August 21, 2004
Why Bush Is Dangerous
Two posts down, I've linked to the Kerry campaign's ad, a clean video of McCain telling Bush he should be ashamed of the slander and filth he's associated himself with. Here is the transcript for that debate, do a text search for "ashamed" and watch how Bush responds. Note particularly the spot where the audience erupts in cheers. And then remember -- this is not a guy to be underestimated. He's a very bad president, but he can be a very savvy candidate.
It Was Tet, Not Christmas Eve
This explanation of Kerry's Cambodia memory convinces me quite entirely. His consistency has been too total for it to be an absolute lie and, as this op-ed persuasively argues, Kerry's discrepancy actually corroborates the rest of his account:
I dunno why the Kerry campaign didn't jump ahead of this, but it reminds me of Stephanopolous in 1992, when questions about Clinton's draft record came up, He was too young to know why this stuff was such a big deal for the Boomers. I get the impression nobody in the Kerry camp has the balls to go to him quick and set him straight on his own stories... but, geez: you know as well as I do that it's the guy whose war story checks out in EVERY detail who is most likely fibbing. People tend to remember the important thing (those assholes may kill me, and what would Nixon tell my family) and get details wrong (it was a Sunday, when it was a Tuesday).
In this case, the mistake on a detail tends to support everything else: he confused OUR holiday, with theirs -- and over 30 years of telling the tale, he's gotten the handle wrong.
Whaaaa?
The CIA is going to release a highly dubious report that will finally settle a key issue in Iraq once and for all - is it an "apolitical entity" with more than a passing interest in pushing a line that just-so-coincidentally dovetails with Bush administration needs?
The CIA plans for the report, due next month, to project as far as 2008 what Iraq might have achieved in its illegal weapons programs if the United States had not invaded the country last year, the officials said.
The report was handled with skepticism among Congress and the intelligence community at large when it theorized that sometime in 2006, Hussein would receive a visit from a time traveler with a secret source of infinitely renewable weapons-grade plutonium. Only referred to as "Doc Brown" in the document, it also leads to questions about Libyan terrorist involvement in Iraq and Iraq's suspicious construction on numerous generators capable of 1.21 gigawatts of energy.
August 20, 2004
Fret, You Monkeys!
Unnamed people within the Democratic Party are "fretting", apparently, over Kerry's "exaggeration problem".
Why any Democrat who's not Zell Miller or Rodney Alexander would actually think Al Gore was a serial exaggerator after even the most cursory inspection of the allegations against him is a mystery, unless the party is decidedly more incompetent than even my worst nightmares of a 2004 election beset by Joementum.
The otherwise useless Orin does tie in something that was in the Daily Howler a few weeks ago. The plan for Republicans to win the 2004 election will come down to the same thing it came down to in 2000 - making it all about what a bad guy Kerry is. And not a bad president, a bad soldier, a bad senator - he's just a bad guy.
The media has so far shown themselves slightly less willing to engage in the execution and slightly more willing to engage in the disassembling of the hits, but it's an attitude that we still could have used four years ago. The challenges from conservatives to "investigate the truth" of the claims that liars make are also going answered more often by the invalidation of the claims rather than the normal ridiculous "he said, she said" of election coverage. You think that the Times piece today didn't investigate the claims of the Swifties - it did. What it didn't do, however, was treat them as valid after it found information that stripped them of validation.
Ah, well. I've got to go find some anonymous "pro-Bush Republicans" who fear that the President's addiction to Japanese schoolgirl porn will ruin him. Because if "pro-Bush Republicans" are worried about something, it must be an issue.
Refashioning Nostalgia
I've got a bunch of edits to implement and a dinner party to cook for, so this'll be my last post today. Josh Benson ended his TNR blog run this morning with an exceptional post asking why Democrats do so badly among working whites. I'm not going to excerpt it, you should just read it...
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done yet?
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Okay. Now, Matthew Yglesias made a good point yesterday when he said that Democrats are troubled because, though many constituencies reliably break our way, the one major constituency (white people) does not. He's right. To some extent, the reasons here are well known; it's a decades-long combination of cultural issues (Civil Rights Act, abortion) whipping them into righteous anger coupled with an unfair response to diminishing economic power, which they blame on women and gays and blacks and latinos whom we keep helping up the economic ladder and into employment that'd otherwise remain the domain of white men. This is combined with a weird faux-traditionalism that subtly moves these questions of economic power into cultural imagery, namely, the Buchananite reliance on the 1950's. The question is how we reverse this trend.
Thomas Frank, in "What's the Matter With Kansas", faults us for denying economic populism and passing NAFTA, welfare reform and balanced budgets. On this, he's not necessarily wrong, but he's not right either. Two competing facts inform the rejection of the argument; the first is that Clinton campaigned as an unabashed free trader, as a supporter of NAFTA, as a fiscal conservative and as the antithesis of economic liberalism and he won more white males than any Democrat had in decades. He partially did this on culture, but he was also for gays in the military, so his example is problematic. Second, we're still a party who needs to do the right thing. If we began giving up policies that do good because they sound bad, we have no soul and won't be able to govern in any coherent or sustainable way.
Continue reading "Refashioning Nostalgia"The Amazing Talking Press Release
Contained within this post by Josh Marshall in an all-too-illustrative example of how the White House deals with the Press.
Now, we all know Bush is a straight-talker, a man who charges rather than discusses and relishes confronting the toughest issues with the least bullshit possible. But instead of condemning or endorsing the Swiftvets ad, he's repeatedly responded with a blanket denunciation of 527's, a group he thought he outlawed in a bill he was forced, unwillingly, to sign. But the constant venom directed at MoveOn hasn't told anyone how the President feels about the allegations against Kerry. So the Press smartly decided to ask Scott McLellan. After all, that's what the guy's there for, to clear up and transmit the information Bush is too busy/hurried/inaccessible to go over personally. But instead, talks with McLellan have become a grown-up game of mousetrap, with the hapless reporters resorting to Socratic logical traps in the hopes of a straight answer. And even when their argument is flawless, the holes nonexistent, McLellan still just crashes through a wall and ignores the entire query (I've excerpted the exchange, you can read it after the jump). There's no longer an exchange of ideas going on in the briefing room, the expected transaction of ignorance regarding the President for enlightenment regarding his opinions continues unfulfilled. Instead, these journalists, reporters at the top of their craft, are stuck with a talking press release. What a shame.
Continue reading "The Amazing Talking Press Release"The Moldy Media
You know, this Philly cheesesteak thing becomes stupider the more I think about it. For Kerry to order a sandwich with swiss -- It's not as if he asked for an aged Reblochon! -- doesn't show that he's not "common" (whatever that means), it shows that he's got different preferences than the locals in Philly.
And really, what's wrong with that? He wasn't arguing that he was born in the city of brotherly love and raised on cheesesteaks, his argument is that his policies will benefit most Americans; a point wholly unrelated to his culinary choices and one wholly obscured by this back-and-forth over who's touched more poor and dirty blue-collar folk. With that in mind, real problem here isn't Bush's lie or his ability to sic the media on stupid stories, it's the idea that this parable reveals anything more than the dairy preferences of the two men. The way the media reports politics, you'd think the candidates stubbornly hid their programs and goals from the press, forcing reporters to analyze their behavior to divine the course they'll likely chart. But it's not that way, the policies are on the websites, the records are easily accessible and the rhetoric flows freely and often. That the media can ignore all this and then twist a meaningless human interest story into a proverb of deep insight is sick.
Just...A...Little...Farther
Look at John Derbyshire desperately straining to reach the obvious conclusion. Wondering, crying out with the incoherency of Shiite tolerance of Sadr, begging the heavens to explain why they don't kick him out themselves, realizing that they appreciate him making us look bad and...falling short, blaming the Arabs and retreating to his internally contradictory world. He just needed one more step, one jump to clear his mental hurdle of American righteousness, and he would have realized that they prefer Sadr because they hate us, and they hate us because we're the occupiers, and to beat Sadr we need to quiet their throbbing rage. But unable to make the jump, he just retreats back to his own dark mutterings against the freedom-hating Arabs and "sensitive" politicians like John Kerry. It's sad, really. Now he'll give the Abu Ghraib prisoners another mental kick and feel better.
A Cheesy Lie
Awhile back, Kerry visited Philly and proved himself an incapable commander-in-chief and all around bad human being by ordering a cheesesteak with swiss cheese, a faux-pas of Hitlerian proportions. Never one to act like an adult, Bush traveled to Philly a few days ago and took a shot at Kerry, saying:
The uh, funny thing, is that it isn't so:
Continue reading "A Cheesy Lie"Yesterday...All My Troubles Seemed So Far Away...
I love me the New York Times investigations. Particularly when possess the the homeric elegance of the right begging, pleading, whining for the elite media to turn their attention to the SwiftVets and, when their wish comes true, finding that the standards making said media elite are deadly to the lying scumbags comprising this 527:
The strategy the veterans devised would ultimately paint John Kerry the war hero as John Kerry the "baby killer" and the fabricator of the events that resulted in his war medals. But on close examination, the accounts of Swift Boat Veterans for Truth' prove to be riddled with inconsistencies. In many cases, material offered as proof by these veterans is undercut by official Navy records and the men's own statements.
She Needs A Golden Calculator
Michelle Malkin is full of angry internment rage over an embarassing appearance on Hardball last night.
Let's start with how the White House has handled this, according to Michelle:
MALKIN: Well, look he‘s already made his statement. The White House said, it doesn‘t associate itself with these 527 campaigns, any of them. And he said that Kerry has served nobly. What else do you want him to say?
That it doesn't approve of the Swift Boat Carrying Loads of Bullshit ads, by name, and that it doesn't belong on the airwaves? Denouncing it by never addressing it directly doesn't stop it, particularly the group has such strong ties to the party. Problem isn't the 527s. Problem is that one of them is directly helping Bush by doing something Bush says is wrong, and Bush can't actually say that the group is doing a wrong thing.
If there's one thing I've learned in politics, it's that the more you imply that you're against something without saying it, the less likely it is that you're actually against it.
Continue reading "She Needs A Golden Calculator"When Polling Goes Awry
In the don't trust what you read category, poll after poll has been showing a 10-20% lead for Kerry in California. It's been nice and immutable, whether appearing in the excellent Field polls or the numbers of the national organizations. Which is why I'm so certain that today's Survey USA numbers, showing Kerry ahead 49:46%, are horseshit. Sorry, but CA is not a 3-point race.
August 19, 2004
Speaking Truth To Weakness
Condi Rice and Sean Hannity are sweet. They have this little code between them, like lovers, or little kids, or members of a prison gang.
"We still don't have clarity about what role Syria may have played in the movement of weapons one way or another before the war," she told radio host Sean Hannity.
"But it's certainly something that is worth clarifying," Dr. Rice added.
Translation: "Shmoopy-poo, we have no intention whatsoever of addressing this as complete bull until it reaches a critical mass, which means you need to get on it. Until then, we're going to keep it alive through vaguely-worded statements that make it seem as if it might have validity. And tonight at 7, get your shiv and head to the TV room."
Zig Zag Zell
"My job tonight is an easy one: to present to you one of this nation's authentic heroes, one of this party's best-known and greatest leaders -- and a good friend. He was once a lieutenant governor -- but he didn't stay in that office 16 years, like someone else I know. It just took two years before the people of Massachusetts moved him into the United States Senate in 1984. -- U.S. Senator Zell Miller [Remarks to the Democratic Party of Georgia Jefferson Jackson Dinner 2001]
"In his 16 years in the Senate, John Kerry has fought against government waste and worked hard to bring some accountability to Washington. Early in his Senate career in 1986, John signed on to the Gramm-Rudman-Hollings Deficit Reduction Bill, and he fought for balanced budgets before it was considered politically correct for Democrats to do so. John has worked to strengthen our military, reform public education, boost the economy and protect the environment.” -- U.S. Senator Zell Miller [Remarks to the Democratic Party of Georgia Jefferson Jackson Dinner 2001]
Credibility Stretching...Stretching
Let me get this straight.
Larry Thurlow responds to the Washington Post story today about his having been given a Bronze Star for something he says never happened. Not only do I doubt his credibility, I seriously doubt his intellect.
So now, Kerry lied Thurlow into a medal?
Not only does this beggar all comprehension - John Kerry was the sole source of information on the attack, and nobody thought to tell anyone else involved about what he said about the mission, even as Rassmann was putting in for a Silver Star for Kerry - but Thurlow is now openly admitting that he has a fraudulent Bronze Star.
It was not until I had left the Navy-approximately three months after I left
the service-that I was notified that I was to receive a citation for my
actions on that day.
I believed then as I believe now that I received my Bronze Star for my
efforts to rescue the injured crewmen from swift boat number three and to
conduct damage control to prevent that boat from sinking.
Well, it's too bad that the official records contradict your "belief". This isn't a debate over whether or not Jesus had straight or curly hair - this was a mission in Vietnam recorded by the Navy at the time.
Thurlow "believes" he got his medal for a particular reason that is contradicted by the official record - which means that at no point in the past 30 years did he ever look at the record of his citation. Or, in fact, at the criteria for a Bronze Star.
(1) While engaged in an action against an enemy of the United States. A-7
(2) While engaged in military operations involving conflict with an opposing foreign force.
(3) While serving with friendly foreign forces engaged in an armed conflict against an opposing armed force in which the United States is not a belligerent party.
c. When the Bronze Star is awarded for heroism, a bronze letter "V" (for valor) is worn on the suspension and service ribbon of that medal.
If there was no enemy present, Thurlow was not engaged at the time he performed his actions on his boat. If he was not engaged, he should have known that he didn't deserve a Bronze Star. So, the question is, why did Thurlow keep a Star for an operation that he knew didn't merit the award? Why didn't he ever check out the reason why he got the Star? What kind of guy cares this much about Kerry's Bronze Star but didn't take 15 minutes to request the records of his own commendation? And if he has, he's been falsely awarded, knowingly, for three decades. Either he's a liar, or an idiot - and in either case, suspect as hell.
The big question is: why did we give a man this stupid a gun and control of a boat in which he was responsible for the lives of other men? How do you receive a medal that requires you be engaged with the enemy for an event in which you contend you weren't engaged with the enemy, and not question it?
Respect Our Freedoms, Slaves
Those pesky Iraqis just don't seem to understand how much freedom and love George W. Bush has given them. That, or George W. Bush should stop using people who don't like him in his ads:
In those spots, the flags of Iraq and Afghanistan appear as a narrator says, "At this Olympics there will be two more free nations -- and two fewer terrorist regimes."
"Iraq as a team does not want Mr. Bush to use us for the presidential campaign," Sadir told SI.com through a translator, speaking calmly and directly. "He can find another way to advertise himself."
Ahmed Manajid, who played as a midfielder on Wednesday, had an even stronger response when asked about Bush's TV advertisement. "How will he meet his god having slaughtered so many men and women?" Manajid told me. "He has committed so many crimes."
...
"My problems are not with the American people," says Iraqi soccer coach Adnan Hamad. "They are with what America has done in Iraq: destroy everything. The American army has killed so many people in Iraq. What is freedom when I go to the [national] stadium and there are shootings on the road?"
...
Manajid, 22, who nearly scored his own goal with a driven header on Wednesday, hails from the city of Fallujah. He says coalition forces killed Manajid's cousin, Omar Jabbar al-Aziz, who was fighting as an insurgent, and several of his friends. In fact, Manajid says, if he were not playing soccer he would "for sure" be fighting as part of the resistance.
"I want to defend my home. If a stranger invades America and the people resist, does that mean they are terrorists?" Manajid says. "Everyone [in Fallujah] has been labeled a terrorist. These are all lies. Fallujah people are some of the best people in Iraq."
Why Won't You Investigate...That Thing?
Judicial Watch, having done their one good deed with Cheney's energy task force records, is back to general conservative hackery. Now, they're asking for an investigation by the Navy and the Department of Defense into Kerry's medals and his anti-war activity.
I'm getting odd memories of Bill O'Reilly's halcyon days of trying to get Jesse Jackson's tax records investigated. He would have had enough evidence to start the investigation...if only the IRS would start the investigation to get him the evidence.
And what I don't get is why the Swifties and the Watchies are pushing Kerry's medals so much. Either a war hero has five medals for wounds and for acts of bravery handed to him but military investigators, or the military has no idea whatsoever what it's doing, and you can't trust any awards it's ever given out, because you could tell them that you gunned down a invading Vietcong force on your way to the shower and they'd give you at least a Bronze Star for it.
Did the military just have a little "Choose Your Own Episode Of Military Valor" checklist? Maybe Mad Libs for Medals?
Here Comes Part 2
The right is going to rue the day the Swift Boat Liars stepped on the stage. Go take a look at Kerry's new ad explaining that, indeed, he is twice the hero and four times the man these slimebuckets are. Notice especially the one-two combo of tarring the Republicans for their negative ads and reiterating Kerry's valor. This ad gives me feelings. New, unfamiliar, feelings.
Comforting
Well, this leaves me feeling confident for electronic voting:
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At first people scratched their heads in disbelief, including many Chávez supporters, but accepted these figures after César Gaviria, secretary general of the Organization of American States, and former President Jimmy Carter said their own quick counts coincided with the electoral council's figures. Two days after the referendum, however, evidence is growing that the software of the touch-screen voting machines had been tampered with. The opposition has requested that the votes be recounted manually and that the boxes holding the voting papers, currently stored in army garrisons, be put under the custody of international observers.
...
Evidence of foul play has surfaced. In the town of Valle de la Pascua, where papers were counted at the initiative of those manning the voting center, the Yes vote had been cut by more than 75 percent, and the entire voting material was seized by the national guard shortly after the difference was established.
Three machines in a voting center in the state of Bolivar that has generally voted against Chávez all showed the same 133 votes for the Yes option, and higher numbers for the No option. Two other machines registered 126 Yes votes and much higher votes for the No. which can both send and receive information, were reprogrammed to start adjudicating all votes to the No option after a given number of Yes votes has been registered.
Half-Point Deduction
I'm all in favor of cute animated Internet games. Really. And I'm making this criticism irrespective of political persuasion. But a glorified game of Simon is not a compelling setup for a political hit piece, especially when you're trying to impart information about relatively inane "contradictions".
The RNC and Bush have both become highly enamored of anti-Kerry online "games", such as Kerryopoly. The DNC and the Kerry/Edwards campaign have, thankfully, seemed to shy away from the epiphany-through-Shockwave that Bush and the RNC are relying on.
Continue reading "Half-Point Deduction"Kerry/Gagne?
Remember all that talk about John Kerry being a good closer? He may look like he's faltering the first few months, like he can't win, like he shouldn't have even been the candidate...but then he turns around and all of a sudden pulls ahead to secure a victory?
I think we just entered the eighth inning.
(Via Atrios.)
Fighting Back
The NYT details Democratic anti-Nader efforts today.
This part was telling:
Cynthia E. Kernick, another Reed Smith partner, said that there was nothing undemocratic about the effort. "Our role is not to challenge the valid voter, but Nader ought not to be treated differently from anyone who wants to get on the ballot," she said. "He can't just get on because he's a legend. That doesn't give him the ability to make shortcuts."
It's time to sit the Nader campaign down and have the talk with them that should be had with every petulant teenager with an inflated sense of ego or entitlement.
Ralph, you are not special. You're just another candidate. You want to be treated like a Republican or Democrat, get onstage at the debates, get as much media coverage, etc.? Then you have to grow up and realize that you will be treated like a Democrat would treat a Republican.
You've arrived! Congratulations. Now shut the fuck up about Democrats being against independent candidates, because you're being treated just like the GOP would be if they were undertaking this venture for a candidate (which, oddly enough, they are). You are now a candidate for president, not a lecture speaker. You aren't to be exalted because you aren't a part of a major party.
You aren't special. You're another cog in another machine with very little chance of doing anything meaningful in the future unless you get your head out of your ass very, very soon. You are entitled to exactly nothing, particularly when you play hardball with people who have a lot more at stake than you do.
And that goes double for you, Defense Bitch.
Alan Keyes With A Nice Chianti
Thomas Sowell pens a memoir of his worst snub ever, when George H.W. Bush would invite neither him nor Alan Keyes to the White House.
The Wall Street Journal was incensed that the elder President Bush agreed to these preconditions but I was more amused than anything else. For one thing, I had been to the White House the previous week and said what I had to say, not that it did any good.
BUSH: "Welcome to the White Hou-"
SOWELL: "Kidneys!"
KEYES: "Slaves!"
BUSH: "What?"
KEYES: "Kidney slaves!"
SOWELL: "No, kidney freedom!"
KEYES: "Sunshine, lollipops and...rainbows everywhere!"
(For those of you who don't know, Sowell is a proponent of the idea that one should be allowed to voluntarily sell their extra kidney as a a basis for being economically "free".)
But Sowell's article would be nothing, nothing, I say, if it didn't go over the well-worn territory of why black people should vote for Republicans.
Seeking Truth
Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, huh? Well, I'm sure they're appreciative to the Washington Post for helping them find it:
But Thurlow's military records, portions of which were released yesterday to The Washington Post under the Freedom of Information Act, contain several references to "enemy small arms and automatic weapons fire" directed at "all units" of the five-boat flotilla. Thurlow won his own Bronze Star that day, and the citation praises him for providing assistance to a damaged Swift boat "despite enemy bullets flying about him."
As one of five Swift boat skippers who led the raid up the Bay Hap River, Thurlow was a direct participant in the disputed events. He is also a leading member of Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, a public advocacy group of Vietnam veterans dismayed by Kerry's subsequent antiwar activities, which has aired a controversial television advertisement attacking his war record.
Instapundit (who I'm not going to link to) cites this story as further evidence of left-wing bias -- they won't talk about the Swift Boat allegations except to prove them wrong. What, he asks, of Cambodia, where Kerry was proved wrong?
It occurs to me that conservative bloggers would be very bad editors, as they have little ear for an interesting story. The Cambodia correction, at best, would read something like: "For years, John Kerry said he was in Cambodia on Christmas Eve. Recent documentation makes that untrue; he was there a few weeks later." Scintillating it isn't.
August 18, 2004
Morgan Hamm Van Den Hoogenband!
Request to the people broadcasting the Olympics - we already know that sports will only get covered if Americans are in them. But can they please stop covering the most marketable/best storied athletes even when another American is doing better?
I'm looking right at Paul Hamm who, even though he ended up winning a gold medal, was overshadowing Brett McClure when McClure was ahead of him.
We wonder why certain sports never take off in the U.S.? It's because the only time they're ever given any credibility as sports is when an American can win them. Cycling? I didn't even know the leader of the Tour de France got a yellow jersey until Lance Armstrong rode. Fencing? Well...an American won that, right? And you have to, like, touch the other person with the sword somewhere? Judo? Don't even bother.
Goddamn liberal sports media...that is wholly America-centered. Actually, it's a lot more instructive about the actual biases of the media than all the bitching and whining that goes on between left and right talking heads. Holding onto narratives like a virtual lifeline, the estimation that all the viewers want to see is the things they're familiar with, the virtual blackout of any story that doesn't fit with that unless it's forced upon them by undeniable circumstance...watch the Olympics if you want to understand why you don't feel informed by the news.