mattgunn.com

August 28, 2004

No More Posts Until Wednesday Morning

I've become so outraged over the way most of the news media has mishandled this SBVT thing that I've begun wondering whether it's healthy for me to force myself to stomach the entire Republican National Convention. Instead of running the risk of harming myself or others, I've decided to take a mini-vacation at an undisclosed location. Nonetheless, I'll be back up and blogging Wednesday morning with an angry report on its first couple days.

Big Stories

Two potentially very attractive stories are developing.

The first is that Ben Barnes, the man who pulled strings to get George W. Bush into the Texas National Guard, has begun to talk. Surprise, surprise, just in time for the RNC news cycle. The real question is who Barnes was working on behalf of, which I don't think he's ever revealed.

I'll be gone the next couple days, but I'm sure all those on my blogroll (there to the left) will have full coverage.

The second is that there's about to be a big spy bust at the Pentagon.

I may have picked the wrong time to head out of town.

Incidentally, I haven't kept as close a watch on The Torture Scandals as I did the first go-round, but Jackson Diehl cut to the chase in Friday's Washington Post. It's a must-read.

Greenspan

Alan Greenspan continues to beg for medicare and social security cuts, as if there aren't any other ways to get these enormous deficits under control. Greenspan may be a revered figure in Washington, but I don't think he means jack to persuadable voters, while medicare and social security mean a hell of a lot to most of them. Would it be politically unwise for John Kerry to come out and say it's time for Greenspan to go? I think it's probably both the right policy and the right politics.

August 27, 2004

Census

The official census figures are even worse than indicated in the report I cited yesterday. From The Washington Post:

The census report provided hard numbers to anecdotal evidence that the recent recovery has missed certain regions and segments of the population. An additional 1.3 million Americans fell below the poverty line in 2003, as incomes dipped for the poorest 20 percent of the population. An additional 1.4 million became newly uninsured.

This is what the country should be debating right now, but George "We've Turned a Corner" Bush will do anything he can to avoid talking about this before election day. He has no serious health care plan and his economic policies completely ignore the poor. He's got a mighty odd way of showing his "compassionate conservatism," doesn't he?

Disgrace. The man is an absolute moral disgrace.

Sure enough, John Kerry and John Edwards have a very detailed plan to provide affordable health care to all Americans. Download Our Plan for America (an impressively specific 252 page policy outline) at johnkerry.com for all the details.

Some of its broader initiatives (download the book for all the details):

Up to $1,000 of Health Care Premium Relief
The Kerry-Edwards plan will provide relief for employers who offer their employees quality health coverage by helping out with certain high cost health cases - saving families up to $1,000 per year.

A Health Plan for Every Child
The Kerry-Edwards plan will pick up the full cost of the more than 20 million children enrolled in Medicaid. In exchange, states will expand eligibility for children's health coverage and low-income adults and enroll every child automatically.

Manage Skyrocketing Health Care Costs
The Kerry-Edwards plan will improve health outcomes while reducing health care costs by cutting administrative costs, waste, fraud, and abuse; enhancing disease management efforts; and reforming malpractice insurance.

Bush NYT Interview

Bush actually granted a one-on-one interview with a newspaper reporter, and it appears as if some of the questions may not have even been screened by the White House in advance!

A few points:

1. Here's my favorite part:

On environmental issues, Mr. Bush appeared unfamiliar with an administration report delivered to Congress on Wednesday that indicated that emissions of carbon dioxide and other heat-trapping gases were the only likely explanation for global warming over the last three decades. Previously, Mr. Bush and other officials had emphasized uncertainties in understanding the causes and consequences of global warming.

The new report was signed by Mr. Bush's secretaries of energy and commerce and his science adviser. Asked why the administration had changed its position on what causes global warming, Mr. Bush replied, "Ah, we did? I don't think so."

I wonder when Bush will own up to the fact that he's never met his energy secretary or his science adviser because God personally dictates to him all White House science policy.

2. Kerry should tee this one up:

He said that in North Korea's case, and in Iran's, he would not be rushed to set deadlines for the countries to disarm, despite his past declaration that he would not "tolerate'' nuclear capability in either nation. He declined to define what he meant by "tolerate.''

"I don't think you give timelines to dictators,'' Mr. Bush said, speaking of North Korea's president, Kim Jong Il, and Iran's mullahs. He said he would continue diplomatic pressure - using China to pressure the North and Europe to pressure Iran - and gave no hint that his patience was limited or that at some point he might consider pre-emptive military action.

He doesn't give timelines to dictators? You can use that either to call him a flip-flopper or a coward, whichever you prefer.

Seriously, I was watching Harvard Professor Graham Allison the other night on Charlie Rose – he wrote a book called Nuclear Terrorism: The Ultimate Preventable Catastrophe, and had some fascinating things to say.

There's good news and bad news when it comes to terrorists' getting their hands on a nuclear weapon. The good news is that a nuclear catastrophe is preventable. The bad news is that a nuclear catastrophe is inevitable if we continue to follow our present course.

The former Soviet Union has a bunch of loose nukes, of course, including 65 suitcase-sized bombs that nobody is able to account for. Scary.

Allison also told a story about a very credible report in October 2001 saying there was a nuclear bomb that had arrived in New York City. George Tenet told Bush, Cheney went to his undisclosed location, and a team of scientists went to New York. I don't know where the error was in the report, but obviously it turned out not to be true. I guess we've got to read Allison's book to find out.

Scariest of all, though, is that there's universal agreement – as opposed to the very sketchy information we had before the war about an Iraqi nuclear weapons program – that Iran is months away from a functional nuclear weapon. According to Allison, once Iran becomes a nuclear state, so will Egypt. Saudi Arabia won't be far behind, either, and will see a nuclearized Middle East.

Moreover, Israel is not going to let Iran complete a nuclear weapon. Iran is a timebomb waiting to explode, and there's going to be another war if we don't have a more engaged policy then we do now.

The huge problem for Bush is a lot of the things he said about Iraq before the war that turned out not to be true are true in spades about Iran. Iran has an advanced nuclear weapons program, will have a nuclear weapon within a year, and has a clear operational partnership with Hezbollah, a potent terrorist threat. The world has to deal with Iran, but Bush has squandered his credibility to the point where he's diplomatically impotent, and he doesn't have much credibility on war issues with most Americans, either.

Bush's inability to effectively deal with Iran is one of the central exhibits of his weakness on defense.

John Kerry, by the way, has a very realistic and detailed plan to secure and reduce existing nuclear weapons materials around the world. It can be found on pages 24-28 of Our Plan for America, which can be downloaded from johnkerry.com.

I'm not positive about this, but I'm pretty sure the official Bush administration policy for dealing with Iran is to bomb Iraq.

3. In the NYT interview, Bush clings to his refusal to specifically condemn the falsehoods in the SBVT ad, even though he answers, "No, I don't think he lied" when asked about Kerry's service. That's incredibly disingenuous, which we expect from Bush, but the NYT shamefully doesn't even bother to quesiton him further on why he won't specifically condemn an ad he essentially says is a lie. He wants to have it both ways, winking at those who seek to assassinate Kerry's service record while he calls it noble. It's his m.o..

The man is an outright coward and moral disaster.

4. So Kerry's seen some erosion – not catastrophic, but it's there – in this week's polls, not just in the horse race, but in perceptions of his personal qualities. Most people assume the SBVT thing is responsible, but there's some problems with that – specifically that in the LA Times poll Democrats by 10 to 1 thought the ads a lie, independents by 5 to 1, and Republicans split in half. In other words, the people who bought those ads were probably highly unlikely to have given Kerry a high rating on any of his personal qualities in the last poll, so they're probably not responsible for much of the erosion.

Instead, I think the senior political adviser quoted anonymously in this NYT article is on to something:

One senior political adviser to the president said the shift in Mr. Bush's favor was due to Mr. Kerry's statement two weeks ago that he would have voted to give the president the authority to invade Iraq even if he had known that the country currently possessed no weapons of mass destruction.

I think the senior political adviser to the president (Karen Hughes, perhaps?) is right.

I understand Kerry's position on the war completely – ousting Saddam was a worthwhile goal, and the president should have had the leverage to do it, but Bush fucked it up to the point where bad execution made it bad policy. Somehow, though, Kerry still hasn't been able to convey that in any language other than senate-ese, and I think his senatespeak before the Grand Canyon early this month is what's hurt him more than anything else.

John Kerry is 100 times the man George Bush is and I think he's going to make an excellent president, but he's got to fix his answer on this or it will definitely ruin him in at least one of the debates. It could also ruin his run for the White House and our chance for progress.

August 26, 2004

LA Times Poll

The LA Times has a new poll out that shows Bush leading Kerry for the first time all year, 49% to 46% among registered voters. There's a Gallup poll out tomorrow as well, and I don't expect that to look great, either. Not welcome news, obviously, but I'm not too concerned, especially after taking a look at the internals. He's had a decent August, as expected, but Bush still has bad numbers for an incumbent and Kerry's counteroffensive on the SBVT attacks is still taking hold.

700,000 More Impoverished

From Reuters:

More Americans likely slid into poverty in 2003 and the gap between the rich and poor widened, economists said on Thursday in a report that could fuel Democrat criticism of President Bush.

While the nation's official poverty rate will not be released until next week, the left-leaning Center for Economic and Policy Research estimated 700,000 Americans were added to the ranks of the poor last year, based on early numbers.

That takes the number of poor in the United States to about 36.4 million, from 35.7 million in 2002.

The poverty line is set at an annual income of $9,573 or less for an individual, or $18,660 for a family of four with two children, according to the Census Bureau.

Don't let the description of the Center for Economic and Policy Research as "left-leaning" fool you – I think Republicans would agree this is an accurate predictor of what the official poverty rate will be, and the study is as close as we'll get to definitive pre-election. [update: sorry, I was too tired when I posted this – the actual definitve study is the census study itself, which I comment on here.]

THAT'S 36.4 MILLION PEOPLE, INCLUDING 18.8% OF ALL CHILDREN, LIVING IN POVERTY.

That's unacceptable.

George W. Bush's only prescription? Make his tax cuts permanent.

Morally disastrous leadership.

Olympic

It seems the United States Olympic Committee doesn't want to be pimped out by the Bush campaign, so they've formally asked the Bush campaign to pull their television ad that uses the Olympic name.

Ginsberg

I hear the loss of chief counsel Ben Ginsberg is not just a temporary embarrassment to Bush-Cheney '04, but functionally a significant setback because he's not easily replaced.

Meanwhile, on Nightline last night Ginsberg asserted that he would continue to work for the SBVT Summer Players.

Iraq

As I write this in the very early a.m., there's a very delicate situation developing in Iraq. From the AP:

A mortar barrage slammed into a mosque filled Iraqis preparing to march on the embattled city of Najaf, killing 27 people and wounding 63 here Thursday hours before the nation's top Shiite cleric was expected to arrive in area with a peace initiative.

The attack on the main mosque in Kufa -- just a few miles from Najaf -- dampened renewed hopes for a rapid resolution to the three-week crisis in Najaf. The U.S. military and the insurgents both blamed the other for the attack.

The crucial factor here, I think, is who Ayatollah Sistani ("the top Shiite cleric") determines is responsible for the mortar fire. If it's the Allawi government and/or U.S. troops, then there's apparently a strong chance the country could be turned upside down. If it's Sadr, it's hard to tell what might happen. [update: I'd like to strike this paragraph from the record. I was tired when I wrote it and not thinkign properly.]

The best source for a complex (yet fairly accessible for the committedly curious, I think) understanding of current events in Iraq is Juan Cole's Informed Comment. Here's what he wrote just prior to the carnage in Kufa:

Ash-Sharq al-Awsat says that Sayyid Muhammad Musawi, one of Sistani's more important aides, warned the Americans against damaging or raiding the shrine of Ali (where Mahdi Army militiamen are holed up). He said that if the Americans behaved this way, it would provoke "general" (i.e. nation-wide) protests and result in a "very bad" situation. This is a threat that Sistani will bring out large urban crowds against the Americans if they do not back off. He can do it, so it is not an empty boast. And those panglossian American military planners who think they have 10 years to get things right in Iraq will find themselves tossed out summarily from the country.

Admirable Complexity

Remarks by John Kerry Tuesday night at a DNC fundraiser in Pennsylvania:

"It's become so petty it's almost pathetic in a way as I listen to these things. You know every — (Rep.) Chaka (Fattah) was telling me a minute ago he keeps hearing these commentators, Republicans all of them, saying "well John Kerry was only in Vietnam for four months blah blah blah." Well, I was there for longer than that number one. Number two, I served two tours. Number three, they thought enough of my service to make me an aide to an admiral. And the Navy 35 years ago made the awards that I made through the normal process that they make. And I'm proud of them and I'm proud of my service and I'm proud that I stood up against the war when I came home because it was the right thing to do." "I've been 35 years now involved in foreign policy one way or the other. From being at the tip of the spear when leaders made bad decisions to trying to oppose it when I came home as an act of conscience. And you can judge my character incidentally by that. 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. You may not have agreed with me but I stood up and was counted and that's the kind of president I'm gonna be."

August 25, 2004

War's Unmistakable Horror

From the AP:

HOLLYWOOD, Fla. - A distraught father who had just been told his Marine son was killed in combat in Iraq set himself on fire in a Marine Corps van and suffered severe burns Wednesday, police said.

Three U.S. Marines went to a house in Hollywood and told the parents of a 20-year-old Marine that their son died had Tuesday in Najaf, police said.

The father, Carlos Arredondo, 44, then walked into the open garage, picked up a can of gasoline, a propane tank and a lighting device, police Capt. Tony Rode said. He smashed the van’s window with the propane tank and doused the van with gasoline before setting it ablaze.

So sad.

I know this wasn't exactly a Norman Morrison protest act, but we should all hear the echoes.

Hypocrisy at its Finest

From the August 7 Philadelphia Inquirer (that's right, just 2 and a half weeks ago):

...Ben Ginsberg, a legal adviser to the Bush campaign, specifically condemned the dual roles played by Democrats Harold Ickes and Bill Richardson, who had official roles at the convention and also within prominent friendly 527s.

"They're over the coordination line," Ginsberg said of Ickes and Richardson. "The whole notion of cutting off links between public officeholders and soft-money groups just got exploded."

Thanks to Political Animal's Amy Sullivan for the tip.

Quote of Tomorrow

"The President started this, and I'm telling ya' right now, John Kerry's gonna finish it."

– Tad Devine, Sr. Kerry Campaign Strategist, on Inside Politics today

Ginsberg Resigns

The opening paragraphs in The Washington Post:

The Bush campaign's chief outside counsel resigned Wednesday morning after acknowledging on Tuesday that he also was providing legal advice to the veterans group working to discredit Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry's war record.

In a resignation letter sent to President Bush, Benjamin L. Ginsberg said there was nothing wrong with doing work for both the campaign and for the outside group, Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, known technically as a 527 organization.

Ginsberg's resignation followed the Bush campaign's dismissal Saturday of a volunteer on its veterans steering committee who appeared in a Swift boat veterans ad. The campaign said retired Col. Kenneth Cordier had not previously disclosed his participation with the swift boat group.

While it's true that there's no evidence Ginsberg has done anything legally improper, I always get a kick out of political resignations like this that basically say, "I'm resigning, but I didn't do anything wrong." I wonder how many Americans read that and relate with it: "Oh, yeah, I remember that time I resigned for nothing – what a shame."

The Bush campaign missed a political opportunity by failing to announce the president had terminated relations with Mr. Ginsberg over this, rather than Mr. Ginsberg simply resigning. That would have at least sent a message Bush disapproves of the smears, while Ginsberg's resignation suggests Bush has been approving all along (especially when Ginsberg's resignation letter is a tacit endorsement of the SBVT: "...I have decided to resign as National Counsel to your campaign to ensure that the giving of legal advice to decorated military veterans, which was entirely within the boundaries of the law, doesn't distract from the real issues upon which you and the country should be focusing."). You can't spin away people's natural association of resignation with culpability.

Kerry campaign manager Mary Beth Cahill's response is pitch-perfect:

The sudden resignation of Bush's top lawyer doesn't end the extensive web of connections between George Bush and the group trying to smear John Kerry's military record. In fact, it only confirms the extent of those connections. Now we know why George Bush refuses to specifically condemn these false ads. People deeply involved in his own campaign are behind them, from paying for them, to appearing in them, to providing legal advice, to coordinating a negative strategy to divert the public away from issues like jobs, health care and the mess in Iraq, the real concerns of the American people. It's time for George Bush to take responsibility himself and condemn these false attacks.

Kerry understands that the only thing that matters when you're attacked is your counterattack. Extensive polling data shows that people are a lot more likely to remember negative information than positive information, so in most political contests you've got to be able to deliver negative information about your opponent if you want to win.

Meanwhile, Kerry/Edwards have pledged to take the high road in this campaign and need to come off as if they are, so they need to walk a tightrope – all their attacks have to appear as self-defense. Bush's/Cheney's/ Rove's aggressiveness plays right into their hands, because it offers Kerry and Edwards the chance to be extremely negative in picking apart Bush as personal and political failure while appearing just to be fighting back, which voters respect.

Republicans have to tear down John Kerry at their convention and throughout the fall or they're not going to win. They've signaled that the politics of ridicule will be the name of their game from here on out. The Kerry campaign's response practically writes itself: "Of course they have to attack John Kerry personally. They can't talk about issues because their stewardship of our country has been certified as an absolute disaster – look at a (jobs), b (health care), and c (Iraq), the whole alphabet, really – and if you want to continue to attack our guys personally we can go down to personal issues like y (Bush as draft avoider and miltary absentee) or even z (Bush as cocaine lover), just let us know."

More SBVT Summer Players/Bush-Cheney '04 Hijinx

Ben Ginsberg, a prominent lawyer for Bush-Cheney '04 and one of Bush's closest advisers (you may remember him as a major player in the Florida recount court battles – he's bald, bearded, and unbearable), has been advising the SBVT Summer Players since July, the AP reports.

This might be the Kerry campaign's best opportunity yet to solidify what's likely a growing perception that these smears are tied to George W. Bush.

First off, let's clear up the misimpression that the Kerry campaign was doing something extraordinary by filing an FEC complaint alleging illegal coordination between the SBVT Summer Players and Bush-Cheney '04. The Bush campaign has filed several complaints alleging illegal coordination between Kerry and the liberal 527s, so SBVT supporters can't possibly argue Kerry's "silencing free speech" – as Crossfire jackass Tucker Carlson has been the past couple days – unless they want to criticize Bush for the same thing.

Furthermore, the FEC is by almost all accounts a toothless tiger, and I don't think there's much chance they'll rule on these complaints before the election. Both sides agree on that, I think, so it looks to me like these complaints have primarily a political intent.

So it's great political ammo for the Kerry campaign to argue that not only does one of Bush's top fundraisers (Texas homebuilder Bob Perry) own the SBVT Summer Players, but also that the lawyer responsible for things going smoothly in the Bush campaign is the same guy responsible for things going smoothly for the SBVTSP. You don't have to go too far to connect the dots there, do you? And when you factor in Merrie Spaeth, the loyal Bush operative who promotes the SBVT, the Kerry campaign can grinningly assert that the SBVT are directly owned (Perry), promoted (Spaeth), and operated (Ginsberg) by the Bush campaign.

Moreover, Ginsberg's bound by attorney-client confidentiality, which helps him in court, but could help Kerry, Edwards, and Co. make the case to the public that Ginsberg has something to hide. If this is much of a story today, Kerry should have surrogates out demanding specific answers from Ginsberg to questions he is legally obligated not to answer.

Kerry was pretty good on The Daily Show last night. He didn't make the mistake of straining to be funny, he just looked relaxed and was able to make a few good points with an audience that likely includes a lot of younger people who've never voted before.

The thing that jumped out at me was Kerry saying this:

The president has won every debate he's ever had. He beat Ann Richards. He beat Al Gore. So, he's a good debater.

This is smart. The debates could make the difference this year (if Al Gore hadn't sighed in that first debate and hadn't displayed a strikingly different posture for each debate, I think there's a good chance the Supremes would have never heard Bush v. Gore), and one of the reasons Bush has been successful in debates (success defined as improving his position in the race afterwards) is because the expectations for him have always been pitifully low. This is partly because many reporters and pundits grade him on a curve, but also because his campaign teams have always excelled at downplaying his debating skills. The Kerry campaign has to build him back up, and it's good to see they're on top of it.

August 24, 2004

The Further Presidentification of John Kerry

1. Kerry's on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart tonight (Tuesday), and that's no joke. Don't miss it.

2. Earlier today, Kerry is going to blast Karl Rove's penis, a.k.a. George W. Bush, in a New York City speech. He's going to say Bush and Co. "turned to the tactics of fear and smear because they can't talk about jobs, health care, energy independence, and rebuilding our alliances – the real issues that matter to the American people." Reuters also reports there's a "fact sheet" to go along with it, which I can't wait to see. I assume it puts their use of the SBVT Summer Players in the context of smears consigned by previous Bush campaigns (both Daddy and junior).

3. Three weeks ago, "Bush advisers" bragged to The New York Times that ridiculing John Kerry was going to be a big part of their convention plan. At the time I mentioned how Kerry and Edwards had spent some time at the Democratic convention foreshadowing the malice that was about to come their way, all for the purpose of using the negativity itself as their offense, a kind of "There they go again" offense.

Well, I'm afraid the "There they go again offense" doesn't adequately describe Kerry's dexterity in positioning himself by waiting until the eve of the Republican National Convention's "ridicule John Kerry" extravaganza to deliver his own extremely aggressive attacks on Bush (forget about the SBVT Players, they're nothing more than cheap props) that don't appear negative, only as self defense. In fact, he's harnessed the SBVT vitriol and transformed it into a sledgehammer that he's in the process of slamming down ferociously on to the Rove phallus (G.W.).

Kerry will say, "you want to attack me, I want to talk about issues important to the American people," and he'll mean it. Bush will say he wants to talk about issues, too, but then he'll attack. It's not Kerry's moral superiority (although maybe that, too) that makes him want to talk about policy issues, it's the polls. Bush can't win on the issues. Ask any Republican pollster and they'll admit that Bush absolutely must paint Kerry as a nauseating alternative because a clear majority of voters in this country want change. Plus, Karl Rove doesn't know how to run any other kind of campaign.

Did Kerry deliberately let that SBVT ad sit out there for an extra week or two so he could use it to unload a preemptive strike against Rove/Bush now? I can't say for sure, but there are some reasons to believe just that. I didn't see "Scarborough Country" tonight, but I read this in a Daily Kos recommended diary:

Oliphant: "Phase 2" of Kerry Counterattack To Begin
by thirdparty
Tue Aug 24th, 2004 at 03:05:44 GMT

This is a quick one... Just caught Tom Oliphant on Scarborough's show on MSNBC, and he had some fascinating insights into Kerry and Vietnam and the Swift Boat Scum that far outshone most of the crap usually on that channel/program. I know he's been a friend of Kerry's for over 30 years, but he seems remarkably objective about the man, the candidate, and his campaigns. A couple of his points:

Kerry, in every campaign he's ever run, has always invited (almost dared) his opponents to attack his Vietnam record. He "leads with his chin," but he does so on purpose. He relishes this fight, and it's a fight he's had over and over again. In this context, the words "Bring It On" take on an entirely new (and in this case, entirely earnest) meaning.

Kerry seems to have planned a very thought-out counterattack to the Swift Boat charges, "phase 2" of which is to begin tomorrow (he's speaking at Cooper Union, which The Note touched on briefly today). To Kerry, the counterattack is always what matters, not the attack itself. In this light, waiting a week or two before responding to the Swift Boat Scum was also a very planned decision.

Oliphant points out how much of this strategy (or obsession) has to do with Kerry's personal convictions and emotions. He has done this repeatedly, and has won every time. He really does turn his boat into enemy fire. Every time.

It was a very reassuring assessment of the man and his campaign. He doesn't fear attacks. He wants them. He invites them. That toughness is one of the most reassuring qualities I can imagine in a candidate. Hopefully, it will shine through to the electorate at large.

If Kerry's paradoxical counteroffensive/preemptive strike works, it will ensure that Bush's "fear and smear tactics" at the Republican convention and into the fall hurt Bush more than Kerry. It will also be considered one of the most brilliant political maneuvers in recent history.

4. "Unfit for Command" – John O'Neill and bigot Jerome Corsi's hatchet job on Kerry's war heroism – is flying off book store shelves. That scared me for a second, and then I thought, what's it gonna sell, like a couple hundred thousand copies or something?

Somewhere around 15 million Americans have already seen "Fahrenheit 9/11," and possibly double that [update: no, probably not double, but perhaps another 7 – 10 million] will see it before November 2 (it comes out on DVD at the beginning of October).

5. A bunch more stuff since yesterday has emerged that contradicts SBVT claims, but I'm not going to take the time to spell them out right now because I can't imagine there's a person left with above a 50 I.Q. who remains unconvinced that these guys are full of shit.

So much more to write but I've got to get some sleep...

August 23, 2004

SBVT Summer Players Updates

1. The Kerry campaign has another ad out today, called "Issues," which says Bush needs to renounce the smears, get back to the issues, and that America deserves better. It's very good, but not quite as powerful as yesterday's McCain ad, "Old Tricks."

2. I saw This Week With George Stephanopoulos and Meet the Press yesterday, and was saddened to see neither show air the McCain "Old Tricks" ad while both gave the SBVT Troupe more free air time.

3. Where's Bob Kerrey? As a friend of John Kerry's, a vet who left his leg in Vietnam, and a hell of a scrappy fighter who loves taking liars apart, he should be all over the talk shows representing Kerry.

4. From "This Is What I Saw That Day," a first person account by columnist William B. Rood about exactly what happened the day Kerry won his Silver Star, published yesterday in The Chicago Tribune. Read the whole thing, but here's the opening:

There were three swift boats on the river that day in Vietnam more than 35 years ago--three officers and 15 crew members. Only two of those officers remain to talk about what happened on February 28, 1969.

One is John Kerry, the Democratic presidential candidate who won a Silver Star for what happened on that date. I am the other.

For years, no one asked about those events. But now they are the focus of skirmishing in a presidential election with a group of swift boat veterans and others contending that Kerry didn't deserve the Silver Star for what he did on that day, or the Bronze Star and three Purple Hearts he was awarded for other actions.

Many of us wanted to put it all behind us--the rivers, the ambushes, the killing. Ever since that time, I have refused all requests for interviews about Kerry's service--even those from reporters at the Chicago Tribune, where I work.

But Kerry's critics, armed with stories I know to be untrue, have charged that the accounts of what happened were overblown. The critics have taken pains to say they're not trying to cast doubts on the merit of what others did, but their version of events has splashed doubt on all of us. It's gotten harder and harder for those of us who were there to listen to accounts we know to be untrue, especially when they come from people who were not there.

People like SBVT founder and "Unfit to Command" author John O'Neill, who didn't even meet Kerry until after the war and has precisely as much eyewitness experience of Kerry's Vietnam conduct as you or I. Somehow, though, he completely makes up a bunch of stuff about the situation surrounding Kerry's Silver Star (and others surrounding Kerry's Bronze Star and 3 Purple Hearts) and some people in the news media treat it as a "he said/he said" situation.

More on O'Neill tomorrow.

5. From today's Washington Post:

The [Kerry] campaign got some unexpected help from Wisconsin state Rep. Terry M. Musser, a Vietnam veteran and co-chairman of Wisconsin Veterans for Bush. Musser lambasted the Bush-Cheney campaign in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel over Republican attacks on Kerry's military record. "I think it's un-American to be attacking someone's service record. Period," Musser said in a Washington Post telephone interview. "The president has an opportunity here to stand up and demand that the attacks be stopped."

Again, that's the CO-CHAIRMAN OF WISCONSIN VETERANS FOR BUSH talking.

How long do you think it will be before he's fired, sent to Iraq, or Cheney just makes sure he disappears altogether?

6. Ken Cordier, who as of Friday was on the Bush-Cheney steering committee for veteran outreach, appears in the latest SBVT ad. I'm sure BC04 thinks his acting as a SBVT is much more valuable to them.

7. Another witness to Kerry's heroism, for which he won his Bronze Star, steps forward to confirm that it went down just as the U.S. Navy, all John Kerry's crewmates, and Jim Rassmann – the Green Beret whose life Kerry saved that day – said it did. From WaPo:

In Colorado, Jim Russell, who participated in Swift boat operations when Kerry did, wrote a letter to the editor of the Telluride Daily Planet to angrily dispute the claim that Kerry was not under enemy fire when he rescued Jim Rassman from the water, a feat that brought Kerry a Bronze Star and Purple Heart.

"I was on No. 43 boat, skippered by Don Droz, who was later that year killed by enemy fire," Russell wrote in the letter. "Forever pictured in my mind since that day over 30 years ago [is] John Kerry bending over his boat picking up one of the rangers that we were ferrying from out of the water. All the time we were taking small arms fire from the beach; although because of our fusillade into the jungle, I don't think it was very accurate, thank God. Anyone who doesn't think that we were being fired upon must have been on a different river."

8. Josh Marshall explains why the news media would be wrong to try and turn this into a "he said/he said" situation of equal, competing claims:

But are Kerry and O'Neil really equal in this?

The military records all back up Kerry. Back in the old days -- i.e., last month -- official military records use to be considered at least presumptively accurate. Now, everyone knows or should know that every after-action report or medal citation isn't necessarily the product of an exhaustive investigation. Yet, they're not meaningless. At a minimum one would assume that the burden of proof would lie with those who dispute their veracity.

So, as I say, all the Navy records support Kerry's account . On top of that, all the people who were in Kerry's boat support his version of events.

Think about that for a minute. All the people in Kerry's boat means all the people closest to the action in question support Kerry's account. Others who were tens or hundreds of yards away, or not even present, contradict his account. Is it really so hard to distinguish between the quality of evidence and testimony that both sides are bringing to the table?

In commenting on Kerry's McCain "Old Tricks" ad the other day, Josh eked out some paragraphs so right that I think major newspapers should keep them on file to consider as the opening paragraphs of George W. Bush's obituary:

I say this is exactly where the Kerry campaign needs to go because it very powerfully captures a truth about President Bush -- namely, that he's a coward who truly lacks shame.

I don't say he's a coward because he kept himself out of Vietnam three decades ago. I know no end of men of that age who in one fashion or another made sure they didn't end up in Indochina in those days. (I quickly ran through both hands counting guys I talk to on a regular basis.) And they include many of the most admirable people I know.

He's a coward because he has other people smear good men without taking any responsibility, without owning up to it or standing behind it. And when someone takes it to him and puts him on the spot to defend his actions -- as McCain does in this spot -- he's literally speechless. Like I say, a coward.

As I said earlier, this is vintage Bush. And it's also a subtle nod to all the ways that Bush is someone who's always gotten by with help at all the key moments from family friends, retainers and others similarly hunting for access and power.

Amen.

9. "Big Lies for Bush," a great editorial yesterday in The Boston Globe (it's so good, I can't figure out where to excerpt, so I'll just repost it):

IMAGINE IF supporters of Bill Clinton had tried in 1996 to besmirch the military record of his opponent, Bob Dole. After all, Dole was given a Purple Heart for a leg scratch probably caused, according to one biographer, when a hand grenade thrown by one of his own men bounced off a tree. And while the serious injuries Dole sustained later surely came from German fire, did the episode demonstrate heroism on Dole's part or a reckless move that ended up killing his radioman and endangering the sergeant who dragged Dole off the field?

The truth, according to many accounts, is that Dole fought with exceptional bravery and deserves the nation's gratitude. No one in 1996 questioned that record. Any such attack on behalf of Clinton, an admitted Vietnam draft dodger, would have been preposterous.

Yet amazingly, something quite similar is happening today as supporters of President Bush attack the Vietnam record of Senator John Kerry.

The situations are not completely parallel. Bush was not a draft dodger, but he certainly was a Vietnam avoider, having joined the Texas Air National Guard rather than serving in the regular military.

Kerry, on the other hand, may have done more than Dole to qualify as a genuine war hero. Although his tour in Vietnam was short, on at least two occasions he acted decisively and with great daring in combat, saving at least one man's life and earning both a Silver Star and a Bronze Star. That's not our account or Kerry's; it is drawn from eyewitnesses and the military citations themselves.

Yet a group of Vietnam veterans is questioning Kerry's record, operating cynically and ignoring the evidence. Many in this group felt betrayed by Kerry's opposition to the Vietnam War after he returned home. A renewed debate on that war might be useful, though we believe most Americans now agree with Kerry's famous statement to Congress at the time that it was a mistake.

Rather than seeking debate, however, this group, Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, is attempting political assassination, claiming in ads and a best-selling book that Kerry is "Unfit for Command." In many cases the charges conflict with statements the same men made in the past. Sometimes the allegations contradict documentary evidence. Last week a former swift boat commander, Larry Thurlow, said Kerry didn't deserve his Bronze Star because there was no enemy fire at the time, but this is contradicted by five separate accounts -- including the Bronze Star citation Thurlow himself was awarded in the same incident, as reported by The Washington Post .

While a few details and dates of Kerry's Vietnam record are open to question, most of the accusations are laughable. Kerry's record of service in Vietnam is clear and, one would think, unassailable. Given the contrast in their Vietnam-era records -- Bush even let his pilot's license lapse while still in the Guard -- Bush might be expected to change the subject.

Yet the Kerry opponents, working with funders and political operatives closely linked to Bush personally, are attempting what is known in politics as the big lie -- an effort simply to contradict the truth repeatedly.

Both parties do it, but Republicans are developing a shocking expertise. The smearing of John McCain in South Carolina in 2000, the reprehensible attack to oust Senator Max Cleland of Georgia in 2002, and this utterly cynical campaign against Kerry by Bush's False Squad deserve only condemnation.

Kerry has faulted a few of his own supporters who lampooned Bush's National Guard record. Now Bush should call off his dogs.

Double Amen.

O.T.

Thanks to George W. Bush, as many as 6 million American workers lose their right to overtime pay today. Here are the policy details. It hurts an awful lot of American families, and it's just sinful.

August 22, 2004

SBVT Summer Players Update

Okay, forget about my last post, where I allude to John Edwards not getting involved. Here's Edwards yesterday at a campaign stop in Roanoke, VA, where he called the SBVT claims "lies" and said that "only" President Bush could put an end to them:

John Kerry had his moment of truth 35 years ago and he chose to serve his country. This is Bush's moment of truth. We will now see what kind of man he is. We're not interested in his rhetoric about service. We're not interested in hearing from his spokesman. We're not interested in hearing from front groups.

In other words, George Bush is a coward well-accustomed to other people doing his dirty work, but I like the way he puts it better. (Maureen Dowd says much the same thing, also very well, in her NY Times op-ed today.)

Also, here's a great new ad from the Kerry campaign, which shows John McCain, in a 2000 debate, admonishing George W. Bush for sponsoring the same kind of smears against his Vietnam service that Bush now supports against Kerry's.

The ad was emailed to 2 million Kerry supporters, but its true intention is to get a bunch of free air time on this morning's shows and the rest of the political shows this week (just what G.W. wanted in the run-up to his convention – pundits reminding everybody what a major league asshole he is!). The ad is an extremely effective reminder that the Bush campaign has shepherded this slime before, and particularly what the Bush campaign did to John McCain in South Carolina in 2000 (a long story that if you don't know it yet, you probably will soon, but basically they waged a full-on character assassination campaign against McCain both above and under ground, including: 1) testimony that he turned his back on veterans, 2) fathered an African-American baby, 3) suffered mental shock during Vietnam that made him "unfit for command.")

It's an extremely shrewd way for the Kerry campaign to get the press corps and pundits to do their job and let every person in America know that the SBVT are bad actors engaged in a huge lie, because they all know what happened to McCain in 2000 and there's no more popular media figure than John McCain.

Also, McCain mentions five Vietnam veteran senators who wrote Bush in 2000 asking for an apology, and I wouldn't be surprised to see one of them (Kerry was another), Repubican Senator Chuck Hagel, join McCain this week in calling on Bush to condemn the SBVT lies.

Kerry has put his opponents in this box nearly every race he's run – they belittle his Vietnam service, which is unassailable, and he uses it as a noose around their necks. If Bush doesn't specifically condemn the SBVT ads, he's going to get pounded on in ways that he hasn't yet imagined – things far more severe than what he's faced in his previous races.

By the way, if you think it's unfair to hold Bush responsible for these ads, here's a handy chart from The NY Times showing how closely associated he and Karl Rove are with the SBVT benefactors.

August 21, 2004

Hmmm...

You think things are getting ugly? Here's Kerry communications director Stephanie Cutter responding to Bush spokesman Scott McClellan's snotty assertion that Kerry "lost his cool":

Mr. McClellan needs to understand that John Kerry is not the type of leader who will sit and read 'My Pet Goat' to a group of second graders while America is under attack. John Kerry is a fighter, and he doesn't tolerate lies from others.

McClellan gets the better of it in his emailed response to reporters by merely quoting Kerry in his DNC acceptance speech:

My friends, the high road may be harder, but it leads to a better place.

Cutter's next move should be to ask why the sitting president mocked Senator Kerry's entreaties to ensure a clean campaign by supporting one of the most dishonest, degrading, and despicable ads in the history of American politics.

Both seem to realize this is close to nuclear war, so why not take off the gloves?

Meanwhile, the one guy on either ticket who isn't marred by all of this is John Edwards, who's getting attractive coverage in the swing states.

Also, entering the week before the Republican National Convention, do you think President Bush seems more like a president or a candidate? He's come off more as "gritty candidate" than "presidential" since March (can you remember his last "presidential" moment?), and it's a real problem for him.

August 20, 2004

Swift Boat Veterans for the Truth Theatre Troupe

I've now concluded it's only a matter of time before the "Swift Boat Veterans for Truth" gather before the public and yank off their fake moustaches, bald caps, hair, and teeth to reveal that we've all been hoodwinked, victims of magnificent political theatre. How else do you explain these guys?

Recent SBVT Troupe engagements:

1.   I very much enjoyed the performance of SBVT Troupe member Larry Thurlow when he debated Jim Rassmann – the man who says he owes his and his children's lives to John Kerry's bravery – on Inside Politics a couple weeks ago. Thurlow said repeatedly that neither his nor Kerry's boat came under enemy fire.

From yesterday's Washington Post:

But Thurlow's military records, portions of which were released yesterday to The Washington Post under the Freedom of Information Act, contain several references to "enemy small arms and automatic weapons fire" directed at "all units" of the five-boat flotilla. Thurlow won his own Bronze Star that day, and the citation praises him for providing assistance to a damaged Swift boat "despite enemy bullets flying about him."

Official Naval documents also show there were bullet holes in at least one of the boats.

Only a brilliant and daring master of disguise like Larry Thurlow would fail to check his own Bronze Star citation before he signed an affidavit calling Kerry, Rassmann, and Kerry's crewmates liars.

(By the way, my favorite part of Thurlow's affidavit is found in part 3, which starts off with "Kerry inadvertently wounded himself in the fanny...")

After The Washington Post informed Thurlow about the language in his own citation, he remained committed to his performance and, in a comedic turn worthy of the great Ali G, blamed John Kerry:

Thurlow said he would consider his award "fraudulent" if coming under enemy fire was the basis for it. "I am here to state that we weren't under fire," he said. He speculated that Kerry could have been the source of at least some of the language used in the citation.

By yesterday evening, Thurlow's speculation turned into certainty on Hardball With Chris Matthews (who reamed Thurlow so hard I thought he was going to have to reveal it was all indeed a gag):

MATTHEWS: But do you know now—right now that the testimony that you were both under fire, intense enemy fire...

THURLOW: Came from his report.

If you want a good laugh, read the entire Hardball transcript. Thurlow contends that Kerry had a master plan to get his 3 Purple Hearts (including the one, I suppose, that dealt with the shrapnel still in his body today), Bronze Star, and Silver Star without earning them.

Also, on the same Hardball episode (obviously a classic), you can watch Japanese internment camp advocate Michelle Malkin (you probably think I'm kidding) claim that Kerry's Vietnam wounds might have been self-inflicted. The only problem is, Matthews treats her as a nutball for originating the statement, when in fact she's actually just a willing nutball who's repeating allegations from the madcap SBVT Players.

Matthews' look back at her when she told him he should have asked John Kerry if his Vietnam wounds were self-inflicted is priceless.

2. One of the craziest things about the SBVT Players is that they act as if John Kerry could have awarded himself all those decorations. Of course he had no such power, and any problem they have with Kerry's medals shouldn't be addressed to Kerry, they should be addressed to the U.S. Navy.

Oddly enough, I believe there's one of Kerry's awards none of them quibble with – I think it's either his second or third Purple Heart. When they were sitting around the table making this stuff up, do you think they joked about the irony of him having one mistaken act of bravery or heroism that wasn't part of his "master plan"?

One of the SBVT Troupe's favorite tactics is to dump all kinds of misinformation about different incidents on you that is very hard to sort out because Kerry was so highly decorated. Eriposte.com goes into awesome, very well-organized detail on each of Kerry's awards and the SBVT Troupe's allegations. When somebody tries to pass on one of the specific SBVT comedy routines as real life, it's an invaluable resource.

3. Today's New York Times has a fascinating look at the origins of the troupe. You've gotta read the whole thing, but I'll excerpt just a couple long passages:

The strategy the veterans devised would ultimately paint John Kerry the war hero as John Kerry the "baby killer" and the fabricator of the events that resulted in his war medals. But on close examination, the accounts of Swift Boat Veterans for Truth' prove to be riddled with inconsistencies. In many cases, material offered as proof by these veterans is undercut by official Navy records and the men's own statements.

Several of those now declaring Mr. Kerry "unfit" had lavished praise on him, some as recently as last year.

In an unpublished interview in March 2003 with Mr. Kerry's authorized biographer, Douglas Brinkley, provided by Mr. Brinkley to The New York Times, Roy F. Hoffmann, a retired rear admiral and a leader of the group, allowed that he had disagreed with Mr. Kerry's antiwar positions but said, "I am not going to say anything negative about him." He added, "He's a good man."

In a profile of the candidate that ran in The Boston Globe in June 2003, Mr. Hoffmann approvingly recalled the actions that led to Mr. Kerry's Silver Star: "It took guts, and I admire that."

George Elliott, one of the Vietnam veterans in the group, flew from his home in Delaware to Boston in 1996 to stand up for Mr. Kerry during a tough re-election fight, declaring at a news conference that the action that won Mr. Kerry a Silver Star was "an act of courage." At that same event, Adrian L. Lonsdale, another Vietnam veteran now speaking out against Mr. Kerry, supported him with a statement about the "bravado and courage of the young officers that ran the Swift boats."

"Senator Kerry was no exception," Mr. Lonsdale told the reporters and cameras assembled at the Charlestown Navy Yard. "He was among the finest of those Swift boat drivers."

Those comments echoed the official record. In an evaluation of Mr. Kerry in 1969, Mr. Elliott, who was one of his commanders, ranked him as "not exceeded" in 11 categories, including moral courage, judgment and decisiveness, and "one of the top few" - the second-highest distinction - in the remaining five. In written comments, he called Mr. Kerry "unsurpassed," "beyond reproach" and "the acknowledged leader in his peer group."

and...

The book outlining the veterans' charges, "Unfit for Command: Swift Boat Veterans Speak Out Against Kerry," has also come under fire. It is published by Regnery, a conservative company that has published numerous books critical of Democrats, and written by Mr. O'Neill and Jerome R. Corsi, who was identified on the book jacket as a Harvard Ph.D. and the author of many books and articles. But Mr. Corsi also acknowledged that he has been a contributor of anti-Catholic, anti-Muslim and anti-Semitic comments to a right-wing Web site. He said he regretted those comments.

The group's arguments have foundered on other contradictions. In the television commercial, Dr. Louis Letson looks into the camera and declares, "I know John Kerry is lying about his first Purple Heart because I treated him for that injury." Dr. Letson does not dispute the wound - a piece of shrapnel above Mr. Kerry's left elbow - but he and others in the group argue that it was minor and self-inflicted.

Yet Dr. Letson's name does not appear on any of the medical records for Mr. Kerry. Under "person administering treatment" for the injury, the form is signed by a medic, J. C. Carreon, who died several years ago. Dr. Letson said it was common for medics to treat sailors with the kind of injury that Mr. Kerry had and to fill out paperwork when doctors did the treatment.

Asked in an interview if there was any way to confirm he had treated Mr. Kerry, Dr. Letson said, "I guess you'll have to take my word for it."

The group also offers the account of William L. Schachte Jr., a retired rear admiral who says in the book that he had been on the small skimmer on which Mr. Kerry was injured that night in December 1968. He contends that Mr. Kerry wounded himself while firing a grenade.

But the two other men who acknowledged that they had been with Mr. Kerry, Bill Zaladonis and Mr. Runyon, say they cannot recall a third crew member. "Me and Bill aren't the smartest, but we can count to three," Mr. Runyon said in an interview. And even Dr. Letson said he had not recalled Mr. Schachte until he had a conversation with another veteran earlier this year and received a subsequent phone call from Mr. Schachte himself.

Mr. Schachte did not return a telephone call, and a spokesman for the group said he would not comment.

There was also this interesting little side note:

When asked if she had ever visited the White House during Mr. Bush's tenure, Ms. Spaeth [the SBVT stage manager] initially said that she had been there only once, in 2002, when Kenneth Starr gave her a personal tour.

Ken Starr's now a White House tour guide?

4. Until George W. Bush renounces this clownery – and I kind of expect he will soon – he's responsible for everything the individual SBVT Troupe members do, and, in fact, anything they've ever done. Kerry yesterday:

Over the last week or so, a group called Swift Boat Veterans for Truth has been attacking me. Of course, this group isn't interested in the truth – and they're not telling the truth. They didn't even exist until I won the nomination for president.

But here's what you really need to know about them. They're funded by hundreds of thousands of dollars from a Republican contributor out of Texas. They're a front for the Bush campaign. And the fact that the president won't denounce what they're up to tells you everything you need to know -- he wants them to do his dirty work.

Thirty years ago, official Navy reports documented my service in Vietnam and awarded me the Silver Star, the Bronze Star and three Purple Hearts. Thirty years ago, this was the plain truth. It still is. And I still carry the shrapnel in my leg from a wound in Vietnam.

As firefighters you risk your lives every day. You know what it's like to see the truth in the moment. You're proud of what you've done -- and so am I.

Of course, the president keeps telling people he would never question my service to our country. Instead, he watches as a Republican-funded attack group does just that. Well, if he wants to have a debate about our service in Vietnam, here is my answer: 'Bring it on.'

I'm not going to let anyone question my commitment to defending America -- then, now, or ever. And I'm not going to let anyone attack the sacrifice and courage of the men who saw battle with me.

And let me make this commitment today: their lies about my record will not stop me from fighting for jobs, health care, and our security – the issues that really matter to the American people.

The conventional wisdom is that Bush and friends have succeeded in putting Kerry on the defensive with these allegations, and Kerry's worse off for it. Maybe that's right. But there's only one prominent issue where Bush has even a slight advantage over Kerry right now, and that's as commander-in-chief in the "war on terror."

How has Kerry drastically cut into Bush's lead on that issue, as shown in public opinion polls, over the last few months? By putting his military credentials front and center. What's the one thing George W. Bush and John Kerry seemingly both want to focus on right now, just a week before the Republican National Convention? John Kerry's military service.

Time will tell who that benefits, but in every race Kerry's ever won it's benefited John Kerry.

August 18, 2004

Fareed

In "Why Kerry Is Right on Iraq" in the current Newsweek, Fareed Zakaria defends John Kerry's Iraq position (which can be summed up as "worthwhile objective, disastrous execution"), and indicts Bush's criticism of it in the process:

Bush's position is that if Kerry agrees with him that Saddam was a problem, then Kerry agrees with his Iraq policy. Doing something about Iraq meant doing what Bush did. But is that true? Did the United States have to go to war before the weapons inspectors had finished their job? Did it have to junk the United Nations' process? Did it have to invade with insufficient troops to provide order and stability in Iraq? Did it have to occupy a foreign country with no cover of legitimacy from the world community? Did it have to ignore completely the State Department's postwar planning? Did it have to pack the Governing Council with unpopular exiles, disband the Army and engage in radical de-Baathification? Did it have to spend a fraction of the money allocated for Iraqi reconstruction—and have that be mired in charges of corruption and favoritism? Was all this an inevitable consequence of dealing with the problem of Saddam?

Sorry to my regular readers for the light posting lately – I'm on the verge of completing a side project I've been working on for the last couple weeks, which will allow me to get back to doing my homework and posting indiscriminately.

August 17, 2004

Movin' On

Here's some must-see t.v. from MoveOn.org.

First, documentary filmmaking legend Errol Morris interviews people who voted for Bush in 2000 about why they're changing their vote this time. Most of them have been loyal Republicans, and their compelling testimony makes for some of the best political ads this year. If you have a few bucks, you may want to donate so they get as much airplay as possible during the Republican Convention.

Second, another ad from MoveOn.org admonishes Bush to take the "Swift Boat Veterans for Truth" ad off the air.

August 16, 2004

A Lot of Sensitivity

John Kerry made this perfectly reasonable statement in response to a question on August 5:

"The first part focuses on security. I will fight this war on terror with the lessons I learned in war. I defended this country as a young man, and I will defend it as president of the United States. I believe I can fight a more effective, more thoughtful, more strategic, more proactive, more sensitive war on terror that reaches out to other nations and brings them to our side and lives up to American values in history. I lay out a strategy to strengthen our military, to build and lead strong alliances and reform our intelligence system. I set out a path to win the peace in Iraq and to get the terrorists wherever they may be before they get us."

One week later, at one of his invitation-only campaign rallies, Dick Cheney took Kerry's quote wildly out of context:

Senator Kerry has also said that if he were in charge he would fight a "more sensitive" war on terror. (Laughter.) America has been in too many wars for any of our wishes, but not a one of them was won by being sensitive. President Lincoln and General Grant did not wage sensitive warfare -- nor did President Roosevelt, nor Generals Eisenhower and MacArthur. A "sensitive war" will not destroy the evil men who killed 3,000 Americans and who seek the chemical, nuclear and biological weapons to kill hundreds of thousands more. The men who beheaded Daniel Pearl and Paul Johnson will not be impressed by our sensitivity. As our opponents see it, the problem isn't the thugs and murderers that we face, but our attitude. Well, the American people know better. They know that we are in a fight to preserve our freedom and our way of life, and that we are on the side of rights and justice in this battle. Those who threaten us and kill innocents around the world do not need to be treated more sensitively. They need to be destroyed. (Applause.)

From some reason, Cheney's absurd political jargon has been taken seriously by many political reporters. I even heard several pundits (Cokie Roberts and Arianna Huffington, to name just two) acknowledge that Cheney had taken Kerry out of context, but then mention that Kerry really opened himself up for attack by using the word "sensitive." Huh?

1.   Cheney's "sensitivity" rebuke is among the most hypocritical in the history of American politics.

The Center for American Progress has a long list of statements in which Bush administration officials publically stress the importance of waging a sensitive war on terror. Including...

Dick Cheney himself just 4 months ago: "We recognize that the presence of U.S. forces can in some cases present a burden on the local community. We're not insensitive to that. We work almost on a continual basis with the local officials to remove points of friction and reduce the extent to which problems arise in terms of those relationships."

President Bush on 3/4/01: "We help fulfill that promise not by lecturing the world, but by leading it. Precisely because America is powerful, we must be sensitive about expressing our power and influence. Our goal is to patiently build the momentum of freedom, not create resentment for America itself. We pursue our goals, we will listen to others. We want strong friends to join us, not weak neighbors to dominate. In all our dealings with other nations, we will display the modesty of true confidence and strength."

These statements have made the rounds by now and I think almost all the political reporters and pundits who comment on them have seen them. It's totally unprofessional for them to make any points about Cheney's original attack without first establishing that it was totally disingenuous.

2.   Remember President Clinton's speech at the DNC: "Strength and wisdom are not opposing values."

3.   If Cheney continues trying to ridicule Kerry by taking him completely out of context on this sensitivity stuff, one of Kerry's surrogates – I suggest Wes Clark – should say the following:

Both Senator Kerry and President Bush have called for us to be 'sensitive' in certain regards in our war on terror. Cheney himself has urged sensitivity. I can't tell you how many military commanders I've heard urge certain types of sensitivity in warfare. Now, Dick Cheney's attacking Kerry for using the word, which is not only hypocritical, but makes you question what's lacking in Cheney's masculinity – or perhaps just his military experience – that makes him so afraid of a little word like 'sensitive.'

The politics of ridicule can be very effective, as Cheney has shown by getting all this free advertising for criticisms of something Kerry never said, and the best way to fight it is to ridicule back. There's no softer target than Dick Cheney, so the Kerry campaign must start hitting him, hard and without sensitivity.

August 14, 2004

A Republican Appeal to African-American Voters

From The Washington Post:

A group financed by a major Republican contributor has begun running radio ads in about a dozen cities, many in battleground states, attacking Sen. John F. Kerry as "rich, white and wishy-washy" and mocking his wife for boasting of her African roots.

The D.C.-based group, People of Color United, has substantial financial backing from J. Patrick Rooney, the former chairman of Golden Rule Insurance Co. and the founder of a new firm, Medical Savings Insurance Co. Both firms specialize in medical savings accounts, created by Republican-backed 1996 legislation, and health savings accounts, which were created by President Bush's 2003 Medicare prescription drug legislation.

The ads run on black radio stations, and represent a transparent attempt to sour black voters on John Kerry so much that they won't show up at the polls.

This group would be better off investing their ad money in Enron stock. You're not going to keep African-Americans from the polls this year. You could list 100 reasons, but for brevity's sake, let's limit to 5:

1. Bush's economic policies hurt.

2. George W. Bush celebrated Martin Luther King, Jr.'s birthday last year by coming out against affirmative action.

3. Bush is the first president since Warren Harding to reject speaking before the nation's largest civil rights organization, the NAACP, all 4 years of his presidency.

4. Two words: John Aschcroft.

5. One word: Florida.

August 13, 2004

The Rare Shock

It's not too often that a political speech surprises you. 99% of the time, reporters tell us what a politician is going to say before he says it, and usually you'd be able to guess even without them telling you. Everything's choreographed, stage-managed, hopelessly expected. That's why it's hard for me to imagine what it must have been like in 1968 listening to Lyndon Johnson end a speech announcing a new course in Vietnam with, "I shall not seek, and I will not accept, the nomination of my party for another term as your President." He shocked the world.

Yesterday, New Jersey Governor James McGreevey pulled a mini-LBJ with the words, "And so my truth is that I am a gay American." Jaws hit the floor all over the country. As the sitting governor of a relatively large state, McGreevey is by far the most powerful politician ever to come out of the closet. He's also married and has two daughters, whom I think greatly deserve our prayers (or whatever kind of secular benevolence you'd prefer to throw their way).

As much as I admired the honesty of McGreevey's speech, the focus on his personal struggles may also turn out to be a brilliant distraction from some fairly serious wrongdoing. From today's New York Times:

In early 2002, when he was facing criticism for appointing an unknown Israeli citizen named Golan Cipel as his special assistant on homeland security without so much as a routine background check, Gov. James E. McGreevey was asked by a reporter about rumors that he and the man were involved in a sexual relationship.

Mr. McGreevey responded, "Don't be ridiculous!"

But yesterday, in a short announcement in which he said he would resign the governorship, he acknowledged that he was gay and had had an affair with a man. The man, his aides acknowledged, was Mr. Cipel, 35, who, they added, had threatened a sexual harassment suit naming the governor.

The details of their relationship and a clearer picture of Mr. Cipel, a published poet and former naval officer, will emerge in the days ahead. But he occupied a significant position in New Jersey's effort against terrorism with questionable credentials for nearly three months and played a curious role in the McGreevey administration that provoked rumors about their relationship.

Reading the whole article, this thing doesn't look good for McGreevey. Given Cipel's lackluster qualifications, I think McGreevey's appointing him to an important counterterrorism post is at least unethical and, given the fact that Cipel's salary grew $30,000 in a month and a half to become among the highest in the executive branch, quite possibly illegal.

I imagine the details of this story, as it unfolds, will be well-publicized nationally because McGreevey has become, in a flash, a quintessentially modern and dramatic media subject. Whatever comes of his guilt or innocence, though, after today McGreevey will always be primarily known as "that gay Governor guy," and he'll be forever tied to discussions about public/private gay social struggles in America.

Ironically, McGreevey's announcement today overshadowed the California Supreme Court's decision to nullify the marriage licenses of thousands of gay Americans. In the long run, this verdict may prove a political blessing to the gay rights movement, but I'm sure that doesn't go a long way to comfort those gay Americans suffering the pain of state-enforced divorce.

Wonkette, a very witty writer who doesn't take things seriously very often, summed up this situation well for those who aim to build a more inclusive society:

We hope that someday it won't mean much to go on national television and announce, "I am a gay American." Someday, we hope that kind of announcement comes at the beginning of someone's political career, not the end.

August 12, 2004

ABC's The Note

For months, the authors of ABC's The Note have been sizing up the presidential horse race at least weekly, if not daily. They've been extremely careful to frame the race as either dead even or perhaps slightly favoring the president (if only due to the power of incumbency), so I was pleasantly surprised and comforted while reading yesterday's edition, which has them unequivocally tagging Kerry as the favorite. Here's a long, worthwhile excerpt:

It is our most fundamental job to regularly tell you three things:

1. where the presidential race stands

2. that where the race stands now is only a snapshot

3. that things can change

And/but the reality is — as amazing as this seems — this is now John Kerry's contest to lose.

Forget the hemorrhaging of manufacturing jobs (and Team Bush's inability — so far — to enunciate a second-term jobs/growth agenda or find a compelling Rubinesque spokesperson on the economy).

Forget the fact that that we still can't find a single American who voted for Al Gore in 2000 who is planning to vote for George Bush in 2004. (If you are that elusive figure, e-mail us and tell us who you are and why: politicalunit@abcnews.com.)

Forget the fact that California, New York, Illinois, and New Jersey (sorry, Matthew) aren't in play and never were.

Forget the latest polling out of Ohio (and perhaps Florida … .).

Forget the extraordinary anti-Bush energy that exists on the left and the "how-do-we-whip-our-folks-up?" dilemma that exists on the right.

Forget the various signs that the Democratic challenger is playing in battleground areas for the middle and the president seems geographically and issues-wise to be still shoring up the base.

Forget the persistence of the Democratic advantage on the congressional generic poll question.

Forget the current ad spending advantage the DNC/anti-Bush 527s have over BC04RNC — while John Kerry pinches pennies.

But remember the poisonous job approval, re-elect, and wrong track numbers that hang around the president's neck to this day and then consider the very smart, mustest-of-read essay by Charlie Cook, in which the Zen Master surveys the troubling (and consistently so … ) poll numbers of the incumbent and renders this spot on verdict: LINK

(Now is the time to subscribe to National Journal's outstanding Web site if you don't already, because you need to read the whole thing.)

"President Bush must have a change in the dynamics and the fundamentals of this race if he is to win a second term. The sluggishly recovering economy and renewed violence in Iraq don't seem likely to positively affect this race, but something needs to happen. It is extremely unlikely that President Bush will get much more than one-fourth of the undecided vote, and if that is the case, he will need to be walking into Election Day with a clear lead of perhaps three percentage points."

"This election is certainly not over, but for me, it will be a matter of watching for events or circumstances that will fundamentally change the existing equation — one that for now favors a challenger over an incumbent."

Of course, Bush-Cheney '04 is aware of all this. Expect increasingly vicious attacks on Kerry, "Swift Boat Veterans for Truth"-style. Arm yourself with facts and a smile.

August 11, 2004

"I couldn't get a job with CIA today. I am not qualified."

Just as I sat down last night to offer you my opinion on whether or not Bush's appointment for CIA director, Rep. Porter Goss, was a good choice, I was given access to this transcript of outtakes from Fahrenheit 9/11:

INTERVIEWER: [Y]ou come from intelligence. This is what you did, this is what you know.

REP. GOSS: Uh, that was, uh, 35 years ago.

INTERVIEWER:   Okay.

REP. GOSS: It is true I was in CIA from approximately the late 50’s to approximately the early 70’s. And it's true I was a case officer, clandestine services officer and yes, I do understand the core mission of the business. I couldn't get a job with CIA today. I am not qualified. I don't have the language skills. I, you know, my language skills were romance languages and stuff. We're looking for Arabists today. I don't have the cultural background probably. And I certainly don't have the technical skills, uh, as my children remind me every day, 'Dad you got to get better on your computer.’ Uh, so, the things that you need to have, I don't have.

– Rep. Porter Goss, March 3, 2004, Washington, DC

Let's review: Goss asserts he lacks the language skills, the cultural background, the technical skills – "the things that you need to have" – to even get a job with the CIA, much less lead it.

I defer to his judgment.

Updated comments:

On one hand, you can make a strong argument that the Goss comments aren't newsworthy. What he's really saying is that he couldn't get hired today as a CIA field operative, not that he couldn't be director of the CIA. They are, of course, very different jobs requiring different abilities. Moreover, if we limited prospective intelligence leaders to those who speak Arabic and are algorithmically-inclined, we'd be drawing from a shallow pool.

On the other hand, his acknowledgment that he doesn't have "the cultural background" is concerning. Perhaps he's merely saying that his ethnicity wouldn't allow him to go undercover, but there's another possibility: he doesn't have the kind of confidence in his expertise in Middle Eastern affairs that would enable him to lay out a comprehensive vision for the agency to assess and eradicate potential threats.

In their recommendations, the 9/11 Commission repeatedly emphasizes the importance of reimagining our analytic capabilities so we can locate potential threats from Islamist terrorists. One of the reasons I don't have much confidence in the Bush administration to do this effectively is because the main advisers to the president – Condoleezza Rice is a good example – didn't come into office with a sufficient background in understanding of the Islamic world. Others have to pick up the slack, and therefore I think it's fair and important to ask Goss specifically what he meant when he says he "probably doesn't have the cultural background" to get a job at the CIA today.

It's a minor point, but may also be worth noting, that former FBI director Louis Freeh was so technologically ignorant that the FBI's computer system remained a dinosaur on his watch. Naturally, this really hurt information gathering and coordination efforts. I assume Goss knows better, but if he gets to the confirmation process, somebody may want to make sure.

At the end of the day, though, I lean more towards the argument that Goss's comments probably aren't very meaningful, and will primarily serve only to amuse progressive bloggers like myself.

You Almost Heard It Here First

I've received some very solid information about Bush's CIA director nominee, Rep. Porter Goss, that should hit the wires very soon. Unfortunately, I can't tell you exactly what it is, but I can tell you that some things he said earlier this year are going to come back to haunt him. It's nothing that would derail his nomination (at least I don't think so, and it really shouldn't), but I think it will be an embarrassing p.r. headache for Goss and Bush.

As soon as Pat Buchan oops, I mean "Deep Throat," unleashes me, I'll post the specifics.

Sovereignty 101

You may have never realized before that you wanted to hear a short lecture on "Tribal Sovereignty in the 21st Century" from George W. Bush, but believe me, you do.

Few Americans are as experienced straddling the fine line between simplicity and idiocy as our president, but this is one of those wonderfully clearcut cases where he loses balance. It's extra hilarious how much the Unity Conference of Minority Journalists audience is laughing at him, but not so funny that all Bush knows about tribal sovereignty is its vague definition.

Straddling/Flip-Flopping

Kevin Drum has a great post up that ably catalogues some of Bush's flip-flops/straddles, but also makes a fine point about John Kerry:

Does John Kerry sometimes straddle difficult issues in an effort to please multiple constituencies? Sure. So do all politicians. Kerry's real problem, though, isn't that he straddles more than anyone else, but that he does it badly. When he explains his positions, he sounds like he's straddling.

The only thing I wish Drum would have added is that another factor that leads to Kerry's reputation for straddling is the exhaustive cover-all-the-bases way in which he often answers questions and explains issues on the campaign trail. It's a snooze as political theatre, but at least there's a noble scrutinzation of public policy behind it.

August 10, 2004

Political Boss

A couple months ago, somebody asked me to name a popular artist whose work I respected while also admiring what I know about their personal character. Without hesitation, I named Bruce Springsteen.

Here are the opening paragraphs of The Boss's New York Times op-ed from last Thursday:

A nation's artists and musicians have a particular place in its social and political life. Over the years I've tried to think long and hard about what it means to be American: about the distinctive identity and position we have in the world, and how that position is best carried. I've tried to write songs that speak to our pride and criticize our failures.

These questions are at the heart of this election: who we are, what we stand for, why we fight. Personally, for the last 25 years I have always stayed one step away from partisan politics. Instead, I have been partisan about a set of ideals: economic justice, civil rights, a humane foreign policy, freedom and a decent life for all of our citizens. This year, however, for many of us the stakes have risen too high to sit this election out.

Through my work, I've always tried to ask hard questions. Why is it that the wealthiest nation in the world finds it so hard to keep its promise and faith with its weakest citizens? Why do we continue to find it so difficult to see beyond the veil of race? How do we conduct ourselves during difficult times without killing the things we hold dear? Why does the fulfillment of our promise as a people always seem to be just within grasp yet forever out of reach?

I don't think John Kerry and John Edwards have all the answers. I do believe they are sincerely interested in asking the right questions and working their way toward honest solutions. They understand that we need an administration that places a priority on fairness, curiosity, openness, humility, concern for all America's citizens, courage and faith.

A staff writer for a political insider site made some smug remark inquiring about which Kerry staff member had the biggest hand in writing Springsteen's article, but if he'd read more songs or seen more interviews with Springsteen over the years, he couldn't escape the truth: those simple, straightforward sentences imbued with a passionate longing for social justice are inimitably, unmistakably Boss.

August 9, 2004

Tattoo

I don't have a tattoo, but I'm tempted to get these lines from New Yorker editor David Remnick re-printed on my forehead (it's pretty big):

... George W. Bush is the worst President the country has endured since Richard Nixon, and even mediocrity would be an improvement. Indeed, if one regards the Bush Administration’s sins of governance—its distortion of intelligence in a time of crisis, its grotesque indulgence of the rich at the expense of the rest, its arrogant dissolution of American prestige and influence abroad, its heedless squandering of the world’s resources—as worse than the third-rate burglary and second-rate coverup of thirty years ago, then President Bush is in a league only with the likes of Harding, Fillmore, Pierce, and Buchanan.

Wasting Time

I think it's been clear for awhile that Condoleezza Rice is generally both incompetent and incredible as a National Security Adviser, but I can certainly see why the president loves her. She's great at delivering the most empty talking points in coherent paragraphs that sound credible, and she'll zealously defend the most indefensible acts of her boss. Yesterday morning on Meet the Press, Rice forcefully asserted that Bush's 7-minute idleness in that Florida classroom on 9/11 "was the right thing to do" and that "the president handled that seven minutes correctly."

She delivered those lines with absolute conviction, which can only mean either she thinks Meet the Press viewers have no common sense, or she has no common sense. Anybody who honestly believes the right thing for a commander-in-chief to do upon realization of a crisis is nothing has no business being a presidential adviser. The 9/11 report tells us that people all over the country were busy improvising a homeland defense during those 7 minutes – American Airlines Flight 77 didn't crash into the Pentagon until 32 minutes after Andy Card told Bush "America is under attack," and United Flight 93 didn't go down until nearly an hour later – and Bush's leadership instinct was to stay out of the loop.

It's one thing for a Bush defender to concede the 7 minutes sitting idle weren't his finest moment, and then question what signifigance it had in a larger sense. But to suggest that it "was the right thing to do" is so absurd that it insults common intelligence.

By the way, Rice's answer was in response to what she thought of John Kerry's answer to a question last week asking what he would have done in that situation if he'd been president. Kerry said he would have excused himself gracefully and attended to the country's business. I've heard several Republicans other than Rice criticize him for this (David Brooks called it a "cheap shot"), saying there's no way he could possibly know what he would have done. I think that's crazy. Who wouldn't have done exactly what Kerry said he would do? Could you imagine as commander-in-chief being told "America is under attack" and doing anything other than excusing yourself so you could get an immediate briefing and perhaps start making some decisions? I can't. I think Kerry's response would be most people's (not just most leaders') natural reaction, and Bush's response was highly unusual.

August 7, 2004

July Job Growth

From The New York Times:

Employers added just 32,000 jobs in July, a small fraction of what forecasters had expected and far below the robust gains in employment earlier this year. The government also announced that job growth in May and June was less than initially estimated.

and...

The weak increases of the last two months now mean that Mr. Bush is highly likely to stand for re-election with an employment level lower than it was on his Inauguration Day. That would be the first time that has happened since 1932, when the country was mired in the Depression and enduring far worse job losses than any it has experienced recently.

3 quick points:

1. The Times is too kind in that second paragraph. Let's be clear: there is no doubt George W. Bush will be the first American president since the Great Depression's Herbert Hoover to preside over a net loss of jobs.

2. Approximately 140,000 new workers enter the job market each month. I look at that number as the threshold – anything less isn't good enough. The July numbers are terrible, and the June totals (I think 112,000 was originally announced, but I think it's now been reduced to about 67,000) were also pretty bad.

3. It's hilarious that the Bush campaign brags about creating 1.5 million jobs over the course of a year, not just because they ignore the previous two years entirely, but also because you need to create about 1.7 million jobs a year just to meet the demand.

An average of nearly 3 million jobs per year (248,000 jobs a month) were created during the Clinton administration, by the way. What's the new Bush-Cheney economic message gonna be? "In our best year, we're nearly half as good as Clinton"?

August 6, 2004

Swift Boat Wackos

A group of swift boat veterans who call themselves "Swift Boat Veterans for Truth" claim to have served with John Kerry in Vietnam and released an ad yesterday smearing Kerry's military service.

Political Animal Kevin Drum dismisses them:

I hope nobody minds if I ignore the whole Swift Boat veterans thing. These people are certifiable lunatics, and I just can't stand the thought of wasting neurons over them.

He's right. These guys are completely nuts, and criticizing them is shooting fish in a barrel. Unfortunately, Republicans have had numerous successes over the years running this kind of underhanded campaign, and they've got a delivery sytem – Drudge, Instapundit, Limbaugh, 98% of Fox News employees, etc... – specifically designed to shovel horseshit to the masses. So if you'd like to shoot some fish, here are some bullets:

Media Matters

Yours Truly

Disinfopedia

Ideamouth

Daily Howler

Salon's Joe Conason

The most productive way to respond to this kind of nonsense might be to accentuate the positive. None of the "Swift Boat Veterans for Truth" served alongside Kerry in Vietnam, but a whole bunch of other guys did. All but one of Kerry's living crew mates stood with him on the stage at the Democratic National Convention last week. They're not all Democrats, but to a man they'll testify that John Kerry is not only a courageous, decisive, and caring leader who earned his three Purple Hearts, Bronze Star, and Silver Star the hard way, but that he would have taken a bullet for any one of them.

As much as I think the truth on the "Swift Boat Veterans for Truth" needs to be set free, I don't mind one bit seeing them on television. I suspect John Kerry's political fortunes rise every time one of them does a media round. Yesterday's Inside Politics featured a debate between swift boat veteran Larry Thurlow and Jim Rassmann, the Green Beret whose life was saved by Kerry and who subsequently put him up for his Bronze Star. It didn't really matter that Thurlow came off as the kind of guy who locks his keys in his car once or twice a month, because any undecided voters watching must have been preoccupied with the same thing: "Wow, that other dude would be dead if John Kerry hadn't saved his life."

United

Both presidential candidates delivered spot-on quotes yesterday on why John Kerry should be our next President:

Our enemies are innovative and resourceful, and so are we. They never stop thinking about new ways to harm our country and our people, and neither do we.
– George W. Bush, after a White House bill-signing ceremony

Had I been reading to children and had my top aide whispered in my ear, "America is under attack," I would have told those kids very politely and nicely that the president of the United States had something that he needed to attend to – and I would have attended to it.
– John Kerry, in response to a question asked yesterday at the Unity 2004 Journalists of Color Conference

One of the funniest things about Bush's quote, if you're able to see it, is that he appeared to be reading from a prepared speech.

Huh?

This is the strangest thing I've read in awhile:

Officials in Indiana and Washington, D.C., said they are dumbfounded by a statement U.S. Rep. Katherine Harris made about a terrorist plot to blow up a power grid in Indiana.

In making the statement during a speech to 600 people Monday night in Venice, Harris either shared a closely held secret or passed along second-hand information as fact.

A staff member of the U.S. House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, which oversees the nation's intelligence operations, said he had heard of no such plot.

And Indiana officials in the county where the power grid is located were at a loss to explain where the information originated.

"As the sheriff of this county, I would certainly be aware of such a threat," Hamilton County Sheriff Doug Carter said. "I have no information to corroborate any of that."

In an interview Tuesday, Harris would not reveal the name of the mayor who told her about the threat or provide further details.

She said in the speech that a man of Middle Eastern heritage had been arrested in the plot and that explosives were found in his home in Carmel, a suburb north of Indianapolis.

Harris, a Republican from Longboat Key who is running for re-election, said the case was an example of the nation's success in fighting terrorism.

Carmel Mayor James Brainard and a spokesman for Indiana Gov. Joe Kernan said they had no knowledge of such a plot. Brainard said he had never spoken to Harris.

If Harris is ever forced to reveal the name of the mayor who told her about the threat, I bet you anything I know who it is: Mayor McCheese.

August 5, 2004

"...things have gotten really, really, really good."

I find Will Ferrell's George W. Bush imitation as hilarious as any I've ever seen. It's not just that he's nailed Bush's distinct cadences, but the sentences themselves sound exactly like they came from the President's mouth, albeit with a satiric perversion of a word or two. Now Ferrell graces us with 4 minutes of W. in a mock campaign ad for America Coming Together, a progressive group working in 17 battleground states to elect John Kerry (and a pretty damn good organization, especially now that you can no longer give directly to the Kerry campaign, to donate money if you want your dollar to have an impact in battleground states).

One of my favorite lines from Will/W.:

There are certain liberal agitators out there who'd like you to believe that my administration's not doing such a good job. Of course, these are people such as Howard Stern, Richard Clarke, and the news.

My only criticism of the film is that Ferrell neglected the advice that he gave to Saturday Night Live months ago – from now on, Ferrell suggested, whenever Bush is portrayed he should be wearing a flight suit, regardless of the context of the skit. When I imagine Ferrell doing this particular ad in a flight suit, it becomes even funnier.

By the way, be careful never to direct any one to americacomingtogether.org, which is a reasonable guess on where the site might be. The Bush campaign wisely co-opted it, though, and it redirects you to the Bush-Cheney '04 site.

Obviously, somebody screwed up big time at America Coming Together by not securing the domain name. Hopefully, that's not characteristic of their overall management. I hear that it's not, perhaps most tellingly from an Iowa reporter on Inside Politics yesterday who gave an organizational edge in the state to Kerry because of ACT's and MoveOn's efforts.

Also, ACT and MoveOn have put together something pretty astonishing in their "Vote for Change Tour." Here's a description:

ACT and MoveOn PAC are very proud to announce our partnership in a truly historic event.

The Vote for Change Tour (October 1-10) includes Bruce Springsteen and the E-Street Band, Bonnie Raitt, Dave Matthews Band, Dixie Chicks, Jackson Brown, John Mellencamp, Ben Harper, Kenny “Babyface” Edmonds, Pearl Jam, R.E.M and others.

Conceived by a loose coalition of musicians four months ago, Vote for Change is a multi-city, multi-artist tour that will include approximately 34 shows in 28 cities in 9 states over the course of one week.

Tickets will go on sale to the public on Saturday, August 21st. All proceeds from ticket sales will benefit ACT’s work in the battleground states.

I can't think of any comparable precedent in electoral politics. They'll probably raise tens of millions of dollars.

I need to give a birthday shout out to Jimmy Gunn – my wise, kind, admirable, vainglorious, and now elderly older brother.

August 4, 2004

Missouri

I'm particularly interested in Missouri political races both because it's my native state and because it's a swing state. Yesterday's primary yielded some good news for Democrats' national prospects, and some bad news for humanity.

I always prefer to hear the bad news first...

A Hate Amendment (aka gay marriage ban) passed overwhelmingly, by better than 2 to 1. As I've written here before, I've yet to encounter an argument against civil gay marriage that doesn't have bigotry at its core. Missouri voters faced a civil rights test yesterday, and they failed miserably.

Scarier still, voter turnout in Missouri was huge. This must embolden those in the Bush-Cheney camp fighting to get Hate Amendments on November ballots in several swing states. I think (but haven't verified) they've already succeeded in Michigan and Oregon (I'm optimistic that Kerry-Edwards will still win both states). I don't know what the status is on a Hate Amendment in Ohio, but if one got on the ballot there it would be particularly damaging to Kerry-Edwards. Originally, they tried to delay this Missouri Hate Amendment until the November ballot, but the MO Supreme Court said no.

It'll be interesting to see if any MO exit polls can tell us exactly how many voters were driven to the polls by Hate. I fear it was a lot.

I hate bigotry, and I try to be absolutely intolerant of intolerance, but instead of launching into an angrier diatribe I'll look at the passage of this amendment, and others like it, for what they are: temporary. Young people in this country are a lot more likely to know gay Americans who are out of the closet, and therefore are much more likely to see them not as deviant abstractions, but as multi-dimensional human beings who must share all the same rights under our federal and state constitutions as the rest of us. That's why – despite support for gay marriage continuing to be a minority position – polls over the last decade have shown rapid and consistent movement towards acceptance of gay rights. It may take us another decade or two, but we shall overcome.

The good news in Missouri today is that Claire McCaskill ousted Missouri's embattled sitting Democratic Governor, Bob Holden. By nearly all accounts (including results in Suvey USA polls that showed she whipped Holden pretty good in televised debates), she's the more formidable opponent for Matt "Baby" Blunt, who walked away with the Republican primary. Joining McCaskill on the Democratic ticket are senate candidate Nancy Farmer, lieutenant governor candidate Bekki Cook, and secretary of state candidate Robin Carnahan. I don't think you have to be an expert in MO politics to reasonably assume that this will help widen Kerry-Edwards' advantage with the women of Missouri. Whether it will widen Bush's advantge with those women's sons, fathers, and husbands I suppose could depend largely on their campaign trail performances.

Anyway, our chances to win Missouri look brighter than they did before yesterday.

August 3, 2004

Time Bandits

Here's Tom Ridge in his terrorizing press conference on Sunday:

As of now, this is what we know: Reports indicate that al-Qaida is targeting several specific buildings, including the International Monetary Fund and World Bank in the District of Columbia, Prudential Financial in northern New Jersey, and Citigroup buildings and the New York Stock Exchange in New York.

If articles in today's New York Times and Washington Post are right, then Ridge carelessly and misleadingly uses the present tense when he asserts "Reports indicate that al-Qaida is targeting several specific buildings...". Both articles make essentially the same claims, so here's WaPo:

Most of the al Qaeda surveillance of five financial institutions that led to a new terrorism alert Sunday was conducted before the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks and authorities are not sure whether the casing of the buildings has continued, numerous intelligence and law enforcement officials said yesterday.

More than half a dozen government officials interviewed yesterday, who declined to be identified because classified information is involved, said that most, if not all, of the information about the buildings seized by authorities in a raid in Pakistan last week was about three years old, and possibly older.

"There is nothing right now that we're hearing that is new," said one senior law enforcement official who was briefed on the alert. "Why did we go to this level? . . . I still don't know that."

One sure thing I can't figure out is why Ridge didn't just level with us? Why didn't he say that we've uncovered information that al-Qaeda had shown intense interest in these buildings at one time and, just to be safe, we're going to assume they're currently targeting them so we're going to beef up security?

Instead, Ridge uses words like "specific," "quality," "rare," "extraordinary," and "alarming," to describe intelligence that apparently refers to nothing more than potential targets. And, intentionally I'm afraid, he confuses us by refusing to make a clear distinction between intelligence on potential targets and a current, specific plot. After he read his statement, take a look at his verbal acrobatics when he gave a confusing answer to the all-important question about a specific plot:

QUESTION: Mr. Secretary, would you say it's fair to say that what has been uncovered here is a specific plot?

RIDGE: I think it's fair to say that we have more specific information about potential targets that I think you can conclude may be the subject of a particular plot.

Again, what is extraordinary about these particular sites is the considerable detail or quality of information regarding those sites. So, again, we have no specific information that says an attack is imminent, but given the specificity and quality of information around these sites, obviously one would conclude, if you were considering the potential attack, these might be among the targets.

I think Ridge's press conference would have been more truthful if he would have edited out everything but his thesis:

But we must understand that the kind of information available to us today is the result of the president's leadership in the war against terror, the reports that have led to this alert are the result of offensive intelligence and military operations overseas, as well as strong partnerships with our allies around the world, such as Pakistan.

Wow, it just happens to directly counter the Kerry-Edwards campaign theme, "Stronger at home, respected in the world."

These people – most notably Bush, Cheney, Ridge and Ashcroft – are shameless. They're much more interested in appearing tough on terrorists than actually being tough on terrorists. They clearly don't have any idea how to disrupt terrorist cells, otherwise they wouldn't have to make such a production out of touting the discovery of would-be targets. As long as they're in office spending so much time leveraging potential threats for their political gain, we're all less safe.

Another fraudultent story line put out by the Bush administration yesterday would have you believe that Bush is actually adopting the most signifigant intelligence re-structuring recommendation of the 9/11 Commission. He did no such thing. Josh Marshall explains.

August 2, 2004

Biden

On Meet the Press yesterday morning, the great Joe Biden rather bluntly made one of the best arguments against a Bush second term: his diplomatic impotence makes him unable to wage an effectively aggressive global war on terror, or other necessary wars, for that matter:

I mean, I'm obviously partisan on this. But if you stand back from it, does anybody think there's any possibility in a second four years George Bush is going to be able to rally the world to help us carry the burdens on anything? I mean, I'm not being facetious. I see no reasonable prospect of that. John Kerry will. Now, maybe it won't all work out the way it's supposed to. It's the only hope we have, and we cannot carry this burden alone, and I don't mean just Iraq. You have to have international cooperation to deal with the big problems we're going to face, and they relate from terror all the way to HIV and infectious diseases to ethnic cleansing.

And the irony is, what frustrates me, is this president, God love him, has made us weaker than before. I was the guy, as you remember, that pushed the last president before him, Clinton, to get into Bosnia and Kosovo. I beat up and about the head everyone who would listen to get involved. Can you imagine after the way George Bush has handled Iraq, another Milosevic, Us being able to gain the support, Democrat or Republican president, to use force legitimately? I think he's--and we've got to restore that. We've got to restore our credibility. And I don't see how George Bush can do that.

There's a lot more to be written about Kerry's general prospects of diplomatic success being infinitely greater than Bush's, but on the specific question of what kind of diplomatic options in Iraq would be available in a Kerry administration that are impossible in the current administration, Juan Cole has some answers.

Atwater Reincarnate

From The New York Times:

President Bush's campaign plans to use the normally quiet month of August for a vigorous drive to undercut John Kerry by turning attention away from his record in Vietnam to what the campaign described as an undistinguished and left-leaning record in the Senate.

Mr. Bush's advisers plan to cap the month at the Republican convention in New York, which they said would feature Mr. Kerry as an object of humor and calculated derision.

I was worried about the Democratic Convention becoming an "I hate Bush" pep rally, but it simply didn't happen. Several of the speeches, including Kerry's, were blistering toward Bush administration actions and policies, but I don't think any of the prime time speakers came even close to crossing the line by deriding Bush personally.

Now, Bush's advisers openly tell The Times they plan to rip Kerry apart by ridiculing him. Will they pay a price? I don't know, but well-orchestrated negative attacks tend to work in politics more often than not.

Kerry expects the attacks, of course, otherwise he might have left this out of his acceptance speech:

I want to address these next words directly to President George W. Bush: In the weeks ahead, let's be optimists, not just opponents. Let's build unity in the American family, not angry division. Let's honor this nation's diversity; let's respect one another; and let's never misuse for political purposes the most precious document in American history, the Constitution of the United States.

And John Edwards would have left this out of his speech:

But what have we seen? Relentless negative attacks against John. So in the weeks ahead, we know what's coming don't we? More negative attacks. Aren't you sick of it? They are doing all they can to take the campaign for the highest office in the land down the lowest possible road. But this is where you come in. Between now and November, you, the American people, you can reject this tired, old, hateful, negative politics of the past. And instead you can embrace the politics of hope, the politics of what's possible because this is America, where everything is possible.

Obviously, Kerry and Edwards intend to frame this as Bush-Cheney = mean and pessimistic vs. Kerry-Edwards = helpful and hopeful. They'll simply return fire by referring to the negativity itself, the "There they go again" offense.

What's going to be interesting, though, is if that alone doesn't work, will they use the Bush-Cheney first strike as an excuse to go nuclear themselves?

Another interesting question: with Edwards (who's still fully capable of making stealth attacks) established as "Mr. Optimism," which Kerry surrogate will emerge, if necessary, as no-holds-barred hit man? I have a feeling it's going to end up being Bob Kerrey. He'd love it.

July 30, 2004

The Presidentification of John Kerry

For months now, I've felt like I'm one of probably about 50 people in the country who was not just anti-Bush, but very pro-John Kerry. Finally, I feel like I've got a lot more company. Kerry didn't just exceed expectations; from what I'm reading, hearing, and sensing, he gained a lot of fans. Few predicted that.

I thought Kerry addressed the two central concerns about him: he responded to his "flip-flopper" tag by coming off as strong, determined, and decisive. He answered the "is he human or robot?" question by being passionate and caring.

Some criticized him for rushing through the speech – so he could fit the entire thing into prime time just before the networks go into local news, and he did even barrel over a "USA" chant (which I don't think I've seen any one else do before... pretty gutsy), but I think his speeded-up delivery actually gave him a fever pitch he wouldn't have had otherwise, and it worked for him.

But in the end, who cares what I think? It's all about what persuadable voters thought. If a week from now it looks like John Kerry closed the deal with some of them, then it was a great speech. If not, then it wasn't.

Still, I feel very hopeful about it. What I'm most excited about generally, though, is that Democrats have now had a convention where we took on Republicans directly on national defense. Republicans have been creaming us on this issue since Vietnam, and we've never recovered. Voters have trusted them more on defense issues in high double digits for decades. Finally, we've got a candidate and a message that allows us a great chance, at the very least, of neutralizing the issue.

More thoughts, disorganized:

1.    The Kerry daughters – Vanessa and Alexandra – were two of the most natural speakers to grace the podium. I only wish they'd been in prime time. I hope their sound bites get some play on the morning shows tomorrow, because they succeeded masterfully at humanizing their Dad in a way that Teresa did not on Tuesday night.

In fact, the whole rollout leading up to JK's speech was perfect: his daughters, the video biography was a presidential candidate's dream (Morgan Freeman's authoritative, steady, comforting narration perfectly matched the message – if the campaign had Freeman address all the Kerry "flip-flopper" accusations, they'd go away), and Kerry's great friend and fellow Vietnam vet, triple amputee Max Cleland, not only made a powerful picture but delivered a profoundly compelling speech, which he's not known for. This was my favorite part:

When John Kerry declared he was going to be a candidate of the highest office in our land the presidency of the United States on a hot, steamy day in Charleston, S.C. a little less than a year ago, I joined the band of brothers at his side. After the ceremony, I grabbed John's arm and pressed a little Bible into his hand. It was the Bible I once read from as a child. I knew that he would need the strength that it provided, the guidance it provided and the comfort it had to offer in the days ahead. At first, he said he was afraid he might lose it. He refused to take it. But I insisted. I told him, hold onto this. You'll need it like your country needs you now. He looked at me with those kind of long, sad eyes and said, I won't let you down. My fellow Americans, John Kerry has never let me down. And he won't let you down either. Why, why? Because he is an authentic American, an authentic American hero. He is the captain of our ship of state. And he will be the next president of the United States.

For anybody who may not have heard, Cleland lost his Georgia senate race in 2000 to Saxby Chambliss, who chose to air a campaign commercial juxtaposing Cleland with Osama bin Laden. You see, Cleland wanted worker protections in the Homeland Security Act, so he wasn't with us, he was with the terrorists. Never mind that George W. Bush opposed the creation of a Homeland Security Department for months. Never mind that Bush could have asked Chambliss privately or publically on one of the many campaign trips he made on his behalf for him to stop airing the ad. Never mind that a "bum knee" got Saxby Chambliss a deferment from having to serve in Vietnam. No, somehow Max Cleland, who left his limbs in Vietnam fighting for us, wanted the same weakly defended America as Osama bin Laden.

John Kerry vowed early in his primary run to never let the Republicans forget what they did to Max Cleland in Georgia. Max Cleland is never gonna let the Republicans forget about it either, and both men's speeches served as a just reminder tonight.

The icing on the cake of the build-up to Kerry's speech was his coming in from behind the crowd, State of the Union-style. Although Springsteen's "No Surrender" doesn't play during many presidential State of the Union entrances, it should.

2.   Long-time political operative and analyst, and West Wing producer Lawrence O'Donnell was on Charlie Rose last night talking about how millions more people will see extended sound bites of Kerry's speech on today's morning shows and on last night's local news broadcasts than saw it live last night. Therefore, the speech was designed not only as a coherent whole, but also to work in smaller snippets.

He also said that everybody who watches the cable network coverage – everybody – not only knows how they're gonna vote, but they know exactly where they stand on every piece of political news before it's delivered to them. I watch a tremendous amount of cable news, and I've got to admit I think O'Donnell has me, at least, pegged pretty well.

3.   Weaknesses? Kerry sweat too much, which is never good. Also, he'll get criticized for not addressing Iraq more specifically – both his vote to authorize the president and his plan going forward. If there's a way to address either of those things with specificity in a political speech and still be successful, I don't know what it is.

I disagree with those who say he should have to answer how he would vote on the Iraq War today, because he never voted to take the country to war in the first place. Those lines in his speech about not rushing to war aren’t post-occupation revisionist ass-covering: he warned Bush not to rush to war before it ever started (I heard him say several of those lines in tonight’s speech in person at a fundraiser in early 2003, before the war even started), and he couldn't have been more clear in saying that Bush had not exhausted the diplomatic options before he went. Kerry would have never taken us into that war — that’s the substantive reality. The political reality is that its perceived as Bush’s war, and he must pay the price for it.

Nonetheless, explaining to the masses his vote to give Bush authorization to use force after diplomcatic options had been exhausted is an impossible political sell, especially for a politician whose weakness is long-windedness and getting too deep into policy minutiae. He learned that lesson throughout 2003.

Kerry should continue to do exactly what he’s been doing: affirm exactly what his standards are in sending our troops to war (which intimates he wouldn’t have gone to war the way Bush did, because Bush didn't meet those standards), and address what we should do NOW. On the now part of it, he won't be able to draw up plans that are much more specific than what he outlined last night until he's commander in chief.

4.   I don't think Rove's "flip-flopper" and "weak on defense" attack lines are going to win him this election. In fact, I think he's played to a natural Kerry strength. Kerry may not have a great common touch, but strength and steadiness are in his body language, gaze, and voice. There was a lot of pressure for Kerry to prove himself a credible alternative going into this convention. I think he did it. Now the pressure goes back on Bush, and their game plan up to this point of pitting "steady leadership" vs. "flip-flopper" isn't gonna do it. They have to come up with something else, and it's got to be creative, because Kerry's answered their best shots in this convention and established himself as an elusive target.

5.   I'll write more about the text of Kerry's speech over the weekend. Wes Clark's, too, which some thought was the best speech of the night.

July 29, 2004

Unsurprised in July

A couple weeks ago, The New Republic posted an article, July Surprise?. Today, exactly what they reported might happen in the article happened. Here's the editor's note TNR now posts along with the original article:

[Editor's Note: This afternoon, Pakistan's interior minister, Faisal Saleh Hayyat, announced that Pakistani forces had captured Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani, a Tanzanian Al Qaeda operative wanted in connection with the 1998 bombings of U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. The timing of this announcement should be of particular interest to readers of The New Republic. Earlier this month, John B. Judis, Spencer Ackerman, and Massoud Ansari broke the story of how the Bush administration was pressuring Pakistani officials to apprehend high-value targets (HVTs) in time for the November elections--and in particular, to coincide with the Democratic National Convention. Although the capture took place in central Pakistan "a few days back," the announcement came just hours before John Kerry will give his acceptance speech in Boston.]

Although I have no reason to believe the administration's sitting on bin Laden or al Zawahiri, something like this reminds us they're not above it. If I were Karl Rove advising on the timing of an announcement of a household name high-value target, I'd avoid the obviousness of a major announcement on Kerry's convention day speech, and do it the day after. This would make Kerry's speech seem like old news.

Excerpts

The Los Angeles Times has up some advance excerpts from Kerry's speech.

Damn good stuff.

All he needs to do is weave it into a personal narrative and he'll hit a home run.

Convention Night #3: Hope Is on the Way

I don't have a good instinct about how well this presentation is playing (or if it's playing at all) among the swing state persuadables who will probably decide this election. But I'm pretty sure that just about everything rides on how well John Kerry comes off in tonight's speech. He's got 2 things going for him: relatively low expectations, and a history of giving his best performances under pressure.

As for last night's speeches...

Al Sharpton

Every once in awhile in politics, you've got to get off message in order to get real. I admired this passionate speech, and I didn't even find it that controversial. Besides calling Barack Obama "Obam Baracka," what did he say that was inaccurate?

Here's how Sharpton started off:

Last Friday, I had the experience in Detroit of hearing President George Bush make a speech. And in the speech, he asked certain questions. I hope he's watching tonight. I would like to answer your questions, Mr. President.

What he's talking about is a condescending speech Bush gave before the Urban League (after he became the first president since Warren Harding to reject all speaking invitations from the nation's largest civil rights group, the NAACP) in which he asked them to consider if it was a good idea to be giving all their votes to the Democratic Party, and to consider further whether the Democratic Party wasn't taking them for granted. Sharpton had some good answers:

Mr. President, you said would we have more leverage if both parties got our votes, but we didn't come this far playing political games. It was those that earned our vote that got our vote. We got the Civil Rights Act under a Democrat! We got the Voting Rights Act under a Democrat! We got the right to organize under Democrats!

Mr. President, the reason we are fighting so hard, the reason we took Florida so seriously, is our right to vote wasn't gained because of our age. Our vote was soaked in the blood of martyrs, soaked in the blood of good men (inaudible) soaked in the blood of four little girls in Birmingham. This vote is sacred to us.

This vote can't be bargained away.

This vote can't be given away.

Mr. President, in all due respect, Mr. President, read my lips: Our vote is not for sale.

Right around the time Sharpton spoke those words, Chris Matthews on MSNBC broke into his speech to remind the audience that Sharpton came to public attention on the basis of a lie (the Tawana Brawley case). I wanted to catch the rest of the speech, of course, so I immediately turned to CSPAN, but I was still astonished and infuriated by Matthews' complete disrespect for what Sharpton was saying. And then flipping around to catch the post-speech analysis on MSNBC, CNN, and Fox, I couldn't find a non-dismissive comment on the merits of the speech – there was only talk about how it was "divisive" and "off-message." It's outrageous that none of these "political analysts" – all of them even whiter than me – could even consider for a second that there might be some truth in Sharpton's speech.

After Lyndon Johnson signed the 1964 Civil Rights Act, he quietly predicted to fellow Democrat Bill Moyers, "I think we just delivered the South to the Republican Party for a long time to come." Of course, Johnson was right, and every serious historian agrees on why: because the Republican Party in a variety of ways has embraced and courted the racist, anti-civil rights sentiment in the South, sometimes overtly and other times in code, and it's come to define their "Southern strategy" in presidential elections.

For the cable news "analysts" to completely ignore this history in their dismissal of Sharpton's speech shows how much progress we still need to make in this country. It's sad.

By the way, if anybody wants a good recent example of a Southern Republican courting the racist vote, look no further than Haley Barbour's tragically successful race for Mississippi Governor last year.

A couple more Sharpton gems:

– "We never got the 40 acres. We went all the way to Herbert Hoover, and we never got the 40 acres.

We didn't get the mule. So we decided we'd ride this donkey as far as it would take us."

– "I suggest to you tonight that if George Bush had selected the court in '54, Clarence Thomas would have never got to law school."

John Edwards

1.   I heard about 70% of this speech many times, and it's fabulous. I'm glad it had its biggest audience yet.

2.   I'm confident the speech worked generally well tonight, too, but I think Edwards was slightly off. He's been getting over an illness, and I thought it affected his timing and power just a little bit.

3.   The tighter the shot is on Edwards, the better he comes off. The intimacy of the camera elevates him. I don't question his stature at all except when I see him in long or medium shots.

4.   I've glanced at a couple dozen headlines from papers across the country, and almost all of them have Edwards' name and image juxtaposed with different written descriptions, nearly all including the word "hope." Bingo.

5.    Edwards needs to get his pumping fists and thumbses ups a little more under control. Some of it seems contrived.

6.    I've heard from a few people – all women, actually – whose first impression of Edwards is that he's too slick. I also heard from a friend, but didn't see myself, that several people in an MSNBC focus group in Ohio were similarly struck by him. I encourage them all to do the same thing: watch him again. His intelligence and sincerity makes you forget about that quality. Actually, according to at least two different women I know, first he causes you to forget about that quality, and then he forces you to fall in love with him.

7.    Pictures of the Edwards family are political gold. The only problem is that his 4 year-old son Jack and 6 year-old daughter Emma Claire belie the fact that he's much older than he looks (51).

8.    The 30% or so of the speech that's new dealt with Iraq and al Qaeda, and most of those lines were very good. I trust him completely to make good foreign policy decisions because I know how smart he is and what good judgment he has, but his central struggle in this campaign will be to convince voters to trust him on national security issues.

9.    I loved this part, which Edwards delivered very passionately, with complete conviction, as he echoed Barack Obama:

And I've heard some discussions and debates around America about where and in front of what audiences we ought to talk about race and equality and civil rights. I have an answer to that question: Everywhere, everywhere, everywhere.

This is not an African-American issue. This is not a Latino issue. This is not an Asian-American issue. This is an American issue.

10.   This is very savvy, and right, and foreshadows what I expect to be Kerry's steeliness tonight:

And we, John and I, we will have one clear unmistakable message for Al Qaida and these terrorists: You cannot run. You cannot hide. We will destroy you.

11.   Everything he said on Iraq is completely right, I just hope people can buy the sunny Edwards being so tough and even militaristic. The debate with Cheney will be key, and I've got a lot of confidence in him.

12.   Elizabeth Edwards lack of podium polish works for her. She is a tremendous political asset. She's so effective I hope she'll do some pretty serious battleground state campaigning on her own.

July 28, 2004

Convention Night #2

President Obama

My Dad called me after Barack Obama's speech last night and we were both crying. It was an inspirational speech perfectly delivered, among the best either of us had ever heard, but what really turned us to sap was the sense we both had while watching that Obama would be our first black President, and there's a good chance together we'll live to see it.

T he speech reads very well, even without the aid of Obama's magnificent oratory. Some of the highlights:

– "My father was a foreign student, born and raised in a small village in Kenya. He grew up herding goats, went to school in a tin- roof shack. His father, my grandfather, was a cook, a domestic servant to the British.

But my grandfather had larger dreams for his son. Through hard work and perseverance my father got a scholarship to study in a magical place, America, that's shown as a beacon of freedom and opportunity to so many who had come before him.

While studying here my father met my mother. She was born in a town on the other side of the world, in Kansas.

Her father worked on oil rigs and farms through most of the Depression. The day after Pearl Harbor, my grandfather signed up for duty, joined Patton's army, marched across Europe. Back home my grandmother raised a baby and went to work on a bomber assembly line. After the war, they studied on the GI Bill, bought a house through FHA and later moved west, all the way to Hawaii, in search of opportunity.

And they too had big dreams for their daughter, a common dream born of two continents.

My parents shared not only an improbable love; they shared an abiding faith in the possibilities of this nation. They would give me an African name, Barack, or "blessed," believing that in a tolerant America, your name is no barrier to success."

– "Now, don't get me wrong, the people I meet in small towns and big cities and diners and office parks, they don't expect government to solves all of their problems. They know they have to work hard to get a head. And they want to.

Go into the collar counties around Chicago, and people will tell you: They don't want their tax money wasted by a welfare agency or by the Pentagon.

Go into any inner-city neighborhood, and folks will tell you that government alone can't teach kids to learn.

They know that parents have to teach, that children can't achieve unless we raise their expectations and turn off the television sets and eradicate the slander that says a black youth with a book is acting white. They know those things.

People don't expect -- people don't expect government to solve all their problems. But they sense, deep in their bones, that with just a slight change in priorities, we can make sure that every child in America has a decent shot at life and that the doors of opportunity remain open to all. They know we can do better. And they want that choice."

– "When we send our young men and women into harm's way, we have a solemn obligation not to fudge the numbers or shade the truth about why they are going, to care for their families while they're gone, to tend to the soldiers upon their return and to never, ever go to war without enough troops to win the war, secure the peace and earn the respect of the world."

– "John Kerry believes in America. And he knows that it's not enough for just some of us to prosper. For alongside our famous individualism, there's another ingredient in the American saga, a belief that we are all connected as one people.

If there's a child on the south side of Chicago who can't read, that matters to me, even if it's not my child.

If there's a senior citizen somewhere who can't pay for their prescription and having to choose between medicine and the rent, that makes my life poorer, even if it's not my grandparent.

If there's an Arab-American family being rounded up without benefit of an attorney or due process, that threatens my civil liberties.

It is that fundamental belief -- it is that fundamental belief -- I am my brother's keeper, I am my sisters' keeper -- that makes this country work.

It's what allows us to pursue our individual dreams, yet still come together as a single American family: "E pluribus unum," out of many, one."

– "The pundits, the pundits like to slice and dice our country into red states and blue States: red states for Republicans, blue States for Democrats. But I've got news for them, too. We worship an awesome God in the blue states, and we don't like federal agents poking around our libraries in the red states.

We coach little league in the blue states and, yes, we've got some gay friends in the red states.

There are patriots who opposed the war in Iraq, and there are patriots who supported the war in Iraq.

We are one people, all of us pledging allegiance to the stars and stripes, all of us defending the United States of America."

– "Do we participate in a politics of cynicism, or do we participate in a politics of hope?

John Kerry calls on us to hope. John Edwards calls on us to hope. I'm not talking about blind optimism here, the almost willful ignorance that thinks unemployment will go away if we just don't think about it, or health care crisis will solve itself if we just ignore it.

That's not what I'm talking. I'm talking about something more substantial. It's the hope of slaves sitting around a fire singing freedom songs; the hope of immigrants setting out for distant shores; the hope of a young naval lieutenant bravely patrolling the Mekong Delta; the hope of a millworker's son who dares to defy the odds; the hope of a skinny kid with a funny name who believes that America has a place for him, too.

Hope in the face of difficulty, hope in the face of uncertainty, the audacity of hope: In the end, that is God's greatest gift to us, the bedrock of this nation, a belief in things not seen, a belief that there are better days ahead.

I believe that we can give our middle class relief and provide working families with a road to opportunity.

I believe we can provide jobs for the jobless, homes to the homeless, and reclaim young people in cities across America from violence and despair."

As you can see, this speech unifies as it splendidly blends classic liberalism with classic conservatism, broadly defining where government's role begins and ends.

The only problem is that more people didn't see it. I understand that there probably aren't all that many people outside political junkheads like myself who will watch anything other than Kerry's speech Thursday night, but there are still several million more watching during the network's prime time coverage than at any other time. Obama ended just before the network coverage began and there's got to be some head-shaking in the Kerry campaign that they couldn't fit him in [update: I'm told the networks didn't carry ANY of the convention last night, but that Chicago stations broke into their regular programming to air the speech – that's cool, but would have been much cooler had Ohio, Florida, and Missouri done it].

Oh, well. A star is born, hopefully one who will be around for a long time, and perhaps even change history.

By the way, Illinois Republicans still haven't come up with a sacrificial lamb to oppose Obama. It's a remarkably rare thing for a non-incumbent to run unopposed, but it's possible here [update: Jack Ryan never officially dropped off the ballot, so it looks like the GOP's best option is to ask him to stay on – that's not quite running unopposed, but same effect].

Teresa Heinz Kerry

Teresa Heinz Kerry is a sophisticated, exotic, uncommon American. I value all those attributes, but unfortuntely many voters don't. I'm curious to see how people respond to her as the campaign goes on, but I think it's right both politically and morally for the Kerry campaign to just "let Teresa be Teresa." She showed a lot of herself last night, and I liked her.

I think her speech was a little too long, though. Also, while she made some very good points in her case for her husband, it's frustrating that she can't find better ways to be a more humanizing character witness for him, talk about some of the things she shares with her husband that make both of them more relatable (John and Elizabeth Edwards have mastered this political art, just take a look at any of their joint interviews and you'll see what I'm talking about). Both John and Teresa have said they see their staunch Catholicism as a mostly private matter, and I admire their refusal to exploit it, but I wish she'd at least let Catholics out there know that they're connected by a shared Catholic faith. I don't think revealing that simple fact is too much political whoring, and I think it would probably help in some important regions.

Some of her best stuff:

– "And tonight, as I have done throughout this campaign, I would like to speak to you from my heart. Y a todos los Hispanos y los Latinos...

... a tous les Franco-Americain...

... a tutti Italiani...

... a toda a familia Portugesa e Brazileria...

... and to all the continental Africans living in this country...

... and to all new Americans in our country, I invite you to join our conversation and together with us work toward the noblest purpose of all: a free, good and democratic society."

– "As a young woman, I attended Witwatersrand University in Johannesburg, South Africa, which was then not segregated.

But I witnessed the weight of Apartheid everywhere around me. And so with my fellow students, we marched in the streets of Johannesburg against its extension into higher education.

This was the late 1950s at the dawn of civil rights marches in America. And, as history records, our efforts in South Africa failed, and the Higher Education Apartheid Act passed. Apartheid tightened its ugly grips. The Sharpeville Riots followed. And Nelson Mandela was arrested and sent to Robben Island.

I learned something then. And I believe it still. There is a value in taking a stand, whether or not anybody may be noticing it, and whether or not it is a risky thing to do."

– "My right to speak my mind, to have a voice, to be what some have called "opinionated"...

... is a right I deeply and profoundly cherish.

And my only hope is that one day soon, My only hope is that, one day soon, women, who have all earned their right to their opinions...

... instead of being labeled opinionated will be called smart and well-informed, just like men."

Gotta rest the back. I'll get to Reagan, Dean, and Kennedy later...

July 27, 2004

Opening Night at the Convention, Part III

Hillary

Best line:

– "John Kerry is a serious man for a serious job at a serious time in our country."

Hillary's not a great speaker, and she didn't have much to do other than introduce her husband, but she did okay. All the people that accuse her of selfishly wanting Kerry to lose because she wants to run herself in 2008 are full of shit. She's raised a lot of money for him, and been an otherwise faithful advocate.

The only thing I'd add is that even though everything she said about health care was right, I don't think it's a great idea for Hillary to be delivering the health care message in prime time on Kerry's behalf, only because many voters associate her, unfairly, with health care socialism.

Billy Jeff Clinton

Best lines:

– "Everyone had to sacrifice except the wealthiest Americans, who wanted to do their part but were asked only to expend the energy necessary to open the envelopes containing our tax cuts."

– "In this year’s budget, the White House wants to cut off federal funding for 88,000 uniformed police, including more than 700 on the New York City police force who put their lives on the line on 9/11. As gang violence is rising and we look for terrorists in our midst, Congress and the President are also about to allow the ten-year-old ban on assault weapons to expire. Our crime policy was to put more police on the streets and take assault weapons off the streets. It brought eight years of declining crime and violence. Their policy is the reverse, they’re taking police off the streets and putting assault weapons back on the streets. If you agree with their choices, vote to continue them. If not, join John Kerry, John Edwards and the Democrats in making America safer, smarter, and stronger."

– "We Americans must choose for President one of two strong men who both love our country, but who have very different worldviews: Democrats favor shared responsibility, shared opportunity, and more global cooperation. Republicans favor concentrated wealth and power, leaving people to fend for themselves and more unilateral action."

– "During the Vietnam War, many young men—including the current president, the vice president and me—could have gone to Vietnam but didn’t. John Kerry came from a privileged background and could have avoided it too. Instead he said, send me."

– "Strength and wisdom are not conflicting values—they go hand in hand."

This was one of the best delivered speeches of Clinton's career, and that's saying a hell of a lot. I giggled through much of it. The Kerry campaign could use it as an outline for how to frame the rest of the race.

The only possible problem I wonder about is if he's become such an icon of the masterful political performance that the man doesn't overwhelm the message. I know I still hear what he's saying, but I'm sometimes distracted marvelling at how well he says it. He's the ultimate political salesman.

Lumping himself as a draft dodger along with Bush and Cheney is selfless and brilliant. I loved it the first time I heard it (months ago), I loved it during this speech, and I'll love it the other hundred times I hope to hear it before November 2. It's also hilarious to hear him talk about how he doesn't know why Republicans have changed their mind about him and showered him with these generous tax cuts. It's ironic that they're working so hard to line Satan's pockets.

Also, it hasn't been a frequently cited part of his speech, but Clinton got elected in part because he presented himself in 1992 and 1996 as tough on law and order issues, which Republicans used to beat Democrats over the head with in decades of elections pre-Clinton. Now, there's no getting around the fact that this president has reduced the number of cops on our streets – one of the only surefire ways to make them safer – just as he's allowed the assault weapons ban to expire. Any way you measure it, whether at home or abroad, this administration is weak on defense.

Opening Night at the Convention, Part II

Remembrance of 9/11

This was very well done, because the focus was truly on remembering the tragedy of that day as it affected all Americans. As the Muslim woman (I'm sorry, I missed her name, now I can't find it, and I'm on limited writing time with my prematurely elderly back [update: her name is Haleema Salie]) who lost more than one family member on 9/11 said, "What unites us is stronger than what divides us."

RNC Chairman Ed Gillespie today said that last night's 9/11 tribute has now made talk of the tragedy "a legitimate part of the conventions." Of course, there's a big difference between last night's tribute to American loss and American unity and the way Bush-Cheney '04 has used the tragedy – starting on about 9/12 – to highlight what they see as Bush's own heroism on 9/11 and thereafter. When they try to exploit 9/11 at their convention, which obviously has been their plan all along, the important thing for Democrats to emphasize is that 9/11 happened to us, not just him, as much as Bush-Cheney would like to eliminate the distinction.

Reverend David Alston

Reverend David Alston, a crewmate of John Kerry's on PCF 94 in the Mekong Delta, testified about Kerry's "brave, wise, decisive" leadership. He also spoke about what a caring leader Kerry was, something you often hear the other crewmates mention.

I hate to say it, but I think Alston's delivery diluted the message of the speech. He orated it, and I think a quieter, more personal tone would have been more effective.

What his crewmates witnessed of Kerry in Vietnam is enormously imporant in contradicting this "flip-flopper" nonsense. What Republicans are really saying with this line of attack is that Kerry's not made of anything, that he's an opportunist missing a solid core. If coreless opportunists repeatedly risk their lives for other men, like Kerry did, then we need more of them.

Gotta rest the back. I'll cover The Mother of all convention speakers, Bill Clinton, when I return...

The Convention: Opening Night

Tonight was everything it needed to be, and a little more.

Nearly everyone agrees, the Democrats at this convention are more unified than ever. Usually that would involve some strong-arming, but my sense is that Democrats of all kinds are eager to submerge their usual piques in order to conquer a president they believe to be a clear and present danger to the America they know and imagine. This has made the Kerry campaign's job much easier, but they still deserve credit for arranging the parts to create a pitch-perfect opening statement.

My reaction to each piece:

Al Gore

Best lines:

– "I prefer to focus on the future because I know from my own experience that America is a land of opportunity, where every little boy and girl has a chance to grow up and win the popular vote."

– "The first lesson is this: take it from me – every vote counts."

Even a cold-hearted Republican has to feel a little bit sorry for Al Gore. The man not only won the popular vote, but he also won the state of Florida using any standard for counting votes state-wide. While he should be president, he's remembered mostly as a comically awkward politician who ran a horrible campaign. It's not entirely fair, but I think Gore has to embrace that identity. If he tries to fight that image, as he has in some recent appearances when he's said some great things but appeared completely unhinged, he comes off as an indignant victim. When he brands himself as a wronged, lovable loser – as he did tonight – he can be a highly compelling, effective leader within the Democratic Party (although I highly doubt he'll ever hold elected office again).

The text of Gore's speech was excellent. Great self-deprecating humor to start off, then he started picking at the wound. The cliche "every vote counts" sounds completely original coming from his mouth; he owns those words like nobody ever has, and hopefully like no one else ever will.

As with the other speakers I saw tonight, he didn't utter the words "George W. Bush." I presume that's a tactical decision by the Kerry campaign to prevent anyone from personalizing their criticisms, and that's great strategy.

He's also the right guy to be making a plea (and warning) to the Nader voters, and I thought it was effective.

The only problem I had with Gore's speech is that he rushed through much of it, but most of his delivery was nearly as good as I've ever heard him. He may have been really time-conscientious, which is a good thing for the Democratic Party. I was only a few months old, but I understand George McGovern gave his acceptance speech at 3 o'clock in the morning at the 1972 convention. Even Bill Clinton finished his speech within about a half hour tonight!

Jimmy Carter

Best lines:

– "Today, our Democratic party is led by another former naval officer—one who volunteered for military service. He showed up when assigned to duty, and he served with honor and distinction."

– "Today, our dominant international challenge is to restore the greatness of America—based on telling the truth, a commitment to peace, and respect for civil liberties at home and basic human rights around the world. Truth is the foundation of our global leadership, but our credibility has been shattered and we are left increasingly isolated and vulnerable in a hostile world. Without truth—without trust—America cannot flourish. Trust is at the very heart of our democracy, the sacred covenant between the president and the people."

– "At stake is nothing less than our nation’s soul."

Wow. Carter's speech was extraordinarily harsh, but he delivered it as a gentle old man and recent Nobel Peace Prize winner. Some may still see him as a failed president, but all former presidents' favorability ratings tend to rise with the length they've been out of office, and Carter is our most accomplished former president in his near quarter century post-White House. I hope a lot of people were watching him.

Like everyone else, he couldn't seem too nasty because he didn't even say Bush's name, but make no mistake: he was nasty. His praising John Kerry for having "showed up when assigned to duty" had an obvious target, and somebody needed to say it. It's good that it came from someone of Carter's stature. (By the way, Bush's National Guard payroll records that the Pentagon reported "inadvertently destroyed" happened to show up late last Friday evening when no one was paying attention, and they proved what nobody really denies – Bush was absent from the Alabama Guard for several months in 1972).

Carter's speech tells 3 true stories very clearly:

I. Kerry's a wise and brave war hero prepared to be commander in chief.

II. Bush's extremism has betrayed America's traditional values, squandered the goodwill of the world, and made us less safe.

III. Kerry can turn that around, and must be given the chance.

I hurt my lower back yesterday and can't sit down for too long, so I'll continue my review of last night later...

July 26, 2004

The Convention

When Republicans try to raise expectations for this Democratic Convention, they often point to Bill Clinton's 16 point bounce after the 1992 convention. What they don't tell you is that Clinton was stuck below 30% in the polls up to that point, so he didn't just have a lot to gain with swing voters, but with Democrats.

John Kerry is polling at about 46% to 48% nationally right now. Bush has about 45% that seem pretty solid for him. So it's extremely doubtful that we'll see a big bounce for Kerry post-convention, no matter how well it goes. There simply isn't a large percentage of voters who haven't already been tapped.

Nonetheless, I do think this is a very important few days for Kerry. Not only is Kerry a complicated guy to begin with, but Bush-Cheney has spent over $100 million on ads telling voters he's awful, and Kerry has spent about $80 million on ads saying he's awesome, so a lot of people are understandably confused. Some of the confused make up the 46% to 48% who say they're voting for him, but aren't entirely locked in, and others are disinclined to vote for Bush but want to be convinced that Kerry's not worse.

While the networks are giving this convention even less coverage than the last one (which had less coverage than the one before it), Kerry's speech Thursday night will still be seen by more people than have ever seen him before, and just as important as their reaction will be its reception by the news media afterwards. It could really make or break his image with the persuadables.

If I were him, I'd focus like a laser beam on countering the "flip-flopper" tag. Some of that will entail Kerry just looking and sounding "strong" and full of conviction, laying out a clear agenda. It should also include drawing a dramatic through-line from his personal biography to his public service record, much of which can be done by testimony from others before he takes the stage. But I also hope Kerry's made sure some of the juiciest sound bites in his speech mock the whole "flip-flopper" idea.

I have a couple main worries about this convention that have been alleviated somewhat by recent happenings.

One is that with Kennedy, the Clintons, Gore, and Carter given high-profile speaking slots, we'd appear more backward than forward-looking. But Barack Obama (recently chosen to give the keynote address Tuesday night), John Edwards, and John Kerry are the featured speakers Tuesday-Thursday, and all 3 are fresh faces nationally who intend to focus on themes of optimism and progress.

The other worry is that this would become too negative with the Bush bashing, but Dems at the convention appear to be heeding Kerry's call to cool it. Let's hope they continue, because Bush hatred is going to be there through election day no matter what, and wasting valuable time on it during the convention is counter-productive. Of course we've got to bring in a little Bush comedy, I just don't want it to be incessant and too mean-spirited...

July 23, 2004

9/11 Commission Report

Here's the 9/11 Commission's website, where the full report can be downloaded. The staff statements also add insight, and tend to be more detailed (from what I've read so far) on certain subjects. You can also get a copy at any bookstore for $10, which is what I did.

Here are some of my reactions after having read a little of it carefully, and having skimmed through most of it:

1. This is a great country we live in, and I really mean it. How cool is it that this report, the subject of so much controversy, has been made so readily available to every U.S. citizen on-line and at bookstores? People may not be interested in the information, but in this case they can't blame their government for not supplying it.

2. Chairman Thomas Kean and Vice Chairman Lee Hamilton have both valued transparency and bipartisan agreement throughout their careers, and they've earned their reputations for that once again. They've done an extraordinary job leading this commission. If you didn't know which party each was from, you wouldn't be able to tell from any of their interviews (if you didn't know, Kean's a Republican and Hamilton's a Democrat).

Sure, the other 4 Democrats and 4 Republicans – to varying degrees – were harder on their party's opponents during questioning at the hearings, but it was never the kind of partisanship where people lead all their senses toward a pre-ordained conclusion, as often happens in congress (the Henry Hyde-led Judiciary Committee during the impeachment proceedings is the textbook example of that kind of numbskull partisanship; by the way, that's what this commission might have looked like had Bush gotten his original appointee, Henry Kissinger, to lead the commission). Instead, this group of 10 have put forward a set of meticulously established facts and a well-thought out set of prescriptions. They focus on fixing systemic problems in a comprehensive way, and don't assign much individual blame.

Somebody like me, of course, wishes they were a little more blunt in their assessments of Bush administration inaction, and those on the other side must be frustrated they didn't criticize Clinton more. Ultimately, though, they were fair, and usually let the facts make their own indictments. For instance, Chapter 8: "The System Was Blinking Red," makes it pretty clear that Bush and Rice were completely incompetent in dealing with the various pre-9/11 warnings, but you have to arrive at that by processing irrefutable facts, not by commission proclamation. It's more powerful that way.

3. Chapter 12: "What To Do? A Global Strategy" and Chapter 13: "How to Do It? A Different Way of Organizing the Government," are extremely impressive, and crystallize what I believe to be a lot of the best thinking out there on a comprehensive way to wage an effective war on terrorism and protect American citizens.

Chapter 12 suggests ways not just to attack the current terrorists, but to stop the growth of terrorism, particularly by engaging the stuggle of ideas and multilateral relationships. It also outlines a number of specific ways we can protect against and prepare for terrorist attacks locally.

Chapter 13 suggests a national counterterrorism center, a national intelligence director with vast budgetary authority, a variety of measures that would make the system more open and accountable, and new ways for congress and homeland security to be more effective.

4. These proposals are extraordinarily ambitious, but I don't think they're pie-in-the-sky, and I understand McCain and Lieberman have co-sponsored a bill to begin enacting some of the tangible recommendations. Nothing's going to happen any time soon, almost surely, because congress isn't even in session much before the election. If there's any justice, there will be an intense focus on debating these specific proposals, though, and they'll become central to the presidential debate.

5. God damn George Bush. If he wouldn't have stalled the establishment of this commission for 18 months, we'd be much further along in this process, and we'd be safer.

6. I was struck by the differences between Bush and Kerry during their public statements yesterday. Kerry is ready to go full-steam ahead with a lot of these proposals, especially the specific reorganization proposals, including the appointment of a national intelligence director. Bush seemed really political, hedging on specifics while speaking in his usual platitudes about "good work" done by the commission and his advisors "taking a serious look" at what's been proposed.

This is a real opporunity for Kerry to show his superior substance and put some of this flip-flopper crap to bed. He's very, very comfortable navigating his way through these kinds of complex policy proposals, and has decades of experience doing it. He was very clear yesterday while Bush looked like a politician.

Remember the 2002 elections? One of the reasons the Republicans did so well was that Bush made it look like he had supported the creation of the homeland security department all-along and Democrats had been holding it up. Of course, it was Lieberman who had proposed it in the first place and Bush had rejected it publically. He flipped on it, though, wisely stole it as an issue, and ironically used it to batter Democrats as he traveled all over the country.

The difference this cycle, I hope, is that Bush isn't dealing with a bunch of anonymous Democrats; he's in a chess match with John Kerry, who's been positioning himself professionally a lot longer than he has. And, if the reports that Bush is hostile to the appointment of a national intelligence director as well as some of the other primary proposals, his only hope is to flip-flop once again. Even if he does, though, he won't be able to credibly co-opt the issue, because Kerry's out front.

July 22, 2004

Berger

One more thing about Berger: while there's no doubt Republicans aren't as concerned about anything Sandy Berger did as they are about distracting the public from the 9/11 Commission report and the Democratic National Convention, there's no getting around the fact that Berger is a moron for not releasing this himself months ago.

His surrogates have been on several shows saying basically that the Justice Department screwed him by leaking this at the most politically inopportune time – and they're right – but what in the world did he expect from Ashcroft's Justice Department? The reality of politics is if you're there to get screwed by your opponents, you'll get screwed by your opponents.

Sandy Berger knows this, and he could have controlled this information much better and saved Democrats a big headache if he had faced reality and announced the allegations against him framed by his response in a press conference last year (around Christmas time would have been good). Perhaps the main reason he didn't do this is because he thought it would jeopardize his chance to be secretary of state in an incoming Democratic administration (he's always mentioned on a short list of candidates), which is both selfish and delusional thinking. His chances were jeopardized once the investigation started, so he should have cut his losses. Instead, he's burdened his party with this. It's aggravating.

July 21, 2004

Berger

5 Things You Can Tell Them About This Sandy Berger Stuff

1. So Republicans have scored some political points and put Democrats on the defensive by leaking sketchy information about a nine month-old FBI investigation of Clinton National Security Advisor and Kerry campaign advisor Sandy Berger. Do they really think that's more important than what's gonna become official tomorrow with the release of the 9/11 Commission report, including the fact that nearly every argument the administration made (or insinuated) pushing war with Iraq actually applied not to Iraq but to Iran?

2. Republicans argue that Berger was trying to cover up something by removing notes and copies of documents from the National Archive (where Berger spent dozens of hours in a secure reading room poring over thousands of documents in preparation for his 9/11 Commission testimony). First off, the 9/11 Commission says it didn't affect their work at all. Secondly, of course it didn't, because from what I've read Berger is only accused of taking his own notes and copies of documents, nothing that each member of the 9/11 Commission needed or wouldn't already have. Thirdly, the copies Berger took were of a Richard Clarke after-action memo on the foiled millenium bombing attempt of LAX, a memo that's been widely reported on in various publications and something that makes the Clinton administration look good.

3. Republicans like Pennsylvania Senator and gay-hatred aficionado have made shadowy claims that somehow Berger stole the copies for the benefit of a Kerry press conference on port security. Santorum yesterday:

Right after the documents were taken, John Kerry held a photo op and attacked the president on port security. The documents that were taken may have been utilized for that press conference [!].

First, there's simply no evidence for that.

Second, Rick Santorum may have enjoyed sex with animals.

4. Maybe Sandy Berger did something illegal. If he did, he'll be charged, and we'll have some specific allegations to talk about, and we can avoid much of this partisan, Santorumesque nonsense.

5. If we're gonna get into classification issues, let's have a long conversation about the Bush administration's shamefully political classification and declassification measures. According to National Security Archive analyst John Prados, writing in The New Republic, "Bush is the first president since Richard Nixon to try to brandish declassification as a political weapon." I think you'd find bipartisan agreement with that in Washington, at least privately.

Girlie-Men Problem Solved

So here's the silly quote:

"If they don't have the guts to come up here in front of you and say, 'I don't want to represent you, I want to represent those special interests, the unions, the trial lawyers … if they don't have the guts, I call them girlie men,'" Schwarzenegger said to the cheering crowd at a mall food court in Ontario.

Democrats have been too serious complaining about this "girlie men" thing, and Arnold's laughing right over them again. The only way for Democrats to beat Arnold is with their own nasty, silly, political theatre. One should stand up and wink and smile this before the cameras:

We all know Arnold has problems with girls. We don't.

War President, We Hardly Knew Ye'

Peace President George W. Bush, yesterday:

Nobody wants to be the war president. I want to be the peace president.

War President George W. Bush on Meet the Press, February 8, 2004:

I'm a war president.

The flip-flop president, maybe?

July 20, 2004

Ready to Rumble

From The New York Times:

Mindful of the election problems in Florida four years ago, aides to Senator John Kerry, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, say his campaign is putting together a far more intricate set of legal safeguards than any presidential candidate before him to monitor the election.

Aides to Mr. Kerry say the campaign is taking the unusual step of setting up a nationwide legal network under its own umbrella, rather than relying, as in the past, on lawyers associated with state Democratic parties. The aides said they were recruiting people based on their skills as litigators and election lawyers, rather than rewarding political connections or big donors.

Lawyers for the campaign are gathering intelligence and preparing litigation over the ballot machines being used and the rules concerning how voters will be registered or their votes disqualified. In some cases, the lawyers are compiling dossiers on the people involved and their track records on enforcing voting rights. The disputed 2000 presidential election remains a fresh wound for Democrats, and Mr. Kerry has been referring to it on the stump while assuring his audiences that he will not let this year's election be a repeat of the 2000 vote.

You figure there will be some very dirty ground battles before and perhaps after the election, so it’s both good politics and good management for Kerry to lead Democrats into fighting shape and reassure those – especially African Americans who are understandably afraid that they’ll again encounter problems at the polls – that his campaign is ready to fight. Some historical perspective:

Robert Bauer, a partner of Mr. Elias's who is overseeing the Kerry legal effort, took a historical view of what he called "warfare over the electoral franchise." The first phase, he said, concerned who was entitled to vote and included the all-white primary, literacy tests and poll taxes that were eliminated in the mid-20th century. The second phase was fought largely over the dilution of the vote along racial lines and used the Voting Rights Act, he said.

"Now, we're into a third phase, that was exemplified by Bush-Gore, of franchise restrictions that are accomplished through manipulations of the elections administration process or of the law," Mr. Bauer said. "It's about people who somehow can't register, or can't vote, or their vote isn't counted, and it's done not frontally, but through legal manipulations."

This is the kind of crap Bauer intends to stop:

…in the special Congressional election there [South Dakota] last month, Native Americans reported widespread discrepancies in the application of the rules, said Jacqueline Johnson, executive director of the National Congress of American Indians. In some places, Ms. Johnson said, signs went up at polling places warning, "No I.D., no vote," even though the law allows voters to sign an affidavit if they do not have valid identification. Elsewhere, she said, people living as far as 60 miles from polling places were sent home to get identification, and partisan poll watchers sometimes insisted that voters instead fill out provisional ballots. Ms. Johnson said such ballots were more likely to be disqualified on challenges.

Not mentioned in the article is the fact that the felon purge list in Florida was finally discarded, despite the continued, deplorably anti-democratic gamesmanship of a few high office holders in Florida, one of whom happens to maintain a familial stake in the election. From The St. Petersburg Times:

The state had tried to keep the list a secret. It fought a lawsuit aimed at opening the records to the public. A series of errors emerged once a Tallahassee judge rejected the state's arguments and released the records on July 1.

The error that proved final - and garnered national attention - was that Hispanics were largely overlooked because of glitches in how the state records information about race and ethnicity.

The list was created by cross-checking voter registration and criminal records. Of the more than 47,000 voters on the potential felon list, Hispanics made up one tenth of 1 percent - this in a state where nearly 1 in 5 residents is Hispanic.

Florida Secretary of State Glenda Hood issued a written statement Saturday saying the exclusion of Hispanics was "unintentional and unforeseen."

"We are deeply concerned and disappointed that this has occurred," Hood said. Many Hispanic voters vote Republican. That they were largely omitted from a list disproportionately weighted with Democratic-leaning blacks has fueled theories that voter rolls were being manipulated for political motives. State officials said it was data errors, not politics, that excluded Hispanics from the list.

"Not including Hispanic felons that may be voters on the list . . . was an oversight and a mistake. . . . And we accept responsibility and that's why we're pulling it back," said Gov. Jeb Bush, who was in Fort Lauderdale on Saturday at an "African-Americans for Bush" rally in support of his brother's re-election as president.

Let me get this straight: Bush and Hood fight to keep their list a secret and go forward with plans to purge, but after it's made public they acknowledge errors, apologize and say, "Damn, I guess we just won't use it." Unbelievable.

Are Glenda Hood and Jeb Bush completely crooked, unimaginably incompetent, or both? There are no other options.

July 19, 2004

Clinton on Race

Here's a great little interview with Bill Clinton on race in America. I only wish it were longer.

During Clinton's term, the African American unemployment rate fell 6.2% nationally; median African American household income increased 21% – outpacing the rate of growth for all Americans; African American home ownership rates went way up; the African American poverty rates declined signifigantly; and the Clinton Earned Income Tax Credit helped lift over a million African Americans out of poverty. And those are just a few of the highlights (by the way, he doesn't mention many in the interview, which is mostly about the future). Diverse economic improvement under Clinton was extraordinary, and a highly underrated part of his legacy.

Meanwhile, our current President is the first American President since Warren G. Harding to refuse to speak before the NAACP, mostly because he's got nothing to talk about.

Da Great Ali G

Da Ali G Show is back on HBO with new episodes, beginning with "Respek." I think it makes me laugh out loud more than any television show I've ever seen.

July 18, 2004

Re-examination

I want to elaborate on what I wrote in my last post, because I've given it some more thought today.

I may have gone too far when I wrote that Bush's assertion that he couldn't do his job without God speaking through him "establishes Bush as a bonafide theocrat, not unlike Osama bin Laden."

Let me be clear: I don't think Bush wants America ruled by one Christian religious authority, like bin Laden clearly wants the world ruled by his perverted notion of Islam. But I do think both men share the conviction that they have a divine mission and that God/Allah has let them know precisely what it is and trusts them to carry it out. This conviction isn't necessarily bad in and of itself – there are numerous examples of great historical figures who shared a similar conviction and used it to make the world more peaceful.

What's wrong with both Bush's and bin Laden's practice of divine mission, though, is not only that they see it as inseparable from their political mission, but also that each has used his religion as a political justification.

Reinhold Niebuhr said it much better than I ever could:

We can approach a solution of the problem of relating religious commitments to political decisions by excluding two answers which have already been shown to be in error. The one wrong answer is to find no relevance at all between our faith and our political actions. This answer is wrong because it denies the seriousness of our political decisions and obscures our Christian responsibilities for the good order and justice of our civil community.

The other wrong answer stands at the opposite extreme. It is to equate religious and political commitments and to regard every political decision as simply derived from our faith. This is a wrong answer because political issues deal with complex problems of justice, every solution for which contains morally ambiguous elements. All political positions are morally ambiguous because, in the realm of politics and economics, self-interest and power must be harnessed and beguiled rather than eliminated. In other words, forces which are morally dangerous must be used despite their peril. Politics always aims at some kind of a harmony or balance of interest, and such a harmony cannot be regarded as directly related to the final harmony of love of the Kingdom of God. All men are naturally inclined to obscure the morally ambiguous element in their political cause by investing it with religious sanctity. This is why religion is more frequently a source of confusion than of light in the political realm. The tendency to equate our political with our Christian convictions causes politics to generate idolatry.

July 17, 2004

Theocracy, American-Style

Via Political Wire:

"I trust God speaks through me. Without that, I couldn’t do my job."

– President Bush, quoted in the Lancaster New Era, during a private meeting with an Amish group.

As far as the first part of that statement – if Bush were truly a religious person, he'd be praying for God to speak through him, not merely trusting that God does speak through him.

It's the second part of the statement that's most alarming, though, because it establishes Bush as a bonafide theocrat, not unlike Osama bin Laden.

July 16, 2004

Republican Hypocrisy

Usually, the anonymous political chain emails I receive are inaccurate or at least shamelessly thin, but this one cleverly exposes several disingenuous Republican arguments:

Things you have to believe to be a Republican today:

Saddam was a good guy when Reagan armed him, a bad guy when Bush's daddy made war on him, a good guy when Cheney did business with him and a bad guy when Bush needed a "we can't find Bin Laden" diversion.

Trade with Cuba is wrong because the country is communist, but trade with China and Vietnam is vital to a spirit of international harmony.

The United States should get out of the United Nations, and our highest national priority is enforcing UN resolutions against Iraq.

A woman can't be trusted with decisions about her own body, but multinational corporations can make decisions affecting all mankind without regulation.

Jesus loves you, and shares your hatred of homosexuals and Hillary Clinton.

The best way to improve military morale is to praise the troops in speeches while slashing veterans' benefits and combat pay.

If condoms are kept out of schools, adolescents won't have sex.

A good way to fight terrorism is to belittle our longtime allies, then demand their cooperation and money.

Providing health care to all Iraqis is sound policy. Providing health care to all Americans is socialism.

HMOs and insurance companies have the best interests of the public at heart.

Global warming and tobacco's link to cancer are junk science, but creationism should be taught in schools.

A president lying about an extramarital affair is an impeachable offense.

A president lying to enlist support for a war in which thousands die is solid defense policy.

Government should limit itself to the powers named in the Constitution, which include banning gay marriages and censoring the Internet.

The public has a right to know about Hillary's cattle trades, but George Bush's driving record is none of our business.

Being a drug addict is a moral failing and a crime, unless you're a conservative radio host. Then it's an illness, and you need our prayers for your recovery.

You support states' rights, which means Attorney General John Ashcroft can tell states what local voter initiatives they have the right to adopt.

What Bill Clinton did in the 1960s is of vital national interest, but what Bush did in the '80s is irrelevant.

Forward away...

July 15, 2004

Edwards Cuts Like a Knife

My opinion runs counter to popular belief: John Edwards is the best attack dog John Kerry possibly could have chosen.

Before he decided upon his all-positive, all-the-time path in the closing month or so of the Iowa primary, Edwards made some blatantly vicious attacks on George W. Bush, calling him things like "an unadulterated phony."

Edwards gets away with using such pointed attacks not just because he's a preternaturally good-natured guy, but also because he usually drops them in right before and after some hopeful, value-heavy talk. There's a good case in point from yesterday's Today show:

Couric: Let me ask you about Dick Cheney. Do you know him well?

Sen. Edwards: No.

Couric: What do you think of him?

Edwards: In my personal interaction with him, he's always been perfectly cordial and polite. He called me on the day that Sen. Kerry named me as his running mate. He was very cordial and polite. I think he is out of touch with the lives of most Americans. I don't think he has any idea of the struggles and problems that people face most days in their lives. I think as a result of that, it's very hard for him to, going forward, to provide the kind of vision of hope and opportunity that this country, I think, is entitled to and needs. But we have dramatically different views of the world. I mean, I come from a family where my father worked in a mill in rural North Carolina. I was the first person in my family to … be able to go to college. And I've had more opportunities than anybody could ever hope for, that I would've ever dreamed of. And because of that, I feel an enormous responsibility to … provide those same opportunities to all other Americans.

Couric: You don't think Dick Cheney wants to provide opportunity...

Edwards: I don't see any sign of it, if it's true. The real question is, in governing, what is it that drives you every day when you get up? For me, it's thinking about all those people that I've grown up with along the way who I want to see them, their families, their kids, their grandkids, get the same kind of chances I've had. I mean, I've grown up in the bright light of America — that's the truth — and I want to make sure others get that same chance.

Stealthily and politely, John Edwards tells us quite directly that Dick Cheney not only doesn't understand average Americans, but also that he doesn't even want to provide opportunities for them. In other words, he doesn't give a shit about them, while they're about all Edwards cares about.

Poll responses to the question "Cares about people like you" reveal it to be Cheney's biggest weakness (and one of Bush's) and one of Edwards biggest strengths. Interview by interview, Edwards intends to widen that gap.

Some in politics have called Edwards a "happy warrior" recently, and I think that's right. But make no mistake: he's a political gladiator who wields a lethal, velvet sword.

July 14, 2004

Bush as 3-Dimensional Cartoon

Yesterday on Hardball, a segment covering Bush's Monday national security speech included a rapid-fire sequence that edited together the 7 different times during the speech Bush defiantly repeated the words "The American people are safer." Here's how it reads in the Hardball transcript:

Kerry‘s aggressive posture came as the president, during a foreign policy speech on Monday, said seven different times...

BUSH: And the American people are safer.

And the American people are safer.

The American people are safer.

The American people are safer.

The American people are safer.

The American people are safer.

The forces of terror and tyranny are suffered defeat after defeat, and America and the world are safer.

Later, guest Richard Holbrooke said this to Chris Matthews:

Your Jon Stewart-like “America is safer” iteration of President Bush‘s speech, which really could have been on the Jon Stewart show, shows a very simple approach to a very complicated problem by the president.

Sure enough, those tuning in to last night's Daily Show (segment will probably be posted soon) saw Jon Stewart lead with a satirical replay of Bush's idiotic "The American people are safer" drumbeat. Stewart aptly summed up the speech:

So basically what it comes down to is this: the Bush administration's strategy to fight terrorism is... repetition.

One of the things the American people have to decide in this election is: do we want to be talked at like children for another 4 years, or do we want to hear from somebody who assumes adults can handle some complexity?

July 13, 2004

I don't have any problem with the word liberal, but I realize it's not a popular word throughout much of the electoral college; I've got a big problem with Democrats losing the electoral college. That's why we shouldn't let Republicans get away with this fallacious assertion that Kerry is "the most liberal" senator and Edwards is "the 4th most liberal" senator, making them "the most liberal ticket in history."

When they spread this crap, here's 3 things we should tell them:

1.   Kerry's #1 liberal ranking and Edwards' #4 liberal ranking from The National Journal are based on just a handful of votes they made in 2003. Some more perspective from Kevin Drum, with an assist from Andrew Sullivan:

Courtesy of one of Andrew Sullivan's correspondents, here are the rankings for the past five years:

2003: Kerry - 1st (96.5) Edwards - 4th (94.5)
2002: Kerry - 9th (87.3) Edwards - 31st (63.0)
2001: Kerry - 11th (87.7) Edwards - 35th (68.2)
2000: Kerry - 20th (77) Edwards - 19th (80.8)
1999: Kerry - 16th (80.8) Edwards - 31st (72.2)

Average: Kerry - 12th (85.9) Edwards - 24th (75.7)

The rankings for 2003 are skewed by the campaign season, and a longer look shows that Kerry is liberal, but hardly a Paul Wellstone liberal, and Edwards is smack in the middle of the Democratic pack.

You may not get invited onto a talk show like editors of political magazines do, but you can do your part anyway. So the next time someone brings this up, let 'em know the facts. After all, that's the whole point of being an advocate for the left, isn't it?

2.   The National Journal is a respectable publication, but their categorizing is pretty silly. For instance, both Kerry and Edwards voted against a $1.3 trillion tax cut that contributed to an unprecedentedly high budget deficit, but somehow their vote against it was "liberal" and to vote for it was "conservative." Certainly that's not fiscally conservative by any traditional definition, so The National Journal's standards are arbitrary and essentially meaningless.

3.   If John Edwards is as "liberal" as Republicans suggest and he still got himself elected in "conservative" North Carolina, then he should get the Christian Right vote because he's almost certainly the second coming of Christ.

Edwards Bounce

When you averaged the Zogby, Time, Newsweek, CNN/USA Today/Gallup polls taken just before Kerry chose Edwards, JK and Bush were deadlocked at 47%. Today, average the same polls and you get JK 50% and GW at 46%.

It's not a big bounce, but there's not much room for big bounces in this election. Persuadables are at historic lows – maybe 10 or 11%, so Kerry and Bush could well struggle for them until November 2, with little breathing room.

Still, Edwards wears as well as any politician I've seen, so I'm optimistic he'll continue to prove his value most over time, especially when it comes to sharpening the ticket's message.

Old Glory

My comrade Brian Cook has a great idea, and I'm gonna take him up on it:

I got an idea for us liberal bullies . . . Encourage all Kerry
supporters to put a Kerry Edwards sticker on their rear window AND a big 'ol American Flag decal. Let's take back the American Flag as a symbol. Placed right next to a Kerry sticker, the message is clear . . .

Please join us. Make Lee Greenwood wet his diaper.

The War on Timber

The President's "War on Timber" continues, from WaPo:

The Bush administration said yesterday it plans to overturn a Clinton-era rule that made nearly 60 million acres of national forest off-limits to road-building and logging, setting aside one of the most sweeping land preservation measures in decades.

From a March 5, 2001 Mother Jones article:

Those who make their living from the land made no secret of their preference during the last election: George W. Bush received $2.6 million in campaign contributions from the agriculture industry, 10 times more than Al Gore collected from farming and timber interests. Galen Weaber (No. 381), president and CEO of Pennsylvania's largest lumber mill, gave $157,750 to support Republican candidates. "I want to protect a way of life that is fast disappearing," he explained to reporters. "The way government is coming down with all these regulations, the way bureaucracy is going, is unbelievable. If I had to start up now, I couldn't do it."

Good investment.

July 12, 2004

Edwards Experience

When they (and you know who "they" are) try to tell you that John Edwards is too inexperienced to be Vice President (or President), here are 4 things you can tell them:

1.   Edwards' 5+ years on the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence gives him 5+ more years of official experience delving into foreign policy issues than George W. Bush had before taking office [Correction: I recently read in Newsweek that Edwards joined the Intelligence Committee later in his term, in 2001, so he's really got more like 3 years on that committee – of course, it's also worth noting that senators still have to vote on various issues of international signifigance no matter what committees they serve on]. If you want to be really strident about it, his years working in the senate give him more official international affairs experience than G.W. Bush, Bill Clinton, and Ronald Reagan combined (I'd throw Carter in there, too, but I suppose his years as a naval officer should count for something).

2.   What are the worst things that could result from Edwards' so-called inexperience? Perhaps he might falsely claim on national television that Saddam has "reconstituted nuclear weapons"? Or that it's "pretty well confirmed" that 9/11 orchestrator Mohammed Atta met with Iraqi intelligence officials in Prague? Or suggest myriad other collaborative actions between Iraq and al Qaeda? Or maybe he'd do something really crazy, like assert that "we'd be greeted as liberators" in a land we sought to occupy, and worse, base all post-invasion occupation plans on the naive assumption of such a magnanimous greeting?

You get the picture. Dick Cheney has had decades of experience, but it's hard to imagine a less-qualified President because his track record makes it horrifically clear that his judgment and values suck. He's both dishonest and buried in ideological quicksand.

Contrast Edwards with Cheney. Nearly everybody on both sides of the aisle characterizes Edwards as an honest guy. He's also earned a reputation from senate colleagues who've worked with him on a host of different domestic and foreign policy issues as a phenomenally quick study. Team that with his communication skills and you've got classic Presidential timber.

3.   Some people get stuck on this inexperience thing with Edwards simply because he looks so young. But he's 51 years old, 8 years older than John F. Kennedy was at his inauguration.

4.   Any discussion of Edwards' experience invites comparisons between Kerry's and Bush's experience. Kerry's a multi-decorated combat veteran, a prosecutor, a Lieutenant Governor, and, as senator, an investigatory maverick and long-time foreign and domestic policy wonk. Bush was a trust fund bounder until he was 40, failed businessman, baseball owner, constitutionally-weak Governor of Texas for 5 years, and incurious, bad President.

July 11, 2004

Snub'ya

My friend Lee Kirk told me this story recently, and I realized it's the only first person account of the President I've heard from someone I know and trust.

In 1989-90, Lee worked as a self-described "towel guy" at Cooper Fitness Center in Dallas. His job was simple: as the clientele walked in, verify their gym cards and provide them with locker keys and towels.

Over the 9 months Lee did this job, he'd see George W. Bush come in to work out about once a week. At that time, Lee didn't care a bit about politics, but he grew to dislike Bush because he walked around with an "I'm a badass" demeanor, and clearly enjoyed his exalted status made conspicuous by two secret service officers who were there to guard him at all times.

The worst thing, though, was that over the course of the nine months, not only did Bush never once say "thank you" to Lee as he gave him his towel and keys, but he never even looked at Lee. He'd just grab the towels and keys out of his hand while looking over his head or off to the side. That seems almost too cartoonishly dickheadish to be true, but I pressed Lee on it and he swore it was as bad as he described it.

"So over nine months, he never said anything to you?" I asked Lee.

"Not a single word."

"No thanks? Ever?"

"Nope. He didn't even look at me. Not once. Would just grab the towel and key right out of my hands without looking at me. It was weird."

After several weeks of that treatment, Lee began to do something he didn't for any of the other members. When he'd see Snub'ya coming, he'd just leave the key and towel up on the counter so he could get them himself and Lee could avoid the indignity.

June 10, 2004

Stand-Up Kerry

I thought both these lines from Kerry were pretty funny.

Kerry lists the similarities between he and John Edwards:

He's a lawyer; I'm a lawyer. His name is John; my name is John. He was named People magazine's sexiest politician of the year; I read People magazine.

Also, on Larry King Live Thursday night, Kerry explained why he didn't plan to see Fahrenheit 9/11:

I've seen it. I've watched it for the last 4 years.

Frankenedwards

I had a horrible dream last night that I was watching the John Edwards-Dick Cheney debate, and Edwards showed up wearing these huge Al Franken-style glasses. I was thinking as I dreamt, "oh no, oh no, what a terrible political miscalculation..."

By the way, I've been readjusting after vacation and my posts have been very light of late, but I'll be back in full swing this week.

Also, Before Sunset is a great movie, particularly the ending, which ranks up there with The Godfather, Ten to Midnight, Shampoo, Some Like It Hot, and Annie Hall as among the greatest of all-time.

July 8, 2004

Kenny Boy

Now that he's been indicted, The White House is once again downplaying Bush's very close relationship with his #1 all-time financial contributor, Enron Chairman Ken Lay. Bush, of course, has deceived us about his relationship with Lay before.

Now, The Smoking Gun has posted dozens of pages of correspondence between Bush and Lay that document not only their close personal relationship, but also how closely intertwined their legislative priorities were. It's just another glaring example of Bush as an agent (and pawn) of big business.

Also, Center for American Progress has a sad rundown on how Lay directly influenced White House energy policy. The whole thing's pretty damning, but this segment really stuck me:

THE KEN LAY PLAN NOW OFFICIAL ADMINISTRATION POLICY: According to Vice President Dick Cheney, Lay met privately with him in April 2001 "to talk about energy." Lay was "the only chief executive of a major player in the electric power industry to confer privately with Cheney as he formulated his national energy strategy." Lay said that he was "flattered that [Cheney] decided to meet with me, and at least hear me out as to some of the things I thought were pretty important that should be considered for his report." At the meeting, Lay handed Cheney a memo outlining "eight points spelling out Enron's case for why federal authorities should refrain from imposing price caps or other measures sought by California officials to stabilize runaway electricity prices." At the time, Enron was manipulating the market to bilk hundreds of millions of dollars from West Coast ratepayers, with company traders caught on tape "gloating over the crisis they helped create." Nonetheless, "seven out of eight recommendations were adopted in the administration's final energy plan." And the president is still pushing the Ken Lay plan as the solution to the nation's energy woes.

When the Supreme Court ruled that Cheney didn't have to turnover the names of the energy executives who effectively wrote White House energy policy, that may have taken the administration off the hook legally (for now), but the those in the news media shouldn't interpret that decision as an ethical or moral pass, and I'm afraid most of them have.

Divider

From ABC News:

President Bush declined an invitation to speak at the NAACP's annual convention, the group said.

and...

Bush spoke at the 2000 NAACP convention in Baltimore when he was a candidate. But he has declined invitations to speak in each year of his presidency, the first president since Herbert Hoover not to attend an NAACP convention, John White, a spokesman for the group, said Wednesday.

I bet he used the "I'm a uniter, not a divider" canard when he spoke before the NAACP in 2000. Have you heard him use that line lately?

July 7, 2004

First Choice, Part I

I know you want a free Kerry-Edwards bumper sticker, and you can sign-up to get a free one here.

Notes on the Edwards' pick, my preference all along:

1.    Some analysts reasonably suggest that VP picks are of little importance because people go into voting booths thinking only about the top guy. However, image is everything in politics, and a candidate's VP running mate can greatly positively or negatively impact the image development of the guy at the top of the ticket. Yesterday, Kerry became a little more handsome, a little more energetic, a little more optimistic, and a little more confident.

2.    While it may have been the obvious best choice in many different ways, Kerry still deserves an awful lot of credit for picking Edwards. Kerry's smart enough to know that many headlines would read, basically, "Kerry gets a charisma injection," which has got to be a little bit tough for even the most confident person to face.

I can't tell you how many pundits I've heard over the last couple months assert Kerry would never pick Edwards precisely because he would never allow himself to face the indignity of being overshadowed on the trail. Slate's resident jackass Mickey Kaus is tops on that list, but in discussing the Edwards' pick on his blog he hasn't uttered a word of apology or even a simple acknowledgment that he had underestimated Kerry. The guy's got no integrity whatsoever. He and others like him are interested in perpetuating the myth of Kerry as some kind of constitutionally frail, exceptionally vain, me-first kind of politician, and the confidence he shows picking Edwards doesn't fit. Well, actually, some just redirected their argument. Pre-Edwards they were saying Kerry wouldn't sacrifice his ego to make a good pick, now they're saying his pick was self-serving in that it was poll-driven.

3.   Edwards makes Kerry more attractive to nearly every voting group I can think of, most importantly independent voters (whom he proved to be enormously appealing to in the Democratic primaries) and rural voters. In fact, his appeal to rural voters in southern Ohio and throughout Missouri could flip the election. Even if Kerry doesn't win those states, Bush will have to spend more money there. Same with North Carolina, Louisiana, Arkansas, and maybe even Virginia. People say, "Oh, Edwards still can't turn North Carolina," but even if that's true his presence on the ticket forces Bush-Cheney to divert resources from somewhere else. The perception of a threat has tangible benefits in politics, and Edwards makes BC04 more worried about at least 3 or 4 different states, and several more important regions throughout the country.

Also, I think Kerry-Edwards will widen Kerry's advantage with women, and will inspire more African-Americans to get to the polls. I don't know if it will make any difference with Latino voters or not, but I'd like to see someone take that question on.

More soon...

July 6, 2004

Oh No? Oh YES

John Kerry's email subject to supporters, sent to me at 5:14am PST:

Kerry-Edwards: A New Team for a New America

Another way of repeating Kerry's campaign theme, "Let America Be America Again."

Read it and weep, George.

Oh No

It's 12:30am on the West Coast and all kinds of rumors are floating around, but The New York Post is now reporting that Kerry has chosen Dick Gephardt as his running mate. I hope to God they've got it wrong.

If Kerry does announce Gephardt as his pick this morning, he not only squanders an opportunity to boost his image with an exciting choice like Edwards, he exacerbates one of his central problems, which is that many people think he's boring. A Kerry-Gephardt ticket is truly "The Ny-Quil Ticket."

Over at The American Prospect a couple weeks ago, Matthew Yglesias went into other details on why Gephardt would be such a horrible pick.

June 29, 2004

Vacation

I'm gonna leave town for a week and rest up for the election stretch drive. I'll resume posting next Tuesday. Have a good one.

More Fahrenheit 9/11

Before I get back to examining individual sequences in F911, a few points:

1.   I failed to mention yesterday the great irony of Moore complaining about the 2000 election tragedy. How did Moore spend the weeks preceding the November election? That's right, campaigning in swing states for Ralph Nader, against Al Gore. Including shoulder to shoulder with Nader in Florida, I think. I'm glad to see he doesn't intend to repeat his mistake, and that's all I ask, but it irks me when those partially responsible for that result don't make a fundamental apology before they protest the results so loudly. It makes me wonder if they're motivated more by the fundamental injustice of it, or their own guilty consciences.

Anybody who tries to tell you that Nader didn't turn it for Bush is crazy. In fact, simple math tells you he cost Gore both Florida and New Hampshire (as well as forcing the Gore campaign to spend more $$$ and other resources in states that were closer with Nader on the ballot). In Florida, I know the numbers by heart: Nader got over 97,000 votes; Gore lost in the certified tally by 537; based on exit polls, 48% of Nader voters said they would have voted for Gore if Nader weren't on the ballot, 24% for Bush, and the rest said they would have stayed home. If Nader didn't campaign so hard in Florida and other swing states, no recounts would have been necessary, Moore would have made some film eviscerating Al Gore, Sr., and by now I would have completed my critical treatise on White Chicks.

Incidentally, here's a persuasive Chris Bowers post on mydd.com explaining why Nader's 2004 candidacy is effectively impotent.

2. Obviously, I have no problem with anybody criticizing Moore or his film, but it's more than a little disingenuous for the political press to make comments like one made in ABC's The Note yesterday morning:

(We gotta say: … with Moore's film, you 'aint seeing the whole truth,. but that's another matter).

Nothing wrong with that statement, but definitely something wrong with the double standard. Could you imagine The Note writing this about a Scott McClellan White House press conference? Or a Dick Cheney speech? Give me the transcript of any McClellan press conference or Cheney speech, and I'll show you a level of evasiveness, dishonesty, and sleight of hand quite similar to Moore at his most irresponsible.

How about Hannah Storm and others asking Moore if his film is propaganda, and suggesting it shouldn't be called documentary? It would be a fair question if those like Storm and ABC News were equally objective with, say, Condi Rice when she looks them straight in the eye and tells them Ahmed Chalabi was just one of many Iraqi exiles who gave the administration some advice before the war. That's totally misleading, pure propaganda that comprised White House talking points, but they don't dare use that term with her.

Rice, Rumsfeld, Cheney, Bush, Powell – these people happen to be particularly accomplished misleaders, but let's not personalize it: some are worse than others, but all White House communication machines systematically propagate talking points that centrally serve to advocate White House interests. That's the definition of propaganda, so if the political press don't want to shy from the word, great, but don't be selective with it.

3.   Is F911 good for Democrats? I think we'll know a lot more in the coming weeks, but I think two central factors must be taken into account: how many persuadable voters will end up seeing it, and how successfully can Republicans tie Moore around John Kerry's neck. (Remember, Moore is the same guy who, according to more than one critic of Moore's one-man show in London, called the passengers on the 9/11 planes cowardly for not fighting back.)

Undecided voters are sometimes glorified as being somehow sophisticated or level-headed, but none of the data in polls I've seen on them really supports that. In fact, they might be just the types to check out a political film merely because it finished #1 at the box office, and they're equally likely to be swayed by it.

On the other hand, as I heard someone say today, "Democrats showcasing Michael Moore as their spokesperson is about as smart as Republicans presenting Ann Coulter as theirs." True, and not smart. People question why the Kerry campaign hasn't been aggressive outside theatres and such, and while I think there might be some creative oppportunities there, the downside is that it's an invitation for a moderator to ask John Kerry to condemn some controversial Michael Moore statement at one of the Presidential debates (it happened to Wes Clark in New Hampshire, and it hurt him).

Also, I'm starting to sense some Bush hatred fatigue among independents. I may be wrong, and I know I'm guilty of it myself sometimes, but personally demonizing a guy will hurt us politically more than it helps us. That's why Democrats should focus on the facts of Bush's actions rather than the content of his character, as hard as it is to separate the two.

Okay, now a few more thoughts on Fahrenheit 9/11 sequences:

Saudis/bin Ladens Exit Post 9/11

Moore certainly has a point when he suggests an inappropriate coziness between the Saudis and the Bush family – the facts that Prince Bandar is the only foreign ambassador with secret service protection, that he's nicknamed "Bandar Bush" within the Bush family and had a long, chummy meeting with Bush on 9/13 (both are confirmed in Woodward's book, which is on the Bush-Cheney '04 suggested reading list), are good to know because the favoritism and other conflict of interest issues are important to debate. Through Dan Briody, author of "The Halliburton Agenda," Moore also makes some good points about the seamlessness with which people like George H.W. Bush and James Baker move from representing public interests as U.S. government officials and private interests – particularly in the oil and defense industries – as business men for profit. (By the way, in one of the Democratic primary debates, John Kerry promised to sign an executive order adding restrictions on such corrupt revolving doors as soon as he takes office.)

However, I find this Moore voiceover statement discrediting and ridiculous:

So one bin Laden attacks the United States and kills thousands of people, and, just by coincidence the other bin Ladens, and the Bush family, reap profits as a result of the military build-up that followed.

If asked to defend this I'm sure Moore would argue it's the literal truth, but clearly it's an insinuation that Bush was in bed with the 9/11 terrorists. There's no evidence for this, it's completely unfair, and it's stupid.

Moore also implies Bush had a hand in arranging flights for bin Laden family members and other Saudis to quickly get out of the U.S. in the days following 9/11. Oddly, the guy who takes full responsibility for approving these flights for the bin Laden family is someone Moore wisely uses as an authoritative voice critical of the Iraq War, Richard Clarke.

Bush Opposes Creation of an Independent 9/11 Commission, and then Delays Its Progress

There can be no argument here. Moore simply shows Bush speaking against the commission's creation and later trying to wiggle out of testifying before it. He also shows Commission Chair Tom Keane criticizing the White House for not producing relevant materials more quickly. The administration's conduct on this always struck me as particularly indefensible and egregious.

Also, the White House did black out several pages on Saudi Arabia in the congressional report on 9/11. Weird.

The final 25 minutes or so of the film, which deals mostly with Iraq, is the most powerful stuff in the film, but unfortunately I'm gonna have to get to that and the other stuff when I get back next Tuesday...

June 28, 2004

Fahrenheit 9/11

[Full disclosure: My brother Patrick oversees distribution of Fahrenheit 9/11 for Fellowship Adventure Group, the company Harvey and Bob Weinstein set up to deal with all aspects of F911's launch – once you read some of my criticisms you might think either I dislike my brother or I'm an independent-minded man. I can assure you both things are true.

Just kidding, I love my bro.]

I haven't been a Michael Moore fan: he's often quick to connect fact A to fact Z without bothering with the letters in between; he frequently takes unfair and mean-spirited shots at his subjects (not just the fat cats, but sometimes really poor, vulnerable folks – the rabbit killer in Roger and Me, for example); he seems to be against lots of stuff, but I can tell you very few things that he's for; he's often self-contradictory; he's an incorrigible demagogue; and the hero of every Michael Moore film, pre-F911, is Michael Moore.

Fahrenheit 9/11 shares some of these symptoms, but it's Moore's most interesting film, by far, because he wisely cuts down on his screen time and in key spots lets the words and actions of others make his points for him. In fact, there are some stunningly powerful sequences in the film, and invariably they occur when Moore's voiceover vanishes and his clowning is off-screen. Also, he's a lot more careful with the facts than he's been in previous works.

Of course, Moore's about as fair and balanced as Fox News. Unlike Fox, though, Moore owns up to what his film is: an op-ed piece where he weaves together facts that support his opinions. I judge Fahrenheit 9/11 on the power and truth of its arguments.

Sorry the following is so scattershot, but I took some frantic notes as I watched the film on the big screen, and tried to pull it altogether later. The film travels from subject to subject, starting with the...

2000 Election Fiasco

Moore's general point that the certified election results were tainted is almost inarguable.

John Ellis, George W. Bush's first cousin, was the ranking Fox News election returns analyst, and he was the first to call Florida, and thus the Presidency, for Bush. The other networks soon followed, as Moore says.

Moore doesn't go deeper into the signifigance of Ellis' early call, but it proved to be very important for the debate that followed. If the networks had shown more prudence and delayed projecting a winner, then the argument shifts from "Bush is the winner and they're now recounting the votes" to "It's so close nobody can figure out who won yet." As it was, the networks put Gore at a terrible p.r. disadvantage simply because Katherine Harris, who was Bush's campaign co-chair in Florida as Moore points out, was in a rush to quickly report and later certify a preliminary vote total.

Katherine Harris did hire a company, Database Technologies, to purge voter rolls in Florida, and they purged thousands of legal voters from the roles (example: if Jamal Simmons from Jacksonville was a felon and therefore couldn't legally vote in Florida, they'd remove every Jamal Simmons from Jacksonville from the list), an inordinate number of whom were African American. About 90% of the African American vote went to Gore. Thus, the election was totally screwed up before anybody even voted.

Moore slips in a short clip of author Jeffrey Toobin saying, "If there was a statewide recount, under every scenario Gore won the election." According to the media consortium that cooperated on a comprehensive recount in Florida, that's true. For some reason, though, most newspaper outlets focused on the fact that Bush still would have won if Gore had gotten the partial recounts his legal team had fought for in court. Here's a good article from Salon explaining it all.

The most powerful part of Moore's election 2000 sequence is when he shows several African American House members (along with Hawaii's late congresswoman, Patsy Mink) formally objecting to the federal certification over the boos of Republicans as they've run into a procedural dead end because they're unable to get a single member of the African American-less senate to object with them.

Bush on Vacation

Moore claims that Bush was on vacation 42% of his first 8 months in office. This comes from The Washington Post. While it's true that Bush did do some work while at his favorite vacation spots, now we know that "chatter" about possible terrorists' attacks during this period was way up and Bush certainly failed to bring his principals together and shake any trees. It's certainly fair to point that out.

Opening Credit Sequence

With ominous music playing, administration members receive make-up and fix their hair, getting ready like actors about to take the stage. It's good, artful stuff from Moore that visually reinforces the idea of politics as show business.

Bush's 9/11 Activities

As Moore says, Bush did receive word of the first plane hitting the WTC before setting foot in the Flordia classroom, but chose to go through with it anyway. I can't believe Moore passed up the opportunity to chide Bush for his first reaction upon hearing the news, which he told Bob Woodward was, "Boy, that's one bad pilot."

Upon hearing from chief of staff Andrew Card that a second plane hit the WTC and "America is under attack," Bush did in fact continue to sit and listen to the children read My Pet Goat for nearly 7 minutes. Moore does a great service popularizing these moments in Fahrenheit 9/11, because most news outlets never gave this aspect of Bush's performance that day any scrutiny.

I'm astonished when people try to defend Bush's inaction during those 7 minutes. What kind of leader doesn't spring to action upon hearing the words, "America is under attack"? There were a ton of decisions to be made in those precious moments. To be specific, Card informed Bush at 9:03am that we were under attack, and American Airlines Flight 77 didn't slam into the Pentagon until 9:39am and United Flight 93 was still in the air until 10:03am. Bush didn't even call Dick Cheney in the Presidential Emergency Operations Center until approximately 9:44am. What would have happened if Bush would have gotten on the phone immediately at 9:03am and tried to get a better grasp of the situation? We'll never know, because our commander-in-chief's instinct in this crisis was to do nothing.

To be continued...

June 27, 2004

3 Things

1. Last week, Ralph Nader picked long-time Green Partier Peter Camejo as his Vice Presidential running mate so he'd have a better shot at the Green Party endorsement, which would have put him on the ballot in 22 states for sure and probably more. Yesterday, the Green Party nominated David Cobb instead. This is great news for Democrats, because Cobb believes the best way to advance the Green agenda is to make sure Bush isn't re-elected, which means not getting in John Kerry's way.

Meanwhile, Republican groups are openly supporting Nader's candidacy, in Oregon and elsewhere, and he's accepting it. So far, though, it's not making much difference, because he can't even get on the ballot anywhere. In Oregon, which has a sizable population of progressives, all he has to do is get 1000 valid signatories gathered in the same place to sign a petition, but he failed to get that many in April and it looks like he failed again yesterday. Pathetic.

2. A charm offensive, Dick Cheney-style. From The Washington Post:

Vice President Cheney on Friday vigorously defended his vulgarity directed at a prominent Democratic senator earlier this week in the Senate chamber.

Cheney said he "probably" used an obscenity in an argument Tuesday on the Senate floor with Patrick J. Leahy (D-Vt.) and added that he had no regrets. "I expressed myself rather forcefully, felt better after I had done it," Cheney told Neil Cavuto of Fox News. The vice president said those who heard the putdown agreed with him. "I think that a lot of my colleagues felt that what I had said badly needed to be said, that it was long overdue."

Somebody must have done some really bad things to Dick Cheney when he was a little kid, because obviously he's holding on to a lot of crap.

3. Fahrenheit 9/11 made about $8.2 million at the box office on Friday, and about $7.5 million yesterday. It'll probably make another $6 or $7 million Sunday, and will definitely be the weekend box office king (despite being on about 1/3 as many screens as the probable weekend runner-ups, White Chicks and Dodgeball). That should make it a pretty big national story on Monday.

Also, the all-time record domestic box office gross for a documentary is Moore's Bowling for Columbine, which made $21.6 million over the course of its entire run. That means Farhenheit 9/11 could conceivably break that record in its opening weekend.

I'm working on my Farhenheit 9/11 review, and will post it soon.

I'm working on my White Chicks review, too, but that film's impact on the election is potentially so enormous that it could take me months to complete.

June 25, 2004

Sudan

It's a rare moment when I wholeheartedly, enthusiastically support the initiatives of two Republican senators, but this Washington Post op-ed by John McCain and Mike DeWine (of Ohio) is very important. First, they describe the problem in the Darfur region of Sudan:

Darfur, a Texas-size region in western Sudan, is the site of the worst humanitarian crisis in the world today. Since December the largely Arab Sudanese government has teamed with the Janjaweed, a group of allied Arab militias, to crush an insurgency in Darfur. The methods that the government and the Janjaweed have employed are nothing short of horrific. They are slaughtering civilians in a systematic scorched-earth campaign designed to "ethnically cleanse" the entire region of black Africans. By bombing villages, engaging in widespread rape, looting civilian property, and deliberately destroying homes and water sources, the government and the Janjaweed are succeeding.

The numbers are appalling. Some 1.1 million people have been driven from their homes, and as many as 30,000 are already dead. The U.S. Agency for International Development estimates that, even under "optimal conditions," 320,000 may die by the end of this year, and a death toll far higher is easily within reach. In the face of this catastrophe, the government and the Janjaweed continue to block humanitarian aid, and widespread killing and destruction persist. While civilians flee, the government's Antonov bombers target water wells, granaries, houses and crops, clearing villages so that the Janjaweed can enter and take over. In the meantime, famine looms.

Then, they prescribe action:

The U.N. Security Council should demand that the Sudanese government immediately stop all violence against civilians, disarm and disband its militias, allow full humanitarian access, and let displaced persons return home. Should the government refuse to reverse course, its leadership should face targeted multilateral sanctions and visa bans. Peacekeeping troops should be deployed to Darfur to protect civilians and expedite the delivery of humanitarian aid, and we should encourage African, European and Arab countries to contribute to these forces.

The United States must stand ready to do what it can to stop the massacres. In addition to pushing the U.N. Security Council to act, we should provide financial and logistical support to countries willing to provide peacekeeping forces. The United States should initiate its own targeted sanctions against the Janjaweed and government leaders, and consider other ways we can increase pressure on the government. We must also continue to tell the world about the murderous activities in which these leaders are engaged, and make clear to all that this behavior is totally unacceptable.

As McCain and DeWine remind us, both the U.S. and UN must not repeat the shameful inaction that led to the slaughter of over 800,000 Rwandan Tutsis in April of 1994. That tragedy was given scant U.S. news coverage, but it should stand as one of the most egregious foreign policy failures of the latter half of the 20th century. We'll never fully absolve ourselves from that failing, but at least we can try to honor those that died by demonstrating we've learned from our mistake. We must take Sens. McCain and DeWine up on their prescriptions, immediately.

JK

In its weekly Democratic Insiders Poll, The National Journal asked 50 Democratic insiders to grade John Kerry's post-primary performance thus far. 34 gave him a B, 8 a C, 7 an A, and 1 a D. One insider arrived at his B grade this way: "Fundraising, A; lack of major campaign-killing mistakes, A; message, D; not being Bush, A."

If Kerry were being graded on message alone, I think a lot of experts would agree with the D. Now, The New York Times gives us a glimpse into a further refined general election message the campaign is set to focus on at the convention and on the campaign trail:

His message, in part, is a return to the promise of Clintonian centrism: reducing the deficit, spurring economic growth, trying to ease "the squeeze on middle-class America," as Mr. Kerry puts it, from things like the cost of health insurance and college tuition.

Before you say, "Oh, how exciting, he's just cheating off Clinton," there's more:

But Mr. Kerry's message also reflects a very different time from the 1990's, framed by three unsettling years of terrorism, war and political division. Mr. Kerry's favorite refrain these days is a plea to "let America be America again." It is a quotation from a Langston Hughes poem that he uses to evoke the idea of restoration - for the economy, for a tax code that he asserts is increasingly unjust, for the dreams of the middle class and, perhaps most of all, for the country's foreign policy.

Now here's the part that completes the package, and distinguishes Kerry from Democratic nominees of recent decades:

In a break with at least a generation of Democratic candidates, and certainly with Mr. Clinton, Mr. Kerry's primary emphasis these days is often foreign policy and national security. "This will be more like a cold war election than the elections of the 1990's," said Elaine Kamarck, a leading strategist for the Clinton-era "new Democrats," now a professor at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard.

The son of a foreign service officer and the veteran of both the Vietnam War and 20 years on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Mr. Kerry is comfortable on this terrain, campaigning on the promise of a safer, more secure United States that is respected by its allies.

Just as he invokes Mr. Clinton on the economy, Mr. Kerry summons the legacy of John F. Kennedy, Harry S. Truman and Franklin D. Roosevelt when it comes to the United States' role in the world - a kind of muscular internationalism. He pledges an end to a "go it alone" foreign policy. He is regularly cheered when he talks about a return to the days of alliance building, arguing that alliances make the United States stronger, not weaker.

Pretty good raw material. Almost exactly a month from now, at the convention, it'll be put to the executive test.

I still love "Let America Be America Again." It appeals to the right, center, and left, because voters of all persuasians, I think, tend to think there was a golden age behind them, and they hope there's one in front of them. But few people think they're living in it now.

Dick

Hilarity courtesy of CNN:

Typically a break from partisan warfare, this year's Senate class photo turned smiles into snarls as Vice President Dick Cheney reportedly used profanity toward one senior Democrat, sources said.

Cheney reportedly told Senator Pat Leahy of Vermont either to "go fuck yourself" or "fuck off" or simply "fuck you." It's unclear exactly which, so go ahead and imagine Cheney said whichever is your favorite.

I don't think Democrats should criticize Cheney for this too loudly, because if the public gets wind that Cheney had an outburst of profanity, they may suffer from the misimpression that he's a human being.

June 24, 2004

Hell Breaking Loose

It's very late on the West Coast (3:45am), and a lot of hell is breaking loose in 4 Iraqi cities. It's very hard lately to distinguish the really bad from the really, really bad, but these attacks appear relatively widespread, which is a really, really bad sign for the "turnover" 6 days from now.

Kerry's Senate Seat

This is news that could affect the balance of power in the senate if Kerry is elected President:

If John Kerry is elected president, his seat in the U.S. Senate would be filled by the winner of a special election rather than a successor hand-picked by Republican Gov. Mitt Romney under a bill approved Wednesday by the Massachusetts Senate.

Going by current polls, several senate races look to be very close, and a deadlocked senate is as likely a scenario as any.

By the way, I think all states should pass a similar law. Why should a governor's party automatically get to assume a federal seat, particularly when the seat was previously filled by the opposing party? It doesn't make any sense to me. Most people consider themselves non-partisan, anyway, and vote for individuals, so why not give them the chance.

2 Tidbits on the Artist Still Known as Bill Clinton

1. I still don't know what the deal was with the gaudy tennis shoes (to my girlfriend's mock horror, that's what I grew up calling "sneakers" or whatever else you may call them) Clinton wore for the 60 Minutes interview, but here's the deal on the bracelet from Mail and Guardian Online (thanks to Atrios for the tip):

We ask him about the red and blue crocheted band around his right wrist -- an incongruous clash with the statesman attire. For the first time in the interview he becomes emotional, the voice catching and his eyes redening. "I've worn it for two years. I went there [to Colombia] and met these unbelievable kids from a village on the edge of the rainforest where the narco-traffickers are dominant," he says. "They sang and danced for peace and I fell in love with these kids. I asked them to perform at the White House one Christmas. They came with the culture minister, a magnificently attractive woman called Consuelo. The bad guys hated these kids because they made them look like what they are. The guerillas couldn't kill these children, so they murdered her ... I can still hardly talk about this.

"Two years ago they asked me back and I said, 'I'll come, but you've got to bring those kids to see me.' So I turn up -- and the children greeted me at the airport, along with the new culture minister -- the niece of the murdered woman. And they gave me this bracelet, which I've never taken off."

2. David Maraniss, who wrote the most informative biography on Clinton I've read, First in His Class, said on Inside Politics yesterday that the revealing heart of Clinton's book is on page 58, where Clinton excerpts an autobiographical essay he had written for his junior English honors class:

I am a person motivated and influenced by so many diverse forces I sometimes question the sanity of my existence. I am a living paradox – deeply religious, yet not as convinced of my exact beliefs as I ought to be; wanting responsibility yet shirking it; loving the truth but often times giving way to falsity.... I detest selfishness, but see it in the mirror every day.... I view those, some of whom are very dear to me, who have never learned how to live. I desire and struggle to be different from them, but often am almost an exact likeness.... What a boring little word – I! I, me, my, mine.... the only things that enable worthwhile uses of these words are the universal good qualities which we are not too often able to place with them – faith, trust, love, responsibility, regret, knowledge. But the acronyms to these symbols of what enable life to be worth the trouble cannot be escaped. I, in my attempts to be honest, will not be the hypocrite I hate, and will own up to their ominous presence in this boy, endeavoring in earnest to be a man....

Bush's Guard Records

Many journalists doubt that the White House turned over all Bush's National Guard service records, as they had claimed. The Associated Press has now filed a lawsuit against the Pentagon and Air Force seeking access to Bush's microfilmed personnel file from the Texas State Library and Archives Commission. From the AP Wire:

There are questions as to whether the file provided to the news media earlier this year is complete, says the lawsuit, adding that these questions could possibly be answered by reviewing a copy of the microfilm of Bush's personnel file in the Texas archives.

The Air National Guard of the United States, a federal entity, has control of the microfilm, which should be disclosed in its entirety under the Freedom of Information Act, the lawsuit says.

The White House has yet to respond to a request by the AP in April asking the president to sign a written waiver of his right to keep records of his military service confidential. Bush gave an oral waiver in a TV appearance that preceded the White House's release this year of materials concerning his National Guard service.

The government "did not expedite their response ... they did not produce the file within the time required by law, and they will not now estimate when the file might be produced or even confirm that an effort has been initiated to retrieve a copy from the microfilm at the Texas archives," the lawsuit says.

Another Poll, Not So Good

I loved the internals of the recent ABC News/Washington Post poll, but I worried a little about the optimistic/pessimistic numbers, which at 62% to 36% was one of the few positive signs for Bush's re-election (by the way, I failed to mention that I doubt it's a coincidence that Bush-Cheney '04 has an ad out called "Pessimist" about John Kerry, and they've been trumpeting that label on the campaign trail). From Political Wire:

The latest National Annenberg Election Survey shows President Bush beginning to bounce back. "In May, 33 percent of the public said 'right direction' and 58 percent said 'wrong track.' In June, the balance was still negative, but the reading improved to 40 percent saying right direction and 50 percent saying wrong track."

The gains for Bush are called "the single most important change between the two polling periods."

But there was also some good news for Sen. John Kerry in another finding: "Among the persuadable voters, Bush and Kerry were now even on their ratings as a 'strong leader.' In May, Bush held an advantage on that attribute."

June 23, 2004

Privacy

From The Chicago Sun-Times:

Actress Jeri Ryan accused ex-husband Jack Ryan of insisting she go to "explicit sex clubs" in New York, New Orleans and Paris during their marriage – including "a bizarre club with cages, whips and other apparatus hanging from the ceiling."

Jack Ryan wanted her to have sex with him while others watched, the star of "Boston Public" alleged.

If you don't know, Jack Ryan is a Republican running against Democrat Barack Obama to represent Illinois in the U.S. Senate. Republican Rep. Ray LaHood has already asked Ryan to withdraw from the race, and plenty of others (including Democrats, I'm sure) are similarly prepared to throw stones.

They're wrong, and they make our society sicker. This is exactly the kind of thing that is the business of Jack and Jeri Ryan and no one else. Their divorce is settled, and there are no public issues at stake. Moreover, I think Bill Bradley drew the line pretty well on this kind of stuff in his 2000 run for the Democratic nomination, when he told reporters: "You have the right to know about my crimes, but not about my sins." Clearly, Jack Ryan's alleged indiscretions fall into the sin category.

When I first read about this "scandal," I recalled a Milan Kundera essay I read years ago. (Actually, that's a lie: I first thought about how hot Jeri Ryan is, and then I thought about Milan Kundera). I couldn't find Kundera's essay, but I Googled upon this:

In "The Unbearable Lightness of Being," Milan Kundera describes how the police destroyed an important figure of the Prague Spring by recording his conversations with a friend and then broadcasting them as a radio serial. Reflecting on his novel in an essay on privacy, Kundera writes, "Instantly Prochazka was discredited: because in private, a person says all sorts of things, slurs friends, uses coarse language, acts silly, tells dirty jokes, repeats himself, makes a companion laugh by shocking him with outrageous talk, floats heretical ideas he'd never admit in public and so forth." Freedom is impossible in a society that refuses to respect the fact that "we act different in private than in public," Kundera argues, a reality that he calls "the very ground of the life of the individual." By requiring citizens to live in glass houses without curtains, totalitarian societies deny their status as individuals, and "this transformation of a man from subject to object is experienced as shame."

Here's another cool, applicable quote, from Jean Rolin:

The pretension of man to explore the conscience of others, the forcible rape of secrecy, are a diabolical parody of the all-seeing-ness of God.

That one's particularly good to throw at judgmental people who fancy themselves religious.

June 22, 2004

Wow

I expected a slight Bush surge after the Reagan commemorations, some very spin-friendly recent economic numbers, and at least the appearance of some international progress on Iraq. For the first time in months, there’s been some cause for optimism for Bush-Cheney. So you can imagine my joy when I looked at the internals of the Washington Post/ABC News poll released yesterday afternoon. (By the way, I highly recommend reading the internals of a poll before reading a summary – first, the headline writers often tend to focus on the national horse race – which is useless because the 20 or so swing states mean everything and Kerry’s huge margin in a solid blue state like New York and Bush’s huge margin in a solid red state like Texas mean nothing – and second, they sometimes obscure the gems by paying attention to marginally helpful internal indicators).

The bottom line on the poll’s results, I think, is that Bush no longer really has even a single issue to leverage politically. Here’s the result that must have forced Karl Rove’s jaw into his colon:

Who do you trust to do a better job handling THE US CAMPAIGN AGAINST TERRORISM, George W. Bush or John Kerry?
Bush    47%
Kerry    48%

Bush, Cheney, Rove, and Co. have worked furiously the last couple years to ensure that November 2, 2004 would be first and foremost a referendum on Bush’s trustworthiness as commander-in-chief of a war on terror. Oops.

Here’s another issue they thought they wanted to make the election about:

Who do you trust to do a better job handling TAXES, George W. Bush or John Kerry?
Bush    40%
Kerry    53%

In the WaPo/ABC News April poll, that question went 49% to 43% to Bush.

Voters trust Kerry more on the economy, education, federal budget deficit, prescription drugs, health care (by an enormous 58% to 37% margin), taxes, war on terror, and international affairs. The only issue voters trust Bush more on is handling the situation in Iraq, by a 50% to 45% margin (don’t ask me how Bush is winning this issue, but I think it’s doubtful he’ll be running on how things are going in Iraq).

This one’s also pleasurably shocking:

Please tell me whether the following statement applies more to George W. Bush or more to John Kerry: He is honest and trustworthy.
Bush    39%
Kerry    52%

Everybody in the country knows damn well who George Bush is, and 52% think he’s dishonest and untrustworthy. If you’re Karl Rove, how do you turn that around? Run a “We were just kidding about all that crap” campaign?

Unless this poll proves somehow to be an outlier, moderation may no longer be an option for Bush. There are few undecided voters, and traditionally more of them will go with the challenger, anyway. Bush and Rove are going to have to decide soon if they’re gonna do it, but I think their only option is to go absolutely berserk on Kerry. This would probably entail waging a mult-faceted culture war (getting gay marriage on swing state ballots must be a top priority for them), and a lot of the underhanded stuff we typically hear from the Drudges, Limbaughs, Hannitys, and Coulters may start to come to us officially from Bush-Cheney ’04.

Is there a silver-lining at all in this poll for Bush? Unfortunately, there is. It’s this:

Thinking about the next 12 months, would you say you feel optimistic or pessimistic about the way things are going in this country?
Optimistic    62%
Pessimistic    36%

This is the reverse image of other recent polls I’ve seen on right track/wrong track numbers. It may be explained by respondents' general inclination to associate themselves with optimism rather than pessimism (or even by people like me becoming more optimistic because it looks like we might have a new President), but I don’t know. Scares me a little, though.

Besides that, I’ll sleep soundly tonight.

June 21, 2004

Long-Established Lies, Part II

Last week, President Bush said, "This administration never said that the 9/11 attacks were orchestrated between Saddam and al Qaeda."

Well, he may not have said it, but he basically wrote it. Here's the full text of Bush's March 19, 2003 letter to Congress (sent the day before he sent missiles into Iraq):

Dear Mr. Speaker: (Dear Mr. President:)

Consistent with section 3(b) of the Authorization for Use of Military Force Against Iraq Resolution of 2002 (Public Law 107-243), and based on information available to me, including that in the enclosed document, I determine that:

(1) reliance by the United States on further diplomatic and other peaceful means alone will neither (A) adequately protect the national security of the United States against the continuing threat posed by Iraq nor (B) likely lead to enforcement of all relevant United Nations Security Council resolutions regarding Iraq; and

(2) acting pursuant to the Constitution and Public Law 107-243 is consistent with the United States and other countries continuing to take the necessary actions against international terrorists and terrorist organizations, including those nations, organizations, or persons who planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001.

Sincerely,
GEORGE W. BUSH

Also, you can look at almost any Bush speech pushing the Iraq War for other examples of Bush rhetorically linking al Qaeda to the 9/11 attacks, but here's a good example from his infamous "Mission Accomplished" speech given aboard the U.S.S. Abraham Lincoln on May 1, 2003:

The Battle of Iraq is one victory in a war on terror that began on September the 11th, 2001, and still goes on. That terrible morning, 19 evil men — the shock troops of a hateful ideology — gave America and the civilized world a glimpse of their ambitions. They imagined, in the words of one terrorist, that September the 11th would be the "beginning of the end of America." By seeking to turn our cities into killing fields, terrorists and their allies believed that they could destroy this nation's resolve, and force our retreat from the world. They have failed.

In the Battle of Afghanistan, we destroyed the Taliban, many terrorists, and the camps where they trained. We continue to help the Afghan people lay roads, restore hospitals, and educate all of their children. Yet we also have dangerous work to complete. As I speak, a special operations task force, led by the 82nd Airborne, is on the trail of the terrorists, and those who seek to undermine the free government of Afghanistan. America and our coalition will finish what we have begun.

From Pakistan to the Philippines to the Horn of Africa, we are hunting down al-Qaida killers. Nineteen months ago, I pledged that the terrorists would not escape the patient justice of the United States. And as of tonight, nearly one-half of al-Qaida's senior operatives have been captured or killed.

The liberation of Iraq is a crucial advance in the campaign against terror. We have removed an ally of al-Qaida, and cut off a source of terrorist funding. And this much is certain: No terrorist network will gain weapons of mass destruction from the Iraqi regime, because the regime is no more.

2 Thoughts on Billy Jeff Clinton

I'll write more on Clinton later, but for now I'll just share these 2 things that struck me as I watched The Greatest Communicator last night on 60 Minutes:

1.   According to psychologist James Hillman, "the very word character originally meant a marking instrument that cuts indelible lines and leaves traces." In its original Greek uses, character often referred to the flaws in people that made them interesting, which puts its use then in stark opposition to the way it's often used in American politics today, as a synonym for integrity or even flawlessness.

Bill Clinton always rebelled against the idea that candidates had to be, in the Greek sense, characterless. He's the deepest, most complex American character I've ever studied, and one of the things I think sets him apart is that he doesn't buy into this ridiculous idea that politicians must pretend to be spotless ideals – he never boasted about his high "character" and never claimed he would do anything like "restore honor and integrity to the White House." Of course, his detractors would say it's because he couldn't, but who can, really? All politicians play games with the truth, but to me the unforgivable ones are those who don't know it. Clinton knows he's a liar, a sinner, and that leads to one of his great paradoxes: he's an honestly dishonest man. He simply shows us more humanity than other politicians.

2.   When Dan Rather asked him "Why?" with Monica, and Clinton responded, "Because I could," I couldn't help but think of that old joke:

Why do dogs lick their balls?

Because they can.

I wonder if Clinton ever heard that joke, and maybe had been planning for years to use the dog excuse the first time he was asked "Why?" by an American journalist in an in-depth interview.

Joking aside, you may hate the answer (Clinton himself called it the most morally indefensible reason), but that's pretty damn honest.

Kerry's Serious About Raising Minimum Wage

Unfortunately, many of the approximately 7.5 million people who would benefit from a minimum wage increase don't vote, but it's still something that a compassionate society must require. On Friday, John Kerry proposed raising federal minimum wage standards from $5.15 to $7 an hour, a hike well overdue (the last increase was in 1997). If elected, Kerry might not get the full increase, but even if he got an increase to $6.25 it would lift the prospects of several million Americans, particularly working single mothers. It's a key difference between Kerry and Bush, a good one to bring up any time some ill-informed cynic suggests there are none.

June 19, 2004

The Road Less Travelled

I keep on thinking about Paul Johnson's crying son, and the barbarians who killed his dad. Incidents like Johnson's beheading reinforce the absolute necessity of waging an effective global war on terror. That's strikingly clear at first glance of the pictures of the lifeless Johnson (WARNING: the pictures are profoundly disturbing, and you don't want to see them unless you're positively certain that you do. Here's the link). The barbarians put Johnson in an orange jumpsuit, just like the Guantanamo prisoners wear. The Iraq terrorists dressed poor Nick Berg the same way, and the pictures I saw of Berg after his death are virtually identical to the pictures of Johnson. Al Qaeda operatives all over the world appear intent to popularize the image of dead Americans, arms tied behind them, with their heads resting on their orange jumpsuit-clad backs.

Al Qaeda's ambitious plan in Saudi Arabia is clear: sensationally kill several Americans; create widespread panic in the U.S. and internationally; drive the approximately 35,000 Americans (many of them experts necessary to keep Saudi Arabia's oil flowing) out of the country to disrupt the oil supply, causing oil prices to skyrocket; devastate the international economy; and topple the reigning Saudi regime. It's not known how many American workers have already left, but I imagine it's a lot. Now that the leader of the al Qaeda group that murdered Johnson has reportedly been shot to death (it's curious that he was killed so soon after the incident – few doubt al Qaeda has friends inside Saudi's security apparatus), we'll see how well-organized they are. If Americans continue to be taken, they could go a long way toward reaching their goals.

What really troubles me today is that I don't see how our response to this kind of terrorism today is any different or more effective than it would have been before 9/11. Cheney and Bush give some tough talk about America hunting down killers, but we have very limited resources in Saudi Arabia and are mostly at the mercy of the Saudis. Where's the step-by-step approach that harnesses the full range of pressures with which we can bear down on terrorists and their protectors? I'm talking about a real global war on terror that could galvanize the cooperative resources of every civlized nation. Something like what Wes Clark wrote about in the September 2002 issue of The Washington Monthly:

The Kosovo campaign suggests alternatives in waging and winning the struggle against terrorism: greater reliance on diplomacy and law and relatively less on the military alone. Soon after September 11, without surrendering our right of self defense, we should have helped the United Nations create an International Criminal Tribunal on International Terrorism. We could have taken advantage of the outpourings of shock, grief, and sympathy to forge a legal definition of terrorism and obtain the indictment of Osama bin Laden and the Taliban as war criminals charged with crimes against humanity. Had we done so, I believe we would have had greater legitimacy and won stronger support in the Islamic world. We could have used the increased legitimacy to raise pressure on Saudi Arabia and other Arab states to cut off fully the moral, religious, intellectual, and financial support to terrorism. We could have used such legitimacy to strengthen the international coalition against Saddam Hussein. Or to encourage our European allies and others to condemn more strongly the use of terror against Israel and bring peace to that region. Reliance on a compelling U.N. indictment might have given us the edge in legitimacy throughout much of the Islamic world that no amount of "strategic information" and spin control can provide. On a purely practical level, we might have avoided the embarrassing arguments during the encirclement of Kandahar in early December 2001, when the appointed Afghan leader wanted to offer the Taliban leader amnesty, asking what law he had broken, while the United States insisted that none should be granted. We might have avoided the continuing difficulties of maintaining hundreds of prisoners in a legal no-man's land at Guantanamo Bay, which has undercut U.S. legitimacy in the eyes of much of the world.

It's not too late. For this administration it is – they're too ideologically-handicapped, mistrusted and incompetent to reimagine an international war on terror where we reduce more terrorists than we create. But the next administration still has a chance to reverse course. We must.

June 18, 2004

Long-Established Lies

Here's Bush at his cabinet meeting yesterday:

QUESTION: Mr. President, why does the administration continue to insist that Saddam had a relationship with al Qaeda, when even you have denied any connection between Saddam and September 11th, and now the September 11th commission says that there was no collaborative relationship at all?

BUSH: The reason I keep insisting that there was a relationship between Iraq and Saddam and al Qaeda, because there was a relationship between Iraq and al Qaeda.

This administration never said that the 9/11 attacks were orchestrated between Saddam and al Qaeda.

We did say there were numerous contacts between Saddam Hussein and al Qaeda. For example, Iraqi intelligence officers met with bin Laden, the head of al Qaeda, in the Sudan. There's numerous contacts between the two.

Bush also said:

He [Saddam] was a threat because he provided safe haven for a terrorist like Zarqawi who is still killing innocents inside of Iraq.

Why this is so misleading, and morally disgusting:

1. Here's the pertinent passage from the 9/11 Commission's Staff Statement 15:

Bin Laden also explored possible cooperation with Iraq during his time in Sudan, despite his opposition to Hussein's secular regime. Bin Laden had in fact at one time sponsored anti-Saddam Islamists in Iraqi Kurdistan. The Sudanese, to protect their own ties with Iraq, reportedly persuaded Bin Laden to cease this support and arranged for contacts between Iraq and Al Qaeda. A senior Iraqi intelligence officer reportedly made three visits to Sudan, finally meeting Bin Laden in 1994. Bin Laden is said to have requested space to establish training camps, as well as assistance in procuring weapons, but Iraq apparently never responded. There have been reports that contacts between Iraq and Al Qaeda also occurred after Bin Laden returned to Afghanistan, but they do not appear to have resulted in a collaborative relationship. Two senior Bin Laden associates have adamantly denied that any ties existed between Al Qaeda and Iraq. We have no credible evidence that Iraq and Al Qaeda cooperated on attacks against the United States.

Here's the analogy: You stopped by your neighbors' house 10 years ago to make a peace offering because for years your kids had been killing their kids and then they vowed to kill you. At that meeting, they ask you if their kids can play on your yard and you completely blow them off. You have no other real discussions with them over the next 10 years. Do you have a meaningful relationship with your neighbors? Do you have long-established ties to them?

In George Bush's and Dick Cheney's bizarro universe, you do.

Here's a list of pre and post-invasion Bush administration insinuations of a meaningful Iraq/al Qaeda connection. Of course, in every case, they link the two in order to suggest a collaborative relationship, which is exactly what the 9/11 Commission statement rejects.

(Ironically, the Reagan and Bush I administrations have far more well-established ties to Saddam than bin Laden – that's not lefty conspiracy jargon, that's a fact.)

Almost every nation's intelligence agency thought before the war that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction stockpiles, so some of Bush and Cheney's statements on chemical and biological WMD were forgivable (although their statements on the nuclear were not). But there was wholesale skepticism about the Iraq/al Qaeda links before the war, and they flat-out ignored it as they pressed their case. Now, they revive an active campaign to mislead all Americans, to strongly assert supremely dubious conjecture as fact. It's inexcusable, reprehensible, and – it's a stark word, but I think absolutely warranted in this case – evil.

2.   Bush said yesterday: This administration never said that the 9/11 attacks were orchestrated between Saddam and al Qaeda.

Most Americans thought Saddam did have a role in 9/11, perhaps because in nearly every speech Bush made pushing the case for war against Iraq, he used 9/11 as the justification for it. I don't think any Bush administration officials explicitly said in public that Saddam played a role in the orchestration, but they all implied it. Here's a textbook example (Meet the Press, 9/14/03):

CHENEY: With respect to 9/11, of course, we’ve had the story that’s been public out there. The Czechs alleged that Mohamed Atta, the lead attacker, met in Prague with a senior Iraqi intelligence official five months before the attack, but we’ve never been able to develop anymore of that yet either in terms of confirming it or discrediting it. We just don’t know.

Of course, the story had been widely discredited by then, because Mohammed Atta had a paper trail in the United States that suggested he was in the United States during the time of the alleged Prague meeting (which came from one very flimsy source to begin with, and the Czechs had already backed off it before Cheney made his statement). Even if it hadn't been disproven, why would Cheney talk about the unknown on national television? Obviously, it's sleight of hand.

(By the way, Cheney's 9/14 MTP performance is startlingly dishonest throughout – he is a very dangerous person.)

3.   David Corn is very careful with the facts, and he's got good stuff on all this. Here's what he says about the Zarqawi connection:

Defending himself, Bush also said that Hussein “was a threat because he provided safe haven for a terrorist like al-Zarqawi who is still killing innocents inside Iraq.” Neoconservative supporters of the war have claimed that the (supposed) fact that Zarqawi received medical attention in Baghdad before the war indicates that he was in league with Hussein’s regime. But the Zarqawi-in-Baghdad episode remains sketchy. And, as I noted here , Zarqawi has been linked to Ansar al-Islam, a fundamentalist terrorist outfit that claimed it was opposed to Hussein and that (prior to the war) operated out of northern Iraq, in territory not controlled by Hussein’s regime.

And another point: on February 8. 2003, five weeks before launching the invasion of Iraq, Bush said, “Iraq has sent bombmaking and document forgery experts to work with al Qaeda. Iraq has also provided al Qaeda with chemical and biological weapons training.” What was his basis for making these claims? If Bush had been speaking truthfully back then, he could use the evidence for these charges to back up his argument and challenge the commission’s report. Earlier this week, Bush called Zarqawi the “best evidence” of the al Qaeda-Iraq connection. But if he really possesed evidence that Iraq was supplying these forms of assistance to al Qaeda that would be make a slam-dunk case. Yet the 9/11 commission saw no such evidence.

By the way, on March 2, NBC News reported that “long before the war the Bush administration had several chances to wipe out [Zarqawi’s] terrorist operation and perhaps kill Zarqawi himself–but never pulled the trigger.” Three times in 2002 and 2003, according to this report, the Pentagon drew up plans to attack Zarqawi in his camp in northern Iraq. Yet the White House said no. According to NBC News, “Military officials insist their case for attacking Zarqawi’s operation was airtight, but the administration feared destroying the terrorist camp in Iraq could undercut its case for war against Saddam.”

If this report was true, it should be big news. The White House had Zarqawi in its sights. Yet Bush officials believed that if they took him out, they would lose an argument for war. (At his presentation to the UN, Powell tried to use Zarqawi to link al Qaeda to Hussein.) So did politics trump a national security decision? Did the administration allow to roam free a terrorist who would soon become perhaps the biggest threat to American GIs in Iraqi? Is Bush now playing politics with the truth by insisting there was a connection between al Qaeda and Hussein, even though the more objective members of the 9/11 commission–who have had access to the intelligence reporting on this dicey matter–have reviewed the record and found no compelling evidence of a signficant relationship?

June 17, 2004

Overview of the Enemy

Here's the pdf file for the 9/11 Commission's Staff Statement No. 15, "Overview of the Enemy." It has several interesting parts to it above what's generally being reported, and I'll get to those another day. But this statement should make Dick Cheney feel foolish:

We have no credible evidence that Iraq and al Qaeda cooperated on attacks against the United States.

It's mind-boggling why Cheney wants to continue to spread statements that not only counter media and governmental reports, but also people within his own administration. My guess is that Cheney has decided it's his job to play without compromise, and often without facts, to the true believing Iraq War zealots.

JEdwards

Charlie Rose's panel on Monday – with ABC News political director Mark Halperin, New York Times reporter David Halbfinger, and Boston Globe columnist Tom Oliphant – focused on Kerry's VP prospects. The interesting thing is that it became a discussion only about John Edwards, and each guy seemed to agree that if Edwards can't definitively be called the Democrats' consensus pick, he's awfully close to it. Moreover, they agreed that if Kerry doesn't pick Edwards, he better do something very soon to undercut the expectation that he's going to. If he doesn't, the eventual pick is vulnerable to being overshadowed by questions about why Kerry didn't pick Edwards, and you'll have a lot of pissed off Democrats. I'll be one of them.

June 16, 2004

The Campaign for Catholics

Several of November’s battleground states – particularly Pennsylvania, Michigan, Ohio, Iowa, Minnesota, Wisconsin, and Missouri – have very large Catholic populations. It wouldn’t be a bad bet to take the winner of the Catholic vote as the winner of the Presidency. Right now, I’m hopeful that the recent politicizations of Catholicism are working to John Kerry’s advantage.

3 points:

1.   From Monday’s New York Times:

On his recent trip to Rome, President Bush asked a top Vatican official to push American bishops to speak out more about political issues, including same-sex marriage, according to a report in the National Catholic Reporter, an independent newspaper.

In a column posted Friday evening on the paper's Web site, John L. Allen Jr., its correspondent in Rome and the dean of Vatican journalists, wrote that Mr. Bush had made the request in a June 4 meeting with Cardinal Angelo Sodano, the Vatican secretary of state. Citing an unnamed Vatican official, Mr. Allen wrote: "Bush said, 'Not all the American bishops are with me' on the cultural issues. The implication was that he hoped the Vatican would nudge them toward more explicit activism."

Mr. Allen wrote that others in the meeting confirmed that the president had pledged aggressive efforts "on the cultural front, especially the battle against gay marriage, and asked for the Vatican's help in encouraging the U.S. bishops to be more outspoken." Cardinal Sodano did not respond, Mr. Allen reported, citing the same unnamed people.

If Bush really did say “’Not all the American bishops are with me’ on the cultural issues,” then that’s clearly pretty arrogant and slimy. You’d expect him to talk to Cardinal Sodano a little differently than he would a Republican ward boss. What’s more, Bush’s none-too-subtle nudging of the Vatican to encourage all American bishops to “get with him” would necessitate asking American bishops to violate at least the spirit of the law. In their “Political Activity Guidelines for Catholic Organizations” posted on their web site, the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops advises on the United States Internal Revenue Code:

What does section 501(c)(3) of the IRC say about political campaign activity? Section 501(c)(3) of the IRC prohibits organizations that are exempt from federal income tax under its provisions, including Catholic organizations exempt under the USCCB Group Ruling, from participating or intervening in political campaigns on behalf of or in opposition to any candidate for public office. As noted, this prohibition has been interpreted as absolute.

Isn’t Bush essentially asking Sodano and the bishops to intervene in the 2004 political campaign on his behalf? Notice that Bush, according to the National Catholic Reporter quote, doesn’t just say “I think we agree on this cause and I wish you’d be louder speaking out for our cause,” he makes it a personal, partisan issue – “Not all the American bishops are with me.”

Bush has made it abundantly clear, of course, that if the American bishops aren’t with him, they’re against him.

2.   Obviously, some bishops need no such prodding from Bush and are clearly “with” Bush and against Kerry. Months ago, St. Louis Archbishop Raymond Burke warned Kerry not to present himself for Communion in his diocese. Colorado Springs Bishop Michael Sheridan out-extremed that by declaring that any Catholic who dares vote for a pro-choice politician should be disallowed Communion.

If you're wondering what might motivate Burke and Sheridan to yell such divisive pronouncements so loudly, I think Father McBrien is on to something in a Time article accompanying the poll:

"Bishops are picked not because they're independent but because they are reliable company men who follow the policies of the Holy See," says Father Richard McBrien, a professor of theology at Notre Dame. "Burke in St. Louis is angling to become a Cardinal. Sheridan in Colorado Springs would love to be an Archbishop. What better way to get noticed than to deny Communion to politicians and voters who are pro-abortion? They get points in Rome!"

I think Father Andrew Greeley, whom I respect tremendously, has made public the same assessment.

3.    I have a message for additional theological incompetents who'd like to join Burke and Sheridan: bring it on. Your radicalism may indeed help John Kerry capture the White House.

Consider the results to these poll questions, asked only of Catholics, from this week’s Time Magazine:

Do you think the Catholic Church should be trying to influence the way Catholics vote?
No    70%
Yes    26%

Do you think the Catholic Church should be trying to influence the positions Catholic politicians take on issues?
No    69%
Yes    26%

Should Senator John Kerry be denied Communion because he is pro-choice?
No     73%
Yes    21%

Does an American Archbishop’s criticism of Kerry’s position on abortion make you less likely to vote for Kerry?
No difference    83%
Less likely        14%

Now, here’s the key: 33% of Americans don’t know Kerry’s Catholic. I can't find what percentage of Catholics don't know he's Catholic, but I'd guess it's a similar figure. The only Catholics who give a damn what bishops like Sheridan and Burke say are right-wing Catholics, and they're already voting for Bush (based on my experience, these Catholics probably account almost entirely for the smaller percentages in the poll questions above – I'd estimate they represent roughly a quarter of the Catholic vote). Out of the persuadable Catholic voters, who are unlikely to be right-wing, a large percentage probably don't know Kerry's Catholic. Moreover, what these controversies do effectively is advertise the fact that he is Catholic, which presumably makes him more attractive to these Catholic persuadables.

More simply put: Is Kerry a good Catholic? questions = good

I have 2 more points, but I need some sleep, so I'll address them tomorrow.

June 15, 2004

Dick

From the AP:

Vice President Dick Cheney said Monday that Saddam Hussein had "long-established ties" with al Qaeda, an assertion that has been repeatedly challenged by some policy experts and lawmakers.

The vice president offered no details backing up his claim of a link between Saddam and al Qaida.

"He was a patron of terrorism," Cheney said of Hussein during a speech before The James Madison Institute, a conservative think-tank based in Florida. "He had long established ties with al Qaeda."

Cheney continues to proudly and defiantly present empty conjecture as hard intelligence. It's exasperating. I wish I could come up with some new way to condemn it, but the only thing that came to my mind when I read this story is how much Cheney sounds like Rain Man. I'm dead serious. Cheney's Rain Man. Until he grows up, the American press should condescend to him the way Tom Cruise did to Dustin Hoffman.

Tony S.

Jon Bon Jovi raised $1 million for Kerry last night. But this is more important than money:

More than 300 people attended the fund-raiser, including actors Meg Ryan, James Gandolfini and Steve Buscemi, both of HBO's "The Sopranos," and Richard Belzer of NBC's "Law and Order: Special Victims Unit."

You read that right. Tony Soprano is a Kerry supporter. This thing's in the bag.

Poll Watching

Here's George W. Bush on June 12, 1999, kicking off his 2000 presidential run:

I don't run polls to tell me what to think.

This is from an article that contrasts Reagan and Bush in yesterday's New York Times:

The second difference is in the business of politics. Mr. Bush, who is his own de facto campaign manager, loves the combat and gossip. His advisers say he knows his exact standing in recent polls, the names of his chairmen in the battleground states and probably the names of important county chairmen.

Bush is a poll hawk. Any fair-minded person who looks at some of his flip-flops would conclude that polls probably influenced his thinking about 100% on at least a few different issues.

June 14, 2004

The Mother of All Torture Memos (until details about the next one emerge)

The Washington Post has posted the full original text of the Justice Department's 2002 memo to President Bush saying torture of terrorist detainees "may be justified." I've yet to read it, so I'll withold comment until I do.

Billy Jeff

Clinton's book comes out a week from tomorrow, and his inaugural interview will be on 60 Minutes this Sunday, so some of its details should begin to emerge this weekend. According to The New York Times, his book tour will double as a campaign for John Kerry. Awesome:

As former President Bill Clinton prepares for a barrage of publicity and a cross-country tour to promote his memoirs, his political advisers are consulting with the Democratic Party and Senator John Kerry's campaign about ways that Mr. Clinton can lend a political hand in the process.

Mr. Clinton received an advance of more than $10 million to write his memoirs, "My Life," and aides to the former president say his first priority now is to sell as many books as possible.

But they also say that whenever his book-selling obligations allow, Mr. Clinton is eager to pitch in for the party by plugging Mr. Kerry and subtly putting down Republicans at book-selling events, and by speaking at fund-raisers or campaign stops on his tour.

With Michael Moore's new film Farhenheit 9/11 opening nationally June 25, right on Clinton's heels, there are certain to be some disgruntled Republicans around. It's gonna be a fun Summer.

More Republicans Suggest Bush Is Weak on Defense

The Los Angeles Times rightly put this story, Retired Officials Say Bush Must Go, on its front page yesterday morning:

A group of 26 former senior diplomats and military officials, several appointed to key positions by Republican Presidents Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush, plans to issue a joint statement this week arguing that President George W. Bush has damaged America's national security and should be defeated in November.

The group, which calls itself Diplomats and Military Commanders for Change, will explicitly condemn Bush's foreign policy, according to several of those who signed the document.

"It is clear that the statement calls for the defeat of the administration," said William C. Harrop, the ambassador to Israel under President Bush's father and one of the group's principal organizers.

Those signing the document, which will be released in Washington on Wednesday, include 20 former U.S. ambassadors, appointed by presidents of both parties, to countries including Israel, the former Soviet Union and Saudi Arabia.

Others are senior State Department officials from the Carter, Reagan and Clinton administrations and former military leaders, including retired Marine Gen. Joseph P. Hoar, the former commander of U.S. forces in the Middle East under President Bush's father. Hoar is a prominent critic of the war in Iraq.

These are some pretty serious people, and the fact that so many Republicans signed up for something so critical of an incumbent President is extraordinary. In fact, I wonder if it has any precedent. Perhaps more than anything else, it illustrates how a completely neocon-driven foreign policy can isolate conservative foreign policy thinkers.

I didn't see this in the other major papers today, but when they issue their official statement it should be considered a very big deal.

Vice President Edwards

Since the end of the primaries, I haven't seen a poll that didn't have John Edwards as far and away the preferred VP choice for Democrats. Now, a number of senators have gone firmly on record encouraging Kerry to put Edwards on the ticket. In fact, From the Senate, a Chorus Rises in Support of Edwards, from The New York Times, has an amazing number of on-the-record sources, which tells me that Kerry must be under considerable private pressure to choose Edwards. One of the reasons Kerry's senate colleagues (and Democratic candidates for the senate) are so intense about pushing Edwards is because they think he would help in some of the important Southern senate races. They're right. To me, these quotes seem to share an urgency often motivated by self-survival:

Louisiana Senator John Breaux (who's retiring, but has endorsed Rep. Chris John to be his successor): "Edwards is from the South and speaks Southern, and I think would be helpful to the candidates in that regard. I think he can campaign well in the South, and I think the candidates would be proud to stand with him when he comes down there."

Louisiana Democratic Senate Candidate Chris John: "It certainly would be helpful in Louisiana, for the mere fact that it's a state where we're looking for some excitement. Edwards would bring some excitement."

North Carolina Democratic Senate Candidate Erskine Bowles: "I've had lots of people who are close to Kerry ask me, and I've always been very candid: he'd be nuts not to pick him."

North Dakota Senator Kent Conrad: "We invited him to North Dakota for our state convention in April and he got the most positive response of anybody I've seen since Bobby Kennedy. He's a terrific speaker, but he's also somebody that people like. You can't overstate the importance of that in politics."

North Dakota Senator Byron Dorgan: "His appeal goes beyond the South. He's Southern, but he's also centrist, he's charismatic and I think he'd add a lot of spark to this ticket."

Perhaps most revealing is this little passage, which appears to have been reserved for an Edwards' detractor. Some detractor:

With Mr. Kerry making clear his desire for discretion, even those who favor Mr. Edwards hastened to say the decision was Mr. Kerry's alone to make, and in any case the Democratic caucus is hardly unanimous in promoting Mr. Edwards.

"We've worked with him, we know him, he's been part of our caucus, he's got the skills that translate on the campaign trail and I think he plays well in a lot of our states, but I'm not going to endorse anybody," said Senator Patty Murray of Washington, who raised $200,000 with Mr. Edwards's help in April.

If Kerry doesn't choose Edwards, it's clear that at the very least he's gonna have to spend a lot of time on the phone explaining why not.

Bush's Tax Increases

Because our taxpayer dollars subsidize it, Iraqis currently pay only 5 cents per gallon for gas. In Los Angeles, we're currently paying about $2.45 per gallon and Americans nationally are paying about $2.05 per gallon.

I have no problem with us subsidizing what Iraqis pay for gas. We need to help them rebuild their nation. What I do resent, however (especially when I read the meter as I pump gas into my tank), is the President's failure to level with us on what the costs of war might be, and his ardently pushing trillions of dollars in tax breaks for millionaires and billionaires as he pushed war. In the end, the money for the Iraq War and for the trillion dollar tax cuts is inevitably gonna come largely from cuts in post-baby boomer social security benefits. That is, unless we can kick this administration out in November and stop the bleeding.

Darth Nader

Ralph Nader has only recently come to national recognition as the poster child of egomania triumping over principles. But he's been working at it for quite awhile. Check this out from "Boss Nader," in National Journal's 6/5/04 print edition (sorry, subscription required):

Amid a dispute with the staff of one of his flagship publications in 1984 over its editorial content and a bid by staff members to form a union, Nader responded with the same kind of tactics that he has elsewhere condemned: He fired the staff, changed the locks at the office, unsuccessfully tried to have one employee arrested, and hired permanent replacements. When the fired workers appealed the action to federal authorities, Nader filed a countersuit. Applying a legal tactic that employers commonly use to resist union-organizing efforts, Nader claimed that the fired workers were trying to appropriate his business. Nader spurned efforts by other progressives to mediate the fight, and he refused an offer to settle the litigation by simply signing a declaration that his workers thenceforth would have the right to organize.

"I was shocked by how Ralph acted," said John Cavanagh, director of the Institute for Policy Studies, who tried to mediate the dispute. "He seemed unable to see how this conflicted with his ideals."

The rest of the article is pretty ugly for Nader, too.

Manchurian Republican Women

The movie I'm most excited to see this Summer is Jonathan Demme's remake of the 1962 classic The Manchurian Candidate. You can check out the trailer here.

Great director (Demme, who did Silence of the Lambs and some lesser known greats like Melvin and Howard). Great cast (Denzel Washington, Meryl Streep, Liev Schreiber, Jon Voight, Jeffrey Wright).

If you've seen the original, you know how chilling Angela Lansbury's performance is. Meryl Streep reprises that role in the remake, and according to Variety (the 5/31-6/6 weekly issue), she's got some role models that should allow her to outchill Lansbury and frighten the bejesus out of all of us:

... [Streep] revealed that watching tapes of Karen Hughes and Peggy Noonan was her research for the role of the politically diabolical mother in "The Manchurian Candidate" remake.

June 13, 2004

Why McCain's a No Go, Why the Leak

The Washington Post gives some specifics that explain why McCain isn't interested in even being considered as Kerry's VP. "Informed sources" say it's generally because "...McCain believes such a bipartisan ticket would not work and could weaken the presidency..."
The two men simply disagree on too much:

McCain has said he supports Bush and has outlined areas where he and Kerry disagree. In yesterday's Washington Post, McCain noted some of those differences to columnist David Ignatius, including a fundamental difference on how to deal with North Korea and differences over the military's "don't ask, don't tell" policy with regard to gays.

McCain, who is outspoken on all subjects, is concerned that policy differences, if openly discussed in office, would make his role untenable if he were to become vice president under Kerry, leading to a potential conflict that would harm the institution of the presidency.

McCain and Kerry also disagree on abortion -- McCain opposes abortion; Kerry supports abortion rights -- and that issue would have the potential to roil a crucial part of the Democratic base. Despite their friendship, the senators disagree more than they agree on issues, according to those who know them.

I think McCain's right, it wouldn't work, and he does Kerry a big favor by rejecting consideration. Effective administrations simply can't have that much disunity at the top, and McCain's the last guy who's gonna hold his tongue when he disagrees with something. Plus, McCain's already made strong statements supportive of Bush that would embarrass the ticket and erase some of its initial luster. These are two primary reasons why I think John Edwards is a better choice than McCain.

I wondered yesterday if the leak may have actually been authorized by the Kerry campaign braintrust, and these WaPo paragraphs suggests that may have been the case:

It could be advantageous for Kerry to make known his interest, aware that McCain would turn it down, strategists say. Hailing from one of the most liberal states in the nation, Kerry has spent the general-election campaign trying to position himself as a centrist who is strong on national defense and a hawk on deficits, two positions the Bush campaign has repeatedly challenged. Kerry frequently mentions McCain in his stump speech, as a way of putting a bipartisan stamp on his work, and has included images of the two men together in his television ads.

It is unclear how seriously Kerry has considered a unity ticket. Aides described Kerry as intrigued but not committed to the idea, even if McCain were seriously interested, which he has made clear he is not.

I'm not convinced the leak helps Kerry any – people will probably register the rejection more than any thought behind an offer.

Incidentally, if Republicans try to work some p.r. advantage into the McCain rejection, it will be important to remind them that McCain has said publically that he rejected consideration as Bush's VP in 2000. Like Kerry's, it was a personal, informal gauge of interest, and came directly from Bush himself.

From the H.I.B. Network (Hypocrisy in Broadcasting)

Rush Limbaugh looks determined to remain a pace ahead of J'Lo on divorces. He's rewinding the aisle walk for a third time. If it weren't for his public hypocrisy, I wouldn't mention it. Atrios has a greatest hits of some of Rush's previous statements criticizing divorce (implicitly or explicitly). Here's one example:

July 16, 1996:

[from the childless Limbaugh]
Marriage is simply the way humanity has discovered that it is the best way to build a building block of an orderly society and sustain it. That's all it is. It is also the means by which you produce legitimate offspring. And I--and I've--whatever else Barney and his mate do, they cannot do that. And that's the soul purpose--now look, we're devaluing marriage--a lot of divorce. Got to fix that. There is way, way too much illegitimacy in this country, and it's leading to the crime rate. This business of the gay marriage is nothing more than a money grab, in my opinion, so people can get on the welfare rolls or the benefit rolls, in state offices and other--and other places.

I--I really do not even think marriage is a right. Marriage is a responsibility. It's not a gift that somebody says, Hey, now it's time for you to get married. It's our bestowal to you.' It's--it's a--it's a commitment that you make and it is a responsibility that you accept. And it's--to--to be--to be tossed around in this manner is to devalue it, which is to devalue the fundamental building block of our society. And I think that's what's wrong with this whole process of same-sex marriage. It just simply denies the definition of what the institution is.

That's a childless, thrice-divorced, former welfare-recipient (as Al Franken has documented) delivering that diatribe. How in the world can millions of listeners fail to identify him as a complete fraud?

June 12, 2004

McCain Rejected VP Consideration

I kind of expected this headline, but it's still unwelcome. It doesn't make Kerry look very good, and makes his eventual choice appear to be a second choice. From the Associated Press:

Republican Sen. John McCain has personally rejected John Kerry's overtures to join the Democratic presidential ticket and forge a bipartisan alliance against President Bush, The Associated Press has learned.

Kerry has asked McCain as recently as late last month to consider becoming his running mate, but the Arizona senator said he's not interested, said a Democratic official who spoke on condition of anonymity because Kerry has insisted that his deliberations be kept private.

The AP uses this language in its lede: "...McCain has personally rejected John Kerry's overtures to join the Democratic Presidential ticket...". So now there's a bunch of "McCain Rejects Kerry VP Offer" headlines instead of "McCain Opts Out of Kerry VP Consideration." The article seemingly contradicts those headlines (and the AP its own lede) when it emphasizes just a few paragraphs later that Kerry never actually offered McCain the nomination:

Both officials said Kerry stopped short of offering McCain the job, sparing himself an outright rejection that would make his eventual running mate look like a second choice.

"Senator McCain categorically states that he has not been offered the vice presidency by any one," said McCain's chief of staff, Mark Salter, who would not confirm the officials' account.

In their article, headlined "McCain Is Said to Tell Kerry He Won't Join" (odd wording – I won't be surprised if it's changed by the time you read this), The New York Times includes a confusion-clarifying quote from "one person who has discussed the issue with both [Kerry and McCain]":

"It was always artfully phrased, but he asked him on several occasions to serve as his running mate," the individual said. "He'd say, `I don't want to formally ask because I don't want to be formally rejected, but having said that, would you do it?' or `I need you to do it,' or `I want you to do it.' "

"It was always phrased in such a way as to give both men plausible deniability," the individual added.

He much you wanna bet that Republicans try to fit this "artful phrasing" into their flip-flopper routine?

Please, please John Kerry, pick John Edwards next month and all will be made right again.

June 11, 2004

"The Genius"

Ray Charles, a great American, died yesterday. He brought soul music to the secular world, but now he's bringing it back to God.

Reagan

Three quick things:

1.   Bravo to ABC's Nightline, which actually went to the journalistic trouble Wednesday night of taking an objective look at Reagan's Presidency, covering the good and the bad.

2.   I'm really late on this, because just about every liberal blogger in the world has mentioned it, but I've heard a few different talking heads say something like, "Reagan left office with the highest approval numbers in the history of modern polling." That's complete fiction. Billy Jeff Clinton left office with an approval rating of 65% in the Gallup poll, while Reagan was at 63%. Atrios goes into more detail, and if you take the average of the last several polls, Clinton expands his lead. Also, while Reagan's final approval numbers were high, when it came to specific poll questions (according to Nightline), his only positive numbers were on foreign policy and defense.

3.   Andrew Sullivan posted two jaw-dropping transcripts of White House press briefings in 1982 and 1984 (Larry Speakes was Reagan's Spokesman):

Q: Larry, does the President have any reaction to the announcement from the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta, that AIDS is now an epidemic and have over 600 cases?
MR. SPEAKES: What's AIDS?
Q: Over a third of them have died. It's known as "gay plague." (Laughter.) No, it is. I mean it's a pretty serious thing that one in every three people that get this have died. And I wondered if the President is aware of it?
MR. SPEAKES: I don't have it. Do you? (Laughter.)
Q: No, I don't.
MR. SPEAKES: You didn't answer my question.
Q: Well, I just wondered, does the President ...
MR. SPEAKES: How do you know? (Laughter.)
Q: In other words, the White House looks on this as a great joke?
MR. SPEAKES: No, I don't know anything about it, Lester.
Q: Does the President, does anyone in the White House know about this epidemic, Larry?
MR. SPEAKES: I don't think so. I don't think there's been any ...
Q: Nobody knows?
MR. SPEAKES: There has been no personal experience here, Lester.
Q: No, I mean, I thought you were keeping ...
MR. SPEAKES: I checked thoroughly with Dr. Ruge this morning and he's had no - (laughter) - no patients suffering from AIDS or whatever it is.
Q: The President doesn't have gay plague, is that what you're saying or what?
MR. SPEAKES: No, I didn't say that.
Q: Didn't say that?
MR. SPEAKES: I thought I heard you on the State Department over there. Why didn't you stay there? (Laughter.)
Q: Because I love you Larry, that's why (Laughter.)
MR. SPEAKES: Oh I see. Just don't put it in those terms, Lester. (Laughter.)
Q: Oh, I retract that.
MR. SPEAKES: I hope so.
Q: It's too late.

With the death toll rising, Speakes remained ignorant and insensitive. Here's a 1984 briefing:

Q: An estimated 300,000 people have been exposed to AIDS, which can be transmitted through saliva. Will the President, as Commander-in-Chief, take steps to protect Armed Forces food and medical services from AIDS patients or those who run the risk of spreading AIDS in the same manner that they forbid typhoid fever people from being involved in the health or food services?
MR. SPEAKES: I don't know.
Q: Could you -- Is the President concerned about this subject, Larry --
MR. SPEAKES: I haven't heard him express--
Q: --that seems to have evoked so much jocular--
MR. SPEAKES: --concern.
Q: --reaction here? I -- you know --
Q: It isn't only the jocks, Lester.
Q: Has he sworn off water faucets--
Q: No, but, I mean, is he going to do anything, Larry?
MR. SPEAKES: Lester, I have not heard him express anything on it. Sorry.
Q: You mean he has no -- expressed no opinion about this epidemic?
MR. SPEAKES: No, but I must confess I haven't asked him about it. (Laughter.)
Q: Would you ask him Larry?
MR. SPEAKES: Have you been checked? (Laughter.)

June 10, 2004

State of the Race

From a new Los Angeles Times poll:

Widespread unease over the country's direction and doubts about President Bush's policies on Iraq and the economy helped propel Sen. John F. Kerry to a solid lead among voters nationwide, according to a new Times Poll.

Yet in a measure of the race's tenuous balance, Times' polling in three of the most fiercely contested states found that Bush has a clear advantage over Kerry in Missouri and runs even with the presumed Democratic rival in Ohio and Wisconsin.

and...

More than one-third of those polled in the nationwide poll said they don't know enough about Kerry to decide whether he would be a better president than Bush. And when asked which candidate was more likely to flip-flop on issues, almost twice as many named Kerry than Bush.

Yet Kerry led Bush by 51% to 44% nationally in a two-way match up, and by 48% to 42% in a three-way race, with independent Ralph Nader drawing 4%.

and...

A striking 56% said America "needs to move in a new direction" because Bush's policies have not improved the country. Just 39% say America is better off because of his agenda.

and...

His assets are enough for Bush to maintain a double-digit advantage in Missouri with Nader in the mix, and to remain essentially even with Kerry in Ohio and Wisconsin, even though majorities in each state say the country should change direction.

and...

Bush also is bolstered by solid leads among culturally conservative groups that have favored Republicans over the past generation: married couples, rural voters, those who attend church services regularly (especially whites) and gun-owners.

But Kerry has unified Democrats, muted the traditional GOP advantage among men and opened a narrow edge among suburbanites.

Kerry also performs well among many groups that his party's nominees have traditionally relied upon: women, singles, those who attend religious services rarely or never, and lower-income families. In a three-way race, Nader has little effect on these dynamics.

Kerry's certainly got his work cut out for him, but he's doing very well at this stage in the game (unprecedentedly well, actually; challengers never poll above 50% before their conventions). The most disappointing thing in this poll for him is probably Bush's double-digit advantage in Missouri (some other recent polls have that race tied). Bush-Cheney's "flip-flopper" label sticking with many voters is also worrisome, of course, but I think Kerry can really dispel some of that at the convention and during the debates. The flip-flopper tag – one Clinton shared – is certainly easier for a campaign to manage than something like the "weak dweeb" tag put on Dukakis.

The fact that 56% of the those polled think the country needs to move in a new direction is devastating for Bush-Cheney. Also, based on previous elections, people's perceptions of the economy are fairly well solidified at this point in the cycle, so the poor economic ratings don't bode well for him. He could prove an exception, of course, but obviously there's more bad news here for Bush than for Kerry.

Then again, political analyst Stuart Rothenberg, a pretty sharp observer, said on Inside Politics last Friday (before Reagan's death, or as conservatives now refer to it, B.R.) that he senses a Bush surge coming on. It was based on feeling rather than any solid new data, but I tend to agree with him, actually. Brace yourself for a little Bush bounce, at least until Kerry selects his VP.

Reagan

1.    On a light-hearted note, for those who happened to watch MSNBC during its coverage of the Reagan memorial, there was a technical glitch for a minute or two during Cheney's speech where you still saw Cheney on the screen, but superimposed were Chris Matthews and Pat Buchanan watching back at the MSNBC studios. As Matthews watched intently, he was chomping on a bagel. I kid you not. I wish I could put up a picture, because Matthews swallowing a bagel on top of Cheney delivering a speech was an uncommonly hilarious image.

2.    Speaking of Cheney's speech, David Sirota uncovered this Reagan-era quote from Dick, which is particularly ironic given he's traveled the country calling John Kerry "weak on defense" for voting against certain defense bills:

According to the 12/16/84 Washington Post, Cheney said if Reagan "doesn't really cut defense, he becomes the No. 1 special pleader in town." Cheney urged Reagan to cut defense spending, saying "the president has to reach out and take a whack at everything to be credible" and said that absent a raid of Social Security or a tax increase, "you've got to hit defense."

I suppose conservatives must think if Dick Cheney had gotten his way and reduced defense spending, you'd be reading this in Russian right now.

Sirota also unveiled this Cheney-on-Reagan quote:

Cheney said Reagan was "tolerating a decision-making process in the upper reaches of the Administration that lacked integrity and accountability ." [Source: National Journal, 8/8/87]

3. I'd put federal judiciary appointments way, way up there on the totem pole of long-term Presidential influence. Reagan's Supreme Court appointments: O'Connor, Bork, Kennedy, Rehnquist (promotion to Chief Justice), and Scalia.

Ouch.

4.   Ken Kimsey sent me these insightful and eloquent words on his experience of the Reagan years:

During much of the Reagan era, I was working in the emerging AIDS field. My memories of Reagan’s cruel indifference and his leadership example of sheer denial are indelible. Of course, many of the people affected by AIDS were also addicted to drugs, in the era of “Just Say No.” I suppose my strongest lingering impression of the Reagan years is the atmosphere of unreality, of a complete disconnect between the seemingly benign, smiling persona of Reagan and the harsh realities of the world in which I was living and working.

June 9, 2004

Can the Conventional Wisdom

What we have now is not just a 24 hour cable news commemoration of a popular President, but also free round-the-clock advertisements for the declared triumphs of conservative extremism. Shouldn't this spectacle put to rest once and for all the idea that we have a "liberal" news media?

Yesterday on Hardball, here's what former Reagan advisor Martin Anderson said in vigorous defense of the massive Reagan deficits:

He [Reagan] could have not spent what was necessary on missile defense and all those other things and we probably would have lost the Cold War.

That's an astonishingly ridiculous statement, but I'm glad he said it because it fitfully underscores some deeply flawed Reaganite thinking.

First, what spending on missile defense was necessary? Somebody may want to inform Mr. Anderson that we still don't have a missile defense program that can be described as anything other than a sick joke, and the original "Star Wars" plans under Reagan were a really sick joke. It's been nothing more than billions upon billions of dollars down the drain.

Second, what would losing the Cold War entail? Mutual assured destruction maybe, or just a communist takeover of the United States? To think an absence of irresponsibly massive defense spending would have somehow led to one of those things takes a fantastic imagination.

Third, if the Reaganites truly believed in the superiority of our capitalist democracy, why did they think we were so vulnerable to communism? Granted it's easier to say now, but even back then there were no strong indications the Soviet Union was outperforming the United States economically or militarily (all the military comparisons are kind of silly anyway, considering each side had the nuclear capacity to obliterate the other's entire country about 200 times – the nuclear arms build-up just assured that we would be able to blow each other up more times). In fact, some genuinely prescient thinkers like Democratic Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan predicted as early as 1979 that the economic downfall of the Soviet Union might be just around the corner. Since the mid-70s, the CIA also forecasted that "the failed economy and stultifying societal conditions" within the Soviet Union would produce change.

I won't argue with the idea that Reagan probably accelerated their economic collapse, but at what cost? Well, the implosion of our own federal budget for one (silver lining: G.H.W. Bush was forced to break his "read my lips" pledge and raise taxes to clean up some of Reagan's mess, and it may have cost him re-election). You team an enormous decrease in tax revenue with enormous defense spending increases and what do you think you're gonna get? Long-term economic success? Of course not.

One of Reagan's most unfortunate handoffs to this President and our country is the certain idea that you can print as much money as you want, spend it all, call yourself rich, and still benefit politically. Even if you don't spend a single dollar of it on something that might directly benefit the quality of life of your citizenry, like, say, insuring the health of every child in the United States.

The TiVo President

If I were President, I'd probably contribute to our nation's deficits by recklessly overspending on the advancement of something like this (from the NY Times):

TiVo, the maker of a popular digital video recorder, plans to announce a new set of Internet-based services today that will further blur the line between programming delivered over traditional cable and satellite channels and content from the Internet. It is just one of a growing group of large and small companies that are looking at high-speed Internet to deliver video content to the living room.

The new TiVo technology, which will become a standard feature in its video recorders, will allow users to download movies and music from the Internet to the hard drive on their video recorder. Although the current TiVo service allows users to watch broadcast, cable or satellite programs at any time, the new technology will make it possible for them to mix content from the Internet with those programs.

June 8, 2004

Rule of the Lawless

The New York Times today:

A team of administration lawyers concluded in a March 2003 legal memorandum that President Bush was not bound by either an international treaty prohibiting torture or by a federal antitorture law because he had the authority as commander in chief to approve any technique needed to protect the nation's security.

The memo, prepared for Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, also said that any executive branch officials, including those in the military, could be immune from domestic and international prohibitions against torture for a variety of reasons.

In other words, administration lawyers decided long ago that President Bush is, in the most literal sense, above the law. That's staggeringly and revoltingly anti-American.

Josh Marshall quotes from a Wall Street Journal article that pinpoints more (which I gather is pretty similar to the Times article, but I can't get it on-line) and puts it in perspective:

To protect subordinates should they be charged with torture, the memo advised that Mr. Bush issue a "presidential directive or other writing" that could serve as evidence, since authority to set aside the laws is "inherent in the president."

So the right to set aside law is "inherent in the president". That claim alone should stop everyone in their tracks and prompt a serious consideration of the safety of the American republic under this president. It is the very definition of a constitutional monarchy, let alone a constitutional republic, that the law is superior to the executive, not the other way around. This is the essence of what the rule of law means -- a government of laws, not men, and all that.

Is it any wonder that the theme song from Terry Gilliam's brilliant 1985 movie Brazil plays in my head so often these days?

As if You Need More Reagan...

Many of these broadcast celebrations of Reagan's life are appropriate tributes to a fallen President, but those in the news media across the board need to find ways to be something more than fawning emcees through all of this. Besides some perfunctory mention of Iran-contra, I've seen absolutely nothing on the cable or broadcast networks even remotely critical of his administration's policies, and I don't think that serves the public. It dehumanizes Reagan and insults the rest of us to glorify him so, and it robs the public of an honest, necessary debate about some of the good and bad of a President's tenure. I'm not saying flame the fans of controversy in the wake of a man's death, but if we can't have reasonably critical public discussions that are able to respectfully distinguish policies from human beings, then Presidents' deaths shouldn't be the public's business any more than all other American deaths.

While the spotlight on the 80's is still bright, it's important that we remember how Reagan administration policies built up some of our recent adversaries, most notably Saddam Hussein (bin Laden's U.S. ties during the Afghan-Soviet Union conflict are fairly sketchy, I believe, and it's trickier to assign political blame for it). In 1982, the Reagan administration removed Iraq from its list of state sponsors of terrorism, which it inherited from the Carter administration, and backed Saddam publically throughout the 1980s while many Democrats in Congress were opposed to our involvement with him because he was so clearly a serial human rights abuser. (Remember the now famous photo of Reagan's Special Envoy Donald Rumsfeld shaking hands with our then ally?)

In 1994, the Riegle Report found that the Reagan administration actually exported biological materials to Iraq. This isn't conspiracy nut stuff, it's from an authoritative U.S. Senate report:

U.S. Exports of Biological Materials to Iraq

The Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs has oversight responsibility for the Export Administration Act. Pursuant to the Act, Committee staff contacted the U.S. Department of Commerce and requested information on the export of biological materials during the years prior to the Gulf War. After receiving this information, we contacted a principal supplier of these materials to determine what, if any, materials were exported to Iraq which might have contributed to an offensive or defensive biological warfare program. Records available from the supplier for the period from 1985 until the present show that during this time, pathogenic (meaning "disease producing"), toxigenic (meaning "poisonous"), and other biological research materials were exported to Iraq pursuant to application and licensing by the U.S. Department of Commerce. Records prior to 1985 were not available, according to the supplier. These exported biological materials were not attenuated or weakened and were capable of reproduction. According to the Department of Defense's own Report to Congress on the Conduct of the Persian Gulf War, released in April 1992: "By the time of the invasion of Kuwait, Iraq had developed biological weapons. It's advanced and aggressive biological warfare program was the most advanced in the Arab world... The program probably began late in the 1970's and concentrated on the development of two agents, botulinum toxin and anthrax bacteria... Large scale production of these agents began in 1989 at four facilities in Baghdad. Delivery means for biological agents ranged from simple aerial bombs and artillery rockets to surface-to-surface missiles."

Hasn't this Reagan administration export policy proved important enough that more people in the country should know about it? Shouldn't something like this be mentioned alongside glowing newsroom summaries of Reagan's Cold War prescience?

Yet More Reagan. With a Little Bush. Sorry.

The second chapter of Lou Cannon's biography President Reagan: The Role of a Lifetime paints Reagan in broad strokes. What struck me while re-reading it today is how much of the chapter could be taken almost verbatim and used in a George W. Bush biography. Check out these sentences (page 17 & 18):

Over time he came to a few settled beliefs and wrote them down in speeches, sprinkled with odd anecdotes. He found his arguments and his anecdotes in Reader's Digest and in newspaper stories and rarely questioned their validity. He preached love of country, distrust of government, the glories of economic opportunity, the dangers of regulating business, and the wonders of free markets and free trade. He believed in the manifest destiny of the United States of America. He also believed in intuition, psychic phenomena, and fate. He was fascinated by the biblical story of Armageddon. He had no use for organized religion, though he said he often prayed. He was modest about his achievements and willing to share the credit with others, but he refused to acknowledge mistakes. When he changed positions on an issue and even when he changed political parties, he insisted that he was being consistent with his past record and that it was others who had changed. He was slow to anger but extremely stubborn. He detested arguments. He trusted everyone who worked for him and considered even mild criticism of the most incompetent subordinate to be a disguised attack on him and his policies...

and

Like most disciplined persons, Reagan was a creature of habit. By the time he came to Washington he had long been accustomed to a daily schedule that told him where he would go and who he would meet and to a script that told him what to say.

Almost all of that could be said about our current President. (What is it, by the way, that draws conservatives to such a personality type?)

Two central characteristics they don't share, however: 1) Bush grew up extremely rich, of course, and Reagan poor and 2) Reagan's sense of timing was uncannily precise in most of his public appearances, whereas Bush's rhythms are, well, let's just say imprecise.

June 7, 2004

Reagan

I've been ideologically opposed to Ronald Reagan's policies since I was about 12 or 13 years old, so – having long anticipated all the positive media coverage – I'd thought his death might be a good time for me to get out of the country for a month or two. Indeed, based on the news segments I've seen, many producers and reporters must expect Reagan will rise from the dead Tuesday morning.

But I've got no money and already have a little vacation scheduled for the end of the month, so here I am to share with you just a few thoughts on all this:

1.   If Lou Cannon's not Reagan's definitive biographer, he's as close as you'll find. Here's his long but worthwhile Reagan obituary in the Washington Post.

2.   From everything I've read about him, I gather Reagan had extraordinarly few personal enemies for a man in the political business (aka "the fight game"). Deluged with all this footage of him since Saturday, it's easy to recall what was so disarming about him. He had a good sense of humor, was preternaturally courteous, and genuinely optimistic. It's right that the news media pay tribute to these qualities that endeared him to so many Americans, especially because so many people have such amazing things to say about Reagan personally. In that sense, perhaps he's earned some of this sacred cow coverage. (Although, as Cannon notes in his obit, Reagan was curiously distant from his children and grandchildren).

3.    What bothers me when I watch all this Reagan worship is the way even some Democrats (although Kerry's statement hit a perfect note) shift so seamlessly from giving him personal praise to endorsing his political legacy. Later this week, I'll go into specifics about why I think Reagan's wielding of Presidential power hurt America in profound ways. Generally, though, most of my objections were poetically expressed by Mario Cuomo in his 1984 Democratic National Convention Keynote Address, "A Tale of Two Cities." I remember hearing part of this speech live when I was 12, and knowing that I would die a Democrat. You should read the whole thing, but here's a long tease:

Ten days ago, President Reagan admitted that although some people in this country seemed to be doing well nowadays, others were unhappy, even worried, about themselves, their families and their futures. The president said that he didn't understand that fear. He said, "Why, this country is a shining city on a hill." And the president is right. In many ways we are a shining city on a hill.

But the hard truth is that not everyone is sharing in this city's splendor and glory. A shining city is perhaps all the president sees from the portico of the White House and the veranda of his ranch, where everyone seems to be doing well. But there's another city; there's another part to the shining the city; the part where some people can't pay their mortgages, and most young people can't afford one, where students can't afford the education they need, and middle-class parents watch the dreams they hold for their children evaporate.

In this part of the city there are more poor than ever, more families in trouble, more and more people who need help but can't find it. Even worse: There are elderly people who tremble in the basements of the houses there. And there are people who sleep in the city streets, in the gutter, where the glitter doesn't show. There are ghettos where thousands of young people, without a job or an education, give their lives away to drug dealers every day. There is despair, Mr. President, in the faces that you don't see, in the places that you don't visit in your shining city.

In fact, Mr. President, this is a nation --. Mr. President you ought to know that this nation is more a "Tale of Two Cities" than it is just a "Shining City on a Hill."

Maybe, maybe, Mr. President, if you visited some more places. Maybe if you went to Appalachia where some people still live in sheds, maybe if you went to Lackawanna where thousands of unemployed steel workers wonder why we subsidized foreign steel. Maybe, maybe, Mr. President, if you stopped in at a shelter in Chicago and spoke to the homeless there; maybe, Mr. President, if you asked a woman who had been denied the help she needed to feed her children because you said you needed the money for a tax break for a millionaire or for a missile we couldn't afford to use.

Maybe, maybe, Mr. President. But I'm afraid not.

Because, the truth is, ladies and gentlemen, that this is how we were warned it would be. President Reagan told us from very the beginning that he believed in a kind of social Darwinism. Survival of the fittest. "Government can't do everything," we were told. "So it should settle for taking care of the strong and hope that economic ambition and charity will do the rest. Make the rich richer -- and what falls from their table will be enough for the middle class and those who are trying desperately to work their way into the middle class."

You know, the Republicans called it trickle-down when Hoover tried it. Now they call it supply side. But it's the same shining city for those relative few who are lucky enough to live in its good neighborhoods. But for the people who are excluded -- for the people who are locked out -- all they can do is to stare from a distance at that city's glimmering towers.

It's an old story. It's as old as our history. The difference between Democrats and Republicans has always been measured in courage and confidence. The Republicans believe that the wagon train will not make it to the frontier unless some of the old, some of the young, some of the weak are left behind by the side of the trail. The strong, the strong they tell us will inherit the land.

We Democrats believe in something else. We democrats believe that we can make it all the way with the whole family intact. And, we have more than once. Ever since Franklin Roosevelt lifted himself from his wheelchair to lift this nation from its knees -- wagon train after wagon train -- to new frontiers of education, housing, peace; the whole family aboard, constantly reaching out to extend and enlarge that family; lifting them up into the wagon on the way; blacks and Hispanics, and people of every ethnic group, and native Americans -- all those struggling to build their families and claim some small share of America.

4.    Bush pretty blatantly pimped Reagan's death during his interview with Tom Brokaw yesterday:

BROKAW: You're here in France for this great feeling, especially in Normandy, for the Americans as a result of what they did 60 years ago.

But throughout Europe, even your friends will say big-time American businessmen, who are over here a lot, they've never seen anti-Americanism so high or the personal feelings against you so high as well. Is that important for you to remedy?

BUSH: You know, look. It's important for people to know what --that I've got a future, that I believe in a future that's peaceful based upon liberty. And I remember my predecessor who's life we mourn, Ronald Reagan, they felt the same way about him.

5.    The New York Times looks at how Reagan's death will affect the Bush-Kerry race. Here's an indication of how Bush will try to take advantage of it:

"In many ways, George W. Bush and the policies that he put forward stand on the shoulders of Ronald Reagan," Ken Mehlman, Mr. Bush's campaign manager, said Sunday in discussing the connections between the two presidents. "Ronald Reagan was someone who believed and viewed the Soviet Union with moral clarity, who understood that peace came through strength and who believed at a time when a lot of people didn't agree with him that the key to prosperity in this country was to trust the American people."

Republicans said that the examination of Mr. Reagan's life would animate their party's attempt to draw a contrast between Mr. Bush, whom they describe as committed and decisive, and Mr. Kerry, whom they have sought to portray as vacillating.

To further illustrate, I've exclusively obtained this mathematical equation from the folks at Bush-Cheney '04:
(Bush + Dead Reagan = Steady Leadership, Fidelity to Principle) +
(Kerry – principles = The Death of America)
= electoral college victory

But then there's also this from The Times:

Some Republicans said the images of a forceful Mr. Reagan giving dramatic speeches on television provided a less-than-welcome contrast with Mr. Bush's own appearances these days, and that it was not in Mr. Bush's interest to encourage such comparisons. That concern was illustrated on Sunday, one Republican said, by televised images of Mr. Reagan's riveting speech in Normandy commemorating D-Day in 1984, followed by Mr. Bush's address at a similar ceremony on Sunday.

"Reagan showed what high stature that a president can have — and my fear is that Bush will look diminished by comparison," said one Republican sympathetic to Mr. Bush, who did not want to be quoted by name criticizing the president.

My own opinion, right now, is that the public celebrations of Reagan's life will have little to no impact come November on the Bush-Kerry race.

June 5, 2004

Reagan

President Reagan dead at age 93.

Drudge has this up right now (1:11am PST):

Hollywood sources tell LA Weekly columnist Nikki Finke that former President Ronald Reagan's medical condition has suddenly worsened. "He really took a downslide today," the insider told Finke Friday evening. "Doctors are at the house. Things aren't good." At the start of the day, several news organizations chased down a rumor that the ex-president had died, but it wasn't true... Family members gathered at the Reagan's Bel Air home late Friday... Developing...

Dick

The New York Times ledes with this today, which isn't much of a story, at least not yet:

Vice President Dick Cheney was recently interviewed by federal prosecutors who asked whether he knew of anyone at the White House who had improperly disclosed the identity of an undercover C.I.A. officer, people who have been involved in official discussions about the case said on Friday.

Mr. Cheney was also asked about conversations with senior aides, including his chief of staff, I. Lewis Libby, according to people officially informed about the case. In addition, those people said, Mr. Cheney was asked whether he knew of any concerted effort by White House aides to name the officer. It was not clear how Mr. Cheney responded to the prosecutors' questions.

Nearly everything I've read leads me to believe Libby is the leaker, so if he had inappropriate conversations with Cheney about it, it could be a very big deal, perhaps even providing a good excuse to knock Cheney off the ticket. I think that would be bad for Democrats, because Cheney's a political albatross, and somebody new on the ticket like Rudy Giuliani or Tom Ridge would be a political breath of fresh air for Republicans (although hardcore conservatives would have some problems with both, who are mostly moderate, and pro-choice).

Another Dick

Sometimes I listen to the enemy on my way to work, and here's what I heard Rush Limbaugh say yesterday morning:

Oil is the fuel of freedom.

That's a direct quote. And it wasn't an isolated line, either – it was part of an entirely serious, impassioned defense about the inherent greatness of oil. I wish I had been able to write down the whole thing, but that one sentence pretty much captures his depth on it, I think.

There are about a thousand reasons why that's asinine, but I'll focus on the flip-flop aspect of it: just a few months ago, Rush told his listeners – through his actions, of course – that OxyContin was the fuel of freedom. Now it's oil. What, according to Limbaugh, is gonna be freedom's fuel next month? Plutonium?

June 4, 2004

One George Gone, One to Go

George Tenet has been a confounding figure to me – everything I've read about him has disallowed me from walking away with a fixed opinion on him. I'm sitting here asking myself questions, but I don't have great answers, so I'll let you in on my half-assed internal Q&A and try to sound as smart as I can:

1.    Why now?

Everybody says the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence's report on pre-war Iraq intelligence, due mid-June, is hell on Tenet and the CIA, and the 9/11 Commission report, expected in late July, won't be a picnic for him either. So it's obvious why his personal life has suddenly become so important to him.

There are two facts, though, that make his timing a little curious.

First, Ahmed Chalabi was all over t.v. this weekend calling Tenet a liar who'd schemed to slander him. A few days later, Tenet's gone. A coincidence, perhaps, but Chalabi's a magician of a crook.

Secondly, President Bush announced just Wednesday that he met with a lawyer about representing him personally in matters concerning the Plame investigation. Tenet, like others in the CIA, was reportedly extremely pissed off when the "senior administration official" (most fingers point to some one in the Vice President's office, although Rove and others were at least peripherally involved) outed undercover CIA operative Valerie Plame, and it was the CIA that jumpstarted the inquiry. Another coincidence? Perhaps. I really don't know. It's weird, though.

2.    Does Tenet really suck?

The Washington Post has a pretty good rundown today of his successes and failures.

Tenet was wrong about WMD stockpiles (as nearly every other intelligence agency in the world was), and his statements on their existence curiously became more certain in the build-up to the war. That mistake may well stain the first sentence or two of his obituary. But Tenet, along with Richard Clarke, recognized as early as 1998 that al Qaeda was the number one threat facing the U.S., and he was very vocal about it. He deserves credit for that, even if he deserves blame for his inability to persuade the powers that be in the Bush administration to take the threat more seriously. (It's going to be interesting to hear how much Tenet agrees with Clarke's conclusions about the pre-9/11 do-nothingness of the Bush administration after some time passes and he feels free to speak candidly.)

Tenet also deserves credit for asserting both before and after the war that the CIA did not characterize Saddam as an imminent threat. His CIA never pushed the nuclear capability nonsense like Cheney did, nor did they push the neocons' "al Qaeda connection" fantasies. He took responsibility for the Niger uranium lie in the President's State of the Union Address, but the CIA had warned Rice and others about spreading that poppycock months earlier (by the way, when all the information on that thing comes out, there will be no more questions about whom was at fault: incompetent Condoleezza and her jackass deputy Stephen Hadley).

In the end, however, I agree with Kerry that Tenet should have stepped down long ago. There were two enormous intelligence failures on his watch. Everybody agrees that Tenet was an extraordinarily beloved figure inside the CIA, but it strikes me that what both the CIA and FBI need are hard-assed reformers with long track records of impressive results. He doesn't appear to be that kind of guy.

3.    What's the political fallout?

CIA Directors are familiar fall guys, that's for sure. Remember after William Casey died and all the people implicated in Iran-contra started blaming him if their lunches weren't on time? Tenet's probably in for the same thing. He does deserve some blame, as I wrote above, but the unambiguously indefensible villains behind much of the bad intel were the neocons and their "Office of Special Plans." This administration will once again try to revise history and point fingers in the wrong directions, but it's all so well-established that I'm hopeful the press will remind people that it was Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Feith, and ultimately Bush who are most responsible for the Iraq myths.

Whatever the case, Bush still can't claim he's held a single person accountable for all the tragic intelligence mistakes (on either 9/11 or Iraq). He used the exact same adjective for Tenet yesterday as he did for Rummy during the Abu Ghraib storm: "superb." He hasn't distanced himself at all; any blaming of Tenet is a partial blaming of Bush.

Still, there is an opportunity for Bush and friends to dump a lot of stuff off on Tenet. It should help him a little politically, even if it shouldn't.

Actually, if Bush wanted to turn this into an immediate and lasting political boost he'd call Rudy Giuliani and beg him to accept appointment as new CIA Director. I haven't seen anybody write that today, so it's entirely my idea and doesn't have any basis in fact that I know of, but the intelligence failures have been such a political disaster for Bush, if the public was assured Giuliani was on top of it, it would probably drastically reduce the potency of the issue for Dems.

But don't tell Bush. Sshhh!

Good News in Missouri

If you haven't heard, Republicans are trying to put gay marriage on the November ballots in several swing states. Succeeding would help them drive bigots to the polls (and informal polls I've done show at least 9 out of 10 bigots vote Republican). Sadly, I agree that it will help them turn out their bigot base wherever it gets on the ballot. Hence, it's great news that the Missouri Supreme Court ruled yesterday that Repubicans have to put it on an August ballot, not November.

The Supreme Court decision has the added benefit of calling attention to Matt Blunt's opportunism – he's the Republican Secretary of State who fought to get it on in November because he's running for Governor. What a jackass.

For President, Missouri is very close in the polls right now. The last one I saw showed Kerry ahead by a few points. The race could turn on the percentage of suburban Catholics Kerry is able to garner, so the Kerry campaign dodged a bullet not having the proposed ban on the ballot.

The Military Family Vote

In 2000, Bush trounced Gore among the active military, their families, veterans, and their families. Kerry has an uphill battle in 2004, but there's a good chance he can narrow the gap, especially with the families. Not only is he making the right kinds of entreaties, but anecdotes like the one recently emailed to me by my good friend Emily Brewer have become increasingly common:

I was in Annapolis last week for Travaun's brother's graduation from the US Naval Academy as a lieutenant in the US Marine Corps. I saw my first 3 BC04 stickers ever (being from Mass, not surprising) but was pleasantly surprised at the general feeling from all parents down there with children graduating that Bush is a liability they are not willing to sacrifice their children's lives for. Usually I am a political pariah down there and am instructed to keep my mouth shut at all times, but this trip was different. As these soldiers were graduating, the parents weren't very receptive to General Dick Meyers' speech about wartime fatalities being a necessary evil and the war on terror's potential for glamorous military careers. Some good news from the general direction of Bush's back yard!

June 3, 2004

He Actually Knows He's Lying Here

With many of Bush's misleading statements, it's hard to tell whether they're intentional, because there's so much he deliberately chooses not to know. But his remarks about Chalabi Tuesday offer us a clearcut case of an outrageous, brazen lie:

Q: Thank you, Mr. President. Mr. Chalabi is an Iraqi leader that's fallen out of favor within your administration. I'm wondering if you feel that he provided any false information, or are you particularly –

BUSH: Chalabi?

Q: Yes, with Chalabi.

BUSH: My meetings with him were very... brief. I mean, I think I met with him, uh, at the State of the Union and, uh, just kinda working through the ropeline. He might have come with a group of leaders. But I haven't had any extensive conversations with him.

Actually, reading the sentences individually shows what a good liar Bush can be – it's really an underappreciated characteristic of his. Each statement might technically be true (most books about Bush confirm that almost all of his meetings are indeed brief), but he weaves them together to suggest that he barely knows Chalabi and that he wasn't a key administration figure in pre and post-invasion maneuvering.

Chalabi is probably closer to the Vice President and several top Pentagon officials than they are to their own wives (some of Chalabi's neocon friends with easy West Wing access still vociferously support him). He's in at least a couple different pictures with Bush. He was one of the first civilians flown into Iraq after we took Baghdad (maybe even before, I can't quite remember), accompanied by his own American taxpayer-funded militia. And that just scratches the surface of his Bush administration entanglements – Bush really kind of insults the press and the public by downplaying the relationship.

There's also this, from Meet the Press on February 8, 2004:

Russert: If the Iraqis choose, however, an Islamic extremist regime, would you accept that, and would that be better for the United States than Saddam Hussein?

President Bush: They're not going to develop that. And the reason I can say that is because I'm very aware of this basic law they're writing. They're not going to develop that because right here in the Oval Office I sat down with Mr. Pachachi and Chalabi and al-Hakim, people from different parts of the country that have made the firm commitment, that they want a constitution eventually written that recognizes minority rights and freedom of religion.

Bush knew Chalabi well. The only question is who he knows better, Chalabi, or Enron's "Kenny Boy" Lay, another Bush intimate whom he later claimed not to be so cozy with.

Bush flip-flops on his friendships pretty quickly when they become inconvenient, no?

Edwards-Obama '12

John Edwards established his credentials as an inspirational political mega-talent in his primary run, and Democrats are similarly fortunate to witness soon-to-be Illinois Senator Barack Obama displaying comparable talents on the Illinois campaign trail. William Finnegan's New Yorker profile leaves little doubt he will be a major national political figure very soon.

Curbing Wrongful Imprisonment

Another day, another man's freedom saved by Curb Your Enthusiasm comic genius Larry David:

"Curb Your Enthusiasm," an HBO show known for its acerbic wit, accidentally helped deliver a happy ending to a man who had been charged with murder.

Juan Catalan spent 5 1/2 months in jail on murder charges before his attorney found video footage taken by the show at Dodger Stadium that backs up his client's claims of innocence.

No Bids Necessary

Yesterday, The Washington Post reported that an email linked Cheney's office to one of Halliburton's no-bid contracts:

Shortly before the Pentagon awarded a division of oil services contactor Halliburton Co. a sole-source contract to help restore Iraqi oil fields last year, an Army Corps of Engineers official wrote an e-mail saying the award had been "coordinated" with the office of Vice President Cheney, Halliburton's former chief executive.

The March 5, 2003, e-mail, disclosed over the weekend by Time magazine, noted that Douglas Feith, a senior Pentagon official, had signed off on the deal "contingent on informing WH [the White House] tomorrow."

"We anticipate no issues since action has been coordinated w VP's office," it continued.

Three days later, Halliburton subsidiary KBR was granted the contract, which was worth as much as $7 billion, according to information on the Army Corps of Engineers Web site.

Unlike the Valerie Plame, Chalabi, and Detainee Torture/Murder scandals (or type in your current favorite shameless Bush administration scandal I failed to mention here __________), I don't think this one will lead anywhere. But the broad point is inarguable: go back and read anything Cheney's said over the course of his public career, read any biography, scour his congressional votes and public statements as Defense Secretary, and you will find that advancing the cause of private defense contractors is as familiar to him as his own skin. Yeah, he's got a huge political problem if he's had any role whatsoever in the awarding of the enormous no-bid Halliburton contracts, but the underlying problem is fixed in the public record: Dick Cheney often advocates private interests at the expense of public interests because he sees no difference between the two.

Air America

There's good news and bad news for Air America in this New York Times story. The bad news is that it's still unclear whether they have a workable business plan, or executives able to make such a plan work. The good news is that a lot of people seem to be listening in areas where they can gauge ratings:

Despite the intrigue concerning its management - and the abrupt pulling of its programming last month from stations in Chicago and Los Angeles, in a contract dispute - there are early indications that, where it can be heard, Air America is actually drawing listeners. WLIB-AM in New York City, one of 13 stations that carry at least part of Air America's 16 hours of original programming each day, even appears to be holding its own with WABC-AM, the New York City station and talk radio powerhouse that is Mr. Limbaugh's flagship.

For example, among listeners from 25 and 54, whom advertisers covet, the network estimates it drew an average listener share (roughly a percentage of listeners) of 3.4 on WLIB in April, from 10 a.m. and 3 p.m. on weekdays, according to the company's extrapolation of figures provided by Arbitron for the three months ended in April. (Arbitron, which does not provide ratings in monthly increments, said the network's methodology appeared sound, although such figures were too raw to translate to numbers of listeners.)

By contrast, according to Air America's figures, WABC-AM drew an average share of 3.2 during the same period in April for the same age group. That time period includes the three hours in which Mr. Limbaugh was pitted head to head against Mr. Franken.

Phil Boyce, the program director of WABC , cautioned against drawing conclusions from preliminary data. "If they end up doing that well when the final number is out, which is two more months, I'll give them a congratulations," Mr. Boyce said.

While the network is awaiting the release of similar figures from Arbitron for other cities, KPOJ-AM, the Clear Channel station that carries its programming in Portland, Ore., informed Air America executives by an e-mail message in late April that its ratings appeared to have tripled last month, according to the station's informal survey. (A station executive, Mary Lou Gunn, did not return a telephone message left at her office on Friday.)

The network, which is also carried on the satellite radio providers XM and Sirius, has found an audience on the Internet. In its first week, listeners clicked on the audio programming on the Air America Web site more than two million times, according to RealNetworks , the digital media provider.

"It's clear the audience is there,'' Mr. Franken said.

The conventional wisdom in the radio industry had been that, unlike the conservatives who dominate commercial talk radio, liberals could not entice and hold listeners.

"This shows there's an appetite out there,'' said Tom Taylor, editor of Inside Radio, an industry newsletter whose publisher is owned by Clear Channel. "There's a good chance they'll right the ship businesswise and keep going forward.''

So preliminary indications are that Franken has edged out Rush Limbaugh among 25-34 year-olds in NYC. That's pretty damn impressive for a startup.

Air America seems especially important today, since NPR looks to be taking a turn to the right (as detailed in Ken Auletta's article in this week's New Yorker, which is not on-line – I'll discuss another day).

June 2, 2004

The First Casualty of War is Money

Costofwar.com provides a handy real-time calculator that reveals how much the Iraq War costs us taxpayers financially. You can also sort to see the portion of the bill paid by your locality.

In Los Angeles, where I live, we’re approaching having spent $1 billion on the war so far – to put that in perspective, the entire annual L.A. city budget is about $5 billion.

Bush Negativity Facts

Here's a solid fact from Monday's Washington Post article about Bush's historic smear campaign on Kerry that I should have mentioned when I first wrote about it:

Three-quarters of the ads aired by Bush's campaign have been attacks on Kerry. Bush so far has aired 49,050 negative ads in the top 100 markets, or 75 percent of his advertising. Kerry has run 13,336 negative ads – or 27 percent of his total. The figures were compiled by The Washington Post using data from the Campaign Media Analysis Group of the top 100 U.S. markets. Both campaigns said the figures are accurate.

By the way, that 49,050 is "and counting..." and the 13,336 is static at the moment, or close to it, because Kerry's television ads right now are all positive bio pieces while Bush-Cheney '04 continues to flail away with its high-priced, mass-marketed Kerry delusions.

Confident George

George Soros, a generous and principled man who built his multi-billion dollar kingdom making wise bets, has good news for America. From a nice piece in USA Today:

Now Soros, a storied financial and political speculator, says another of his bets is about to pay off: more than $15 million against President Bush.

The Hungarian-born billionaire, who had vowed to spend more if necessary to deny the president re-election, says he's contributed enough to achieve his goal. "There probably will be some further contributions, but I don't expect any substantial increase," he says in an interview. "Large numbers of people are beginning to see the Bush administration in the same light as I do. Frankly, I don't think I'll need to do a lot more. ... I now take the defeat of Bush more or less for granted."

Yesterday on Meet the Press, Nancy Pelosi guaranteed victory for Kerry. That's right: she actually used the word "guarantee," with no qualifications.

I won't take anything for granted or make any guarantees, but I do feel very, very good about things right now. Then again, you can probably count on about 2 or 3 race-impacting events before November, so I'll continue to spend much of my energy trying to prove Soros and Pelosi right.

Health Care Matters

Here’s the most innovative aspect of John Kerry’s health care plan, as outlined on his website (if you scroll down and click on "A New Approach to Controlling Spiraling Health Care Costs"):

Workers cannot afford health insurance premiums that are rising ten times as fast as wages. John Kerry has a comprehensive plan to stop spiraling health care costs, including providing relief for the highest cost cases. In 2001, only 4/10 of one percent of private insurance claims were for individuals with health expenses in excess of $50,000. However, these claims accounted for nearly 20 percent of medical expenses for private insurers. Under Kerry’s proposal companies and insurers that guarantee a pass-through of the savings to their workers through reduced premiums, would be reimbursed for 75 percent of catastrophic costs above $50,000. To be eligible for this relief, employers would have to: provide affordable health coverage to all their workers; demonstrate they will pass through savings of up to $1000 to workers; and encourage disease management to improve and hold down the cost of care.

Brad Delong endorses this aspect of Kerry’s plan, and further explains how it would benefit the system:

The Clinton health care reform effort is a decade dead. But now the Kerry campaign has dusted off and brought forward a very clever idea from Brandeis's Stuart Altman to not eliminate but at least diminish the magnitude of these two ways that market-based health-care reforms self-destruct. The idea? Have the government take its task of social insurance seriously, and reinsure private insurers and HMOs: construct a 'premium rebate' pool to pay annual health-care bills over $50,000. This greatly diminishes the cost to insurers and HMOs of covering the really sick. The cost of treating the really sick will then be on the taxpayer rather than on the insurance-purchasing consumer. Insurance rates will fall. And the incentive for the young without many assets to go naked and uninsured will diminish as well.

Thus two of the big problems with our health care system become smaller problems. If this plan is enacted, we will no longer have to worry as much (i) adverse selection--the enormous financial incentives HMOs and insurance companies have to figure out some way not to cover the sick people--and (ii) cost shifting--the fact that those who buy insurance have to pay not only their own routine costs and their own catastrophic costs but the catastrophic costs of others and the uninsured as well. The first means that--often--those who need health care the most have a hard time getting it. The second means that--often--those who could afford or would buy insurance if it were priced at its fair actuarial value don't because of this cost shifting.

It's a serious and clever proposal. It's a proposal for the government to do something--risk spreading--for which it has, potentially at least, a powerful comparative advantage. And it's a government program that would significantly diminish the market failures that gum up the private sector health care market.

I agree. Read the whole thing.

Also, you may want to check out Kerry’s health care proposals in their entirety. Not only would they be good if enacted, but most of them look politically viable to me. They seem to have been crafted with a legislator’s eye (by the way, everybody always mentions how governors have valuable executive experience to be President, but few ever mention this senatorial advantage).

Ron Brownstein, usually well ahead of the political reporting curve, also has health care on the brain. In The L.A. Times, he focuses on practical steps that tend to focus more on prevention. He lists a few proposals from the newly-launched Health Policy Institute before warning Bush and Kerry not to neglect them:

To fight the epidemic of asthma among inner-city children, it recommended not only expanded screening but also more inspections of rental housing and improved building codes for schools and day-care centers to combat the conditions that trigger the disease. To fight the high (and growing) obesity rates among minorities, it urged more physical activity in schools and redoubled efforts to locate supermarkets and parks in inner-city neighborhoods.

Ever since Clinton's national healthcare plan collapsed, Washington has mostly gridlocked over how to expand coverage. But the studies from the Joint Center and George Washington University show that even without agreement on that overriding question, practical steps are possible to help millions of low-income families live healthier lives and receive more effective care when they need it. Ignoring that opportunity, while waiting for consensus on coverage, would be a form of political malpractice.

Bush, simply put, doesn't have a serious health care plan.

June 1, 2004

Terror Administration

More information about Ashcroft's terror warning last Wednesday surfaced over the weekend. I now have some follow-up points to add to those I made then:

1.   According to Friday's Washington Post, Ashcroft's terror warning itself appears to have been a violation of the law:

Under the Homeland Security Act of 2002 and Bush administration rules, only the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) can publicly issue threat warnings, and they must be approved in a complex interagency process involving the White House. Administration officials sympathetic to Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge said he was not informed Ashcroft was going to characterize the threat in that way -- an assertion that Justice officials deny.

2.    The scant information divulged at Ashcroft's press conference wasn't new, but was 6 weeks old. From the same Washington Post article:

Some administration officials also complained yesterday that Justice Department or FBI officials in private conversations with reporters may have suggested that the latest evidence of a terrorist attack is new, when it is about six weeks old, officials said.

3.    One of the only specific charges Ashcroft made was that, "After the March 11 attack in Madrid, Spain, an al-Qaida spokesman announced that 90 percent of the arrangements for an attack in the United States were complete."

The sourcing for the al Qaeda quote would be hilarious if it didn't so painfully illustrate how vulnerable we are to attack with Ashcroft's Justice Department overseeing things. From NBC News:

But terrorism experts tell NBC News there's no evidence a credible al-Qaida spokesman ever said that, and the claims actually were made by a largely discredited group, Abu Hafs al-Masri Brigades, known for putting propaganda on the Internet.

“This particular group is not really taken seriously by Western intelligence,” said terrorism expert M.J. Gohel of the Asia-Pacific Foundation, an international policy assessment group. “It does not appear to have any real field operational capability. But it is certainly part of the global jihad movement — part of its propaganda wing, if you like. It likes to weave a web of lies; it likes to put out disinformation so that the truth is deeply buried. So it is a dangerous group in that sense, but it is not taken seriously in terms of its operational capability.”

The group has claimed responsibility for the power blackout in the Northeast last year, a power outage in London and the Madrid bombing. None of the claims was found to be credible.

"The only thing they haven't claimed credit for recently is the cicada invasion of Washington,” said expert Roger Cressey, former chief of staff of the critical infrastructure protection board at the White House and now an analyst for NBC News. Cressey also served as deputy to former counterterrorism chief Richard Clarke.

A senior U.S. intelligence official previously told NBC News that this group has no known operational capability and may be no more than one man with a fax machine.

Unbelievable.

4.   It's unclear to what extent Ashcroft acted on his own (Homeland Security Director Tom Ridge claimed he heard Ashcroft's warning at the same time as the public), but it's strikingly clear there's no discipline in this administration on public dissemination of terror threats. A lot of reporters think Ashcroft may have been protecting his FBI turf, which is sinful if true.

Whatever the motives, these guys don't know what the hell they're doing, and Bush hasn't fired anybody for any of the pre or post 9-11 screw-ups. They're completely unaccountable, and we'll continue to endure wholly inadequate security precautions until they're voted out of office.

Novak Disgruntled, Part X

Nearly every week, self-described "conservative extremist" Robert Novak hammers The White House on differing areas of incompetence. With friends like him, Karl Rove must be thinking, who needs enemies?

Novak focuses on troubles in Afghanistan this week. Here's his lede:

The handful of valiant American warriors fighting the ''other'' war in Afghanistan is not a happy band of brothers. They are undermanned and feel neglected, lack confidence in their generals and are disgusted by Afghan political leadership. Most important, they are appalled by the immense but fruitless effort to find Osama bin Laden for purposes of U.S. politics.

Later, he drops this interesting nugget on the perceived lack of progress in our hunt for bin Laden:

The problem is that nobody I have talked to in the military thinks his capture is likely or may even be possible. The American fighting men think ''UBL'' (as he is called) is hiding in Pakistan, impossible to find. Most exasperating to the men in the field is the manpower and effort expended on what they consider to be a helpless cause.

I still won't be the least bit surprised if bin Laden's carcass turns up before the election (and politics be damned, I hope it does). In fact, given this administration's mind-blowing record of unscrupulousness, I wouldn't be surprised if it happens in late July just before or during the Democratic Convention, overshadowing it.

Regardless, the fact remains that history as it unravels continues to prove Richard Clarke right. We never had the proper military committment and post-war nation-building focus in Afghanistan because resources were being diverted to Iraq from the outset. While Novak has interviewed those who think Karzai is totally corrupt, I'm not so sure – let's face it, he was never more than the President of Kabul because the rest of the country was never really secure. By nearly all accounts, most of the country is now run by warlords and the narco-trade is booming to unprecedented levels.

I'll have to study them more for a sufficient critique, but it seems ridiculous to me that there are all these U.N. and U.S.-backed operations dedicated to eliminating Afghanistan's poppy crops (used for opium/heroin production) while offering Afghan farmers minimal humanitarian aid. It's unrealistic to think that such a big cash crop will not find a way to thrive in such a poor country, especially when we have so few troops there. Our only hope, I think, would have been for the President to authorize an ambitious transnational exchange program in which we paid top drug market prices to Afghan farmers for their poppy crops, and then destroyed them ourselves. There'd have to be serious oversight checks and transparency mechanisms in place, of course, to ensure the stuff was really destroyed. It would have been costly, but a wise investment in terms of cutting off revenues that inevitably line terrorists' pockets.

Oh well. The gap between what is and what could have been grows ever wider and more exasperating.

Stewart Commencement Address

Jon Stewart's commencement address at his alma mater, The College of William and Mary, is unsurprisingly good. My favorite bit:

But here’s the good news. You fix this thing, you’re the next greatest generation, people. You do this—and I believe you can—you win this war on terror, and Tom Brokaw’s kissing your ass from here to Tikrit, let me tell ya. And even if you don’t, you’re not gonna have much trouble surpassing my generation. If you end up getting your picture taken next to a naked guy pile of enemy prisoners and don’t give the thumbs up you’ve outdid us.

Happy Birthday, Mom

Happy birthday to my Mom, my loyal reader from the beginning and one of the greatest people on the planet. Bore 6 children within 8 years and then stuck around to raise us, too. SHE should head Homeland Security.

May 31, 2004

Raising Joe Isuzu

Some mischaracterizing of your opponent's statements and overall record is a commonly accepted part of the political game. Flat-out voluminous lying, on the other hand, is something political campaigns must pay a price for if our politics and its press coverage are to retain any seriousness.

The Washington Post has a must-read front page article (although the facts put together read like it's an editorial), From Bush, Unprecedented Negativity, in today's edition. Here are the lede paragraphs:

It was a typical week in the life of the Bush reelection machine.

Last Monday in Little Rock, Vice President Cheney said Democratic presidential candidate John F. Kerry "has questioned whether the war on terror is really a war at all" and said the senator from Massachusetts "promised to repeal most of the Bush tax cuts within his first 100 days in office."

On Tuesday, President Bush's campaign began airing an ad saying Kerry would scrap wiretaps that are needed to hunt terrorists.

The same day, the Bush campaign charged in a memo sent to reporters and through surrogates that Kerry wants to raise the gasoline tax by 50 cents.

On Wednesday and Thursday, as Kerry campaigned in Seattle, he was greeted by another Bush ad alleging that Kerry now opposes education changes that he supported in 2001.

The charges were all tough, serious -- and wrong, or at least highly misleading. Kerry did not question the war on terrorism, has proposed repealing tax cuts only for those earning more than $200,000, supports wiretaps, has not endorsed a 50-cent gasoline tax increase in 10 years, and continues to support the education changes, albeit with modifications.

Scholars and political strategists say the ferocious Bush assault on Kerry this spring has been extraordinary, both for the volume of attacks and for the liberties the president and his campaign have taken with the facts. Though stretching the truth is hardly new in a political campaign, they say the volume of negative charges is unprecedented -- both in speeches and in advertising.

The article goes on to detail a drumbeat of blatant distortions of Kerry from Bush-Cheney '04. It's a decent example of a press outlet doing an appropriately objective job rather than something that's artificially "balanced" (although reporters Dana Milbank and Jim VandeHei do criticize Kerry in a lone paragraph); there is simply no comparison between the conduct of the Bush and Kerry campaigns so far.

Josh Marshall offers another take, as well as an illustrative example of the negativity gap:

But if you'd like a more immediate and tangible read on the sorts of campaigns the two are running, stop by the campaign sites of President Bush and John Kerry.

Now, look at how often, candidate A's face appears on the front page of candidate B's website, and vice versa. For instance, as of the early morning hours of Monday, John Kerry's face appears 6 times on the front of the Kerry website, while President Bush's face appears not once. On Bush's website, Kerry's face appears 4 times. Bush's face, not once.

By the way, if Bush-Cheney didn't think they were getting their asses kicked right now, they'd be proud of their faces.

I don't think it's too idealistic to ask that President Bush and Vice President Cheney be held to a higher standard for truth-telling than Joe Isuzu in their statements about John Kerry. So far, they've failed to meet that standard in an overwhelming percentage of their campaign ads, which is why Democrats should consider using "The Joe Isuzu Campaign" as an effective moniker for Bush-Cheney '04.

Josh Marshall Day

I hate to steal quotes from Josh Marshall in back-to-back posts, but this is just too smart not to highlight:

The most salient point to emerge from the president's recent speech on Iraq was the new rationale he put forward for continuing to support him and his policies: effective management of his own failures.

Consider the trajectory.

Originally, the case for war was built on claims about the Iraqi regime's possession of weapons of mass destruction and its support for terrorist groups like al qaida. To a lesser degree, but with increasing force as these other rationales faded way, the case was made on the basis of democratizing and liberalizing Iraq.

As that prospect too has become increasingly distant and improbable, President Bush has taken a fundamentally different tack. His emphasis now is seldom on what good might come of his Iraq policy but rather the dire consequences of its unmitigated 'failure' or its premature abandonment.

In other words, the president now argues that he is best equipped to guard the country from the full brunt of the consequences of his own misguided actions, managerial incompetence and dishonesty.

Yep. In a nutshell.

May 29, 2004

Barbequers for Bush

By 50% to 39% in a recent poll, Americans said they'd rather have a backyard barbeque with President Bush than with John Kerry. Chris Matthews has brought this up a bunch of times in the past few days, as if it's somehow really important.

This election is not the 2000 election. We live in grave times. We may have then, too, but now we realize it.

We're looking for competence in this election, not comedy. I'd hoped Kerry would somehow work the ridiculous barbeque question to his advantage, and yesterday in Green Bay he did:

See we're not electing a barbeque master. We're electing a President of the United States. If Bush wants to go make barbeques for the next four years, while I'm President, that's fine by me.

I think Democrats should turn this "We're electing a President, not a barbeque master" thing into a theme – come up with about 5 other creative ways to say it and repeat them to death. It serves to isolate Bush's cheesy personality – which is attractive to a lot of voters out there, I suppose – from his competence, which even many hardcore Republicans have come to seriously doubt.

I also just love the "barbecue master" label – it fits Bush like a glove, and offers an illustrative image of his clownishness.

If you want cheese on your burger, though, I have a feeling you'd have to remind him about 10 times.

Don't Free Martha

I'm a big Scott Turow fan, for his talents as a novelist and lawyer, but especially for his recent work as an articulate death penalty opponent and reformer.

Since I haven't paid terribly close attention to the Martha Stewart case, I'll just adopt Turow's views as he laid them out in a recent The New York Times op-ed:

...What the jury felt Martha Stewart did — lying about having received inside information before she traded — is wrong, really wrong. And the fact that so many on Wall Street have unashamedly risen to her defense is galling — galling because what she did actually harms the market. Wall Street leaders should be expressing chagrin that a corporate tycoon — who was also a member of the New York Stock Exchange board — could feel free to fleece an unwitting buyer.

Virtually everybody who takes Ms. Stewart's side conveniently ignores the fact that there was some poor schmo (or schmoes) out there who bought her shares of ImClone. Those buyers, no matter how diligent, no matter how much market research they read, no matter how many analysts' reports they studied, could not have known what Martha Stewart did: that the Waksal family was dumping shares.   In my book, that's fraud. Martha Stewart ripped her buyers off as certainly as if she'd sold them silk sheets that she knew were actually synthetic.

Turow's argument runs much deeper than just Martha Stewart. He thinks widespread defense of Stewart is symptomatic of our "Two Americas" for justice:

Perhaps the most troubling aspect of the whole case, to me anyway, is   how the arguments in defense of Ms. Stewart show a widespread mentality that is all too comfortable with unwarranted privilege. It is yet another example of how justice is very different for the rich and poor.

Consider: While it's not insider trading for Martha Stewart to make some $50,000 using stolen information because she did not have the duty not to steal it, something very different would happen to you if you were caught with, say, a stolen watch in your hand. In that circumstance, the law virtually presumes you are guilty. For decades, American juries have been instructed that when a person is found in unexplained possession of recently stolen property, it is proper to infer that the person knows it is stolen, and thus almost certainly is guilty of receiving stolen property.

Likewise, while it's technically not insider trading for someone to sell shares of stock for more than what he knows, through inside information, to be their true market value, the converse, your buying or selling that hot watch at a steep discount, will almost inevitably get you convicted for trading in stolen property. When we're talking about these petty kinds of crimes, most often committed by the poor, the law does not bother with airy discussions of fiduciary duty. I can't take seriously those who want to believe that the starkly differing contours of the law in these roughly parallel circumstances are unrelated to the economic circumstances, and social standing, of the typical violators.

May 28, 2004

McCain

I just watched McCain on Conan O'Brien, and he was pretty damn funny. The highlight may have been that he genuinely couldn't seem to recall the name of his current opponent for his Arizona senate seat.

Once again, he made it clear that he has absolutely no interest in being Vice President, and I believe him. It's odd that Democrats like Joe Biden, Dick Gephardt, and Hillary Clinton continue to encourage him to run – I figure somebody from the Kerry campaign must be prodding them to keep such speculation alive, perhaps because publicizing McCain's consideration boosts Kerry's bipartisan credentials. I also think McCain would be Kerry's first choice if Kerry thought he would say yes, and Kerry might even give it a shot anyway (it would be very embarrassing if McCain declined and that leaked, however). Still, I'd bet the farm that this is all noise and McCain won't be the VP selection.

A new CBS News poll says a Kerry/McCain fusion ticket wallops Bush/Cheney by 53% to 39%. That improves upon Kerry's lone standing against Bush by 6%, where he still beats Bush pretty easily, 49% to 41%. McCain helps Kerry most with veterans.

More importantly, the CBS poll shows Kerry also being helped by John Edwards on the ticket, with Kerry/Edwards beating Bush/Cheney 50% to 40%. Edwards improves Kerry's standing with conservatives and independents, and with veterans, too. Curiously, Edwards hurts with liberals a little bit, which doesn't make much sense.

Anyway, I still think Edwards is the guy. Edwards wears better on voters than any politician I've ever seen, so if he and Kerry start off with a 10% advantage, that's very confidence-inspiring because Edwards is more likely to help expand that gap than narrow it.

Newsweek's Howard Fineman recognizes that Kerry is giving Edwards a prolonged audition for the role.

By the way, in more good news for Kerry, a new Annenberg poll shows his biographical ads are working in the swing states. Also, most observers figured Bush would be the first to expand the number of competitive states, but it's been Kerry so far. He's already forced Bush to counter ads in Louisiana and Colorado, and now he's taking him on in Virginia, too.

Also, I thought Kerry's speech yesterday laying out his national security priorities was important, and I'll elaborate soon.

Beautiful Song

Unless you're squeamish about creative and incessant use of the f-word, you should definitely listen to this wonderful new song by Eric Idle, formerly of Monty Python.

Washingtonienne

Washingtonienne unmasked herself in The Washington Post on Sunday. Her name's Jessica Cutler. You can read more gossip at The National Debate, which has links that will provide every last detail of this Washington mini-scandal.

Those are the last words I'll ever write about this. I promise. It's been a nice diversion, though, from thinking about slaughter in Sudan, for instance.

May 27, 2004

The Economy

The only good news for Bush's reelection hopes right now is job expansion, especially in several key electoral states. Job gains the last few months have been strong by most measures. But Bush will still almost certainly go down as the first President since the Great Depression to see a net loss of jobs on his watch, so Kerry will always have ammo to go after his complete record. More importantly, despite recent job growth, high home ownership, sizable GDP expansion, and rising stock values (even if the market has fallen a little flat recently), Bush's ratings on the economy continue to tank. Some of this may just be people playing catch up, and I expect Bush's ratings on the economy to improve in future polls (although for his sake they better improve fast, because history shows that people's judgments on a President's economic handling cements by early Summer). But there's also another explanation: other economic bread and butter issues are bad, and people feel it. In a Democracy Corps memo Stan Greenberg and James Carville sent out last week, they call attention to some of them, none of which bode well for Bush's own job retention:

In assessing why Bush is sinking, not rising with the economy, one has to keep in mind people's assessment of their own personal financial situation (which has not been rising, even as it forms a part of the ABC News/Money consumer confidence measure); the unemployment rate which leaves people with a sense of scarce jobs and low bargaining power; the strikingly unequal income gains in this recovery; the focus on outsourcing and reduced benefits for current jobs; and most important, the dramatic rise in costs of health care and gasoline.

Plus the fact that 4 million Americans have lost their health insurance under Bush. Plus the fact that deficits are higher than ever. Plus the fact that the cost of the Iraq War is rapidly approaching about $200 billion (after Bush administration officials told us, remarkably, it would pay for itself, and his chief economic adviser, Lawrence Lindsey, was fired for suggesting publically that the war would cost – you got it – about $200 billion). Plus the fact that everybody in the world knows there's a looming social security crisis and Bush hasn't done a thing about it.

Yes, Bush's stunning incompetence on fiscal management is surpassed only by his dizzying incompetence on his management of the Iraq War. He's an even bigger loser than his dad, who at least left office with some unassailable foreign policy achievements. His Presidency is a colossal failure using any historical standard.

Terror Warning

Some have suggested that the terror warning issued yesterday was political, that it intended to move the focus off Iraq and onto terrain more favorable to Bush.

2 points:

1.   According to recent polls, Bush's once enormous advantage over Kerry on the "war on terror" has dropped precipitously. Check this out. So even if that is the Bush administration intention, it's not as politically advantageous for them as it once would have been.

2.   Whatever the general motives behind the warning, this Ashcroft statement was undoubtedly political:

The Madrid railway bombings were perceived by Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda to have advanced their cause. Al Qaeda may perceive that a large-scale attack in the United States this summer or fall would lead to similar consequences.

Let me translate: al Qaeda struck Madrid to ensure that the wussies would beat the big, tough, pro-Iraq War, Bush-like conservative party in Spain, and they succeeded. bin Laden might try to attack the U.S. to force the "consequence" of the American/French wussy John Kerry winning over George W. Bush, because they fear Bush so much.

Nonsense.

Obviously, Osama bin Laden believes that all al Qaeda attacks advance his cause. And Ashcroft doesn't know anything more than you or I about what bin Laden "perceives" or "may perceive." He slips this in solely to sell the line of crap that bin Laden wants Bush to lose this election, a pretty damn unscrupulous thing to include in an address ostensibly about national security.

Plus, it's not only empty conjecture, it's illogical. Why wouldn't bin Laden be rooting for Bush? Bush's braindead policies have both guaranteed the continued appeasement of terrorist benefactors (particularly in Pakistan and Saudi Arabia) and served to make international recruitment of future terrorists an absolute cakewalk for years to come.

Regardless, whenever conservatives like Ashcroft interpret the Spanish election to their benefit, they always leave out a couple very important factors in the conservative Popular Party loss. First, opinion polls showed the overwhelming majority of Spanish people opposed the Iraq War while their administration did not. Secondly, in the few days before the election, the Popular Party essentially lied to voters. They put out misinformation suggesting that the Basque separatist group Eta perpetrated the attacks, not the true culprits, an al Qaeda allied group.

Now I can understand why Ashcroft might not appreciate Spanish voters actually having the gall to oust an administration that lied to them about national security matters, but most humans I think can accept their reasoning.

In any case, I'm now busy looking for those 7 terrorists. You know the lone woman in the bunch is an M.I.T. grad? Pretty scary.

By the way, Kerry's criticisms yesterday on Bush's handling of national security were sharply on-target.

The Base

Bob Novak has written several articles this year detailing Bush’s problems with his Republican base. Here’s the latest, "Bush's Shaky Base."

This may be the key graf:

What most bothers [67 year-old faithful conservative] Devine and other conservatives is steady growth of government under this Republican president. If Devine's purpose in devoting his life to politics was to limit government's reach, he feels betrayed that Bush has outstripped his liberal predecessors in domestic spending. A study by Brian Riedl for the conservative Heritage Foundation last December showed government spending had exceeded $20,000 per household for the first time since World War II. Riedl called it a "colossal expansion of the federal government since 1998."

Future studies will now have to factor in the “prescription-drug benefit” (aka “pharmaceuticals industry subsidy”) which conservatives never liked. Immigration reform is also wildly unpopular with them, and the Iraq War is unpopular in some conservative circles, too. (Novak himself opposed the war.)

Novak is such an ideologue that it’s hard to determine sometimes whether his reporting is an accurate reflection of what’s going on or just a firm political reminder to the Bush administration not to forget about people like himself, but he certainly knows his right-wing politics. Furthermore, recent polls (specifically CBS News and ABC/WaPo) show some fairly signifigant erosion in Republican support. So Bush really does have at least some work to do with his base, which is real bad political news for him, and the clock’s ticking (it’s almost June!).

In the end, I think both parties will show up at the polls and remain with their guys, but Kerry increasingly has a better chance to pick off Republicans than Bush does Democrats, whose unity in opposition to this President is nearly complete. If Bush has to spend time and resources on his base into this Summer and into the Fall – and it looks that way – inevitably he’ll lose more of the independents who will probably decide the election. All the polls I’ve seen show he’s fairly weak with them to begin with and doesn’t have a whole lot of room for growth.

Funny

When Kerry was asked about Bush's weekend bike accident the other day, he thought he was off the record, so he deadpanned a facetious question, "Did the training wheels fall off?"

He wasn't off the record, though, so it's been reported and some of the more humorless wingnuts have railed against Kerry for it. But really, has Bush said something funnier than that, intentionally at least, in the past 4 years?

May 26, 2004

Bush's Speech

Due to a series of by now well-documented errors that began with Rumsfeld’s insistence on invading with too few troops and the neocons’ absolute dismissal of the State Department’s well-laid plans for post-war Iraq, President Bush no longer has much control over what happens in Iraq. While his speech Monday night wasn’t quite the disaster his last few major public addresses have been, it struck me as basically irrelevant. A morbid fatefulness now dictates most of our politics: if there’s more blood on the ground in Iraq this week, Bush’s speech will look bad; if there’s less, he’ll look better.

A few other things:

1. Bush's proposal to tear down Abu Ghraib and build a new prison seemed like a decent idea – even though it doesn’t address the systemic detainee policy problems, I thought it would make for good symbolism in Iraq (and for Bush, better politics at home). Then I heard an NPR reporter this afternoon reciting Iraqis (including the U.S.-appointed Interior Minister) responding to it as a rather silly idea, because there’s little room for prisoners as it is now and it may exacerbate a short-term population problem. NPR also reported that few Iraqis saw or heard the speech because it was given in the middle of the night, and it wasn’t in the morning’s papers.

2. The speech was mostly platitudinous and didn’t announce any real choices. What Bush now seeks to communicate about Iraq is terribly simple and awfully transparent: “This is my 5 point plan for Iraq – did you hear me?! I’ll say it louder!! I’ve got a plan for Iraq!!! A plan!!!!”

3. Bush is lowering the bar. Remember all his ambitious rhetoric about making Iraq a towering Middle Eastern democracy? Mostly gone. Now, you hear Bush administration mouthpieces say their goal is merely stability, and to see Iraqi leadership that isn’t openly hostile to the U.S.. Such dramatic goal reduction should be called a flip-flop, shouldn’t it?

4. Bush suggests "a force of 260,000 Iraqi soldiers, police, and other security personnel" will soon be able to secure the country – first, the military troops portion of that is only at about 15,000 and every expert I know of says they're incompetent. Second, the administration's goal of adding an additional 25,000 troops won't be met for years. Third, even if they were ready, Bush doesn’t tell us whom would have ultimate authority over them. Us? The interim government? Pretty big question. He should level with us.

5. If Bush read the papers, maybe he wouldn't have to rely on advisers too dishonest to tell him that Abu Ghraib (and other Iraqi prison scandals) weren't just the result of a "a few American troops who disregarded our country and disregarded our values." He could inform the world before The New York Times has to:

An Army summary of deaths and mistreatment involving prisoners in American custody in Iraq and Afghanistan shows a widespread pattern of abuse involving more military units than previously known.

The cases from Iraq date back to April 15, 2003, a few days after Saddam Hussein's statue was toppled in a Baghdad square, and they extend up to last month, when a prisoner detained by Navy commandos died in a suspected case of homicide blamed on "blunt force trauma to the torso and positional asphyxia."

Among previously unknown incidents are the abuse of detainees by Army interrogators from a National Guard unit attached to the Third   Infantry Division, who are described in a document obtained by The New York Times as having "forced into asphyxiation numerous detainees in an attempt to obtain information" during a 10-week period last spring.

Great Whites Guarding Red Meat

When it comes to putting industry officials in charge of government regulation, I think the “fox guarding the henhouse” metaphor evokes an image not nearly violent enough for what’s gone on in the Bush administration. It’s more like Great White Sharks guarding slabs of red meat. Check out this Sunday Denver Post article:

Troy [lead counsel for the U.S. Food and Drug Administration] is one of more than 100 high-level officials under Bush who helped govern industries they once represented as lobbyists, lawyers or company advocates, a Denver Post analysis shows.

In at least 20 cases, those former industry advocates have helped their agencies write, shape or push for policy shifts that benefit their former industries. They knew which changes to make because they had pushed for them as industry advocates.

The president's political appointees are making or overseeing profound changes affecting drug laws, food policies, land use, clean-air regulations and other key issues.

The Denver Post, God bless ‘em, names names:

1.    Ann-Marie Lynch
The drug-industry lobbyist who fought price controls joined the Health and Human Services Department and has helped drug companies avoid the limits.

2.    Thomas A. Scully
The former hospital lobbyist presided over an agency that helped a chain he once represented win a favorable settlement in a Medicare fraud case.

3.    Daniel E. Troy
The lawyer who represented major drug companies still fights for causes that benefit them as chief counsel at the Food and Drug Administration.

4.    Charles Lambert
As a USDA official, the former lobbyist for the meat industry who opposed labeling told a hearing that mad cow disease was not a threat.

5.    Jeffrey Holmstead
The EPA official, a lawyer, formerly worked for a firm that represents utility companies, which are among the biggest air polluters.

6.    J. Steven Griles
The tenure of the veteran energy lobbyist at the Interior Department was labeled an "ethical quagmire" by the agency's inspector general.

And that’s just the beginning… Dozens more profiles can be found here.

Business as usual, a skeptic might say. The Denver Post says no:

Bringing bias to a federal job isn't new. Presidents of all political persuasions have appointed people who shared their party's values.
As president, Bill Clinton peppered the federal bureaucracy with Democratic state officials, lawyers and advocates from various environmental or public-interest groups.

Only a handful of registered lobbyists worked for Clinton, however.
Bush's embrace of lobbyists marks a key difference because it allows "those who are affected by the regulations to determine what the ground rules should be," said David Cohen, co-director of the Advocacy Institute, which helps teach nonprofits how to lobby in Washington.

While previous Republican presidents hired lobbyists, "the Bush administration has made it rise in geometric proportions," Cohen said, meaning Bush is "capturing the instruments of government and using them for the ends" that favor Bush's political supporters.

This is one issue Republicans can’t argue with a straight face, and it’s wrong that they don’t just be honest and say, “Yeah, we think we can do everything better in the private sector, so as long as we control the EPA we’re going to do everything we can to dismantle it.” Instead, for political viability, they commonly downplay their antagonism for these government agencies that have shown a capacity to protect people.

As a general rule, Republicans fight to privatize public infrastructure while Democrats fight to protect it. Democratic patronage and Republic patronage contrast accordingly. Moreover, George W. Bush and Dick Cheney have worked to champion industry interests over public interests their entire careers. For instance, look at Cheney’s concerted efforts, waged over decades, to privatize the Pentagon. Even something that you might expect to be an exception – like the ridiculous prescription-drug benefit – is just a public handout that benefits drug companies more than consumers.

G.W. Interactive

"Dress'm Up Dubya" is a hell of a lot of fun. I guarantee it.

May 25, 2004

Jet-lagged or scandal-fatigued? I don't know which, but I'm sorry that I won't post again until late Tuesday night/early Wednesday morning. I have to do my homework on Bush's speech, his problems with his Republican base, Ahmed Chalabi, 37 prisoners (and counting) "abused" to death, Big Oil, Washingtonienne, Howard Stern, John Kerry's possible VPs, Bush-appointed lobbyists, etc...

By the way, if you ever fly into or out of Chicago's O'Hare Airport, based on my recent experience it might be a good idea to add about 10 hours or so to your scheduled departure and arrival times.

"Let America Be America Again"

The Wall Street Journal reported yesterday that Kerry's new campaign "rallying cry" is "Let America Be America Again," taken from the beautiful poem by the great African-American poet Langston Hughes. The first few stanzas:

Let America be America again.
Let it be the dream it used to be.
Let it be the pioneer on the plain
Seeking a home where he himself is free.

(America never was America to me.)

Let America be the dream the dreamers dreamed--
Let it be that great strong land of love
Where never kings connive nor tyrants scheme
That any man be crushed by one above.

(It never was America to me.)

O, let my land be a land where Liberty
Is crowned with no false patriotic wreath,
But opportunity is real, and life is free,
Equality is in the air we breathe.

(There's never been equality for me,
Nor freedom in this "homeland of the free.")

And the last couple stanzas:

O, yes,
I say it plain,
America never was America to me,
And yet I swear this oath--
America will be!

Out of the rack and ruin of our gangster death,
The rape and rot of graft, and stealth, and lies,
We, the people, must redeem
The land, the mines, the plants, the rivers.
The mountains and the endless plain--
All, all the stretch of these great green states--
And make America again!

I love the poem and think the Kerry campaign is well-served by adopting its title and ideas, for a few reasons:

1.    While the public is nearly as divided as ever politically and culturally, one of the few unifying ideas out there is that America always holds the promise of freedom and equality. It's optimistic and calls for unity, echoing John Edwards' calls to make the "Two Americas" one. Kerry's hired a couple Edwards' speechwriters, and I'm beginning to hear it.

2.    It's fundamentally conservative – it doesn't glorify some past Utopian America (that never really existed in the first place, despite what Tom Brokaw or Tim Russert seem to convey sometimes), but it pays homage to its core ideals as enshrined in the Constitution. At the same time, it doesn't overlook our continuing failures and asks us to do better. America is best served when it's measured against its own ideals, and its the ideals themselves that make this country exceptional.

3.   It's timely – these have been a rough, rough few years, in no small part due to the national management disaster that is the Bush administration. We have not been living up to our ideals, and there's no better example of that than The Torture Scandals.

4.   The fundamental conservatism of a "Let America Be America Again" message invites scrutiny of Bush's proclaimed conservatism, which ultimately can only reasonably be seen as a lie. Bush's central domestic policy calls for huge tax cuts and rampant spending in a time of war, a radical idea by any historical measure. Likewise, his central distinction in international affairs is as a proponent of pre-emptive war, another radical idea by any American historical measure. This administration is by no means conservative, and certainly isn't liberal, either. It's just radically dysfunctional.

5.   It pays respect to African-Americans, the soul of the Democratic Party.

Check This Out

Speaking of "Let America Be America Again," check out this video interpretation. It's certainly heavy-handed at times, but there's also something appropriately jarring about it. It's an impressive piece of filmmaking.

The death numbers need to be updated, sadly, which I suppose underscores its warning. Giving an exact figure for civilian casualties in Afghanistan and Iraq is a bad move, too, because that's impossible to calculate, as all the studies I've read on the subject concede.

Pelosi

Pelosi reams Bush in this San Francisco Chronicle interview. It's inflammatory and true. Republicans are all over her for it, but I appreciate her bluntness. Good for her. She's been a hell of a good House minority leader so far, by the way. Great fundraiser, great disciplinarian.

Life of DeWine

I got this from Political Wire:

"The office of straight-laced Ohio Sen. Mike DeWine (R) became the epicenter of salacious Capitol Hill gossip Wednesday, when it surfaced that an entry-level DeWine staffer apparently had been chronicling her steamy sex life on an Internet weblog," the Cleveland Plain Dealer reports.

"The blog was removed from public view after another Washington blog, known as Wonkette.com, linked to some of the racier passages from the DeWine employee's online diary. The passages detailed the woman's affairs with several men, purporting to include a married (but unnamed) chief-of-staff in a federal agency, and discussed being paid for sex."

Political Wire also provides a link to an exact reproduction of the Washingtonienne blog, the one alluded to above, which I'm sad to see shutdown. It may be funniest if you read it as if Senator DeWine wrote it himself. I know I did, and found it highly entertaining and informative.

May 20, 2004

Whistleblower

Military intelligence Sgt. Samuel Provance goes on record in today's Washington Post:

Military intelligence officers at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq directed military police to take clothes from prisoners, leave detainees naked in their cells and make them wear women's underwear, part of a series of alleged abuses that were openly discussed at the facility, according to a military intelligence soldier who worked at the prison last fall.

Sgt. Samuel Provance said intelligence interrogators told military police to strip down prisoners and embarrass them as a way to help "break" them. The same interrogators and intelligence analysts would talk about the abuse with Provance and flippantly dismiss it because the Iraqis were considered "the enemy," he said.

The first military intelligence soldier to speak openly about alleged abuse at Abu Ghraib, Provance said in a telephone interview from Germany yesterday that the highest-ranking military intelligence officers at the prison were involved and that the Army appears to be trying to deflect attention away from military intelligence's role.

A later passage begs more questions about how exactly Major General Geoffrey Miller changed Abu Ghraib's modus operandi. Miller is the commander at the Guantanamo detention facility who was sent to Iraq last August to, according to Sy Hersh, bring an interrogation focus to Iraq's prisons. Miller urged changing military policy so that military intelligence would be in charge of the prison. WaPo:

Provance said when he arrived at Abu Ghraib last September, the place was bordering on chaos. Soldiers did not wear their uniforms, instead just donning brown shirts. They were all on a first-name basis. People came and went.

Within days – about the time Maj. Gen. Geoffrey D. Miller paid a visit to the facility and told Karpinski, the commanding officer, that he wanted to "Gitmo-ize" the place – money began pouring in, and many more interrogators streamed to the site. More prisoners were also funneled to the facility. Provance said officials from "Gitmo" – the U.S. detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba – arrived to increase the pressure on detainees and streamline interrogation efforts.

"The operation was snowballing," Provance said. "There were more and more interrogations. The chain of command was putting a lot of resources into the facility."

Right now, I think we're at a point in the scandal where Senate Republicans must choose whether or not they're gonna fulfill their constitutional obligations and aggressively investigate this thing, or if they'll do the Bush administration's bidding to obscure it. If they want to help them push this "renegade MPs" fantasy, there may be enough shadows for them to hide in, but the press has been all over this thing.

In Monday's Slate, Fred Kaplan did a great job summarizing the chain of command and presenting reasons why these torture scandals are likely to blow up even more:

Read together, the magazine articles [New Yorker and Newsweek] spell out an elaborate, all-inclusive chain of command in this scandal. Bush knew about it. Rumsfeld ordered it. His undersecretary of defense for intelligence, Steven Cambone, administered it. Cambone's deputy, Lt. Gen. William Boykin, instructed Maj. Gen. Geoffrey Miller, who had been executing the program involving al-Qaida suspects at Guantanamo, to go do the same at Abu Ghraib. Miller told Brig. Gen. Janis Karpinski, who was in charge of the 800 th Military Brigade, that the prison would now be dedicated to gathering intelligence. Douglas Feith, the undersecretary of defense for policy, also seems to have had a hand in this sequence, as did William Haynes, the Pentagon's general counsel. Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, commander of U.S. forces in Iraq, learned about the improper interrogations—from the International Committee of the Red Cross, if not from anyone else—but said or did nothing about it for two months, until it was clear that photographs were coming out. Meanwhile, those involved in the interrogations included officers from military intelligence, the CIA, and private contractors, as well as the mysterious figures from the Pentagon's secret operation.

That's a lot more people than the seven low-grade soldiers and reservists currently facing courts-martial.

So, what happens next?

First, members of the Senate Armed Services Committee have said they will keep their hearings going until they "get to the bottom of this." Republicans as well as Democrats are behaving in an unusually—and unexpectedly—aggressive fashion on the question of how high up the blame should go.

Second, the courts could get involved. Newsweek reports that the Justice Department is likely to investigate three deaths that occurred during CIA interrogations, possibly with an eye toward charges of homicide. War-crimes charges, for willful violation of the Geneva Conventions, are not out of the question. Rumsfeld and Cambone could conceivably face perjury charges; if the latest news stories are true, their testimony before the armed services committees—taken under oath—will certainly be examined carefully.

Third, Seymour Hersh seems to be on his hottest roll as an investigative reporter in 30 years, and the editors of every major U.S. daily newspaper aren't going to stand for it. "We're having our lunch handed to us by a weekly magazine! " one can imagine them shouting in their morning meetings. Scoops and counterscoops will be the order of the day.

All of these hound-hunts will be fueled by the extraordinary levels of internecine feuding that have marked this administration for years. Until recently, Rumsfeld, with White House assistance, has quelled dissenters, but the already-rattling lid is almost certain to blow off soon. As has been noted , Secretary of State Colin Powell, tiring of his good-soldier routine, is attacking his adversaries in the White House and Pentagon with eyebrow-raising openness. Hersh's story states that Rumsfeld's secret operation stemmed from his "longstanding desire to wrest control of America's clandestine and paramilitary operations from the CIA." Hersh's sources—many of them identified as intelligence officials—seem to be spilling, in part, to wrest back control. Uniformed military officers, who have long disliked Rumsfeld and his E-Ring crew for a lot of reasons, are also speaking out. Hersh and Newsweek both report that senior officers from the Judge Advocate General's Corps went berserk when they found out about Rumsfeld's secret operation, to the point of taking their concerns to the New York Bar Association's committee on international human rights.

The knives are out all over Washington—lots of knives, unsheathed and sharpened in many different backroom parlors, for many motives and many throats. In short, this story is not going away.

May 19, 2004

American Il Duce?

Here's Alan Dershowitz on Antonin Scalia, via Atrios:

He's an interesting guy. His father was a teacher at Brooklyn college when I was there. His father was a proud member of the American-Italian fascist party and got his doctorate at Casa Italiano at Columbia at a time when in order to get your doctorate you had to swear an oath to Mussolini. So he comes from an interesting background and he went to a kind of military school in New York which was a place where many children of fascists were educated. Therefore to call him a conservative - he's never expressed any conservative priniciples - he's a statist. He's a man who is well in the tradition of Franco and Mussolini. Not Hitler. He's not an anti-Semite - there's no bigotry or racism in him at all. But he is somebody who has these views which would have been very comfortable in fascist Italy or fascist Spain.

That's a very strong charge from Dershowitz, which I'm sure Scalia's defenders will characterize as wildly unfair and perhaps racist (stereotyping Italians as fascist). Even if everything Dershowitz says is verifiable, we shouldn't hold what people's fathers do against them in America, so I think we should set his father's background aside. However, I think a serious discussion about whether or not Scalia's ideology is fascistic is fair game, and Dershowitz is a serious legal mind. I'd like to hear Scalia himself point out exactly those decisions where he takes decisively anti-statist stands.

I'm certainly no legal scholar, but I do follow the Supreme Court fairly closely, and besides certain First Amendment cases, I find Scalia's decisions utterly predictable in that they almost always articulate the most radical right-wing positions.

Another Disaster

Breaking News from NBC:

Iraqi officials said a U.S. helicopter fired on a wedding party Wednesday in western Iraq, killing more than 40 people, including children. Senior Pentagon officials confirmed that approximately 40 fatalities in an attack in the area near the Syrian border, but told NBC News that the AC-130 returned fire after coming under attack from militants.

More:

Associated Press Television News obtained videotape showing a truck containing bodies of people who were allegedly killed in the incident. Most of the bodies were wrapped in blankets and other cloths, but the footage showed at least eight uncovered, bloody bodies, several of them children. One of the children was headless.

Iraqis interviewed on the videotape said partygoers were firing in the air in traditional wedding celebration. American troops have sometimes mistaken celebratory gunfire for hostile fire.

More:

The report is reminiscent of an incident in July 2002, when Afghan officials said 48 civilians at a wedding party were killed and 117 wounded by a U.S. airstrike in Afghanistan's Uruzgan province. An investigative report released by the U.S. Central Command said the airstrike was justified because American planes had come under fire.

Yet Another Kerry VP Update

Okay. Now, Newsweek sources repeat the old info. that Kerry will pick his VP early, by the end of this month. This contradicts other recent reports, as well as what Kerry himself has said recently. Maybe he was just laying the groundwork for a surprise, but I doubt it. We’ll see.

Here's another reason John Edwards would be a great pick:

Republican incumbent George W. Bush leads Democratic challenger John Kerry in North Carolina, but according to a WRAL/Mason-Dixon Poll, if Kerry chooses Sen. John Edwards as his running-mate, the race in the state currently becomes a dead-heat.

Statewide, Bush is supported by 48% of voters, while Kerry is backed by 41%, independent Ralph Nader draws 3% and 8% remain undecided. With Edwards as Kerry's running-mate, the GOP ticket of Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney is favored by 46%, the Kerry/Edwards Democratic ticket gets 45%, Nader draws 2% and 7% are undecided.

Also, Brian Cook adds something valuable:

You report that Kerry does better with women than with men, which is true. I think it's important to note that women vote in greater numbers than men usually. So, gender gap isn't as big a problem for Kerry as it is with Bush.

True, and the key point for this discussion is that women not only vote in greater numbers than men, but polls have shown more swing voters this year are female, another reason for Kerry to select LLJ ("Ladies Love Johnny").

Also, CNN.com groupies think Kerry will pick Edwards.

Wes Clark wins a Boston Globe endorsement, or close to it.

May 18, 2004

A Beautiful Day

Congratulations to all the new couples in Massachusetts. The pictures of their happiness yesterday, at last, make me proud to be an American. It's also fitting that the landmark day fell on the anniversary of another American leap of progress, the Brown v. Board of Education verdict.

Not even our regressive President could spoil the day. He put out a terse statement that began with, "the sacred institution of marriage should not be redefined by a few activist judges." Of course, at nearly the same time as the statement was released, he contradicted himself by praising the activist Supreme Court Justices who unanimously decided Brown v. Board of Education 50 years ago. If that court had included the ideological predecessors of Rehnquist (who carried segregationist views well into his adulthood), Scalia, Thomas, and Bush, Brown wouldn't have made it.

John Kerry had it right in his speech yesterday:

Today more than ever, we need to renew our commitment to one America. We should not delude ourselves into thinking for an instant that because Brown represents the law, we have achieved our goal, that the work of Brown is done, when there are those who still seek, in different ways, to see it undone – to roll back affirmative action, to restrict equal rights, to undermine the promise of our Constitution.

Kerry, of course, has been an integrationist his whole life. In John F. Kerry: The Complete Biography by the Boston Globe Reporters Who Know Him Best, David Thorne – Kerry's good friend at Yale and future brother-in-law – remembered an encounter between Kerry and Bush when they were both Yale undergrads in 1965. Neither Kerry nor Bush remembers meeting at Yale, but Thorne swears they did (the story's on page 40):

On this day, Bush met Kerry and the two had a discussion about busing, according to Thorne. Court cases involving school integration were in the news by 1965. Bush, whose father was running for Congress back in Texas, engaged Kerry, Thorne recalled. "I just remember fairly vividly, they were having a conversation about busing. John had been participating in busing stuff, but George was very conservatively placed and thought it was a crazy idea."

Kerry VP Update

Many of the things I wrote about Kerry’s VP prospects on April 12, as well as my individual feelings about Wes Clark’s and John Edwards' suitability, still stand, but there’s been some new information.

Here’s what I know:

1. The timetable for Kerry’s selection has reportedly been pushed back to a date that falls more in line with traditional announcements. Originally, the Kerry campaign floated the idea that Kerry might pick someone by the end of May, but now it looks like it would be June at the earliest, or more likely July just before the Democratic National Convention (July 26 – 29), as usual. One of the reasons for this, no doubt, is Kerry’s extraordinary fundraising pace, which has well-exceeded expectations and lessened the need for money help from a #2. Also, the later in the cycle you can get a bump in the polls and a national newsblitz to focus on your campaign, the better, so if Kerry’s not in trouble, he may as well wait.

2. According to John Mercurio, who does “Ticket Talk” for CNN's Inside Politics every Monday, Kerry and his search committee chair Jim Johnson have met with all 5 people on what he calls “the short list.” Those 5 people are John Edwards, Dick Gephardt, Bill Richardson, Tom Vilsack, and Wes Clark. Bloomberg reported a week or so ago that Bob Graham was on the short list and Bill Richardson was not, but that doesn’t jibe with anything else I’ve been hearing or reading.

3. The unions want Gephardt. I've also read that of everyone being considered, Kerry likes Gephardt the most personally.

4. With problems in Iraq continuing to mount, the conventional wisdom is that General Clark’s stock rises. However, Mercurio reports that Gert Clark, or “The General’s General,” as Wes often refers to his wife, is vociferously opposed to him being VP. Others have written that he’d be more interested in something that would allow him to more fully leverage his experience, like Director of Homeland Security, Secretary of Defense, or Secretary of State. I’ll say this – I’d feel safer if Wes Clark were running Homeland Security.

5. Richardson had a generally positive profile in The New York Times Magazine last week (sorry, no longer on-line for free). One part of me is really scared that Democrats will miss a momentous opportunity to honor Latino voters – an increasingly important group to curry favor with – if Kerry doesn't pick Richardson. He probably has the biggest potential upside of any of the candidates, but it's nearly impossible to measure beforehand the impact his presence on the ticket would have on Latino turnout and choice.

6. I still prefer Edwards, Clark, and Richardson, probably in that order. One of the considerations here is who would most help Kerry with the gender gap (polls consistently show Bush doing much better with men, and Kerry doing much better with women). I haven’t seen any hard data on it, but presumably Edwards would help maintain or expand the advantage with women, and Clark could help reduce the gap with the men. All three would be tremendous assets, I think. Vilsack is a bit of a question mark and Gephardt is so bland a choice I fear it would damage Kerry more than it would help.

7. McCain, by the way, looks to me to be out of the question, as much as big news media outlets wish it weren't so.

May 17, 2004

Copper Green

Sy Hersh's New Yorker piece, The Gray Zone, is indeed explosive, but it's gonna be tough for its findings to blossom into a full-blown scandal since it revolves around an operation, Copper Green, that officials are legally forbidden to talk to Congress about in unclassified sessions.

In order to get the full story, we need a few good whistleblowers.

On Face the Nation yesterday, Hersh not only asserted that there are plenty out there, but also where to find them (by the way, it's an open secret that most senior uniformed military officers detest Don Rumsfeld):

Let me just say this, though, to the senators [Lindsey Graham and Carl Levin, other Face the Nation guests], which is I – I – believe me, I know our military is full of really dedicated people, and they can be very rough when they have to be. But the kind of stuff that's gone on in this prison and in – and in – and with this program has really offended some very senior people. And you guys have a great staff, both the majority and minority. You've got a lot of professonal people there. If you convene a serious hearing, and I assure you some senior officers will come and, if you give them enough protection, and tell you things that will really knock your socks off. So go for it.

That's Sy Hersh, America's hellraiser. We need more.

Also, Newsweek joined the party yesterday.

Young John Kerry

The New York Times has a good article on John Kerry's prep school days, which diverges a little in some of its conclusions (and is generally more positive) from a piece The New Republic published early last month.

As hard as Bush-Cheney tries to depict Kerry as both politically and personally spineless, and as willing as news media outlets often are to fit their coverage of Kerry into that storyline, Kerry has remained remarkably steadfast throughout his life to a specific set of political and personal ideals. A less-admiring way to put it might be that he beats to his own drummer. The Times sums it up well in a key graf:

Mr. Kerry has always been a pace apart in every world he has inhabited — from grade school to college to Vietnam to the Senate — moving forcefully and successfully through diverse milieus without ever being fully of them. To his critics, his ambition has always been just a little too obvious, his manner too calculating. To his friends, his tenderheartedness and complexities have been too little understood. Always and everywhere, his seriousness has stood out.

I think this outsider quality can be a tremendous asset for an American President. It fosters an independence necessary for progressive decision-making, and it assures that he's felt some degree of pain and isolation that gives him a greater understanding into the marginalized constituencies in America most in need of understanding leadership. As "the most liberal" member of the Senate, Kerry has certainly championed the goals of these groups – racial minorities, gays, the poor, the disabled – throughout his political life.

In The Times, Kerry's boyhood best friend also talks about his vulnerability:

I think what doesn't come across publicly is exactly the problem he had when I first met him, is that people don't see that — first of all, I liked the fact that he was hurt, that he could be hurt. He's a guy who can be wounded. He's got tremendous sensitivities. I don't think that comes across at all in his public persona. He sometimes will close off, like he doesn't need anyone. But he does.

Kerry doesn't "feel our pain" in the spectacular way Bill Clinton does. His empathy is quiet, with a dignified loneliness to it – I think of a moment Tom Olyphant witnessed back on April 23, 1971, just before Kerry lobbed war decorations over a White House fence:

At the spot where the men were symbolically letting go of their participation in the war, the authorities had erected a wood and wire fence that prevented them from getting close to the front of the US Capitol, and Kerry paused for several seconds. We had been talking for days – about the war, politics, the veterans' demonstration – but I could tell Kerry was upset to the point of anguish, and I decided to leave him be; his head was down as he approached the fence quietly.

In a voice I doubt I would have heard had I not been so close to him, Kerry said, as I recall vividly, "There is no violent reason for this; I'm doing this for peace and justice and to try to help this country wake up once and for all."

The more I read about John Kerry, the more I come across instances like this that demonstrate him to be a deeply patriotic and sensitive man. Old-fashioned, really, in the way we like our Presidents.

TNR

From The New Republic's "Notebook":

ABU GHRAIB IDIOCY WATCH I

"You know, if you look at–if you, really, if you look at these pictures, I mean, I don't know if it's just me, but it looks just like anything you'd see Madonna or Britney Spears do onstage. Maybe I'm–yeah. And get [a National Endowment for the Arts] grant for something like this. I mean, this is something that you can see onstage at Lincoln Center from an NEA grant, maybe on Sex and the City – the movie."–Radio host Rush Limbaugh speaking on May 4 about the prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib

ABU GHRAIB IDIOCY WATCH II

"I'm sure that our committees are going to be asking the right questions. ... But a full-fledged congressional investigation–that's like saying we need an investigation every time there's police brutality on the street." –House Majority Leader Tom DeLay on the same subject, May 4 (Thanks to Paul Goode)

I don't know which statement has a higher moron quotient, but DeLay's made me laugh harder. What a moral atrocity that guy is.

Miller Lite

Georgia Senator Zell Miller, whom recent polls suggest may be the only "Democrat" in the country who supports President Bush, perpetuated an old political myth when he called John Kerry "an out-of-touch, ultraliberal from Taxachusetts" Saturday.

Atrios eviscerates him:

First of all, since Kerry happens to be elected to the Federal government he has little control over state and local tax policy in his home state. But, since Zell wants to play that game, let's turn to the facts.

According to those lovable nuts over at the Tax Foundation, Taxeorgia's state and local tax burden ranks 18th in the nation, at precisely the national average of 10% of income.

While in small government loving Massachusetts, the state and local tax burden ranks 36th in the nation, at 9.6% of income.

What about business friendlyness? Well, Zell, sorry to say once again your tax-loving commie state of Taxeorgia with its totally complicated tax code appears to be downright hostile to business! At least compared to the free market haven of Massachusetts! You see, Massachusetts, according to the Tax Foundation, ranks 12th in the nation while Taxeorgia ranks 25th!

And, hey, what do you know? It appears you welfare lovers in Taxeorgia are sucking at the federal government's teat! Taxeorgia gets more from the federal government than it sends in taxes! For every buck you freeloaders send to DC you get $1.01 back! What of Massachusetts? Well, suprise surprise! Massachusetts is supporting layabouts like Taxeorgia! A whopping $.25 of every dollar Massachusetts sends to the Feds is stolen from them and redistributed to states which can't manage to take care of themselves, like Taxeorgia.

That's exactly the kind of analysis blogs are good for. Give the man some money.

Cut and Run?

London's The Herald reports that Bush and Blair want to get out of Iraq soon after the transfer of power. Colin Powell also seems to be throwing out some trial balloons of late. Blair's spokesman:

"They have been working on a joint strategy for the last few weeks and it has speeded up in the last few days. It is a recognition that people need to see we have a grip, that we are not there for ever amen, politically or militarily."
"Neither is this a case of cutting and running, but showing we have a strategy of achieving what we said we wanted to achieve: the transfer of authority to an Iraqi government and responsibility to an Iraqi security system."

Could be good, could be disastrous, we'll have to wait and see if there can be a strong, clear U.N.–backed plan. I know one thing for sure: if we leave that country without real security or stable leadership, Iraq II surely goes down as one of the most tragic foreign policy disasters in history. Maybe we're already there, but irresponsible U.S. and British abandonement would guarantee it.

Not Too Swift

Joe Conason uncovers yet more "Swift Boat Veterans for Truth" Republican ties, as if there weren't enough on record already:

When the "Swift Boat Veterans for Truth" launched its campaign against John Kerry 10 days ago, leadership and guidance were provided by Republican activists and presidential friends from Texas -- notably Houston attorney John E. O'Neill and corporate media consultant Merrie Spaeth. Indeed, although the group made its debut at a press conference in Washington, it looked and sounded like a Texas GOP operation.

On closer inspection, the ostensibly nonpartisan "Swift Boat Vets" seem to have another pair of significant sponsors with deep and long-standing Republican connections in Missouri. Both are officers of Gannon International, a St. Louis conglomerate that does lots of overseas business in, of all places, the Socialist Republic of Vietnam.

May 16, 2004

Bombshell

How big a story will The Gray Zone, Sy Hersh's article posted a few hours ago on The New Yorker website, be? We'll have a better idea after tomorrow's morning shows, but to me it reads as directly linking Rumsfeld to the torture of Iraqi detainees:

The roots of the Abu Ghraib prison scandal lie not in the criminal inclinations of a few Army reservists but in a decision, approved last year by Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, to expand a highly secret operation, which had been focussed on the hunt for Al Qaeda, to the interrogation of prisoners in Iraq. Rumsfeld’s decision embittered the American intelligence community, damaged the effectiveness of élite combat units, and hurt America’s prospects in the war on terror.

According to interviews with several past and present American intelligence officials, the Pentagon’s operation, known inside the intelligence community by several code words, including Copper Green, encouraged physical coercion and sexual humiliation of Iraqi prisoners in an effort to generate more intelligence about the growing insurgency in Iraq. A senior C.I.A. official, in confirming the details of this account last week, said that the operation stemmed from Rumsfeld’s long-standing desire to wrest control of America’s clandestine and paramilitary operations from the C.I.A.

Kerry the Prosecutor

The part of John Kerry's career most often overlooked is his time as a prosecutor. Jeffrey Toobin shed some light on it in last week's New Yorker. It's an important article – one that generally shows Kerry as an effective, results-driven, extraordinarily successful manager – and Toobin may be right when he writes:

The issues that mattered to him then have dominated his subsequent legislative career, and it is his brief career as a lawyer, more than his record as a protester, that could suggest what kind of President he would make.

May 15, 2004

What Would Kirk Do?

Yesterday, I wrote that I would put John Kerry's recent poll performance in historical perspective today, but I lied. Another day.

This isn't the first time I've lied, and according to Growing Pains loverboy Kirk Cameron, I'm headed straight to hell for it. If you want to hear Kirk's thoughts on your sins, he will show you The Way here.

God damn it.

May 14, 2004

David Brooks

I don't agree with everything David Brooks wrote in this New York Times op-ed from last week, but I think he makes an important point here:

Believe me, we've got even bigger problems than whether Rumsfeld keeps his job. We've got the problem of defining America's role in the world from here on out, because we are certainly not going to put ourselves through another year like this anytime soon. No matter how Iraq turns out, no president in the near future is going to want to send American troops into any global hot spot. This experience has been too searing.

Unfortunately, states will still fail, and world-threatening chaos will still ensue. Tyrants will still aid terrorists. Genocide will still occur. What are we going to do then? Who is going to tackle the future Milosevics, the future Talibans? If you were one of those people who thought the world was dangerous with an overreaching hyperpower, wait until you get a load of the age of the global power vacuum.

In this climate of self-doubt, the "realists" of right and left are bound to re-emerge. They're going to dwell on the limits of our power. They'll advise us to learn to tolerate the existence of terrorist groups, since we don't really have the means to take them on. They're going to tell us to lower our sights, to accept autocratic stability, since democratic revolution is too messy and utopian.

On one hand, the sobering lessons of Iraq encourage future Presidents and the American public to see war for what it really is. That's a good thing. In the near future, at least, I think the days of thinking about and referring to wars as "cakewalks" – as Rumsfeld/Cheney bud Ken Adelman did about Iraq – are over.

On the other hand, because of Iraq we're unlikely to support a war like Kosovo, where we ousted Milosevic and saved probably hundreds of thousands of Kosovar Albanians. In that situation, the relative evil of not using American force to prevent the genocide far outweighed the relative evil of dropping bombs.

We did fail to act in Rwanda in 1994, and it enabled the slaughter of an estimated 800,000 Rwandan Tutsis in about 100 days. President Clinton calls the inaction one of the great regrets of his presidency, as well it should have been.

One of the legacies of Iraq, I'm afraid, is that it makes choosing the tragic Rwandan course exceedingly more likely than choosing the noble Kosovo course.

ARG Ohio Poll

Ohio is a must-win state for Bush-Cheney, so this new ARG poll is unwelcome news for them. Kerry's got 49% to Bush's 42%.

42% is a fairly awful number for an incumbent President to have in a Republican state.

Tomorrow, I'll attempt to put Kerry's performance in recent polls in some historical perspective, but the bottom line is that he's doing exceptionally well for a challenger.

Bush has problems in Washington, too. Check out this from The Hill:

Republicans on the Hill are so frustrated with the White House that when Speaker J. Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.) criticized the administration at a House GOP meeting last week, the caucus burst into applause.

House Republicans? They're Bush's most loyal constituency. I read something like that and become very optimistic that Democrats will have a lot more people at the polls in November than Republicans.

May 13, 2004

Torture

The New York Times ledes with a very interesting article entitled Harsh C.I.A. Methods Cited in Top Qaeda Interrogations:

The Central Intelligence Agency has used coercive interrogation methods against a select group of high-level leaders and operatives of Al Qaeda that have produced growing concerns inside the agency about abuses, according to current and former counterterrorism officials.

Nothing much surprising about that. In fact, I remember when Khalid Shaikh Mohammed – whom most experts peg as the operational mastermind behind both 9/11 and the U.S.S. Cole attacks – was taken, I think people pretty much assumed he'd be taken off somewhere to be tortured until he gave up information. I would never shed any tears for that guy, and I don't think most other people would, either.

But this country desperately needs to have an honest debate to determine exactly how we feel about torture. Last year, civil rights stalwart Alan Dershowitz shocked many when he opened the door to debate torture in "ticking-bomb" terrorist cases:

If torture is going to be administered as a last resort in the ticking-bomb case, to save enormous numbers of lives, it ought to be done openly, with accountability, with approval by the president of the United States or by a Supreme Court justice.

Actually, Dershowitz supports an outright ban on torture, but he also says if the U.S. engages in it – which, basically, we do – then it should be subject to congressional and judicial oversight. Others, like Harvard Professor Michael Ignatieff, say that we shouldn't because it's inefficient (pain doesn't necessarily produce truth) and counterproductive (pain does produce more committed terrorists, like Ayman al-Zawahiri), in addition to being brutally inhuman.

Although I lean towards arguments like Ignatieff's, I really don't know for sure. I want to consider all sides, and I'm sure they'll be lots to digest in the coming months, given the controversies du jour.

What I do know is there's a huge difference between high-level terrorists like Khalid Shaikh Mohammed and lower-level terrorist operatives, and there's an even bigger difference between low-level terrorist operatives and your average Abu Ghraib detainee. Common sense suggests the administration would like to orchestrate a campaign that blurs the lines between those groups, and this NY Times article may well have been leaked for that purpose.

No matter what they say, though, Bush's and Rumsfeld's position has basically been that they want unchecked freedom to do whatever they want with anybody they choose to detain, which is wrong and anti-democratic to the core. There should be transparency in this process, so the public knows exactly where our government draws the lines and how it's checked. Right now, there are a lot more shadows than light, which is good for corrupt governments and bad for democratic people.

By the way, this Times reporting struck me as dubious:

Under such intensive questioning, Mr. Zubaida provided useful information identifying Jose Padilla, a low-level Qaeda convert who was arrested in May 2002 in connection with an effort to build a dirty bomb.

How do we know it was useful information? Because John Ashcroft told us so in a splashy press conference? His word means nothing. Nobody other than the U.S. government has been allowed to talk to Padilla, and they're not letting us in on any of the details of his "connection with an effort to build a dirty bomb," so who can even begin to judge his guilt or innocence?

May 12, 2004

60 Minutes II

Has more on Abu Ghraib and another Iraqi prison, Camp Bucca, tonight at 8pm.

Pictures

Last week, I wrote that the Abu Ghraib pictures were worth way, way more than a thousand words. Certainly, they've created an earthquake in the media that no amount of words could match. At the same time, though, the power of the pictures actually may work to undermine the aspect of the scandal that's potentially most damaging to the Bush administration – that the pictures represent not just the misdeeds of a few heartless soldiers, but numerous instances of failed leadership at the highest levels that practically invited violations of U.S. law and the Geneva Convention.

The systemic problems are more likely to be exposed by complicated, detailed investigative reports from the the news media (like Sy Hersh's New Yorker bombshells 1 and 2), the government (like Taguba's report), and non-governmental organizations (like the International Red Cross report), and I think a lot of people out there are so confident in their visceral ability to register images that whatever they believe about them in their gut right now might overwhelm anything that will be discovered via the written word over the next few months.

In other words, we already know that Rumsfeld sought and approved more laxity in how we can treat detainees, but as long as he's not photographed actually practicing the inevitable result of those approvals, he'll be in better shape with the public than Lynndie England (who's forever enshrined, alongside several of Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz's ex-girlfriends, in the Genital Mocking Hall of Fame).

Iraqi Detainee Scandal

This may fall under the category of semantic quibbling rather than important distinction, but I think it's more precise to refer to this as an "Iraqi Detainee Scandal," rather than the "Iraqi Prisoner Abuse Scandal" that news outlets like CNN are using.

First, most definitions of "prisoner" suggest one who's awaiting trial or
already been sentenced, and it's entirely unclear that the Iraqis at Abu
Ghraib meet that definition. In fact, both the Taguba and International Red Cross reports point to evidence of random detentions.

The ICRC Report includes this astonishing finding:

Certain CF military intelligence officers told the ICRC that in their
estimate between 70% and 90% of the persons deprived of their liberty in Iraq had been arrested by mistake.

Secondly, there are at least 2 pictures of dead men in the first batch of
pictures, and I understand others currently not public include pictures of Americans with Iraqi cadavers. I don't understand why there's not more discussion in the news media about the pictures of the dead – I think the public is still in a little bit of a state of denial on those. That's why I'd take out the word "abuse" to modify scandal.

Conversation Ender

The single best argument against Rumsfeld's resignation? His likely successor may be Paul Wolfowitz.

Poll

In the latest CNN/USA Today/Gallup poll, Bush's approval rating is 46%, which puts him right around where defeated incumbent Presidents have been in May of their election years. At this time in their cycles, Ford was at 47%, Carter was at 43%, and Daddy Bush was at 40%.

The landslide winners – Reagan and Clinton – were at 54% and 55%, respectively.

Nick Berg

I'm angered, saddened, and disgusted by the beheading of Nick Berg.

Did the barbarians on the tape do it because of Abu Ghraib, as they claimed? Of course not. That's ridiculous. Well before Abu Ghraib, like-minded murderers did the exact same thing to Daniel Pearl and said it was because he was CIA.

But the killer in the video claims to be Abu Masab Zarqawi, and if this story is true, then there are others to blame in addition to the barbarians:

But NBC News has learned that long before the war the Bush administration had several chances to wipe out his terrorist operation and perhaps kill Zarqawi himself — but never pulled the trigger.

May 11, 2004

GW Sleeps Through Vietnam, Again

Here's President Bush on Meet the Press with Tim Russert on February 8:

The thing about the Vietnam War that troubles me as I look back was it was a political war. We had politicians making military decisions, and it is lessons that any president must learn, and that is to the set the goal and the objective and allow the military to come up with the plans to achieve that objective. And those are essential lessons to be learned from the Vietnam War.

Republican Senator Chuck Hagel on Face the Nation Sunday:

Don Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz, the entire civilian leadership, did not listen to the uniformed leadership starting with General Shinseki. They dismissed those generals who've spent their lives – these military people, lives, 25, 30 years, preparing for every possibility, and we didn't do that. Now we are in a mess.

Then this from Sunday's Washington Post:

A senior general at the Pentagon said he believes the United States is already on the road to defeat. "It is doubtful we can go on much longer like this," he said. "The American people may not stand for it -- and they should not."

Asked who was to blame, this general pointed directly at Rumsfeld and Deputy Defense Secretary Paul D. Wolfowitz. "I do not believe we had a clearly defined war strategy, end state and exit strategy before we commenced our invasion," he said. "Had someone like Colin Powell been the chairman [of the Joint Chiefs of Staff], he would not have agreed to send troops without a clear exit strategy. The current OSD [Office of the Secretary of Defense] refused to listen or adhere to military advice."

President Bush, what were those essential lessons any President must learn from the Vietnam War, again?

Taguba

The New York Times profiles Maj. Gen. Antonio M. Taguba, who authored the main report on Iraqi detainee abuse. He sounds like a true American patriot. How long do you think Cheney and friends can resist questioning his character? I bet they're chomping at the bit, waiting for the signal that unleashes them.

Weisberg with Definitive Bush Bio

I expressed similar ideas on April 1, but Jacob Weisberg puts it much better in Slate:

What makes mocking this president fair as well as funny is that Bush is, or at least once was, capable of learning, reading, and thinking. We know he has discipline and can work hard (at least when the goal is reducing his time for a three-mile run). Instead he chose to coast, for most of his life, on name, charm, good looks, and the easy access to capital afforded by family connections.

The most obvious expression of Bush's choice of ignorance is that, at the age of 57, he knows nothing about policy or history. After years of working as his dad's spear-chucker in Washington, he didn't understand the difference between Medicare and Medicaid, the second- and third-largest federal programs. Well into his plans for invading Iraq, Bush still couldn't get down the distinction between Sunni and Shiite Muslims, the key religious divide in a country he was about to occupy. Though he sometimes carries books for show, he either does not read them or doesn't absorb anything from them. Bush's ignorance is so transparent that many of his intimates do not bother to dispute it even in public. Consider the testimony of several who know him well.

Richard Perle, foreign policy adviser: "The first time I met Bush 43 … two things became clear. One, he didn't know very much. The other was that he had the confidence to ask questions that revealed he didn't know very much."

David Frum, former speechwriter: "Bush had a poor memory for facts and figures. … Fire a question at him about the specifics of his administration's policies, and he often appeared uncertain. Nobody would ever enroll him in a quiz show."

Laura Bush, spouse: "George is not an overly introspective person. He has good instincts, and he goes with them. He doesn't need to evaluate and reevaluate a decision. He doesn't try to overthink. He likes action."

Paul O'Neill, former treasury secretary: "The only way I can describe it is that, well, the President is like a blind man in a roomful of deaf people. There is no discernible connection."

You could almost sum up GW's whole being in one word – a word that he, ironically, dreads: "entitlement."

It's unbelievable that someone with such an allergy to the accumulation of knowledge and thoughtful reflection could have such an unwavering confidence in his ability to make the right decisions.

Differences Between Bush and Kerry

A friend of mine sent a mass email questioning how much different Kerry would be in office than Bush. I could have done better highlighting the major issues, but I guess my response is worth posting:

Kerry has been a career-long supporter of progressive causes. This includes not just his voting record, but fearless investigative leadership into government corruption in the BCCI scandal and illegalities (mostly pertaining to the CIA, whom few in Congress ever dare take on) in Reagan's Latin American misadventures. During the Democratic primary, David Corn wrote a very good article for The Nation entitled What's Right With Kerry, and I encourage you to read every word of it.

In addition to reading Corn's piece, please consider a list of important issues John Kerry voted against or fought Bush over in just the 107thCongress: tax cuts, ANWR drilling, nomination of Ashcroft as AG, right-wing congressional attempts to ban gays from the Boy Scouts, every right-wing nutjob Bush appointee to the federal judiciary, and the outlawing of overseas military abortions.

Kerry also supported expansion of the Patients' Bill of Rights, which Bush resisted, McCain/Feingold campaign finance reform, which Bush sought to curtail, $ for hate crime prosecution, which Bush opposed, and for employee protection for the Department of Homeland Security, which Bush threatened to veto.

That's just for the period from 2000-2002.

On foreign policy, Kerry starts every discussion as a lifelong
internationalist and would appoint like-minded civil servants while Bush and his administration principals are mired in the worst possible kind of American exceptionalism. His administration's approach to Iraq, North Korea, and, yes, even Israel, would differ greatly from Bush's both in the macro and micro senses. If you have trouble buying that, just think about the kind of people Kerry would likely appoint – there's a world of difference between the Richard Holbrookes and Wes Clarks of the world from the Don Rumsfelds and Dick Cheneys.

You can cherrypick an issue or two that he and Bush agree on, but he has substantial disagreements with Bush on about 95% of the issues facing this country, and there's no doubt that a Kerry administration – in make-up, policy, and execution – would be nearly unrecognizable from Bush/Cheney.

You can't rebuild Rome in a day, but please, please, please let's at least begin the rebuilding process. This is the most important election in any of our lifetimes, and we simply can't endure another 4 years of this crap.

May 10, 2004

Rumsfeld's and Cheney's Privates

Dick Cheney issued this prepared statement over the weekend:

Don Rumsfeld is the best Secretary of Defense this country has ever had. People ought to get off his case and let him do his job.

ABC News reports that the President will join Cheney (quite possibly by the time you read this) by offering a "ringing endorsement" of Rumsfeld at a press conference this morning.

While I think you can construct a pretty tight argument that Don Rumsfeld may be the worst Secretary of Defense in American history (for starters, he inexplicably failed to even create a plan to keep the peace in "post-war Iraq," which guaranteed there would never be a "post-war Iraq"), I agree that Rumsfeld is an excellent representative for this administration's values.

One of the things that's come to light over the past couple months is the ubiquitous presence in Iraq of private contractors who are virtually indistinguishable from uniformed military. Reportedly, some of these civilian contractors appear in the horrific photos from Abu Ghraib, and they're also singled out in Major General Taguba's Report. These private contractors are not beholden to Geneva Convention standards and fall under questionable military command.

Why do we have so many of these contractors in Iraq?

Simply put, because this administration, led by twin ideologues Donald Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney, want them there.

Dick Cheney has dedicated much of his career, with little public notice and tragic success, to helping private defense contractors take over responsibilities that once belonged to the Pentagon. Read Contract Sport, an excellent article from Jane Mayer published in the February 16-23 New Yorker:

[Cheney] has been both an architect and a beneficiary of the increasingly close relationship between the Department of Defense and an élite group of private military contractors—a relationship that has allowed companies such as Halliburton to profit enormously. As a government official and as Halliburton’s C.E.O., he has long argued that the commercial marketplace can provide better and cheaper services than a government bureaucracy. He has also been an advocate of limiting government regulation of the private sector. His vision has been fully realized: in 2002, more than a hundred and fifty billion dollars of public money was transferred from the Pentagon to private contractors.

While the public shells out all those billions, we don't own what we pay for.

This AP story details Rumsfeld's lack of interest in setting up the terms by which we could adequately oversee private contractors.

Here's the lead:

A year before the Iraq invasion, the then-Army secretary [Thomas White] warned his Pentagon bosses that there was inadequate control of private military contractors, which are now at the heart of controversies over misspending and prisoner abuse.

Rummy's role:

Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld also acknowledged his department hasn’t completed rules to govern the 20,000 or so private security guards watching over U.S. officials, installations and private workers in Iraq.

No single Pentagon office tracks how many people — Americans, Iraqis or others — are on the department’s payroll in Iraq.

“You’ve got thousands of people running around on taxpayer dollars that the Pentagon can’t account for in any way,” said Dan Guttman, a lawyer and government contracting expert at Johns Hopkins University. “Contractors are invisible, even at the highest level of the Pentagon.”

The problem has been known at the Pentagon for years.

So, basically, we've got 20,000 taxpayer-funded militiamen in Iraq who represent the United States, but fall outside U.S. military command.

This is the kind of crap that makes me certain this administration is taking us Beyond Thunderdome. Really.

The Great Fareed Zakaria

He always puts things in perfect perspective:

Since 9/11, a handful of officials at the top of the Defense Department and the vice president's office have commandeered American foreign and defense policy. In the name of fighting terror they have systematically weakened the traditional restraints that have made this country respected around the world. Alliances, international institutions, norms and ethical conventions have all been deemed expensive indulgences at a time of crisis.

Within weeks after September 11, senior officials at the Pentagon and the White House began the drive to maximize American freedom of action. They attacked specifically the Geneva Conventions, which govern behavior during wartime. Donald Rumsfeld explained that the conventions did not apply to today's "set of facts." He and his top aides have tried persistently to keep prisoners out of the reach of either American courts or international law, presumably so that they can be handled without those pettifogging rules as barriers. Rumsfeld initially fought both the uniformed military and Colin Powell, who urged that prisoners in Guantanamo be accorded rights under the conventions. Eventually he gave in on the matter but continued to suggest that the protocols were antiquated. Last week he said again that the Geneva Conventions did not "precisely apply" and were simply basic rules.

The conventions are not exactly optional. They are the law of the land, signed by the president and ratified by Congress. Rumsfeld's concern—that Al Qaeda members do not wear uniforms and are thus "unlawful combatants"—is understandable, but that is a determination that a military court would have to make. In a war that could go on for decades, you cannot simply arrest and detain people indefinitely on the say-so of the secretary of Defense.

The basic attitude taken by Rumsfeld, Cheney and their top aides has been "We're at war; all these niceties will have to wait." As a result, we have waged pre-emptive war unilaterally, spurned international cooperation, rejected United Nations participation, humiliated allies, discounted the need for local support in Iraq and incurred massive costs in blood and treasure. If the world is not to be trusted in these dangerous times, key agencies of the American government, like the State Department, are to be trusted even less. Congress is barely informed, even on issues on which its "advise and consent" are constitutionally mandated.

Leave process aside: the results are plain. On almost every issue involving postwar Iraq—troop strength, international support, the credibility of exiles, de-Baathification, handling Ayatollah Ali Sistani—Washington's assumptions and policies have been wrong. By now most have been reversed, often too late to have much effect. This strange combination of arrogance and incompetence has not only destroyed the hopes for a new Iraq. It has had the much broader effect of turning the United States into an international outlaw in the eyes of much of the world.

Whether he wins or loses in November, George W. Bush's legacy is now clear: the creation of a poisonous atmosphere of anti-Americanism around the globe. I'm sure he takes full responsibility.

Applause.

May 9, 2004

Limbaugh Comes Clean on His Sadomasochism

This is unbelievable. Yesterday, I linked to some horrifically scumbaggy remarks Rush Limbaugh had made on Tuesday. But his words Wednesday were even worse. In fact, I think it's not the least bit hyperbolic to take these words and determine that Rush Limbaugh's ideology is very similar to Saddam Hussein's ideology. I'm dead serious. Whenever you hear psychotic dictators try to justify their human rights abuses, they sound a lot like this. From Media Matters for America (where you can check out all his Neanderthal rants from the last few days), here's the transcript:

LIMBAUGH: All right, so we're at war with these people. And they're in a prison where they're being softened up for interrogation. And we hear that the most humiliating thing you can do is make one Arab male disrobe in front of another. Sounds to me like it's pretty thoughtful. Sounds to me in the context of war this is pretty good intimidation -- and especially if you put a woman in front of them and then spread those pictures around the Arab world. And we're sitting here, "Oh my God, they're gonna hate us! Oh no! What are they gonna think of us?" I think maybe the other perspective needs to be at least considered. Maybe they're gonna think we are serious. Maybe they're gonna think we mean it this time. Maybe they're gonna think we're not gonna kowtow to them. Maybe the people who ordered this are pretty smart. Maybe the people who executed this pulled off a brilliant maneuver. Nobody got hurt. Nobody got physically injured. But boy there was a lot of humiliation of people who are trying to kill us -- in ways they hold dear. Sounds pretty effective to me if you look at us in the right context.

That's so cruel, inhuman, and un-American, you could take apart every sentence. But two simple things immediately come to mind:

1.    We have little idea who most of these prisoners are or what they did to be imprisoned. Torin Nelson, a former military intelligence officer who worked at Guantanamo Bay before joining Abu Ghraib as a private contractor last year, told The Guardian in a must-read piece:

"A unit goes out on a raid and they have a target and the target is not available; they just grab anybody because that was their job," Mr Nelson said, referring to counter-insurgency operations in Iraq. "The troops are under a lot of stress and they don't know one guy from the next. They're not cultural experts. All they want is to count down the days and hopefully go home. They take it out on the nearest person they can't understand."

"I've read reports from capturing units where the capturing unit wrote, "the target was not at home. The neighbour came out to see what was going on and we grabbed him," he said.

According to Mr Nelson's account, the victims' very innocence made them more likely to be abused, because interrogators refused to believe they could have been picked up on such arbitrary grounds.

2.   The deaths of two Iraqi prisoners have already been ruled homicides, and 12 more prisoner deaths in Iraq and Afghanistan are under investigation. Among the pictures of Abu Ghraib is that of a battered dead man (if you can stomach it, in the lower left of this CBS page is a link to "Prisoner Photos"), which Rush Limbaugh apparently sees as the result of just another brilliant act of intimidation, or perhaps a clever frat-boy prank.

May 8, 2004

Dietz Is Good

[I tried to post this the other day but screwed it up somehow.]

I just discovered this great blog from Michael Dietz that smartly scrutinizes the front page of The New York Times every day. It's called Reading A1, and it's too bad I didn't have it around before the war – then I might have been alerted to the flimsiness of Judith Miller's reporting on Iraqi WMD. Check it out.

The Hazards of Drugs

From DailyKos, here's unrepentant drug addict and racist Rush Limbaugh on the Iraqi Prison Abuse Scandal:

CALLER: It was like a college fraternity prank that stacked up naked men –

LIMBAUGH: Exactly. Exactly my point! This is no different than what happens at the Skull and Bones initiation and we're going to ruin people's lives over it and we're going to hamper our military effort, and then we are going to really hammer them because they had a good time. You know, these people are being fired at every day. I'm talking about people having a good time, these people, you ever heard of emotional release? You of heard of need to blow some steam off?

Hey, you want to help me blow off a little steam? Put that hood on, grab the leash, and let me wrap it around your neck so I can drag you across the floor.

E.J. Dionne

In The Washington Post, E.J. Dionne makes the case for why Bush should be held responsible for the prison mess:

But dumping Rumsfeld and Myers is not enough. Ultimately the buck stops with President Bush. No, I don't think for an instant that Bush knew anything about this. That's the problem. Reports of prisoner abuse have been around since the war in Afghanistan and the opening of the military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. The president needs to explain why he wasn't more curious about what was happening, and whether his management style delegates so much authority that the White House could be caught so unprepared for this catastrophe. Are we dealing here with a culture of unaccountability?

Nearly everybody agrees that Bush is incurious by nature. This disaster is just the latest example of how it contributes to his stunning incompetence as an executive.

May 7, 2004

Not So Close

Among political pundits and spokespeople from both parties, it's become cliche that November will see another election eve nailbiter. Yet I've had the feeling for awhile now that this thing is gonna break one way or the other and the victor will wind up with over 300 electoral votes after everything's been counted (but not recounted).

For Bush to achieve electoral orgasm, there would have to be explosive jobs gains in battleground states over the next few months. Also, something probably would have to surface about Kerry that really turned off independents. I'd add something about a miracle in Iraq, but why bother.

Kerry's road to dominant victory is more likely given consistent patterns that began to emerge in polls early this year. I had planned to post some fleshed-out thinking on this, but now I don't have to because Hotline editor Chuck Todd – a highly astute, objective political analyst – has written A Kerry Landslide? for The Washington Monthly, and it's much fleshier than anything I could come up with:

...2004 could be a decisive victory for Kerry. The reason to think so is historical. Elections that feature a sitting president tend to be referendums on the incumbent--and in recent elections, the incumbent has either won or lost by large electoral margins. If you look at key indicators beyond the neck-and-neck support for the two candidates in the polls--such as high turnout in the early Democratic primaries and the likelihood of a high turnout in November--it seems improbable that Bush will win big. More likely, it's going to be Kerry in a rout.

Todd brings up high voter turnout in Democratic primaries as a positive sign for Democrats, but highlights this fact, which I hadn't seen before, as more telling:

A fairer way to gauge the eagerness of the president's base to rally behind him is to compare this GOP primary to the last one that featured an incumbent running for reelection with no real primary opposition: Bill Clinton in 1996. That year in New Hampshire, 76,874 Democrats cast ballots for Clinton. This year, 53,749 Republicans cast ballots for Bush. This is especially astonishing, considering that, in New Hampshire, there are more registered Republicans than Democrats.

You don't need much polling data to tell you that voter turnout should be extraordinarily high this year. Just listen to your friends, enemies, and neighbors. Traditionally, high voter turnout helps Democrats in national elections. But Todd notes something particular to this year that Democratic pollster Ruy Teixeira often points out, which is that Kerry consistently does better in polls of "registered voters" than he does with "likely voters." Registered voter polls tend to be more reliable when you have high turnouts.

Todd also explores this phenomenon:

The second nuance to look at is what political consultant Chris Kofinis calls "the Bush bubble": the gap between the president's overall approval ratings and his approval ratings on specific policy areas. According to the most recent Washington Post /ABC News poll, Bush's approval rating now stands at 51 percent. That isn't bad, though it is noticeably below what the last two incumbents who won reelection had at this point in the election cycle: Reagan's approval was 54 percent and Clinton's was 56 percent. But even Bush's 51 percent may be softer than it looks. In the same poll, on seven of nine major policy issues--the economy, Iraq, Social Security, health insurance, taxes, jobs, the deficit--less than half of respondents said that they approved of the president's performance. In several cases, his approval was well below 50 percent. Only 45 percent approved of Bush's handling of Iraq; 44 percent of his performance on the economy; 34 percent of his performance on the deficit; and 33 percent of his stewardship of Social Security.

Although Bush's job approval ratings have been lower in polls released this week (the lowest of his Presidency pre or post 9/11), they can all be spun except for one key number that Todd doesn't mention: right track/wrong track ratings. I've heard many analysts from both parties say that the answer to the question, "In general, are you satisfied or dissatisfied with the way things are going in the United States at this time?," is the single most reliable indicator for how incumbent Presidents will perform on election day. The right track/wrong track numbers have been bad and getting worse since mid-January. The latest Gallup poll shows 62% of the country dissatisfied with the way things are going in the U.S.. Other recent polls confirm voter irritability. That's politically disastrous for Bush.

Mr. Todd, the bottom line, please:

Right now, the president is vulnerable. As The New Republic 's Ryan Lizza argued in a recent New York Times editorial, undecided voters "know [the incumbent] well, and if they were going to vote for him, they would have already decided. Thus support for Mr. Bush should be seen more as a ceiling, while support for Mr. Kerry, the lesser-known challenger, is more like a floor."

That points to both an opportunity and a challenge for the Kerry campaign. Kerry needs to convince voters that he's up to the job--and that Bush isn't. If he can woo voters dissatisfied with Bush's policies, there's a potential--and historical precedent--for Kerry to win big.

Amen.

May 6, 2004

The Nader Solution?

Yale law professor Bruce Ackerman made an ingenious proposal in a NY Times op-ed yesterday. I saw Ralph Nader questioned about it on Inside Politics, and he claimed not to have read it but also said he was really intrigued by the idea. Here's the skinny:

In November, Americans won't be casting their ballots directly for George Bush, John Kerry or Ralph Nader. From a constitutional point of view, they will be voting for competing slates of electors nominated in each state by the contenders. Legally speaking, the decisions made by these 538 members of the Electoral College determine the next president.

In the case of Mr. Bush and Mr. Kerry, electors will be named by each state's political parties. But Ralph Nader is running as an independent. When he petitions to get on the ballot in each state, he must name his own slate of electors. While he is free to nominate a distinctive slate of names, he can also propose the very same names that appear on the Kerry slate.

If he does, he will provide voters with a new degree of freedom. On Election Day, they will see a line on the ballot designating Ralph Nader's electors. But if voters choose the Nader line, they won't be wasting their ballot on a candidate with little chance of winning. Since Mr. Nader's slate would be the same as Mr. Kerry's, his voters would be providing additional support for the electors selected by the Democrats. If the Nader-Kerry total is a majority in any state, the victorious electors would be free to vote for Mr. Kerry.

There may be some angle to this that I'm missing, but it looks like a possibly ideal solution – Nader could campaign for those things he thinks are getting short shrift and get the recognition he craves, but not at the expense of the policies he proclaims to hold so dear.

I emailed Nader to encourage him to take Ackerman up on his idea. If you agree, you might want to let him know, too.

Random Thoughts on the Pictures of Abu Ghraib

1.    A picture is worth way, way more than a thousand words. How much longer would American soldiers have been in Vietnam if it weren't for television journalists' unprecedented access to the battlefields? There are so many scandalous things you read about this war – the complete lack of a coherent post-war plan to keep the peace, for instance – that too few in America know much about because they can't be captured in dramatic visuals.

2.    My girlfriend suggested that the presence of young women in the pictures make them striking in an extraordinarily eerie way. It certainly makes them unlike any other war photos I've seen. I asked her why she thought the presence of women in the photos had that effect, and she answered it's because women are generically perceived as protectors/caretakers – so there's a real troubling disconnect there – and also you can't just dismiss it as some kind of blanket "brutality of man during war" thing. I think she's on to something.

3.    Now is not the time for Donald Rumsfeld to split hairs by publically distinguishing between "abuse" and "torture."

4.    I haven't looked at the Geneva Convention definitions of torture, but looking at it from the Ingmar Bergman perspective, it looks like torture to me. In his films, Bergman unflinchingly explores the various shades of darkness in the human condition, and he's said (and shown many times over) that humiliation is the most violent in the arsenal of human weapons. To me, the pictures of Abu Ghraib look like planned humiliation exercises.

5.   I think President Bush made some of the statements he needed to in his interview on Arab t.v. yesterday, but generally I think he looked the way he usually does in a crisis – dithering, blinking a lot, and groundless. And is it just my prejudice, or do Bush's attempted expressions of humility often read merely as scared? Whatever the case, it's profoundly damaging to American diplomacy that he's our representative to the rest of the world. It's as wrong as a major league pitcher batting clean-up.

6.   I wonder what Guantanamo looks like on the inside, and if these pics could have any possible impact on the pending cases about the jurisdiction of Guantanamo before the Supreme Court.

Swift Boat Follow-Up

Joe Conason of Salon and Bob Somerby of The Daily Howler have good stories on the "Swift Boat Veterans for Truth," which I didn't happen to read before I wrote my own piece yesterday.

Also, Mike Stark directed my attention to this 2002 New Yorker article on John Kerry, and makes the point that Nixon's chief counsel, Charles Colson, didn't just tap O'Neill to attack Kerry, he also formed an entire group around him called Vietnam Veterans for a Just Peace:

"[Kerry] was an immediate celebrity. He was also an immediate target of the Nixon Administration. Years later, Chuck Colson--who was Nixon's political enforcer--told me, "He was a thorn in our flesh. He was very articulate, a credible leader of the opposition. He forced us to create a counterfoil. We found a vet named John O'Neill and formed a group called Vietnam Veterans for a Just Peace. We had O'Neill meet the President, and we did everything we could do to boost his group."

"Swift Boat Veterans for Truth" can be seen as merely a 21st century reinvention of Vietnam Veterans for a Just Peace.

May 5, 2004

Swift Boat Veterans for a Big Lie

A newly formed group called "Swift Boat Veterans for Truth" has called upon John Kerry to release all his Vietnam service records. They also say Kerry is "unfit to be commander-in-chief."

Let's put "Swift Boat Veterans for Truth" under a microscope:

1.   Their call for Kerry to release his Naval records is a little odd, because, uh, Kerry's already released all his Naval records. The original documents can be downloaded from his web site here. I emailed "Swift Boat Veterans for Truth" to let them know where they can find the records (although the exact words I used were slightly less polite). You may want to do the same.

2.    "Swift Boat Veterans for Truth" says "We have every commanding officer he ever had in Vietnam." That's just completely false, or, more diplomatically put, "a fucking lie." "Swift Boat Veterans for Truth" also says, "They all signed a letter saying he is unfit to be commander-in-chief."
Hmmm... There are 29 pages of officer evaluation reports on Kerry (scroll down to "Fitness Reports" if you want to download) that were filled out by Kerry's commanding officers while he served in the Navy. How in the world could "Swift Boat Veterans for Truth" read the following descriptions from Kerry's C.O.'s as "unfit"?

October 19, 1967, evaluation from Captain Allen W. Slifer:
A top notch officer in every measurable trait. Intelligent, mature, and rich in educational background and experience, ENS Kerry is one of the finest young officers I have ever met and without question one of the most promising.

September 3, 1968, evaluation from Captain E.W. Harper, Jr.:
LTJG KERRY is an intelligent and competent young naval officer who has performed his duties in an excellent to outstanding manner.

December 18, 1969, evaluation from LCDR George M. Elliott:
In a combat environment often requiring independent, decisive action LTJG Kerry was unsurpassed. He constantly reviewed tactics and lessons learned in river operations and applied his experience at every opportunity. On one occasion while in tactical command of a three boat operation his units were taken under fire from ambush. LTJG Kerry rapidly assessed the situation and ordered his units to turn directly into the ambush. This decision resulted in routing the attackers with several enemy KIA.
LTJG Kerry emerges as the acknowledged leader in his peer group. His bearing and appearance are above reproach. He has of his own volition learned the Vietnamese language and is instrumental in the successful Vietnamese training program.
During the period of this report LTJG Kerry has been awarded the Silver Star medal, the Bronze Star medal, the Purple Heart medal (2nd and 3rd awards).

Evaluation co-signed by Joseph Streuli and George M. Elliott on January 28, 1969, and March 17, 1969, respectively:
... exhibited all of the traits of an officer in a combat environment. He frequently exhibited a high sense of imagination and judgment in planning operations against the enemy in the Mekong Delta.

March 2, 1970 evaluation from Admiral Walter F. Schlech:
... one of the finest young officers with whom I have served in a long naval career.

I could continue with more positive evaluations of Kerry's service, but quite frankly all the excellence is boring me a bit.

There aren't any negative descriptions. None.

3.   Perhaps more important than Kerry's C.O. evaluations are the evaluations of the men under his command. From USA Today (a Rupert Murdoch-owned paper) [correction: I'm wrong– USA Today, as several helpful readers have pointed out, is owned by Gannett, but the point remains that they're no lefty outfit. My apologies for the mistake]:

Interviews with 18 officers and enlisted sailors who served with Kerry in Vietnam mostly portray a young leader with an aggressive command style. Many recall a warm, compassionate officer who cared deeply about his working-class crew. They also remember a warrior who ferried pregnant women and hungry villagers down river for medical care and food.

They recall how he initiated water-balloon fights to break the tension. How he asked his crew to call him "John" on the river and "sir" back at base. And how he listened to their problems in a way that foretold a career in politics.

"His concern for us was overwhelming," says Fred Short, a PCF-94 gunner's mate who would get the shakes when the adrenaline of battle wore off. "He would come around then and put his hand on your shoulder and ask if you're all right," says Short, 56, of North Little Rock "I never had another officer do that."

Even those soldiers who didn't like Kerry had respect for him:

"John was a master at looking out for John," says Larry Thurlow, a fellow boat commander. "John has never been bashful about saying, 'Man, I'm a war hero.' "

Yet, except for one crewmate, even those who felt betrayed by Kerry for later leading Vietnam Veterans Against the War and who call themselves Bush supporters acknowledge that he showed courage under fire. "He was extremely brave, and I wouldn't argue that point," Thurlow says.

Stephen Gardner is the one guy who served alongside Kerry who has negative things to say about his courage under fire (some "Swift Boat Veterans for Truth" guys claim they "served with" Kerry, but actually I think it would be more accurate for them to say they served "around the same time," and perhaps on a different planet, than Kerry did):

Stephen Gardner, a gunner's mate on PCF-44, spoke out for the first time last month after hearing conservative radio commentator Rush Limbaugh question Kerry's war credentials. Gardner, who says "this country's in a world of trouble" if the Democrat is elected president, calls Kerry a "hesitant" commander who shunned danger.

Gardner, 56, claims Kerry retreated during a firefight under the pretense that he wanted to get Gardner medical attention. "It was a panic run," says Gardner, who calls his wound superficial. While he refuses to call Kerry a coward, he recalls "a guy who was protecting himself most of the time."

That view does not square with the recollections of eight other enlisted sailors who served with Kerry and were interviewed for this story. Kerry and other PCF-44 veterans say the shooting was over when they turned back to base.

"I never saw John back down from anything," crewmember Bill Zaladonis says.

"I have no idea where he's coming from," Kerry says of Gardner.

Rassmann also dismisses the idea of a cautious Kerry. He says he is alive today because of Kerry's courage during a vicious battle in March 1969. The special forces soldier had been blown off PCF-94 by a mine that also injured Kerry's right arm. Swimming in the river while being strafed from both banks, Rassmann was convinced he was about to die before Kerry's boat returned. As the soldier struggled to climb scramble nets draped over the boat's bow, Kerry reached down with his uninjured arm and pulled him on board.

"He was frankly nuts coming up to the bow and exposing himself" to the barrage of bullets and mortars, Rassmann says.

4.   Okay, so who's behind "Swift Boat Veterans for Truth"? Two really terrific guys. Meet...

Roy Hoffman

Rear Admiral Hoffman (ret.) was a Captain who headed up a Coastal Surveillance Force unit under which Kerry served. Douglas Brinkley writes about him on pages 177 and 178 in Tour of Duty:

...The new commander, hawkish Captain Roy Hoffman was ecstatic about Sealords. He knew that military reputations were made in wartime, and he was determined to make his in Vietnam. What's more, he had a genuine taste for the more unsavory aspects of warfare, and truly wanted to smoke the Viet Cong out of their tunnels, burn their jungle outposts, and annihilate them once and for all. Decades later, many Swift boat veterans under Hoffman's command would compare him with the rough-hewn colonel in the movie Apocalypse Now who boasted that he "loved the smell of napalm in the morning." In short, Captain Hoffman sought to convince his Swift boat skippers to do whatever it took to notch splashy victories in the Mekong Delta and thereby get him promoted.

Kerry would never forget how ardently Captain Hoffman lauded the exploits of one "enterprising officer" from the Danang Swift division. The officer had surprised some thirty Vietnamese who were fishing in round, floating baskets just off the shore of a peninsula in an area that was, unfortunately for them, a free fire zone. Hoffman considered it ideal military thinking that the Swift skipper had shown the presence of mind to sneak his boat in between the baskets and the shore, cutting the fisherman off from escape and then opening fire on them. All the baskets were sunk, and so were the fishermen. "Fantastic," Hoffman reportedly proclaimed upon hearing the news. Kerry himself would later hear Hoffman praise such "industriousness" at a remarkable meeting in Saigon. Clearly, the Navy had undergone a sea change. Not only were cowboy antics on the rivers of Vietnam no longer frowned upon, they were rewarded with medals.

Sounds like one hell of an American.

Months ago, Hoffman told The Boston Globe that Kerry was a problem and asked to get more specific he said:

"He was just going off on excursions that were not part of the plan at the time." But Hoffman said those problems were corrected and that he admired the gutsy way Kerry later went after the enemy.

It sounds like Hoffman values ingenuity less than gutsiness, and perhaps discretion least of all.

The other "Swift Boat Veterans for Truth" point person is...

John O'Neill

After Kerry made a mark as an anti-war veteran in 1971, he earned a spot on Nixon's enemies list. On the Nixon tapes, White House special counsel Charles Colson can be heard assuring Nixon that "We'll keep hitting him [Kerry], Mr. President." In addition to putting Kerry under FBI surveillance, Colson and Nixon recruited cleancut Vietnam vet and toe-the-line right-wing ideologue John O'Neill, who had an hour-long meeting with the President in which Nixon coached him to "Give it to him, give it to him." I've seen a picture of O'Neill and Nixon sitting in front of that White House fireplace. I suppose O'Neill saw his "Kerry character assassination" assignment from Nixon as a 33 year gig.

Although O'Neill had taken over Kerry's Swift boat command after he left Vietnam, before they met on a Dick Cavett Show debate he had never seen Kerry in person. But he despised him. He admonished Kerry everywhere for standing up against Nixon: "The President does our talking for us, as with most Americans. Mr. Kerry certainly does not."

33 years ago O'Neill wanted everyone to shut up so Richard Nixon could lay down the law, just as I'm sure he'd like to crush all dissenting voices to Bush's today. John Kerry stood up then to Nixon, and he stands up now to Bush.

According to Brinkley, O'Neill "truly believed in the U.S. incursions into Cambodia and Laos." That's pretty much all you need to know about the guy, that he would provide unwavering support for a war in Cambodia that was not only blatantly illegal, entirely secret, and abhorrently inhumane, it was also a complete tactical failure. It accomplished absolutely nothing except multiples of thousands of deaths of poor Cambodians. I can't even begin to understand somebody whose ideology is so unclean that he can see goodness in that. You could take a stroll with O'Neill and spot some dogshit and he'd try to convince you that it was a delicious green apple.

Tomorrow, I'll get a little deeper into O'Neill's ideology and the roots of his hatred for Kerry...

May 4, 2004

Kerry's Ads

I've overestimated the power of money so far in this campaign. In the Democratic primary, Dean's overwhelming money advantage didn't bring him any victories outside Vermont, although mismanagement certainly played a part in that. Then, Bush-Cheney spent $70 million slandering John Kerry and the damage appears marginal. ("I'm President Bush, and I approve of painting John Kerry as a scumbag so I can continue to change the tone in Washington.")

It's usually spin when politicians have to answer critics by saying they're "thrilled" with where they are in a campaign, but when Kerry said just that on Meet the Press a couple weeks ago, I think it was genuine. I'm certainly thrilled that they've taken their best shots at him, he's still standing, and they've blown a huge wad of cash.

However, I hope money's unlucky streak comes to an end with Kerry's enormous new $27.5 million ad buy. The ads – which I think are almost perfect, but judge for yourself – will run through May 27 in 19 battleground states. They represent the most money any candidate has ever spent on a single ad buy in history. To give you an idea of the stratosphere Kerry's dealing in here, Al Gore spent only $9 million from the end of his primary to the Democratic convention. No Democrat has ever experienced a luxury quite like it, so it's hard to guess what kind of impact it will have.

I'm hopeful.

Wes

Covering the list of Kerry's potential VP picks last month, I didn't give ample consideration to General Wesley Clark. I suppose I was still recovering from some of my disappointment that Wes wasn't more disciplined when he campaigned for the top spot, so I inadvertently dismissed him. A lot of others have, too, but I think that's a mistake. He'd take some undeserved fire for not having a clear war position, but in Democratic circles here in L.A. I've run into a ton of people who got involved in politics because of Clark.

Ron Browstein spotlights Clark in his LA Times column:

Even more intriguing is a name that has attracted even less attention: former NATO Supreme Commander and 2004 Democratic presidential contender Wesley K. Clark. The irony is that Clark probably would be generating more buzz as a potential vice president if he hadn't sought his party's nomination. The consensus in Democratic circles is that the retired Army general dimmed his prospects through an uneven performance on the campaign trail.

Yet those experiences left Clark with more preparation for a vice presidential campaign than if he hadn't run at all. And he has proven one of the Democrats' most acute analysts and effective messengers on national security: His speeches on Iraq last fall, which called for broadening international participation in the occupation and warned against dismantling the entire Iraqi army, look prescient now.

Last week, Clark underscored the potential value of a running mate who once wore four stars on his shoulders and a Silver Star on his chest when he responded to recent Republican attacks on Kerry's activities in and after Vietnam with a ringing challenge: "Those who didn't serve, or didn't show up for service," he wrote, "should have the decency to respect those who did … "

As a candidate, Clark demonstrated plenty of flaws. But few other Democrats could deliver a punch like that with such authority. And none could better symbolize Kerry's determination to rebuild relations with traditional allies than the man who directed, in Kosovo, the one war NATO ever fought. In an election that could revolve more around guns than butter, Clark may pack more firepower than any of the other names on Kerry's list of running mates.

It's odd. If Clark would have never run for President, he would have been the frontrunner for VP, no matter who got the nomination. His experience on the trail can only be regarded as an asset. He may be tainted political goods in some insider circles, but he still holds remarkable appeal to your Average Joe. And another thing Brownstein doesn't mention is that Clark could help Kerry take his native Arkansas, a swing state that leans Bush.

An internationalist War Hero ticket? I like it. Tickets painted in broad strokes usually do best.

May 3, 2004

"Mission Accomplished" Jubilee

I revisited what I wrote last year on May 2, 2003 – the day after Bush's phony aircraft carrier landing. I remember being mad as hell that day, mostly because Bush once again seemed to be getting away with – as he had in 2000 – falsely advertising himself as an experienced military man. Many in the news media have gone back to cover what they failed to cover in 2000, so I give them credit for that. What's most bizarre to think about now, though, is that pundits of all persuasians marveled at what terrific campaign spots that U.S.S. Lincoln footage would cut into. Devastatingly wrong.

I also wrote in hopes of John Kerry's Democratic nomination:

My only hope is that John Kerry will be the Democratic nominee and the press will contrast his soldierly heroics with President Bush's not even showing up for National Guard duty. Like Bush, Kerry was well-connected and could have gotten a deferment. Unlike Bush, he volunteered to serve because he didn't want someone less privileged than he to have to go and die in his place. Three Purple Hearts, a Silver Star, and a Bronze Star later, he's well-positioned to take           on Bush in '04, and I hope to God the news media does their               job this time and adequately contrasts their military records.                They've got to, right?

My hopes have panned out for the most part. While a lot of people are down on him right now, Kerry's withstood a $70 million advertising onslaught by merely losing recoverable ground in his approval/disapproval ratings. Nothing at all to worry about a full 6 months before the election. I still think he's the right guy.

April Casualties

We lost 140 Americans in Iraq in April, 25 more than the 115 lost during the invasion itself. 327 Americans were wounded, although that number will rise. My heart goes out to the families.

Rieckhoff

Army National Guard 1st Lt. Paul Rieckhoff, an Iraq veteran, gave the Democratic Radio Address yesterday morning. I saw him on This Week with George Stephanopoulos, and he's a very effective Bush critic. He criticized Bush policy and said the troops still need better equipment, so the RNC released a videotape of Rieckhoff saying last October that "we've made incredible strides" in Iraq, which of course doesn't contradict his criticisms at all. So, with no evidence, the Republicans have suggested that Rieckhoff is dishonest, and if he continues to criticize bush policies in public, surely the "unpatriotic" tags will follow closely behind.

April 30, 2004

Balance vs. Objectivity

A few months ago, I watched a debate on CSPAN on whether press bias generally tilts left or right. Eric Alterman, who argued along with Al Franken on behalf of liberals, made a very interesting, important distinction between "balance" and "objectivity." The press goal, he argued, should not be balance, but objectivity. In other words, reporters often simply regurgitate what the spokesperson for a particular institution – say, the White House or the Pentagon – says so they can record that and balance it with an opposing viewpoint articulated by some opposing side. The problem with this is that, in the name of "balance," truth – which should always be the goal – is left out of the equation. This is much easier for reporters who want to meet their deadlines on time, of course, but bad for a public seeking reliable information.

In this week's issue, The New Yorker details a good, if somewhat extreme, example of the wrongheadedness of putting balance before truth:

Among the many peculiarities of [NY] Times house style—such as the tradition, in the Book Review, that the word “odyssey” refer only to a journey that begins and ends in the same place—one of the more nettlesome has been the long-standing practice that writers are not supposed to call the Armenian genocide of 1915 a genocide. Reporters at the paper have used considerable ingenuity to avoid the word (“Turkish massacres of Armenians in 1915,” “the tragedy”) and have sometimes added evenhanded explanations that pleased many Turks but drove Armenian readers to distraction: “Armenians say vast numbers of their countrymen were massacred. The Turks argue that the killings occurred in partisan fighting as the Ottoman Empire collapsed.”

Of course, The Turks are wrong, and there's no legitimate question about the fact of Armenian genocide in 1915. Some professors asserted as much in letters to the editor, which captured the attention of Daniel Okrent, the NY Times new public editor (an ombudsman, really). He got the professors together with the editor of the Times, Bill Keller, and the paper's standards editor, Allan Siegel, and they put an end to the silly practice.

Siegal drew up new guidelines. “It was a nerdy decision on the merits,” he said. Writers can now use the word “genocide,” but they don’t have to. As the guidelines say, “While we may of course report Turkish denials on those occasions where they are relevant, we should not couple them with the historians’ findings, as if they had equal weight.” Okrent pointed out that “the pursuit of balance can create imbalance, because sometimes something is true.”

It's a smart correction by The Times that they should apply more broadly, and other dailies should do the same. They should all have an ombudsman, too. They work.

The Greatest Resource in Internet History

Want all the specific dishonest quotes, say, from Dick Cheney on Iraq pre-invasion? Or George W. Bush post-invasion? Or John Ashcroft on civil liberties? Or just generally stupid statements from Brit Hume?

They're all nicely organized for us in this new database, claimvfact.org, from the Center for American Progress.

Pass it on.

April 29, 2004

Happenings

1.    Bush and Cheney appear before the 9/11 Commission today, together and unrecorded. What a joke.

2.    Joe Wilson's The Politics of Truth, which reportedly reveals the identity of the senior administration scumbag who leaked the identity of his undercover CIA operative wife, hits bookstores on Friday. My guess is it's Cheney's Chief of Staff, Lewis "Scooter" Libby.

3.   Some protestors, according to The New York Times, are trying to infiltrate the Republican Convention in NYC as volunteers.

Here's counterconvention.org, which tries to organize the various groups planning to protest the RNC this Summer. There's a golden opportunity to really turn the GOP's shameless politicization of 9/11 back on them, but it'll be interesting to see if the renegades are able to produce something that actually hurts Republicans and helps Democrats. Protestors aren't typically the politically savviest lot, but I retain hope.

Unfortunately, there's a jackass out there who's trying to get protestors at the Democratic Convention in Boston as well. When are these Naderian idiots gonna learn that by trying to hurt both parties equally in a two-party system, they're actually working in support of the status quo? Anybody who's interested in trying to disrupt both conventions may as well just volunteer for the GOP for real.

4.    Yesterday, Senator Frank Lautenberg of New Jersey put on some great theatre on the senate floor. I tip my cap to him:

Lautenberg pointed to a poster with a drawing of a chicken in a military uniform that defined a chicken hawk as "a person enthusiastic about war, provided someone else fights it."

"They shriek like a hawk, but they have the backbone of the chicken," he said.

"We know who the chicken hawks are. They talk tough on national defense and military issues and cast aspersions on others. When it was their turn to serve where were they? AWOL -- that's where they were," Lautenberg said.

"And now the chicken hawks are cackling about Senator John Kerry. And the lead chicken hawk against Senator Kerry is the vice president of the United States -- Vice President Cheney.

"He was in Missouri this week claiming that Senator Kerry was not up to the job of protecting this nation. What nerve. Where was Dick Cheney when that war was going on?" Lautenberg said.

Cheney did not serve in the U.S. military. Lautenberg quoted a Cheney interview from the 1980s that he had "other priorities" in the '60s than military service.

The Kerry campaign also has some pertinent questions about G.W.'s Guard service up on their web site. I think the phony medals flap really pissed them off.

April 28, 2004

Kerry on Hardball

John Kerry was very aggressive on Hardball with Chris Matthews last night. Statements of note on the Iraq War:

“We know that the president and the White House exaggerated material that they were given purposefully, even though they were told otherwise.”

True.

“I think the president has made some colossal mistakes, not the least of which is taking our nation to war in a way that was rushed, that pushed our allies away from us, that is costing the American people billions of dollars more than it ought, that is putting our young soldiers at greater risk they they ought to be, without a plan to win the peace. And he broke his promise to go to war as a last resort.”

True, true, true, true, true, true, and true.

He accused Bush and his advisers of having gone to war in Iraq simply “because they could.”

“I think it comes down to this larger ideological, neocon concept of fundamental change in the region,” he said. But “they misjudged exactly what the reaction would be and what they could get away with.”

Sounds over the top, and he'll probably catch a lot of fire for this statement, but I think that's basically right. I believe, and I think Kerry would agree with this, that almost everybody in the Bush administration did believe Saddam had WMD. But I don't believe that they thought it was nearly the threat they presented it as. Hell, Kerry himself thought Saddam was a long-term threat, but that's a far cry from Bush's hammering the idea of Iraq as a "unique and urgent" threat into American consciousness. Bush certainly didn't have any reliable evidence for making those statements (along with the fraudulent al Qaeda and 9/11 linkages), and I don't think he entirely believed them. So he was either lying or he had the judgment of a willful seven year-old. I don't know which it worse.

Kerry's right – more than anything else, the Iraq invasion was driven by the neocon ideal of gaining a stronghold in the region. It was meant to be the first move in a long-term strategy that was born from a very narrow ideology. They didn't just think it would be doable, they thought it would be easy – "a cakewalk," as Don Rumsfeld's neocon friend Ken Adelman often called it.

They were wrong, and they must be held accountable. Kerry leads this nation where it needs to go when he calls for that accountability.

Another interesting thing Kerry said, and unfortunately MSNBC doesn't have the full transcript up yet so I'll have to paraphrase, is that he finds it kind of funny that some have called his Vietnam war protesting opportunistic, given how unpopular he knew his statements and actions would be with so many people.

He's right. This "opportunism" charge is the pure invention of his political enemies, starting with Tricky Dick Nixon. If any fair-minded person has any doubt about the depth of Kerry's sincerity in his vocal opposition to the war in those days, they could read Tour of Duty and their doubts would be erased.

Finally, I shake my head as I hear that evildoer, Karen Hughes, have the gall to suggest that Kerry "pretended" to throw away his war medals. She does a wonderful job carrying on the Nixonian tradition, doesn't she? Thank God we have eyewitness accounts from people like Tom Olyphant of the Boston Globe, who was within a few feet of Kerry when he relinquished his medals/ribbons on April 23, 1971 (read the whole account, which I think should be considered definitive):

At the spot where the men were symbolically letting go of their participation in the war, the authorities had erected a wood and wire fence that prevented them from getting close to the front of the US Capitol, and Kerry paused for several seconds. We had been talking for days -- about the war, politics, the veterans' demonstration -- but I could tell Kerry was upset to the point of anguish, and I decided to leave him be; his head was down as he approached the fence quietly.

In a voice I doubt I would have heard had I not been so close to him, Kerry said, as I recall vividly, "There is no violent reason for this; I'm doing this for peace and justice and to try to help this country wake up once and for all."

With that, he didn't really throw his handful toward the statue of John Marshall, America's first chief justice. Nor did he drop the decorations. He sort of lobbed them, and then walked off the stage.

Kerry and Likeability

Here's a positive Washington Post article on what people who know John Kerry think of him. The bottom line seems to be that he's a complicated guy, uneasy to understand, but he has a lot of friends and is comfortable with who he is.

It also goes into the typical stuff about how voters often perceive him as cold or aloof. Yes, Kerry can be a little bit of a robot, but he's worn well in all his elections and has been a terrific closer. He's also always done well with the working class voters with whom political analysts often suggest, perhaps sometimes with wrongful condescension, that accessibility is such an important trait.

I think William Weld, Kerry's opponent in 1996, makes a key point:

Like John Edwards this year, Weld was considered a far more "likable" candidate than Kerry. And – like Edwards – Weld was defeated. "Maybe it's good to be a backslapper superficially," Weld says. But ultimately, he says, presidential elections come down to how voters judge a candidate's gravitas, experience and ideas.

I'm not sure that Weld would be right about gravitas, experience, and ideas trumping likeablity in your typical election, but given the gravity of the times I think he'll be right this year. If he is, it's hard to imagine Bush could beat Kerry with voters focused on "gravitas, experience and ideas."

A Political Diversion

Because 3 African American women – LaToya, Fantasia, and
Jennifer – finished in the bottom 3 last week on American Idol, Elton John called the voting "incredibly racist." That's an incredibly stupid comment, not just for the obvious reasons but also because (assuming it's true what I've been told) the crawl at the end of the closing credit sequence reveals that the producers can put whomever they want in the bottom 2 or 3 every week.

Now, if John had called the producers "racist," and not the same voters who crowned Ruben Studdard the winner last year, it would have been a slightly less stupid charge, because I'd bet huge coin that producers did want to separate the African American "divas" from the rest of group last week.

April 27, 2004

Defending John Kerry

So Bush-Cheney '04 succeeded in getting a phony controversy on the networks and in some newspapers about what John Kerry did with his war medals/ribbons in 1971, and what he said he did with them. Here's the transcript from Good Morning America yesterday of Kerry defending himself.

I won't go into all the details, but basically all the confusion stems from arbitrary distinctions between military ribbons and military medals. From what I understand, ribbons represent medals and it's common in the military to refer to the two interchangeably (i.e. "he's got a chestful of medals" often really means "he's got a chestful of ribbons"). Thanks to dailykos, here's a page of "Navy Service Ribbons" that are called "medals."

Kerry did the right thing by turning this nonsense back on his attackers. He told NBC News last night:

"If George Bush wants to ask me questions about that through his surrogates, he owes America an explanation about whether or not he showed up for duty in the National Guard. Prove it. That's what we ought to have. I'm not going to stand around and let them play games."

It turns out Bush, as a matter of fact, did not turn over all his Guard records last month, as his campaign claimed. There are a lot of unanswered questions Kerry can pick at if he continues to be maligned. I've got another good line for Kerry, too: "I wouldn't expect George Bush or Dick Cheney to understand a word of military parlance, considering neither one of them ever served a day in combat."

The news outlets (in a positive development, many haven't taken the bait) that have picked up this latest "Kerry as flip-flopper" narrative from Bush-Cheney should be ashamed of themselves. It's unsurprising, but they shouldn't be allowed to be as sloppy as they were in 2000, when they started letting Karl Rove write their front page stories on Al Gore. Ben Fritz wrote a very good article for Salon way back in May of 2003 called "The Gore-ing of John Kerry." Here's how it starts out:

Media accounts describe him as phony and calculating, incapable of making a heartfelt statement. His history is analyzed cynically, sometimes falsely: Misrepresentations of his statements and actions metastasize into myth. As a result, he is seen as the archetypal slippery, soulless politician. That much of the supporting evidence is false seems utterly beside the point.

That's how Republicans caricatured Al Gore in 2000 -- a line the media dutifully parroted. And as the 2004 presidential campaign gets underway, it's happening again. This time the victim is Sen. John Kerry.

If ABC News (by the way, one of their "investigative reporters" on the Kerry piece has a history of corruption in stories on Democrats) or The New York Times or whoever else wants to do a relevant story on hypocrisy, how about an examination of Dick Cheney's illustrious history of proposing, publically advocating, and voting for massive defense cuts while he's for weeks been front and center attacking Kerry, erroneously, for things Cheney himself did?

Karen Hughes, Terrorist

Yesterday, on Late Edition with Wolf Blitzer, Karen Hughes equated those who disagree with her on abortion with terrorists:

BLITZER: There is a clear difference when it comes to abortion rights between the president and his Democratic challenger, John Kerry. In your opinion, Karen, how big of an issue will this abortion rights issue be in this campaign?

HUGHES: Well, Wolf, it's always an issue. And I frankly think it's changing somewhat. I think after September 11th the American people are valuing life more and realizing that we need policies to value the dignity and worth of every life.

And President Bush has worked to say, let's be reasonable, let's work to value life, let's try to reduce the number of abortions, let's increase adoptions.

And I think those are the kind of policies that the American people can support, particularly at a time when we're facing an enemy, and really the fundamental difference between us and the terror network we fight is that we value every life. It's the founding conviction of our country, that we're endowed by our creator with certain unalienable rights, the right to life and liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

Unfortunately our enemies in the terror network, as we're seeing repeatedly in the headlines these days, don't value any life, not even the innocent and not even their own.

Karen Hughes worked for Texas Governor George W. Bush when the state repeatedly oversaw more executions than any other. Does Karen Hughes value life? Is she a terrorist?

I didn't think so, but by her own logic she undoubtedly is.

April 26, 2004

Political Catholicism

Last Friday, Vatican Cardinal Francis Arinze of Nigeria suggested John Kerry should be denied communion because he's pro-choice. In February, St. Louis Archbishop Raymond Burke, under dubious authority, publically warned Kerry not to present himself for communion in St. Louis.

Republicans will try to run with crap like this all the way through to election day and try to turn Kerry's Catholicism against him.

For now, I'd just make the following 3 points:

1.    The Catholic Church is a worldwide body of Christians, not just the Vatican or the clergy. Arinze and Burke are just 2 out of over 1 billion baptized Catholics around the globe. While some in the Church may agree with them, I and many other Catholics – including other Cardinals and Archbishops – think their views are ridiculous. The Catholic Church is not a top down corporation or a monolith, as some people – including a few who write for popular media outlets – often incorrectly portray it.

2.   If Arinze and Burke seek consistency, they have to call for the denial of communion to every Catholic politician who supports the Iraq War or the death penalty (damn near all of them on the latter, with the glaring exception of John Kerry). They'd also have to consider calling for the denial of communion to all those Catholic politicians, like "pro-life" Pennsylvania Senator Rick Santorum, who have consistently refused to push universal health care, a higher federal minimum wage, and other issues vital to the working poor as national priorities.

3.   Jeanne from Body and Soul has some terrific insights and links to other great stuff on this topic, including this Gadflyer article by Amy Sullivan. Sullivan makes some great points, like these:

...Kerry has not made his religiosity an issue. Although I often argue that if candidates bring their religion into politics they have an obligation to explain the content of their beliefs and how those beliefs influence their political attitudes, I don't think that voters have a right to know much more. I certainly don't want my candidates squaring off to prove which one of them reads the Bible or prays more often. I don't think it's related to their fitness for office. If, however, they make their religiosity one of their selling points, if it is something they run on, then religion becomes fair game.

Which is why I want to know why these same questions aren't being asked of George W. Bush, a man who has Jesus as his running mate and who told Bob Woodward that he doesn't turn to his father (George H.W. Bush) for advice, because he's more concerned about what His Father (God) has to say. No word yet on what God actually says.

But this is not just a throw-away point. Does Bush deviate from the teachings of the United Methodist Church? Yes he does, on some crucial political issues. Has he been reprimanded by leaders in his denomination? Yes, particularly on the issue of war in Iraq. And if you want to make this a question of who's the better Christian, then it's fair to ask why President Bush doesn't go to church. You heard me – the man worships at Camp David and every so often wanders across Lafayette Park (although the park is pretty much impassable now what with all of the security construction going on) to attend services at St. John's Episcopal Church. But the man who has staked his domestic policy on the power of civil society and of good Christian individuals to change lives isn't an active member of a congregation – the very kind of organization in which he claims to have so much faith.

Good questions.

Also, since Bush has made it clear that he runs everything through Jesus, wouldn't it be fair to ask him to point out what sayings of Jesus in the New Testament led him to believe that Jesus advocated bombing Iraq?

A Couple Quotes

"If we're in a war on terror, let's tell them to do something besides go shopping and take a trip." – Senator John McCain, taking an unmistakable jab at President Bush during a discussion on how young Americans could serve their country.

"After what has happened in Iraq, there is an unprecedented hatred and the Americans know it... There exists today a hatred never equaled in the region." – Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, speaking to Le Monde last week.

The Other Casualties

I don't read Doonesbury or Get Fuzzy, comic strips that last week featured characters who lost limbs in Iraq, so I can't comment on them in context. But there's no doubt that a brighter light needs to be shined on the fact that thousands of service men and women have been maimed in Iraq, including over 300 this month. Pentagon numbers are often inexact and slow to develop, too, so sadly the numbers could be a lot higher than sites like this one can confirm.

April 23, 2004

Bremer Pre-9/11

I don't want to beat a dead horse – I know there's no honest person who would argue that the Bush administration took terrorism seriously before 9/11. But Atrios linked to these interesting comments made on February 26, 2001, by the terrorism expert the Bush administration later named to be the top guy in Iraq, Paul Bremer:

The new administration [Bush] seems to be paying no attention to the problem of terrorism. What they will do is stagger along until there's a major incident and then suddenly say, 'Oh, my God, shouldn't we be organized to deal with this?' That's too bad. They've been given a window of opportunity with very little terrorism now, and they're not taking advantage of it. Maybe the folks in the press ought to be pushing a little bit.

Also, check out what he told The Washington Post in December of 2000:

L. Paul Bremer, who succeeded Oakley as ambassador for counterterrorism and who recently chaired the National Commission on Terrorism, said Clarke and the Clinton administration have their resources "correctly focused on bin Laden."

April 22, 2004

Kerry's War Record

Last week, The Boston Globe published a story, "Kerry faces questions over Purple Heart," which was based on the uncertain recollections of a Republican named Grant Hibbard, who was Kerry's commanding officer at the time the Navy rewarded him his first Purple Heart (of three). Republican Hibbard insinuated that Kerry's minor wound didn't really merit a Purple Heart.

The Republican Attack Machine (Rush, Hannity, Drudge, BC04, etc...) begged for more details. I suppose they intended to prove Kerry a phony by suggesting he probably only deserved 2 of his 3 Purple Hearts to go along with his Silver and Bronze Stars. Do they really want to invite a debate on the degree of pain John Kerry felt under fire in the Mekong Delta versus the degree of absenteeism in George Bush's Alabama Guard service?

I suppose so, because they intensified calls on Kerry to release his full military records, which he did yesterday. Boy, the Kerry campaign must have really wanted to keep a muzzle on headlines like the one in today's New York Times: Kerry's Military Records Show a Highly Praised Officer. They must have really dreaded facing the repurcussions of Kerry's superiors' written evaluations of the young soldier, things like:

Intelligent, mature and rich in educational background and experience, Ens Kerry is one of the finest young officers I have ever met and without question one of the most promising.

and

...in a combat environment...Kerry was unsurpassed.

How will Democrats control the damage?

Make It Disappear

It's well-documented that this administration has its fair share of secrecy fetishists. But Donald Rumsfeld wouldn't just take something politically inconvenient and make it disappear from a public transcipt, would he?

Oops:

The Pentagon deleted from a public transcript a statement Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld made to author Bob Woodward suggesting that the administration gave Saudi Arabia a two-month heads-up that President Bush had decided to invade Iraq.

That's the lead of this Washington Post story. It goes on to reveal that Rumsfeld had characterized the deleted passage as just "some banter," even though it directly validated a key assertion of Bob Woodward's book that Rummy tried to dispute Monday.

Happy Birthday to Me

I've had my fair share of dust-ups with myself over the years, but on balance, I'm an okay guy.

Happy birthday, buddy.

In addition to being the day of my birth, April 22 is notable for other reasons. It's Jack Nicholson's birthday. And Earth Day. But most relevant to today's issues is that it's the 33 year anniversary of John Kerry representing Vietnam Veterans Against the War in his testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. The highlighted questions below became famous:

Each day to facilitate the process by which the United States washes her hands of Vietnam someone has to give up his life so that the United States doesn't have to admit something that the entire world already knows, so that we can't say that we have made a mistake. Someone has to die so that President Nixon won't be, and these are his words, "the first President to lose a war."

We are asking Americans to think about that because how do you ask a man to be the last man to die in Vietnam? How do you ask a man to be the last man to die for a mistake?

Right-wingers have used parts of Kerry's testimony to demonize him, but I think there's little doubt after reading the testimony in its entirety that even then Kerry was an extraordinarily knowledgable student of history. Moreover, history has now proven Kerry right, and it took admirable courage for him to first fight a war and then come back home to lead, to stand up for what he knew was just.

April 21, 2004

"Brilliant" War Plan?

During the Woodward interview on 60 Minutes Sunday, Mike Wallace offhandedly referred to Rumsfeld's original Iraq war plan as "brilliant." It bothered the hell out of me, because many people I listen to about the Iraq War still take for granted the dated conventional wisdom that, despite our current problems, the original Iraq war plan was genius.

Nonsense.

War is only as good as the peace that follows it, and there hasn't been peace in Iraq since the invasion began. The troubles we experience in Iraq today are inextricably tied to that original plan.

By deciding to invade with a smaller force, Rumsfeld and Co. certainly were able to assert military control over Baghdad startlingly quick, within about two weeks. But the decision also forced them to sacrifice security for speed.

Before the war, Army chief of staff and the preeminent expert on U.S. military peacekeeping operations, General Eric Shinseki, testified before Congress that "several hundred thousand troops" would be needed to stabilize Iraq. Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz publically rebuked Shinseki as "wildly off the mark." Shinsheki was discredited privately, too, before his retirement last year. So was former Army secretary Thomas White, who went on record agreeing with Shinseki after the war. And so were retired Generals Barry McCafferey and Wes Clark, who were dismissed as "blow-dried Napoleons" by Tom DeLay after they questioned the wisdom of the Pentagon's plan as cable tv military analysts.

What Wolfowitz, DeLay, Cheney, Rumsfeld, and Bush failed (and perhaps still fail) to understand is that more troops were necessary to keep the peace, not win the war. Nobody can say for sure how many lives – Iraqi, American, and other – their misunderstanding cost us. But there's no doubt their original plan was risky, and in this case I think risky equals stupid.

In a recent Newsweek article, Fareed Zakaria, my Yoda when it comes to international affairs, has it right:

The history of external involvement in countries suggests that, to succeed, the outsider needs two things: power and legitimacy.          Washington has managed affairs in Iraq so that it has too little of each. It has often been pointed out that the United States went into Iraq with too few troops. This is not a conclusion arrived at with 20-20 hindsight. Over the course of the 1990s, a bipartisan consensus, shared by policymakers, diplomats and the uniformed military, concluded that troop strength was the key to postwar military operations. It is best summarized by a 2003 RAND Corp. report noting that you need about 20 security personnel (troops and police) per thousand inhabitants "not to destroy an enemy but to provide security for residents so that they have enough confidence to manage their daily affairs and to support a government authority of its own." When asked by Congress how many troops an Iraqi operation would require, Army Chief of Staff Eric Shinseki replied, "Several hundred thousand" for several years. The number per the RAND study would be about 500,000.

How many troops did the administration deploy originally? About 200,000. God only knows where we'd be today if they had sent twice that.

For more, Frontline did an exhaustively researched 2 hours on the Iraq invasion a couple months ago, and this failure to send enough troops was a centerpiece. The Frontline site has a full chronology, interviews, and analysis covered on that program.

April 20, 2004

Longing for Edwards

I'm on record endorsing John Edwards for Kerry's VP. This Sunday Boston Globe article illustrates how eager and ready Edwards is for the job.

Edwards shoots fish in a barrel:

''You know it must be an amazing thing to live a life where, when you're asked multiple times whether you've questioned anything you've done, whether you've made any mistakes . . . you can't think of a single thing," he said. The 1,000-plus crowd began chortling loudly. Edwards's voice rose.

''Well I have a suggestion for the president. If he's struggling with that question, give me a call," he said. ''I'll give him an answer."

Edwards bears witness to John Kerry's greatness:

''I knew John Kerry well before this presidential campaign. I know him much better now. Here is a man who has fought for jobs, health care, clean air, clean water, . . . put his life on the line in Vietnam," said Edwards. ''This man needs to be president of the United States."

Please, John Kerry, bring this man back to the campaign trail, full-time. He was born to do it.

Bad Bandar

Tonight on Larry King Live, Prince Bandar called in to say that Woodward got everything right in his book, except that Cheney and Rumsfeld told him that "The President hadn't made a final decision on going to war" before they showed him the Iraq war plan and told him that they were definitely going to war. Woodward was in the studio, and he questioned Bandar, who had no good answers, on why Cheney/Rumsfeld would tell him no decision had been finalized before showing him war plans and making sure he was on board with the decision to go to war. Bandar's a terrible liar. And after the commercial break when King and Woodward came back on-air sans Bandar, Woodward said that, after his 30 years of reporting, Bandar's explanation (or non-explanation) goes into the Hall of Fame of strange things he's heard from interviewees.

Speaking of Bandar, why aren't more people talking about this item in The Washington Post on Sunday:

Investigators are looking at the Saudi accounts for evidence of money laundering, which is the use of complex transactions to hide the origin or destination of funds related to illegal activities such as drug smuggling or terrorist acts. The investigators have reached no conclusions about the reasons for the transactions in the embassy accounts, including the personal accounts of the Saudi ambassador, Prince Bandar bin Sultan.

Am I crazy, or shouldn't Bandar's curious financial transactions be part of any discussion measuring how appropriate it is for Bush to be sharing top secret government information with this guy?

Finally, Atrios makes a very important distinction on Bandar's election year oil price accommodation with the Bush administration:

You know, sometimes it just drives me crazy that the media is just incapable of explaining very simple concepts.

If Woodward's allegations about the Saudi Prince and oil prices are true, and given Scotty's non-denials today they clearly are, then the issue is not WOW BUSH STRUCK A DEAL TO LOWER OIL PRICES.

The deal is...

BUSH STRUCK A DEAL TO KEEP OIL PRICES HIGH UNTIL CLOSER TO THE ELECTION AT WHICH POINT THEY'LL FALL.

That's right.

You can also now add the fact that Bandar himself, on Larry King, acknowledged the accuracy of Woodward's version.

The Condensed John Kerry

Here's Slate's cheat sheet on the upcoming release, John F. Kerry: The Complete Biography by the Boston Globe Reporters Who Know Him Best.

They emphasize the bad more than the good, but nobody's perfect.

My Favorite All-Time Link

I was emailed this link 8 times in a two day period several months ago. The laughs got heartier each time I watched it. If you haven't seen it, you will not be disappointed.

April 19, 2004

No Plan, Just Attack

I'm eager to read Plan of Attack, Bob Woodward's new book, in its entirety. But most of the stories Woodward told on 60 Minutes last night just corroborated stuff we already know from previous books and other public documents: Cheney's the master puppeteer of this administration; CIA Director George Tenet's certainty is about as reliable as a compulsive gambler's; Bush may think he's the Son of Man; within the administration, Colin Powell is given roughly the same amount of attention the average 16 year-old boy pays to his mother; and Bush planned to invade Iraq well before we'd been led to believe.

There are a couple new bombshells that jump out, however, that should be taken very, very seriously by Congress, the Justice Department, and the press:

1.   This one could be on an Iran-contra Affair level of scandal:

”Rumsfeld and Franks work out a deal essentially where Franks can spend any money he needs. And so he starts building runways and pipelines and doing all the preparations in Kuwait, specifically to make war possible,” says Woodward.

“Gets to a point where in July, the end of July 2002, they need $700 million, a large amount of money for all these tasks. And the president approves it. But Congress doesn't know and it is done. They get the money from a supplemental appropriation for the Afghan War, which Congress has approved. …Some people are gonna look at a document called the Constitution which says that no money will be drawn from the Treasury unless appropriated by Congress. Congress was totally in the dark on this."

Congress holds some hearings on Iraq this week (finally), and I hope we get some answers on this. But it seems rather obvious to me that diverting money Congress allocated to Afghanistan to another "secret" war is grounds for impeachment.

It's startling news, and it's rather remarkable that this single item isn't the lead story on every newspaper this morning. Perhaps so many bombs have dropped with the O'Neill book, the Clarke book, the 9/11 Commission revelations, and so on, that the press can no longer adequately distinguish between news that's politically bad for the administration and news that clearly implicates criminal wrongdoing on the part of the President.

Let's see how Congress deals with this revelation today. I figure some of them have to be mad as hell, and if they're not, there's something wrong.

Woodward, by the way, is notoriously meticulous with facts.

2.   Check this out:

But, it turns out, two days before the president told Powell [about his decision to go to war], Cheney and Rumsfeld had already briefed Prince Bandar, the Saudi ambassador.

”Saturday, Jan. 11, with the president's permission, Cheney and Rumsfeld call Bandar to Cheney's West Wing office, and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs, Gen. Myers, is there with a top-secret map of the war plan. And it says, ‘Top secret. No foreign.’ No foreign means no foreigners are supposed to see this,” says Woodward.

“They describe in detail the war plan for Bandar. And so Bandar, who's skeptical because he knows in the first Gulf War we didn't get Saddam out, so he says to Cheney and Rumsfeld, ‘So Saddam this time is gonna be out, period?’ And Cheney - who has said nothing - says the following: ‘Prince Bandar, once we start, Saddam is toast.’"

After Bandar left, according to Woodward, Cheney said, “I wanted him to know that this is for real. We're really doing it."

But this wasn’t enough for Prince Bandar, who Woodward says wanted confirmation from the president. “Then, two days later, Bandar is called to meet with the president and the president says, ‘Their message is my message,’” says Woodward.

Prince Bandar enjoys easy access to the Oval Office. His family and the Bush family are close. And Woodward told 60 Minutes that Bandar has promised the president that Saudi Arabia will lower oil prices in the months before the election - to ensure the U.S. economy is strong on election day.

Woodward says that Bandar understood that economic conditions were key before a presidential election: “They’re [oil prices] high. And they could go down very quickly. That's the Saudi pledge. Certainly over the summer, or as we get closer to the election, they could increase production several million barrels a day and the price would drop significantly.”

Okay, if you're having trouble keeping track of the scandalous info. in that passage, let me try to help.

Bandar, the ambassador from Saudi Arabia, home of 15 of the 19 9/11 hijackers, was briefed on a war plan marked "no foreign" before the U.S. Secretary of State was even told of a decision to go to war.

Bandar is seemingly discussing favors (quid pro quos?) directly with the President of the U.S..

You may also remember that the Bush administration blacked out all the unflattering references to Saudi Arabia in the Congressional Joint Inquiry's public report on 9/11.

Perhaps you also have a vague recollection of a Newsweek article published about 2 years ago entitled: Exclusive: New Questions About Saudi Money—and Bandar. Here's Michael Isikoff's lead:

A federal investigation into the bank accounts of the Saudi Embassy in Washington has identified more than $27 million in "suspicious" transactions—including hundreds of thousands of dollars paid to Muslim charities, and to clerics and Saudi students who are being scrutinized for possible links to terrorist activity, according to government documents obtained by NEWSWEEK. The probe also has uncovered large wire transfers overseas by the Saudi ambassador to the United States, Prince Bandar bin Sultan. The transactions recently prompted the Saudi Embassy's longtime bank, the Riggs Bank of Washington, D.C., to drop the Saudis as a client after embassy officials were "unable to provide an explanation that was satisfying," says a source familiar with the discussions.

There are also legitimate quesitons about some money that found its way from the hands of Bandar's wife, Princess Haifa, into the hands of two 9/11 hijackers.

For whatever reasons, I don't think these Saudi Arabia money trail questions have been adequately answered. But I find it incredibly strange, discomforting, and inappropriate for the President to be sharing top secret, "no foreign" war plans with Bandar.

I thought John Kerry came off relatively relaxed, smart, clear, resolute, and assertive on yesterday's Meet the Press. It was his best performance on the campaign trail in months. It looks like he studied, which would have required his having taken some time off from counting the tens of millions of dollars his fundraisers have brought in over the last couple weeks.

April 16, 2004

Tom Stoppard: Two Americas

On Charlie Rose last week, British playwright Tom Stoppard had some really insightful stuff to say about the two conflicting ways we're perceived overseas:

I'm sure you don't need me to tell you that there is a dual vision of America when you're standing outside America. I think abroad it's true to say that there are two Americas in competition for the focus of one's perception of this country.

There is a very, very well-known, much-loved, well understood America which is open-hearted, liberal, generous, kind... rich, certainly, but a model, in a sense, for free societies. That America is always there, and it exists in movies as well as in novels and it exists, as it were, in real life where one meets America – one goes there and meets Americans.

Inside this pattern, there is this very strange America which is unpopular, rather insensitive, perhaps too self-interested, just a little greedy about imposing its idea of immorality on, quote, "lesser nations." It's rather Kiplingesque.

These two rather dislocated Americas, as I say, are in competition for one's belief. As you know, in Europe, elsewhere, this administration comes in for a huge and acute degree of dislike, resentment, fear – you know, quite aggressive responses, to say the least... And, one has to say, "Well, is America being misrepresented by its administration, or have we got America wrong?" Is the heart of this country the heart which is saying, "No, I'm right and you really have to live with my form of rightness?"

Our overseas relationships can't be repaired overnight, and the breach won't be immediately repaired this year even if we elect the lifelong internationalist John Kerry instead of George W. Bush. But voting for Kerry over Bush would certainly signal to the world that we believe we've been misrepresented, and advance the image of the more benevolent America into the international imagination.

Fire the Pollsters

On Tuesday night, W. again told one of his favorite, most blatant, and most ridiculous lies:

"And, you know, as to whether or not I make decisions based upon polls, I don't. I just don't make decisions that way."

If that's the case, then I think Americans should call on him to fire the two (or is it 3?) taxpayer-funded full-time pollsters employed by the White House. The people who finance the Bush-Cheney '04 campaign also might want to quesiton the huge payouts they're doling out to many pollsters who apparently have nothing to do.

Also, W. should alert his staff that they should stop advising him on the basis of polling they've read. I know he hasn't read this New York Times article, because he's said publically he doesn't read the newspapers and gets all his news from advisers, but if he did he'd know this adviser must not have gotten the memo:

One adviser said the White House had examined polling and focus group studies in determining that it would be a mistake for Mr. Bush to appear to yield.

This is one of those lies W. absolutely knows is a lie. He can't use ignorance as an excuse, because polls are so basic to political decision-making. He's just disingenuous to the core.

Trump might the right call last night. It was an obvious choice, but he still deserves a tip of the cap.

It's hard to read this article on Governor Schwarzenegger's daily schedule and not be reminded of Bill Clinton's energy. They're very similar in a lot of ways.

No, This Isn't April Fools

From The Guardian:

Some Iraqi nuclear facilities appear to be unguarded, and radioactive materials are being taken out of the country, the U.N.'s nuclear watchdog agency reported after reviewing satellite images and equipment that has turned up in European scrapyards.

When does an administration cross the line from being weak on defense to actually being helpful to terrorists?

Time Off

There are a 3 extremely interesting nuggets in this Slate piece by Fred Kaplan about Bush's month-long vacation from August 3, 2001 to September 3, 2001:

1.   Larry Johnson, a former CIA officer and the State Department's counterterrorism chief from 1989-93, explained on MSNBC this afternoon, during a break in the hearings, why the PDB—let alone the Moussaoui finding—should have compelled everyone to rush back to Washington. In his CIA days, Johnson wrote "about 40" PDBs. They're usually dispassionate in tone, a mere paragraph or two. The PDB of Aug. 6 was a page and a half. "That's the intelligence-community equivalent of writing War and Peace," Johnson said. And the title—"Bin Laden Determined To Strike in US"—was clearly designed to set off alarm bells. Johnson told his interviewer that when he read the declassified document, "I said 'Holy smoke!' This is such a dead-on 'Mr. President, you've got to do something!' " (By the way, Johnson claimed he's a Republican who voted for Bush in 2000.)

2.    The official story about the [now famous 8/6/01] PDB is that the CIA prepared it at the president's request. Bush had heard all Tenet's briefings about a possible al-Qaida attack overseas, the tale goes, and he wanted to know if Bin Laden might strike here. This story is almost certainly untrue. On March 19 of this year, Tenet told the 9/11 commission that the PDB had been prepared, as usual, at a CIA analyst's initiative. He later retracted that testimony, saying the president had asked for the briefing. Tenet embellished his new narrative, saying that the CIA officer who gave the briefing to Bush and Condi Rice started by reminding the president that he had requested it. But as Rice has since testified, she was not present during the briefing; she wasn't in Texas. Someone should ask: Was that the only part of the tale that Tenet made up? Or did he invent the whole thing—and, if so, on whose orders?

3.    Then again, it's easy to forget that before the terrorists struck, Bush was widely regarded as an unusually aloof president. Joe Conason has calculated that up until Sept. 11, 2001, Bush had spent 54 days at the ranch, 38 days at Camp David, and four days at the Bush compound in Kennebunkport—a total of 96 days, or about 40 percent of his presidency, outside of Washington.

Yet by that inference, Bush has remained a remarkably out-of-touch—or at least out-of-town—leader, even in the two and a half years since 9/11. Dana Milbank counts that through his entire term to date, Bush has spent 500 days—again, about 40 percent of his time in office—at the ranch, the retreat, or the compound.

I understand that a President never gets a complete vacation, really, because he still has to be briefed every day and stuff like that. But a month-long vacation seemed excessive to me then and looks particularly bad now that we know about the voluminous pre-9/11 al Qaeda warnings (not just the 8/6 PDB). 40% of your time out of Washington when that's where your principals are also seems pretty ludicrous.

April 15, 2004

Sunday's a big political t.v. day. John Kerry is Tim Russert's guest on Meet the Press, and Bob Woodward gets the Richard Clarke treatment on 60 Minutes for his new book, Plan of Attack, which is rumored to be more damaging to the administration than the Clarke book. Set your TiVos.

Fareed Zakaria, my favorite international affairs analyst, has a great article in this week's Newsweek called Our Last Real Chance. There are two things I admire about Fareed – his ability to put complex ideas into simple language and his courage to prescribe specific solutions after he diagnoses problems – that are on classic display in this summarizing of what went wrong in Iraq and the way we might begin to solve our current predicament there. I was surprised by how much he thought our hopes depended on Ayatollah Sistani:

Next, the CPA must find a way to create a legitimate interim government. Ayatollah Sistani can provide that legitimacy. America will have to concede to Sistani's objections to the current plans: he     is unlikely to endorse any transfer to the current Governing Council,   or even a modestly expanded version of it. He has objected to a three-person presidency, and to giving the Kurds a veto over the constitution. He also wants restrictions on the powers of the interim government, and an understanding that the interim constitution can be amended. Many of Sistani's objections are valid, others less so. But in any event, right now his blessing is crucial.

ABC News reports that Kerry should surpass his original pre-convention fundraising goal of $80 million tonight. That's pretty amazing.

I'm also encouraged that the Bush-Cheney campaign is starting to reduce their t.v. advertising in the swing states. It's hard to determine the anti-Kerry ads precise effect so far, but there's no doubt that Kerry has succeeded in his first post-primary goal – raising enough money to compete against the Republican Attack Machine – unambiguously, while Bush-Cheney have had decidedly mixed to poor results in their first goal – unilaterally defining John Kerry, knocking him out if possible.

Having spent only about $6 million on ads (to BC's $40 million), Kerry's even or leading in most polls. Of course, the 9/11 commission and the situation in Iraq have contributed to that more than anything else, but part of the measure of a good campaign is how they negotiate paid advertising with current events.

April 14, 2004

The Mistakeless President

9 Lessons Learned from W's Press Conference

1.    As an actor, Bush is usually better with scripted material than he is on his feet, and last night was no exception. Trying to be as objective as I can possibly be about it, I can see how a person (perhaps a somewhat dim-witted person) could have watched Bush read his opening statement tonight and seen a resolved, determined leader. I'd say Bush's acting ability with a script is roughly on par with the acting ability of, say, Keanu Reeves. But he's without peer on improv – he's the worst actor I've ever seen. He stammered, dithered, evaded, mumbled, looked unsure of himself, and sometimes even put his body into strange contortions. Hopelessly unPresidential.

2.    One of the talking points Bush's advisors fed him was "We just weren't on war footing before 9/11." Yet Condoleezza Rice has as one of her talking points that "we were at battle stations" before 9/11, because the President had ordered them there. I thought being "at battle stations" might put you on "war footing," but maybe that's just me.

3.    In an answer to one of the night's best questions, GWB claimed he could not think of a single mistake he's made after 9/11:

QUESTION: Thank you, Mr. President. In the last campaign you were asked a question about the biggest mistake you'd made in your life and you used to like to joke that it was trading Sammy Sosa.

You've looked back before 9/11 for what mistakes might have been made. After 9/11 what would your biggest mistake be, would you say? And what lessons have you learned from it?

BUSH: Hmm. I wish you would have given me this written question ahead of time so I could plan for it. (Laughter.)

John, I'm sure historians will look back and say, gosh, he could have done it better this way or that way. You know, I just — I'm sure something will pop into my head here in the midst of this press conference, all the pressure of trying to come up with an answer. But it hasn't yet.

I may send a resume to the White House, because if he hired me he'd never have to worry again about answering this type of question directly and completely.

4.    This GWB statement was jaw-dropping:

Nobody in our government, at least, and I don't think the prior government, could envision flying airplanes into buildings on such a massive scale.

Unbelievable. He's actually working from talking points dated almost a year ago.

There were many explicit warnings about terrorists using planes as missiles before 9/11, so many that Condoleezza Rice took the rare step in her 9/11 commission testimony of correcting a previous statement she had made about no one being able to predict using a plane as a missile. She conceded that people in the government had imagined such a scenario (because she had taken so much flak from the media and some of the 9/11 widows for suggesting otherwise).

While we're used to Bush getting the facts wrong, it's astonishing that he wasn't on top of some of the highlighted portions of Rice's and Richard Clarke's recent testimonies. These Clarke lines were played and replayed a lot on newscasts nationwide just 3 weeks ago:

CLARKE: But as to your question about using aircraft as weapons, I was afraid beginning in 1996, not that a Cessna would fly into the Olympics, but that any size aircraft would be put into the Olympics.

And during my inspection of the Atlanta Olympic security arrangements a month or two before the games, I was shocked that the FBI hadn't put into effect any aircraft -- air defense security arrangements. So I threw together an air defense for the Atlanta games somewhat quickly, but I got an air defense system in place.

We then tried to institutionalize that for Washington to protect the Capitol and the White House. And that system would have been run by the Secret Service. It would have involved missiles, anti-aircraft guns, radar, helicopters.

Secret Service developed all the plans for that. Secret Service was a big advocate for it, but they were unable to get the Treasury Department, in which they were then located, to approve it. And I was unable to get the Office of Management and Budget to fund it.

5.    Tonight, Bush downgraded the Iraq War from "the central front in the war on terror" to just "part of the war on terror" or "a theater in the war on terror." Do you think he'll ever downgrade it to the point where he gets it right by calling it "a tangent to the war on terror"?

6.    A hard-hitting question from Fox News reporter/Bush-Cheney Reelect operative Bill Sammon:

QUESTION: You have been accused of letting the 9/11 threat mature too far, but not letting the Iraq threat mature far enough.

First, could you respond to that general criticism?

What a clown.

7.    The most frightening moment of the Q & A? Look how Bush goes directly from talking about his reelection prospects to talking about dead people, without any segue. A psychologist (or a psychopathologist) could have a field day with this:

QUESTION: Thank you, Mr. President. Sir, you've made it very clear tonight that you're committed to continuing the mission in Iraq. Yet as Terry pointed out, increasing numbers of Americans have qualms about it. And this is an election year.

BUSH: Yeah.

QUESTION: Will it have been worth it, even if you lose your job because of it?

BUSH: I don't plan on losing my job. I plan on telling the American people that I've got a plan to win the war on terror, and I believe they'll stay with me. They understand the stakes. Look, nobody likes to see dead people on their television screens. I don't. It's a tough time for the American people to see that. It's gut-wrenching.

With that wording, "nobody likes to see dead people on their television screens. I don't," it's like he's just a spectator in this thing, not the guy who ordered it. It calls his stature into question.

And, of course, I still don't understand why he's mixing dead people on television with his reelection prospects.

8.    This is another scary jaw-dropper, and I'd also consider it funny if Bush's incompetence on this kind of stuff wasn't leading to casualties:

QUESTION: Mr. President, who will we be handing the Iraqi government over to on June 30th?

BUSH: We'll find that out soon. That's what Mr. Brahimi is doing. He's figuring out the nature of the entity we'll be handing sovereignty over.

Let me get this straight. He's absolutely certain we're on the right course and we're making progress and we have to stick to turning over sovereignty on 6/30 (a date originally dictated by our Presidential election, by the way), but not only do we not know who we're turning it over to, nobody does.

All that brilliant Bush administration post-war planning has forced the U.N. into a situation where they have to try and create some kind of responsible Iraqi government within the next 77 days. Oops, make that 76.

9.   Final headshaker. Bush bragged:

The A.Q. Khan bust, the network that we uncovered thanks to the hard work of our intelligence-gathering agencies and the cooperation of the British, was another victory in the war against terror.

If you don't know, A.Q. Khan is the Pakistani nuclear scientist who sold nuclear weapons to North Korea (and others on the black market), got caught, and was immediately pardoned by Musharaff, who also took the moment to praise Khan as "a national hero." Reportedly, there's no chance in hell Khan could have committed his crimes without the support of Pakistani intelligence and the Pakistani military.

Bush is now so desperate that this is the kind of thing he wants to trumpet as a success.

April 13, 2004

Easter Fun

This sounds like one hell of a good show. From the Associated Press:

A church trying to teach about the crucifixion of Jesus performed an Easter show with actors whipping the Easter bunny and breaking eggs, upsetting several parents and young children.

People who attended Saturday’s performance at Glassport’s memorial stadium quoted performers as saying, “There is no Easter bunny,” and described the show as being a demonstration of how Jesus was crucified.

Melissa Salzmann, who took her 4-year-old son J.T., said the program was inappropriate for young children. “He was crying and asking me why the bunny was being whipped,” Salzmann said.

Patty Bickerton, the youth minister at Glassport Assembly of God, said the performance wasn’t meant to be offensive. Bickerton portrayed the Easter rabbit and said she tried to act with a tone of irreverence.

“The program was for all ages, not just the kids. We wanted to convey that Easter is not just about the Easter Bunny, it is about Jesus Christ,” Bickerton said.

Performers broke eggs meant for an Easter egg hunt and also portrayed a drunken man and a self-mutilating woman, said Jennifer Norelli-Burke, another parent who saw the show in Glassport, southeast of Pittsburgh.

“It was very disturbing,” Norelli-Burke said. “I could not believe what I saw. It wasn’t anything I was expecting.”

I wonder if Bickerton conveyed her "tone of irreverence" wearing a full bunny suit or just some ears and a strap-on nose or something.

Anyway, if the show hits L.A. next year it's definitely something I plan to take my nephews to see.

Kerry's Iraq Plan

As The Los Angeles Times Ron Brownstein pointed out this weekend, Kerry has been very consistent in his proposed course of action in Iraq:

Kerry has often been accused of shifting positions and splitting hairs on the war. But on one point the senator has never wavered: that the key to long-term stability in Iraq — and more financial and military support from other nations — is to transfer authority for designing a new government from the United States to the United Nations.

Although many media outlets have reported that Kerry hasn't specified an alternative to Bush's plan in Iraq, he detailed his position in a speech in September and reiterated it this week.

"They need to go to the world and say we're not going to have an American authority that is creating this new government," Kerry said Wednesday. "We're going to have an international authority that will help develop the new government."

In fact, I think Kerry reiterated that position just about every day since last September.

Kerry's Washington Post editorial this morning once again spells out his views pretty clearly.

Bush's Tax Cuts for Terrorists

Thank God David Cay Johnston of the NY Times unearthed this. It was buried in some tedious I.R.S. budget bill. It's inexcusable:

The Bush administration has scuttled a plan to increase by 50 percent the number of criminal financial investigators working to disrupt the finances of Al Qaeda, Hamas and other terrorist organizations to save $12 million, a Congressional hearing was told on Tuesday.

The Internal Revenue Service had asked for 80 more criminal investigators beginning in October to join the 160 it has already assigned to penetrate the shadowy networks that terrorist groups use to finance plots like the Sept. 11 attacks and the recent train bombings in Madrid. But the Bush administration did not include them in the president's proposed budget for the 2005 fiscal year.

Here's the administration pinching pennies on national defense and seemingly trying to hide it. One of my great frustrations is that so few people understand the extent to which funding the war in Iraq and gargantuan tax cuts have taken away from some fundamental items necessary for a real war on terror. This is a perfect example.

Bush's first press conference of 2004 is scheduled for 5:30pm PST today.

April 12, 2004

Kerry Veepstakes

It’s folly to predict who John Kerry will choose as his running mate. Few imagined Gore would pick Lieberman, Clinton would pick Gore, or Bush would pick Cheney.

What captures my interest is: who should Kerry pick? Which addition to the ticket would most help Democrats take back the White House?

In an attempt to answer those questions, I’ll evaluate some prospective running mates by subjecting them to the following questions:

Do they help affirm Kerry’s best attributes?

Do they balance the ticket?

Would they be likely to deliver a state, or hold particular appeal in a certain region?

Do they appeal to the moderates and independents likely to decide this election?

Do they have any weaknesses that are likely to damage the ticket?

On April 4, The New York Times reported that Kerry is likely to make his selection relatively early, by the end of May. The Times also reported that Jim Jordan, the Chairman of Kerry’s VP selection committee, has already interviewed 4 candidates and begun asking others for their thoughts on them. Let’s evaluate them first, keeping in mind the 5 questions:

North Carolina Senator John Edwards

If Kerry and Edwards shared a seesaw, neither side would ever hit the ground. Edwards is the South to Kerry’s North, a fresh face to Kerry’s experience, and an easy charm to Kerry’s senatorial gravitas.

Edwards’ stock has risen steadily since he emerged as a national political figure. His “Two Americas” campaign theme hit people where they live. James Carville, Clinton’s top campaign strategist, called Edwards “the best stump speaker I’ve ever seen run for President.”

During the primary, there was a clamoring for a Kerry-Edwards ticket, and Edwards continues to top opinion polls as Democrats’ VP choice. More importantly, polls show he’s an enormously appealing figure to moderates and independents. Although his presence on the ticket is unlikely to turn his home state of North Carolina our way, his down home style and economic populism could be a considerable boost in the Midwestern battleground states. It’s also important to note that the ladies, no matter where they live, seem to love this guy.

Some have suggested that Edwards is so dynamic that he would overshadow Kerry, but do they really think somebody wouldn’t vote for Kerry-Edwards because they like Edwards more?

I’ve heard others say Edwards is too sunny to adequately perform the Vice President’s attack dog responsibilities, but they must have missed Edwards during the primary calling Bush “an unadulterated phony” who “doesn’t care about ordinary people.” In fact, I think Edwards would make the best Bush–Cheney detractor of all the VP candidates, because his attacks land stealthily and consistently, with varying degrees of force.

Bush–Cheney would go after Edwards as “an ambulance-chasing trial lawyer,” but Edwards has demonstrated an ability to expertly turn those attacks against Bush’s biggest weakness: for most of his life, Edwards has championed regular people against the powerful corporate forces Bush and Cheney have protected most of their lives.

Bush–Cheney might also say he’s too young and inexperienced to be President, but at 50 he’s not too young and his six years on the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence are six years more foreign policy experience than Bush had entering office.

New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson

Richardson would bring 4 enormous assets to the ticket: he’s Latino; he’s acknowledged by both parties as a superb diplomat; he’d add executive experience to the ticket; and he’d deliver New Mexico.

Bush’s own pollster, Matthew Dowd, admits that if Democrats win the Latino vote by the same percentages they did in 2000 (62% Gore to 35% Bush), Bush will lose. Richardson, a Mexican American, should appeal to Latinos nationally, and specifically in states with high Latino populations like New Mexico, Nevada, Colorado, California, New York, and Florida.

During the Clinton administration, Richardson was U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations (1997-98) and Secretary of the U.S. Energy Department (1998-00). He was even tapped by the Bush administration last year to negotiate with North Korea. His vast experience and standing as one of our country’s most capable diplomats bolster Kerry’s own foreign policy credentials. Moreover, the broad multilateral foreign policy vision of Kerry–Richardson would contrast favorably with the kneejerk unilateralism of Bush–Cheney.

As Governor of New Mexico and a Clinton cabinet appointee, Richardson’s executive background balances Kerry’s legislative background.

Contrary to popular belief, the closest state in the 2000 election was not Florida (which Bush officially won by 537 votes), but New Mexico (Gore beat Bush by 366 votes). Richardson is enormously popular in the state, and his presence on the ticket would protect its 5 electoral votes for Democrats.

Missouri Congressman Dick Gephardt

Almost all Gephardt’s advantages as the VP pick have disadvantages attached.

He’s from Missouri, a battleground state that Bush won by about 3% in 2000, but Gephardt’s name on the ballot may not actually help Kerry as much in the state as you might think. He’s never held statewide office, only local office in St. Louis, and any Missouri political observer (I’m a native St. Louisan) will tell you that the rest of Missouri can actually be prejudiced against “big city” St. Louis politicians.

Gephardt is very popular with the unions, which might help particularly in battleground states like Michigan and Ohio, but unions are energized to oust Bush already and his message to Midwestern working class voters can fairly be described as John Edwards-lite, without the great delivery.

He’s got decades of valuable experience in domestic and international affairs, but he’s also got 14 terms of Congressional votes for Republicans to mischaracterize.

Also, not only did he vote to authorize force in Iraq, but he was a leader of the resolution in the House, which tied the hands of senators like Kerry who sought to add restrictions to the resolution.

Gephardt could be a decent attack dog. His oft-repeated line in the primary, “This President… is a miserable failure,” had teeth.

I like Gephardt, but all in all I think his addition makes it easy to coin Kerry–Gephardt a “Washington insider” ticket, and it would be a net loss.

Iowa Governor Tom Vilsack

The two-term Governor – the first Democratic Governor Iowa’s had since 1968 – has had an impressive political career in Iowa. Gore beat Bush by a mere 4000 votes in Iowa in 2000, so Vilsack stands to help Kerry most by securing those 7 electoral votes.

As a personable, if undynamic, fresh-faced Midwestern centrist with executive experience, I understand why Vilsack’s on the short list. But I don’t think there’s enough solid information available to determine whether Vilsack would have carryover appeal to other Midwestern battleground states. Accordingly, his positives aren’t nearly as impressive as Edwards’ or Richardson’s.

Others

Pundits have bandied about a number of other considerations – Virginia Governor Mark Warner, Pennsylvania Governor Ed Rendell, Florida Senators Bob Graham and Bill Nelson, Indiana Senator Evan Bayh, Arkansas Senator Blanche Lincoln, Delaware Senator Joe Biden, former Nebraska Senator and 9/11 commissioner Bob Kerrey, and, of course, Hillary. But nobody has garnered more attention of late than Republican Senator John McCain of Arizona.

McCain hits home runs when subjected to the criteria questions I outlined originally: his well-known Vietnam heroism would make Kerry-McCain the “war hero” ticket; he would balance the ticket ideologically, while also creating an unprecedented “fusion ticket,” a very attractive idea in these politically-splintered times; he’d probably swing Arizona’s 10 electoral votes from Bush to Kerry; and he’s remarkably popular with the independents and moderates who will probably decide the election.

There are few big problems, though.

While McCain initially flirted with an offer from Kerry, saying he’d “entertain” it, he’s since absolutely ruled out accepting the nomination. It’s almost a right of passage for future Vice Presidents to rule themselves out of consideration before they’re tapped, but McCain’s rejections have become increasingly strident. If he went back on them, he’d look weak and opportunistic.

Secondly, not only is McCain a Republican, but he’s also said repeatedly that he thinks George W. Bush deserves re-election because “he’s shown moral clarity and leadership after 9/11.” If McCain were the selection, how many times do you think Bush-Cheney would air a television ad of him repeating those words? It would be very discrediting, I think.

Thirdly, it’s difficult to say how negatively Democratic interest groups would react to the many conservative positions McCain has taken over the years, but it could get ugly. One thing Kerry doesn’t want is a choice that ruffles a lot of Democratic feathers.

It’s too bad, in a way. As The New York Times reported, “One [Kerry] adviser said that choice [McCain] would almost guarantee Mr. Kerry's election.”

I find that statement a little hyperbolic, but selecting McCain would certainly cause a political earthquake, attract a lot of voters Kerry is unlikely to win otherwise, and undermine any suggestion that Kerry is a “safe” politician.

So if I were advising Kerry, I'd tell him:
1.    Edwards
2.    Richardson
3.    McCain
4.    The Rest

April 9, 2004

Condi's Headshakers

Condoleezza Rice makes a lot of excuses. Sometimes her statements gel with the facts and sometime's they don't. Sometimes they gel with previous statements she's made, and sometimes they don't. But as a witness, she's about as reliable as a few scattered pages of RNC talking points.

The Center for American Progress has a thorough catalogue of Rice's claims vs. facts. Among the most damaging:

On the now infamous August 6, 2001 Presidential Daily Briefing (PDB)...
CLAIM: There was "nothing about the threat of attack in the U.S." in the Presidential Daily Briefing the President received on August 6th. [responding to Ben Veniste]

FACT: Rice herself confirmed that "the title [of the PDB] was, 'Bin Laden Determined to Attack Inside the United States.'" [Source: Condoleezza Rice, 4/8/04]

On using planes as missiles...
CLAIM: "I do not remember any reports to us, a kind of strategic warning, that planes might be used as weapons." [responding to Kean]

FACT: Condoleezza Rice was the top National Security official with President Bush at the July 2001 G-8 summit in Genoa. There, "U.S. officials were warned that Islamic terrorists might attempt to crash an airliner" into the summit, prompting officials to "close the airspace over Genoa and station antiaircraft guns at the city's airport." [Sources: Los Angeles Times, 9/27/01 ; White House release, 7/22/01]

More on the domestic terror threat...
CLAIM: "One of the problems was there was really nothing that look like was going to happen inside the United States...Almost all of the reports focused on al-Qaida activities outside the United States, especially in the Middle East and North Africa...We did not have...threat information that was in any way specific enough to suggest something was coming in the United States." [responding to Gorelick]

FACT: Page 204 of the Joint Congressional Inquiry into 9/11 noted that "In May 2001, the intelligence community obtained a report that Bin Laden supporters were planning to infiltrate the United States" to "carry out a terrorist operation using high explosives." The report "was included in an intelligence report for senior government officials in August [2001]." In the same month, the Pentagon "acquired and shared with other elements of the Intelligence Community information suggesting that seven persons associated with Bin Laden had departed various locations for Canada, the United Kingdom, and the United States." [Sources: Joint Congressional Report, 12/02]

Not only is Rice incredible, she's incompetent. I agree wholeheartedly with what Kristen Breitweiser, a 9/11 widow, had to say yesterday on Hardball with Chris Matthews:

Condoleezza Rice-- It’s her job to not have that Grand Canyon [of intelligence between the director of the CIA and the president]. It is her job to fuse that information in one fusion center. And, you know what? She didn’t do it.

The four 9/11 widows who basically drove Congress and this administration into creating the commission are Breitweiser, Lorie Van Auken, Mindy Kleinberg, and Patty Casazza. They may be the 4 best people in the world to listen to when considering mistakes made by both the Clinton and Bush administrations before 9/11.

Here's the entire transcript of their Hardball interview.

I've been watching them in various t.v. interviews for the past few weeks, and it's obvious that they've spent a great deal of time, if not most of their time, since their husbands have died studying the hell out of how these attacks might have been prevented. They've been weeks, sometimes months, ahead of the mainstream press. For instance, when Condoleezza Rice came out with her "No one could have possibly imagined planes being used as missiles" nonsense last year, the widows detailed 12 specific warnings received by government officials about terrorists using planes as weapons.

6 other things that struck me as I watched Rice's testimony in its entirety today:

1.    There were 3 bombshells. The first was commissioner Ben-Veniste getting Rice to acknowledge the name of the August 6, 2001 Presidential Daily Briefing from George Tenet: "BIN LADEN DETERMINED TO ATTACK INSIDE THE UNITED STATES." When you've been running around for months, as Rice has, telling everybody that all the pre-9/11 chatter was exclusively about threats overseas, that's kind of daming, isn't it? Rice tries to split hairs by saying that we already knew he was determined, that somehow it was a historical summary, but then why was it in the PDB, which is supposed to highlight the urgent stuff?

But more importantly, and this is the second bombshell, why didn't the President take any action after hearing this in the same PDB (which Bob Kerrey unilaterally declassified, which I'm sure pissed somebody off)?

In the spirit of further declassification, this is what the Aug. 6 memo said to the president. That the F.B.I. indicates patterns of suspicious activity in the United States consistent with preparations for hijacking. That's the language of the memo that was briefed to the president on the 6th of August.

The President went on a month-long vacation on August 7 and Rice couldn't name a single action he took to deal with that information.

The third bombshell came when Ben-Veniste asked her if she ever relayed to Bush that she knew there were al Qaeda cells inside the United States. Her answer: "I really don't remember if I had discussed this with the President."

Do you feel safer with this person as our National Security Advisor?

2.    Rice began her opening statement with a concession ("America's response across several administrations of both parties was insufficient"), and then she gave about 15 minutes worth of excuses (starting with "Historically, democratic societies have been slow to react to gathering threats, tending instead to wait to confront threats until they are too dangerous to ignore or until it is too late"), but she offered no apologies, and refused to utter what 9/11 commissioner Bob Kerrey called "the m-word," mistake. It's a tremendous contrast with the straightforward apology that was Dick Clarke's entire opening statement.

3.    Also in her opening statement, Rice said we couldn't have a narrow war on terror, and that "He [Bush] recognizes that the war on terror is a broad war." I think she's got it completely wrong.

Phase one should have been decapitating al Qaeda and eliminating the Taliban in Afghanistan, which would have required putting pressure on Pakistan (yes, perhaps even threatening that nuclear power with war if they didn't cooperate) to help us find and kill bin Laden, Zawahiri, and Mullah Omar. We shouldn't have left Afghanistan until al Qaeda's leadership was dead, Mullah Omar and the Taliban were gone without possibility of return, and Karzai had military control of the entire country. Instead, we committed fewer troops to Afghanistan than were needed because we were already planning war on Iraq; bin Laden, Zawahiri, Mullah Omar and other principles have gotten away; warlords now control most of the country; and we basically appeased Pakistan (there are a ton of indications that their intelligence agency, who basically installed the Taliban, continues to jerk us around). We also need to rid Northwestern Pakistan of terrorists, but Bush and Musharaff are too afraid to go in there.

Concurrently, a massive U.S. special ops force, perhaps combined with NATO forces, should have been plotting out and activating not just the elimination of the rest of al Qaeda, but also Hezbollah, throughout the globe.

Also, there should have been an international conference defining terrorism and then outlining and activating the specifics of an international war on terror, ignorance, poverty, sytemic abuse of women, and religious intolerance.

Some serious attempt at dealing with Hamas and sticking with a more realistic Middle East road map would also have to be part of it.

We'd have to define a single standard with which to deal with host states, particularly Saudi Arabia, Iran, Pakistan, and Syria, which clearly have the worst terrorist-coddling records (although focus on the terrorists themselves and the war of ideas first, as opposed to this administration's out-of-date cold war inclination to focus on single governments).

Now that's a broad, ambitious war. People would call it impossible to realize, but a great leader would push us to act on it as our best and brightest continued to imagine and build it. A real leader would also ask regular Americans to sacrifice something.

Taking over Iraq, which was not a terrorist haven before the war but probably is now, was the narrow option, and that decision sucked all our resources away from a global war on terror that would have made us more, not less, safe.

Whew. I apologize for my long-windedness. Back to Dr. Rice...

4.    Rice disparaged the idea that holding principals' meetings, opposed to deputies' meetings, would have made any difference. This shows she doesn't understand bureaucracy in a way that would allow her to be affecive within the system.

The FAA Director, Norm Mineta, hadn't even heard about the hijackings threats, for Chrissakes. That's inexplicable, and both Rice and Bush bear ultimate responsibility.

It's so silly to deny that principals' meetings couldn't have made a difference. It defies common sense, really. Anybody who's ever worked in a corporation knows that if you want something done, the closer the help you can get is to the top, the more likely it is you get what you want. Your CEO makes one phone call and you get the world, your direct supervisor makes a thousand phone calls and you're lucky to get a free sandwich.

5.    One of the most astonishing parts of Rice's testimony that I haven't heard or read anyone else mention is her saying that an immediate military response to the U.S.S. Cole attacks, which caused the murder of 17 American servicemen, might have been "tit-for-tat" and just "emboldened the terrorists." Appeasement? Weak on terror? Hello?

6.    My favorite exchange of the day came between Rice and Bob Kerrey. It's mostly hilarious, but Kerrey makes a good point:

(the background on this is that Bush, before 9/11, once told Rice that "I'm tired of swatting flies," and Rice somehow started spinning this as an example of the President being aware of the al Qaeda threat and being proactive on it)

KERREY. You've used the phrase a number of times and I'm hoping with my question to disabuse you of using it in the future, you said the president was tired of swatting flies. Can you tell me one example where the president swatted a fly when it came to Al Qaeda prior to 9/11?

RICE. I think what the president was speaking to -

KERREY. No, what fly had he swatted?

RICE. Well, the disruptions abroad was what he was really focusing on. When the C.I.A. would go after Abu(?) -

KERREY. No, no. He hadn't swatted -

RICE. - or go after this guy. That was what was meant.

KERREY. Dr. Rice, we only swatted a fly once on the 20th of August 1998. We didn't swat any flies afterwards. How the hell could he be tired?

RICE. We swatted - I think he felt that what the agency was doing was going after [audio glitch on CNN] and there. And that's what he meant by swatting flies. It was simply a figure of speech.

KERREY. Well, I think it's an unfortunate figure of speech. Because I think especially after the attack on the Cole on the 12th of October 2000 it would not have been swatting a fly. It would not have been - we did not need to wait to get a strategic plan. Dick Clarke had in his memo on the 25th of January overt military operations. He turned that memo around in 24 hours, Dr. Clarke.(as spoken) There were a lot of plans in place in the Clinton administration, military plans in the Clinton administration. In fact, just since we're in the mood to declassify stuff, he included in his Jan. 25 memo two appendixes. Appendix A, strategy for the elimination of the jihadis threat of Al Qaeda. Appendix B, political military plan for Al Qaeda. So I just, why didn't we respond to the Cole? Why didn't we swat that fly?

Clinton testified for 4 hours yesterday, too. It's a shame his testimony wasn't public. I'm sure he would have loved it if it were. Good ol' Billy.

April 8, 2004

Iraq

There are two competing portraits being drawn about what's happening in Iraq.

One is the Bush/Rumsfeld/RNC version, which focuses on Shiite cleric Moktada al-Sadr causing all the trouble as the leader of a relatively small group of insurgents (1000-6000 men in a country of 25 million is the way Rumsfeld spun it in yesterday's press conference). The troubles in the Sunni areas, they say, are perpetrated by disgruntled Baathists, former Saddam loyalists.

The other is what all the journalists on the ground seem to be saying, which is that both the Shi'a and Sunni insurgencies have a considerably broader base. As the NY Times reports today:

A year ago, many Shiites rejoiced at the American invasion and the toppling of Saddam Hussein, a Sunni who had brutally repressed the Shiites for decades. But American intelligence officials now believe that hatred of the American occupation has spread rapidly among Shiites, and is now so large that Mr. Sadr and his forces represent just one element..

Meanwhile, American intelligence has not yet detected signs of coordination between the Sunni rebellion in Iraq's heartland and the Shiite insurgency. But United States intelligence says that the Sunni rebellion also goes far beyond former Baathist government members. Sunni tribal leaders, particularly in Al Anbar Province, home to Ramadi, the provincial capital, and Falluja, have turned against the United States and are helping to lead the Sunni rebellion, intelligence officials say.

The result is that the United States is facing two broad-based insurgencies that are now on parallel tracks.

I hope we catch al-Sadr soon, dead or alive. He is a thug, a murderer. But he's just a small part of the equation, I'm afraid.

There's Joy in Inglewood

Inglewood, California voters went against a new Wal-Mart Supercenter overwhelmingly. For us Californians, it's just the beginning of the battle. One down, 39 to go.

White People Need Compassion, Too

Now this is unbelievable. I really had to see if it wasn't a meticulously crafted practical joke. It's the "Compassion Photo Album," which is found on the Bush-Cheney '04 official web site.

For those unable to access, it's just a bunch of pictures of George W. and Laura posing with African-Americans (and even some actual Africans – they're so compassionate!) and other minorities. Has to be seen to be believed. It's so wackily ironic it could go unedited in The Onion.

Wait. Do you think maybe there was just some confusion over at BC04 headquarters, and it was meant to be called the "Condescension Photo Album"? It's certainly a more accurate description of the contents.

Thanks to Atrios for the tip.

Journalist Soldiers

I missed this when it happened last September. CNN war correspondent Christiane Amanpour – whom I admire about as much as any other journalist – made the following statement about Iraq war coverage:

"I think the press was muzzled, and I think the press self-muzzled. I'm sorry to say, but certainly television and, perhaps, to a certain extent, my station was intimidated by the administration and its foot soldiers at Fox News. And it did, in fact, put a climate of fear and self-censorship, in my view, in terms of the kind of broadcast work we did."

Some of that may be arguable, but the idea that Fox's journalists aren't really fair and balanced but are foot soldiers for the Bush administration isn't.

Remarkably, Fox agrees with me, and they went on the record. Here was Fox's official response delivered by spokeswoman Irena Briganti:

"Given the choice, it's better to be viewed as a foot soldier for Bush than a spokeswoman for al-Qaeda."

At first, I was thinking Briganti was definitely a foot soldier for Bush, but now I'm viewing her more as a spokeswoman for al-Qaeda. I don't know, though. It's a close call.

How a Bill Almost Becomes an Unconstitutional Law

Thanks to Reanna Remick, a Georgia reader, for passing this and this along.

Here's the basic story: A jackass in the Georgia House named Bill Heath added an amendment to an existing bill that outlawed involuntary female genital mutilation so that it would include a ban on voluntary genital piercing for Georgia women (although not Georgia men, perhaps because Heath doesn't want to be forced to remove the two nails that keep most of his brain lodged in his penis). It's so bizarre I wondered if Heath was just naive about some women's preferences, but his public statements show he knew exactly what he was doing – preventing adult women from controlling their own bodies:

"The original intent of the amendment was to make illegal the voluntary piercing of female genitalia for decorative purposes."

"What? I've never seen such a thing. I, uh, I wouldn't approve of anyone doing it. I don't think that's an appropriate thing to be doing."
Astonishingly, 159 other jackasses in the Georgia House failed to object to his amendment and passed it in a unanimous 160-0 vote.

After being pushed by many women's rights organizations, however, the Georgia Senate struck down the ridiculous piercing amendment and restored the female genital mutilation ban (a good law now, actually).

Hopefully, the people of Georgia will now see to it that al Qaeda spokesperson Bill Heath never gets elected again.

April 7, 2004

Iraq

New York Times reporter John F. Burns, who's been in Iraq since well before the war began, gave a very sobering analysis of the situation on Charlie Rose Monday night. Among the more ominous statements – and unfortunately one that's probably a conclusive description of what's happening, as it echoes all the major news stories on events in the ground in Iraq today and over the weekend – was this:

What we see here is a metastasis of the [Sunni] insurgency into the Shi'a majority community, which is the one thing that American generals here have always said privately was their worst fear.

It's hard to see now what the possible solutions are, but I pray for them.

Mess with Texas

Republican Sam Walls looked like a good bet to win a seat in the Texas state legislature. Then various pictures of him clad in female apparel started showing up, which I understand can be a problem for Texas office seekers. His Republican primary opponent is shopping the pictures everywhere, but Sam won't withdraw from the race.

He is sorry, though: "I apologize for any embarrassment caused to my supporters by my opponent's disclosure of a small part of my personal past."

Personally, I would find it infinitely more embarrassing to be a Texas
Republican than a cross dresser.

Dishonest Dick

As a Wyoming Congressman in 1986, Dick Cheney proposed a huge gas tax, saying, "Let us rid ourselves of the fiction that low oil prices are somehow good for the United States." Now, Cheney excoriates Kerry for considering (not even voting for) a 1993 proposal for a gas tax.

Cheney also proposed signifigant defense budget cuts as Secretary of Defense in 1991, but he continues to scold Kerry for having voted against some of the same cuts he proposed.

If you multiplied Cheney's integrity a thousand fold, you could still fit it into a thimble.

Darth Nader Update

State law in Oregon says if you can get 1000 people in the same room to sign a petition for you, you can get on the Presidential ballot. No problem for somebody with Ralph Nader's name recognition and stature, especially in a state with a relatively high number of progressives, eh?

Nope. Nader's best organizational effort brought him only 741 people (aka "Bush/Cheney supporters") willing to sign a petition for him. What an embarrassment.

To prove a point, I'm tempted to drive up to Oregon myself this week and hold a huge kegger where I'm confident I could get the 1000 signatures necessary for ballot eligibility. If an anonymous, slightly above average Southern Californian loser like myself could get on the ballot, maybe it's time for Nader to retire (and by retire, I mean pass away).

April 6, 2004

Fundraising Totals?

Wait a minute. On Friday, the Bush Cheney campaign didn't report an exact fundraising total, but they claimed they surpassed the record-breaking $50 million + reported by the Kerry campaign. But Monday's Wall Street Journal reported:

"President Bush is expected to report having raised $37 million in the first quarter, which ended Wednesday. The windfall has helped him surpass his low-end fund-raising goal of $170 million."

At first I thought maybe it's a misprint, but looking at the monthly BC FEC filings without March yet included shows that they were indeed on pace for $37 million, not $50 million.

Who's lying here? I don't know for sure, but I'd bet that BC wanted to dilute the enormity of the Kerry achievement and cover up the rather astonishing reality that a running mateless Kerry outraised them by over 35%. That's a big story. I haven't noticed anybody else writing about this, but I find it outrageous, if unsurprising. Why do the press corps trust these people at all?

Actually, it might be fair for Bush to say he raised about $87 million, since he earned $37 million from people that like him and generated $50 million for Kerry from people that hate him.

Also, this last paragraph of Political Wire's summary of the WSJ article (which I can't link to because it's subscription only) is an eye-opener:

Meanwhile, Sen. John Kerry "reported raising $50 million in the quarter -- exceeding the total raised by former Vice President Al Gore during the entire 2000 primary campaign." And Kerry "has tapped a robust source of small donors on the Internet. His campaign has raised roughly $1 million a day via the Web -- a pace that outshines that of former rival Howard Dean."

Awesome.

Joey Pulitzer Gets It Right

More than a few mediocrities over the years have taken home Pulitzers (perhaps almost as many as have won Oscars). But Nancy Cleeland, Abigail Goldman, Evelyn Iritani, and Tyler Marshall of The Los Angeles Times couldn't be more deserving of the prize they earned for their 3 part series on how much Wal-Mart sucks. Please read the whole thing – it's a story well told that rather dispassionately explores contemporary American consumer and business values, good and bad.

For me, I don't think I'll ever shop at Wal-Mart again. I'd rather pay full price for something than get a bargain paid for by others.

It's so good I can't help but excerpt the lead paragraphs from the first 2 parts:

Part 1: An Empire Built on Bargains Remakes the Working World

Chastity Ferguson kept watch over four sleepy children late one Friday as she flipped a pack of corn dogs into a cart at her new favorite grocery store: Wal-Mart.

The Wal-Mart Supercenter, a pink stucco box twice as big as a Home Depot, combines a full-scale supermarket with the usual discount mega-store. For the 26-year-old Ferguson, the draw is simple.

"You can't beat the prices," said the hotel cashier, who makes $400 a week. "I come here because it's cheap."

Across town, another mother also is familiar with the Supercenter's low prices. Kelly Gray, the chief breadwinner for five children, lost her job as a Raley's grocery clerk last December after Wal-Mart expanded into the supermarket business here. California-based Raley's closed all 18 of its stores in the area, laying off 1,400 workers.

Gray earned $14.68 an hour with a pension and family health insurance. Wal-Mart grocery workers typically make less than $9 an hour.

"It's like somebody came and broke into your home and took something huge and important away from you," said the 36-year-old. "I was scared. I cried. I shook."

Wal-Mart gives. And Wal-Mart takes away.

Part 2: Scouring the Globe to Give Shoppers an $8.63 Polo Shirt

When Wal-Mart Stores Inc. demands a lower price for the shirts and shorts it sells by the millions, the consequences are felt in a remote Chinese industrial town, at a port in Bangladesh and here in Honduras, under the corrugated metal roof of the Cosmos clothing factory.

Isabel Reyes, who has worked at the plant for 11 years, pushes fabric through her sewing machine 10 hours a day, struggling to meet the latest quota scrawled on a blackboard.

She now sews sleeves onto shirts at the rate of 1,200 garments a day. That's two shirts a minute, one sleeve every 15 seconds.

"There is always an acceleration," said Reyes, 37, who can't lift a cooking pot or hold her infant daughter without the anti-inflammatory pills she gulps down every few hours. "The goals are always increasing, but the pay stays the same."

Reyes, who earns the equivalent of $35 a week, says her bosses blame the long hours and low wages on big U.S. companies and their demands for ever-cheaper merchandise. Wal-Mart, the biggest company of them all, is the Cosmos factory's main customer.

Reyes is skeptical. Why, she asked, would a company in the richest country in the world care about a few pennies on a pair of shorts?

The answer: Wal-Mart built its empire on bargains.

Damn good, appropriately dramatic journalism.

O'Reilly Is a Disaster

From Atrios from The Forward (subscription):

The self-described enemy of political spin, Fox News commentator Bill O'Reilly, appears to have been overstating his charitable efforts on behalf of Israel. During a March 10 appearance on the Don Imus radio show, O'Reilly said, ‘I did a benefit in L.A. four weeks ago where we raised millions of dollars for Israel.’ O'Reilly and his publicist told Business Week media editor Tom Lowry that the benefit he "chaired" in Los Angeles had raised $40 million for Israel. But a few inquiries into the event in question raise questions about the account given by O'Reilly, who routinely refers to his television show as the ‘no spin zone.’ It turns out that O'Reilly was the paid keynote speaker, not the volunteer chair, of a February dinner that raised $3 million for the Jewish Federation of Greater Los Angeles.

April 5, 2004

Bad News in Iraq

Obviously, it's really scary what's going on in Iraq right now. From what I understand, it seems like there's not just big trouble in the Sunni Triangle, but in several Shi'a dominated areas in the South. Once insurgents become indistinguishable from civilians, it becomes impossible to win. I fear we're close to that point.

Kerry Fundraising Juggernaut

The Kerry campaign raised over $50 million during the first quarter of this year, which appears to be slightly less than Bush/Cheney raised this quarter but more than any other quarterly take in campaign history, shattering the previous Democratic record, Howard Dean's $15 million 4th quarter haul last year.

Democrats have only dreamed such amounts in the past, so its total impact is unpredictable. I think it's reasonable to assume, however, that Kerry's pre-convention fundraising goal will be reset from $80 million to $120 million or more, which will probably force Bush/Cheney to reset their own goals as well. The sad fact is that BC can probably raise as much as they want, but the more they have to raise for themselves the less they can raise for the Republican Party.

This is going to be a hell of a race.

Update.

March Job Growth

The March job growth numbers are very good for the country. Unfortunately, they're also good for the Bush/Cheney campaign, so good that it will be very tough for Kerry to win if the next few months show similar growth.

If you're looking to put things in some fair anti-Bush perspective, though, the Center for American Progress has some good talking points here, as well as in this article, appropriately entitled "Bush Jobs Record Still Worst Since President Hoover." The most compelling fact is that March is the very first month of above average employment growth during the Bush administration, while there were 34 months of above average employment growth during Clinton's tenure.

The Young JFK

This is an illuminating article (subscription only, sorry) from The New Republic about John Kerry's high school experience at his
blue- blood boarding school, St. Paul's.

Kerry was very much an outsider at St. Paul's and is not popular to this day among his fellow 1962 graduates. Here's how he was different:
1) He was Catholic to their Episcopalian, a huge deal in those days.
2) He was relatively poor compared to the rest of them.
3) He was openly ambitious and dedicated to achievement, which ran against a culture that appreciated assumed but understated superiority.
4) He was a Democrat and most of them were Republicans.

Deserved or not, Kerry garnered a reputation for being selfish. He idolized JFK, and when he started signing his own papers "JFK," his classmates joked it stood for "Just For Kerry."

I certainly wasn't there, but I don't care what those little Republican blue-blood pricks had to say then or what they have to say now.

Seriously, I think it's really ironic that Kerry is tagged within the community of aristocrats as being one of us, and outside the community of aristocrats as being one of them. I think these silly tags account for some of the vague anti-Kerry sentiment I've heard. The good news is that the perceptions haven't had much practical effect so far – he always seems to have considerable appeal to working class people, based on exit poll data from his elections in Massachusetts and in the Democratic primaries.

Revisiting Clinton on Counterterrorism

I didn't realize until stumbling across it a couple days ago that this January 21, 1999 NY Times interview of Bill Clinton by Judith Miller and William Broad existed, but I think it adds to any substantive discussion about Clinton's pre-9/11 thoughts and actions on counterterrorism.

Some general things that strike me:

1)    Keep in mind that January 21, 1999 was the same day Senator Dale Bumpers gave a summarizing defense of Clinton at the Senate impeachment trial. Clinton's decision to focus on the subject of counterterrorism when all media eyes and ears were on him suggests he counted counterterrorism as a high national priority. It's clear that Americans were not very concerned about terrorism in 1999, but it's equally clear that Clinton was concerned.

2)    The interview centered mostly on chemical, biological, and cyber terrorism, and Clinton, unsurprisingly, was impressively nimble in his grasp of the details and in explaining what his administration was doing to keep us safer. It's evident that Clinton had a sophisticated understanding of international terrorism, and he directed his principals to make it a high priority as well.

3)    It's not fair to suggest that President Bush should have been as on top of things pre-9/11 as Clinton was after nearly 7 years in office. (Clinton's being "on top of things" doesn't mean he didn't make some crucial mistakes.) But even after 9/11, it's still not clear to me exactly what President Bush himself understands about international terrorism, other than the fact that "they hate freedom." Perhaps after he speaks to the 9/11 commission, which should happen within the next couple weeks, we'll gain some more insight.

April 2, 2004

On Late Night With Conan O'Brien last night, there was this skit (called "In the Year 2000" if you're familiar with the show) in which Conan and Al Franken predict the future. These two jokes were especially funny, particularly the second one:

Conan: President Bush will throw out the first pitch at the St. Louis Cardinals opening game. Bush will then pitch the rest of the game when he insists that replacing him now would send the wrong message to our enemies.

Al Franken: A mad scientist will switch the brains of Bill O'Reilly and Al Franken. As a result, Bill O'Reilly will support liberal causes and Al Franken will masturbate to old John Wayne movies.

On page 229 of Against All Enemies, Richard Clarke writes:

As I briefed Rice on al Qaeda, her facial expression gave me the impression that she had never heard the term before, so I added, "Most people think of it as Usama bin Laden's group, but it's much more than that. It's a network of affiliated terrorist organizations with cells in over fifty countries, including the U.S.."

Last week, Rice apologists like Rush Limbaugh and Instapundit pushed a quote from an October 4, 2000 radio interview with Rice. They claim it's exculpatory, but it's actually a red herring:

We don't want to wake up one day and find out that Osama bin Laden has been successful on our own territory.

Rice is firmly on record talking about bin Laden pre-9/11!
(I think there's at least one other example of Rice talking about bin Laden publically pre-9/11, too.) Clarke's a fool, they said. End of issue.

But they're factually wrong. Clarke didn't say he got the impression Rice wasn't familiar with bin Laden, only that she wasn't familiar with al Qaeda. Clarke even acknowledges within the passage that Rice was familiar with bin Laden (why else would he use bin Laden's name to help define al Qaeda for her?). He simply had the impression, based on her reaction upon hearing the term in their first meeting together, that she wasn't familiar with the al Qaeda network. As far as I know, there's not a single fact in the public record that contradicts that impression.

Suggesting bin Laden and al Qaeda are the same thing is kind of like saying everybody familiar with David Beckham is familiar with Real Madrid. bin Laden and al Qaeda are obviously two different things, and any sophisticated discussion about counterterrorism has to treat al Qaeda as an entity bigger than bin Laden, even if it does include him.

While a casually informed political observer would be well aware of bin Laden before 9/11, al Qaeda wasn't nearly as well known. I knew exactly who bin Laden was before 9/11, but my memory of what I knew about al Qaeda is sketchy – I know I didn't know how to spell it, and I doubt Condoleezza Rice did, either.

While you expect people like Limbaugh or Instapundit to numbskullingly assert bin Laden and al Qaeda are the same, it's infuriating when mainstream journalists like NBC's Lisa Meyers, who cited the red herring quote as directly contradictory of the "incredible charge" by Clarke, spread the same misinformation. It's completely unprofessional that she was so sloppy in her fact checking or her thought process or whatever it is that led her to get it wrong.

Although I can't be as sure about The New York Times Michiko Kakutani, here's what Kakutani wrote in the NY Times Against All Enemies review:

In addition some of his interpretations of other people's reactions are clearly patronizing and off base: for instance his observation that when he first briefed Condoleezza Rice, Mr. Bush's national security adviser, about Al Qaeda, "her facial expression gave me the impression that she had never heard the term before" is contradicted by public statements that she made about the terrorist group before joining the Bush White House.

Kakutani doesn't mention what those statements are, but if, as I suspect, the statements are those that refer to bin Laden and not al Qaeda, it's dead inaccurate and the NY Times should note the correction.

I've done a Lexis-Nexis search and I can't find Rice mentioning the al Qaeda network before 9/11. I've sent an email to Kakutani asking for a citation. I'll let you know which one of us is wrong.

There were 52 U.S. military fatalities and 327 wounded in Iraq in March, the most in each category since last November. This represents a disturbing spike from February, when we had 20 fatalities and 147 wounded.

If you read anything more ironic this year than this NY Post Dubya's Teary Dad Hits Critics article, please send it to me:

March 31, 2004 -- SAN ANTONIO, Texas - An emotional former President George H.W. Bush yesterday defended his son's Iraq war and lashed out at White House critics.

It is "deeply offensive and contemptible" to hear "elites and intellectuals on the campaign trail" dismiss progress in Iraq since last year's overthrow of Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein, the elder Bush said in a speech to the National Petrochemical and Refiners Association annual convention.

Actually, this may be more ironic. Or perhaps more postmodernly ironic may be the way to put it.

The week before last, The Daily Show created a Bush-Cheney mock ad that showed Kerry snowboarding from one side to the other while a mock sinister voiceover talked about him flip flopping "to the left, and back to the right, and to the left again..." You get the idea.

Wednesday, Bush-Cheney vixen Karen Hughes was a guest, and, without any hint that she knew it was satire, sincerely complimented Jon Stewart for having come up with one of the most meaningful sound bites in the campaign with that ad. Stewart said something like, "Um, that's called irony," but I still don't think Hughes got it.

Creepy.

Speaking of The Daily Show, which seriously might be the best political show in the country right now, Jon Stewart played the Robert Novak segment from Crossfire that I had mentioned last week. The one in which Novak implies Richard Clarke is a racist because he's critical of Condoleezza Rice.

This was Stewart's beautiful on-air response:

That's the thing about Robert Novak – he's always fighting injustice. He sees a white man attacking a black woman, that's when he's gotta say something. Or when he hears about a CIA agent still working undercover – he has to reveal that person. That's Robert Novak: a douchebag for liberty.

In case you forgot, Novak is the journalist/puppet who senior Bush administration officials used to reveal CIA operative Valerie Plame's identity in order to intimidate her husband, Joe Wilson.

Joe Wilson's book, The Politics of Truth: Inside the Lies that Led to War and Exposed My Wife's CIA Identity--A Diplomat's Memoir, comes out April 30. You may want to pre-order.

99% of what comes out of Rush Limbaugh's mouth is completely silly, but I sure hope he's right about this:

I'm told, by the way, that the Woodward book makes this one [Clarke's book] look like, you know, an afternoon in the sand box.

The Woodward book is called Plan of Attack and it'll be excerpted in The Washington Post and get the 60 Minutes treatment before it's released in bookstores late this month. You may want to pre-order that one, too.

The books exposing all the White House scumbaggery come out a lot quicker than they did in Nixon's era, eh?

I got an inspirational email today from a new reader, Lisa Wilkinson. She writes:

As I drove to work this morning, through Chicago’s westside ghetto, past schools that have nowhere to turn to support Bush’s (Shrub’s) unfunded “No Child Left Behind” mandate, I was getting up my usual head of defeat Shrub froth and I had an idea. A small one. I’m going to start posting the “Bush Administration Fact of the Day” in my dining room window. I live on a corner, so it gets some viewing space.

The stakes in this election could not be higher. If anybody else out there has ideas like Lisa's, please implement them. Democrats are more energized than ever. "Small" activism like that can tip the scales.

April 1, 2004

On page 32 of Richard Clarke's Against All Enemies, this paragraph is part of a passage that has received a lot of attention, but I've yet to hear anybody point out the emboldened sentence, which I find to be its most telling (and amusing):

Later, on the evening of the 12th, I left the Video Conferencing Center and there, wandering around the Situation Room, was the President. He looked like he wanted something to do. He grabbed a few of us and closed the door to the conference room. "Look," he told us, "I know you have a lot to do and all... but I want you, as soon as you can, to go back over everything, everything. See if Saddam did this. See if he's linked in any way..."

So here it is, in those precious hours after September 11 when able public servants like Clarke were hustling non-stop to check off items on what must have been endless to-do lists, the most powerful man on the planet was wandering around looking for something to do. It's farcical, but do you doubt it for a second?

It certainly squares with other insider accounts of Bush's aloofness as a leader. I think of the part in The Price of Loyalty George W. Bush, The White House, and the Education of Paul O'Neill, in which O'Neill, Bush's former Treasury Secretary, describes Bush's conduct at a cabinet meeting about a looming energy crisis:

"This meeting was like many of the meetings I would go to over the course of two years," he recalled. "The only way I can describe it is that, well, the President is like a blind man in a roomful of deaf people. There is no discernible connection."

You can also find the following amusement in the index of Price of Loyalty:

Bush, George W.
    lack of knowledge of, 58, 80, 88, 97, 126-27, 148-49

That's not Jay Leno making some joke. Those are the impressions of his own Secretary of the Treasury.

Okay, Bush people would say O'Neill was a disgruntled former employee. Maybe you should listen to one of Bush's supporters, say, someone like Richard Perle. Perle, of course, is a hardline conservative who pushed for the invasion of Iraq since the Clinton Administration. You'd be hard pressed to find a talk show on which Perle hasn't appeared as a Bush surrogate. Here's what he told Ron Suskind, author of Price of Loyalty (page 80):

"The first time I met Bush 43, I knew he was different. Two things became clear. One, he didn't know very much. The other was that he had the confidence to ask questions that revealed he didn't know very much. Most people are reluctant to say when they don't know something, a word or term they haven't heard before. Not him. You'd raise a point, and he'd say, 'I didn't realize that. Can you explain that?' He was eager to learn."

If you replace "Bush 43" with "my nearly 3 year old nephew, Finn," that could be me talking. Although I think I may have more respect for Finn's intelligence than Perle has for Bush's. The scariest part is, though, that Perle himself isn't exactly the sharpest knife in the drawer. I actually saw him badly beaten in a debate with dennis kucinich! once. So we've got a leader of the free world getting answers from a right wing ideologue/moron like Richard Perle not just on complicated questions about internal Iraqi politics and the like, but also to basic questions like "What's this Bill of Rights?".

We're in a lot of trouble.

This Kerry campaign email could portend a stunning announcement next month:

Our campaign is just hours away from the critical quarterly fundraising reporting deadline. And thanks to people like you, we are on the verge of raising more money in a single quarter than any campaign in history.

Maybe they were being sloppy (although I doubt it), but notice they don't say "any Democratic campaign in history," but "any campaign in history."

That record currently belongs to the Bush/Cheney campaign for their 3rd Quarter 2003 haul, $49.5 million. If Kerry comes even close to that total, we're looking at a whole new ball game. Democrats have never had anything like that kind of money to spend, not even in '96 when Clinton was our incumbent President.