A New Leak on Rice

Robin Wright has gotten her hands on portions of the text of a speech Condi Rice was scheduled to give on September 11th, 2001, to the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies ... a speech postponed by certain now famous events ... and the parts that Wright published this a.m. in the Washington Post pretty much prove at least some of Richard Clarke's criticism of this administration and its lack of interest in terrorism pre-9/11.

The undelivered speech was the National Security Advisor's roadmap at the time for what the Bush administration considered the most pressing issues internationally -- "the threats and problems of today and the day after, not the world of yesterday." And what was at the very top of that list of threats? Rogue missiles. The Bushies were rolling out that old chesnut, strategic missile defense. And what did NOT merit the barest mention? Osama bin Laden wasn't mentioned. Al Qaeda wasn't mentioned. Islamic extremism wasn't mentioned. Instead, there was plenty of implicit criticism of the Clinton administration for NOT funding strategic missile defense systems, that old blood-sucking vampire dug out of the grave of the Reagan years ... a.k.a., big bucks for defense contractors.

If the 9/11 Commission hadn't morphed into The Bland Investigating The Blind, signing on to a sweetheart deal that gives them Condi Rice but none of her aides under oath, that gives them George Bush and Dick Cheney holding hands together and NOT under oath and not even recorded for posterity ... IF the 9/11 Commission wasn't run by a Bush partisan, a lawyer from Texas who once co-wrote an article with Condi Rice ... we the citizens of this great nation might expect some truth out of all of this. Instead, we're guaranteed only spin. But so far, Richard Clarke's charges look quite accurate to us.

March for Women's Lives

The biggest protest march in over a decade is scheduled in Washington, D.C., for April 25th. We understand that three big buses are going from Boone. You can find a local contact person to reserve a spot on one of the buses by going to the "Events Calendar" here and scrolling down to April 25th. Also check out this national website.

If it's not time to rally together, what time is it?

The O'Franken Factor on Your Computer

Here's the link to go to for the new Air America -- "Left-Wing Radio." Al Franken is on noon til 3 p.m., opposite the drug-addicted Rush Limbaugh.

http://www.super62.com/jacor-common/pdx/streaming.php

The Hypocrisy Is Rank -- As Well As Comic

Second Lady Lynne Cheney wrote a novel, "Sisters," in 1981 that according to Publisher's Weekly was only published in Canada, maybe by design, since it was a bodice-ripper about the Old West in which the bodice-ripping is mainly being done by proud lesbians who DO NOT go blind or die because of their forbidden loves.

What has brought all this back to mind is that Lynne Cheney herself was "surprised" to learn that a paperback version of the novel is about to be published in this country on April 6th. So surprised in fact that she lapsed into amnesia when confronted by a New York Times reporter. Cheney said she didn't remember the plot of her own novel. (See "Whopper of the Week" published today in Slate.)

Which got me Googling, and I found that Cheney's hypocrisy has been a hot topic in some quarters for weeks now, including a satiric dramatic staging of portions of Cheney's novel in New York City back in early March (covered in a Lloyd Grove column in the NY Daily News). And there was a hilarious "live chat" with Second Lady Cheney at Whitehouse.org on March 18th in which her impersonator said, "I have long stood as a pillar of feminine neoconservatism -- having dedicated my entire adult life to the preservation of an America in which white Christian women enjoy the privilege of never needing to question the 19th century status quo .... I have been a proud personification of the truism that if God had wanted the weaker sex working, he'd have made them pretty much indistinguishable from dudes in the first place."

According to Elaine Showalter in The Chronicle of Higher Education, Cheney does NOT list "Sisters" on her resume for the American Enterprise Institute, perhaps because it "displays a compassionate, indeed liberal, attitude toward a fraught issue of personal choice." Showalter continues:

"I first discovered Sisters in a used-book stall in Paris in the early 90's, and I brought it home to share with members of the Modern Language Association's Executive Council during the years when the M.L.A. was under attack from the right, and an official visit from Cheney [as head of the National Endowment for the Humanities] to M.L.A. headquarters felt like a visit from the queen of a hostile country. I found Sisters surprising and impressive then, very different from Cheney's public persona. Rereading it a decade later, I am even more struck by its narrative power and daring. Historical color, forbidden passion, female bonding, whips and fires, strong opinions, scenes of morbidity and madness -- Sisters is a real page-turner and would make a wonderful movie."

"Whips and fires" -- Courtney Love would be perfect for the role of Sophia!

(Daily Kos had a lengthy post on this developing story yesterday.)

What hangs over all this bizarre cultural baggage, as the CBC points out, is the sexual orientation of Cheney's own daughter Mary, and her husband's boss's declaration in favor of an anti-gay Constitutional amendment: "...gay-rights activists have noted that the novel's positive treatment of lesbian relationships is at odds with the Bush administration's stance against gay marriage. Cheney, whose daughter Mary is openly gay, has so far been silent about the issue."

So far, we haven't seen any mention of this on Drudge, who loves any hint of hypocrisy on the left, and we can't wait to see what Andrew Sullivan does with this story.

Tennis, Anyone?

Dan Balz writes in this morning's Washington Post that Sen. John Kerry's public image has clearly been "damaged" since Super Tuesday by a relentless media assault by the Rovians ... stuff about his being too "liberal" and changing his position willy-nilly. There's been no effective Kerry response to these attacks, and the polls show that Bush has overtaken him.

Balz doesn't mention Kerry's recent Sun Valley skiing vacation, but he paraphrases a respected pollster who clearly alludes to the wisdom of taking time off at this particular juncture:

"Andrew Kohut, director of the Pew Center, said Kerry's standing has slipped in part because of the Bush campaign attacks and because he has been far less visible than he had been during the heat of the primaries."

Snow-boarding down an Idaho mountain was like sending an engraved invitation to George Bush: "Define me to your heart's content, since I'm obviously otherwise engaged and will not challenge you."

Just in Time for April Fool's!

Bush's Treasury Secretary John W. Snow said in an interview with The Cincinnati Enquirer that the practice of moving American jobs to low-cost countries "is part of trade" and that "there can't be any doubt about the fact that trade makes the economy stronger" (story picked up and reported in the New York Times this morning). The euphemism these cats favor is "outsourcing."

Secretary Snow said those words in O-H-I-O, the 2004 swing state hard hit by the loss of jobs. Which led the NYTimes reporter to remark that, gee-whiz, "Mr. Snow's comments, published on Tuesday, reflect a growing willingness by the Bush administration to defend global free trade even in hard-hit industrial states" and to recall that Bush's chairman of the White House Council of Economic Advisers, N. Gregory Mankiw, got into very hot water last month for saying almost exactly the same thing. Mankiw had to write a letter of apology to Republican House Speaker Dennis Hastert for saying what he said.

Now, about the campaign strategy of sending a cherry "outsourcing is good" message into deepest Ohio ... WAY TO GO, TEAM!

Bob Woodward's New Book Is On Deck

Lloyd Grove, who used to write gossip for the Washington Post and now hangs out at the tabloid New York Daily News, says that Bob Woodward's next book on the Bush administration's war on terror is going to be "very bad for the Bush reelection campaign." Other gossip we heard somewhere on Sunday in the welter of TV gasbags says that Colin Powell has dished the unvarnished truth to Woodward in an effort to save what's left of his tattered reputation, since he plans on leaving this regime no matter whether Bush is reelected in November or goes down in flames to Lurch.

The new Woodward book, "The Plan of Attack," is due out next month and will be excerpted in a multi-part series in the Washington Post as well as featured by Mike Wallace on a 60 Minutes segment on April 18.

Eric Alterman says that Woodward is trying to redeem himself after his kiss-ass performance in "Bush at War."

Bowles Ashamed of Being a Democrat?

Another non-debate joint appearance of Erskine Bowles and Richard Burr, this time in front of the N.C. Bankers Association. The write-up in the Raleigh News & Observer contains this paragraph:

"Bowles, a Charlotte investment banker and former White House chief of staff for President Clinton, barely even mentions he is a Democrat."

Just what we're looking for in a candidate!

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