Easter Lemming Liberal News

A Bigger, Badder Sequel to Iran-Contra

The Players -- What is already on the public record suggests the existence of a disciplined network of zealous, like-minded individuals. Centered in Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Douglas Feith's office and around Richard Perle in the Defense Policy Board in the Pentagon, this exclusive group of officials operates under the aegis of Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, Pentagon chief Donald Rumsfeld and Vice President Dick Cheney.

This network includes high-level political appointees, such as Undersecretary of State John Bolton, who are scattered around several other key bureaucracies, notably in the State Department, the NSC staff, and most importantly, in Cheney's office.

Cheney, of course, has a direct link to Bush (and all the heads of agencies), while his powerful chief of staff and national security adviser, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, also enjoys exceptional access and influence. Indeed, the two men's frequent visits (as well as those of another DPB member, former Republican House Speaker Newt Gingrich) to CIA headquarters before the Iraq war have been cited by retired and anonymous intelligence officers as having actively intimidated analysts who disagreed with the more sensational assessments about Iraqi weapons of mass destruction and ties to al-Qaeda produced by Feith's office.

The Agenda -- Recent stories expose a consistent pattern of manipulation and exaggeration of intelligence in order to justify the war against Iraq and, more recently, efforts to hype evidence about the alleged threat posed by Syria.

It appears that certain elements in the Pentagon leadership, specifically Douglas Feith, are trying to sabotage sensitive talks between Teheran and the State Department to promote cooperation over al-Qaeda and other pressing issues affecting Afghanistan and Iraq.

The rightwing Washington Times reported on Friday that certain "high-level circles within the administration" are hoping to persuade Chinese military officers to co-sponsor a coup to overthrow North Korean leader Kim Jong Il.

The Result -- "What I saw was aberrant, pervasive and contrary to good order and discipline." - Lt. Col. Karen Kwiatkowsky.

In an interview with IPS, she insists that her views of Feith's appointees and operations were widely shared by other professional staff. Quoting one veteran career officer "who was in a position to know what he was talking about," Kwiatkowsky says, "What these people are doing now makes Iran- Contra look like amateur hour."

Gary Permalink on 8/16/2003

Iraqis’ 10 tips to beat blackout heat

Iraqis who have suffered for months with little electricity gloated Friday over a blackout in the northeastern United States and southern Canada and offered some tips to help Americans beat the heat.

Gary Permalink on 8/16/2003

The Economic News

After 13 rate cuts, the perception is the Fed is nearly powerless to stimulate the economy. Backup responsibility for restoring growth falls to the Federal Government. They are tasked to implement tax cuts and spending increases that would best increase growth and minimize suffering. The current administration has so far chosen to fight two expensive wars of dubious merit, to give the bulk of tax cuts to people who do not need it and are least likely to spend it, and to give the rest of the world economy ample incentive to withdraw their support from an increasingly dysfunctional dollar-centered system of global trade and finance. We'll now throw higher rates onto this pile of woes and see what happens, but as $800 billion in home equity was extracted in 2002, this has the potential to be a very big straw.

AND Twilight Zone Economics By PAUL KRUGMAN

The best guess is that growth in the second half of the year will be faster than in the first half, possibly high enough to create some jobs, but not high enough to make jobs easier to find. In other words, in terms of what matters most, the economy will continue to deteriorate.

All this is, of course, an indictment of our economic policy — a policy that has managed the remarkable trick of generating immense budget deficits without giving the economy much stimulus.

Gary Permalink on 8/16/2003

Bush, GOP Can Block All Investigations

USAToday -- The GOP has the White House and both Houses of Congress, the law that provided for special counsels has expired, the administion has beaten back the GAO through GOP judges on the courts. This leaves no way to call the GOP and the administration on anything.

Normally a free press would provide some check but mostly they have become lap dogs grateful to only repeat official stories they are told.

Gary Permalink on 8/16/2003

White House reverses course, won't cut troops' pay

The Pentagon's support for the idea of rolling back "imminent danger pay" by $75 a month and "family separation allowances" for the American forces by $150 a month collapsed after a story in some editions of The Chronicle Thursday generated intense criticism from military families, veterans groups and Democratic candidates seeking to unseat President Bush in 2004.

"We support extending the pay provisions," White House spokesman Jimmy Orr said late Thursday afternoon after a day in which Bush's political opponents bashed him for what they said was a callous attitude toward combat troops who are still suffering casualties.

Link from Cursor.org.

Gary Permalink on 8/16/2003

John Dean - Bush Whitehouse Tactics "Worse than Nixon"

John Dean -- On July 14, in his syndicated column, Chicago Sun-Times journalist Robert Novak reported that Valerie Plame Wilson - the wife of former ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV, and mother of three-year-old twins - was a covert CIA agent. (She had been known to her friends as an "energy analyst at a private firm.")

Why was Novak able to learn this highly secret information? It turns out that he didn't have to dig for it. Rather, he has said, the "two senior Administration officials" he had cited as sources sought him out, eager to let him know. And in journalism, that phrase is a term of art reserved for a vice president, cabinet officers, and top White House officials.

On July 17, Time magazine published the same story, attributing it to "government officials." And on July 22, Newsday's Washington Bureau confirmed "that Valerie Plame ... works at the agency [CIA] on weapons of mass destruction issues in an undercover capacity." More specifically, according to a "senior intelligence official," Newsday reported, she worked in the "Directorate of Operations [as an] undercover officer."

Bits and pieces of information have emerged, but the story is far from complete. Nonetheless, what has surfaced is repulsive. If I thought I had seen dirty political tricks as nasty and vile as they could get at the Nixon White House, I was wrong. The American Prospect's observation that "we are very much into Nixon territory here" with this story is an understatement.

Indeed, this is arguably worse. Nixon never set up a hit on one of his enemies' wives.

Gary Permalink on 8/16/2003

The Real Deep Divide in America

Americans are three times as likely to believe in the Virgin Birth of Jesus (83 percent) as in evolution (28 percent).

Religion remains central to American life, and is getting more so, in a way that is true of no other industrialized country, with the possible exception of South Korea.

Americans believe, 58 percent to 40 percent, that it is necessary to believe in God to be moral. In contrast, other developed countries overwhelmingly believe that it is not necessary. In France, only 13 percent agree with the U.S. view. (For details on the polls cited in this column, go to www.nytimes.com/kristofresponds.)

I'm not denigrating anyone's beliefs. And I don't pretend to know why America is so much more infused with religious faith than the rest of the world. But I do think that we're in the middle of another religious Great Awakening, and that while this may bring spiritual comfort to many, it will also mean a growing polarization within our society.

Gary Permalink on 8/16/2003

Great Dem Forum in Philly

As I watched the forum on CSPAN I looked for two things. First - what candidates looked like on television. A lot of people cast their votes by TV impressions.

Winners - Dean - short but engaging, Kerry - Lincolnesque, Gephardt - OK.

Losers - Sharpton - sounds great, looks freaky, Kucinich - sounds strident - poor on looks , Lieberman - looking much worse recently, jowly, needs a voice coach so he doesn't sound whiney.

Better than usual but still not presidential - Braun. She is a nice lady who would make a good Senator, ambassador, or Secretary of HUD.

So I thought three "looked" presidential.

Edwards and Graham were no shows to the forum but from other events they are OK except sometimes Edwards looks too young, particularly when he is badly prepared on a question.. Wesley Clark, who will get in this race, also looks presidential.

Second, were the candidate stands on the issues personally agreeable, did they seem mainstream enough to be winable and did they make good short points.

Dean, Kerry and perhaps Gephardt got the nod from me. Sharpton and Kucinich were too left for the general election and Lieberman too right for the Democrats but OK in the general election. Braun does not quite have the caliber of the others but would be OK if she was more prepared and perhaps more forceful in her arguments.

I could support all the candidates stands with minor disagreements except for one thing, Kerry, Gephardt, and Lieberman continue to make Bush's case on Iraq for him. That is a losing position. It may not be the mainstream position yet but to see Kerry in particular have great stands on all the issues and then say that Bush wasn't misleading the American people was too much.

I think Gephardt would make a great Secretary of Labor but I wonder if his more liberal stands than Dean on health care and trade would work in the election. Kerry is very good except he doesn't have the fire and the problem with the war.

Rob Kall of OpEdNews.com went in person and noted Dean's organization and his enthusiasm although Kall may be a Kucinich supporter.

Gary Permalink on 8/16/2003

Bustamante Leads Terminator

The California Field Poll found 25 percent of registered voters opted for Bustamante followed by 22 percent for Schwarzenegger.

The other candidates trailed in single digits: State Sen. Tom McClintock took 9 percent; businessman Bill Simon won 8 percent; former baseball commissioner Peter Ueberroth received 5 percent; all three are Republicans. Independent and columnist Arianna Huffington got 4 percent, and Green Party candidate Peter Camejo received 2 percent.

Gary Permalink on 8/16/2003

Gore Gave a Great Speech - Pundits Are Smirky Boys

Daily Howler - Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

Part 4

Gary Permalink on 8/16/2003

Salon On Dean

I haven't decided to vote for Howard Dean, but after 10 days watching his campaign, I promise never to say he's unelectable again.

"I think Dean has to move beyond his base, attract institutional players, work the mainstream. But his campaign is telling us that the left is going to have a seat at the table again. That's the message to the DLC: Get used to it. Stop saying liberals are no longer good enough for the Democratic Party. Somebody needs to knock 'em a new asshole." - Donna Brazile, veteran liberal activist and 2000 Gore campaign manager.

One thing I don't worry about is that his lefty base doesn't know what he stands for, and will bolt when they realize he's a moderate. His base knows exactly how moderate he is. I interviewed dozens of his liberal devotees, and they all know the not-so-liberal aspects of his record. Someone at the Meetup lamented his staunch pro-Israel stance; several people I met said they differed with him on the death penalty. Brilliant says he has issues with Dean on all of his more conservative stands. "But he's not afraid to say what he thinks. Dean asks the fundamentally sound questions and does not have an ideological answer that trumps reason, as Bush does."

More from Joan Walsh:

The Democratic Weaselship Council

If Democratic centrists want to repeat Bill Clinton's success, they should stop attacking fellow Democrats as "far left" and concentrate on uniting the party against Bush

Gary Permalink on 8/16/2003

The Anti-Bush

Don't like the tone but Novak makes some good points.

This "he can't win" argument did not stop Barry Goldwater, George McGovern, Ronald Reagan or Jimmy Carter from being nominated, and the last two actually were elected. The party faithful liked the purity of those candidates and did not care about electability, and the same might be proved true of the Anti-Bush.

Gary Permalink on 8/09/2003

White House For Sale Dot Com

UK Guardian -- Public Citizen, a consumer advocacy organization founded by Ralph Nader in 1971, launched the Web site, www.WhiteHouseForSale.com, on Friday that focuses on major Bush fund-raisers who bundle $2,000 contributions from many individuals.

Gary Permalink on 8/09/2003

Where do people get the idea Howard Dean's a liberal?

The WSJ reserves judgement on Dean.

Who's the pied piper of this lefty brigade? Howard Dean, a physician, son of a Wall Street executive, whose chief passion is fiscal moderation; as governor of Vermont, the Washington Post chronicled last weekend, he was "a careful, even cautious steward."

No, what the Dean complaints really are about is a battle more intrinsic to presidential politics than ideological struggles: outsiders versus insiders, insurrectionists versus the establishment.

This also explains his appeal, ventures Hamilton Jordan, who brilliantly ran the successful Jimmy Carter insurgency in 1976. "When these other guys gang up on Dean and say, 'He's not one of us,' it's not hurting him. When you give voters a chance to vote against the political establishment it's very attractive."

Like any outsider, Howard Dean should expect more than the usual share of scrutiny and attacks. And it'll start soon.

Gary Permalink on 8/09/2003

Dean shares No. 2 spot in Democratic race, poll shows

Former Vermont governor Howard Dean, riding a blitz of media publicity and talk show buzz, has surged into the top tier of 2004 Democratic presidential candidates, a USA/TODAY/CNN/Gallup Poll shows.

In 10 days, Dean has climbed from fourth place to a tie for second, passing a highly touted rival, Sen. John Kerry of Massachusetts.

Connecticut Sen. Joe Lieberman, who was Al Gore's running mate in 2000, leads the Democrat pack. Dean and Missouri Rep. Richard Gephardt tie for second. Kerry is next, dropping 3 points in 10 days.

Analysts say Lieberman's lead in the national poll is largely a result of his being better known than the other candidates. But even his lead has slipped.

Gary Permalink on 8/09/2003

Newsweek Gets Letters

READERS FROM ALL over the political spectrum question the assumption that Dean is all that far-left leaning. Other readers objected to portraying Dean’s success as a potential threat to his party in the coming elections. “I would just like to remind Mr. Alter that former president Carter and his staff were quite joyous when Ronald Reagan became the Republican nominee. Shall I say more?”

Gary Permalink on 8/09/2003

Is Afghanistan Getting A Billion Dollar Kissoff?

The Pentagon plan will probably do what it is supposed to do: The new reconstruction projects will be appreciated and Karzai will be elected, putting the face of U.S. success on a nation-building project just about the time the administration asks for more international help in Iraq. Afghanistan will be no safer from the internal unrest that feeds terrorism a year from now than it is today, but it had better figure out how to cope with that problem on its own.

Gary Permalink on 8/09/2003

Canadian Journalist Notes Jessica Lynch's Spin Doctored Stories

In the exploitation of Jessica Lynch's name, what did U.S. military officials know and when did they know it? How much of the official misinformation was deliberate and how much was merely the skillful manipulation of confusion?

Gary Permalink on 8/09/2003

Ganging Up on Howard Dean

Democratic Presidential hopeful Howard Dean is getting the treatment. The acerbic physician and former governor of Vermont has raised more money and gained more popularity than expected. As a result, the pundits who examine political candidates' viability have turned their gaze on him.

The Washington press corps can be like a gang of mean junior high school kids. But there is more than fickle dislike for a certain personality in the media tarring of Dean. Dean is an outsider. As the most identifiably progressive candidate-or at least the one with the most money, since Dennis Kucinich, who is running to the left of Dean, hasn't raised millions and has been almost completely ignored by the press-Dean sticks out. The "Democratic wing of the Democratic Party," which Dean claims to represent, is not much in evidence in Washington these days.

To the inside-the-Beltway media, which lives and dies by connections, contacts, and conventional wisdom, "there is something appealing and at the same time unappealing about someone who comes from the outside," says Hart. "They need to take an extra look. They need to neutralize him by showing that this guy isn't ready for prime time." That's because, at bottom, what most stands out about Dean to Washington insiders is that he's not an insider himself. That threatens their sense of superiority-not just of the insider candidates in the field, but also of the press corps that follows and anoints them. "Political veterans, insiders, would never get a pop quiz," says Hart.

Newsweek recently ran a piece that described Dean getting annoyed and sarcastic with members of the national press corps.

"He doesn't seem to like journalists, and the feeling is mutual," Hart says. That leads the press to jump on unflattering stories, even if they're not quite accurate. A public stumble that might be overlooked in another candidate could become the dreaded Jimmy-Carter-attack-rabbit episode. Look for more anecdotes about Dean losing his cool and getting his facts mixed up, says Hart.

The public, leaving aside gatekeepers like Tim Russert, are less interested in a candidate who can pass a rigged, on-the-spot civics test than they are in someone with the brains and guts to aggressively take on George W. Bush.

Gary Permalink on 8/09/2003

California Grizzly Mindreading and Bush as FDR

uggabugga

Further down is Bush vacation time (about 40%) compared to the average American's - 8.1 days after a year on the job, 10.2 days after three years, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Gary Permalink on 8/09/2003

The Dean Announcement

How to announce a candidacy.

I believed that, by running for President, I could raise the issues of health care for every American and the need to focus on early childhood development. I wanted to bring those issues to the forefront of the national debate. And I wanted to balance the budget to bring financial stability and jobs back to America.

Most importantly, I have wanted my party to stand up for what we believe in again.

The tax cuts that are the radicals' weapon are not about tax cuts for working people. They are not even about tax cuts for millionaires. Instead, the tax cuts are designed to destroy Social Security, Medicare, our public schools and our public services through starvation and privatization.

This administration has shown disdain for allies, treaties, and international organizations alike.

We are the great grassroots campaign of the modern era, built from mouse pads, shoe leather and hope.

The great lie spoken by politicians on platforms like this is the cry of "elect me and I will solve all your problems."

The truth is the future of our nation rests in your hands, and not in mine.

Gary Permalink on 8/09/2003

Clark Would Complicate GOP Plans

If the general decides to run, he'll be behind the eight ball in Iowa and New Hampshire, as well as in the crucial fund-raising game. But Clark may be gunning for a vice-presidential slot, where he could draw voters hesitant about a too-left-leaning Dean or Kerry candidacy.

Why should Republicans be scared of him? "In the way Reagan brought over Southern Democrats, Clark could bring over moderate Republicans. The right-wing should be worried because of Clark's swing-state appeal."

He's whip-smart, silver-haired handsome, articulate and a retired general. He sounds like an Arkansas good-ol'-boy, but was first in his West Point class and a Rhodes scholar at Oxford University.

He saw combat in Vietnam, commanded NATO forces and fared well toe-to-toe with Tim Russert of NBC's "Meet the Press," perhaps the ultimate test of candidate battle-worthiness.

Many Dean supporters like him as a VP. There is a 90% chance he will run.

Gary Permalink on 8/09/2003

Democrats Frustrated with Party Even as Candidates Gain Visibility

The Complete Pew Report

Fully 70% of Democrats say there is no chance they will vote to reelect the president, up from 62% a month ago.

About three-in-ten Democratic voters (29%) say there is a "good" or "some" chance they will vote for Dean, a significant gain since July (19%). But Dean remains an unknown figure to most Democratic voters (55%, down from 65% last month).

The Democratic presidential picture changes when viewed from the perspective of only those Democratic voters who are familiar with the candidates. In that case, Kerry, Dean, Gephardt and Lieberman all draw comparable levels of potential support.

Kerry, Dean, Gephardt and Lieberman also elicit similar levels of voter enthusiasm.

Gephardt and Graham win the most enthusiasm among conservative Democrats at this point in the race, but both are struggling to appeal to liberals.

Dean receives more enthusiastic support among war opponents than the other candidates. A third of Democratic voters who oppose the war say there is a good chance they will vote for Dean, compared with 30% for Kerry, 27% for Gephardt, and 26% for Lieberman.

Sharpton Polarizes

Preferences Not Strongly Influenced by Party Criticism

Bush Jr. War Bounce Smaller Than Bush Senior
(Chart)

More Want Greater Focus on Economy

Bush's Lead Slips to 5% from 14% during war

Iraq: Growing Pessimism

People want to Sacrifice Tax Cuts for Security, Health Care

Most Favor Raising Taxes for Health Care

Most Find Medicare Benefit Too Skimpy

Gary Permalink on 8/09/2003

Huge Crime Wave in Baghdad

The morgue, which handles all violent or suspicious deaths, recorded 10 gunfire deaths in July 2002. This July it handled 470, said the director, Dr. Fa'aq Amin Bakr.

Some 5,000 police officers are back on the streets of Baghdad, says Bernard Kerik, the former New York police commissioner overseeing the rebuilding of the police force. He says Iraqi officers are handling 80 percent of cases, with Americans taking care of the rest.

But police officers complain about their equipment. Although the Americans have given them radios and a few bulletproof vests, there aren't enough pistols and ammunition is scarce. At one station responsible for an area with a population of 700,000, officers have one working vehicle — a bus.

Gary Permalink on 8/09/2003

Klingons For Dean

Photo

Gary Permalink on 8/09/2003

Bush, Rove Behind CA Recall, Schwarzo Run

As early as April 2001, according to the New York Times, Rove-Bush political operatives met with Schwarzo to encourage him to run. “That would be nice,” Rove said when asked about the prospect of a Governor Schwarzenegger. "That would be really, really nice."

Schwarzo, as it happened, backed off; the GOP ended up running one of its even wackier right-wingers, and Davis was re-elected. This made the Republicans extremely angry, sources tell MWO. Since the days of Richard Nixon and then Ronald Reagan, the GOP has assumed that the Golden State rightfully belongs to them. It doesn’t anymore – but they will not have it that way.

And so, after the 2002 election, the White House went into overdrive on a plan to topple Governor Davis in defiance of the clear will of the California electorate.

The plan was ingenious. First, turn the looting of California by Dubya’s buddies at Enron to the White House’s advantage and blame Davis for the energy crisis that hit California a little while back. Remember "Kenny Boy" Lay and the rest of the Enron thieves? Well, except for a few fall guys, they’re all still sitting pretty – and now, cleverly, the White House had decided to make Gray Davis one of the fall guys. Second, blame Davis for the collapse of the dotcom boom and the drying up of federal funds that has come with Dubya’s tax cut for his rich corporate sponsors. Third, get the Republicans in the California state legislature to block the two-thirds majority needed to pass the state’s budget – and then demonize Davis as the perpetrator.

Enron, Tax Cuts, Obstructionism: it’s Bush’s latest political trifecta! Or so the White House is hoping and scheming.

Who, in California, has been coordinating the "recall" power-grab? Why, according to the Sacramento Bee, it’s none other that Bush’s chief California political operative, financier Gerry Parksy."

Joining Parsky, straight out of Karl Rove’s office, is long-time Bush strategist and Rove minion Mindy Tucker.

BuzzFlash is reporting the same story.

Gary Permalink on 8/09/2003

When Supreme Court Justice Thomas Lied

In the Loop -- Justice Clarence Thomas, during his confirmation hearings 12 years ago, Senate Democrats grilled him for his views on a constitutionally protected right to privacy.

Under questioning from Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr. (D-Del.), Thomas said that his "view is that there is a right to privacy in the 14th Amendment."

Former senator Dennis DeConcini (D-Ariz.), a key moderate, focused on the issue in a floor speech announcing his support for Thomas.

But in the court's ruling in June striking down anti-sodomy laws, Thomas dissented, saying: "And just like Justice Stewart, I 'can find [neither in the Bill of Rights nor any other part of the Constitution a] general right of privacy,' " quoting Potter Stewart's dissent in the Griswold case.

Also The Flap Gets Named

And now, in no particular order, the 10 winners of the Loop Name that Flap Contest to give President Bush's WMD problem a catchy name. Entries were judged by national staff reporter Ceci Connolly and national copy desk chief Vince Rinehart.

• The Blair Glitch Affair -- Janine Patry, a director of marketing in Mukilteo, Wash. There were several other variations, such as the Bush-Blair Affair and the Blair-Bush Project.

• Rice Capades -- Arlington consultant Steve Hudak.

• Embelligence -- Washington public affairs adviser Michael P. Gillis.

• Iraqniphobia -- James Keller, who works at the Defense Logistics Agency's office of operations research and resource analysis. (There were many later entries with variations on the theme.)

• Dubya-M-D -- Again, multiple entries. The first was from student Graham Fortier of Chevy Chase, whose entry was the Dubya-M-D Scandal. Later entries, including one by legendary TV writer Herb Sargent of New York, the first supervising writer for "Saturday Night Live," simplified it to just Dubya-M-D.

• Nointelpro -- Los Angeles lawyer and multiple contest winner Mark Steinberg, who also suggested "Perle Jam."

• Uraniumania -- The first of a number of related entries came from Chicago copywriter AngelaWells.

• Litewater -- Arlington patent examiner Martin Angebranndt. (A play on the Clinton scandal and on heavy water -- a missing WMD component -- and on the substance of the evidence.)

• Shock-and-Err -- Mark Miller of Silver Spring, who works in public relations.

• Brits Set Me Up -- Washington lawyer and former federal prosecutor Pamela B. Stuart, playing on Mayor for Life Marion Barry's poetic phrase.

Gary Permalink on 8/09/2003

Texas Democrats, Republicans take battle to courts

Houston Chronicle - AP and a better story from their reporters.

All nine [Texas Supreme Court] justices are Republicans, and one, Priscilla Owen, has had her nomination to the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals blocked three times by U.S. Senate Democrats.

Additionally, Attorney General Greg Abbott, who is representing Perry and Dewhurst, was a Supreme Court justice before resigning in 2001 to run for his current office.

Austin American-Statesman -- Gov. Rick Perry and Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst asked the Texas Supreme Court to compel the Senate Democrats to return from New Mexico and attend a special session to redraw the state's congressional districts. Just before that, the 11 Democrats filed a lawsuit in a Travis County state District Court arguing that the governor has no right to call a special session on redistricting and asking for a ruling that the Senate cannot have them arrested if they return to Texas.

Gary Permalink on 8/09/2003

NPR Considering Restricting Journalists From Appearing on Fox

NPR is in the process of writing its own ethics guide. It can't come too soon because of issues such as this one where Liasson appeared to abandon her role of reporter. Situations such as this one inevitably come back to haunt both the reporter and NPR.

Last October 3, Mara Liasson on FOX News Sunday commented on the arrival of Congressmen Bonior and McDermott in Baghdad prior to the start of the war:

These guys are a disgrace. Look, everybody knows it's 101, politics 101, that you don't go to an adversary country, an enemy country, and badmouth the United States, its policies and the president of the United States. I mean, these guys ought to, I don't know resign.

The New York Times happens to have a very succinct code of conduct for its journalists that could just as easily apply in this case:

102. In deciding whether to make a radio, television or Internet appearances, a staff member should consider its probable tone and content to make sure they are consistent with Times standards. Staff members should avoid strident, theatrical forums that emphasize punditry and reckless opinion-mongering. Instead we should offer thoughtful and retrospective analysis. Generally a staff member should not say anything on radio, television or the Internet that could not appear under his or her byline in The Times.

Gary Permalink on 8/09/2003

The Rumsfeld and Woolsey Plan to Attack North Korea

A senior Pentagon adviser has given details of a war strategy for invading North Korea and toppling its regime within 30 to 60 days, adding muscle to a lobbying campaign by U.S. hawks urging a pre-emptive military strike against Pyongyang's nuclear facilities.

Less than four months after the end of the Iraq war, the war drums in Washington have begun pounding again. A growing number of influential U.S. leaders are talking openly of military action against North Korea to destroy its nuclear-weapons program, and even those who prefer negotiations are warning of the mounting danger of war.

Some analysts predict that North Korea could test a nuclear warhead by the end of this year — an event that could cross the "red line" that would provoke a U.S. attack.

Military conflict in the Korean peninsula could trigger a catastrophe, not only because of the suspected presence of nuclear bombs in North Korea, but also because of the 11,000 North Korean artillery weapons along the border that could inflict death and destruction on millions of people in the South Korean capital, Seoul, which is within artillery range of the North's guns.

The plan would include 4,000 daily air strikes against North Korean targets, the deployment of cruise missiles and stealth aircraft to destroy the Yongbyon nuclear plant and other nuclear facilities, the stationing of U.S. Marine forces off the coasts of North Korea to threaten a land attack on Pyongyang, the deployment of two additional U.S. Army divisions to bolster South Korean troops in a land offensive against North Korea, and the call-up of National Guard and Reserve units to replace U.S. combat forces that are currently bogged down in Iraq and Afghanistan.

WSJ -- We believe the use of air power in such a war would be swifter and more devastating than it was in Iraq. We judge that the U.S. and South Korea could defeat North Korea decisively in 30 to 60 days with such a strategy.

Links from cursor.org.

Gary Permalink on 8/09/2003

More Important New York Times

After being known for months by independent analysts, this finally shows up in America's newspaper of record: Engineering experts from the Defense Intelligence Agency have come to believe that the most likely use for two mysterious trailers found in Iraq was to produce hydrogen for weather balloons rather than to make biological weapons, government officials say. If you read the article, presumably because Bush and Cheney have made these "mobile biolabs" part of their argument, they are still not accepting this.

The retired ambassador who voiced doubts about a reported Iraqi weapons program says he has become a target of a campaign to discourage others like him from going public.

Companies, hoping to win a new round of contracts to rebuild the Iraqi oil industry, say the government has already arranged for Halliburton to get most of the work.

The Bush administration persistently manipulates scientific data to serve its ideology and protect the interests of its political supporters, according to a House committee report.

Some Democratic strategists fear that the party is out of touch with a large swath of black voters — those 18 to 35 years old who grew up after the civil rights movement.

Episcopal Church leaders approved a resolution stating that local dioceses are within the bounds of the church when they allow the blessing of unions of gay or lesbian couples.

Gary Permalink on 8/09/2003

Latest Krugman

New York Times -- The Montreal Protocol, signed in 1989, shows how science and policy can work hand in hand. Research showed that certain chemicals were destroying the ozone layer, which protects us from ultraviolet radiation, so governments agreed to ban the use of those chemicals, and the ban appears to be succeeding.

But would the people now running America have agreed to that protocol? Probably not. In fact, the Bush administration is trying to reinterpret the agreement to avoid phasing out the pesticide methyl bromide. And on other environmental issues — above all, global warming — America's ruling party is pursuing a strategy of denial and deception.

Before last year's elections Frank Luntz, the Republican pollster, wrote a remarkable memo about how to neutralize public perceptions that the party was anti-environmental. Here's what it said about global warming: "The scientific debate is closing [against us] but is not yet closed. There is still an opportunity to challenge the science." And it advised Republicans to play up the appearance of scientific uncertainty.

But as a recent article in Salon reminds us, this appearance of uncertainty is "manufactured." Very few independent experts now dispute that manmade global warming is happening, and represents a serious threat. Almost all the skeptics are directly or indirectly on the payroll of the oil, coal and auto industries. And before you accuse me of a conspiracy theory, listen to what the other side says. Here's Senator James Inhofe of Oklahoma: "Could it be that manmade global warming is the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people? It sure sounds like it."

Gary Permalink on 8/09/2003

The Big Dem Helper Next Year

Labor, environmental and women's organizations, with strong backing from international financier George Soros, have joined forces behind a new political group that plans to spend an unprecedented $75 million to mobilize voters to defeat President Bush in 2004.

The organization, Americans Coming Together (ACT), will conduct "a massive get-out-the-vote operation that we think will defeat George W. Bush in 2004," said Ellen Malcolm, the president of EMILY's List, who will become ACT's president.

ACT already has commitments for more than $30 million, Malcolm and others said, including $10 million from Soros, $12 million from six other philanthropists, and about $8 million from unions, including the Service Employees International Union.

In a statement describing his reasons for giving $10 million, Soros said, "I believe deeply in the values of an open society. For the past 15 years I have focused my energies on fighting for these values abroad. Now I am doing it in the United States. The fate of the world depends on the United States and President Bush is leading us in the wrong direction."

Gary Permalink on 8/09/2003

Lying for Bush

Latest example is Fred Barnes of the Weekly Standard on Fox's Special Report.

The Daily Howler seems to be the start of the chain of links.

Al Gore said we’re being deceived. Fred Barnes quickly made him a prophet.

Gary Permalink on 8/09/2003

Job cut announcements up 43%

U.S. job-cut announcements jumped in July to their highest level in three months, an outplacement firm said Tuesday, another sign that the longest job-market slump since World War II continues.

Gary Permalink on 8/09/2003

Controversial Article on Bush - The Accidental Radical

The Atlantic -- "In 2009, George W. Bush retired to his ranch in Texas. His nation and his party were not reluctant to let him go. Today he lives in relative isolation, a figure in equal parts imposing and tragic. Bush, like Woodrow Wilson and Lyndon Johnson, had aimed high and achieved much. But, like them, he had let his impatience and impetuousness get the better of him. He was energetic and assertive, admirably so, but, like more than a few politicians before him, he mistook boldness for sustainability. He pushed the system and the public too hard. He had campaigned originally as a 'humble' man, and in the end humility was forced upon him."

Bush's mentality seems more like that of an entrepreneurial CEO than of a conventional politician: He tends to look for strategies that cut to the heart of the problem at hand, rather than strategies that minimize conflict. "He doesn't like 'small ball'—that's his term," one of his aides says.

The point of this article is not to predict failure for George W. Bush, much less to wish it. The point is to dramatize the stakes he is playing for. He is risking his presidency, his nation's fiscal and geopolitical strength, and the conservative movement. If he wins, he is FDR. If he loses, he is LBJ.

Gary Permalink on 8/09/2003

Bush Approval Still Falling - Now 53%

President George W. Bush's approval rating has dropped to 53 percent, a five-point slide in a month, as an increasing number of Americans say the U.S. economy is more important than the war on terror, a new poll shows.

The survey of 2,528 adults from July 14 through Aug. 5 gave Bush a five-point edge -- 43 percent to 38 percent -- over an unnamed Democrat if the 2004 presidential election were to be held now, according to the poll by the Washington-based Pew Research Center for the People and the Press.

Gary Permalink on 8/09/2003

John Nichols: Joe Lieberman just doesn't get it

"There are millions of Americans who want an alternative to the Republicans on issues of trade, foreign policy and many other issues. But in too many contests, Democrats are not offering voters that alternative."

Over time, all of the contenders for the party's 2004 Democratic presidential nomination have come to the conclusion that Feingold reached. Except one.

Harry Truman warned that, when given a choice between a Republican and a Democrat imitating a Republican, voters would not hesitate to vote for the real thing. And, with his support for the Bush administration's agenda on foreign policy and trade - fundamental issues not just for Democratic activists but for millions of disenchanted citizens who need to be drawn to the polls if the Democratic nominee is to prevail in November 2004 - Lieberman has positioned himself as precisely the pale imitation of Bush that grass-roots Democrats fear will doom them to a repeat of 2002.

Gary Permalink on 8/09/2003

Gore's Moveon Speech

Gore's speech blasting Bush's consistent pattern of misleading the American people could easily have been given by two Democratic candidates - Dean and Graham. It could not have been given by Lieberman.

Here is the pattern that I see: the President's mishandling of and
selective use of the best evidence available on the threat posed by
Iraq is pretty much the same as the way he intentionally distorted
the best available evidence on climate change, and rejected the best
available evidence on the threat posed to America's economy by his
tax and budget proposals.

In each case, the President seems to have been pursuing policies
chosen in advance of the facts -- policies designed to benefit
friends and supporters -- and has used tactics that deprived the
American people of any opportunity to effectively subject his
arguments to the kind of informed scrutiny that is essential in our
system of checks and balances.

The administration has developed a highly effective propaganda
machine to imbed in the public mind mythologies that grow out of the
one central doctrine that all of the special interests agree on,
which -- in its purest form -- is that government is very bad and
should be done away with as much as possible -- except the parts of
it that redirect money through big contracts to industries that have
won their way into the inner circle.

Gary Permalink on 8/09/2003

Jim Hightower Book Tour

Jim Hightower, America¹s most popular populist and all around political sparkplug, is back with
THIEVES IN HIGH PLACES: They¹ve Stolen Our Country and It¹s Time to Take It Back.

Starting on Monday, August 18, he'll take his uniquely optimistic message of grassroots politics to audiences across the country with a 25-city tour.

It is not all bad news, THIEVES IN HIGH PLACES highlights the grassroots organizations that are making a difference in this country, standing up to corporations, fighting to keep libraries open and taking on Wal-Mart.

Gary Permalink on 8/09/2003

Someone recognized my fondness for poetry

Elusive Oasis
By Michael Douglas Carlin

Deficit Spending
National Debt
Vanishing Treasures
Age of Regret

Armies Invading
Presidents Lying
Bombs are Exploding
Soldiers are Dying

Starving for Truth
Thirsting for Reason
Absence of Honor
In the Valueless Season

Treadmill of Progress
Where will it lead
Decadent Structures
While Refugees Bleed

Future Uncertain
Enemy Unseen
Humanity's Challenge
The SUV Dream?

Salvation of Man
Future Looks Bright
Hell's Frozen Tundra
Reflecting the Light

Agenda of Fear
Freedom is Hexed
Free Speech is Dead
Democracy's Next

© 2003 Michael Douglas Carlin. All Rights Reserved.

Gary Permalink on 8/09/2003

REPUBLICAN LIE ABOUT QUORUM BUSTING EXPOSED

Harris County Demeocratic Party Chairman Gerry Birnberg: According to the Associated Press, in 1993, eleven Republican senators ran and hid to prevent a senate vote on a bill supported by the Democrats, redrawing line for judicial districts. They had tried, unsuccessfully, to pull off quorum busting walkouts in 1983 and 1991, but in 1993, they were temporarily successful in keeping the Texas Senate from acting on a bill they opposed by running and hiding, denying a quorum. And of course, the founder of the Republican Party once jumped out of a second story window in the state capitol to bust a quorum and prevent a vote on a bill Democrats were trying to pass. So the claim the Republicans would never do any such thing as engage in quorum busting techniques is just plain false.

Websters New Collegiate Dictionary defines a "demagogue" as one who "makes use of popular prejudices and false claims in order to gain power." Sure sounds like Tom DeLay, Rick Perry, David Dewhurst, and a bunch of other Republicans to me.

Gary Permalink on 8/09/2003

The war according to David Hackworth

Salon Premium - The "most decorated veteran" has the real analysis of the Iraq quagmire.

The mistake in Vietnam was we failed to understand the nature of the war and we failed to understand our enemy. In Vietnam we were fighting World War II. Up to now in Iraq we have been fighting Desert Storm with tank brigade attacks. The tanks move into a village, swoop down, the tank gunner sees a silhouette atop a house, aims, fires, kills and it turns out to be a 12-year-old boy. Now, the father of that boy said, "We will kill 10 Americans for this." This is exactly what happened in Vietnam; a village was friendly, then some pilot turns around and blows away the village, the village goes from pro-Saigon to pro-Hanoi.

American troops in Iraq are complaining of basics like clean clothes, hot food and mail from home. Is there anything wrong with the Pentagon's famous supply chain?

This goes back to the shitty estimate on the part of Rumsfeld. He did not provide enough troops or the logistical backup, because his Army was not staying, it was coming home. So who needs a warehouse full of shit?

One letter I got today, written by a sergeant in a tank unit, said that of its 18 armored vehicles -- Bradley or Abrams -- only four are operational. The rest were down because of burned-out transmissions or the tracks eaten out. So it is not just the shitty food and bad water -- a soldier can live with short rations -- but spare parts, baby! If you don't have them, your weapons don't work. Most of the resupply is by wheeled vehicles, and the roads and terrain out there is gobbling up tires like you won't believe. Michelin's whole production for civilians has been stopped [at certain plants] and have dedicated their entire production to the U.S. military in Iraq -- and they can't keep up!

What would you tell Rumsfeld if you could talk to him?

In mid April, I wrote a piece that asks for Rumsfeld to be fired, to be relieved. I took enormous heat for that. He went in light, on the cheap, he has misunderstood the whole war, he should go ... Rumsfeld is an arrogant asshole. That's a quote, by the way.

Gary Permalink on 8/08/2003

FAIR - The Great WMD Hunt and more

FAIR - The American media went along with repeated false claims.

The Op-ED Spectrum Narrows more in America. The center-right slant in media citations of think tanks continued in 2002, with conservative groups receiving 47 percent of last year’s citations, centrists 41 percent and progressives 12 percent--the least representation for the left since 1998.

Bush Uranium Lie Is Tip of the Iceberg

Gary Permalink on 8/08/2003

Al Gore Moves On

Going far beyond a September 2002 speech where he warned that unilateral action in Iraq could disrupt the war on terrorism and warranted further debate, Gore offered a stinging condemnation of Bush's leadership on the war. "It is obvious to most Americans that we have had one too many wars in the Persian Gulf," Gore said. "As a result, too many of our soldiers are paying the highest price for the strategic miscalculations, serious misjudgments, and historic mistakes that put them and our nation in harm's way." The only effect the invasion had on Al Qaeda, he said, was to "boost their recruiting efforts."

Gore centered his stinging and often tongue-in-cheek remarks around the false impressions the Bush administration employed while pursuing their political objectives. Early in the speech, Gore recalled widespread misconceptions that were used to build support for toppling the Iraqi government, such as Saddam's connection to the 9/11 attacks and Al Qaeda and the threat of weapons of mass destruction ending up in the hands of terrorists. "When you put it all together," Gore said, "it was just one mistaken impression after another." He added that Congress and the news media exacerbated the problem by failing to hold the Administration accountable to the American people.

The harsh criticism of Bush's justification and handling of the war placed Gore in sharp contrast with recent statements by the centrist Democratic Leadership Council and their poster boy Joe Lieberman, who recently warned Democrats opposed to or "ambivalent" about the war of leading the party into "the political wilderness." In comparison, Gore's statements emphasized the foreign policy platform articulated by Democratic candidates such as Howard Dean and Bob Graham--tough on terrorism, opposed to preventive attack and committed to multilateralism. To regain credibility in the world community, Gore promoted internationalizing the Iraqi peacekeeping force, scrapping the plan to build new nukes at home and rapidly boosting efforts to decrease America's dependency on Persian Gulf oil by developing alternative energy technologies.

Gore said the President's "ideologically narrow agenda had seriously divided America," while accusing Bush's most ardent supporters of launching a kind of "civil cold war" against dissenters. To loud applause, Gore called on Bush to "rein in" Ashcroft and Rumsfeld, vigorously uphold civil liberties and scrap the Pentagon's proposed "Total Information Awareness" program, which he compared to something out of George Orwell's 1984. Despite the questionable information Bush receives from his advisors, Gore concluded that the real cause of policy obfuscations "may be the President himself."

Though his speech primarily dealt with foreign policy priorities, Gore also described a similar pattern of deception used to advance the President's economic policies. He targeted Bush's assertion that tax cuts would unleash investment and create new jobs, increase growth and revenue without swelling the deficit, and benefit middle-income families. Provocatively, Gore cited Nobel Prize winning economist George Akerlof in the German newspaper Der Spiegel: "This is the worst government the US has ever had in its more than 200 years of history."

Despite speculation that he might re-enter the presidential race, Gore insisted he won't run. Instead, he praised current Democratic presidential candidates and announced that his endorsement would come later in the political cycle. Yet Gore, whose fiery rhetoric drew a number of standing ovations, clearly seemed pleased to be back on the radar. "We have work to do," he concluded, before jumping into the crowd to shake hands with the enthusiastic audience. After eight years of political timidity in the White House and a failed presidential campaign, Gore finally gave the people something to cheer about.

Gary Permalink on 8/08/2003

The Threat To Civil Liberties

Accused "dirty bomb" terrorist suspect Jose Padilla has been isolated in a naval brig for more than a year, ever since President George W. Bush classified him as an "enemy combatant" and called him a "threat to the nation."

But last week, nine thick friend-of-the-court briefs were filed in Padilla's appellate case, arguing against what they see as just as serious a threat to the nation: Bush's assertion that he can, as commander-in-chief, order the military to detain an American citizen picked up on U.S. soil indefinitely without charges, a trial or access to a lawyer.

Gary Permalink on 8/07/2003

Loeb offers an Independent Analysis of Kwiatkowski

Kwiatkowski's charges, which tend to confirm reports and impressions offered to the press by retired officers from other intelligence agencies and their still-active but anonymous former colleagues, are likely to make her a prime witness when Congress reconvenes in September for hearings on the manipulation of intelligence to justify war against Iraq.

According to Kwiatkowski, the same operation that allegedly cooked the intelligence also was responsible for the administration's failure to anticipate the problems that now dog the US occupation in Iraq, or, in her more colorful words, that have placed 150,000 US troops in "the world's nastiest rat's nest, without a nation-building plan, without significant international support and without an exit plan".

Kwiatkowski's comments echo the worst fears of some lawmakers, who have begun looking into the OSP's role in the administration's mistaken assumptions in Iraq. Some are even comparing it to the off-the-books operation run from the National Security Council (NSC) during the Ronald Reagan administration that later resulted in the Iran-Contra scandal.

Gary Permalink on 8/07/2003

Top 30 Bush - Iraq Lies

Just a handy reference.

Gary Permalink on 8/07/2003

Pentagon Analyst Speaks Out Again

After making news by denouncing the poor planning in Rumsfeld's DOD for occupying Iraq, Karen Kwiatkowski now writes about Occupied America.

There are some interesting differences between living in neoconservative occupied America and neoconservative occupied Iraq. Our neoconservatives came in under cover of presidential appointment and moved catlike from cozy American Enterprise Institute conference rooms into even cozier offices in the E-Ring of the Pentagon, to sunny floors of the State Department, and into the baroque curves and corners of the Old Executive Office Building next door to the White House.

Iraq’s neoconservatives came to town smelling of diesel sucked in through the air conditioners of their Toyota LandRovers bumping up behind a line of U.S. Army tanks.

The results have been much the same in both cases. Foreign and domestic policy for the respective countries must seem, to the average American as to the average Iraqi, to be designed and implemented by space aliens.

In occupied America, we have not yet been delivered into that Joplinesque freedom of having nothing left to lose. We still think that our government tells the truth, to the extent that if we observe the government lying, we – like abused women at the violent hands of some drunken boyfriend – make excuses. He didn’t really mean it, it was for my own good, he’s really a good man when he isn’t drinking or having a bad day.

While Leiberman accuses quasi-fiscally conservative Dean of being too far left, and Bush wonders if Colin Powell will really quit and what that does to his 2004 chances if the man starts talking about what really happened this year, occupied America cowers, hoping the beatings will stop soon.

All this and she has a link to Phillip K. Dick's The Man in the High Castle!

Rumsfeld lost another analyst, we gain another voice warning of the insanity in Washington. Her archives are here and here (with discusion).

She apparently came to the same conclusions at the same time as I did with more insight and more first-hand experience. Here she is on 27 August 2002:

Richard Perle believes that a US military campaign in the heart of Arab Muslim culture will defeat the secular dictators and unpopular royals in the region, and free the democratic people there to become unified peaceful neighbors and good trading partners with the U.S. I mean, this isn't the Crusades, or even extension of Zionism. This is just good business, right?

Osama, on the other hand, well… shares this vision, up to and including the unification part, with one minor insight that Richard Perle has ignored. Unilateral offensive action by the U.S., ill defined in its objective and unrelated to a clear and present danger, is consequently impossible to intellectually defend or to materially prosecute as a just war. Such a military action, "war" if you will, the word cheapened by its promiscuous usage in this country, will indeed unify the Arab peoples in a way only unjust attacks by a superior military force can do. This is a consequence Osama cheers as having the added attraction of fueling anti-U.S. politics in the new "democracies." Perle apparently ignores this side effect with either a "not gonna happen" or "so what," illustrating a casual regard for consequences shared by megalomaniacs, wherever we find them.

Osama, on his own or with al Qaeda, could not effect the crumbling of Western democratic practices and moral values of justice. The attacks on New York and Washington were not enough to break or even weaken the spirit of Americans or America. But by sparking an illogical frenzy of unfulfilled ambitions amongst key advisors to the executive office, pressing to bypass democratic or moral concerns long treasured in America if not always practiced, Perle and company provide the missing link for Osama's dreamscape.

Gary Permalink on 8/07/2003

Not a [expletive] bomb threat you [expletives]

David Socha, a 17-year-old on his way to Hawaii from Paxton, Massachusetts, was arrested last week in Boston and charged with a felony for having a note in his gym bag which read: "[Expletive] you. Stay the [expletive] out of my bag you [expletive] sucker. Have you found a [expletive] bomb yet? No, just clothes. Am I right? Yea, so [expletive] you."

According to WCVB, he was charged with "making a terrorist threat." Now, I know I don't have the ability to read tea leaves like today's prosecutors and "law" makers, but I do know that there's no terrorist threat contained in that note.

I finally took the link from cursor.org.

Gary Permalink on 8/07/2003

Perle Breaking the law - again

During and after his chairmanship, Perle used his insider status to demand fees for appearances on a number of foreign broadcasts, which included British, Canadian, Japanese and South Korean television.

Gary Permalink on 8/07/2003

U.S. Marks Hiroshima Anniversary By Holding Top Secret Summit to Discuss Expanding Nation’s Nuclear Arsenal

Democracy Now!

Gary Permalink on 8/07/2003

Holding Iraqi Scientists

It keeps them away from the media where they will embarass Bush.

Gary Permalink on 8/07/2003

Interesting Newsweek chat about Dean

Jonathan Alter is one of the best political analyst/writers.

Gary Permalink on 8/07/2003

29 Nations - Only 15,500 Troops

THE United States is having to organise temporary military task forces to plug the gaps in its Iraq garrison because allies round the world have promised only half of the 30,000 peacekeeping troops the Pentagon needs to ease the pressure on its overstretched army.

Foreign peacekeepers are due to start arriving in the next two weeks, but even when the 15,500 men pledged by 29 countries from Albania to the Ukraine are on the ground, there will not be enough of them to allow the planned rotation home of all combat-weary American units.

We needed a lot more than that.

Gary Permalink on 8/07/2003

Three crucial days for Gephardt in September

Major undecided unions convene on Sept. 8, 9 and 10; Democratic nomination may hang in the balance

A decision by the labor confederation not to unite behind one candidate would leave each union free to back its own favorite.

Dean will continue to run even if labor unites behind Gephardt.

Gary Permalink on 8/07/2003

Democrats sense opportunity in '04

According to a survey by Ipsos and the Cook Political Report, only 40 percent of respondents said they would definitely vote to re-elect Mr. Bush, and 44 percent said the Bush administration exaggerated evidence about Iraqi weapons of mass destruction.

But 54 percent approved of Mr. Bush's performance overall, according to the poll, which had an error margin of plus or minus 2.2 percentage points.

In an NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll, Mr. Bush drew 45 percent to 36 percent for a generic Democrat, though he beat Mr. Dean, Mr. Lieberman, and Mr. Kerry by at least 15 points each. The error margin is plus or minus 3 percentage points.

The fragmented Democratic opposition is helping Mr. Bush, analysts said, at least for now. But when the Democratic field eventually narrows to a single candidate, the race will be reshaped.

"It's getting back to reality," said Erik Smith, a spokesman for Mr. Gephardt. "Once you have one nominee head to head with Bush, it'll even up even more. We're a 50-50 country."

Gary Permalink on 8/07/2003

As jobs flow overseas, voices speaking up

"It is collusion between corporations that pour big money into politics and Congress that passes legislation enabling the corporations to replace American workers with substitutes, thereby keeping all wages artificially low to enhance corporate profits."

Sounds like it came from a labor leader or someone in the Howard Dean wing of the Democratic Party.

But it didn't. The speaker in question: [very conservative pundit] Phyllis Schlafly.

"The big companies are following a new business model: Pay Chinese wages, but charge U.S. prices."

Gary Permalink on 8/07/2003

Ashcroft Orders Tally Of Lighter Sentences

Will Enable Washington Political Appointees to Appeal More Rulings and "Blacklist" Judges

Rehnquist said that gathering information on sentencing practices could help Congress make decisions, but also "could amount to an unwarranted and ill-considered effort to intimidate individual judges in the performance of their judicial duties."

Gary Permalink on 8/07/2003

What Bush administration is doing appears not to be working

Houston Chronicle Editorial

President Bush says his policy of large and repeated tax cuts targeted toward those who pay the most taxes will create jobs. So far there is little evidence his tactic is working.

Bush administration officials argue that the job losses would have been worse without the tax cuts, but it is difficult to imagine more catastrophic losses under a single president. Unless the United States adds about 4 million jobs to its economy in the next 16 months, Bush will rack up the worst employment score of any president since Herbert Hoover.

The Houston Chronicle!

Gary Permalink on 8/07/2003

Bush Shaky With Independents; May Be Trouble In '04 Election

Investor's Business Daily

Last month, Bush's rating on the economy surged to 76% among Republicans, but fell to 31% among independents. With Democrats, it held steady at 18%.

Bush doesn't have to worry about a Republican challenger, but a surging Howard Dean might claim more independents than Bush can afford.

Gary Permalink on 8/07/2003

Arianna's Big Play

The California recall election may be a right-wing power grab, but Arianna Huffington, now officially a candidate, insists it's also a progressive opportunity.

Gary Permalink on 8/07/2003

Perry tries to defend 1993 GOP walkout

"They need to find a better argument than that," Perry said, referring to the 10-year-old quorum bust in which 11 Republicans -- then the minority in Texas politics -- countered a racially tinged judicial redistricting resolution by going into a closed-door session at the same time the Senate was set to convene and vote on the measure.

Then-Lt. Gov. Bob Bullock announced that the Senate could not convene because no quorum was present. Only two of the 13 Republican senators were on the floor. The sound of buzzing emerged from the chamber, in a reference to the 1979 "Killer Bees" rebellion.

The walkout only lasted a day. To date, no such legislation has passed.

Gary Permalink on 8/07/2003

Latest predictions show that climate change is going to be far worse than earlier forecasts

The leading leftwing thinktank examines the next steps beyond the Kyoto agreement under which the UK has agreed to cut its greenhouse gas emissions by 12.5% and the EU by 8%. But runaway global warming is likely unless the US, the world's biggest polluter can be persuaded to take the issue seriously, the report says.

Geoff Jenkins, the head of the climate prediction programme at the Hadley Centre for Climate Change, says that when soil inevitably starts to break down, it releases the carbon stored in the last 150 years - thus increasing the rate of global warming.

Scientists predict temperatures to rise 5C (9 F) in the northern hemisphere by 2100. The new calculations show it could be 8C (14.4 degrees F). Scientists believe this would be disastrous, and to prevent even higher rises developed countries must cut emissions by 80%.

Gary Permalink on 8/07/2003

Jobs Go Global

Looking for a high-paying tech job? Good luck. Offshore outsourcing—the exporting of jobs that were once done in-house—has been on the increase, to the point where a report by Gartner Inc., an information technology research firm, calls the movement of tech-related jobs an “irreversible megatrend.”

By 2004, predicts another Gartner study, more than 40 percent of companies will have already shipped some tech-related work overseas or will be testing the idea.

Forrester [Research Inc.] came out with a study that said that 3.3 million white collar jobs will go overseas by 2015. It’s hard to forecast out one year, let alone 12, so I’m a bit wary of real numbers. But I do recognize that it is real, and is gaining momentum every day.

Gary Permalink on 8/07/2003

California Recall Becomes Circus

Barnum and Bailey Selling Tickets

Gary Permalink on 8/07/2003

Dean In 2004 Meetup

Meetup.org to find Deaners

Gary Permalink on 8/06/2003

"Give 'em hell, Howard" may be our best chance to throw Bush overboard.

On Board the Dean Machine

"No man should be allowed to be president who does not understand hogs, or hasn't been around a manure pile," Harry Truman said.

His campaign buttons say, "GIVE 'EM HELL, HOWARD." And that's just what he plans to do. Howard Dean knows about hogs, and he's been around a manure pile. You learn about these things when you've been governor of a rural state like Vermont for 11 years. So when Dean comes to Iowa--a place where the men wear mesh-back John Deere caps without irony and the women make pies as good and pure as their hearts, where the stench of cow manure in the morning smells like victory--he can speak the language.

Every stump speech Dean delivered last week during a breathless two-day barnstorm of 10 towns and cities spread over 10 counties ended with the same rousing exit line: "The biggest lie told to people like you by people like me at election time is that I can solve every problem in America. That's not true. But the truth is the power to change this country is in your hands, not mine."

That line invariably sets off Fourth of July fireworks in the hearts of those who hear it. Last week it earned Dr. Dean repeated standing ovations.

What do you make of the theory that the real motivation behind the Bush tax cuts and the deficits they're racking up is to bankrupt the government so it can't afford human services and social welfare programs?

"I think that's true. I think the purpose of these tax cuts is to de-fund the federal government."

You've backed up your opposition to the Iraq war by talking about the way the Bush administration has been undercutting veterans while talking about supporting the troops.

"The president is a complete hypocrite when it comes to the veterans. He goes to a veterans' hospital and announces that they are going to have the best healthcare in the world. But in fact the day before he cut the healthcare benefits of 164,000 veterans."

Great story.

Gary Permalink on 8/06/2003

Cuomo Calls on Gore

Labeling the Democratic voices from the presidential field "babble," prominent Democrat Mario Cuomo is calling on former Vice President Al Gore to enter the race for the party's nomination.

Cuomo's comments came one day before Gore was to deliver a speech at New York University on the Bush administration's handling of the U.S.-led war against Iraq and other national security issues.

Democratic presidential candidate Howard Dean didn't take Cuomo's appeal to Gore too seriously.

"I don't know, Mario is having a little fun," Dean said in an interview with The Associated Press. "I think Al Gore is a terrific human being. ... I think Mario is stirring the pot. That's what he does and he does it well."

Cuomo, who was leading in the polls in late 1991 when he decided against a race for the 1992 Democratic presidential nomination, also criticized Lieberman for saying that Howard Dean was too liberal to win the White House.

"I think that's an unfortunate confession by Lieberman of weakness," Cuomo told WROW-AM about the Connecticut senator.

Gary Permalink on 8/06/2003

Patriot Act 2 Getting a Bad Name? Rename it the Victory Act!

Attorney General John Ashcroft is hitting the road to rally support for the Victory Act, which would further expand his powers to go after Al Qaeda and narcoterrorists, the Daily News has learned.

Ashcroft will starting pushing the Vital Interdiction of Criminal Terrorist Organizations Act later this month in a 10-day, 20-state Victory tour that includes a stop in New York.

Gary Permalink on 8/06/2003

Independents Looking At Dean

Ultimately, the question is not whether Mr. Dean is moderate enough — it's really whether he's radical enough to challenge the categories of American politics. To do so, he must construct an electoral coalition that goes beyond the left and beyond narrow Democratic partisanship, even as he pursues the Democratic nomination.

Independent voters could figure prominently in the primary season, as 22 states hold open primaries where independents may vote. Critical early states like New Hampshire and South Carolina are among them. Mr. Dean's participation in the "Choosing" process and his recent endorsement by former independent Gov. Lowell Weicker of Connecticut create bridges to those voters. But Mr. Dean must also have an authentic cause with which to inspire them.

George W. Bush won the election as a compassionate conservative. Perhaps Mr. Dean could win it as a moderate radical.

Gary Permalink on 8/06/2003

Some doubts about Graham

The advantage Graham had among the Democratic presidential candidates was that he could preobably take Florida, greatly simplyfying the electoral college race. This recent poll has cast some doubts on that. The poll is inconclusive as it did not ask if any other Democrats could do better in Florida.

If Graham were the Democratic nominee for president and the election were held today, he would lose to President Bush 51 to 39 percent, according to the poll.

The survey, with a margin of error of four percentage points, shows that Graham's run for the presidency -- and perhaps his sharp attacks on the Bush presidency -- has cost Graham points with Florida voters who crossed party lines to support him over four decades as a state legislator, two-term governor and senator.

Gary Permalink on 8/06/2003

Former President Carter to be Tried for Peace Crimes

The Onion -- An international peace-crimes tribunal commenced legal proceedings against former U.S. President Jimmy Carter for alleged crimes against inhumanity Monday.

Yale University political-science professor Janet Hargrove said the evidence against Carter is overwhelming.

"Carter's defense team will have a difficult task defending him against these peacemaking accusations," Hargrove said. "Carter's signature is right there on the Camp David accords between Egypt and Israel. His decision to return control of the Panama Canal to Panama continues to impede U.S. military intervention in the region even today, and his influence on the SALT II treaty is a matter of public record. He may have been in part responsible for the temporary nuclear détente between the U.S. and the Soviets."

While much of his peacemaking took place during his term of office, the years following Carter's presidency have included peace-mongering missions in Ethiopia, Sudan, North Korea, and the former Yugoslavia.

"Jimmy Carter's political career includes a laundry list of anti-war-making offenses," said chief prosecutor Charles B. Simmons. "Carter's record of benevolence, diplomacy, and respect for human life is unrivaled in recent geopolitical history. For millions, the very sight of his face evokes memories of his administration's reign of tolerance."

"Carter is one of the worst enemies the forces of destruction have known since Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and his non-violent rampages of the '50s and '60s," Simmons said. "Even today, in his capacity as an ex-president, [Carter] continues his pursuit of non-aggression. He must be stopped now, before another terrible war is avoided and more lives are saved."

On behalf of the Bush administration, Vice-President Dick Cheney expressed regret over Carter's alleged crimes.

"We are all aware of the missteps that occurred during the placid days of the Carter administration," Cheney said. "It was simply a matter of bringing the justice to light. Thankfully, the process has begun, and this chapter in our nation's history is finally being brought to a close."

Gary Permalink on 8/06/2003

Hollings Set to Retire, Swipes at Bush

This AP story was removed from most US newspapers I checked.

Democratic Sen. Ernest "Fritz'' Hollings of South Carolina used his retirement announcement to lash out at President Bush, calling him "a good fraternity brother'' and the weakest president he's seen in his half century of public service.

"I say 'weak president' in that the poor boy campaigns all the time and pays no attention to what's going on in Congress,'' Hollings said. "Karl Rove tells him to do this or do that or whatever it is. But he's out campaigning.''

The retirement of Hollings has Republicans jumping at the chance to take over the seat in the increasingly GOP-leaning state.

The announcement was carried live and debated by callers on CSPAN.

Gary Permalink on 8/06/2003

Hard To Imagine How Wrong Wolfowitz Is

The real problem with American nation-building is that American officials don't give it much thought, don't read up on its history, don't appear even to recognize that there is a history from which lessons can be learned.

Wolfowitz -- It's hard to conceive that it would take more forces to provide stability in post-Saddam Iraq than it would take to conduct the war itself and secure the surrender of Saddam's security forces and his army. Hard to imagine.

To see just how wrong Wolfowitz was, look at Dobbins' account of how many troops have been needed to create stability in previous postwar occupations. Kosovo is widely considered the most successful exercise in recent nation-building. Dobbins calculates that establishing a Kosovo-level occupation-force in Iraq (in terms of troops per capita) would require 526,000 troops through the year 2005. A Bosnia-level occupation would require 258,000 troops—which could be reduced to 145,000 by 2008. Yet there are currently only about 150,000 foreign (mainly American) troops in Iraq—about the same as the number that fought the war.

To match the stabilization effort in Kosovo, Iraq should also be protected by an international police force numbering 53,000. Yet those 150,000 soldiers now in Iraq are also doing double-duty as cops.

In other words, had Wolfowitz talked with Dobbins (or any other high-ranking officials who'd been involved in nation-building), he would have learned that stabilizing post-Saddam Iraq would take at least twice the number of forces that were being amassed to defeat Saddam's army.

Gary Permalink on 8/06/2003

Global warming may be speeding up, fears scientist

One of Europe's leading scientists yesterday raised the possibility that the extreme heatwave now settled over at least 30 countries in the northern hemisphere could signal that man-made climate change is accelerating.

"The present heatwave across the northern hemisphere is worrying. There is the small probability that man-made climate change is proceeding much faster and stronger than expected," said Professor John Schellnhuber, former chief scientific adviser to the German government and now head of the UK's leading group of climate scientists at the Tyndall centre.

Gary Permalink on 8/06/2003

Episcopalians Elect First Openly Gay Bishop

The Episcopal Church voted Tuesday to approve the election of its first openly gay bishop, a decision that risks splitting the denomination and shattering ties with its sister churches worldwide.

A last minute smear campaign with ties to the neo-conservatives failed to derail the approval. Link from Atrios.

So we come full circle. Gene Robinson, meet Paula Jones and Monica Lewinsky. But there is a difference: In Clinton's case, years of digging eventually produced evidence of private sexual misbehavior. Robinson appears guilty of nothing at all -- save being a gay man who wants to be a bishop. For some, unfortunately, that is enough to justify all sorts of innuendo and dirty tricks. Be warned: This is the way they play.

Gary Permalink on 8/06/2003

America's First Empire Proved Costly, Frustrating

A Century-Old Conflict Has Lessons For The Present Situation In Iraq

Now is the time for debate and a clear decision. Does our position as the world's leading power mean that we are obligated to enforce a Pax Americana? If it does then we must be willing to face the price in blood and treasure.

Gary Permalink on 8/06/2003

A Clarksters Meetup

Nine Democrats have been running for months, raising money and building support. None of them is good enough for those who would draft Clark. It's nothing personal; most Clarksters just think the declared candidates can't win in a campaign that will turn on national security. But how about that four-star general? Impeccable bona fides on that, they say. Led the NATO forces trying to put the Balkans back together, believes in America working with its allies, shot four times in Vietnam, Bronze Star, Purple Heart.

There is no speech touting Clark's position on the issues, to the disappointment of a pair of Howard Dean supporters, who wonder how to distinguish him from Clark. "We're trying to figure out what he stands for," Rick Parker says as his wife nods. Told that there are no issues, because there is no candidate, they look bewildered.

Maybe Clark will get in. Maybe he won't. "Please declare already," Hlinko says Monday, flecks of Clark bar on his lip. "I gotta get my life back."

Gary Permalink on 8/06/2003

I.R.S. not pursueing businesses

The Internal Revenue Service has identified nearly 2,000 businesses that are not withholding taxes or are filing frivolous returns, but it mostly fails to follow up on those cases, a government report shows.

Gary Permalink on 8/06/2003

Surge in Home Loan Rates Will Hurt Economy

If cheap mortgages have kept the economy afloat, the economy may have just sprung a leak.

A little more than a month after the Federal Reserve reduced its overnight lending rate to just 1 percent, mortgage rates have shot up as investors have soured on the bond market — in part because of confusion about the Fed's intentions in managing the economy.

Though many economists contend that big government deficits eventually lead to higher interest rates as the government begins to crowd the markets with its huge borrowing needs, most analysts say the recent surge in interest rates is not a result of the newest news on deficits.

Note the key word "most." You will hear more about deficits and interests rates in the coming months.

Gary Permalink on 8/06/2003

Democrats try to draft surprising Huffington to stop Terminator

In a state trying to come to terms with the extraordinary prospect of ousting its governor and replacing him with the Terminator, activists in the San Francisco Bay area are stirring things up even more by trying to recruit reformed conservative Arianna Huffington to enter the race as the progressive alternative.

The 53-year-old daughter of a Greek newspaper publisher has undergone a political transformation in recent years. Once a darling of the right, she's now a darling of the left.

Gary Permalink on 8/06/2003

Democrats United On Attacking Bush

Decrying Bush's policies as trickle-down economics, Kerry said, "I believe every worker in America is tired of being trickled on by George W. Bush."

Through most of the forum, the nine candidates savaged Bush's record on the economy and workers' rights. They blamed Bush for the loss of nearly 3 million jobs since he was sworn into office in January 2001 and accused him of presiding over one of the most anti-worker administrations in history.

"This administration has declared war on the middle class in this country," Gephardt said. Saying Bush has the worst record on the economy of any president since Herbert Hoover at the start of the Depression, he added, "He's got to go, for us to get jobs back in this country."

Kucinich played the role of aggressor throughout the evening, and challenged his rivals to prove they were as pro-labor and pro-worker as he is by asking if they would repeal the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA).

The others let his comments go without responding, instead laying out their own plans for expanded health care, more money for education, additional aid to the states and more protections for workers.

Dean used his closing statement to argue that centrist policies will not defeat Bush, as he sought to answer a question many Democrats are asking about his insurgent candidacy: Could someone who opposed the war in Iraq defeat Bush?

Noting that he opposed the war and also wants to repeal Bush's tax cuts, Dean said, "You can't beat President Bush by trying to be like him. We tried that in 2002 and it didn't work. . . . We need to stand up for ourselves again and take on the president directly."

Lieberman and Kucinich did not come off well, Braun seemed irrelevant.

Gary Permalink on 8/06/2003

Voting Company Reverses Stand: Flawed software WAS used in Georgia and other elections

Earlier, Diebold had told reporters that the software which contained “stunning security flaws” that made hacking easy, was an older version and never used in any election.

Gary Permalink on 8/06/2003

White House To Cut Money For Cancer Drugs

The Bush administration will soon propose significant cuts in Medicare payments for cancer drugs, based on new data suggesting that the government pays far more than the market price for such medicines, administration officials said today.

Doctors, who could lose income under the proposal, and patients' advocates said the cuts could harm cancer care. Ellen L. Stovall, president of the National Coalition for Cancer Survivorship, an advocacy group led by cancer survivors, said the proposals, "instead of expanding access to lifesaving drugs, would limit access to cancer treatments for some of the most seriously ill Medicare beneficiaries."

Gary Permalink on 8/06/2003

Leiberman Wrong - Dean Right

John Nichols -- "I share the anger of my fellow Democrats with George Bush and the direction he has taken this nation. But the answer to his outdated, extremist ideology is not to be found in the outdated extremes of our own," Lieberman declared. "That path will not solve the challenges of our time, and could send us back to the political wilderness for years to come."

Lieberman is, of course, wrong. Democrats were consigned to the political wilderness in 2002, when party leaders chose to follow his counsel and cosy up to the Bush administration on issues such as war and peace, the USA Patriot Act and corporate welfare bailouts for the airline industry. While Republican turnout went up in 2002, Democratic turnout slackened. A quick analysis of the results led most Democrats -- from presidential prospects to grassroots activists -- to recognize that any further fuzzing of the margins between the parties in 2004 would be disastrous. So it comes as no surprise that the greatest applause line on the campaign trail has been Dean's pledge to represent "the Democratic wing of the Democratic party."

Democrats who counsel compromise going into the 2004 contest are likely to find themselves disregarded in much the same way that Republican compromiser were in 1980. And rightly so. If the party chooses a candidate who is confident enough to aggressively challenge George W. Bush, Democrats might well find that steering an uncompromising course is far more appealing to the great mass of American voters that the circumnavigations proposed by Joe Lieberman.

Gary Permalink on 8/06/2003

Neocon Coup at the Department d'État

Dowd - Neocons are using their usual tactics to regime change the state department.

Gary Permalink on 8/06/2003

Watchdog Group Reveals White House Effort to Gag Anti-Bush Causes

The Bush administration is actively seeking to gag or punish social service organizations that challenge the party line on such matters as health care for poor children and HIV prevention, according to a new report. Nonprofits that disagree with the president's own solutions, or go further and blame him for problems in the first place, have come to expect unpleasant consequences. Those might include audits of federal-funds spending and reviews of content, such as workshop literature.

"If you disagree with the administration on ideological grounds, they're going to come down with a hammer. This has huge implications for the free flow of speech in this country," says Gary Bass, executive director of OMB Watch, itself a nonprofit, which released the report last week as part of its 20-year-old mission to monitor White House budget and spending decisions.

Gary Permalink on 8/06/2003

BusinessWeek Looks Favorably at Dean

Conservative Vermont business leaders praise Dean's record and his unceasing efforts to balance the budget, even though Vermont is the only state where a balanced budget is not constitutionally required. Moreover, they argue that the two most liberal policies adopted during Dean's tenure -- the "civil unions" law and a radical revamping of public school financing -- were instigated by Vermont's ultraliberal Supreme Court rather than Dean. "He was not a left-wing wacko," says Bill Stenger, a Republican and president of Jay Peak Resort, who says he supported Dean because of his "fiscally responsible, socially conscious policies."

Gary Permalink on 8/06/2003

Larry Flynt Is Copying Pat Robinson

He repeats his call for directed prayers to remind God to get off his ass and start smiting.

Link from Atrios.

Gary Permalink on 8/05/2003

Ticket To Anywhere

Natasha at Pacifica Views liked Dean's response to Leiberman,

What I liked: He responded to the issues, and didn't burn bridges with voters who supported the other candidates. He disagreed without personal attacks.

She needs to watch more of Dean and Kucinnach more and I think she might switch to Dean. Kucinnach is closer on her issues but Dean's got fire, integrity, and more electability.

Gary Permalink on 8/05/2003

Why The Patriot Act Matters

Watch what you link to.

A federal judge sentenced a man to a year in prison Monday for creating an anarchist Web site with links to sites on how to build bombs.

Austin said he took a plea bargain because he feared his case was eligible for a terrorism enhancement, which could have added 20 years to his sentence. The plea deal had called for him to serve four months.

Bad judgement. Previous cases have held that you are not publishing by linking to a site. Still, four months or over twenty years, you can see why Austin pleaded.

Gary Permalink on 8/05/2003

New GOP Marriage Cards

Uggabugga

Gary Permalink on 8/05/2003

How a Bush-promoted Christian prison program faked success by massaging data

You don't have to believe in faith-healing to think that an intensive 16-month program, with post-release follow-up, run by deeply caring people might be the occasion for some inmates to turn their lives around. The report seemed to present liberal secularists with an unpleasant choice: Would you rather have people "saved" by Colson, or would you rather have them commit more crimes and go back to prison?

But when you look carefully at the Penn study, it's clear that the program didn't work. The InnerChange participants did somewhat worse than the controls: They were slightly more likely to be rearrested and noticeably more likely (24 percent versus 20 percent) to be reimprisoned. If faith is, as Paul told the Hebrews, the evidence of things not seen, then InnerChange is an opportunity to cultivate faith; we certainly haven't seen any results.

So, how did the Penn study get perverted into evidence that InnerChange worked? Through one of the oldest tricks in the book, one almost guaranteed to make a success of any program: counting the winners and ignoring the losers. The technical term for this in statistics is "selection bias"; program managers know it as "creaming." Harvard public policy professor Anne Piehl, who reviewed the study before it was published, calls this instance of it "cooking the books."

Gary Permalink on 8/05/2003

Good Cursor

Cursor - During a panel discussion that followed Larry King's interview with Howard Dean, Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchinson answered a caller's question about the current location of Saddam's WMD, by saying that "We know he has chemical weapons because he used them on his own people up in the north against the Kurds." And when another caller brought up the issue of Bush going AWOL from the National Guard, she said, "I think the question is going back to a previous campaign."

William Saletan writes that "One of the comedies of the 2004 campaign is watching all the candidates other than Dean claim to be angry when they clearly aren't. Lieberman just happens to be the least convincing of them."

Gary Permalink on 8/05/2003

My Italian Husband Is Losing His Faith In America

Body and Soul - Bush and Company are using the "no fly" lists to target anti-war protesters, I said.

No way, he said. They'd never get away with that. Not in America.

His cynicism about the Italian government knows no bounds, but he retains a touching, innocent faith in his adopted country. It takes effort these days. I hope it lasts, because I'd like to share it.

The only incident in American politics I've ever seen disturb him was the election of 2000. It bothered him even more than it did me, maybe because it was the first time since he moved here in 1968 that he couldn't claim that worse things happen in Italy. He couldn't come up with an example of worse corruption, even by the people who invented it.

My government wonders whether its better just to knock people off and not have to bother with messy trials, and I'm not even surprised. It uses the law to harass its enemies, and it doesn't even seem out of the ordinary to me. It's what I've come to expect. Ordinary cruelty.

Gary Permalink on 8/05/2003

Butch, Butch Bush!

Dowd - swaggering president needs a gay makeover.

"Bush does such a good job of seeming blissfully laid back and vacantly bubbly that he might as well go blond. It might help with California's electoral votes, too."

Gary Permalink on 8/05/2003

Across the board, the Bush administration has politicized policy analysis

Latest Krugman.

Gary Permalink on 8/05/2003

Leiberman is wrong

In the New York Times and the Washington Post you can read him denouncing any Democratic tilt to the left of him. That seems just a bit self-serving. In addition, since the criticism is aimed at Dr. Dean, I would rate the governor's overall record more conservative than Leiberman's.

I watched his speech and he seemed a weaker candidate than most of the others. He was trying to make a forceful, determined impression but at least twice I thought it slipped into a weak whine. Once in talking about the other candidate and once about how he could persuade NATO allies to help us in Iraq. The biggest perception problem the Democrats will have is any candidate who appears weak or a whiner.

I would vote for Leiberman over Bush any day but that isn't saying much. I would vote for a dead tree stump for President before I would vote for Bush.

Gary Permalink on 8/05/2003

Legal challenges to the California recall election

Seeking to delay the vote, two seeking to have the lt. governor step up instead of having replacement candidates run, one seeks to remove seperate proppositions from the ballot, and the last seeks a ruling on the nature of the requirements for replacement candidates.

The Democrats are also unsure about placing a candidate on the ballot.

Gary Permalink on 8/05/2003

Who Knew? Conservative papers more partisan than "liberal" papers

Howard Kurtz notes a new Harvard study says the conservative editorial pages are more intensely partisan, and far less willing to criticize a Republican administration than the liberal pages are to take on a Democratic administration.

Tomasky examined the editorial commentary on 10 Bush and Clinton episodes that were roughly comparable.

The liberal papers criticized the Clinton administration 30 percent of the time, while the conservative papers slapped around the Bush administration just 7 percent of the time.

The liberal papers praised the Clintonites 36 percent of the time, while the conservative papers praised the Bushies 77 percent of the time.

One more set of numbers: The liberal papers criticized Bush 67 percent of the time; the conservative papers criticized Clinton 89 percent of the time.

Further down he comments on the Note dissing the Time and Newsweek articles on Dean. No mention was there when I checked the Note. A mistake by Kurtz or did the Note later retract it?.

Gary Permalink on 8/05/2003

Political Marketing - The GOP and the Dems Know About You

Here Come Demzilla and Voter Vault

Democrats and the GOP are snooping on you

"If a customer wanted a list of all 45-plus Italian men, registered Democrat, with a median income over $70,000, voting in presidential elections, with a phone number, living in the 3rd election district in the City of Troy, N.Y., the customer would make the appropriate menu selections for that target group and press the 'submit request button.' A count would be given (125 voters). . . . The only data that would appear is: name, address and phone numbers. All supporting data remains hidden."

"We are the cutting edge of this technology," said Jason Powers, vice president for business development, who worked for the RNC in developing its national database. "We'll process 5 billion records this year."

Geo-demographics based decision-making and marketing has been one of my interests for about twenty years. It is getting more restricted in the private sector - not in politics.

Gary Permalink on 8/04/2003

Decadelong control of U.S. House could rest on Texas redistricting

Why this issue won't go away. If DeLay can figure out some plan that succeeds the House might be lost to the Democrats for a long time.

"This is their opportunity to cement their lead in a way that will make the House Republican at least for the decade," said U.S. Rep. Lloyd Doggett, D-Austin. "Very high stakes."

Perhaps not, but possible.

Gary Permalink on 8/04/2003

The Real Election Map - A Toss-Up

The electoral college amps for each candidate are pretty similar. Just based on the electoral college the best candidate is Graham followed by Gephardt. Except we all know there is more to being a candidate than where you live and all five front runners are electable. The reason for the closeness is that the country right now is closely divided between liberal/tolerant states and conservative/intolerant ones on cultural issues like abortion, gun-control, etc.

Gary Permalink on 8/04/2003

Doonesbury!

Lies, Now and Then.

And head to the Daily Howler to See Why Gore's wasn't a lie.

Gary Permalink on 8/04/2003

Stunning Upset

New Poll Shows Dean Leading Iowa

The poll, taken July 22-29, shows former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean nudging out U.S. Rep. Dick Gephardt of Missouri as the front-runner in Iowa at this stage of the race for the Democratic presidential nomination.

Dean is the first choice of 23 percent of those who say they definitely or probably will attend the Democratic caucuses. Gephardt is favored by 21 percent. Massachusetts Sen. John Kerry comes in third in the nine-member field with 14 percent.

Gary Permalink on 8/04/2003

Rumsfeld Firing The Generals

IN ADVANCE OF Schoomaker’s swearing-in last Friday, the Army’s acting chief, Gen. John Keane—who is himself retiring—spoke with a list of three- and four-star generals, thanked them for their services and told them it was time to go. Sources say Keane first contacted half a dozen names, but by the end of the week the list had reportedly grown to 11—”with more to come within 30 days,” according to one Army source. The Army has a total of 50 three- and four-star generals. A senior Pentagon civilian called the move “housecleaning.”

Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld has made no secret of his dissatisfaction with what he sees as unimaginative Army leadership. Schoomaker, too, is critical of a culture he sees as risk-averse and change-resistant. In comments made privately but now circulat-ing widely in the Pentagon, Schoomaker said recently: “Rumsfeld might think we’re at war with terrorism, but I’ll bet he also thinks he is at war within the Pentagon ... It’s a war of the culture.”

Gary Permalink on 8/04/2003

The Pentagon has some explaining to do

Another analyst comes out in Bush I's hometown paper that this is the worst administration ever and that next to no professional planning was done for post-war Iraq.

I observed the environment in which decisions about post-war Iraq were made.

Those observations changed everything.

What I saw was aberrant, pervasive and contrary to good order and discipline. If one is seeking the answers to why peculiar bits of "intelligence" found sanctity in a presidential speech, or why the post-Saddam occupation has been distinguished by confusion and false steps, one need look no further than the process inside the Office of the Secretary of Defense.

Saddam is not yet sitting before a war crimes tribunal. Nor have the key decision-makers in the Pentagon been forced to account for the odd set of circumstances that placed us as a long-term occupying force in the world's nastiest rat's nest, without a nation-building plan, without significant international support and without an exit plan.

Very damning.

Gary Permalink on 8/04/2003

Silence of the Media Lambs: The Unreported Story of How They Fixed the Vote in Florida

WorkingForChange brings Palast's The Best Democracy Money Can Buy - AMAZON $11.20.

The office of the governor of Florida, Jeb Bush, brother of the Republican presidential candidate, had illegally ordered the removal of the names of felons from voter rolls -- real felons who had served time but obtained clemency, with the right to vote under Florida law. As a result, another 40,000 legal voters (in addition to the 57,700 on the purge list), almost all of them Democrats, could not vote.

(In the opening excerpt from Palast's book we learned that five months before the November 2000 election, Governor Jeb Bush of Florida and his Secretary of State, Katherine Harris, moved to purge 57,7000 people from the voter rolls, supposedly criminals not allowed to vote. Almost every one was innocent of crimes -- though the majority were guilty of being African American. BBC reporter Palast asks, "How did 100,000 US journalist sent to cover the election fail to get this vote theft story?")

The Washington Post ran the story of the voter purge on page one, including the part that “couldn’t stand up” for CBS and Salon . . . and even gave me space for a bylined comment. Applause for the Post’s courage! Would I be ungrateful if I suggested otherwise? The Post ran the story in June,though they had it at hand seven months earlier when the ballots were still being counted. They waited until they knew the findings of the U.S. Civil Rights Commission Report, which verified BBC’s discoveries, so they could fire from behind that big safe rock of Official Imprimatur. In other words, the Post had the courage to charge out and shoot the wounded.

Let’s understand the pressures on the CBS TV producer that led her to kill the story simply because the target of the allegation said it ain’t so. The story demanded massive and quick review of documents, dozens of phone calls and interviews -- hardly a winner in the slam-bam-thank-you-ma’am school of U.S. journalism. Most difficult, the revelations in the story required a reporter to stand up and say that the big-name politicians, their lawyers and their PR people were freaking liars.

Gary Permalink on 8/04/2003

Daily Kos -- The Secret of Dean's Success

Here we have a Democrat who isn't afraid of Bush. In fact, he's eager to take the battle to Bush when most of the others offer nothing more than tepid press releases.

I have been saying for over a year that the math looks good for Democrats. I have been saying the issues look good. I said before the war it wouldn't be a campaign winner, and I think I called it correctly. The economy is in shambles. This president has the worst job record of any since Hoover, with millions of jobs lost.

People will want an alternative to Bush. Not just disaffected Democrats. Or out-of-work independents. But people from across the political spectrum. And it starts with that grassroots and netroots army of his.

But for now, we're still waging a primary battle. Dean fans may profess outrage that Lieberman and Kerry have trained their guns on Dean. Don't be. While I would prefer a clean primary, it ain't gonna happen. And if Dean can't handle Lieberman's inept charges or Kerry's more pointed criticisms, then he has no business facing the Rove machine. At this point, a little dirt won't harm the party's chances in 2004.

Gary Permalink on 8/04/2003

Bitterness Grows in Iraq Over Deaths of Civilians

In numerous interviews, Iraqis said that more than factors like unemployment, fuel shortages, or electricity blackouts, civilian casualties since the war's end have raised the level of bitterness against US soldiers and could prolong or widen armed resistance.

''It has increased our hate against Americans,'' said Ali Hatem, 23, a computer science student at the University of Baghdad. ''It also increases the violence against them. In Iraq, we are tribal people. When someone loses their son, they want revenge.''

In late April, soldiers from the 82d Airborne Division shot dead 13 Iraqis when they opened fire on protesters in the town of Fallujah, about 50 miles west of Baghdad. Soldiers fired on another demonstration on June 18 at the gates of the Republican Palace in Baghdad, killing at least two people. In both those cases, US forces said they believed they were being fired upon by armed insurgents hidden in the crowd.

''No Americans have visited us to speak about what happened,'' said Moustafa Ahmed, 28, who says his 24-year-old brother, Uday Ahmed, was shot by a soldier from the 82d Airborne Division. ''And we don't feel we can go speak to them.'' His brother was killed July 9.

Uday had been fixing a neighbor's car to earn money. He walked a few blocks from his house in the southwest Baghdad district of Saidiya to an auto repair yard to look for a spare part. Walking across the yard, he held the car's ignition distributor, a metal object about the size and shape of a hand grenade.

He was clearly visible from the roof of the Dorah Police Station that abuts the repair yard. There, 82d Airborne soldiers are posted behind sandbags, rifles at the ready.

From atop the roof, a soldier spotted Uday Ahmed and fired.

This was predictable before the war, at least I predicted it. My nephew is posted in Baghdad - a new photo here.

Gary Permalink on 8/04/2003

For Snopes.com, Debunking the Bambi Hoax Was All in a Day's Work

Despite the fact that the station's LuAnne Sorrell did a four-part report on the scheme -- supposedly giving men the chance to hunt naked women with paintball guns for up to $10,000 -- it failed to do the heavy lifting needed to unmask the hoax. Instead, urban legends site Snopes.com led the way within days with a detailed explanation of why it was a hoax.

In fact, KLAS ended up crediting Snopes, though the station still sticks by claims that two hunts took place, with a paintball actually hitting someone. And that's after Las Vegas Mayor Oscar B. Goodman went public to debunk the alleged hunt. "It all was staged," Goodman told the press. "They were actors and actresses, and there wasn't even the real shooting of paintballs." KLAS' latest report yesterday noted that Goodman is now calling the scam a front for an unlicensed escort service.

A chance for me to plug Snopes.com, which I use when relatives get carried away about some false story they were emailed.

Gary Permalink on 8/04/2003

Interesting, But I Think Friedman is Naive

History may one day record that maybe the most honest speech about why we invaded Iraq was given by Prime Minister Tony Blair, addressing the filing cabinets in an empty hallway just outside his office at No. 10 Downing Street.

Gary Permalink on 8/04/2003

The unreported cost of war: at least 827 American wounded

US military casualties from the occupation of Iraq have been more than twice the number most Americans have been led to believe because of an extraordinarily high number of accidents, suicides and other non-combat deaths in the ranks that have gone largely unreported in the media.

Unofficial figures are in the thousands. About half have been injured since the president's triumphant appearance on board the aircraft carrier USS Lincoln at the beginning of May. Many of the wounded have lost limbs.

The figures are politically sensitive. The number of American combat deaths since the start of the war is 166 - 19 more than the death toll in the first Gulf war.

The passing of that benchmark last month erased the perception, popular at the time Baghdad fell, that the US had scored an easy victory.

The Pentagon figure for "wounded in action" in Iraq is 827, but here again the total number of injuries appears to be much higher.

The estimate given by central command in Qatar is 926, but according to Lieutenant-Colonel Allen DeLane, who is in charge of the airlift of the wounded into Andrews air base, that too is understated.

"Since the war has started, I can't give you an exact number because that's classified information, but I can say to you over 4,000 have stayed here at Andrews, and that number doubles when you count the people that come here to Andrews and then we send them to other places like Walter Reed and Bethesda, which are in this area also," Col DeLane told National Public Radio.

Gary Permalink on 8/04/2003

Latest Molly Ivins

In the stupefying hypocrisy sweepstakes, I'd like to salute Arlene Wohlgemuth for saying, "When we (R's) were in the minority, we worked in a bipartisan manner." That would be the same Arlene Wohlgemuth who notoriously killed off dozens of bills in a fit of pique – the infamous "Memorial Day Massacre."

But the palm for hypocrisy goes to Goodhair for his immortal declaration that Democrats are harming the poor children of Texas. I thought I would upchuck. It was Perry and the R's who insisted on slashing social services, including health insurance for poor children, rather than raise taxes. He now claims the D's are holding up the distribution of a new pot of federal money we just got. He didn't even open the call of the last special session to bills to disburse the money; said it wasn't necessary.

Even in politics, no one gets to lie that bad.

Gary Permalink on 8/04/2003

The Cool Passion of Dr. Dean Meets the Hot Bias Of Time

Just a lot of things to dislike about John Cloud's Time piece.

"especially the South, which Dean talks about as though it's another planet."

"What's unclear is whether he has surged because contributors and poll respondents think he is a new kind of Old Democrat—a candidate who will finally revive the left—or because those contributors and respondents know the truth—he is a rock-ribbed budget hawk, a moderate on gays and guns, and a true lefty on only a few issues, primarily the use of U.S. military power, which Dean seems to regard with a mixture of contempt and suspicion."

"it's hard to imagine Dean's glorious season ending without disappointment. Either he will alienate the mainstream by tacking left in order to keep his troops in their combat sandals, or, more likely, they will shed a tear when they learn who he really is."

What planet is this guy from?

Gary Permalink on 8/04/2003

Dean Hits a Triple and a foul.

Cover of Time, Newsweek, Washington Post and the Drudge Report (foul ball).

If you add this : U.S. News and World Report - In Bush's Face it's a home run.

Also from Drudge: Core Democrats have a huge disdain for Bush.

Gary Permalink on 8/04/2003

Traci Lords has a new book

Salon Interview.

Gary Permalink on 8/04/2003

Digby is Right - As Usual

The Republican Party of George W. Bush is fundamentally different than the Party of George H.W. Bush. They are playing a form of political hardball that is completely unresponsive to the cooperative, consensus style politics that characterizes the DLC. They will not budge on policy and when it comes to tactics they are knife wielding thugs.

Dean’s early success isn’t about liberal spending programs and “far left” hatred for Junior. It’s about opening your eyes and seeing what is right in front of your face --- a dangerously radical Republican party that simply will not compromise or deal fairly.

The DLC is still saying exactly what they said back in 1985, (which should be terribly embarrassing because it indicates that they have failed spectacularly to change the party’s image.) The truth is that they succeeded quite well at first, but the result was a GOP that saw the Democrats moving their way and seized the opportunity to move the goalposts ever further to the right and also become more aggressive and hostile. They did not meet us in the middle, guys, they just kept on going in the direction they wanted to go anyway.

And they lost all compunction about tarring the opposition with outright lies and character assassination.

The fact is that it does not matter if our candidate actually supported the war in Iraq or not. If John Kerry is the nominee rather than Howard Dean, do they actually believe that the Republicans will not find a way to portray him as soft on national security? Please.

It. Does. Not. Matter. What. We. Actually. Do.

We could sign on to a 0% tax rate for millionaires, repeal of Social Security, prison terms for homosexuality and oil rigs in the middle of San Francisco Bay and they would still say we are liberal, tax and spend, tree hugging, treasonous pacifists because it is in their interest to do so. Until we stop tugging our forelocks and sniveling around like beaten dogs, thereby validating their lies, they will be believed by a fair number of Americans. People who turn the other cheek when they are being unfairly and relentlessly attacked are either saints or pussies ... and the DLC aren’t saints.

The way to change the Republican propaganda-created perception that the Democratic Party is a bunch of namby pamby, liberal, pacifist big spenders is to FIGHT BACK.

Right now, the DLC is part of the problem, not the solution. They succeeded in moving the party to being fiscally conservative and strong on law-and-order and national security issues. but the GOP just went right-wing nut radical. The Democratic Party is now positioned the best on the issues facing this country if Dems change their image and fight back. This election is going to be about perception - Phoney Bush or Truth-Telling Dean.

Gary Permalink on 8/03/2003

The doctor is in – in Bush's face!

Having raised more money than any Democrat in the second quarter of this year, having attracted more volunteers, in its estimation, than any campaign in history, and having reached the magical "top tier" status in the eyes of most media, the Dean campaign is now looking to take on Dubya himself. Trippi describes the next phase of the Dean campaign this way: "Over the next six months," he says, "we must be in George Bush's face."

U.S. News has learned that the Dean campaign will spend between $100,000 and $200,000 to put up a new television commercial running this week in the unlikely (and probably unwinnable) state of Texas. In the ad, which Dean taped last Wednesday in Council Bluffs, Iowa, he wears a blue, open-necked work shirt, faces the camera, and says, "I want to change George Bush's reckless foreign policy, stand up for affordable healthcare, and create new jobs . . . . Has anybody really stood up against George Bush and his policies? Don't you think it's time somebody did?"

The pitch, which is airing only in Austin (at the same time President Bush is vacationing in Crawford, 87 miles away), is to some extent a stunt but on another level is intended to send the message that Dean will cede no ground to Bush anywhere. "We want to go right into the belly of the beast," Trippi says.

In Dean's "coming out" speech at the Democratic National Committee's winter meeting in February, his very first line to the party elite (after a weak joke about maple syrup) was: "What I want to know is why in the world the Democratic Party leadership is supporting the president's unilateral attack on Iraq." It was a body blow that Dean followed with a flurry of hooks and jabs, before ending with: "We're going to change this party! And then we're going to change this country! And we're going to take back the White House!" Several in the audience noted (with no small amount of alarm) that Dean had put changing the party first on his list.

Dean's road map to victory is this: After he wins first or second place in the Iowa caucuses (January 19) and first place in the New Hampshire primary (January 27), the supporters of the defeated candidates will coalesce around him, which, combined with Dean's own army of loyalists, will make him unstoppable. But his opponents are sounding the alarm early. They say that while there might be a theoretical opportunity for enough angry hard-core lefties, McCainiacs, Perotistas, Greens, and Deanie Boppers to put Dean over the top in the primaries, he will be a sitting duck for George Bush, defender of America, who will use Dean's antiwar stance to paint him as a squishy-soft liberal who will not defend the nation in time of crisis. "Dean is a real and enormous threat," says one highly respected Democratic leader who is not aligned with any campaign. "He won't fold, and he won't do something stupid and peak in August. He has only growth potential. If he wins Iowa and he wins New Hampshire, who is going to stop him? Nobody. But Karl Rove (Bush's chief political adviser) and his crowd are dying to face Dean. It is going to be pretty tough for an antiwar candidate to win in 2004."

Howard Dean has heard this before–he says he is not antiwar, just anti-Iraq war–and he believes voters will not be scared off. Sitting in the unpretentious Café Piccolo, a short drive from his campaign headquarters, and eating a bowl of soup and an oatmeal cookie (not, he admits, the most nutritious lunch an internist could have), Dean says, "Average Americans, who are concerned with working and feeding their families and are not that interested in politics, think this is a bunch of politicians who don't have much to say. Average Americans vote for the person they like, and they vote for the person they trust."

"This president promised that he would be a uniter, not a divider, and that was a lie!" Dean thundered recently in a speech in Concord, N.H., even though most candidates go out of their way to avoid using "lie" or "liar."

"I think being likable is a big deal," he says. "Part of that likability stuff is not having a big smile and a glad hand; it's about having people respect you. That's very important. In fact, that's more important than having them like you."

"Anger alone is never going to get you elected president; it's not going to fuel a campaign," Dean says. "My campaign is about hope, hope for a community, hope for a country where all of us are going to be included again, and that's really fueling this campaign much more than the anger is."

"I find him very, very refreshing," says Joe Mathews, 53, who owns a travel agency in Manchester, Vt., and, as a Republican, has always voted against Dean "out of habit." But Mathews says he will vote for Dean for president because he admires the fiscal conservatism Dean displayed in 11 years as governor. "What the rest of the country is starting to find out," he says, "is Dean is not particularly left wing. And as far as checkbook issues, he is to the right of George Bush, because if it isn't in the bank, Dean doesn't spend it."

I think we were all sort of hoodwinked by George Bush," Dean says. "Everything he said he was going to do in the campaign he did the opposite of. He is a divider, not a uniter, there is nothing compassionate about him or about his presidency, and he just couldn't give a damn about the American people."

"We started out with seven people and $157,000," Trippi says, clutching his left side where he has either torn a muscle or broken a rib, "and nobody ever heard of us. Kerry, Gephardt, Edwards, Lieberman, they had millions in the bank, access to the best staffs, and massive name ID. So if we can get this far against them, what makes anybody think Karl Rove couldn't run circles around them? It is great that Karl Rove wants us, because we want George Bush. We are just afraid that at the last minute, the Republicans are going to switch him out for a moderate." And if it didn't hurt too much, Trippi would laugh.

Some weeks ago, Democratic Party Chairman Terry McAuliffe privately asked each candidate to drop out of the race when it became "mathematically clear" that the party had selected a nominee, a date he estimated would be no later than March 9 of next year. McAuliffe asked each to release his or her delegates and endorse the presumptive winner before the convention. (EL - This really shows McAuliffe is soo yesterday. Incredibly stupid. Someone who likes to fold and play dead.)

Dean refused. "It's not going to happen," he told U.S. News. "I'm not deliberately going to sit it out [in order to] have an uncontentious convention. I certainly want the Democratic nominee to win and I hope it's me, but this is about building the party, and I'm building the party and I'm in for the long run."

Gary Permalink on 8/03/2003

President Bush's job approval rating drops to 54 percent

The still dropping Bush numbers buried in the article about Hispanics being just as we thought, 2/3rds Democrats.

Mr. Bush won the support of 35 percent of Hispanic voters in 2000; in this poll, [only] 21 percent of Hispanics who say they are registered to vote said they would vote for his re-election.

Hispanics approved of Mr. Bush's job performance 52 to 38 percent, while 54 percent said that he "cares about the needs and problem of people like yourself." By contrast, just 40 percent of Hispanics said they had a favorable view of the Republican Party, while 60 percent said they had a favorable view of Democrats.

There is also a sharp divergence of views on Iraq: 49 percent of Hispanics said removing Saddam Hussein from power was not worth the potential loss of American life and other costs of attacking Iraq, compared with 39 percent of all respondents.

On other issues, like abortion and gay rights, the responses clearly broke away from the Democratic model. Hispanics were evenly divided on the question of whether homosexual relations between consenting adults should be legal; among the general public, this position is supported by 54 percent to 39 percent.

Gary Permalink on 8/03/2003

Saddam Did Get Rid of Iraq WMDs

A close aide to Saddam Hussein says the Iraqi dictator did in fact get rid of his weapons of mass destruction but deliberately kept the world guessing about it in an effort to divide the international community and stave off a U.S. invasion.

The strategy, which turned out to be a serious miscalculation, was designed to make the Iraqi dictator look strong in the eyes of the Arab world, while countries such as France and Russia were wary of joining an American-led attack. At the same time, Saddam retained the technical know-how and brain power to restart the programs at any time.

Saddam's aide suggested the brinkmanship ultimately backfired because U.S. policy switched in the aftermath of Sept. 11, 2001, from containing the Iraqi leader, to going after those who could supply terrorists with deadly weapons

Before the invasion, the British government claimed Saddam could deploy unconventional weapons within 45 minutes. The Bush administration insisted the threat was so immediate that the world couldn't afford to wait for U.N. inspectors to wind up their searches.

Except how could I do basic research and figure out he had no weapons and the U.S. government couldn't?

Gary Permalink on 8/03/2003

The Worldview of Howard Dean

His instincts on foreign policy and national security.

Dean caught fire in the 2004 presidential race based on his opposition to the Iraq war. But in July 2003, he cautioned that he had "told the peace people not to fall in love with me." He claims to have supported every U.S. military intervention after Vietnam and before Iraq. In August 2002, he said he would support a unilateral invasion of Iraq if President Bush could "show that there's evidence [Saddam] has either atomic or biological weapons and can deliver." Dean ended up opposing the war on the grounds that Bush 1) should have worked through the United Nations to disarm Iraq (or to depose Saddam, if Iraq failed to comply with inspections); 2) should have given more consideration to the concerns of U.S. allies; and 3) never should have claimed that Iraq presented an imminent biological or nuclear threat to the United States.

Gary Permalink on 8/03/2003

Why I slapped a Howard Dean bumpersticker on my car

Body and Soul - I don't particularly care if Howard Dean ends up as the Democratic nominee. On many issues, I prefer Kerry, or even Gephardt. But I would like whoever ends up as the nominee to have a little of Dean's fire lit under him (I'm assuming, of course, that the nominee will be male, which I think is a safe assumption, although far from a reasonable one). I'd like him to have proof -- and I think Dean offers that proof -- that he'll be rewarded for speaking up, not for caution.

Gary Permalink on 8/03/2003

Iraqi Scientists Still Deny Any WMD Arms Programs

Despite vigorous efforts, the U.S. government has been unsuccessful so far in finding key senior Iraqi scientists to support its prewar claims that former president Saddam Hussein was pursuing an aggressive program to develop nuclear, biological and chemical weapons, according to senior administration officials and members of Congress who have been briefed recently on the subject.

The sources said four senior scientists and more than a dozen at lower levels who worked for the Iraqi government have been interviewed by U.S. officials under the direction of the CIA. Some scientists have been arrested and held for months, others have made deals in return for information and at least one has agreed to be interviewed outside Iraq.

No matter the circumstances, all of the scientists interviewed have denied that Hussein had reconstituted his nuclear weapons program or developed and hidden chemical or biological weapons since United Nations inspectors left in 1998. Several key Iraqi officials questioned the significance of evidence cited by the Bush administration to suggest that Hussein was stepping up efforts to develop new weapons of mass destruction programs.

Gary Permalink on 8/03/2003

Ann Coulter Sucks

"My only regret with Timothy McVeigh is he did not go to the New York Times Building."
-- Ann Coulter to George Gurley, New York Observer, August 21, 2002

Phil Donahue: "I just want to make sure we got this right. Liberals hate America. They hate all religions except Islam. Liberals love Islam, hate all other religions."
Ann Coulter: "Post 9/11."
Donahue: "Well, good for you."
--Donahue, MSNBC, July 19, 2002

"Ann is an illustration of how a certain kind of virulent right-wing politics is based on emotion, not reason. Almost to a one, I found that the most hateful voices on the right were venting their own deep-seated problems and frustrations. "
-- David Brock, Washington Post, Feb. 26, 2002

On Islamic extremists: "We should invade their countries, kill their leaders and convert them to Christianity."
-- Ann Coulter, National Review Online, September 2001

"The presumption of innocence only means you don't go right to jail."
-- Ann Coulter, Hannity & Colmes,August 24, 2001

"God gave us the earth. We have dominion over the plants, the animals, the trees. God said, 'Earth is yours. Take it. Rape it! It's yours.'"
-- Ann Coulter, Hannity & Colmes,June 20, 2001

"I think [women] should be armed but should not [be allowed to] vote. No, they all have to give up their vote, not just, you know, the lady clapping and me. The problem with women voting -- and your Communists will back me up on this -- is that, you know, women have no capacity to understand how money is earned. They have a lot of ideas on how to spend it. And when they take these polls, it's always more money on education, more money on child care, more money on day care."
-- Ann Coulter, Politically Incorrect, Feb. 26, 2001

"The thing I like about Bush is I think he hates liberals."
-- Ann Coulter, Washington Post, August 1, 2000

To a disabled Vietnam vet: "People like you caused us to lose that war."
-- Ann Coulter, MSNBC

"I think we had enough laws about the turn-of-the-century. We don't need any more." Asked how far back would she go to repeal laws, she replied, "Well, before the New Deal...[The Emancipation Proclamation] would be a good start."
-- Ann Coulter, Politically Incorrect, May 7, 1997

"My libertarian friends are probably getting a little upset now but I think that's because they never appreciate the benefits of local fascism."
-- Ann Coulter, MSNBC, February 8, 1997

More here:

At a meeting of the National Political Action Conference, Coulter advised, "We need to execute people like John Walker in order to physically intimidate liberals, by making them realize that they can be killed too. Otherwise they will turn out to be outright traitors."

In her second book-length primal scream, published in the summer of 2002, Coulter compared Katie Couric of the Today Show to Eva Braun.

For such comments, she is celebrated and rewarded. While promoting Slander, Coulter was booked on Today, Crossfire (as both a guest and guest-host), Hardball, The Big Story with John Gibson, and countless other cable and radio programs. She was lovingly profiled in Newsday, the New York Observer and The New York Times "Sunday Styles" page, while also enjoying a seat at the White House Correspondents Association Dinner as a guest of The Boston Globe. She was even invited on ABC's Good Morning America as an election analyst in November 2002. In The Wall Street Journal -- a newspaper that had actually been destroyed by terrorists, and whose reporter, Daniel Pearl, had been murdered by them -- Melik Kaylan defended her comments in Coulter-like fashion. He argued, "We have been programmed to think that such impassioned outrage, and outrageousness, are permissible only on the left, from counter-culture comedians or exponents of identity politics." He also compared Coulter's alleged "humor" to that of Lenny Bruce, Angela Davis and the Black Panthers. Too bad, therefore, as Charles Piece pointed out, the conservative media darling has yet to be "arrested and jailed for what she said (Lenny Bruce), prosecuted in federal court (Angela Davis) or shot to ribbons in her bed (the Black Panthers)."

Eric Alterman

And Spinsanity -

"The primary victim of outrageous persecution during the McCarthy era was McCarthy." -- Ann Coulter in her new book Treason: Liberal Treachery from the Cold War to the War on Terrorism

"Liberals spent most of the war on terrorism in a funk because they didn't have enough grist for the anti-war mill. They nearly went stark raving mad at having to mouth patriotic platitudes while burning with a desire to aid the enemy."

More from Counterpunch:

"Even Islamic terrorists don't hate America like liberals do. They don't have the energy. If they had that much energy, they'd have indoor plumbing by now."

Why does she think the franchise is too big already? Who exactly has the vote who shouldn't have? "Women," she says, laughing. "It's true. It would be a much better country if women did not vote. That is simply a fact. In fact, in every presidential election since 1950--except Goldwater in '64--the Republican would have won, if only the men had voted."

She lambasts liberals for name-calling, even though barbs and insults are her idea of small talk. She condemns the liberal press for judging women by their looks, before announcing, "I don't think I've ever encountered an attractive liberal woman in my entire life."

'So in a maniacal pursuit of equality... these querulous little feminists stripped women of the sense that they can rely on the institution of marriage and gave men licence to discard their wives. But at least women can choose to be pigs now, too! This is what happens when you allow women to think about public policy.'

Gary Permalink on 8/03/2003

LET’S PLAY SOFTBALL!

The Daily Howler scores it a dismal 1 for 3 for reporters at the press conference on Iraq. That is still better than PBS did going up against Condi Rice.

Gary Permalink on 8/03/2003

Conspiracy Theory of the Day

Let's Play Illuminata - New World Order

The U.S. secretly controlled by The Project For A New American Century secretly controlled by Rev. Moon is used to destroy the U.N. secretly controlled by the communists. Father Moon likes unwitting tools the best of all. She is right about one thing, if Iraq had WMD's, Uday and Qusay would have known it.

Gary Permalink on 8/03/2003

Voter Backlash Feared on Medicare Drug Benefit

In a worst-case scenario, President Bush and lawmakers of both parties could wind up being blamed by voters, whatever they do. They could be blamed either for failure to pass a bill or for passing a bill that falls too far short of voters' expectations, a description that appears to fit the bills passed by the House and Senate last month.

"We're moving from a win-win situation to a lose-lose situation," which is likely to make it difficult to cut a House-Senate deal on the issue, said Thomas E. Mann, a government scholar at the Brookings Institution.

Opinion on the likely political fallout divides largely along party lines. "Both parties have promised it. The Republican Party will benefit the most if it passes," said Rep. Thomas M. Reynolds (N.Y.), chairman of the House Republicans' campaign committee. "I think we only lose if we don't pass anything."

But if the benefits are seen as inadequate, Bush will be blamed, along with the tax cuts he espoused that reduce revenue for programs such as drug benefits, said Rep. Robert T. Matsui (Calif.), Reynolds's Democratic counterpart. "In a way, Republicans might have been better off just talking about it," he added.

Their conclusions were backed up by assessments of leading party pollsters. "I'd rather have a fight with the Democrats over a bill we passed . . . rather than talking about how the president failed to do something he promised to do four years ago," said GOP pollster Bill McInturff. But Democratic pollster Geoffrey Garin said that, for both parties, "the risk of doing the wrong thing may outweigh the risk of doing nothing at all."

Dean, as the outsider who has expanded health benefits in Vermont, gains from this debacle.

Gary Permalink on 8/03/2003

Afghan Political Violence on the Rise

A year and a half after the United States and its allies drove the Taliban from power, acts of politically motivated violence have become frequent and fierce in the key southern province of Kandahar, the birthplace of the Taliban and the source of countless shifts in Afghan politics and culture over the centuries.

Bands of 50 or more pro-Taliban fighters have begun appearing around Kandahar, both along the border with Pakistan and in the interior of the province. Just over the border in the Pakistani town of Chaman, high-ranking Taliban officials are meeting openly and handing out guns, money and motorbikes, according to a witness and Afghan police officials. Poor Afghans who don't share the Taliban's strict interpretation of Islam or its mission of jihad are nevertheless accepting Pakistani money to plant land mines and bombs in Afghanistan, they said.

In addition to Taliban fighters, other men with guns -- warlords -- dominate much of Kandahar, allowing the trade in illegal drugs to flourish. Civic activists who once hoped to provide an alternative to both radical fundamentalists and marauding militiamen feel silenced and afraid.

"If someone rises up to say something about democracy or social equality, then tomorrow he won't exist anymore," said Mohammad Wali Hotek, head of one of the largest tribes in the Pashtun ethnic group, which is predominant in the south. "As there is no rule of law in Afghanistan, the gunmen can do anything they want.

Gary Permalink on 8/03/2003

Bushism of the Day

"We had a good Cabinet meeting, talked about a lot of issues. Secretary of State and Defense brought us up to date about our desires to spread freedom and peace around the world."—
Washington, D.C., Aug. 1, 2003

Gary Permalink on 8/03/2003

Argentina Didn't Fall on Its Own

Wall Street Pushed

The fantasyland that Argentina represented for foreign financiers came to a catastrophic end early last year, when the government defaulted on most of its $141 billion debt and devalued the nation's currency. A wrenching recession left well over a fifth of the labor force jobless and threw millions into poverty.

An extensive review of the conduct of financial market players in Argentina reveals Wall Street's complicity in those events. Investment bankers, analysts and bond traders served their own interests when they pumped up euphoria about the country's prospects, with disastrous results.

A year and a half after the crash, Argentina has begun recovering from its depression. Although the economy is still producing considerably less than before the crisis, and unemployment is much higher, growth has picked up in the past several quarters. A few Wall Street bankers are sniffing around again for deals to restructure defaulted debt, but the national government has ruled out hiring any firm that underwrote its bonds during the 1990s.
"The lesson is, we must pay attention to bubbles," Lavagna said in a visit to Washington this year. "With stocks, or companies, or countries, all are part of the same phenomenon. Probably Argentina is the best example of a country."

For developing nations, "the worst period is when financial markets have the most liquidity," Lavagna said. "This is when countries make the worst mistakes. That is certainly the case in Argentina."

Gary Permalink on 8/03/2003

Dean is Colorful, Cautious

As Governor, Dean Was Fiscal Conservative
Presidential Candidate Imposed Discipline on Vermont Legislature's Efforts to Spend

All of your progressive ideas, Dean told his party caucus, won't amount to anything if Vermonters don't trust you with their money -- and they don't. We're seen as tax-happy liberals who spend money unwisely.

Dean's words foreshadowed years of acrimonious battles with his party's formidable liberal wing, which controlled the legislature. From 1991 to 2002, Dean issued more vetoes than any previous governor. But he slowly bent Democrats to his will. When he left office in 2002, Vermont had a fairly balanced budget, while states across the nation bled fiscal red ink.

"Capitalism is a great system, and to make it work you must have social justice," Dean said. "But it's all in the balancing. Government is the mediator."

Over the next decade, he successfully expanded a health insurance program to guarantee health coverage for every child in the state and insisted that the state health plan pay for mammograms. The state now has a prescription drug benefit for those with incomes up to 400 percent of the poverty level.

If Dean was so effective leading that fight, why didn't he risk more battles on the sort of issues that are dear to the liberals? Ready, the state auditor, laughs when asked the question.

"Because Howard Dean's neither a phony nor a liar," Ready said. "He's just not a liberal."

Gary Permalink on 8/03/2003

Capitol Hill Cross-Fire

The gun lobby in Congress, as brazen as it is shameless, recently scored an alarming coup among compliant lawmakers by jamming a routine appropriations bill with amendments to undermine federal laws that track illicit firearms. The legislative blitz, engineered by the National Rifle Association, took the House Appropriations Committee by surprise last month. Yet it was approved 31 to 30, in bipartisan homage to the N.R.A.'s power to stir politicians' fear and obeisance.

The amendments would take a wrench to the existing powers of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms to close in on unscrupulous gun dealers by checking on their licenses, sales records and inventories. The rifle linked to last year's fatal sniping attacks on 13 people, most of them in metropolitan Washington, came from just such a questionable dealer, who claimed that 238 firearms were somehow "lost" from his inventory.

Of course, the smell of campaign money can be as pungent as the smell of burnt gunpowder to politicians who witnessed the N.R.A.'s propaganda power in last year's elections.

Gary Permalink on 8/03/2003

Like Bush, Blair Creating Faith-Based Government

The Prime Minister is aiming to put religion right at the centre of government.

The Prime Minister, who this weekend becomes the longest continually serving Labour Prime Minister in history, has set up a ministerial working group in the Home Office charged with injecting religious ideas 'across Whitehall'. One expert on the relationship between politics and religion described the move as a 'blow to secularism'.

Blair's move is believed to have the strong support of the two other leading Christian members of the Cabinet, David Blunkett, the Home Secretary, and Paul Boateng, Chief Secretary of the Treasury.

The working group will be chaired by the Home Office Minister with responsibility for what is called 'civic renewal', Fiona Mactaggart. The members will include Estelle Morris, the former Education Secretary who is now the Arts Minister, and Christian organisations including the Evangelical Alliance. Known as the Faith Community Liaison Group, it will have an input into controversial policy areas such as faith schools, which are allowed to select their pupils on the basis of their beliefs, and religious discrimination.

Non-religious groups attacked the plans, saying they gave a special platform to religious groups denied to others.

Blair, a committed Christian who keeps the Bible by his bed, knows he is taking a risk by revealing the importance he places on religion in informing his politics. He also knows that many of his key officials feel uncomfortable about the central role that God plays in his life. There were furrowed brows of consternation when Blair, asked who he would answer to for the deaths of British soldiers, replied: 'My Maker'.

Alastair Campbell, Blair's communications director, said 'We don't do God' when the Prime Minister was questioned in a recent interview with Vanity Fair about his religious beliefs. When Blair wanted to end his televised address to the nation at the start of the war in Iraq with 'God bless you', he was advised against it.

Gary Permalink on 8/03/2003

Response to Diebold's Technical Analysis

Rather than respond with a 35 page point by point rebuttal and risk a continuously growing exchange, we focus on a few examples of Diebold's misinformation, and we show some examples of security problems that appeared in our report and for which there were no counter arguments in the Diebold "analysis".

At end - Several people have asked us what questions they should be asking voting system vendors with regards to security.

Gary Permalink on 8/03/2003

N Korea Rejects US official

North Korea has said it will have no dealings with a senior US state department official who launched a stinging attack on the Communist regime during a visit to the region last week.

A North Korean spokesman said it would still hold talks on its nuclear weapons programme, but not with John Bolton.

Last week Mr Bolton described life in North Korea as "a hellish nightmare".

During a visit to the South Korean capital, Seoul, he said the country's leader, Kim Jong-il, was a tyrannical dictator who lived like royalty

A Foreign Ministry spokesman told the state news agency that the North would no longer consider Mr Bolton an official of the US administration.

He said there was no place at negotiations for "human scum" and "bloodthirsty vampires".

Mr Bolton is the US state department official responsible for arms control and is an outspoken hawk on North Korea.

Much as I hate both the neo-cons and the North Korean government, I now and then think how much they deserve each other.

Two teams of swaggering non-diplomats with nuclear weapons, if only I lived in Europe I would love to watch.

Gary Permalink on 8/03/2003

E-Voting Experts Ousted From Elections Conference

Shooting the messengers.

Dr. Rebecca Mercuri, a leading expert in voting machine security, had her conference credentials revoked by the president of the International Association of Clerks, Records, Election Officials, and Treasurers (IACREOT), Marianne Rickenbach. The annual IACREOT Conference and Trade Show, which showcases election systems to elections officials, is being held at the Adam's Mark Hotel in Denver all this week.

Mercuri believes that her credentials were revoked because of her position in favor of voter-verified paper ballots for computerized election systems. "I guess in a very troubling way it makes sense that an organization like IACREOT, that supports paperless computerized voting systems, which are secret by their very design, would not want computer experts who disagree with that position at their meetings."

David Chaum, the inventor of eCash and a member of Mercuri's 'voter-verified paper ballot' group, had his credentials revoked on the first day of the conference.

Gary Permalink on 8/03/2003

Charles Lindbergh, the famed aviator, explorer and all-American hero, had a secret second family, according to three Germans who claim he was their father.

Americans may have to re-examine the legacy of the airman portrayed as a happy family man with five children and his wife, Anne Morrow.

The two men and one woman who say their father was Lindbergh have come forward with a collection of letters he wrote to their mother.

In an article yesterday, they told the Süddeutsche Zeitung that, on a visit to Germany in 1957, Lindbergh, then 55, fell in love with Brigitte Hesshaimer, a 31-year-old hat maker.

Very possible, he loved the Germans, was a prolific letter writter as the story says, was often away from home on world trips, and he seemed to compartmentalize his life.

Gary Permalink on 8/03/2003

MI6 chief to quit after split on Iraq

Britain's top spymaster has decided to retire early, dealing a damaging new blow to the Government's credibility over its presentation of intelligence on Iraq.

Gary Permalink on 8/03/2003

Pressure for Brits to Leave Iraq Rising

The time has come for us to get out of Iraq

It is thus not just the successive delays in rotating forces home that are ruining morale, but the mission impossible of turning Iraqis into democrats in short order. Now that hopes of recruiting large numbers of peacekeepers from other countries have faded, the time has come to prepare the next-best exit strategy. If equipped with an adequate security force, there is no reason why the new Iraqi Governing Council cannot be left to rule on its own - and such a force could be formed quickly out of existing Kurdish and Shi'ite militias rounded off with police forces raised in Sunni areas as well. The continued survival of Saddam Hussein is no obstacle to a rapid hand-over of power. He has no loyal followers in Iraq but for the Sunni tribals, who can longer impose their will on most Iraqis.

The perils of a rapid exit are many, but the only alternative is a prolonged occupation that offers no greater guarantees of success, at far greater cost.

Perhaps surprisingly, I don't agree with this.

Gary Permalink on 8/03/2003

White House Pressures Niger leaders in Iraq nuclear row

America has warned the Niger government to keep out of the row over claims that Saddam Hussein sought to buy uranium for his nuclear weapons programme from the impoverished West African state.

Herman Cohen, a former assistant secretary of state for Africa and one of America's most experienced Africa hands, called on Mamadou Tandja, Niger's president, in the capital Niamey last week to relay the message from Washington, according to senior Niger government officials.

Gary Permalink on 8/03/2003

''Unwantedness leads to high crime; abortion leads to less unwantedness; abortion leads to less crime.''

Levitt is a full professor in the University of Chicago's economics department, the most legendary program in the country. (He received tenure after only two years.) He is an editor of The Journal of Political Economy, a leading journal in the field. And the American Economic Association recently awarded him its John Bates Clark Medal, given biennially to the country's best economist under 40.

He is a prolific and diverse writer. But his paper linking a rise in abortion to a drop in crime has made more noise than the rest combined. Levitt and his co-author, John Donohue of Stanford Law School, argued that as much as 50 percent of the huge drop in crime since the early 1990's can be traced to Roe v. Wade. Their thinking goes like this: the women most likely to seek an abortion -- poor, single, black or teenage mothers -- were the very women whose children, if born, have been shown most likely to become criminals. But since those children weren't born, crime began to decrease during the years they would have entered their criminal prime. In conversation, Levitt reduces the theory to a tidy syllogism: ''Unwantedness leads to high crime; abortion leads to less unwantedness; abortion leads to less crime.''

In the abortion paper, published in 2001, he and Donohue warned that their findings should not be seen ''as either an endorsement of abortion or a call for intervention by the state in the fertility decisions of women.'' They suggested that crime might just as easily be curbed by ''providing better environments for those children at greatest risk for future crime.''

Still, the very topic managed to offend nearly everyone. Conservatives were enraged that abortion could be construed as a crime-fighting tool. Liberals were aghast that poor and black women were singled out. Economists grumbled that Levitt's methodology was not sound. A syllogism, after all, can be a magic trick: All cats die; Socrates died; therefore Socrates was a cat.

Profiling one of the leading figures in personal and social economics.

Gary Permalink on 8/03/2003

When Fox News Is Talking About Bush Spinning Job Cuts...

In a final Cabinet meeting before his annual August vacation, President George W. Bush on Friday put the best face he could on a mixed unemployment report.

Strategy, or are they losing viewers?

Gary Permalink on 8/02/2003

I Apologize

I once lumped Roger L Simon in with LittleGreenFootballs and Junkyardblog as extreme conservative. This was from a posting at metafilter of some people calling the writer of "Where is Raed" an Iraqi spy. That was also based on his support for the Iraq war and a hasty reading of a few entries in his blog.

Spotting his objection on google over two months later I had to read more. Well, he has also just resented being called liberal. I now have him placed as eccentric but talented and probably still going through a bad war-hawk phase.

Like a few other people I know, he is twisted between the Republican's domestic policy and the Democrat's foreign policy because he seems to be getting all of what he thinks are facts from the conservative side. he definitely seems to be getting their spin.

Can we reconcile his positions on increased funding for public education, some form of national health insurance, gay marriage, etc. with his wanting an aggressive foreign policy and bring him back to the Democrats? Or maybe it is all an image problem with Daschle and most national Democratic leaders being absolute wimps?

Except for the three liberals running, Sharpton, Moseley-Braun and Kucinich, all the of the Democrats want a powerful military. (Too powerful, we are going to be spending more than the next most powerful 30 countries this year, but that's me. With that big a military why don't we just start invading countries that aren't a threat to us? Oops, we already have.)

I don't know, I still think the solution is education - they lied, Iraq didn't have the weapons or the links to Al Qaeda - and giving the Republicans Hell back and educating them how better off we all would be under almost anyone but Bush.

I had to comment on his recent blog:

"Democratic Party (presently ruled by some morally-limited clown named Dean who responds to the death of the genocidal Hussein Brothers by wondering whether the ends justify the means)?"

You think Dean rules the Democratic party when he is being attacked from all other candidates and the DLC establishment?

And you think these Dean statements are morally clownish?

"It's a victory for the Iraqi people but it doesn't have any effect on whether we should or shouldn't have had a war."

Or another source: "It doesn't have any effect on whether we should or shouldn't have had a war. I think in general the ends do not justify the means."

I can remember the debate during Vietnam over wiping out a village of civilians because some were Vietcong we were saving it from. Which side did you come down then on if the ends justified the means?

In the 80's, Republicans were terrified of Iran and sold Saddam the ingredients for chemical weapons and then the delivery systems and satellite photos for using them. Did those ends justify the means?

Later, I have noticed I have been much grumpier lately. This started even before the last week when my health has been bothering me. It doesn't seem like much to downgrade him from "extreme conservative" to someone going through a "warhawk phase." I recognize that and I think I'll have more essays on why I'm angry, I'm grumpy, and I seem to take it out more on folks who should be on our side but have been seduced by the dark side.

Gary Permalink on 8/02/2003

Dean offers environmental plan

Democratic presidential candidate Howard Dean is proposing an environmental policy that would push automakers to improve fuel efficiency standards and require that part of the nation's electricity supply come from renewable sources.

One day after presenting his economic plan in Iowa, the former Vermont governor planned to lay out his 100-year vision for the environment and criticize President Bush's record in a speech Thursday in San Francisco.

20 percent of the nation's electricity supply would have to come from renewable sources such as wind and solar power by 2020. He also would elevate the Environmental Protection Agency to Cabinet level and would insist that the United States participate in international environmental agreements, such as the Kyoto global warming treaty.

But in a proposal certain to upset automakers in key electoral states such as Michigan, Dean suggested requiring automakers to establish a fuel efficiency standard of 40 miles per gallon by 2015. The current requirement is 27.5 miles per gallon for cars and 20.7 for trucks.

Gary Permalink on 8/02/2003

The President Exempts Gays from Marriage, Saudis from Guilt

Greg Palast -- Well, well, well. President George was in one hell of bind this week when it turned that that Saudi Arabia funded Al Qaeda, not Iraq. Realizing we'd invaded the wrong country, Bush did the honorable thing: he's come out against gay marriages.

This caused some real confusion in my staff where a gay member of our investigations team announced he was changing his allegiance from Howard Dean to George Bush. "Bush Saves Gays from Marriage! Bush Saves Gays!" he rushed around the office beaming. "Gay people exempt from going to in-laws for Thanksgiving dinner! Gay-mericans exempt from PTA meetings and hiring divorce lawyers!"

Gary Permalink on 8/02/2003

The Emperor Has No Evidence

Call me naive. But I still am occasionally surprised that George W. Bush keeps getting away with his dog-ate-my-homework presidency. The latest example was his press conference a few days ago, his first since March.

So Bush dodged a straightforward question about the evidence (or lack thereof) underlying his Hussein-and-al Qaeda assertions by discussing the search for new evidence, he engaged in transparent revisionism (referring to weapons programs rather than weapons stockpiles), and he claimed to have conducted an extensive review of intelligence, though his aides say he did not fully read the major document on matter. All in one press conference. That was quite a performance--above and beyond the normal call of spin. To top it off, he declared that he takes responsibility for everything he says, "of course." How nice. He may take responsibility. But he is not held accountable.

Gary Permalink on 8/02/2003

How Does Bush Raise So Much Money?

Bundling, Connections, and Tax-Breaks

Almost all of the top Bush fundraisers are in the top 1 percent of the nation's incomes, and many are in the top one-tenth of the top 1 percent. Consequently, they are among those who benefit the most from administration legislation reducing the top income tax rate, the capital gains rate and the elimination of taxation on dividend income.

The GOP can solicit a greater number of $2,000 donations as a result of wide support in a corporate community eager to repay the Bush administration for its pro-business policies.

Internal campaign documents show that the bundling organization is dominated by corporate CEOs, lobbyists, energy company executives, venture capitalists and investment bankers who can reach tens of thousands of subordinates, customers and subcontractors. The biggest source of new bundlers has been the universe of doctors, corporate defense lawyers and others who favor the Bush administration's proposal to limit lawsuits and to limit the amount that can be recovered for medical malpractice -- legislation that is part of the broad Republican effort known as tort reform.

Becoming part of the Bush money machine starts with a pledge card and a commitment to raise a specific amount, from $20,000 to $250,000 or more. A highly successful innovation of Bush's first campaign, which raised a record $101 million, was the designation of "Pioneer" for someone who raised at least $100,000.

Dean is the only candidate who has tapped into a different campaign system that may combat this.

I doubt any major presidential campaign in modern history – or least, Democratic Party history -- has raised such a large share of its funds from ... small donations.

Bush 81% $1000+ donations
Other Democrats 70-73%
Dean 23%

Gary Permalink on 8/02/2003

Who Do We Elect And Why?

Jennifer Kenney wrote -- This is all so ridiculous, to debate electability on the basis of policy positions. Most people - especially most people who are not policy wonks - make decisions with their guts. They like something or don't based on its innate attractiveness, not on a careful weighing of evidence.

If this were not the case, would anyone truly think that Bush was an asset to our national security? Would he have gotten close enough to steal the election? Would the Dems be thinking about running anybody other than Hillary? Would I ever have thought I was "so in love" with that guy who was "just between jobs right now"? No, no, and Whoa Nelly! People aren't such rational creatures.

The question isn't whether Kerry (or anybody else) has the stance on the issues to beat Dean, the question is whether anybody else has the energy and rhetoric to beat him. Most folks aren't aware of him (or that the primary races have even started). When they become aware of him, they'll decide whether or not they like him from their guts, not their heads, and once they make that decision they'll fill in all the logical policy blanks to justify that decision. That's electability.

Digby -- She’s right. Political junkies and partisans care about issues. Everybody else votes on a gut feeling or tribal identification. The politicians’ job, among other things, is to project an image and an aura that accurately captures who he is and reassures voters that he can do the job. If the politician is astute about the mood and the direction of the country, he will be able to emphasize those personal qualities that people subconsciously believe is needed at that particular time. (Biography and resume count, too. People use them as short hand.)

The post modern nature of the media makes this more important than ever. Narratives are strangely constructed and often left dangling as the herd rushes off in different directions. Truth and reality are presented as relative to which party you belong to --- facts are nothing more than spin points to be debated by the candidate or his “critics.” You can't blame people for relying more and more on their instincts to guide their political choices. It's almost impossible for a busy person to sort out the facts and the truth about any candidate.

Al Gore’s biggest failure as a candidate wasn’t a bad strategy and it wasn’t a lack of passion. It was a stilted and uncomfortable speaking style.

Gary Permalink on 8/02/2003

Big Lies: The Right-Wing Propaganda Machine and How it Distorts the Truth

CONASON: Well, as far as I can tell, the Republicans, at least on Capitol Hill, are far more immoral, by their own standards, than the Democrats are. I have a list in the book -- I go through members of Congress on the Republican side, and other conservatives, because you mention Gingrich being kind of an outstanding example of people who practice the opposite of what they preach. I would challenge any of them to find me a list that long of Democrats who've done the same thing. They won't be able to. And the reason is that the Democrats are more tolerant of human frailty in the first place. This is why they found it easier to forgive Clinton his bad behavior in his marriage.

I don't want to be perceived as saying that all conservatives or all Republicans are liars. I use those terms in the book in a somewhat general way to express what their movement is doing. There are certainly honest conservatives and honest Republicans. But when it comes to morality, they have been promoting themselves on the basis of the lie that they are morally superior in some way to their opponents. And that’s just demonstrably false.

I actually don't think it’s the job of the Democrats to go out and attack any individual Republican’s morality. I actually think it’s the job of the media to measure whether these kinds of allegations by one political party against another have any validity and how much hypocrisy is involved. That’s the function of a free press. Again and again, the mainstream media, and what I call the commanding heights of broadcast and print media in this country, have failed to do that job. They have let the Republicans get away with this stuff. They’ve let the Christian Coalition get away with it. The history of the religious right and the conservative movement in this country is rife with the most grotesque hypocrisy in recent years. And they’ve been allowed to basically have it reported only in the most glancing way which permits them to continue to do the same thing. If the truth about them were told as I tell it in the book, and most people knew that, they would never be able to say any of this again.

I mean, Bush is a patrician. He’s from a nice family with a lot of money and some kind of social background. Karl Rove is a sort of lower middle-class guy who never went to college. Of course he’s going to carry the garbage out. This is a division of labor in American society; it's perfectly reflected in that relationship.

BUZZFLASH: Let me ask a question concerning what one might call celebrity pundit journalism. We have people now like Bill O’Reilly, Ann Coulter,etc. What makes Bill O’Reilly an expert on anything? But on what basis do they have any value to impart that opinion to the American public, other than that they’re entertainers?

CONASON: None, as far as I can tell -– I mean that honestly. I don't know that Bill O’Reilly knows anything about anything. His remarks about the war struck me as the kind of thing that would be said by some inebriated idiot on a barstool: Let’s bomb ‘em. That sort of kill ‘em all and let God sort ‘em out type of thing that some idiot says who’s stumbling along in the gutter. Read the stuff that he said. And I have to tell you it astonished me that this is somebody who is put forward as an authority. It’s a joke.

All the goals that the founders had for the United States are not ideas that contemporary so-called conservatives are much interested in. I’ll tell you what they’re interested in: They’re interested in achieving their own power, in amassing their own wealth, in protecting themselves -- and their interests -- against the interests of the majority. Those are the goals of the leaders of the movement that now calls itself conservatism. And it has very little to do with American traditions and American ideals.

Gary Permalink on 8/02/2003

Economics Nobel Laureate Slams Bush Gov't as "Worst" in American History

"I think this is the worst government the US has ever had in its more than 200 years of history. It has engaged in extradordinarily irresponsible policies not only in foreign policy and economics but also in social and environmental policy," said the 2001 Nobel Prize laureate who teaches economics at the University of California in Berkeley.

"This is not normal government policy. Now is the time for (American) people to engage in civil disobedience. I think it's time to protest - as much as possible," the 61-year-old scholar added.

Akerlof has been recognized for his research that borrows from sociology, psychology, anthropology and other fields to determine economic influences and outcomes.

Gary Permalink on 8/02/2003

Laughin' All The Way To The Bank

Late Night Politics

"Yesterday in the Rose Garden, President George W. Bush staged, as CNN dramatically highlighted, his ninth solo press conference. Notice the emphasis on the word 'solo.' What is Bush, Lindbergh crossing the Atlantic?" —Jon Stewart

"You know, something like 90 people who have now filed to run for governor in this recall election. They say there could be as many as 200 people on the ballot. You know, it's really easy to run here in California. All you need is like a couple of signatures, not many, thirty-five hundred bucks, you're on the ballot, like that. I mean, what does it say about California? We have stricter requirements to get on 'American Idol' than we do to run for governor." —Jay Leno

"Arnold Schwarzenegger has still not officially bowed out of this race. It looks like he's not gonna run. But I'll tell ya, if Arnold does run, he better get on the ballot, because you don't want a write-in with a name like Arnold Schwarzenegger. Because people will go — 'Schwarz, schwarz, oh Davis is easier.'" —Jay Leno

"President Bush's economic team is now on their jobs and growth bus tour all across America. I think the only job they created so far is for the guy driving the bus." —Jay Leno

"President Bush has refused to declassify portions of the congressional 9/11 reports about the Saudis, because he says it will help the enemy. Not Al Qaeda, the Democrats." —Jay Leno

"Senator Bob Graham of Florida said if we apply the same standards of impeachment to President Bush in Iraq that we did with President Clinton and Monica Lewinsky, Bush would be impeached. See I think these are two completely different situations. One president was invading Arab territory, the other president was invading Jewish territory." —Jay Leno

"The U.S. government says it is hot on the trail of Saddam Hussein. And you when they say they are 'hot on the trail,' you know what that means. It means a year from now they'll be saying they are 'hot on the trail of Saddam Hussein.'" —David Letterman

"They say that Saddam is alone, they say he is isolated, but he still has more loyal followers than California Governor Gray Davis." —David Letterman

"The military said that Saddam is running out of places to hide. Let's just hope he doesn't hide with his weapons of mass destruction. Then we'll never find him." —Jay Leno

"Newsweek magazine is reporting that after Uday was killed, U.S. forces found a briefcase next to his body. And the briefcase contained cologne, Viagra, men's underwear, $100 million in cash and one single condom. That is so typical guy isn't it? He's got a $50 million bounty on his head, hundreds of troops outside the door waiting to kill him and he's thinking 'Well maybe there'll be some chicks. I'll bring a condom just in case.'" —Jay Leno

"We finally got the Hussein boys and President Bush has been gloating about it all week. And why shouldn't he? Finally, he said, some good news I don't have to make up." —Bill Maher

"The president has ordered United States Marines to be positioned off the coast of Liberia. He said 'Don't worry, we will not be losing more American lives.' His plan this time is to bypass the war altogether and go straight to the photo op on the deck of the ship." —Bill Maher

"If you don't know anything about Uday and Qusay, these were bad guys. This is what they did all day, they watched pornos, they drank alcohol and they gambled. Which of course has got Congress all worried because they're going 'They can shoot you for that?'" —Jay Leno

"The council's first official act was replacing several official Saddam-themed national holidays with a new one: April 9th, the day Baghdad fell. Iraqis can now look forward to next April's Baghdad Liberation Day sales, which will be advertised as having 'prices so low, it's almost like looting.'" —Jon Stewart, on the first session of the Iraqi Congress

Gary Permalink on 8/02/2003

Note to self: The demons of sour conservatism cannot touch anything that truly matters. Just FYI

Go ahead, ya smirkin' Texas lug, stumble around all scrunched and blank eyed and pseudo-manly, shove this country into a bloody unwinnable war and lie about all the reasons why, gouge the economy and ruin the schools and embarrass the nation every single day as you mangle grammar and meaning and truth. It doesn't really matter.

Go ahead, toss those useless $400 rebate checks to the depressed and jobless populace as some sort of bogus humanitarian gesture as you quietly force an increase in their property taxes to pay for your record-breaking deficit brought on by the tax cut no one wants. Ha. You are so cute.

There is so much more going on than you know. There is so much deeper understanding and wider knowledge and higher winking and you can't touch any of it. Do you know this? You need to know this.

You and your brethren are like this sticky toxic mist. You will burn off in the sun of awareness and orgasm and breath. This is what makes it so fun to watch, so magical and visceral, such a divine circus, a rich tragicomic pageant. Do you sense it?

By all means, hack away at the Clean Air Act so it allows millions more pounds of pollutants into the air every year. Slam gays and women's rights and call everyone in the country a "sinner," cut funding for AmeriCorps and the arts and the poor and nature conservation. Wow. The universe is so very proud. Do you hear it laughing? You're not even making a dent.

See, you cannot touch us. We are inured. You are merely hollow and sad and quickly, effortlessly forgettable the minute we step outside or get into bed with our lovers or laugh with friends or scream to the sky the lyrics to "Ballroom Blitz," always, always striving to taste the intense flavors of the collective dream state.

What, too vague? Too namby-pamby new-age tofu-licking pro-sex liberal? Too bad.

Because there is more meaning and content and depth and significance in a lover's moan and in a drop of wine and in a dog's wag than in anything you can conjure in your homophobic faux-cowboy Lynne Cheney-thick dream, honey. Get over yourself. We are on to you. We know you are made of nothing but spin and frantic gesticulations and scowls. Poke a finger into you and out pours only sawdust and sighs.

We watch you spin and hype and rage and scrunch your face in intense bogus prayer aimed at your bitter and self-righteous and homophobic God as your testes wither and weep. Man, have you got gall.

But here's the thing: You affect only the surface of things. You are like the little swarm of gnats you have to pass through on the path to the cool summer lake. You are the tainted oyster in the vast ocean of time and sex and love. You are a jagged pothole on the highway to hell and the broken step on the stairway to heaven. But you are not real. You give no light. You contribute nothing. Not where it matters.

Gary Permalink on 8/02/2003

Can We Stick The Phoney Label On Bush?

Salon - Democrats can't win in '04 by fighting Bush on the issues alone. They have to convince Americans that their warrior president is a phony in a flyboy suit.