Our Shame

Our government, in our name.

What would Golda say?

I heard a story many years ago about Golda Meier, former Israeli Prime Minister, that proported to be from her time in the Israeli Parliament. I have no idea whether it is truth or folklore.

At the time, there had apparently been a steep rise in the reported number of rapes, and the concerned representatives felt moved to respond. They suggested a country-wide curfew for women, to “protect” them from the apparent predators. Rather than arguing with them about the obvious sexism that even made that suggestion a possibility, she turned it around. Golda responded that she thought it a wonderful idea, but that it seemed obvious that, were a curfew to be extended, she thought it should apply to the male half of the population. “After all, it is men committing these crimes, don’t you see?”

The proposal was, of course, immediately abandoned.

I couldn’t help but think of that when I read this, via Salon.

My thoughts exactly

Never in my wildest imagination did I ever imagine myself liking to Newsweek. But Howard Fineman, of all people, has captured the existential reasoning behind my decision to blog:

And there always is an argument about something. We are, after all, the Arguing
Country. We are born to debate, free of top-down rulers and their absolutes; no
other place has such a provenance and responsibility. We are—and must remain, if
we are to thrive—a never-ending series of arguments: about the meaning of
personhood and citizenship; about the structure of government, credit and the
law; about our relationship to the rest of the world and even to the demands of
our own history. The "gun issue," for example, is an element of a larger dispute
over the limits of individualism in a country created for the "general welfare."
Facts change, but the underlying creative tensions do not. The trick is to tap
the heat of the friction in the service of progress as we struggle toward the
Founders' "more perfect union." We've been doing it since 1607.

My thoughts exactly.

Fake Schock - Real Awe

The NY Times breaks a big one.

What strikes me is not that they did it. It’s how well they did it. Organized media manipulation. This has always been the single realm of competency in the Bush Administration. From Judith Miller to Plamegate. Blackout the caskets and take fake walks through fortressed markets. Whatever else you say about them, the Rove Gang really knew how to “catapult the propaganda.”

Sure wish they had mustered some of that energy toward governing.

Another Report on this Debacle

Our own Defense Department’s think tank releases a report. McClatchy picks it up. This is the opening line:

"Measured in blood and treasure, the war in Iraq has achieved the status of a
major war and a major debacle," says the report's opening line.

They go on.

The report carries considerable weight because it was written by Joseph Collins,
a former senior Pentagon official, and was based in part on interviews with
other former senior defense and intelligence officials who played roles in
prewar preparations.

[Snip]

The report said that the United States has suffered serious political costs,
with its standing in the world seriously diminished. Moreover, operations in
Iraq have diverted "manpower, materiel and the attention of decision-makers"
from "all other efforts in the war on terror" and severely strained the U.S.
armed forces.

"Compounding all of these problems, our efforts there
(in Iraq) were designed to enhance U.S. national security, but they have become,
at least temporarily, an incubator for terrorism and have emboldened Iran to
expand its influence throughout the Middle East," the report
continued.

The addition of 30,000 U.S. troops to Iraq last year to
halt the country's descent into all-out civil war has improved security, but not
enough to ensure that the country emerges as a stable democracy at peace with
its neighbors, the report said.

"Despite impressive progress in
security, the outcome of the war is in doubt," said the report. "Strong
majorities of both Iraqis and Americans favor some sort of U.S. withdrawal.
Intelligence analysts, however, remind us that the only thing worse than an Iraq
with an American army may be an Iraq after a rapid withdrawal of that
army."

"For many analysts (including this one), Iraq remains a
'must win,' but for many others, despite obvious progress under General David
Petraeus and the surge, it now looks like a 'can't win.'"

Anything you’ve read so far that you didn’t know?

I wish reports like these mattered. If someone is a “defeatist” in the face of a conflict we “can’t win”, doesn’t that make her/him a pragmatist?

You can download the entire report here.

Stunning Incompetence

The non-profit sector occasionally eats both young and old alike, and work has prevented predictable posting lately.

But for those of you who believe this MBA President had already reached the zenith of incompetence, I offer you DDay at Hullabaloo presenting a new GAO report. I wish some of the bigger mouths on the net were half as focused on this as they are on last night’s media debate debacle. Emptywheel provides a sickening timeline.

TGIAD

Thank God I’m a Democrat!

I may have a distorted impression of tonight’s Democratic debate, because I tuned in late. Apparently I was lucky enough to miss the most baiting, Republican-framed questions from the “moderators”, as well as the most aggressive exchanges between the candidates. Apparently ABC decided to divide the debate in two: the cheap crap half and the policy half. I will sleep grateful that I missed the first half.

But while the rest of the netroots is piling on ABC, and their atrocious handling of their role, I have to tell you that my first reaction was delight in watching both of these candidates. What a sadly sweet thing it was to hear two extremely intelligent people lay out their understanding of the challenges we face putting this republic back together after the wantonly destructive years of Bush. Sadly sweet, because its sad to realize how hungry we are for intelligent adult conversation in the political realm. Screw the intricacies of their positions. Just listening to these two – and comparing them to the pathetic excuses for leadership that we have settled for over the last 7+ years – made be proud to be a Democrat.

Although I continue to believe that Hillary would be a more effective President, I no longer truly care who wins. I will be proud to wave the banner for either of our potential nominees. They so out-class the Republicans.

Our National Shame

While the rest of the left netroots devolves into armed camps, we take refuge in those level-headed bloggers who have kept their eyes on the real issues, the true moral outrages, of this administration. Is it betraying my chauvinism to point out that these are the leading women bloggers?

Digby is behind FDL is trying to organize a national campaign that requires local activism. I’ve written about the subject before here, but since neither of our current candidates has shown any enthusiasm for the subject, it falls to us to push the conversation about these the war crimes.

Classic Digby:

There was a time when many members of the press and many citizens of this
country would rend their garments about what they would "tell the children"
about sex in the White House. Oddly, they seem to be unconcerned about what to
tell the children about torture being devised and approved in the same place.
That tells you something about the provincial Village that runs our politics.

Obama Stumbles

By now, you have no doubt heard the recent kerfluffle over Obama’s remarks about the working class. The left blogs have mostly adopted three positions:

• Obama supporters are refusing to critique the remarks, and are focused on characterizing Clinton's reaction as more evidence of her joining Republican talking points.
• Clinton-supporting sights are all over it on the electability front.
• They've ignored it in favor of other topics, which I think is a defensible position, but

Why force ourselves to abandon critical analysis just because we have taken a side?

Here are Obama's actual words, in response to questions about how he can draw support from blue-collar voters:

"It's not surprising, then, they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or
antipathy to people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or
anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations."

And you should also give a listen to his first response to that chatter.

Obama’s response here is carefully crafted. Rather than step away from the reaction to the word “bitter”, he steps into it, claims it, and turns it back around. Masterful. And there is no doubt that much of what Obama said – even in his much less judicious original remarks – is largely true.

The problem is that these comments (particularly his original comments) come from the perspective of someone explaining – in fairly broad strokes – one set of people to another. They are socio-psychological in nature and therefore – by definition – apart from and therefore “above” those being described. This is at the heart of what I think folks are reacting to.

Blue-collar voters don’t want to be “explained” to what are then set up (semantically) as the rest of the Democratic electorate. They see themselves at the center of that electorate. Yes, many of them own and use guns and attend church, but in saying that they “cling” to these things only as a way to “explain their frustrations” automatically places them among the wingnuttery who actively wedge around those issues. The blue-collar Democrats I know will resent having things that are a part of their cultural tradition (guns and God) lumped in with anti-immigrant fever or a reasoned rejection of more free trade agreements. This is the real reason this stumble will have resonance, and will stand as a serious self-inflicted wound.

On another note, since I criticized him on the issue in an earlier post, I must let you know that Obama finally sat down with the GLBT press.

ITMFA

Did this really sink in?

I ask myself, as much as anyone else. It’s almost too stunning to react to, and – at the same time – I can’t say I’m surprised.

So we have a bunch of blustering cowards playing Josef Mengale in the office of the Presidency of the United States. Not grimly turning their heads away from something they thought distasteful but necessary, but actually sitting around and debating and deciding which acts of torture, and in which potential sequences, they would like to inflict by proxy on the people they rounded up and declared “enemies.”

And far be it from me to defend John Ashcroft, but just as in the now-famous hospital bed scene, it seems that only he had enough shreds of decency left to be ashamed:

Then –Attorney General Ashcroft was troubled by the discussions. He agreed
with the general policy decision to allow aggressive tactics, and had repeatedly
advised that they were legal. But he argued that senior White House
advisors should not be involved in the grim details of interrogations, sources
said.

According to a top official, Ashcroft asked aloud after one
meeting: “Why are we talking about this in the White House? History will
not judge this kindly.”

You got that right.


ABC news followed up with the Idiot in Chief to get his reaction, which was: “What’s the big deal?”

Well, let’s see. Setting aside the obvious moral vacancy evidenced by such behavior, I’m thinking that this could rise to the level of a conspiracy to subvert both U.S. and international law!

As I have said repeatedly, I understand the pragmatics of the decision not to move to impeach this President and Vice-President, but I think it sets a precedent that may ultimately cause long-term harm to our system. This is the latest in a long list of behaviors on the part of this administration that as its direct aim the goal of making established law and the structures of our government subordinate to the will of the Executive Branch. If these are not impeachable offenses, what are?

And it really slays me that the underpinning reluctance to impeachment arises out of the ridiculous misuse of it by the Republicans against Clinton. So if I get right, by pursuing the false criminality of a Democratic President, they made it impossible to pursue the REAL criminality of a Republican? What freaking genius. What freaking fools are we.

The ACLU is calling for a Special Prosecutor. Thank God for the ACLU.

ALSO NOTE:

Digby has compiled a truly wonderful contact list I've added to the Action roll. It includes a lot of print media contacts from all around the country that others don't have.

STFU

This one is intended as a double-barrel shot. Out of the right barrel, Media Matters picks up some of the most obscene sexism imaginable, courtesy of the Fox Network. Can anyone honestly imagine a similarly extreme racist getting anywhere near the microphone? (Plenty of racism hits the airwaves, to be sure, but nothing this outrageous is permitted any longer, just ask Don Imus.) And – if you can stomach it – check out this original material from the jerk. Don’t you just wish these guys could work out their mommy issues?

I was too lazy to track down the url, but this will take you straight into your mail server: Comments@foxnews.com


Speaking of men who now clearly need therapy, out of the left barrel we have (sigh) again, Bill Clinton. When he went off the rails in South Carolina I wondered whether he wasn’t unconsciously trying to sabotage Hillary’s campaign. Now he’s gone off again and resurrected one of its most embarrassing moments. Can’t we send him somewhere away from the cameras to work it out?

Special Alert
If you get MSNBC (I don’t) or it you don’t mind watching tv on your computer (I don’t) check out this documentary special on MSNBC tonight. I’ll be fascinated to see the pubic conversation on race that is scheduled to follow.

Actually Winning on FISA

Since he was my primary touchstone throughout the FISA debate, I’ll let Glenn Greenwald give you the good news.

How did this happen? We are so used to losing!

Throughout the FISA struggle, Glenn Greenwald has been both my hero and my nemesis. As a constitutional and civil rights lawyer, his informed and surgical analysis of the issues at stake in the debate were inspirational, and the energy he put behind the netroots campaign, along with the women at FDL, was determinative.

At the same time, Glenzilla always had a gloom and doom tone about the final outcome. It was as if he really believed in the campaign against FISA as an important process in which to engage, while simultaneously discouraging us from having any real hope at ultimate success. He acknowledges that today.

This is the first time in a long time that right-wing fear-mongering on
Terrorism hasn't succeeded. Given that virtually everyone (including me) assumed
that the Congress would ultimately enact the new FISA bill demanded by Bush, it
demonstrates that smart strategies combined with intense citizen activism can
succeed, even when the Establishment -- its lobbyists, Congressional
representatives and pundits -- lines up in bipartisan fashion behind their latest measure. And it removes the Democrats' principal excuse that they cannot resist Bush's Terrorism demands without suffering politically.

Yeah for us!

Reader Poll:

I know most of you are lurkers, but if you did ANYTHING – made one phone call, sent one email, wrote one letter – on the FISA issue, would you comment and let me know? As this blog unfolds, I would like to get a sense of whether readers are willing to engage with me in true activism, or if you would prefer just to read about other people’s activism (snark!).

Giving it all away

The New Republic hosts a feature piece today on Andy Stern who, if you haven’t heard, is supposed to be the new savior of organized labor from his post as head of the SEIU. Ezra Klein was asked to critique, and I thought this observation very telling:

As for Stern's impact on the national health care scene, I can say, in context
of reporting that I've been doing, that it's immense. It was SEIU's pressure
that pushed the Democrats to the left on health care in the campaign (Stern
declared that they wouldn't even consider endorsing any candidate that didn't
have serious, detailed, universal health plan -- though Obama, who had the least
universal plan of the Big Three, eventually got the endorsement).

Read the last line again.

Andy Stern made universal health care the determinative factor in his negotiations with potential Democratic nominees ( we may assume because it has the single biggest impact on the health and well-being of his constituents), and yet ultimately threw his support behind Obama – the ONLY serious candidate whose plan fails to achieve that goal. What possible conclusion is there to be drawn but an exchange of policy objective for influence?

People who are serious about a progressive agenda need to let go of the politics of personality and recognize that we must hold our support as conditional – provided only to the extent that candidates support the same outcomes of policy that we do. This is where we have our greatest impact.

Fred Kagan is a Dick

I know that among whatever readers I have there is a strong contingent of NPR listeners and PBS watchers. Up until very recently, they were the only source of sane news coverage around.

So it is particularly galling to me when completely discredited people are given a megaphone on the public airwaves.

Fred Kagan is a Dick.

And The News Hour with Jim Lehrer just offered him up as an expert commentator on today’s testimony by Petraeus and Crocker before Congress.

In response, I offer you Fred Kagan as..........

the first installment of

“Your Guide to Discredited Hacks

The Essential Consumer Guide to Whom to Ignore.”

Fred Kagan – Resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), former professor of military history at West Point, self-described military “expert”. Kagan has been among the most pompous and un-repentant of the original Iraq War cheerleaders. There is no outcome that is too thin for him to declare an astounding self-vindication.

Glenzilla summarizes him here, but this is my favorite quote:

The first thing I want to say is that: The Civil War in Iraq is over. And until
the American domestic political debate catches up with that fact, we are going
to have a very hard time discussing Iraq on the basis of reality.

So hey – great news! The civil war in Iraq is over! No more sectarian killing! Does this mean we can leave now?

Here is a little bit of old Fred’s biography:

Frederick Kagan, along with father Donald and brother Robert, belongs to the influential neoconservative Kagan family, in the same vein as the Kristol and Podhoretz clans. Like his father and brother, Frederick favors hawkish foreign policies and extravagant defense budgets. He is a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) and is associated with the now largely defunct Project for the New American Century (PNAC), which his brother cofounded.

[Snip]

Established in 1997 by a number of leading neoconservative writers and pundits associated with the American Enterprise Institute, the Project for the New American Century (PNAC) is a nonprofit organization whose declared aim is "to promote American global leadership." PNAC, which has been largely inactive since late 2005, played an important role building public and official support for a post-Cold War interventionist agenda in the Middle East and other global hotspots both before and after the 9/11 terror attacks. Such was its apparent influence that some scholars gave it singular importance in shaping policy during the George W. Bush administration. Writing in the Sociological Quarterly, David Altheide and Jennifer Grimes argued that "PNAC, working with a compliant news media, developed, sold, enacted, and justified a war with Iraq."

Now I have no issue with PBS, in this case, propping Kagan up as a foil against critics of Administration policy. What I DO object to is using him as some kind of legitimate intellectual voice on U.S. policy without fully disclosing his role as a primary architect.

Fred Kagan has been wrong about absolutely everything since BEFORE the onset of this war. And every statement he makes is intended to justify his original error. What does it take to be considered an expert? A history of utter and abject failure to show correct judgment?

Even if --by some miracle -- we are able to leave Iraq in anything other than stunning defeat, the policies he advocated will be judged as a failure. They already are in the minds of the American people, regardless of the outcome at this point.

So you should ignore every single word that comes out of the mouth of this charlatan, and demand that PBS seek out intelligent policy experts to help us find our way out of this morass.

Check out the action buttons to the right; I have added the appropriate PBS link for The News Hour.

This war, too

Another offering in honor of National Poetry Month, lest we forget that this election is about something more than your candidate:

At the Vietnam War Memorial
By Craig Erick Chaffin

Black granite stretches its harsh, tapering wings
up to pedestrian-level grass
but sucks me down, here, at the intersection of names.
I forgive, I must, though I wish something
could heal this wound in the earth.

Behold, all theorists, the price of theory:
extreme unction by napalm and blood,
vets shipped home whole or in pieces:
The VA grants prostheses
But not minds free of horror.

In jungles tumescent, through villages
of straw, by the Mekong where catfish
sleep in mud-heaven, we tramped,
disarming mines and flushing tunnels,
killing women and children
for potential collaboration,
smoking Tai-stick until stuporous –
still, the sound of Charlie
played on every frond.

Beat against this polished rock, America,
this vast projective surface for your sins,
wear your bloody heart out.
It’s not how many died
but that they died in vain, achieving
nothing except our grief for them.

It’s said you cannot write a good poem
until recollected in tranquility.
Let this then be a bad poem, bad as the war,
dividing author from reader and reader from page.
Let it drive a wedge between fathers and sons.
Let fathers mistake rebellion for disloyalty,
let sons mistake honor for stupidity,
let senators mistake appropriation for commitment,
let mothers confuse waste with sacrifice,
let sisters turn to prostitution to forget.

Let teachers suicide in public in partial recompense,
let preachers castrate themselves for passive assent,
let everything in America that breathes
hang its head in irrefragable shame.
Here is the legacy of your assumptions,
here the necropolis of your dark-suited wisdom:
A city set in a pit cannot be hid…

Don't Tune In

General Petraeus is going to appear on Capitol Hill tomorrow to tell us that the U.S. occupation of Iraq has achieved some notable successes. Count on it. He could provide a bulleted Powerpoint and stay home. There will be no revelations, no true debate about what we are doing there, at what cost or for how long. There will be posturing and defense, posturing and defense. The MSM is billing this as a debate that will involve all three candidates for President and the key operatives in the war. What a joke.

Instead, it will be a kabuki dance between the already established positions of the two parties. We know the Administration line: Regardless of the facts on the ground, whether we are winning (and need to stay and shore up our victories,) or losing (and need to stay to forestall our defeat,) we can’t leave. Period.

For their part, the Democratic candidates will engage in very tense questioning, (the only unknown being whether the exchange turns ugly and embarrassing) while never actually committing themselves to doing anything “precipitous”.

This is what will pass for “holding them accountable”. No need to keep yourselves tuned in.

I was appalled to hear the MSM line up against General Fallon when he resigned recently for being too honest in his assessment of the military situation of the United States. Let’s all decide, once again, to ignore the real advice of the military.

From Steve Coll at the New Yorker via TPM:

A war born in spin has now reached its Lewis Carroll period. (“Now here, you
see, it takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place.”) Last
week, it proved necessary for the Bush Administration to claim that an obvious
failure—Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki’s ill-prepared raid on rival
Shiite gangs in Basra, which was aborted after mass desertions within Maliki’s
own ranks—was actually a success in disguise, because it demonstrated the Iraqi
government’s independence of mind.

But the money quote is:

The suppression of professional military dissent helped to create the disaster
in Iraq; now it is depriving American voters of an election-year debate about
the defense issues that matter most.

God help us all.

Celebrate Spring

In honor of National Poetry Month:

Putting in the Seed

You come to fetch me from my work tonight
When supper's on the table, and we'll see
If I can leave off burying the white
Soft petals fallen from the apple tree
(Soft petals, yes, but not so barren quite,
Mindled with these, smooth bean and wrinkled pea),
And go along with you ere you lose sight
Of what you came for and become like me,
Slave to a springtime passion for the earth,
How love burns through the Putting in the Seed
On through the watching for that early birth
When, just as the soil tarnishes with weed,
The sturdy seedling with arched body comes
Shouldering its way and shedding the earth crumbs.

Robert Frost

1916

That didn't take long

Comments back!

The Learning Curve

How about that? There have been two comments posted in this first week, and one of them was from a troll selling hatehillary gear! It figures that the uglies would find me first!

So until I figure out how to delete bad comments (which should be simple -- but something is going on with my browser!) I've had to temporarily disable the comments. Sorry to drag you around my learning curve!

(not that many of you were making any comments.)

Teh Gays? Not so much

My first emotional break with the on-line community came about because of how quick they were to forgive Obama for his pandering to the homophobic Christian right of the African-American community. This was the Donnie McClurkin affair, when Obama chose a gay-hating evangelist to front a rally in South Carolina. He has never really been held accountable for that insult.

I “get” the hierarchy of the left. I learned it during the last great wave of the women’s movement. The most important issues were those leftist white men cared most about. Racial issues came second; women’s issues came third (if there was room), and GLBT issues came last. So I learned early that those who were supposed to be in my same corner of the political universe could be my worst enemies or, at least, my most untrustworthy friends.

I, for one, have never forgiven Bill Clinton for Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell (DADT) or for the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), and I blamed Hillary as well. She actually started out behind with me at the beginning of this campaign.

But she spoke out early on behalf of gay teens when she was ahead in the polls – with little to gain and much to lose. I worked with homeless kids, and a disproportionate share of those who had been “thrown-away” by their own parents were gay or lesbian kids.

Hillary won the points Obama lost, for me at least. I would never trust him to care about the ways this hatred affects my life except in the most philosophic and vacuous sense. Obama spent a lot of time courting votes in Pennsylvania this week. But the gays? Not so much.

Since this observation is counter to the prevailing narrative about Obama, it doesn’t surprise me much that this isn’t getting much play in the netroots. Via Corrente,

Equal Justice on the Left

I remember when Air America first came on. I was working at a different charity at that time and used to stream it, especially Al Franken, almost every day. But the afternoon was Randi Rhodes, and from the very beginning she impressed me as nothing more than a left-wing version of Rush Limbaugh. I had the same reaction to the first sound of her voice that I used to have when I would fall asleep on the couch and awaken to the first bars of “Jerry! Jerry! Jerry!”.

Move as quickly as possible to the off button.

Well I gave up on AA some time ago, thanks in no small part to Randi, so I didn’t cry any tears to read this week that she has been suspended from the station because of some REALLY across the line vitriol spewed at Hillary recently. Via the Huffington Post:

Air America host Randi Rhodes called both Geraldine Ferraro and Hillary Clinton
"whores" in a recent appearance. Rhodes, who hosts a weekday radio show on Air
America, said to the cheering crowd, "What a whore Geraldine Ferraro is! She's
such a fucking whore!" She then proceeded to say, "Hillary is a big fucking
whore, too" to a mixed audience reaction. "You know why she's a big fucking
whore? Because her deal is always, 'Read the fine print, asshole!'"

Are we supposed to react differently because Randi calls herself a liberal? I didn’t listen to Imus either but I sure wanted him to be held to account. I think our collective tolerance for this kind of vile invective has coarsened our culture and contributed to the ascendency of stupid. And I will be posting a lot about the culture of stupid.

Since this is supposed to be an action blog, here is the comment link to Air America for those who might like to lodge an opinion.

STFU 2

I find Kevin Drum at the Atlantic Monthly to be consistently reasoned and fair, unlike much of the on-line community these days. He’s also a good source for bits I don’t see other places, like these.

How much more discredited can these people be? The very fact that they are still employed is outrageous. How do we shut them up?

STFU

It’s hard to be a Clinton supporter these days.

Regular commentators and diarists have felt driven off their home sites. The heat on both sides on-line is toxic. Favorite sites (of mine!) are camped out across large divides and progressive communities are being split. And for every voice trying to caution folks not to harden themselves around a do-or-die outcome, there are four or more who are promoting poisonous attitudes about The Other. And The Other is Clinton on-line.

If you have followed me here from my email postings, you know that I started out as an Edwards supporter who migrated to Hillary as he dropped out and the media helped remind me that sexism was alive and well.

And for all of the resentment of the netroots about the Clinton’s previous triangulation against the left, there is no doubt that she has staked out the most liberal policy positions throughout the campaign. The frustration among her supporters is that we recognize that there is a butt-load full of heartache between where we are now and things like universal health care, and we some of us have grown to become more concerned with outcomes than with promises. We are aghast that Obama has done all the compromising up-front in an effort to separate himself from any radical reform.

But the Clinton campaign, itself isn’t making things any easier.

On the most base and political level, the Clinton campaign is a disaster. I cannot remember another in which so much damage has been done by people either close to the campaign or directly involved. It compels one to scream, “STFU!!”

From insider leaks to Bill’s acting out in South Carolina to Ferraro to today. Via TPM, it appears to be Harold Ickes.

It’s very hard to defend these reprehensible tactics, however based they may be on realpolitic.