POLITICS
Ari Rabin-Havt
A report by CNN’s Jake Tapper has thrown cold water on the frenzy that began when ABC’s Jonathan Karl and the Weekly Standard’s Stephen Hayes reported National Security Council spokesman Ben Rhodes implied in an email that talking points distributed should be edited to provide political cover for the State Department.
Tapper, with the full email in hand reported, “Whoever provided those seemingly invented the notion that Rhodes wanted the concerns of the State Department specifically addressed.”
There is no evidence that either Karl or Hayes had themselves seen the full email and intentionally chose to edit out the context before reporting on them. Instead, a source, likely a Capitol Hill staffer in either House leadership or a committee office passed on these emails, received as part of a deal to confirm CIA director John Brennan.
Ari Rabin-Havt
Many were intrigued if not excited by the announcement that Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg would fund, along with other technology figures including Reid Hoffman from LinkedIn and Joe Green of Nation Builder a new group called Fwd.us to fight for comprehensive immigration reform – a necessary and laudable goal.
While promising to “harness the best of new and old organizing tactics” the group, called Fwd.us, has fallen prey to the most cynical elements of our political process. Using two subsidiary organizations, one supporting Democrats, the other Republicans, the group launched a seven-figure ad buy in South Carolina and Alaska.
Ari Rabin-Havt
This weekend in The New York Times, Jeremi Suri offered a simple solution to solve the escalating war of words and actions on the Korean Peninsula – bomb them, bomb them now.
“The best option” according to the University of Texas professor, “is to destroy the North Korean missile on the ground before it is launched. The United States should use a precise airstrike to render the missile and its mobile launcher inoperable.”
The op-ed comes in response to reports that North Korea has moved two Musudan missiles near the coast and readied them for testing that could potentially take place this week.
Ari Rabin-Havt
By an unsurprising vote of 71-27, the Senate has voted to end debate on Chuck Hagel’s nomination. This conclusion marks yet another instance in which conservative media figures led their readers astray.
The overwrought accusations hurled at Hagel, not to mention the invention of fake organizations he might be connected to, serve to further diminish the reputation of the conservative media.
All candidates for appointed or elected office deserve a thorough vetting -- not a witch hunt. The never-ending quest for a nonexistent statement, speech, or financial tie that would sink Hagel’s nomination amounted to an embarrassment. Facing a critical moment for U.S. national security interests, conservatives chose to play to their extremist media instead of acting in the best interests of their country.
Ari Rabin-Havt
Is there a point where one’s political dislike becomes so engrained it seeps into a personal hatred that borders on psychosis?
The first lady has endured four years of attacks not on political positions -- where criticism would be completely in-bounds -- but on her style, her weight, and her butt.
The reaction to her appearance, by video, at last night’s Oscars ceremony demonstrates the depth of conservative delusion.
Ari Rabin-Havt
I couldn’t help but have some déjà vu reading Robert Draper’s New York Times Magazine piece, Can the Republicans Be Saved From Obsolescence?
It was eight years ago John Kerry had lost his campaign for President. Progressives were dismayed. For the next year we gathered at innumerable conferences to diagnose and fix our Party and our movement. Some of these efforts led to the creation of organizations – out of a small invitation-only gathering of online organizers at a retreat center in Maryland the New Organizing Institute was created.
Some merely built up social capital and created new networks on the left – the most memorable was a gathering that culminated in an all-night dance party DJed by Moby in the basement of his upstate New York home.
Ari Rabin-Havt
The Valentine’s Day vote in the United States Senate speaks not to the qualifications of Chuck Hagel to serve as secretary of defense, but instead to the insane theatrical performance that the branch of government created under Article 1 of the Constitution has mutated into.
By a single vote -- Harry Reid had to cast a procedural vote against the nomination to reserve the right to bring it to the floor again -- Republicans chose to delay Chuck Hagel’s nomination.
After the Presidents’ Day recess, Chuck Hagel will be confirmed when 59 votes magically become 61. Both Lindsey Graham and Lamar Alexander have stated they will then vote to move the nomination to the floor, and it is likely that many more Republicans will follow their lead.
Ari Rabin-Havt
Far from a cool drink of water (ok I couldn’t resist), Marco Rubio’s State of the Union response was a failure in that it continued to rest the entire weight of the Republican Party squarely on its Achilles heel.
In 2012 the GOP was doomed to defeat because they could not bear to listen to facts that were not from their own limited echo chamber. And Tuesday night Marco Rubio, who has been elevated as a conservative savior by the same elements of the movement who directed the Romney campaign off a cliff, showed he was pretty comfortable in the confines of Fox News’ messaging womb.
Instead of a launching pad for a new conservative movement, his speech was constructed around seven straw men, many of which were directly contradicted in the Presidents own remarks:
Ari Rabin-Havt
Roger Ailes seems to have caught a case of amnesia or a serious projection complex, “kvetching” to Eliza Gray:
“The president likes to divide people into groups,” he huffs into the phone. “He’s too busy getting the middle class to hate rich people, blacks to hate whites. He is busy trying to get everybody to hate each other.” With that off his chest, Ailes gets back on message. “We need to get along.”
That sounds a lot like a mob boss bemoaning a crime wave.
Ari Rabin-Havt
Out promoting a new book, former Washington, D.C. , school chancellor and current head of the anti-union school reform group Students First Michelle Rhee appeared at Politico’s "Breakfast Club" on Friday. In the course of defending criticism of her organization’s ties to prominent conservatives, she declared that “this is actually the cool thing about what we’re doing — this is bipartisan.”
It’s understandable in our perverted media and policymaking environment that Rhee would want to adopt the bipartisan label. Many in Washington oddly believe that label alone should trump sound policy, effectiveness, or even morality.
As evidence of the bipartisanship, Rhee touts the support of several Democratic mayors -- the political equivalent of the “some of my best friends are . . . “
