From Matthew Yglasias' blog by way of Eschaton..

On the left, the College Democrats are treated like shit, the think tanks do approximately nothing to help their young research assistants move on to bigger things, the junior staffers on the Hill get no support and encouragement to stay involved in politics, and in general no one seems to give a damn whether or not there will be a next generation of professional progressives.

This simple point illustrates one of the major reasons why the Conservative/right-wing movement has been so succesfull in gaining ground in an increasingly modern society. While many of the major groups have strong differences of opinion and often give different issues varying amounts of importance (gay rights and fiscal responsibility are two good examples) they hold true to the old axiom, "a rising tide raises all boats."

By banding together to ensure people that fall under their broad umbrella are able to achieve positions of power, they are able to create a more favorable environment in which to push their own agenda. Their ability to brand themselves ensures greater success come election day.

Certainly the fiscaly conservative Republicans who work to preserve the environment in places like Montana and Alaksa are less concerned with the fundamentalist pro-born again lifestyle agenda in places like Texas and Alabama, but they recognize that a Republican congress is more amenable to both their positions.

This cohesiveness (shaky though it is) trumps most Democratic/liberal attempts at organization. Too often the different groups are too busy sniping at each other ot realize that they factionalism leaves plenty of room for the right to walk right on in.

This is not to say that the ability of the left to understand and appreciate the nuance and difficulty involved in creating effective policy is a bad thing, it is simply that the right has been able to paint the left and themselves with a broad brush. Their simplicity is seen as an asset, "common-man, every-day, church-goin joe six-pack type of elected official working for you and yours."

There are certainly many, many intelligent operatives on the right who know the issues inside and out, but they are able to do so and avoid the label they so often use on those on the left who publicly display their knowledge of an issue, the "wonk".

The right has been able to do what every campaign attempts to do, they were able to define the left before the left could define itself.

This may be an impossible mission. Attend any anti-war rally and inevitably 20 different groups are their pushing their message, "Free Palestine", "Leagalize It", "Hands of My Body", etc. Not that these shouldn't be events in which different groups should come together, but they should come together under one banner.

Matt's point focuses mostly on the college students and those about that age who are already involved, but they need to understand the importance of linking up under a defined message, one that states in simple terms what we are working for, not against.

The Republican Party is in full-time campaign mode, there are no non-political decisions made. Everything this administration has done in the past three years has been about politics. Everyone from the state rep to the President has a set of talking points and they go from there. Their orgnization is incredible and it has brought them success despite the obvious flaws in their policies.

Republicans: Cut taxes -> more revenue!
Reality: cut taxes + increase spending -> defecit
Solution: Blame the war, cut spending on social policies (negligible fiscal impact, but good repub politics) talk about something else, pass the buck.

We don't need to be cynical to play the game, we just have to be organized. We need to expose the shell game for what it is.

To achieve our ends we need to win back the White House, and win back the Congress.

But doing that only buys us time. We need to take back the state legislatures. The Republicans know that the national scene will change. They won big in 1994, then lost seats in 1998. They are want the school boards, the city councils and the state legislatures. In those arenas they can extend their power with an even freer hand (see the resurgence of Creationist chatter and the recent rash of redistricting).

The Guardian has a piece out today about U.S. intelligence concerns about the Chalabi/INC-Iran connection. The piece even goes so far to suggest that Iran, working through the INC was able to draw the U.S. into going to war in Iraq.

Whether the overall implication is true, or if Iran was simply using the Chalabi's intelligence chief Aras Habib as a source of U.S. intelligence is really of little consequence. If it's true that high-level sources in the Defense Department and the Vice-President's Office (the two offices who had the most cozy relationship with Chalabi and the INC, and were the biggest cheerleaders for this war and Chalabi) have been providing the classified info that is making its way to Iran, the implications are enormous.

Messing around with an intern is bad judgment, attatching the fate of your fellow countrymen and the future of U.S. legitimacy to a group of con-men and double agents is downright criminal.

Laura Rozen has a comprehensive look at Chalabi and his history over at her blog "War and Piece".
Kevin Drum over at the Political Animal has a pretty good rundown of some assorted information on Chalabi and how many people have been burned by him.

As more and more information comes out, the Neocon dream of a new, democratic middle-east sinks deeper and deeper into the mud.

Unfortunately, the U.S.'s legitimacy and our hard-earned respect get pulled down right with it. There's little doubt that the administration couldn't have done this much damage if they tried.

A few of the reactions to the President's speech last night...

• St. Louis Post Dispatch: Words Don't Do It: more won't help.

• L.A. Times: Fewer words more plans

• Chicago Tribune: Bush Stands tough, ready to give Iraq back

• New York Times: Bush is walking in his own footprints, give us a plan.

Many of the bloggers and several editorials have come to the conclusion that the President's uneventful speech was, well, a failure. It has been written of as PR, and it is, as Josh Marshall of Talking Points Memo said,

"Finally, finally , the president has decided to confront the root problem in our troubled occupation of Iraq: the spin deficit."

It seems at first that the main point of the speech was PR. There are no policy changes, and he certainly wasn't addressing the Chalabi-Iranian agent issue, so there was no meat to the speech. It was simply an attempt to show the President being, well, Presidential; to show he is involved and cares what happens.

Yet the White House apparently only asked for air-time on CNN, FoxNews and one other channel, but none of the major networks (ABC, CBS, NBC, PBS). While cable is pretty ubiquitous at this point, the effect of pre-empting prime-time programming for a Presidential address is a bit of show that gets attention. If you are shooting for PR, this is the attention you want. However, if you want to make an empty gesture because you know you have nothing substantial to add, then this would be one way to do it.
Similar to having a press conference and picking only those journalists who you know will toss you softballs.

There is nothing wrong for drumming up some good press for your policies, its when you refuse to answer tough questions publicly and toss of carefully constructed non-speeches that you begin to look calculating. If these speeches are as important as the White House would have us believe, then they would have put it on the networks.

There will be four more of these speeches in the coming weeks. We'll have to see if the President is willing to make some major policy announcements in these speeches, or if he will stay with the non-speech speech.

The BBC World News did a short story on the mercenaries that were arrested in Equatorial Guinea and Zimbabwe. While the report didn't clarify much about the intentions of the group of mercenaries, it did mention that a number of them were former black members of the South African army, apparently a notorious battalion that fought in the Bush Wars in the 70's and 80's. After the fall of the apartheid government, they were pretty much left out in the cold. Many of them live together in a poor community near the border with Botswana.

Here's a link to the BBC story...

There are also a number of related stories on the same page.

It's an odd, twisting story. The men will apparently be charged in Guinea and may face the death penalty. They U.S. intelligence services and MI6 have been accused of helping the plotters in Guinea, and it goes on from there.
There is the question, still of who owned the planes, of course.

The Bush administration is backing off its initial proposal to reorganize overtime pay. While the administration has said that the timing has nothing to do with the election, the new proposal increases from the previous proposal the number of workers elligible for overtime pay.

While it may seem like a good policy for the administration, something guaranteed to get some votes, there is a passage in the New York Times story that seems to run counter to the administrations arguments about taxation and wealth.

The revisions, made after the Labor Department received more than 75,000 comments, would deny overtime pay to white-collar workers who earn more than $100,000 annually and perform some professional, administrative or executive duties, the department said. The initial plan put the salary ceiling at $65,000 annually.

The changes also would guarantee premium pay to about 1.3 million white-collar workers earning less than $23,660 a year at a cost to employers of $375 million annually, the department said. The salary tests in the regulations will not be adjusted for inflation.

So, if a worker makes too much money, because he works too many hours, he is suddenly no longer elligible for the fruits of his labor. A principle that would seem to run counter to many Republican and conservative arguments that company executives who make 250 times what the average worker make, earned every penny. In addition, by not allowing the salary test to adjust with inflation, they will be unable to ask for more if inflation causes the value of their salary to drop down the road. While this may not seem like much, the last major revision of overtime standards was in 1949. At that point, the dollar bought a lot more than it does now.

There are also worries that employers will attempt to reclassify workers as performing administrative, professional or executive duties. Such classifications could serve as grounds to deny overtime pay.

Much of the late-90's boom rode on the backs of rapidly increasing productivity. Commentators and administration officials have constantly pointed to increased productivity as both a sign of a recovering economy and as one of the driving forces. Much of that productivity has been the result of layoffs forcing the remaining workers to take up a great deal of slack. In addition, the simple act of layoffs is seen by investors as being a positive sign, often leading to an uptick in their stock prices.

The slow squeeze of these workers is being used to prop up an image of a recovering economy. The administration tempts a backlash by first forcing workers to work more and work harder, and then to attmept to deny them adequete compensation.

The Associated Press reported today that the 2000 Bush campaign paid a $90,000 fine for not disclosing fundraising and spending during the Florida recount:

WASHINGTON April 20 — Democrats have scored one small, belated victory in the 2000 presidential recount. President Bush's 2000 campaign has agreed to pay a $90,000 civil fine for failing to disclose fund raising and spending to the Federal Election Commission for its effort to win the Florida recount, the FEC said Tuesday.

The campaign paid the fine to settle the case, which resulted from a complaint by Democratic National Committee Chairman Terry McAuliffe.

Bush raised nearly $14 million for his effort to win the Florida ballot dispute, compared to about $3.2 million in recount spending by Democratic presidential nominee Al Gore.

The Bush campaign disclosed details of its recount spending in a report to the Internal Revenue Service in July 2002. The FEC said the campaign should have reported the fund raising to the commission.
Story here.

The New York Times has a story today about the role an Iranian delegation has had in getting Sadr to back off his attacks in the city of Najaf.

The house-to-house fighting that has gone on in Najaf has has been bloody. A several day cease-fire allowed the Iranians to help negotiate an end to the hostilities.

According to Juan Cole, Sadr will apparently be temporarily exiled to Iran until a stable government can be established. Once that happens, he would return to Najaf to face trial for the murder charge that prompted the U.S. action to apprehend him.

The Iranian involvement is something that has received little attention, despite appearing to be very essential in finding a negotiated solution to the fighting in Najaf.

Hopefully, this stepping down of hostilities can influence some of the other hotspots in Iraq. Some are dedicated foreign fighters, and others are former Bathists, but the more moderate elements may hopefully see this as a positive step. If the Great Satan (the U.S.) is willing to allow Iranians to mediate a solution that will benefit everyone, perhaps others will be willing to work with the U.S. and U.N. in stabilizing and rebuilding Iraq.

In April and May 2001, for example, the intelligence community headlined some of those reports "Bin Laden planning multiple operations," "Bin Laden network's plans advancing" and "Bin Laden threats are real."

That's from Dana Priest's story in the Washington Post. Now, the August 6th PDF has been repeatedly classified as a "historical" document (which makes little sense, especially if you read the PDB), but it seems that a string of warnings such as the memos Priest refers to, should be a clear sign to anyone that this was not simply a fact-finding summary as the President contends.

There was a concerted effort to bring this danger to the attention of the administration. The author of the August 6th PDB wrote that memo because she wanted to bring attention to the issue (The Washington Post article is here) as well.

The more and more this issue gets looked at, and the more the White House tries to spin, the worse the administration looks. It is one thing to acknowledge an intelligence failure, it is another spin and shift blame in a thousand directions. Certainly Ashcroft, Tenet, Rice, Cheney, Rumsfeld and the President can not be held responsible for particular individual mistakes or mis-communications. Yet someone should take responsibility for the failure of the system.

Of course, taking responsibility for actions is not in great supply in Washington or the administration in particular.
Their absolute refusal to take this issue by the horns will hurt them in the long run. By tearing into former administration officials, or trying to take shots at commission members (like Ashcroft did today), they give the appearance of being unhelpful and possibly trying to conceal something. As the President put it last night, "A country that hides something is a country that is afraid of getting caught." In a politically charged country like the United States, even the appearance of guilt can sink a politician.

The maniacal devotion to secrecy, the speed with which they close ranks, and their instant and harsh attacks against anyone who criticizes them has put them in a position in which they may be incapable of functioning in the public view. They release statements and make carefully scripted public appearances, and woe to the reporter who tries to get off the talking points. If their public face reflects the reality of the inner workings of the administration, then it is doubtful that they would be able to shift with the changing realities. Their continued push to deploy a missile defense may be most symbolic of this lock-step mindset.

The administration came in with a fixed view of the world. They saw the greatest threat as coming from states, rogue nations. They believed that diplomacy was the way of the weak and that existing treaties bound the hands of the U.S. Despite making the correct move in invading Afghanistan following 9/11, they quickly reverted to their previous mindset and decided to invade Iraq. Now the Afghans are disappointed, there are still upper echelon members running around along the Afghan/Pakistan border and we have yet to find anything to verify the Administrations pre-war claims except that Saddam was as cruel as we said he was.

These difficulties have driven the majority of the criticism directed at the administration; the administration does not communicate with those who disagree with their beliefs (CIA, Military planners, experiences officers, the U.N. inspectors they sent in), they refuse to cooperate with congress unless absolutely necessary, their focus on Iraq has distracted them from the war on terror as well as drained valuable resources.

The criticism will continue as long as they continue to refuse to deal with the issues at hand. They simply close the door, take the phone off the hook and continue as before.

It looks like the new liberal network Air America is off the air in Los Angeles and Chicago. Apparently they bounced a check. They are supposedly in negotiations with the station owners trying to work out a deal.
Full Story Here.

The fledgling network is getting off the ground slowly, but they are on the air on ten stations including XM satelite radio.
The reviews so far have been mixed. Franken is not as funny as some hoped, and the tone is more strident than what many were expecting. Of course, what must be remembered is that this is talk radio, entertainment with a political bent, not Capital Beat.

Those who can't get Air America on the air, can pick up the stream on the internet from their website.