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For The Trees
Who is our economy FOR, anyway? About the Authors: Dave Johnson John Emerson Richard Reich Thomas Leavitt
Recent Posts: BEST OF STF: Dave's: Articles not at STF: The ATLA Speech on building a progressive infrastructure Lowering the Bar The Attack on Trial Lawyers and Tort Law Who's Behind the Attack on Liberal Professors On the Right and their communications infrastructure: Why Republicans Win Win or Lose The "Conventional Wisdom" Machine Some History of the Conservative Movement HOW TO FIGHT BACK An Amplifier Of Our Own Don't Blame the Democrats How They Do It 1 2 3 4 Getting Rolled Other: You're Gonna Get Drafted Scalia and Self-Government Who is Our Economy For? Voting Machine Story Link Collection What's Wrong with this Picture? (Voting Machines) Like Meat in the Supermarket Get Active Thin Line 1 2 3 Fixing Social Security Seeing the Forest I, II, III "Incredibly Positive News" The Breadth of It The Republican Crony Club Moon Bush Ralph Nader is a Scab John's Best Of: Kerry Smear Page Bandar Bush 9/11 Commission Report Damages Bush -- if you read it Florida Goon Squad Intimidated the Supreme Court The Use and Abuse of George Orwell Zizka's Archives (John's previous identity) Zizka Sampler News Sources: AlterNet BuzzFlash Common Dreams Cursor Drudge Retort Information Clearing House Smirking Chimp TruthOut What REALLY Happened Links to Other Weblogs: |
 2/29/2004 $97 The Left Coaster: Bush Tax Package Has Led To Average Refund Increases Of Less Than $100. --- Posted at 2/29/2004 05:54:00 PM by Dave Johnson Link to this | | | | e-mail this post  
Republicans and October Surprises In response to comments following this post, In October? No Surprise. Fears that Republicans will attempt to manipulate elections using some kind of "October Surprise" go back further than the 1980 election when Iran released the hostages just after Reagan's inauguration, after President Carter had worked so hard to get them released with no success -- and no rational reason for the Iranians to hold out so long. (Doing that only makes sense if the Iranians wanted something in writing signed by a representative of the new President, not by a candidate, and coincidentally two weeks later the Reagan administration started shipping arms to Iran -- a fact that became public from the Iran/Contra investigation.). In fact, this story about the 1968 election, Nixon 'Wrecked Early Peace In Vietnam', describes events that helped people who knew about them realize what was going on in 1980: (Other sources here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here.) At the heart of the new account was Nixon's fear that Vietnam peace efforts by President Johnson in the run-up to the November 1968 US presidential election could wreck Nixon's bid to oust Hubert Humphrey, the Democratic candidate, and capture the White House. Nixon's response to Johnson's efforts was to use a go-between, Anna Chennault, to urge the South Vietnam's president, Nguyen van Thieu, to resist efforts to force them to the peace table. Nixon's efforts paid off spectacularly. On October 31, Johnson ordered a total halt to the bombing of North Vietnam, the precondition for getting the North and their Vietcong allies to join the talks. Two days later, under intense secret urgings from Nixon and his lieutenants, Thieu announced his government would not take part. Less than a week later, Nixon was elected president with less than a one-point margin in the popular vote over Humphrey.The charge that the Reagan campaign interfered with attempts to get the hostages released in order to manipulate the elections came from people who knew that Republicans had interfered to block peace negotiations of a previous Democratic administration in order to make Democrats look weak on national security. They understood what Republicans are capable of. And now we have more history. We have Nixon in 68, Reagan in 80 and Bush forcing the Iraq vote to manipulate the 2002 election. So the question is not what are they capable of doing for the 2004 elections, it's what ARE they going to do? (Gotta go -- My wife's looking at me with that 'there I go again' look...) --- Posted at 2/29/2004 04:29:00 PM by Dave Johnson Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
Race To The Bottom Over at The Zeitgeist: Lay off the Kool-aid Tom...: "I've been a software developer since the late 1970s when I was running my own business in high-school. I was a VP in technology on Wall St. for many years, and even helped jump-start this whole Internet thing by putting JPMorgan & Co. on the Internet back in early 1991 -- JPMorgan was the very first bank in the world on the Internet -- and helping to fund the development of a little program called Mosaic (which later became Netscape). I've run my own consulting business. I am the founder of a start-up. God help me. I am 41, I've got 25 years in this business and I know lots and lots and lots of people. I have never seen such pessimism from so many smart, smart people before. Why are they so blue? Its simple: They know that no matter how hard they work, no matter how many degrees they have, no matter how much have contributed/created in the past, and no matter how much they are capable of creating in the future -- it doesn't matter one bit. They're all toast. Because you see, its not about training, or capability, or creativity, or past contributions, or future potential... its only about cost. And there's no way they can win. Ask any employer who's fired their IT people. they'll tell you: It doesn't matter what their American staff was capable of creating or achieving. They just don't want Americans, no matter what. Its all about a race to the bottom; a race to see who can get away with paying the least. With about 3 Billion people in the world willing to work for pennies, and with selfish, greedy, thoughtless corporate thugs willing to put the shaft to Americans and others who made our high-technology world possible, there's no possible way for American (or other) workers to survive. There's just no competing with essentially free labor."I don't think the job loss situation is about "trade" at all. I think the use of the terms "trade" and "free trade" are clever ways to distract from the real problem. "Trade" sounds great, OF COURSE we should "trade" with others. Duh! But the arguments I have heard promoting sending jobs offshore are pretty much the same argument as those for getting rid of the minimum wage, for not having unions, for workers keeping quiet, doing what they're told and being grateful that they have food and shelter at all. As I wrote the other day in Trade, Jobs and the Ongoing Struggle, "Show me where the current trade arguments are different from the minimum wage arguments? They argue that raising (or even having) a minimum wage keeps the poor from getting jobs. And they argue that asking trade partners to protect workers rights and safety and pay higher wages keeps THEIR poor from getting jobs."I think this is about the moneyed interests -- corporations in this case -- being able to make use of global unemployment to drive down not just wages and benefits (costs) but also the power of workers. This is about the struggle between labor and capital that has been going on and will go on. Since they started shipping jobs to Mexico they have been able to substantially weaken the unions and by weakening the unions they have weakened the power of the Democratic coalition (with some help from Ralph). It seems that the question, Who is our economy FOR, anyway? gets more and more relevant every day. --- Posted at 2/29/2004 01:11:00 PM by Dave Johnson Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
Who Are "Vietnam Vets Against John Kerry"? Kerry's positions on defense issues and his opposition to the Vietnam War are both legitimate political issues and well worthy of discussion. However, the motivation of this anti-Kerry demonstration is quite dubious. The leader of "Vietnam Veterans Against John Kerry", Ted Sampley, is a con man who has been making an excellent living off his POW-MIA non-profit organization. Sampley was one of those who helped George W. Bush smear John McCain in the 2000 Republican primary. In McCain's words: "I am well familiar with Mr. Sampley, and I know him to be one of the most despicable people I have ever had the misfortune to encounter. I consider him a fraud who preys on the hopes of family members of missing servicemen for his own profit." Ironically, one of the operatives attacking McCain for Bush, Thomas Burch, attacked the first President Bush in 1988 for naming the National Guardsman Dan Quayle as his Vice Presidential candidate! Apparently it's not just Democrats who have questions about the Vietnam-era National Guard. Vietnam Veterans Against John Kerry McCain on Sampley Sampley's non-profit; Burch More on Burch and Sampley 2000 McCain smear; Burch attacking Bush the First Conason on McCain and Kerry Smears --- Posted at 2/29/2004 01:01:00 PM by John Emerson Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
2/28/2004 In October? No Surprise. Over at Calpundit Kevin says: "The idea that the Bush administration is somehow keeping Osama under wraps in order to spring an 'October Surprise' that will guarantee their reelection is a common topic of gossip, but not something that anyone (yet) has been willing to broach in serious news pages -- and for pretty obvious reasons."What are the obvious reasons? Thinking this through, (sorry, Tom), I can come up with a number of reasons but there aren't any obvious ones - at least to me. Is Kevin saying that it is obvious the press isn't picking this up because it's a wild, fringe idea that the Bush people might do something like this? How wild is it when you consider that this is the crowd that took the country to war against a country that had not attacked or even threatened us instead of finishing the task of capturing or killing the terrorists who attacked us on 9/11? AND that this is the crowd that used the timing of that war to manipulate the 2002 elections? Wild compared to that? Or is he saying that it is obvious the press isn't writing about this because the press is either controlled by or intimidated by the Bush corporatists? Is he saying it is obvious because it is obvious that they are holding Osama for use in an October surprise? Uh oh, my wife is looking at me tapping faster and faster on the keys, and she's getting that "there you go again getting all worked up" expression that tells me I had better calm down. --- Posted at 2/28/2004 09:41:00 PM by Dave Johnson Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
Email to Dave I sent an email to Dave with this thought I had over a salad this evening. He seems to like it: I have the campaign slogan for the Demos. They don't deserve it -- it should go to Ralph, but then nobody will hear it. AMERICANS FIRST! Kerry/Edwards 2004 Also, another related one: Kerry/Edwards for Americans! If any right-winger is stupid enough to play some word game and compare it to America First, YOU JUST RIP THEM A NEW ONE: "What! It's really no surprise to anyone who's been watching you guys, but I'm really shocked you'd make it so clear, so openly, that YOU DO NOT PUT AMERICANS FIRST!" Scream. Scream a lot. This could even win back the Congress. There's lots of ways you could take this. Edwards might do particularly well with it. (Dean would have done great with it, alas.) --- Posted at 2/28/2004 09:25:00 PM by richard Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
I'm embarrassed... for this guy actually. My goodness! This guy is darn near illiterate. He writes at about the fourth grade level. As someone who worked with hundreds of IU students as a teaching assistant a few years ago, I'm happy to report that this guy is not typical. Atrios is right though, this guy's ignorance, illiteracy, and bigotry certainly seems to give us an indication where the conservative movement is heading these days, doesn't it? If you were curious as to exactly what kind of person W was appealing to with the "Defense of Marriage" constitutional amendment, now you know. --- Posted at 2/28/2004 08:38:00 PM by Tom Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
2/27/2004 Extra Unemployment Benefits Lose in Senate Yahoo! News - Extra Unemployment Benefits Lose in Senate: "A Senate measure to extend federal unemployment benefits failed by two votes Thursday despite the election year support of 12 Republicans from states hit hard by layoffs. Democrats tried to attach the amendment to a gun liability bill, but it failed 58-39 in the GOP-controlled Senate. The margin was two votes shy of the 60 needed to overcome a procedural objection. "A "procedural objection" -- meaning the Republicans filibustered it, right? "[Republican Senator] Nickles said jobless workers have more incentive to find a job when the extra unemployment benefits stop. "The more you pay people not to work, the less inclined they are to work," he said.Right. All those people are just sitting around on their butts, turning down all the jobs they are being offered. --- Posted at 2/27/2004 02:46:00 PM by Dave Johnson Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
Did US and UK Know? Juan Cole asks a VERY good question about US and British bugging of UN officials: "The Blix wiretaps raise an interesting question. Did the US and UK know even more about the lack of evidence for weapons of mass destruction than we thought, from what Blix was saying privately in spring of 2003 before the war?" --- Posted at 2/27/2004 12:10:00 PM by Dave Johnson Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
Trade, Jobs and The Ongoing Struggle Following is a comment I left following this post at Brad DeLong's blog. (Of course, what I'm posting here is edited, selected, massaged, even tortured to make me look better.) Responding to a claim that '...Americans are told that trade destroys jobs...'.: "I don't know what is gained by misrepresenting the positions of people opposed to the current trade situation! Who is telling Americans that? NO ONE IS. What I hear people saying is that trade with countries that do not honor their agreements, and/or countries that do not permit labor to organize or that do not allow their citizens to vote on their country's policies or do not have environmental regulations, etc. is inherently stacked against OUR interests AS WELL AS the interests of the people in the countries we trade with. And it is not harming JUST the interests of Americans who lose their jobs but also the interests of our country as a whole. How do we benefit by trading away our jobs, assets, manufacturing base, technological expertise and revenue base, to trade partners who are not purchasing enough from us, not paying their own citizens well, not protecting the environment, not letting workers organize, not letting their citizens vote, not floating their currency so their goods cost what they should relative to ours, etc.? Ultimately this is about more than trade, it is the ongoing struggle over who gets what share of the pie. Of course corporations will always try to lower costs. They should. But this can mean trying to repeal the minimum wage, or use child labor, or bribing inspectors. So it's up to us, the people, to try to put in place controls that protect the public interest. It is our duty. Is it 'protectionist' to support a higher minimum wage, or national health insurance or worker safety regulations, or the right to unionize? YOU BET IT IS! It protects the people who work for a living. Here AND with our trading partners. Without worker protections in place in countries like China, and without agreements in place that mean that our trade "partners" REALLY DO balance out our job losses by purchasing US goods, and by allowing their currencies to follow the market, it is NOT A LEVEL PLAYING FIELD. It is NOT "FREE" TRADE AT ALL! All we are doing is trading away American living standards, increasing our debt, to enrich corporate executives and corrupt Chinese officials! "Protectionism" means PROTECTING AMERICANS. A $500 billion trade deficit indicates a problem with our idea of "free trade," doesn't it? Stagnant income growth for the middle class since the 70's indicates a problem, doesn't it? With the trade portion of the struggle between moneyed interests and the public, we are trading away jobs and assets in return for loans. The public takes on the trade debt load and the executives walk away with the cash. With other forms of this struggle, like the minimum wage and the right to organize, we are experiencing the corruption of our own political system, trading away our retirement income for tax cuts to the rich, and other signs that the public's position in this ongoing battle is weakening... The trade situation is just another part of that battle - it's the scene in 'Grapes of Wrath' where they're bussing in the strikebreakers so they can keep wages low. It's just that they're bussing them over the border now. --- Let me add to that. Show me where the current trade arguments are different from the minimum wage arguments? They argue that raising (or even having) a minimum wage keeps the poor from getting jobs. And they argue that asking trade partners to protect workers rights and safety and pay higher wages keeps THEIR poor from getting jobs. But, in fact, history shows that increasing the minimum wage and other income redistribution policies precedes higher growth, not lower growth. And periods of wealth concentration coincide with periods of lower growth. This is a consumer economy and customers with money to spend grows the economy. Clinton's tax HIKES and minimum wage HIKES and EITC (Earned Income Tax Credit) HIKES brought about a boom. So policies that promote higher wages and income redistribution benefit everyone, and policies that reduce wages and concentrate wealth promote that "race to the bottom." Policies for labor OUTSIDE the country have the same effect as those for labor IN the country. Promoting workers rights increases growth, and benefits all of us."Go join the discussion. --- Posted at 2/27/2004 11:42:00 AM by Dave Johnson Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
The Stonewalling Continues Why are Republicans still stonewalling the 9/11 Commission? Again, for the hundredth time, what are they hiding? I have a suspicion that I'll go ahead and share. I suspect that somewhere in the President's Daily Briefing (probably on different days in August) an analyst mentioned a concern about hijacking and domestic terrorism by al-Qaeda -- maybe even going so far as to suggest that targets like the World Trade Center would be vulnerable. I doubt that the analyst who prepared the briefing connected the concern over hijackings and a heightened threat of domestic terrorism but they probably suggested both of these as potential concerns. I also now suspect that someone suggested to the president that he increase the security at airports but W couldn't be bothered because he some brush to clear or a golf game to go to or some other pressing engagement during his month-long vacation in August of 2001. Furthermore, don't you find the insistance that the president actually wants the commission's work to continue for the two months but can't seem to get Hastert to go along, a bit too convenient? I mean, heck folks, who really believes that little cover story? And also, why just an hour with the commission, Mr. Bush? Here's a question from today's gaggle that really shows that some in the press recognize the president's hypocrisy on this issue: In every speech he gives, President Bush invokes the atrocities of 9/11 and he talks about how that event has impressed on him a determination to always honor the victims of those atrocities in his daily conduct of his office. And I wonder if you could explain with some serious Texan straight talk here, Scott, how it is honoring the victims of 9/11 to restrict the questioning of the President on this subject to one hour?How about it, Mr. President? Answer that question for us all please. --- Posted at 2/27/2004 10:34:00 AM by Tom Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
2/26/2004 Stern Digby finds a strange coincidence in the firing of Howard Stern. Go read at Hullabaloo: "So, suddenly John Hogan, Bush Ranger and CEO of Clear Channel discovers that Howards Stern talks about pornography on his show and is offended. The day after Stern made the above remarks. Coincidence, I'm sure."And, the same piece has something I agree with: "Furthermore, it's just a little bit galling that a violent, pornographic snuff film that features 15 minutes of big juicy close-ups of hunks of flesh flying off the human body as it is flogged with barbed whips is deemed appropriate for children by supposedly good Christians while they have a complete hissy fit over a 5 second long shot of Janet Jackson's nipple on television."It seems so easy to sell stuff to the the fundies, if you use the right approach. This time it's movie marketing hype. Other times it's estate or capital gains tax cuts. GOD says go pay $9 and see the most violent film ever made. GOD says we should cut capital gains taxes. GOD says send me $100 so I can build a theme park or buy a diamond mine and get even richer. AND they all go out and DO it (or vote for it)! I wonder if I can think up a way to make some money off the right-wing Christians. The money would go to a great cause. --- Posted at 2/26/2004 05:04:00 PM by Dave Johnson Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
Accountability On the Right For those who think that the investigation into the Plame affair (Bush aides revealing the identity of a covert CIA agent, working on preventing weapons of mass destruction from getting into terrorist hands) is likely to lead somewhere, or the 9/11 commission (looking into whether Bush f*cked up and let us get attacked), or the investigations into pre-Iraq WMD intelligence (looking into whether Bush f*cked up and got us into a war), I suggest looking at what happened to a couple of cases that involved right-wingnuts and actual dead bodies. I don't have a high level of optimism that there is going to be ANY oversight or accountability or justice as long as the Right controls all the branches of government. Update As with any Google search, if the page is no longer there you can still read it by clicking "Cached." This one, for example -- and it is really worth reading past the "about me" and into the "letter" part. --- Posted at 2/26/2004 02:38:00 PM by Dave Johnson Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
MoDo: "Stations of the Crass" Our soldiers are being killed in Iraq; Osama's still on the loose; jobs are being exported all over the world; the deficit has reached biblical proportions. And our president is worrying about Mars and marriage? When reporters tried to pin down White House spokesman Scott McClellan yesterday on why gay marriage is threatening, he spouted a bunch of gobbledygook about "the fabric of society" and civilization. The pols keep arguing that institutions can't be changed when, in fact, they change all the time. Haven't they ever heard of the institution of slavery? The government should not be trying to legislate what's sacred. When Bushes get in trouble, they look around for a politically advantageous bogeyman. Lee Atwater tried to make Americans shudder over the prospect of Willie Horton arriving on their doorstep; and now Karl Rove wants Americans to shudder at the prospect of a lesbian — Dick Cheney's daughter Mary, say — setting up housekeeping next door with her "wife." When it comes to the Bushes' willingness to stir up base instincts of the base, it is as it was.Indeed. --- Posted at 2/26/2004 06:39:00 AM by Tom Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
2/25/2004 Kerry and Cleland Smears I've started to collect anti-Kerry smears as they show up. So far I've put up the "Special Interest Money" smear, the "Didn't Really Earn His Medals" smear, the "Jane Fonda Photo" smear, and the "Kerry: Self-Hating Jew" smear. I've also thrown in the two Max Cleland smears: "Cleland-Saddam-Osama" and "Cleland Blew off his Arm and Legs Himself Out of Sheer Stupidity" (the last one courtesy of Ann Coulter.) This should end up being quite a lengthy file (!) so I've parked it at the other site. I will also continue to update my Bush-Bin Laden site ("Who is Bandar Bush?"). Bush is vulnerable on the War on Terrorism if the Democrats have the guts to attack him. He's actually doing a crappy job and has some enormous skeletons in his closet. I expect as dirty a campaign as I've witnessed in my lifetime, and I see it as my role to encourage the Democrats to respond with adequate ferocity. Smear Page Who is Bandar Bush? --- Posted at 2/25/2004 09:36:00 PM by John Emerson Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
Same-Sex Marriages Thanks to Oliver Willis for pointing to these pictures of society coming apart, the end of civilization, the destruction of America, the ruin of all we stand for, etc. --- Posted at 2/25/2004 07:28:00 PM by Dave Johnson Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
I'm assuming... that Greenspan's luck just ran out, right? I mean, heck folks, W and the boys have to respond to this forcefully -- or there goes Florida. And Dave's right. Greenspan is suggesting that the administration default on the nation's promises to senior citizens in order to save the taxcuts for the rich. What are the odds Greenspan has got a job this time next week? This is really getting fun to watch, isn't it? --- Posted at 2/25/2004 12:12:00 PM by Tom Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
So Here It Is Not even bothering to disguise the relationship. First, the massive tax cuts for the rich, then the cuts in OUR retirement to help pay for a bit of those tax cuts. Greenspan Urges Cuts to Social Security to Reign In Deficit: "Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan urged Congress on Wednesday to deal with the country's escalating budget deficit by cutting benefits for future Social Security retirees rather than raising taxes."He is saying that the SAME money is better for the economy when given to rich people than when use to meet the needs of regular citizens. And how else does he suggest solving the problem of the massive deficits resulting from the tax cuts for the rich? "Tax rate increases of sufficient dimension to deal with our looming fiscal problems arguably pose significant risks to economic growth and the revenue base,'' Greenspan said. "The exact magnitude of such risks is very difficult to estimate, but they are of enough concern, in my judgment, to warrant aiming to close the fiscal gap primarily, if not wholly, from the outlay side.''He says that we must cut spending on the needs of the public rather that tax the rich. He says that raising taxes on the rich threatens economic growth but that cutting the incomes of elderly, or making the sick pay for their treatment, or cutting the paychecks of teachers or construction workers, etc. does not. In other words, he is saying that THE SAME money given to rich people is better for the economy than money spent on the needs of regular people. Also posted at Daily News Online. --- Posted at 2/25/2004 09:13:00 AM by Dave Johnson Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
2/24/2004 What? I just don’t get it. I’ve been trying to decide why W thinks a fight over prohibiting gay civil unions, an issue very few people in this world care about, is going to help his campaign. It just doesn’t make any sense. I think, of course, that tolerance is always a good thing. If states want to do this, what’s the big deal? I just can’t understand why W and the boys feel threatened by states offering civil unions for gay folks. (I remind you that the state can’t legally preside over religious sacraments -- but you knew that, right?) And, also, how does this really “threaten” your marriage or my marriage? Furthermore, if this passes, can you imagine what historians will say about this generation if the only amendment added to the constitution is this “Defense of Marriage” amendment? My goodness, what would this say about us? Furthermore, while this issue might crank up the real knuckle-dragging bigots out there (like these guys), most people give it a big yawn. Most folks think, hey, why should prohibiting gay marriage be a priority for our government when there’s so many other important issues out there? And wait a minute, aren’t these the guys who are always talking about local control and state rights? How in the world is this proposed amendment consistent with those beliefs? Or, more interestingly, is this yet another in a long line of issues designed merely to distract us? Have W and the boys just tossed this issue out there so that people will stop noticing that the economy is heading South (consumer confidence ominously dropped last month) and the Iraq situation is rapidly deteriorating – and that this administration has no earthly idea how to deal with either problem? Unfortunately, this issue might also distract the folks in this administration from more important problems. Honestly folks, think about it, if there’s a terrorist attack anytime in the next couple of months, W and the boys may have missed the opportunity to thwart it because they were just too busy focusing on this oh-so-important “Defense of Marriage” amendment. I mean, heck folks, this issue is so out there that apparently even Tom DeLay thinks it’s an extremist and divisive issue – and Tom’s not exactly known for his, er, thoughtfulness. I also think this has a real chance to backfire. It makes W and the boys look like insensitive bigots just at the point in the campaign when they need to appeal to someone outside of their base. A little over a year ago I can remember joking that W’s true base is made up of that 33% of the people in this country who would vote for W even if he sprouted pointy ears and a tail and began speaking in indecent iambic couplets. (Actually, didn’t W begin to do that just last week?) But how does this issue appeal to anyone beyond these already rock solid Bush supporters? If you recall, I also predicted that if W went down it would be an incredible show. Pass the popcorn folks. I really do think that the show is just starting. If these guys really think this is the issue to fight the 2004 elections over, can you imagine the bushel basket of hilarious missteps yet to come? --- Posted at 2/24/2004 08:53:00 PM by Tom Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
A Special Little Law Senate to Vote on Shielding Gun Makers. A special little law saying you can't sue gun manufacturers, "has the support of the White House and 55 sponsors in the Senate, including the Democratic and Republican leaders."The spine injection lasted only so long. Coming soon, Sainthood for Joseph McCarthy. Later, honors for Jefferson Davis. --- Posted at 2/24/2004 08:45:00 AM by Dave Johnson Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
2/23/2004 Tell The DNC To Launch The $100 Revolution Go read NDN Blog: The DNC and the $100 revolution and then go to the DNC or the DNC Blog and tell them to launch the $100 revolution this summer! And, donate $100 today. It's your duty. Seriously. How else are we going to win? --- Posted at 2/23/2004 09:34:00 PM by Dave Johnson Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
“Free” Trade, Offshoring, Jobs and the Concept of "Ownership" in General I have a longer piece titled, “Free” Trade, Offshoring, Jobs and the Concept of "Ownership" in General over at the american street. --- Posted at 2/23/2004 05:56:00 PM by Dave Johnson Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
Education Secretary Calls Teacher Union a "Terrorist Organization" More from the Cabinet of Mister "I'm going to change the tone in Washington" and "I'm a uniter not a divider." Paige calls NEA 'terrorist organization': "Education Secretary Rod Paige called the National Education Association a 'terrorist organization' Monday as he argued that the country's largest teachers union often acts at odds with the wishes of rank-and-file teachers regarding school standards and accountability. "What can I say? I suppose Bush's Labor Secretary considers the AFL-CIO to be the same thing. And the head of the EPA the Sierra Club. Etc. And check out what he calls an "apology:" "It was an inappropriate choice of words to describe the obstructionist scare tactics the NEA's Washington lobbyists have employed against No Child Left Behind's historic education reforms. "I also said, as I have repeatedly, that our nation's teachers, who have dedicated their lives to service in the classroom, are the real soldiers of democracy, whereas the NEA's high-priced Washington lobbyists have made no secret that they will fight against bringing real, rock-solid improvements in the way we educate all our children regardless of skin color, accent or where they live. "This is the guy who's job is to WORK WITH the teacher unions! --- Posted at 2/23/2004 04:53:00 PM by Dave Johnson Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
Who Wins, Who Loses? Let's suppose that the Democrat (presumably Kerry) wins this fall. When that happens, who will the other winners and losers be? One loser will be Karl Rove and Bush's core constituency of anti-tax fanatics, Armageddon Christians, homophobes, and militarists. Rove has tied Bush's fate so closely to these groups (at the expense of more rational moderates and conservatives) that it seems that they might bring Bush down. When that happens, the Republicans are going to be less likely to cater to them in the future. A second loser will be the media -- pretty much all of them, from the talk shows and Fox on up to the Times and the Post. Multiple signs of dissatisfaction about Bush are trickling in, and his poll numbers are about as bad as a sitting President has ever gotten, but the media are still reporting him as "a popular President". By and large, nothing Bush says or does is ever critically reported, no matter how ludicrous and outrageous it is. From a professional point of view, of course, the media's imbecile coverage of Gore / Bush and the Bush administration has been a disaster. But from the more cynical point of view, the media's attempt to get Bush elected will have failed if Kerry wins, and if that does happen Jack Welch, the Rev. Moon, Rupert Murdoch, and Roger Ailes will whip their little loser media butts for them. The third loser will be the Democratic pros. Below I linked to Kos calling the Democratic pros "the whiniest, most afraid people in the country". Before Howard Dean came along, the Democrats -- following the best professional advice -- were getting ready to slump through a loser campaign which would not even mention the Iraq War except to support it. Dean (along with a lot of grass-roots Dems) woke them up, and now it looks like we might actually have a fight on our hands. So if we win, it seems that maybe we should be getting some new pros. Coda: What I just said is probably far too optimistic. Kerry -- who I'll be happy to vote for -- is now the candidate of the Democratic Establishment, and it's quite possible that in the end the media lords will pick up on Bush's weakness and get behind Kerry. So I guess my title should have read "Who should lose". The media are probably beyond hope, but hopefully there will be someone in the Kerry campaign to put a bug in his ear about this. He might be educable. --- Posted at 2/23/2004 09:51:00 AM by John Emerson Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
Game Time Below I agree with Matt Yglesias for once. He's responding to Josh Chafetz, who described Kerry's response to Saxby Chambliss (!!) as "slimy". ********** Can't we get used to the idea that it's game time? Between games, and maybe before and after games, you can have a certain amount of idle chat between players of opposing teams, and maybe players from one of the teams team might admit that they got an unfair break in a previous game, or that one of their own players tends to travel a bit, etc., etc. But once the whistle is blown you don't call fouls on your own side. And you also don't have people on the court who are still deciding which side they're on, or who believe that competition is a bad thing and that we should all just get along. So there's no reason to listen to Ricky [Yglesias pet conservative]. He's on the other team. (Though it might be mentioned that his claim that "the Democrats started it" makes one guess that his long-term memory was seriously impaired during his heavy-metal-tweaker days.) I don't see Chafetz as a Republican. Not quite -- presumably he's angling for the David Broder above-the-battle Ace Pontificater gasbag slot. Let him have that slot, I say -- but someone get him and Broder off the basketball court! (Come to think of it, though, wasn't Chafetz channeling the Krauthammer of a couple days ago? So maybe he really is a Republican.) I think that after the Chambliss-Cleland race, the Bush-McCain race, and Gingrich's 1994 Sharon Smith smear (at my URL), whatever objective observers still remain will agree that the Republicans play as dirty as anyone ever has played. However, objective observers who blame the Republicans will be immediately smeared as Democratic sympathizers, so why should they even bother to try? Tit for tat, and do unto others before they do unto you. If you don't like what you see, get your ass out of the way. P.S. Chafetz seems have missed the subtext here. The man sent by the Republicans to attack Kerry, Saxby Chambliss, was the chickenhawk who defeated triple-amputee Vietnam vet Max Cleland. Chambliss' secret weapon was a TV ad which morphed Cleland's face into Saddam Hussein's. Kerry's statement (with Cleland right beside him) was partly getback for something which happened in the past, and partly a preemptive strike against the smears that are sure to be sent Kerry's way. --- Posted at 2/23/2004 09:19:00 AM by John Emerson Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
Howard Zinn says: The quick Thanksgiving visit of Bush to Iraq, much ballyhooed in the press, was seen differently by an army nurse in Landstuhl, Germany, where casualties from the war are treated. She sent out an e-mail: "My 'Bush Thanksgiving' was a little different. I spent it at the hospital taking care of a young West Point lieutenant wounded in Iraq. . . . When he pressed his fists into his eyes and rocked his head back and forth he looked like a little boy. They all do, all nineteen on the ward that day, some missing limbs, eyes, or worse. . . . It's too bad Bush didn't add us to his holiday agenda. The men said the same, but you'll never read that in the paper." As for Jeremy Feldbusch, blinded in the war, his hometown of Blairsville, an old coal mining town of 3,600, held a parade for him, and the mayor honored him. I thought of the blinded, armless, legless soldier in Dalton Trumbo's novel Johnny Got His Gun, who, lying on his hospital cot, unable to speak or hear, remembers when his hometown gave him a send-off, with speeches about fighting for liberty and democracy. He finally learns how to communicate, by tapping Morse Code letters with his head, and asks the authorities to take him to schoolrooms everywhere, to show the children what war is like. But they do not respond. "In one terrible moment he saw the whole thing," Trumbo writes. "They wanted only to forget him." In a sense, the novel was asking, and now the returned veterans are asking, that we don't forget.Indeed. Sometimes people forget that it was us anti-war folks who had enough foresight to worry about these problems before the war took place. I really think W should spend a day per week visiting injured soldiers. It might make him a bit less likely to take us into an immoral and unnecessary war again. Maybe. --- Posted at 2/23/2004 08:42:00 AM by Tom Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
2/22/2004 Stealing From Dave Barry I am going to have to steal the line, "I am not making this up" for this post. But I am giving credit. Manufacturing jobs involve assembling things. Place item Bg on item Bn (bottom), then place Item L on the BgBn combination. To complete, place a Bn (top) unit on this, and wrap the completed assembly. OK, so to make their job-creation record look better before the election the Bush administration is talking about reclassifying a certain job category as a manufacturing job. Item Bn is bun. Bg is burger and L is lettuce. I am not making this up. --- Posted at 2/22/2004 01:56:00 PM by Dave Johnson Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
2/21/2004 Bin Laden If the, Sunday Telegraph - Bin Laden 'surrounded', is true, they have Bin Laden cornered and are awaiting orders to go get him: "'The timing of that order will ultimately depend on President Bush,' the paper says. 'Capturing bin Laden will certainly be a huge help for him as he gets ready for the election.'"But they're waiting for the right time, and everyone seems to agree that election politics are the determining factor. So here's this guy who has had his forces attack us, is engaged in planning further activities to attack and kill Americans and others, and we're not getting him until the time is right to help Bush's election prospects. Just one more example of Party over Country. --- Posted at 2/21/2004 12:25:00 PM by Dave Johnson Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
Bush / Bin Laden 2.0 Bush / Bin Laden 2.0 We can expect a dirty Presidential campaign, and I agree with Kerry that we should go tit for tat and not lie down the way Dukakis did. George W. Bush's unhealthy friendship with the Saudis and the fraudulence of his War on Terror are valid political issues. They are also red meat quite suitable for political hardball. What's not to like? I've revised my long file documenting Bush ties with the Saudis (including the Bin Ladens), Bush favoritism to the Saudis, Saudi involvement in terrorism, Bush indifference to counter-terrorism before 9/11, the irrelevance of the Second Iraq War to terrorism, blowback, Pakistan, etc. All the material is available elsewhere; what I've done is sift and sort the material and organize it into an anti-Bush storyline. It isn't fun reading and doesn't really break new ground. I mean it to be a resource for the campaign. Anyone who wants to can pirate it, excerpt it, reformat it, etc. I would be very happy to have it mirrored. I also welcome for updates, corrections, and suggestions. UPDATE: I am planning to keep this page updated and am promoting it under the brand name "Who is Bandar Bush?". I hope as many sites as possible give it a permanent link: http://www.johnjemerson.com/zizka.binladen.htm . I suspect that Kerry and the official Democrats will want to keep their hands off this, which is all the more reason for us freelancers to keep the question alive. --- Posted at 2/21/2004 10:32:00 AM by John Emerson Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
2/20/2004 They're In Baghdad Now Chalabi, asked whether his Iraqi National Congress manipulated the Bushies into invading a country that did not attack us and did not threaten us, has this to say: "'Our objective has been achieved. That tyrant Saddam is gone, and the Americans are in Baghdad. What was said before is not important.' "Yep. Just like their friends the Republicans, you gotta learn to watch what they're DOING not what they SAYING if you want to know what they're up to. As I wrote before, "They're in Baghdad now." All the Iraqi and American dead and wounded don't figure into this at all. And, of course, the casting away of international law, the hundreds of billions spent, the militarization of our culture, the possible coming Iraqi civil war, the credibility and reputation of the United States... None of that figured into the calculations at all. After all, they're in Baghdad now. They got what they want, fuck you very much. Update - Thinking about this, I think this is huge. Just huge. This story needs to get OUT THERE. Chalabi as well as admits that the INC pursued a scheme to manipulate American intelligence. Fine, but the Bush people wanted war and fell for it. The cost is tremendous. The potential for disaster is vast. --- Posted at 2/20/2004 10:01:00 PM by Dave Johnson Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
Patriot Games I think Billmon has some election ideas worth projecting to a wide audience. In Patriot Games he writes (along with so much else, all of it important): "To really crack the GOP coalition, though, economic populism has to be wrapped in something larger -- like the flag. I'm coming around to the view that the winning theme for the Democrats in this election -- the one that could really tear the bark off Bush (to borrow somebody else's phrase) is 'economic patriotism.' The Dems need a rhetorical and substantive program that ties the job/trade issue into a broader set of arguments about the privileges and obligations of citizenship, the relationship between fiscal stewardship and national strength, and the enduring worth of basic American principles like opportunity, community and fairness. And they have to contrast those priorities with the increasingly warped values of the corporate crony capitalists and their Republican water boys in Washington. In other words, the Democrats need to make the case that the GOP has been selling ordinary hard-working, middle-class Americans down the river - and thus selling the country down the river.""Economic patriotism." I REALLY like that idea, and especially his wording. Some have called for "economic democracy" but I like this wording much better. There is a lot that can be done with this idea. After all, who IS our economy for, anyway? --- Posted at 2/20/2004 06:53:00 PM by Dave Johnson Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
the american street Everything over at the american street for the last several days is good. Go read. --- Posted at 2/20/2004 09:23:00 AM by Dave Johnson Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
2/19/2004 Duh! The NY Times actually notices that Iraq is about politics, not security. The Transfer: U.S. Presidential Politics and Self-Rule for Iraqis: "'This is entirely a schedule dictated by Karl Rove,' said an Arab diplomat who maintains close contacts with the administration, referring to the White House's political director. 'Anyone who thinks otherwise is naive.'" --- Posted at 2/19/2004 11:35:00 AM by Dave Johnson Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
More on Free Trade and the Democrats Matt's earlier piece was a response to Daniel Drezner. Drezner, in turn, responded to Matt. He made this interesting point: "NAFTA has become unpopular among Republicans, while Democrats like it fine. It gets -5 from white evangelicals, -6 from rural whites, -4 in exurban counties, -5 among white male seniors, and a whopping -17 among white non-college married men." These are Republican voters to whom a free-trade Democratic Party has nothing much to say, but whom a free-trade-skeptic Democratic Party might be able to recruit. Right now the Republicans are working on making inroads on the Democratic core: labor, Jews, Hispanics, and blacks. They don't need to win those constituencies -- if they get 20% of the black vote or 30% of the Jewish vote they really hurt the Democrats. The Democrats have been playing a defensive game for at least the last 16 years. Are there any Republican core constituencies that the Democrats might be attacking? It seems to me that Drezner just named some prospects. Democratic unanimity on free trade is driven by the donors, tby he media (who all have their own axes to grind), and by the party pros. Not by the voters. Considering how well the pros have been doing recently, I think that we should ask whether we need some replacement pros. --- Posted at 2/19/2004 09:41:00 AM by John Emerson Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
Free Trade and the Democrats Two comments from a thread on Matt Yglesias (edited to stand alone, more or less). Matt is a standard knee-jerk free-trade Democrat. My points below are, first, that while free trade is not the only bad thing or even the worst thing to happen to labor in the last 23 years, it's part of a larger anti-labor pattern; and second, that many of those hurt by free trade are part of the Democratic core, and that to remain viable as a party the Democrats have to take care of their constituents. If they were going to support free trade because it's a good thing "on the average", they should have extracted concessions to soften the blow. They knew this, they wanted to do this, and they failed. We're living with the consequences, and the party is weakened. An example of a concession: make education more accessible. Retrain Americans for well-paying jobs. But education is becoming less accessible, not more. The degree of contempt that middle-class white Democrats feel for the Democratic core constituencies ("can't pander to them!") is really appalling. ************ Yes, it was very wise of the Democrats to hurt one of their major constituencies. It really strengthened the party for its future battles. Certainly it would be wrong if Democrats actually represented ("pandered to") its constituents. And labor knows, deep down in its heart, that the Dems would have liked to have done some things to make the transition easier, retrain displaced workers, make education more accessible for their children, etc., and that it's not the Dems fault that that part of the bargain wasn't kept. None of the statistics whizzes on Brad DeLong's site ever gave a specific number on the "few" Americans who have been hurt by free trade, leading me to suspect that nobody cared much how many they were, and that nobody wanted to ask that question for fear of finding that the "few" were indeed far too many. I think that part of the indifference here comes from a disdain for the kind of corny, tacky,people labor is thought to consist of. The Democrats seem to have become the smart yuppie party. The unanimity about free trade is among media people, Democratic political pros, donors to the Democratic party, and rich Republicans. Not among voters, especially not Democratic voters. (Given the overwhelming free-trade buzz coming from the media, stated opinions about free trade are not necessarily well-informed, but support for free trade is only about 50% even so.) So the Democratic party leadership has got itself into a position where a significant proportion of its own constituents are enemies not to be trusted. That's not a recipe for political strength, I don't think. Certainly the Democrats' self-sacrifice was a noble one, though, as we move on our way toward the one-party state. Economically, averaging across the whole population, free trade may be as good as you said, but politically it was suicidal. Talking to Democratic pros I've always met intense resistance to the idea of finding new support among those who seldom vote. Non-voters are most common among people near the poverty line -- the people who used to be represented by Democrats, but who are now essentially unrepresented. But to recruit them you'd have to make an effort, spend money, and make a solid offer of some kind of concrete benefit. And within the neo-conservative / neoliberal consensus, you can't do that. ********** Politics (as opposed to economics) is like an activity in which general-good lump benefits averaged out over the whole population are less significant than the particular outcomes impacting specific individuals and groups, since it's individuals who vote and they're often recruited as group members. Economists and lumpen-utilitarians all condemn politics and essentially dream of a politics-free world, but politics can give a voice to minorities who would otherwise be steamrollered. In our present situation, small minorities who have large amounts of money are well represented indeed, whereas much, much larger minorities such as industrial labor have been abandoned. (Matt himself is completely deaf to the losers, if the utilitarian calculation comes out positive on the average). Right now Matt and Brad DeLong are explaining that the bad things happening right now are not the result of free trade, but are for other reasons. Fine, but when the Dems joined the Republicans in a bipartisan free-trade policy, they should have gotten a quid pro quo on the "other reasons". They failed to do so, and now we're screwed. Free trade is only part of the long-term (since 1980) national anti-labor policy which the Democrats have been unable to resist. And the other aspects of this anti-labor policy affect everyone working for a paycheck, not just industrial labor. When the party leadership has the degree of hostility to its core constituency (can't pander to them!) that the Democrats do, it's no surprise if the party is weak. --- Posted at 2/19/2004 08:29:00 AM by John Emerson Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
Are You Having Problems? I received an e-mail from a reader who has started having technical problems viewing Seeing the Forest recently. If you are having any problems please leave a comment or send me an e-mail. Thanks. Update - That's TECHNICAL problems only, please. I'll say what I want and Bush does too suck. --- Posted at 2/19/2004 07:58:00 AM by Dave Johnson Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
2/18/2004 Surprise, Surprise Look where more than $75 of Education funds have gone! People For the American Way | Funding a Movement: "An initial People For the American Way analysis of federal education grants has uncovered a pattern of major — and at times unsolicited — grants made to a small cadre of pro-voucher private advocacy groups. The funds diverted to these groups total more than $75 million over the last three years, and were doled out by the U.S. Department of Education despite chronic underfunding of the Bush administration’s own landmark ‘No Child Left Behind’ education legislation. "If the Education Department is funneling this kind of of money to far-right voucher proponents, how much do you think other departments of our government have channeled into the Right's network of organizations? For example, the founder and funder of the far-right Libertarian Cato Institute received the government contract to supply oil to the Strategic Petroleum Reserve. Now, there's a HUGE chunk of cash funneled to the far right! Is anyone investigating this? (Hint, hint.) We know that more than $10 million went into running Medicare ads that are actually Bush campaign ads. --- Posted at 2/18/2004 03:58:00 PM by Dave Johnson Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
Dean Everyone is talking about what did Dean in. The Confederate flag comment. The scream. The Gore endorsement... I actually think this was the turning point, before the Iowa primary. It was played on the news there, and had an impact: "Perhaps the most resonant was a recent campaign appearance where Dean told a Republican heckler to sit down -- 'You've had your say, now I'm going to have mine.'"I've seen a tape of it, and it was not pretty. Dean WAS mean. Better would have been to ask the heckler up on the stage and have a friendly discussion with him about hte merits of Democrat vs Republican values. Let the Republican be nasty if he wanted to, show that you're willing to pleasantly engage. --- Posted at 2/18/2004 03:29:00 PM by Dave Johnson Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
Bloggers - Trackbacks at Seeing the Forest Fellow bloggers - Seeing the Forest is on Blogspot, which means we do not have automatic trackbacks. If you refer to a Seeing the Forest piece you can let readers here know by setting up a Trackback manually. Here's how: Click on the Trackback link following the piece you want to link to. A window pops up, and gives you a "Trackback URL". In the "Must Read" piece below, you'll see this Trackback URL: http://www.trackback.org/tb.php?uid=78&tb_id=107714393430380616. Copy that entire URL because you will be pasting it somewhere in a minute. To set up your Trackback you can go here: http://kalsey.com/tools/trackback/ The first field is where you will paste that Trackback URL you copied. It wants the special Trackback URL, not the URL of the piece you are referencing! Put the name of your weblog where it asks, then the name of the weblog entry that you are linking to a Seeing the Forest piece from... In Entry URL field you paste the permalink to the posting in your weblog where you link to the Seeing the Forest piece. Then click the Ping button. Your Trackback will appear at the Seeing the Forest post, and you will start to enjoy the benefits of thousands - no, millions - of new readers. Blogger-using bloggers who want to add trackbacks, go to http://www.trackback.org to set up this capability. --- Posted at 2/18/2004 03:05:00 PM by Dave Johnson Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
Absolute Must-Read America as a One-Party State, in American Prospect, is an absolute must-read. "The target is not the Democrats but democracy itself." "There have been moments in American history when we kept our republic only by the slenderest of margins. This year is one of those times. "Read it with everything from this piece in mind. This is not like previous "elections." There is not a pendulum that naturally swings back and adjusts politics -- the things that happen do so because people make them happen. This right-wing crowd is not fucking around and they are not concerned with your -- or the country's -- best interests. This is a true turning point in American history. The choices you make and they way you spend your time between now and election day will determine whether there is right-wing theocratic ideological domination of the country -- and therefore the planet -- for the foreseeable future. --- Posted at 2/18/2004 02:38:00 PM by Dave Johnson Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
Is George W. Bush Capable of Fighting the War on Terror? Note: The below is the short form of a much longer piece which can be found here. The long form documents everything I say at length, with over a hundred links. They say that the 2004 election will be about defense and security. On these issues, Bush's ties with the Saudis are his weak spot. If we attack this weak spot, we win. I hope to get wider circulation for this piece, but for the moment I'm soliciting advice, corrections, criticism, suggestions, and additions. I don't promise to take anyone's advice, but I'd like to hear it: zizka@johnjemerson.com . IS GEORGE W. BUSH CAPABLE OF FIGHTING THE WAR ON TERROR? Some question the Democrats' credibility on defense and the War on Terror, but in reality, George W. Bush is the one we should be questioning. Both before and after 9/11 his performance was unsatisfactory -- in large part because of his close ties to the Saudis. The 9/11 attacks were led, manned, and funded by Saudis, and Bush's war in Iraq was a diversion which had nothing to do with fighting terror. Bush was uninterested in terrorism during his campaign and during the first months of his term, and Republicans ridiculed and sabotaged President Clinton's efforts in that area. We can expect the 9/11 Commission's report to be a coverup, but there is already ample evidence that the Bush administration was grossly negligent in its handling of the terrorist threat during the months leading up to 9/11. And rather than 9/11 being "the day that changed everything", for the Bush administration it was the day that changed nothing. They just went ahead with their pre-existing plans to invade Iraq. Saudi Arabia is the key to terrorism -- but the Saudis haven't even been touched yet, and in fact have repeatedly been favored by the Bush administration. 9/11 was only the most recent and most lethal of several attacks by Saudis on Americans, and the Saudis have never cooperated with the United States in the investigation of any of these crimes. Contrary to what we've been led to believe, Osama Bin Laden and al Qaeda still have supporters in Saudi Arabia -- some them influential in government. For decades the Saudis have been financing fundamentalists and terrorism in foreign lands (including Osama himself until not too long before 9/11.) George W. Bush is incapable of fighting the War onTerror. He and his family (as will be seen below) have too many Saudi friends and business partners to be willing or able to confront them effectively. The United States needs a new President who is able to get the job done. Democrats should make this their issue, amd they should also prepare themselves for some kind of big surprise between now and November -- a new war, a new terrorist attack, or the capture of Osama. We should have our responses ready: This is not the time to fight a new war. If there's a new terrorist attack, then Bush has failed. And capturing Osama (who?) has already taken far too long. It's not the Democrats who lack credibility. It's George W. Bush. --- Posted at 2/18/2004 02:00:00 PM by Dave Johnson Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
National Voice I urge readers to check out National Voice. --- Posted at 2/18/2004 11:55:00 AM by Dave Johnson Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
2/17/2004 How Clear Do You Want It? Greenspan says Congress should cut Social Security to keep tax cuts: "Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan said Thursday that Congress should make President Bush's tax cuts permanent and cover the $1 trillion price by trimming future benefits in Social Security and other entitlement programs. "Pass our retirement money up to the top. Work till you're 70. No unemployment insurance extensions. Privatize Medicare. Cut welfare. No more overtime pay. Fuck you. Shut up. Who IS our economy for, anyway? --- Posted at 2/17/2004 09:13:00 AM by Dave Johnson Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
Perfect Sense It all makes perfect sense. --- Posted at 2/17/2004 09:06:00 AM by Dave Johnson Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
The Whiniest People in the Country Kos: "Except that I don't really fit in DC. I'm a fish out of water. I steadfastly maintain my "outsider" status even as I work with the biggest insiders of them all. As such, I have a front-row seat to the show that few share. And I can quite honestly say -- DC Democrats are some of the whiniest, most afraid people in the country." That's my experience, in spades. Every time I talk to a Democratic Party pro, the message is negative. Can't be too liberal, can't attack a popular president (Bush!), don't get your hopes up. "That's already be tried" is the answer to every proposal. Bush's negatives as high as any President's have ever been, and those guys are still afraid of him. You can't argue with them either. If you try, they'll read back the Indiana county-by-county results since 1980, or something like that, and make you look ignorant. Something tells me that when the Republicans won Congress in 1994, no one on the Democratic side lost his job. Bonus: South Knox Bubba's President's Day Message UPDATE: I'd like to respond to two comments below, one by Scott and one by "^=^". Combining the two (though they aren't identical) , what's being said is approximately this: "Both sides always complain about the media and about the weakness of their leadership " and "The media aren't biassed, just incompetent". I hear these things said often, as if they were self-evidently true. I think that they are not only not self-evident, but not true at all. They are convenient beliefs, since they justify cynicism and a noncommital attitude, but this seemingly-sophisticated stance is actually a sucker's game. The Republicans have figured out to work people who think that way -- they always complain, no matter what. "If both sides complain about me, I must be doing something right!" Cute, but wrong. And the media have also figured out how to mask their bias by pretending that they're just being shallow, cute, hip, in-groupy, and "ironic". That doesn't actually sound so wonderful at all, but it's much less painful than admitting that they're actually working for Karl Rove and Dick Cheney. It was Bob Somerby's coverage of Gore-Bush 2002 which convinced me that the media are, in fact, effectively right-wing. Gore was hamstrung with one false accusation after another, while Bush was never confronted with enormous problems with his record and with his program. That wasn't Gen-X shallowness or irony. That was bias pure and simple. As for complaints about the party leadership -- Bush's recent orgy of political opportunism has roused a bit of grumbling from his supporters, but by and large both Bush and the Republican leadership in Congress have pushed a strong Republican line, and by and large Republican party discipline in Congress has been excellent. Some of the hard right in the Republican core constituency probably believe that Bush has sold them out, but they need to realize that they're a minority even within their party. By contrast, even very moderate Democrats frequently complain about the feebleness of the Democratic Party leadership. "They all say that, and both parties are about the same". You can't just comfortably assume that. Maybe it's true, maybe not. I say that it's not. (Edited to change "lost" to "won" in the last line of the opening piece. Thanks to Scott for the correction.) --- Posted at 2/17/2004 07:53:00 AM by John Emerson Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
Pictures Over Words and Facts Remember what I said about pictures have more impact on people's perceptions than words and facts? Bush to Meet With National Guard Members. --- Posted at 2/17/2004 07:25:00 AM by Dave Johnson Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
2/16/2004 Those Ads -- Go Visit I suggest visiting the campaign sites advertised over on the right there. Knowles for Senate in Alaska, Chandler for Congress in Kentucky, and Haines for Congress in Georgia. These candidates are smart enough to be reaching out to the weblog community, and you should go visit their sites and, especially, donate something to help them win. If you're SERIOUS about wanting to do something about taking the country back, you've got to be ready to sacrifice a bit. Even if you can only donate $5, why not do that? It only takes a minute. It helps them a lot (because there are a lot of you) and it helps YOU. And it boosts your karma. Click on the ads and go visit the sites. --- Posted at 2/16/2004 05:23:00 PM by Dave Johnson Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
Record Budget Surplus President Clinton announces another record budget surplus - September 27, 2000 "President Clinton announced Wednesday that the federal budget surplus for fiscal year 2000 amounted to at least $230 billion, making it the largest in U.S. history and topping last year's record surplus of $122.7 billion."OOPS - wrong president. --- Posted at 2/16/2004 05:12:00 PM by Dave Johnson Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
Cost Of War Counter --- Posted at 2/16/2004 05:04:00 PM by Dave Johnson Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
Sums It Up This USA Today story, Why Bush stopped flying remains a mystery, sums it all up without getting into nit-picking about dates or records. The fact is that Bush suddenly stopped flying and gave no reason. Members of the Guard aren't allowed to do that. Why, after the government spent over $1 million to train him as a pilot, did Bush stop flying, and why wasn't he punished? --- Posted at 2/16/2004 04:55:00 PM by Dave Johnson Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
Making Americans Poorer Here's Grover Norquist, writing about Bush's accomplishments, from the Right's viewpoint: "Four more years of united GOP government will lead to the expansion of NAFTA to the entire hemisphere and another Doha round of trade liberalization, leading to the unions' further decline. Teamsters will have to compete with Mexican truck drivers. Why pay union dues if you aren't being shielded from competition like this? Public sector unions face a similar squeeze. Bush and Congress have begun the process of competitively sourcing 850,000 jobs. That's almost half of all civilian workers in the federal government. This will save taxpayers 30 percent of present cost, as the civil servants who now cut the grass for the Pentagon will have to compete for their jobs with private contractors. Four more years of competitive sourcing at the federal level will inevitably trickle down to the state and local levels, affecting one third of the 15 million state and local workers. For every 100 jobs contracted out, the Association of Federal, State, County, and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) loses 37 dues-paying members. If only one fifth of the 5 million jobs available to be competitively sourced are privatized, it costs AFSCME 370,000 times $500, or $185 million."Each of these Republicans "accomplishments" lowers wages and makes Americans poorer! And their purpose is to weaken those who oppose the Right, further consolidating the Right's power. And another perspective on Norquist's column, discussing the increasingly violent tone of the Right's language, can be found here. And more on the increasingly violent tone here: "...I hate all you f*ing Democrats. You f*ng deserve to be die. Hopefully we can kill the f*ing bunch of you soon..." --- Posted at 2/16/2004 02:55:00 PM by Dave Johnson Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
Making My Point Here's a news story about a Bush visit to a factory that demonstrates my point in my previous post: "As he entered, a half-dozen workers were steadily polishing windows, as if Bush had walked into an ordinary shift on President's Day. News cameras snapped away as Bush picked up a caulking gun and hugged workers. Five minutes after Bush and his entourage of journalists left, the factory floor was deserted, and there was no sign later in the day that production had resumed."Here's something the Reagan people knew: only the pictures matter. Once Michael Deaver, one of Reagan's marketing wizards, was asked about a news story that showed pictures of Reagan at photo-ops, while the voice-over talked about how Reagan was misleading people by using these photo-ops to give impressions that were actually the opposite of Reagan's policies. Deaver thanked them for showing the pictures (just spell my name right) and said the voice-over and the facts don't matter -- what mattered were the pictures people saw because that is what formed their impression of events. Here we have Bush touring a supposedly busy factory. Five minutes after he left the factory was deserted. You and I, the informed news junkies will scoff at how this proves what we have been saying. (Like the time Bush appeared in front of boxes that had "Made in China" covered up. Remember? Regular people don't.) But the Bush people understand that most of the public will see Bush visiting a busy factory and hugging employees and this means that Bush is a caring guy who has revived the economy. --- Posted at 2/16/2004 02:31:00 PM by Dave Johnson Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
The Arrogance of the Informed Also posted at the american street. I wrote at american street a while back about “tiers” of voters, and how there are informed voters – namely us online, the readers and writers of news sites and weblogs – and then there are concerned but less informed voters, and how I think it was those voters who heard only the short, last-minute characterizations of messages – “Dean angry” and “Edwards nice” and Kerry Vietnam vet.” Many months ago I had a long phone conversation with Mathew Gross, until very recently the blogger for the Dean campaign. In that conversation he asked if I thought the power of the Internet and weblogs would be enough to go around the media and get Dean’s message out to people directly. I quickly said I didn’t think so. I said it almost before thinking, sort of instinctively. Of course, up until a few weeks ago, with Dean 30 points ahead of Kerry everywhere, I felt like that would be one of those stupid statements – me of little faith – that I would regret for years. But now I think that perhaps my age and experience was leading me to understand something that is going on here with our views of blogging and politics and the electorate. [I'm not saying here that Mathew thought they would or wouldn't be able to bypass the media - we were bouncing around ideas, and this was long before it started to look like the Dean campaign actually would be able to use the Internet to reach a wider audience.] Let me tell you how I learned my most important lesson about marketing. Many years ago I was an engineer who had wound up running a software company. I was approached by a direct mail consultant with an idea to sell something to my customers using direct mail. I agreed that the idea was a good one and we got started, but very soon I became uncomfortable with the sales pitch that the consultant was writing for use in the letters. I felt the language was insulting and obvious, even slick and sleazy, and that the customers wouldn’t fall for that kind of trash. So we decided to put it to a test (that’s the beauty of direct mail, you test everything) where I would write a letter and we would mail each of our letters to several thousand people and see what happened. I wrote by far the best sales letter I had ever written or even imagined. It was a letter I would read if it came to me, and that would cause me to purchase. It was extremely respectful of the customers, used the best grammar, gave details and described features… anyway it was just superb. He, on the other wrote a sleazy, trashy, salesy typical direct mail letter that had nothing technical in it at all, nothing about the features – that said this remarkable new breakthrough product was being offered exclusively to them and only them and only for a very limited time so they must act now or lose out and by the way if they bought NOW they would also get a free gift that was so valuable... – a letter that I would have thrown out immediately assuming I even opened the envelope. We mailed the letters and a week or so later the orders started to come in. After two weeks the results were becoming obvious, and after three weeks and his letter outselling mine almost four to one I wrote out by hand and FAXed to him a long letter that said only, “I will never question Jim Johnson again. I will never question Jim Johnson again. I will…” which went on for three pages so that it would come out of his FAX machine as one long scroll. I understand he still has that FAX hanging up in his office. So I learned a very, very important lesson: There is a REASON that direct mail is all so similar and reads the way it does. BECAUSE IT WORKS! Because they have been doing it for decades and have studied it and refined it and refined it and tested it and refined it again, and it makes money – more money than other things they have tried because more people respond to it. And by extension, I came to understand that there is a reason that there are all those stupid ads on TV that we all hate, and ads in magazines, and billboards, and posters in subways, and huge ads on the sides of buses. And I came to understand why big companies spend BILLIONS on advertising when they are otherwise so cheap they ration pencils to their employees. BECAUSE ADVERTISING/MARKETING WORKS! And I came to understand why they use such stupid appeals that are insulting to me. Because it works on most people, even if it does not work on me. And this is because I am informed BUT MOST PEOPLE ARE NOT. Years later I worked for a while as a consultant, mostly helping other engineers who found themselves in the position of having companies learn from my mistakes, and helping turn the companies into real businesses – setting up Boards of Directors, and other businessy things. The very hardest part of that job was convincing engineers that they really didn’t understand marketing, and that they needed marketing professionals to handle their marketing. The engineers invariably were much like I was before that direct mail challenge. They assumed that other people were like them, knew what they knew, and understood what they understood. They were dismissive of stupid and obvious marketing appeals and felt they had read and knew a lot about marketing and could do a better job themselves. They felt they could certainly word things more intelligently, that they understood their products better, and that people would flock to buy the products because they are better. I only occasionally succeeded in convincing them to bring in professional marketing people AND allowing those professionals to do their jobs with minimal interference – and the companies that did not almost universally failed eventually. So where is this leading? How many of you think you are too smart to fall for ads and blatant sales pitches? You probably are, and that is the problem that I am trying to write about today. The very fact that you are reading this means that you get your information online, and that you seek out alternative sources of deeper information than you get from your newspapers and TV. I am trying to say that you and I are informed and that blinds us to some realities. The very fact of OUR awareness can mislead us about most voters because most voters are NOT particularly informed at all. And they are busy or have other reasons that they are not likely to ever become highly informed about what is going on. Our state of informedness causes us to lose sight of what it is like to only hear what I call the “surface” messages that circulate – messages like “Dean angry” and “Edwards nice.” I think THIS is the reason that 50% of Americas STILL believe that Iraq was responsible for the 9/11 attack – because what news they DO hear has the President using 9/11 and Iraq in the same sentence repeatedly. Things like that. It isn't going to change. We need to learn to hear what THEY are hearing, and understand how those things are going to affect them. As I like to say, the people behind the Republicans are the people who sold tobacco – people so skilled they convinced others to kill themselves and to hand over their money in the process. They are people who DO understand regular Americans. We should learn from them. That bulge in Bush's flight suit and the Marlboro man are are both designed to convey simple, basic, short messages on an emotional level to specific target audiences. That's marketing. Simple, basic, short messages that reach the target audience on an emotional level, repeated and repeated. I fear that we online consumers of news suffer the arrogance of the informed. I think we all, bloggers and readers alike, might benefit from taking a step back, seeing a bigger picture – one that encompasses millions of less informed voters – and trying to understand what THEY think and how THEY react to things they hear. --- Posted at 2/16/2004 02:01:00 PM by Dave Johnson Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
President George W. "Otter" Bush Otter (to Dean Wormer): "You fucked up -- you trusted us!" (Animal House). A lot of people are asking grave questions about Sen. Kerry's vote for the Second Iraq War. Is he flip-flopping? How much confidence can we have in a guy like that? And so on. Well, I'm asking questions too, but it seems to me that there's one person who shouldn't be asking this question, and that's our frat-boy President: George W. "Otter" Bush. --- Posted at 2/16/2004 08:06:00 AM by John Emerson Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
Was W's Guard File "Scrubbed?" Kevin's got the scoop. After interviewing the principals himself, Kevin believes some sort of scrubbing did take place. That certainly would explain the rather small file, wouldn't it? Good job on this, Kevin. --- Posted at 2/16/2004 07:48:00 AM by Tom Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
2/15/2004 A Free-Trade-Skeptic Economist I'm a free trade skeptic, as is Dave. At a minimum, free trade has been oversold, without serious consideration of the transition costs and -- above all -- without concern for the particular people who are hurt (mostly labor). On the whole and in the long run, free trade may very well be a good thing, but right now for a lot of people it's a bad thing. As a non-economist, I'm always at something of a loss arguing this point over at Brad DeLong's site. So here's Max Sawicky, an economist who isn't a born-again free-trader. Read it all, but here's a sample: "Some people defend outsourcing on the grounds that its ill effects could be alleviated by a non-existent safety net. This cold comfort for obvious reasons. We might add that the trend in the Federal budget makes any such safety net ever more unlikely. Nor is the liberal urge to balance the budget helpful in this dimension." --- Posted at 2/15/2004 08:00:00 PM by John Emerson Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
GOP == KKK Tell me how this is different from the KKK, in language and intent, except I don't think the KKK is big in Rhode Island: College Republicans offer whites-only award: "A student group at Roger Williams University is offering a new scholarship for which only white students are eligible, a move they say is designed to protest affirmative action. The application for the $50 award requires an essay on 'why you are proud of your white heritage' and a recent picture to 'confirm whiteness.' 'Evidence of bleaching will disqualify applicants,' says the application, issued by the university's College Republicans. "I'm sure they're complaining about the --- Posted at 2/15/2004 01:36:00 PM by Dave Johnson Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
Why Care about Bush's Military Service? I haven't jumped into the Bush AWOL fray so far, though I'm glad that Kevin Drum and others have done so. This is something that I researched briefly a year or two ago, so I've known for that there's a problem there for awhile. Of course, it's also true that many from that generation (mine) have skeletons in their closets, and I have never thought that military service should be a prerequisite for political leadership. So this is a tricky one. I also somewhat agree with those who think we shouldn't pin too many of our hopes on this issue. Even if GWB's Guard service turns out to have been adequate, he will remain one of the worst Presidents in American history. And if it turns out that Bush's service was unproblematic, then all the usual suspects will be able to feign horror at Democratic slime tactics, and we'll be seeing the same old "Democrats are no better than Republicans" meme again. (Isn't it interesting, though, that "The Democrats are just as bad" always counts as a defense of the Republicans? No one ever argues that the Republicans aren't creeps.) And while the hypocrisy issue still can be raised, there's so much hypocrisy in politics that for many voters indignation fatigue has set in.* However, the problems with Bush's military service do make a pretty good wedge issue. A lot of Bush's support comes from people who vote more on character than on issues. For them physical courage, personal integrity, and a strict sense of honor are primary requirements for leadership. Those who think this way aren't terribly analyitic or curious, but they do care about details -- for them, certain acts are just inexcusable. Many of them have been flimflammed by Bush so far, but they will turn against him if they find out that his record is seriously blemished. This group might be small, but it's part of Bush's core constituency, so it's important. And on the other hand, perhaps this issue (ignored in the 2000 campaign) might just be the last straw for a lot of people. Problems with the Iraq War and its justifications, Bush's loopy economic plans, his waffling on tariffs, the weird marriage-promotion boondoggle, the weird Mars mission trial balloon, etc., etc., might have pushed a lot of centrists and moderate conservatives to the point that they're willing to look at the evidence (which has always been there) about Bush's military service. Once someone loses the benefit of the doubt, people start looking at the little things. I think that's what has happened, and it's about time. There's still a problem here: the kingmaker role of the corrupt monopoly media. If they've actually turned against Bush, that's a good thing, but it's a very limited good. As long as the media select our Presidents for us, we're in trouble. * This makes it seem that I myself don't care much about personal character. I have to admit that after more than forty years on the scene, the idea that someone in politics might be full of integrity strikes me as a dream from a bygone day, like King Arthur or Good King Wenceslas. --- Posted at 2/15/2004 10:02:00 AM by John Emerson Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
2/14/2004 Dean Supporters to be Purged? Via Atrios there's a New Republic story about plans by Democratic Party regulars to take revenge on people who supported Dean. Key quote: "As one former high-ranking Clinton administration official puts it, 'Will they work again in this town again? I hope not.'" If something like this came from Fox News I'd assume it was a deliberate provocation meant to split the party, but the people at TNR are officially Democrats. Of course, I've always wondered whether Peretz would try to destroy the party if he thought that his side was going to lose control, and maybe I know now. I'm 100% ABB and didn't even take sides in the primaries, but this makes steam come out of my ears. I like a lot of things about Kerry and a pray to God (should there be one) that he wasn't involved in this. Dean did the Democrats an enormous amount of good by getting out ahead and showing that it was actually possible to attack Bush, and he and his supporters don't deserve this kind of treatment. Dean did fling a bit of shit in the direction of the party pros, but they richly deserved it. Kerry won't do himself any favors by playing their creepy little game. --- Posted at 2/14/2004 10:12:00 PM by John Emerson Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
The Media Demand Your Love and Admiration Now! Remember the way Bush joshed with the media and gave them nicknames, and how that was supposed to show that he was a regular guy (unlike the stiff, arrogant, Al Gore)? My take on that is different. Bush's real message was something like this: "Welcome to the club! Sure, I'm a bigshot, but in your own way you're all bigshots too now. You're The Press. So let's all be buddies!" In the old days, when there were lots of them, reporters were just reporters and columnists were just columnists. But as reporters grew fewer (with media consolidation and the rise of the monopoly media), individual reporters became more important. Rather than just being some guy with a B.A. who got himself a pretty good job, the new hire became A CNN Political Reporter or something like that, and he expected to be treated with respect. Ironically, this happened while professional standards were plummetting. The lords of the new monopoly media -- Roger Ailes, Jack Welch, Rupert Murdoch, the Rev. Moon, and the others -- are kingmakers, almost a branch of government, and the authority that reporters now have comes entirely from the men who hired them. As a result, the reporter's job has become a balancing act between the old professional standards (which have not been entirely forgotten) and the need to please the boss. Since it is still forbidden to directly order the suppression of facts and the slanting of news, skilled reporters have become mind-readers and, like well-trained horses or dogs, do the right thing without being told. In this new post-professional world, success is everything: truth-tellers and whistle-blowers who get fired aren't heroes or martyrs any more, but just suckers and losers. In this context I find it very odd to be told that internet sources, especially the anonymous ones, "lack authority". The contrast apparently is with the authority of the New York Times, Fox News, etc., etc. But as we have seen, this authority is rapidly diminishing -- partly because of the media's incompetence and corruption, but also because of the challenge from internet media. Much as the pamphleteers of a few centuries ago challenged the claims of the nobility and the Church to a monopoly of truth, today's internet writers are challenging the mainstream media. They really can't claim to be able to replace the mainstream media and they really aren't trying to, but they're doing a pretty good job of keeping our open political system alive. The media whores, of course, don't think this is fair. After years of hard work honing their craft, learning to express tomorrow's conventional wisdom today, and brownnosing, they finally got the big-time jobs they'd been looking for, and they thought that they'd arrived. They were going to "have authority." They were going to be the ones to say "And that's the way it is!" But then the internet came along. A BUNCH OF LINKS: Some Salon no-name writes about anonymity Tena of Atrios on "The Internet" "Bloggers are not Gentlemen" Kerry and the media (pre-intern) Brad DeLong on the incompetent and arrogant press The Indispensable Daily Howler (Originally I had a long thing about the corrupt and incompetent media, the fluff story about Kerry and the intern, the flap about anonymity on the Internet, the Bush National Guard story, etc., etc. Rather than bore you with all that, I decided to go straight to my most interesting point. But just to remind you: the fight for freedom in America and Europe was fought and won by anonymous lowlife journalists relying on a new medium called "the printing press". Not by people with authority.) --- Posted at 2/14/2004 12:10:00 PM by John Emerson Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
More on Calhoun's tall tale... right here: So Calhoun noticed the issue. And he didn't call his local paper and give them the scoop of their lifetime. He didn't call or write the Washington Post. Instead, he called the Bush people, who are never very concerned with image(they're more substance focused), and said, "If you need me to come forward, I will." And the Bush people, in the eleventh hour of a presidential campaign, with a potential landmine about to go off under their feet, say, "We're hoping that won't be necessary." And you can understand their reasoning: "We could just nip this thing right in the bud and put the allegation that our presidential candidate was AWOL during a time of war, or we can just sit back and see how this crazy thing plays out. I mean, it's not like anyone took a picture of him in a sweater, or anything. What the heck? Tell him we'll call him if we need him." And though the rumors persisted, and occassionally popped up in newspaper stories, and though there were websites devoted to the issue, and though there were even rewards offered for a guardsman who could remember serving with Bush in Alabama, nobody in the Bush administration bothered to give Calhoun a call, and Calhoun never bothered to mention it to anyone. Keep in mind, this is the Bush administration that spared no evidence, no matter how flimsy, on the need to invade Iraq--the African uranium, the aluminum tubes, the al-Qaeda operatives meeting with Iraqi intelligence in Prague. All of which turned out to be bullshit, but they offered it without hesitation, and sometimes over the objections of the CIA, the State Department, foreign governments, and the U.N. weapons inspectors. But when it came to a potentially campaign ending scandal, and they had eye-witness testimony, they preferred to just let it slide and see what happened. And when the issue resurfaced during the Democratic debates, did anyone bother to pick up the phone and say, "Calhoun, we need you"? Nope. And when it began appearing in the major newspapers and on network television, did anyone say, "Call Calhoun"? Nope. And when Tim Russert sat in the Oval Office and asked Bush about his guard service, did Bush say, "Tim, you can call Bill Calhoun. He'll tell you I showed up"? Nope. Instead, the Bush people released a dental record. But now that Calhoun has stepped forward, he can surely point us in the direction to put this issue to rest. Right?Read the rest of it. Suffice it to say there are a few logical and evidentiary holes in Calhoun's story.Calhoun said he does not have any photographs or documents to prove Bush showed up for duty, but his ex-wife, Patsy Burks, said she remembered Calhoun's account.Well, Christ, ex-wives are better than any ol' stupid piece of paper. --- Posted at 2/14/2004 10:46:00 AM by Tom Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
2/13/2004 Now isn't that conveeenient? Honestly, does anyone really believe this Calhoun guy? He apparently was put in contact with the media by some of W's sycophantic Republican supporters and, heck folks, his story even contradicts the written records they've presented already. Calhoun is now claiming W attended quite a few more drills in Alabama than W's own military records say he did. This seems even more suspicious considering that Calhoun is in Daytona for the 500 and W is going to be there on Sunday. I can't help but wonder if W will slip Calhoun the $100,000 briefcase in person on Sunday or if Karl Rove will do it for him. Update 2/14/04 11:59 a.m. CST: Billmon is all over Calhoun's unlikely story in this post. Just as I thought, Calhoun is apparently just another loyal Republican trying to help Karl and the boys out. --- Posted at 2/13/2004 08:28:00 PM by Tom Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
No Connection My cable internet service is out for a few days. I'll be posting from dial-up only if it is absolutely necessary. Sorry, need the speed. Maybe John and 2 Thomases and Richard can post something? --- Posted at 2/13/2004 02:19:00 PM by Dave Johnson Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
The Real Man There is, as far as I can tell, no positive evidence that Mr. Bush is a man of exceptional uprightness. When has he even accepted responsibility for something that went wrong? On the other hand, there is plenty of evidence that he is willing to cut corners when it's to his personal advantage. His business career was full of questionable deals, and whatever the full truth about his National Guard service, it was certainly not glorious. Old history, you may say, and irrelevant to the present. And perhaps that would be true if Mr. Bush was prepared to come clean about his past. Instead, he remains evasive. On "Meet the Press" he promised to release all his records — and promptly broke that promise. I don't know what he's hiding. But I do think he has forfeited any right to cite his character to turn away charges that his administration is lying about its policies. And that is the point: Mr. Bush may not be a particularly bad man, but he isn't the paragon his handlers portray. Some of his critics hope that the AWOL issue will demolish the Bush myth, all at once. They're probably too optimistic — if it were that easy, the tale of Harken Energy would have already done the trick. The sad truth is that people who have been taken in by a cult of personality — a group that in this case includes a good fraction of the American people, and a considerably higher fraction of the punditocracy — are very reluctant to give up their illusions. If nothing else, that would mean admitting that they had been played for fools. Still, we may be on our way to an election in which Mr. Bush is judged on his record, not his legend. And that, of course, is what the White House fears.Indeed. --- Posted at 2/13/2004 06:44:00 AM by Tom Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
2/12/2004 Intimidation - or When Your Company IS "The Party" This story in today's Washington Post, GOP Activists Chafe at H&R Block Hire, says a lot more than you think it does: "Republican activists were chattering and e-mailing one another yesterday about H&R Block -- and it wasn't about getting their taxes done. They were angry that the tax and financial services preparation company had recently hired Nicholas J. Spaeth, a Democrat, as the company's senior vice president and chief legal officer. Spaeth, based at the company's headquarters in Kansas City, Mo., is responsible for overseeing 'the functions of the company's business units' as well as its government relations activities. [. . .] Adding insult to injury, said one GOP activist, is the fact that H&R Block's main in-house lobbyist in Washington is Robert Weinberger, who is a member of the board of the Center for Responsive Politics, which tracks political money and is considered hostile by Republicans. "They run a Democratic shop. They're insulting to Republicans. They don't understand Republicans," said Grover Norquist, one of the forces behind the K Street Project. "We looked at skills in doing the job, not in the points of view," she said. She noted that the company's political action committee contributions for the 2001-2002 campaign cycle and for 2003 were split 50-50 between Republican and Democratic candidates. She also said Sarah Wilson, a legislative assistant in the Washington office, worked for then-Texas Gov. George W. Bush. The company's even-handed PAC contributions did not impress Norquist. "That is so 1984. So they have no interest in legislation in this town?" Norquist said. "That is so lazy."Here we have Republicans publicly complaining that H&R Block has hired a Democrat as a VP, clearly trying to intimidate the company into firing this person and hiring a Republican instead, and threatening legislative consequences. What is between the lines in the story is what this says about all the other companies. If the Republicans feel free to openly complain because one company hired a Democrat as an executive, it means that they are used to companies being "on board" with the "game plan," "on the same page" and "reading from the same playbook" (attempt at speaking corporatese...) -- in other words, they expect companies to only hire Republicans as executives. It seems that more and more there is a very thin line between a company and The Party (part 1, part 2) --- Posted at 2/12/2004 10:24:00 AM by Dave Johnson Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
2/11/2004 Huh? The White House late Wednesday released a copy of a dental evaluation President Bush had in the National Guard in Alabama during the Vietnam War to rebut suggestions made by Democrats who have questioned whether the president ever showed up for duty there. A copy of the dental examination done on Jan. 6, 1973, documents the president serving at Dannelly Air National Guard Base, which is south of Montgomery, Ala., White House press secretary Scott McClellan said in a statement. Earlier in the day, McClellan hardened its defense of Bush's Guard service, saying critics were "trolling for trash" for political gain.But, wait, given everything W and the boys have said this just doesn't make any sense: According to the White House, the dental exam shows Bush did report for duty in Alabama. The exam, however, was done after November 1972, when earlier reports have said Bush returned to Texas.No, not "earlier reports" but everything the man and his minions have ever said about this has included the claim that he returned to Texas in November of 1972. Why are they contradicting themselves all of a sudden? What's up here? What are they trying to hide? I think this is what desperation looks like folks. [Link via Atrios] --- Posted at 2/11/2004 08:09:00 PM by Tom Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
Quicker KOS Quicker Kos: "I am a free trader, unapologetically so." But now it threatens MY job. --- Posted at 2/11/2004 02:29:00 PM by Dave Johnson Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
If It Were Clinton... Saw at Atrios: Retired Guard officer says he saw some files discarded in trash Retired National Guard Lt. Col. Bill Burkett said Tuesday that in 1997, then-Gov. Bush's chief of staff, Joe Allbaugh, told the National Guard chief to get the Bush file and make certain "there's not anything there that will embarrass the governor." Col. Burkett said that a few days later at Camp Mabry in Austin, he saw Mr. Bush's file and documents from it discarded in a trash can. He said he recognized the documents as retirement point summaries and pay forms.Does anyone remember how the press went absolutely nuts with the lie about records being "shredded" at the Rose law firm, where Hillary Clinton had worked? Does anyone remember the Congressional investigations? How about Hillary's "missing billing records?" This was one subject of a special prosecutor investigation! How is this different? Here's how it is different: Bush is not a Democrat. That's all there is to it. That's all the press or the Congress needs. --- Posted at 2/11/2004 09:19:00 AM by Dave Johnson Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
Everyone... needs one of these, right? Boy, isn't this thing quite embarrassing given the current state of affairs? --- Posted at 2/11/2004 06:32:00 AM by Tom Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
2/10/2004 George W. Bush and Truthslaughter Just now over at Matt Yglesias's site, Daryl McCullough said "I agree with Bush defenders that 'lie' might be inappropriately harsh. The problem with Bush is not that he lies, but that he has a reckless disregard for the truth." Now, that sounds exactly like the legal definition of manslaughter, as opposed to first and second degree murder. "Manslaughter" designates criminal homicide which results from a "reckless disregard for human life", but which is without intent to kill or premeditation. So perhaps Bush isn't a liar after all. Little of what he says is true, but his intellectual recklessness and indifference to fact make one doubt that he is capable of forming the intent to lie. He just doesn't care -- he's guilty not of lying, but of truthslaughter. If you think that Bush really is a liar you might object to this. But stop and think -- often prosecutors plea-bargain murder charges down to manslaughter just so they can get the conviction. The accusation of lying is a very serious one, and it's one which is hard to make stick. So let's just bargain it down a notch. The way Bush has been going with his weapons of mass distraction and his wacky economic plans, I bet that even a lot of Republicans will agree by now that a lot of it does look quite a bit like truthslaughter. (Edited to distinguish Jason from Daryl McCullough, who are both great guys, but not identical. Even the Scots suffer from stereotyping in this world of ours -- McCullough is a Scottish name, isn't it.....?) --- Posted at 2/10/2004 10:18:00 PM by John Emerson Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
April Fools? Is this, at Nathan Newman an April Fools joke? Reuters is going a step further. It told its editorial employees in an electronic posting late last week that it planned to hire six journalists in Bangalore, India, to do basic financial reporting on 3,000 small to medium-size American companies... The reporters in Bangalore will mostly be responsible for extracting basic financial information from company news releases and quarterly earnings reports. Tasks like interviewing a company president, talking to analysts and covering breaking news, will continue to be done by more experienced journalists working in the countries where those companies operate, Mr. Schlesinger said. While the pilot project is intentionally modest, it is related to a much larger effort, announced by Reuters late last year, that will send about 200 of its data-entry jobs to Bangalore from England and the United States.Nathan suggests that we're about to see a change in the way the financial press covers trade and jobs issues. So much of the press has become so completely career-minded, and they know that you write good stories about the Right or you don't HAVE a career, period. And then this. We might actually see the beginning of an awakening on the part of the people who write our news stories. The corporations that own the media will still be in control but I think we just might see the lap-dog attitude of the reporters changing soon. --- Posted at 2/10/2004 05:07:00 PM by Dave Johnson Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
This could get interesting... WASHINGTON - The White House, facing election-year questions about President Bush (news - web sites)'s military service, is releasing pay records and other information intended to support his assertion that he fulfilled his duty as a member of the Air National Guard during the Vietnam war. The material, to be released Tuesday, was to include pay records and annual retirement point summaries to show that Bush served. "These records clearly document that the president fulfilled his duty," White House press secretary Scott McClellan said. The point summaries were released during the 2000 presidential campaign but the pay records were not obtained by the White House until late Monday from the Air Reserve Personnel Center in Denver, Colo., McClellan said. He said the center, apparently acting on its own, reviewed Bush's records and came up with the pay information. "It was our impression from the Texas Air National Guard — they stated they didn't have them," he said. "It was also our impression those records didn't exist." Bush on Sunday authorized the release of his Guard records. McClellan said the latest material apparently is all of Bush's records. The pay information documented the dates when Bush showed up for Guard duty, the spokesman said. "You are paid for the dates you served," McClellan added.You know it's a bad week when you're having to do stuff like this. Of course, there's also this and this and this to respond to as well. Not a good week for the administration. Not a good week at all -- and it's only Tuesday. --- Posted at 2/10/2004 08:44:00 AM by Tom Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
Jobs A comment I left, to this post at Eschaton: Free-trade economists seem to ignore a very basic rule -- supply and demand. If you have a free market in JOBS, in a world with hundreds of millions of unemployed, then NECESSARILY wages must fall to the point where enough people starve off, and the remaining people work for a subsistence-only wage! DUH! We MUST impose policies that increase wages, not decrease wages. We MUST require tariffs on imports to protect wages here. The POINT of those tariffs is to pressure those countries to PAY THEIR WORKERS MORE SO THEY CAN BUY THINGS WE MAKE, TOO! Otherwise we are NECESSARILY in a "race to the bottom." Mexico has been losing jobs to Vietnam. Vietnam is losing jobs to China. Even India is losing jobs to China. And in China you are put in jail if you try to form a union. Yes, one day things WILL even out -- but not in our lifetimes, and not, at this rate, with an INCREASE in the living standards. They will even out at the bottom unless governments intervene with regulations that INCREASE wages.So there. --- Posted at 2/10/2004 08:39:00 AM by Dave Johnson Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
2/09/2004 My goodness I just now figured out that Yoshida is one of those wingnut trolls who is merely seeking attention -- any way he can get it. I mean, heck folks, you can't write stuff like this and be sane after all: If the Democrats were still in power today, Saddam Hussein would be as well. Period. The Democrats don’t have the stomach or the will to fight the terrorists, as they have shown us over a period of several decades. The Democrat Party is the party of appeasement, cowardice, and treason. There is no moral difference now between giving money to Howard Dean and giving money to al-Qaeda. While the two have ideological differences, they have the same ultimate goal: the defeat of George W. Bush. A vote for the Democrats is a vote for the victory of the terrorists. This is not meant as an insult, it is simply the truth. Just as a vote for the Democrats in 1864 was a vote for disunion, a vote for the Democrats today is a vote for the victory of the Islamists.(And I'm not getting into psycho-analyzing the Canadian guy who is apparently -- eek -- a David Frum "Republican-Canadian" wannabe -- that would just be too cruel of me.) Anyway, Yoshida must really be having a tough time right now, huh? What with his boy W apparently on the way down and all. I think I'll leave him alone in his agony. Why oh why did I give this guy any attention? His insane musings were apparently discovered by folks like Jesse Taylor a couple of weeks after I retired my blog so I didn't realize he was just one of these living wingnut cartoon characters you hear about all the time. If I'd have realized he was one of those guys, I really wouldn't have put up that last post. I really don't like to give folks like Yoshida the attention. I'll stop it now. --- Posted at 2/09/2004 08:00:00 PM by Tom Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
Is It Possible to Fight Back? (Cross-posted at american street) In the last couple of years I have researched and written about the massive communications “infrastructure” that the Right has built. Many of us bloggers refer to this infrastructure as the "Wurlitzer." The Right's infrastructure is massively funded. One study, $1 Billion for Conservative Ideas, by David Callahan, showed that in the 1990s the Right's funders pumped more than $1 billion into this ideological indoctrination campaign. A good description of this infrastructure can be found in my report The Attack on Trial Lawyers and Tort Law. This report is written to trial lawyers and their organizations, discussing how and why they are under attack from the Right. (The real fun of this report is following the footnotes and reading the online sources I used.) I wrote this report because believe that we can -- and must -- recognize and fight back against the Right's machine, by building a counter-infrastructure or our own. But doing so takes money. Trial lawyers are a major source of funding for moderates and progressives, which is why they are being attacked by the Right. So I did the research and wrote the report, describing what is happening to trial lawyers, and how, and why, appealing to them to begin funding organizations to counter the Right’s machine. The report has been embraced by the American Trial Lawyers Association, and they have passed it along to the state trial lawyer organizations, and several of these have publicized (another example here) and/or sent the report to their members. I am working on similar reports (if I can find the funding to continue) written for Organized Labor, School Employees, Mainstream Religious Organizations and Philanthropic Foundations, each describing the Right’s attack on their particular interests and making the case for funding a counter-infrastructure to counter the Right. Each of these groups have been major funders of moderate and progressive activities in the past (which is why they are under attack from the Right) and I am hoping that with enough information about the Right's efforts to attack their interests they can be persuaded direct their funding efforts toward a broad counter-attack. If you know of individuals or organizations that would be interested in assisting me with this effort by helping to fund these reports, please contact me. Also, for your enjoyment and terror, I have collected what I think is the most complete collection of links to online sources of information about the "conservative movement" here. (Please let me know of any significant articles, reports, etc. that might be missing.) So all of this is my humble attempt to help trigger an organized, funded response to the Right’s decades-long effort to swing the country toward their ideological belief system. It’s a dirty job, but… It IS Possible to Fight Back The beneficiaries of the Right’s efforts are the corporations, and the corporations have donated a lot of money to the Right’s efforts. But the beneficiaries of OUR efforts are THE PEOPLE. And there are a LOT of people! In the last national election Al Gore received 51 million votes. (Actually, 50,999,897, but who’s counting -- especially in Florida.) Howard Dean is on to something when he talks about raising $200 million from 2 million people, each giving $100. He is really, really on to something. I want to push this idea further. If each committed Progressive donated $100 each year toward fighting the Right, we would raise hundreds of millions of dollars – over the next decade this would add up to billions, far surpassing that $1 billion the Right spent in the 1990s on their organizations. I think we should introduce a new ethic into Moderate and Progressive thinking. I think we need to see that it is our duty to donate money to help build and continue to fund organizations that will fight back against the Right. I think we can all see the need for this now. I think we can all feel the urgency. I propose a campaign to persuade every single Moderate and Progressive that it is their duty to donate at least $100 each per year to Moderate and Progressive organizations. We can call this effort something like "The Earth is Worth $100," or "The Fight-the-Right Tax is $100 Per Year." Think of it as cheap tithing. If each Gore voter donated $100 this would raise more than $5 BILLION each year. This is not realistic, but I am demonstrating that even without the traditional funding sources – labor, foundations, etc. – it IS possible to raise the amounts of money necessary to take on the Right. The site counter for this [american street] website shows that the average daily readership of the american street is 1470 individuals. If each of these readers gave $100 american street would raise $147,000. Yes, if our readers followed the $100 commitment principle, just this weblog alone could raise $147,000, which is almost enough for seed money to launch one organization. With this money an organization could begin hiring and start serious fundraising and PR efforts to reach another 10,000 people donating $100 each, raising $1,000,000 for operations. I'm not saying we should do this today -- I'm showing how the $100 principle would enable even small groups to start building an organization that works to counter the Right’s propaganda. DailyKOS' hit counter says its average daily readership is 109,610. If each of those readers donated $100 that would raise $10,961,000, sufficient to launch and fund for a year three or four serious organizations. And those 109,000 people are still only a fraction of the number of Moderates and Progressives in the United States. This is serious money we're talking about. Projecting an aura of defeat is one of the Right’s tactics against us. So many of us believe the fight is hopeless, that the RIght has all the money and it is useless to even try to respond. But never forget that there are more of us than them, and never forget that we are fighting AGAINST war, and FOR the earth, and FOR helping others, and that Progressive ideals of sustainability, and building community, and sharing, and cooperating and nurturing are healthier and stronger than the dark, negative, intolerant, fearful, materialistic, divisive, hateful, jealous and cultish ideology of the Right. We not only CAN win, we MUST win! So what do YOU think? Is this an idea worth persuing? And if so, how? Are YOU giving at least $100 per year? Is a commitment to give $100 per year to Moderate and Progressive organizations too much to ask to take America back from the nightmare we find ourselves in? --- Posted at 2/09/2004 11:20:00 AM by Dave Johnson Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
A Suggestion for Libertarians I'm a liberal Democrat and all, but I have a bold and original suggestion for libertarians (including libertarian Republicans). Don't get mad until you hear what it is: Maybe 2004 would be a good year for y'all to vote for the Libertarian candidate. I realize that most of the time most of you vote for the Republican as the lesser evil. Usually that makes sense, but this year is it even true? From your point of view, Bush is as about as bad as a Democrat on tariffs, government spending and "little government" issues. He's worse on fiscal responsibility, civil liberties, and privacy rights. And he gave us this godawful war. Some of you might think you should support Bush during the present state of emergency, but we can be confident that this state of emergency is going last forever. (Who is our enemy, again? For a long time I thought this was The War on Terrorism, but now I'm hearing that it's really The War Against Evil. Somehow I think that either one of those wars will last awhile). If you want to vote for the Democrat, of course that would be great. But I can see that Kerry, our likely nominee, is not your cup of tea, and granted that he supported both the war and the Patriot Act, I get your point. (Though changing his mind would be a lot easier for him than it would be for Bush). There's never going to be a better time. If the Libertarians don't make a good showing this year, they never will. They might as well fold up their tents and quit. P.S. So am I a fiendish operative throwing a monkey wrench into the Bush machine? Or am I just telling you that right at the moment you and I really have something in common? Your call. --- Posted at 2/09/2004 09:50:00 AM by John Emerson Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
Daily News Online Important new news site: Daily News Online. Take a look. --- Posted at 2/09/2004 08:27:00 AM by Dave Johnson Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
Nuh-uh Adam Yoshida's response to Kevin's post is priceless. Open mouth. Insert foot. Yoshida's comment on Kevin's comment board was pretty funny too. I like this part: This is more treasonous nonsense from a pack of liars and scumbags.How's that for a tempered intellectual response? BTW, I hadn't realized it but Hesiod had talked about this more than a year ago. This document shows that Bush had to sign a document acknowledging he was being re-assigned to this disciplinary guard unit. So, well well well, the president lied about his draft record just yesterday morning. I'm impressed. How about you? --- Posted at 2/09/2004 08:15:00 AM by Tom Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
2/08/2004 Bush AWOL mystery solved? Go here. Calpundit may have the goods on the Bush AWOL mystery. Someone said that the reason Bush was letting the rumors fly is that the truth was worse than the rumor. Looks like they were right. You heard it here second. UPDATE: Diana Moon of Letter From Gotham suggests two questions, the first one for Bush and second one for his war buddies: "Mister President, can you give us the names of three National Guard Service colleagues who served with you between May 1972 and October 1973?" and "Any American who can document that he was in the National Guard between May 1972 and October 1973 and remembers serving with Bush during that period should contact the news departments of CNN, Fox, CBS, NBC, and ABC to verify that Bush wasn't AWOL. That way, we can stop refighting the Vietnam War and focus our attention on current issues." Sounds like a plan. --- Posted at 2/08/2004 07:37:00 PM by John Emerson Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
Totalitarian Unanimity American unanimity on the Iraqi threat before the second Iraq War can only be described as totalitarian. I remember thinking at the time that Saddam probably did not have a significant WMD capacity and that he was not a major threat to the U.S., but I just didn't think that it was worth saying so. I didn't have any special information, and almost all of the experts (and essentially all of the media) were supporting the Bush line. So mostly I argued for multilateralism and/or containment. But Ritter wasn't the only expert who disagreed: Hans Blix also did. And even without a sex-crimes charge, he too was marginalized by what amounted to smear campaign -- as indeed were the French, the Germans and most of Old Europe. The unanimity of opinion on the WMD question was a local American phenomenon not to be found elsewhere in the world. This kind of engineered unanimism is usually only seen in one-party states. Dissenting voices were swamped in a flood of coordinated, on-message repetitions of the Bush Administration's unfounded and false claims about the Iraqi threat. The vast majority of the major media were working for the administration, and only a few people with independent sources of information were in a position to know how weak the administration's case really was. We obviously need a complete post-mortem. (Here and here are two tidbits from Atrios on how the media worked -- the point of the Pincus story is that it was a good story buried on page seventeen.) There really need to be some mea culpas, some resignations, and multiple apologies to Ritter and Blix. I really don't think that we'll see any of that, but until it happens, we're still really as bad off as we ever were, since the same corrupt media still control the airwaves. We're really in Nader-Chomsky territory. The Democrats should have listened. --- Posted at 2/08/2004 03:06:00 PM by John Emerson Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
Comments on Meet the Press Extreme softball. They didn't have to submit the questions in advance because Russert did not ask one question that was a surprise, in order to catch Bush unprepared so the country could see how he responds. Did he ask ANY follow-up questions? For example, on Bush's military record Russert did not follow up and ask why Bush refused to take his medical exam and stopped flying, after the government had spent over $1 million to train him as a pilot. That is a very important question and the public has the right to know the answer. The press has an obligation to ask, and Russert did not. One thing for sure, the focus groups have found that "not going to trust a madman" is working better than other phrases. He used the word "madman" over and over again. On the U.N., keep in mind that we're talking about a country that DID NOT HAVE weapons: "You mentioned "preemption." If I might, I went to the United Nations and said, Here is what we know, you know, at this moment, and you need to act. After all, you are the body that issued resolution after resolution after resolution, and he ignored those resolutions. So, in other words, when you say "preemption," it almost sounds like, Well, Mr. President, you decided to move. What I decided to do was to go to the international community and see if we could not disarm Saddam Hussein peacefully through international pressure. You remember U.N. Security Council Resolution 1441 clearly stated show us your arms and destroy them, or your programs and destroy them. And we said, there are serious consequences if you don't. That was a unanimous verdict. In other words, the worlds of the U.N. Security Council said we're unanimous and you're a danger. So, it wasn't just me and the United States. The world thought he was dangerous and needed to be disarmed. And, of course, he defied the world once again. In my judgment, when the United States says there will be serious consequences, and if there isn't serious consequences, it creates adverse consequences. People look at us and say, they don't mean what they say, they are not willing to follow through."But these were resolutions saying Iraq should disarm. DISARM WHAT? And of course, no follow up: "Mr. President, you made a terrible mistake and got us into a war. Now there are over 10,000 Iraqi dead, over 500 American dead, the country is flat broke, the military is dangerously overextended and the country has no credibility in the world. Shouldn't there be consequences for mistakes of such magnitude?" On free elections in Iraq -- simple evasion. Russert: If the Iraqis choose, however, an Islamic extremist regime, would you accept that, and would that be better for the United States than Saddam Hussein? President Bush: They're not going to develop that. And the reason I can say that is because I'm very aware of this basic law they're writing. They're not going to develop that because right here in the Oval Office I sat down with Mr. Pachachi and Chalabi and al Hakim, people from different parts of the country that have made the firm commitment, that they want a constitution eventually written that recognizes minority rights and freedom of religion. I remember speaking to Mr. al Hakim here, who is a fellow who has lost 63 family members during the Saddam reign. His brother was one of the people that was assassinated early on in this past year. I expected to see a very bitter person. If 63 members of your family had been killed by a group of people, you would be a little bitter. He obviously was concerned, but he I said, you know, I'm a Methodist, what are my chances of success in your country and your vision? And he said, it's going to be a free society where you can worship freely. This is a Shiia fellow. And my only point to you is these people are committed to a pluralistic society. And it's not going to be easy. The road to democracy is bumpy. It's bumpy particularly because these are folks that have been terrorized, tortured, brutalized by Saddam Hussein.In other words, they won't choose an Islamist government because the people WE have chosen to set up the government aren't Islamists. No follow-up from Russert on what happens if the people of Iraq vote for different leaders than the ones we have set up. This guy is in way over his head. --- Posted at 2/08/2004 01:08:00 PM by Dave Johnson Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
2/07/2004 The Dirty Tricksters Win Again: More on Ritter The post below made me take a walk through memory lane back to the pre-war anti-war days. Anyway, here's a link to my post on the story about Ritter back in January of 2003. If you recall, this whole thing sounded like something Nixon's Dirty Tricksters would do. I had forgotten that Thomas Spargo, the judge in the case, was likely the culprit -- the guy who broke the law in other words. Here's a bit of the post: The timing is, of course, very suspicious. On the eve of a war against Iraq this has all the appearances of an attempt to silence or at least discredit one of the more effective critics of the administration. First of all, the records in this case were sealed and whoever leaked them to the press was quite simply breaking the law. They have also violated Ritter's civil rights as well. Now, also suspiciously, U.S. attorneys William Pericak and Thomas Spina, Jr. have decided the government may pursue federal charges against Ritter based on what they have heard in the press about Ritter's alleged rendezvous attempt. Pericak and Spina have received a copy of Ritter's file in the New York case just today it appears. Of course, the most curious thing of all is who the judge in Ritter's case in 2001 was -- his judge was a fellow named Thomas J. Spargo. Spargo is not exactly a household name but, if you recall from a couple of years back, he's a well-known Republican lawyer and activist who played a role in the mob demonstration that shut down the vote-counting in Miami during the recount battle of 2000. In fact, I recall it was quite controversial that he took part in this disgraceful demonstration since he was serving as a judge at the same time in New York. Anyway, Spargo is the judge who put the seal on Ritter's record in 2001 and, presumably, was in charge of making sure that none of this information was made public.Why haven't W and the "law and order" Republicans put someone in jail over this? You and I know the answer, don't we? --- Posted at 2/07/2004 11:06:00 AM by Tom Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
2/06/2004 Whatever Happened to Scott Ritter? Right now one of the big Rove Administration talking points is that "Everyone thought Saddam had WMD's, not just Bush". This nicely supplements the main point dutifully being trotted around: "This was an intelligence failure, and Bush is going to get to the bottom of it". However, before the war there was one guy who was quite vocal about his belief that Saddam did not have WMD's: Scott Ritter. And as a former U.N. weapons inspector in Iraq, Ritter was in a position to know what he was talking about. He was right, and almost everyone else was wrong. So where is he these days? Well, he's not on TV. According to Bob Somerby of The Daily Howler, Ritter has been seen on national broadcast media exactly three times in the last six months -- and one of those times he was slimed by Gloria Borger. (My own Googling research turns up very little more since 2002). Meanwhile, the people who got us into this mess run from talk show to talk show and from interview to interview, explaining endlessly why it wasn't their fault and how they were basically right all along. Rumsfeld or Condoleezzea can make three national TV appearances in one day. So why is it that we don't we see Ritter? Mostly because he was smeared. In January 2003 there was a leak of a story about a 2001 misdemeanor arrest for attempting (via the internet) to meet a minor for sexual purposes. The legal case was dropped and the records sealed -- but this was enough to permanently discredit Ritter in the eyes of the media. Since then he's been almost invisible: Ritter was disappeared. The case shouldn't have been in the news in the first place, since court records were sealed, and in any case the sex-scandal story (a misdemeanor with the charges dropped) was never seen again after February 2003. But after the story came out, Ritter (the one guy who apparently knew what was going on in Iraq) got considerable ink in the foreign-language and British press, but almost no attention in the U.S. We shouldn't be surprised. Sidney Blumenthal and Greg Palast can't get published in the American daily media either, and they aren't even kinky. You don't want to go overboard about this, but the controlled media we have now should bother everyone. What we're seeing goes far beyond the traditional domination of the media by centrist points of view, and approaches the situation to be found in one-party states. UPDATE: Moniker pointed out in the comments that many people worldwide doubted Saddam's WMD. That's correct, and I should have made it clear that what I was talking about was an engineered American unanimity. I will write more on this soon. SECOND UPDATE Col. David Hackworth has proposed that Ritter be nominated to the MWD probe commission. Makes perfect sense, but somehow you doubt that it will happen. P.S. I never did tell you whether Ritter was guilty or not, did I? The answer is, I don't know, and almost no one else does either. The normal presumption when charges are dropped on a misdemeanor case is that there wasn't much there in the first place. The few facts we have are consistent with a frameup, entrapment, or blackmail, though these are not the only possible explanations. And of course, if it was blackmail, then apparently Ritter did something un-nice -- even if it was also unprosecutable. The real point is that Ritter was right when almost everyone else was wrong, and that the media have been ignoring him since February 2003. LINKS: I have parked links to this story here. I have also added links to stories about the movie Ritter made in 2001 (before 9/11) with funding from an Iraqi businessmen. The film has also been used to discredit Ritter, but I think that the case against him is weak. While checking up on the film story, I did find that Ritter is sort of an oaf, with rather odd mannerisms, and thus not the best spokesman for his case. Or at least, that's how slick media people feel about him. --- Posted at 2/06/2004 03:59:00 PM by John Emerson Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
Bush Appoints Silberman Bush appointed Laurence Silberman to head the "independent" investigation of Iraq intelligence. This might be the one person even less independent than Kissinger. He first shows up as one of the people from the Reagan campaign who met with the Iranians in the Iran Hostage Crisis: "In September 1980, Allen got a call from Robert McFarlane, then an authority on Iran for the Senate Armed Services Committee. McFarlane told Allen that he knew a representative of the Iranian government who might be useful. `McFarlane wanted us to meet him; he was emphatic,' recalls Allen. `And against my better judgment, I agreed.' Allen asked another campaign advisor, Laurence Silberman, to accompany him."Then he's one of the judges who let Ollie North off the hook on a technicality. Later he shows up as one of the main behind-the-scenes Clinton-haters: Laurence Silberman, appointed by Supreme Court Chief Justice Rehnquist to sit on the review panel, is known by many as an ally of the Federalist Society and the judge who overturned Oliver North's convictions. In "Blinded by the Right," David Brock suggests Silberman was a driving force behind the conservative muckraker's "The Real Anita Hill," which trashed the woman who challenged Clarence Thomas, and of the "troopergate" articles that eventually produced Paula Jones. According to Brock,This appointment says all we need to know about the "independence" of this commission.though he was a sitting federal judge who would rule on matters to which the Clinton administration was party, Larry strongly urged me to go forward. By now, after his almost daily dealings with me as I wrote "The Real Anita Hill," Larry must have known I always deferred to his judgment. He also had keen psychological insight. He wrapped his advice in an appeal to my ego. The trooper story would be much bigger than the Anita Hill book, he predicted. Clinton would be "devastated," and therefore the story could only greatly enhance my reputation. Sitting in his favorite tan leather club chair, scotch in hand, the judge told me he felt sure that if the same story had been written about Ronald Reagan, it would have toppled him from office. Clinton, he surmised, might be toppled as well. Of course, the liberal media might ignore the story to protect Clinton, but in conservative circles, I would be king. When I heard that I was over the fence.Later, as Brock indicates, Silberman ruled on Clinton matters, including whether Clinton's bodyguards could be compelled to testify in the Lewinsky case. He famously asked in an opinion, "Can it be said that the president of the United States has declared war on the United States," when he disagreed with the administration's tactics. His court also backed the leaks to the media from the office of his friend Ken Starr. [. . .] Brock's account also alleges that Silberman was good at moving dirt behind the scenes, acting as a source, both on and off the record, for "The Real Anita Hill." Brock relates the story of his finishing a chapter alleging Sen. Paul Simon leaked confidential papers on Hill to the press. After Brock drops it through Silberman's mail slot, the judge and his wife call their young cub reporter. "They were passing the phone to each other, marveling at my 'genius' at the top of their lungs," Brock says. "'You got him. You nailed him. You fucked him. You killed him,' they sang. The state of manic euphoria that gripped the Silbermans that evening is impossible to describe to a normal person." --- Posted at 2/06/2004 11:33:00 AM by Dave Johnson Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
2/05/2004 The Kerry Smear -- Spotted Again I have been following a certain kind of smear that appears to be a tactic of the Republicans for the election. Anonymous callers to talk shows, anonymous letter writers, all with stories about how John Kerry is a nasty rich elitist who does thing like push in front of people in lines at supermarkets. I wrote about it here and, especially here. Now in Murdoch's NY Post (Murcoch owns Fox News), there's this (thanks to Atrios): "ONE of the surest ways to get the phones ringing on any Massachusetts talk-radio show is to ask people to call in and tell their John Kerry stories. The phone lines are soon filled, and most of the stories have a common theme: our junior senator pulling rank on one of his constituents, breaking in line, demanding to pay less (or nothing) or ducking out before the bill arrives. The tales often have one other common thread. Most end with Sen. Kerry inquiring of the lesser mortal: "Do you know who I am?"It's time to write to your local papers, warning people of this tactic. (Cross-posted at the american street.) --- Posted at 2/05/2004 07:46:00 PM by Dave Johnson Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
Lies Lies Lies Yeah Part 2,357 From this bombshell UPI story: Federal law-enforcement officials said that they have developed hard evidence of possible criminal misconduct by two employees of Vice President Dick Cheney's office related to the unlawful exposure of a CIA officer's identity last year. The investigation, which is continuing, could lead to indictments, a Justice Department official said. According to these sources, John Hannah and Cheney's chief of staff, Lewis "Scooter" Libby, were the two Cheney employees. "We believe that Hannah was the major player in this," one federal law-enforcement officer said. Calls to the vice president's office were not returned, nor did Hannah and Libby return calls.From an October 6, 2003 press conference by Scott McClellan: Q Scott, the President just expressed his desire to get to the bottom of this CIA leak issue. And he said he wanted to hold accountable whoever was responsible -- MR. McCLELLAN: Absolutely. Q -- responsible for this. But can you confirm that the President would fire anyone on his staff found to have leaked classified information? MR. McCLELLAN: I think I made that very clear last week. The topic came up, and I said that if anyone in this administration was responsible for the leaking of classified information, they would no longer work in this administration. This is a very serious matter. The President made it very clear just a short time ago in the East Room, and he has always said that leaking of classified information is a serious matter. And that's why he wants to get to the bottom of this. And the sooner we get to the bottom of it, the better.From an October 10, 2003 press conference by Scott McClellan: Q Scott, earlier this week you told us that neither Karl Rove, Elliot Abrams nor Lewis Libby disclosed any classified information with regard to the leak. I wondered if you could tell us more specifically whether any of them told any reporter that Valerie Plame worked for the CIA? MR. McCLELLAN: Those individuals -- I talked -- I spoke with those individuals, as I pointed out, and those individuals assured me they were not involved in this. And that's where it stands. Q So none of them told any reporter that Valerie Plame worked for the CIA? MR. McCLELLAN: They assured me that they were not involved in this.Now, explain to me why Scooter and Hannah still have jobs? Didn't the White House say they'd immediately fire any person who was involved in this? Apparently, Libby and Hannah are the sacrificial lambs. But why did the White House lie about Libby's involvement? How did they think they could get away with that? I mean, heck folks, most of the people in that room KNEW for a fact that McClellan was lying. Surely they knew it was bound to come out that Libby was involved sooner or later, right? However, I've got one eensy teensy (but important) question: Who told Libby and Hannah that Plame was a CIA operative? Are you thinking what I'm thinking? --- Posted at 2/05/2004 06:49:00 PM by Tom Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
The New Ad The new ad is a dating service FOR PROGRESSIVES. I can see the need for this. I went out with a Libertarian once. Ugh! --- Posted at 2/05/2004 04:51:00 PM by Dave Johnson Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
No One Remembers Does anyone remember this, from Dec. 7, 2002? Iraq Delivers Arms Declaration to U.N.: "BAGHDAD, Iraq - Iraq handed over its long-awaited arms declaration to the United Nations on Saturday, denying it has doomsday weapons, and President Saddam Hussein grudgingly apologized to Kuwait for his 1990 invasion. [. . .] The declaration will "answer all the questions,'' said Lt. Gen. Hossam Mohammed Amin, its chief author. If the United States "has the minimum level of fairness and braveness,'' it will accept it as the truth, he said. [. . .]But new teams of U.N. arms inspectors are now crisscrossing Iraq in search of signs of weapons of mass destruction, and the Bush administration says it is sure Baghdad still has such weapons. It has threatened war to enforce Iraqi disarmament. The huge Iraqi declaration, summarizing largely civilian industrial activity, was an anticlimax, since the Iraqi denial has been repeated endlessly, including by Gen. Amin on Saturday. ``I reiterate here Iraq has no weapons of mass destruction,'' he told reporters."Of course, TODAY'S excuse is that Saddam didn't know that he didn't have WMD, and that's why Bush thought they did. --- Posted at 2/05/2004 02:08:00 PM by Dave Johnson Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
They're In Charge Now From Dr. Strangelove: "I can no longer sit back and allow Communist infiltration , Communist indoctrination, Communist subversion, and the international Communist conspiracy to sap and impurify all of our precious bodily fluids... " -Base Commander RipperThis wingnut was modeled after the John Birch Society wingnuts. Well, people, now those wingnuts run the country. --- Posted at 2/05/2004 01:15:00 PM by Dave Johnson Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
July 2002 In one of my first Seeing the Forest posts I wrote: "After this November's election the Democratic Party is going to have to start asking Democrats for money instead of hitting up corporate Republicans as they have been doing. They are used to getting large chunks of cash from corporations and now they have to raise lots of smaller chunks from actual Democrats. I think the changes they will have to make to tailor their message to actual Demcorats is going to make a huge difference in the message of the Democratic Party. I've been to a few Democratic clubs and other meetings lately and have to say that the mood of the grass roots is nothing like the message that the Democratic Party has been putting out. Grass-roots Democrats are not at all happy with the way House and Senate Democrats have been voting for several years. I think we are likely to see a very strong populist resurgence."And look what has happened! Taking away the corporate money HAS changed the party. --- Posted at 2/05/2004 09:35:00 AM by Dave Johnson Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
W's Alternate Universe Because we acted, nations of the Middle East no longer need to fear reckless aggression from a ruthless dictator who had the intent and capability to inflict great harm on his people and people around the world.That's true I guess. Unfortunately, now the nations of the Middle East need to fear reckless agression from the United States. And the people of Iraq have learned the United States has the capability to inflict great harm, haven't they? --- Posted at 2/05/2004 08:49:00 AM by Tom Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
Dean - Wisconsin Or Out Dean says he must win Wisconsin or leave the race. He is asking supporters to donate $700,000 by Sunday to pay for ads. I have put "the bat" back up - click on it to give, even $5. What do I think? I think he's being realistic. I also think he might be pretty sure he has a good chance of winning Wisconsin. If he does that helps propel him into the BIG March 2 primaries including California and New York. And it will be a very interesting time up to the convention, with FOUR candidates blasting Bush on the news every single night. YES! Last night's Redwood City Meetup was surprising. About 1/3 of the people there were at their first Dean Meetup. I wonder what it was like in the rest of the country? All I can say is, we'll see. --- Posted at 2/05/2004 08:18:00 AM by Dave Johnson Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
Ghostwriting Republican Trash Talk (Matt Yglesias linked to a query from warblogger Tacitus asking for examples of "Bill Clinton's policy lies". Fun was had by all, especially by his resident trolls. This is a rewritten version of my contribution.) I believe in the division of labor and comparative advantage. I'm sure that the Republicans have already found every lie Clinton ever told, along with a lot that he didn't tell -- as Reagan said, there's gotta be a pony somewhere in all that shit. As far as I'm concerned, our job is just to shovel away the shit. Why we're running errands for Tacitus, I don't know. For people who need to believe that there's a decent conservative in the world, apparently he's the man. But from what I've read, he's just as nasty as the others -- he's just painfully trained himself to keep a civil tongue in his head. For the sake of the common good, Tacitus always demands that we meet him half way, but I have never seen him starting off by meeting us half way. He just struts over with a chip on his shoulder to make his demands. I'm hardly a Clinton loyalist -- he double-crossed my wing of the party up one side and down the other -- but my doubts about Clinton aren't to be shared with Tacitus, who I'm sure enjoyed watching a Democrat do the Republicans' work. During the Dukakis campaign, the Democrat's response was to stop campaigning for a minute to decide whether Boston Harbor was really that bad. When the Republicans insinuated that Clinton's mother was a whore -- yes, they really did do that -- the Democratic response was to ask if it was strictly true, and to hold a symposium on the role of women in today's world. So now we're ghost-writing trash-talk for Bush's Republican defenders. Civility in American politics came to an end in the 1994 Congressional campaign, when one of the nastiest guys in American politics became Speaker of the House with the help of a ludicrous and vicious smear. The Republicans have done nothing since then to improve the situation, and they've held on to their gains. Democrats play fair, and Republicans don't. Democrats are openminded and thoughtful, and Republicans aren't. We have the high moral ground, and they have the Presidency, Congress, and the Supreme Court. (Unnecessary personal references omitted. There are many fine people who still believe that dialogue with Republicans is possible, though when I visit their sites I wonder why they bother to try.) Update: I checked back on the Yglesias thread, and apparently the Tacitus thread was not trolling for "Clinton was just as bad" slime, but was straightforwardly intended. Someone else has also given me evidence that my judgement of Tacitus (based on fifteen minutes at his site plus his comments here and there) was unfair. On the other hand, by being an asshole I succeeded in drawing more attention to myself than I otherwise would have gotten. My self-promotion skills are improving, I guess. --- Posted at 2/05/2004 08:01:00 AM by John Emerson Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
2/04/2004 What's my name? --- Posted at 2/04/2004 06:30:00 PM by John Emerson Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
Why Bush Won't Allow His National Guard Records To Be Released I suspect the reason Bush won't let his Service Records to be released is they will show he accepted pay for dates he did not show up. I mean, we already know he never completed training to become a fighter pilot because he stopped flying rather than take a physical after they announced a new policy of drug testing. He already admits there was quite a bit of time he wasn't there. (He claims he made it up.) His "honorable discharge" papers show that he left a year early. So what does he still have to hide? Why won't he allow the records to be released? --- Posted at 2/04/2004 01:49:00 PM by Dave Johnson Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
Best THIS at Billmon's Whiskey Bar is why I read weblogs, and read the professional pundits less and less often. Oh, wait, newspapers CAN'T do what bloggers do - because bloggers can link to stories, and you can leave comments! On the deficits: ""Gulp," says the House Republican Caucus. "You mean you want us to handle it?" "Naturally," replies the president. "What other suckers would I have in mind?" And so the Great Barbecue of 2003 finally reaches its greasy end. The meal has been devoured -- all those rich tax cuts and thick slices of pork, topped off by that enormous ice cream sundae of prescription drug benefits. The check is on the table. The guests are frantically trying to avoid eye contact."Don't worry, their kids will cover the bill. --- Posted at 2/04/2004 01:04:00 PM by Dave Johnson Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
Ask The Simple Question I wish the press would ask Republicans why they didn't think it was "outrageous and baseless" to call President Clinton a "draft-dodger." Republicans roared back on Tuesday, accusing Mr. Kerry of "smear tactics" for saying the president should answer questions about his service record.I wish someone would ask Republicans if they also think it was "smear tactics" to accuse President Clinton of ... jeeze, think of all the things they accused him of! Ralph Reed, the Bush campaign's Southeast regional chairman, went even further. "It's gutter politics," Mr. Reed said in an interview. "We're absolutely convinced that the American people will reject these smear tactics."Did the American people reject the Republicans for their tactics against President Clinton? How did the Republicans fare, after years of the nastiest kind of sleazy attacks on Clinton? Oh yeah, I remember, now they countrol the House, they control the Senate, and they control the White House. --- Posted at 2/04/2004 09:15:00 AM by Dave Johnson Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
Taxpayer Money Paying For Bush Campaign Ads! The government will be spending $9.5 million to run blatantly political pro-Republican election ads, in English and Spanish, promoting Bush's Medicare Destruction bill that was passed by a few votes. From The Progress Report: "THE AD'S DISTORTIONS: The new Medicare ads urge citizens to call 1-800-MEDICARE to hear more about the new law. And in 'Big Brother' style, when you call that number you have to actually say out loud 'Medicare improvement' in order to get information. The information you then receive is filled with distortions. The hotline claims the new Medicare 'is the same Medicare you have always counted on' -- failing to disclose that the law includes provisions which try to force more seniors into private HMOs. The hotline claims that seniors will be able to find 'immediate savings between 10% to 15% from a new drug discount card program.' But the cards, which were written into the bill by one of President Bush's closest business associates, actually do not guarantee any savings at all. The hotline also says the new prescription drug program under Medicare 'will provide significant savings for seniors.' But as the Center for Economic and Policy Research notes, 'seniors in the middle income quintile will pay an average of $1,650 a year in out-of-pocket expenses for prescription drugs in 2006 - a figure nearly 60% more than they paid in 2000.'"You have to SAY "Medicare Improvement." This is basic marketing -- repeat the message. Getting rid of Medicare is "improvement." And making you actually SAY it... Call your Congressional Representative and demand these Bush campaign ads be taken down, and those responsible be sent to jail! Also, read the whole thing at the Center for American Progress. There is a lot more, including reminding us how the government spent $30 million to mail a letter telling all Americans that Bush had provided "long-term tax relief for all Americans who pay income taxes" and that "you will be receiving a check [so] you need to take no additional steps." Remember how the term "tax relief" works for the Republicans. And they just get away with this stuff! There is no accountability. Clinton would have gone to jail if he had even thought about doing anything like this. Are we approaching the time when we need to be in the streets demanding an end to this kind of corruption and destruction of our system? --- Posted at 2/04/2004 08:44:00 AM by Dave Johnson Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
2/03/2004 Is This For Real? This post: Kerry Beat Dean in New Hampshire by Only 1.5% When Computers Weren't Doing the Counting says that where machines counted the votes, Kerry beat Dean by a big margin, but when the votes were counted by hand he did not. Read the post. Is this for real, or is someone just making stuff up? Should Dean ask for a hand recount? (These are paper ballots - it was optical scan machines counting them v.s. hand counts.) --- Posted at 2/03/2004 09:16:00 PM by Dave Johnson Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
A Comment I Left At The Dean Blog Here's a comment I just left at the Dean blog. What do you think? "The number one question about your candidacy is “Can you be elected?” The public is asking it, the press is asking it, and your supporters are asking it. Answer it. Don’t talk about anything else until this is answered. You should be starting every single sentence with “I will beat George Bush because…” and not saying anything else. You need to have this as your message, and nothing else, until it is no longer a question that people ask. You should have no other message because THERE IS NO OTHER QUESTION. Period. Short message. Answer the number one question. Repeat and repeat – that’s basic marketing. Answer this question and all the people who “support Dean, but,” will be back voting for you!I heard they actually read the blog comments. (And STF.) Update - I guess it resonated. Other people are copying and reposting my message in the comments. (Repetition works.) Update - Exit polls confirm what I'm saying. --- Posted at 2/03/2004 08:51:00 PM by Dave Johnson Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
In Command The Republican Drudge Report site has the big headline "In Command" up again, with a picture of Kerry. (No, I won't provide a link to Drudge.) And, I hate to get into this game, but I saw Kerry interviewed on CNN, and his forehead and eyebrows did not move at all, not once, not even a little bit, not even when he blinked. No question about it -- Drudge was right. --- Posted at 2/03/2004 07:57:00 PM by Dave Johnson Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
Bobby Knight makes a fool of himself again Bob Knight has done it again. If you recall, I went to IU for my doctorate and I've commented on this before: Strangely, my parents went to Texas Tech and have now begun to cheer for Knight's Tech squad. I keep telling them that it's only a matter of time before he goes ballistic there. And, with what appears to be another coddling university administration that is catering to Knight's every whim, the explosion is actually likely to come sooner rather than later. Of course, like a ticking time bomb, we all can't help but watch, fascinated, waiting for the inevitable. For his players' sake, I really hope it doesn't happen. Unfortunately, we all know it will, don't we?Apparently, yesterday it did. It really is about time for him to go, don't you think? --- Posted at 2/03/2004 01:18:00 PM by Tom Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
Hullabaloo, on Kerry Go read Hullabaloo: "Kerry had better get his rhetoric together and stop with the 'IIIII led the fight against the Dingell-Daschle compromise in 1986 when my goooood friend the Senatooor from Delawaaaare and I stood firm for working women and the Contras in the funding for the Omnibus Spending bill 227 that offered nothing for the nuclear freeze under the Salt III treaty banning all long range ballistic child care vouuuuchers. I stoooood firrrrrm then and I'll stand firrrrm agaaaain!' The Republicans are going to reply, 'When America was attacked, George Bush knew what to do. He kept you safe.' "He nails it. Even MORE great Dibgy here: "Whining about the media's unfairness or RNC cheating or primary voter's laziness or the Supreme Court stopping the vote count is useless. It does not matter how it happens, the end justifies the means. If you can't make it happen, you don't deserve to win, even if the deck is stacked, the media are useless lemmings or the other side hacks into the Diebold voting machines. If the game is rigged a true winner would make sure it's rigged in his favor. That's the American Way."And, "By drawing out the primaries the way they did, the Democrats had far too much time to think about who they were voting for and they often voted for someone who wasn't a winner. If Bill Clinton couldn't win Iowa and New Hampshire, he had no business being the nominee. But, nobody told the voters or the press (who were fixated on Ross Perot at the time) so he managed to eke out the nomination when it was obvious that either Tom Harkin or Paul Tsongas should have run against George Bush."Heh. --- Posted at 2/03/2004 01:00:00 PM by Dave Johnson Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
More Smears Does this sound a LOT like what I wrote about hearing on the radio the other day? You're going to hear a LOT of this sort of thing in the coming months. And you're NOT going to hear about even more of it, because it will be "under the radar." Every single local newspaper, church newsletter, radio call-in show, local music radio DJ anecdote, internet mailing list, e-mail chain-letter, and EVERY OTHER SOURCE of information that most Americans have. THIS is where Bush will be spending a good chunk of his $2-300 million. What do we do about it? --- Posted at 2/03/2004 12:24:00 PM by Dave Johnson Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
The Media are Playing for the Other Team The Democrats have four good candidates in the Presidential race. Any one of them can be elected, any one of them would be a far better President than George W. Bush, and whichever one runs will be slimed by the combined efforts of the RNC and the national media. That's why I don't think that we should put a lot of energy into thinking about the various candidates' different vulnerabilities. If Max Cleland can be slimed, anyone can be. The Democratic candidate is going to have to run over the media, because the great majority of the media are going to be playing for the other team. Cases in point: the Bush AWOL issue, the Bush budget, and the recent attempts to blame the intelligence failures leading up to Iraq War II on the CIA. The facts about Bush's military service have been readily available for a couple of years. There is room for differences of opinion, but there's unquestionably a real issue here. But the major media either ignore the issue, claim that Bush has been vindicated, or claim that no one really knows. Any of them could educate himself by clicking on one of the following links and spending half an hour, but none of them has bothered. (Links: DeLong, Daily Howler, and Orcinus.) Second, there's the Bush budget. For months Brad DeLong has been commenting on the disastrous Bush fiscal policies and the compliant coverage it's been getting in the press. Here's his recent piece on the budget just presented. This budget is massively fraudulent, simply leaving out information normally included in budgets whenever that information happens to be embarassing to the Bush Administration. But the Post doesn't tell you that. Outrageous and impossible assertions are presented as if they make sense. (DeLong's followup). Finally, the Iraq intelligence fiasco. People who read the papers and have a memory that goes back two years know that the CIA was more cautious than the White House about connecting WMD and Al Qaeda to Saddam. At the time, the CIA was blamed harshly for this, and a free-lance amateur intelligence service was set up in Cheney's office to doctor the evidence to administration specifications. (Slacktivist has collected the relevant stories here. And here's a neo-com book arguing the previous administration line in great detail: Laurie Mylroie's "How the CIA and the State Department Tried to Stop the War on Terror".) The new story, though, is that the Bush Administration overestimated the Iraqi threat because it had been misled by the CIA-- exactly the opposite of the truth! So many columnists have agreed upon exactly the same cover story that it's difficult to believe that it hasn't been a coordinated effort. And here's where we get to the interesting part. David Brooks, who used to be widely-respected as a conservative commentator, now works for the "liberal New York Times". But here he simply repeats the Bush Administration spin on the intelligence fiasco, right on schedule. Think about it. As a conservative ideologue, Brooks was not thought of as a partisan hack. But since he moved to the Times, he seems to have become one. (There are many other examples). Doesn't this tell us that the fix is on, and that we are playing against the entire media -- even the liberal New York Times? I really don't think that there's an innocent explanation for the major media's failure to get these three stories right. Oddly enough, there still are many don't trust anything they read on the internet. (As I have said elsewhere, we are not gentlemen.) But there's really been an inversion. Increasingly it's the "reliable sources" which can't be trusted. PS: Maybe something's changing. Here's Dan Froomkin on the National Guard story. I'd love to be wrong about all this! --- Posted at 2/03/2004 10:43:00 AM by John Emerson Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
Another Thought On Dean Reading yet another article on what went wrong with the Dean campaign, I realize I haven't seen a single one that addresses what I think went wrong. Putting it simply: Dean did not efectively address the "electability" question. I think any volunteer who had been working at the street level could tell you that the number one question asked was, "Can he be elected?" And the Iowa caucuses proved that this was the number one question on Democrats' minds. And it certainly was a question being asked by the press. You can't blame the press for asking the question if the candidate is not answering it effectively. And if he were answering it effectively, maybe they would stop asking. I used to think that Dean is the most electable of the candidates, because he understands how the Republicans are going to campaign, and was going to fight back effectively. He is a centrist, endorsed by the NRA, clearly able to build a movement of activated, enthusiastic volunteers, ready to go door-to-door and donate money as necessary. My opinion has, of course, changed. First, the campaign did not effectively respond to "the scream." I think this was an example of "Photoshopping" a candidate. They enhanced the sound in that tape, filtered out the crowd noise, and made is seem that Dean was just going nuts, when in fact he was raising his voice because the crowd was going wild. I'm not complaining here that he was unfairly smeared, I'm complaining that the candidate who had said he was ready to fight back WASN'T ready, when it came down to it. I had counted on Dean to assemble an effective response team, ready to respond to smears and tricks like this, and this did not happen. Second, Dean never effectively addressed the big issue - electability! An effective ad would say, "A centrist governor, endorsed by the NRA, etc., etc." and would lay out the case that he IS electable. Such an ad should have been the ONLY thing running for weeks in Iowa. Come to think of it, there's still time. Governor, if you really ARE electable, tell us why, over and over, and don't talk about anything else until that question is settled. We'll vote for you if you prove you really can beat Bush! --- Posted at 2/03/2004 08:34:00 AM by Dave Johnson Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
2/02/2004 North Korea Read about what's going on in North Korea. And this is coming from the BBC, so the Bush problem doesn't come into play, does it? --- Posted at 2/02/2004 05:58:00 PM by Dave Johnson Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
Why Kerry Instead Of Dean? I have a post over at the american street, discussing my thoughts about why so many voters went for Kerry instead of Dean in Iowa and New Hampshire. Update - A comment over at that post points to this, and says, "When is somebody going to point out that John Kerry is going to get reamed in the general election because of the book cover for "The New Soldier"? There on the cover is his name above a group of men mimicing the revered Iwo Jima memorial for WW2 vets with an upside down flag. [. . .] This is why the conservative media has been soft on Kerry and it's the Democrats who are going to have to pay for not alerting voters to the kinds of problems that this candidate will have to face if he becomes our nominee." Read the whole page. It shows what's coming if Kerry is the nominee. If you think his status as a Vietnam Vet is going to help... read it. I'm not knocking Kerry for anything here. What I'm saying is that Vietnam Vet isn't going to be a plus for him. Remember how Clinton was accused of being unpatriotic for protesting against the war? Well, Kerry threw his medals away, and posed for pictures like this with upside-down flags. I think he was right to do so, but you KNOW what the Right is going to do with this. Remember Max Cleland - and he never protested against the war. --- Posted at 2/02/2004 05:20:00 PM by Dave Johnson Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
Who Were the Suckers? Calpundit tells us about a new blog for liberal hawks called "Iraq'd". The guy (Spencer Ackerman) pretty much takes the bull by the horns and admits that he and his friends had been conned. I know that recriminations and fingerpointing are very wrong and bad, but couldn't we at least get an acknowledgement that this time around it was the naive, unrealistic, lost-in-the-Sixties ideologues who called it right, and the sharp, realistic, tough-minded wonks who got suckered? Some of us left-wing Dems have been at the receiving end of TNR's snarky disdain for more than two decades now, and it really should be our turn now. "It's not false just because George Bush says it". That was one of the liberal hawks' main arguments, and it turned out to be a very poor one. From 9/11 onward it's been clear that Bush was going to capitalize on the crisis for all kinds of unrelated political purposes, and there always were plenty of reasons to believe that his Iraq war plan itself was riddled with fraud. Even if Iraq War II had been a great triumph, I don't think that the liberal hawks would have gained much from their stand. They probably would have improved their position within the weakened Democratic Party, but Bush wouldn't have needed them anymore for anything, and they would have found themselves discarded like used Kleenex. --- Posted at 2/02/2004 12:51:00 PM by John Emerson Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
People Still Think... Counterspin Central has results of a Newsweek poll: "'Do you think Saddam Hussein's regime in Iraq was DIRECTLY involved in planning, financing, or carrying out the terrorist attacks of September 11th, 2001, or not?' Jan. 29-30, 2004 Was -- 49% Was Not -- 39% Don't Know -- 16%'"The good news is, this can only go down. --- Posted at 2/02/2004 12:41:00 PM by Dave Johnson Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
Pop Quiz Take the Pop Quiz, over at Whiskey Bar. --- Posted at 2/02/2004 08:09:00 AM by Dave Johnson Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
2/01/2004 Kerry? Let me open this up for discussion before I go to bed. I think it's obvious that Kerry was and is the GOP choice for who they want to run against. Look at the level of attacks on Dean compared to the lack of attacks on Kerry. Lots of the anti-Dean stuff originated at places like Drudge, meaning from the Republicans, and I saw a "Kerry in Command" headline at Drudge the other day. There are few press attacks on Kerry -- even a 60 Minutes puff-piece last week. They have tons of oppo research on him, and he has plenty of votes they can twist into an anti-American fervor. He is married to an extremely wealthy woman, which they will find SO many ways to use as a model of hypocrisy. AND his voting record is very close to Ted Kennedy. On national security they can neutralize him, and on domestic issues they can tear him apart. Where Dean was the Centrist (endorsed by the NRA) who was cast as a liberal, Kerry is the liberal they can cast as ... well, think about it. This one really IS a liberal from New England. Not to mention that his style is, to say the least, NOT one that most Americans are going to warm up to. In my opinion the Republicans have been absolutely rejoicing at the prospect of running against another liberal from Massachusetts. What do you think? Was Kerry the GOP's plan all along? Monday Update - Calpundit notices, too. --- Posted at 2/01/2004 09:38:00 PM by Dave Johnson Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
Americans Deserve a Profound Apology... Imagine that you are the parent, or the brother or sister, or the wife, husband or child of a young man or woman killed in Iraq - one of the 138 who died in the march on Baghdad, or one of the 384 who have died there since May 1, when major combat was pronounced over. Imagine, for that matter, that your loved one is among the almost 3,000 men and women who have been wounded in Iraq since the war began - many of whom will forever bear their horrible injuries as a reminder of where they were and why. The why of it was torn apart last week. Now, imagine how appalled the friends and the beloved of Iraq's casualties must have been last week to hear David Kay, the recently retired chief U.S. weapons inspector in Iraq tell the world, "It turns out we were all wrong." Or to hear President Bush - who ordered the war in Iraq on the basis of "wrong" intelligence - changing his story, saying now that it was still a justified war because Saddam Hussein was such a bad guy and just the sort who would have developed and used weapons of mass destruction as only he could have. Or Sen. John W. Warner of Virginia, the Republican chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, badgering Kay into acknowledging the very remote possibility that some day, somewhere, someone just may find evidence that Iraq had some sort of weapons program to justify the invasion and the cost in American lives and resources. Or Vice President Dick Cheney still handing out the baloney about some trailers found in Iraq being tied to production of weapons of mass destruction even though Kay and all others have said it isn't so. Imagine how the loved ones of the dead may feel as they watch the spectacle of political jockeying over who should take the blame for a war being started on the basis of flawed intelligence, over whether there will be an investigation, and over the effect the timing of such an investigation may have on Bush's campaign to get himself re-elected. If I were such a parent, or spouse, or child, or wounded soldier, I expect my fury would be visceral and overwhelming. I would not let these men forget what they had done to my family. Blood is on their hands.Indeed. Read the rest of it. --- Posted at 2/01/2004 05:32:00 PM by Tom Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
A Smear Today, driving to the store to buy a lightbulb, about 2:35pm Pacific time, I listened to a caller to the Bob Brinker radio show - a financial advice call-in show - someone calls in to talk about how "5 years ago" John Kerry came to California to tour the defense contractor plant where she works, and that night there was a company dinner. Employees were asked to contribute to his campaign, she says. One secretary she knows was afraid to not contribute because she was sure she would be fired. The host, Brinker, says of course she would have been fired, this is how it works, pure intimidation. Unnamed caller, unnamed company. I will bet a week's pay this was a planted call from the Republicans, designed to smear Kerry. The call got past the producer, even though the call was not asking for financial advice. This is a national radio show with a large audience. I have no doubt that calls like this are showing up on talk shows all across the country, national and local. (Bush has already spent even more than Dean on his "primary" campaign, even though he is unopposed.) Republicans ALWAYS accuse the opposition of things they are themselves doing. Intimidating employees to contribute is what Republicans do, not Democrats. Executives are "asked" to contribute the max to the Republicans. Of course anyone that isn't "on the same page" doesn't fit in at that company, etc... --- Posted at 2/01/2004 03:22:00 PM by Dave Johnson Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
That Virus Checking my mail just now there were 95 messages that had the virus attached. --- Posted at 2/01/2004 01:11:00 PM by Dave Johnson Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
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