After seeing this Anderson Cooper clip, it is pretty obvious to me that GannonGuckert is not having a good time. Because I am not a cynical, cold person always out for blood, I will admit that I do get upset when I know someone's life is in turmoil in such a public circus. It is especially sad when the one being embarrassed has no prior fame. They should start a Monica Lewinsky/Richard Jewel Media Circus Therapy Group. Nonetheless, this story is very important in spite of supposed hurt feelings.

Guckert has a media strategy. He is trying to deflect through his fifteen minutes of infamy--dodging as many specifics as possible, relying on a sob story that treats his professional life as if it is his personal life. But is it embarrassing for Hugh Hefner, Larry Flynt or Bob Guccione to say they are pornographers? Is Heidi Fleiss embarrassed after two decades of being "Hollywood Madame?" No. Legal or not, these are their careers. They make money doing what they do.

On top of not making much sense, the deflection game is also not working. The reason it isn't working is because there is obviously a lot more to the story given how many times the White House has already been caught paying propagandists and how many times Guckert has already been caught distorting (note: there are more like this at Americablog.org). These are the signals of a cover up. And what better than a cover up to get bloggers and some real journalists working? This story is not going away any time soon.

So what does Jim Guckert do in order to put his life back in order and get the press and bloggers off his back?

The most logical thing for him to do--based purely on the logic of self preservation--is to come clean about his ties to the White House in as much detail as possible. What did Karl Rove et al ask you to do and when did they ask you to do it?

Now before I go on, let me talk to Jim/Jeff in private. You listening? Good. Newsflash! As much as we all know you conservatives believe your own propaganda, we liberal muckraking bloggers don't give one shit about you, GannonGuckert. You were a nobody until two weeks ago. You will return to being a nobody. But we do care a whole hell of a lot about documenting two nasty traits of this White House.

1)their phoniness and reliance on propaganda/PR/marketing schemes to fuck over the American people and
2)their pervasive corruption, dirty gamesmanship, thuggery and their hostility to the press and to open communication with the people they govern.

And guess what? Both issues meet in one place right now. Where? You guessed it, right there in you, JeffJimGannonGuckert. From the looks of that Anderson Cooper tape, all this exposure (hehe...see?) really looks like it is getting to you.

As I was saying, Guckert should reveal his ties to the administration in detail for a simple reason. Liberals gunning for the administration now serve his purposes better than the GOP. There are two sides battling for ground on this story. There is a side that wants this to be about Jeff Gannon and about how liberal bloggers conspired to take him down. And then there is a side that wants the story to be about the White House and its divorce from free society. This story will be one or the other at this point. Which one do you want it to be JeffJim?

Do you want this story to continue to be about your embarrassing career choices or do you want it to be about how you were a pawn in a game of political football that just got blown wide open? Do you want to be a prostitute or a noble whistleblower? Withholding information about your ties to the White House only exposes you more because right now, investigating you is the only way we are going to get to that burning set of questions about the White House. And frankly, you keep egging the blogosphere on with your incoherent defenses every time you sit down for an interview.

So do yourself a favor, JeffJim, and ally with the "liberal bloggers" who want to get this story off of you and laser focused on the thugs in the White House. Running for cover in a GOP that has a lot more to lose by cozying up to a gay prostitute rather than making him the object of their latest deflection--a domestic Lyndie England if you will--will only hurt what is left of your good name in the end.

Think about it another way: if you defect you will probably at least get a book deal. And with your background it shouldn't be too hard to write the most interesting book to downplay a major sex scandal since 2004's My Life. And that's when the big bucks start rolling in...





Note: all of this analysis is off-base if Guckert is in fact taking advantage of what Sidney Blumenthal called "an enormous potential for blackmail." In that case Guckert has an incentive to take shelter in the GOP smokescreen. But if that story breaks, he will be in the same position then as he is now. At that time, his choice will be between a story about Jeff Gannon or a story about the high ranking Republican that he was servicing.

According to this comment from my Daily Kos diary, a blue dress would break the GannonGuckert story wide open:



Hehe. I love the internets!

(Photo: courtesy of dKos user Joe Willy)

He has lots to say about GannonGuckert, but this passage about the Rethuglicans in general nails it:

George W. Bush's carefully crafted mystique is built entirely on his manufactured masculinity. In fact, the Republican Party has based its whole image upon the idea that they are the party of macho straight men and the fawning traditonal women who love them. They have spent the last 35 years impugning the manhood of every male Democrat and portraying every Democratic feminist as a manhating bitch --- and winning the national security issue pretty much on the basis of what that implied to their bigoted neanderthal base. It never ends. Back in the day it was "I can't tell if you're a boy or a girl with all that hair." Just last year they spent hundreds of millions of dollars convincing a large number of people that a documented war hero (and killer) was a mincing, vacillating "Frenchman." What do you think that that was all about?

I've always believed that one of the main reasons Clinton frustrated them so much was that his womanizing protected him from the ongoing gay-baiting subtext of the Republican appeal. It took one of their most potent arrows out of the quiver. The best they could do was call Hillary a dyke.

Every time the Republicans are called upon to squeal "don't ask don't tell" when asked about JimJeff Gannon, it puts another hairline crack in their coalition. Don't ever think that this does not affect them. It goes to the very essence of who they portray themselves to be.

I'd say that's about right.

for Lt. Governor in Georgia. Young Dems of Emory has the scoop

Campus Progress is liveblogging CPAC, which is pretty cool. Don't know what CPAC is? Check it out, and try not to vomit.

But my absolutely favorite post thus far?

The world Cheney and his friends talked about tonight was a world where the people that control three branches of government are the vicitims, where the only media to trust is biased, and where we are constantly finding biological and chemical weapons in Iraq. I kid you not, Rep. Chris Cox, CHAIR of the Homeland Security Committee told the audience, "We continue to find biological and chemical weapons [in Iraq]."

Someone hit this guy with a whipped cream pie.

P.S. Count the number of black faces, hell, ANY minority faces on CPAC's main page. Just like Dean said the other day. The only time you see minorities at conservative functions, they're working at the hotel. (As a friend notes, sometimes they're also the token keynote speaker)

From hannity.com here:

Fill out the form below to send in your suggestions for what Sean and his wife should name their dog.

The answer is clearly...





Karl Rover




"Ri Ruv You Rawn!"

Awe.

And he even has his little barrel, ready to bail out Sean's career if ever he's in trouble. Man's best friend, indeed.


(Photo made from these two images. Dog: http://www.np2d.com/qsPortal/Home.asp, Karl: AFP)

Catherine Crier on GannonGuckert. Watch the video here.

Aaaaand, Wonkette apparently believes that the outrage on the part of bloggers about GannonGuckert's access to the White House is kind of hypocritical because "bloggers [are supposed to be] in favor of a lower bar of access, not a higher one."* If this is the extent of her argument then I totally disagree.

Blogging is a medium of communication. It is not a unified community. It is true that many bloggers blog because their writings are too edgy, too loose, too provocative or too bad to be published**, but that does not imply that bloggers all wish they were published or think it would be appropriate if they were. But even beyond the logical level, if you look at the realm of political blogging (both left and right from what I can tell), I have found that there is a pervasive sense that the fact checking in the mainstream media is piss poor. This is an argument that implies that we should in fact be more rigorous in our standards for evaluating what would be public information broadcast on the airwaves for all to hear, not less. In that sense, I fail to see how outrage at the fact that GannonGuckert's lack of credentials or even a journalistic career path--to put it nicely--prior to his access to what is for every serious journalist the most secretive administration in recent memory is hypocritical in the slightest.

Lowering the bar is fine. If it was the case that poor prostitutes, unemployed people, drug addicts, poor white farmers, etc--all of society's kicked around and left behind--had a seat at the table with the President during his press gaggles, I would indeed love that and I am sure AmericaBlog would too. That would be "lowering the bar." That would be a conversation. But it is something akin to the fallacy of composition to suggest that the most secretive administration in recent memory lowering the standards for one person out of either negligence or an intention to plant a reporter in order to--at a very minimum--take heat off the President in press conferences of very limited and elite access counts as lowering the bar. Any one instance of lowering the bar does not mean the administration lowers the bar in any meaningful, philosophically coherent sense.

I am convinced that the fallacy of composition and related logical errors seem to keep many liberals in a suicide pact with their own beliefs. We are so unconcerned with people's sexual orientation on principle that we fail to voice legitimate outrage when those principles are being used to stomp on our throats with jackboots. Political bloggers that I have read want better journalism, more access and a serious hearing of the issues. They want less homophobia. None of these are helped along in the slightest by the "family values" White House. GannonGuckert being a gay prostitute with access to the White House only shows how deeply entrenched the corruption is in this Creepublican Party--not because he is gay, but because he is a known gay prostitute possibly planted by an administration that pretends to care about a system of family values that rejects gayness and prostitution as repugnant enough to be a reason to vote for them on face.

They are in a big fat double bind, Wonkette.

And it is time to jackboot their throats for a change.


*I couldn't find this quotation on her site, so I am not sure if it was blogged or in an interview.
**Corked Bats is deliberately in the "too bad" category.

Welcome to Corked Bats to all of you who arrived here via Colbert Killed A Panda.

For those of you who have no idea what this reference is, it is from the Daily Show tonight.

Shameless I am.

The Rude Pundit has it here.


WARNING: Not a work-friendly link (no pictures, just crass diction).

This kind of crap has been spewed every time something good happens in Iraq. Anderson says:

Each of us has a Hobbesian choice concerning Iraq; either we hope for the vindication of Bush's risky, very possibly reckless policy, or we are in a de facto alliance with the killers of American soldiers and Iraqi civilians. We can be angry with Bush for bringing us to this nasty ethical crossroads, but here we are nonetheless.

He continues:

I don't mean to suggest, in the right-wing, proto-fascist rhetorical fashion, that every good American is obliged to support all American wars. But at this moment in this war, that binary choice of who you want to win is inescapable and needs to be faced squarely, just as being pro-war obliges one to admit that thousands of innocent Iraqis have been killed or maimed or orphaned.

At a certain point during the Vietnam War, a majority of Americans, those of us who were in favor of unilateral U.S. withdrawal, were in a de facto alliance with the North Vietnamese, the Vietcong, and the Soviets. Unpleasant but true.

False dilemma much?

It is old. It is boring. It is repugnant.

Here's the deal. The anti-war people do not oppose ultimate success in Iraq (if success is a decent government, internal peace, and a chance for Iraqi prosperity). To suggest this is completely baseless. There is a big difference between proceeding with caution based on experience--combined with concerns about downstream consequences--and rooting for bad news.

Additionally, there are two big reasons to be worried--or at best ambivalent--about incremental successes in George Bush's War in Iraq. The first is (Gasp!) moral. Anti-war critics have--for the most part--opposed the war because the means of pursuing it have been so wasteful of life, of resources, of America's moral leadership in the world, so negligent of intelligent and constructive criticism, and so based on misinformation and willful deceit. If we ultimately have success in Iraq (God willing), it will never justify the way in which this war was pursued and the consequences we and the Iraqis have suffered for it (and still may suffer in terms of blowback). In other words, there is a weird, seemingly pathological tendency of the pro-war people, now riddled with self doubt because of the continuing security challenges in Iraq, to lash out anew with accusations that anti-war people support all kinds of horrible things because we oppose this war anytime there is a bit of good news. We have wasted lives--and judging by the reactions of the pro-war crowd, they seem willing at the drop of a hat to drop any fledgling criticisms they may have of the wisdom of their modus operandi. Given their continuing power in government, this is cause for enormous concern.

Will we prosecute future wars in the same way and waste more lives instead of confronting this experience with hard analysis? This is a serious question if success in Iraq comes under this administration. 100,000 dead Iraqis, 1500 dead American soldiers, over 10,000 wounded. Were those numbers necessary? That question deserves a hearing even if we are successful. Previous reactions to "turning points" in Iraq certainly do not inspire confidence that such a hearing is forthcoming.

The second reason to be concerned is that this administration likes to use good news in Iraq as a political club with which to beat its opposition over the head (and the media follows suit). So, please forgive progressives for having anxiety whenever Bush gets a little poll boost from a good story. All of a sudden "THE MANDATE IS BACK!" and we are looking at dismantling more rights and more successful initiatives to protect the least among us. More right-wing appointees, more accusations from the noise machine that we hate our country, more bigotry and militarism.

In short, the ends don't justify the means. We all hope for a good end. We just don't want a good end in Iraq to be used as yet another means to or rationalization for wasting innocent life.

Let me just break it down: those who feel uncomfortable learning more about the dirty details of the GannonGuckert affair need to be reminded of an important distinction. It is: liberals are not wierded-out by the fact that sex happens and that sometimes it happens in positions different from missionary and that sometimes it happens with different kinds of people. Generally, we frown upon cheating, but that is a personal issue for the couple or couples involved, not the public's business.

That "Jeff Gannon"--possibly a White House plant, possibly a White House blackmailer, possibly linked to the Valerie Plame memo--was in fact a homosexual prostitute is significant specifically because Republicans (particularly the right wing junta that has culture warred its way to the White House) are supposedly incredibly freaked out by non-missionary, non-heterosexual sex.

Except that the ones in power aren't. They are completely fine with gay people and with wierd sex. They pretend not to be in order to win elections and defeat liberal ideas of freedom.

They wilfully pretend that America has no significant diversity in terms of sexual ideas and attitudes--which is why sexual orientation differences are supposedly so deplorable--while at the same time they have gay family members and co-workers that they accept. They act shocked, but they aren't. They say it is a moral issue, while they do not treat it as one at all.

They are "faking it"--in other words.

So have at it. Exposing the fact that the gay issue is nearly a complete fabrication designed to win elections will help advance the cause of liberty for all people. Homosexuality is real--and the sooner bigoted people are forced to deal with it, not fear it, the better off this society will be.

This is an ongoing series about the transformation of a right wing dittohead who voted for Bush in 2004, but bolted to the Democratic Party less than a month ago. It is written by diarist advisorjim at DailyKos. The writing is crisp and witty. It is especially relevent if it is true that he was once a Rethug.

I consider this required reading for those following the framing discussions.

This is a repost from Outsidereport. I think its an intriguing thought that peace is happening because America is not meddling.

What's interesting about the past four years, is that as powerful and domineering as Bush has been globally, America's role in promoting peace throughout the world and our place as the barter of peace in the hot spots, has steadily declined. During the Clinton area and before, America was the number promoter of resolving the Middle East conflict, we were the ones pushing for peace between India and Pakistan, and we were the ones defending South Korea and Japan against any North Korean attack. We were also the big negotiator and counter balance to Iran.

Because of Iraq and Afghanistan, and largely because of Bush's unilateralist policies, America has been left on the sidelines, largely becoming a nation on the outside looking in. In the case of Israel, America has pretty much ceded much of its authority and negotiating power to Sharon and the Israelis, who have in turn, cracked down hard on the Palestinians while also offering "sticks" now that Abbas is in charge. Abbas has launched his own mini war to reign in the militants, and Hamas is looking to go to the way of the ANC in South Africa (terrorist grassroots movements that transition to the political process). Israel and Palestine look as if they are on the way to peace, but Bush seems to be jumping to the head of the parade with his idea now for a Mid-east conference. The hard tasks of peace has already been accomplished by Abbas and Sharon and to a lesser extend, the EU (through the sheer exhaustion in continuing to fight on both sides).

In the case of Iran, America is again on the outside looking in as Iran continues to negotiate with the EU while lashing out at America. The former President of Iran basically called Bush a bird brain. Iran realizes that America is tied down to Afghanistan and Iraq, thus it has free reign (this also gives free reign to the EU to undermine American power). Cheney's comments begging Israel to strike and Condi's statements about not attacking Iran, show our weakness and Iran is capitalizing on it.

In yet another case, India and Pakistan are moving closer to peace not because of any significant act by America, but because the leaders of those countries of their own volition have decided to steer toward peace. Even China and Taiwan are making moves toward reconciliation because both sides now see the seriousness and urgency of the matter. China no longer feels the need to worry about America invading and Taiwan now realizes that big brother US isn't going to be able to save them if attacked. This has led to both sides moderating and not feeling to raise the rhetoric to fend off US meddling.

I think for the "American Power First" crowd, this slippage of our power proves that we don't always have to be the answer to peace. Its always been sort of paternalistic of us to think that peoples across the world could not solve their own differences. In some respects, America's meddling may worsen worldwide situations because both sides may feel no need or urgency to work together. In the case of India and Pakistan, because America was NOT involved, I believe the individual nations felt the urgency and desire to work it out.

Perhaps the absence of American power from the world can be a good thing in some instances. Perhaps its also time for America to think about redefining its role in the world. And perhaps we should only exercise our power in the truly dangerous situations and zones (Rwanda, Kosovo, Sudan) and trust the judgment of other nations to resolve their own disputes.

More soldier blogs:

Uncle Sam Ate My Baby (Mother of a soldier just out of basic. We'll see where this goes...)
Diary of a Soldier (In Iraq now)
Ryan and Christy's Place
Lance in Iraq (not sure how much he talks about the war)
Seth's Blog (favorite song is Clash City Rockers by the Clash. I "need a little jump of electircal shockers" myself, man.)
CJ's Henhouse (A Soldier's Perspective) (He is now posting his war diary from 2003)
Soldier's Life After Iraq (A returned soldier's wife)
Iraq Calling

Here are a few more. I am trying to collect as many as I can, so if you know of any others, send them along. I am especially interested in American soldier blogs. Here are some more from inside Iraq:

Baghdad Blogger (Friend with Raed Jarrar, has reported for the BBC)
Healing Iraq (He has a particularly good list of Iraq blogs)
Baghdad Girl (13 Years Old)
Crystal Light from Baghdad (Baghdad Girl's brother's new blog. We'll see what he has to say.)
Kurdo's World (Kurdish blogger)

There is a lot more that I am finding, but I am going to bed for now.

Hey, CB is probably not big enough for this yet, but if you have thoughts on this bizarre and unfolding story, chime in....

Hehe. You laugh to keep from crying...

This is a good brief debate between Christopher Hitchens and Tariq Ali about the Iraq War. Here is a clip:

CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS: I actually couldn't say that I knew what the President's attitudes on homosexuality was. I know what his attitude on gay marriage is. I think it's slightly strange. Well then, I should simply say this. The only really organized rebel force in Iraq, worthy of the name insurgent force, force of people's army, guerilla warfare, is and has been the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan and its allies whose flag I'm happy to wear on my lapel. They deserve the name of a true rebel people's army. They of course are fighting for regime change, and as long as they do, so will I.

TARIQ ALI: I think the Iraqi resistance continues to grow because a colonial occupation has that effect, that even people who might have initially been indifferent or even halfway sympathetic, seeing the effects of a colonial occupation, where large numbers, several thousands of innocent civilians are being killed -- when you see the pictures from Samarra, of women fleeing with their children -- it stokes the resistance. Zarqawi is neither here nor there.

Read it all here.

The public debate is piss poor about Iraq because both sides have terrible logical extentions. Fascism or Imperialism. Take your pick. I think the war was doomed from the start for this very reason, actually. There was never a very good, crisp competition of ideas before this war. As a result, our policy is imperialism-lite rather than a policy based on avoiding imperialism while striking a blow against fascism. That is why Kerry never sounded coherent on this issue--he wanted a policy that was neither supportive of fascism nor neo-imperialist. The dynamics of the debate still have not become sophisticated enough to recognize that as an attractive point of view.

Pity.

Time to rethink them. See, humans may have lifespans of 5000 years in the not-too-distant future, according to this article. Unfortunately, they would really need to be revised.

Assuming the average lifespan is 78 years, 4 years is roughly 5% of your average president's life (it might be higher for presidents because they are generally well-fed and have pretty cushy pensions). If our lifespan became 5000 years then a proportional presidential term would be a whopping 256 years!

If we were to transport Bush by time machine 100 years into the future and retrofit him with these life-saving nanobots--assuming that his folksiness would still play in Peoria and the War on Terror was still ongoing--a reelected Bush would serve for an unimaginable 513 years.

For some perspective: 2005 minus UberBush's 513-year rule places us in 1492, the year Colombus arrived on Hispanola. If we lived 5000 years, it would be like having Bush since the beginning of America!

And Jesus was born during Reagan's first term. Go figure...

(Photo: Amon Carter Museum, Ft. Worth, TX)

I had a killer observation last week on John Arovosis' AMERICABlog. In an effort to link Gannon with Guckert he posted three pictures of Gannon and a picture from an AOL profile maintained by Guckert. This is important because it ties the fake reporter to military escort sites and it also proves that Scott McClellan and others called him knowingly by his alias in press conferences. The link between Gannon and Guckert is also important for the purposes of finding more personal and professional information and potentially tracing him back to Karl Rove.

So I pointed out in one of the comments to the post before the one with the photos that GannonGuckert had on the same watch in two of the photos. Then last night, John posted this hint about what this story will be today in which he thanks the person who first found the watch linkage. So this person is nice enough to credit me with it.

Unfortunately, I did not see the watch similarities first. I cannot tell a lie. It was actually "Jerry" who posted about an hour and a half before I did. I made my comment without prior knowledge of Jerry's post, but he should get the credit.

(Slate)

Wolcott zeroes in on a cool new dynamic:

I wonder if Dems are learning the wisdom imparted by Bull Moose, that there's mischievous and useful fun to be had in being the opposition party, particularly when the party in power is as flatulent with hubris and corruption as the fiefdom of Tom DeLay. Dems should resist the temptation to be statesmenlike and bail out Bush should he stumble, the way they shamefully rescued Reagan in his second term. Bipartisanship has gotten Democrats nowhere for four years, has earned them nothing more than a fine spittle of contempt falling like a constant drizzle. They should let a smile be their umbrella as they enjoy the spectacle of House and Senate Republicans promoting Social Security privatization as if they'd been ordered by their commander in chief to suck lemons.

Hehe. Indeed.

Is anyone else having fun springing the "so you like torture and want to punish Grandpa for a life of work" line on the once mighty Republican surrogates at the water cooler? Oh, Right Wing Noise Machine, thou hast spawned a million liberal Hannitys.

This diary at Daily Kos outlines one of the reasons why I feel so great about Chairman Dean. Yeeeeeargh!

The New York Times has 'em here.

D.B. Light at Light Seeking Light has dissected more thoroughly the attitudes in the various Baghdad blogs I referred you to yesterday. He is right, these blogs are interesting because they show the many different ways that even folks from the same family can process the events occurring around them. One thing that struck me is that the anti-Americanism expressed in these blogs seems to have a lot more to do with a disconnect between America's promise of a better life through political pluralism and the outcomes on the ground. Even if you consider these blogs anti-American, they seem to be operating on the level that the American state is problematic while the American dream may in fact be positive.

I continue to believe that the xenophobic and ethnocentric way in which the Bush administration adresses anti-Americanism (ie, failing to draw a distinction between hating the actions of the American state and hating "freedom" itself) is continuing to mislead the American public--and anger the world-- about the true nature of our challenges abroad. These are just blogs, but they are also evidence that this nuanced view exists out there in a lot of people. The administration seems bent on concealing the possibility that many people around the world could be brought to the table if America acted more in line with its ideals (even if there are some that we may never be able to reach).