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A day in Manhattan
Zogby VA poll
"It ain't going down like this"
What can they say?
ABC News' website has the AP story
The most shocking statistic of the week
The NY Times has picked up the Barnes story too
Unbelievable
Bob Dole: Whore
TNR: Fire-breathing Keyes may help Bush
Barnes and Barnes
Off to New York
No Longhorn till 2006
Kerry's war on usury
Outfoxed
Part one of the Daily Show's Kerry inteview is up
Bumper stickers!
Ten ways Bush Screwed New York
Alessandra Stanley on cable news
Hitchens: Kerry flip-flops on Vietnam!
Bush under 50 in Virginia and Arkansas
'Nuff said
"A Texas Size Celebration"
GOP recriminations
Bated breath
"God is not a Republican. Or a Democrat."
Wolf Blitzer is too busy
Taking advantage of the media's objectivity
It's out!
Protecting me?
The pixie dust has cleared
Dole: Carrying water for the Bush family
Apparently it's not Bush vs. Kerry, it's Bush vs. Satan
Turning undecideds into absentees
Old tricks
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Copyright 2003-04 JUSIPER
Sunday, August 29, 2004
A day in Manhattan
Hundreds of thousands.
That's a lot of protesters.
They were everywhere you went today in Manhattan, and of all ages and races.
Most important of all was that aerial shot that you probably saw on the news: proof of massive, vocal dissent delivered in a visual form that no amount of media commentary can diminish.
Saturday, August 28, 2004
Zogby VA poll
These pages have argued for months that Virginia should be considered a potential battleground.
But for Bush to only be ahead by a single point in that state, after the swift boat slander, no less, is staggering. Boosted by what has got to be something like a 40 point gender gap, Kerry has made this a race.
What can they say?
Plenty, unfortunately. First, right out of the gate, they can call Barnes a "partisan crank", which they essentially already have. He's appeared at a Kerry rally, which is where he made the comments. Second, if the public comes to believe it, they can say that Bush and his family never knew what Barnes was doing for them. There's no documentation, after all.
Still, a video played over and over again by the cable networks says more than a thousand newspaper stories.
UPDATE: The ABC story now provides greater context:
Five years ago, Barnes found himself at the center of questions about Bush's Vietnam-era service when the then-Texas governor emerged as the Republican presidential front-runner.
At that time, Barnes' lawyer issued a statement saying Barnes had been contacted by the now-deceased Sidney Adger, a Houston oilman and friend of Bush's father, who was then a congressman. Adger asked Barnes to recommend Bush for a pilot position with the Air National Guard and he did, that statement said.
I'm hoping that Peter, JUSIPER's expert on the AWOL story, will provide us with some commentary on the significance of this new chapter.
ABC News' website has the AP story
On the Ben Barnes video. With a statement the White House gave to the Houston Chronicle (blaming it on a partisan Democrat, of course).
The most shocking statistic of the week
It came this week, the number Via Kos' Tom Schaller:
It happened this week almost without notice: The number of Americans killed in Iraq during 2004 now exceeds the number killed in 2003.
More remarkably, the 488 killed thus far this year died in just 239 days (2.04 daily average), while the 482 killed last year died during fully 287 days (1.68 daily average), which means that not only has 2004 been bloodier than 2003 in absolute terms, but in relative terms as well.
Is this progress? Is this stability and safety?
Saddam Hussein, for the record, was captured on December 14, 2003.
Friday, August 27, 2004
Unbelievable
From Illinois' Capitol Fax:
After . . . [Alan Keyes' fourth speech during Republican Day at the Illinois State Fair], several Republicans flocked to the conservative African-American to offer their support and their encouragement. Others just stared at him with adoring gazes. Unfortunately, it was the wrong black guy. Conservative Springfield radio talk-show host Abdul-Hakim Shabazz wasn't quite sure how to react when the reverential Repubs expressed their undying support for his candidacy and his beliefs. 'I'm not Alan Keyes,' he repeated, under his breath, after each of them had walked away. Now that's a winning campaign slogan.
Bob Dole: Whore
If you didn't think he was one after he slimed John Kerry for "Stop lying about my record"'s son, you will now. What a particularly sad ending to a yes man's career.
TNR: Fire-breathing Keyes may help Bush
The New Republic, in an article on Alan Keyes, reminds us that no matter how stupid GOP strategists look, they usually have something up their sleeves:
His apocalyptic claims about American culture and buffoonish scream-and-dance campaign style (Tim Lahaye meets Paul Robeson on the trail) will be received with eye-rolls from most moderates. But to the swing-state religious conservatives whose non-participation torments Rove, Keyes is one of the most capable messengers for Bush's cause. He's the political equivalent of a dog-whistle, reaching only those who would heed his urgent call. If Bush wins Iowa, Wisconsin, and Missouri on the strength of high turnout among religious conservatives in counties that border Illinois, then Alan Keyes--a disastrous Senate candidate who may take other Illinois Republicans down with him--will be able to return to Maryland having finally won an election.
Barnes and Barnes
Atrios, Josh Marshall and others are all over this must see video. If it can be vouched for, it could start a whole new chapter in the war---and an important one at that.
UPDATE: The story hits Knight-Ridder.
Off to New York
Nearly 70% of JUSIPER's staff will be in New York next week for the Republican convention, albeit not as one of the fifteen (mostly wingnut) invited blogs, some of which (Red State, Real Clear), in fairness, I read every day.
Hopefully we will have an opportunity to write as things happen. For now, a few small observations:
1) GOP activists we have spoken to are not at all thrilled to be in New York City, a blue city full of just the types of people they would have preferred be aborted (if they believed in that of course): gays, nonwhites, and immigrants.
2) The Christian Coalition is not holding its traditional big bash.
3) While this may seem hard to believe, there is a decided lack of fervor among many in the religious right for this candidacy. But they are holding their fire for the moment out of expediency.
4) The most interesting goings on during the daytime should be preparations for 2008 and the very, very bloody civil war for what's left of the party (it will be in tatters no matter what the outcome of this election is).
There's a lot more to say about all of these topics; hopefully we'll have a chance to blog over the next week.
No Longhorn till 2006
If then.
Mac users, on the other hand, will be on Tiger by next year, and maybe on Lion by the time the presumably buggy Longhorn comes round.
Kerry's war on usury
Companies like MBNA, the top contributor to George W. Bush of all time, must be terrified.
Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry on Friday proposed cracking down on unfair credit card lending practices that he says have helped Americans pile up record levels of charge card debt.
In a statement released by the campaign, Kerry said there should be federal laws and regulations to stop banks and other lenders from charging exorbitant penalty interest rates in some cases, and require lenders to plainly disclose on bills how much money and how many years it will take to pay off a debt by making only minimum payments.
[...] The proposal floated by the Kerry camp would also prevent credit card companies from charging double interest penalty rates on the existing debt of customers who pays on time but miss or dispute a payment to a different company.
And no MBNA-backed bankruptcy bill will have a prayer of becoming law in a Kerry administration.
Thursday, August 26, 2004
Wednesday, August 25, 2004
Ten ways Bush Screwed New York
A good angle for any reporters looking for a story with "local flavor."
Tuesday, August 24, 2004
Hitchens: Kerry flip-flops on Vietnam!
Ridiculously, Slate's Christopher Hitchens is charging that John Kerry is trying to turn the Vietnam War into "a noble cause". I suppose what he really means, as if the Bush campaign were feeding him lines, is that Kerry has flip-flopped on Vietnam.
Hitchens often writes with an air of desperation - perhaps it's only been that way since the Iraq invasion started heading south (he was pro-war). Usually his tortured logic is maddening, but I try to forget about it and let the anger filter out. This time Hitchens follows such a twisted path that if I ignore its brambles, I don't know what'll happen. I just can't let it pass without responding.
You know what they say.
Serenity now, insanity later.
Hitchens begins his column with an anecdote - about Sir Walter Raleigh being distracted from writing his History of the World after witnessing a brawl - which is so unnecessary that the only reason I can imagine it was included was to showcase his impressive and far-flung anecdotal knowledge of history. In other words, to put his reader at a disadvantage from the get-go. I'm smarter than you; ye who enter, abandon all hope of rebuttal.
Anyway, Hitchens begins by confessing that he has "no idea whether John Kerry is or is not telling the unvarnished truth about his service in Vietnam." He goes on to say:
It's obviously ridiculous for either side to accuse the other of using their recollections for "partisan" purposes. What else? Kerry himself didn't make a fetish of this until he sought a party's nomination (which is what "partisan" means) and his nemesis John O'Neill has been silent since the last time this all came up, which was in the Nixon era. Did Kerry imagine that if he dressed up in his old uniform again, his former critics would decide to keep quiet? What, if anything, was he thinking?
Okay, this may actually be a good point. Kerry did choose to make his veteran status a campaign issue. And I certainly don't want to be caught arguing that only a veteran can serve as commander-in-chief. Yeah, it's a good point. Until you recall that George W. Bush himself opened the door to this kind of thing when he landed on that aircraft carrier. (Just like a real soldier.) And until you remember that Kerry actually has made his veteran status an issue before, contrary to Hitchens' claim, when, as a senator, he returned to Vietnam to investigate claims about POWs. (That is, if you ignore Hitchens' "fetish" language, which is a little unfair - is this campaign theme more of a fetish than any other successful campaign theme that gets repeated over and over again, in other words, all of them?)
Hitchens continues:
On that previous occasion, though, Kerry was using his service as a warrior to acquire credentials as an antiwarrior. Now, he is cashing in the same credentials to propose himself as alliance-builder and commander in chief. This is not a distinction without a difference.
So, someone who's seen combat can't know something about both the values and the terrors of war? Wouldn't that be precisely the kind of person best able to do so? I wonder if Hitchens really means that.
The next bit gets a little self-referential, and more than a little confused:
A few years ago, the faculty and students at the New School in New York (where I should say that I teach part-time) had to vote on whether another Democratic senator—Bob Kerrey of Nebraska—should lose his job as president of the university. He had been accused of committing war crimes in Vietnam. Some of his squad said that he'd personally slaughtered some old people and children, others said he'd been there but not taken a direct part. Nobody disputed that an appalling atrocity had occurred under his command. Whatever the truth of the matter, I thought that Kerrey himself was not telling it. He had, for example, claimed that these cold-blooded murders took place on "a moonless night" when easily consulted records showed this not to be so. The faculty of the school for which I work voted for his resignation, but he sort of copped a pass by having lost part of a limb in a later engagement and having gone on to be anti-Nixon, and a general consensus emerged that one mustn't pass judgment on actions committed in the fog of war. (Incidentally, this was an absolutely astonishing proposition for the New School, which was home to a generation of anti-Nazi refugee scholars, to have accepted.)
Here Hitchens - in addition to getting into the game and relating some of his own recollections - is trying his hand at guilt by association: if Bob Kerrey is lying, then John Kerry is lying too. They're both veterans, they're both Democrats. And their names sound the same. Now that's some real powerful logic.
John Kerry actually claims to have shot a fleeing Viet Cong soldier from the riverbank, something that I personally would have kept very quiet about.
In other words, Kerry admits to doing something that everyone agrees actually happened in spite of the potential for it to reflect on him negatively, whereas Hitchens, had he been in John Kerry's position, would have hid the truth to make himself look better. Hitchens, apparently unknowingly, is now providing evidence against the very suspicion he's trying to raise, that Kerry's every move is designed to promote himself at the expense of the truth.
He used to claim that he was a witness to, and almost a participant in, much worse than that.
Gotta stop here, too, to point out that Kerry didn't witness most of what he testified about to the Senate, but was mainly repeating the stories given to him by other veterans in the anti-war group he was representing. Just more sloppiness on the columnist's part.
So what if he has been telling the absolute truth all along? In what sense, in other words, does his participation in a shameful war qualify him to be president of the United States? This was a combat of more than 30 years ago, fought with a largely drafted army using indiscriminate tactics and weaponry against a deep-rooted and long-running domestic insurgency. (Agent Orange, for example, was employed to destroy the vegetation in the Mekong Delta and make life easier for the swift boats.) The experience of having fought in such a war is absolutely useless to any American today and has no bearing on any thinkable fight in which the United States could now become engaged. Thus, only the "character" issues involved are of any weight, and these are extremely difficult and subjective matters. If Kerry doesn't like people disputing his own version of his own gallantry, then it was highly incautious of him to have made it the centerpiece of his appeal.
This claim of Hitchens' is almost too easy. First, Hitchens is conflating the actions of individual soldiers with the policies they were ordered to carry out. Second, I'm glad he's so certain that a war like Vietnam is no longer "thinkable" in any fashion, but having fought in such an unthinkable war just might make a reflective soldier conscious of some of the ways not to fight another one.
Kerry's highlighting of his service does something else too, which is secondary to that and isn't exactly a qualification to be president, but helps level what's become an unfair political playing field. It makes the point that, contrary to Republican claims, Kerry and other Democrats can be patriots too - a point they must hammer away at if they are to head off nasty GOP charges of softness or treason. Hitchens might reply that fighting in a war is hardly the only way to prove yourself a patriot, and that there are many other ways. But how many of those other ways would be any good at neutering Republican trash-talking in today's political climate? That makes the talk about Vietnam not only useful, but fair and even necessary.
Hitchens concludes with an elegant belly-flop:
Meanwhile, even odder things are happening to Kerry's "left." Michael Moore, whose film Kerry's people have drawn upon in making cracks about the president and the My Pet Goat moment, repeatedly says that you can't comment on the Iraq war—or at least not in favor of it—if you haven't shown a willingness to send a son to die there. Comes the question—what if you haven't got a son of military age? Comes the next question—should it only be veterans or potential veterans who have a voice in these matters? If so, then what's so bad about American Legion types calling Kerry a traitor to his country? The Democrats have made a rod for their own backs in uncritically applauding their candidate's ramrod-and-salute posture. They have also implicitly subverted one of the most important principles of the republic, which is civilian control over military decisions. And more than that, they have done something eye-rubbingly unprincipled, doing what Reagan and Kissinger could not do: rehabilitating the notion of the Vietnam horror as "a noble cause."
Kerry's service speaks to Kerry's service, not to the whole Vietnam war. Once again Hitchens is conflating the soldier with the war. Does he really mean to imply that noble individuals could not or did not take part in an ignoble war? And we're talking about one of the many, many veterans who returned from the war to oppose it as immoral and actually help end it! Just a couple of paragraphs earlier, Hitchens alluded to Kerry's testimony about war crimes in Vietnam, a reminder that Kerry, who began his political career in opposition to it, can hardly be credibly associated with rehabilitating the Vietnam War as "noble".
Bush under 50 in Virginia and Arkansas
These aren't from Zogby but from Survey USA, which has Bush ahead 49-45 in one and 48-47 in the other.
"A Texas Size Celebration"
Sure, Bob Perry, the guy who paid for the swift boat smears, has nothing to do with the national Republican Party. He's only helping the chairman of the Harris County Republican Party welcome all the leading lights of the Texas Republican Party to a fundraiser at Tavern on the Green during the national Republican party's convention. See? Perry's name is the third of the "honorary Texas chairmen" listed on the invitation; the guests include Tom DeLay, Kay Bailey Hutchison, John Cornyn and Rick Perry. Maybe the President, whose father used to be chairman of the Harris County Republican Party himself, will show up to press his campaign against independent ads.
UPDATE: The Dallas Morning News and Josh Marshall are saying that Karl Rove and former President Bush are also invited guests. The invitation JUSIPER obtained didn't show their names, but that's even more reason for us to attend, and we're working on it.
GOP recriminations
It's hard to believe given the GOP's effectiveness at portraying uniformity, but there is some real anger among hardcore Republicans, particularly among big donors. Despite the real fear that left-leaning 527's may help Democrats outspend the right, some wingnuts aren't donating, says their own mouthpiece, Newsmax.
And the reasons? About what you would expect folks who made their money screwing the poor and elect Republicans to lower their taxes by screwing the poor a second time.
With just two months left we thought the Republicans would be desperate for money. And so it is.
One wealthy Republican – one of the few who can write Soros-style checks of $10 million or more – tells us that he has, all of a sudden, gotten calls from desperate Republicans seeking help, including one call from RNC chief Ed Gillespie. All calls have gone unreturned.
Like most Republicans, he is strongly rooting for Bush. But no money will be sent. This donor doesn't believe it will make much of a difference at this point.
And then there's politics. President Bush never invited the donor – a frequent guest in the Oval Office of previous Republican presidents - to the White House even once during the past four years.
It's a story we have heard time and again. Conservatives who write to the president get no response, and no one from the Bush White House calls to thank their friends and supporters on behalf of the President. These are the normal things previous administrations have done.
The stories about lack of follow up from the Bush White House and RNC are legion with the constituencies of the "Reagan base" of the party.
It's reminiscent of nothing so much as Newt Gingrich causing a government shutdown because he didn't get to ride with the big boys in Air Force One, but then I suppose you get the kind of supporters you deserve.
Bated breath
There's something Zogby didn't tell the Wall Street Journal: results from four battleground states he added to his polling. It is a sign of how badly things have begun to look for George W. Bush that he won all four of these states comfortably in 2000: Colorado (by 9), Virginia (by 7), North Carolina (by 13) and Arizona (by 6). The suggestion that Kerry is ahead in any of those states will send shockwaves through the political world.
As it is, Zogby shows Kerry, a liberal senator from Massachusetts, ahead in both Arkansas and Tennessee, states Bush won by 6 (Clinton) and 3 (Gore) in 2000. It is very hard to believe, but Kerry has consistently performed better in Arkansas polling than Arizona polling of late.
Regardless, none of these states were supposed to be competitive in the first place. If they remain competitive after Bush's convention, only an October surprise will save him.
Monday, August 23, 2004
"God is not a Republican. Or a Democrat."
That's the slogan of Sojourner magazine's campaign aimed at shaking the Religious Right's stranglehold over religion in politics.
An excerpt from their petition:
We believe that claims of divine appointment for the President, uncritical affirmation of his policies, and assertions that all Christians must vote for his re-election constitute bad theology and dangerous religion.
We believe that sincere Christians and other people of faith can choose to vote for President Bush or Senator Kerry - for reasons deeply rooted in their faith.
We believe all candidates should be examined by measuring their policies against the complete range of Christian ethics and values.
We will measure the candidates by whether they enhance human life, human dignity, and human rights; whether they strengthen family life and protect children; whether they promote racial reconciliation and support gender equality; whether they serve peace and social justice; and whether they advance the common good rather than only individual, national, and special interests.
I know progressive Christian leaders are struggling to be heard above the din, and hopefully this will raise their voices a little. The magazine's going to publish the petition in the New York Times and other papers and engage in an online campaign to spread their message. I hope that's only the beginning. It's going to take a lot more than that.
Wolf Blitzer is too busy
But five U.S. soldiers were killed in the last 24 hours in Iraq. Maybe he could have mentioned it during what he called "a slow news day" rather than spend the first fifteen minutes of the hour repeating Bush lies and video footage of Bob Dole re-earning, and so richly, his title of hatchet man and toady.
Taking advantage of the media's objectivity
Since the media will report any Bush lie and refuse to discredit it in the name of objectivity, Democrats should really take a page from the playbook. Examples:
1) They could find some boob or party hack with loose links to the Labor Department to accuse the Bush administration of having illegally tampered with official labor statistics--"in fact, our analysis shows that while the Bush administration fudged the numbers to show a gain, outside of the St. Louis area Missouri actually lost 15,000 jobs."
2) They could find someone to come forward saying he saw secret documents saying that the Bush Administration will be announcing a draft in October, 2005.
3) Or they could just dredge up that old pesky story that never seems to die, which may have coincided with his National Guard service (and about which, ironically, a terrified RNC spokesman said: "The Democrats will do anything in this election, judging by their campaign tactics, to smear without any evidence or background") .
The media will dutifully report anything, so long as one side keeps repeating the lie, and sooner or later, at least 30% of the population will believe it, including 40% of persuadables.
Democrats refrain from doing so, largely because they tend to believe in the legitimacy of the democratic process, and that is a good thing. Of course, at least this time around, they have the additional advantage that the truth is far, far worse than anything they could make up. Too bad our lazy media is too dumb (oops, I meant telegenic) and poorly trained to rigorously analyze or investigate much of anything anymore.
Protecting me?
Cole on the mosque attacks :
Al-Jazeerah did 'person on the street' interviews on the Najaf issue in Cairo and Beirut. The Egyptians said things like, 'this is an American attack on Islam.' Not on Najaf, or Shiism, or on Iraq. On Islam. That's what a lot of Muslims think, and they are absolutely furious.
Some of my readers have suggested to me that it doesn't matter what Americans do, since Muslims hate them anyway.
This statement is silly. Most Muslims never hated the United States per se. In 2000, 75 percent of Indonesians rated the US highly favorably. The U.S. was not as popular in the Arab world, because of its backing for Israel against the Palestinians, but it still often had decent favorability ratings in polls. But all those poll numbers for the US are down dramatically since the invasion of Iraq and the mishandling of its administration afterwards. Only 2 percent of Egyptians now has a favorable view of the United States.
It doesn't have to be this way. The US is behaving in profoundly offensive ways in Najaf. U.S. military leaders appear to have no idea what Najaf represents. I saw one retired general on CNN saying that they used to have to be careful of Buddhist temples in Vietnam, too. I almost wept. Islam is not like Buddhism. It is a far tighter civilization. And the shrine of Ali is not like some Buddhist temple in Vietnam that even most Buddhists have never heard of.
I got some predictably angry mail at my earlier statement that the Marines who provoked the current round of fighting in Najaf, apparently all on their own and without orders from Washington, were behaving like ignoramuses. Someone attempted to argue to me that the Marines were protecting me. Protecting me? The ones in Najaf are behaving in ways that are very likely to get us all blown up. The US officials who encouraged the Mujahidin against the Soviets were also trying to protect us, and they ended up inadvertently creating the Taliban and al-Qaeda. Such protection, I don't need.
Sunday, August 22, 2004
Dole: Carrying water for the Bush family
Then again, he has been since 1988.
UPDATE: Josh Marshall hits him even harder.
Apparently it's not Bush vs. Kerry, it's Bush vs. Satan
The Defense Department confirmed last week that a senior military intelligence official violated internal rules by giving speeches, mostly at Baptist or Pentecostal churches, in which he said that America is a "Christian nation," depicted President Bush as having been anointed by God, and described the war on terror as a battle against "Satan."
How, I wonder, did people like this explain Bill Clinton winning the presidency? How will they explain it if John Kerry wins?
Oh wait, I think I can guess the answer.
Turning undecideds into absentees
From this morning's LA Times , on Bush strategist Matthew Dowd:
It is an article of faith among political consultants in both parties that voters undecided late in a race trend against the incumbent. But given the conflicting impulses the polls find among these voters this year, Dowd predicted they would not break decisively for either Bush or Kerry. And many, he predicted, might not vote at all. In such a scenario, he said, turning out the party base would grow in importance.
Undecideds "might not vote at all". Why would Dowd say that, given that this has become one of the most highly engaged campaigns in recent memory? The real question is, under what conditions would undecideds stay home on election day?
Here's the answer, and Dowd knows it: if a negative campaign based on personal attacks were to confuse and disspirit voters, blur the lines between lies and the truth, and raise cognitive dissonance to levels of such discomfort that they just throw their hands up and abandon the whole process.
Of course, that strategy won't work with a candidate's most intense supporters, for whom loyalty is an article of faith. (And that applies to both sides.) Hence Dowd's reasoning.