Your National Security Advisor At Work

The headline writer over at the Associated Press did not do any favors for National Security Spokesmodel*, James Jones, with the headline: "National security adviser: US safer under Obama."

Jones had the misfortune of speaking to the Atlantic Council in the wake of a North Korea's renunciation of the 1953 armistice which ended the Korean War. The timing was akin to a global warming protest delayed by snowfall.

Jones didn't roam too far off Team Obama's talking points reservation, regarding efforts to get out of Iraq, revamping the strategy in Afghanistan, and the campaign to repair the U.S. reputation aroad.

Of course, getting out of Iraq may take several years; a new commander and more troops signifies a new capability in Afghanistan, not necessarily a revamped strategy; and if you apologize enough, I'm sure more folks will like you.

More noticeably -- and in recognition that criticism from former Vice President Dick Cheney is getting traction -- Jones offered that Guantanamo has served as a recruitment tool for insurgents and as a result has probably (emphasis mine) created more terrorststs than it detained.

Now Jones would be in a position to know if this was true or not. A few questions should be asked of our vast intelligence capability:

- Is there an upswing in jihadist propaganda on the Internet seeking recruits on behalf of those captured?
- What are those recently captured/detained saying about Guantanamo?

Perhaps Jones is right, (although the use of the word "probably" gives him plenty of wriggle room) but I have yet to see any empirical evidence to suggest that it is true. Yet this assertion -- repeated ad nauseum, corrupts the debate.

We should expect better.

* If General Jones can ride his bike to McLean from the White House for lunch as the national security adviser, it's obvious that he's on board for who he was -- a USMC commandant and a commander of NATO forces in Europe -- so that Team Obama can have a patina of gravitas when it comes to national security. It's difficult for one to think that he's developing strategy.

Bitterness

You'll learn a lot more about Mike Lupica than you will of Rush Limbaugh, Dick Cheney, and (the sainted) Colin Powell, the putative topics in Lupica's column, today.

You'll see Lupica for what he is -- another angry white male.

Big Papi and The General

I'm not a Boston Red Sox fan, but I can't help but notice the decline in offensive production by David Ortiz a/k/a "Big Papi." Once a feared hitter, his batting average has now slipped below the "Mendoza Line" and seems to be in free fall. In one game against the Mets this weekend, he struck out three times. The one time he made contact with the ball, he hit into a double play.

Out of respect for his (previously) clutch play, his manager, Terry Francona has had Ortiz bat third. However, it seems likely that he will now bat lower in the order until he gets his numbers up. (And that appears to be a big "if" at this point as he strikes out every four times he bats. )

Officially, he's listed as 33, but there's been a pattern of players born in the Dominican Republican to shave off a few years off. He could be older.

In all likelihood, Big Papi may be on the downside of what was a remarkable few years in Boston.

General Colin Powell, an ostensible Republican, is on the downside of his public life. Since he has never desired to run for public office and has already served as Secretary of State, where can he go?

For better or worse -- history will be the ultimate arbiter -- he was part of the effort that resulted in what we now know as Operation Iraq Freedom. That will be his link to posterity.

Therefore, his concern is limited to legacy maintenance -- being a centrist in a time of tumult rather than the neocon who led us to war. So, with limited, nay, no skills at building a party, he leaps from one Sunday talk show to the other to speak poorly of Rush Limbaugh. Alas, his efforts don't go beyond sound bytes.

The media will always accommodate a disgruntled Republican, especially one with the cachet of Mr. Powell, who is upset about a party that he thinks has swung too far to the right. (Seemingly the Reagan Administration was moderate enough for him, go figure.) He will always have the opportunity air his grievances.

Where Big Papi has tried to be productive, Colin Powell, remains content by simply criticizing the current GOP. In the end, neither is helping his team.

Another Daily News Error?

Bill Madden, the national baseball writer for the New York Daily News, whose relationship with accuracy can best be described as a nodding acquaintance gets it wrong today.

In a riff where he compares the current Mets manager, Jerry Manuel, with the 1962 manager -- the legendary Casey Stengel, he gets the "that guy" issue wrong.

According to Madden:

This seemed especially so on Monday in the aftermath of the Mets' five-error "retro '62" performance against the San Francisco Giants in which Church missed third base, a la Marvelous Marv Throneberry, as he was heading home with the go-ahead run and Manuel referred to him as "that guy" adding: "That's unbelievable. I can't explain why, how or anything."

According to someone who listened to a recording it appears that Madden misquoted Manuel who actually said "a guy." That's a significant difference.

Don't hold your breath for a correction.

The Fall of a Bright Liberal

It didn't have to end this way.

Back in the early 1990's Chris Matthews was a columnist for a San Francisco paper -- I forgot which one. In that role, he would appear on those egg-headed conferences that C-SPAN shows when Congress was out of session. I didn't necessarily agree with his views but I had a respect for the way he developed his. A bright liberal guy at the dawn of the Clinton Age.

Given his insights on the ways of Washington -- he was a onetime an aide to Speaker Tip O'Neal -- someone had the idea of making him a talk show host.

In the process a unique talent was converted into a commodity.

Being a talk show host means you have to develop a shtick and Matthews obliged. He would invariably answer the questions posed to his guests and his rapid fire technique showed signs of attention deficit order. (Think: Bill O'Reilly without the warmth.)

Things went well enough; he sold a few books in the process and made a nice living.

But as MSNBC, his network, lurches to the political left; the one time bright liberal has become a hack.

Last night, I took a gander at his show. He had a clock on the upper right of the screen and was counting the time it took for former Vice President Cheney to insult President Obama. As the Vice President began his remarks, he ad-libbed a "Good Afternoon" as he chided the President for being long with his presentation.

Well for Matthews, that constituted a "cheap shot." A cheap shot that came in the first five seconds of the speech. (Apparently that was the "number" for the day.)

I heard and read a lot of commentary yesterday but I have to give it to Matthews -- his insight was, well, unique.

In any event, the end may be near.

Because MSNBC is an incredibly cheap outfit -- the Matthews program is aired twice on the East Coast at 5 and 7 PM. (Fox does the same thing to a degree but it re-airs programs every three hours for the benefit of its West Coast audiences.) Based on the ratings, Matthews comes in dead last for the 25-54 demo at 5 PM and at 7 PM he's third in overall audience. (Fox's "Special Report" has about 1.1 million more viewers.) Spin 'em any way you want -- those numbers are not good.

As I noted, it didn't have to end this way for a formerly bright guy.

Ruminations

SCI-FI: I gave it a couple of viewings but like most of America, I realized that Life wasn't worth watching. They lost me when the hot chick started sleeping with her shmoe of a boss. Another NBC success story.

A GREAT JOB IF YOU CAN GET IT: Seems our National Security Advisor has the time to bike home for lunch. I would guess that all told it probably takes three hours out of his day. Good thing he's unimportant, otherwise he'd be missed.

EXILED: At first, I thought Joe Biden, given his latest goof, was sent to Siberia. He's actually in Serbia.

CAFE CHIP: Something tells me that President Obama's move to increase vehicle fuel mileage is nothing more than a bargaining chip to be used sometime down the road.

RUNNING: I know of some registered voters in New York City getting three to four mailings from the Bloomberg campaign. It's safe to say, he's not taking chances.

SNOWED: Marc Ambinder is keeping an eye on the meme that Obama is easily cowed by his generals. Perhaps, but Bush was swayed by his defeatist brass -- Pace, Casey, and Abizaid. Success in Iraq came when he finally got rid of two and kicked the other upstairs.

IMPOTENCE: As the Senate Majority leader, things can't get any worse for Senator Reid given his erroneous reports, his poor polling numbers, and a President who disses his state's leading source of revenue.

Culture of Corruption

Let's see what we have here:

• An "ethics" columnist who doesn't see anything wrong about donating to MoveOn.org; claiming the organization is "non-partisan".
• An economics columnist who can't manage his own finances.
• A past her prime opinion columnist copying and pasting another's work and passing it off as her own. And it's not like this was the first time, either.
  
• An ombudsman who covers for the paper with a whitewash of an investigation regarding the spiking of a negative report on then candidate Obama's fundraising efforts.
  

The media columnist for The Times thinks the paper has the financial wherewithal to be around until 2011.

Perhaps.

But the rot is already setting in.

Stenography 101

Helen Kennedy, ostensibly a Daily News Staff Writer, but for all intents and purposes an overpaid stenographer, is credited with a story today on Page 3 of "New York's Number One Newspaper."

She breathlessly cherry picks an "explosive" story that will soon be on the pages of that paragon of journalism, GQ.

Apparently, someone provided Robert Draper, a writer for the magazine, with classified briefing slides during the early stages of the Iraq War. The slides had Biblical verses on them. Odd? Perhaps. However, who is to go on the record and state that these slides are indeed the real McCoy rather than fancy fakes to deceive? I understand that efforts to control the proliferation of PowerPoint technology are failing.

Apparently these quotations worried nameless Pentagon analysts for fear that they would inflame the Islamic world. If anyone was going to get inflamed, it would have happened shortly after the first tanks rolled into Iraq.

Other snippets abound in this "damming GQ article" alleging that Rumsfeld blocked efforts to present Senator Kennedy the Presidential Medal of Freedom. How or why Rumsfeld would care isn't broached. Ms. Kennedy (A relation perhaps? She doesn't tell.) describes the Senator as cancer-stricken. Alas, the senator's cancer was diagnosed long after Rumsfeld left office, so her adjective is used to provoke a reaction rather than to describe.

As you can imagine, the sources are anonymous but the allegations are treated as, well, like gospel.

Tellingly, the liberal media, and the NYDN which sets its editorial sails to those prevailing winds, fails to even bother attempting to contact either the former President or the Defense Secretary for their views. Nor for that matter does Ms. Kennedy bother to independently confirm the allegations herself.

That would require journalistic skills and that's not the job of a stenographer.

Bush and Rumsfeld may be gone, but they will not be forgotten by those who wish to distract us from the current dangers.

UPDATE: Rumsfeld responds. Quite strenuously.

Ruminations

FOOLS: In an otherwise limp criticism of Wanda Sykes (BTW, has she ever been funny?) Mike Lupica wants you Rush Limbaugh listeners to know that you're mean-spirited. The search for an original insight from the Daily News's resident rabblerouser continues.

PROPS: Eminem valiantly trying to restart his career will take 200 laid off auto workers to see his performance on the Jimmy Kimmel program. In addition to losing their jobs, it seems that they may have also shed their dignity.

YOU'RE FIRED: First, it was Rick Waggoner, now it's David McKiernan. Joe Biden would be wise to keep looking over his shoulder.

THE OTHER SHOE: Little seems to be said about the State Department's role in securing Roxana Sabieri's release which suggests that they were quite involved. The New York Times helpfully spins a tale to the Administration's liking. We have seen the "quid" and time will indicate what the "quo" may turn out to be.

THE DODGER: Roger Clemens broke his silence to advertise, er, criticize a new unflattering book about him. He took the opportunity because he was going overseas on vacation next week. The key question -- does his travel destination have an extradition treaty with the United States?

LONG ARM: A sportswriter suggests a way for Manny Ramirez to make amends to his fans. I suggest he keeps the money. Lawyers to defend him from fraud charges won't come cheaply.

The New York Daily News Gets It Wrong (Surprised?)

The New York Daily News committed a big time disservice to their readers by reporting a version of events that conflicted with the official report regarding the Planegate matter. Thomas DeFrank and Kenneth Bazinet do not wrap themselves in glory on this one.

From the first paragraph, they get it wrong:

The White House aide who okayed the $328,835 Air Force One photo-op flight around the Statue of Liberty last week was sacked Friday.

Actually, Caldera, according to the official report, was not responsible for authorizing the flight.

Instead, the military office decided to react to media inquiries, not to make a prior announcement, according to the review by Jim Messina, White House deputy chief of staff.

There are a couple of things odd with this statement. For starters, the report was prepared for Jim Messina, he did not author the report. Secondly, the deputy director, George Mulligan, did not anticipate any media reaction to the flight which I thought was a newsworthy aspect that went un-reported. That's why they opted to react to media inquiries.

"The FAA warned the military office that the media needed to be advised of the flight," said an administration source. "There were red flags."

Why does the Daily News provide anonymity for the source? It's not clear. Moreover, the report does not indicate that the FAA raised any red flags about advising the media. This quote seems to be gratuitous unless it's meant to add to the criticism of Caldera.

Caldera's office insisted the flyover was a "classified" mission.

Actually details about the flight were considered to be "for official use only." This is simply a caveat -- it's not a classification. There are only three classifications: confidential, secret, and top secret. It wasn't classified.

A prominent Republican official who specializes in damage control said: "This is a message from [chief of staff] Rahm Emanuel that you won't be fired for a mistake or a policy disagreement - but you will be fired for embarrassing the President. That's a good, strong message that needed to be sent."

Again with the gratuitous anonymous source. Why does the "prominent Republican official" not want to have his or her name disclosed? Moreover, it's untrue. The President turned a blind eye to Tim Geithner, Linda Solis, Ron Kirk, and Kathleen Sebelius who caused the President a fair amount of embarrassment for their tax problems. (We'll leave aside Joe Biden's gaffes for the moment.) Moreover, how does this official know that mistakes or policy disagreements are not a cause for firing?

If they got this wrong -- what else have they gotten wrong -- without the benefit of an official report?

Something Not Quite Right

With the Friday afternoon resignation of Louis Caldera, the White House is hoping that the matter of 'Planegate" will come to a close. Given the compliant state of the White House press corps, its likely that this issue has breathed its last. Although Mr. Caldera is not entirely blameless in this matter, it seems unlikely that he's the only one guilty of bad judgment.

Nonetheless, the critical question as to who initiated this endeavor remains unanswered. Mr. Caldera's office, according to the White House website, "...ensures that White House requirements are met..." In other words, he was paid to execute, not to think.

It seems that someone, with serious juice, requested the flyover. Curiously, according to the official White House report on the matter -- there is no discussion as to who got the ball rolling other than to note that coordination began in March.

If the Air Force is anything like the Army -- which I know a thing or two -- I suspect that several participating elements would have to sign off on the deal. It wasn't the Air Force's role to question the mission -- their function was to execute the mission. Colonel Scott Turner was the go-to guy who oversaw the planning and coordination. He answered to Mr. Caldera's assistant, George Mulligan.

Mulligan, in turn, notified Caldera about the planning of the mission and added that "...WH shouldn't catch any questions about it." (Mulligan, it seems, has a political tin ear.) Caldera claims not to have read it until after the event occurred. Moreover, Caldera claims to have had two email accounts and he reads one more frequently than the other and he had back spasms that compelled him to leave early which prevented him from reading the email.

Even if one accepted this argument at its face, it seems strange that the director and the deputy director failed to formally discuss this matter given the nature of the mission as they all knew it to be atypical. (There was a thirty second discussion that characterized as an "aside.") Moreover, it seems odd that the one who initiated the matter did not check in for a status update.

Mulligan then recommended that Caldera notify Robert Gibbs, the press secretary, or Jim Messina, the deputy chief of staff. Mulligan didn't see this as his responsibility and had assumed that the Air Force would handle the public relations.

Caldera didn't have a coherent explanation as to why he failed to notify Gibbs or Messina. In my experience, that suggests two possible reasons. First, he actually brain cramped and failed to pass the word on. Or, secondly, he was covering for someone and took the hit. It should be noted that Caldera did not formally authorize the mission -- his crime was that he failed to pass the word on the mission.

After the event, Caldera opted to take the hit for the team and it seems that his scalp was required to end the debacle.

The report accomplished its purpose -- assigning the blame to Caldera. Yet it still remains uncertain as to who started this matter in the first place.

Ruminations

SCRAMBLING: As soon as B of A got word that they needed more capital, they called me trying to push a $12.99/month credit history security plan. They're not going to make up their shortfall with that pathetic effort.

HELPFUL: Murray Chass excoriates Selena Roberts' over-hyped tome on Alex Rodriguez. Nothing like a hack attack to develop a little sympathy for the guy. Now if he can help the Yanks end their losing skid...

ACOUSTICS: I was flipping between the Mets and Yankees telecasts last night. Both games were played at their respective new stadiums. It could have been the sound quality used by the production teams but things seemed to be awfully quiet in the Bronx. It was far nosier in Queens. Then again it could have been a reflection of what was seen on the field.

FORGOTTEN: NBC is becoming known as an acronym for Nothing But Cheap. They plan to wheel out a few Saturday Night Live specials in primetime this fall. Last year there was a Presidential election. This year, their pining their hopes on what? BTW, can anyone name three members of this year cast? I thought so.

BOTTOMLESS: I thought Barack would be different. (Not better but at least different.) However, even he's resorting to Clintonian sleight of hand when it comes to ostensible budget cuts. No Democrat and sadly no Republican can turn away increased spending.

OVERDUE: It's been six days since Bill Carter of the New York Times propped up Rachel Maddow. Maybe he's on vacation.

Imagine If a Republian Had Said It...

Here's another case of a loose lipped Democrat adding to the politics of destruction.

Arlen Specter, (D-PA) suggested that Jack Kemp could have beaten his cancer (without knowing much about what actually killed him and why) had the GOP forcefully supported then President Nixon's request for funding for the War on Cancer in the 1970s.

Actually a Republican wouldn't have been stupid enough to make that comment.

Your National Security Advisor at Work

In the big scheme of things, perhaps it is just a matter of our adversaries learning what our fax cover sheets look like.

But it also indicates that following the rules is optional.

Politico reports that foreign policy aide Denis McDonough is seen carrying a document stamped "SECRET" in a photo that was part of the White House's Flickr feed.

I learned a long time ago that when you are moving classified documents, that they are secured -- at a minimum -- in a manila envelope.

Again, it may not be a big deal but it certainly suggestive of the ship that James Jones is running in the White House.

Ruminations

GAFFE-IN: What was the purported upside when Barack Obama selected Joe Biden as his Veep? Delaware's dirty secret is now America's headache.

LUXURY: Recession, war(s), pandemic are in the headlines but our Congress is focused on, well, college football.

STRESSED: Rather than eyeing a college football championship -- perhaps Congress should be performing a "stress-test" on the government's ability to meet its current obligations? I can imagine why they would want to keep those results secret.

GHOSTS: There is probably more than meets the eye on Arlen Specter's defection to the Democratic Party. Clearing the decks to permit a primary-free race for a 79 year old cancer survivor probably doesn't come cheap. So much for the Keystone State's youth vote, huh? Moreover, who told Specter that he was the indispensable man of the Senate?

SCARE FORCE ONE: Louis Caldera, was once a policymaker as the Secretary of the Army back in the Clinton era answerable to the Secretary of Defense Now, he's an overpaid order-taker and fall guy as the chief of the White House Military Office. Maybe he can't sell is DC-area home? It will be interesting to see if anyone gets fingered, much less, fired for the Air Force One photo op in New York.

OLD MATH: The dead tree version of the New York Daily News boasted 2.5 million readers. I suspect that they used the New Math that was popular in the 1960s. However, real numbers like 600K don't lie.

WEAK: Given the hype surrounding the book, I can't help but be unimpressed by the charges levelled against A-Rod. I'm not a member of the Alex Rodriguez fan club, but the author would have been better served going after real miscreants.