Atrios describes Pundit David Ignatius' predictions of troop reduction in Iraq

Atrios goes back and lists the efforts that have been proposed to reduce the number of U.S. troops in Iraq or get us out of there. There have been public statements by that great Pundit, David Ignatius, in June 2006, August 2006, on the Baker-Hamilton Report in December 2006 and now July 2007.

Each statement projected success in about one Friedman Unit (six months.)

Over this time while he was predicting a drop in troop strength average American troop level has increased from about 130,000 troops to the current 160,000 troops.

Gives you great confidence in his predictions, doesn't it?

D.C. Pundit Corps motto: "Keep them in the dark and feed them B.S."

Glenn Greenwald states it very nicely:

One could write media criticisms for the next several years and not come close to capturing the essence of our Beltway media the way [Richard] Cohen [Washington Post] did in this single paragraph:

With the sentencing of I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, Fitzgerald has apparently finished his work, which was, not to put too fine a point on it, to make a mountain out of a molehill. At the urging of the liberal press (especially the New York Times), he was appointed to look into a run-of-the-mill leak and wound up prosecuting not the leaker -- Richard Armitage of the State Department -- but Libby, convicted in the end of lying. This is not an entirely trivial matter since government officials should not lie to grand juries, but neither should they be called to account for practicing the dark art of politics. As with sex or real estate, it is often best to keep the lights off.

That really is the central belief of our Beltway press, captured so brilliantly by Cohen in this perfect nutshell. When it comes to the behavior of our highest and most powerful government officials, our Beltway media preaches, "it is often best to keep the lights off." If that isn't the perfect motto for our bold, intrepid, hard-nosed political press, then nothing is.

That is the motto that should be inscribed at the top of Fred Hiatt's Editorial Page in pretty calligraphy. And let us acknowledge what a truly superb job they have been doing in keeping the lights off.

A better example of what the old statement "Keep them in the Dark and Feed them Bullshit" means could not be written.

The "them" in that statement is, of course, the American public. You. Me. Ambiance is "Dark." Menu is "Bullshit." In the past this was the only restaurant in town, and we were expected to pay for what we could get and leave quietly. The pundits even got to where they expected a Tip for their service.

What has happened is that the politicians - the denizens of Washington, D.C. on who the pundits started their careers as reporters describing and reporting on, are also the people who the reporters and pundits talk to. Those "denizens" operate in the murky realms of politics where much of what is done really is, to say the least, highly unsavory. Those "denizens" operate based on the idea that their murky doings are best not revealed.

The reporters and pundits are, in theory, in the business of revealing and reporting those murky dealings to us - to the American public. But here is the problem. While they are supposedly being paid to report to us, they don't listen to us! Never have, and that is the way they like it. They listen instead to the politicians on whom they are supposed to report, and those politicians really, really don't like being investigated and reported on. They want someone supposedly reporting on them to actually be speaking for them.

That's what Richard Cohen is doing. He is speaking for the politicians, not reporting on the politicians. Want examples? Go read Eric Boehlert at (the blog, natch) Huffington Post (via .)

Gee. It should not come as a surprise that the politician spokespersons who call themselves reporters and who have spent their full career speaking for politicians feel put upon when some of their mere audience stand up on their hind legs and tell them You are failing to do your jobs as reporters!

That is the basis of the "reporter/pundit" put-downs of bloggers. Many Bloggers are telling the most experienced old hands in the D.C. pundit corps that they have spent their professional lives as so-called reporters living a lie.

Uh, oh. Some of the bullshit is being exposed to the light, and the professional bullshit artists (pundits - Cohen, Hiatt, Klein, etc.) are reacting like spiders who have lived their lives in the dark do when a spot light is shined on them. We are watching them react with high anxiety as the D.C. pundit/reporters scramble to find their comfortable, dark niches so that they can again be comfortable.

There are still things that the "Spiderhole Restaurant" have on the menu that can't be found in any of the newer, alternative restaurants. But I'm damned sure not going to Tip for what I now find is and has been really rotten service. I don't care how anxious it makes the pundits. Their anxiety and refusal to face the new environment is not MY problem. They will just have to adapt.

I have always enjoyed shining lights on spiders in the dark and watching them scramble. As a blogger, I have a new flashlight. The D.C. pundit spiders will just have to learn that they are now a part of my entertainment.

Bwahahahaha. Run, spiders, run! And thanks, Glenn.

David Broder defends his columns

I used to have a lot of respect for what David Broder wrote in his columns, but either I was unaware of how inaccurate he often was or he has gotten much, much worse in the years that the Republicans dominated the Congress. Here is his on-line question and answer session. See what you think.

Then, here is what TRex at Firedoglake thinks and here is what Think Progress wrote about the same conversation. Then we have Atrios weighing in with his opinion.

I am sad to say that I agree with TRex, Think Progress and Atrios.

Here's what I think Broder has gotten wrong. He assumes that the majority of American people are politically moderate, pragmatic centerists. I'll agree with him this far.

But then he seems to think that the two parties, Republican and Democratic, are the Right and Left sides of the political spectrum. Each has its moderate and its extreme members, and the agendas of each party tend to represent the most extreme members because agendas of this type are the easiest to use to get elected. Broder thinks that voters tend to vote for the more extreme, simplified agendas and not for agendas built on compromise. The logical conclusion that I think Broder has drawn is that if you take the public agendas of each party then you have found the extreme versions of both the Right and the Left politically. Take those extreme agendas together with the assumption above that Americans prefer moderate, centrist solutions to problem, and the logical conclusion is that the majority of the American people want to find a political position that is half-way between the two agendas. This is where he has gone wildly wrong.

The Republican Party is a top-down hierarchical party, with the agenda set by those in overall control. The conservative movement has been a movement of some of the most radical and extreme right-wingers in America. The result has been that the political agenda of the Republican party has been extremely right-wing, with moderate Republicans having little or no say in it. This agenda is not close to what the practical average American voters want, but since this top-down hierarchical Republican Party is dominated by very wealthy right-wing extremists like Richard Mellon-Scaife and Joseph Coors and some powerful right-wing fundamentalist religious leaders who want to take religious control of the government, that is the agenda the Republicans present. Since it is an essentially unpopular agenda with the majority of Americans, it must be forcefully implemented, often by stealth, lies or by the use of raw power.

The Democratic Party is structured very differently. Instead of being a top-down hierarchical party, it is a loose alliance of many groups with a variety of agendas. The agenda of the Democratic Party is the result of a great deal of internal political activity before it ever sees the light of day. If there is an extreme left-wing group in America, it is essentially politically mute. The result is that the basic agenda of the Democratic Party is already very much like what the majority of Americans are looking for, a practical set of solutions to clear problems that are widely recognized.

There is a second part to the Democratic Party agenda, however, and that is the part that actively rejects the extremist agenda items the Republican Party are implementing through stealth, lies and raw power. The tactics of stealth, lies and raw power are designed to run over any logical or rational debate and attempts at compromise. The Democratic reaction to this has been slow to build, because the needed aggressiveness and use of raw power to counter raw power are foreign to the normal nature of the majority of Americans, those who make up the Democratic Party. As the Bush administration has gotten more corrupt and extreme, the reaction in the Democratic Party has built up. The largest cause of this at present is the senseless and incompetently fought war in Iraq. Since Bush refuses any form of compromise, he is going to have to be stopped and, if possible, removed from office.

It is the Democratic activists who loudly proclaim that the only way to stop the Republican extremism is to take aggressive and extreme actions against them. The Democratic activists are the people the Republicans are declaring to be left-wing extremists. They are not. They are mostly moderate centerists who have been pushed too far by the extremist and very radical Republican Party currently led and controlled by the radicals George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, the Social Right (Dominionists) and the NeoCons. It is not an extremist action to resist tyranny, and what the Republicans offer is exactly that - tyranny.

David Broder has probably not been outside Washington D.C. and done original reporting of any significance in decades. All he sees is the various political activities in the Capital city, and he is applying a simplistic version of late 50's and early 60's political science as taught in high schools in those days to the actions he sees in Washington. That's my opinion of where he has gone wrong.

Now, because of his age and left-over reputation, he is resistant to change long held beliefs and gets angry when he is called on them. So I don't expect him to change.

Now this is my most likely belief. The alternative is that he has been bought-off somehow by the Republican conservatives to try to make them look good. While this is possible, I don't think that Broder himself would accept this opinion of his motives and performance. That is why I consider the first proposed explanation a lot more likely.

So go read the question-and-answer at the Washington Post and see if you agree with either of my explanations.

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Yuk! It's 1:00 AM. I'm going to have to get up at 5:00 AM, and since I am the lead clerk at my location, I can't be late.

Bill Maher tells the truth - Bush will think he is getting Hell.

This is an excellent description of what the sick collection of frightened misfits who currently run the White House have been doing.



It's interesting that while the Bush/Cheney people have neutered the media pundits (with their help), we are getting a collection of comics to take their place. This is a step up. Punditry and laughs too.