Welcome to today's RedState Morning Briefing Summary (RMBS FAQ).
There are six items in today's Morning Briefing. Three of them are concerned with ACORN and two of them about the supposed ACORN CEO contact list obtained by Erick. I still don't know whether to believe in its authenticity, but if Erick ends up being sued and/or arrested by the end of the month, then I'll think it's real.
Inside The ACORN Rolodex: ACORN Has Its Own Political Party Other Than the Democrats
Erick continues mining the illegally-obtained and/or fraudulent file that purports to be the contact list of ACORN CEO, Bertha Lewis:
Above is a word cloud of the associations in the Bertha Lewis contacts list we received. Some are legitimate business dealings. Forest City Ratner, for example, is both bailing out ACORN and relying on its support for its construction projects. But others are more intriguing.
Golly. That's an awfully big contact list for one person. The CEO of ACORN really deals personally with all those people? All for ACORN business?
Anyway, as the you can probably guess from the graphic, the "intriguing" connection is with the Working Families Party:
Lewis is both the head of ACORN and also the Co-Chair of the Working Families Party. As you can imagine, ACORN would have us believe that those are separate roles. However, information suggests otherwise and we also know that ACORN has a habit of creating political parties for its own ends.
ZOMFG! Someone creating a political party to promote an agenda? What has this country come to? Why aren't these people in prison?!
What has Erick poppin' a chubby is that WFP runs a for-profit canvassing/GOTV operation called Field Services. A New York court ruled that because Field Services was working for WFP candidates, their efforts were an "in-kind contribution" and were subject to campaign finance reporting laws.
According to Elizabeth Benjamin in the New York Daily News,
Even the Democrats - who have become the [Working Family Party's] closest allies since the party helped them win a slim majority in the state Senate - are looking to distance themselves. They’ve got plans to build their own field organization.
That would enable Dems to rely less on the WFP’s controversial for-profit arm, Data & Field Services, which has drawn scrutiny from the city Campaign Finance Board.
This is important because, following ACORN’s pattern of practice, the WFP set up Data & Field Services to skirt around election laws as a for-profit entity. Unfortunately for them, the New York Campaign Finance Board ruled Data & Field Services is part and parcel WFP. That means it has to comply with campaign finance rules.
If it were shown that ACORN is joined at the hip to WFP in the same way Data & Field Services is, then ACORN might also have to comply and disclose — something it does not have to do now.
There isn't the remotest similarity between the ACORN/WFP relationship and the WFP/FS relationship. Even if Erick's fantasy were to come true, I think he'd be greatly disappointed by how unremarkable an ACORN financial disclosure would turn out to be.
Erick is a douche for publishing this at all, but more so for the lack of substance. There's no story here. It's not like he was forced to get this story out because "the public had to know."
General McChrystal to Obama: More Troops Or I Quit!
Gee, I thought we "won" in Afghanistan. Wingnuts have spend the last five years, at least, lampooning the idea that the situation in Afghanistan was deteriorating. Now that it's gotten to the point where we aren't sure that it can be reversed, suddenly they're noticing — and blaming Obama.
This is a cover-your-ass move by General McChrystal who doesn't want his career to end if things don't turn around in Afghanistan. If he gets more troops, expect him to complain about something else he's not getting. As long as there's something he didn't get, he can shake the blame. Also, whether he stays or leaves, his command will see him as sticking up for them — literally putting his career on the line. All in all, a good political move from the General and nothing more. Gen Shinseki did the same thing under Bush — and was fired for it.
Of course, Dan McLaughlin at RedState sees things as being better under Bush:
If you are old enough to remember the George W. Bush Administration and the 2004 and 2008 presidential campaigns, you will recall that a favorite theme of critics of Bush’s war management was that Bush hadn’t listened to Army brass asking for more troops in Iraq and/or Afghanistan. In particular, the Democrats practically made a secular saint of General Eric Shinseki, who supposedly was fired for delivering this message. (The truth is rather different, but the media has been printing the legend for so long it’s hardly worth the candle at this late date to argue the point). Gen. Shinseki even ended up being given a Cabinet post in the Obama Administration for little other reason than as a symbol that Obama would break from his predecessor by following his subordinates’ recommendations.
Apparently, the "truth" about Gen. Shinseki isn't worth repeating (probably because it's not actually true "truth"). McLaughlin goes on to claim that Obama has reduced troop strength — and then quotes General Jones explaining that troop strength has been increased as much as it's going to be.
First, Obama scaled back the U.S. troop commitment. Obama during the campaign had promised more troops for Afghanistan, where the U.S. had approximately 36,000 troops and was relying heavily on training the Afghan military to supplement U.S. and NATO forces. In November 2008, Defense Secretary Robert Gates had indicated that some 30,000 troops would be sent to Afghanistan, and the 30,000 figure was requested by General David McKiernan, the U.S. commander in Afghanistan (he reports to General David Petraeus). Instead, Obama reduced the force to some 17,000 additional U.S. counterinsurgency troops - barely more than half what General McKiernan had requested - plus an additional 7,000 troops for other functions. But Obama’s national security advisor, General James Jones, bluntly warned the military brass that further requests for more troops would upset the White House:
Now suppose you’re the president, Jones told them, and the requests come into the White House for yet more force. How do you think Obama might look at this? Jones asked, casting his eyes around the colonels. How do you think he might feel?
Jones let the question hang in the air-conditioned, fluorescent-lighted room. Nicholson and the colonels said nothing.
Well, Jones went on, after all those additional troops, 17,000 plus 4,000 more, if there were new requests for force now, the president would quite likely have "a Whiskey Tango Foxtrot moment." Everyone in the room caught the phonetic reference to WTF - which in the military and elsewhere means "What the [expletive]?"
It's not wonder that someone would say "WTF?!" to a request for more troops in Afghanistan. Here are the historical troop levels:
(via CNN)
They currently have four times as many troops in Afghanistan as Bush had in early 2003. You'll also note that McLaughlin's claim that Bush had 36,000 troops in country is factually inaccurate. Of course, the lack of troops under Bush wasn't Bush being inept, but sophisticated! Really! McLaughlin:
And in fact, in Afghanistan as in Iraq, there are always competing considerations between adding more troops to increase our capabilities, and keeping a lighter footprint to avoid antagonizing the locals and to allow the indigenous military to shoulder some responsibilities. The critics on the Left - Obama and Kerry included - never, ever gave a moment’s thought to these considerations in criticizing the Bush Administration.
So when the Iraqis wanted us the hell out of their country, but we sent in a "surge" anyway… that was Bush thinking about our "footprint"? What utter rubbish.
We should expect to see a lot more of this. The wingnuts are desperately trying to spin away from the truth that Bush started two wars and fucked both of them up.
The No-To Guy
Robert A. Hahn:
Today has not been a good day for our president in terms of his coverage overseas. In an analysis piece entitled Why everyone is saying no to Obama, Amir Mizroch at the Jerusalem Post recounts the many ways that foreign leaders — the Saudi royals, Dear Leader Kim, Mahmoud Abbas, the Iranian Mullahs, even friends like Benyamin Netanyahu — are beating our president like a drum. Mizroch concludes...
Everyone has worked it out by now: The great secret is out. America’s economy has made Obama a weak president, and he will likely remain weak throughout his first term. He has about two years to pull the American economy out of its free-fall before he begins his reelection campaign. If he can do it, and that’s a big if, chances are good that he’ll get reelected, and in his second term he can try to pull some geopolitical strings. But for the next three years, expect to see a world that says no to Obama. No meaningful and dramatic diplomatic initiative can come out of the White House in the next three years, as long as Obama remains weak.
For some reason, there is a widespread belief — even in some lefties — that Israel exerts undue influence over the U.S. Certainly AIPAC is a powerful right-wing organization with a lot of connections in Washington, but there is an underlying fact that is usually ignored: Israel needs the U.S. way more than the U.S. needs Israel. This didn't bother hard-right Israelis when Bush was in power, but now that we have a left-wing President, it really gets under their skin.
Amir Mizroch is the news editor for the Jerusalem Post. He was born in Israel, but grew up in South Africa. For some reason, he is upset that Obama is President, but I can't think of anything he might have learned in South Africa that would lead him to be hostile to blacks in positions of political power.
Anyway, I see this as the Israeli right's version of "Obama's numbers are tanking."
This quote from Hahn is priceless though:
…the day will come when we wish we did not have an incompetent president…
That day came, Robert. It took way too long, but it was finally acted upon on November 4th, 2008.
The Politics of PACs
James Richardson highlights DNC statements against possible Republic Presidential candidate Tim Pawlenty, who just started a PAC to fund his campaign:
After launching a website last week describing Pawlenty as "extreme," the Democratic National Committee today characterized the potential 2012 contender as a "part-time Governor" after news surfaced he was to launch a political action committee.
"Tim Pawlenty is quickly becoming the definition of ’say one thing and do another’. Today’s news about Pawlenty starting a political action committee is just the latest in a series of broken pledges by the Governor - first breaking his pledge to not raise taxes on the people of Minnesota, and now breaking his pledge to finish his term ‘strong’ as Governor," said DNC spokesman Hari Sevugan.
"This is just more evidence that Pawlenty is, at best, a part-time Governor who cares more about his national political ambitions than the people of Minnesota," he said in an email to reporters this afternoon.
Richardson calls this out as hypocrisy, citing Senators Clinton, Obama and Biden all having started PACs for their Presidential runs. He updates with a rather pointed note about Tim Kaine:
UPDATE: The DNC’s "part-time" missive seems particularly ill-advised when one considers the organization’s leadership. Virginia Governor Tim Kaine was installed as Chairman of the Democratic National Committee in early 2009 by President Obama, and has since weathered criticism for his absent governing. Keeping with Sevugan’s twisted logic, Kaine fits the bill of "part-time Governor" quite nicely.
You know what? Richardson is correct; this is hypocritical. It's a clear example of IOKIYAD (It's OK if you're a Democrat). The only thing I can say in the DNC's defense is that the Rovian Republicans made IOKIYAR such a staple of right-wing politics — as we see every day in the RedState Morning Briefing — that they have only themselves to blame for the fact that tactics like this are considered appropriate. What's Richardson's take on the manufactured outrage over Obama's horrible "czar" — which are fewer in number than Bush's? [crickets]
They can object to IOKIYAD when they stop with IOKIYAR. I'm not holding my breath.
Media Matters Is On the Case of the ‘Stolen’ ACORN Rolodex
Erick brags about his low ethical standards:
If you were doubting the legitimacy of RedState’s access to Bertha Lewis’s contacts list, look no further than Media Matters’ overheated rhetorical condemnation of our writing about it.
Media Matters is assuming that the contact list is legitimate, as no one has said otherwise. I'm still not sure.
This is an awfully feeble claim, but Erick's missive goes down hill from there:
Double standard much? If this were a right-wing organization, Media Matters would be plowing through it. As Media Matters does not organizationally poop without prior coordination among left-wing interests, we can presume they are scared by the information we have.
- When you claim that if the roles were reversed, the X would do the same thing, it is incumbent on you to provide an example of X doing that thing. Otherwise you're full of shit. In case any RedStaters are reading this, let me state the logical conclusion: Erick is full of shit. Media Matters would never do what he's done, nor would anyone on Daily Kos or any other reputable site.
- Throwing in a ridiculous conspiracy theory just makes you look even more stupid (which is a feat for Erick).
I don't usually look at the comments, and the comment on this are particularly moronic, except for this piece of advice from self-identified liberal BlueLandRed:
Eric, that you’ll shortly be the subject of an FBI visit. Not that you’ve done anything illegal, but in all likelihood, the person that acquired Lewis’ contact list did. If they did do something illegal electronically, the FBI could very easily get involved if Lewis files a formal complaint... and you know that’s likely. If you’re not willing to give the FBI the name of the person you suspect, be prepared to have your computers taken and searched. I’m sure you know this, never lie to a federal agent, just take the 5th.
He wasn't banned for this comment (amazing), but one of the responses was, "Do you realize Erick is a 'lawyer.'" Yeah, the responder put the work lawyer in scare-quotes. This reminded me that Orly Taitz is also a "lawyer." Maybe she can defend Erick from being charged under the Computer Fraud and Abuse act.
Obama continues effort to distance himself from ACORN
RedStater California Yankee takes today's Moe Lane Panty-Wadding Award for this article complaining that Obama is not acknowledging his integral relationship with the ACORN criminal empire:
During Sunday’s talk show Obamarama, the President acted as though he barely knew about ACORN. In an exchange with George Stephanopoulos, Obama said that ACORN "deserves to be investigated," but did not endorse recent votes in Congress to cut off ACORN’s federal funding but did not endorse recent votes in Congress to cut off ACORN’s federal funding:
STEPHANOPOULOS: How about the funding for ACORN?
OBAMA: You know, if — frankly, it’s not really something I’ve followed closely. I didn’t even know that ACORN was getting a whole lot of federal money.
STEPHANOPOULOS: Both the Senate and the House have voted to cut it off.
OBAMA: You know, what I know is, is that what I saw on that video was certainly inappropriate and deserves to be investigated.
STEPHANOPOULOS: So you’re not committing to — to cut off the federal funding?
OBAMA: George, this is not the biggest issue facing the country. It’s not something I’m paying a lot of attention to.
Obama… is exactly right here. I'm glad he said this. As far as whether ACORN has received much in the way of Federal funding, Glenn Greenwald pointed out that:
ACORN has received a grand total of $53 million in federal funds over the last 15 years -- an average of $3.5 million per year.
The RedState article goes on to list Obama's various dealings with ACORN over the years, none of which would mean that he's paying attention to them now. Oddly, California Yankee neglects to mention how Obama got NASA's help to launch ACORN's array of Orbital Mind Control Lasers. Maybe the black helicopters got to him.