Tuesday, December 12, 2006

the Memo I want to say word about the memo. The memo I refer to here is the one the right-wing blogosphere is apparently no longer getting. No one seems to be in charge of the memo any more. This observation comes via the data I can gather from Tailrank which allows me to scan without visiting, the daily panic in various parts of the blogal village. The right is still "on message" to the extent that they are all still uniformly talking about the same thing on a given day. There is now an echo chamber feel to it as they link back and forth to each other, rather than the previous form of all saying the same thing in the same words, as though on some undisclosed Stepford wifi network. I thought this might be something that just seemed apparent, but last week Josh Marshall made a reference to the right-wing web loggers making a shift to less central voices in support for the administrations Iraq policy. As more prestigious republicans temper their unconditional support. Call it the Mark Steyn effect. Some of the things that have been batted about recently might have been better left unobserved on. They seem to have realized this and settled into a more conservative "noise and misdirection" approach.  Some examples from earlier were first when many of these web loggers were up in arms over a reference (rep Dingle? who has an unhelpful idea that we need a draft) that the Army recruits the economically and educationally disadvantaged by recruiting in such area's. Not so, they shouted. The Army isn't stupid, ergo it isn't being recruited from areas we gleefully accept as stupid. The actual case is more complex  No Atheists in a Foxhole? No Idiots, Either - New York Times . Institutional conservatives, such as those in the military who know where they recruit, may say to themselves "I guess these guys are on our side, but what a pack of idiots. I may need to rethink these bozos"  Such musings form a large part of my own political education.  Similarly it seemed to startle many of them when a Chinese submarine was discovered following an U S ship China's naval surveillance of U.S. - Editorials/Op-Ed - The Washington Times, America's Newspaper. Its not that unusual that this happens. It was formerly entirely routine with the Soviet Navy. I dug through a fair number of old pictures to find one that could proves this point (see illustration me and Victor). I also have a less dramatic picture taken from where I was standing on the ship which makes it clear the submarine was only about two hundred yards off.  For those wanting to know where are the Ra5c Vigilantes in this picture? Eventually the helo that took this picture will fly back to the carrier and be spotted next to one. One legitimate question here: is our relationship with China slipping into explicitly cold  war terms. The Honolulu Star-Bulletin article starbulletin.com | News | /2006/11/14/ mentions Admiral Fallon (a former Vigi pilot) who as the Pacific Area commander is tying very hard not to let that happen. The Navy even has a high ranking delegation setting off to China  The real story there is how did a diesel sub, "undetected until it surfaced within firing range. The submarine was spotted by a routine surveillance flight",  get within 5 miles of a carrier group? Unsat!  I saw one headline post in a right wing web log bewailing the New York Times for once again cracking open our stone temple national security state. This was over the leaking of first the Hadley memo Bush Aide's Memo Doubts Iraqi Leader - New York Times and later the Rumsfeld "memo" Rumsfeld Memo on Iraq Proposed 'Major' Change - New York Times perhaps they should have run another tea spoon of Folgers into their morning coffee because it was obvious to everyone else that various groupings within the White House had leaked those memo's and other information themselves  Go ahead, leak a little. - By Jacob Weisberg - Slate Magazine. It cheers them though to just blame the NY Times for printing what Rumsfeld handed them.  The last bit of acting out is their fixation on an incident at the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport Diversity of Opinion on Imams' Dispute With Airline - washingtonpost.com", what they term the case of the Airport Imams. They jumped out fast and reflexive on this. Some I noted the first day or so kept claiming an active terrorist ring had been captured. They passed up an opportunity to moderate their rhetoric when this claim wilted. It was all deliberate, a publicity stunt, a provocation they insisted. They can't claim they aren't also seeking ownership of this issue, not when they have a couple of columnists riding this hobby-horse near full time. Even allowing that this was a set piece of public demonstration, their accusation still winds up as: caught while being Arab in public. I think the Imams involved should in form a standing group around this - a political action committee they could call it the Arab in Public Action Committee or AIPAC for short. Sounds good to me. 11:54:24 PM    comment [];trackback [];

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License. 2006 P Bushmiller. Last update: 12/15/06; 8:00:49 PM.