October 30, 2004
August 26, 2004
NO PLAN TO WIN THE PEACE
Testimony of John F. Kerry on Legislative Proposals Relating to the War in Southeast Asia (United States Senate, Committee on Foreign Relations, Washington, D.C. 4/22/71)
Senator Aiken: I was going to ask you next what the attitude of the Saigon government would be if we announced that we were going to withdraw our troops, say, by October 1st, and be completely out of there-air, sea, land- leaving them on their own. What do you think would be the attitude of the Saigon government under those circumstances?Mr. Kerry: Well, I think if we were to replace the Thieu-Ky-Khiem regime and offer these men sanctuary somewhere, which I think this Government has an obligation to do since we created that government and supported it all along. I think there would not be any problems. The number two man at the Saigon talks to Ambassador Lam was asked by the Concerned Laymen, who visited with them in Paris last month, how long they felt they could survive if the United States would pull out and his answer was 1 week. So I think clearly we do have to face his question. But I think, having done what we have done to that country, we have an obligation to offer sanctuary to the perhaps 2,000, 3,000 people who might face, and obviously they would, we understand that, might face political assassination or something else. But my feeling is that those 3,000 who may have to leave that country-
Senator Aiken: I think your 3,000 estimate might be a little low because we had to help 800,000 find sanctuary from North Vietnam after the French lost at Dienbienphu. But assuming that we resettle the members of the Saigon government, who would undoubtedly be in danger, in some other area, what do you think would be the attitude, of the large, well-armed South Vienamese army and the South Vietnamese people? Would they be happy to have us withdraw or what?
Mr. Kerry: Well, Senator, this obviously is the most difficult question of all, but I think that at this point the United States is not really in a position to consider the happiness of those people as pertains to the army in our withdrawal. We have to consider the happiness of the people as pertains to the life which they will be able to lead in the next few years.
If we don't withdraw, if we maintain a Korean-type presence in South Vietnam, say 50,000 troops or something, with strategic combing raids from Guam and from Japan and from Thailand dropping these 15,000 pound fragmentation bombs on them, et cetera, in the next few years, then what you will have is a people who are continually oppressed, who are continually at warfare, and whose problems will not at all be solved because they will not have any kind of representation.
The war will continue. So what I am saying is that yes, there will be some recrimination but far, far less than the 200,000 a year who are murdered by the United States of America, and we can't go around- President Kennedy said this, many times. He said that the United States simply can't right every wrong, that we can't solve the problems of the other 94 percent of mankind. We didn't go into East Pakistan; we didn't go into Czechoslovakia. Why then should we feel that we now have the power to solve the internal political struggles of this country?
We have to let them solve their problems while we solve ours and help other people in an altruistic fashion commensurate with our capacity. But we have extended that capacity; we have exhausted that capacity, Senator. So I think the question is really moot.
Senator Aiken: I might say I asked those questions several years ago, rather ineffectively. But what I would like to know now is if we, as we complete our withdrawal and, say, get down to 10,000, 20,000, 30,000 or even 50,000 troops there, would there be any effort on the part of the South Vietnamese government of the South Vietnamese army, in your opinion, to impede their withdrawal?
Mr. Kerry: No; I don't think so, Senator.
Senator Aiken: I don't see why North Vietnam should object.
Mr. Kerry: I don't for the simple reason, I used to talk with officers about their- we asked them, and one officer took great pleasure in playing with me in the sense that he would say, "Well, you know you American, you come over here for 1 year and you can afford, you know, you go to Hong Kong for R. & R. and if you are a good boy you get another R. & R. or something you know. You can afford to charge bunkers, but I have to try and be here for 30 years and stay alive." And I think that that really is the governing principle by which those people are now living and have been allowed to live because of our mistake. So that when we in fact state, let us say, that we will have a cease-fire or have a coalition government, most of the 2 million men you often hear quoted under arms, most of whom are regional popular reconnaissance forces, which is to say militia, and a very poor militia at that, will simply lay down their arms, if they haven't done so already, and not fight. And I think you will find they will respond to whatever government evolves which answer their needs, and those needs quite simply are to be fed, to bury their dead in plots where their ancestors lived, to be allowed to extend their culture, to try and exist as human beings. And I think that is what will happen.
I can cite many, many instances, sir, as in combat when these men refused to fight with us, when they shot with their guns over tin this area like this and their heads turned facing the other way. When we were taken under fire we Americans, supposedly fighting with them, and pinned down in a ditch, and I was in the Navy and this was pretty unconventional, but when we were pinned down in a ditch recovering bodies or something and they refused to come in and help us, point blank refused. I don't believe they want to fight, sir.
Senator Aiken: Do you think we are under obligation to furnish them with extensive economic assistance?
Mr. Kerry: Yes, sir. I think we have a very definite obligation to make extensive reparations to the people of Indochina.
Senator Aiken: I think that is all. [Emphasis added]
NORTH VIETNAM TAKES CONTROL (THIRD INDOCHINA WAR) (Timeline from the 1st Battalion 50th Infantry Association Website)
30 Apr 75 Saigon surrenders.Apr-Aug 75 Per UC Berkeley demographer, Jacqueline Desbarats' article "Repression in the Socialist Republic of Vietnam: Executions and Population Relocation," research show an extremely strong probability that at least 65,000 Vietnamese perished as victims of political executions in the eight years after Saigon fell. Desbarats and associate Karl Jackson only counted executions eyewitnessed by refugees in the USA and France to project the rate of killings for the population remaining in Vietnam, and so discarded about two-thirds of the political death reports received, so their figures are likely very conservative. Their death count did not include victims of starvation, disease, exhaustion, suicide or "accident" (injuries sustained in clearing minefields, for example). Nor did they count Vietnamese who inexplicably "disappeared."
2 Jun 75 Official Communist Party newspaper "Saigon Gai Phong" declares that the Southerners must pay their "blood debt" to the revolution.
1975-1985 Within Viet Nam, postwar economic and social problems were severe, and reconstruction proceeded slowly. Efforts to collectivize agriculture and nationalize business aroused hostility in the south. Disappointing harvests and the absorption of resources by the military further retarded Viet Nam's recovery.
1975-1985 A massive exodus from Vietnam began with the change in government; eventually, 2 million people tried to escape. Many braved typhoon-lashed seas only to languish for years in detention camps throughout Southeast Asia. Hong Kong took in many Vietnamese refugees in the 1970s and 1980s. By the mid-1980s, Asia and the rest of the world was suffering from what was dubbed "compassion fatigue" and Hong Kong started trying to force Vietnamese to repatriate, efforts that produced regular riots in the camps.
1976 The first Vietnamese "boat people" come ashore on the northern beaches of Australia after travelling 4,800 km in leaky fishing boats. Over the next decade, tens of thousands of Vietnamese will flee Vietnam as boat people.
1976 South Vietnam and North Vietnam are united in a new Socialist Republic of Viet Nam. . . .
1978 Vietnamese Prime Minister Pham Van Dong declared that a million people who had "collaborated with the enemy" (about 7% of the South Vietnamese population) had been returned to civilian life from reeducation camps and jail.
SPOT THE OXYMORON
Anarchists hot for mayhem: Police on guard vs. violent tactics (Patrice O'Shaughnessy, Daily News, 8/25/04)
Fifty of the country's leading anarchists are expected to be in the city for the Republican National Convention, and a handful of them are hard-core extremists with histories of violent and disruptive tactics, according to police intelligence sources.
THE CARTER STAMP OF APPROVAL, AVAILABLE TO DICTATORS EVERYWHERE:
The Carter-Chavez Connection (Steven F. Hayward, August 26, 2004, FrontPageMagazine.com)
In this morning’s Wall Street Journal online edition, Jimmy Carter attempts to respond to critics of his role in legitimizing the recent Venezuelan referendum on the loathsome Hugo Chavez regime. The nub of the problem is this: While exit polls conducted by the very reliable American firm of Penn, Schoen, and Berland showed Chavez losing by a large margin (59 – 41), the official results put Chavez free and clear by a vote of 58 to 41 percent.How could the exit polls be nearly 40 points off? The short answer is, they weren’t. Chavez, whose anti-democratic, pro-Castro sympathies are openly proclaimed (he tried to block the constitutionally-mandated referendum for months), stole the election. [...]
Carter has a long history of coddling dictators and blessing their elections, and among his complex motivations is his determination to override American foreign policy when it suits him. In the famous 1990 election in Nicaragua, Carter, along with most of the liberal Democratic establishment in Washington, openly hungered for a Sandinista victory as a way of discrediting the Reagan-Bush support for the Contras. Sandinista strongman Daniel Ortega had visited Carter in the U.S. and called him “a good friend,” and Carter consistently downplayed or excused reports of Sandinista pre-election thuggery and voter intimidation. When the early vote count showed the Sandinistas losing by a landslide, the Sandinista junta ordered a news blackout and appeared on the brink of canceling the election. Although Carter pressured the Sandinistas to relent, he also told opposition candidate Violetta Chamorro not to claim victory until Ortega had conceded defeat—potentially disastrous advice if Ortega had ignored Carter and nullified the election. Carter returned to the U.S. bitterly disappointed that his Sandinista pals had been turned out. (Among other ridiculous things Carter said about Nicaragua under Communist rule was that there was “as much free enterprise, private ownership, as exists in Great Britain.”)
There is speculation that Carter blessed Chavez’s stolen election to prevent further violence, but it should also be kept in mind that Carter also enjoys seeing the interests of the United States, especially when defined by Republican presidents, humiliated. Chavez’s anti-Americanism will now intensify, thanks in part to the worst ex-President in American history, who has never been content to let his four years of ruinous rule be his last public deed.
Why couldn't the rabbit have won the fight?
THE MESSAGE GEORGE BUSH DOESN'T WANT YOU TO HEAR
A third Swift Boat Veterans for Truth ad is up here.
A HIGH LOW:
Ranks of Poor, Uninsured Rose in 2003 (Joel Havemann, August 26, 2004, LA Times)
Median income remained essentially unchanged last year at $43,318 per household, the Census Bureau reported today, but 1.3 million more people lived under the poverty line.The poverty rate rose another four-tenths of a percentage point to 12.5% — one out of every eight Americans — and the number of people without health insurance grew by 1.4 million to 45 million, propelled by a decline in the number of people with private health insurance.
The unchanged level of median income suggests, barely two months before President Bush faces reelection, that the middle class is holding its own.
Helpful when one of these reports comes out to recall that the U.S. poverty level (for a family of four) is set so high that it equals the per capita GDP of Portugal.
THAT TIME OF YEAR AGAIN:
Football isn't exactly a font of great literature, but one of the exceptions is Friday Night Lights, the film version of which is coming out soon. You can see the trailer here.
PUNISH THE BODY AND THE HEAD FOLLOWS (via Robert Schwartz):
Media-Ready Crib Sheet: Twenty questions for John Kerry. (Peter Kirsanow, 8/26/04, National Review)
Senator Kerry has been pretty successfully avoiding the media, but sometime between now and November 2 he'll have to sit down for a far-ranging interview on a program other than The Daily Show on Comedy Central. Thus far, most Kerry interviews have been less-than-penetrating (one recent poll even indicates that nearly a third of the electorate knows very little about John Kerry) and certainly not hostile (in comparison, see, among other things, President Bush's press conference of last spring). Bill Clinton was subjected to far-greater scrutiny by this time in the 1992 election cycle. Kerry's legendary policy flip-flops as well as his campaign's shifting stories related to the current controversy compel questioning at least as tough as that directed at Kerry's critics.Here are only a few of the questions Kerry hasn't adequately addressed. They don't even have anything to do with swift boats. There are no "gotcha" questions. They're posed in a respectful manner. In fact, many are softballs. After all, few interviewers would wish to alienate Kerry and foreclose the possibility of follow-up interviews. With that in mind, here goes:
1. The Bush campaign maintains that you spent 20 years in the Senate with no signature legislative achievements. What do you consider to be the five most important pieces of legislation that you've authored?
It just gets uglier from there and each question is a reminder of how badly the Democratic Party blundered by having uncontested primaries. Whatever else you may think of George W. Bush, so far in his political careeer he's knocked off a popular incumbent governor, a popular war hero in the GOP primaries in '00, and a popular incumbent vice president in a time of unprecedented peace and prosperity. That is an unrivalled track record of success and, for all the gallons of ink that have been spilled about his stupidity, indicates he's a pretty formidable candidate. John Kerry built his career in a yellow dog Democrat state and had the presidential nomination handed to him by a party that was terrified of Howard Dean's passionate advocacy of its core principles. Mr. Kerry's only serious rival, John Edwards, ran as if there were a category for "Mr. Congeniality." Now a battle-tested (political battle anyway) Mr. Bush squares off against the anointed Senator Kerry and it should be no surprise that the fight is lopsided. These unanswered questions suggest that the following rounds will be even bloodier. If there a ref he'd be thinking about when to stop the fight.
REASON IS A MUG'S GAME:
IRRATIONAL MARKET BUBBLES: Are They "Post-Modern"? (Elliott Wave International's
Robert Folsom, Editor of Market Watch, August 25, 2004, Financial Sense Online)
Newsweek magazine recently ran an article with the headline "Mind Reading," and the subhead, "The new science of decision making. It's not as rational as you think."The piece rehashes a bit of year-old news about an experiment conducted by economists at Princeton University, known as the Ultimatum Game. The game has two players and goes like this:
"Subject A gets 10 dollar bills. He can choose to give any number of them to subject B, who can accept or reject the offer. If she accepts, they split the money as A proposed; if she rejects A's offer, both get nothing.... A makes the most money by offering one dollar to B, keeping nine for himself, and B should accept it, because one dollar is better than none."
The rational choice is to accept the dollar, yet the outcome was consistently irrational:
"People playing B who receive only one or two dollars overwhelmingly reject the offer. Economists have no better explanation than simple spite over feeling shortchanged. This becomes clear when people play the same game against a computer. They tend to accept whatever they're offered, because why feel insulted by a machine?"
As I said, this story was in the news more than a year ago. The only new twist in Newsweek had to do with a scanning gizmo that apparently spots which region of the brain produces the irrational choice. Yet what got me was Newsweek's claim that this research will "help understand some of the most vexing problems in postmodern society," such as "irrational market bubbles." Now, I'm a big fan of science 'n'all. I really am. But ... we're supposed to believe that market bubbles are "postmodern"? HEL-LO!! Calling all search engines! Tulip Mania? South Sea Bubble? The panics of 1837, 1857, 1873? And wasn't there a little episode in 1929?
Another question: Were market bubbles in the good old days something besides "irrational"?
The answer to the "irrational choice" paradox is so obvious that it would take a PHD in Economics to miss it. The game is not about choosing to receive a benefit, but about the valuation of relative self worth between two people. It is a social transaction, not a monetary transaction. Player A, in his choice of how much to offer player B, is making a statement about how he views his own social worth in comparison to B, with the expectation that B views the comparison similarly. Any offer to B that is less than $5 is a statement of social superiority, or dominance. An offer above $5 is a statement of social inferiority. Likewise, B's acceptance of an offer below $5 is an admission of inferiority, while a rejection of an offer of $5 is a statement of superiority. The "socially" rational offer by A is $5.
In a larger sense, market decisions are mainly a statement about beliefs which may or may not indicate statements of self worth, but which often are. Refusing to liquidate a losing position is often based on a belief that "I deserve to get my money back", not on the rational assessment of the likelihood of recovering it. Worldviews and expectations bias our ability to rationally calculate probabilities based on the available information, which often is contradictory. Bulls stay bullish in the face of bearish news, and Bears stay bearish in the face of bullish news. The human psyche requires a narrative, but market randomness offers none.
KEYES 13, OBAMA 1 (via mc):
Keyes on 'right side of the issues,' Ditka says (ART GOLAB AND SCOTT FORNEK, 8/26/04, Chicago Sun-Times)
"Da Coach" met "Da Candidate" Wednesday night, and he treated Alan Keyes to a meal at his Gold Coast steakhouse while they talked about politics and their families.Former Bears coach Mike Ditka, who himself had turned down the chance to run for the U.S. Senate as a Republican, used the occasion to put his seal of approval on Keyes, who moved here from Maryland to take on Democrat Barack Obama after Jack Ryan dropped out of the race.
"I support him because he's a conservative and on the right side of issues I already believe in," Ditka said of Keyes as he left his namesake restaurant, trademark cigar clenched between his teeth. "We're very close philosophically about what we believe, about politics and issues."
How'd you like to try and get a word in edgewise when those two start talking?
DAWN OVER MARBLEHEAD
KERRY CHALLENGES BUSH TO WEEKLY DEBATES (ABC News, The Note, 8/25/04)
In Anoka, MN, John Kerry challenged President Bush to weekly debates on the issues.Is the Kerry Campaign being run by people whose only qualification is that they once read a book about a presidential campaign? This is the traditional loser's ploy, so I guess they felt they had an obligation to go through with it. Two things, though. First, do they realize that they're announcing that they've taken over the loser's role in the campaign? Second, have any of these people ever met John Kerry? Let's say that the Bush Campaign loses it's mind and agrees to weekly debates. Short of lightening striking, letting people see John Kerry side-by-side with President Bush week after week after week would be their worst possible tactic. They must start paying attention to Mickey Kaus: keep John Kerry away from the cameras and maybe they can avoid a blowout.BUSH CAMP REAX: "There will be a time for debates after the convention, and during the next few weeks, John Kerry should take the time to finish the debates with himself. This election presents a clear choice to the American people between a President who is moving America forward and a Senator who has taken every side of almost every issue and has the most out of the mainstream record in the U.S. Senate," said BC'04 spokesman Steve Schmidt.
IF ONLY HE'D USE HIS GENIUS FOR GOOD
Bush to Urge Court to End Independent Political Ads (Update1) (Bloomberg, 8/26/04)
President George W. Bush plans to seek a court order to force the U.S. Federal Election Commission to stop all political advertising by independent groups, said spokesman Scott McClellan.In one move, the Bush campaign puts John Kerry, the establishment media and John McCain in an impossible situation. This is politically brilliant and yet terrible. We here at BrothersJudd give the President lots of room to stray from the conservative path, either because of the realities of mainstream politics or to achieve some greater goal. This time, though, he strays too far. We can't even say, as we did (wrongly) when it came to CFR, that filing suit is just for show, because the courts will never go for it. Who knows what the courts will do? If only some basic rules were written done somewhere so everyone could refer to them when they have questions like this.Bush asked Senator John McCain, a Republican from Arizona, to help end advertising by political organizations known as 527 groups, named for the section of the Internal Revenue Service code that grants them tax-exempt status. McCain told the New York Times he disapproves of ads attacking Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry by Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, one of the 527 groups.
More (Via The Note):
McCAIN REAX: "I enthusiastically applaud President Bush's commitment to ensuring that 527s operate under the same funding rules that apply to federal candidates and parties. I look forward to working with the President, both in the courts and through legislation, to force the Federal Election Commission to regulate 527s, as they are already required by the law and affirmed by the Supreme Court, to do," said McCain in a statement.KERRY TO TAKE DOWN McCAIN AD: "We respect John McCain's wishes, and will stop running the ads of him challenging Bush to denounce the attacks on his service. It's long past time that George Bush also take John McCain's advice and do the right thing by putting an end to the smears and lies attacking John Kerry's military service. George Bush needs to say this is wrong, he needs to say it must end," said Kerry spokesperson David Wade.
LOOKING TO GOVERNMENT FOR ACCURACY?:
The jobs numbers that you're not hearing about (Timothy Kane and Andrew Grossman, 8/26/04, USA Today)
The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) recently snuck out a telling confession beneath everyone's radar: Its flagship payroll survey is likely undercounting hundreds of thousands of jobs.Most economic observers were too busy fretting over the lackluster gain of 32,000 payroll jobs in July to take notice of the other positive indicators, let alone the quiet little study that acknowledges payrolls have a problem.
The study describes how job-changing can inflate the payroll survey's numbers artificially. When worker turnover is brisk, as in the late 1990s, millions of workers are counted twice when they switch jobs. About 3.9 million people changed employers during a typical month during the 1990s, but only 3.1 million do so now.
Why is job-changing dropping? Maybe stability is preferred since 9/11. Perhaps lower turnover is a reflection of the aging workforce and low participation rate of current teens. Or maybe more workers are becoming self-employed. The reason doesn't matter, but the effect on payrolls does.
For months, the debate has been raging over how to measure jobs. Being that we're in a presidential election year, the issue has been magnified. But why should the average person care? Because only an accurate reading can gauge the country's true economic health and affect everything from interest rates to consumer confidence.
Ironic that businessmen, who generally disdain the government, follow the economic numbers it generates like lemmings off a cliff.
BOUGHT BROTHER (via Kevin Whited):
A $136,000 Link: Max Cleland, Bush political appointee. (Rich Lowry, 8/26/04, National Review)
Max Cleland, who made a staged appearance at the Bush ranch Wednesday, was appointed by President George W. Bush to the board of directors of the Export-Import Bank in 2003. The same Max Cleland who is spending nearly all of his time attacking President Bush is, amazingly enough, a Bush political appointee.According to a bank spokesman, Cleland makes $136,000 a year off this very cushy job. A couple of questions come to mind here: If Cleland had any decency, wouldn't he resign? Why would he accept a political appointment from a man he so loathes and thinks represents the very worst in American politics? Max Cleland's extremely partisan activities are being subsidized by the American taxpayer.
But, wait, it gets more sinister. There is now a definitive link between President Bush and the attacks against him. This link is as direct as most of the links that have been highlighted between Bush and the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth: Bush gave a $136,000 job to one of his attackers and a key member of Kerry's "band of brothers." By the logic of most of the press corps, this means George W. Bush must be responsible for the activities of Kerry campaign's band of brothers.
He's certainly acting as if he were a Bush operative--yesterday's little skit was humiliating.
IT WAS FINE THE WAY THEY WROTE IT (via mc):
Married? Single? Status affects how women vote (Susan Page, 8/25/04, USA TODAY)
[M]ost married women say they'll vote for President Bush. By nearly 2-to-1, unmarried women say they support John Kerry.The "marriage gap" — the difference in the vote between married and unmarried women — is an astonishing 38 percentage points, according to aggregated USA TODAY/CNN/Gallup Polls. In contrast, the famous "gender gap," the difference in the vote between men and women, is just 11 points. [...]
Why do married and unmarried women tend to see the political world so differently?
For one thing, conservative women are more likely to be married, though of course many liberal women are married, too. Democratic pollster Celinda Lake says unmarried women as a group start out as more liberal-leaning than married women. And they are often hard-pressed economically.
Most unmarried women — 54% — have annual household incomes below $30,000, according to the Census; that's twice the percentage of married women with incomes that low. Most married women — 51% — have household incomes of $50,000 and above; that's double the number of single women with income that high.
That makes single women more anxious than their married friends about bread-and-butter issues, less confident of having health coverage and more likely to take an expansive view of what the government can and should do to maintain safety-net programs.
Having children seems to intensify views on both sides. Married women with children are even more Republican that those who don't have children; single women who have children are even more Democratic than those who don't.
Today folks imagine that the main reason for the historic opposition to the aristocracy was nothing more than a matter of class hatred, but a classic definition (from John Adams) reveals that it was based on basic power politics: "By aristocracy, I understand all those men who can command, influence, or procure more than an average of votes...." One of the great defects of the welfare state is that the government itself wields inordinate influence over the votes of those who are dependent on it for their economic security. Combine this with the atomization of families and society in general, which increases the number of dependents and the level of their dependency, and you've a situation where a constitutional regime which originally intended to limit the concentration of power anywhere, but especially in the hands of the central State, has gradually seen the shift of more and more power precisely to that State. The final piece of this puzzle, of course, is that every expansion of the franchise has added more of the very people who are most likely to demand security and be prone to dependency. It's been a campaign of real genius: the statists have managed to create and purchase the loyalty of a vast pool of captive voters who can be counted on to support the State and oppose freedom.
There are a number of ways that conservatives (or originalists, if you will) are trying to combat this state of affairs--chiefly by the creation of an Ownership Society, which makes people dependent on themselves for welfare; and by restoring the primacy of family, civic groups, churches, and the other sinews of civil society. But one means that is too seldom considered is a re-restriction of the franchise, limiting it once again to those who are not likely to be dependent on the State. Barring a surge in gender-selection abortion it's out of the question to repeal the 19th Amendment entirely, but there's no reason the vote shouldn't be limited to those (women and men) who are married.
HUH?:
It's Getting a Bit Dodgy: John Kerry has evaded his Senate record, his plans for the war on terror, and a host of other issues. Will he be able to get out of his Vietnam troubles? (Fred Barnes, 08/25/2004, Weekly Standard)
The dodge has worked well for Kerry. At the Democratic convention last month, he didn't bother to defend his Senate positions on defense and foreign policy. In his acceptance speech, he devoted only 73 words to his two decades in the Senate. Instead, he surrounded himself with Vietnam veterans and insisted the best window on his leadership as president was that the men who'd served with him in Vietnam were now backing his presidential campaign. The result: little discussion in the media or the political community of his Senate record at the convention and since then.That may change as early as next week when Republicans gather for their convention in New York City. No doubt Republican speakers will go after Kerry for favoring cuts in intelligence and Pentagon spending, endorsing the nuclear freeze and deployment of Pershing missiles in Europe, opposing the Reagan doctrine of supporting anticommunist guerillas in Nicaragua and elsewhere, and voting against the Iraq war.
Worked well?
LOWERING THE BOOM:
The Passing of an Era? (Wilfred McClay, 8/24/04, Democracy Project)
I’m hardly the only one to be struck by the vehement, uncontained rage of media figures like Chris Matthews and Tom Oliphant, and the sweeping, completely unearned condescension of the New York Times and Washington Post, directed at the Swift Boat Vets and their gallant campaign against John Kerry’s candidacy. Why such an angry, petulant---but also, be it noted, completely self-righteous---reaction? Why the shift in tone, the loss of control? It seems to me that, aside from the obvious partisan particulars, there are two larger and interlocking reasons for this, and taken together, they suggest why the struggles now underway may have consequences far beyond their immediate content.First, it seems we are experiencing one of those moments when history shifts its gears, and the accredited elites cannot seem to grasp what is happening, and cling desperately to the pieces of their fraying reputation. It’s a shift that the army of talented bloggers out there, part of one of the most genuinely populist movements ever to arise in modern American politics, has been announcing for a long time---perhaps a little prematurely and self-interestedly, but what they have been predicting is now clearly upon us. The baby-boomer generation’s journalistic and academic elites sought, and gained, control over the nation’s chief organs of knowledge production, accreditation, and communication, with all the enormous power and influence that has entailed. But now the Gramscian monopoly is crumbling, and they cannot see how they are themselves largely to blame for their own discrediting. [...]
There is a second deeper reason why people like Matthews, Oliphant, et al. are reacting with such uncontained fury and condescension. It’s because the case of Kerry is a proxy for a whole set of assumptions that the boomer elites have made about the world, and managed to install as our conventional wisdom, about the arrogance of American power, the unmitigated evil of Nixon, the goodness and altruism and truthfulness of the antiwar movement (and therefore themselves), and so on. That whole complacent and self-congratulatory narrative---which is, in some sense, encapsulated in Kerry’s famous testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee---is being implicitly challenged now. Bush’s foreign policy challenges it, and if it can be shown that Kerry is a comprehensive liar---and in fact the Cambodia lies alone, which have been admitted to, would surely have been enough to end a Republican candidate’s entire career---it calls into question everything about the great boomer narrative. It threatens their sense of world-historical rectitude, their moral amour-propre. Hence the indignant reactions.
Chris Matthews demonstrated an archetypal disconnect last night when he badgered his conservative guests about the Swift Boat ads but then revealed that his sister (sister-in-law?) had written to him and said that her husband, who served in Vietnam, and all his friends from the service just loathe the Senator and have since his Senate testimony.
The country has never forgiven the Boomers their protest years and they still don't get that simple fact.
PROTOCOL? THERE'S AN ELECTION TO WIN:
Bush skips GOP protocol, lays down the law (ROBERT NOVAK, 8/26/04, Chicago Sun-Times)
Because there is little difference between the president's and mainstream Republican thinking, however, it is a basically conservative document. Conservatives can take issue with stem-cell research, gay marriage and particularly immigration provisions, but the right is essentially happy with this platform.But why did drafting this political manifesto resemble the Manhattan Project developing the atomic bomb? The process fits the Bush White House's authoritarian aura that has tempered enthusiasm within the party on the eve of its national convention.
Actually, the big issues -- taxes and abortion -- that formerly generated fervent Republican platform battles have been decided. Past presidential nominees, even incumbents, did not always win those struggles. In 1984 at Dallas, the platform committee beat back the Reagan White House's desire for wiggle room on raising taxes. In 1996 at San Diego, candidate Bob Dole's attempts to fudge on abortion were turned back. George W. Bush faced no such confrontations.
Nevertheless, the Bush White House completely abandoned the old platform process. While Democrats went through a seemingly democratic procedure to create a sham platform skirting contentious issues, Republicans have a real platform that was handed down like the Ten Commandments.
Well, it is based on them.
YOU STAY, GIRL!:
Cuban woman ships herself to Miami in a wooden crate (LUISA YANEZ, 8/26/04, Miami Herald)
Workers on the late shift at a DHL warehouse at Miami International Airport were processing cargo from a Nassau-to-Miami flight when they heard a voice coming from a plywood crate.Apprehensively, they approached and pried open the package.
A young Cuban woman unfolded herself from her cramped position and stepped out into the night air, in good condition.
In a twist on a 40-year-old tradition that usually involves rafts or speedboats, she had entered the United States by stuffing herself, a jug of water and a cellphone into a crate not much bigger than a small filing cabinet and having herself shipped.
The gamble paid off. The woman, still not publicly identified, will be allowed to stay in this country under the wet-foot, dry-foot policy that allows undocumented Cubans who reach U.S. soil to avoid immediate deportation, a spokeswoman for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement said Wednesday.
Officials hope the practice doesn't catch on.
Then drop the vile "wet foot" proviso or get rid of Castro.
RELATIVITY IN ECLIPSE:
An unexplained effect during solar eclipses casts doubt on General Relativity (The Economist, August 25, 2004)
"ASSUME nothing" is a good motto in science. Even the humble pendulum may spring a surprise on you. In 1954 Maurice Allais, a French economist who would go on to win, in 1988, the Nobel prize in his subject, decided to observe and record the movements of a pendulum over a period of 30 days. Coincidentally, one of his observations took place during a solar eclipse. When the moon passed in front of the sun, the pendulum unexpectedly started moving a bit faster than it should have done.[H]is suggestion would fit in with another odd phenomenon: the fact that
the Pioneer 10 and 11 space-probes, launched by NASA, America's space
agency, in the early 1970s, are receding from the sun slightly more slowly
than they should be.
Sometimes breakthroughs are made by smart people who are not specialists in the required field. They have the advantage of seeing phenomena with fresh eyes, and haven't absorbed the Conventional Wisdom that can often harden to dogma. Peter Frey was an English Professor at Northwestern but helped popularize a time-control technique known as iterative deepening for computer chess. Thomas Gold is an astronomer and geophysicist who made contributions to audiology (and defends an abiogenic theory of the origins of oil). Dr. Allais is a Nobel Prize winner in economics, as the article states.
The Theory of Relativity has to be a strong contender for the most crank-prone theory in the history of science. It is wildly counterintuitive, and the Special Theory portion has just enough mathematics (a gasp square root!) to attract attention. Nonetheless, when people of the caliber of Maurice Allais make a suggestion, it is worthy of a followup.
[BO]TOXIC POLITICS:
Pelosi visits LV to support Gallagher: Both Democrats question Kerry's stance on Iraq (PAUL HARASIM, 8/26/04, Las Vegas Review-Journal)
Calling President Bush's invasion of Iraq "a grotesque mistake," Nancy Pelosi, the highest-ranking Democrat in the U.S. House of Representatives, said in Las Vegas Wednesday that she can't understand why John Kerry has said he still would have "voted to give the president the authority to go to war" even had he known there were no stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction, Bush's original justification for war.Labeling Bush an "incompetent" who didn't have the judgment, experience or knowledge to risk American lives in Iraq, the House Minority Leader then said she "can't answer" why Kerry continues to support a position that seemingly gives Americans little choice between the presidential candidates when it comes to the war in Iraq.
Asked why Kerry holds that position on Iraq, Pelosi answered "I don't know"...
Who's got the wobbly base?
IT'S NOT THE LYING, IT'S THE SEARING:
Shots Hit Kerry's Weak Spot (Max Boot, August 26, 2004, LA Times)
This political punch-up raises a couple of interesting points. First, it once again confirms that, for all the conservative caterwauling about the insidious power of liberal reporters, the establishment media have little ability anymore to control the national agenda. The press would have been happy to parrot Kerry's version of his war story as reported by his authorized chronicler, Douglas Brinkley, in "Tour of Duty." But the iron triangle of Rush Limbaugh, Fox News Channel and Regnery Publishing (which released the bestselling book, "Unfit for Command: Swift Boat Veterans Speak Out Against John Kerry") elbowed conflicting claims onto the front pages.Just as with the Clinton scandals, which were publicized by the same conservative crew, the rhetoric about Kerry's supposed wrongdoing has outpaced any verifiable facts. The story nevertheless has struck a chord with the public, because it plays to existing concerns about Kerry's character.
Once a general impression forms about a candidate — and this is the second point raised by the Vietnam brouhaha — a seemingly trivial event can assume outsized importance. Thus Gerald Ford's reputation as a bumbler was inadvertently confirmed when he tripped on the Air Force One gangway. Likewise, Jimmy Carter's reputation as a wimp when he claimed to have been attacked by what the press happily dubbed a "killer rabbit"; Michael Dukakis' as a soft-on-defense liberal when he posed for a ludicrous photo inside a tank; George H.W. Bush's as an out-of-touch aristocrat when he professed befuddlement at encountering a supermarket scanner; and Al Gore's as an insufferable android when he dominated the first debate with George W. Bush.
Kerry's problem has been the persistent perception that he is a consummate opportunist who is willing to say anything to advance his own career. The New Republic unearthed a classic example when it found letters his office had sent to one of his constituents in 1991: One explained why he favored the Gulf War, the other why he opposed it. The Swift boaters' stories fit his image as a slippery schemer.
Much to Democrats' chagrin, the claim that George W. Bush was AWOL during his National Guard service hasn't caused as much of a stir, perhaps because it doesn't fit his image — Bush is generally seen as too hawkish, not as someone who ducks a fight.
Mr. Boot dismisses the Cambodia story as an inconsequential lie, but it has resonance for a particular reason: like Joe Biden borrowing Neil Kinnock's speech about his own life story but then relating it as if it were personal, it is Mr. Kerry's rhetoric about how the memory was "seared" iinto him and his effort to use the false memory (we'll avoid calling it a lie) for political purposes--and purposes opposed to American interests--that makes the episode so damaging.
WE'VE LOTS MORE MONEY, SEND MORE FOLKS:
Study Says Illegal Immigrants Cost U.S. $10 Billion a Year; Analysis Is Disputed (Ricardo Alonso-Zaldivar, August 26, 2004, LA Times)
Illegal immigrants cost the federal government more than $10 billion a year, and a program to legalize them would nearly triple the figure, a study released Wednesday said.The analysis by the Center for Immigration Studies, which opposes efforts to legalize the estimated 8 million to 12 million undocumented immigrants in the United States, comes as Republicans are bracing for a fight over immigration at their convention next week in New York.
So bringing in the 12 million ambitious folks who do our scut work only costs us about as much as a bookkeeping error in the federal budget, even when the estimate is coming from a bunch of nativists? And folks wonder why we're the world's only hyperpower.
SECOND FIDDLING WHILE ROME BURNS:
Second Fiddles Attuned to Very Different Scores (Richard Simon, August 26, 2004, LA Times)
The two candidates have this much in common: They play to their strengths. In both cases their strengths correspond to their campaign strategy.For Cheney, who is highly regarded by the Republican right but anathema to moderates, that translates to audiences that are mostly die-hard Republican. Edwards, more moderate than presidential nominee Sen. John F. Kerry, is more likely than Cheney to seek out audience members of both parties.
Cheney sometimes plays the traditional role of the vice presidential candidate as attack dog against the opposition so that the presidential candidate can remain above the fray.
Edwards shuns the attack role, finding that it conflicts with his sunny, I'm-for-the-underdog image.
The main difference being that Mr. Cheney doesn't have a political future to protect, while Mr. Edwards--like Jack Kemp, another recent fiasco of a running mate--is trying to maintain his position for '08. Bad enough that Mr. Kerry chose someone who's unprepared to govern the nation, but choosing someone who isn't really interested in helping the ticket win is a colossal misjudgment.
THE MULLAH VS. MOOKIE FOR THE MOSQUE:
Spotlight Is Now on Top Cleric: In asking his supporters to flood Najaf, Sistani is staking his influence to effect an end to standoff. (Alissa J. Rubin, August 26, 2004, LA Times)
There is no guarantee that Sistani's call for his followers to flood into the holy city will end the siege at the Imam Ali Mosque. If the move fails, Sistani's prestige could decline. But each time the widely esteemed senior cleric has stepped onto the political stage, he has vastly altered the dynamic, forcing shifts in U.S. policy and deference to his views.Sistani, 74, arrives this time at a critical moment. The shrine is occupied by Sadr's militiamen, who have kept Sistani and his supporters from entering for months. Sadr's forces are in turn under siege by U.S. and Iraqi troops. The fighting has left scores dead and destroyed parts of the Old City.
Numerous attempts to reach a peace deal have failed. The people of Najaf are exhausted by the fighting. The Iraqi government has vowed to storm the shrine unless Sadr's forces give up. And Shiite Muslim clerics around the world have warned that any direct attack on the holy site could have disastrous consequences.
Sistani faces the challenge of threading his way through these various interests while maintaining a certain distance from all of them. In particular, though he shares the government's aim to expel Sadr's forces from the mosque and tamp down popular support for the anti-American cleric, he does not want to be seen as overly sympathetic to the U.S. and the closely allied and dependent Iraqi forces.
To that end, Sistani has given a simple but direct challenge to both Sadr and the U.S.-backed Iraqi forces: Leave the shrine and the Old City and let Shiite religious authorities, led by him and three other grand ayatollahs in Najaf, take over again.
Whether both sides will accede to Sistani's wishes remains to be seen. But both are well aware that Sistani wields enormous clout, and his followers are nothing if not loyal and legion.
FUNNY SORT OF TRUCE:
Kerry's Lost Opportunity: He could have healed the wounds of Vietnam. Instead, he tried to exploit them. (HERMAN JACOBS, August 26, 2004, Wall Street Journal)
Whenever the question of Vietnam percolated to the surface of the nation's collective political consciousness, as it did briefly during Bill Clinton's first presidential campaign, the protagonists on either side only became yet more distrustful and disdainful of the other. And so years ago, wearied by their own arguments as much as by the arguments of their antagonists, sensible majorities of both the supporters and the opponents of the Vietnam War yielded to an unwritten domestic truce, composed of two principles:* Those who participated in the war, with the exception of anyone at or above the rank of general officer, are entitled to public honor for their service.
* Those who actively opposed the war, with the exception of the most extreme Jane Fonda-types, are not to be branded as cowards or traitors to their country.
Depending on one's political bent, one or the other of the two prongs of the domestic truce might be accepted only grudgingly, but it was accepted nonetheless, because most of us had become convinced that the best way to handle any question involving Vietnam was just to "let it alone."
Yes, there would still be occasional flare-ups when the domestic truce would be tested. Until recently, the most notable episodes involved Dan Quayle and Mr. Clinton, who--because they had neither very actively opposed the war nor fought in it--did not seem to be entitled to the truce's honors and amnesties. Those petty skirmishes over Mr. Clinton's ROTC dodge and Mr. Quayle's "alternative" service stirred up some old antagonisms but quickly subsided when the larger public declined to enlist. And so, the truce held.
We were aware that even the Left had been forced to accept that the war was honorable (though to some misguided), but when did the Right ever forgive those who opposed their own nation? It wasn't a truce, the Left lost the argument.
MORE:
Kerry's Testimony (LA Times, August 26, 2004)
It turns out that the attack on John Kerry's war record was just Act 1. Now the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth (and, miraculously, all the right-wing media) have turned to Kerry's antiwar record.
"Turns out"? What did they think it was about?
AIR CAMPAIGN:
Interviews show Bush tuned in to right-wing radio (Brian C. Mooney, August 26, 2004, Boston Globe)
On the White House website, www.whitehouse.gov, nearly all of the administration radio interviews featured since April are with conservative commentators, hosts at stations in battleground states, or both.A White House spokesman, Ken Lisaius, flatly denied that political considerations are involved in making administration officials available to radio stations, or any other news media.
"We're not concerned with politics," he said. "It's the Bush-Cheney campaign that's focused on politics."
Moreover, the interviews on the website, which has audio links, are merely a sampler of those of good audio quality or on timely subjects of public interest, he said. In addition, interviews on less-than-conservative National Public Radio (the Globe found at least 10 in recent months in the transcript archives of NPR's website, www.npr.org,) cannot be posted.
"NPR doesn't allow us to use their audio," Lisaius said.
"We try to make members of this administration available in any number of media formats so that people around the country know what their government is doing because this administration has a very solid record of accomplishment," said Lisaius. Those media include radio stations "of all stripes in all parts of the country," he said.
But of 61 interviews featured on the White House website since April in which the interviewer and station or network is identified, 54 were conducted either by conservative commentators or by hosts in markets located in battleground states, a Globe analysis shows.
They include 27 interviews with stations in Michigan, Ohio, West Virginia, Missouri, Florida, New Hampshire, Oregon, Washington, New Mexico, and Arkansas -- all among the 20 or so states being contested by both sides with paid advertising.
Another 27 were with conservative hosts; ABC Radio's Sean Hannity had seven interviews on the White House site, and Hennen had five.
Some of the interviewers are not only supportive of Bush but active in the campaign. For instance, Steve Gill of WTN in Nashville, with three interviews on the White House site, spoke at the opening of the Bush-Cheney headquarters in Clarksville, Tenn. Syndicated talk-show host Laura Ingraham served as MC at a Bush campaign rally in St. Paul last week. Another, Premiere Radio Networks talkmaster Glenn Beck, is selling "John Kerry's Waffle House" T-shirts for $14.95 on his website, capitalizing on the Bush campaign's "flip-flopper" assault on the Democrat.
Among other interviews on the White House site are three each by personalities of the Radio America network (self-described as "driven by a commitment to traditional American values, limited government and the free market") and the Salem Radio Network ("the largest network serving religious radio").
If, as the White House contends, the concentration of administration interviews in battleground state stations is mere coincidence, the daily flurry of radio appearances by Bush campaign officials in those same states is not.
"It's part of our effort to do what we call `flood the zone,' " said Bush campaign spokesman Kevin A. Madden. "When you have a campaign designed around `echo politics,' we try to get our message out there every which way possible."
These guys are good.
YOU'D THINK APOLOGIES WOULD HAVE BEEN AMPLE:
Jibes at gay governor cost 2 their jobs (AP, Aug. 26, 2004)
The public address announcer for the Atlantic City Surf of the independent Atlantic League was fired and the scoreboard operator resigned after poking fun at Gov. James E. McGreevey's sexual orientation.Announcer Greg Maiuro dedicated a between-innings rendition of the song "YMCA" to McGreevey during a game on Aug. 17, less than a week after New Jersey's governor announced that he had had an extramarital affair with a man and would resign. The 1970s hit song by the Village People is widely considered a gay anthem.
The following night, scoreboard operator Marco Cerino posted the message "Sponsored by Gov. Jim McGreevey" on the scoreboard when the song was played. Cerino resigned over the incident, the team said.
They're out of their jobs but he isn't out of his?
August 25, 2004
MOVE:
One of the more obvious instances of media bias we've seen in recent years was the way the United States Congress suddenly became the Republican Congress in 1994. You can't change the media though, so you just grin and bear it. But there was just a clip from a Moveon.org ad on MSNBC in which they referred not to the government of the United States but to the "Bush government." Do we even need to say these folks are anti-American when they apparently don't recognize the American government if they aren't running it?
IT'S NOT WHETHER THERE'S OIL BUT WHERE THE OIL IS (via Robert Duquette):
Dearth of new wells drilled could keep oil prices high (Carola Hoyos, August 24 2004, Financial Times)
The Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries this week revealed that its members drilled 6.5 per cent fewer wells in 2003, suggesting that the global supply crunch and high oil prices could last longer than expected, analysts said. The numbers appear to contradict statements by Opec members that they are actively building extra capacity. [...]Part of the explanation, in particular for Nigeria and Qatar, lies in the fact that companies are drilling fewer but more sophisticated wells. In Iran, Kuwait and Venezuela, investment has been stifled by political disagreements and leaders' eagerness to spend the additional petrodollars on other investments or the enrichment of a powerful minority. But as big consumers such as the US become more desperate for oil, the pressure is growing for countries such as Saudi Arabia and Kuwait to open their doors to international oil companies.
Mohammad Hadi Nejad Hosseinian, Iran's deputy oil minister, blamed Opec's lack of investment on weak oil prices. “Most Opec countries have been unable to supply extra oil as a result of inadequate investment during the period when oil prices were weak,” he said, adding: “Iran expects to rely heavily on foreign investments to implement its ambitious plans [to increase oil production by nearly 2m b/d].”
Opec's capacity has remained at about 31.5m b/d since autumn 2000, though demand increased by 6m b/d and prices recovered from the Asian crisis of the late 1990s during that time, the CGES said. During that time almost three-quarters of the increased capacity needed to satisfy the extra demand came from outside Opec.
But ageing fields, a difficult investment climate in Russia and a dearth of discoveries in other parts of the world mean that consumers will not be able to rely on countries outside Opec for additional oil.
Oil Prices Sink Below $44 on Profit - Taking (THE ASSOCIATED PRESS, 8/25/04)
Oil prices plummeted below $44 a barrel Wednesday, sinking for the fourth consecutive day, as supply fears receded, gasoline futures plunged and profit-taking took over.``This is overdue, this is so overdue,'' said Fadel Gheit, an oil industry analyst at Oppenheimer & Co. in New York. ``Oil prices have been extremely inflated.''
Light crude for October delivery settled at $43.47, down $1.74. The price of Nymex-traded oil futures has fallen by 11 percent since last Thursday, when they settled at $48.70 -- the highest Nymex settlement on record.
When adjusted for inflation, oil is more than $13 cheaper than it was leading up to the first Gulf War.
I WAS PROMISED EMERGENCE:
Tests of a Smear Campaign (E. J. Dionne Jr., August 24, 2004, Washington Post)
You would have thought that if the issue of who served under fire during the Vietnam War became a big deal at this point in the presidential campaign, it would be a major advantage to John Kerry. [...]This episode is a great test of how politics work in our country. It is, first, a test of George W. Bush.
Bush claims that his highest priority is uniting the country in the war against terrorism. A president who would be a uniter and not a divider knows that cheap-shot politics can only further rend our nation and weaken his own ability to lead.
At this point we should probably expect folks like Mr. Dionne--who expected the imminent return of liberalism to power in America--to stop making sense for awhile, but this is especially sill. Did anyone who knows anything about politics really think Vietnam was going to be a helpful issue for the Senator? Even better, does Mr. Dionne think that when the President says he wants to unite the country he doesn't mean unite it behind his own leadership?
IF YOU'RE GOING TO BE IMPEACHED...:
MPs plan to impeach Blair over Iraq war record (David Hencke, August 26, 2004, The Guardian)
MPs are planning to impeach Tony Blair for "high crimes and misdemeanours" in taking Britain to war against Iraq, reviving an ancient practice last used against Lord Palmerston more than 150 years ago.Eleven MPs led by Adam Price, Plaid Cymru MP for Carmarthen East and Dinefwr, are to table a motion when parliament returns that will force the prime minister to appear before the Commons to defend his record in the run-up to the war. Nine of the MPs are Welsh and Scottish Nationalists, including the party leaders, Elfyn Llwyd, and Alex Salmond, and two are Conservative frontbenchers, Boris Johnson, MP for Henley and editor of the Spectator, and Nigel Evans, MP for Ribble Valley.
A number of Labour backbenchers are considering whether to back the motion, though it could mean expulsion from the party. [...]
Under the ancient right, which has never been repealed, it takes only one MP to move a motion and the Speaker has to grant a debate on the impeachment. This means, at the least, Mr Blair will have to face a fresh debate on his personal handling of the war and there will have to be a vote in parliament on whether to institute impeachment proceedings.
...it's got to be better to have it be for liberating a nation than for lying in a sexual harassment suit, eh?
THAT OLD PRE-CONVENTION BOUNCE YOU'RE ALWAYS HEARING ABOUT...:
For the first time this year in a Times survey, Bush led Kerry in the presidential race, drawing 49 percent among registered voters, compared to 46 percent for the Democrat. In a Times Poll just before the Democratic convention last month, Kerry held a 2 percentage point advantage over Bush.
That small shift from July was within the poll's margin of error. But it fit with other findings in the Times Poll showing the electorate edging toward Bush over the past month on a broad range of measures, from support for his handling of Iraq to confidence in his leadership and honesty. [...]
The Times Poll, supervised by polling director Susan Pinkus, interviewed 1,597 adults, including 1,352 registered voters nationwide, from Aug. 21-24. It has a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 3 percentage points. [...]
The poll spotlighted another challenge for Kerry. After a Democratic convention that focused much more on Kerry's biography than his agenda, just 58 percent said they knew even a fair amount about the policies he would pursue as president; nearly four in ten said they knew not much or nothing at all.
By comparison, even though Bush has put forward few specifics about his second-term priorities, 70 percent said they had a good idea of the policies he would pursue. Compared with the trend of modest erosion for Kerry in the poll, Bush either slightly gained ground or stabilized his position on several measures.
Bush's overall approval rating, which many analysts consider the best single gauge of his prospects in November, stood at 52 percent, with 47 percent disapproving; the numbers last month were 51 percent to 48 percent.
Still not paring down to likely voters but even that can't save the Senator. If you think he's been acting crazy this week just wait.
WHAT THE HECK ARE THE REGISTRATION NUMBERS THERE?
Knowles, Murkowski to face off in November (DAN JOLING, August 25, 2004, Associated Press)
Tony Knowles and Lisa Murkowski say nothing's going to change now that they've posted primary victories.They figured all along they'd face each other in November for the right to represent Alaska in the U.S. Senate.
"I'm going to work hard, shake hands, talk to Alaskans, listen to Alaskans and continue the message I've heard from so many Alaskans over the past months," Knowles said Tuesday night. With 426 of 439 precincts reporting, he had 34,962 votes, or 95 percent. [...]
Murkowski led former state Senate President Mike Miller 38,653, or 58 percent, to 24,575, or 37 percent, with 426 of 439 precincts reporting. Former U.S. Attorney Wev Shea was in third place with 2,492, or 4 percent.
I know even less about Alaska than about most things, but those vote totals are startling. Even with a serious challenger she still smoked Knowles?
BACK AND FORTH LIKE A BADMINTON BIRDIE:
State police shuttled McGreevey to Cipel rendezvous (Newsday, August 25, 2004,)
Gov. James E. McGreevey used state troopers assigned to protect him to escort him to the apartment of the aide with whom he is believed to have carried on an gay extramarital affair, according to a published report.The Star-Ledger of Newark, citing two sources with knowledge of the visits, reported for Wednesday that drivers from the state police's Executive Protection Unit began shuttling McGreevey to Golan Cipel's apartment soon after McGreevey was elected governor in November 2001. [...]
The law enforcement source told the Star-Ledger that many of the visits took place when McGreevey and Cipel lived in the same neighborhood in Woodbridge, where McGreevey had been mayor. McGreevey moved into Drumthwacket, the governor's mansion in Princeton, about three months after his January 2002 inauguration.
The visits were always after business hours, sometimes at night, and ranged from a few minutes to a few hours, the source told the newspaper. At least once, the source said, McGreevey kept his driver waiting from 11 p.m. until 1 a.m.
The source said McGreevey sometimes would have his security drop him off at Cipel's apartment, then pick him up later. Sometimes, McGreevey dismissed the troopers, telling them he would walk home.
Geez, the Governor even helped him pick out an apartment closeby, you'd think he could have walked all the time.
THOSE 527'S SEEMED LIKE SUCH A GREAT IDEA UNTIL THE GOP BOUGHT A FEW:
G.O.P. Group Says It's Ready to Wage Ad War (GLEN JUSTICE, 8/25/04, NY Times)
A day after President Bush called for an end to campaign spending by independent groups, one such Republican organization said on Tuesday that it had raised $35 million to counter Democratic attacks on television and hoped to wage a $125 million advertising campaign through Election Day.The organization, the Progress for America Voter Fund, is the first Republican group to announce that it had raised a substantial amount of money to compete with Democratic-leaning groups that have collected tens of millions of dollars to attack the Bush-Cheney campaign on television.
Others may be poised to follow.
"We don't disagree with the president's take," the president of the group, Brian McCabe, said. "But we can't unilaterally disarm. There is extensive activity by the liberals, and we still need to counter them and level the playing field."
On Wednesday, the organization will begin commercials in Iowa and Wisconsin that attack Senator John Kerry's record on national security. Mr. McCabe said his group hoped to keep the spots running in the two states through the election and to add states as it raised money.
The President has already moved ahead in IA and WI and ad buys like this are going to leave a rapidly imploding Kerry campaign trying to defend blue states that it badly needed to be able to take for granted. By October the campaign may well have been reduced to a desperate bid by the Democrats to cling to states like CA, NY, IL, and MA.
ANY IDIOT CAN MAKE A MOCKUMENTARY:
TO: The National Endowment for the Arts--Film Division
FROM: The Brothers Judd
PROPOSED PROJECT: PTSD-109 [A Bro Judd Joint]
BUDGET: $50,000
(1) PT Cruiser
(10) cases Sam Adams
(1) black Labrador Retriever
(1) DVD movie camera
(5) nights at the Days Inn hotel in Anacostia
(?) Buckets of KFC (+ mashed potatos and biscuits)
(2) pair Ray-Ban sunglasses
SYNOPSIS:
In the spirit of Michael Moore's Roger & Me the filmmakers will prowl the halls of Congress and the Washington news bureaus of the major media desperately seeking any professional politician or political pundit who still thinks that Senator John Kerry's Democratic Convention speech--with set design by Max Fischer--was a good idea.
LARGE "D" DEMOCRATS:
Can a Constitution Be Unconstitutional?: The battle for state marriage amendments leads to a power grab in Michigan. (Ted Olsen, 08/24/2004, Christianity Today: Weblog)
No one denies that Citizens for the Protection of Marriage has enough signatures to put a state constitutional amendment on Michigan's November 2 ballot. The organization needed around 317,700 signatures, but got 480,000 of them.But yesterday, the four-member Michigan Board of State Canvassers deadlocked, thus blocking the amendment from appearing on the ballot.
"Democratic Canvasser Doyle O'Connor said the board should not place an amendment before voters that would be 'patently unlawful' and certain to be struck down by the courts if approved," the Detroit Free Press reports. "O'Connor sided with opponents of the marriage proposal who claim it would nullify existing benefits for unmarried partners offered by universities, local governments and private corporations, in addition to restricting marriage to heterosexual couples. To do so, he said, would violate other constitutional protections and 'could never be enforced. We know the courts would set it aside.'"
Huh. A constitutional amendment would be unlawful? That's odd. I wonder what other constitutional clauses are unlawful. Ooh! Maybe the whole separation of powers thing is illegal! Maybe Article II Section 2 of the Michigan Constitution is illegal! Here's what it says, after explaining how many signatures a petition to amend the constitution requires:
Any amendment proposed by such petition shall be submitted, not less than 120 days after it was filed, to the electors at the next general election. Such proposed amendment, existing provisions of the constitution which would be altered or abrogated thereby, and the question as it shall appear on the ballot shall be published in full as provided by law.
Huh. Nothing in there about the Board of State Canvassers needing to prophesy about what the courts might say.
Say this for the Left: they're going to make the rest of pry power from their cold, dead hands.
IT'S A START:
Deadline looms in Sudan crisis: Khartoum agrees to allow more African Union troops and monitors in Darfur. (Danna Harman, 8/26/04, CS Monitor)
Four days from a United Nations deadline to disarm and punish those responsible for killing an estimated 30,000 people during the 18-month crisis in western Sudan, two key questions remain: Has the Sudanese government made sufficient progress to stave off possible UN sanctions? Probably. And, critically, does the UN have the will to follow through with its threats? Probably not."Khartoum remains adept at saying and doing just enough to avoid a robust international response; but the fact is they have not satisfactorily fulfilled their obligations within the time period established by the [July 30 UN] resolution," charges John Prendergast, an Africa expert at the International Crisis Group (ICG), based in Washington. "What we need now is direct, concerted pressure - otherwise, the Security Council risks being part of a long cycle of threats that have rarely been followed up meaningfully." [...]
The main area of progress is on the humanitarian front. Back in June, aid groups were waiting months to get visas and travel permits, and supplies were getting blocked by customs. But this month at least six new nongovernmental organizations were given permits to operate in the region, and existing ones added staff and programs. Wednesday, the International Committee of the Red Cross announced plans to launch a major airlift to the region. It said it intends to make six trips into the region, carrying equipment and medical supplies, by Sept. 5.
"Pressure on the government has worked," says Adam Koons, director of Save the Children-USA in Sudan. "As horrible as the situation is, and much effort is still needed, we have averted enormous loss of life."
CIRCUS MAXIMUS:
That '70s Show (JAMES TARANTO, August 25, 2004, Best of the Web Today)
"I called the media. . . . I said, 'If I take some crippled veterans down to the White House and we chain ourselves to the gates, will we get coverage?' 'Oh, yes, we will cover that.' "
--John Kerry, testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, April 22, 1971"Kerry is sending to Crawford former Sen. Max Cleland of Georgia, a frequent companion of Kerry's on the campaign trail and a fellow Vietnam War veteran who lost three limbs during the war. Cleland . . . will try to deliver a letter protesting the [Swift Boat Veterans for Truth] ads to [President] Bush at his heavily guarded ranch, Kerry aides said."
--Reuters Aug. 25, 2004
Hi. I'm Max, but you can call me "some crippled veteran."
UP THE RIVER AND INTO THE HEART OF DARKNESS:
If He Only Had a Heart: John Kerry tanks on The Daily Show. (Dana Stevens, Aug. 25, 2004, Slate)
When my boyfriend and I heard that John Kerry was slated to be the guest on last night's Daily Show, we all but raced to the TiVo to set it on record. (Not that we ever miss The Daily Show anyway, but this would be one worth keeping.) What a "get" for Jon Stewart, the court jester of the 2004 election! And finally Kerry would have the chance to step down from the campaign stump and show people who are desperate for a reason to vote for him what he's really made of: his passion, his conviction, his much-vaunted (at least by his wife) sense of humor. Except, as Jon Stewart has been known to say: Eh, not so much.From the moment the senator appeared and sat down on the gray sofa where, just last week, Bill Clinton basked in the audience's applause like a cat lapping up cream, Kerry's charisma was less than zero: It was negative. He was a charm vacuum, forced to actually borrow mojo from audience members. He was a dessicated husk, a tin man who really didn't have a heart. His lack of vibrancy, his utter dearth of sex appeal made Al Gore look like Charo.
Every time some Mexican-hating crank on the Right pens a screed for a journal read only by folks who miss Der Sturmer about how George Bush is a tool of the conniving cabal of hook-nosed neocons, people start barking about how he's in trouble with his base. Meanwhile, normal people in what we are informed is now called the MSM (or Main Stream Media) are just burying John Kerry for being a horrendous candidate, but somehow that same frenzy hasn't started yet. When it does it's hard to see how he stops the slide. Even when folks were pretending he had a shot at winning this election they had to acknowledge that no one likes him personally and that Democrats were picking him only because of his "electability." If he's not electable what does he have left? His medals are on the White House lawn and the money belongs to his wife, who doesn't seem too likely to pleased with her cabana boy if he costs her that First Lady gig. Maybe he will keep that Senate seat after all--though Paul Cellucci seems likely to win it from him in a couple years.
SMALL SAMPLE, BUT BRUTAL NUMBERS:
BUSH'S SUPPORT INCREASES IN ARIZONA (KAE-TV, 8/24/04)
A new statewide poll of 400 registered voters conducted by KAET-TV/Channel 8 and the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication at Arizona State University August 19 - 22, 2004, found that President George Bush has increased his support in Arizona against Senator John Kerry in the last 30 days but the race is still a statistical dead heat. Forty-seven percent said they would vote for Bush, 39 percent were supporting Kerry and 14 percent were undecided. In July, 41 percent of those surveyed were supporting Bush, 42 percent were for Kerry and 17 percent were undecided. In the current poll, when undecided voters were asked who they were "leaning toward" supporting, 53 percent said they will vote for Bush and 47 percent for Kerry.Among voters with the highest probability of voting,* the race tightened. Forty-five percent were voting for Bush, 42 percent for Kerry and 13 percent were undecided. The race for president in Arizona remains highly polarized. Eighty-six percent of Bush's supporters and 94 percent of Kerry's supporters said they are very firm in their commitment and are unlikely to change their mind between now and November.
The poll suggests that Bush's increasing support is largely coming from registered independents. While 14 percent of the Republicans said they would cross over to vote for Kerry and 14 percent of the Democrats said they would choose Bush, independents were supporting Bush by a two-to-one margin (52 percent to 26 percent). The survey also found that people who regularly attend religious services are much more supportive of Bush than Kerry (61 percent to 29 percent). No "gender gap" was found in this poll.
Fifty-one percent of those interviewed approved of the job Bush is doing as president, 43 percent disapproved and 6 percent had no opinion.
WILL THEY STOP THE SLAUGHTER?
Letter to John Kerry (GeorgeWBush.com, 8/25/04)
August 25, 2004I know some of you are pessimistic but, really, is this campaign going to lose to that campaign? Continue reading "WILL THEY STOP THE SLAUGHTER?"Senator John Kerry
304 Russell Senate Office Building
Washington, DC 20510Dear Senator Kerry,
We are pleased to welcome your campaign representatives to Texas today. We honor all our veterans, all whom have worn the uniform and served our country. We also honor the military and National Guard troops serving in Iraq and Afghanistan today. We are very proud of all of them and believe they deserve our full support.
That’s why so many veterans are troubled by your vote AGAINST funding for our troops in Iraq and Afghanistan, after you voted FOR sending them into battle. And that’s why we are so concerned about the comments you made AFTER you came home from Vietnam. You accused your fellow veterans of terrible atrocities – and, to this day, you have never apologized. Even last night, you claimed to be proud of your post-war condemnation of our actions.
We’re proud of our service in Vietnam. We served honorably in Vietnam and we were deeply hurt and offended by your comments when you came home.
You can’t have it both ways. You can’t build your convention and much of your campaign around your service in Vietnam, and then try to say that only those veterans who agree with you have a right to speak up. There is no double standard for our right to free speech. We all earned it.
You said in 1992 “we do not need to divide America over who served and how.” Yet you and your surrogates continue to criticize President Bush for his service as a fighter pilot in the National Guard.
We are veterans too – and proud to support President Bush. He’s been a strong leader, with a record of outstanding support for our veterans and for our troops in combat. He’s made sure that our troops in combat have the equipment and support they need to accomplish their mission.
He has increased the VA health care budget more than 40% since 2001 – in fact, during his four years in office, President Bush has increased veterans funding twice as much as the previous administration did in eight years ($22 billion over 4 years compared to $10 billion over 8.) And he’s praised the service of all who served our country, including your service in Vietnam.
We urge you to condemn the double standard that you and your campaign have enforced regarding a veteran’s right to openly express their feelings about your activities on return from Vietnam.
Sincerely,
Texas State Land Commissioner Jerry Patterson
Rep. Duke Cunningham
Rep. Duncan Hunter
Rep. Sam Johnson
Lt. General David Palmer
Robert O'Malley, Medal of Honor Recipient
James Fleming, Medal of Honor Recipient
Lieutenant Colonel Richard Castle (Ret.)
STEAL A MARCH:
So Much for Free Speech (Robert J. Samuelson, August 25, 2004, Washington Post)
The presidential campaign has confirmed that, under the guise of "campaign finance reform," Congress and the Supreme Court have repealed large parts of the First Amendment. They have simply discarded what were once considered constitutional rights of free speech and political association. It is not that these rights have vanished. But they are no longer constitutional guarantees. They're governed by limits and qualifications imposed by Congress, the courts, state legislatures, regulatory agencies -- and lawyers' interpretations of all of the above.We have entered an era of constitutional censorship. Hardly anyone wants to admit this -- the legalized demolition of the First Amendment would seem shocking -- and so hardly anyone does. The evidence, though, abounds. The latest is the controversy over the anti-Kerry ads by Swift Boat Veterans for Truth and parallel anti-Bush ads by Democratic "527" groups such as MoveOn.org. Let's assume (for argument's sake) that everything in these ads is untrue. Still, the United States' political tradition is that voters judge the truthfulness and relevance of campaign arguments. We haven't wanted our political speech filtered.
Now there's another possibility. The government may screen what voters see and hear. The Kerry campaign has asked the Federal Election Commission (FEC) to ban the Swift Boat ads; the Bush campaign similarly wants the FEC to suppress the pro-Democrat 527 groups. We've arrived at this juncture because it's logically impossible both to honor the First Amendment and to regulate campaign finance effectively. We can do one or the other -- but not both. Unfortunately, Congress and the Supreme Court won't admit the choice. The result is the worst of both worlds. We gut the First Amendment and don't effectively regulate campaign finance.
The First Amendment says that Congress "shall make no law . . . abridging the freedom of speech, or . . . the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government" (that's "political association''). The campaign finance laws, the latest being McCain-Feingold, blatantly violate these prohibitions.
Campaign Cops and Car Ads (George F. Will, August 22, 2004, Washington Post)
Russ Darrow -- "The Right Russ," his bumper stickers say -- is running in the Sept. 14 primary for the Republican nomination for the U.S. Senate seat held by Russ Feingold (D-Wis.). Feingold is a saint in the church of campaign finance reform because of the McCain-Feingold legislation enacted in 2002 to solve the supposed problem of "too much money in politics."In 1965 Darrow founded a business -- Russ Darrow Group Inc. -- that now includes 22 dealerships selling new and used vehicles. It is operated today by Russ Darrow III. It runs broadcast, print and electronic (e-mail and other) advertising using the now valuable brand name "Russ Darrow."
McCain-Feingold's blackout provision says that 30 days before a primary, it is illegal for corporations -- a category that includes thousands of advocacy groups from Planned Parenthood to the National Rifle Association -- to finance any "electioneering communication" via radio or television that "refers to" a congressional candidate and is "targeted to the relevant electorate."
Because of that law, the company felt compelled to ask the Federal Election Commission whether it can continue to advertise when its founder is running for federal office. Common sense says the law was not intended to pertain to, and its language cannot be tortured to extend to, commercial advertising. But Common Cause thinks otherwise.
Clearly, car ads are not "electioneering communications." Hence mentioning Darrow's name as a brand name in a communication with no relevance to any election cannot consti- tute making a reference to a political candidate.
Nevertheless, Jay Heck, director of the Wisconsin operations of Common Cause, the national advocacy organization for enlarged government regulation of political advocacy, says: "Why should [Darrow] have an unfair advantage and be able to pay to have his name out there with corporate money, where his opponents have to use regulated, disclosed money?"
It is breathtaking. It is a measure of how many forms of speech have been made problematic by the campaign reformers' itch to extend government supervision of speech.
It would be a great time for the President to make a major campaign finance reform speech, putting down a marker so that he and the wider Republican majorities in Congress can revisit the law first thing in 2005 and make it consistent with the First Amendment.
THE LEOPARD AND ITS SPOTS:
Kerry's Dueling Promises on Economy: Position on Reducing Deficit Conflicts With Campaign Commitments (Jonathan Weisman, August 25, 2004, Washington Post)
Sen. John F. Kerry's pledge to reduce record federal budget deficits is colliding with an obstacle that may be growing higher by the week: his own campaign commitments.A Washington Post review of Kerry's tax cuts and spending plans, in addition to interviews with campaign staff members and analyses by conservative and liberal experts, suggests that they could worsen the federal budget deficit by nearly as much as President Bush's agenda. If projected savings from unspecified cuts do not materialize, Kerry's pledges could outstrip those of the president, whom the Democrat has repeatedly accused of unprecedented fiscal recklessness.
"I wish Senator Kerry was providing a starker contrast," lamented Leonard E. Burman, a tax policy analyst at the Urban Institute, who was a Treasury Department official in the Clinton administration. "The [Bush] policies with respect to the deficit are insane. They have to be reversed. But it will take presidential leadership to do it."
"You have to begin with the premise that the steps you need to take to reduce deficits are almost diametrically opposed to the steps you need to take to win elections," said Leon E. Panetta, Bill Clinton's first budget director. "You can cut spending and raise taxes or you can cut taxes and raise spending."
Remember how economic conservatives were going to vote for Anybody But Bush because they'd have to be more fiscally responsible and pro-free trade?
HOW'D WE GET STUCK WITH THIS CLOWN:
Man Overboard (Richard Blow, 8/25/04, TomPaine.com)
The danger of the anti-Kerry attack is not that it will change many people’s minds about the Democratic candidate. As the Democratic convention showed, and the GOP convention will show, the vast majority of voters already know who they’re casting their ballots for. This polarized election is now about two things: Turning out your voters, and winning the undecideds, who are probably about five to 10 percent of the electorate. Near the end of a tight race, undecideds usually break for the challenger. If the incumbent hasn’t won them over after 46 months in office, he’s not likely to in the 60 days before Election Day. These voters are Kerry’s to lose, and that’s just what he may be doing.Undecideds are finicky voters. They don’t like political brawls. They vote on the issues, and that’s good for Kerry: If this election is about Iraq, the economy and whether Americans are better off than they were in 2000, he wins. So Kerry has to give five to 10 percent of American voters a positive reason—a bold agenda, a plan for change—to vote for him. On the flip side, he must steer clear of an extended controversy that will alienate the undecideds.
But in his counterattack to the Vietnam question, Kerry has waded right into that controversy. This should have been a fringe issue, as Bush’s National Guard service has always been. (And it won’t work for Kerry to attack Bush on the National Guard question; it’s a vetted issue by now.) Instead, Vietnam has been dominating the headlines for days. People who would never even have known what a Swift boat is are now debating just how much blood John Kerry lost in Vietnam. Bob Dole, who appears to be losing some of his mental clarity but still has enormous credibility, said that Kerry should apologize to Vietnam vets. Ouch. Inevitably, some of the undecided voters will conclude that Kerry deserved his medals. Others won’t. Some will just get turned off, and not vote, which hurts Kerry more than it does Bush.
What's remarkable is that the Kerry campaign has managed to make such a mess in a slow news month when Americans should be debating Paul Hamm’s medal, not John Kerry’s. Misunderstanding the media this badly isn’t easy. Meanwhile, Bush has stayed above the fray, opining that the political ads of all independent groups should be prohibited. Such a ban will never happen—certainly not before November. But calling for it does make Bush sound statesmanlike.
If the economy and the war on terror worked in Mr. Kerry's favor he'd be running on them. Instead, the President is.
HIDE AND THEY MIGHT LIKE US BETTER:
Get Mad. Act Out. Re-Elect George Bush.: Protesters risk playing into GOP hands (Rick Perlstein, August 24th, 2004, Village Voice)
One of the most exhilarating moments in Lewis Koch's life came in the summer of 1968. He was a producer for NBC News, based in Chicago, specializing in the anti-war movement—of which he was a sympathizer. Now, at the Democratic National Convention, he was an actor in what he thought was one of its glorious episodes. Cops were beating kids without provocation, and with the footage he was putting on the air, Middle America might finally realize that justice rested more with those protesting the war than those so violently defending it."I remember my self-satisfaction," Koch recalls, "and saying to myself, 'Oh, did you do a terrific job!' "
Then came the most traumatic moment in Lewis Koch's life.
"The phones would ring off the hook. People were furious. . . . Nothing I had intended had gone through. Actually what they saw were clear pictures of these young kids rioting. Chaos in their city." Next thing he knew, Richard Nixon had swept to presidential victory on the wings of a commercial proclaiming—above those selfsame pictures—that "the first civil right of every American is to be free from domestic violence."
Now Lew Koch senses déjà vu all over again in the loose talk among protesters of staging similar scenes at next week's Republican convention—talk that by putting the ugliness of the Bush regime on display, protesters thereby might end it. Koch's frustration is overwhelming. "What the protesters are saying is the same thing as the Weathermen: 'Bring the war home.' And you know what happens? You lose the war! They have guns. And they'll have the judges that Bush will appoint to the Supreme Court in the next four years."
It recalls the old philosopher's conundrum: When a tree falls in the forest, does it make a sound? If resistance against Bush actually plays into Bush's hands, is it really resistance?
The parallels between Chicago 1968 and New York 2004 are striking.
It is resistance, it's just unpopular. That's the Left's problem and it has been for decades now--they have to hide their message from the citizenry.
IN THE BEST CLUB OF ROME TRADITION
Pollutants cause huge rise in brain diseases (Juliette Jowit, The Guardian, August 15th, 2004)
The numbers of sufferers of brain diseases, including Alzheimer's, Parkinson's and motor neurone disease, have soared across the West in less than 20 years, scientists have discovered.The alarming rise, which includes figures showing rates of dementia have trebled in men, has been linked to rises in levels of pesticides, industrial effluents, domestic waste, car exhausts and other pollutants, says a report in the journal Public Health.
In the late 1970s, there were around 3,000 deaths a year from these conditions in England and Wales. By the late 1990s, there were 10,000.'This has really scared me,' said Professor Colin Pritchard of Bournemouth University, one of the report's authors. 'These are nasty diseases: people are getting more of them and they are starting earlier. We have to look at the environment and ask ourselves what we are doing.'
Well, Professor, what we are doing and have been for years is cutting pollution to record low levels, banning vices like smoking, inventing more and more miracle drugs and encouraging everyone from childhood on to work, play and eat with a view to living as long as they possibly can. However, if you want your funding renewed, you are well-advised to blame economic growth and enterprise. Your donors are getting on and would prefer not to confront the unsettling truth.
SPENSER SHOULDN'T DEFER TO HAWK:
When to Hold 'Em: The U.S. should detain suspected terrorists—even if it can't make a case against them in court. (Thomas F. Powers, Sep/Oct 2004, Legal Affairs)
A number of prominent legal scholars and government officials, ranging from the liberal constitutional expert Laurence Tribe to the conservative federal judge Michael Chertoff, have begun to give serious consideration to the idea of preventive detention. Even Justice John Paul Stevens, who supports civil libertarian positions, admitted in the Padilla case that "[e]xecutive detention of subversive citizens, like detention of enemy soldiers to keep them off the battlefield, may sometimes be justified to prevent persons from launching or becoming missiles of destruction."What about international law? The point is not that the United States should defy international law. It must not. But under the Geneva Conventions terrorists do not fit into the only two categories provided, POW or war criminal. Preventive detention responsibly addresses the question of what to do with fighters who do not wear uniforms or otherwise distinguish themselves from civilians in combat.
The government's critics explain the Administration's current policy either in terms of some institutional perversity (executive overreach) or by reference to some pathological "authoritarianism." But the failure thus far to devise a comprehensive policy reflects, at least in part, a liberal democratic hesitation in the face of a practice that appears to be fundamentally illiberal. The time has come to face terrorism squarely, and to craft a legal response that reflects our constitutional principles.
EXISTING U.S. DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE POLICIES extend some limited procedural rights to detainees. Most notable is the annual status review of every individual detained by the recently created Office for the Administrative Review of the Detention of Enemy Combatants. This, together with Justice Sandra Day O'Connor's insistence in Hamdi that all detainees be granted a hearing before a "neutral decisionmaker," and with the aid of legal counsel, provides a starting point.
How we proceed from there should be decided in light of the experience of other countries that have struggled to combat terrorism. If preventive detention is justified in large measure by the scope and intensity of the actual threat of terrorism, then England and Israel both surely qualify. More than 3,000 terrorism deaths are associated with the conflict in Northern Ireland, and more than 1,200 people have been killed by terrorists in Israel in the past decade alone.
Great Britain's indefinite internment policy, formalized in 1973 following the recommendations of a famous report authored by Lord Diplock on the situation in Northern Ireland, was allowed to lapse in 1980. Lord Diplock was reacting to a legally murky use of police power, one he termed "imprisonment at the arbitrary Diktat of the Executive Government." Though his reform proposal, incorporated in the 1973 Northern Ireland (Emergency Provisions) Act, made preventive detention a matter of administrative, not judicial, oversight, the new policy reasserted civilian control and included due process safeguards. No less a figure than the secretary of state for Northern Ireland made initial detention determinations. Within a period of 28 days, an administrative official would then review each case with the option to extend the detention. Those detained also had a right to be informed of their status hearing in advance, and they were granted the right to an attorney paid for by the government. After September 11, in the 2001 Anti-terrorism, Crime and Security Act, a limited version of the internment policy, applying only to non-citizens, was reintroduced in Britain.
In 1948 Israel inherited from the British an unofficial detention policy that was formally articulated in the 1979 Administrative Detention Law. Partly in response to provisions of international law, administrative detention is justified, as it is in England, only under a state of emergency—a status Israel has invoked and lived under continuously since 1948. The minister of defense must authorize each case. Detention orders are issued for six months at a time and may be renewed at the end of that period. In Israel the civilian courts provide oversight, first by "confirming" the initial detention order and then by reviewing the status of each detainee every three months, overlapping with the review, every six months, by the minister of defense. Detainees have the right to an attorney, and the right to be present at their confirmation hearing and at all subsequent judicial proceedings.
THE POLICIES OF BRITAIN AND ISRAEL each moved in the same direction: toward greater legal clarity and toward more extensive due process protections. The United States should take advantage of those countries' experiences to find ways to build due process into preventive detention. Current U.S. policy reflects a reactive and piecemeal approach. Designing a preventive detention policy means, in effect, creating a separate legal system that applies only to a small class of persons, a system running parallel to criminal law on the one hand, and to the laws governing POWs and war criminals on the other.
A comprehensive policy must specify standards and procedures in six key areas: 1) preliminary screening and determination of status; 2) a hearing at which detainees may challenge their status; 3) the right of appeal; 4) periodic reconsideration and renewal of status, or release; 5) general legal support, including notification and access to attorneys, evidence, and witnesses; and 6) clear standards of treatment for detainees. Some of this is already in place in Defense Department practices, but it needs to be pulled together, clarified, and made explicit for anyone who wants to know about the country's policy. [...]
In England and Israel, preventive detention has been highly controversial. Though Lord Diplock was essentially a reformer, and though his report on Northern Ireland brought legal clarity and constraint to what he and others perceived to be runaway executive power, his name is often associated with authoritarian excess. Fashioning a preventive detention policy is likely to be a thankless task here as well. The name of the architect of America's preventive detention policy may well become associated with an innovation that will be loved by none and hated by many. But the benefit would be to bring the rule of law to bear even here, where the Bush Administration has made clear that it is only so willing to check its own power.
The glory of republicanism is not that liberty is unlimited but that it is protected from arbitrary and capricious interference. However, the competition between our understandable reluctance to give government too much power and our inevitable demand that government protect us from threats at any cost, tends to force us into precisely the kind of situation where
we do restrain liberty arbitrarily.
As Mr. Powers argues, it would be far better to be honest with ourselves and accept that we are going to take the steps necessary to guard against the threat of terrorism and to craft a careful and consistent set of laws and regulations that apply universally. Measures like preventive detention and torture may be distasteful, but we expect and want them to be utilized on our behalf. It's incumbent upon us as citizens then to set grant permission to and set guidelines for those government officials we wish to do our dirty work.
BRIGHT IDEA, EDISON (via Charlie Herzog):
'Sense of hope' on schools (Susan Snyder, Connie Langland and Alletta Emeno, 8/25/04, Philadelphia Inquirer)
In a dramatic improvement, the Philadelphia School District nearly tripled the number of schools that met achievement requirements under the federal No Child Left Behind law, statistics released yesterday show.The success mirrored statewide improvements.
Of the district's 264 schools, 160 met the mark for making "adequate yearly progress," which is based largely on test scores, graduation and attendance rates. Only 58 were at the standard in the 2003 report. This is the second year that the state has identified schools that need improvement.
In Philadelphia - which was taken over by the state three years ago because of dismal academic performance and financial struggle - education advocates were thrilled.
"I think we've given people a sense of hope that we can turn around an urban school system," said State Rep. Dwight Evans (D., Phila.), speaking at a news conference at school district headquarters. [...]
In Philadelphia, improvement was charted in all kinds of district schools - those run by outside managers, such as Edison Schools Inc., charter schools and regular district schools.
"The results show that each partner's unique approach under the district's managed instruction model has contributed to today's success," said James Nevels, chairman of the Philadelphia School Reform Commission.
Of the 45 city schools run by outside managers, 23 met the performance standards, up from seven last year.
Edison Schools Inc., which came to the city under controversy because of its for-profit status, increased from one of its 20 schools making adequate progress to 12.
"The controversy, the complicated entrance to Philadelphia, was, frankly, worth it," Edison spokesman Adam Tucker said.
(The firm, however, did not fare quite as well in the Chester Upland School District, where it manages eight schools. Two made the target, up from one last year.)
Charter schools in Philadelphia also posted strong gains. Twenty of the 43 charters met adequate yearly progress, compared with only four last year, district officials said.
Is Senator Kerry for or against this kind of progress this week?
NOT UNTIL WE GET TO HUMBERT'S PEAK...:
Vast New Energy Source Almost Here (SPX, Aug 25, 2004)
Australian scientists predict that a revolutionary new way to harness the power of the sun to extract clean and almost unlimited energy supplies from water will be a reality within seven years.Using special titanium oxide ceramics that harvest sunlight and split water to produce hydrogen fuel, the researchers say it will then be a simple engineering exercise to make an energy-harvesting device with no moving parts and emitting no greenhouse gases or pollutants.
It would be the cheapest, cleanest and most abundant energy source ever developed: the main by-products would be oxygen and water.
"This is potentially huge, with a market the size of all the existing markets for coal, oil and gas combined," says Professor Janusz Nowotny, who with Professor Chris Sorrell is leading a solar hydrogen research project at the University of New South Wales (UNSW) Centre for Materials and Energy Conversion.
ONCE YOU START SLEEPING WITH THE ENEMY...:
Kerry Makes Illegal Phone Call to Swift Boat Veteran (NewsMax, 8/25/04)
Kerry's latest faux pas: calling Vietnam veteran Robert "Friar Tuck" Brant and asking if he knew about that awful group Swift Boat Veterans for Truth."I said, 'I am one, John,'" Brant said.
The Massachusetts Democrat failed to note that Brant had appeared at a news conference announcing the group in May.
"There was a moment of hesitation, and he said, `I appreciate your honesty.' He said, `Well, why are you?'"
Brant reminded Kerry of his depiction of veterans as war criminals. "I said, `You know that's not true,'" Brant recalled to the Associated Press. "That's been simmering in me about 35 years."
The New York Post reported today: "Sean McCabe, a spokesman for the 264-member organization, said it plans to send a cease-and-desist letter warning Kerry 'to stop calling our members,' because it's an independent '527' group and it's illegal for campaigns to contact them."
The senator was breaking the law and should have immediately ended the call when Brant said he was a member of Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, Fox News Channel's "Fox & Friends" reported this morning.
Nothing new for a guy who negotiated with the North Vietnamese illegally.
MEANWHILE, FOR THOSE NOT MIRED IN THE MEKONG:
Orders for Durable Goods Make Big Gain: U.S. factories see orders for durable goods rise by 1.7 percent in July (JEANNINE AVERSA, August 25, 2004, Associated Press)
U.S. factories saw orders for costly manufactured goods in July post the biggest gain in four months, an encouraging sign that the economy is emerging from an early summer funk.The Commerce Department reported Wednesday that orders for durables goods - big-ticket items expected to last at least three years - rose by 1.7 percent in July from the previous month - lifted by stronger demand for goods including airplanes, machinery and communications equipment.
The increase - the largest since March - followed a 1.1 percent advance in June. The showing in July was stronger than the 1 percent rise that some economists were forecasting.
The latest snapshot of manufacturing activity joins some other recent economic reports suggesting the economy may be picking up a bit of momentum after being stuck in a rut in June.
Asked for its reaction, the Kerry campaign responded that the Senator was in Cambodia on December 28th 1968, not the 25th.
KIM JONG-IL LICKS HIS CHOPS:
Would Kerry have won the Cold War? (Terence Jeffrey, August 25, 2004, Townhall)
Reagan's conventional military buildup, European missile deployment and refusal to cave on SDI broke the will of an evil empire.Now, here's why this is important today: Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry opposed all the key policies Reagan used to win a bloodless victory in the Cold War.
In his first Senate race in 1984, Kerry championed the nuclear freeze. In September 1985, two months before Reagan met Gorbachev in Geneva, when freezeniks held their own Geneva summit, Kerry was their star. "Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., keynote speaker for the Geneva freeze meeting," United Press International reported at the time, "told the activists that 'if it were not for the freeze movement, I am confident that the government of the United States would not be in Geneva today talking with its Soviet counterparts.'"
In August 1986, two months before Reagan met Gorbachev in Reykjavik, Kerry fought to pre-emptively scuttle SDI. After a measure to steeply reduce SDI funding failed in the Senate, Kerry, according to the Associated Press, "called Star Wars 'a cancer' and said 'what we must do is deny this program the funds that would enable this cancer on our nation's defense to grow any further.'"
What about Reagan's buildup of conventional weapons (which still benefits U.S. forces today)? "(C)andidate Kerry in 1984 said he would have voted to cancel many of them -- the B-1 bomber, B-2 stealth bomber, AH-64 Apache helicopter, Patriot missile, the F-15, F-14A and F-14D jets, the AV-8B Harrier jet, the Aegis air-defense cruiser, and the Trident missile system," the Boston Globe reported.
So the Vietnam portion of the Kerry campaign lasts at least until the GOP convention, then we get a few weeks of him justifying his anti-war activities and Senate testimony, and only then do we get to the point where he has to defend his abysmal record as an elected official. Maybe the Democrats should have had contested primaries after all?
BOOMTIME IN HOOVERVILLE:
July fails to chill housing market (JEANNINE AVERSA, 8/25/04, Associated Press)
Sales of previously owned homes declined in July but still posted their third-best sales pace on record -- a sign that the housing market, while slowing a bit, remains in good shape.The National Association of Realtors reported Tuesday that sales of existing homes fell to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 6.72 million units, representing a 2.9 percent decrease from June's record-high pace of 6.92 million units. [...]
Even though the drop nationwide in July was steeper than the 2 percent decline some economists were forecasting, the level of sales was still considered buoyant. July's sales were running 8.6 percent higher than the pace for the same month last year.
''We're off the highs, but the levels we are at are very, very healthy,'' said David Lereah, the association's chief economist.
He said he expects sales of previously owned homes to set record highs for all of 2004.
Richard Yamarone, an economist at Argus Research Corp., agreed with that assessment, saying he has no worries about the health of the housing market.
Just because we have a growing economy, rising population and record employment doesn't mean the housing market can stay strong....
THEY'RE TEENS, AFTER ALL:
Putting Caps on Teenage Drinking: A nationwide plan to reduce underage drinking is long overdue. ( JIM GOGEK, 8/25/04, NY Times)
Bold government initiatives can be effective. This summer, we're celebrating the 20th anniversary of the minimum drinking age of 21, signed into law by President Ronald Reagan in 1984. That legislation has saved an estimated 20,000 lives. An adequately financed, nationwide plan to reduce underage drinking, adhering to the National Academy report, would save even more lives. But so far, it looks like underage drinking will only be fought by impoverished advocacy groups, a scattering of state officials and trial lawyers who see the story of tobacco litigation about to repeat itself.
You don't need more money, just take away the driver's license of anyone under 21 who's caught drinking or using drugs and don't let them have it back until they're over 21. You'd be using the same peer pressure that gets them to misbehave in the first place. The humiliation of not being able to drive when all your friends can would be a powerful motivator.
PARDONS? THEY DESERVE PARADES:
Panama leader may pardon 4 Castro foes to spite Cuba: Angry over criticism from Havana, Panamanian President Mireya Moscoso said she will consider a pardon for four jailed anti-Castro Cuban exiles. (NANCY SAN MARTIN, 8/25/04, Miami Herald)
Angered by Cuban attacks, Panamanian President Mireya Moscoso Tuesday was considering pardoning four anti-Castro Cuban exiles jailed in Panama -- and ordered the ''immediate'' departure of Havana's ambassador to Panama.In Miami, leaders of a group of exiles who have supported the four by raising $400,000 for their defense said they were ''elated'' with Moscoso's announcement but denied reports that they had lobbied the Panamanian president for pardons.
The twin actions by Moscoso, whose term expires next Monday, plunged Panama-Cuba relations to a historic low and may leave the incoming government of President-elect Martin Torrijos with a diplomatic mess on its hands. [...]
The four men jailed include three Miami exiles and Luis Posada Carriles, an El Salvador resident labeled by Havana as its most wanted terrorist. They were arrested in 2000 in Panama City after President Fidel Castro, visiting for a heads-of-state summit, alleged at a news conference that the exiles were plotting to kill him.
They were cleared of the murder charges and possession of 33 pounds of explosives but were convicted in April of endangering the public safety and given sentences of up to eight years in prison. Posada and the three Miamians -- Pedro Remón, Guillermo Novo and Gaspar Jiménez -- claimed they were in Panama to help a Cuban general who was to accompany Castro and supposedly had planned to defect.
And people think Sadr has held Najaf for too long?
MAKE WAY FOR THE AYATOLLAH:
Sistani's rescue bid (Peyman Pejman, 8/26/04, Asia Times)
In the latest twist, supreme Shi'ite leader Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani said that he would return to Iraqi on Wednesday and ask all Iraqis to "march to Najaf in order to rescue the city". Sistani has been receiving medical treatment in London, where he arrived a day after the latest bout of fighting began three weeks ago."We want a stop to this bloodshed in the city of Najaf," said an aide to Sistani, Sheikh Ali Smaisem. "We will negotiate with the same delegation from the [Iraqi] National Conference, and we want them to bring a representative from the government." Smaisem was referring to a delegation of eight Iraqi dignitaries who visited Najaf last week and were unable to broker a peaceful end to the crisis.
"His eminence Grand Ayatollah al-Sistani will arrive in beloved Iraq in a few hours and he will return to the holy city of Najaf to rescue it from its ordeal," spokesman Hamed al-Khafaf said in an e-mail sent to The Associated Press in Beirut on Wednesday morning.
This could have no better outcome than to strengthen al-Sistani.
KEYES 13, OBAMA 1:
Alan Keyes's Daffy Idea to Repeal the 17th Amendment (Lewis Gould, HNN)
Alan Keyes, the Republican senatorial candidate in Illinois, has now joined Senator Zell Miller of Georgia and House Majority Leader Tom DeLay in calling for repeal of the Seventeenth Amendment to the Constitution, the one that provides for the direct election of United States senators. Senator Miller, who has introduced his own amendment to repeal the Seventeenth, contends that the direct election of senators “was the death of the careful balance between state and federal governments.” Once the Senate was the province of members “who thoughtfully make up their own minds, as they did during the Senate’s greatest era of Clay, Webster, and Calhoun.” Now senators, in Miller’s view, “are mere cat’s paws for the special interests.” Miller favors returning the right to elect senators to the state legislatures who had that job until the Seventeenth Amendment was ratified in 1913. Keyes agrees since it seems likely that the Illinois electorate is not going to prove receptive to his bid for that state’s open Senate seat. Before this flawed idea gets any traction, it would be well to recall the historical circumstances that led to the adoption of the direct election amendment in the first place.Why did Americans in the Progressive Era endorse this change in the nation’s fundamental law?
Articles about Mr. Obama are a function of his race, about Mr. Keyes a function of his ideas. Would you rather be the token or the provocateur?
BLOW IT UP AND START OVER:
9/11 Panel Leader Has Praise for Plan to Split C.I.A.: Thomas H. Kean called a proposal to break up the C.I.A. and move other intelligence agencies outside the Pentagon a "constructive alternative" to the commission's proposals. (PHILIP SHENON, 8/25/04, NY Times)
The testimony Tuesday from Mr. Kean and the commission's deputy chairman, Lee H. Hamilton, may be useful to Mr. Roberts in pursuing his legislation, which has been fiercely attacked by several influential members of Congress, Democrats and Republicans alike, and has clearly shocked officials at the C.I.A. and the Pentagon.Their comments suggested that Mr. Kean and Mr. Hamilton were willing to work with Mr. Roberts and his allies in the Senate and House to fashion legislation that would accomplish their common goal, an intelligence overhaul far more sweeping than anything that the Bush administration has suggested it would accept.
In a statement issued late Monday to employees of the C.I.A., the acting director of central intelligence, John E. McLaughlin, described Mr. Roberts's plan as a "step backward" and said, "We are nowhere near the end of this debate." He predicted that there would be no "breakup of the C.I.A. given the agency's vital front-line role in the war on terror."
President's don't often get handed opportunities to radically restructure the bureaucracy--Mr. Bush should seize this one. Centralization is a terrible idea; but you can do a lot of other constructive things--not least getting rid of CIA and tossing the civil service rules--under cover of the Roberts plan.
GET THE GIMP:
Democrats Travel to Bush's Ranch Asking Him to Denounce Ads (Bloomberg, 8/25/04)
Former Democratic Senator Max Cleland plans to travel today to President George W. Bush's ranch to demand that he denounce television ads accusing Democratic challenger John Kerry of lying about his war record.Cleland, 61, who lost both legs and his right arm during the Vietnam War, is to be accompanied on his trip to the Crawford, Texas, ranch, by former U.S. Army Green Beret Jim Rassmann, who credits Kerry with rescuing him from a river in Vietnam.
Boy, Max Cleland has no pride, huh? His official role in the campaign is to be a stage prop.
MORE:
The Sampan incident (Pat Buchanan, August 25, 2004, Townhall)
Steve Gardner will not forget the night as long as he lives. It was mid-January 1969. He was manning the double .50 caliber machine-gun mount in Lt. John Kerry's swift boat. "The PCF 44 boat, engines shut off, lay in ambush near the western mouth of the Cua Lon River," writes John O'Neill in his best-seller "Unfit for Command."Kerry was in the pilothouse monitoring the radar. But, Gardner claims, Kerry had given his crew no heads-up when, suddenly, a sampan appeared right in front of them. The swift boat lights were thrown onto the sampan. Kerry, however, still had said nothing and was nowhere in sight. Gardner yelled to the sampan to stop. No reaction.
Then, as Gardner and crew thought they saw a man on the sampan holding or reaching for a weapon, they cut loose with the machine guns.
But when the crew boarded the sampan, they found no man on the boat, just a woman clutching a child no more than 2 years old and the shattered body of a boy. The man who had been piloting the sampan was believed to have been blasted into the water.
Here was a tragedy of war. But it is the contention of O'Neill and Gardner that Kerry bears responsibility for the boy's death.
Can't wait for the claim that Pat is a tool of Karl Rove.
I KNEW AL GORE, SENATOR . . .
Kerry does "The Daily Show" (Mary Dalrymple, AP, 8/24/04)
As Kerry launched into one of his lengthy monologues about why President Bush avoids talking about issues like the economy, jobs and the environment, the comedian interrupted.One of the things that Al Gore was good at (notice how kind I'm being) was self-deprecating humor. It always led one to suspect, all evidence to the contrary not withstanding, that there might actually be a human being somewhere inside. Apparently, John Kerry is no Al Gore."I'm sorry," Stewart said. "Were you or were you not in Cambodia?"
Stewart and Kerry then lean in and stare each other down over the comedian's desk before Stewart asks about some of the other things Kerry's opponents are saying about him. . . .
Kerry said the debates would be a challenge. "The president has won every debate he's ever had," Kerry said. "He beat Ann Richards. He beat Al Gore. So, he's a good debater."
He's also not much of a politician. He didn't answer the Cambodia question. What the heck is the point of going on a comedy show if you're not going to take the opportunity -- friendly questioner, no follow up, relatively uninformed audience, inherent deniability -- to say anything you want ("It's a little embarrassing, but... actually, we were looking for weapons of mass destruction."). The only thing he does here that even approaches good politics, and it is so basic that having to credit him for it is a little sad, is try to lower debate expectations. Too bad that ship has sailed. If your supporters are calling your opponent a chimp and a moron, how do you tell them that you might not be up to the task of debating him?
*The only joke I came up with was lame, so here's a contest. We are looking for a good Cambodia joke, from John Kerry's POV, making light of the Cambodia controversy (John Kerry's version of Reagan's "I am not going to exploit for political purposes my opponent's youth and inexperience"). The best joke left in the comments by midnight Wednesday will receive my used copy of James Lilek's book, "Mr. Obvious."
The contest is now closed. The winner will be announced this evening. Thanks to everyone who participated.
And the winner is ... Mike Earl. The actual John Kerry couldn't deliver this line properly, but a competent politician could use a line like this to move the focus back to the President and to what the Democrats have to hope is their ace in the hole. Mike: Send me an email with the address to which you would like the book sent.
DID RUSSIA JUST AVOID 9-11?:
Report: Russian Jet Sent Hijack Signal (The Associated Press, Aug. 24, 2004)
The Russian plane that went missing around the time as another jet crashed issued a signal indicating a hijacking or seizure before disappearing from radar, the Interfax news agency quoted an unnamed government source as saying Wednesday.The signal came at 11:04 p.m. Tuesday from the Tu-154 airliner that went missing in southern Russia's Rostov region, Interfax quoted the source in Russia's "power structures" as saying.
HOW LOW IS ITS NATURAL FLOOR?:
Oil Prices Fall for 3rd Day as Fears Ease (JAD MOUAWAD, 8/25/04, NY Times)
Oil prices fell for a third day on Tuesday, retreating from the record highs of near $50 a barrel set last week, as exports from Iraq resumed and traders worried less about supply shortages.In New York, light low-sulfur crude for October delivery fell 84 cents, to $45.21 a barrel, on Tuesday. On Friday, the last day for trading September contracts, the price briefly hit $49.40 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange before falling to $48.70.
Oil prices remain about a third higher than they were in July, run up by a succession of geopolitical threats to supply - renewed fighting in Iraq, legal squabbling in Russia and political infighting in Venezuela. Most oil-producing countries are pumping all they can, leaving the market little capacity to adjust if a big producer halts exports.
Events in Iraq have dominated trading on the oil markets this month. Prices rose when Iraqi exports were halved, then fell this week on reports that exports had resumed in the north of the country and returned to normal in the south.
"There's a lot of politics in the price, a lot of expectations of the worst," said Mehdi Varzi, senior energy consultant at Dresdner Kleinwort Wasserstein in London.
Since the price hikes have been almost entirely psychological it could fall a long way once it starts down.
August 24, 2004
THE LAUGHINGSTOCK:
Campaign Journalists: Has Swift Boat Story Gone on Too Long? (Joe Strupp, August 24, 2004, Editor & Publisher)
As Sen. John Kerry spoke to supporters at a campaign event in New York City's East Village Tuesday afternoon, the swift boat controversy that has enveloped his run for the White House in recent weeks was on the minds of many of the journalists present.After the speech, when approached by an E&P; reporter as he worked the crowd, Kerry declined twice to answer when asked what he thought of press coverage of the swift boat issue. After a third time, the candidate finally said, "I'm talking about the economy, jobs, health care and things that matter to Americans."
Kerry had raised the issue briefly during the speech at Cooper Union, declaring "we have seen a calculated effort to evade the debate. The Bush campaign and its allies have turned to the tactics of fear and smear because they can't talk about jobs, health care, energy independence, and rebuilding our alliances."
Some of the reporters covering Kerry said that the candidate had become less accessible on the campaign plane in recent weeks, with a few speculating that it might be because he did not want to face questions about the swift boat issue. But among them, different views arose over the swift boat story, with some saying it had gone on too long and others believing it was news that had to be covered.
"What I've heard from colleagues is that people feel it probably has had too long a life," said Frank James, a Chicago Tribune reporter. "We wish someone would put a stake in this vampire."
James also said some wondered why Kerry did not take on the issue himself earlier on. "He should have knocked it down early, but the campaign clearly thought it would go away."
A candidate can survive a press corps that doesn't like him personally, but not one that doesn't respect him professionally. The press and fellow Democrats would appear to have begun questioning the Senator's competence.
BEDDING DOWN WITH SEATTLE MAN:
A LIGHTER TOUCH OF EVIL (Alexander Zaitchik, NY Press)
TO GRASP HOW much has changed in the last five years, consider this: During the Seattle WTO protests of 1999, one of the protestors' biggest nemeses in the media was a rookie New York Times columnist named Paul Krugman. Krugman's articles attacking the protestors weren't as snide as Tom Friedman's—the mustachioed one penned a piece that week called "Senseless in Seattle," in which he claimed the protestors were just out for a "1960's fix"—but they were close. The Princeton professor had no patience for the anti-corporate-globalization demonstrators who chanted, "This is what democracy looks like," and descended to inventing the Friedman-esque tag "Seattle Man" to describe people who don't know what they were talking about. Activists spat Krugman's name in disgust when they passed around his columns that week.That was then. It isn't necessary to recount how a free-trade economist emerged as a guiding spirit of this week's RNC protest. It's enough to note that the globalization debate has been sidelined by the radical policies and undemocratic thrust of the current administration, which Krugman has heroically helped bring into crisp focus. Those who cursed Krugman in Seattle five years ago may still disagree with him about steel tariffs and the benevolence of large corporations, but most have put all that aside to join him in the Popular Front this November.
One of these days, when he returns to his senses, Mr. Krugman will feel like Bill Murray's character did in Lost in Translation when he woke up and realized he'd just slept with the lounge singer.
"I'LL BRING BACK THE 70s":
Kerry Says 'I Stood Up' Against Vietnam War (Carol Giacomo, 8/24/04, Reuters)
John Kerry on Tuesday firmly defended his outspoken opposition to the Vietnam War, saying when the United States was in moral crisis over the conflict in the1970s "I stood up and was counted."Confronting an issue that has embittered some veterans and helped fuel an election year attack on his military service, the Massachusetts senator said voters "can judge my character" by his Vietnam record.
"Because when the times of moral crisis existed in this country, I wasn't taking care of myself. I was taking care of public policy. I was taking care of things that made a difference to the life of this nation," Kerry told a fund-raiser in this critical battleground state.
"You may not have agreed with me, but I stood up and was counted and that's the kind of president I will be," he added.
"Where's that shark tank?"
TOO BAD YOU CAN'T GET A PURPLE HEART FOR WOUNDING YOUR PRESIDENTIAL ASPIRATIONS:
Kerry backs off on medal claim: After WND story on journal discrepancy spokesman says no enemy fire 'possible' (Art Moore, August 24, 2004, WorldNetDaily.com)
After WorldNetDaily's report last week of a discrepancy in John Kerry's personal account of his first Purple Heart, his presidential campaign has backed off on claims that he was wounded from enemy fire.WND reported that nine days after Kerry claims he was hit by hostile fire in 1968, he wrote in his journal as he set out on a subsequent mission, "A cocky feeling of invincibility accompanied us up the Long Tau shipping channel because we hadn't been shot at yet, and Americans at war who haven't been shot at are allowed to be cocky."
The Kerry campaign has not responded to repeated requests from WND for a response, including a call this morning. But yesterday, Fox News host Major Garrett confronted John Hurley, national coordinator of Veterans for John Kerry, asking him on camera if it is possible the first Purple Heart did not result from an incident involving enemy fire.
Hurley replied, "Anything is possible ... ."
THE WOUNDS DON'T GET OLD IF THEY'RE LEFT TO FESTER:
Swift Boats And Old Wounds (David S. Broder, August 24, 2004, Washington Post)
I remember precisely when this premonition of perpetual division first struck me. On Aug. 19, 1992, the third night of the Republican National Convention in Houston, Barbara Bush and Marilyn Quayle were the featured speakers. The first lady praised her husband's fine qualities and Mrs. Quayle turned her fire on the Bill Clinton Democrats, who had just finished their convention in New York.Through almost gritted teeth, Marilyn Quayle declared that those people in Madison Square Garden, who were claiming the mantle of leadership for a new generation, were usurpers. "Dan and I are members of the baby boom generation, too," she said. "We are all shaped by the times in which we live. I came of age in a time of turbulent social change. Some of it was good, such as civil rights; much of it was questionable."
And then she drew the line that has not been erased: "Remember, not everyone joined in the counterculture. Not everyone demonstrated, dropped out, took drugs, joined in the sexual revolution or dodged the draft. Not everyone concluded that American society was so bad that it had to be radically remade by social revolution. . . . The majority of my generation lived by the credo our parents taught us: We believed in God, in hard work and personal discipline, in our nation's essential goodness, and in the opportunity it promised those willing to work for it. . . . Though we knew some changes needed to be made, we did not believe in destroying America to save it."
When she finished, I turned to my Post colleague Dan Balz, a contemporary of the Clintons and the Quayles, and said, "I suddenly have this vision -- that when you guys reach the nursing homes, you're going to be leaning on your walkers and beating each other with your canes, because you still will not have settled the arguments from the Sixties."
Of course John Kerry and his ilk should be forgiven, just as soon as they apologize for trying to destroy the village and ask forgiveness. That the Senator realizes he should not be proud of his anti-war past is amply demonstrated by the fact that he's trying to hide it and run on his war service instead.
ZELLULOID HEROES (via AWW):
Democratic mayor backs Bush (JOE GORMAN, 8/24/04, Tribune Chronicle)
YOUNGSTOWN - Mayor George McKelvey announced Monday that he is endorsing President Bush for re-election in November.The two-term Democratic mayor, who also has served as 3rd-Ward councilman and county auditor, said he will not switch parties, but may speak at the Republican convention later this month in New York if he can work out the logistics of flying there from a family vacation in the Caribbean.
"I have a 24-hour pass,'' McKelvey joked.
The mayor also added that he may have an opportunity to address the convention if he attends.
McKelvey said he usually does not issue an endorsement during a presidential campaign, but he said he decided to come out publicly for Bush because this election is "the most important of my lifetime.'' [...]
McKelvey said that for more than a century, area voters unflinchingly supported Democrats in national elections and have very little to show for it.
"During the campaign, they promise us they will deliver the beef, and after we give them our overwhelming support, not only do they not give us the beef, we don't even get the bun,'' McKelvey said.
McKelvey also said that Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., Bush's rival for the presidency, has a bad habit of promising everything to voters.
"In my book, when you stand for everything, you stand for nothing,'' McKelvey said.
In other words, Ohio isn't actually in play.
NO, SERIOUSLY, WOLF! (via Robert Duquette):
The Funding of America (Stephen Roach, Morgan Stanley)
With the United States pushing the envelope on macro imbalances, the funding of its “twin deficits” -- budget and trade -- has taken on great importance in shaping world financial markets. In the end, these deficits matter only if they have consequences for asset prices and/or the real economy. So far, that has not been the case. Courtesy of massive foreign capital inflows into dollar-denominated assets, America has not been penalized for its profligate ways. Can this continue? [...]Ever-widening current account deficits and ever-falling domestic saving rates are simply not sustainable developments for any economy. All foreign and US officials can do in such a climate is step up their efforts in containing sharp adjustments in asset prices and attempt to buy time. That’s the essence of the strategy that seems to lie behind the dramatic pick-up in foreign official buying of US securities since last fall. Despite the falloff in May and June, TIC data reveal that official purchases accounted for fully 35% of total net foreign purchases of dollar-denominated securities over the September 2003 to June 2004 period; that’s more than double the longer-term norm of 14% and fully four and half times the 7.6% share prevailing, on average, over the 2000-02 period. There can be little doubt as to why foreign policy makers -- especially those in Asia -- have intensified their campaign to support the dollar; lacking in domestic demand and fearful that their external demand support would be eroded by stronger home currencies, they simply can’t afford to face the alternative.
There is a worrisome precedent for this shifting mix of foreign capital inflows from private to official funding. The last time it happened in the context of a US current account problem was in the months leading up to the stock market crash in October 1987. During the pre-crash period, private foreign buying of US securities started to falter as America’s external adjustment put further downward pressure on the dollar. In an effort to stem the decline of the US currency, foreign officials stepped up to fill the void. Over the January to September 1987 period, TIC data reveal that the official share of foreign purchases averaged 47.3% -- nearly four times the 13% share of 1986. This strategy was aimed at offsetting the natural venting function of financial markets that normally comes into play during a current account adjustment. However, as the Crash of 1987 indicates, this approach was ultimately destined to fail. In my view, that’s precisely the risk today -- especially with the US current account deficit (5.1% of GDP in early 2004) well in excess of what it was in the mid-1980s (3.5% at its peak in late 1986). As this earlier episode reveals, official support for currencies of economies that have large current account deficits turned out to be a last-gasp, losing effort. The lesson: For economies in disequilibrium, the venting function of financial markets ultimately cannot be denied. [...]
The bottom line in all this is that the external funding of a saving-short US economy is on exceedingly shaky ground. While foreign demand for dollar-based securities moved back to its recent trend in June, that hardly eases the burden of America’s massive financing imperatives. Meanwhile, with the US trade deficit exploding and the current account gap likely to keep widening, there is nothing stable about America’s dependence on the “kindness of strangers.” The day will inevitably come when foreign investors -- already heavily exposed to dollars -- will reassess risk-adjusted return expectations of US securities. That’s what happened in the fall of 1987, and there are increasingly worrisome signs of a replay of that same ominous chain of events.
These problems are of little concern to the average investor. The same is true of US politicians -- those largely responsible for this sad state of affairs. After all, goes the logic, the world has learned to live with America’s outsize deficits. Why can’t it continue to do so indefinitely? In my view, this is yet another example of the “greater fool theory” that took NASDAQ to 5000 four and a half years ago. All the classic symptoms of a US current-account adjustment are now evident. At the same time, the stewards of globalization -- the IMF, the BIS, the OECD, and even the Federal Reserve -- are now all on the same page in sounding the alarm. It’s high time to take these warnings seriously. The funding of America is an accident waiting to happen.
All of us are old enough to remember the Depression of the late '80s; the wrenching process by which we were forced to balance our trade and our budgets; the difficulties we faced funding our war against the Soviets; the punishment the Republicans took in the '88 election for leading us into disaster; and we still pity those poor investors who were saddled with American stocks and bonds which are today only worth....oops, wait, never mind.
"WHO IS THIS DESERTER TO QUESTION MY SERVICE?":
Vietnam Boomerang: John Kerry's "war crimes" libel returns to haunt him. (Wall Street Journal, August 24, 2004)
The issue here, as I have heard it raised, is was he present and active on duty in Alabama at the times he was supposed to be. . . . Just because you get an honorable discharge does not in fact answer that question.
--John Kerry, questioning President Bush's military-service record, February 8, 2004.A good rule in politics is that anyone who picks a fight ought to be prepared to finish it. But having first questioned Mr. Bush's war service, and then made Vietnam the core of his own campaign for President, Mr. Kerry now cries No mas! because other Vietnam vets are assailing his behavior before and after that war. And, by the way, Mr. Bush is supposedly honor bound to repudiate them.
We've tried to avoid the medals-and-ribbons fight ourselves, except to warn Mr. Kerry that he was courting precisely such scrutiny ("Kerry's Medals Strategy," February 9). But now that the Senator is demanding that the Federal Election Commission stifle his opponents' free speech, this one is too rich to ignore.
What did Mr. Kerry expect, anyway? That claiming to be a hero himself while accusing other veterans of "war crimes"--as he did back in 1971 and has refused to take back ever since--would somehow go unanswered? That when he raised the subject of one of America's most contentious modern events, no one would meet him at the barricades? Mr. Kerry brought the whole thing up; why is it Mr. Bush's obligation now to shut it down?
Because Mr. Kerry can't?
KEYES 11, OBAMA 1:
The Fight in Illinois: Alan Keyes vs. Barack Obama (Phyllis Schlafly, Aug 24, 2004, Human Events)
Alan Keyes has upset the liberal game plan to crown law school lecturer Barack Obama as the new leader of blacks in America. Ted Kennedy and Hillary Clinton like Obama because he imitates their votes, but Americans like Keyes because he is straightforward about issues we care about.The Keyes-Obama race for the U.S. Senate from Illinois reminds locals of a similar contest in 1950. Then a conservative Republican traveled up and down the Land of Lincoln and toppled one of the most powerful liberals of that time, Senate Majority Leader Scott Lucas.
The victor in that race, Everett McKinley Dirksen, played to the grassroots rather than to the media. His stunning upset showed that the voters were ready to break with New Deal liberalism and join the Republican landslide in 1952.
Everett Dirksen, the greatest orator of his time, won because he articulated public opposition to the follies of the Truman Administration. Dirksen was equally persuasive whether he was negotiating with a small group over an arcane section of legislation or declaiming broad themes without a microphone to a thousand voters on the hillsides of southern Illinois.
Illinois voters have the opportunity this year to hear Alan Keyes, perhaps the greatest orator of our time and a man with a fund of knowledge about issues that matches his eloquence.
No matter how much one reveres the great Phyllis Schlafly, the parallel to her 1964 paean to Goldwaterism brings bad juju.
"I MEANT ALL THOSE OTHER WAR CRIMINALS"
KERRY PHONES SWIFT BOAT FOES (Drudge Report "World Exclusive", 8/24/04)
Dem presidential hopeful John Kerry personally phoned anti-Kerry swift boat vets, the DRUDGE REPORT has learned.Kerry is desperate to find something that will move the debate. Look for either an address in which the Senator tearfully reexamines the Vietnam war (he'll either celebrate brothers-in-arms nobly defending the country or denounce war-mongerers sending young men off to commit war crimes) or some bold new policy (either immediate withdrawal from Iraq, or national health care).Kerry reached out to Robert "Friar Tuck" Brant Cdr., USN (RET) Sunday night, just hours after former Sen. Bob Dole publicly challenged Kerry to apologize to veterans. . . .
KERRY: "When we dedicated swift boat one in '92, I said to all the swift guys that I wasn't talking about the swifties, I was talking about all the rest of the veterans."
IRRATIONAL AFTER ALL?:
Mind
Over Money (Tom Walker, August 23, 2004, Atlanta Journal Constitution)
Terrorism is a new chapter of "behavioral finance," which deals with the emotional side of money management. Some experts believe emotion plays a bigger role in people's financial and investment decisions than is recognized by the traditional Wall Street theory -- that investors make rational decisions on the basis of their financial self-interest.Behavioral finance is based on the unspectacular notion that human beings
are emotional creatures whose behavior is guided only partially by
reason."I'm extremely skeptical, bordering on total cynicism, that any of this
stuff actually works," Richard Michaud, president and chief investment
officer at New Frontier Advisors LLC in Boston, said in a Bloomberg
News report.
Markets are obviously irrational to some extent. The question is, can a few smart souls take advantage of this information? There is a story, perhaps apocryphal, that a famous financier sold his positions just before the 1929 Crash when he realized his shoeshine boy was giving him stock advice (variously attributed to Joe Kennedy and J P Morgan). Also, the Peter Lynchs and Warren Buffetts of this world, while not getting it right every time, seem to have special insight into this hall of mirrors and can outperform the market to an extent. The article (registration required, unfortunately), makes the case for the war on terror exacerbating the irrationality of the current market.
MY WAY OR THE HIGHWAY, BUT NEVER A THIRD WAY:
The Return of the Third Way (Katy Harwood Delay, August 24, 2004, Mises.org)
A group of Democrats are working to revive the
"third way" fashion from the 1990s. Led by Evan Bayh in the Senate, the
group The Third Way seeks a shift away from the left-liberal-labor dogma
toward "market-oriented" economic policies.According to its inventor Tony Blair, speaking with Clinton and other heads
of state at a 1998 NYU School of Law banquet, "[the Third Way] leaves
behind, if you like, the old left that was about big government or
state-controlled tax-and-spend, and [here he gets a little vague] it is not
the politics of laissez-faire, either . . . it is essentially a belief that
we can construct a different type of politics for the 21st century based on
the values of what I would call progressive politics, but rigorously, in a
really disciplined way, applying those in an entirely fresh perspective for
the problems that we face today."This admittedly lacks specificity, but I think we can safely say that the
Third Way is an attempt at compromise between capitalism and socialism, a
new-age effort to reestablish free-market roots while preserving and
grafting onto them the aforewilting progressive leaf system. Just as I
thought. [...][D]on't let them fool you. Third-Way economics is merely another political
trial balloon. The politicians are still simply trying to twist fattened,
round socialism into a lean, square, free-market hole, mainly to solicit our
vote. The problem extends beyond the Labour-Democrat nexus to encompass the
Tory-Republican nexus as well. Here we find Third-Way governance combined
with free-market rhetoric.The core problem is the one Mises identified. Every form of intervention
generates an imbalance that seems to call forth a next step toward markets
or toward further intervention. The choice determines whether the social
system will be pushed toward the economics of prosperity or that of poverty.
The Third Way, in short, attempts to combine policies that are internally
contradictory. To attempt a pivot between laissez-faire and socialism is to
be caught in precisely the imbalance that afflicts the US and Europe today.
The problem with this analysis is that the population is rather evenly divided between those who favor freedom and those who favor security. It's entirely possible, maybe even likely, that Compassionate Conservatism/Third Way/New Democratism can't successfully strike a balance between the social safety net that the majority demands and the free market mechanisms that are the only way to pay for it in the long run. But if so then the future is probably pretty bleak. As examples throughout Europe amply demonstrate, people won't stop demanding welfare just because it's driving their nation into the ground.
Followers of Mises seem to have the utopian belief that they can somehow do away with that powerful demand for security--despite the fact that it is as old as Man--or that some imaginary system exists whereby freedom can be vindicated despite the political controls that would be necessary to stop the majority from voting itself a welfare regime. Their argument is with reality.
JUST VOICE WORK, HUH?:
Roberts will be two busy to work (Chicago Sun-Times, August 24, 2004)
Julia Roberts, who is pregnant with twins, plans to take a break from movies. In fact, she's throwing most plans out the window.''I'm not planning anything," Roberts told Newsweek magazine. "I can't imagine how big I'm going to get in the next three months, but ... you just kind of play it as it comes. I'm allowed to do that, aren't I?''
Guess who else appears to be taking a break for the next few months.
LIKE THAT LAST JAPANESE SOLDIER . . .
Holiday in Cambodia: The "Christmas Eve" attack on Kerry is cheap and almost certainly wrong (Fred Kaplan, Slate, 8/23/04)
Having pretty much failed at their efforts to disprove the official U.S. Navy account of Kerry's valor in battle as skipper of a "Swift boat" patrolling the Mekong Delta, the veterans against Kerry have moved to discredit his more obscure claim—made a few times over the years, in interviews and Senate floor speeches—that, on Dec. 24, he took CIA or special ops forces across the border into Cambodia, even while Washington claimed no American troops were there. . . .Kerry's Cambodia Whopper (Joshua Muravchik, Washington Post, 8/24/04)O'Neill, Drudge, and the other sneerers choose to ignore the 10 preceding pages—the opening pages of a chapter called "Death in the Delta." On Christmas Eve 1968, Brinkley writes, Kerry and his crew:
headed their Swift north by the Cho Chien River to its junction with the My Tho only miles from the Cambodian border. … Kerry began reading up on Cambodia's history in a book he had borrowed from the floating barracks in An Thoi. … He even read about a 1959 Pentagon study titled "Psychological Observations: Cambodia," which … state[d] that Cambodians "cannot be counted on to act in any positive way for the benefit of U.S. aims and policies." [Italics added [by Kaplan].] . . .But one thing is for sure: Lieut. Kerry did not spend that Christmas Eve just lying around, dreaming of sugarplums and roasted chestnuts. He had plenty of time to cover the 40 miles from the Cambodian border to the safety of Sa Dec (he did command a swift boat, after all). More to the point, the evidence indicates he did cover those 40 miles: He was near (or in?) Cambodia in the morning, in Sa Dec that night.
Now a new official statement from the campaign undercuts Brinkley. It offers a minimal (thus harder to impeach) claim: that Kerry "on one occasion crossed into Cambodia," on an unspecified date. But at least two of the shipmates who are supporting Kerry's campaign (and one who is not) deny their boat ever crossed the border, and their testimony on this score is corroborated by Kerry's own journal, kept while on duty. One passage reproduced in Brinkley's book says: "The banks of the [Rach Giang Thanh River] whistled by as we churned out mile after mile at full speed. On my left were occasional open fields that allowed us a clear view into Cambodia. At some points, the border was only fifty yards away and it then would meander out to several hundred or even as much as a thousand yards away, always making one wonder what lay on the other side." His curiosity was never satisfied, because this entry was from Kerry's final mission.It's always amusing when the press keeps fighting for their man long after he's thrown in the towel.
ANOTHER BEAUTIFUL MIND (via Jeff Guinn):
Democracy Matters Are Frightening in Our Time (Cornel West)
A decade ago I wrote Race Matters in order to spark a candid public conversation about America’s most explosive issue and most difficult dilemma: the ways in which the vicious legacy of white supremacy contributes to the arrested development of American democracy. This book—the sequel to Race Matters—will look unflinchingly at the waning of democratic energies and practices in our present age of the American empire. There is a deeply troubling deterioration of democratic powers in America today. The rise of an ugly imperialism has been aided by an unholy alliance of the plutocratic elites and the Christian Right, and also by a massive disaffection of so many voters who see too little difference between two corrupted parties, with blacks being taken for granted by the Democrats, and with the deep disaffection of youth. The energy of the youth support for the Howard Dean campaign and avid participation in the recent anti-globalization protests are promising signs, however, of the potential to engage them.
It would take real determination to write a book stupider than Race Matters--which contained the warning: "We are living in one of the most frightening moments in the history of this country. "--but Mr. West seems equal to the task. Presented with a nation in which over 80% of his fellow citizens are Christians and about 40% describe themselves as evangelicals and where Howard Dean made nary a ripple in even Democratic primary voting, while a new free trade pact comes along every week, what conclusions does Mr. West draw? That governance according to the politics of that overwhelming majority represents the failure of democracy and that the rout of the secular Left is a sign of its long term promise. And then folks wonder why America has always been so contemptuous of intellectuals?
WHY DOES CHARLIE BROWN ALWAYS THINK THE FOOTBALL WILL BE THERE? (via mc):
In Najaf, Iraqi Politics Dictate U.S. Tactics (Karl Vick, August 24, 2004, Washington Post)
The company commanders had their maps, their orders and their rules of engagement."As for the timeline, I'm going to ask you to remain flexible," said Army Maj. Doug Ollivant, who was running the pre-battle briefing one day this month. "You've just entered the world of political war, and it's not a guy wearing a uniform who is going to be making the final decision on where and when this happens."
Ollivant was, in fact, flexible when the order to scrub the mission reached his armored Humvee that night, on the way out of the main gate of the principal U.S. base in Najaf with a column of Abrams tanks raring to go behind him. But three nights later, when his radio crackled with the same message -- no go -- passed down from the same guy not wearing a uniform, the 1st Cavalry Division officer slapped the dashboard and cursed.
"Welcome to my world," he ruefully told a Special Operations officer who also had been whipsawed for two weeks by the shifting political calculations dictating how U.S. forces go about defeating a Shiite Muslim militia fighting from inside the holiest shrine in Shiite Islam.
"We're in the same world," the officer said with a smile. "Especially down here."
If there is any doubt that the new Iraqi government is calling the shots in this country, the supporting evidence is mounting daily in Najaf.
Here's a case where the neocons were fooled as badly as their critics. The President meant it when he said he was transferring sovereignty. Never have so many been deceived so often by a man who keeps his word.
THE DUPE AND HIS DEFENSES ARE SOON PARTED:
New Bush Ads Target Kerry's Senate Record (Nick Anderson, August 24, 2004, LA Times)
President Bush assailed John F. Kerry's record as a senator in two new television commercials Monday, amid ongoing controversy over other Republican-backed attacks on the Democratic presidential nominee's record during the Vietnam War.One of the new Bush advertisements, airing on national cable channels and in local broadcast markets in several key states, depicts Kerry as a longtime backer of tax increases for the middle-class. The other, airing in Nevada, says he has cast votes in favor of a nuclear waste dump at Yucca Mountain. [...]
Today, the Swift Boat Veterans group is expected to air another ad charging that Kerry tarred the service of other Vietnam veterans through his antiwar protests in the early 1970s.
The group is funded primarily by Texas Republicans who are Bush supporters, which has caused the Kerry campaign to charge it is a "front" for the president's reelection bid. Bush and his aides have strongly denied any such connection.
But the president's campaign has intensified its advertising attacks on Kerry, focusing on his record since he was first elected to the Senate almost 20 years ago.
New data from TNSMI/Campaign Media Analysis Group show Bush spent more than $12 million on TV ads from Aug. 8 through Saturday, while other Kerry critics spent nearly $1 million more. "A fairly good one-two punch," said Evan Tracey, chief operating officer of the ad monitoring group.
During the same two weeks, Kerry spent almost nothing, saving money for September and October. But his cause was helped by various pro-Democratic groups that, although independent of his campaign, spent nearly $19 million promoting him and attacking Bush.
The new Bush ad targeting Kerry's tax policy uses footage from the Democrat's speech last month accepting the presidential nomination. The 30-second spot shows Kerry saying, "We won't raise taxes on the middle class."
"Really?" responds the ad's female narrator. "John Kerry's voted to raise gas taxes on the middle class 10 times. He supported a 50-cent-a-gallon gas tax increase. Higher taxes on middle-class parents 18 times. He voted to raise taxes on Social Security benefits. Ninety-eight votes for tax increases. There's what Kerry says, and then there's what Kerry does."
Kerry did vote for a major 1993 tax bill that included provisions raising taxes on gasoline and Social Security benefits for certain retirees. And he has often opposed GOP-sponsored tax cuts.
Note the $19 million to $1 million ratio? Is the Senator sure he wants to bar all 527 ads? No wonder Kim Jong-il dreams of negotiating with him.
MOOKMIRE:
Fed-Up Residents of Najaf Turn Against Rebel Cleric: Sadr and his militia are blamed as families and livelihoods suffer during fighting around shrine. (Raheem Salman and T. Christian Miller, August 24, 2004, LA Times)
Haydar Hasan Abdullah wandered the twisting streets of this ancient city on Monday looking for a fight.He was not seeking to battle American troops who have encircled one of Islam's holiest shrines for nearly three weeks. Instead, he wanted a shot at militants loyal to cleric Muqtada Sadr who are hiding beneath its gleaming gold dome.
"There are some fighters among the group of Muqtada who are actually saboteurs who have done such bad things to the city of Najaf," said Abdullah, who was searching for the police station on Monday to offer himself as a recruit. "We feel so sorry for what is happening to kids, women and innocent other people. We are quite prepared to do whatever the government wants us to do."
Sadr built his support among the poorest Shiites, Iraq's majority religious sect that was oppressed by the Sunni-dominated government of Saddam Hussein. In fiery speeches, the youthful preacher has promised an end to the U.S.-led occupation.
Sadr's message has resonated with his supporters in some parts of Iraq, including Baghdad's sprawling Sadr City slum.
But in Najaf, there is growing frustration with his lengthy standoff at the Imam Ali shrine, revered among Shiites around the world as the burial place of their sect's founder, Ali, the son-in-law of the prophet Muhammad.
How did al-Sadr manage to get himself stuck in this quagmire?
YOU CAN’T GO HOME AGAIN
Here's the Olympian point: We ogle the flesh (Margaret Wente, Globe and Mail, August 24th, 2004)
The Olympics have become like Field Day in Grade 3. There are so many medals on offer that, eventually, every country's bound to get one, so long as it shows up. No nation is allowed to go home empty-handed, not even a scrawny little one like us. Besides, artistic gymnastics is nothing to sneeze at. It is definitely higher on the athletic status ladder than synchronized swimming, another event that has frequently stood between us and global shame. I don't know why we're so good at it. Perhaps synchronized swimming is simply too silly for anybody else to bother with.[...]Are all sports equally worthy? The ancient Greeks didn't think so. They didn't go in for synchro-anything. Unlike Canadians, who love playing nicely together, they were strictly individual competitors. They did not believe in team sports, artistry or nose plugs. They believed in running, jumping, wrestling and hurling heavy objects through the air. Unlike synchronized swimmers, they approved of gouging and pummelling their opponents to death. This made determining the victor a whole lot easier than it is today. You never had to worry about scoring 9.787. You knew you'd won when you'd killed the other guy.
Not everybody minds that the pure spirit of the Olympics has been diluted by the addition of women and all kinds of silly pseudo-sports. My husband, for example, rather likes it. He is an avid student of women's beach volleyball, which he thinks is a noble addition to the Games. He also loves the Amazons who run around the track. He adores the female wrestlers, and wonders what it would be like if Tonya Verbeek got him in a headlock. Speaking for myself, I don't know beans about the men's backstroke or the fly, but I appreciate the broad shoulders and narrow hips of the swimmers and the gymnasts in their itty-bitty skin-tight suits. My husband swears that half of them are gay, but I think he's just being mean.
After these Games, they will debate adding sports like skateboarding, squash and rugby to the Olympics. Frighteningly unattractive women now wrestle and weightlift while announcers never dare say what is on everyone’s mind. Disabled athletes are demanding full participation with that defiant sense of entitlement that characterizes modern victimhood (Can seniors be far behind?). Judging is suspect in most sports where “presentation” is scored. It now takes a decade for the host to prepare because the entire city must be rebuilt and the Games can only be financed by forcing us to watch two minutes of cutesy, repetitive commercials for every one of competition. Drug cheating remains endemic and threats to suspend countries or entire sports are never carried out. Yet, like Ozymandias’ kingdom, the movement is incapable of even the most minor retrenchment and we watch the whole silly, boring extravaganza with artificially induced excitement, knowing full well we are witnessing a modern Roman circus destined to collapse.
It is enough to make a poor boy yearn for a good soccer match.
CONVICTED BY HIS OWN WORDS
The Vietnam Passion (DAVID BROOKS, 8/24/04, NY Times)
I'm launching a major investigation into whether the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth organization is being secretly financed by the Kerry campaign. For today that organization begins airing ads drawing attention to John Kerry's 1971 testimony against the Vietnam War.If voters see that testimony, they will see a young man arguing passionately for a cause. They will see a young man willing to take risks and boldly state his beliefs. Whether they agree or not, they will see in John Kerry a man of conviction.
Many young people, who don't have an emotional investment in endlessly refighting the conflicts of the late 1960's, might take a look at that man and decide they like him. They might not realize that man no longer exists.
That conviction politician was still visible as late as the 1980's. When Senator Kerry opposed aid to the contras, or took on Oliver North, he did it with the same forthright fire.
But then in the early 1990's, things began to evolve.
It's fine to have convictions but why are his always wrong when it comes to fighting totalitarianism?
Word of the Day for Tuesday August 24, 2004
fungible \FUHN-juh-buhl\, adjective:1. (Law) Freely exchangeable for or replaceable by another of like nature or kind in the satisfaction of an obligation.
2. Interchangeable. [...]
Fungible comes from Medieval Latin fungibilis, from Latin fungi (vice), "to perform (in place of)."
THE NOT-SO-HAPPY PILL
Boy blames a pill for murders (Barry Meier, International Herald Tribune, August 23rd, 2004)
Christopher Pittman said he remembered everything about that night in 2001 when he killed his grandparents: the blood, the shotgun blasts, the voices urging him on, even the smoke detectors that screamed as he drove away from their rural South Carolina home after setting it on fire."Something kept telling me to do it," he later told a forensic psychiatrist. Now, Christopher, who was 12 at the time of the killings, faces charges of first-degree murder. The decision by a local prosecutor to try him as an adult could send him to prison for life. While prosecutors portray him as a troubled killer, his defenders say the killings occurred for a reason beyond the boy's control - a reaction to the antidepressant Zoloft, a drug he had started taking not long before the slayings.
Such defenses, which have been used before, have rarely succeeded. And most medical experts do not believe there is a link between antidepressants and acts of extreme violence.
Yet as we have seen from previous posts, the medical establishment is coming to believe anti-depressants may be a cause of suicide in children. Why one and not the other?
The explosion in pharmacology (and soon perhaps genetic engineering) means the cost we pay for indulging unthinkingly in the noble human instinct to relieve pain and distress leaves us less and less able to judge the actions of others through the common understandings of human nature we use to impose responsibility and decide the appropriateness of guilt, innocence, mercy, forgiveness, punishment and retribution. It is slowly turning each one of us into a distinct and alien species.
August 23, 2004
ALL THEY WANT IS THE SAME DEAL HE GOT NORTH VIETNAM:
Turning Up the Heat (DONALD MACINTYRE, 8/30/04, TIME)
Pyongyang hinted last week that it might pull out of the next round, slated to be held next month, citing a hostile U.S. "smear campaign." With the U.S. presidential election approaching, some say Kim is stalling, hoping that John Kerry will win—and that the North will be able to get a better deal from a Democratic Administration.
MALEVOLENT MASTERPIECES:
Despite its blatant racism, 'Nation' still needs to be seen (Renée Graham, August 17, 2004, Boston Globe)
The first and only time I watched D.W. Griffith's "The Birth of a Nation" in its entirety, I was a college student enrolled in a class on the African-American image in film. Though I'd heard of Griffith and what is widely acknowledged as his masterpiece, I knew nothing about the film when the black-and-white images began flickering across the screen in our small classroom.Three hours later, we all sat slack-jawed, unable to even make eye contact with one another. It was the only occasion during my four years of college when I can recall a roomful of know-it-all students being rendered completely silent. That the 1915 film, based primarily on Thomas Dixon's play, "The Clansman," is considered one of cinema's groundbreaking achievements (it's regarded as the first epic narrative and a pioneering work in technical structure and editing) was totally lost on us. What resonated was its virulent racism. Blacks (actually played by white actors in blackface) are depicted as dumb and dangerous brutes, while the Ku Klux Klan is hailed as a group of gallant heroes protecting the virtue of white womanhood and uplifting the South after its defeat in the Civil War.
In the past 20 years, I've watched bits and pieces of "The Birth of a Nation," and my initial revulsion always gets the better of me. Still, even though it's unlikely I'll ever sit through this film again, I do not believe it should be consigned to some dusty closet, never to be shown in public again.
Last week, a Los Angeles theater owner canceled a planned screening of "The Birth of a Nation" after civil rights groups promised protests outside the venue. In launching a series on cinema's most important silent movies, Charlie Lustman, who runs the Silent Movie Theatre, described the film as "the biggest and most cinematic gem in history." Still, he intended to show a disclaimer denouncing the film's overtly racist content.
That wasn't good enough for Los Angeles NAACP president Geraldine Washington, who maintained the film possesses "no positive value whatsoever" and charged its screening would "run the risk of creating unrest and hate crimes." When the film opened in 1915, it all but served as a Klan recruitment tool, attracting more than 25,000 marchers to celebrate the movie's Atlanta premiere. The NAACP blamed the film, which President Woodrow Wilson allegedly compared to "writing history with lightning," for inciting racial violence.
People should see it for the same reason they should see Triumph of the Will, Inherit the Wind, and Battleship Potemkin--they demonstrate the capacity of brilliant propaganda to make myths that are more powerful than reality.
AWFULLY EARLY:
Everyone Wants a Piece of the $18-Billion Man in Iraq: Rebuilding czar from U.S. has little to show for efforts. Better times are coming, he says. (T. Christian Miller, August 23, 2004, LA Times)
The man with $18 billion to spend is taking a beating.Where's the money to rebuild Iraq? The jobs for broke Iraqis? The promised health clinics and schools, bridges and dams, electricity and clean water?
Retired Rear Adm. David Nash gives the same answer to the skeptics who quiz him on America's long-delayed effort to rebuild Iraq: Better times are coming.
"This country is going to take off," said Nash, 61, the head of the U.S. effort to rebuild a nation devastated by a dozen years of sanctions, three wars and a simmering insurgency.
After long delays and broken deadlines, there are signs that the largest reconstruction effort since World War II's Marshall Plan is poised to get rolling.
New and refurbished power stations are starting up weekly. Private contractors are finishing plans for building thousands of schools, clinics and infrastructure projects. Iraqi jobs in the program have soared from 5,300 daily employees to more than 88,000.
Were Baghdad post-War Berlin the Marshall Plan would still be a year away from even being proposed.
WHERE DID AUSTRALOPITHECUS GO?:
Disparate Jobs Data Add Up to a Mystery (David Streitfeld, August 23, 2004, LA Times)
According to the government's regular survey of the nation's households, 629,000 people started work in July. But when the government asked companies how many jobs they had added to their payrolls, the answer was only 32,000.If they're not working in a store, office or factory, what are those 597,000 other folks doing? Working as consultants? Selling bric-a-brac on EBay? Mowing their neighbors' lawns?
Or are they actually unemployed but so ashamed that they're lying about it?
"I can't tell you," said Tom Nardone, chief of the Division of Labor Force Statistics of the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics. "We just don't know why there's a difference between the surveys." [...]
These new workers resemble the dead in the movie "The Sixth Sense": Only some people can spot them.
Those catching a glimpse seem to be mostly Republicans. Vice President Dick Cheney, for instance, can see them clearly. They're freelancers, private contractors, people working at home. They're not on the roster of any corporation's human resources department but are prospering anyway.
They're people, for example, like his wife.
At an Aug. 11 campaign appearance in Missouri, the vice president said Lynne Cheney "does very well in terms of her own professional career and line of work, but she doesn't work for anybody…. If you're in business for yourself, if you've got your own small business and so forth, you don't get picked up by those other numbers."
The "other numbers," the corporate payrolls, have been slumping this summer.
That's an ominous sign for the reelection prospects of Cheney and President Bush. Whatever attention isn't being focused on Iraq is on the economy, which means jobs. Rising employment makes people feel secure. They know that if their own job doesn't work out, there are many more out there.
Calculating employment is a massive task. To estimate payroll levels, the Bureau of Labor Statistics queries 400,000 so-called work sites every month about their hiring activities.
Whether the reason is outsourcing to China and India, rising corporate healthcare costs, increased efficiencies from technology or just general queasiness, the work sites haven't been in a hiring mode for a long time. Since March 2001, two months after the Bush administration took office, company payrolls are down a cumulative 1.2 million.
But when the government asks 60,000 people directly about employment, as it also does every month, the jobs picture looks healthier. Although the 629,000 jump in July was unusually high, the cumulative increase in the household survey since March 2001 is 1.8 million jobs.
We try as hard as we can to fashion a dynamic economy, one premised on the long-term value of creative destruction, then we're perplexed when static measures don't make sense.
THE LOUDER THEY SQUEAL THE BETTER IT SOUNDS:
Senators propose dismantling of CIA (Bryan Bender, August 23, 2004, Boston Globe)
The chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee yesterday proposed a sweeping overhaul of US intelligence agencies that would break up the CIA and the Pentagon's vast spy bureaucracy, split off the FBI's intelligence mission, and centralize control of most of the functions of the executive branch's distinct espionage, counterterrorism, and intelligence analysis organizations.The proposal by Senator Pat Roberts, Republican of Kansas, goes well beyond the recommendations of the Sept. 11 commission and the Bush administration to reconstruct the nation's intelligence bureaucracies, including removing the largest intelligence-gathering operations from the CIA and the military.
Speaking on CBS's "Face the Nation," Roberts said, "My worry is that, if the administration comes out and does not go far enough in regards to the 9/11 Commission and the families, or for that matter with my friends across the aisle, and then they simply introduce a bill that encapsulates the recommendations of the 9/11 Commission, that's not a bill. It's a good list of recommendations. . . . We have an urgent need to move but we have to get it right. This was not an idle thing."
The draft legislation would effectively do away with the intelligence structure that has defined the national security apparatus since the years after World War II, replacing the landmark National Security Act of 1947 that established much of the modern model for US intelligence and defense.
The proposed 9/11 National Security Protection Act, supported by eight committee Republicans, met with immediate criticism from longtime government bureaucrats, many of whom have warned against a hasty reshuffling of intelligence agencies.
Already yesterday, intelligence and defense officials who asked to remain anonymous described the plan as "unworkable" and "counterproductive."
It's a great idea to dismantle the current agancies and start over, a terrible one to just reconstitute them in a more centralized structure.
WINNING THE CULTURE WARS:
First-Time Voters for Life: What a Pace Poll suggests about new registrants and abortion rights. (Duncan Currie, 08/20/2004, Weekly Standard)
ACCORDING TO A RECENT POLL, new voters are trending pro-life on abortion. The nonpartisan Pace University/Rock the Vote survey, conducted by the Pace Poll in mid July, is the first in a three-part nationwide study of first-time voters, defined as "voters who registered after the 2000 presidential election." Most news coverage of the survey has focused on its implications for the general election. Namely, that in a head-to-head Bush-Kerry race, post-2000 registrants support Kerry over Bush by 50 percent to 40 percent; and in a three-way Bush-Kerry-Nader race, Bush garners 44 percent of the vote to Kerry's 42 percent and Nader's 6 percent. But the press has largely ignored first-time voters' opinions about abortion rights.On abortion, Pace Poll researchers slice the new voter demographic into four groups. There are those who believe "abortions should be legal and generally available" (21 percent); those who feel "regulation of abortion is necessary, although it should remain legal in many circumstances" (23 percent); those who say "abortion should be legal only in the most extreme cases, such as to save the life of the mother, incest, or rape" (41 percent); and those who think "all abortions should be made illegal" (13 percent). The survey shows that, essentially, 44 percent of new voters are pro-choice while 54 percent are pro-life. Among first-time Latino voters, pro-lifers outnumber pro-choicers 61 percent to 34 percent; among blacks, the pro-life/pro-choice breakdown is 59 percent/42 percent. Self-described "moderates" similarly tend to be more pro-life (52 percent) than pro-choice (45 percent).
Pro-life views also have surprising traction among new voters who identify themselves as John Kerry supporters. A plurality (34 percent) of Kerry voters, not to mention pluralities of new independent voters (36 percent) and new undecided voters (35 percent), believe "abortion should be legal only in the most extreme cases, such as to save the life of the mother, incest, or rape." On the other hand, some 31 percent of Kerry voters say "abortions should be legal and generally available," the most extreme pro-choice position available. But still, first-time Kerry voters are more likely to be pro-life than they are to favor abortion on demand, according to the Pace Poll.
These findings come on the heels of an April 2004 Zogby poll, which showed that 56 percent of Americans either believe abortion should never be legal or would restrict it to cases of rape, incest, and when the mother's life is in danger.
A nation that could confront such popular but immoral institutions as slavery and segregation can confront abortion.
SMASHING LOBS:
Bush Urges End to Attack Ads by Outside Groups on All Sides (MARIA NEWMAN, 8/23/04, NY Times)
"All of them," the president said, when asked whether he specifically meant that the veteran's group's ad against Mr. Kerry should be stopped. "That means that ad, every other ad. Absolutely. I don't think we ought to have 527's. I can't be more plain about it, and I wish — I hope my opponent joins me in saying — condemning these activities of the 527's. It's — I think they're bad for the system."Mr. Bush was asked whether he agreed with the charges made in the ads by the anti-Kerry group that the Democratic nominee had portrayed his war record inaccurately.
"I think Senator Kerry served admirably, and he ought to be proud of his record," Mr. Bush said. "But the question is who's best to lead the country in the war on terror, who can handle the responsibilities of the commander in chief, who's got a clear vision of the risks that the country faces."
"I think we ought to be looking forward, not backward," he said.
Could Mr. Kerry have made this any easier for him?
KERRYCARE:
More Canadians look to U.S. for treatment (Mark Kennedy, August 20, 2004,
CanWest News Service)
Canadians will increasingly travel to the United States to pay for medical care unless governments in this country finally devote the public funds to the health system that it needs, says the new head of the country's medical profession.In an interview with CanWest News, Canadian Medical Association president Dr. Albert Schumacher added that if the "crisis" isn't fixed, public pressure will only intensify for a parallel private system in which Canadians can pay for faster treatment in their own communities.
Schumacher, a Windsor, Ont., general practitioner, said that Canadian patients are not getting the timely access they need to a range of medically necessary health treatments.
"There is a patient demand. Where I live in Windsor, I see people go across the border on a continuous basis because they want to buy more."
Yet this is the system the Democrats promise us?
VAN HELSING VS. THE WALKING DEAD:
Bush Yet to Flesh Out Domestic Agenda: Many likely small steps in taxes and savings would add up to 'radical change,' analysts say. (Warren Vieth, August 23, 2004, LA Times)
With only a week to go before the Republican National Convention, the lack of details in President Bush's second-term domestic policy agenda has left some conservative activists worrying aloud about the Vision Thing.But analysts from both parties make the case that although the individual pieces of Bush's emerging agenda may not appear that weighty or new, they still add up to something big.
Bundled within overlapping themes of tax reform and economic "ownership," they say, are initiatives that would, if enacted, move the country toward fundamentally different systems of taxation and social insurance.
Wage income would be taxed at something close to a flat rate instead of today's graduated rates. Investment income would be largely tax-free. And individuals would shoulder more of the risk for their retirement, in return for potentially greater rewards.
"If you tell liberals that we're going to have a flat tax, that's like putting a cross in front of a vampire: They start cringing," said Stephen Moore, president of the Club for Growth, a conservative fundraising organization. "By doing these things in little bitty steps at a time, it's sort of like a slippery slope, but in the right direction."
"What they're trying to do is a radical transformation of the tax code," said Peter Orszag, a former economic advisor to President Clinton and now a senior fellow at the centrist Brookings Institution. "They're trying to do it in little pieces rather than all at once. The sum of all those pieces would be a radical change."
Amazing what you can achieve if you're patient and persistent.
PLUS THE GRADE 9 CLASS HAS SOME FIRM VIEWS ON THE DEFENSE BUDGET
Teenage 'judges' may sit in court (John Steele, The Telegraph, August 23rd, 2004)
Teenagers could be involved in delivering justice in a ground-breaking scheme for a new style of "community" court being considered by the Government.The court would bring together criminal, civil, family and other areas of law under an experienced judge, with access to agencies such as probation.
It is envisaged that the court, which will be tested in a pilot scheme in north Liverpool, would involve representatives of the local community. The most far-reaching idea under consideration is the possibility of training young people, aged between 14 and 17, to become involved in aspects of the running of the court.
A number of British Government ministers and officials are said to have visited the Red Hook justice centre in Brooklyn, New York, where "teen courts" deal with petty offenders up to the age of 16.
One of the hallmarks of the modern decline is the growing inclination to involve children in weighty moral and political issues and accord them a perspective or expertise that adults are lacking. Contrary to modern myth, this is not because today’s children are any smarter or more qualified than they ever were. It is because adults are steadily losing any sense of the principled groundings and convictions upon which they could offer order and guidance to the inexperienced. As many of us no longer have any settled ideas of what teenagers should and should not be doing, what motivates them or what they need, we have less and less of practical use to tell them. But instead of admitting our confusion and abdication, we hide behind the fantasy that teenagers are little adults and their views on issues far beyond their experience and understanding can be just as important as ours.
SO, WE'RE NOT THE ONLY ONES WITH U.N. PROBLEMS:
Impose Africa troops in Darfur says analysis group (Reuters, 8/23/04)
The U.N. Security Council should impose an African Union force of at least 3,000 troops on Sudan with a mandate to protect civilians in the western region of Darfur, the International Crisis Group said on Monday.The U.N. Security Council, which has already given Sudan till the end of August to prove its commitment to solving the conflict in Darfur, should also impose sanctions on named government officials, the analysis group said in a report.
The African Union has discussed sending a force of 3,000 to Darfur, but Sudan rejected the idea on Monday.
The ICG report said Sudan's government had acted in bad faith throughout the crisis in Darfur and was "adept at saying and doing just enough to avoid a robust international response".
It criticised the U.N. Security Council's first resolution, passed on July 30, for failing to take action against Khartoum and giving Sudanese officials the impression they can continue to fend off international pressure.
PLEASE SIR, I WANT SOME MORE
Guilt-free dessert? (Globe and Mail, August 21st, 2004)
A U.S. government dietary advisory panel is considering whether its revision of nutrition guidelines should let some people treat themselves to guilt-free desserts.Such treats would be bonuses for healthful living, under proposals being considered by the advisory panel that's drafting an update of the nutritional guidance.
The experts are looking at what are called “discretionary calories.” Those could be allowed for people who get nutritious meals while staying below the calories they need to burn for energy.
The panel is looking at ways to write discretionary calories into the recommendations that the government is to issue early next year, in tandem with an update of the food guide pyramid.
Discretionary calories are what's left when the calories needed to meet all of a person's nutrient needs are subtracted from the greater number of calories needed to meet energy needs.
It is relatively easy to rally around the struggle for freedom when one is threatened by tyrants like Hitler or Hussein, but how does one confront well-meaning bureaucrats who believe the world is a better place when we feel state-approved levels of guilt as we munch our Twinkies?
FROM THE ARCHIVES: THE POW-Cs:
When John Kerry's Courage Went M.I.A.: Senator Covered Up Evidence of P.O.W.'s Left Behind (Sydney H. Schanberg, February 24th, 2004, Village Voice)
Senator John Kerry, a decorated battle veteran, was courageous as a navy lieutenant in the Vietnam War. But he was not so courageous more than two decades later, when he covered up voluminous evidence that a significant number of live American prisoners—perhaps hundreds—were never acknowledged or returned after the war-ending treaty was signed in January 1973.The Massachusetts senator, now seeking the presidency, carried out this subterfuge a little over a decade ago— shredding documents, suppressing testimony, and sanitizing the committee's final report—when he was chairman of the Senate Select Committee on P.O.W./ M.I.A. Affairs.
Over the years, an abundance of evidence had come to light that the North Vietnamese, while returning 591 U.S. prisoners of war after the treaty signing, had held back many others as future bargaining chips for the $4 billion or more in war reparations that the Nixon administration had pledged. Hanoi didn't trust Washington to fulfill its pro-mise without pressure. Similarly, Washington didn't trust Hanoi to return all the prisoners and carry out all the treaty provisions. The mistrust on both sides was merited. Hanoi held back prisoners and the U.S. provided no reconstruction funds.
The stated purpose of the special Senate committee—which convened in mid 1991 and concluded in January 1993—was to investigate the evidence about prisoners who were never returned and find out what happened to the missing men. Committee chair Kerry's larger and different goal, though never stated publicly, emerged over time: He wanted to clear a path to normalization of relations with Hanoi. In any other context, that would have been an honorable goal. But getting at the truth of the unaccounted for P.O.W.'s and M.I.A.'s (Missing In Action) was the main obstacle to normalization—and therefore in conflict with his real intent and plan of action.
We're as happy as anyone to bash the Senator and Mr. Schanberg has enough blood on his charge sheet from the war that he ought to be especially careful about making accusations, but it seems especially unfair to criticize Mr. Kerry for leaving behind bars people he's said were war criminals. Maybe he thought justice was being served?
JUST WHEN YOU THINK YOU CAN ABANDON THE TIMES (From Oxblog)
Over Najaf, Fighting for Des Moines (Glen G. Butler, NY Times, 8/23/04)
Najaf, Iraq — I'm an average American who grew up watching "Brady Bunch" reruns, playing dodge ball and listening to Van Halen. I love the Longhorns and the Eagles. I'm you; your neighbor; the kid you used to go sledding with but who took a different career path in college. Now, I'm a Marine helicopter pilot who has spent the last two weeks heavily engaged with enemy forces here. I'm writing this between missions, without much time or care to polish, so please look to the heart of these thoughts and not their structure.Major Butler's article is impossible to summarize or condense. If you have the time to spare and find reporting from the ground in Iraq interesting, or have a desire to become informed prior to the upcoming presidential election, you might wish to consider the possibility of reading this article in its entirety, if that's not to much of an imposition.
HE'S GONE ALREADY:
In N.J., Pondering a Run For Governor -- or Not (David Finkel and Brian Faler, August 23, 2004, Washington Post)
Sen. Jon S. Corzine for governor?Maybe not. Or maybe so. It depends on how much weight one gives to what the New Jersey Democrat says vs. what he adds.
Echoing a written statement he issued Wednesday, Corzine said yesterday on NBC's "Meet the Press" that "I respect" and "I accept" the decision by New Jersey Gov. James E. McGreevey (D) not to immediately resign in the wake of his announcement that he is gay and had an extramarital affair with a man.
However, Corzine added, if McGreevey were to step down by the Sept. 3 deadline for there to be a special election, he would be ready to run.
"If Governor McGreevey changed his mind and said, 'All right, I'm resigning immediately, there will be a special election,' would you run for governor?" host Tim Russert asked Corzine.
"I suggested directly to the governor I was prepared to do that," Corzine said.
The thing to remember is that Senator Corzine is running the Democrats Senate campaign this year, so he knows they're not only not retaking the chamber but losing seats. One of the bitter lessons of the GOP's 60 years in the congressional wilderness is that being in the minority is no fun. Knowing you'll be there your whole career makes it hard to recruit candidates and to retain good incumbents. He sees the handwriting on the wall and he wants out.
AID TO OUR ENEMIES:
Wounded by friendly fire: This has become one of the most nationalistic US elections in living memory - and it is all Kerry's doing (Gary Younge, August 23, 2004, The Guardian)
[I]f the method of attack by Republicans is underhand, the issue they have chosen for this attack is understandable. For it was Kerry, not Bush, who placed his military service centre stage in this election campaign. The logic of doing so was clear enough. Clips of Kerry striding through the delta carrying a gun while his band of brothers (those who served with him) offered testimony of his heroics, served as a double whammy. They established Kerry in the public mind as a strong leader in wartime while providing a contrast with Bush, who stayed at home.But by the time of the Democratic convention, the party had elevated his service 35 years ago from one aspect of his personal history to his principle selling point in his campaign for the presidency. Refusing to spell out what plans he had for the future in Iraq or the war on terror, he was forced to exploit this one moment in his past for all it was worth.
"If we do not speak of it others will surely rewrite the script," said Vietnam veteran George Swiers shortly after returning. "Each of the body bags, all of the mass graves will be reopened and their contents abracadabraed into a noble cause."
And so it was that Kerry referred to his military service alone to qualify him for the presidency. He delivered a string of nationalist non sequiturs: "As president, I will wage this war with the lessons I learned in war"; "I defended this country as a young man and I will defend it as president"; and "I learned a lot about these values on that gunboat patrolling the Mekong delta".
Then towards the end he reached for the stars and stripes. "That flag flew from the turret right behind my head. And it was shot through and through and tattered, but it never ceased to wave in the wind. It draped the caskets of men that I served with and friends I grew up with."
In so doing, Kerry may have neutralised charges that he will be weak on defence. But he also made his war record fair game and set the ground work for one of the most nationalistic elections in living memory: a campaign that offers the choice between a Republican candidate who wants America to be obeyed and a Democrat who wants it to be "looked up to" and become "once again a beacon in the world".
Kerry is not only running for president, but in flight from a history he knows only too well. When he returned from Vietnam he testified before the Senate foreign relations committee that American troops had "raped, cut off ears, cut off heads, taped wires from portable telephones to genitals and turned up the power, blown up bodies, randomly shot at civilians [and] razed villages in fashion reminiscent of Ganghis Khan." Just a few reasons why that beacon has burned so dimly for so long, and why Americans deserve a better choice.
That last bit is why Republicans hate him so much, because idiots like this author are still throwing his baseless accusations back in our faces--as if Vietnam, the Cold War, support for the contras, Afghanistan, and Iraq were causes we should be ashamed of. Why do they hate us? Because people like John Kerry told them they should.
LIKELY?:
Viewed from Kurdistan the future for Iraq is most likely partition. (Bashdar Ismaeel, 23/8/2004, Online Opinion)
It is often easy to forget that Iraq is a dynamic mixture of a number of ethnic groups. Its controversial composition in 1920, in the aftermath of World War I and the fall of the Ottoman Empire, is the very reason for the instability and terror experienced today. After the premature end of the liberation honeymoon, mistrust has quickly displaced harmony; tears have replaced hope and joy.How the Iraqi cake will be cut is open to debate: federalism itself is a political hot potato and accepting federalism in principle does not constitute agreement on the finer details of its application. The problem in Iraq is that there are too many problems or hotspots. If you think you have resolved an uprising in Najaf, fighting erupts in Falluja; when the Kurds and Sunnis have reached agreement, the Shia and just about everyone else on the table are at war. It appears that just as one group is nearing satisfaction, another group emits groans of discomfort almost immediately. Although the Iraqi train has trudged along in the last year or so, not much has been achieved on the surface. The police and army are still small in numbers and lack the capacity to deal with Iraqi insurgents without the assistance and logistical support of the US army. Unemployment is still high – after all who would want to do business in an environment where shootings and kidnappings are commonplace. National elections are now a matter of months away without any real progress on the ground. For the Kurds, the last 18 months have been a game of wait and see. Their patience is slowly running thin.
It is open to debate just how long the Kurds are willing to co-operate with the Arab majority. It is clear that they want to press ahead with their own redevelopment, with or without the rest of Iraq. The keenness to encourage business development in Kurdistan is evident, the construction of two new airports in Arbil and Sulaminyia is testimony to this and Kurdish parliamentary members are openly seeking logistical support and training from as far a field as Taiwan. The deployment of South Korean troops around the outskirts of Arbil will, at least in theory, aid this goal of the Kurds.
The greatest fear for the Kurds is that continued patience and co-operation (however long that is sustained) may prove to be fruitless. After all the compromise and diplomacy of the Kurds, their ultimate goals of autonomy and federalism within a united Iraq have not been realised.
The FutureWhat the future holds for Iraq is unclear. What is clear, is bringing stability to Iraq will take much longer than first anticipated. Crucially, due to the volatile (and at times explosive) mix of the Iraqi population, there is no guarantee of peace and harmony. The possibility of an Iraqi civil war may soon become a question of “when” and not “if”. The numerous hot items on the table will not be resolved without someone getting their hands burnt. What is evident is that all parties want to handle the hot item for their maximum benefit without feeling its heat – which is not possible. We have already witnessed that compromise in Iraq is a scarce commodity. Who essentially loses out is key. Either way such losses will ultimately lead to what’s becoming increasingly predictable - Iraq’s disintegration.
One has to ask if the break up of Iraq is actually a bad thing.
There are growing voices that the only solution is for the Kurds, Sunni and Shia to buy separate houses and no longer reside under the same roof. This is a natural human reaction: if you do not get on with your housemate or landlord, it is simple, you move out. In this analogy, in a future Iraq, the landlord will essentially be the Shia, how they treat the Kurd and Sunni minority is crucial. Ultimately, the conflict of interests will prove too much leading to the partitioning of Iraq into three distinct states.
A Kurdish state will, for one, cause uproar in Iran, Syria and particularly Turkey. However this is now becoming an inevitability; many feel it is no longer a question of whether an independent Kurdistan will be established.
There was always going to be an independent Kurdistan, in fact we should have recognized it as a sovereign state shortly after the '91 war. But there's no reason the Shi'a need tolerate a Sunni state in their midst.
JUST BECAUSE IT NEEDS DOING DOESN'T NECESSARILY MEAN WE NEED DO IT:
African Union 'Could Help Disarm Sudan' (The Scotsman, 8/23/04)
An African Union force in Sudan’s western Darfur region could help disarm insurgents and pro-government militias accused of killing civilians, Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo said before the start of AU-sponsored peace talks today between the Sudanese government and Darfur rebels.More than 150 AU troops from Rwanda are currently in Darfur protecting some 80 union monitors observing a largely ignored cease-fire, and another 150 soldiers from Nigeria are expected to arrive in coming weeks.
While the troops’ mandate does not spell out how far they can go to protect targeted civilians, Obasanjo, the current AU chairman, said yesterday that the soldiers and Sudanese government “must work together to garrison the rebels and put them somewhere where their arms can be collected.”
“While that is happening, the government of Sudan must weigh heavily” on Arab militia known as the Janjaweed to disarm, Obasanjo said in an interview broadcast on state television. “The Janjaweed have been ... armed by the government.”
This would be an ideal solution--Africans stopping Africans from killing Africans.
GETTING THERE:
New Afghan Army asserts itself: Rivals in western Afghanistan agreed to a cease-fire last week after the arrival of the Afghan National Army. (Halima Kazem, 8/23/04, CS Monitor)
The recent fighting in Afghanistan's western province of Herat is seen by many as an effort to mar the country's first democratic presidential elections, but for President Hamid Karzai it has also provided the opportunity to flex his muscle and show how far his government has come in the last three years.With 13,700 soldiers, the fledgling Afghan National Army (ANA) has become a force that Mr. Karzai has used to douse flareups between warlords who still rule a majority of the country.
Earlier this month the Afghan government rushed two ANA battalions to Herat, where a local commander of a neighboring province attacked Herat's governor, Ismail Khan. Although Mr. Khan has been known to disobey orders from the central government, sources close to the president say Karzai made a decision to defend Khan in order to show the power of his government and deter other warlord uprisings.
A cease-fire was signed last week after the ANA moved in - backed up by the threat of American warplanes above.
"The Afghan National Army is the spine of this country and of our president. The central government can defend itself now," says Faiz Mohammed, a lieutenant in the Afghan National Army.
