Saturday, June 11, 2005

Open Thread

Because there is never enough thread.

Open Thread

Rock on.

Open Thread

Because there is never enough thread.

Open Thread

Have fun.

Open Thread

Rock on.

Steve Speak

Conyers listen:

First and most damaging to me, why would the White House see a need to build a strategic information campaign using White House staff to manipulate media coverage in favor of a war months in advance of going to the UN, Congress, and the American people if the issue and decision had not already been made? Retired Air Force Colonel Sam Gardiner wrote a little-noticed but never disputed paper that outlined the steps the Bush Administration took to build what in essence was a strategic influence and disinformation campaign to manipulate the media and sway public opinion in favor of a war that Bush says he hadn’t yet decided upon. These efforts started with the creation of the Coalition Information Office by none other than Karen Hughes at about the same time the Downing Street Memo said that Bush had made up his mind. Colonel Gardiner feels that organization was in fact put together at the time of the memo, and that the “marketing” of the war began in September when Congress returned from summer recess. Since his study came out, Colonel Gardiner has received confirmation from a number of sources including sources inside the Bush Administration that almost all of his initial conclusions were correct. Even though the whole study is chilling, pay particular attention to his material from Page 50 onward to see how the Downing Street Memo can be supported with Gardiner’s work. Perhaps Congressman Conyers can call Colonel Gardiner as a witness next week to lay out the involvement of the White House and outside GOP public relations firms in selling a war to the Congress and the American people through an intimidated and spoon-fed media, a campaign that actually commenced around the same time that the Downing Street Memo indicated a decision had already been made. And yes, I've talked with Gardiner today, and Colonel Gardiner is willing to share his information with Conyers.

Second, none other than Bob Woodward himself in his wet-kiss book “Bush at War” reported that Bush authorized Rumsfeld to move approximately $700 million from Afghanistan reconstruction to the establishment of a logistical infrastructure to support an Iraq invasion, without the required congressional notice and authority. When did this happen, as Woodward notes with a great deal of risk of legal problems for the White House? It happened in July 2002, at about the same time as the Downing Street Memo was written saying the decision had already been made by Bush, within a month of the Downing Street Memo. Perhaps Conyers can call Bob Woodward as a witness to testify about what he found in researching his book on this congressionally-unauthorized transfer of funds from Afghan reconstruction to Iraq war planning during the Summer of 2002.

And lastly, it has been reported that Bush dropped in on a White House meeting in Condi Rice’s office in March 2002, and blurted to the three startled US senators Rice was meeting with “Fuck Saddam, we’re going to take him out.” Perhaps Conyers can call the three senators as well as Michael Elliott and James Carney of Time Magazine to confirm what Bush said and did, three months before the Downing Street Memo said that a decision had already been made.

Again, the key for Conyers is not to get trapped into building his case primarily upon the fixed intelligence claim in the memo, but to build also a circumstantial case as well that supports the bigger claim that the decision had already been made by the White House to go to war in the Summer of 2002, despite what was being told to Congress and the American people.

Money Update

1213 donations totalling $53925.72.

Plus ça change plus c'est la même chose

Jesse, blogathoning away, writes:

One: The most prominent rumor I hear about Glenn is that before September 11th, he was generally much saner and fairer. This, unfortunately, is bullshit.


Actually Reynolds was widely considered to be eminently reasonable long after that by many people who should've known better. When I began blogging many on "my side" didn't approve of my tendency to not show proper deference to him. Ah, memories.

Anyway, Jesse digs up something from the perfesser from 1995 which proves the point rather strongly.

Repackage

Yglesias takes issue with Lindsey Graham's recent statement:

We should assume there are going to be 100,000 troops in Iraq two years from now, and continuing losses. It is time to repackage this war and let Americans know we are fighting for freedom.

He writes:

Spouting nonsense in response to what you know perfectly well to be a problem is, in my opinion, far worse than just being a dupe. It's obviously that unless we're going to implement a fairly massive increase in the level of resources dedicated to this conflict, which nobody seems to want to do, that we need to be making plans for a relatively expeditious exit from it.


I don't think this is entirely nonsense, though nor do I think it'll solve the problem. The way we were brought into this and the Bush administration's unwillingness to deviate from "happy talk" about Iraq has made our military situation much, much worse than it has to be.

This war was going to be easy, cost nothing, and require nothing from most of the public except throwing away their Dixie Chicks CDs and the pouring out of all of their French wine. Notions of shared sacrifice, of a genuine collective patriotism, and a genuine "support the troops" agenda were ignored. I can't remember a single prominent lawmaker or public figure of any sort getting up and saying "America is fighting for freedom, and those who truly love their country and who are able should make the ultimate commitment to it." No one has asserted that the patriotic thing to do would be to enlist.

And, of course they haven't. Peter Beinart looks to be in fine fighting form to me, but he's busy fighting the patriotic fight against Move On. Tex Sensenbrenner has twentysomething children, and I'm pretty sure they haven't signed up. Jenna and NotJenna haven't enlisted. The 101st Fighting Keyboarders believe they are fighting this war from their basements.

The point is that 9/11 and Iraq could've been used to create a kind of "national greatness conservatism" that the Bull Moose and McCain used to blather about, through a variety of mechanisms. Colin Powell could have been used to give teary "sacrifice for your country" speeches instead of pushing scary stories about Saddam the Destroyer. Peggy Noonan could've shifted from writing mash notes to firefighters to writing mashnotes to the troops. But, McCain lost that election and commander codpiece and his fop brigade are running things, there's no way any of them or their people are going to enlist, and all of this stuff is alien to them.

It's certainly not that I want there to be a successful campaign to get people to send their sons and daughters off to die for George Bush's war. Nor do I really want our country to be defined by a military-centered patriotism. I think that now it's probably too late to have a successful repackaging to do so. However, the prospect of a military hollow in the middle and empty at the bottom is a very real problem.

So, how about it? Private NotJenna reporting for duty?

Thought of the Day

From Rick Perlstein, TAP 12/6/04:

We talk about southern culture, blue-collar culture, NASCAR culture -- which overlaps, in complicated ways, with evangelical culture. Certainly one tenet they all share is this: When somebody punches you in the gut, you don?t smile, stride halfway between his position and yours, and say that maybe the guy has a point. Behaving like that is precisely what has made the Democrats look so unsympathetically unfocused and confused to so many people.

Wow

I got through an entire Tierney column without getting pissed off.

Pandathon

Pandagon is having a blogathon for Amnesty International.

Open Thread

Rock on.

Open Thread

Enjoy.

Open Thread

Rock on.

Friday, June 10, 2005

BoBo's World

Meth mouth:

From the moment on Thursday when the young man sat down in Dr. Richard Stein's dental chair in southwestern Kansas and opened his mouth, Dr. Stein was certain he recognized the enemy. This had to be the work, he concluded, of methamphetamine, a drug that is leaving its mark, especially in the rural regions of the Midwest and the South, on families, crime rates, economies, legislatures - and teeth.

Quite distinct from the oral damage done by other drugs, sugar and smoking, methamphetamine seems to be taking a unique, and horrific, toll inside its users' mouths. In short stretches of time, sometimes just months, a perfectly healthy set of teeth can turn a grayish-brown, twist and begin to fall out, and take on a peculiar texture less like that of hard enamel and more like that of a piece of ripened fruit.

The condition, known to some as meth mouth, has been studied little in dentistry's academic circles and is unknown to many dentists, whose patients are increasingly focused on cosmetic issues: the bleaching and perfect veneers of television's makeover shows. But other dentists, especially those in the open, empty swaths of land where methamphetamine is being manufactured in homemade laboratories, say they are seeing a growing number of such cases.

Thanks Al

And a big fuck you to the liberal media for robbing Al Gore of what will probably be his biggest legacy - creating the internet. I've never seen anyone even attempt to seriously dispute the assertion of "no Al Gore, no internet." It's hard to imagine, about 12 years after mosiac, that the web wasn't inevitable. However, it surely wasn't. There's a pretty good chance that without Senator big geek Gore we would never have had the "information superhighway." Sure, we would have had a set of competing walled gardens (compuserve, aol, etc...) which would've probably had improved interconnectedness over time. But, I do believe that without Gore (and, of course, others) there's a pretty good chance that the Web as we know it, or anything similiar, would never have existed.

So, once again, thanks Al.

heh-indeedy

Steve Clemons

Wanker of the Day

Falafel Bill.

The Worst Restaurant Review of All Time

I'm not sure if Majikthise is correct on this. There have probably been worse. But, I just want to make sure to add that what she calls the worst restaurant review of all time was written by someone who is fast getting the reputation for being the worst restaurant reviewer, if not of all time than at least of all the New York Times.


And that man, Frank Bruni, we must remember, was probably the worst campaign reviewer or campaign reporter or whatever we call them of all the time. One can blame Gore's "loss" on many things, but it certainly wasn't helped by fluffer Bruni's daily love letter to George in the liberal New York Times. I find it fairly funny (not, of course, "ha ha" funny) that Bruni's food reviews seem to get more aired criticism than his campaign reviews.

Theater

In a just world John would be a millionaire. He may be, for all I know, though since we both own the same $20 gap shirt I doubt it. He has an excellent idea:

This story is 100 times as important as anything Howard Dean did or didn't say. We need to take what happened today and run with it. I can only imagine the protests - members of the House with gags on. Imagine all the Dems walking around for one day next week with gags on, on the House floor, in hearings. Come on guys, let's do it :-)


click through to understand why.

Paul Lynde Was Gay?

Well slap my ass and call me Liberace. Always the last to know.

Popcorn

Could this be the finger the takes tiny flick at the house of cards?

AUSTIN - The Texas Association of Business, accused of illegally soliciting and using $1.9 million of corporate money in 2002 statehouse elections, must give their accusers information about the donations, the Texas Supreme Court ruled Friday.

Those alleging wrongdoing are some 2002 Democratic candidates who lost their races. The TAB must give the candidates' attorneys a list of how many businesses donated to the group and how much each donated.

"It means everything for the future of the case," said attorney Buck Wood, adding the information will be used to investigate which companies donated money to TAB and how that money was used.

Democrats contend the association, along with Texans for a Republican Majority Political Action Committee, worked together to funnel corporate money into Texas House races in 2002. Attorneys for TAB and TRMPAC argue the money the groups raised was used legally.

Friday Cat Blogging

A rare almost action shot:


Just sitting there:




And, bonus Friday Howard Dean and Nancy Skinner blogging:

Lies and the Lying Liars

Limbaugh full of it as usual.

Loons

Drum writes:

It's true that there are conspiracy loons on the left too. But to get a glimpse of the genuine 200-proof article, you really have to hang out at the right wing taverns. There's just nothing to compare.


To be fair, one can find the genuine 200-proof article hanging out at the left wing taverns too. However, such people are completely marginalized by our media when they are on the left and when they're on the right they have their own television shows and major positions at prominent think tanks and full access to the liberal media to push their crazy new books, etc...

To be fair to conspiracy loons of all types, sometimes they're on to something...

Exhibit A Against the Press

So FishbowlDC runs a funny MSNBC photo. A former journalist says he's "started to hear references to it being fake. Is it fake? I have no idea. Nor does he. But, from this he concludes:

Then I thought, what a coincidence: This is EXACTLY why newspapers are still more reliable in the end than blogs: Newspapers have editors to check to make sure photos like this are indeed authentic or fake.

But, he also has no idea whether FishbowlDC did or didn't verify its legitimacy before posting it. Maybe he did?

He emails:
I'm wondering if either site ran a correction or anything to let your readers know that it's authenticity is in question or doubt.


But who's doubting other than this guy? Again, I have no idea if the picture is real or fake.



But, anyway, this brings us to the more important part of the story. From the New York Times, Feb. 2004:

And on Thursday, a new photograph of the senator and the actress began circulating via e-mail. Unlike the image Mr. Sampley bought, which shows Mr. Kerry seated several rows behind Ms. Fonda, this picture - its origins are unclear - shows them side by side, Ms. Fonda behind a microphone and Mr. Kerry, holding a notebook, to her right.


Very tricksy of the Times this was, saying "its origins are unclear." However, a quick google search would've brought them here. So, its origins were clear just not to the reporter or editors who didn't spent the 5 seconds on the internets to determine what they were..

The point here is not that newspapers shouldn't be allowed to ever screw up. The point is that journalists should stop talking about the Platonic ideal of their profession, rather than what actually goes on day to day.

The Cornhole

June 10 edition.

Check Mate

Froomkin writes:

When is it time to start referring to Bush as an unpopular president? When his approval ratings are solidly below 50 percent for at least three months? Check. When his approval ratings on his signature issues are in the red? Check. When a clear majority of Americans say he is ignoring the public's concerns and instead has become distracted by issues that most people say they care little about? Check.


Sounds reasonable, but they won't do it. The narrative frame of "unpopular president" will not be allowed to take hold in the media. They won't do it.

Open Thread

Rock on.

Open Thread

Enjoy.

The Situation

Jay Severin has been hired by MSNBC to be on bowtie boy's new show. Media Matters gives us some of his greatest hits.

I ask again, is there anything a conservative can say which can get them drummed out of public life?

Got Your Back Fund Update

1015 donations for a total of $45998.91.


You can donate here.

Hilarity

This really was one of the funniest things I've ever read.

Kos explains.

Lovely

Another wonderful new Bush nominee.

Lesbo

Hillary's a lesbo! LESBO! LESBOLESBOLESBOLESBOLESBOLESBOLESBOLESBO.

These people are pathetic.

...as NYMary points out, by Klein's standards (Oh my! she touched the lesbianic hair of a lesbianic lesbian!) Bush is a power bottom.

Red Alert

AP Poll:

WASHINGTON - As the war in Iraq drags on, President Bush's job approval and the public's confidence in the direction he's taking the nation are at their lowest levels since The Associated Press-Ipsos poll began in December 2003.

About one-third of adults, 35 percent, said they think the country is headed in the right direction, while 43 percent said they approve of the job being done by Bush. Just 41 percent say they support his handling of the war, also a low-water mark.


Off the Christmas List

WaPo done a bad thing.

Fuck Jesse Helms

What DrFrankLives says.

Thursday, June 09, 2005

Support the Troops

Apparently Fox News has just said "aw, fuck it" when it comes to covering the deaths of American soldiers. They stopped updating their fatality list almost a month ago.

More Thread

845 for $37285.98...

thanks to all who have linked.

Fresh Thread

Enjoy.

Fox News Meltdown

this is hilarious.

It can't be said enough that the problem with Fox News is not that it's conservative, it's that its essentially a mouthpiece of the God's Own Party. I can't think of any other media outlet, except maybe Rush Limbaugh, which so perfectly functions as an RNC puke funnel - not the ideological press in Europe, not the Weekly Standard and National Review, not even the New York Post.

Money

680 donations for $29598.48.



...741 for $32698.73


...769 for $33633.76

Open Thread

Rock on.

Splice and Dice

Looks like Bill O'Reilly is taking lessons from Lisa Myers and Jeff Greenfield.

National

I don't know why the Dems have been slow about making Coingate national. Here's another way in...

500 Donations

Totalling $20903.31.

Well, that's one fewer wealthy donor with a sense of entitlement Dean has to waste time with.

Wealthy donors who don't go whining to the press when their feelings are hurt are of course appreciated.

Rude

The Rude Pundit of course lives up to his name, so those with delicate sensibilities should not click through. The rest of you however...

If I were Howard Dean, I'd hire Mr. Pundit to be my speechwriter.

Information

Ah, the New York Times, courageously running profiles of judicial nominees after the voting was over.

But there’s one slight problem with Kirkpatrick’s report; it appears in this morning’s Times, the day after Brown’s confirmation! Much like its cowardly buddy (the Washington Post), the Times refused to profile Brown in the weeks before her Senate vote, when a tough-talking front-page profile like this might have sparked some real debate. But then, this is exactly what the fearless Times did in the case of another disputed judge, Priscilla Owen. Kirkpatrick did a front-page profile of Owen last Thursday—also on the morning after the Senate voted to confirm.

Dance Monkeyboy Dance

A primary reason why the kool kids klub of beltway media are so hostile to Democrats is that the Democrats listen. They yell dance and the Democrats start dancing. It's the power they have and they get off on using it. Republicans, on the other hand, never dance, so the kool kids klub stops bothering to make them try.

Will our elected reps ever understand this?

Matt Speak

You Listen.

$11330.11 $13535.14 $15690.21 $18908.29 $20503.31

Thanks all. That's a little bit less time Dean needs to spend bowing before the insiders.

...Liberal Oasis has more.

Famous

This is pretty stunning:

The memo was leaked this year to the Times of London, which printed it on May 1. The story, coming on the eve of Blair's reelection, generated extensive press coverage in Britain. In setting up his question to Mehlman on Sunday, Russert said, "Let me turn to the now famous Downing Street memo" (emphasis added).

Famous? It would be famous in America if the D.C. press corps functioned the way it's supposed to. Russert's June 5 reference, five weeks after the story broke, represented the first time NBC News had even mentioned the document or the controversy surrounding it. In fact, Russert's query was the first time any of the network news divisions addressed the issue seriously. In an age of instant communications, the American mainstream media has taken an exceedingly long time -- as if news of the memo had traveled by vessel across the Atlantic Ocean -- to report on the leaked document. Nor has it considered its grave implications -- namely, that President Bush lied to the American people and Congress during the run-up to the war with Iraq when he insisted over and over again that war was his administration's last option.


Bob Somerby has commented on the fact that frequently op-ed pages mention facts that appear nowhere in their newspapers. I've started to notice this a lot on cable news too. They're aware of a set of facts, and occasionally they even mention one or two, but frequently they discuss issues as if their viewing public knows these things, without ever having bothered to inform them.

Resign

I don't know if the state of Ohio has an mechanism to remove a sitting governor, but I think it's about time for him to resign.

Gov. Bob Taft’s office learned seven months ago — not this week — that the Ohio Bureau of Workers’ Compensation had lost $225 million in a high-risk investment.

In an Oct. 26, 2004, e-mail to Taft aide James Samuel, the bureau’s administrator-CEO, James Conrad, wrote that the “entire value” of the portfolio managed by MDL Capital Management was down about $225 million.

Mr. Conrad also alerted the governor’s office that the bureau had rejected MDL’s request for another $25 million and the firm was in danger of collapsing, which he said would be “likely to make national news.”


Who wants to guess the number of times CNN has mentioned this story in the past month?

Open Thread

Enjoy.

Open Thread

Have fun.

Wednesday, June 08, 2005

Open Thread

Because there is never enough thread.

Because Candy Crowley Hates America

I've been resisting the idea of encouraging people to donate to party orgs for various reasons. But, the Democrat insider attacks on Howard Dean are, frankly, an attack on all of us.

As Bobbi Flekman told us, "money talks and bullshit walks." So, if you're a wee bit unhappy with the way the spoiled brat Dem insiders are behaving, go give Howard Dean a few bucks.

Kitty Porn

So wrong, but so right.

True Love

Driftglass is certainly onto something here with the conservative mindset.

It reminds me somewhat of people I've known who are in the breakup stages of an emotionally abusive relationship. In those final moments, post breakup, they convince themselves that this person who has shit on them and who they've been fighting with for months or more is the most wonderful perfect human being on the planet and they feel the deepest and truest love for them that could ever be felt by anyone. In the middle of the trauma of a rough breakup it's easier to seize on that than the alternative (truth) - that you just wasted a few years with a truly awful awful person.

Big Ideas

You really have to love Mayor Mike's whinefest. What a loser (though, it must be said, a very rich loser and if I ever feels the need to donate large sums of money to a certain blogger I'll happily allow myself to be bought).

Less than 24 hours after watching his stadium dreams crushed in Albany, the mayor delivered a downcast assessment of the city's future even as he vowed to continue pushing an aggressive development agenda. His normally sanguine outlook tempered by the previous day's events, Mr. Bloomberg said the defeat of the Manhattan stadium threatened to define New York as a place where big ideas are doomed to fail.

"I think it was a major blow to this city," he said. "I think most people understand this; that we have lost something. We've lost a little bit of our spirit to go ahead and our can-do attitude. If you adopt this kind of policy, we never would have built Carnegie Hall, we never would have built Radio City Music Hall, we never would have built the airports, or the Triborough Bridge or Central Park."

He added, "One of the great dangers is that developers are going to get disheartened and say, 'I can't build anything in New York City because the politics always get in the way.' "


Yeah, whatever. I'm no New Yorker, though I'd love to be if I had enough money to not be a Poor New Yorker, but there are plenty of Big Ideas that probably would manage to sail through the politics.

2nd Avenue Subway for starters.

Take the stadium land and develop a genuine urban village there, and not some faux-suburban monstrosity that seems too much the rage in cities these days.

42nd street light rail is worth considering.

Oh, and then there's that whole downtown development someone should be thinking about.

And, generally, hunting around the city to find all the land parcels which would be suitable for medium-rise housing with street level retail.

Torture Lou

He's the Zen master of crappy polls, so let's vote for "effective."

Vote for Americans

Victory for the underdog and perhaps a future victory against Wal-Mart, but I can't help but wonder if Asian-Americans will ever stop being considered to be "foreign" by a large chunk of our country. It's a very insidious manifestation of racism which is far more damaging than is often acknowledged:

Jun Choi, a political newcomer who tapped into Edison's burgeoning Asian population, wrestled the Democratic nomination from Mayor George Spadoro yesterday in a stunning upset.

Choi, the first Asian-American to run for mayor in the sprawling township, credited his victory to an army of Election Day volunteers who placed thousands of calls, knocked on doors, hung signs, and brought voters to the polls.

"They said it couldn't be done," Choi told more than 200 cheering supporters at his campaign headquarters in an office building on Main Street. "They said we didn't stand a chance. The pundits and the insiders said it was hopeless, but they were wrong."

...

Choi, who made his first bid for public office, was virtually unknown until two radio hosts on NJ 101.5 FM poked fun at his Korean heritage, asking who would vote for someone with that name and insisting Americans should vote for Americans.


And, yes, the publicity surrounding the DJ's comments is what propelled him to victory but they're still quite disturbing.

The Stupids

First, let's take a look at the alternative universe inhabited by our good friend the Assrocket:

Anyone who relies on the newspapers believes that 1) we went to war only because of Saddam's WMDs, and 2) there weren't any WMDs.


Unlike Assrocket who relies on a combination of messages beamed from Grover Norquist's navel and the collected works of Laurie Mylroie.

And, this is about the stupidest thing I've ever read, which of course means it's had a universal "heh-indeedy" from the wingnutosphere.

Incredible.

Wanker of the Day

Have to go local here for a minute. Ward Leader Carol Campbell has singlehandedly stopped the reintroduction of the Girard Ave. trolley here in Philadelphia.


THIS YEAR, amid all the parades and fireworks of the July 4th holiday, Philadelphia will celebrate another, more embarrassing anniversary:

It will be exactly one year since this city's political leaders shelved the Route 15 trolley - an estimated $82 million public works project that was already paid for, and ready to resume its historic route along the Girard Avenue corridor.

Why?

Because Carol Campbell, a ward leader who also happens to be an officer in Philadelphia's Democratic City Committee, didn't want to lose parking on one side of a block in her neighborhood.

The Truth About Edward Klein

When I read the Vanity Fair excerpt of Edward Klein's anti-Hillary book my first reaction was it was just a rehashing of all the bullshit they threw at her during her Senate campaign. Nothing new.

It was worse than I thought. It looks like he's cribbed big chunks of it from Sidney Blumenthal, and in the Vanity Fair excerpt at least without attribution.

Be Very Afraid

Now that Bush is opening the door to a private-accountless plan we can all be very very scared. Bill Thomas is currently cavorting in one of the lower circles of hell with Satan's own actuaries and tax experts trying to craft some sort of plan which will one way or another open the door to the destruction of Social Security and a massive shift of the tax burden over the long run onto the poor and the middle class. It won't say that of course, and it will be meticulously designed to appeal to the only focus group that really matters - the Russert/Hiatt/TNR center right crowd who will demand that the Democrats applaud this wonderful compromise.

The fight is about to begin anew...

The News is News

What CJR Daily says. It's incredibly disorienting watching the one hour CNN International feed on CNN. One is reminded what "news" is when it isn't the politics-as-gossip and missing white women we've become accustomed to.

More Ohio Fun

$455K to lie to kids about sex. Wonderful.

Shift

Link:

WASHINGTON - President Bush has all but conceded his plan for private accounts for Social Security is dead, admitting privatization won't save the federal retirement system.
"You can solve the solvency issue without personal accounts," Bush said in an interview with the Radio-Television News Directors Association.

Private accounts have been the cornerstone of Bush's Social Security plan, and the White House insisted he's not abandoning them. He still plans to talk up privatization as an option for young Americans, but his primary focus now will be on keeping the program healthy


Of course it's hard to understand how we can think about the issue of solvency as long as the preznit is yammering about file cabinets filled with meaningless IOUs. Until he stops that any increase in pre-funding is a sucker's game...

Open Thread

Enjoy.

Keyboard Kommandos

Episode 1.



While you're visiting the Poor Man, read this too. A couple of times. Then print it out and pass it around.

Money Laundering

Reading through the whole Toledo Blade article it's pretty clear that the Republicans in Ohio turned the Workers' Compensation Bureau into a two way money laundering system - rewarding donors with cash, who would then recycle some of it into political donations.

WTF?

Uh, yeah, the Republican party is "pretty much the white Christian party."

Sleazier Than the Swifites

The new anti-Hillary book appears to be filled with crap, unsurprisingly. Let's pre-emptively convene a panel on blogger ethics so we can discuss the fact that this will not prevent it from getting numerous hours of uncritical coverage on our ethical media outlets.

Open Thread

Rock on.

Open Thread

Have fun.

Tuesday, June 07, 2005

Milky Boobies

Sure, I get a bit uncomfortable when a mother (I assume wet nurses aren't as common as they used to be) unveils her breasts and begins feeding jr.

But, who cares what I think? Really. Have child, s/he's hungry, you do what you have to do. Kudos to all of you who think my being made uncomfortable by it is Not Your Problem.

It's Hard to Lose it All

Really. You gotta be one fucked up investor to lose ALL YOUR MONEY. The Ohio GOP is following in the footsteps of a prior Orange County administration.

COLUMBUS - The Ohio Bureau of Workers’ Compensation admitted today that it lost $215 million in a high-risk fund that few people knew about.

The bureau had invested $355 million with a Pittsburgh investment firm, MDL Capital Management, beginning in 1998.

But last year, after diverting $225 million into a fund that works like a hedge fund, the fund lost $215 million. Although the bureau has known about the loss since last year, Gov. Bob Taft was notified about it today.

People Who Will Never Be the Democratic Nominee for President

This is not about my personal preferences. Just stating the facts:

Bill Richardson
Ed Rendell
Joe Lieberman
Bob Kerrey
John Kerry (take 2, obviously)
Howard Dean

McCain the Sucker

I think stranger is right and Big Media Matt is wrong on the gist. The fact that Mark McKinnon is going to work for McCain is just evidence that McCain is a bit of a fool. Keep your friends close and enemies closer and all that. McKinnon will knife McCain as soon as it's appropriate.

Kerry

One can debate whether Kerry should've released his military records during the campaign. It may have helped. It may have not. But, it's certainly wrong to be sure of this opinion. As August writes:

If Kerry bowed to right-wing pressure last year and given them the records because he actually felt he had something to prove to them, what would be next? Accepting their challenge to debate them in that god-awful Sinclair Media propoganda "Stolen Honor" event? Allowing them to examine his scars live on television the night before the election? Each ridiculous demand would top the next, and each would be backed by the warbloggers with the proud standby that "if he doesn't say yes, he's hiding something."


More than that, assuredly Jeff Gerth would've stepped in and figured out that if you translated the records into German and back, and then read some sort of Adam Nagourney misinterpretation of something Kerry had said, you could claim there was some sort of minor discrepancy which could be divined if you'd drank a lot of tequila while reading Peggy Noonan columns, and this would blow up into 4 more months of "questions."

The point is that as long as our liberal media is willing to run unsubstantiated bullshit and accusations from the right nonstop, it's silly to imagine that anything can innoculate us against it. That isn't to say there's good strategy and bad strategy in the face of it, but in this particular case I think Kerry's actions may have been correct. At least, I think it's wrong to believe that had he signed the release previously it would have had any noticeable effect on the Chris Matthews election narrative.

Wanker of the Day

Robert G. "The Wanker" Kaiser.

Look Posties. "Pincus's page" at the Washington post - A18 - is why you've become a joke.

Pincus should've been on the front page before the war, and he should be there now.

Wanker.

Open Thread

Have fun.

Open Thread

Rock on.

Internalize This

Bush is an unpopular president.

Anything?

CNN just exhumed Ed Rollins to babble about stuff. Is there anything a Republican can do that will drive them out of public life? Rollins, you may remember, got in a mini-scandal when he boasted about bribing black ministers to suppress voter turnout in Jersey.

Maybe Bill Bennett was onto something with that whole "Death of Outrage" stuff.

Did Bush Lie?

well, no shit.

Open Thread

Have fun.

Occasional Reminder

Just a few points some people forget sometimes:

1) This blog does not exist to promote you, your blog, your business, your organization, your pet issue or cause. Failure to promote or link to any particular thing should not be taken as disapproval of it.

2) If a story falls on the front page of the New York Times, and I don't say anything about it, some people probably will manage to actually hear about it even without it appearing on this page.

3) If Josh Marshall, Tapped, the Washington Monthly, Daily Kos, Pandagon and numerous other blogs talk about something, and I don't, some people probably will manage to actually hear about it even without it appearing on this page.

4) People who write angry emails chastising me for not writing about issue X or demanding that I do so generally find their way into my spam filter. I imagine many other bloggers react similarly. See also 1) and 2) above.

5) People who write angry emails chastising me for writing about issue X and complaining that there are so many more important things to write about generally find their way into my spam filter. I imagine many other bloggers react similarly. See also 4) and 1) and 2) above.

6) Such occasional reminders are not angry bitter complaints. None of the above should discourage people from emailing me with things they think I might be interested in. There is a big difference between "this is interesting" and "you must write about this." Nor should any of the above be taken to mean that I react badly to any and all criticism of what I write. It's just the type of criticism that comes from people who get angry when this blog isn't their personal megaphone that annoys me. "What you wrote is wrong" is very different from "how dare you do/don't write about issue X."

White House Involved in Boeing Corruption Scandal

Stunning.

Look over there! A missing white woman!

Pod People

I hope I never get on Wolcott's bad side.

Delicious Pepper Sausage

Giblets discusses Dem obstructionism.

Edge

Mahablog writes:

Now is the time for the Dems to stop being fuzzy and shapeless and find an edge.


I think that sums it up pretty well. Self-identified moderates and independents aren't, on the whole, issue voters. Trying to appeal to them by being accomodationist is the wrong way to go. Sure there are places where Democrats have to be fairly conservative to win elections, but many Democrats who try to fashion themselves as moderates simply lose their shape, their definition, their edge. For the most part this has nothing to do with positions on actual policies, but fuzzy accomodationist rhetoric. It doesn't appeal to voters, just the "The Note" crowd.

Compromise is something you do behind the scenes. Stop doing it in public.



...one more thing, the only refutation to the "liberal media" canard necessary is a daily reading of the Note. I wouldn't recommend it, however, as it will likely cause you to kill yourself. Consider this from today's brilliant dispatch:

4. Did the Swift Boat Veterans who demanded Sen. Kerry sign the Form 180 get what they wanted, given that his military records are pretty much what was released during the campaign? Or does it just give them a little mileage out of the average-student thing? And will Kerry push back in "now show us yours" way?



Yes, because Kerry had shitty grades in college this validates the Swift Boat Veterans and their media enablers. Your self-justifying celebrity press corps in action.

Swift Boat Liars

Still liars.

Someone should count up the number of hours on cable news these people were given, and then we could talk about it at a conference on blogger ethics.

Hemmer

There are so many things one can say about Bill Hemmer leaving CNN. First, of course, is thank God! Next thought is what does it fucking say about CNN that they'd make Bill Hemmer their White House correspondent. What does it say about Bill Hemmer, who's usually even more smug about the art of journalism than Aaron Brown is, that he'd quit rather than actually have to do something besides read a teleprompter or stand in a storm.

Open Thread

Rock on.

Open Thread

Because there is never enough thread.

Monday, June 06, 2005

Open Thread

Enjoy.

Miracle Whip Pizza

Oh just fucking kill me.


(title explained here)

Falafel!

For some reason no one wants to pay a lot of money to spend a week with Bill O'Reilly.

Dishonorable Discharge From the 101st Fighting Keyboarders

At the Take Back America conference someone asked me why, of all of the fine officers of the 101st Fighting Keyboarders, do we tend to pick on Jonah Goldberg most of all for not enlisting in the actual military. I don't remember what I actually responded, but I've thought about it more a bit since. I suppose the reason is that unlike most of the rest of the 101st, who don't even think they need to bother to construct excuses for their unwillingness to support their words with deeds - they recognize that's for suckers - Jonah actually seems to imagine that he'd be a hero, if only... And, his stated "if only" is, to put it mildly, fucking sad given the sacrifices of all the people fighting Jonah's War. Remember, Jonah wrote:

As for why my sorry a** isn't in the kill zone, lots of people think this is a searingly pertinent question. No answer I could give -- I'm 35 years old, my family couldn't afford the lost income, I have a baby daughter, my a** is, er, sorry, are a few -- ever seem to suffice.


This sad pathetic response makes Jonah not worthy of the 101st Fighting Keyboarders, the most honorable of whom never acknowledge that serving the cause they send others to die for is even a possibility to consider, let alone make excuses for.

A 19 year old woman from Idaho just died for Jonah's War. Wonder if he cares?

The Big Money

If I could go back in time I would do so, quit my education, and sign on to whatever Google position I could which would have given me stock options. And, to the couple current/former google employees that I know - hey, ya greedy bastards, drop a couple shares into your favorite blogger's tip jar. But, can anyone given a sane justification for its $80 billion market cap?

The Long Game

I just watched the 7th episode of the new Doctor Who series because, uh, my TV strangely picks up time delayed signals from the BBC. If I were one of those annoying people who saw politics in every corner of pop culture I would assert:

Satellite 5 is Fox News.
The alien "Max" represents unspecified Iranian players (and, it must be said, looked a bit like Roger Ailes).
The great and bountiful 4th empire, controlled by Satellite 5, is Amurkah.

But, such observations are silly.

Holy Crap

We hear a lot about how the news audience is graying, but jeebus on a cracker I don't think I'd ever really internalized just how bad it is. Recent ratings numbers:

Total viewers, total day: FNC: 869,000 / CNN: 352,000 / MSNBC: 186,000

Total viewers, primetime: FNC: 1,758,000 / CNN: 721,000 / MSNBC: 306,000

25-54 demo, primetime [I think this should say daytime, not primetime -a]: FNC: 304,000 / CNN: 98,000 / MSNBC: 76,000

25-54 demo, primetime: FNC: 416,000 / CNN: 150,000 / MSNBC: 129,000




I assume that the <25 crowd is a trivial part of the audience. So, only about 25% of, for example, CNN's daytime audience is younger than 55 and about 15% of its primetime audience.

wow.


(bonus giggle link here)

That's A Lot of Wine

Coingate marches on:

Investigators seized hundreds of rare coins, Cuban cigars, computers, documents, and took custody of 3,500 bottles of wine over the weekend during searches of the home and office of a former employee of Tom Noe, a spokesman for the Jefferson County, Colorado, Sheriff’s Office said today.

As many as 10 investigators and lab technicians spent 12 hours on Friday scouring the Evergreen, Colorado, home of Michael Storeim, a former manager of Numismatic Professionals, which is a subsidiary of Ohio’s $50 million rare-coin venture.

Investigators then turned their attention to the offices of Michael Storeim Inc., where they spent six hours seizing documents, invoices and computers, said Jacki Tallman, a spokesman for the sheriff.

Sean Hearted Hal

Great stuff from Max Blumenthal.

They Write Letters

I write to Salon:


Dear Salon,


Please stop sucking.


Love,

Atrios

They Write Letters

David Brock writes to Rick Kaplan at MSNBC:

Dear Mr. Kaplan:

We noted with interest MSNBC's impending launch of The Situation With Tucker Carlson. We thought we would take the opportunity to offer you our input.

Given the current lineup on MSNBC and its fellow cable news channels, the addition of one more conservative as a prime-time host -- particularly one with a penchant for hyperbole, distortion and outright misinformation -- will further skew MSNBC's prime-time lineup and undermine the network's credibility. MSNBC already features one conservative host in prime time (Joe Scarborough), not to mention Chris Matthews, whose undisguised contempt for liberals and Democrats seems to grow by the day (as Media Matters for America recently documented, despite absurd claims from the right that he is a liberal, Matthews has admitted voting for President Bush "at least once," proudly said he "defended [Bush] against the liberal elite," and echoed conservative talking points on any number of issues).

Even though the addition of Carlson means that you are adding yet another conservative as sole host of a prime-time show, we would like to encourage you to allow some progressive voices to be heard as well. Preliminary reports indicate that Carlson's program will feature a regular group of panelists to discuss issues in the news. We are sure that you have a genuine desire that these panels be balanced. Allow us to suggest what true balance would look like.

First, a discussion between two conservatives and one progressive is not "balanced." On the typical cable news show, the conservative host will be joined by a conservative guest and a liberal guest, making for a 2-to-1 imbalance. Sometimes, these shows even tilt 3-to-1 against the sacrificial progressive. Media Matters noted such a panel on MSNBC during last fall's presidential debate and a series of them during the presidential inauguration in January.

Second, a discussion between two conservatives and one reporter for a mainstream news organization is not "balanced." All too often, reporters are brought on as foils for opinionated conservatives, leaving no one to advocate a progressive position and playing into the distorted conservative complaint that journalists are liberal advocates. This is not to say that reporters shouldn't be panelists, but when they are, don't fool yourself into thinking they balance conservatives. Media Matters also noted this phenomenon on MSNBC during last fall's presidential debates.

There are many articulate, interesting, insightful progressives who would be assets to panel discussions -- not just on Carlson's show but on any similar program on your channel. If you are having any trouble filling the slots, don't hesitate to get in touch with us for some suggestions.

Sincerely,

David Brock

Open Thread

Enjoy.

This Modern Watergate

heh-indeedy.

"Shameless, Debauched People"

Tomasky's been eating his wheaties lately.

Bye Bye Dino

We hardly knew ye.

Lies and the Lying Liars

The very first verifiable fact released from a new Newsmax-pushed anti-Hillary book turns out to be easily verified as... a lie.

This, of course, is unlikely to prevent the author from getting the red carpet treatment all over our liberal media.

Runaway Bride

Apparently "all missing pretty white women, all the time" isn't actually a ratings winner for CNN. No matter, they're still doing it...

Covering the April death and succession of Pope John Paul II was good for CNN's ratings; covering the foibles of Jennifer Wilbanks, the "runaway bride" from Georgia, in May, was not. Fox News continued to far outpace CNN in May's Nielsen estimates, as well as all other cable news outlets. Concurrent with its 25th anniversary, CNN's April ratings spike evaporated. Fox News increased its year-over-year ratings during the prime-time hours in total viewers, averaging an audience of 1.4 million for the month, compared with CNN's 610,000.


I wonder if CNN will ever get a clue. MSNBC won't as long as Kaplan is in charge.

Bolton Spying on Colleagues

Lovely.

What's That Sound?

Oh, it's the sound of right wing bloggers not talking about how freedom is on the march in Lebanon all because of George Bush.

More Ohio Weirdness

A kos diarist picks up on some truly bizarre and as of yet apparently unexplained wrinkles in coingate.

Time For Anothe Panel on Blogger Ethics

Seriously. We're out of control:

AS the first lady of California, Maria Shriver serves as a busy unpaid adviser to her husband, Arnold Schwarzenegger. And in between writing her fifth book, raising four children and making public appearances, she is apparently serving NBC in a similar capacity.

Maria Shriver, wife of Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger of California, was an NBC reporter.
She reluctantly left her job at the network - where she worked as a reporter for "Dateline" - after her husband was elected, but she was recently drafted to help NBC's "Today" show decide whom to have on the air. At least, that's the story according to Laurence Leamer, the author of "Fantastic: The Life of Arnold Schwarzenegger," who was in negotiations for an appearance on both the "Today" show and "Dateline" to promote the book, which comes out tomorrow.

Things seemed to be going well until a series of e-mail messages in March between John Murphy, head of publicity at St. Martin's Press, which is publishing the biography of Mr. Schwarzenegger, and Andrea Smith, a producer at "Today" in charge of authors. In that exchange, it became apparent that before "Today" would officially book Mr. Leamer, he needed to first obtain Ms. Shriver's blessing. Ms. Smith said as much in an e-mail message she sent to Mr. Murphy on March 8, a copy of which was obtained by The New York Times: "Anyway, you can ask Maria to call me so I can just make sure she is O.K. with us doing the Leamer book."

Radio GaGa

I'll be on the Brian Lehrer show at 10, paired with one of the Powerliners. Don't remember which one.

Regular People

White people.

Independence

Wolcott writes that that the reason the Times management hates Krugman is that he's independent and doesn't give a shit about them. I think there's a lot of truth to this. It's also the reason journalists tend to hate bloggers.

But, it isn't independence itself that they hate - it's independence which hasn't been granted by the gatekeepers of their world. If they hated fuck you power and fuck you money for its own sake they'd have turned their guns on Novak and Safire and Limbaugh and Will and plenty of others long ago. What they hate is that some people have sidestepped the career track they've put themselves on. They don't hate independence, they just hate that someone in their world has obtained it in some other fashion than the way they're trying to get it.

Operation Integrity

The General gets a dishonorable discharge from the protest warriors.

Open Thread

Enjoy.

Open Thread

Have fun.

Sunday, June 05, 2005

When Democrats Attack

I don't even know what to make of this.

Nixon

I shouldn't be surprised by this stuff anymore, but the Nixon revisionism has been so extreme that in a decent society some of the players (cough Ben fucking Stein cough) would never be handed a microphone again.

Some samples. You'd think the faux philo-semitism which has become a part of the religion of the Right would lead to at least a few Righties being disturbed by quotes like this:

Please get me the names of the Jews. You know, the big Jewish contributors of the Democrats. Could we please investigate some of those c---suckers?

Open Thread

Have fun.

Grade Grubbing

Go read Media Girl and Gilliard and then return.

I have no doubt that grade grubbing is a long and honorable tradition among students. However, my perception is that the style of grade grubbing changed over my years as a student, grad student, and then professor. Grade grubbing used to be attempted through some combination off ass-kissing, attempts to obtain sympathy, and polite persuasion. Towards the end of my teaching it was more frequently the kind of rude and outraged sense of entitlement displayed in the links. Aside from any other considerations, I was always shocked that some students thought that the best way to get a better grade was, well, to be an asshole to the person responsible for giving that grade.

"Delayed Adulthood"

So I'm watching some guy on CNN talk about how young people are delaying "adulthood," jumping around from job to job, getting married later, and all this is about an unwillingness to have responsibilities.

I was curious about the marriage age issue so I looked it up.

In 1900 the median age of first marriage for males was 26. In 2000 it was 27.

For women it was 22. In 2000 it was 25.

Those numbers were lower midcentury, but that was basically a baby boom phenomenon.



Hardly revolutionary changes.

Some More Reality Based Reporting

From Newsweek, surprisingly.

Coingate

Americablog has the rundown. The Toledo blade is really doing excellent work, and they're not afraid to point out how full of shit a lot of the players are. They're writing in a way which doesn't require a "discerning reader" to hit paragraph 27 to find that the person in question is a big fat liar.

Though with Chris Cox set to head the SEC I'm starting to wonder if rare coins and other exciting collectibles might just be a better investment than publicly traded stocks. Sell! Sell! Sell!

"No Blacks"

I'd be a bit more open to conservative opposition/outrage about affirmative action if they piped up a bit more loudly when this kind of shit was uncovered.

The Grand Narrative

There are two issues with respect to Iraq and everything else, the policy and the politics/rhetoric. They do not exist independently and it's much easier to spin a compelling narrative around an actual policy. This is difficult with Iraq because it's such a multi-faceted complex constantly evolving situation. While there are some policies (good or bad) which can be communicated ("more troops!" "internationalize the situation!" "leave Iraq now!") fairly simply, it isn't really a situation which lends itself to easy politicking, no matter what your actual desired policy is. It would be nice if the Democrats could construct a credible "what we should do next" policy, but that gets increasingly difficult, and it's even more difficult to construct a policy onto which a compelling narrative can be grafted. At the moment all they are capable of doing is criticizing things around the edges ("should have more troops," "should've done better with the reconstruction," etc...) but none of these criticisms is any match for the grand narrative of the Bush administration "we are spreading Democracy and freedom in Iraq."

There is only one way to construct an alternative grand narrative on Iraq. It isn't enough to say "we were right to invade Iraq but Bush has handled it badly and we would've done better if we'd done X." That Does Not Work. All it says is Bush fucked up a bit but, hey, none of us perfect.

The only thing that will work is to say "we were wrong to invade Iraq." That's the grand narrative which will resonate when a majority of the population happens to agree with this statement. That's your narrative. Onto that you of course have to add some sort of what we should do next policy.

Right now too many Democrats think that their credibility on this issue is tied with their previous support for the war. That is false. That's what gives them their lack of credibility. The only way to start speaking with any credibility on the issue is to go back to the beginning and say it was a bad idea, we were lied to, we shouldn't have trusted them then and we can't trust them now.

War is messy. Everyone halfway sensible knows that. Pointing out the imperfections of the situation in Iraq will never resonate enough because no matter how corrupt and incompetent this administration has been, people understand that war is messy. Micromanagement suggestions are not a compelling alternative vision.

None of this addresses the "what should we really do next" policy question. In 2004 we tried to argue that what we need to do next is put more competent people in charge. That argument failed, and we're stuck with incompetence for 4 more years. It's no longer an option. As a matter of pure politics, since the Dems actually have no ability to implement an Iraq policy, I'm actually happy for them to propose whatever might win them some elections. That isn't being overly cynical - I've offered the same advice on domestic policy. It's what a minority party does - makes proposals which have no chance of being enacted which appeal to the electorate and make your side an appealing alternative. If the smart people toiling away at various think tanks have smart solutions which might make some actual progress, they're free to bring them to the president and he's free to ignore them. I see no reason to pointlessly offer practical but unappealing solutions which will neither be enacted nor win us any votes. If "free kittens for everyone in Iraq!" wins us votes, then that's our policy. If "nuke them all!" wins votes, I could even potentially be convinced that we should say that, as long as we had some rhetorical exit strategy from that plan (I'm largely kidding on this one, but I could approve of some asskicking rhetoric).

But, I find it impossible to believe that the Democrats can ever construct an appealing alternative narrative on this subject until they acknowledge that we shouldn't have gone there in the first place.


...let me add that that it isn't just about winning elections. If I belived that our team could in fact somehow manage to influence actual Iraq policy in a positive way by making sensible proposals which somehow the Bush administration would be pressured to adopt then I would encourage that. But, no amount of blabbering to Timmeh about what we should do is going to accomplish that, so what's the point?

No More Corners

It's certainly possible that things will magically start getting better in Iraq. The good news for those of us in the reality based community who would like to actually understand what's going on and think seriously about it is that I think we've reached the end of our artificial milestones that cause yet another round of "things are getting better!" and "I was against the Iraq war but maybe I was wrong!" and "why do you hate freedom?" opeds.

The importance of this Washington Post article cannot be overstated, though it will probably large overlooked. First, we do have some signs that the Democrats have recognized that they need to stop running from this issue. I'm not confident that they'll be willing to do so in the necessary way - admit they were wrong to support the war, wrong to trust this administration to do it right even given what they believed at the time, and sorry for their mistake - but maybe I'll be surprised.

The most important thing about this article is that we have a Republican essentially saying that Bush is full of shit.

"I am pleased that in less than a year's time, there's a democratically elected government in Iraq, there are thousands of Iraq soldiers trained and better equipped to fight for their own country [and] that our strategy is very clear," Bush said during a Rose Garden news conference Tuesday. Overall, he said, "I'm pleased with the progress." Cheney offered an even more hopeful assessment during a CNN interview aired the night before, saying the insurgency was in its "last throes."

Several Republicans questioned that evaluation. "I cannot say with any confidence that that is accurate," said Rep. Steve Chabot (R-Ohio), a member of the House International Relations Committee. "I think it's impossible to know how close we are to the insurgency being overcome."



And, we have McCain at least very quietly telling Bush to cut the fucking happy talk:

McCain said Bush needs to carefully balance his reassuring statements to a troubled nation with frank talk about the arduous and unpredictable future. "It's a long, hard struggle and very gradually maybe we are making progress," McCain said. "There are tough times ahead."

Sunday Bobbleheads

Document the atrocities.

Suburbia

Drum, a serf in the kingdom of Irvine, writes:

That pretty much leaves one option: residents of suburbs themselves don't like the idea of mixed-use development and they let their planning boards know it in no uncertain terms. What's more, since developers don't seem to be fighting residents very hard about this, I have to assume they're skeptical that they could rent out all the space. If they really thought they could make a buck off developments like this, they'd be bribing city councilmen left and right.

In other words, I suspect that just because people visit Downtown Disney on their vacations, it doesn't mean they're pining away for small town life. They aren't pining away for roller coasters in their backyards, either. In the end, some people like cities and some people like suburbs, and it's just a matter of taste. The people who like cities whine about gentrification and white flight, and the people who like suburbs whine about anything that increases noise or traffic congestion. Both sides seem pretty dedicated to keeping their own patches of land just the way they are.

I'm sure there's a lot of truth to this, though I don't think it's a complete explanation. I do think that developers get locked into a mold and other governmental/legal/institutional issues are at play, but nonetheless this is certainly a nontrivial part of the story.

I used to live where Kevin does, in the kingdom of Irvine (a place I could talk about ad nauseum if I thought anyone cared). While I was there I was told an anecdote. I'm a bit fuzzy on the details, so don't take any of the precise facts as gospel, but the basic gist is true.

Larry Agran, who has served as mayor a couple of times, had at some point pushed to put an urban corridor some place in the city. From what I remember this wasn't even a serious mixed-used multi-block area, but instead a few blocks on one street which would have street level commercial/retail and perhaps some apartment blocks on either end. Artist renditions of this were printed up, and the opponents of this plan (which, it must be made clear, would've involved an infintesimal portion of the land of Irvine) took these renditions and for their ad campaign added in pictures of panhandlers, the homeless, etc... The point was that anything even slightly resembling a "city," even a tiny version, was going to attract The Wrong Types.