I'm a little late on all the Politico bashing that's been going on and call me old-fashioned, but if you're going to title this piece "Obama models campaign on Reagan Revolt", it'd be nice if the author actually provided more details to support this assertion.  Best I can tell the name "Reagan" is only used three time in the piece, one of which is in the title, and exactly which "Reagan Revolt" campaign are we talking about: 1968, 1976, when he almost torpedoed Gerald Ford, or 1980?  Furthermore, how is the Obama campaign similar to the "Reagan revolt" campaign(s)... ah, we'll never know but if one of Obama's pollsters is quoted as saying the campaign admired Reagan's above-the-fray optimism evidently that's enough?

Anyway, if you read a little further down, you'll see that the author asserts and provides far more detail as to why Obama's campaign strategy more resembles Gary Hart's 1984 presidential run. Okay, so let's try this again, 

 "Obama models campaign on Hart's 1984 run"? 

Accurate, but not nearly as sexy as that Reagan headline, is it?

Kevin Drum noticed today that Alberto Gonzales is trying to set a record for the number of things a government official not named Nixon can be investigated for at one time.  I think a better comparison in this case would mention not Nixon, but Edwin Meese III.  In fact, I'm surprised that more people haven't mentioned the similarities between the two men.  Both rose to prominence as legal and political yes-men to their respective Presidents which prepared them to be god-awful Attorney's Generals better known more for their hackery, corruption and inability to manage the Department of Justice.  Meese was so bad he was investigated by at least two different Independent Counsels and three different Special Prosecutors not to mention all the times he was pulled before Congressional committees.  To give you an idea how bad things were at the DOJ under Meese and how we're seeing a similar situation now, check out this article called "Meese Malaise" from Times magazine in May of 1988:

Their criticisms of Attorney General Edwin Meese have been aired in the past month, but this time the two top Justice Department officials had an elite audience: Ronald Reagan and George Bush. In the Oval Office last Wednesday, the two attorneys told the President that his friend of 20 years lacked the "moral authority" to remain the nation's top law-enforcement officer.

Outgoing Deputy Attorney General Arnold Burns said Meese's legal troubles had infected the Justice Department with a "malaise." That had worsened the day before, when three more of Burns' aides quit, bringing to five the number of high-ranking Justice officials who have left since Burns and William Weld announced their resignations March 29. Weld, who had headed the criminal division, told Reagan what he had earlier told Meese: that he would indict the Attorney General if he were running the investigation. Meese's friend E. Robert Wallach had profited from his relationship with the Attorney General, Weld said, and it appeared that Wallach had made sure that Meese was rewarded for going along with his schemes.

The President asked no questions during the 30-minute meeting. Meese then gave Reagan his side of the story, presenting a rosier assessment, although John Shepherd, his nominee to replace Burns, had withdrawn his name just hours before. The St. Louis lawyer decided that the eight-month job would not be worth enduring more questions about his personal life in the confirmation process. Predicted a White House aide: "No Deputy Attorney General will ever be confirmed as long as Ed is there."

Washington's tolerance for Meese is fading. No Republican, particularly not George Bush, wants to head into the November elections while Meese sits in the Justice Department offering a fat target for Democratic attacks. Reagan, unmoved by the accounts of the resigned Justice officials, bellowed a loud no when asked last week whether Meese should resign. But not even Reagan may be able to stand by his pal when later this spring Independent Counsel James McKay issues what will be at best a highly critical report on Meese's unethical conduct.

I like that part about lack of "moral authority", resignations and discontent in the department, DOJ Criminal Division head announcing he would indict Mr. Meese if given the chance, and Reagan steadfastly refusing to remove Meese... kinda deja-vu all over again as Yogi Berra would say.  Needless to say, Ed Meese, sanctimonious conservative ideologue and Reagan veteran, is a bonifide hero to most hard-core conservatives and if you took a look at his bio at the Heritage Foundation, you'd be hard pressed to reconcile his actual government service with such a glowing, sentimental load of crap. 

"Edwin Meese III is a prominent leader, thinker and elder statesman in the conservative movement – and America itself." 

Good God!

Meese was eventually forced to step down a little early so there may be some hope but the general pattern of history seems to be mismanagement, corruption and political hackery of the worst kind is rewarded by today's Conservative movement so I expect to see Alberto stick it out a little longer... after all Ed Meese did.

I think Tony is trying to say that increased violence means the insurgents are getting "desperate"... but then again that was used so many times two years ago it'll probably only make people laugh now?

Over at RedState, we see how Bush is faring of late:

ABC News is reporting their White House correspondent has been told by government officials that Gens. Petraeus and Odierno have already decided that they want to keep US troop levels at current levels into December and possibly well into 2008 if not longer.  So if I read this correctly, it's only the beginning of June but senior commanders in Iraq have already decided what they'll report... in September? 

Its hard to say whether or not Ms. Raddatz received a load of bull but I'd feel a lot better if Congress were to ask Gens. Petraeus and Odierno to come back and answer some questions about this matter.  I figure if Petraeus can comeback and give a secret pep-talk to the Republican caucus before the escalation vote then he'll have no trouble coming back to answer a few questions on this matter from say Ike Skelton or Carl Levin.

Plame Covert.

"Asking Petraeus to assess the situation in September might be asking him - if the evidence pointed in that direction - to say that his whole counterinsurgency strategy was wrong. If the evidence is not clear, he would most likely cherry-pick data by pointing out, as he already has, that sectarian violence is down in Baghdad, while ignoring such inconvenient truths as the increase in suicide bombings or the rise in deaths of American soldiers and contractors.

Was Gen. William Westmoreland ever objective about the attrition strategy in Vietnam or Gen. Douglas MacArthur about the Chinese intervention in Korea?"

I doubt Gen. Petraeus got to where he is by doubting his own abilities or offering any real hard objective criticism of the President's policy in Iraq to date.  As I said in an earlier post, this is the guy made responsible for building the new Iraqi Army a couple years ago and despite his glowing editorials to date I'm not sure I see much in the way of progress on that front, either.

If you were to read this article you wouldn't have a clue, but you would come to see that it is elusive.  If my reading is correct basically what we're seeing now in Iraq is a wash.  Number of attacks in Baghdad are steady and rising, violence is moving to surrounding areas as well as what once were fairly quiet parts of the country, sectarian killings are down (if we leave out those killed by car bombs), while the Shiites have already ethnically cleansed most of East Baghdad they can't expand for the time being, no political compromises expected before the Iraqi government takes a couple months off during the summer, oh, and attacks have decreased in Anbar province.  In fact, the US military is so confident things are gonna work over time that they refuse to release any sort of statistics on the number of attacks on US and Iraqi forces in Baghdad? 

Which gets me back to "progress", what does it mean in this context?  How do we measure it especially when it doesn't appear to be happening in any real quantifiable way?  I know, wait until all the troops get there and see what happens but I keep seeing things that question the efficacy of even our current strategy.  Check out this Pat Lang post and tell me he doesn't have a point that most of these outposts we're putting up in Baghdad are poorly placed, difficult to defend and difficult to relieve in the case of a well-coordinated attack, which will eventually come.  I too was struck by the picture, not realizing we were putting up blast walls around everything and puzzled that fields of fire appeared almost non-existent in these built up areas. 

And don't expect Ray Odierno to sort it out.  His command of the 4th Infantry Division in the first two years of the occupation will someday be a textbook in how not to fight a counterinsurgency.  For instance, intimidating and terrorizing the population as force protection is as a rule really bad, detaining all the men (suspect or not) in a sweep area and sending them to an already crowded Abu Ghraib prison is a recipe for disaster, and, my favorite, counterinsurgency by interdicting artillery fire (ie. receive a little mortar fire and drop a couple hundred artillery shells on small towns and farm fields) really doesn't work.  Yep, one more thing that doesn't give me any hope this will work.  Sure Petraeus is overall commander, but Ray Odierno does the day to day and I while I know he is an asshole, I have no confidence he really knows what he's doing. 

Which gets me back to my main question, what is progress?

Christ, what are they teaching kids in journalism school nowadays? 

Greg Sargent has a post highlighting the latest absurd GOP attack on Nancy Pelosi.  I know Nancy Pelosi attack stories are a dime a dozen these days, but what is telling is how uncritically the Associated Press picked up the "story" and ran with it?  Republicans are charging Pelosi with adding $25 million to the budget for renovations to the San Francisco waterfront solely to pump up the value of various rental properties owned by her husband while Pelosi is on record as saying the Port of San Francisco requested the funding. 

Basically, what we get is another "GOP charges this and the Pelosi people deny the allegation" trope or as I like to call it, another "there's a controversy here, the end" story.  Interestingly enough, Greg notes that there is no indication that AP bothered to verify if the Speaker's defense of her actions held up?  They reported the controversy but never bothered to call anyone in San Francisco, yet alone the Port of San Francisco, and when Greg called, guess what, yep, the Port of San Francisco requested the funding, the decision making was generated by local agencies and the request was passed up throught the mayor's office and local city and county government? 

I'm sorry, I know a lot of reporters work on deadline but isn't that basic Journalism 101, try to verify whether allegations are true before going to press?  And wouldn't it have been a much bigger story if you'd bothered to call the Port of San Francisco and they said, we don't know what you're talking about and this is Nancy Pelosi's project all the way?  Instead we get crap like the "Speaker wants the biggest plane the military has to commute home" stories or "Barack Obama attended a radical islamic school when he was younger" stories.  It shouldn't be up to bloggers like Greg Sargent to follow up on these things, that's your job!  Maybe this is just my opinion, but Christ you'd have had to have slept through the last six years not to know that much of what you'll hear from Republicans, from the White House to the Congress, doesn't hold up to even a tiny bit of scrutiny or verification, in fact the US Attorney hearings among others make that abundantly clear, so how about more real reporting and less passing on the gossip of the week, huh?