GOP Boasts Of Using Huffington Post To Drive Wedges Between Democrats And Activist Base

The Politico’s Michael Calderone (h/t KingOneEye) reports:

Huffington Post reporter Ryan Grim, a former POLITICO staffer, said that after the House leadership released a video earlier this month questioning the White House on national security, a senior House Republican aide reached out to make sure he’d received it — that’s despite knowing how the site would probably play the story (and how commenters would react).

The piece that resulted — “House GOP Obama Ad Aims to Terrify” — likely appealed to liberal Huffington Post readers, while also drawing attention to the Republican clip, which is what the party wanted all along.

Such a relationship can be beneficial to both parties — while the GOP message usually won’t get a friendly reception among Huffington Post readers, there are times when it can drive wedge between the moderate Democrats in Washington and party’s activist base.

“In some cases — like oversight of TARP and transparency in Obama’s White House — their agenda is not inconsistent with Republicans,” said Alex Conant, the RNC’s national press secretary in 2008.

Conant wrote his first Huffington Post commentary last month, touching upon an area where the anti-war left and the Obama administration might differ: Afghanistan. There, Conant wrote that in some aspects, Obama is following the path laid by liberal bogeymen like George W. Bush and Donald Rumseld.

“The piece I wrote for them, I thought, was something that was appropriate for their audience,” said Conant. “It was about how Obama’s going to have problems with his base — which is Huffington Post readers — because of his Afghanistan policies.”

“To the extent that Republicans have an interest in communicating with Obama’s base,” Conant continued, “that’s going to be a good medium.”

In other words, this is concern trolling raised to a high art. Or blogger jujitsu.

Korea shock

The former president of South Korea, Roh Moo-hyun has committed suicide in the wake of a (probably politically-motivated) corruption investigation. He is accused of profiting from millions of dollars paid to family members. He was one of a generation of left-reformers that sought to clean up South Korea’s notably corrupt and undemocratic (and conservative) system. While in office, he made major strides in reconciliation between North and South, strides which his conservative successor has reversed. Whether he was or was not guilty of financial corruption, he was one of the rare leaders in Korea with political courage and compassion. From his obituary:

But in 1981 his work brought him in contact with a case of human rights abuse which he says changed his aspirations forever.

Mr Roh was asked to defend one of two dozen students arrested for possessing banned literature, for which they were detained and tortured for almost two months.

“When I saw their horrified eyes and their missing toenails, my comfortable life as a lawyer came to an end,” Mr Roh is quoted as saying.

This will in my estimation destabilize and demoralize Korea. The present conservative government is not what Korea needs. In Asian terms, Roh has cleaned the slate of charges against him and his party… but is there a generation of leadership to follow?

Tom Ridge Must Be Trying For The Sane Indie Vote In 2012

That’s what this video says to me.

He won’t get any Republicans — not yet, they’re still too fixated on thinking that they need to be even farther right than they are now — but he might prepare the ground for a saner GOP come 2016.

What’s wrong with the Department of Justice?

First count, conspiracy to deprive defendant of civil rights. Scott Horton:

U.W. Clemon, formerly Alabama’s most senior federal judge, has written a scorching letter to Attorney General Eric Holder itemizing gross misconduct by federal prosecutors involved in the Siegelman case and demanding that the Justice Department open a full investigation into the matter. “The 2004 prosecution of Mr. Siegelman in the Northern District of Alabama was the most unfounded criminal case over which I presided in my entire judicial career,” he writes. “In my judgment, his prosecution was completely without legal merit; and it could not have been accomplished without the approval of the Department of Justice.” Clemon goes on to note that prosecutors engaged in judicial forum shopping, attempted to poison the jury pool, and filed and pressed bogus charges….

In recent weeks, a panel of the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed five of seven counts of the Siegelman conviction in an opinion issued by three Republican judges. The case was referred back to a fourth Republican judge, Mark E. Fuller, for re-sentencing. The ruling prompted further cries for a reexamination of the case, as 75 former attorneys general from 40 states, both Democrats and Republicans, wrote Holder noting gross irregularities in the case and improper conduct by prosecutors who secured the conviction….

Attorney General Holder’s office advised the Huffington Post that notwithstanding the long-standing allegations of prosecutorial misconduct, now amplified by a large group of attorneys general and the state’s former senior federal judge, the Justice Department had no investigation of the accusations underway.

Second count, conspiracy to give aid and support to America’s enemies. Naomi Seligman of CREW:

Earlier today, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) learned that the Obama administration is opposing our request that the Supreme Court reconsider the dismissal of the lawsuit, Wilson v. Libby, et al. In that case, the district court had dismissed the claims of Joe and Valerie Wilson against former Vice President Dick Cheney, Karl Rove, Scooter Libby and Richard Armitage for their gross violations of the Wilsons’ constitutional rights. Agreeing with the Bush administration, the Obama Justice Department argues the Wilsons have no legitimate grounds to sue….In fact, the Obama administration has gone one step further, suggesting Mr. Wilson failed to provide any evidence that Mr. Cheney, Mr. Rove or Mr. Libby harmed him.

Alice Marshall’s Working On A Book

You might be interested in helping her write it:

About this Project

I am an independent PR practitioner with a longtime interest in voting machines. With your help I can write a book that chronicles the story of how the reputation of this technology went from perfect solution to alleged conspiracy.

The book I propose would be entirely about the reputation of voting machine technology. Others have written about the merits of the voting machines; I do not propose to address that aspect of the story. I am solely concerned with the reputation meltdown of the machines. When they were first brought to notice, they enjoyed widespread confidence. Now they are seen as insecure at best and the instrument of conspiracy at worst. How did such a thing come about? This article I wrote for the Daily Dog will give funders a sense of my approach.

So far as I am aware, this was the first case of an online campaign directed against a specific technology. I propose to write a detailed book that traces the story from the obscure websites that attacked the machines to when the machines became the subject of late night comedy. It will be necessary to conduct hundreds of interviews with activists, computer scientists, corporate leaders, lawyers, elections officers, reporters, and politicians. I am particularly eager to interview the public relations teams of the companies involved to get their side of the story. What is it like to be on the receiving end of this sort of pressure campaign?

Obviously, this will require a great deal of time; if I write this book I will not be able to accept any additional PR clients. It will be necessary to subscribe to Lexis/Nexis and similar data bases. I also anticipate that I will require a research assistant. It is my ambition to publish the book before the end of October 2009. There are elections this year in Virginia, New Jersey, and Kentucky. An October release would be the best timing for a book such as this.

This book will be aimed at public relations professionals. Robert French, who teaches public relations at Auburn University, has agreed to review the book on his blog infOpinions, so funders can be confident that the book will receive some publicity.

Project location: Washington, DC

Alice is a longtime online activist whose online history goes back to the early days of Salon‘s Table Talk. She’s been one of the heavy lifters on the subject of electronic voting. Her planned book is worth the support you can give it.

Friday Cat Blogging

Hey, Starbucks!

Maybe if you didn’t screw your employees, and maybe if you didn’t burn your friggin’ coffee, you might have more customer loyalty and people wouldn’t be ditching you for better fair-trade brands that they can make at home.

I get my coffee from fair-trade, fair-employment sources like Peace Coffee and Farmer to Farmer. Set the coffee maker up the night before, wake up to fresh coffee the way I like it, take some to work in a Thermos. Life is good.

David “Kagro X” Waldman Was At The Same Meeting With Civil Liberties Advocates That Michael Isikoff Covered

And while he agrees with most of how Isikoff characterized it, he did disagree with the portion of Isikoff’s interpretation currently being bandied about by several persons online as alleged ‘proof’ that Obama’s shut the door on any probes (and which was used by some Kossack commenters to attack the diary I referenced earlier today):

There’s not much I’d feel compelled to add to what’s already out there, though one thing that jumps out at me is that I don’t know that I’d be able to agree with the assessment Isikoff passes on that the President spoke for the Attorney General and foreclosed the option of investigations, prosecutions or the like. The President ran the meeting, and it was his session. But I don’t know that I’d agree that it was his intention to announce the foreclosure of any such options. It may ultimately be his actual intention, but it didn’t appear to be his intention to declare it then and there — a subtle difference perhaps, but that subtlety was pretty much characteristic of most of what he had to say. He took his time and approached the issues and his answers to our questions carefully. The absence of any comment from the Attorney General appeared to me to be more of an acknowledgment that it was the President who wanted to direct the discussion, and the White House staff and administration officials present weren’t getting in the way of that.

Now, anyone who’s read David/Kagro’s diaries and front-page pieces over the past few years knows that he’s not an Obamabot in the least. But I predict that he will soon be accused of being one, if he hasn’t been already.

A Justice Department Attorney Looks At Obama’s Speech Today

Excerpted from Kossack and Justice Department attorney Lars Thorwald’s DKos diary on Obama’s speech:

I heard a level of determination in his voice that I think some could reasonably interpret as being tinged with a bit of pique over the political silliness of the last few weeks.  

Of course, the President used carefully weighed language, but I think his message was clear on those matters in which he was determined to set forth policy.  True to Obama: steel determination wrapped in a velvet glove.  

Where he wanted to be, the President was certain and clear and unwavering.  For instance, he forcefully declared that we will close the prison at Guantanamo–delivering that message without hesitation or reservation.

The message between the lines was, hey, you scairdy-cat and illogical Congress critters can sort of suck it if you think otherwise.  Some of these detainees are going to SuperMax prisons.  You’d best learn to deal with it.  So he took some in his own party to task in that measured, reasoned way that is becoming Obama’s hallmark.

But here’s the point: although Obama’s speech was powerful enough that he could have declared that there will be no further investigation or examination of the legality or illegality of the use of torture, and even though he did declare set positions on several key issues,  I did not hear such foreclosure with regard to possible prosecutions.

Vertical Farming

Terrapass’ Adam Stein, who is normally skeptical of vertical farming, links approvingly to this LA Times piece on two high-tech greenhouses that grow large amounts of high-value crops like tomatoes with far less of a water input than needed in conventional farming — a big deal in desert places like Southern California:

Rising out of verdant acres of strawberries and artichokes between Highway 101 and the Pacific Ocean in Ventura County are two mammoth, high-tech greenhouses.

[...]

The facility generates its own renewable power. It hoards rainwater. It hosts its own bumblebees for pollination. And it requires a fraction of the chemicals used in neighboring fields to coax plants to produce like champions.

[...]

The son of a Dutch immigrant farmer, the 51-year-old Houweling has helped build his family’s agricultural business into one of the largest greenhouse-based growers in North America. But the California facility is no ordinary hothouse.

On a recent afternoon, he was eager to show visitors clusters of plump, sweet tomatoes hanging overhead from vines that reach high into the rafters. This arrangement allows the farm’s 450 permanent employees to climb ladders to pick the fruit instead of stooping. The plants, which are fed individually through tubing that looks like intravenous hospital equipment, produce 20 times more fruit per acre than in conventional field production.

Virtually nothing is wasted in this ecosystem. Workers have dug a four-acre pond to store rainwater and runoff. This water, along with condensation, is collected, filtered and recirculated back to each of the 20-acre greenhouses. That has cut water use to less than one-fifth of that required in conventional field cultivation. Fertilizer use has been reduced by half. There are no herbicides and almost no pesticides, and there is no dust.

Five-acres of photovoltaic solar cells supply much of the electricity to run pumps and climate controls. Thermal systems collect solar heat and warehouse refrigeration exhaust to warm the greenhouses on cool evenings. Together, the two systems generate 2.1 megawatts of electricity, enough to power 1,500 homes.

“We believe this is the first greenhouse in the world that is energy neutral,” Houweling said.

Until recently, it wouldn’t have been possible to do this and make any money at it — and it certainly won’t work everywhere, or for every crop. But in places like California, where the prices for land are high and access to water is by no means guaranteed, this is likely going to be the wave of the future for various types of produce.