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For The Trees
Who is our economy FOR, anyway? About the Authors: Dave Johnson John Emerson Richard Reich Thomas Leavitt
Recent Posts: BEST OF STF: Dave's: Articles not at STF: The ATLA Speech on building a progressive infrastructure Lowering the Bar The Attack on Trial Lawyers and Tort Law Who's Behind the Attack on Liberal Professors On the Right and their communications infrastructure: Why Republicans Win Win or Lose The "Conventional Wisdom" Machine Some History of the Conservative Movement HOW TO FIGHT BACK An Amplifier Of Our Own Don't Blame the Democrats How They Do It 1 2 3 4 Getting Rolled Other: You're Gonna Get Drafted Scalia and Self-Government Who is Our Economy For? Voting Machine Story Link Collection What's Wrong with this Picture? (Voting Machines) Like Meat in the Supermarket Get Active Thin Line 1 2 3 Fixing Social Security Seeing the Forest I, II, III "Incredibly Positive News" The Breadth of It The Republican Crony Club Moon Bush Ralph Nader is a Scab John's Best Of: Kerry Smear Page Bandar Bush 9/11 Commission Report Damages Bush -- if you read it Florida Goon Squad Intimidated the Supreme Court The Use and Abuse of George Orwell Zizka's Archives (John's previous identity) Zizka Sampler News Sources: AlterNet BuzzFlash Common Dreams Cursor Drudge Retort Information Clearing House Smirking Chimp TruthOut What REALLY Happened Links to Other Weblogs: |
 9/30/2004 Now Things Get Dangerous Kerry did very well, and even the Republicans admit it. Bush kept repeating "mixed messages" as he was supposed to but the focus-group magic didn't seem to work so well this time. Bush is actually everything we've all been saying -- a spoiled rich-guy who has always had someone show up and bail him out, and consequently hadn't prepped for the debate -- he kept expecting $150,000,000 of "flip-flop" ads to have already eliminated this guy -- or maybe he just couldn't believe that after being hit by that kind of money Kerry even showed up. So what happens now? We can let up a bit from worrying that the election is going to just continue rolling down a path toward Bush actually winning more votes than Kerry. After this debate it does not look very good for Bush. But are the Republicans going to accept that things are turning against them in the election? Are the corporations that have been enjoying no-bid open-ended defense contracts and huge subsidies and tax breaks going to calmly start figuring out how to make an honest living? Are Tom Delay and Dennis Hastert ready to loosen their hold on the balls of the Ethics Committee and take their medicine? No, now is when they get dangerous. How many people do you think are going to jail if the Republicans lose their power over the Justice Department and the FBI and the investigative committees of the House and Senate? How many of them stand to lose their heads to raving mobs if there is ever an audit of what has been happening to the Treasury since Bush took office? Nope. Now is when they get dangerous. You think the Swift Boat Vets smears were bad? Watch your backs. --- Posted at 9/30/2004 11:37:00 PM by Dave Johnson Link to this | | | | e-mail this post  
Trippi on Kerry Joe Trippi at Hardblogger - "Why this guy waits til the last days of a campaign to show this fighting side is beyond me— but it seems to work for him and it worked for him tonight." --- Posted at 9/30/2004 09:28:00 PM by Dave Johnson Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
Complete online polls list, with URLs Pay particular attention to Florida, Ohio and other swing states. http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=132x927474 --- Posted at 9/30/2004 09:04:00 PM by Camilo Wilson Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
He is And how can this be? For he is the Kwisatz Haderack! --- Posted at 9/30/2004 08:48:00 PM by richard Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
ABC Poll ABC poll: Kerry 45% Bush 36% --- Posted at 9/30/2004 07:57:00 PM by Dave Johnson Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
Scorpion Remember the story about the frog and the scorpion? Bush smirked -- he can't help it, it's what he does. --- Posted at 9/30/2004 07:49:00 PM by Dave Johnson Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
Mixed Messages As I click through channels, most of the Republican commentators are repeating "mixed messages" undermine our safety. So that's the prepared message of the debate. It's clearly a POWERFUL focus-group message. And they know it. It is repeated over and over, especially by Bush, so it might be the only thing people remember tomorrow. --- Posted at 9/30/2004 07:41:00 PM by Dave Johnson Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
Online Polls Go vote in online polls: ABC News: http://www.abcnews.com/ CBS News: http://www.cbsnews.com/ CNN: http://www.cnn.com/ Fox News: http://www.foxnews.com/ MSNBC: http://www.msnbc.com/ USA Today: http://www.usatoday.com/ --- Posted at 9/30/2004 07:33:00 PM by Dave Johnson Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
Bush Just Over His Head Bush is just a guy in waaayy over his head. It's obvious. --- Posted at 9/30/2004 07:08:00 PM by Dave Johnson Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
ON HIS WATCH! Kerry said it! Kerry said that North Korea got nukes ON HIS WATCH! --- Posted at 9/30/2004 07:05:00 PM by Dave Johnson Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
Kerry Stomping Bush I never thought I'd be saying this, and there is still a half hour left, but it appears that Kerry is just fucking stomping Bush. Maybe the rest of the country will be under the focus-group-tested spell, but I think Kerry is just stomping him. --- Posted at 9/30/2004 06:56:00 PM by Dave Johnson Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
Iraq Attacked Us? Bush just said that Iraq attacked us, and that is why he sent troops there? --- Posted at 9/30/2004 06:54:00 PM by Dave Johnson Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
Two Faced Bush says "you gotta have a president who'll pursue the terrorists" But he also said, "I don't know where bin Laden is. I have no idea and really don't care. It's not that important. It's not our priority." and, responding to a question about bin Laden's whereabouts "I am truly not that concerned about him."  --- Posted at 9/30/2004 06:40:00 PM by Dave Johnson Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
Bush On Defensive Bush is totally on the defensive, and he seems to only have one talking point that he repeats over and over: "What kind of message does criticism of the President send to our troops?" And "Sending mixed signals." Yes, it's a great, tested, focus-group line, but repeating it over and over to EVERY question? Update He has repeated that SEVERAL times now. He just said that Kerry driticizing the Prime Minister of Iraq undermines the war effort. It must have tested very powerfully in the focus groups! --- Posted at 9/30/2004 06:32:00 PM by Dave Johnson Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
Earpiece? In the iddle of an answer, Bush was getting heated up, starting to shout. Suddeny he stumbled, looked down like he was listening to something, and completely changed the pace, smiled a little... I think he has an earpiece! Someone told him to calm down! Update After Kerry answered the last question, the camera was showing both of them. As soon as Kerry finished and before it was Bush's time Bush cocked his head to listen to something, then gave an answer. Update - Remember, Bush DOESN'T KNOW that he's on camera! It's against the rules, but the networks are doing it anyway. --- Posted at 9/30/2004 06:16:00 PM by Dave Johnson Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
Another Lie "Saddam had no intention of disarming." Disarming WHAT? --- Posted at 9/30/2004 06:14:00 PM by Dave Johnson Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
First Lie Bush lasted less than a minute. He said ten million Afghans are registered to vote. From June: Karzai Reports 3.8 Million Afghans Now Registered to Vote. (Karzai is President of Afghanistan.) --- Posted at 9/30/2004 06:11:00 PM by Dave Johnson Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
Did Bush Whiten His Teeth? Take a look when it starts. Word is that Bush whitened his teeth! --- Posted at 9/30/2004 05:54:00 PM by Dave Johnson Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
Help Me Make Truth and Facts Matter I want to make truth and facts matter. During and after the debate tonite please post comments here with details of Bush's misrepresentation or distortions of facts, outright lies, and other twisting of the truth. We know he is going to do this, it's what he does. I want to collect these and then get people to start contacting the media, local and national, to try to get them to report on this. Seeing the Forest is not one of the hugely trafficked sites, but there are enough people reading here to swamp phones and e-mail, and this DOES make a difference. If Bush lies or distorts I want us to pin it down, and drive it home. Help me. --- Posted at 9/30/2004 05:52:00 PM by Dave Johnson Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
Republican Intelligence Bill Allows Torture Surprised? Why? Go read at The Sideshow. --- Posted at 9/30/2004 05:23:00 PM by Dave Johnson Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
Rox Populi's Own Best Political Bloggers Contest Rox Populi : I Call Bullshit and Offer My Own Best Political Bloggers Contest. Go see what Seeing the Forest is nominated for, and add your own categories and nominations in the comments.  --- Posted at 9/30/2004 04:39:00 PM by Dave Johnson Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
Jobless Claims Up In case you missed this today: U.S. weekly jobless claims rise: "The number of Americans seeking first-time jobless benefits jumped unexpectedly last week as the impact of recent hurricanes battering the Southern United States continued to be felt. For the week, first-time claims rose to 369,000 for the week ended Sept. 25, from 351,000 the week before."Not good at all. We're a big country -- lots of people lose jobs and find jobs each week. Brad DeLong has said that approx. 350,000 is a break-even level for our economy -- anything higher than 350,000 means the overall economy is losing jobs. They say this is beause of the weather in Florida, and it may be. But that's still a lot more people who have lost jobs than are finding them. --- Posted at 9/30/2004 03:30:00 PM by Dave Johnson Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
After The Debate Tonite Some post-debate ideas from an e-mail I received: National and local news organizations will be conducting online polls during and after the debate asking for readers' opinions. Look for online polls at these national news websites, and make sure to vote in every one of them: ABC News: http://www.abcnews.com/ CBS News: http://www.cbsnews.com/ CNN: http://www.cnn.com/ Fox News: http://www.foxnews.com/ MSNBC: http://www.msnbc.com/ USA Today: http://www.usatoday.com/ And be sure to check the websites of your local newspapers and TV stations for online polls. It is crucial that you do this in the minutes immediately following the debate. --- Posted at 9/30/2004 01:41:00 PM by Dave Johnson Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
Blatant Tax dollars blatantly spent to propagandize Americans and influence the election: U.S. Effort Aims to Improve Opinions About Iraq Conflict (washingtonpost.com): "The Bush administration, battling negative perceptions of the Iraq war, is sending Iraqi Americans to deliver what the Pentagon calls 'good news' about Iraq to U.S. military bases, and has curtailed distribution of reports showing increasing violence in that country. The unusual public-relations effort by the Pentagon and the U.S. Agency for International Development comes as details have emerged showing the U.S. government and a representative of President Bush's reelection campaign had been heavily involved in drafting the speech given to Congress last week by interim Iraqi Prime Minister Ayad Allawi. Combined, they indicate that the federal government is working assiduously to improve Americans' opinions about the Iraq conflict -- a key element of Bush's reelection message." [all emphasis added]This is the kind of thing people go to jail for in free countries, unlike here. Bush brings us closer to the old Soviet model every day, with The State promoting The Party and The Party making all decisions. --- Posted at 9/30/2004 10:52:00 AM by Dave Johnson Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
9/29/2004 Sedition Act Coming See this story, Bush camp rips Kerry rhetoric: "President Bush's campaign manager yesterday accused Sen. John Kerry's campaign of parroting the rhetoric of terrorists, signaling a new level of aggressiveness in advance of tomorrow's presidential debate. 'The enemy listens,' Bush campaign manager Ken Mehlman told reporters on a conference call. 'All listen to what the president said, and all listen to what Senator Kerry said.' "Criticizing the President in wartime... 'FIRE BAD!' My prediction: After the election - if Bush is the one in office (notice how I never say "elected" or "wins." We have learned that there are other ways to take office...) - the Congress will pass a partner to the Patriot Act. It will be a Sedition Act, making it illegal to criticize the govenment, especially the President, in time of war. --- Posted at 9/29/2004 10:59:00 AM by Dave Johnson Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
Boobs Confined Space says CBS is learning the lesson: "Don't try exposing boobs on television." --- Posted at 9/29/2004 09:43:00 AM by Dave Johnson Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
A thought experiment ... A Thought Experiment, over at Media Matters for America: "A thought experiment Substitute the name 'President George W. Bush' wherever Senator John Kerry's name appears in this Amazon.com interview with Ann Coulter and ask yourself if the FBI wouldn't be knocking on her door right about now." --- Posted at 9/29/2004 07:33:00 AM by Dave Johnson Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
9/28/2004 Because We Want To skippy the bush kangaroo writes, "we blog because we want to. when we stop wanting to, that's when it's time to quit." And I use capital letters because I want to. --- Posted at 9/28/2004 04:39:00 PM by Dave Johnson Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
The Draft -- Will They Do That? The Draft. Will they do that? (Video clip) Will they do that? --- Posted at 9/28/2004 04:32:00 PM by Dave Johnson Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
Welcome New on the blogroll, Tough Luck Charlie, Debunking The Myth of the Frivolous Lawsuit. --- Posted at 9/28/2004 03:30:00 PM by Dave Johnson Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
Is E.J. Dionne Becomming a Blogger? In How to Win the Heartland, E.J. Dionne says what us bloggers have been all about ever since 9/11 happened: "The reluctance to explore what Bush knew before Sept. 11 and what he did about it stands as one of the great mysteries of American journalism."Yes, it does. Perhaps THE great mystery of American journalism - what's left of it, anyway. --- Posted at 9/28/2004 11:39:00 AM by Dave Johnson Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
What Kerry Actually Said -- Entirely Consistent To people who accuse Kerry of "flip-flopping": If you want to be an honest person you owe it to yourself to actually read and understand Kerry's position before you accuse him of things like changing positions. Fair enough? I encourage anyone who really wants to know what Kerry's position on the war was to read the statement he made to the Senate when he voted to allow the use of force. He says his vote was based on President Bush's promises to get sufficient UN authorization (Bush didn't) if he was going to use force, and only to use that force as a last resort if Iraq did not let weapons inspectors in. (Bush didn't.) Excerpts from John Kerry's Statement on Iraq Before the War: First, he had been told by the Administration that there were WMD. (Remember, the Administration was NOT sharing intelligence reports that contradicted this case for war.): "... Why is Saddam Hussein pursuing weapons that most nations have agreed to limit or give up? ... Why is Saddam Hussein attempting to develop nuclear weapons when most nations don't even try, and responsible nations that have them attempt to limit their potential for disaster? ... Why does he develop missiles that exceed allowable limits? ... Why is he seeking to develop unmanned airborne vehicles for delivery of biological agents? [. . .] Although Iraq's chemical weapons capability was reduced during the UNSCOM inspections, Iraq has maintained its chemical weapons effort over the last 4 years. Evidence suggests that it has begun renewed production of chemical warfare agents, probably including mustard gas, sarin, cyclosarin, and VX. Intelligence reports show that Iraq has invested more heavily in its biological weapons programs over the 4 years, with the result that all key aspects of this program--R&D, production and weaponization--are active. Most elements of the program are larger and more advanced than they were before the gulf war. Iraq has some lethal and incapacitating agents and is capable of quickly producing and weaponizing a variety of such agents, including anthrax, for delivery on a range of vehicles such as bombs, missiles, aerial sprayers, and covert operatives which could bring them to the United States homeland."ALL of these "intelligence reports" given to the Senate by the Bush administration turned out to be untrue, largely based on reports supplied by Chalabi plants -- and the Bush administration KNEW IT. Eventually he starts to get around to his reasons for voting for the resolution, ... I traveled to New York a week ago. I met with members of the Security Council and came away with a conviction that they will indeed move to enforce, that they understand the need to enforce, if Saddam Hussein does not fulfill his obligation to disarm." And I believe they made it clear that if the United States operates through the U.N., and through the Security Council, they--all of them--will also bear responsibility for the aftermath of rebuilding Iraq and for the joint efforts to do what we need to do as a consequence of that enforcement. [. . .] If the President arbitrarily walks away from this course of action--without good cause or reason--the legitimacy of any subsequent action by the United States against Iraq will be challenged by the American people and the international community. And I would vigorously oppose the President doing so. [. . .] I will vote yes because I believe it is the best way to hold Saddam Hussein accountable. And the administration, I believe, is now committed to a recognition that war must be the last option to address this threat, not the first, and that we must act in concert with allies around the globe to make the world's case against Saddam Hussein. As the President made clear earlier this week, "Approving this resolution does not mean that military action is imminent or unavoidable." It means "America speaks with one voice." Let me be clear, the vote I will give to the President is for one reason and one reason only: To disarm Iraq of weapons of mass destruction, if we cannot accomplish that objective through new, tough weapons inspections in joint concert with our allies. In giving the President this authority, I expect him to fulfill the commitments he has made to the American people in recent days--to work with the United Nations Security Council to adopt a new resolution setting out tough and immediate inspection requirements, and to act with our allies at our side if we have to disarm Saddam Hussein by force. If he fails to do so, I will be among the first to speak out. If we do wind up going to war with Iraq, it is imperative that we do so with others in the international community, unless there is a showing of a grave, imminent--and I emphasize "imminent"--threat to this country which requires the President to respond in a way that protects our immediate national security needs. [. . .] I will support a multilateral effort to disarm him by force, if we ever exhaust those other options, as the President has promised, but I will not support a unilateral U.S. war against Iraq unless that threat is imminent and the multilateral effort has not proven possible under any circumstances. [. . .] The administration must continue its efforts to build support at the United Nations for a new, unfettered, unconditional weapons inspection regime. If we can eliminate the threat posed by Iraq's weapons of mass destruction through inspections, whenever, wherever, and however we want them, including in palaces--and I am highly skeptical, given the full record, given their past practices, that we can necessarily achieve that--then we have an obligation to try that as the first course of action before we expend American lives in any further effort.It's all there. It is exactly what he is saying now. He was voting for this in order to force Iraq to let weapons inspectors back in, which Iraq did. Kerry goes on to predict what will happen if we do not build a solid international coalition in conjunction with the UN, and the prediction is what is now occurring. It's long, really long, and it goes on (and on and on and on) from where I left off, but I encourage you to read it so that you will understand what Kerry said he was voting for, what the President had promised the Congress and the UN, and how the President broke the promise. The President asked Kerry for his support, appealing to his patriotism. It was a trick and a betrayal, and Bush is now twisting what Kerry did to make him appear unpatriotic! It is Bush who has flip-flopped all over the place. But worse, Bush conducted a bait-and-switch operation on us, and launched aggressive war, and is using every dirty trick lie in the book, accusing everyone else of what he himself has done, calling people unpatriotic, even treasonous, BECAUSE they supported him when he asked, in the name of the country. --- Posted at 9/28/2004 09:33:00 AM by Dave Johnson Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
The Left Coaster Catches Gallup At It Again! The Left Coaster: Gallup Is At It Again - Yesterday's National Poll Had 12% GOP Bias: After supplying CNN and USA Today with a poll two weeks ago that showed a double-digit Bush lead amongst likely voters that turned out to have a significant bias in its sample favoring the GOP, Gallup did it again yesterday. Except that yesterday, they not only did it again, they apparently felt that a 7% GOP bias wasn't good enough. So they perpetrated the same fraud upon the media (including their partners CNN and USAT) and voters and this time used a 12% GOP bias in their likely voter screen. I kid you not.This raises two questions in my mind:
"By presenting these polls with this kind of bias, and then ensuring through CNN and USA Today the farthest possible media saturation, why is Gallup not guilty of engaging in a political disinformation campaign?"Indeed. Combine this with stories like the Ohio Repubicans refusing to allow new voter registrations because the paper is not heavy enough - and other irregularities there (another here), pluss all the news coming out of Florida, and it can start to look like this will not be a legitimate election. Surprise. Watch your backs! --- Posted at 9/28/2004 08:22:00 AM by Dave Johnson Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
An Excellent Point Stirling makes an excellent point over at The Blogging of the President: 2004: "As the facts later showed, there were half a dozen scams to shave off votes from Gore - no one of which was enough to scew the election by itself, but taken together they were. The media put their thumb on the scales in favor of tax breaks and consolidation, we therefore got Bush. The political system fell into line, we therefore got a strong unilateral control of power. The legitimacy doves said 'tie election! tie election!'. But in a tie election one would get a government of national unity, a group that governed from the center by consensus. The other theory - the unspeakable one that the election had been stolen - predicted a government from the extreme. Which theory has turned out to be more predictive of Bush and his government? The tie election theory, or the election theft theory?"An excellent point. If it were a CLOSE election, we would have gotten a government of unity, governing from the center. But no, we got a far-right extremist government, governing by decree, excluding the Democrats from participating in legislation, using government agencies to consolidate their power, and launching attacks on the opposition. --- Posted at 9/28/2004 07:23:00 AM by Dave Johnson Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
Repetition Repetition works. Remember that. Repetition works. Poll Shows Bush With Solid Lead: "Bush's relentless attacks on Kerry have badly damaged the Democratic nominee, the survey and interviews showed. Voters routinely describe Kerry as wishy-washy, as a flip-flopper and as a candidate they are not sure they can trust, almost as if they are reading from Bush campaign ad scripts. [emphasis added]"Have I mentioned that repetition works? Someone ought to mention this to the Democratic leadership. They seem to like to pursue a strong theme for about a week, and once it starts looking good they think it worked, and move on. Bush has been on ONE theme since the start of the campaign about six years ago, and repeating that. He does that because repetition works. --- Posted at 9/28/2004 07:06:00 AM by Dave Johnson Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
9/27/2004 Asking Again - Why Did Bush Stop Flying? I'm asking the question again. Why did Bush stop flying? The other day I wrote, Do any of you fly, or know any pilots? Ask ANY pilot if they can understand why a young man would stop flying fighter jets if they didn't absolutely have to. And not only that, why would someone refuse to take a flight physical and stop reporting for Guard drills? MOST of us would face serious consequences for such behaviour. (Of course, most of us would face serious consequences for selling shares of a company when we knew they are about to report a loss. Or for running up a massive deficit. Or for launching a war against a country that did us no harm and was no threat to us, when we were already in the middle of another war.)Keep asking the question: WHY DID BUSH STOP FLYING? --- Posted at 9/27/2004 10:09:00 PM by Dave Johnson Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
Digby! Digby! Digby! Please, please read this piece by Digby at Hullabaloo. I just want to repeat this because it is just so right, and should be echoed around the blogosphere": It is what led me to the point at which I am able to say without any sense of restraint or caution that I would put NOTHING past them --- even a staged terrorist attack. This is because every time I think they have some limits, they prove me wrong. As the old saying goes, fool me once shame on you, fool me twice...won't get fooled again.... Gore and his team knew that the Republicans would fight with everything they had, but they still maintained some faith in the legal system to require basic fairness in something this important. And, even the most cynical of us thought that the egos of the Supreme Court justices would never allow them to make a purely partisan decision because history would remember them as whores. If I had any political idealism left it died on the day that Antonin Scalia stopped judges from counting votes in Florida."THIS is what we have all been trying to say to the Democratic Party for more than three years now. This is NOT your father's Republican Party. They are NOT fooling around! This is NOT about America for the people who have seized control of the old, honorable Republican Party, or about the public good. No, it is about getting and keeping power and using that power to further a weird, cultish, ideological/theocratic agenda and they have been working toward this end for decades. This is the old John Birch Society crowd, and their current agenda reflects that right down the line. Read Digby's piece and the pieces it points to -- and WATCH YOUR BACKS! Update If you're STILL not mad enough, or don't believe that the Republicans are capable of ANYthing, then go read this. --- Posted at 9/27/2004 09:49:00 PM by Dave Johnson Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
Animation The Dancing Ass --- Posted at 9/27/2004 06:31:00 PM by Dave Johnson Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
Wow! Billionaires For Bush Video This is a must-see: Billionaires For Bush video. (Thru Atrios) --- Posted at 9/27/2004 06:25:00 PM by Dave Johnson Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
Cracking the Code Figuring out what the Republicans are up to is only partly a matter of understanding frames and framing. Sometimes those frames are also codes, a secret, insider language, to which those of us who are not evangelical Christians or otherwise up-to-date on neocon lingo haven't even got a clue. I'll give just one example, but it's a good one. It was recently reported that the RNC had sent out mailings to two states, Arkansas and West Virginia, on September 24 stating that liberals are going to take away their Bibles. I think that neither the press nor the Democratic party had the slightest idea what was really going on or what this means. It was understood as just another dastardly Republican scare tactic. Edwards responded by saying that this was outrageous and Bush should insist that they never do anything like that again. Ha! Rove must have been laughing up his sleeve, it was so obvious that only the insiders, those with secret knowledge, understood what was being said. The public response, in fact, helped to reinforce and spread the desired message. To most of us it would mean that the RNC is saying that secular liberalism will ban reading the Bible. I don't think that's how they meant their audience to understand it. A Google search on "liberals Bibles" brought up 59,100 hits. The battle about "liberals" and "Bibles" has been going on for many years. This battle is terribly important to those involved with it, and the rest of us not only know nothing about it but could care less. Looking into this immediately takes one into an arcane never-never land where only the initiated dare to go. I haven't been to West Virginia for years, but I've recently been to Arkansas. I dearly love Arkansas, so what I'm about to say is an explanation, not a criticism. In Arkansas towns, there seems to be a little church on almost every corner. Vastly more churches than, for example, grocery stores. The mainstream churches are represented, often have large impressive buildings just like everywhere else, but what's happened is that the denominations have split and split again into countless little, separate denominations, each accusing all the others of heresy. Heresy is a very important concept, and accusing each other of heresy is pretty much the local game, like bridge or baseball in other parts of the country. Arkansas is a poor state, and people have to have something to do on those long summer evenings. So what's a heresy? Mostly anything "liberal." "Liberal" does not mean what we think it means. Ultimately, "liberal" means anything that in any way could be traced to the Enlightenment. in other words, although this is never spoken, all the principles on which the Constitution is based, the ideal of society as a contract between reasonable people, everything we think of as the basis for modern civilization. The mainstream churches are understood as having been corrupted by the Enlightenment and to have fallen into "liberalism." The Episcopalians, of course, since they now have a gay Bishop, are the Devil's spawn. But so are the Unitarians, the Presbyterians, and even most of the Baptists. And they mean that literally. The word Bible is also a coded word. Their Bible, as they interpret it, in no way resembles the Bible most of us recognize. Each word has its own secret, arcane meaning and one has to find out what that meaning really is -- while, at the same time, taking the Bible absolutely literally. No allegorical or literary interpretations allowed. The Biblical controversies have also been raging on for years. How literally should one take it? Which version should one take literally? There are those who equate the King James version with the Antichrist, and those who would kill to preserve every sacred word of it. However, it doesn't really matter what the Bible literally SAYS. What matters is what the Bible is interpreted to MEAN. And each little denomination, each little congregation, has its own interpretation, with everyone else's version considered to be heresy. But the really BIG, dangerous, awful heresies are the interpretations of the Bible one learns in those literally damned, take that seriously because they mean it, mainstream churches like the Presbyterians and the Baptists (but not all of the Baptists.) That's the point on which all these little denominations can unite -- against the really BIG "liberal" Enlightenment inspired heresy. So -- one would have to somehow know that what the RNC mailing is really saying is something like if the Democrats win those heretics in the mainstream churches and their Biblical interpretations will be more important for setting public policy than yours. It will no longer matter how you interpret the Bible. They're not really saying that anyone is going to ban the Bible, but that they're going to ban their interpretations of it, and maybe the particular translation they've accepted as the Word of God. This could be why the moderate Republicans have become so unwelcome in the party. So many of them tend to be Episcopalians, Methodists, Presbyterians, Unitarians, the Devil's spawn (they're actually occasionally called that) liberals corrupted by the Enlightenment, for God's sake! Well, I said this was arcane. Somebody in the Democratic party should be paying attention to identifying these insider coded words and what they mean. There are millions of people who know all too well what they mean, relish the fact that the rest of us don't know, since we're going to Hell because we don't know, and they will vote for Bush on that basis. Because Bush knows. --- Posted at 9/27/2004 04:08:00 PM by Meryl Johnson Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
Daily Two-Faced Liar Report A surprising story from Reuters! A press organization is actually investigating whether Bush's statements are true!! Key Bush Assertions About Iraq in Dispute: "Many of President Bush's assertions about progress in Iraq -- from police training and reconstruction to preparations for January elections -- are in dispute, according to internal Pentagon documents, lawmakers and key congressional aides on Sunday. Bush used the visit last week by interim Iraqi Prime Minister Iyad Allawi to make the case that 'steady progress' is being made in Iraq to counter warnings by his Democratic presidential rival, Sen. John Kerry, that the situation in reality is deteriorating. Bush touted preparations for national elections in January, saying Iraq's electoral commission is up and running and told Americans on Saturday that 'United Nations electoral advisers are on the ground in Iraq.' He said nearly 100,000 'fully trained and equipped' Iraqi soldiers, police officers and other security personnel are already at work, and that would rise to 125,000 by the end of this year. And he promised more than $9 billion will be spent on reconstruction contracts in Iraq over the next several months. But many of these assertions have met with skepticism from key lawmakers, congressional aides and experts, and Pentagon documents, given to lawmakers and obtained by Reuters, paint a more complicated picture. TROOP, POLICE TRAINING The documents show that of the nearly 90,000 currently in the police force, only 8,169 have had the full eight-week academy training. Another 46,176 are listed as "untrained," and it will be July 2006 before the administration reaches its new goal of a 135,000-strong, fully trained police force. Six Army battalions have had "initial training," while 57 National Guard battalions, 896 soldiers in each, are still being recruited or "awaiting equipment." Just eight Guard battalions have reached "initial (operating) capability," and the Pentagon acknowledged the Guard's performance has been "uneven." Training has yet to begin for the 4,800-man civil intervention force, which will help counter a deadly insurgency. And none of the 18,000 border enforcement guards have received any centralized training to date, despite earlier claims they had, according to Democrats on the U.S. House of Representatives Appropriations Committee. They estimated that 22,700 Iraqi personnel have received enough basic training to make them "minimally effective at their tasks," in contrast to the 100,000 figure cited by Bush. "Let me tell you exactly what the story is. They're saying they're trying to train them, yet they have not trained," Sen. Joseph Biden (news, bio, voting record), the ranking Democrat on the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said on CNN. The White House defended its figures, and a senior administration official defined "fully trained" as having gone through "initial basic operations training." Gen. John Abizaid, head of U.S. Central Command that covers Iraq, told NBC's "Meet the Press" that the number of trained Iraqi forces "will continue to grow." [. . .] ELECTIONS, RECONSTRUCTION DISPUTED The status of election planning in Iraq is also in question. Of the $232 million in Iraqi funds set aside for the Iraqi electoral commission, it has received a mere $7 million, according to House Appropriations Committee staff. While Bush said the commission has already hired personnel and begun setting election procedures, congressional aides said preparations in other areas were behind schedule. According to a one-page election planning "time line," registration materials are supposed to be distributed in early October and initial voter lists to go out by the end of October, which is during the holy month of Ramadan. So far, the United Nations has been reluctant to send staff back into the battle zone. It only has 30 to 35 people now in Baghdad, no more than eight working on the elections. "The framework for it (free and fair elections) hasn't even been set up. The voter registration lists aren't set. There have to be hundreds of polling places, hundreds of trained monitors and poll watchers. None of that has happened," Madeleine Albright (news - web sites), former Secretary of State for President Bill Clinton (news - web sites), a Democrat, told ABC's "This Week." With the violence expected to intensify in the run-up to the elections, congressional experts were also skeptical $9 billion could be spent on reconstruction projects within several months, as Bush asserted. A top Republican aide briefed by the administration said, "at best," the $9 billion would be disbursed by late 2005 or early 2006. A top Democratic aide called Bush's projections "laughable." [All emphasis added]I reprinted so much of this article because there is just so much in it that is astonishing. One article prints a little bit of the truth about what is going on, and it is just too much to take! It is so different from the news the public has been receiving. One question is, does Bush even have any idea what is oging on in Iraq, or even care? Another is, will it matter to the public, even if they DO find out this information? Of course, the Republican line on this is that the "liberal media" lies and should not be listened to. --- Posted at 9/27/2004 02:37:00 PM by Dave Johnson Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
Oregon, sane Republicans http://www.oregonlive.com/commentary/oregonian/index.ssf?/base/editorial/109594063089030.xml http://www.oregonlive.com/public_commentary/oregonian/index.ssf?/base/editorial/109611397171980.xml http://www.oregonlive.com/search/index.ssf?/base/news/1096286180262511.xml?oregonian?lcg http://www.oregonlive.com/search/index.ssf?/base/news/1096027307176160.xml?oregonian?lcwa http://www.concordmonitor.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20040930/REPOSITORY/409300379/1037/NEWS04 --- Posted at 9/27/2004 07:08:00 AM by John Emerson Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
9/26/2004 TalkLeft Suggests Draft Likely TalkLeft: Newsweek: Are Iran and Syria Next: Apparently, Bush's advisors agree that a preemptive attack is not on the horizon because we've expended our military wad in Iraq. Doesn't that just make a draft more likely? Not to Bush advisors, who say "covert action of some kind is the favored route for Washington hard-liners who want regime change in Damascus and Tehran." One thing is pretty clear. With Bush, there's no end in sight to war and destruction. If it's not Iraq, it will be somewhere else. As he lies, our soldiers die. Boot Bush.Shrill. --- Posted at 9/26/2004 08:47:00 PM by Dave Johnson Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
Too Insider I started this in the morning but was out all day... a comment on bloggers becomming too "insider" for new readers to understand. At Eschaton this morning, Atrios has this: "Balance Sunday's Meet the Press "roundtable:That's the whole post. This is terribly blogger-centric and insider. I would bet that only a small fraction of his readers understand what he was trying to say. Compare this to Josh at Talking Points Memo writing about the same show:David Broder, Doris Kearns Goodwin, Robert Novak and William Safire...All anyone ever needs to know about David Broder is that he actually said this:He came in here and he trashed the place, and it's not his place. "Of the four panelists, one is the profoundly middle-of-the-road David Broder, a paragon of Washington's establishment assumptions. For the sake of discussion, let's call him balanced or neutral. Two of the other four are Bill Safire and Bob Novak, two of the most prominent and conservative columnists in the country. Finally, you have Doris Kearns Goodwin. In her personal views, it's probably fair to call her a liberal. But, as you might say, she doesn't play one on TV. She goes in for high-minded commentary, which is fine in itself but makes her little balance for Safire and Novak. There's your balance. Two against one -- and the one has one arm tied, voluntarily, behind her back."Atrios, you have new readers at your blog -- especially today! They aren't "in the know" but they are interested and want to explore this online phenomenon. Bring them in, don't scare them away. --- Posted at 9/26/2004 08:51:00 AM by Dave Johnson Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
9/25/2004 Framing MyDD :: Losing the Election One GOP Frame at a Time: "The term 'War on Terror' is a GOP frame invented by Bush's communications team in the rhetorical aftermath of 9/11. People who buy into that frame overwhelmingly support Bush." --- Posted at 9/25/2004 11:08:00 PM by Dave Johnson Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
"Working the Ref" In sports, "working the ref" means blasting every decision the referee makes that goes against your side, with the hope that it will cause the ref to think he/she needs to "look impartial" and therefore give you a break you don't deserve. The Republican "liberal media" propaganda blitz is a similar strategy. By blasting everything the mainstream does as "liberal" the hope is twofold: First, that the public will not believe reports that are unfavorable to the Right, and second that the media, because they do not want to look "liberal," will "self-censor" and give the right an undeserved break. Well, this tactic is paying off in spades. CBS has decided not to tell the public some things it has uncovered about the Bush drive to war: The Fallout: '60 Minutes' Delays Report Questioning Reasons for Iraq War According to the Newsweek report, the "60 Minutes" segment was to have detailed how the administration relied on false documents when it said Iraq had tried to buy a lightly processed form of uranium, known as yellowcake, from Niger. The administration later acknowledged that the information was incorrect and that the documents were most likely fake. --- Posted at 9/25/2004 04:57:00 PM by Dave Johnson Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
9/24/2004 They Don't? The Gweilo Diaries: Say it ain't so. Not that I would ever have any reason to try them. --- Posted at 9/24/2004 10:19:00 PM by Dave Johnson Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
Thank you Harpers! Naomi Klein's "Year Zero" article is online. --- Posted at 9/24/2004 10:15:00 PM by richard Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
Milion Old-Man March Read about it at skippy the bush kangaroo. --- Posted at 9/24/2004 10:15:00 PM by Dave Johnson Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
Working America You've all joined Working America, right? --- Posted at 9/24/2004 07:51:00 PM by Dave Johnson Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
Bloggered Again Bloggered again. Can you even see this? Google has put a new verb in the dictionary: to Blogger. --- Posted at 9/24/2004 07:20:00 PM by Dave Johnson Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
Busted Here. --- Posted at 9/24/2004 07:17:00 PM by Dave Johnson Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
Coffee and Wireless I'm posting this while parked outside of a Starbucks, that is near a Pete's. I'm drinking a Peet's and using Starbuck's wireless. Starbucks has wireless, but Peet's has real coffee. (Spelling fixed) --- Posted at 9/24/2004 03:02:00 PM by Dave Johnson Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
The Good Germans For months now Brad DeLong has been asking for the adult Republicans to stand up and be counted. Every once in a while little teasers make you think that it might actually happen. For example, just recently four Republican Senators stiffly criticized Bush's Iraq policy. A Wall Street Journal columnist described the Bush Administration as "hapless and incompetent." And when you think about it, there really are no reasons why a conservative should vote for Bush: his fiscal policies are the worst ever, his handling of the Iraq War has been a disaster from the beginning -- and there's a lot more. Nonetheless, all the above are still supporting Bush. With the exception of Lincoln Chaffee, no important Republican has distanced himself from Bush, and not a single one supports Kerry. A number of conservatives and moderates from the military, the State Department, and the intelligence and security services are supporting Kerry or have repudiated Bush, but almost no politicians have, nor have any of the conservatives in the punditocracy. This is appalling. Apparently the "grownup conservatives" and "moderate Republicans" value their party above their own integrity or the fate of the nation. They might criticize their miserable failure of a President, but they will not oppose him politically. Some even say that the Iraq War "should not be politicized", but that's actually what elections are for: getting the bad leaders out of office. (And of course, the ones who are being "political" here are the Republicans who support Bush even though they understand how wretched his performance has been.) Why is this happening? My guess is that it's because of fear. Karl Rove is known to be ruthless in punishing anyone who steps out of line, and my guess is that Senator Jeffords has been given good reason to regret going independent. Any Republican who deserts Bush can kiss his career ambitions goodbye. Rove and Bush have put together a political campaign which is directed entirely at the lowest common denominator. Almost none of the Republican talking points (which are almost entirely attacks on Kerry) can be taken seriously: flip-flop, raising taxes, not supporting the troops, fake Purple Heart, fake Silver Start, elitist windsurfer, ketchup, WMD, al-Qaeda in Iraq, democracy in Iraq, and so on. (And this is to say nothing of the extraordinary viciousness of some of the high-level attacks on the al-Qaeda-loving, Saddam-loving Democrats.) But it's quite possible that Bush will be able to win on these issues, without any help from the "Republican moderates and intelligent conservatives." In that case, Bush will owe them nothing, and they will be irrelevant forever. We will have a President who owes nothing to anyone who knows anything at all about the world -- and God help anyone who stands in his way. A lot depends on which way the adult Republicans swing, but they're even more gutless than Democrats. We shouldn't hope for much. --- Posted at 9/24/2004 02:00:00 PM by John Emerson Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
"Support our troops" Here's a heart-warming story that doesn't warm my heart at all: "On Monday, it was Oprah Winfrey, who came to congratulate the soldiers’ wives expecting babies between September and December — all 640 of them. Each became pregnant after their husband returned from Iraq. “This is incredible. This is the biggest blessing. It’s unbelievable,” said Holly Munster, a military spouse."I happen to know a pregnant Guardswoman who has been told that she will be sent to Iraq two months after the baby is born. The GI Rights hotline tells me that she has virtually no options. The military is hard up for warm bodies, and they're grabbing everyone they can find and taking a very hard line on all petitions for exemption. She finished her two years of active service three or four years ago, but still has two or three years of obligation in the "Individual Ready Reserve". GI's are led to believe that the IRR is never called up except in case of national emergency, but Rumsfeld's lean and mean new model Army, combined with the Bush administration's disastrous mishandling of the Iraq War, means that the National Guard and the reserves are being drawn on the way they never have been before. (Ex-Guardsman Bush likes to hide behind this fact: unlike today, however, the Vietnam era Guard really was a way of staying out of combat). "Support our troops" is an age-old lie. Being lied to, ordered around, and sent to die or to be mutilated is what troops are for. They support us, and the best way for us to support them is to bring them back home. Unless something changes, the young Guardswoman I know is going to have her life made a living hell. --- Posted at 9/24/2004 01:45:00 PM by John Emerson Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
Why Did Bush Stop Flying? "'He just couldn't cut it,' says Linke. 'I was let to believe he was kind of a coward.' ": --- Posted at 9/24/2004 01:43:00 PM by Dave Johnson Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
Kerry Staff Read This The Candidates, Seen From the Classroom, on the communications skill of the candidates. --- Posted at 9/24/2004 12:08:00 PM by Dave Johnson Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
WBLOG Radio - The Lost Episode Waaayyy back during the Republican convention I did a radio show with the DCCC. Well, they finally got it posted: The Stakeholder :: WBLOG Radio - The Lost Episode --- Posted at 9/24/2004 11:02:00 AM by Dave Johnson Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
Outsourcing Kiss Your New Job Goodbye got me thinking. Maybe an economist can answer this question: When we read about the number of jobs being "outsourced" does this count only existing jobs lost and sent out of the country? Or does it also count the number of new jobs that would have been created here but are not? --- Posted at 9/24/2004 10:17:00 AM by Dave Johnson Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
Back in 2003, Closing In on Bush and Harken... For a post below I dug up a post from April, 2003. It got me thinking. The press was closing in on the corporate corruption of Bush and Cheney, and their involvement with Harken Oil and Haliburton corruption. But then there was a war, and a series of major terrorist alerts and the story was dropped. Let's see if we can revive the story. Here is the entire post: (Yes, some links have disappeared, but there's more than enough info still there.) OK, That's Over, So Where Were We? A while back the press was closing in on a number of issues of corruption involving both the President and Vice President and it started looking like Bush and Cheney were in some real legal trouble. But suddenly there were a lot of great big terror alerts, everyone look over there, everyone get scared, there's a big scary dragon, glorious leader will slay the dragon that is making you all scared, run around, run around, kill Iraq, frenzy, frenzy, kill Hitler, war, war, glorious leader HOORAY, HOORAY -- whatever. So tonite Bush is going to tell us that He has led us to Glorious Victory and the "threat to the United States from Baghdad has ended." OK. Well that's out of the way, then. So where were we? Oh yeah, Bush and Cheney and Harken and Haliburton and conflicts of interest and SEC investigations and insider trading and tax evasion and corporate corruption, and a whole bunch of other things were starting to hit the news. Take a look at BuzzFlash's Bush Harken insider trading collection. Remember the stories about Harvard bailing out Bush at Harken? There's more here from The Nation. What about Cheney's business dealings and the SEC investigation of his dealings at Haliburton? Remember hearing about Bush and Harken setting up offshore subsidiaries to dodge paying their taxes? I remember I had several questions. Does it all just go away? Is that how the American system of justice works now? Or is it time to start looking at this again, pick up where we left off?And here is one from August, 2002: Ongoing Questions - Keeping Them In Your Face Why won't Bush release those SEC files that he says clear up all the questions about his Harken transactions? And what about the minutes of the Harken Board meetings, so we can find out if Bush approved of the Aloha Petroleum scam? Did Bush pay taxes on that Harken loan money? Did Bush pay taxes when he sold the Texas Rangers? Why isn't there an INDEPENDENT INVESTIGATION of Harken and Haliburton? Why isn't there an INDEPENDENT INVESTIGATION of what we knew, and where we failed, regarding 9/11? (See Bartcop today, "Partners in Crime") Why aren't there any jobs programs for people whose unemployment benefits are running out? Who is our economy for? What Bush Says Now - What Bush Did Then. (I know, it's not a question, but it does start with the word "what.")Did these questions get ANSWERED? Or did we all just get DIVERTED? So what say we start looking into these again? --- Posted at 9/24/2004 09:53:00 AM by Dave Johnson Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
Cursor fund drive As far as I'm concerned, Cursor is the best one-stop political news source on the net, especially with their new election news feature. Their fund drive is still going. These guys are working for peanuts (I know-- I applied for a job there) but someone's gotta send them the peanuts. --- Posted at 9/24/2004 08:04:00 AM by John Emerson Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
Not Enough Troops Panel Calls U.S. Troop Size Insufficient for Demands: "A Pentagon-appointed panel of outside experts has concluded in a new study that the American military does not have sufficient forces to sustain current and anticipated stability operations, like the festering conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan and other missions that might arise."This is how Bush has "protected" the country. Not enough troops. If you are draft age, see if you can guess what this means. Mr. Reed added that the study raises troubling questions in the event that the American presence in Iraq drags on and new emergencies arise. "Iran and North Korea are provocative," he said. "They very well might cause us to take military action; one hopes not. And then, as you often say, there's also the surprises that we don't even contemplate at this moment."Just one burp, anywhere in the world, in fact, and you will be wearing a uniform, wondering at the course your life is taking. An article published Thursday by Inside the Pentagon, a military affairs newsletter, quoted the study as concluding that "current and projected force structure will not sustain our current and projected global stabilization commitments."Let's see if we can break down those big words: "Current and projected force structure" -- how many troops we HAVE, and how many we NEED -- "will not sustain our current" -- not enough NOW -- "and projected global stabilization commitments" -- not enough at all for the future. Translation -- you're gonna get drafted. --- Posted at 9/24/2004 07:27:00 AM by Dave Johnson Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
9/23/2004 George W. Bush's "fear of flying": an Erica Jong President? The sourcing here is a bit uncertain, but this is a great rumor, and it may be true. Let it all come out in the wash. "Contrary to some news reports that suggest Killian admired Bush, Linke says the officer didn't have much use for the young Lieutenant. He mentioned that Bush appeared to have a drinking problem, she recalls, but he was most offended by another incapacity: his fear of flying. According to Linke, Killian said Bush was grounded in his fourth year of flying after he became incapable of flying or properly landing a plane." Source Via Glenn Smith of Texans For Truth at BOP PS. Dave already posted this, but I thought the Erica Jong reference was worth keeping. UPDATE: Maybe he was afraid to fly because he was no good at it. --- Posted at 9/23/2004 10:27:00 PM by John Emerson Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
Who Went Instead Of Bush? When Bush found out that Harken Oil was going to announce they lost money, he raced to sell his stock before the news reached the public, which would make the price go down. (This is what Martha Stewart is going to jail for.) But no one asks about the person who BOUGHT the stock and suffered the loss in his place. Similarly, there is another side of the Bush National Guard story. That is the story of the people who who had to take Bush's place. SOMEONE took his place in Vietnam. SOMEONE took his pace in the Guard when Bush stopped showing up. (SOMEONE took command of the government while the nation was under attack and Bush sat stupified and immobilized in a classroom reading My Pet Goat.) When "protected" people like Bush screw up or screw us, SOMEONE takes the fall, takes the rap, takes the loss, or does the job. Read about another example of this over at The Blogging of the President: "This evening, reporters are calling. Janet Linke, an art teacher, said her husband was recruited to fill the slot abandoned by Bush. Jerry Killian, Bush's superior officer, told her Bush had grown afraid to fly. There is a growing list of Americans who have stepped forward to give their personal testimony about the man who ducked Vietnam and abandoned his commitment to the military, a man all too willing to send others to fight and die in battle."He SAYS he is the great wartime leader, fearless, resolute, staying the course... But who is the REAL man, the one we would find if only we could see past the fog of lies and cover stories that props Bush up? --- Posted at 9/23/2004 09:05:00 PM by Dave Johnson Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
Two-Faced So Bush says he is "protecting the country?" That he is a "war president?" That the country faces its threat ever? Well, forces are stretched thin in Iraq, no? Wouldn't a President who was intent on protecting the country be taking steps to do something about our military force levels? Or is he saying one thing, but doing another? --- Posted at 9/23/2004 08:47:00 PM by Dave Johnson Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
Where's Kelley? I'm watching John O'Neil of the Swift Boat Liars on Hardball right now. I just realized I've seen him on several shows this week. He just said that Kerry supported the Communists in Vietnam. So where is Kitty Kelley? She has an explosive new book out, much better documented than anything from the Swift Boat Liars! It says that Bush was using cocaine while his father was president. BUT I AM NOT SEEING HERE ANYWHERE! --- Posted at 9/23/2004 04:32:00 PM by Dave Johnson Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
Draft Making a Comeback? John Lichman -- Is a draft making a comeback?: "However you choose to look at it, realize that the plan itself isn't imaginary, nor are congressional bills H.R. 163 or S.89 which state the plan."Watch your backs! --- Posted at 9/23/2004 04:29:00 PM by Dave Johnson Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
BAGnewsNotes BAGnewsNotes has placed a BlogAd, and here's what he says about his site: "The blog has three purposes: 1.) To deliver opinion in a unique format, combining political, sociological and psychological commentary with iconic illustrations and ironic humor. 2.) To create a place to visit for liberal news and opinion particularly when visual content is involved (including, but not limited to: charts, graphs, maps, flash, video clips, political illustrations and political graphics). 3.) To provide a platform for my highly regarded BAGnews cartoon, which has been featured on such well regarded political websites as Znet, Bartcop, CommercialAlert.org, Adbusters and New York Surveillance Camera Players."So go visit. --- Posted at 9/23/2004 04:17:00 PM by Dave Johnson Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
Here It Comes U.S. Economic Gauge Signals Weakness: "A key gauge of future economic activity weakened for a third straight month in August as costlier oil spread worry among consumers and businesses, a report from a business research group showed on Thursday . "It should hit hard just after the election. let's see, massive trade deficits, massive budget deficits, housing price bubble, dollar overpriced, interest rates held unnaturally low... LOTS of rubber bands ready to snap back just after the election... Watch your backs! --- Posted at 9/23/2004 03:28:00 PM by Dave Johnson Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
The ReBirchican Party Mary at Left Coaster notices that the 2004 Republican party agenda closely matches the 1950's John Birch Society agenda. --- Posted at 9/23/2004 10:41:00 AM by Dave Johnson Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
Draft News Daily Bush, talking about the draft, "What we need to do is - don't worry about it." (See #1) BushDraft.com From March, Agency initiates steps for selective draft, "The government is taking the first steps toward a targeted military draft of Americans with special skills in computers and foreign languages." Military Draft: A Sleeping Giant Stirs Rock the Vote: A NEW MILITARY DRAFT? April, Nader tells youths to brace for draft May, U.S. Preparing For Military Draft in Spring of 2005 -- Legislation in the works: Selective Service System already mobilizing Also May, Old Enough to Vote? Old Enough to Die. What happens during a Draft? TalkLeft: The Draft is Not a Republican vs. Democrat Issue: Despite his statements to the contrary, Bush may reinstate the draft. This is supported not only by his "stop-loss" orders extending soldiers' duties in Iraq and the acknowledgement that there is a shortage of soldiers for a prolonged war, which seems to be what we're in for with Bush at the helm, but also by actions of the Selective Service System,(more here), whose directors and members serve under the direction of his Administration.Scroll down for more on the draft. Especially see: You're Gonna Get Drafted --- Posted at 9/23/2004 08:37:00 AM by Dave Johnson Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
Election Reform I'm suddenly absolutely, completely burned out on politics. Just as we get close to the finish line I need a break! I have the awful feeling that I'm not the only person suffering from this, either. By the time we finally vote, who gives a damn? Enough money's being spent on this election to feed and house all the homeless in this country for life. Or to provide a free college education for every child. Or health care for everyone. This is no longer a Democratic process. Nobody who isn't independently rich and/or backed by powerful interests can possibly run for a national office. This is now true even on a local level, at least in states like New York and New Jersey and cities like New York. People spending this kind of money expect it to be a good investment. There's no better basis for corruption. Worse, no matter how much money is spent, the candidates for the party not in office are essentially invisible. Equal time on radio and TV for each party's candidates used to be required by law. We've got to restore the fairness doctrine. Because running for office is now so expensive, and because of the electoral college, only the "swing states" count. The rest of us are not exactly being told that our vote doesn't count, but it couldn't be more clear that we're written off as unimportant, so why should we bother to vote? There's got to be a better way to do this. We could analyze how we got ourselves into this mess from now until doomsday. Gigantic plot or unexpected results of previous honest attempts at reform? Undoubtedly some of each, and so what? We have to deal with the mess we have now. Reform has to begin on the local level and especially the party level. Congress isn't going to do anything that cuts its own throat. Once the election is over, regardless, we've got to start thinking about reforming the process. What we've been doing is crazy! No campaign should go on this long, and the sad truth is that the next campaign starts the minute the last one ends. Which means that nobody is taking care of business and the country just drifts. --- Posted at 9/23/2004 06:25:00 AM by Meryl Johnson Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
Harry Speakup Diebold claims that their latest voting system security features are impervious to human tampering. So, Bev Harris of Black Box Voting trained a chimp to do it. Really. Bev said that at yesterday's press conference a reporter expressed some scepticism after seeing Baxter (the election stealing chimp) mess with Diebold's votes database. The reporter pointed out that surely chimps would not be granted access to the election computer room. Really. (Via Bev Harris appearance on today's Morning Sedition with Marc Maron and Mark Riley, a consistently excellent Air America show.) --- Posted at 9/23/2004 03:43:00 AM by richard Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
9/22/2004 TalkLeft: Selective Service Proposed Draft Plan Document TalkLeft: Selective Service Proposed Draft Plan Document: Here is the official document (pdf) calling for a reinsatement of the draft--for men and women--ages 18-34, not just to those who might qualify for active military duty, but for those with skills the Government finds helpful in war--linguists, medical workers, etc. Just about everyone. Note this has nothing to do with bills to reinstate the draft by Democrats like Charlie Rangel that made headlines two years ago. This is the Bush Administration at work--its representatives on the Selective Service System (SSS).Maybe we should change the tagline of Seeing the Forest to DRAFT NEWS DAILY for a while. --- Posted at 9/22/2004 09:42:00 PM by Dave Johnson Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
Congressional Evaluation Project lightning writes: "Kit, of Kit's Concatenation has just put up her "Congressional Evaluation Project". If you want to know what your (or anybody else's) Congresscritter or Senator has been doing for the last few years, check it out." --- Posted at 9/22/2004 06:25:00 PM by Dave Johnson Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
Bush Music A great piece of music at skippy the bush kangaroo --- Posted at 9/22/2004 05:29:00 PM by Dave Johnson Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
Send An E-Mail That little picture of an envelope that follows each post allows you to send an e-mail about that post. I suggest trying it out with this post: You're Gonna Get Drafted! --- Posted at 9/22/2004 04:38:00 PM by Dave Johnson Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
Draft Alert! Here. (Be sure to scroll down to the cartoon.) --- Posted at 9/22/2004 04:32:00 PM by Dave Johnson Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
Elect Us A Congress Please go read what Joe Trippi has to say about how we can elect us a Congress! --- Posted at 9/22/2004 04:22:00 PM by Dave Johnson Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
Private Retirement Accounts I don't get it. Bush says we need "private personal savings accounts" for retirement. What am I missing? Is there something stopping people from setting up a private savings account NOW? I have an IRA, and the government gives me a good tax break when I put money in it. If you work for a corporation you might have a 401K account, and you get to put even more tax-free money in that. But Bush says that we need to get rid of Social Security and replace it with private accounts. From this story: "He [Bush] said allowing younger workers to set up personal savings accounts could bring them a better rate of return than the government gets with Social Security trust funds, which hold federal bonds. 'We've got to think differently,' he said."But we have private accounts NOW. So how is a plan to replace Social Security with private accounts different from just getting rid of Social Security? It seems to be little more than a word game to trick people into giving up Social Security. And, by the way, has the rule that rate of return = risk somehow CHANGED? Bush says we would get a higher return by taking our retirement money out of bonds and putting it into stocks. But doesn't that also mean that we then have our money at a higher risk? --- Posted at 9/22/2004 03:45:00 PM by Dave Johnson Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
Draft? Bush's War Needs Troops The Charleston Gazette - Draft? Bush's War Needs Troops: "ALARM is spreading that President Bush may seek a military draft, or mobilize more of the National Guard and Army Reserve, to obtain enough combat troops to wage his bogged-down Iraq war. Two bills pending in Congress would launch a new draft for all young Americans ages 18 to 26, both male and female, with no college exemption. Also, a new border agreement with Canada is designed to prevent young Americans from fleeing northward to elude the draft."They're gonna grab your asses off the street, put a rifle in your hands, and send you off to a place that is 120 degrees in the shade and the people hate you. Better get registered and vote. (Thanks to TruthOut.) --- Posted at 9/22/2004 03:34:00 PM by Dave Johnson Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
Today's Google Experiment: "Kerry Lied" and "My Lai" In today's Google experiment, let's see how many websites say "kerry lied". The answer is "about 41,200." (Yes, that search is for the phrase, not the words individually.) The first site found, "KerryLied.com" says, "John Kerry told the world we were war criminals who raped, tortured and murdered in Vietnam. Now, thirty-three years later, we told America the truth." Scrolling through what is found, most right-wing sites claim that Kerry accused the US of committing atrocities in Vietnam, which they say was a lie. Well, the first lie is that Kerry accused the US of committing atrocities. This is not what he said. And the second lie is that American forces did not commit atrocities. STF BONUS - Second Google Experiment in the same post! Let's see what happens if we search for "My Lai"? GOSH! There are "about 72,000" websites that say there WERE atrocities committed by US forces! Note - Some of the websites say Kerry lied about being in Cambodia - they say that the US was never in Cambodia... Well, Kerry made a mistake about when he was in Cambodia. It turns out he was there in January, not "Christmas." As for the claim that the US military was not in Cambodia, from a U.S. State Department report: "In April 1970, U.S. and South Vietnamese forces entered Cambodia in a campaign aimed at destroying NVA/VC base areas." --- Posted at 9/22/2004 03:13:00 PM by Dave Johnson Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
Whoa! Draft Coming Even Sooner Press Reports on U.S. Casualties: About 17,000 Short, UPI Says, Nearly 17,000 service members medically evacuated from Iraq and Afghanistan are absent from public Pentagon casualty reports commonly cited by newspapers, according to military data reviewed by United Press International. Most don't fit the definition of casualties, according to the Pentagon, but a veterans' advocate said they should all be counted. The Pentagon has reported 1,019 dead and 7,245 wounded from Iraq. The military has evacuated 16,765 individual service members from Iraq and Afghanistan for injuries and ailments not directly related to combat, according to the U.S. Transportation Command, which is responsible for the medical evacuations. Most are from Operation Iraqi Freedom.Whoa! Looks like they're gonna need a draft even sooner than previously expected! And it's HOT there. IF YOU ARE DRAFT AGE YOU'D BETTER GET REGISTERED SO YOU CAN VOTE!!! (When you look at this report, remember the time difference and look a tomorrow's forecast. Loooks like they're in a cool spell.) --- Posted at 9/22/2004 02:18:00 PM by Dave Johnson Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
Good Today Altercation is good today. Funny, smart. Especially read the think that starts "Eric R. has more on this liberal conundrum thing:" --- Posted at 9/22/2004 02:15:00 PM by Dave Johnson Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
Kerry: Draft Likely to Return Under Bush Young people, pay attention now - if you don't want a drill sergeant shouting "Attention!" AT you. Kerry: Draft Likely to Return Under Bush: "Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry, citing the war in Iraq and other trouble spots in the world, raised the possibility Wednesday that a military draft could be reinstated if voters re-elect President Bush. " --- Posted at 9/22/2004 01:08:00 PM by Dave Johnson Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
War President = Draft President Bush is campaigning as the "War President." If we remind young people that THE DRAFT usually accompanies A WAR, then every time Bush repeats that he is the "War President" what they will hear is that he is the "GONNA DRAFT THEIR ASSES President." WAR PRESIDENT = DRAFT PRESIDENT --- Posted at 9/22/2004 11:03:00 AM by Dave Johnson Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
How Ideas Circulate This just came in, one message in a digest from a list server. Compare it to the original from 5 days ago: Subject: YOU ARE GONNA BE DRAFTED c flyer for college campuses I loaded this 1/2 page Microsoft Word document YOU'RE GONNA BE DRAFTED Flyer into the file section of this yahoo group so that you can share it with your other yahoo groups and USE IT TODAY. THERE ARE ONLY A FEW DAYS LEFT FOR NEW PEOPLE TO REGISTER TO VOTE! I have been passing it out to college students, please pass it out where you live. It really does get their attention, and their help. If you make lots of copies, then cut them in half you WILL find volunteers who WILL help you pass this out which will result in more college students registering and voting. I carry my Fire Bush sign with me when passing them out. STILL WORKING TO TAKE BACK MY COUNTRY! You're Gonna Get Drafted The Draft - A Reason to Vote if You´re Under 30 If you didn't vote in 2000, or voted for Nader or Bush you blew it, and now you're gonna get drafted. There's no way around it now, the draft is almost a certainty, they´ve been hiring the staff & Congress has written the legislation to re-start the draft! You're hearing about the Reserve & National Guard units being called up, & about soldiers not allowed to leave the military even though their term is up, & about the back door draft? Have you thought about what this means to you? You KNOW this means they're having trouble finding enough soldiers to go to Iraq, right? Of course! Bush doesn´t want to start the draft BEFORE the election. Duh! But what do you think will happen the day after the election? I repeat, they are having trouble finding enough soldiers to go to Iraq so guess what; Young People ARE Going TO Get Drafted to Go To WAR! Ah, maybe you think they can't do that? Maybe you think the draft won´t happen to you? Maybe you think they can't just grab your ass up off the street, stick a rifle in your hands & send you off to war? Don´t deceive yourself and think Bush cares about YOU when he has NOT attended ONE funeral of any of our 1017+ dead Americans from the war! NOT ONE! Assault rifles are back on the streets & You are gonna be drafted just as fast! WAR. The word you have been hearing from Bush´s lips for months now. "I'm a WAR president", he says. Well, what did you think war MEANS? Who´s gonna replace the downsizing of Britain´s troops in Iraq and our 7000+ wounded and 1017+ dead?? YOU! WAR means young people getting drafted from off the street, out of school and sent off to fight. That. Is. What. War. Does! THE DRAFT IS HOW THEY WILL FORCE YOUNG WOMEN & MEN TO PARTICIPATE. No exemptions this time! If you don´t vote, you are supporting Bush: pre-emptive warS, deficit spending, & his divisive policies and rhetoric on the basis of religion, political party, race, choice and sexual preference. Bush says our preemptive war with Iraq was not a mistake so don´t you think we are more likely to go to (MORE) war with North Korea which has WMD? Which candidate do you want as YOUR Commander and Chief after you are drafted?? YOU HAD BETTER VOTE! Bush says, "we're at WAR, and that's the issue in this election". WAR! So call your friends and family, and make sure they are registered by Oct 2nd to vote Nov. 2nd. DON´T MISS THE MOST IMPORTANT ELECTION OF OUR LIFETIME; PASS OUT FLYERS, MAKE A DIF-FERENCE & VOTE 4 KERRY! You can make a difference because YOU COUNT when YOU VOTE!!! --- Posted at 9/22/2004 10:56:00 AM by Dave Johnson Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
New Post at American Street I have a new post over at American Street, on how the Right communicates the message that "Democrats hate relitgion." --- Posted at 9/22/2004 10:43:00 AM by Dave Johnson Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
Fun Stuff Just for fun. (Found while researching a coming piece for American Street) 60 Hard Truths about "Liberals", 60 Hard Truths about gun hating Liberals. 25 More Hard Truths About Liberals Do The Democrats Really Hate America? Why Liberals Hate America Why "Liberals" are so despicable Liberals hate fellow Americans more than Islamists Update - Link in "60 Hard Truths" is fixed. --- Posted at 9/22/2004 10:03:00 AM by Dave Johnson Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
Every Single One of Us Every single one of us should read this post on press bias over at Eschaton, including the linked articles. CBS screwed up. But look at what the press has been doing for DECADES. --- Posted at 9/22/2004 08:10:00 AM by Dave Johnson Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
9/21/2004 Kerry and Iraq The Washington Monthly has some good words about Kerry vs. Bush on Iraq: "Pundits have been kvetching for months now that Kerry hasn't produced a gift-wrapped miracle that definitively solves all our problems in Iraq. But that's just not in the cards anymore. Iraq is such a mess that there's nothing left except choosing the least worst of a bunch of bad choices. In any case, Kerry has now said what he'd do in Iraq, and while it might not be a slam dunk, it's surely better than George Bush's apparent plan to keep doing what he's been doing all along ('stay the course'). What Bush has been doing all along is exactly what got us where we are today, and practically anything would be better than that."Someone else, I don't remember who, said asking what Kerry is going to do about Iraq is like when you have two kids, and one of them has knocked over your vase and it's in 1000 pieces on the floor, and you turn to the other one and say, "What's your plan for fixing the vase?" --- Posted at 9/21/2004 05:12:00 PM by Dave Johnson Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
Really! Pictures of the bigger picture. (Got it from Left Coaster, who got it from Sideshow.) --- Posted at 9/21/2004 04:04:00 PM by Dave Johnson Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
More Forgery Story (Trees) From this story (scroll down): "The hot rumor in New York political circles has Roger Stone, the longtime GOP activist, as the source for Dan Rather's dubious Texas Air National Guard 'memos.' The irony would be delicious, since Rather became famous confronting President Nixon, in whose service a very young Stone became associated with political 'dirty tricks.' Reached at his Florida home, Stone had no comment. "The forgery story is a tree. It is a disctaction. See the forest, the bigger picture. The press was closing in on the big question, and someone shouted "look over there." Let's look back at the big picture now: WHY DID BUSH STOP FLYING? Do any of you fly, or know any pilots? Ask ANY pilot if they can understand why a young man would stop flying fighter jets if they didn['t absolutely have to. And not only that, why would someone refuse to take a flight physical and stop reporting for Guard drills? MOST of us would face serious consequences for such behaviour. (Of course, most of us would face serious consequences for selling shares of a company when we knew they are about to report a loss. Or for running up a massive deficit. Or for launching a war against a country that did us no harm and was no threat to us, when we were already in the middle of another war.) --- Posted at 9/21/2004 03:34:00 PM by Dave Johnson Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
Not Allowed to Vote TalkLeft: America's Disenfranchised: Excluded From Voting asks you to get involved in changing one of the schemes that was initially designed to keep African-Americans from voting. --- Posted at 9/21/2004 02:28:00 PM by Dave Johnson Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
Lakoff's New Book Buy George Lakoff's important new book, Don't Think of an Elephant!, through Seeing the Forest by clicking here: Don’t Think of An Elephant! is the antidote to the last forty years of conservative strategizing and the right wing’s stranglehold on political dialogue in the United States. Author George Lakoff explains how conservatives think, and how to counter their arguments. He outlines in detail the traditional American values that progressives hold, but are often unable to articulate. Lakoff also breaks down the ways in which conservatives have framed the issues, and provides examples of how progressives can reframe the debate. Lakoff’s years of research and work with environmental and political leaders have been distilled into this essential guide, which shows progressives how to think in terms of values instead of programs, and why people vote their values and identities, often against their best interests. Don’t Think of an Elephant! is the definitive handbook for understanding and communicating effectively about key issues in the 2004 election, and beyond. --- Posted at 9/21/2004 02:19:00 PM by Dave Johnson Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
New Anti-Kerry Smear Out! I was driving, and Paul Harvey News came on. Paul Harvey is one of the most widely-listened to news sources, FYI. He said that even though it is illegal for governments to try to influence the elections of other governments, the Kerry campaign has been meeting with a "secret agent" from South Korea. They are trying to organize Korean-Americans to vote for Kerry. This brings to mind the anti-Asian stuff that was going on during the last election, linking Gore to "Budhist Temples," and donors with Asian names, etc. I guess they have data that shows this influences a certain number of voters. ALSO during the broadcast harvey said that two Kerry aides have "confired" that they were part of the planning of the CBS forgeries broadcast. Update - More here. --- Posted at 9/21/2004 01:58:00 PM by Dave Johnson Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
The universe (which others call the Library) The Wikipedia is not Borges's library. Not yet. But it's getting there. --- Posted at 9/21/2004 01:35:00 PM by richard Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
Ad Strip Over on the right, under the Blogads, is a "Google Ad Strip." Why do they keep putting ads for Republican sites in the strip? And what is 'W' ketchup? --- Posted at 9/21/2004 08:42:00 AM by Dave Johnson Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
What Is Bush Hiding?: "But what's good for Dan Rather, who is not running for president, ought to be good for George Bush, who is. 'There are a lot of questions and they need to be answered.' Surely that presidential sentiment applies as much to Bush's Guard service as to Rather's journalistic methods. "Why did Bush refuse to take his flight physical, and stop flying? I'm a pilot. I can't IMAGINE a young guy having the opportunity to fly jet fighters, and just stop. ESPECIALLY after the government had spent over a million dollars training him, and was ordering him to take that physical and continue flying! Why. Did. Bush. Stop. Flying? --- Posted at 9/21/2004 08:38:00 AM by Dave Johnson Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
Understanding For a greater understanding of the Bush family animosity toward Dan Rather (amd John Kerry), read Just Cut Out Their Tongues by Thom Hartmann. excerpt: The Bush family's hostility to Rather first broke the surface of public attention back in 1988, when Vice President George H.W. Bush was confronted on network television about his various roles in the criminal affair now known as Iran/Contra. At the time, rumors were flying that in the fall of 1980 then-VP-candidate Bush had negotiated with Iran to hold the American hostages until after the election. The hostages were not only held throughout the election campaign, but were released the very hour Ronald Reagan was sworn into office. The ongoing dragged-out hostage crisis (and Carter's failed attempt at rescue) had knocked the incumbent president down so far in the polls that the long-shot ticket of Reagan/Bush won. When it later came out, in part because of an investigation started by Senator John Kerry, that after the 1980 election Reagan/Bush were illegally selling American missiles to the Iranians "in exchange for hostages" at a time there were no hostages (the Iranian hostages had been freed, and the Lebanese hostages not yet taken), speculation intensified. The key to busting the whole deal open and indicting George H.W. Bush, some congressional investigators believed, would be Bill Casey. As the manager of the 1980 Reagan/Bush campaign, he would have known of the deal, and persistent allegations floated around Washington that he'd even helped organize the initial negotiations between Bush and Iranian representatives.The plot thickens. See if this sounds a bit like the "forged memos" controversey: Others have suggested - although there is no clear evidence one way or the other - that Rove was behind the appearance in the Gore campaign of Bush's debate prep notes. Had Bush "lost" the debates in a big way, the issue could have been deftly shifted to the Gore campaign having had advance copies of his notes.Remember that? A video of Bush's preparations for debating Gore was mailed to Gore's campaign. Imagine of the aide hadn't immediately called the FBI and turned it in, and Gore smeared Bush in the debates. Do you think maybe the story would be that Gore had a video of Bush's preparations? Go read the rest. --- Posted at 9/21/2004 08:11:00 AM by Dave Johnson Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
A National Draft in the Future? Howard Dean | Hidden Agenda: A National Draft in the Future?: "A key issue for young Americans and their families to consider as they prepare to cast their votes in the upcoming presidential election is the real likelihood of a military draft being reinstated if President Bush is re-elected. President Bush should tell us now whether he supports a military draft. Here is the evidence that makes a draft likely:The list continues, go read. The draft is coming. Under 30? Should'a voted. And you had better vote THIS TIME. --- Posted at 9/21/2004 08:04:00 AM by Dave Johnson Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
9/20/2004 Satan Endorses Bush Video here. --- Posted at 9/20/2004 09:47:00 PM by Dave Johnson Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
Pentagon blocks site for voters outside U.S. Pentagon blocks site for voters outside U.S.: In a decision that could affect Americans abroad who are not yet registered to vote in the Nov. 2 presidential election, the Pentagon has begun restricting international access to the official Web site intended to help overseas absentee voters cast ballots.The Bush administration is engaged in an all-out effort to keep as many people as they can from voting. THIS example is probably because Americans oversees are seeing and hearing news that is not censored as it is here, and are well aware of the way Bush has isolated us from the international community of nations. --- Posted at 9/20/2004 09:44:00 PM by Dave Johnson Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
Your Favorite Political Weblogs? Slashdot wants to know what are Your Favorite Political Weblogs? --- Posted at 9/20/2004 08:13:00 PM by Dave Johnson Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
9/19/2004 SURVEY: How many more troops will it take to pacify Iraq? 40,000? 400,000? 1,000,000? Answer in comments. Also available as options are: "we can't do it", and "we shouldn't try". Feel free to expand on your thoughts. Also to comment on what differences you see between a Kerry and a Bush administration in terms of future conduct of the war in Iraq, and how you see this playing out in the 2006 and 2008 election cycles. --- Posted at 9/19/2004 06:52:00 PM by Thomas Leavitt Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
Kerry Should Call War a Religious Issue For Many in Missouri, Picking a President Is More a Matter of Values Than Policy: "'I can't get past the moral issues, I just can't,' said Mr. Woods. 'So I cannot in any way support the Democratic Party,' because of his objections to abortion and homosexuality."Basic marketing: the Republicans declare they are the party for religious voters, it becomes a "brand," and religious voters feel they have to vote Republican. Maybe Kerry should try the same game, and declare his issues as religious, too. WAR is certainly an issue that can be cast as a make-or-break religious vote. How about the death penalty? How about lying, cheating, stealing, intimidation, and giving no-bid contracts to your cronies? Should religious voters be approving THAT? But it won't be seen that way by religious voters unless someone SAYS IT that way! It MIGHT just occur to some religious voters that war and killing and lying and cheating and steaing are ALSO religious issues ... but in my own humble opinion I think that putting IN FRONT OF THEIR FACES would help that process along. --- Posted at 9/19/2004 01:15:00 PM by Dave Johnson Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
It's the Draft, Stupid - Calling All Bloggers In the 1992 election James Carville hung a sign in the Clinton campaign "war room" that read, "It's the economy, stupid!" He was saying that the issue that was going to win for them in that election was the economy, and everything else was a time-wasting distraction. Perceptions about the economy tend to decide elections because people tend to vote in their blatant self-interest. In this election I think there is another issue that is a winner: the Draft. I think if young people start to believe they could be drafted they will register and vote because it is in their blatant self-interest. There are enough young non-voters to completely change the dynamics of this election - even in the short time remaining to get them registered. The news from Iraq is not good. We are not winning, the anti-American insurgency is gaining momentum, and we obviously need a lot more troops there as soon as possible. This is why we are hearing about National Guard and Reserve call-ups, as well as stories about troops being threatened with being sent to Iraq if they do not re-enlist. It appears that Bush is waiting until after the election to do something about this - and this politically-motivated hesitation means that things will be even worse in November than they are now. It's just reality that our military is stretched too thin in Iraq, and consequently is stretched too thin in the rest of the world. If ANYthing happens in another location, like Korea, we are in trouble. We should have a draft in effect NOW, but Bush will not discuss this before the election for obvious political reasons. If we can start getting the word out that a draft is coming, it will be self-re-enforcing. Every time Bush calls himself a "war president" it reminds young people that they are of draft-age. I encourage all bloggers to start writing about the draft. It is coming, and it is necessary, because of the mess that Bush has us in. We need to start explaining this. Older bloggers can write about their own experiences in the Vietnam era. Let's get the word out! I am not asking bloggers to link to this piece, I am asking you to write about the draft on your blogs, and say that it is coming, that young people had better start paying attention now because they are going to find their lives taking an unexpected turn after the election. --- Posted at 9/19/2004 01:11:00 PM by Dave Johnson Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
Tactics, Strategy, Messages Might Not Matter All the tactics, strategies, messages, smears., issues, etc. might not even matter in this election. Ready or Not (and Maybe Not), Electronic Voting Goes National: "nearly one-third of the more than 150 million registered voters in the United States will be asked to cast their ballots on machines whose accuracy and security against fraud have yet to be tested on such a grand scale."You click a box on a screen that says Kerry, but later the machine reports that you voted for Bush. Or, maybe you click a box that says Bush, and the machine reports that you voted for Kerry. And there is NO WAY at all to check. None. Or maye the machines don't change any votes. There's no way to know that either. There is no way to trust the results of the coming election for a third of all votes cast. None. This is a formula for civil strife if there ever was one. Watch your backs. --- Posted at 9/19/2004 12:03:00 PM by Dave Johnson Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
9/18/2004 White-Bearded Peaceniks Pandagon: A Reading List To War, in which Santa Cruz is "home of reflexive dovishness and factually incorrect tirades" and those who were opposed to the Iraq war are "white-bearded peaceniks." I'm avoiding comment. Meanwhile Matthew Yglasias writes rather academically that he "drastically underrate[d] the possible downside risks of the war" and that "the most pernicious thing about the public debate in America is the continued propensity of questions to be framed around generic issues of "hawkishness" versus "dovishness" rather than the more relevant question of where should finite military and related resources be deployed." (I actually had to look up 'pernicious'.) A while back this white-bearded peacenik wrote this: WAR. WAR. My God, we started a WAR! WAR IS THE WORST THING IN THE WORLD and we are at war, and we started it. Yes WE. You and me, our country, we started a war, and now we are starting to see it grow. We are seeing images of soldiers urinating on prisoners with hoods over their heads. We are seeing images of children burned to death, arms missing, mosques exploding, bombs ending lives, coffins returning home...I'll try to write something again soon on the topic of living as if the world is a TV show where you watch things happen to other people, instead of in the world outside of the United States where things happen to real people. VietNam was the last time Americans were allowed to see what REALLY happens in a war. And because of the draft it happened to THEM. If you think about it, this means that no one under about 45 really understands that war is anything other than a TV show. It's like the meat in supermarkets - it comes in a nice clean package. THIS is why the public thirsts for war. Much of the public sees this as a TV show. Clean. Sanitary. No REAL death. No REAL gore. It's just another TV show. Like the meat in the supermarket.Meanwhile... New wave of Iraq bombings. --- Posted at 9/18/2004 10:06:00 PM by Dave Johnson Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
More About the Memos I want to say something more about the memos. I think, if the memos ARE forged - and we don't know that - that the White House caught CBS in a trap. But I want to point out that this is CBS's fault. The White House was being smart, tough and taking advantage of an opportunity. I would be disappointed if the Kerry campaign didn't do the same thing, given the chance. The problem here is that CBS didn't nail the story down. They came out against a President with documents that were not sufficiently authenticated. If this happened they should be held to the same standard we would hold the Swift Boat Vets. And the Republicans should hold the Swift Boat Vets to the same standard they are holding CBS. Fat chance. --- Posted at 9/18/2004 09:19:00 PM by Dave Johnson Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
Partisanship is Good, #2 Over the last year I've argued in many places (notably Kevin Drum, Crooked Timber, Matt Yglesias, and Brad DeLong -- though DeLong himself is fine) that political partisanship not only excusable, but actually a good thing, and in fact an obligation at times. Along with this I have argued that you should not be quick to call fouls on your own team, and that rather than do so you should let your opponents do their own work. Furthermore, whenever one of the chickenshit little issues that political campaigns generate pops up, the wisest thing to do is to treat it ruthlessly as a partisan distraction, rather than agonizing about truth and Gandhi and shit. These discussions usually end up with some ignoramus (often a life-long Democrat) calling me a Stalinist hack and blaming me for the massacre of the kullaks. It would be nice if all Democrats could be trusted to distinguish between the party spirit of Harry Truman and the party spirit of Josef Stalin, but they can't. Most of the people who come to STF are partisan Democrats who will wonder why I'm posting this. It's because many of the genteel Democrats who are driving me nuts are academics who think that they are too good for partisanship. Many of them have read Weber's "Science as Vocation", but not his essay "Politics as Vocation". It would do them good to read it, except that none of them ever come over here because they boycott all Stalinists. But I'll post it anyway. Below are some excerpts from Max Weber's "Politics as Vocation", plus a link. This piece was written in 1918 at the end of Weber's life, and he was thinking specifically about the prospects of the doomed (as we know, and as he feared) liberal democratic Weimar Republic which he had helped found. "In order to be a useful apparatus, a machine in the American sense--undisturbed either by the vanity of notables or pretensions to independent views--the following of such a leader must obey him blindly. Lincoln's election was possible only through this character of party organization.... But even herewith the problem is not yet exhausted. No ethics in the world can dodge the fact that in numerous instances the attainment of 'good' ends is bound to the fact that one must be willing to pay the price of using morally dubious means or at least dangerous ones --and facing the possibility or even the probability of evil ramifications. From no ethics in the world can it be concluded when and to what extent the ethically good purpose 'justifies' the ethically dangerous means and ramifications....One cannot prescribe to anyone whether he should follow an ethic of absolute ends or an ethic of responsibility, or when the one and when the other..... Now then, ladies and gentlemen, let us debate this matter once more ten years from now. Unfortunately, for a whole series of reasons, I fear that by then the period of reaction will have long since broken over us. It is very probable that little of what many of you, and (I candidly confess) I too, have wished and hoped for will be fulfilled; little-perhaps not exactly nothing, but what to us at least seems little." Weber: Politics as VocationP.S. Not all genteel Democrats are prissy academics. Some have battered-wife syndrome and do submissive wetting in hopes that Rove won't hurt them. (These are probably the ones most responsible for the Dems' McCain infatuation of awhile back, as if McCain could even protect himself). Others are clean and clever lads who know which side their bread is buttered on. Battered and buttered, that's us! --- Posted at 9/18/2004 05:44:00 PM by John Emerson Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
IseFire's Comment In the comments to the You're Gonna Be Drafted post, "IseFire" left this: "Let the draft come. It will be visted on the sons and daughters of many Bush supporters. A new poll suggests that "Voters are uneasy about Democrat John Kerry's ability to handle an international crisis." At this point, I think I have given up on the American electorate. They have chosen to be dazzled by Bush's falsehoods: falsehoods about himself and falsehoods he spreads against John Kerry. They choose this man, Bush, who ignored national security reports warning him of terrorists determined to use airplanes as weapons; who sat immobilized in a classroom--the glassy look of mental short-circuiting coating his eyes--when told that the second plane had hit the WTC; who then used the 9/11 attack (an attack against America in my city! that endangered my friends and killed seven men from my fire station one block away) as an excuse to invade Iraq, misleading us as to Iraq's capabilities, and because of this let the war against the terrorists flounder when he switched all our resources to this reckless invasion of a land whose oil he coveted, a nation devoid of WMDs and terrorists, but which now--thanks to this man--teems with huddled masses yearning to make Americans bleed. This man, Bush, in the process of all of this turned us into the most despised nation on the planet, a nation that will get little help as we sink into Iraq's abyss, suffocate under debt caused by Bush's tax giveaways to the rich, and eventually wake to the full magnitude of the horrible consequences that his "dry drunk" illogic and grotesque misunderstanding of Christianity has wrought. All this as Bush's record, and America is worried about Kerry's ability to lead in crisis?! Then, America deserves George W. Bush! Heaven forbid America election John Kerry--a man who in the crisis of combat, of ambush, took charge and saved the life of a comrade. Heaven forbid America elect a proven senator with a deep patriotism that is combined with an international worldview. Heaven forbid America elect someone who as a gov't prosecutor went after organized crime and made life better for thousands. Heaven forbid America elect someone who shed blood in foreign lands...for us! for YOU! and who then returned and spoke out against a war because he hated too much to see us do the wrong thing at the expense of our young men! Heaven forbid we elect someone with a sterling education evocative of the learnedness of our nation's Founders! Heaven forbid we elect someone who has the compassion to care, the savvy to practice wise diplomacy, and the connections to pull the globe's democracies back together into a more perfect confederacy of nations determined to cooperate against the threats of religious extremism and terrorism. Heaven forbid! And heaven just might forbid it, or so it would appear. Our nation has never been so corrupt; the poor have never been so poo"Fortunately it continues at his website. --- Posted at 9/18/2004 01:53:00 PM by Dave Johnson Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
Stupidest Headline Ever: "Varying Polls Reflect Volatility, Experts Say" Varying Polls Reflect Volatility, Experts Say (NYT) If two polls asking roughly the same people approximately the same question at about the same time show a 10-point discrepancy, that doesn't reflect "volatility". It reflects dishonesty or some sort of big fuckup. Both results can't be right. And on top of that, these same experts have been assuring us for months that the battle lines hardened early and that most voters have already made up their minds. That's exactly the opposite of volatility. The fuckup theory would be that the experts have no idea what's going on. It makes more sense to me to think that Gallup and a few of the others are deliberately lowballing Kerry. That conceivably could be a good thing if Bush becomes overconfident, but I think that the purpose is to demoralize Democrats, and that purpose has been effectively served. Everything is a move in the game now. Apparently some of the pollsters are working against us. Just one more thing we have to deal with. Soto on Gallup Soto on CBS/NYT poll Teixeira on polls UPDATE: In Minnesota the Republicans are actually trying to shut down a poll whose results they dislike. --- Posted at 9/18/2004 09:06:00 AM by John Emerson Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
Naomi Klein I finally read Naomi Klein's piece in Harpers about the neocons' Iraq reconstruction fantasy. It's the clearest, most pointed look at an often neglected aspect of the occupation -- the establishment by the "Year Zero" libertarian nutjobs of a dream country. (Listeners fo Randi Rhodes will recognize one of her frequent movie allusions in the picture Klein paints. It's easy to imagine scenes in the Green Zone in 2003 not unlike Hyman Roth's birthday party on the Havana hotel terrace in 1959. Did anyone think to bring a cake in the shape of Iraq? And no imagination at all is necessary to see the close parallel between the respective playing out of the Iraqi and Cuban scripts. The interrupted opulence followed by American senators, corporate veepees and Corleones making for the planes and boats could be used, with just a little computer graphic touching up, to put Iraq 2004 on the big screen.) Read Klein's article. It's focused, crisp, and mostly first-hand. Probably the best thing I've read on Iraq. --- Posted at 9/18/2004 04:43:00 AM by richard Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
9/17/2004 A Forgery Set-Up???!!! I was wondering -- if the Bush Guard document turns out to really be a forgery, how did the right-wing blogosphere know, and so fast? Well, here is the answer: Blogger Who Faulted CBS Documents Is Conservative Activist Read the article. It looks like a set-up. Thanks to BOPNews. See also here. Comment: Since the documents could have been made when they were supposed to have been, and the content of the documents is not in question, there was really no reason to question them at all in the first place, especially within a few hours, by someone with no access to them. Yet, in a coordinated campaign, by a Republican PR firm, the accusation was immediately blasted all over the right-wing media. At that point, there was only ONE way to know if there was a reason to suspect they were forged -- and that way was if you knew for sure. (If they even are.) If you get my meaning, wink, wink. And now we know that the source of the story, originally attributed to "bloggers," turns out to have been a Republican operative. Anyway, none of this has anything to do with what the documents SAID, which was true. Which makes this an even more interesting case, doesn't it? The fact that we're all talking about the documents, even though what they SAY has much greater ramifications. WHY DID BUSH STOP FLYING? THAT is the real question here. Update - There's more to this story. Read WHY CBS went on the air with the documents. John Roberts, the network's White House correspondent, called to report he'd just completed an on-camera interview with Dan Bartlett, the White House communications director. Bartlett, it appeared, had no quarrel with the authenticity of the documents. That was the turning point. "If we had gotten back from the White House any kind of red flag, raised eyebrow, anything that said, 'Are you sure about this stuff?' we would have gone back to square one," Josh Howard, the program's executive producer, told the Los Angeles Times in an interview Friday. "The White House said they were authentic, and that carried a lot of weight with us." The story aired that night, and Dan Rather, the CBS News anchor, seemed to have scored yet another coup in his broadcasting career. Hours later, the roof fell in. Critics, many of them Internet-based, immediately charged that CBS had relied on phony documents from a shadowy, unnamed source. Rather, 72, long a target for conservative critics, was again fending off allegations of liberal bias. A growing chorus of media observers voiced distress that CBS had hurried a story onto the air without fully checking the facts.If not a set-up, maybe a bugged office, giving them advance warning? Take a look at this, When time passed and Will heard nothing, she called CBS News the night of Sept. 7. She said she told her contact — whom she declined to name — "If you run this story, you'll get all sorts of questions from hundreds of document examiners." Will declined to say what if any reply CBS gave to her warning.If someone was privy to that conversation... But, as I said, we don't even KNOW that this document was forged. And, as I said, the REAL question -- the one with significance to the American people -- is, WHY DID BUSH STOP FLYING? It matters, because if the guy has an addiction problem, we need to know it. Update - A good piece by Keith Olbermann at Hardblogger. --- Posted at 9/17/2004 11:07:00 PM by Dave Johnson Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
You're Gonna Get Drafted The Draft – A Reason to Vote if You’re Under 30 You already blew it: You didn't vote last time, or voted for Nader or Bush, and now you're gonna get drafted. There's no way around it now, the draft is almost a certainty. You're hearing about Reserve and National Guard units being called up, and about people not allowed to leave the military even though their term is up. Have you thought about what this means to you? You KNOW this means they're having trouble finding enough soldiers to go to Iraq, right? Of course Bush doesn’t want to start the draft BEFORE the election. Duh! But what do you think happens the day AFTER the election? I repeat, they are having trouble finding enough soldiers to go to Iraq. Think about it. Right, you're gonna get drafted. Or, maybe you think they can't do that? Maybe you think the draft doesn't happen in America. Maybe you think they can't just grab your ass up off the street, stick a rifle in your hands and send you off to war? Of course not, that NEVER happens. Right. WAR. Yes, that word. The word you have been hearing from Bush’s lips for months now. "I'm a WAR president", he says. Well, what did you think war MEANS? Somebody ELSE’S war? Did you think it means you get to watch a TV show with planes and stuff? No, WAR means young people getting grabbed up off the street and sent off to fight. That. Is. What. War. Is. And, by the way, women and students are NOT going to be exempt this time. Maybe not even rich kids. ONLY the children of politicians will be exempt. THIS TIME. So, are you finally ready to do something about it THIS TIME? Which candidate do you think is more likely to grab your ass off the street and send it to Iraq? Which candidate do you think is more likely to start a war with Iran, or Syria, or maybe even North Korea? Like Bush says, we're at war, and that's the issue in this election. Well, THAT’S what you should be thinking about THIS TIME. So vote. THIS TIME. ========== Except there's a problem with this message. Young people are so disengaged that there probably aren't very many of them reading weblogs like this one, so they won't see this. And that means they might not figure this stuff out in time for the election. You have to help them. Take this post and copy it and paste it into an e-mail and send it to someone who is under 30. Or write your own message explaining what the draft is, and why they should be concerned enough to actually vote. It is important to explain that the draft actually CAN happen to them. If you're old enough you can tell them from experience. --- Posted at 9/17/2004 05:31:00 PM by Dave Johnson Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
New Bush Guard Documents When they release the documents on Friday afternoon, you know they aren't going to help him. CNN.com - More Bush Guard records released: "'George Bush is one member of the younger generation who doesn't get his kicks from pot or hashish or speed,' the news release said. 'Oh, he gets high, all right, but not from narcotics.'"Oh, really? Is THAT why he stopped flying, then? High on life? And why is there always, always a hint about drugs, even in stuff that's supposed to be favorable to him? --- Posted at 9/17/2004 05:10:00 PM by Dave Johnson Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
Friday Buddy Blogging 
Friday Buddy Blogging - testing a new way of putting pictures onto the weblog. 
--- Posted at 9/17/2004 03:06:00 PM by Dave Johnson Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
Steve's On The Gallup Poll Case Steve Soto at The Left Coaster on Why You Should Ignore The Gallup Poll This Morning - And Maybe All Of Theirs. --- Posted at 9/17/2004 02:07:00 PM by Dave Johnson Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
Answers to Kerry Questions Bill at Liberal Oasis has put together a document with answers to questions people ask about Kerry. This is useful when taokig to people who haven't made up their minds. Get it here. --- Posted at 9/17/2004 02:00:00 PM by Dave Johnson Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
Are You Reading Are you reading Derelection daily? --- Posted at 9/17/2004 09:58:00 AM by Dave Johnson Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
More Intimidation by Republicans Conservatives Urge Boycott of Procter & Gamble: "For Procter & Gamble to align itself with radical groups committed to redefining marriage in our country is an affront to its customers."P&G does not favor denying civil rights to gays. So they say this is "aligning itself with radical groups committed to redefining marriage." --- Posted at 9/17/2004 09:35:00 AM by Dave Johnson Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
POP We don't know why, but it obviously happened. --- Posted at 9/17/2004 09:31:00 AM by Dave Johnson Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
"What are those guys up to this time?", Part II Tom Tomorrow has this to say about bad polls: It's all bollocks, of course. Republicans just want to psyche you out. They want you to think they can't be defeated. They want you to doubt yourself, to stumble, to give up. But there are way too many variables at play. Iraq, the economy, terrorism--it's a confluence of events which hasn't come together like this before. We're in uncharted territory. The future hasn't been written yet. Don't forget that.This is pretty much what I said below about rumors. During the last weeks of the campaign, you don't want to spend too much time asking yourself "Is that really true?" Just ask "What are those guys up to this time?" Everything is a move in the game. As Mr. Tomorrow pointed out, we've recently had polls asking the same question during the same time period coming up with results that are ten points apart. It doesn't make a lot of difference why this happened. There certainly are Republican pollsters out there lowballing Kerry's polling results, but maybe it's just bad methodology. Obviously, someone's got to be wrong. I think that there is definitely a silver lining here. From the scuttlebutt I've seen, apparently pollsters' methods of defining "likely voters" aren't very sensitive. This means that if the Democrats get-out-the-vote campaign is better than last time, Kerry is really doing better than the polls say. (Because Bush's get-out-the-vote was already pretty good last time, he has less room for improvement.) Furthermore, if Bush believes his own polls, maybe he's become over-optimistic. For example, if the polls are wrong which show West Virginia to be safe for Bush and Minnesota a tossup, then Bush's recent Minnesota trip was a big mistake. If you look at most of the polls, Kerry is hanging tough. I presume that the Kerry campaign is starting to counterattack on issue other than National Guard service, and I've seen evidence of that already. The main point is to keep fighting. Don't let any of the daily fluctuations in the news -- polls or anything else -- get you down. A lot of it is fluff, and some of it is disinformation. Here' Conason on the polling --- Posted at 9/17/2004 08:20:00 AM by John Emerson Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
9/16/2004 Crime Syndicate Matt Stoller, on the Kerry campaign: "the campaign isn't in chaos, it's a political campaign responding to eighty thousand swirling currents and finding it difficult to run against what is essentially a criminal syndicate. "That's a good way to put it. --- Posted at 9/16/2004 07:08:00 PM by Dave Johnson Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
At Hardblogger David Shuster at Hardblogger: "To win a presidential election, strategists of every stripe will tell you that your campaign must show audacity, fearlessness, and chutzpah. And it's why the Republican party and the Bush campaign has been crushing the democrats and John Kerry. Take the CBS/Bush national guard documents-- Republicans are hammering the anti-Bush story and those responsible for it. The GOP is even demanding a Congressional investigation. Quote, (from a Republican letter on capitol hill): 'We urge CBS to retract its story, and to disclose the identities of the people who have used your network to deceive your viewers.' A congressional investigation may be warranted. But keep in mind this is the same group of lawmakers who tried to BLOCK investigations into the false testimony, forged documents, and outright lies used by the CIA and Pentagon to make the case for war with Iraq. Audacity? You bet. Aggressive and smart politics? Indeed."Aggressive and smart politics? Or do they just lie, and cheat, and steal. (Warning, long file, probably should have broadband for it... and how come you don't?) Also, Dee Dee Myers says, about the Swift Boat smear, Yes, it's Monday Morning Quarterbacking. But after more than 30 years in this game, Kerry and Co. should have seen it coming. --- Posted at 9/16/2004 10:29:00 AM by Dave Johnson Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
Bush National Guard: New Witnesses -- and Witness Intimidation The Bush AWOL story is still alive as more evidence appears and more witnesses come forward. Besides Mrs. Knox, Robert Strong, and Bobby Hodges, a fourth contemporary witness, Richard Via, has also confirmed that Killian's opinion of Bush was about the same as that expressed in the challenged memos. These witnesses should expect the worst. Here's what happened to a different Robert Strong once the real Robert Strong's testimony came out: "Last week, if you typed the words Professor Robert Strong in the popular search engine, a webpage that happens to be about me appeared at the top of the list. For those who have been filling my e-mail inbox with vicious vitriol, that was apparently evidence enough. At first, I found all of this a bit funny. Here I was in the midst of my 15 minutes of fame, and it was just a case of mistaken identity. But the more e-mails I read, the less amused I became. The meat they contain is more raw and distasteful than any spam I have ever encountered..... But how does that get them to the conclusion that I am a ''liar,'' the ''biggest dirty trickster since Watergate'' and ``a paid agent of George Soros''? My e-mailers apparently think that the folks at 60 Minutes were sloppy in checking the facts about Bush's service in the National Guard. Where do they get their facts? How can they be utterly oblivious to their own inability to discover the simplest facts about me?" Here's another example. Dr. Philip Bouffard is an authentication expert who first said that the Killian memos looked fake, and then was quoted by the Boston Globe as having changed his mind. All hell broke loose: "I have people calling me and e-mailing me, and calling me names, saying that I changed my mind. I did not change my mind at all!" Bouffard is apparently no longer giving interviews. To the blogger quoting Bouffard, the Globe's alleged misquotation of Bouffard was the story; to me, the flood of abusive phone calls is the story. So that's what happened to two people who were wrongly thought to have testified against Bush -- think what it must be like for people who actually do testify against him. In the SBV case there was a definite pattern of witnesses either falling silent, changing their stories (several of the SBV's contradicted their own official Vietnam-era reports about Kerry), or both in succession. Staudt, normally a Bush supporter, refuses to talk. Burkett, accused of being the source of the memos, refuses to talk. George Elliot, a former commander of Kerry's, changed his story three times in two days and refused to talk after that. In the memo case, Bobby Hodges originally confirmed the CBS story, and then later claimed that CBS had deceived him. Comparing his two statements, we can see that he accepted the memos as expressing Killian's point of view, though he did not examine the actual physical memos and was not aware of questions about their authenticity. It seems reasonable to conclude that after Hodges' first statement, someone got to him and explained that, not only could he get away with retracting his previous statement, but that that would be a very good idea indeed. Bob Somerby and others have documented how the SBV organizers wrote a script and put words in people's mouths -- and in fact, several of the supposed SBV's have said that their names were used against their wishes. The whole SBV campaign was an orchestrated political operation, and as the months go by we'll find out more and more about how fraudulent it was. And without denying that the opponests of the Killian memos may have scored some points, we can be sure that they're an orchestrated operation too, and we should fight them as such. The conclusion we should come to is that we're in the middle of a street fight. The other side is willing to say and do pretty much anything, and they have an enormous pool of volunteer trolls to intimidate witnesses. (People who are only annoying posting on internet political sites can be frightening when they're flooding an individual with anonymous phone-calls and emails.) They also are willing to manufacture evidence, bear false witness, and put words in people's mouths. It's a mistake to take anything that comes from them at face value. It's all part of the fight. As usual, I've had arguments during the last week with the finer sort of genteel liberal. To them the main story has been: "Are the memos authentic?" For me, the question is: "What are those guys up to now?" It's not that the validity of the memos is irrelevant -- it isn't -- but if we lose a point on that question we should just fight to get the point back somewhere else. Drawing attention to the fact that four witnesses confirm the substance of the memos is a good place to start. One opinion I've heard expressed is that the National Guard question and the memos themselves are distractions from the real campaign. Agreed, and if we can get the campaign on an issues track, we should. But the genie is out of the bottle, and we have no choice but to fight whichever fights our semi-criminal opponents send our way. We cannot pretend to be "above the battle". Everything that comes up in the next seven weeks, and above all in the last week, should simply be treated politically. If a report comes out that Kerry tortured kittens in his youth, or had a torrid affair with a STASI agent in East Berlin, or was a heroin addict in Vietnam -- and we know that something will come out around October 28 -- we should not spend any time at all thinking about the truth value of the reports, but should just fight back with all we've got. But I'm a political hack, and Democrats aren't supposed to be political hacks. We're supposed to be nice guys, in the finish-last sense of the word. And my expectation is that on Oct. 30 the liberal blogosphere will be asking itself whether Kerry is really a kitten-torturer, and if so, whether a man who tortured kittens in his youth can be trusted to lead this great nation. David Brock on media treatment of memo controversy Revised 9:15 a.m. PDT. --- Posted at 9/16/2004 06:03:00 AM by John Emerson Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
Illegal No surprise here. The United Nations secretary general, Kofi Annan, declared explicitly for the first time last night that the US-led war on Iraq was illegal.
--- Posted at 9/16/2004 03:56:00 AM by richard Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
9/15/2004 No Unimportant Races Natasha writes about Chamber of Commerce money being used in lots of "little" races. But it's a big story. --- Posted at 9/15/2004 10:56:00 PM by Dave Johnson Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
Support Kerry Digby says: " And, the very least we can do is make sure that if the issue of politics comes up in our daily lives that we unequivocally say out loud that we support Kerry and think he's a good man even as we make our case against Bush. [. . .] Kerry's working his ass off on our behalf to take down little Junior. We owe him some respect for that and we need to help him make that affirmative case for change. Here's a little idea for a personal political project that each of us can undertake. Surely, we all know one person who doesn't usually vote, an apolitical type who isn't interested. This country is crawling with them. This is the election to get them registered and make sure they vote, whether by sending them the link for an absentee ballot or offering to pick them up and take them to the polls on election day. Everybody knows somebody like this. If we all make sure that we each get one person to vote who wouldn't otherwise give a damn, we win. So, think about it. Which of your slacker friends can you get to vote this year? Take the initiative. They won't mind. They don't care. Make that work for us." --- Posted at 9/15/2004 10:29:00 PM by Dave Johnson Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
Wow Wow. Wow. Wow. --- Posted at 9/15/2004 10:20:00 PM by Dave Johnson Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
Traditional Values Coalition: Lying Scum Sucking Bastards The Traditional Values Coalition has launched its latest attack, using classic right wing "big lie" techniques to attack the GLBT community by smearing it as a promoter of pedophilia and undermining of the family - in the process, they conflate polyamory with pedophilia, getting a twofer (bashing the queer and the poly communities) in the process. Not to mention inflicting severe damage on the reputation of a young and risk taking African-American film maker (I hope he sues them for libel) and sending a message to everyone in Hollywood that the religious right will stop at nothing to destroy their films and their reputations. Here's an excerpt from their latest press release: > Kevin Bacon's film, "The Woodsman" is produced by homosexual activist > filmmaker Lee Daniels who told a reporter for "Film Festival Today" > that he wanted to "put a benign face on pedophilia" in this film. A > benign face on someone who molests children? Why would someone want > to provide a sympathetic view of a man who robs children of their > innocence and condemns them to years of guilt and shame? Source: http://www.traditionalvalues.org/modules.php?sid=1886 Here's what was actually said: TOM BROOK: “What do you say to those people who say you’re trying to put a benign human face on paedophilia?” LEE DANIELS: “That I’m trying to tell a story, is what I’d say.” See URL below for the full interview in context: http://www.bbcworld.com/content/template_clickpage.asp?pageid=2432 Note who actually said what. Note who the Family Values Coalition said this. Which version of the story do you think that Rush and the rest of the AM radio gang will be ranting about from this point forward? This is disgusting. It pisses me off. Normally, I wouldn't write about it in this blog, but this kind of flat out viciously defamatory lie is just outrageous and deserves to be emphatically rebutted and discredited ASAP, before it gets repeated everywhere. Next time you hear a right winger repeat some outrageous quote by a member of a marginalized community, think about the example above before taking it seriously. --Thomas Leavitt --- Posted at 9/15/2004 09:38:00 PM by Thomas Leavitt Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
Daddy, are you a traitor? A guy is a Democrat. His daughter comes home one day and asks, Daddy, are you a traitor? It certainly isn't going to get any BETTER if Bush-the-uniter wins. And what do we DO to traitors? Watch your backs. --- Posted at 9/15/2004 09:24:00 PM by Dave Johnson Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
Kerry and the War in Iraq At a time when the occupation of Iraq looks more and more hopeless: 1,000+ dead American military service men and women (more every day), thousands of (often severely) injured soldiers (more in the last few months than the entire preceding period of invasion and occupation), and an insurgency that appears ever more effective and able to engage in large scale co-ordinated actions (one that, in fact, effectively controls several major cities in Iraq) - at this time, when Bush should be completely vulnerable and easily confronted with a failed policy of war and occupation in Iraq, Kerry finds himself unable to capitalize on the incumbent's weakness. Why? Simple - Kerry, like the rest of the American establishment, like Bush, has no idea where to go from here. He hasn't the faintest credible idea of how to stabilize the situation in Iraq (or Afghanistan, Iraq's forgotten step-sister), and he can't conceive of us withdrawing without doing so... the upshot of this is that Kerry is as committed as Bush is to occupying Iraq indefinitely, regardless of the cost in American (and Iraqi) blood or money. Put another way: Kerry's forward policy on Iraq is essentially identical to Bush's -- which leaves him unable to challenge the incumbent on his current and future policies in Iraq (and no ability to capitalize on the disaster the occupation has become). No wonder every statement he makes comparing his positions with Bush's is backward looking: "I would have done everything differently." This is talk that is not only cheap, but meaningless. Kerry himself says: "As complicated as Iraq seems, there are really only three basic options: One, we can continue to do this largely by ourselves and hope more of the same works; Two, we can conclude it’s not doable, pull out and hope against hope that the worst doesn’t happen in Iraq; Or three, we can get the Iraqi people and the world’s major powers invested with us in building Iraq’s future." Remarks at Westminster College on April 30th, 2004 http://www.johnkerry.com/pressroom/speeches/spc_2004_0430.html Option one appears to be Bush's plan, more or less - continue spending America's blood and patrimony on a war that has no end, against an enemy that appears as faceless and unidentifiable as Al Quaeda and "global terrorism" - or put another way: as completely generic, decentralized, and unstructured as Al Quaeda (which at this point in many ways more resembles a movement, than an organization). Option three appears to be Kerry's plan - share the burden with our allies... the problem with that is two-fold: 1. It doesn't change any of the essential characteristics which make our current policy ineffective: replacing some or even the majority of American troops occupying Iraq with NATO troops won't prevent or stop any of the car bombings, kidnappings, and drive by shootings that dominate the headlines every day. Militarily, Iraq is very much like Vietnam - we win every battle, sometimes by hugely disproportionate margins, but are losing the war. How many American deaths have been the result of formal combat (vs. car bombs, mortars, and other non-force engagement type events)? Not terribly many. The Mahdi Army suffered enormous casualties in combat against American forces in Najaf over a period of weeks - literally hundreds of fatalities, compared to a number that is unknown to me but unquestionably vastly smaller on the American side. But did that matter? No... simply by continuing to exist, by continuing to resist in any form whatsover, the Mahdi Army emerged essentially victorious. Another 40,000 troops (even another 400,000 troops) wouldn't change the fundamentals of this equation - conventional forces can't do much against suicide bombers and car bombs, or a political/military situation in which conventional formulas for victory are meaningless. 2. Our allies in NATO show no enthusiasm whatsoever for taking over the occupation of Iraq: most of them were against it in the first place, most of the European "street" is still against it, and those of our allies who supported it are paying a high political price that is likely to scare off any of them contemplating a change of heart. In this, they appear very rational. What evidence does Kerry offer that he is going to be able to change the basic political calculus of European politics? Or, put another way, how is he going to change the fact that no sane leader is going to want to wade into the quagmire that is Iraq today? Kerry argues that it is in the self-interest of Europe to not let Iraq descend into chaos. But the average European (and his/her representatives) don't seem to agree. Nor does the European elite (see the Financial Times/UK editorial below). So we see that, in effect, option three is essentially option one - because if we can't persuade our European allies to assume almost the whole responsibility for the occupation in Iraq, Kerry's non-plan leaves us as fully committed as Bush's. This leaves option two: Cut and run. It may be brutal. It may be humiliating. But we'll survive it. And, ultimately, the cost of "peace with honor" in Iraq, as in Vietnam, will be very very high ... and, in the end, make little to no difference in the ultimate outcome. The Financial Times/UK just published an editorial saying essentially the same thing. http://www.commondreams.org/views04/0911-26.htm Here's an excerpt: The core question to be addressed is this: is the continuing presence of US military forces in Iraq part of the solution or part of the problem? As occupying power, the US bears responsibility for Iraq under international law, and is duty-bound to try to leave it in better shape than it found it. But there is no sign of that happening. The time has therefore come to consider whether a structured withdrawal of US and remaining allied troops, in tandem with a workable handover of security to Iraqi forces and a legitimate and inclusive political process, can chart a path out of the current chaos. *** end excerpt *** Read the rest of the editorial - it end by saying that we need to prepare to "step aside and let the Iraqis try to emerge from it [chaos]." The FT is not some wingnut leftist rag - it is the voice of the European financial elite. What hope does Kerry have of dragging the rest of Europe into Iraq when a leading publication, in the home of our one major European coalition partner, is already advocating that we get out now?!? If Kerry wins, and doesn't pursue an immediate and unconditional withdrawl from Iraq on a definite timetable, he (and the Democratic Party) will pay a terrible price. Four years from now, the war in Iraq won't be Bush's war - it will be Kerry's... the thousands upon thousands of fatalities and injuries incurred over the next four years won't be on Bush's head - they will be on Kerry's. And so will the political consequences. At that point, perhaps the biggest benificiary will be the Green Party, whose candidate, David Cobb, advocates exactly this: "an immediate withdrawal of US military from Iraq". As a Green, the prospect of the Democratic Party rendering itself completely discredited as an effective alternative to the Republican Party on the defining issue of our time, the war in Iraq, leaving the Green Party as the sole credible voice of opposition should be pleasing - but as an American, the cost is far too high to contemplate with any ease. How many men and women of my generation have to die (or lose a limb, or two) before the American political elite is dragged face to face with reality? Another 10,000? Twenty thousand? Fourty thousand? 57,000? It isn't worth it. All I can say is I devoutly hope that Kerry wins, and when the impossibility of pursuing option three becomes readily apparent, is willing to bite the bullet and get us the hell out ASAP, rather the following through on his pledge to keep us in Iraq through the next election cycle. Kerry won't have my vote this fall, his non-policy in Iraq, among other things, makes that impossible - I'll gladly cast my vote for the nominee of the Green Party for the third election in a row (along with many other Californians, I hope), but my heart and my hope will be with Kerry, for a victory nationwide, and a bout of common sense, post-election. --- Posted at 9/15/2004 08:39:00 PM by Thomas Leavitt Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
Debunking another right-wing hatchet job on public education. A friend of mine posted the following item to a Santa Cruz area school discussion group (apologies if this is long, but their is a lot of detail to assemble): > Where Do Public School Teachers Send Their Kids to School? > > NATIONAL - Teachers, it is reasonable to assume, care about > education, are reasonably expert about it, and possess quite a lot > of information about the schools in which they teach. If these > teachers are more likely than the general public (which may not have > nearly as much information or expertise in these matters) to send > their own daughters and sons to the public schools in which they > teach, it is a strong vote of confidence in those schools. ... The > data show that urban public school teachers are more likely than > either urban households or the general public to send their children > to private schools. Across the states, 12.2 percent of all families > (urban, rural, and suburban) send their children to private schools - > a figure that roughly corresponds to perennial and well-known data > on the proportion of U.S. children enrolled in private schools. But > urban public school teachers send their children to private schools > at a rate of 21.5 percent, nearly double the national rate of > private-school attendance. (by Denis P. Doyle, Brian Diepold, and > David A. DeSchryver for The Thomas B. Fordham Foundation) > > http://www.edexcellence.net/foundation/publication/publication.cfm?id=333 My response: The Thomas B. Fordham Foundation is not an objective source. See the item below, from Cursor's "Media Transparency" website, which helps you figure out whether the money and ideology behind surprising/counter-intuitive "news" and "studies" you see in the media are suspect. Their president, Chester E. Finn, is described as "one of the education policy gurus of the conservative movement" - and the conservative movement has made the defunding, degrading and destruction of public education one of their primary priorities. This guy has major "conservative" wingnut foundation credentials... he's an advisory board member of the National Association of Scholars, and a fellow at the Manhattan Institute, a leading ultra-right wing think tank. http://www.mediatransparency.org/people/chester_finn.htm There's a discussion of the foundation on the "school workers on-line community", in which Finn is described by one participant as: "an enemy of public education as well as a driving force for standards based reforms and high-stakes tests" http://lists.wayne.edu/cgi-bin/wa?A2=ind0105&L=swoc&D=0&P=2390 Their research director is also a "research fellow" at the Hoover Institution. http://hnn.us/readcomment.php?id=38716 More documentation on the background and ideological orientation of the foundation, and the authors of the report, can be found below. Getting clear about the ideological predispositions of the sponsoring foundation doesn't necessarily invalidates the particular study - it just calls for closer scrutiny. As well, let's get clear about something else: These foundations don't pay for "objective" research - if the results didn't serve the particular ideological agenda, this study would never have seen the light of day... in fact, if the authors and funders hadn't been pretty certain about what the end results would be, it would never have been funded in the first place. *** I've read through the report, a PDF copy is available at this URL: http://thewheelerreport.com/releases/Sept04/Sept7/0907choicesstudy.pdf A brief perusal of the report above reveals that this is fodder for the debate over "school vouchers" and "choice". Not at all surprising, given the authors' pro-voucher/"school choice" ideological predispositions. For example, the report highlight Milwaukee's results, in particular (and no other city's), where voucher based "school choice" is well established. Numerous other positive references to "school choice" are scattered throughout the report (in fact, this is clearly the underlying hypothesis of their report: that "choice" leads to better results). You'll note that the summary below highlights the difference between urban public school teachers and the public at large - an intellectually and statistically indefensible comparison, as the report itself admits, when it admits that the difference between urban public school teachers and the urban public at large is only 21.5 vs. 17.5 percent (a much smaller 4% - you'll also note that they don't say anything about the level of significance of their results, and what the margin of error and confidence level is, basic statistical figures that are necessary in order to evaluate the results of any study), and when it focuses on a select sub-group of that particular sub-group (teachers making under $42,000 a year) - why? Because AT ALL OTHER INCOME LEVELS, teachers are MORE LIKELY to send their kids to public schools, not less! In fact, the report makes a big deal of their finding that lower income teachers are 4.6% more likely to send their kids to school than the lower income public at large, while remaining completely silent about the fact that public school teachers making over $84k a year (where do they pay these wages!?!) send their kids to private [typo corrected] school at a rate of 8.9% LESS than the public at large. A completely counter-intuitive result if you assume that greater resources makes it easier to make the decision to send your kids to private school. Given that I'm not a social scientist and statistical methodology specialist, I'm not as well equipped to analyze and understand the methodology used to develop the figures cited in this study (I hope someone with more credentials than myself does take a whack at that), but I have some basic questions that the report doesn't answer adequately, in my opinion - how is the "control" group (the general public) defined? How accurate and relevant is it to compare lower income teachers to the public at large in the same income bracket - aren't teachers more likely to be better educated than others in their income bracket (especially lower income teachers) - as the report acknowledges? Income is not a full descriptor of socioeconomic class and associated behaviors. Doesn't structuring the comparison this way include teachers employed full time in the same category as many others employed at a much lower wage range, or not employed at all (mothers on AFDC, for example)? I wonder what the results would be if you "controlled" for all these factors? Wouldn't you like to know? As well, the report states that it backs up two decades of evidence showing that urban (you'll notice that they focus on this group almost exclusively) public school teachers send their kids to private schools as a higher rate than the general public... but all the only evidence they are able to cite is a 1983 survey of public school teachers by the Detroit Free Press and a previous study of theirs done in 1995. Interestingly enough, a 1999 era poll by Gallup on behalf of the Phi Delta Kappa (5th annual) shows that, UNIQUELY, teacher in inner city schools have dramatically different opinions than ALL OTHER teachers: "The tendency for teachers to award high grades to schools holds true for all teachers except those in the inner cities. Inner-city teachers give their community schools, the school in which they teach, and the nation's schools nearly the same grades, and all are lower than the grades given by teachers in urban, suburban, small-town, and rural areas." http://www.pdkintl.org/kappan/klan9904.htm Note that these teachers also tend to be the newest, and least well paid. So, if you're going to pick a sub-population of teachers with a less than fully positive view of public education, you couldn't do better than the group picked by the study's authors. Here's what I think: This report was bought and paid for by an ideologically biased institution with a clear anti-public education agenda. It was assembled by individuals with a clear ideological history of support for forms of "school choice" that include funding for private schools, including religious institutions. The report supports their pre-existing ideological positions, and it's methodology and analysis is worth questioning in detail. In summary this report is just one more salvo fired by the right wing noise machine, part of the right-wing's long standing program aimed at undermining and destroying public education in favor of a "voucher" system that would use public funds to pay for private education and religious indoctrination, and should be viewed with great suspicion by all serious advocates for public education. I look forward to seeing a more through analysis and rebuttal of this report by professionals... although I'm sure that any such analysis won't be anywhere near as well covered in the media. Regards, Thomas Leavitt BACKGROUND ON THE Thomas B. Fordham Foundation: Here's what "Rethinking Schools Online" has to say about it: http://www.rethinkingschools.org/archive/17_01/Ford171.shtml "The Fordham approach is profoundly anti-intellectual." They are much harsher on the foundation's 911 publication than the reviewer below, but essentially pin the ideological position of the foundation in an identical fashion. School Voices folks should also note the foundation's attack on Alfie Kohn. Here's a response to another report the Thomas B. Fordham Foundation issued a few years back: http://www.asu.edu/educ/epsl/EPRU/peer_reviews/cerai-00-07.htm "In the Foundation’s new report, each state is given a letter grade of A to F for each of the five areas evaluated – English, mathematics, history, geography and science. Only five states make the report’s honor roll, while 42 are rated negatively. The problem with the evaluations is a simple one: the states’ rankings for quality of standards are inverse to their performance on the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) and on the Third International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS). That is, the same states that have done the best job in the eyes of the Fordham report’s authors in implementing high standards have shown the poorest performance on widely accepted national tests for student achievement, and vice versa. These states have also performed poorly when compared to other nations." "Yet while clearly taking sides in the debate between "back-to-basics" advocates of rote learning and automatic computation, and those who would focus more on understanding underlying mathematical principles and their application, the report never seriously engages the nuances of this debate. Instead it opts to place its arguments in ideological, almost religious, terms." Read the whole response, especially the last paragraph, describing the weak to non-existent underpinnings for the report in question. Here's another review of a book the foundation published: http://www.lib.msu.edu/corby/reviews/posted/fordham.htm The review's author, while being relatively positive about the book itself, makes it clear that there is an ideological agenda behind it: "In the attempt to balance out what it views as the liberal, left-leaning curriculum currently taught by historically ill-educated teachers, the collection offers examples of alternative ways of thinking which are unabashedly conservative and right-leaning." Here's the summation: "The collection affords a rich repository of topics and references to documents on which to draw to achieve a celebratory history of America. At the same time, the essays are an illuminating window into the thinking of serious people with serious concerns and they warrant critical and skeptical examination for their content, rhetoric, and assumptions. In some ways, they might be seen to correspond to the advocacy of creationism which likewise needs to be recognized and acknowledged but also to be treated with critical awareness of mainstream scientific thinking about evolution." The intellectual equivalent of advocating for creationism? Highly suspect, in my book. BACKGROUND ON THE AUTHORS: Here's the lead author's biography, he's definitely a voucher/choice advocate: http://www.thedoylereport.com/cyber_chair/about_denis_doyle He has been associated with “think tanks” since 1980 -- Brookings, AEI [American Enterprise Institute], Heritage and Hudson Institute, where he is presently a non-resident Fellow. The last three are classic ultra-right wing think tanks... see mediatransparency.org for details. Brian Diepold appears nowhere else as a published author (based on a Google search). The third author appears to be currently working for Brian Doyle, but previously, he was Research Director for the Center for Education Reform (see article from their web site below, defending public funding of school vouchers for religious schools). http://www.edreform.com/index.cfm?fuseAction=document&documentID=263§ionID=58 The CER has received nearly 1.5 million in funding from extreme right wing foundations (see mediatransparency.org, below) over the last decade. http://www.mediatransparency.org/search_results/info_on_any_recipient.php?recipientID=56 Dave S. himself admits that the major teacher's unions, NEA and AFT "traditionally do not like" CER. http://www.nea.org/neatoday/9904/messages/10.html --- Posted at 9/15/2004 01:17:00 PM by Thomas Leavitt Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
Bush - Drugs? From the comments in the piece below this: "It would seem to me that there must be a reason (beyond their normal penchant for hiding facts) Bush/Rove has concealed the NatGuard records for so many years. Look very closely at the refusal to take the direclty ordered physical. I believe that holds the monster they fear. Why wouldn't an apparently heatlthy young man just refuse, against direct orders, to take it, knowing that his flying days would be over without it? DRUGS. - Tsquared"I report, you decide. --- Posted at 9/15/2004 10:12:00 AM by Dave Johnson Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
GOP Officially Part of the Memo Smear What did I tell you? The Republican Party officially accused the Democratic Party of providing forged documents to CBS as part of a campaign to smear Bush: Republicans condemned the video and linked it to questions about whether a recent CBS News report on memos written by Bush's former squadron commander might have been faked. "The video the Democrats released today is as creative and accurate as the memos they gave CBS," said Republican National Committee spokesman Jim Dyke.Never mind that the documents were NOT forged, were NOT given to CBS by the Democratic Party, and accurately reflect everything kown about Bush's service. Just keep those lies coming, one right after another. By the way, did I mention that Rush Limbaugh yesterday said on his show that he is now serving as an advisor to the Bush campaign? Update - House Republicans have officially called on CBS to "retract its report." About 40 House Republicans demanded today that CBS News retract its report of a week ago that called into question President Bush's service with the Texas Air National Guard more than three decades ago.This is serious intimidation. The ONLY think in question is one memo. The ONLY reason it is in question is that a right-wing blogger says it looks like a Word document. But they are saying that the ENTIRE STORY should be retracted, etc. This is a full-court press by the Right to smear Kerry, CBS and Deocrats in general. AND IT IS WORKING. Watch your backs. --- Posted at 9/15/2004 01:23:00 AM by Dave Johnson Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
9/14/2004 Nader A plea from prominent liberals "Ralph Nader's bid for the presidency suffered a huge snub from the left Monday when more than 70 prominent supporters of his previous presidential campaign urged voters to swallow their doubts and vote for John Kerry. They included such heroes of the intellectual left as Noam Chomsky, Howard Zinn and Cornel West, writers Barbara Ehrenreich and Studs Terkel, actors Susan Sarandon and Tim Robbins, and musicians Jackson Browne and Bonnie Raitt. They were aiming at voters in battleground states where Nader's candidacy is seen as a direct threat to Kerry. "We urge support for Kerry-Edwards in all swing states, even while we strongly disagree with Kerry's policies on Iraq and other issues," they said. "For people seeking progressive social change in the United States, removing George W. Bush from office should be the top priority." The statement was signed by 78 of the 113 prominent Americans who were personally recruited by Nader to endorse his candidacy in 2000."I really do believe that we are going to see the practical end of democracy in America if Bush wins this. It will become increasingly difficult for voices of opposition to the Right to get ANYthing on the mainstream media, through the courts, or other channels of reaching the public. What we are experiencing now, though unprecedented, is NOTHING compared to what is coming. The public will be increasingly manipulated with propaganda. The full power of the government will be brought into the process of increasing the Right's one-party control over the process. And "the system" will make it ever harder for opposition candidates to be heard, or even to get on the ballot. This is not fooling-around time, this is uniting time. Watch your backs! Update - Ouch, I wrote that in a hurry when I was supposed to be in the car driving my wife and visiting mother-in-law to the Santa Cruz County Fair... Courts are not a channel to reach the public, "the process of increasing ... of the process..." Ouch. But this is blogging - something I just HAD to say, so I said it. Keepin' it real. --- Posted at 9/14/2004 11:52:00 PM by Dave Johnson Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
Me! Four days ago, I called it. My theory is that these are forgeries of actual documents. Think about it. It would be a PERFECT repug tactic. Not only does it have all the characterisitcs of a repug trick. but they used a similar tactic before. Recall the "John Haldeman" trick the Nixon crew pulled on Woodward/Bernstein.Wow, am I smart. --- Posted at 9/14/2004 11:36:00 PM by richard Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
Secretary: the memos "accurately reflect the viewpoints of Lt. Col. Killian" They've found Killian's secretary (86 years young). The headlines say that she called the memos "forgeries". But here's the rest of the story: "The former secretary for the Texas Air National Guard colonel who supposedly authored memos critical of President Bush’s Guard service said Tuesday that the documents are fake, but that they reflect real documents that once existed.... Mrs. Knox, 86, who spoke with precise recollection about dates, people and events, said she is not a supporter of Mr. Bush, who she deemed “unfit for office” and “selected, not elected.” “I remember very vividly when Bush was there and all the yak-yak that was going on about it,” she said..... She said she did not recall typing the memos reported by CBS News, though she said they accurately reflect the viewpoints of Lt. Col. Killian and documents that would have been in the personal file. Also, she could not say whether the CBS documents corresponded memo for memo with that file. “The information in here was correct, but it was picked up from the real ones,” she said..... " Link, Dallas Morning News, Sept. 14 (registration required) This whole story is a diversion which is sucking up air from the real issues. But the whole hysterical winger hooplah about the forgeries sure looks a lot less important now than it did yesterday. And Dubya is the worst President since Franklin Pierce, and his Guard service was sub-minimal. UPDATE: Kevin Drum has a different take on this. [75 words redacted in the cold light of dawn.] I do not understand why he chose to accept the Republican spin and to give the article a Republican edit. Bush is the story, not the memos. --- Posted at 9/14/2004 07:42:00 PM by John Emerson Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
Here and there and everywhere Not having a good day today, or yesterday. I've been garbling stuff all over the place -- equipment failure had something to do with it. Here are some miscellaneous items. I. New "Bush flip-flop" site TR at Eriposte, whose Swiftvets summary covers that story in detail, has shifted his energies to a Bush flipflop summary. His stuff is a great resource for people writing letters to the editor, speaking in public, arguing with their freeper brothers-in-law, etc. II. Put your money down now! "Osama Sweepstakes is a fun method of putting a very important issue in front of the American people. I believe, like many others, that bin Laden is currently in custody and will be unveiled before the election, leaving Kerry in a no-win situation. The site, at http://www.osamasweepstakes.com/ allows you to vote for the day that YOU think Karl Rove has determined as optimum for his 'capture'! " III. And what I also meant to say was: This sentence dropped out of my post about how Republicans mean "macho" when they say "character": "All these years, The DLC has been giving us the wrong advice. They've been encouraging us to accomodate ourselves to the Republicans, when what the voters have really wanted is for the Democrats to be tougher and less weeny. No one in the world is afraid of Joe Lieberman, and Republicans love him. Democrats can't gain the voters' respect by submitting to the alpha male." --- Posted at 9/14/2004 03:47:00 PM by John Emerson Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
Time for the Truth It's time for the Kerry campaign to cut to the heart of the matter, and to start speaking the plain truth: "Let me tell you how it truly is", "Here's the truth about Iraq / the deficit / medicare / jobs". "The President is telling you that things are going well in Iraq. The truth is that they're getting worse (specifics)." "The President is telling you that that the jobs picture is getting better. The truth is that it's not (specifics)." "The President is telling you that my plans cost $2trillion. The truth is that the President's plans cost $3trillion and they are hiding that from you." "The truth is ... and the President is telling you that / not telling you that / lying about my plan / hiding from debates .... I am John Kerry, and I tell the American people the truth" The "consistency of message" of the republicans, which is immensely effective, is sadly missing from the democratic campaign, which every day feels more and more like Gore's theme du jour. It's ok to attack on multiple fronts. But what's not ok is not to do it in a consistent way or without a unifying theme. I am proposing a very simple and very powerful unifying theme: "The truth is ... and the President lies (in the most direct language possible). I am John Kerry, and I tell the American People the truth". Parenthetical note about language: "a distortion of my record" and "a distortion of my proposal" just don't connect, specially with swing voters (way too intellectual!!!) . Use the active voice and man in the street verbs: My oponent "lies about" "twists what I say", "cooks up" "dreams up", "makes up" "invents" "contrives" "hides" "hatches". With this you can be serious and critical, and you blunt Bush's mockery. You can attack that too: My oponent "laughs" "makes fun" "doesn't take seriously". "Misleading" is bad, since it admits that the oponent leads. John Kerry is a truly honest, courageous man. His opponent is a cowardly, deceiving man, and he and his campaign lie compulsively and non-chalantly, blatantly disrespecting the truth. If John Kerry does not emphasize this fundamental difference, he'll be buried by the never-ending avalanche of lies (when you're not limited by facts, you can make up an infinite number of falsehoods -- haven't we seen enough to be convinced of this?) There's no stronger character contrast between the candidates than their respect for Truth. The American people, overall, are not so cynical (yet) that they have given up on the truth. The truth has a way of being recognizable. Point the truth out, and it opens people's eyes. Mr. Kerry, while there's still time, expose you oponent for the fraud that he is. The American People deserve no less. --- Posted at 9/14/2004 01:47:00 PM by Camilo Wilson Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
Bush Video DNC Video: Fortunate Son. Go see! --- Posted at 9/14/2004 10:31:00 AM by Dave Johnson Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
Remember Our Rule Remember the Seeing the Forest Rule: When Republicans make accusations, you'll find that it is really THEM doing whatever they are accusing others of, and are using the accusation as a cover for their activities. It is a very effective tactic. When Bush accuses Kerry of flip-flopping, it is BECAUSE Bush's record consists of flip after flop. When he attacks Kerry's war record ... So Bush has been running around accusing Kerry of planning to spend a lot of money. Now there is this story, $3 Trillion Price Tag Left Out As Bush Details His Agenda: "The expansive agenda President Bush laid out at the Republican National Convention was missing a price tag, but administration figures show the total is likely to be well in excess of $3 trillion over a decade. A staple of Bush's stump speech is his claim that his Democratic challenger, John F. Kerry, has proposed $2 trillion in long-term spending, a figure the Massachusetts senator's campaign calls exaggerated. But the cost of the new tax breaks and spending outlined by Bush at the GOP convention far eclipses that of the Kerry plan. "So remember the rule. --- Posted at 9/14/2004 09:43:00 AM by Dave Johnson Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
Forgery or no, Bush's Guard service sucked The main point of this post is that the Killian memos should not be the main point of this post. (And no, guys, I'm not backtracking. I've been saying like this all along.) But read to the end -- the memos will be there. Big picture: Dubya is the worst President since Franklin Pierce -- also an alcoholic. (As it happens, Pierce is a relative of Dubya on his mother's side. I imagine them together someday, upholding the family honor in Hell.) Why do I say that? Well, his fiscal policies are the worst in American history. Republican deficit hawks are going nuts. His civil liberties and environmental records are among the worst, though he does have stiff competition. Iraq is a bloody mess, as a lot of recently-retired generals have pointing out. And there are many more terrorists now than there were before the Iraq War. Enough said. Bush's National Guard Service is important, if it has any importance at all, as a character issue in the election. The fact is, as the conservative U.S. News & World Report concludes here in a very careful story which does not use the Killian memos at all, that there are multiple reasons for concluding that Bush's performance did not even meet the minimum standard: "A new examination of payroll records and other documents released by the White House earlier this year appear to confirm critics' assertions that President George W. Bush failed to fulfill his duty to the Air National Guard during the Vietnam War." (Here's a graphic presentation, showing four years of good service followed by two years of virtually no service.) And the fact remains that not a single Guardsman has come forward to testify that they saw Bush in Alabama, despite a reward that's been on the table for years. (There are people who remember Bush's presence in the Barbour political campaign at that time, though their reports aren't flattering). Does anyone care? Well, apparently some of the families of Guardsmen do: "But we can't help notice the irony that a person who managed to avoid going to combat by joining the National Guard is now sending the National Guard into combat in a war based on lies." But it's not a sure thing that this issue will hurt Bush very much, since born-again Christians are very forgiving of prodigal sons if they're repentant, and since the uber-hawks who might otherwise object to Bush's record hate Kerry even more. So what about the memos that aren't the main point of this post? They aren't necessary for the case against Bush. Some say they're forged -- a good case is made here. Other experts deny it. I'm not making up my mind, but the real possibility of forgery does indeed seem to be there. It has always made sense for non-experts to wait and see and let things come out in the wash. The first wave of criticisms of the memos turned out to be full of holes, and we're now on about the third wave. Certainly we would have been foolish to accept the case against the memos right off, but we also would have been foolish to have given too much credence to them. And contrary to what the wingers are saying, most Democrats did not rush to judgement one way or another. Mostly we just sat back and let the Republican operatives do their work, giving them helpful criticisms whenever was saw them make a mistake. They really should be thanking us. That's not the way it's being spun of course. The wingers don't have any evidence, but they're sure that the Kerry campaign is guilty. They also claim that Democrats and liberals unanimously concluded immediately that the memos were valid, which is not true at all -- my opinion is that many too liberals rejected the memos too quickly and too uncritically -- we shouldn't do the other side's work for them. The spin loudly being pushed is that Bush's Guard service has been vindicated, that all liberals made fools of themselves by prematurely accepting the memos, and the the Kerry campaign is tarnished. None of these points are true. If the memos are bogus, Dan Rather and CBS are hurt -- funny how wingers think liberal love Dan Rather. Rather's source will be discredited, along with the forger himself if he's someone different. And that's it. The Kerry campaign has not been shown to have been involved. Bush's Guard service was still poor. And Bush is still the worst President since Franklin Pierce. From here on out, it's a media spin story. Will the wingers succeed in bullying the legit media into concluding that Bush's Guard Service has been vindicated and the Kerry campaign has been tarnished? Will the media buy the winger spin that the questions about Bush's service are just a smear -- a claim that a quick read of the USN&WR story will show to be wrong? The Republican media machine is a powerful one, and the media are gelatinous, fluffy, shallow, and often right-wing, so it's unfortunately quite possible that the winger spin will win out. But this is a media story now. The Bush story is still that his Guard service sucked. $50,000 reward for anyone who saw Bush in Alabama Guard Boston Globe story (does not mention Killian memos)Lukasiak's research on Bush's Guard service (very thorough) Ivins on the Guard and Texas politics --- Posted at 9/14/2004 09:18:00 AM by John Emerson Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
Just Like on TV Bush got a double push in the polls because of intelligent timing. The Republican Convention was soon followed by the hysteria over the anniversary of 9/11, and Bush took complete advantage of this. Naturally, experiencing both the Convention and 9/11 has set me brooding about the conjunction of the two events. First, 9/11. I stood outside with a neighbor and watched the two towers fall. Meanwhile, inside, my TV was on, featuring, of course, images of the two towers falling. I'd even watched some of this inside, before it occurred to me to go outside and see "the real thing." Real reality outside, virtual reality inside. It's all too easy to forget that there's a difference between the two. It's not that the TV image is fiction, but it's confined to a small screen, however vivid the image you're safe from its physical effects, and, most important, what's happening is being interpreted for you while it happens. Good, bad, dangerous, evil, fun, it's all presented to you, along with what you should think about it, what you should be feeling. Outside, no such luck. Your emotions are your emotions, no matter what you're feeling. You get the impact not only of sight but of grit and smell, and the real expressions on the faces around you, not some edited image. and, most vividly of all, how you're going to react to what you're seeing, what you're going to do about it. That good old fight or flight instinct. Those images of the planes hitting the towers immediately became iconic and even before the day was over, mythological. The images of people jumping from the towers was edited out. Too hard to deal with. Most of the sound of the towers falling was lowered to an acceptable level. You can't smell it, or feel it in your nose. You are not breathing vaporized people. Properly sanitized and interpreted, the entire country was treated to this, day after day, and now, for a week or so once a year, without even realizing what's happening to us, we are shown exactly what we're supposed to remember and how we are supposed to feel about it. Subjective reactions and personal feelings don't count. Staying with 9/11 for a minute, what was Bush doing that day? We're supposed to vote for him because he's Big Daddy and will protect us. So where was Big Daddy during that crucial period? Giuliani got to the WTC site so fast he almost got killed there. Rumsfeld helped rescue the wounded at the Pentagon. Whatever we may think of these two men, they at least showed up. Bush was in Florida reading to school children to push the importance of his education bill. Politics, not love of children. Once told about the attack, he kept on reading for several minutes. We hear about that now, but not about the rest of his day. Back in Washington, Cheney was physically carried down to the White House war-room bunker. He was joined by Rice and various others, all safe in a nice attack-proof bunker. Giuliani didn't retreat to a bunker. New York has ancient underground air raid shelters, plus the entire subway system, but nobody seems to have even thought about hiding underground. Natural selection at work. New York thrived during the cold war. You don't live in New York if you have a bunker mentality. Bush didn't return to Washington, not even to his nice, safe bunker. He made an announcement on TV and then -- he fled. By 9:57 AM Air Force One was in the air accompanied by fighter planes. At first they flew in large circles with no plan to go anywhere. What could be safe enough for Bush? At 11:45 they landed at Barksdale AF Base in Louisiana, so he could make another announcement. By 1:15 he was back on the plane, heading for Offutt, Nebraska, and its underground bunker. He got back to Washington around 6:30 PM -- because his absence was becoming "hard to explain." He spent the night with Cheney and the rest of the crowd. Now he explains he refused to sleep down there -- how brave of him -- but in fact he did. Now to the Convention. New York became a Police State, no getting out of admitting that. Armed with attack weapons, probably the largest army of police ever gathered in one place guarded the Garden against no particular danger; the streets anywhere near the Garden were lined with every imaginable kind of barrier. Watching the convention was like entering a time warp. The 50s have long passed into oblivion -- except inside that convention hall. That was a terrible time, everyone rigidly glued to their jobs, wives in lock-step with their husbands, every hair groomed, every word said censored, parents hit their children. This was the era of back yard air raid shelters, for all the good that would have done, of nightmares about nuclear threat, of "preparedness" for things nobody could prepare for. A country in unadmitted terror, no matter that World War II was over, real terror back then. Do you see where I'm going with this? An awful lot of people, maybe half the country, never really got over this. We yearn for the security of what we know. What we knew was hideous insecurity against which there seemed to be no protection, fear for our jobs, fear for our lives. Like Pavlov's dog, we salivate when the bell rings. I remember that period very well. I remember deciding that I'd rather die than live that way, prepared to hide in a sealed-off bunker against nuclear attack, and then have to live through the aftermath. Life at any price. Life is worth living -- only if one can live it. Life is for living with courage, not for dragging it out as long as possible whatever the cost. That's the difference between living a free and happy life, or ruining one's life worrying about what may or may not happen. We live dangerous lives on a dangerous planet, and life has always been like that. No matter how careful you are, you could be hit by a truck tomorrow. That's just the way life is. You can have a bunker mentality and go hide, or you can be out in the open and take your chances. Republican politics is the politics of the bunker mentality. That's why it's so hard to get through -- there's nothing rational going on to appeal to. It's the old fight or flight instinct being manipulated by a bunch of masterful crooks. --- Posted at 9/14/2004 06:44:00 AM by Meryl Johnson Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
9/13/2004 Mythbuster If Kerry ignores this advice, he's finished. --- Posted at 9/13/2004 10:47:00 PM by richard Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
Derelection Always good. --- Posted at 9/13/2004 09:51:00 PM by Dave Johnson Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
Bush team 'knew of abuse' at Guantanamo Bush team 'knew of abuse' at Guantanamo Evidence of prisoner abuse and possible war crimes at Guantánamo Bay reached the highest levels of the Bush administration as early as autumn 2002, but Donald Rumsfeld, the defence secretary, chose to do nothing about it, according to a new investigation published exclusively in the Guardian today. The investigation, by the veteran journalist Seymour Hersh, quotes one former marine at the camp recalling sessions in which guards would "fuck with [detainees] as much as we could" by inflicting pain on them. --- Posted at 9/13/2004 08:00:00 PM by Dave Johnson Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
Right-Wing Blogosphere Chris Bowers at MyDD writes, Top-Down Right-Wing Blogosphere Growing Powerful. --- Posted at 9/13/2004 07:53:00 PM by Dave Johnson Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
"Can It Happen Here?" Maureen Farrell at BuzzFlash.com asks Can It Happen Here? : And though It Can’t Happen Here is out of print, and surprisingly hard to find, selected quotes remind us that despite its 1935 publication date and antiquated references, the book remains far too relevant:
--- Posted at 9/13/2004 07:40:00 PM by Dave Johnson Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
Cursor Needs Some Help Cursor is asking for some help keeping afloat through the election. Cursor's Media Transparency is one of the absolutel key resources heping people like me research the Right. --- Posted at 9/13/2004 05:33:00 PM by Dave Johnson Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
Wimpiness and Character Michael Tomasky (and, following him, Kevin Drum, comment that Republicans vote on character, whereas Democrats vote on issues. Their point is good, but what is "character"? It means a lot of things, but it doesn't mean niceness. It means a bit of macho and above all, decisiveness. (Think Captain Kirk and John Wayne.) What it excludes is sitting around agonizing, "What do we do now?". (Think Jimmy Carter and Michael Dukakis.) Republicans want somebody who will get the job done in a time of crisis – as do we all. This definition of character accounts for a supposed paradox in the Republican attitude toward personal defects. Macho, decisive guys are actually very high risk for wild and crazy youthful episodes. Republicans only ask that the guys quit doing those things, and repent. That's why it won't really hurt Bush much if Kitty Kelly has evidence that, back in the day, he occasionally did lines of coke off whores' chests. Because in the end, he cleaned up his act and found Jesus. Many voters, perhaps subconsciously, take the Presidential campaign as an indicator of a candidate's effectiveness in dealing with America's enemies. A candidate needs to know when to respond reasonably to a reasonable proposal, and when to respond aggressively to a hostile act. Dukakis failed that test when his wife's hypothetical rape was brought up. He responded hypothetically, whereas he should have said something like, "God damn you, you piece of shit, leave my wife out of this!" All these years, The DLC has been giving us the wrong advice. They've been encouraging us to accomodate ourselves to the Republicans by being more moderate, whereas what the voters really want is for the Democrats to be tougher and less weeny. No one in the world is afraid of Joe Lieberman, and Republicans just plain love him. Democrats can't gain the voters' respect by submitting to the alpha male I'm a relatively wimpy guy, but I've spent much of my life in macho environments and have learned to survive there. Pretty much any time in the last 20 years, I've been able to go from being the wimpiest guy in the room to the most macho guy in the room with a ten-minute bus ride. This isn't really a "blue-collar" thing, because a lot of macho guys are middle class. It isn't even a sexual-politics thing. There are lots of macho gays in history (Alexander the Great, Julius Caesar) and a lot of macho women (Elizabeth I, Golda Meir, Indira Gandhi, Queen Christina). It's a character thing. Bartcop has been saying this for years: "How can the Democrats protect the American people when they can't even protect themselves?" We do not need a warlike president, but we do need a decisive one, and Kerry has to show that he's decisive. (After all, President Bunnypants really isn't very intimidating if you look at him closely, as the "My Pet Goat" episode shows.) The place for Kerry to start is by treating the lying, terrorist Republican shits the way they deserve to be treated. And always remember -- if Bush is re-elected, the terrorists win.--- Posted at 9/13/2004 03:32:00 PM by John Emerson Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
The Supposedly Forged Document Remember the Sandy Berger smear? This was the story claiming that President Clinton's National Security Advisor had smuggled incriminating documents out of the National Archives. (Berger was completely cleared.) This was a planned smear - in the works for months - and was used by the Republicans to make the public think that Clinton was responsible for letting the 9/11 attack happen and that "the Democrats" were engaged in a conspiracy to cover up the evidence. Well, along similar lines, and listening to Limbaugh just now, I can see that the Right's "Bush Guard memo forgery" is taking shape. The entire Wurlitzer - the Right's media echo chamber that is able to repeat a lie over and over and over until it is the ONLY story in the news - is cranked up and telling the public that CBS has been caught engaging in a smear against Bush using forged documents. Never mind that the document (one document, no plural 's') in question is legit. According to Limbaugh:
--- Posted at 9/13/2004 11:51:00 AM by Dave Johnson Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
New Ad Along with the other ads over on the right side of this page - all of which are worth taking a look at - there is a new ad from Betty Castor, running for the Senate in Florida. From the ad: The balance of the US Senate could rest on Betty Castor's US Senate race in Florida. Three major hurricanes have seriously hampered fundraising at a critical time, with only 50 days left. Help Betty weather the hurricanes and the Republican storm by making an emergency contribution today.So please take a look, and help out the campaign. --- Posted at 9/13/2004 11:47:00 AM by Dave Johnson Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
Scurrilous Rumor Department I know Dave thinks this should be strictly hands-off, but screw him. Seeing the Forest cannot afford to fall behind the curve on a story as important as this. Our competitors will eat us alive if we do. "How Jenna Bush became the Moby Dick of Prague" --- Posted at 9/13/2004 09:37:00 AM by John Emerson Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
Bush's Plan Putin Tightens Grip on Power in Russia (washingtonpost.com): President Vladimir Putin outlined plans Monday to "radically" change the Russian political system in a way that would increase his own power, portraying the moves as a means of combating terrorism in the aftermath of this month's deadly school seizure.Sound familiar? Watch your backs! --- Posted at 9/13/2004 09:15:00 AM by Dave Johnson Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
9/11 ON THEIR WATCH - Yet They Lash Out at Us Eric at Altercation writing about 9/11: ""Even so vociferous a critic of the unelected Bush, Cheney, the Neocons, and the religious right as myself could not bring himself to imagine in that horrific week with the smell of the smoking ruins literally polluting the sky above my house, that America’s president, its vice-president and their advisers would be capable of the following: --- Posted at 9/13/2004 09:14:00 AM by Dave Johnson Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
Reframing Lakoff says, among other things: The Two Americas should be called Strong America that works and Elite America that doesn't. It is Strong America, which contributes more than it is paid, that supports Elite America's lifestyle. To unite the country, Elite America must give up its subsidies and Strong America must be paid what it deserves. --- Posted at 9/13/2004 04:52:00 AM by richard Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
Sweet Hole Alabama Voting for Kerry? You're fired! --- Posted at 9/13/2004 04:01:00 AM by richard Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
9/12/2004 Headline at Washington Times The Right is going all out on this one. The Mooies weigh in with Bush Guard papers 'forged'. The Chicago Sun-Times has CBS falls for Kerry campaign's fake memo Scaife's NewsMax has: Only One Expert Sided With '60 Minutes' CBS Won't Deny Kerry Link to Docs Texas Guard Director: '60 Minutes' Doc 'Forged as Hell' '60 Minutes' Hid 'Pro-Bush' Witness More Problems Surface With Guard Docs and more... Fox has Source Pulls Support for Memos on Bush Guard Service They are cranking up the Wurlitzer for this one, going all-out. Watch your backs. --- Posted at 9/12/2004 05:32:00 PM by Dave Johnson Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
Summary of Bush Campaign Bush's election campaign can be reduced to two anti-Kerry points. 1. "I've screwed up Iraq so bad that Kerry has no idea how to fix things". 2. "Kerry fucked up -- he trusted me!" (the Animal House defense.) Both are true. You wouldn't think that Bush would want to be using these two particular arguments, but they do seem to be working. Gotta love that media of ours. --- Posted at 9/12/2004 05:31:00 PM by John Emerson Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
More to Discuss At this post, the author notices that the press is acting funny, making Kerry look bad and Bush look good... My comment, "Hey, I think we figured out a few years ago that the corporate media was moving solidly into support of the Right's agenda. They're there now. Why do we all act surprised each and every time we see more evidence of it? How long does something have to be in front of our faces before we see what is going on? This is NOT the America we grew up in. Think about Russia, where the opposition to Putin is pretty much kept off the TV, period. Or Italy where the leader OWNS much of the media. And think about countries where the opposition is harassed by the full power of the government, jailed, etc. I am becoming more convinced that is where we will be if Bush is in office next year."Watch your backs. --- Posted at 9/12/2004 04:41:00 PM by Dave Johnson Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
Argue Now Let's see if I can start everyone arguing. I left a comment over at Brad DeLong's site, to someone who said it is inevitable that we will pull out of Iraq, just like we did with Vietnam: "I think the situation in Vietnam was fundamentally different from Iraq today. Vietnam really was not a threat to us, and was not going to be. We really had no business being there at any time from start to finish. Leaving cost us nothing. (Before you say Cambodia, you're wrong, and Vietnam actually stepped in to STOP that.) But think about what Bush has created in Iraq. It was no threat to us before, but it is now. It really is a terrorist recruitment center now. And if we do leave, including leaving the oil (fat f*****g chance), then in the South we have created a wealthy nation-state allied with (maybe soon to be part of) Iran and intent on taking out revenge on us. In the North we leave behind a civil war between the Kurds and the Sunnis, wth Turkey invading. Meanwhile the entire region will have been disrupted by us, knowing that we DO just leave. We can't leave Iraq now. That was Dean's position, by the way. The only people saying we should just leave are the Naderites."OK, start the argument, please. --- Posted at 9/12/2004 04:23:00 PM by Dave Johnson Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
UN Bad! Every time you hear a Republican talking trash about the UN, remember where this stuff originates. Visit Get US out! of the United Nations and see for yourself. In fact, a LOT of far-far-right stuff is being expressed by supposedly "mainstream" Republicans these days. I wonder why that is? --- Posted at 9/12/2004 04:07:00 PM by Dave Johnson Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
U.S. Gunship Fires on Crowd It's getting worse and worse. Violence Sweeps Baghdad; U.S. Gunship Fires on Crowd: "A U.S. helicopter gunship fired at Iraqis milling around a burning U.S. vehicle in a Baghdad street Sunday during fierce battles in which witnesses and officials said 13 people had been killed and 61 wounded. [. . .] The U.S. military said two of its helicopters opened fire after coming under attack from the crowd. Reuters television footage showed no evidence of shooting from the ground. "As the helicopters flew over the burning Bradley they received small-arms fire from the insurgents in vicinity of the vehicle," a military statement said. "Clearly within the rules of engagement, the helicopters returned fire destroying some anti-Iraqi forces in the vicinity of the Bradley." Earlier, the U.S. military had said a helicopter destroyed the vehicle "to prevent looting and harm to the Iraqi people" after four U.S. soldiers were lightly wounded in the attack on the Bradley.""Anti-Iraqi forces"? What kind of Orwellian words are they using now? Why do we always have to fight through a fog of lies and intentionally misdirecting language to figure out what is going on. (That question answers itself, doesn't it?) Why do we ALWAYS ALWAYS get lies and contradicting statements?! Meanwhile in Afghanistan, "Protesters angered at President Hamid Karzai's sacking of a warlord governor in the west of the country ransacked U.N. compounds and clashed with security forces Sunday, leaving as many as three people dead and dozens wounded, including three U.S. troops who were hit with stones."It's bad, it's getting worse, but I fear it is going to get a LOT worse for us as well as the entire world if Bush wins this election. Or should I more accurately word it, "takes office" after this election, since we know that winning the election and taking office can be two very different things. If Bush loses (and doesn't take office), the Right's propagandists have set the ground almost inevitably for very, very serious strife here at home. I mean, how can Kerry be considered a legitimate leader to people who believe the things they are saying about him? If Bush does take office, it is clear that all the power of the state will be used to demolish domestic opposition to Party control. We might still have elections but it will be like Russia, where only The Party has access to the media, and they make things difficult in every other way as well. EVERYTHING is on the line in this "election." Watch your backs. --- Posted at 9/12/2004 01:53:00 PM by Dave Johnson Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
Hold Bush to the Same Standard as Nader Running Scared: It's Good to be the King --- Posted at 9/12/2004 07:58:00 AM by Dave Johnson Link to this | | | | e-mail this post
9/11/2004 | ||||
