Scott McClellan ruffles feathers

A lot has been written about Scott McClellan’s — the Bush loyalist and former White House spokesperson — tell all book. Of course, conservative apologists and Bush supporters are already gunning for their former colleague. Bush apologists don’t particular like this claim by the former White House spokesperson:

“If anything, the national press corps was probably too deferential to the White House and to the administration in regard to the most important decision facing the nation during my years in Washington, the choice over whether to go to war in Iraq.

“The collapse of the administration’s rationales for war, which became apparent months after our invasion, should never have come as such a surprise. … In this case, the ‘liberal media’ didn’t live up to its reputation. If it had, the country would have been better served.”

Writing in The Corner, a blog from the conservative National Review magazine, Seth Leibsohn takes issue with McClellan’s claim:

The evidence I’ve seen does in fact show that the administration had different justifications for the liberation of Iraq — but we saw them plainly and in the open before as well as after the invasion. The president, the secretary of state, the VP, and many others gave lots of reasons for the invasion of Iraq. There were international legal cases, there were public policy cases, there were national security cases all to be made. And they were. The idea that the press didn’t do its job and was too soft on the president — as McClellan writes — is, frankly, laughable. Raise your hand if you have any evidence that the press was too soft on the administration.

Conservatives have long labored to caricature the press as liberal — which has served conservatives well, as they use this now conventional wisdom as bludgeon against submissive journalists if they don’t parrot conservative memes and talking points. Therefore, conservatives are not about to concede that, if anything, during the run up to the war, the media did as they were expected: they unquestionably parroted the Bush administration’s talking points, and claims about the threat that Iraq posed to our national security.

David Kurtz, over at TPM media, will be taking Seth’s challenge. However, I here offer Judith Miller and the New York Times subsequen apology as exhibits A and B, in response to Seth.

Republicans Want an Imperialist

We’ve seen that the Liberal brain is more adaptive, open to new experiences and data, and, therefore, less authoritarian. If true Liberals, what does it say of conservatives and republicans, and their world view? John McLaughlin, of The McLaughlin Group, has some insight on the question, via CrooksandLiars.com:

McLaughlin: Look Americans — particularly Republicans like you [referring to Tony Blankley] — they love authoritarianism.

Blankley: I don’t love authoritarianism. Even though I love you, John.

McLaughlin: Keep quiet now. They don’t want a President. They want an imperialist.

I think John McLaughlin has it right.

Values Voter Debate: Why should God bless America?

This has received little no coverage in the traditional media, so it’s no wonder that I had not heard of it; however, I can’t help but think, Wow, if a liberal group had done anything like this, the traditional and rightwing media would’ve been all over it.

For those who didn’t have the opportunity to watch the Values Voter Debate last evening, you missed quite a display of political pandering, ridiculous rhetoric and all-around right-wing lunacy. You also missed this lovely rendition of “God Bless America” performed by the Church of God Choir, from Springfield, Ohio – reworded to better reflect the Right’s agenda:

Why should God bless America?
She’s forgotten he exists
And has turned her back
On everything that made her what she is

Why should God stand beside her
Through the night with the light from his hand?
God have mercy on America
Forgive her sin and heal our land

The courts ruled prayer out of our schools
In June of ‘62
Told the children “you are your own God now
So you can make the rules”
O say can you see what that choice
Has cost us to this day
America, one nation under God, has gone astray

Why should God bless America?
Shes’s forgotten he exists
And has turned her back on everything
That made her what she is

Why should God stand beside her
Through the night with the light from his hand?
God have mercy on America
Forgive her sins and heal our land

In ‘73 the Courts said we
Could take the unborn lives
The choice is yours don’t worry now
It’s not a wrong, it’s your right

But just because they made it law
Does not change God’s command
The most that we can hope for is
God’s mercy on our land

Why should God bless America?
She’s forgotten he exists
And has turned her back on everything
That made her what she is

Why should God stand beside her
Through the night with the light from his hand?
God have mercy on America
Forgive her sins and heal our land

Age and the Conservative Brain

Sure, it’s one study, but it does confirm, in a much more fundamental level, the work of George Lakoff, that is: the liberal brain processes information differently than conservatives.

From the LA Times:

Exploring the neurobiology of politics, scientists have found that liberals tolerate ambiguity and conflict better than conservatives because of how their brains work.

[...]

Previous psychological studies have found that conservatives tend to be more structured and persistent in their judgments whereas liberals are more open to new experiences. The latest study found those traits are not confined to political situations but also influence everyday decisions.

The results show “there are two cognitive styles — a liberal style and a conservative style,” said UCLA neurologist Dr. Marco Iacoboni, who was not connected to the latest research.

[...]

Based on the results, he said, liberals could be expected to more readily accept new social, scientific or religious ideas.

“There is ample data from the history of science showing that social and political liberals indeed do tend to support major revolutions in science,” said Sulloway, who has written about the history of science and has studied behavioral differences between conservatives and liberals.

Perhaps this explains why the adage about becoming more conservative with age persists, because the older brain is not as able to process new information and, thus, adapt.

Liberal Media on the Attack

Our so-called liberal media can never tear itself away from conventional wisdom, nor from sucking conservative-talking-points ass. This so-called liberal-main-stream-media is all too content with simply parroting the conservative attack lines against Democrats. Here’s one example from Newsweek’s CW feature:

Old CW: First woman Speaker will be Rayburn redux.
New CW: Botox bumbler blows first play.

Digby has more on the "Botox" attack line being directed against Democratic women representatives:

This particular Mean Girlz theme didn’t spring from nowhere. It’s coming directly from Frank Luntz:

LUNTZ: I always use the line for Nancy Pelosi, "You get one shot at a facelift. If it doesn’t work the first time, let it go."

This must have focused grouped well among their target wingnut pigs because, as I previously noted, Queenbee Dowd generously shared this one with the whole world today (before she went off on a sexist rant of her own):

Ted Olson, the former solicitor general and eloquent Republican lawyer who argued the Bush v. Gore case before the Supreme Court, was warming up the rabidly conservative Federalist Society crowd for John McCain with a few sexist cracks about Botox.

The new Congress could amuse itself, he said, by “searching for any sign of movement in Speaker Pelosi’s forehead.” The Senate, he added, would be entertained by “the expressionless, Pelosi-like forehead of Senator Clinton.”

Thank god for commentators like Arinna Huffington, who chimes in on the sexist conservative attack lines being parroted by our so-called liberal media:

The only thing surprising about the current mainstream media narrative regarding Nancy Pelosi is its relentless predictability. Practically since the day the Iraq war started to go bad, Democrats have been derided in the press for not having a plan, and choosing pragmatism over principle.

Cut to ’06. Hot on the heels of an electoral triumph, Speaker-elect Nancy Pelosi endorses as Majority Leader the member of the House most identified with speaking out against the war — the man whose courage in doing so fueled the nationalized campaign that gave Democrats the majority in the first place. I’m speaking, of course, about Jack Murtha.

Murtha then loses the Leadership race to Steny Hoyer. As Pelosi no doubt knew, it was an uphill battle from the beginning — Hoyer had been tirelessly campaigning for the job among Democratic caucus members for months. But Pelosi gave her support to Murtha because, as she put it in title of her blog this week on HuffPost: "Bringing the War to an End is my Highest Priority as Speaker."

It doesn’t get much clearer or more principled than that.

So what’s been the reaction in the media?

According to the Los Angeles Times, Pelosi is off to a "rocky start," while the New York Times says she’s "tempting disaster."

Disaster? If wanting to give a high-profile platform to the man most responsible for his party finally locating its spine regarding Iraq (and who, for his troubles, received the full brunt of the Bush/Rove/Mehlman slime machine) is a "disaster," what word do you use to describe the war itself? Disast-orrfic? Catastro-bacle-aster? Disaster-to-the-10th-power?

Maureen Dowd joined the bash-Pelosi-bash with a column entitled "Squeaker of the House," writing:

"Nancy Pelosi’s first move, after the Democratic triumph, was to throw like a girl. Women get criticized in the office for acting on relationships and past slights rather than strategy, so Madame Speaker wasted no time making her first move based on relationships and past slights rather than strategy… Ms. Pelosi offered an argument along the lines of: John Murtha’s my friend. He’s been nice to me. I don’t like Steny. He did something a long time ago that was really, really bad that I’m never, ever going to tell you. And I’m the boss of you. So vote for John."

Really? I don’t recall Pelosi ever saying — or even implying — anything of the kind. Again, how much clearer could Pelosi be than "Bringing the War to an End is my Highest Priority as Speaker"? If ending this disastrous war (and I’m using the term in its true sense and not its New-York-Times-editorial sense) doesn’t qualify as "strategy" then what does?

In their editorials this week, both the LA Times and the New York Times chided Pelosi for even considering not installing California Congresswoman Jane Harman as the chair of the House Intelligence Committee, a point also raised by Dowd:

"Everyone in Washington was perplexed at Ms. Pelosi’s ham-handed effort to sabotage not only Mr. Hoyer but her former friend and fellow Californian, Jane Harman."

Wait, so first Pelosi is criticized for "making her first move based on relationships," and then she’s criticized for not giving a chairmanship to a "former friend and fellow Californian?"

So damned if you do, damned if you don’t.

As for the wisdom of "everyone in Washington," well, a walk around Baghdad should suffice as rebuttal.

I’m surprised that seniority as the be-all qualification for leadership still has so many ardent backers in Washington. Pelosi has made it clear that the highest priorities of the new Congress will be changing course in Iraq and the restoration of oversight. It is by these two yardsticks that she needs to decide who the Chair of the Intelligence Committee should be. And by nothing else.

Wouldn’t it be refreshing to have a Democratic leader who would rather listen to the American people than to "everyone in Washington"?