Certain portions of the National Intelligence Estimate were leaked by the liberal media less than two weeks before the mid-term election. The NIE report was written 5 months ago, but only now does it get leaked. Blame it on a media holding back until an opportune time, or blame it on politically motivated leakers timing a leak they knew the media would rush uncritically into, but either way it’s nothing but a smear campaign with the media playing a prominent role. It’s a role that they should not have been part of–as skeptical as they claim to be–but they jumped in with both feet.

Today, President Bush called their bluff and released other parts of the report for folks to read for themselves. It’s a shame that in order to get a fair hearing the Bush administration has to declassify material. It appears that those on the Left and their supporters in the media are more than willing to compromise national security and break the law in order to gain political points.

So you wanna’ cherry pick quotations? John Hawkins highlights another blogger, allegedly a former member of the U.S intelligence community, who does his own cherry picking that paints a completely different picture. Worth a read.

Of course, Democrats, reading what they want and ignoring the rest, hold on to the spin and proclaim this as some sort of indictment against the war in Iraq. They’re playing pure politics with national security. Again. They’re holding up this snippet of a report as the gospel truth. Wonder what their thoughts were on the NIE report that there may be WMDs in Iraq. Actually, when that report was discussed, those on the Left noted more cherries picked other quotes from it that expressed doubt about their presence. At the time, as noted on Redstate,

But the NIE, I recalled from the discussions following the “NO WMD!” declarations from the Dems and the MSM, had said that there were WMD. When the MSM found snippets which expressed doubt, it was explained that the NIE contained a diversity of opinions and outlook.

That was then; diversity of opinion. This is now; monolithic groupthink. Short-attention-span Democrat voters will fall for it. But no one should.

Technorati Tags: NIE, Iraq, war, WMD, media

I watched most of the Fox News Sunday interview by Chris Wallace of Bill Clinton. A couple of observations.

1. Clinton could have easily parried any perceived attack on his administration with a calm, to the point defense of what he did and why he did it. Instead, he spent most of his time getting downright accusatory of Chris Wallace and Fox News and blowing the whole thing out of proportion. Methinks he doth protest too much. Not what you’d expect from the type of politician he’s been in the past.

2. When Clinton asserted that Wallace hadn’t asked these questions of Republicans, I just knew the blogosphere’s fact checking machine was going to kick in to high gear. Patterico’s got the goods. Does the “evil” Rumsfeld count? That should quell any argument about the interview being some sort of right-wing hit piece, but of course many on the left will not be deterred from that pre-conceived notion.

Technorati Tags: Fox News, Chris Wallace, Bill Clinton

Hugo Chavez, a man embraced by Cindy Sheehan and Harry Belafonte, and who gives free PR to Noam Chomsky, spoke before the United Nations yesterday. His words, both then and later, ought to give pause to those who make common cause with him. They also ought to give pause to those who vote for people who have made common cause with Chavez.

“The devil came here yesterday,” Chavez said, gesturing to where Bush had stood during his speech on Tuesday. “He came here talking as if he were the owner of the world.” He later said he was referring to President Bush when he spoke of the devil.

Chavez said it still smelled like sulfur. Well, as James Taranto notes, he who smelt it….

Chavez then made the sign of the cross and appeared to pray for a moment. Where is the American Left on this? If Bush had some something like this, even in jest, they would be outraged over it. Either they would decry his outward religiosity, or complain that he was using it to make a joke. As far as I know, though, this little demonstration has passed without serious comment by Chavez supporters here.

Rep. Charlie Rangel did come out against Chavez’s remarks in general when he said,

You don’t come into my country, you don’t come into my congressional district, and you don’t condemn my president. If there’s any criticism of President Bush, it should be restricted to Americans – whether we voted for him or not.

That was great of him to say, and I’m glad to hear this come from across the aisle. I don’t think Rangel would have said he was a “supporter” of Chavez before this.

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Gas prices are dropping. On queue, Bush’s poll numbers are rising. Again, just further proof that setting public policy based on poll numbers is never a good idea.

When the Clinton administration folks came up with the phrase, “It’s the economy, stupid”, all that meant was that they were poll driven. Want to push through your agenda? Manipulate the economy so that folks feel like things are better, and you can claim a “mandate”. That’s not the way to run a government. The Republicans have, correctly, not jumped at quick fixes for the most noticeable economic data point–gas prices–and they have paid for it in presidential approval ratings and hence in the liberal punditry as well. Republicans did the right thing, in spite of the short term problems in PR it would cause them. The market has corrected itself and the emotional sector of the public is coming back on board.

The economy is important, make no mistake. But it’s not so important that, as the catch-phrase implied, it’s the main thing. The economy is not something that government should be overly meddling in. Unfortunately, too much of the public has been conditioned to think that the state should run the economy, and when prices are high it’s the government’s job to “fix” things. They don’t see that, all over the world and throughout history, the more control of the economy the government had, the less free the people were, and the worse the economy functioned. Look at the socialist countries of Europe or the failure of centrally Communism for prime examples.

The people run the economy. Let ’em.

Update: Well, speaking of gas prices, Betsy is pointing out the (unfortunately) predictable response of some to assume that the Bush administration is, indeed, practicing manipulation of gas prices for just such a bump in the weeks leading up to the mid-term elections. C’mon, folks, this is pathetic. She notes that USA Today provides the very obvious, market-driven (and even weather-driven) reasons. Is 40% of the public really that unaware of the news of the day that they’re willing to believe this? Given some of the manipulation they’ve come to expect from their government (that is, when they want the government to do it), I suppose it’s not completely unsurprising. But it is disappointing.

Update #2:  Back Talk uses some statistical analysis to show that because these two graphs correlate doesn’t mean one causes or influnces the other.  He notes that, for example, Bush’s popularity jumped before the 9/11 gas price jump rather than after.  He also shows a graph of Bush’s popularity vs. housing prices, but nobody’s tying those two numbers together.  Very good points and worth considering in this discussion.  I would only add that most folks know, day to day, what the gas prices are and not many know the value of homes around them very often, so gas prices would affect their perception more.  But I do appreciate Engram’s points.

Technorati Tags: oil, gas prices, economy, polls, communism, socialism

Robert Novak is setting the record straight on the Armitage leak of Valerie Plame’s identity. It’s not good for the rabid Left that was waiting for someone–anyone–to be frog-marched.

First, Armitage did not, as he now indicates, merely pass on something he had heard and that he ”thought” might be so. Rather, he identified to me the CIA division where Mrs. Wilson worked, and said flatly that she recommended the mission to Niger by her husband, former Amb. Joseph Wilson.

Second, Armitage did not slip me this information as idle chitchat, as he now suggests. He made clear he considered it especially suited for my column.

An accurate depiction of what Armitage actually said deepens the irony of him being my source. He was a foremost internal skeptic of the administration’s war policy, and I long had opposed military intervention in Iraq. Zealous foes of George W. Bush transformed me improbably into the president’s lapdog. But they cannot fit Armitage into the left-wing fantasy of a well-crafted White House conspiracy to destroy Joe and Valerie Wilson. The news that he and not Karl Rove was the leaker was devastating news for the left.

Interestingly, while the Left was happy to assume that the leak was part of a Republican conspiracy, Novak’s information paints a very different picture, one in which one might be able to make out a Democratic rumor program to discredit White House staff.

Armitage’s silence the next 2 years caused intense pain for his colleagues in government and enabled partisan Democrats in Congress to falsely accuse Rove of being my primary source. When Armitage now says he was mute because of special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald’s request, that does not explain his silence three months between his claimed first realization that he was the source and Fitzgerald’s appointment on Dec. 30. Armitage’s tardy self-disclosure is tainted because it is deceptive.

I’m not saying there was such a conspiracy of whispers. What I am saying is that it’s deliciously ironic that the result could be construed as coming from one.

If you really want the deep details, A.J. connects all the dots.

To add to the farce, now Valerie Plame is suing Armitage. But in order to do that, she has to really turn her allegations in knots.

One-time covert CIA officer Valerie Plame on Wednesday sued the former No. 2 official at the State Department for violating her privacy rights.

The suit does not accuse Richard Armitage, who was deputy secretary of state in the Bush administration, of participating in an administration conspiracy to blow her cover.

…

By adding Armitage’s name to the suit, Plame’s lawyers set up a different scenario. They contend a White House conspiracy existed, but that Armitage’s leak was independent of it.

Armitage is accused of violating Plame’s privacy rights. He is not accused of violating the Wilsons’ constitutional rights to equal protection and freedom of speech _ allegations that remain against the White House officials.

So Armitage leaked the name, but didn’t violate any equal protection or free speech laws, while the White House did the same thing and did violate those laws. ‘Cept that the White House “leaked” something to Novak that he already knew. And this all happened with such amazing coincidental timing.

Joe Wilson is really desperate to see frog-marching. Is this an amphibian thing?

Technorati Tags: Robert Novak, Richard Armitage, Valerie Plame, Joe Wilson, conspiracy, Karl Rove, Democrats

With a hat tip to James Taranto, it’s time to bust the myth that we had all this store of goodwill built up because of what Muslim terrorists did to us on 9/11, but Bush squandered it when he went to war. From the London Telegraph, Anne Applebaum writes:

But it’s also true that this initial wave of goodwill hardly outlasted the news cycle. Within a couple of days a Guardian columnist wrote of the “unabashed national egotism and arrogance that drives anti-Americanism among swaths of the world’s population”. A Daily Mail columnist denounced the “self-sought imperial role” of the United States, which he said had “made it enemies of every sort across the globe”.

That week’s edition of Question Time featured a sustained attack on Phil Lader, the former US ambassador to Britain – and a man who had lost colleagues in the World Trade Centre – who seemed near to tears as he was asked questions about the “millions and millions of people around the world despising the American nation”. At least some Britons, like many other Europeans, were already secretly or openly pleased by the 9/11 attacks.

And all of this was before Afghanistan, before Tony Blair was tainted by his friendship with George Bush, and before anyone knew the word “neo-con”, let alone felt the need to claim not to be one.

There was outpouring of sympathy, to be sure. But to confuse that with some sort of policy shift is just wrong.

The dislike of America, the hatred for what it was believed to stand for – capitalism, globalisation, militarism, Zionism, Hollywood or McDonald’s, depending on your point of view – was well entrenched. To put it differently, the scorn now widely felt in Britain and across Europe for America’s “war on terrorism” actually preceded the “war on terrorism” itself. It was already there on September 12 and 13, right out in the open for everyone to see.

And really, was the breaking of the UN sanctions by the likes of France and Russia really a result mostly–even partially–of some sort of lost love for the US? Please. It was selfish interest, plain and simple, by economies that couldn’t handle the loss of a trading partner very well.

Anne does note that American may have turned folks off with our “go it alone” mentality (although a coalition of 20 groups in Afghanistan and a few dozen that have or had participated in Iraq doesn’t sound too much like we’ve “spurned traditional alliances”), but faults Europe as well for already being “disinclined for their own reasons to sympathise with any American tragedy”.

Frankly, Democrats are blaming Bush for losing something we never really had.

Technorati Tags: Anne Applebaum, goodwill, anti-Americanism

Drudge’s big headline this afternoon is that gas is down to $2.05/gallon in Iowa. Did I not catch the news story proclaiming that the federal government had moved in and enforced price controls?

No, I (and you) missed nothing of the sort. Instead, as the Captain notes, market forces (remember those things?) are at work.

A number of factors play into this drop in price. First, as the article notes, the summer driving season has passed. Gas prices normally drop after Labor Day as children go back to school and family vacations make their way to the scrapbook. Also, this season has seen much lower levels of violent weather, and while we’re not out of hurricane season yet, the chances of a really damaging storm in the Gulf of Mexico gets less likely with each passing day. Traders buy oil on futures, which means their speculation now extends past the hurricane window — and since they had built bad weather into previous pricing, it makes sense that we would see a sharp drop now.

It seems that, just as Al-Qaeda has, the market, the weather, and American families have conspired to give the Democrats one less campaign issue. In the same way as leftist paranoids looked with suspicion on the release of terrorist videos, prepare for more hand-wringing over the “curious timing” of this news.

Yes, the market has been allowed to work and prices are now coming down. Understand, however, that I loved high gas prices. My wallet didn’t all that much, but I can telecommute 3 or 4 days a week, so it didn’t complain too loudly. But there were so many upsides to high prices, most of which liberals purport to love. There was the encouragement to conserve or telecommute or car pool. The higher prices increased the demand and the funding for research into alternative energy sources. They helped pay for college tuition (people in the middle class work for oil companies, too, y’know). There was so much good that came from them, yet liberals wailed and whined about it. Truth is, they’d rather the prices go up due to a tax increase so the government gets the money rather than R&D departments of the evil “Big Oil”. Then they could siphon it off, pad their wallets, and be magnanimous with the scraps as grants to R&D departments of the evil “Big Oil”.

By the way, will all the Democrats who wanted to blame Bush for the high gas prices now turn around and credit him for lowering them? Hold not thy breath.

Technorati Tags: gas prices, oil, free market, Democrats, paranoia

You should. For the next 60 days, you aren’t allowed to get your political message out in the media, thanks to McCain-Feingold. Even if your message is about pending legislation. As long as the incumbent is simply mentioned, it’s banned political speech. (Fortunately, blogs are exempt.)

And it could have been tempered recently. Republicans voted to temper it, but the Democrats would not hear of it.

Technorati Tags: McCain-Feingold, free speech, Democrats

Brian Maloney, who keeps up with the radio talk show biz, is rather upset that Rush Limbaugh is going to do a 90-second opinion piece on Katie Couric’s new CBS Evening News.

Sounding a bit defensive, Limbaugh explained his rationale, took two calls on the subject and then quickly moved on to another topic. In a lighthearted way, he lashed out a bit at friends and supporters for not giving him more credit after all these years in the public realm.

Well, I read the transcript and honestly I don’t hear it the way Brian does. I don’t hear “defensive”, and I certainly don’t hear “lashing out”. Some dittoheads do indeed worry too much when Rush gives any time at all to anyone who leans left. And I don’t see the big deal, especially since, as Rush points out, his viewpoint is hardly ever covered on the Big 3 newscasts, so this is an historic opportunity for folks to get an unfiltered look at Limbaugh and his ideas. Yeah it’s only 90 seconds, but that’s about 80 seconds more than usual on a typical CBS news night.

There will probably still be the same issues with CBS News later as there are now; most stories ignoring or minimizing the center-right views, assuming the center-left arguments are always mainstream, going to center-left experts and organizations for reaction, etc. etc. Depending on how they handle this, CBS may actually get a bit more balanced, which can only be a good thing.

Technorati Tags: politics, radio, Rush Limbaugh, CBS, Katie Couric, Brian Maloney

Ever since the whole Valerie Plame kerfuffle imploded, the bad news keeps dribbling out. Ace at PoliPundit adds a few more notes to the supposed politically-motivated “smear campaign”. The Left just knew they were right. They invested so much in Joe Wilson’s charges only to have the bubble burst from beneath them. And it wasn’t like Wilson was some sort of ironclad source. The thing that got this started was his misrepresentation to the public of his own report. It just went downhill from there.

Technorati Tags: Valerie Plame, politics, Joe Wilson