For The Trees

Who is our economy FOR, anyway?

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About the Authors:
Dave Johnson
John Emerson
Richard Reich
Thomas Leavitt

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Open source voting

The New York Times has it right on electronic voting. It's not the editorial page, or even an op-ed. But at least the Times Magazine's "Idea Lab" section plugs one of the two neglected requirements for genuinely trustworthy electronic voting systems: open source software. (The other is extensive exit polling, and the third requirement -- that gets all the press -- is a voter-verifiable paper trail.)

First off, the government should ditch the private-sector software makers. Then it should hire a crack team of programmers to write new code. Then -- and this is the crucial part -- it should put the source code online publicly, where anyone can critique or debug it. This honors the genius of the open-source movement. If you show something to a large enough group of critics, they'll notice (and find a way to remove) almost any possible flaw. If tens of thousands of programmers are scrutinizing the country's voting software, it's highly unlikely a serious bug will go uncaught. The government's programming team would then take the recommendations, incorporate them into an improved code and put that online, too. This is how the famous programmer Linus Torvalds developed his Linux operating system, and that's precisely why it's so rock solid -- while Microsoft's secretly developed operating systems, Linux proponents say, crash far more often and are easier to hack. Already, Australians have used the open-source strategy to build voting software for a state election, and it ran like a well-oiled Chevy. A group of civic-minded programmers known as the Open Voting Consortium has written its own open-source code.

Ditch the private sector, indeed. The mechanism by which I vote is not anybody's fucking trade secret. Make a profit somewhere else, like torturing muslims. But leave me my vote. It's pretty much just ceremonial at this point, but, please. (Via Slashdot.)

--- Posted at 5/31/2004 07:36:00 PM by richard

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Win or Lose

This is Part II of The Right Will Fight Dirty. Major league baseball teams use the minor league teams as a place to "farm" new baseball players. These minor league teams plant seeds by hiring hundreds of young "wannabe" players, providing them with a place to make a living while they train and gain experience, and eventually some of the best players rise up to "the majors." Hence the term "farm teams." In The Next Generation, Atrios linked to Right On, a piece by Matthew Yglesias, which links to a piece by Laura Rozen describing how the right-wing American Enterprise Institute enthusiastically recruits young interns. They are discussing how the Right has a "farm team" system in place to provide internships, training, materials, etc. to a next generation of right-wingnuts to be political candidates at all levels, Congressional staffers, pundits, speakers, activists, etc. The Right has farm teams to recruit young people who are interested in politics, train them, give them a place to grow and learn. Moderates and Progressives do not. In Political Entrepreneurs vs. Political Managers John Emerson talks about the differences between businesspeople and academics as being behind some of this problem, and moderate/liberal philanthropic foundations keeping their grantees on short leashes, and writes, "Eric Alterman noticed early in his career that his conservative friends all had cushy jobs, and he didn't." Finally, Jesse at Pandagon writes from a perspective of having interned (for free) at some liberal outfits. This "farm team" system is just one part of the massive "infrastructure" that the Right has in place. This infrastructure consists of hundreds of organizations, all designed from scratch to change public opinion and the resulting political environment. This infrastructure was developed by a core group of funders who have, in effect, taken over the Republican Party and the "conservative movement" for their own ends. This money has built a network -- an infrastructure -- of over 500 organizations, centrally funded and coordinated and designed to market to the public. Because it is infrastructure for their movement, these organizations and the people in them are available to act on any issue at any time. What they sell is the Republican Party -- not the honorable GOP of the past, but the new monolithic, cultish, far-right, secretive, post-Bircher, Nixonian, elitist, warlike, corporate Party, hawking a strange mixture of anarchic libertarian fantasy economics, money-worshiping, and desiring a one-party corporate/theological governance ruled by a behind-the-scenes aristocracy of inherited wealth. This sales job goes on 24 hours a day, every day, through every channel by which information reaches people. A collection of links to articles, reports and resources for learning about the right-wing movement, its history, how it is funded and how it operates is available here. It is so important to our future that we understand just who is behind this right-wing movement and how they have been able to accomplish what they have, so I encourage you to visit this site and read the articles and studies it links to. You've probably heard of the value of "early money" in elections. The influential "Emily's List" is named after this concept. "EMILY" stands for "early money is like yeast." The idea is that money that comes to a campaign very early is the most important because the earlier a candidate is able to campaign and start advertising, contacting the press and community groups, explaining positions, establishing an identity, etc., the more likely the campaign will be successful. What the Right has is even better than that. Their network of organizations is like an early money tree -- pumping out the benefits of early money years and years before any election, during elections, and the day after an election, getting started on the next one. The Right's machine is not oriented around the election cycle, it is constant, yet this is why they win elections. Their organizations provide a drumbeat of propaganda all year, every year, working with the latest PR and marketing techniques, utilizing the latest research into the psychology of persuasion, exploiting the latest trends, etc. Because its marketing is constant, their politicians have it easy -- they just show up and echo the ideology that this machine has been pumping out and ride along on the rest of the resulting public opinion. Their politicians are almost interchangable, their work having been already done for them by the organizations, they have only to show up and say the right things and they have an automatic base of support. Moderate and Progressive politicians, on the other hand, have to develop their positions each election cycle largely on their own, and communicate their ideas themselves. Everyone blames the Democratic Party for lack of vision, lack of marketing, etc. when the problem really is that there is not a comparable network of moderate and progressive ADVOCACY MARKETING AND COMMUNICATIONS organizations that are OUTSIDE of the party apparatus, supporting it, feeding it ideas, foot soldiers and voters. Organizations on the Right, like the Heritage Foundation provide talking points, training, media skills, and most important, farm teams -- EMPLOYMENT for thousands of "foot soldiers" for the Right! Almost everyone on the Right is paid, and paid well (which serves to buy their loyalty to the core group of funders, their ideology and their goals.) They follow a long-term approach, which is why recruiting lots of young people and finding them paid positions as foot soldiers is an important part of their operation. Eventually these people will become activists, candidates, etc. And by having an employed stable of professional pundits, speakers, activists, etc., they are able to bring their "wurlitzer" to bear on any issue at any time, as necessary. So the question here is why doesn't "our side" have a similar infrastructure in place? I've spent a lot of time studying this problem and have developed some theories. And I have some ideas about how to begin to counter what the Right is doing. Yglesias hits the nail on the head when he writes, "It's the attitude of an arrogant, bloated, dominant movement that would have been appropriate in 1967 or 1977 but was clearly outdated by 1997 and will be simply pathetic by 2007." This jibes with my own theory about why things are the way they are, that is similar to evolution: adapt to changing environments or die. Here's what I mean. Look back at the origins of this right-wing network. (See also here.) The "liberal establishment" used to be the only game in town. Growing up from the roots of modern philanthropy at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th century, the system of philanthropic foundations and non-profits that was in place by the 1960s consisted of scholarly issue-oriented think tanks, and program-oriented public-service organizations that operated from a base of public agreement over common goals. In other words, in the 60's there was universal agreement that it was a good thing to help the poor, protect the environment, provide universal education, etc. And one of the things this system depended on was that not only the public was in agreement about their mission, but that the resulting political environment was supportive of it as well. Because the public environment already shared and was already supportive of its values and ideals, the "liberal establishment" was not designed to have organizations that work to change the underlying public environment and the resulting political environment. In fact, this was AND IS strongly considered to be against the rules! Well, the leaders and funders of the far Right didn't agree with this, and started building institutions of their own, designed from the start to fight against this "liberal establishment" and change that public consensus. The key is that their organizations grew from an effort to fight against liberal organizations and change public thinking. So they designed advocacy organizations with a marketing and communications focus. And over time they became more and more effective at accomplishing their mission, changing the way more and more people think, and discrediting who they saw as their opponents and enemies. So while the organizations of moderates and liberals kept plodding along as if nothing had changed, the reality is that now there is no longer a public consensus that it is good to help the poor, protect the environment, provide universal education, etc. And, most important, the result of the Right's efforts is that the political environment is now hostile to the goals of the major philanthropic foundations and the non-profit organizations they support. Like the proverbial frog in water that is heating to boiling, the UNDERLYING environment has changed without the "liberal establishment's" organizations and their methods changing in response to the new environment. The Right's entire system was designed from the beginning to change the public and political environment and undermine the effectiveness of the system. "Our side's" organizations pre-existed this so they are not designed to respond, and have not yet adapted. Here's my usual example of what this means. Suppose you are a philanthropist supporting programs to protect a redwood grove. What you might do is spend money on a biologist, and on programs to have the public learn about the grove, and on lawyers for the occasional lawsuit, etc. And that always used to be an effective way to use your money. But in today's evolved political environment an elected official can say that to fight forest fires we need to cut down the trees, or a judge can say that the "public good" is the market system so trees should be used for corporate profit. And, you might even face public protests and ridicule for your efforts to protect the environment (often led by the local far-right radio station...) So just like that the redwood grove is gone, and your entire philanthropic investment wasted. The changed public environment means that traditional methods of philanthropy are a waste of money. In TODAY'S environment the battle must be to change underlying public attitudes, and with them the resulting political environment. The Right has worked to change this underlying public and political environment, and the moderate and progressive establishment still consists largely of organizations that are not designed at their core to fight to change underlying public attitudes and the resulting political environment. They are designed to implement programs that depend on an environment in which the public-at-large supports their goals. The organizations of the Right are designed from scratch to work against the ideals and values that we all (reading this) cherish. Moderates and Progressives urgently need to build a number of powerful advocacy organizations designed from scratch to affect the underlying public and political environment. They need to explain to the public the value and benefit to them of ideals of nurturing, supporting each other, caring for the environment, even democracy. They need to build a "farm team" system that trains large numbers of young people to become activists, political candidates, writers, educators, commentators, filmmakers, etc., all working to restore support for progressive values and ideals. The failure on the part of mainstream moderate and progressive philanthropy -- the larger foundations -- to recognize the seriousness of the threat from the Right AND to respond by developing a long-term plan and build a comparable infrastructure of hundreds of advocacy marketing/communicating organizations, recruit thousands of young foot-soldiers, etc. -- has had disastrous consequences. It has led to the current emergency of the Bush administration. The photos of torture in Iraqi prisons tell us that it does not overstate matters to say that America has been transformed into a hostile, aggressive, warlike, brutal nation that few of us recognize. Democracy itself is being undermined. This is beginning to change. Moderates and Progressives are beginning to understand the need to develop new organizations designed to respond to those of the Right. And many are beginning to understand the need to change the way their philanthropy is organized. For example, see the new GiftHub. And, last week, Alternet had a good article on this subject, Building the Countermovement by Laurie Spivak. The new organization Center for American Progress is an example of what we need to build. David Brock's new organization Media Matters is another such organization, designed to counter the Right's media, and it is already having an impact. Commonweal Institute has been building an organization to work on language and communication of ideas. Those of us in the blogging universe see the effects of these organizations. So it is easier to understand that many more such organizations would begin to seriously counteract the effect of the Right's machine, and start taking the country back. But these are only three, where the Right has over 500 such organizations, built over the last 30 years! We need to work to move the thinking of "our" leaders and "our" philanthropists toward understanding the need to build a permanent long-term progressive infrastructure. This is where my research has been focused. I've been on this like a drumbeat for a couple of years now, and I see more and more people coming to see this need as well. We need to start building our own "machine" to take back the country -- and save the world. Literally. If Kerry manages to win, all the better, but what if this means that this wonderful energy we see around us leading to a revival of progressive spirit, campaign contributions and volunteers then goes back into hibernation as it did after Clinton's election? The Right only grew stronger during the Clinton years. And if Kerry loses, we MUST change our strategy and start working to bring the public back to understanding the benefits of sharing, community, democracy and caring for the environment. We MUST begin long-term efforts to return to the majority. WIN OR LOSE it is time to start building a moderate/progressive advocacy marketing infrastructure to fight back against the powerful organizations of the Right.

--- Posted at 5/31/2004 11:04:00 AM by Dave Johnson

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A rabid lame duck?

I doubt that Josh Micah Marshall's post or this article by Dana Milbank and Jim Vandehei will tell anyone here much of anything that they don't already know, but it might be evidence that this year the media won't be quite as willing to carry water for Bush as it was in 2000. Milbank has always been more willing than most to tell it like it is, and success-worshippers who support Bush for that reason alone might be figuring out that the guy is turning into a loser. As Marshall points out, Bush has virtually nothing positive to run on, and has to run entirely by stressing's Kerry's negatives. But negative campaigning has worked in the past, so we can hardly be complacent. In a negative campaign, the Nader factor becomes more important, since the Bush people can sit back and let the Nader campaigners do a lot of their work for them. Bush's core constituency of hard-core rightwingers seems to be at least 30% of the electorate, so Kerry needs almost three-quarters of the remainder. If Nader gets a significant chunk of the vote, he could make it possible for Bush to win with a plurality even if most independents and non-insane moderate Republicans desert him. (And as I keep saying, centrists and independents aren't necessarily all that smart -- some of them are just random airheads). So Bush could be elected by a plurality without the vote of anyone whatever except fanatics and airheads. The lame duck we'd end up with would be a rabid one.

--- Posted at 5/31/2004 06:45:00 AM by John Emerson

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Lincoln

See Sam Waterston deliver Abraham Lincoln's 1860 speech at Cooper Union. It's brilliant -- both the speech and the recreation. If only...

--- Posted at 5/30/2004 10:51:00 PM by richard

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Chalabi story spins out of control

I don't think anyone knows what's going on in Iraq right now. Seeing the Forest isn't normally an up to the minute newsblog, but this is getting so weird that I can't help myself. Nobody really knows who ordered the raids on Chalabi. No one really knows who chose Chalabi's cousin Alawi to be head of state, either. Don't ask me. UPDATE: It seems now that Alawi was the American candidate, and that the Iraqis and the UN were presented with a fait accompli. The relationship between the raids on Chalabi and the Alawi nomination still remains unclear: Washington Post. Chalabi is apparently still in the driver's seat in Iraq; one of his cousins is in line to be come head of state Chalabi seemingly in control Chalabi's office raided a second time by someone or other Among the charges against Chalabi is implication in blatant corruption Raid apparently was by private contractors hired by the State Department Cheney and Chalabi were very tight buddies, but Chalabi was smarter Chalabi's dupe Michael Ledeen of the National Review spins furiously in Chalabi's defense An unbelievable performance by David Ignatius: He praises Bush for trying feebly to clean up the mess he made

--- Posted at 5/30/2004 09:31:00 PM by John Emerson

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Glorious Leader Bush -- ON HIS WATCH!

The President: Paying the Price:

[After 9/11] "At first, Bush did a masterful job of pulling the country together. Democrats as well as Republicans joined him at the ramparts. "We will speak with one voice," Senate Democratic leader Tom Daschle declared on 9/11. Bush's decision to go to war in Afghanistan won support across the political spectrum because it seemed an entirely appropriate response to an attack on our country by terrorists harbored by that nation's government."

"Bush did a masterful job of pulling the country together?" BULLSHIT! Yes, the Democrats acted patriotically, pulling together behind the President. This piece, oddly crediting Bush, says right in it that it was DASCHLE, not Bush, declaring that we will speak with one voice. But do you remember Bush acting to bring the country together and hold it together? Do you remember Bush calling for setting aside political differences? Tell me what Bush did to bring us together. What I remember is The Party immediately trying to pass yet another tax cut because they had a political advantage. Why does Bush get the credit for being a leader because the Democrats acted patriotically? If Gore were President do you think he would have failed to try to calm the country, instead of stoking the fear ever since, as Bush has? Do you think he would have failed to ask all of the diverse groups that make up America to join together? Do you think he would have politicized 9/11 and divided the country in HALF, as Bush has? And do you think FOR A MINUTE that the Right would have partriotically united behind Gore? So Bush gets credit as a leader because the Democrats did the right thing. 9/11 happened ON HIS WATCH. Maybe he should be getting some credit for THAT.

--- Posted at 5/30/2004 06:43:00 PM by Dave Johnson

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Digby! Digby! Digby!

REAL bloggers post on Memorial Day weekend. In All The News The GOP Sees Fit To Print , Digby writes,

"After twelve years of blown story after blown story, it is time for the press (and not just The NY Times) to either declare that they are extensions of the Republican Party or expose their sources when they've shown themselves to be purposefully passing incorrect information (which Okrent endorses as proper journalistic ethics.) Judith Miller undoubtedly believes she is being unfairly scapegoated, but she is not. Blair and Bragg were fired for offenses that didn't lead to any real consequences other than a lot of journalistic navel gazing. Yet Miller, more than anyone, was a willing tool for certain political friends and sources and used her prestige and position on the paper of record to further their agenda to take this country into a war. That is inexcusable. However, The New York Times has decided to excuse her and others like Patrick Tyler and Jill Abrahamson and is allowing them to keep their jobs. "

But you gotta go there to read the whole thing.

--- Posted at 5/29/2004 10:06:00 PM by Dave Johnson

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Everything you need to know about Judith Miller, including nasty gossip

Judith Miller of the New York Times played an enormous role in promoting Ahmed Chalabi's lies. She was at one time listed as an expert by Middle East Forum, a think tank run by Daniel Pipes and William Kristol, and has coauthored a book with Laurie Mylroie, an anti-Saddam obsessive no longer taken seriously by much of anybody. She has been represented by the literary agent Eleana Banador, whose clients are almost without exception neocons. She really should never have been allowed to work for the Times. She's been under fire for inaccurate, dishonest, and biased reporting for some time, and recently the New York Times has very timidly started to acknowlege that maybe her reporting wasn't really all that hot. She is married to Jason Epstein, one of the founders of the New York Review of Books (though no longer active there), and judging by her bio pic she's a reasonably hot second wife. Epstein's first wife remains an editor at TNYRB, which recently published a devastating article about Miller's shoddy work for the Times. One of the oddest things about Miller is that when she first came to Washington she was working for The Progressive, the weeniest of weeny liberal magazines. She moved to the Times in 1977. As much as any single American outside the government, Miller deserves the blame for our disastrous Iraq incursion. It will be interesting to see whether there will be any real consequences. Cache from the time when Miller was actually listed as an expert by Richard Pipes' Middle East Forum advocacy group(this is no longer on the web) Did she fuck her way to the top? Nobody likes Judith! Steve Gilliard: it's unusual for a reporter to be as thoroughly disliked as Miller is. Perhaps her primary loyalty was not to journalism: one proposed alternative Miller's father ran a Mafia hangout (see more below) More on the Riviera / Marine Room Mafia hangout Part I of a series on Miller; Part II; Part III; Part IV. LINKS: Most Recent NYT Mea Culpa Previous NYT Mea Culpa Official Judith Miller Bio LA Times on Miller Massing's New York Review of Books Article exposing Miller Miller's Husband's Ex-wife is an Editor of the New York Review of Books Editor and Publisher on Miller Columbia Journalism Review on Miller Schafer of Slate on Miller Miller and the Middle East Forum Who is The Middle East Forum? Miller published in the Middle East Forum Benador Associates, Laurie Mylroie, and Judith Miller Miller even offended her colleagues at the Times

--- Posted at 5/29/2004 06:18:00 PM by John Emerson

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The Right Will Fight Dirty

I’ve been trying for three weeks to write about what happens after the election, and I keep getting hung up on the things the Right will do to stay in power. Beyond just the loss of power, any honest Justice Department or Congressional examination of their activities since January 2001 is likely to land many of them in prison for a very long time. So maybe I need to get that subject out of the way before I can write about AFTER the election. We’ve all heard each other's paranoid talk that there will be an “October Surprise,” or that the voting machines will refuse to count Democratic votes, or that the Republicans might just cancel the election. Unfortunately there is reason to fear. In 1968, fearing an end of the Vietnam War would mean a Humphrey victory, the Republicans sabotaged the pending peace agreement, and by 1972 they had turned the IRS, FBI and CIA into little more than arms of The Party, with the government acting as a pay-to-play contractor to large corporate contributors. Fortunately there was still an independent press and a Congress willing to investigate such matters when they became visible, and Nixon had to resign. In 1980 there is every reason to believe the Republicans made a campaign deal with the terrorist government of Iran to keep the American hostages -- and keep Carter looking bad -- in exchange for post-election arms shipments. A few years later, after the Iran/Contra arms scandal investigation began, Lawrence Walsh wrote about the nature of The Party apparatus that had infiltrated the government and obstructed his efforts to find out for us what had happened. The following is from The Impeachment Conspiracy by Robert Parry:

“The North case reached the U.S. Court of Appeals in 1990 and the Poindexter case followed in 1991. Iran-contra special prosecutor Lawrence Walsh, a Republican himself, encountered what he termed "a powerful band of Republican appointees [who] waited like the strategic reserves of an embattled army." Walsh recognized that many of the appeals judges held a "continuing political allegiance" to the conservative Federalist Society, an organization dedicated to purging liberalism from the federal courts. "It reminded me of the communist front groups of the 1940s and 1950s, whose members were committed to the communist cause and subject to communist direction but were not card-carrying members of the Communist Party," Walsh wrote. [For details, see Walsh's Firewall.] A leader of this partisan faction was Judge Laurence H. Silberman, a bombastic character known for his decidedly injudicious temperament. Silberman had served as a foreign policy advisor to Ronald Reagan's 1980 campaign and had joined in a controversial contact with an emissary from Iran behind President Carter's back. [See Robert Parry's Trick or Treason.]”

Then came the election of Clinton! How much do I have to write about The Party’s activities to bring down the Clinton administration and cause every attempt at governing to fail, never mind the good of the country? With The Party’s Federalist Society judges in place every special prosecutor appointed to investigate Republican wrongdoing was a right-wing Party operative, and those appointed to investigate Democrats was … a right-wing Party operative. Every motion before the Courts went against Clinton and the Democrats. Just one example of Party infiltration of the mechanisms of government was Gary Aldrich. That a far-right sleazebag operative like Gary Aldrich was in the FBI at all, not to mention assigned to the Clinton White House, speaks volumes about the nature of The Party’s takeover of the apparatus of government for its own ends – as well as to the Clinton Administration’s understanding of what it was up against. And, finally, the 2000 election. The Supreme Court demonstrated the extent and power of Party operatives, positioned within the mechanisms of our government, whose loyalty is to an ideology and a Party rather than the country. These years of this Bush's hands on the controls mean that our government is now infested with ideological operatives, waiting for their opportunity to prove that their loyalty lies with The Party, not American democracy. So yes, it's hard to write about what to do if Kerry wins. But I'm working on it. Win or lose, we have to come to understand how the Right managed to become so powerful, and what we must do to counter this before we lose what is left of the America we knew.

--- Posted at 5/28/2004 07:11:00 PM by Dave Johnson

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I'm irritable for a reason

OK, Ashcroft's smear ("Al Qaeda wants Kerry to win") made it to CNN (look for "Gohel"), and now we're protesting. That's all well and good, but basically the Republican story is out there now, and we're just responding. Where's the Democratic story? Everybody should know that Bush flubbed the War on Terror, because that's what he did. We should have had the word out there already, but we don't. As long as the bad guys have the initiative, they win. Supposedly Kerry is biding his time. That's OK for now, but unless Kerry gets his message out there loud and clear well before the election, during the last six weeks or so he'll be batting down one smear after another, and he'll lose. He needs to be on the attack and keep one step ahead of the Republicans; he can't afford to sit back and respond. I was just involved in a disagreement with some very nice, genteel liberals who were worried that the Democrats would stoop to making nasty remarks about the Bush twins. I had to confess that this particular problem was not anywhere on my list of things to worry about, and that I might actually end up sometime making a few snarky remarks about the little drunken sluts myself. What is on my list of things to worry about? I mostly worry about seeing a lame, ever-so-professionally-run Kerry campaign getting blindsided during the last month. I also worry about Kerry ending up being a one-term president because Bush's mess proves to be impossible to clean up. And finally I worry about Kerry continuing Bush's Iraq policy because he's worried about being called a dove. Liberals and Democrats spend too much time reading Orwell and worrying about turning into Stalinists. What they should be worrying about is disappearing entirely the way the Whigs did. Liberals remind me of the cartoon of the 98-lb. weakling promising never to use his martial arts powers for evil purposes. The Democrats don't have any goddamn superpowers to misuse. Let's quit worrying about it.

--- Posted at 5/28/2004 06:32:00 PM by John Emerson

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Political Entrepreneurs vs. Political Managers

Matt Yglesias has posted a piece contrasting the right wing's strong infrastructure for encouraging young conservatives to the weak support that the Democratic Party gives its own next generation. This gives me a rare opportunity to agree enthusiastically with Matt, and leads into a piece which I've been planning to write for some time. Conservatives and liberals come from very different backgrounds. Conservatives tend to come more from the business world, whereas most liberals have a history in academia, public administration, non-profits, unions, and other large bureaucratic organizations. While there are strengths that come from this institutional background, there are weaknesses too, and at the moment I find the weaknesses the most striking. Businessmen are entrepreneurs, gamblers, opportunists, and sometimes lowlifes, and they are always looking for an edge. Many are semi-educated, uncredentialed, and self-taught, and they're always on the outlook for talent. They don't usually care about someone's credentials if they're able to do the job. By contrast, academics and administrators are always worried that someone might be hired or promoted who is Not Fully Qualified. In many cases, the administrators see their job as maintaining normality, following standard operating procedures, and keeping things on an even keel. They strongly favor team players who don't rock the boat, and are often quite indulgent of staff who are part of the family, even if they're not pulling their full share of the load. In many organizations positive performance standards are unclear, so avoiding problems becomes the goal, and the fail-safe position is to hire a credentialed, experienced worker with no history of innovation. This sounds like the generic libertarian stump speech, but I think that this is an issue on which liberals should listen to libertarians. I don't push my argument nearly as far as they do -- they think that it destroys the whole liberal program down to the roots -- but I believe that they do have a major point. There was something out awhile back saying that liberal foundations keep people on a short leash, demanding tons of documentation and placing a swarm of miscellaneous conditions on every grant. This is true in academia too -- grantwriting has become a profession in itself. Without a good grantwriter (who doesn't really need to know much about the field), many scientists would never be able to do their work at all. Kos believes that the Democratic Party is dominated by timid people who do well whether the party wins or loses -- he really can rant on that subject (no link, sorry). To call the Democratic bureaucracy risk-averse is a vast understatement. Their practices are the standard bureaucratic ass-covering, and the fact that these practices haven't really been working very well is no skin off their ass. They still have their jobs, right? Eric Alterman noticed early in his career that his conservative friends all had cushy jobs, and he didn't. Conservatives often say that you can't solve problems by throwing money at them, but they're more generous to young conservatives than liberals are to young liberals, and they're also more willing to take chances. Ann Coulter has supported herself in style for more than a decade by cranking out freelance stuff which is shoddy and nasty, but effective. At the beginning of her career someone just said, "Give her a chance", and she came through for them. Liberals do not work that way. "But... but... you're not saying that we should get down to their level and hire the liberal equivalents of Ann Coulter, are you?" Well, maybe I am. I'm sort of sick of seeing liberal Democrats bragging about the Miss Congeniality booby prize we get for losing all the time. But at least, the Democrats should take their chances, spread some money around, and give a bunch of relatively untested and relatively uncredentialed young guys like Matt, Jesse at Pandagon, et. al., the chance to show what they can do. (Also, they should avoid ageism and shovel some cash my way too. The party needs to mend its fences with its paranoid fringe elements.) (This is Part II of the piece on competition I promised here. Part I will appear later, since this piece is more or less timely now.

--- Posted at 5/28/2004 11:36:00 AM by John Emerson

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Media ads becoming less effective

Kos has a post up arguing that political advertising in the big media has become less effective. This ties in with one of my pet ideas: the Democrats' media-heavy campaign strategy has been suicidal. To begin with, big media buys serve to fatten up big media, and big media showed in 2000 that it will ultimately support the Republicans. So we're giving tons of money to some of our worst enemies. Second, expensive media campaigns force the party to focus too much on fundraising. And the need to raise more and more money forces the Democrats to make more and more deals with the big potential donors, with the result that the less affluent of the traditional Democratic constituencies come to have less and less influence within the party (especially since the party seems to have resigned itself to a low rate of electoral participation). I'm not an expert on all this, but I know that there have recently been successful candidates (Paul Wellstone was one) who primarily relied on feet on the ground and grass-roots campaigning. Perhaps the national party should think of moving in that direction. P.S. Since this is just a blog, I think I can shoehorn in another pet idea of mine. My experience has been that the Democrats' paid staff tends to be heavy with bright and shiny recent college grads (often from Ivy League schools) for whom the job is just an easy, low-paid break between college and their real career. For local outreach work in non-middle-class areas, at least, wouldn't it be better to hire people from the community for whom the job might actually be a good job? Didn't the Democrats use to work this way?

--- Posted at 5/27/2004 10:23:00 AM by John Emerson

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Gore's Speech

To see Al Gore's speech click here. (RealPlayer)

--- Posted at 5/27/2004 08:23:00 AM by Dave Johnson

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Mayfield False Arrest Under Patriot Act

Brandon Mayfield, an American-born Portland lawyer and convert to Islam, has just been released and exonerated after having been held for about two weeks as a material witness under provisions of the Patriot Act. The basis for his arrest was a fingerprint match, which turned out to be erroneous, connecting him with the big recent bombing in Spain. People who say that worries about the Patriot Act are exaggerated should look at this case. Mayfield was released only because Spanish police working on the case (who had doubted the FBI identification from the start) finally connected the fingerprint to a different man. Otherwise the guy would probably be in jail indefinitely. The FBI found several fingerprint matches (perhaps by setting their computers to pull in as many matches as possible: my guess) and then zeroed in on Mayfield after they found that he was a Muslim convert who had represented a convicted terrorist in a non-political case. At first they represented the match as much closer than it really was, even though the Spanish police had their doubts. Problems with Fingerprint Identification From the Case Transcript Talkleft on Mayfield Oregonian Links

--- Posted at 5/26/2004 09:17:00 PM by John Emerson

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Best Blog Line of the Week

In The Smirk, Stirling Newberry writes,

"We have just had a three trillion dollar experiment in 'does it matter who is president'."

--- Posted at 5/26/2004 08:47:00 PM by Dave Johnson

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Why the Chalabi Problem is Worse Than You Think

Why the Chalabi Problem is Worse Than You Think: over at The Blogging of the President: 2004. Ouch.

--- Posted at 5/26/2004 08:28:00 PM by Dave Johnson

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They Just Lie 2 (or is it 3 or is it 45 ... lost count)

Here is the Republican Party's official response to Al Gore's call for Rumsfeld and others to resign because of the abuses at Abu Ghraib. G O P.com :: RNC Communications Director Statement on Al Gore's Comments Today at MoveOn.org Rally:

"Al Gore served as Vice President of this country for eight years. During that time, Osama Bin Laden declared war on the United States five times and terrorists killed US citizens on at least four different occasions including the first bombing of the World Trade Center, the attacks on Khobar Towers, our embassies in East Africa, and the USS Cole. Al Gore's attacks on the President today demonstrate that he either does not understand the threat of global terror, or he has amnesia."

Here we have the Republican Party officially blaming Clinton and Gore for the 9/11 attacks -- and doing so in response to Gore's call for accountability for what happened in the prison in Iraq. So just as President Bush said in his speech the other night that we are in Iraq in response to 9/11, the Republican Party responds to Gore's call for accountability for the Iraqi prison scandal by accusing him of being responsible for 9/11! AND the Republican Party says that Gore asks for accountability because he "does not understand the threat of global terror." As if the prison scandal had anything to do with global terror, and as if people who do understand the threat of global terror would excuse what happened. Here we have an entire political party that bases its positions on outright lies. What's left to say? How does one respond to this level of deceit? How does one protect oneself from this level of deceit? And most importantly, how do we protect the country from this level of deceit? But wait, there's more. Rush Limbaugh gave a longer version of the same statement today when he responded today to Gore's call for Bush to condemn Limbaugh's incredibly offensive statements on the torture at Abu Ghraib. Here is some of Limbaugh's response:

"Algore, this whole speech, he went nuts. He's flailing around wildly there. Not just me, he's attacking everybody who has led the nation through 9/11, the war on terrorism, and he's making statements that are flat out lies in this speech. For example, the Geneva Conventions. I don't know how many of you know this, the Geneva Conventions do not protect terrorists. They protect soldiers who serve under a nation who wear uniforms who carry their weapons openly, and with the kind of threat that we're facing today with terrorist cells in the U.S. plotting an even bigger attack than 9/11. I mean, it says a lot about Gore. It says he's perverse, that he would be argue to go confer greater rights on those who seek to murder millions of Americans and calling for even tougher actions to seek them out and destroy them before they destroy us, and this is what is truly puzzling to me about the left, and this is what's disarming about these prison photos. What really troubles me about these photos, above and beyond what's in them, is how they're being used to undermine our war effort. Now we have the former vice president, a man who was thisclose to becoming president of the United States, speak out in this speech. We haven't played you the bites, but he was flailing around on the Geneva Convention. He starts talking about conferring more rights on the kind of people who want to murder tens of thousands more Americans than he does seem interested in dealing with the people who want to commit those murders. He has succeeded in giving our adversaries in Europe and our enemies in the caves of Afghanistan and the allies of Iraq a message that they'll take to heart, and that is that we are not a united nation, that we do not have the will to win this war, and that we are weak and indecisive. That's the message that Gore sends today, and it's the wrong message, because it's a lie, and beyond that it is an outrage. I don't think anything of this kind has ever been done by a former vice president during a war, but our adversaries and our enemies would be badly mistaken if they actually believe that Gore speaks for this nation, because he doesn't. I speak for more of this nation than Algore does, and I will say it on this program. Otherwise, why is he bothering to mention my name? He speaks for the radical fringe in his party who have become more and more the mainstream of his party. They are the Hate-America First radical left, and I hope the American people get to hear all of this speech. I hope it's played over and over again, for this is how low Gore and his crowd are willing to go to undermine the war effort and our troops and this president to promote themselves and their own agenda and get themselves back into power. Lest we forget, Algore and his boss, Bill Clinton, stood by while the enemy was plotting and planning to murder thousands of Americans. They did nothing serious to stop bin Laden. They did nothing serious to fight terrorism. They degraded or military. They slashed our troop levels, undermined our intelligence services. Today calls for civil rights for terrorists in his speech while opposing the Patriot Act which helps us find and stop terrorist cells right here in our country, and Gore has said nothing about how he would fight this evil because he's obsessed with hatred not for the enemy but for George W. Bush -- and that's what identifies MoveOn.org. That's what identifies most of the fringe, radical left in this country. They actually think Bush is a greater threat to the people of this world and this country than any thug dictator, Saddam Hussein, Kim Jong ll, anybody. They think Bush poses a greater threat, and as misguided as that is, this is what animates them. It is what motivates them and inspires them. In this speech today he actually makes the case for civil rights for terrorist cells in these prisons under the Geneva Convention when the Geneva Convention does not even cover terrorists. But more importantly, the idea that this guy -- who didn't say anything about terrorism in his presidential campaign."

Remember, he's talking about the treatment of people in a civilian prison in Iraq, where there is no question that every single person is covered by the Geneva Conventions. Every single person in Iraq is covered by the Geneva Conventions. (AND we are covered by OTHER treaties and laws banning torture of ANYONE, ANYWHERE, as well as our own ethics as Americans.) Limbaugh is a spokesman for the Republican Party, no way around it. And in case there is any question whether he diverges from the official position of The Party, we have seen the Party's statement that says pretty much the same things Limbaugh says here. Limbaugh says Gore is "perverse" for objecting to the treatment that we saw in those photos -- The Party says Gore "does not understand the threat of global terror." Limbaugh says those people in the Iraqi prison "seek to murder millions of Americans" -- The Party says Gore should not ask for accountability in Iraq because when Gore was in office "Osama Bin Laden declared war on the United States five times and terrorists killed US citizens on at least four different occasions including the first bombing of the World Trade Center, the attacks on Khobar Towers, our embassies in East Africa, and the USS Cole." Limbaugh IS The Party. One more thing. Limbaugh also equates "our adversaries in Europe" with "our enemies in the caves of Afghanistan and the allies of Iraq." This is not "fringe" Republican thought, it comes up over and over. Here, for example. (Ledeen is one of the architects of the Iraq war.) It comes up in The Party's treatment of France and the United Nations, as well as Bush's threats against Mexico. It's just lies, which they try to cover by accusing Gore of being the liar. The question is, how far these people will take this? The question is, what are they capable of doing to achieve and hold on to power? Remember, they have taken it all the way to war in Iraq. Watch your backs.

--- Posted at 5/26/2004 06:18:00 PM by Dave Johnson

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Survivor - Republican Stype

Over at DCCC.

--- Posted at 5/26/2004 05:25:00 PM by Dave Johnson

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Ashcroft's smear

Immediately below, Dave comments on Ashcroft's new terror alert, which implicitly claims that al Qaeda wants to see Kerry elected. Obviously any terror attack between now and the election will be given a Republican spin by the administration. Ashcroft's announcement sets that up, while also trying to immunize the administration against any negative interpretations, should a new terrorist attack occur during Bush's watch. In other words, the next terrorist attack hasn't even happened yet, and it has already been politicized. Kerry's campaign team needs to start preparing the ground for their own response to the next attack, when and if it occurs. Pre-emptively pointing out loudly and often that Bush has so far done nothing much to protect the US against terrorism (and in particular, that the Iraq War hasn't helped) would be a great place to start. Beyond that, they should have a response ready for immediate release as soon as an attack take place. (You can be sure that the Republicans have one.) The various possible scenarios should all be prepared for, with a string of followups in the can ready to go. If the Kerry people sit around strategizing for a day when and if something happens, Bush will have won the election by the time Kerry says a word. The Republicans have framed it this way: if al Qaeda attacks, it's because they want Kerry to win; if al Qaeda doesn't attack, it's because Bush has been effective. The Kerry team has to break that frame, and the time to start is now. Bush has not been effective.

--- Posted at 5/26/2004 03:02:00 PM by John Emerson

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Isn't That Conveeeeenient!

U.S. Warns Of Al Qaeda Threat This Summer:

"The concerns are driven by intelligence deemed credible that was obtained about a month ago indicating an attack may be planned between now and Labor Day. That information dovetails with other intelligence 'chatter' suggesting that al Qaeda operatives are pleased with the change in government resulting from the March 11 terrorist bombings in Spain and may want to affect elections in the United States and other countries. 'They saw that an attack of that nature can have economic and political consequences and have some impact on the electoral process,' said one federal official with access to counterterrorism intelligence. "

Right. They want Bush out. So if you are a Kerry supporter then you're also a supporter of al-Queda. Isn't that conveeeeeenient! The information was obtained a month ago, but released today. And we happen to know that "al Qaeda operatives are pleased with the change in government resulting from the March 11 terrorist bombings in Spain." Except that the change in government was NOT the result of the attack, it was the result of the government LYING ABOUT the attack. And everyone in the world knows that except people who get their new from U.S. sources. Isn't that conveeeeeenient! Roger Ailes notices, too.

--- Posted at 5/25/2004 09:38:00 PM by Dave Johnson

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Presidents falling off of things

Hasn't George W. Bush now passed Gerald Ford in the Presidential Falling Off Of Things stats? As I recall, Ford stumbled twice getting off planes, but I don't remember any visible marks. Bush has fallen off a couch, a Segway, and a bicycle, and two of those three times he had some hickeys to explain. The Presidential Vomiting On Allied Prime Ministers record is still held by the elder, smarter Bush.

--- Posted at 5/25/2004 08:42:00 PM by John Emerson

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I Told You So

US intelligence fears Iran duped hawks into Iraq war:

"An urgent investigation has been launched in Washington into whether Iran played a role in manipulating the US into the Iraq war by passing on bogus intelligence through Ahmad Chalabi's Iraqi National Congress, it emerged yesterday. Some intelligence officials now believe that Iran used the hawks in the Pentagon and the White House to get rid of a hostile neighbour, and pave the way for a Shia-ruled Iraq. "

Not to mention, getting Iraq's oil fields. Ha Ha I Told You So!

"It's pretty clear that Iranians had us for breakfast, lunch and dinner," said an intelligence source in Washington yesterday. "Iranian intelligence has been manipulating the US for several years through Chalabi." Larry Johnson, a former senior counter-terrorist official at the state department, said: "When the story ultimately comes out we'll see that Iran has run one of the most masterful intelligence operations in history. They persuaded the US and Britain to dispose of its greatest enemy."

Jeeze. These stupid, incompetent, ideologically insane, hateful, arrogant, cultish, corrupt, right-wing, ignorant CLUCKS got duped, sold us out, made fools of us, betrayed us, destroyed our honor, besmirched our good name, bankrupted us, sold us up the river, destroyed our reputation, undermined our integrity, and killed thousands.

--- Posted at 5/25/2004 08:57:00 AM by Dave Johnson

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Bush The Liar

From his speech last night, AGAIN saying Iraq is a war against the 9/11 terrorists:

"In the last 32 months history has placed great demands on our country and events have come quickly. Americans have seen the flames of Sept. 11, followed battles in the mountains of Afghanistan and learned new terms like orange alert and ricin and dirty bomb. We've seen killers at work on trains in Madrid, in a bank in Istanbul, in a synagogue in Tunis and a nightclub in Bali. And now the families of our soldiers and civilian workers pray for their sons and daughter in Mosul and Karbala and Baghdad. We did not seek this war on terror. But this is the world as we find it. We must keep our focus. We must do our duty. History is moving and it will tend toward hope or tend toward tragedy. Our terrorist enemies have a vision that guides and explains all their varied acts of murder. They seek to impose Taliban-like rule country by country across the greater Middle East. They seek the total control of every person and mind and soul. A harsh society in which women are voiceless and brutalized. They seek bases of operation to train more killers and export more violence. They commit dramatic acts of murder to shock, frighten and demoralize civilized nations, hoping we will retreat from the world and give them free reign. They seek weapons of mass destruction to impose their will through blackmail and catastrophic attacks. None of this is the expression of a religion. It is a totalitarian political ideology pursued with consuming zeal and without conscience."

--- Posted at 5/25/2004 08:17:00 AM by Dave Johnson

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The Agonist: Justice Must Be Seen To Be Done

The Agonist: Justice Must Be Seen To Be Done:

"We must face the facts, the cold, hard facts. We illegally invaded another nation, engaging in war crimes to do so, in that we lied to the UN as to the causes for war. We did so without pressing necessity to invade - or to lie at all, since our target was an individual who could have been legally indicted for war crimes by merely stretching forth our hand. We invaded solely because of the electoral time table of George W Bush Jr, and for no other reason. This is worse that a crime, it is worse than a mistake, it is a blot against that most precious object of a free people - our willingness to comply with our own laws."Stirling says it all for us -- go read.

--- Posted at 5/25/2004 08:01:00 AM by Dave Johnson

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Judith Miller off the NYT Chalabi beat

The Times has finally come up with a pretty good piece about the Chalabi spy story. It mentions that the information had to have come up from someone high up on the totem pole, probably in the Defense Department. Oddly enough, Iran, William Safire, and Chalabi himself all deny that Chalabi was an Iranian spy. Safire is becoming loonier and slimier by the minute. At the moment Judith Miller, the Times reporter who eternally disgraced herself and the Times by reporting Chalabi spin as fact, is nowhere to be seen. Johnston and Oppel on Chalabi Safire on Chalabi Miller's errors have still not been acknowledged by the Times

--- Posted at 5/24/2004 06:19:00 AM by John Emerson

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Guardian on rape/abuse of female prisoners in Iraq by American guards

[This is horried and repulsive enough... especially the fact that these women are being released without any protection or follow up (resulting in disappearances, murders, suicides, etc.)... but what really gets my goat is this:

Like other Iraqi prisoners, all five are classified as "security detainees" - a term invented by the Bush administration to justify the indefinite detention of prisoners without charge or legal access, as part of the war on terror. US military officials will only say that they are suspected of "anti-coalition activities".

"Invented by the Bush administration..." "indefinite detention without charge..." WHY ARE WE TOLERATING THIS? WHERE IS THE OUTRAGE ON CAPITOL HILL? Our ancestors fought a REVOLUTION a little bit over two hundred years ago precisely because King George was engaging in this type of behavior. One of the outcomes of that experience was the Constitution of the United States and the accompanying Bill of Rights, along with a lot of jurisprudence (such as Habeus Corpus) designed to translate those nobel words into tangible reality. These rules were put into place for a REASON, and our new King George and his cabal of neo-conservative nogoodnicks are busy demonstrating exactly what that reason was - and sullying the good name of our country, our heritage, our government and each of us as American citizens. I take this very personally. Bastards! http://www.guardian.co.uk/women/story/0,3604,1220673,00.html

The other prisoners Most of the coverage of abuse at Abu Ghraib has focused on male detainees. But what of the five women held in the jail, and the scores elsewhere in Iraq? Luke Harding reports Thursday May 20, 2004 The Guardian The scandal at Abu Ghraib prison was first exposed not by a digital photograph but by a letter. In December 2003, a woman prisoner inside the jail west of Baghdad managed to smuggle out a note. Its contents were so shocking that, at first, Amal Kadham Swadi and the other Iraqi women lawyers who had been trying to gain access to the US jail found them hard to believe. The note claimed that US guards had been raping women detainees, who were, and are, in a small minority at Abu Ghraib. Several of the women were now pregnant, it added. The women had been forced to strip naked in front of men, it said. The note urged the Iraqi resistance to bomb the jail to spare the women further shame. Late last year, Swadi, one of seven female lawyers now representing women detainees in Abu Ghraib, began to piece together a picture of systemic abuse and torture perpetrated by US guards against Iraqi women held in detention without charge. This was not only true of Abu Ghraib, she discovered, but was, as she put it, "happening all across Iraq".

[...continued at URL above] --Thomas Leavitt

--- Posted at 5/23/2004 09:41:00 PM by Thomas Leavitt

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CHALABI WAS AN IRANIAN SPY!!!!!!!!

So far you're not seeing that kind of headline -- there's not much excitement at all. A Google News "Chalabi" + "Iran" search gets more responses and cover stories from Iran and from Chalabi himself than it gets stories. The always-reliable Evan Bayh doesn't want to hear about it -- he thinks that the American people are tired of hearings. (Was Evan one of the big Chalabi suckers? You sort of guess so, don't you?) Chalabi appeared on national TV three times today and is getting the kind of fair treatment in the media that I wish Scott Ritter had gotten. From reading by the tea leaves it seems clear that the hawks and their friends in the media are completely unembarassed and are fighting back -- so far, very successfully. (The New York Times, whose Judith Miller was the single biggest journalistic offender, didn't mention the story at all today.) Whenever it seems that we've finally come to the last straw, it blows away in the wind. My worst nightmare is the same as Karl Rove's fondest dream: George W. Bush might end up being reelected entirely by the combined votes of the proto-fascists of his core constituency, and the airhead centrists who don't know, don't care, and can't be bothered. If you follow the Bush campaign at all closely, you'll see that that's exactly what Rove's strategy is, and the frightening thing is that it might very well work.

--- Posted at 5/23/2004 05:52:00 PM by John Emerson

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What can you get away with saying?

As long as I've been on the internet, I've been dealing with the question "What can you get away with saying?" My solution has been to confess to being a paranoid conspiracy theorist and then say my piece. By making a joke of it, I can slip past some people's radar, and when what I say turns out to be pretty well grounded, people are pleasantly surprised. (Sometimes.) But I pay a price for this, and for most people I'll probably always be in the extremist niche. The reason I have to play this game is that a lot of Americans, and I'm especially thinking of the Democratic leadership and the vaguely-liberal members of the media, just don't want to hear certain kinds of ideas. One way or another doves, "populist" Democrats, and "conspiracy theorists" are just tuned out. This comes up because recently Jonathan Alter of Newsweek was criticized for dealing with the same problem ("What's OK to say?") rather differently. When Atrios excerpted Alter calling the Bush Administration a "bunch of clowns" on Air America, Kevin Drum pointed out that Alter's Newsweek writing during the same period was much milder. Kevin wondered why Alter didn't say the same things on the pages of Newsweek that he did on Air America, and Brad DeLong pitched in, basically endorsing what Kevin said. You really don't have to wonder. Alter has an editor who will let him go only so far. The media are big business, and people who want careers learn what they can say and what they can't. Significantly, one of the very few major-media people who lets it all hang out is Paul Krugman, who has a successful career of his own and is actually slumming when he writes for the New York Times. (In not-completely-unrelated news, Josh Micah Marshall and Matt Yglesias have both recently admitted that they are to the right of most of their readers. Not that they aren't entirely sincere in every word they say, but they are certainly aware that moving to the left would not be good for their careers). This is normally explained in terms of "what people want to hear". That would be a doubtful explanation even if it were true -- since sooner or later the truth bites you on the ass, whether you want to hear it or not. But it's not the real explanation anyway. There are certain things the commercial media don't you want to say, and professionals learn what those things are. It gets worse. As we know, the right wing has learned the game of "working the refs", so besides the publishers and editors, there's an enormous, well-funded, conservative "media watch" goon squad ready to jump on any evidence of "liberal media bias". And so Krugman, who is intellectually and ethically head and shoulders above almost all of his peers (e.g., William Safire and George Will), has been under fierce, unremitting attack ever since he figured out how bad the Bush Administration really is. I should probably stop now, but then I'm a paranoid ideologue. The centrist (i.e. right) wing of the Democratic Party, possibly including some of the bloggers named, has played its own part in this. During the runup to the Iraq war, even most Democrats put the doves outside the pale. Prudential anti-war arguments were allowed, but dovish ones were not. The same could be said of things like free trade and welfare reform. Refusing to "pander" to its own constituency (except for social liberals, natch) seems to have become Rule One for many Democrats. Unfortunately, once the Democratic center had destroyed the Democratic left, the Democratic center in its turn became the "left", and the vicious right-wing attacks continued without interruption. Appeasement never works. During the 2000 election, the Republican right wing -- a frightening group of Armageddon Christians, exterminationists, anti-Government anarchists, and neo-Confederates -- stayed within the party, whereas the heavily-reviled Democratic left was driven out. (That was what Lieberman was for, right?) Buchanan got .7% of the vote, and Nader got 2.7%. Switch those percentages, and Gore would have won in a near landslide, 50%-46%. Atrios excerpts Alter. Kevin Drum compares Alter on AA and in Newsweek. Brad De Long pitches in. Kevin's followup Yglesias is more conservative than his readers Marshall is more conservative than his readers

--- Posted at 5/23/2004 07:43:00 AM by John Emerson

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Is Microsoft part of the "vast right wing conspiracy"?

See excerpt from News.Com article below (part of a larger report on a controversial "study" attacking the originality of Linux): "Microsoft indeed has provided funding to the Alexis de Tocqueville Institution for five years, a Microsoft representative said, without disclosing how much has been granted. Microsoft funds several public policy institutes, including the American Enterprise Institute, the Center for Strategic and International Studies, the Heritage Foundation, and the Cato Institute, the representative said." Source: http://news.com.com/2100-7344_3-5216651.html Interesting list of institutions, eh? Not to mention that the tactic Microsoft is accused of using in this article, funding an allegedly "objective" study by an "academic" institution (which just happens to serve the interests of the institution's funders) is remarkably similar to that taken by the ultra-right think tanks who've been at the forefront of funding these same institutions. I wonder how much of their monopoly rents from the Windows OS and Office have been poured into these institutions? Another reason to dislike Microsoft, I guess (if there were not already more than enough)... not to mention kind of scary: MS could drop a billion (about how much the entire VWR has lavished on their favored "think tanks" over the last decade) on these twits without even blinking. Hmm... a search of Media Transparency for Microsoft produces this pointer to the Alexis De Toqueville Institution, which cites a paper by this same individual (Kenneth Brown) from the year 2000. Guess what's next for Mr. Brown? A book on the same subject... if history is any guide, it will be heavily subsidized by the institutions whose interests it serves... and its author won't suffer financially, either. These "academics" never do - I joke with my friends that both the right and the left pay their professional activists a living wage. It's just that the left defines this as $14.00/hour with no benefits, and the right, $120,000 a year with all the perks you can imagine. :/ I think I'll write Media Transparency an email suggesting that they add MS to the list of institutions whose donations they track. --Thomas Leavitt

--- Posted at 5/22/2004 08:11:00 PM by Thomas Leavitt

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Bush Campaign Lies

Bush Campaign Lies Honestly, can you think of a Presidential campaign in the past that was based entirely on lies, like the Bush campaign is? I'm serious, it's entirely lies and if you think about that it's pretty amazing that things are at this point where they can do that.

--- Posted at 5/22/2004 02:34:00 PM by Dave Johnson

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First

Remember who said it first.

--- Posted at 5/21/2004 11:03:00 PM by Dave Johnson

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Best Blog Line of the Day

Male Bovine Excrement!

--- Posted at 5/21/2004 02:20:00 PM by Dave Johnson

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'US Soldiers Started to Shoot Us, One by One'

'US Soldiers Started to Shoot Us, One by One' I have to say, even the military's account of this operation sounds like they set out to kill everyone in the village.

--- Posted at 5/21/2004 09:48:00 AM by Dave Johnson

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This Is Not My America

ArchPundit: This Is Not My America:

WASHINGTON -- A military intelligence analyst who recently completed duty at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq said Wednesday that the 16-year-old son of a detainee there was abused by U.S. soldiers to break his father's resistance to interrogators.

This is what having Bush as president means. Watch your backs.

--- Posted at 5/20/2004 03:17:00 PM by Dave Johnson

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Cover Stories

There's something in human nature that makes us avoid accepting bad news. As long as we can point to reasonable doubt – another possible explanation – we don't let the bad news sink in. Especially if acceptance means we have to do something we don’t want to do, or to believe a particularly unpleasant truth. So Republicans have learned that it is a remarkably effective tactic to come up with a "cover story" that they spread when they want to do something that the public is otherwise not going to like. Lay down a fog of words to confuse and get people arguing and keep people from becoming activated, and they can go ahead and do pretty much anything they want. For example, "a few bad apples" did bad things in the Iraqi prisons. That's the cover story, and Bush is sticking to it. Look at this story in yesterday’s NY Times, "White House Is Trumpeting Programs It Tried to Cut". From the story,

For example, Justice Department officials recently announced that they were awarding $47 million to scores of local law enforcement agencies for the hiring of police officers. Mr. Bush had just proposed cutting the budget for the program, known as Community Oriented Policing Services, by 87 percent, to $97 million next year, from $756 million. The administration has been particularly energetic in publicizing health programs, even ones that had been scheduled for cuts or elimination. [. . .] The administration also announced recently that it was providing $11.6 million to the states so they could buy defibrillators to save the lives of heart attack victims. But Mr. Bush had proposed cutting the budget for such devices by 82 percent, to $2 million from $10.9 million.

Etc. Say one thing even while doing something completely different. Who are you going to believe, the nice words containing pretty promises of pleasant prosperity, or your own lying eyes? Remember the "Healthy Forests Initiative?" That's the one where they cut down the trees to prevent fires. It's designed to enrich logging companies, while the cover story is that it helps the forests stay healthy. And the "Clear Skies Initiative" that lets power generators increase pollution of the air? Their words are not matching their actions. Here's an even better example, in yesterday's Washington Post, "Bushwhacked In the Caribbean." The Bush administration is demanding that Caribbean countries renounce their commitment to democracy. From the piece,

The Bush administration['s]demand[s] that the democratic countries of the Caribbean [. . .] (3) abandon their policy of admitting only democratically elected governments into the councils of Caricom. [. . .] The United States' demand that Caricom abandon its long-held insistence on democratic principles is psychic poison to the region. Haiti was welcomed as a full member of Caricom because its people had established a democratic form of government. After the recent shattering of that democracy, Caribbean heads of government decided to maintain support for the people of Haiti but allow democratic elections to determine who will represent Haiti in the councils of Caricom. "We are the children of slaves," one Caribbean national explained. "And so, we stay away from the tyranny of the unelected. . . . If America thinks that an unelected government is fine for Haiti, when will they say that an unelected government is best for my country?" The Bush administration, however, has been implacable. Its officials were to have come to the Caribbean in April and May to discuss, among other things, terrorism, but the administration presented Caribbean governments with an ultimatum: no recognition of Latortue, no meetings between the United States and the Caribbean leaders. Caricom reminded U.S. officials that Latortue was not elected by anyone. And so the meetings are off. Why is the unelected Latortue more important to the Bush administration than the Caribbean's 14 democratically elected governments?

Now remember, Bush says the Iraq invasion and occupation (after the WMD cover story was dropped) is about bringing democracy to the region, because that is what America is about. But when you look at what the U.S. under Bush actually DOES, this immediately falls apart. Bringing democracy is a cover story. So how do we deal with this? How do we cut through the words they spread? Most – but not all – people in the old Soviet Union came to understand that their government lied. They came to recognize propaganda and read between the lines. So it stopped working. And in America now, we must also learn to look only at what they DO, and ignore what they say. We must learn that the Right's words are only designed to confuse and obfuscate. The words are only cover stories, designed to make us forget what our own eyes can see. They just lie. We have to develop skills for overcoming the power of their words, their cover stories, and learn to believe only what they do. They just lie. Look at what they do, always ignore what they say. These Republicans thought they could go into Iraq and do what they do here – lay down a fog of words to cover their actions. But in Iraq the people had lived under a lying dictator and had already learned to watch what happens and not to rely on the words. It's second nature. This is why so many are so angry at us now. They know to look at what happens, not what is said, and they can see with their eyes that what is happening there is not what we say is happening. They can see that we are not at all doing what we say we are, they see the contradictions, they see the contracts given to connected Americans, they see their economy changed to benefit the wealthy, they see the oil being taken, they see the treatment they receive from us, and they know that what is really going on is different from what we say. Bush speaks of us as a noble power, bringing hope and light and democracy and prosperity to the rest of the world. But the rest of the world sees what is happening and hates us for it. Sadly, sadly, America has changed, and now we must learn to look for what actually happens, and ignore the pretty, enticing words.

--- Posted at 5/20/2004 08:51:00 AM by Dave Johnson

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Jobs Going Away

Offshoring of U.S. jobs accelerating, researchers say

New figures on offshore outsourcing suggest that American companies are sending even more white-collar jobs to low-wage countries such as India, China and Russia than researchers originally estimated. Roughly 830,000 U.S. service-sector jobs - ranging from telemarketers and accountants to software engineers and chief technology officers - will move abroad by the end of 2005, according to a report released Monday by Forrester Research Inc.

--- Posted at 5/20/2004 08:44:00 AM by Dave Johnson

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Iran Behind It All?

U.S. Soldiers Raid Chalabi's Home in Iraq. My wild idea? Iran. Maybe, knowing that the Right in America is able to engineer opinion and push through anything they want, Iran hatched a plan to convince key neo-cons that Iraq was a great target. Maybe Chalabi was working for Iran the whole time, manipulating the neo-cons into engineering the invasion of Iraq, making them think they were engaged in a noble effort to "bring democracy to the region" and protect Israel, and get the oil, and implement an experimental example of their libertarian ideology, etc.

Ahmad Chalabi, the longtime Pentagon favorite to become leader of a free Iraq, has never made a secret of his close ties to Iran. Before the U.S. invasion of Baghdad, Chalabi's Iraqi National Congress maintained a $36,000-a-month branch office in Tehran—funded by U.S. taxpayers. INC representatives, including Chalabi himself, paid regular visits to the Iranian capital. Since the war, Chalabi's contacts with Iran may have intensified: a Chalabi aide says that since December, he has met with most of Iran's top leaders, including supreme religious leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and his top national-security aide, Hassan Rowhani. "Iran is Iraq's neighbor, and it is in Iraq's interest to have a good relationship with Iran," Chalabi's aide says. But U.S. intelligence agencies have recently raised concerns that Chalabi has become too close to Iran's theocratic rulers. NEWSWEEK has learned that top Bush administration officials have been briefed on intelligence indicating that Chalabi and some of his top aides have supplied Iran with "sensitive" information on the American occupation in Iraq. U.S. officials say that electronic intercepts of discussions between Iranian leaders indicate that Chalabi and his entourage told Iranian contacts about American political plans in Iraq. There are also indications that Chalabi has provided details of U.S. security operations. According to one U.S. government source, some of the information Chalabi turned over to Iran could "get people killed."

And now the entire US military is bogged in a quagmire -- no adventures into Iran any time soon, that's for sure. Meanwhile Iraq is getting ready to split into parts -- with Iran lined up to get the Shiite south and its oil regions. Maybe these dumb Bush clucks fell for one of the greatest scams in history! What do you think? Is this a good one? (See also, How Ahmed Chalabi conned the neocons) Update - If they were really smart, they would have hidden a speaker in the ceiling in Bush's bedroom and make him thinkit was God talking to him, telling him to invade Iraq. ... come to think of it, maybe they did!

--- Posted at 5/20/2004 08:09:00 AM by Dave Johnson

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Don't Ever Criticize The Party

A teacher was fired because his student read a poem that criticized Bush. Read about it here.

In March 2003, a teenage girl named Courtney presented one of her poems before an audience at Barnes & Noble bookstore in Albuquerque, then read the poem live on the school's closed-circuit television channel. A school military liaison and the high school principal accused the girl of being "un-American" because she criticized the war in Iraq and the Bush administration's failure to give substance to its "No child left behind" education policy. The girl's mother, also a teacher, was ordered by the principal to destroy the child's poetry. The mother refused and may lose her job. Bill Nevins was suspended for not censoring the poetry of his students. Remember, there is no obscenity to be found in any of the poetry. He was later fired by the principal. After firing Nevins and terminating the teaching and reading of poetry in the school, the principal and the military liaison read a poem of their own as they raised the flag outside the school. When the principal had the flag at full staff, he applauded the action he'd taken in concert with the military liaison. Then to all students and faculty who did not share his political opinions, the principal shouted: "Shut your faces."

Seeing the Forest readers: Watch your backs and SHUT YOUR FACES!

--- Posted at 5/19/2004 04:56:00 PM by Dave Johnson

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Bush Denounce? Fat Chance

From Right Hook, Michael Savage the other day: (Savage says he has 6 million listeners, so take this seriously)

"'I think there should be no mercy shown to these sub-humans. I believe that a thousand of them should be killed tomorrow. I think a thousand of them held in the Iraqi prison should be given 24 hour[s] -- a trial and executed. I think they need to be shown that we are not going to roll over to them ... Instead of putting joysticks, I would have liked to have seen dynamite put in their orifices and they should be dropped from airplanes ... They should put dynamite in their behinds and drop them from 35,000 feet, the whole pack of scum out of that jail.' The next day Savage added that Arabs were 'racist, fascist bigots,' and purported to speak for a majority of Americans regarding the war. He offered several all-American solutions to our problems in the Middle East. 'Right now, even people sitting on the fence would like George Bush to drop a nuclear weapon on an Arab country. They don't even care which one it would be. I can guarantee you -- I don't need to go to Mr. Schmuck [pollster John] Zogby and ask him his opinion ... The most -- I tell you right now -- the largest percentage of Americans would like to see a nuclear weapon dropped on a major Arab capital. They don't even care which one... 'I think these people need to be forcibly converted to Christianity ... It's the only thing that can probably turn them into human beings.' "

Do you think Arabs know that many right-wing Americans are talking like this? Do you think THIS is the real unspoken message that the Right wants out there? Sure, Savage is a wingnut, but he's not the only one talking like this by a long shot. Enough of them are talking like this, and our government sure is acting like it's their thinking... Sometimes I think the best way to understand the messages the Right is putting out there is to learn what their target audiences are hearing. Do you think Bush is going to renounce this kind of talk and apologize for it? Fat chance.

--- Posted at 5/19/2004 12:09:00 PM by Dave Johnson

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Always Ignore their Words

Watching what they do, not what they say, I think this tends to confirm what I wrote before about the Strategic Petroleum Reserve. Bush: Tapping Emergency Oil Would Endanger U.S.:

Bush accused Democrats of playing politics with the rise in gasoline prices, saying that calls by some of them to tap the Strategic Petroleum Reserve would leave Americans more vulnerable if a terrorist attack were to occur. "We will not play politics with the Strategic Petroleum Reserve," Bush told reporters after a meeting with his Cabinet. "The idea of emptying the Strategic Petroleum Reserve would put America in a dangerous position in the war on terror," Bush said.

Now, this is obviously crap. Democrats are asking Bush to stop buying oil (using OUR Social Security money to do it) when it's at the highest price ever, not to "tap the reserves." The SPR currently stands at 659 million barrels, with a capacity of 700 million. The government is buying 170,000 barrels of oil each day, at a time of peak demand, driving prices even higher. Watching what they DO, this is a crony deal, sending 170,000 barrels times $41 each day going from the government to Koch Supply & Trading, LP, a major funder of the Right. Remember, aside from what they are SAYING, what they are DOING is refusing to stop BUYING MORE OIL at a time of peak demand, at the highest prices ever, when the reserve is just about full anyway.

--- Posted at 5/19/2004 11:21:00 AM by Dave Johnson

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Blogger

OK, what's Blogger doing to me now. If you don't see what I'm talking about it's probably fixed...

--- Posted at 5/19/2004 08:24:00 AM by Dave Johnson

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Don't Forget

Don't forget to listen to Al Franken on Air America Radio starting at noon Eastern time. Click the link, and click "Listen Live" to listen online.

--- Posted at 5/19/2004 08:23:00 AM by Dave Johnson

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Spam

963 spam e-mails as of 8:15 this morning. Today will be a new record. Spam has rendered my e-mail almost useless. When I'm travelling, and have to use a dial-up connection... Update As of 5:15pm I have received 925 more spams since this morning.

--- Posted at 5/19/2004 08:15:00 AM by Dave Johnson

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Good Time to Place an Ad

This is a good time to place your ad in the BlogAds strip to the right and be a sponsor of Seeing the Forest. Seeing the Forest is currently the 58th "Most Influential Blog" out of 143,610 blogs tracked. To see the unique daily visitor count click on the numbers at the bottom of the column on the right. (This number does not include e-mail subscribers or syndicated news readers.) To place an ad click here. Or click on "Advertise at Seeing the Forest" at the bottom of the adstrip.

--- Posted at 5/18/2004 07:41:00 PM by Dave Johnson

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New RSS Options

Thanks to a post at Hullabaloo there are new options for subscribing to Seeing the Forest. Over on the right side of the page, scroll down until you see the logo. This lets you subscribe to the RSS feed, through . If you know what that means, it means something. If you don't, don't worry about it.

--- Posted at 5/18/2004 12:00:00 PM by Dave Johnson

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Gas Prices

People are asking why the government is now going all out buying oil to fill the Strategic Petroleum Reserve. After all, prices are the highest ever, driven by demand. A pause in the purchases would lower demand -- which would bring down prices -- as well as save the People of the United States a lot of money by waiting until prices are lower to purchase the oil. Maybe this has something to do with it. The Bush administration gave the contract for supplying the oil to Koch Supply & Trading, LP, owned by some of the primary funders of the far, far right. By purchasing oil for the Reserve, the Bush administration is helping fund the Right, which is pumping millions upon millions into his campaign. For example, this press release from the National Center for Policy Analysis (NCPA), titled "Schumer's Proposal to Lower Gas Prices Puts Politics Ahead of safety and Sound Economics" doesn't mention that NCPA receives at least $80,000 a year from Koch foundations (Lambe is also a Koch foundation).

--- Posted at 5/18/2004 10:10:00 AM by Dave Johnson

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Rumsfeld is toast

Apparently Rumsfeld has been chosen as the fall guy for Iraq, as this piece by Martin Sieff, "UPI Senior News Analyst" shows: "Even worse for Rumsfeld and his coterie of neo-conservative true believers who have run the Pentagon for the past 3½ years, three major institutions in the Washington power structure have decided that after almost a full presidential term of being treated with contempt and abuse by them, it's payback time. Those three institutions are: The United States Army, the Central Intelligence Agency and the old, relatively moderate but highly experienced Republican leadership in the United States Senate." You can add a fourth basically-conservative institution to the anti-Rumsfeld list: the UPI, which is owned by Rev. Moon. As I understand, UPI is mostly a simple news-dissemination organization, and doesn't normally do opinion like this. (Sieff is defnitely right-wing -- he was originally from the Washington Times and has written for the National Review.) It looks to me as if the neocons will be thrown overboard to try to save the Bush Presidency. It seems unlikely to me that anyone will abandon Bush himself, though Kerry has really done nothing to make it impossible for Sens. Hagel and Lugar (or other rational conservatives) to support him. P.S. Correspondents have notified me that Sieff also has written for Salon, and that he's been critical of Bush for over a year. The recognizable names in a "UPI columnist" Google are hard-right paleocons such as Joe Sobran and Ann Coulter, and some of them have apparently been critical of the Iraq adventure all along.

--- Posted at 5/18/2004 08:19:00 AM by John Emerson

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"Liberal elitism", etc.

The "elitist" charge thrown at Democrats by Republicans is basically phony. For all his pretensions, George W. Bush was born a millionaire and never has had to work a day in his life. Republican policies are most helpful to those in the top 1% of the income scale, and are increasingly less helpful the further down the scale you go. Probably they do harm to most people in the bottom half, and possibly even to the bottom two-thirds. So in reality, the elitism smear is just part of a well-financed Republican effort to deceive people. So why is the charge so effective? I think that it's because, by now, the Democratic Party does indeed represent large groups whose status depends on credentials and connections, and that many plebian voters basically don't like these people. The college professor is a case in point. I would guess that most people who come out of college admiring their professors (especially liberal arts professors) end up as Democrats, whereas most of the students who come out of college hating those professors (especially students specializing in practical fields) end up as Republicans. (And non-college people are probably more likely to hate professors than to love them.) Liberal-arts-type people do well in academia, education, arts and entertainment, non-profits, public service, and administration. They don't usually gravitate toward business or technical fields, and they seldom end up as labor in the traditional sense of the word. (Not being labor is the main purpose of education, right?) Now, it's in these liberal-arts type fields that various sorts of P.C., coolness, and hipness are most influential. For jobs in these areas, it tends to be necessary to have the right manners, to say the right things, and just generally to seem like the right kind of person. I'm convinced that this is the new gentility and that the liberal arts education and its mannerisms have become the new index of class. People who are hip and cool (even if quite poor) are genteel, whereas people who are unhip and uncool (even if they're prosperous) are low-class and are excluded. And P.C. diversity is a sort of fig leaf hiding what's going on. It's a cliché, but it's still true: diversity just doesn't extend, for example, to white guys who drink pop wine and shoot rabbits for fun. In actual fact, uncool low-income people are hurt more by the acts of Republican management than they are by anything that the liberal academic and administrative elite ever does. But the lefestyle snobbery they percieve is real, and as a result the Democrats have effectively allowed the Republicans to pick up a lot of their votes -- essentially for nothing. After all, the Democrats' main concern with regard to organized labor (which is actually a relatively privileged part of the bottom half of the income scale) is that it is terribly. terribly important not to pander to them. Basically, the neoliberals running the party have chosen not to represent a considerable chunk of the electorate, and nobody should be surprised if the Republicans take advantage of this and pick up some cheap votes. (This is a think-piece and not keyed to any recent event, or even to the fall election. It's Part One of two, and the second part, about competition, is better.)

--- Posted at 5/17/2004 09:13:00 PM by John Emerson

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Bush - Supporting the Troops?

The Interrogations: Rumsfeld and Aide Backed Harsh Tactics, Article Says:

"The article suggested that Mr. Rumsfeld and Mr. Cambone had, in effect, shifted the blame for the abuses away from top civilians at the Pentagon to lower-level military police guards who are facing disciplinary proceedings in military courts."

We already know who these guys choose if it's the troops or them. Who do you think they'll choose if it's the country or them?

--- Posted at 5/15/2004 10:28:00 PM by Dave Johnson

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the american street today

Everything over at the american street today is good, and much of it is also really funny.

--- Posted at 5/15/2004 12:16:00 PM by Dave Johnson

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Irony

Matt Stoller looks back at the Republican Party platform of 2000:

"'The arrogance, inconsistency, and unreliability of the administration's diplomacy have undermined American alliances, alienated friends, and emboldened our adversaries.' [ed. this is referring to Clinton's administration] 'Nor should the intelligence community be made the scapegoat for political misjudgments. A Republican administration working with the Congress will respect the needs and quiet sacrifices of these public servants as it strengthens America's intelligence and counter-intelligence capabilities and reorients them toward the dangers of the future.'"

--- Posted at 5/14/2004 11:07:00 AM by Dave Johnson

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Here's an interview with Sibel Edmonds, one of the considerable number of mid-level FBI people who are claiming that the 9/11 investigation has been bungled. She was a translater (from Farsi, Turkish, and Azerbaijani) who was fired by the FBI after she took information to a Senate committee. She goes beyond claiming that there was a bungle. Her basic accusation, based on material she was responsible for translating, is that certain information was deliberately suppressed because it would embarass several "friendly nations" -- to say nothing about American government officials who worked with those nations. She's under court order and not allowed to say which nations -- Pakistan and Saudi Arabia are almost certainly among them, but there are more. This gets us into conspiracy theory territory, and the interviewer and his callers get into some things that are a bit dubious. Considering that such a high proportion of what the administration told us before the war turned out to be misleading, and considering that our major media have repeatedly published real howlers (and habitually bury or ignore big stories), I don't know why we hold dissidents to such a strict standard. Some of what they say holds up to criticism and some doesn't, but most mainstream people simple reject this kind of stuff unseen and unread. Everything I know tells me that 9/11 was blowback, ultimately from our Afghanistan involvement, and that the Saudis and the Pakistanis had a lot to do with it. Nothing the Bush administration has done has addressed these facts, and I think that they have good personal reasons for not doing so. Edmonds believes that if the truth came out, some major figures would face criminal charges (though again, she doesn't name names). I've been plugging this Pakistan/Saudi angle for a couple years, and nobody seems interested. Bush is vulnerable but the Democrats and the media won't go there. Thanks to Bartcop. My own Bandar Bush page. A few things I collected about Pakistan.

--- Posted at 5/13/2004 09:32:00 AM by John Emerson

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Cursor.org is having its annual fund drive. If you look at the numbers they've put up, you'll figure out that the Cursor guys are willing to work full time for $20,000 a year or less. As far as I'm concerned, Cursor is the best one-stop political clipping service on the web. Give what you can.

--- Posted at 5/13/2004 07:03:00 AM by John Emerson

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The war on WAL-MART

Nathan Newman writes battle dispatches from the front.

--- Posted at 5/12/2004 07:55:00 PM by richard

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SERIOUS Questions

MaxSpeak raises some very serious questions: MaxSpeak, You Listen!: "HERE IS THE ENEMY". Nick Berg's (the man who was beheaded) father appeared on a right-wing Republican "enemies list." A couple of weeks later his son was picked up and detained in Iraq, and not allowed to call a lawyer. Then the FBI questioned his father. More here.

--- Posted at 5/12/2004 01:09:00 PM by Dave Johnson

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Why People Vote Green

Tax Breaks for Business Are Approved in the Senate:

"After months of delay and relentless corporate lobbying, the Senate voted, 92 to 5, on Tuesday for a bill that would create $170 billion in new tax breaks for business while trying to crack down on a variety of tax shelters."

92 to 5 means most Democrats voted for a $170 billion tax cut for businesses, in the middle of a war, with the money coming from OUR retirement savings. Businesses get another $170 billion. WE get cuts in our Social Security. This is why people vote Green. Not me, but, jeeze, on days like this I can understand the impulse.

--- Posted at 5/12/2004 10:30:00 AM by Dave Johnson

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The Beheading

My opinion - the beheading is an attempt to provoke Bush into doing something else stupid, like he did with Fallujah, and draw us even deeper into Iraq. Every penny spent and every person sent to Iraq is one less resource with which to battle al-Queda. And the more al-Queda can provoke us into seeing Iraq and Islam as the enemy, and the more they can promote tribal thinking of "us" against "them" -- the better for their cause. Bush just keeps being led by the nose by these guys. Or maybe Bush and al-Queda share a cause: war between Christians and Muslims.

--- Posted at 5/12/2004 10:15:00 AM by Dave Johnson

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The Rumsfeld Wire

On the right, below the BlogAd, you'll see something new. The Rumsfeld Wire alerts you to weblog posts that discuss the Iraq prison abuse scandal and calling for the removal of Rumsfeld. Take a look.

--- Posted at 5/12/2004 08:56:00 AM by Dave Johnson

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Inhofe's Outrage at "Humanitarian Do-Gooders"

Senator Inhofe said he is outraged at the "humanitarian go-gooders" at the Iraq prison abuse hearings yesterday:

"As I watch this outrage, this outrage everyone seems to have about the treatment of these prisoners . . . I'm probably not the only one up at this table that is more outraged by the outrage than we are by the treatment," Inhofe told fellow Armed Services Committee members investigating the treatment of inmates at Abu Ghraib prison. "You know, they're not there for traffic violations," he said. In the cells where the primary abuse took place, "they're murderers, they're terrorists, they're insurgents." Several senators cited a Red Cross study concluding that as much as 90 percent of those detained in Iraq "had been arrested by mistake." Inhofe, 69, was unimpressed. "I am also outraged that we have so many humanitarian do-gooders right now crawling all over these prisons looking for human rights violations while our troops, our heroes, are fighting and dying," he said. ". . . I'm also outraged by the press and the politicians and the political agendas that are being served by this."

So why is he so outraged? Inhofe is another one who believes that GOD wants us in Iraq. After 9/11, Inhofe said,

"One of the reason I believe the spiritual door was opened for an attack against the United States of America," Inhofe huffed, "is that the policy of our government has been to ask the Israelis, and demand it with pressure, not to retaliate in a significant way against the terrorist strikes that have been launched against them."

He gave a Senate floor speech a while back, said that Israel is right in what it is doing because GOD gave that land to Israel:

From the Senate floor, Sen. James Inhofe, R-Okla., preached what was essentially a sermon about Israel last December. "The Bible says that Abram [Abraham] removed his tent, and came and dwelt in the plain of Mamre, which is in Hebron, and built there an altar before the Lord," he said. "Hebron is in the West Bank. It is at this place where God appeared to Abram and said, 'I am giving you this land' ... This is not a political battle at all. It is a contest over whether or not the word of God is true." As Inhofe's speech suggested, for elements of the Christian right, pro-Israel fervor has ascended to the realm of the sacred. Christian leaders Ralph Reed and Gary Bauer both say that their support of Israel -- and Israeli expansionism -- is partly rooted in biblical injunction. Bauer says, "There are a variety of Old Testament scriptures in which God is saying to Abraham that the people of Israel will occupy all the land between the sea and the river," which he says means the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River. "There's a belief that this is covenant land," he adds.

To make matters even worse, we're learning that Gen. Boykin is involved in this scandal. Why is this so bad? Boykin is this wingnut:

Boykin touched off a firestorm last October after giving speeches while in uniform in which he referred to the war on terrorism as a battle with "Satan" and said America had been targeted "because we're a Christian nation."

It still seems that we don't know the "real" reasons we're at war in Iraq. There is no question that Inhofe and Boykin's prominence in this scandal will fuel suspicions in the Arab world that this is a religious war, Christians against Islam, and, in fact, it is looking more and more like this may be part of the master plan.

--- Posted at 5/12/2004 08:24:00 AM by Dave Johnson

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The Left Coaster Has Some Troubling Questions

The Left Coaster: Why Was Nick Berg Held By The American Military?

--- Posted at 5/11/2004 09:04:00 PM by Dave Johnson

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Worse and Worse

General Who Made Anti-Islam Remark Tied to POW Case:

"The U.S. Army general under investigation for anti-Islamic remarks has been linked by U.S. officials to the Iraqi prisoner abuse scandal, which experts warned could touch off new outrage overseas. A Senate hearing into the abuse of Iraqi prisoners was told on Tuesday that Lt. Gen. William Boykin, an evangelical Christian under review for saying his God was superior to that of the Muslims, briefed a top Pentagon (news - web sites) civilian official last summer on recommendations on ways military interrogators could gain more intelligence from Iraqi prisoners. Critics have suggested those recommendations amounted to a senior-level go-ahead for the sexual and physical abuse of prisoners, possibly to 'soften up' detainees before interrogation -- a charge the Pentagon denies. [. . .] "This will be taken as proof that what happened at Abu Ghraib (prison) is evidence of a broader culture of dehumanizing Arabs and Muslims, based on the American understanding of the innate superiority of Christendom," said Chris Toensing, editor of Middle East Report, a U.S.-based quarterly magazine. "

--- Posted at 5/11/2004 07:22:00 PM by Dave Johnson

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Mark Schmitt Kicks Himself

The Decembrist: A Bad CEO

--- Posted at 5/11/2004 06:43:00 PM by Dave Johnson

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David Brock Day at Seeing the Forest

Salon also has a David Brock interview up. Brock's website "Media Matters" is here.

--- Posted at 5/11/2004 11:00:00 AM by John Emerson

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Read Altercation Today

Today's Altercation:

"Let's recap shall we? We invaded a country that we now know posed no threat to us and enjoyed no connection whatever to those who did. In order to do so, we pulled manpower and resources away from the job of protecting us and thereby made ourselves more vulnerable to the thousands of new enemies we created with our failed, dishonest invasion. OK, what next?"

Then he says what next. Go read

--- Posted at 5/11/2004 08:53:00 AM by Dave Johnson

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Spam Record

A new record. 635 spams arrived just since late last night. Today looks to beat the all-day record. My morning routine is to check my mail, go through it deleting spams (the ISP does have Spam Assassin, which catches most of it, leaving me with "only" 635 this morning) then delete the trash and check mail again to clear the server. BUT by the time I'm checking the mail again I have more spam, so I delete that, empty the trash, and check mail again. Usually by then there's a few more so I repeat the process again. Only then do I go walk the dogs. Update - I haven't been keeping track through the day, but I just checked e-mail after clearing it 2 hours ago, and there were 273 new spams. Update 2 - 257 MORE spams! Update 3 - 7:45 pm 309 more spams. I think I know what's going on:

E-mailer wins round against anti-spam firm E-mail marketer Scott Richter, branded by critics as the ``spam king,'' has won a round in a legal battle with a San Bruno anti-spam company. A U.S. District Court judge in Oakland on Monday ordered SpamCop to temporarily stop reporting complaints about Richter's company, OptinRealBig.com, to Internet service providers. The order is effective until May 20, when the two parties are due in court. Owned by IronPort Systems, SpamCop offers people a way to report e-mail messages as suspected spam. SpamCop then forwards that information to ISPs, which can block those e-mails from being delivered to their customers. Richter has filed suit against IronPort, claiming that SpamCop interfered with OptInRealBig's contracts and business relationships, defamed the company and damaged its potential future earnings.

--- Posted at 5/11/2004 08:28:00 AM by Dave Johnson

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David Brock's New Book!

Salon has an excerpt from the book today.

--- Posted at 5/11/2004 08:16:00 AM by Dave Johnson

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A vote for Nader is a vote for ..

Kerry! Thom Hartmann described yesterday a scheme that might let Ralph run in every state he wants to run in and to run as hard as he can everywhere while actually helping the Democratic nominee. Simply put, Thom suggested that Nader choose Kerry's electors as his own. Thom's idea is not quite good enough for me -- it's just another way for Nader to be marginalized. BUT, if Kerry and Nader agree to a symmetrical arrangement, where the electors are pledged to vote for whichever of the two candidates receives the plurality of the popular votes in their states, then even a die-hard ex-Democrat like me would go for it enthusiastically. A trivial, but greatly effective, form of instant runoff voting. Nader would of course lose everywhere to Kerry, who would get all the electoral votes, but Ralph (and his supporters) would get the right to say, almost certainly with some truth, that they were the Democrats' margin of victory. Interesting. Unlikely, but interesting. (The DLC and their ilk would never permit it, of course.) UPDATE: Thanks to commenters and The Decembrist, it's clear this idea doesn't work. The winner-take-all electoral vote system disallows pooling of electors. The US electoral system once again defeats democracy. Guess I'll just have to throw the election to Bush again. Disappointing.

--- Posted at 5/11/2004 04:08:00 AM by richard

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Shock and Anger

Bush's Backing of Rumsfeld Shocks and Angers Arabs

"Arab commentators reacted with shock and disbelief on Monday over President Bush's robust backing of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld against calls for his resignation. [. . .] "After the torture and vile acts by the American army, President Bush goes out and congratulates Rumsfeld. It's just incredible. I am in total shock," said Omar Belhouchet, editor of the influential Algerian national daily El Watan. "Bush's praise for Rumsfeld will discredit the United States...and further damage its reputation, which is already at a historic low in the Arab world," he added. [. . .] "After Mr. Bush's decision to keep Rumsfeld, all their apologies seem like lip service," Dubai-based political analyst Jawad al-Anani told Reuters. "Mr. Rumsfeld would have certainly lost his job if the prisoners were American. [. . .] A Saudi businessman, who asked not to be named, said keeping Rusmfeld would be seen as Washington's quiet approval of the abuse. "This just confirms that what is happening in Iraq (news - web sites) in general, and especially what is happening in Abu Ghraib is sanctioned by the American administration and that is a hell of a position to be in. "I see no advantage in keeping Rumsfeld. Bush should be building bridges with the outside world."

For our OWN safety -- Rumsfeld must go. We must show the world that we are making changes. And we must MAKE those changes.

--- Posted at 5/10/2004 10:09:00 PM by Dave Johnson

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There's a piece in Salon from David Brock's new book The Republican Noise Machine. The most interesting passage is the following, which tells what happens when he tries to talk to people about what he knows about the media: Those who receive their news from the New York Times and National Public Radio give me blank stares. They are living in a rarefied media culture -- one that prizes accuracy, fairness, and civility -- that is no longer representative of the media as a whole. Those who have heard snippets of Rush Limbaugh's radio show, have caught a glimpse of Bill O'Reilly's temper tantrums on the FOX News Channel, or occasionally peruse the editorials in the Wall Street Journal think I'm a Cassandra. They view this media as self-discrediting and therefore irrelevant. They are living in a vacuum of denial. This reminds me of dozens of internet arguments I've had with high-minded academic liberals and moderates. They really do not know how slanted the information is that the average man or woman gets these days, and basically they don't care. The stupider and more misinformed the average voter is, the easier it is for these fine people to feel superior. The same people I'm thinking of are usually also too fastidious to take partisan stands or show any loyalty to the Democratic Party (or as far as that goes, the Green Party either). For them the most important thing is to maintain their self-image of elite independence. They'd infinitely rather lose and lose again than seem uncool. What brought this on was one more idiot liberal ("David the Obscure") badmouthing Al Franken's Air America on the Calpundit comments board. What he says is stupid enough to be trolling, but I often hear known liberals say this kind of stupid shit, so I'm taking it at face value: Personally, I'm glad Radio America is defunct. That kind of shrillness will never change anyone's mind. The kind of person who supported the war and Bush and may yet change their minds would probably like to think they arrived at that conclusion on their own, not with a lot of pushing and pinching from the Left. I don't want to go into how many ways this is wrong. Air America might succeed and it might fail, and it might be well-done or badly-done, but we all have to want it to succeed. It provides a liberal Democratic voice in a market niche which until now has been completely flooded with the worst right wing crap. David the Obscure and his ilk should find ropes and go hang themselves, instead of stinking up the planet with their jerkish, worthless opinions.

--- Posted at 5/10/2004 09:57:00 PM by John Emerson

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Plantu checks in



--- Posted at 5/10/2004 07:31:00 PM by richard

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Rumsfeld Resignation

It's Monday, and Rumsfeld still has not resigned. Officers are reprimanded and grunts are courtmarshalled. But Rumsfeld gets Bush's support and praise. Support the troops -- go sign the petition.

--- Posted at 5/10/2004 12:26:00 PM by Dave Johnson

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Al Franken

Al Franken is just craking me up. (Listen online.) On Rumsfeld's testimony before Congress last week: "I didn't borrow the plate, it was broken in pieces when I borrowed it, and it was in one piece when I returned it."

--- Posted at 5/10/2004 09:42:00 AM by Dave Johnson

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They Just Lie

Roger Ailes has an excellent post detailing some of the lies we are being told about the Iraq prison scandal. They just lie. They just say when they feel they need to say to provide enough of a smokescreen to confuse the issue and get us all arguing about what they said, instead of keeping our eye on what is really happening. It's all just PR. That's all they know or care about -- PR. They have their goals -- what THEY get -- and they have their PR -- what WE get.

--- Posted at 5/10/2004 09:34:00 AM by Dave Johnson

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New Poll

There's a new Zogby poll that you can read about here. Also, you can read about what you can get people to think when you control the information they hear:

"Russ Teague, selling lamps at the flea market, could hardly disagree more. 'It's a minor problem,' says Teague, an Air Force veteran, 'a rare anomaly that has nothing to do with the administration and everything to do with six or seven people who did something regrettable.' In fact, Teague blames the media for much of the uproar, and points out that the Army itself uncovered the abuse - an object lesson for the Middle East in how a transparent democracy deals with miscreants. But Teague also sympathizes with the accused MPs, pointing out that they - unlike the myriad critics and commentators - are actually in a war."

This guy is repeating directly what I heard on right-wing talk radio Friday! Almost word-for-word. If you read weblogs, you are informed -- unlike at least half of the people in the U.S., apparently.

--- Posted at 5/09/2004 10:08:00 PM by Dave Johnson

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Orcinus On The Press

Media Revolt: A Manifesto. Excerpt:

"The obvious aspect of this discussion is the way the entire framing of the debate -- as a question of 'character' as opposed to such boring details as policy -- heavily favors the party that relies more on imagery and jingoism, wrapping itself in the flag and pounding its chest about moral superiority: in other words, conservatives. "

Atrios pointed to it, but how many really read the whole thing? Please do. Especially if you are from the press or a blogger.

--- Posted at 5/08/2004 10:11:00 PM by Dave Johnson

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Ghraib, etc.

There's not much to say about Abu Ghraib. I didn't predict the kinky tabloid details (which are the whole reason the story is getting so much play -- not the photo of the guy who was beaten to death), but when you saw how Guantanamo was set up and how the "illegal combatant" category was defined, you knew what was coming. So my opinion about Iraq is about the same now as it was a month ago. A few more people seem to be agreeing with me, which is fine. It always surprises me when that happens; I never have any idea why or why not. I thought Enron would be a big deal. This leads me to the whole issue of premature correctness. There are an enormous number of people in the media making their mea culpas and hedging what they said a couple of years ago, but nobody's been demoted or fired, and those of us who were right all along are still on the outside looking in. The pathological, incompetent, dishonest, slavish media people whose cheerleading helped get us into this mess are still in place. And the Democrats are playing the Iraq issue very, very gingerly. So I expect a few cosmetic changes and a brief moratorium on invasions, but without any major policy change. I'm always glad to be wrong. (There's more, including my contribution, on this Brad Delong Thread.)

--- Posted at 5/08/2004 12:03:00 PM by John Emerson

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Bush, Rumsfeld Blaming the Troops

We have seen that the Republican Congress refuses to hold the Bush administration accountable for anything. The Congress is controlled by the Republicans, and the Bush administration are Republicans, so they will not investigate or ask questions no matter how serious the abuse of power. And we have seen that the Republican Justice Department also refuses to look into matters that involve the Bush administration, and other Republicans. Look what's happening with this scandal over abuse of prisoners in Iraq. The Republicans are showing that they do not "support our troops" at all. The Republicans are blaming the troops. The Bush administration and its surrogates and their talk radio and their pundits and their politicians and their whole echo chamber are blaming "a few bad soldiers," leaving all of those serving in the prisons over there hanging out to dry. Think about that. Do we blame the troops, and stop there? Or do we blame the chain of command? Do we blame the leadership examples? Or do we just push all of this off on the troops on the front lines? And about how this affects our troops in Iraq. They are being SHOWN that THEY will be blamed for failures of policy. They are being shown that their leadership will run and hide when the going gets tough. And worse, they are being shown that when there is a choice between taking a political hit, or stepping up to the plate and taking responsibility and diffusing the ANGER that could lead to an increase in attacks and a decrease in their safety while doing their jobs, their leaders - OUR leaders - run and hide and blame others, and blame them, and blame anyone except those who sent them there and told them what to do. So it's time to REALLY support the troops. It's time to hold the Bush administration accountable for its failures. It's time to DEMAND accountability. Since the people who are supposed to be holding our leaders accountable are refusing to do their jobs it's time for the people to step up to the plate and demand accountability! This is a choice between supporting the Republicans who want to blame the troops in a blatantly political attempt to evade responsibilitybecause they are afraid it will cost them votes, and those of us who want to hold leadership accountable. Blame the troops? Or blame the leadership? Which is it going to be? Sign the petition. And send e-mail to people you know, asking them to sign the petition. It is time for Rumsfield to go. Blame the people who put the troops there and told them what to do, not the troops.

--- Posted at 5/07/2004 03:42:00 PM by Dave Johnson

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Joe Conason on Abu Ghaib is a must-read

Joe Conason has solid evidence that the Abu Ghraib problems trace back to political appointees, specifically Doug Feith, rather than to the military. Don't miss it.

--- Posted at 5/07/2004 02:38:00 PM by John Emerson

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"A MOTHER'S PRIDE" BY BARBARA BUSH

Thought you'd be in the mood for a Mother's Day message. Apparently people are saying mean things about Barbara's little boy. Help her feel good about herself by sending out some love, OK? Times have been hard lately. Her other boys (Jeb, Neil, and the elusive Marvin) all are feeling the pinch too. With your help, they'll all be able to take care of needed tasks such as reroofing their houses, getting electric washing machines, and sending their kids to rehab. Bar really hates those cruel, elitist things that people are always saying. Her kids are just as good as anyone else's. STF Management "A MOTHER'S PRIDE" BY BARBARA BUSH With Mother's Day coming up this weekend, I've been thinking about how proud I am of our children. And it's with a mother's pride that I'm writing you today to ask you to support our eldest, George W., and his re-election campaign with a donation of $1000, $500, $250, $100 or $50.......... Earlier this week, our son's re-election team announced their "March to a Million" campaign. Never before has a presidential campaign received contributions from over one million supporters. With your help, we'll make history. www.GeorgeWBush.com/Million/ This election is going to be a tough one. That is why I'm asking for your support. For months the President has been facing negative advertising from John Kerry and all sorts of pro-Kerry groups. I've been particularly disappointed in the personal attacks. Your donation, no matter what the size, will help advertise the President's positive agenda for America and deliver his compassionate conservative message directly to the voters. www.GeorgeWBush.com/Million/ America needs a strong leader like George W. Bush. He is the right man to lead America during these challenging times. Thank you very much for your support today. I hope you and your family enjoy a wonderful Mother's Day. Sincerely, Barbara Bush

--- Posted at 5/07/2004 05:48:00 AM by John Emerson

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Our values



--- Posted at 5/06/2004 02:33:00 PM by richard

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Not "The Onion"

AMUSEMENT PARK FALLS TO AMERICANS AFTER HARD FIGHTING "The second unfolded just after midnight Thursday in this city, when more than 450 soldiers in armored vehicles rumbled into a neighborhood amusement park where Mr. Sadr's militiamen, known as the Mahdi Army, were storing heavy weapons near a ferris wheel and bumper car ride. At 12:30 a.m., soldiers were drawn into an intense firefight, killing an Iraqi who had been lobbing grenades from the area of the pirate ship ride. The man was carrying identification showing he worked for an American-trained security force, the Facilities Protection Service." DANES THREATEN WESTERN HEMISPHERE "Although Narwhal is not specifically aimed at any one country in particular, there is no doubt about for whom the message is intended: that major superpower, which has always represented a threat to world peace -- Denmark."

--- Posted at 5/06/2004 11:19:00 AM by John Emerson

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No Polls

Here's an update to my far-too-subtle post from last night. (Thanks Cursor.)

--- Posted at 5/06/2004 08:28:00 AM by Dave Johnson

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Pelosi on Surprise Iraq Funding Request

Washington, D.C. -- House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi released the following statement today on the Bush Administration's $25 billion Supplemental Appropriations request for the war in Iraq: "By requesting just $25 billion in additional money for our troops in Iraq - when we know that at least twice that amount will be needed - the Bush Administration is once again keeping the true cost of the war from the American people. "For weeks, despite the increased fighting in Iraq and the continued loss of our brave soldiers, the President and the Secretary of Defense have maintained that an additional funding request could not be submitted before the November election because it was impossible to know the right amount. "We need to know how the Administration all of a sudden decided that it needed $25 billion since many experts - including the House Budget Committee - have concluded that at least $50 billion in additional funding will be necessary to provide our troops with the equipment and support they need to accomplish their mission. "We must give the troops what they need to be successful under increasingly risky conditions. And the President must tell the hard truth to the American people about how much longer our troops will remain in Iraq and how much more it will cost."

--- Posted at 5/06/2004 07:54:00 AM by Dave Johnson

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War Crimes?

I linked to this video before, but can't find the post. (If you know where it is, let me know. Thanks.) It seems a good time to remember it. Warning: graphic, nasty.

--- Posted at 5/05/2004 10:14:00 PM by Dave Johnson

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Threats

Over at Counterspin Central," it depends on the meaning of what the word "threat" is. If you're reading this, you're probably a threat, too. In other words, if Bush wins this elecion, watch your backs.

--- Posted at 5/05/2004 08:36:00 PM by Dave Johnson

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Con Man

A line in this story struck me somehow... Oklahoman May Have Infected Nearly 170 Women With HIV:

"'There was just something about him ... that he had the ability to make you feel that you were really special and beautiful, and you were the only woman in the world to him,' she said."

OK, this guy seduces 170 women since 2003 (approx. one every two days?) because he made women think they were "the only woman in the world to him." Somehow I just have to post this because you know what it reminds me of, right? (here, here, here, here)

--- Posted at 5/05/2004 08:26:00 PM by Dave Johnson

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Digby!

Digby has an important post talking about why David Brock's new organization Media Matters is important. I've been saying here for some time that we should be listening to Rush Limbaugh so we can understand just what Republicans are saying and thinking. Now, Media Matters is transcribing Rush! Digby writes about this:

"But, his ugly talk still operates just a little bit under the radar in terms of specificity. I imagine the majority of people think they know what he is saying, but they don't. Until you see it written down, you really don't get just how vicious and crude it really is. His radio voice serves to make him sound somewhat friendly and funny. People think he is exaggerating for effect. Still, the message gets out, day after day. 'Democrats are not real Americans like you.' This treasonous, unamerican picture of liberalism has seeped into the body politic so thoroughly that even liberals themselves have internalized this distorted version of themselves."

I still say it is important to listen rather than wait for the transcripts, because then you can see the stuff filtering out to the mainstream as it happens. (Read the transcripts, too.)

--- Posted at 5/05/2004 06:52:00 PM by Dave Johnson

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Bob Somerby on Air America, Thursday, 12:30 Eastern Time

Bob Somerby of the incomparable Daily Howler will be on Al Franken's Air America show Thursday (tomorrow) at 12:30 Eastern Time. Let's hope that this is a prelude to hiring him. I've never heard Somerby, but he makes his living as a speaker and comedian and he should be good on radio.

--- Posted at 5/05/2004 09:17:00 AM by John Emerson

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More Media Control Of What We See and Hear

Last week one media company called the TV show NightLine traitors and took NightLine of the air rather than show a tribute to the soldiers who have sacrificed their lives for The Party's oil needs. Now we learn a little bit more about the raw politics behind the control of what what we see and hear. Disney Forbidding Distribution of Film That Criticizes Bush:

Mr. Moore's agent, Ari Emanuel, said Michael D. Eisner, Disney's chief executive, asked him last spring to pull out of the deal with Miramax. Mr. Emanuel said Mr. Eisner expressed particular concern that it would endanger tax breaks Disney receives for its theme park, hotels and other ventures in Florida, where Mr. Bush's brother, Jeb, is governor. "Michael Eisner asked me not to sell this movie to Harvey Weinstein; that doesn't mean I listened to him," Mr. Emanuel said. "He definitely indicated there were tax incentives he was getting for the Disney corporation and that's why he didn't want me to sell it to Miramax. He didn't want a Disney company involved."

As the election nears, expect more and more maneuvering by The Party to stay in control. Watch your back.

--- Posted at 5/04/2004 09:43:00 PM by Dave Johnson

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Another Nasty Kerry Smear

John Kerry's Vietnam Medical Report on National Review Online. The thing is, a doctor talking about a patient like this is unethical, right? Which brings his credibility into question. So how much money has to have changed hands for the doctor to say this?

--- Posted at 5/04/2004 03:25:00 PM by Dave Johnson

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About The New Ad ===>>>>

I received the following (edited) regarding the new blog ad over in the right column:

I am a long time fan of your blog. I am writing to bring your attention to the blogad which now graces your site. At first glance, I know it might not make much sense for an Arkansas state representative candidate to advertise on a blog that doesn't have a whole lot to do with Arkansas. The Republican in this race, however, has national name recognition and will be able to raise money nationally. He is Tim C. Hutchinson, the son of the former senator of the same name. The elder Hutchinson, you will recall, lost to Mark Pryor here in Arkansas in 2002 and was the only Republican in a contested race to lose. He was also voted as the most conservative Senator in the country. Now his son is venturing into politics. He is advertising himself as a "law and order" candidate, which is interesting because he has had a bit of a law and order history. When he was in law school, he paid only a $50 fine and $100 in court costs after killing two people in a car crash. He was working on his father's campaign at the time. He walked away with a clean driving record. Check out the full story at: http://www.burntorangereport.com/mt-tb.cgi/1358 [. . .] This race has national importance because the district is in Benton country, Arkansas, birthplace and headquarters of Wal-Mart. It is the GOP base in Arkansas, and probably the heart of its national base as well. A Rasmussen poll this morning showed Kerry and Bush at 45%-45% in Arkansas. The state is in play, and defeating Hutchinson will help Kerry win here. The Democrat in this race, Robbyn Tumey, is a self-made businesswoman running for office for the first time. I hope y'all will take a blogging interest in this race, particularly Tim Hutchinson's history. Keep up the good fight.

Click on the ad and send some turkee.

--- Posted at 5/04/2004 12:17:00 PM by Dave Johnson

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Worst Column Ever: Safire's "The Cruellest Month"

William Safire: "A certain grim logic suggests a turn for the better may be coming this summer." You have to read it all. It goes on, getting steadily worse and worse, without a scrap of fact or logic anywhere. Innuendos, wishful thinking, wild speculation, weird rhetorical questions, simple misrepresentations of fact, raving free association -- Safire is truly a columnist worthy of George W. Bush. There's no reason to believe that anyone in this administration is thinking any more rationally than Safire is -- the spin doctors are the policy makers now. Hold on to your hats.

--- Posted at 5/04/2004 10:17:00 AM by John Emerson

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Fighting The Right

The Blogging of the President: 2004 posted this:

David Brock's organization, Media Matters (http://mediamatters.org), is now tracking the right-wing influence on media by writing down what Rush Limbaugh says. Digby has more on why this resource is useful. [. . .] Is this effective liberal institution building? I wonder what Dave Johnson thinks. What do you think? Will all of this actually matter? Does it substitute for an ideology?

So here's what I think: I think the announcement of Media Matters is great news. It is one small, essential piece of the answer to the Right's juggernaut. I think this new organization is also important because it (and Center for American Progress) is a sign that "our side" finally is starting to "get it" about building long term institutions designed to affect overall national attitudes, rather than mainly funding short-term, election-oriented efforts to build support around a candidate. I spent some time with Brock several months ago and we talked about Media Matters, and about the effect of the Right's infrastructure on our politics. The Right has built up this marketing/communications machine with the intention of moving America's opinions to the right. Think about how this affects elections -- the Right has this machine in place pounding out "ideas," telling people lies like "Social Security is going broke," "lawsuits are out of control," "children are trapped in failing public schools," and "tax cuts increase revenue." After hearing this over and over, and hearing the Right's proposed solutions, THEN along comes an election, and the Right can just plug in a generic candidate who spouts the slogans Americans are pre-conditioned to expect. Meanwhile Progressive candidates have to start FROM SCRATCH, each election cycle, explaining to Americans about things like single-payer insurance and what the term means... and have to do it ALONE, and have to raise the money themselves to communicate to the public... It's a nearly-impossible task when you think about it. And between elections the Right's huge infrastructure is doing research on marketing techniques, framing language, etc... And the whole time they are pounding out their propaganda all across America, writing books, opinion pieces, letters to the editor, articles, sending out speakers, pundits, talk show guests, etc. all repeating whatever talking points they've decided to use on the public, all with the overall goal of furthering their "movement." So I think the Right's network of "advocacy organizations" with a marketing/communications focus is the reason we find ourselves in the situation we're in. It's not so much that it's impossible to compete with their machine as that so far we haven’t barely even STARTED competing with it. Media Matters and Center for American Progress are good beginnings. But they are only beginnings. The Right has over 500 organizations and they are massively funded, and COORDINATED, working together as part of "the conservative movement." It is essential that we understand how the Right operates, and how they are funded, and, especially, how they are affecting American thought. It's not illegal, it's not a conspiracy, it's smart. So why does the Right have this and "our side" does not? I'll quickly lay down a few reasons I think this is. First, the Right's infrastructure evolved as a response to the 60's "establishment" of scholarly academic-oriented think tanks. That they evolved as a response is a key - the institutions on "our side" were the frogs in the water as it warmed up, not noticing the changing environment until it's too late. They have not evolved. Momentum was in place. Jobs and careers were on the line. Etc. -- we all know how bureaucratic institutions are slow to respond. The Right's organizations grew up designed, from the start, to CHANGE MINDS AND PERSUADE because moderate and progressive thinking was the dominant paradigm. Historically, moderate and progressive organizations, largely already in place, did not face a need to change minds and persuade ideologically and so they were not designed to do that. The Right's organizations were designed from the start to change minds and persuade, while moderate and progressive organizations were designed from the start to accomplish issue objectives. Now the Right has changed lots of minds, while moderate/progressive orgs are not designed to respond to today's facts on the ground. Most important I think is the Right's understanding of funding as an investment in ideas and in the results that come from changing minds. The Right provides general operating support to advocacy organizations for the purpose of changing the way Americans think. Moderates and progressives generally DO NOT. They instead tend to fund PROGRAMS and ISSUES. This is a huge difference! This is the KEY problem with building organizations equipped to respond to the Right. It requires an evolutionary change in the way moderate and progressive money sees the world. Moderate/progressive money works to accomplish specific objectives rather than affect overall public attitudes and politics. The Right's organizations change minds and affect politics, and the result is votes for Republican politicians, who then accomplish the goals of the ideological movement. So all the money that is poured into environmental organizations, for example, is becoming more and more ineffective as the Right's politicians and judges wipe out all the environmental gains. I always use the example of a philanthropist spending $500,000 a year on programs for an old-growth redwood grove. Maybe hiring a biologist, or funding lawsuits to protect from logging... Ten years later a politician might order the area logged "to protect against fires" or one Federalist Society judge might decide that resources should be used for corporate profit -- and the $5 million is WASTED (and the trees are gone.) So the Right's understanding that funding advocacy organizations is an investment pays off. So I think our work now should be to persuade funders - philanthropists, foundations, etc. - of the need to change the way moderate and progressive organizations are designed, to recognize that there is an ideological war going on, and we need to start persuading the public that progressive values -- community, democracy, sharing, nurturing, investment, responsibility and honesty -- are superior to the right-wing ideology of greed and hate. We need to start SERIOUSLY funding advocacy organizations for the LONG TERM. The Right is literally spending BILLIONS on this effort and it is time for our side to step up to the plate. Media Matters is a great start but it is one small organization. Center for American Progress is a great start, but it is one small organization. Neither is designed to reach the general public with a marketing/communications focus. We need to grow up 498 MORE organizations now, to fight back and take back our country.

--- Posted at 5/04/2004 10:13:00 AM by Dave Johnson

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Lottery Winnings

American Joblog:

"I had a daydream yesterday afternoon. It was the best... I had won the Powerball lottery, and no longer needed to work. So, I set up my own non-profit, which, if necessary, would be funded by generous grants from me. I hired at least one activist and hundreds of interns (paid or not paid, the dream didn't specify) in each state, and our goal was to walk the streets, and inform the citizens in each state about our struggle against offshoring and excessive H1-B/L-1 immigration workers. I would pay these activists a nifty little salary and have a little benefit package so that they loved their mission, and their organization. I could create some jobs for Americans, and fight those that would make Americans jobless."

Where would YOU spend YOUR lottery winnings?

--- Posted at 5/04/2004 08:05:00 AM by Dave Johnson

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Don't Take the Bait

Over at The Gadflyer, in Laying Out the Bait, Paul Waldman points out the right-wing arguing tactic of changing the subject.

--- Posted at 5/03/2004 11:30:00 AM by Dave Johnson

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Media Matters for America

Media Matters for America

--- Posted at 5/03/2004 08:15:00 AM by Dave Johnson

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Atrios and Roger Ailes Break a News Story

Atrios and Roger Ailes have broken a news story about an NPR reporter planting right-wing propaganda in her reports. In this instance the reporter pretended to be interviewing Catholics about whether they think Kerry is a good Catholic because he supports a woman's right to choose instead of outlawing abortion. The following is based on a comment I left at Ailes' site. Let me speculate a bit... Focus-group and polling research showed that stories about Kerry being a bad Catholic would move some Catholic voters over to the Bush column. (Atrios and others have pointed out how Republicans go against the Church - death penalty, war, etc. but that doesn't go out as NEWS stories!) Actually I think that story is part of a larger campaign designed to pull religious people into the conservative camp. There are many signs of an organized, planned marketing campaign here... Have you noticed a number of stories about how church-goers vote Republican while people who do not believe or do not regularly attend church are Democrats? I think this is part of the same campaign targeting religious voters and messaging them with reasons they shouldn't trust Democrats. Why are these stories in the news? The data used to support the "news" angle of the story could be presented differently, perhaps to say something like Methodists, Presbyterians, Lutherans and others are NOT voting predominantly Republican while Southern Baptists are, in large numbers. But that wouldn't have the same pro-Republican effect, would it? And why wouldn't it? Basic marketing - the assumptions of the story serve as a self-identification for the target demographic. Like the sound of a current alternative rock tune at the beginning of a Scion commercial, the target demo self-identifies and tunes in to hear the message. You and I don't tune into Archer Daniels Midland commercials, but I bet fund managers and day-traders do. And once you're tuned in, the message is if you are religious you are supposed to be voting Republican.

--- Posted at 5/02/2004 10:29:00 PM by Dave Johnson

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Accountability

There is no law. There is only "The Party" and the interests of The Party. Under Republican rule the Congress won't investigate ANY allegations of wrongdoing against ANY Republicans, the Justice Department will not, and the press will not. (But if a Democrat, like Martha Stewart...) There is no accountability, and we are witnessing (only the beginning of) the consequences of absolute power. There is no law. The Treasury has been looted. All constraints on corporations have been removed. The military is sent of on adventures to seize oil fields. What else happens where there is no accountability? When "The Party" and its cronies are allowed free reign? Only right-wing ideological operatives are sent to administer U.S. operations in Iraq, and ideologically approved (big bucks to The Party) corporations get huge-money contracts. Here are the results: The Pictures That Lost The War:

"Some accused claim they acted on the orders of military intelligence and the CIA, and that some of the torture sessions were under the control of mercenaries hired by the US to conduct interrogations. Two "civilian contract" organizations taking part in interrogations at Abu Ghraib are linked to the Bush administration. California-based Titan Corporation says it is "a leading provider of solutions and services for national security". Between 2003-04, it gave nearly $40,000 to George W Bush's Republican Party. Titan supplied translators to the military. CACI International Inc. describes its aim as helping "America's intelligence community in the war on terrorism". Richard Armitage, the current deputy US secretary of state, sat on CACI's board. No civilians, however, are facing charges as military law does not apply to them. Colonel Jill Morgenthaler, from CentCom, said that one civilian contractor was accused along with six soldiers of mistreating prisoners. However, it was left to the contractor to "deal with him". One civilian interrogator told army investigators that he had "unintentionally" broken several tables during interrogations as he was trying to "fear-up" detainees. Lawyers for some accused say their clients are scapegoats for a rogue prison system, which allowed mercenaries to give orders to serving soldiers. A military report said private contractors were at times supervising the interrogations.

Absolute corruption does not just involve stealing money. And while this story is about torture of prisoners, we're hearing stories about insulting regular civilians by writing words like "pig" and "beer" onto the bodies of people returning to Fallujah, and about killing of Iraqi civilians at checkpoints, or when returning fire. No, absolute corruption inevitably leads to things like this:

"In November, Frederick wrote, an Iraqi prisoner under the control of what the Abu Ghraib guards called “O.G.A.,” or other government agencies—that is, the C.I.A. and its paramilitary employees—was brought to his unit for questioning. “They stressed him out so bad that the man passed away. They put his body in a body bag and packed him in ice for approximately twenty-four hours in the shower. . . . The next day the medics came and put his body on a stretcher, placed a fake IV in his arm and took him away.” The dead Iraqi was never entered into the prison’s inmate-control system, Frederick recounted, “and therefore never had a number.”

And, back to the other article (While the following from the article details some British activities, the American activities are just as bad.)

"The British pictures show a hooded Iraqi aged between 18-20 on the floor of a military truck being brutalized. According to two squaddies who took part in the torture, but later blew the whistle, the Iraqi's ordeal lasted eight hours and he was left with a broken jaw and missing teeth. He was bleeding and vomited when his captors threw him out of a speeding truck. No-one knows if he lived or died. One of the British soldiers said: 'Basically this guy was dying as he couldn't take any more. An officer came down. It was 'Get rid of him - I haven't seen him'.' The other whistle-blower said he had witnessed a prisoner being beaten senseless by troops. 'You could hear your mate's boots hitting this lad's spine ... One of the lads broke his wrist off a prisoner's head. Another nearly broke his foot kicking him.' According to the British soldiers, the military police have found a video of prisoners being thrown from a bridge, and a prisoner was allegedly beaten to death in custody by men from the Queen's Lancashire Regiment."

What worries me is, at what point does "The Party" feel justified bringing this to American streets? I'm serious. After all, to these ideologues environmental groups, even teacher unions are terrorist organizations. Last night I spent time surfing the right-wing blogs and press, and what I read there was most alarming. More on that later. Watch your back.

--- Posted at 5/02/2004 10:34:00 AM by Dave Johnson

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Defeat

A year on from 'Mission Accomplished', an Army in Disgrace, a Policy in Tatters and the Real Prospect of Defeat:

"The tide is going out for the US in Iraq. They were not able to use their military strength against Fallujah and Najaf. They have very little political support outside Kurdistan. They can no longer win. It may be one of the most extraordinary defeats in history."

--- Posted at 5/02/2004 10:05:00 AM by Dave Johnson

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The Agonist: Mission Accomplished?

The Agonist: Mission Accomplished?

--- Posted at 5/01/2004 09:42:00 PM by Dave Johnson

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Fallujah



--- Posted at 5/01/2004 01:26:00 AM by richard

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