Arianna Huffington - My Email To Arianna On Lousy Dem Debate Article

Hi Arianna,

Normally, I enjoy the Huff Post, but this article makes my BLOOD boil. Which one? This one:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/huff-wires/20080115/democratic-rdp/

"Clinton, Obama Vow to Bury Race Debate"

Why does the write refer to John Edwards as "the only white male in the race'? So freaking what? And why do your editors select headlines that focus on Obama and race and insult Obama?

I didn't see the debate -- I was at MacWorld -- but everyone I talked to, half not with any candidate in terms of preference -- said "Obama won."

Why in heaven's name are you all so afraid to point out when he does well, and why are you letting your new editor continue to inject racism into the campaign.

This is a real low for the Huffington Post.

Best,

Zennie

Flush With Cash, Karl Rove To Resign - Wash Post

Now, I'm guessing about the cash matter, but it reads he's not going to take another job. Plus, he's going to write a book (!) which means - drum roll, please -- a large book advance! Personally, as one who's worked in politics, I admire Karl Rove's work and the reputation he crafted as a top-flight political strategist.

Karl Rove, Adviser to President Bush, to Resign
By Peter Baker and Debbi Wilgoren
Washington Post Staff Writers

Monday, August 13, 2007; 7:34 AM

Karl Rove, the architect of President Bush's two national campaigns and his most prominent adviser through 6-1/2 tumultuous years in the White House, will resign at month's end and leave politics, a White House spokeswoman said this morning.

Bush plans to make a statement with Rove on the South Lawn this morning before the president departs for his ranch near Crawford, Tex. Rove, who holds the titles of deputy chief of staff and senior adviser, has been talking about finding the right time to depart for a year, colleagues said, and decided he had to either leave now or remain through the end of the presidency.

"Obviously it's a big loss to us," White House spokeswoman Dana M. Perino said this morning. "He's a great colleague, a good friend, and a brilliant mind. He will be greatly missed. But we know he wouldn't be going if he wasn't sure this was the right time to be giving more to his family, his wife Darby and their son. He will continue to be one of the president's greatest friends."

Rove, 56, who escaped indictment in the CIA leak case, has been under scrutiny by the new Democratic Congress for his role in the firings of U.S. attorneys and in a series of political briefings provided to various agencies across government. Citing executive privilege, he defied a subpoena and refused to show up for a congressional hearing just two weeks ago on the allegedly improper use by White House aides of Republican National Committee email accounts. Fellow Bush advisers have said they believe the congressional probes have been aimed in part at driving Rove out.

The White House said his departure was unrelated to the investigations. In an interview published this morning, Rove told Wall Street Journal editorial page editor Paul A. Gigot that he had been interested in leaving last year but did not want to go immediately after the Democrats took over Congress, nor did he want to abandon Bush as he fought for his troop buildup in Iraq and an immigration overhaul.

"I just think it's time," Rove told Gigot in comments confirmed by the White House. The Journal said White House Chief of Staff Joshua B. Bolten told Rove and other senior aides that if they stay past Labor Day, they would be expected to remain through the end of the second term, Jan. 20, 2009.

"There's always something that can keep you here," Rove said, "and as much as I'd like to be here, I've got to do this for the sake of my family."

Rove said he was finished with political consulting and plans to spend much of his time at his house in Ingram, Tex., with his wife, Darby, and near their son, who attends college in San Antonio. He said he plans to write a book about Bush's years in office, a project encouraged by the president, and would like to teach at some point, but has no job lined up for now. He does not plan to work on a presidential campaign nor would he endorse a candidate.

Rove is the latest of a string of high-profile presidential aides to head for the door as the Bush administration enters its final stages. In recent months, presidential counselor Dan Bartlett, budget director Rob Portman, deputy national security advisers J.D. Crouch and Meghan O'Sullivan, political director Sara M. Taylor, strategic initiatives director Peter H. Wehner and a string of other longtime aides have resigned one after the other.

None came close to Rove's stature or influence, however. His departure is the end of an era in modern GOP politics, the conclusion of 14 years that began with advising the son of the last Republican to hold the White House, then guiding that son first to the Texas governor's mansion and, ultimately, to the White House. Along the way, Rove became the most prominent political strategist of his generation and a bete noire for liberals and even a number of conservative critics.

Along with Karen Hughes and Joe Allbaugh, Rove was part of a group known as the "Iron Triangle" who were central to Bush's early political success in Texas, but he was the most enduring of the three. Bush termed him "The Architect" for his role in capturing the White House in 2000 and Rove was similarly credited with midterm Congressional election victories in 2002 and Bush's reelection over Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.) in 2004. The ouster of the Republican Congress in 2006, punctured Rove's long winning streak and empowered his enemies.

Rove's influence extended far beyond the politics of electioneering, deep into policymaking. He helped craft the first-term Bush agenda of tax cuts, which succeeded, and the second-term agenda of Social Security private accounts, which did not. More broadly, he provided the intellectual and historic framework for the Bush presidency and hoped to use it to open a new era of Republican political dominance, a project that today looks potentially crippled by the unpopularity of both the president and the Iraq war.

Rove was investigated for his role in leaking the identity of Valerie Plame, a CIA operative whose husband publicly criticized the administration's handling of prewar intelligence. Although White House spokesman Scott McClellan initially spoke with Rove and publicly denied that Rove had anything to do with the leak, the investigation later determined that he had in fact divulged or confirmed Plame's identity to columnist Robert Novak and Time magazine reporter Matthew Cooper.

Special counsel Patrick J. Fitzgerald brought Rove before the grand jury multiple times and considered charging him in the case but ultimately decided not to. Fitzgerald did indict I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, Vice President Cheney's chief of staff, who was convicted of perjury and obstruction of justice for lying to investigators, although Bush later commuted his sentence. Libby's attorney asserted at his trial that he was being sacrificed to protect Rove.

Rove told Gigot that he remains confident Bush will recover politically despite his low approval ratings. "He will move back up in the polls," Rove said. And he said Republicans could still retain the White House next year. The Democrats are likely to nominate Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (N.Y.), "a tough, tenacious, fatally flawed candidate," he said, but Republicans have "a very good chance" of beating her.

Rove laughed off his own reputation as the svengali of the Bush presidency. "I'm a myth," he said. "There's the Mark of Rove. I read about some of the things I'm supposed to have done and I have to try not to laugh."

Staff writer Howard Schneider contributed to this report.

TPM: Obama Spot On About Pakistan, Gives Washington Insiders Bellyache

Obama and Pakistan
08.09.07 -- 11:16AM

By Josh Marshall - talkingpointsmemo.com

I'm always interested to try to tease apart and find the meta-debates operating beneath the surface of campaign debates. As I wrote a few years ago in what I called the bitch-slap theory of GOP electoral politics, the whole swift-boat saga was less about the specifics of Kerry's injuries forty years ago than whether he could defend himself from the charges today. Someone who can't defend himself is weak; and if a guy can't defend himself he can't defend you.

That's what that whole song-and-dance was about.

So what is this back and forth about Obama and Pakistan about?

What this has boiled down to -- and this became even more clear after Tuesday night's labor-hosted debate, when Biden and Dodd acted as Hillary's proxies -- is Hillary, in league with the party's foreign policy establishment, trying to make Obama, implicitly or explicitly, concede an error, that he misspoke.

Precisely what he misspoke about is largely beside the point. The key is that they get him to concede that in the complex and serious world of foreign policy big-think, where words have consequences, he made an error. Of course, it's almost good enough if most observers decide that Obama screwed up. But once he concedes it himself, if he does, he stipulates from now through the end of the Democratic primary campaign that his inexperience in foreign policy is a basic premise of the campaign upon which the battle between him and Hillary will be waged. He can learn, improve, make progress, whatever, but his inexperience compared to Hillary will continue to be the reference point throughout.

But I think he's done a pretty good job so far refusing to get put in that box. And the truth is that I think Obama's actual words are so clearly unobjectionable that this is all Kabuki theater of a particularly strained and disingenuous sort. All Obama said was that if we have actionable intelligence about the whereabouts of high-value al Qaeda targets in Pakistan, and Pakistan won't act, we will act.

Clearly, no Republican can quibble with this. They're on the record for invading countries because they might become dangers to us at some point in the future. They're hardly in a position to disagree with Obama if he says we'll hunt down people who committed mass casualty terror attacks within our borders. And I'm not sure Democrats are in much of a position to do so either.

The unspoken truth here, I suspect, is that Obama has struck on the central folly of our post-9/11 counter-terrorism defense policy -- strike hard where they aren't and go easy where they are. I think everyone can see this. But Obama got there first. So they need to attack him for saying it.