffen up and pass a FISA bill without telco immunity.

Bloggers took Bush, Uncle Fester Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld et al to task on Iraq long before the mainstream media had a clue.

George W. Bush, for the remaining nine and a half months of his term (not starring Mickey Rourke as Bush) wants to spy on bloggers.

It’s that simple.

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who needs repubbblicans when we can fight with ourselves?

by skippy the bush kangaroo

we have said several times before we don't have a dog in the clinton-obama fight.

but we have to say that we are most unsettled by manifestations of that fight that have been creeping more and more into otherwise reasonable people who write here in blogtopia, and yes, we coined that phrase.

we don't mind when bloggers, who have chosen one side or another, point out various insufficiencies and hypocrisies on the part of the opposing candidate; that is, after all, why bloggers blog.

but as of late people whom we admire and respect have begun silly sniping towards each other, simply because of what has been said on blogs about the two dem candidates.

examples after the jump:


folks aren't just pointing out bad logic or inconsistent arguments; there are a lot of personal digs being thrust about. things have gotten so bad that it's almost as if we don't even need the hardly-ever-right wing bloggers as targets for our wrath. it seems that we'll all be happy hating other progressives, simply because of whom they endorse for the dem nominee.

the dem daily takes great exception to booman's taking great exception to talkleft:

booman (booman tribune) has apparently taken on the role of netroots police and has deemed that talk left for the clinton leanings probably shouldn’t be trusted after the primaries are over, to “get back on board” for the general election.

i don’t know why i care what talk left says. i think it is just pride in the artform of blogging. i can’t stand to see analysis so bad that it is indiscernible from straight-up undisclosed shilling. talk left is an insult to the genre of left-wing political blogging. it’s so easy to debunk their crap that it is an beneath most people to even bother.

and it’s impossible that they can just shrug off their performance in the primary and get back on board for the general. they have so little credibility…who would want them as an ally?

what kind of crap is that? booman took offense to jeralyn’s post that included a link to republicans for obama and the quote that i also posted from jeralyn in my post below:

who’s really picking our democratic nominee? if it’s the democratic youth or african american voters, i’m okay with that. that’s fair. if it’s republicans, i’m not. we’ll get trounced in november.without reliable stats to show obama’s support is from those who will for the democrat in november, i’d say the best way to ensure republicans stay out of our race and don’t steal another election from us is for dems to vote for hillary to be the nominee.

i’m curious… will booman start blacklisting all the clinton supporters in the netroots? because there are more than a few of us. the implication that any blog or blogger in the netroots that supports clinton shouldn’t be trusted “get back on board” for the general election is in a word asinine.

t-rex gets even more down and dirty when he starts comparing taylor marsh to michelle malkin:

but, moving right along, marsh really started chewing the scenery today when she freaked out about michelle obama’s offhand comment about being really proud of america for the first time in her adult life, etc. etc.

michelle obama does not speak for me

“for the first time in my adult lifetime i am really proud of my country. and not just because barack has done well, but because i think people are hungry for change.” - michelle obama (video)

the love i have for this country does not depend on a political campaign predicated on the notion of “change.”

the love i have for this country does not depend on one person, certainly not some politician with a slogan that others have used, which he has re-used.

the love i have for this country does not depend on aiding the winning of someone for president, without a clue what he or she is offering in the guise of one word, “change.”

the love i have for this country does not depend on ignorance of what patriotism requires to serve a personal goal.

my uncle dick certainly didn’t serve his country and get battle fatigue in wwii so people could pick and choose pride in this nation based on personal association to some politician, forgetting the greater glory we all serve through our country’s ideals.

taylor, darlin’, i feel fairly confident that mrs. obama doesn’t want to dig up your uncle dick’s bones, piss on them, and re-bury them upside down. call it a guess, a hunch, even, but that seems to be the level of insult that you’re dealing with here.

the thing that really bugs me about this taylor marsh post, though, is how much it stylistically resembles this bit of vintage wingnuttery, michelle malkin’s “john doe manifesto”:

dear muslim terrorist plotter/planner/funder/enabler/apologist,

you do not know me. but i am on the lookout for you. you are my enemy. and i am yours.

i am john doe.

i am traveling on your plane. i am riding on your train. i am at your bus stop. i am on your street. i am in your subway car. i am on your lift.

i am your neighbor. i am your customer. i am your classmate. i am your boss.

i am john doe.

i will never forget the example of the passengers of united airlines flight 93 who refused to sit back on 9/11 and let themselves be murdered in the name of islam without a fight.

blah, blah, blah. this species of hot-faced, clench-jawed jeremiad may feel marvelous to write, but a post that feels like a blazing tower of righteousness at the keyboard can have a distinct tendency to read like an unhinged, holier-than-thou diatribe when it pops up on someone else’s monitor. just fyi.

i said earlier that i like and respect taylor. she was a delight in the few minutes we had to converse face to face at ykos, but i think it would be good for her to scootch the chair away from the computer for a couple days, dust off her hands, and maybe go rent a batting cage or take out a wall in her house with a sledgehammer.

hey, folks, let's just take a breath and settle down here...

we have said this before and we'll say it again...neither one of these candidates are progressive! hell, they are barely democrats, at least not democrats in the roosevelt/kennedy definition.

you can make the case that getting a dem into office will be good for the dem party (assuming the dems retain a majority in congress). we can and have argued that that's not going to make a difference, but we won't go into that again here.

what you shouldn't do, if you are a blogger, is start accusing fellow progressive bloggers of such things as manipulation, losing touch w/reality, meglomania, igorance, hatred, and other deadly sins usually reserved for labeling of gop bloggers.

let's remember, we're on the same side here. it doesn't help to burn any bridges that we might have to cross again after denver, when we need to ban together to defeat mclame.

if someone you admire seems to be going over the edge, the best way to handle it, in our opinion, is with a private email. and make sure it's a polite email, and well-thought out, and prefaced with a plethora of your positive opinion of that blogger.

we need each other. we don't need to fight.

we must hang together, as ben franklin said, or we will surely hang separately.


addendum: well, it could be worse:

according to cops, ortiz, 28, stabbed sean shurelds last thursday night in the kitchen of an upper providence township home. according to a criminal complaint, a copy of which you'll find here, the 41-year-old shurelds, an obama supporter, told ortiz that the illinois senator was "trashing" clinton (apparently in regard to recent primary and caucus results). ortiz, a clinton supporter, replied that "obama was not a realist." while not exactly fighting words, the verbal political tiff led to some mutual choking and punching. and, allegedly, a stabbing in the abdomen. ortiz, pictured in the mug shot below, was charged with a felony aggravated assault count and two misdemeanors and jailed in lieu of $20,000 bail. shurelds was flown to hahnemann university hospital, where he was admitted in critical condition.

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Matt Bai Doesn't Get It

The Argument: Billionaires, Bloggers and the Battle to Remake Democratic Politics

It's a bad sign when, after you finish reading a book you're going to review, and you flip back through the pages, you find that on every fifth page you've written in the margin:

Bullshit!

Bai writes for the New York Times Magazine, so you won't be surprised that this book gave me flashbacks to the Clarence Thomas hearings.

Yeah, Bai hung out with Jerome and Markos, and he attended the first Yearly Kos, and he has one or two not-nasty things to say about Howard Dean, but basically these 308 pages boil down to this:

The Democratic Party has been hijacked by a bunch of clueless billionaires and crazy losers from the blogosphere who don't have the kind of well-designed party platform that will gain them the trust and endorsement of real Democrats like Joe Lieberman and the Editorial Board of the New York Times.

One typical snide snark:

"The blogs ... were, in fact, the voices of the new public square, but it was more like the Parisian public square in the days of the Bastille - not a place where tonwspeople came to carefully consider what their leaders had to say, but where the mob gathered to make its demands and mete out its own kind of justice."

OK, first up for the Internet guillotine: Patronizing MSM Broderists like Matt Bai.

And the section on a Move On house party to come up with five-word progressive agenda items was just about the most condescending thing I've ever read. The "tiny apartment" (Bai couldn't find a place to sit) in "a mostly-black, mixed-income neighborhood" (poor people and minorities - borrrrrring) filled with people who struggled with ideas and weren't poised and eloquent like his Georgetown friends. Good grief, even the snacks were home-made and brought by attendees - haven't these people ever heard of caterers?

FSM give me strength.

But the real crime Bai commits is that in the service of his Beltway MSM agenda he wastes a ton of pretty decent reporting. Bai's premise is that despite a historic political victory last November, the Democrats still don't have a winning platform. And he'll twist any fact, any quote to prove that premise.

One minute he's sneering at dems for phrasing their beliefs in broad, philosophical language - "help working families," "universal health care" - lacking specific policy prescriptions, and the next he's complaining that their beliefs are just a bunch of detailed policy prescriptions, without a broad, overarching philosophy.

And they have the gall to hate Bush and the Republicans! Just because Bush and the Republicans are doing every thing they can to destroy the last semblance of democracy, freedom and the rule of law in this country. How naive. How unserious. How inappropriate. They probably wear white after Labor Day, too.

Then he accuses Democrats of the worst crime of all: working to win elections!

Boy, it's a good thing FDR, Truman and JFK never had to campaign for office - they never would have had time to actually lead the country.

He even trots out that old canard that Democrats have no "new ideas." Gives it pseudo-legitimacy by quoting actual Democrats saying it.

Matty boy. you're about four curves behind. The Liberals and Progressives of the Democratic Party have spent the last 12 years developing exactly the broad philosopies and detailed policy proposals that are not only good for the country but have the approval of the majority of Americans.

No, we don't all agree on the specifics, but that's how ideas and policies get honed to perfection - in the fire of political debate.

What we're just starting to get - in the persons of Jim Webb, Jon Tester and John Yarmuth - are Democratic politicians who are willing to stand up proudly and proclaim those liberal values and policies. And by doing so, win elections.

If you're curious about how we got from the suicidal depression of November 2004 to where we are today, there's some good stuff here - especially about the secretive Democracy Alliance of progressive billionaires.

But The Argument is best read as a warning: that even after the genuine miracles liberals and progressives have achieved in the past two years, the twin stereotypes of "feckless Democrats" and "crazy, nihilistic bloggers" aren't going away any time soon.

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