War

Cross-posted at Daily News Online.

The Wrong War:

"Mr. Clarke, President Bush's former counterterrorism chief, writes in his book, "Against All Enemies," that despite clear evidence the attacks had been the work of Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda, top administration officials focused almost immediately on the object of their obsession, Iraq.

He remembers taking a short break for a bite to eat and a shower, then returning to the White House very early on the morning of Sept. 12. He writes:

'I expected to go back to a round of meetings examining what the next attacks could be, what our vulnerabilities were. . . . Instead, I walked into a series of discussions about Iraq. At first I was incredulous that we were talking about something other than getting Al Qaeda. Then I realized with almost a sharp physical pain that Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz were going to try to take advantage of this national tragedy to promote their agenda about Iraq.'"

I have a cousin who went to Iraq. He was in a Marine recon unit that went in before the war. He's very gung-ho about "defending America" and retaliating against the terrorists for 9/11, so we don't talk about this. But I wonder what he's going to think about this later, when he realizes that he was NOT "defending America" or avenging 9/11.

More than that, I wonder about the families of the dead. And I wonder about the injured. I wonder how they feel -- or will feel when the truth is accepted -- having sacrificed so much for the wrong war, for a trick, for an election gimmick, for a far-right ideology. And when the troops return, and the truth is known, how will they react? What will they say about this period of their lives, spent away in Iraq, seeing what they have seen and for some of them having done what they did in the course of a war and the year following that war.

I wonder how will we ever ask others to sacrifice? Now that our country has done this, how will we be able to ask people to sacrifice when it really IS necessary, really IS about defending the country, and really IS about fighting for freedom?

This betrayal is beyond politics, beyond impeachment, beyond resolution by law, certainly beyond a swinging left-right pendulum of national attitudes that naturally resolves itself back to some center. America was hijacked, politics was hijacked, our law was hijacked, our SYSTEM was hijacked, international law was hijacked, morality was hijacked...

There is nothing worse than war. When this is all over (if we do come to our senses) we must -- MUST -- repair our system and put in place oversight and accountability mechanisms to prevent anything like this from happening again. And I mean a lot more than just preventing a war -- I mean all the steps that led up to this, from the one-dollar-one-vote campaign system that let them get a foothold, to the repeal of the equal time doctrine that allowed them to turn our radio and TV stations into full-time right-wing propaganda outlets, even to indirect-but-related activities to consolidate their power over our institutions of morality like their taking over the Southern Baptist Church. That's part of the whole equation, and we need to look at every little piece of how they accomplished the takeover that led to this terrible, unforgivable war.

Free Trade Again

Matt and Kevin are posting about free trade again, so I'm being the free trade skeptic again. (How about you? Anything new with you?)

As always, I'll start off by saying that free trade is in many respects a good thing, etc., etc., and that under certain circumstances it might have been a very good thing.

Free trade defenders always point to the formal economic principle of comparative advantage and claim that it proves that with free trade, everyone is always better off. Even at best, though, it doesn't prove that; the most it can prove is that, on the average, free trade between two countries makes both countries better off. Not "everybody".

One major American product is labor, and Indian and Chinese labor, by and large, have an enormous comparative advantage over American labor. So perhaps America should reduce its production of labor, and stress products for which we do have a comparative advantage.

Problem solved, except that most Americans have nothing to sell but labor. What then? Well, they collect unemployment for a few months, and then they hunt for work for another few months, and then they become "discouraged workers". And then -- voila! -- they disappear from the statistics, and everything is fine again.

It is dogmatically asserted by all free traders that the tradeoff is even -- one job exported, one job imported. There may be some formal tendency of the system to gravitate that way, but isn't this an empirical question? What has actually been happening?

On the one hand, maybe our big partners like China and India aren't playing the game the same way we are. There is, after all, an enormous trade deficit. And on the other, maybe our exporting firms are exporting products which are less labor-intensive. So what are the facts? (I don't know, but I don't think we can get them by extrapolating from the formulae in our Economics 101 textbook).

From the point of view of labor, free trade tends to force labor producers (i.e. workers) to compete with overseas workers whose pay is much lower. And even these workers (e.g., in China and India) have to compete with workers elsewhere who are paid still less (e.g., in Egypt and Bangla Desh). And maybe this is a good thing on the whole, but it's certainly not good for everyone. Specifically not American workers.

Kevin Drum points out that if one job is lost and one gained, the loser will be angrier than the winner is happy (what's called "prospect theory"). This again assumes a parity that may not exist, but even if there is a one-for-one exchange, and even if the jobs are equally good, there's no real advantage in breaking even like that -- certainly no advantage big enough to justify the messianism about free trade. You really need a better than one-for-one ratio. So maybe prospect theory is a good guide -- if you're only going to break even with free trade, you better not do it.

As usual, I will conclude that free trade might have been a good thing. (Yes, I've failed to mention some of its benefits here). But combined with our present economic slump with its jobless recovery, and the relentless long-term reduction in public amenities (especially medical insurance, pension plans, and access to education), and finally the lack of real commitment to the various proposals floated to soften the impact for displaced workers, I find it hard to be sure that free trade was a good thing.

And certainly the Democrats made a big political mistake by sacrificing a chunk of their core constituency in the name of the global general welfare. Clinton's allies in the free-trade battles were mostly Republicans -- and most Republicans are anti-labor pure and simple. With free trade, the Republicans won, and both the free-trade Democrats and the protectionist Democrats lost -- to say nothing of labor.

And the Democratic party is now that much weaker, and the Republican Party that much stronger.

March Madness and Budget Watch

Posted by Tom Manatos
Advisor to House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi


Check out the right kind of humor/cleverness to use these days, as opposed to President Bush's poor taste humor.....Leader Pelosi is tying in the "March Madness" theme into the Republican Madness recently. See site for first round of "Republican March Madness" and vote for the most outrageous Republican priority.

Speaking of outrageous Republican action, the Republican budget just passed on the House floor last night and it will now go to conference committee with whatever was passed in the Senate. See fact sheets on how the Republican Budget affects different issues: Education, Homeland Security, the Environment, Veterans and Armed Forces and Health Care. Also, definitely check out the House Democrats central site for everything regarding the budget including actual video of Republicans voting against protecting social security and veterans benefits, "Budget Watch."

For information like this or any information pertaining to House Democrats please feel free to contact me at Tom.Manatos@mail.house.gov.

Lying Liars Update

Awhile back my buddy Dave posted a piece on the Bush-Rove strategy of lying all the time. More recently, mind-mannered neoliberal Josh Micah Marshall said about the same thing, and for Brad DeLong's opinion just google "Brad + DeLong + these + liars" for the ongoing series. (Dave's piece is now the #1 google for "They just lie".)

The Rove-Bush strategy doesn't seem to work as well overseas, and deception still can be an issue for Spanish voters and also for Polish leaders. But here in America we're all California fuzzy-logic situational ethics: "That was then -- it doesn't really make any difference any more -- it's water over the dam -- we're positive people who look forward -- solutions are more important than fingerpointing." Or at least Rove and Bush hope so, judging by Bush's recent lame WMD jokes.

For my Polish and Spanish readers, however, with their naive enthusiasm for their recently-won democracy, here's a collection of links about the Bush administration's lies, Chalabi's lies, and the circulation of lies through the American media. (The Knight-Ridder pieces are of special interest: throughout the Iraq War, reporters for this chain consistently did actual reporting, instead of just typing up administration handouts the way the deteriorating New York Times and Washington Post did. Perhaps market forces will eventually propel one of the Knight-Ridder newspapers to national status to fill the journalistic gap.)

237 misleading administration statements about Iraq (pdf file complied by Rep. Waxman, of the House minority)

Knight-Ritter: Exiles plant fake stories in media

Knight-Ridder II

Editor and Publisher: Fake Iraqi exile stories planted in media

Editor and Publisher II

Chalabi: "So what if we lied?"

Chalabi family has cashed in for $400 million so far

Google cache of Royce story

The two Chalabi stories got very little coverage in the U.S. media, and the second story has apparently been pulled from the internet by Newsday, which originated it. I saved the Google cache.

THE UNMAKING OF A PRESIDENT-2004

[... this is a little bit old, but well worth thinking about. I couldn't find an "original" posting site via Google, and found all sorts of copies reposted, so I think I'm o.k. in posting the full text. The theory espoused is provactive, at the very least, and the information included re: relative levels of positive/negative coverage is disturbing (although, admittedly, Dean's campaign, in challenging conventional wisdom, was bound to provoke more reaction, positive and negative, than that of his opponents). --Thomas Leavitt]

THE UNMAKING OF A PRESIDENT-2004
By Carl Jensen

Howard Dean supporters across the country were surprised when they
woke up Tuesday morning, January 19, to read reports of Dean's
unexpected third place finish in the Iowa caucuses.

What happened?

Gov. Dean started 2003 with little name recognition and even less
campaign funding. Through the summer he spread the old familiar theme
of power to the people, mostly through the Internet, and Americans by
the hundreds of thousands responded with their support and dollars. We
wanted to take our country and the Democratic Party back.

Then in late 2003, the media, which had anointed Dean as the front
runner, started to attack him. By the time of the Iowa caucuses, the
polls showed him plummeting and the media's new darling, Senator John
Kerry, soaring.

Kerry's remarkable overnight turnaround even surprised the candidate
himself who gleefully declared he was the "Comeback Kerry."

Meanwhile, the Center for Media and Public Affairs (CMPA), a
nonpartisan, nonprofit research organization in Washington, DC, which
conducts scientific studies of the news media, was monitoring the
nightly network news broadcasts that are the source of news and
information for most Americans.

The results of the CMPA study, released January 15, 2004, revealed that
Gov. Dean received significantly more negative criticism on the
network broadcasts while his Democratic presidential competitors
received significantly more positive comments. The research examined
187 stories broadcast on the ABC, CBS, and NBC evening news in 2003.

Only 49 percent of all on-air evaluations of Gov. Dean in 2003 were
positive while the other Democratic contenders received 78 percent
favorable coverage.

In a follow-up study by CMPA, of the network coverage of the
candidates from January 1 to January 18, the night before
the Iowa caucuses, revealed that the networks selected Kerry and Senator
John Edwards before the Iowa voters did. As you may recall, Kerry
finished first with 38% of the vote; Edwards ranked second, just below
Kerry, with 32%; and Dean managed only a poor third with 18% of the
vote. During the two-and-a-half week period leading up to the Iowa
caucuses, there had not been a single negative word uttered about
Edwards by the three networks (100% favorable coverage) while nearly
all, 96%, of the comments about Kerry were positive.

However, Gov. Dean's coverage during those first 18 days of January
was significantly less glowing with 42% unfavorable on-air
evaluations.

What happened in the campaign that inspired the media to turn on Dean
and throw their support to uninspiring Kerry?

A clue may be found in a story published in the Washington Post on
November 19, 2003.

The Post reported that, "In an interview Monday night (11/17/03), Dean
unveiled his idea to 're-regulate' utilities, large media companies
and businesses offering employee stock options. He also favors broad
protections for workers, including the right to unionize."

Also on November 19, the Associated Press reported, "Dean, the
former Vermont governor, said Tuesday that if elected president, he
would move to re-regulate business sectors such as utilities and media
companies to restore faith after corporate scandals such as Enron and
WorldCom."

Dean's idea of re-regulating two out-of-control business sectors
produced criticism from some of his competitors and surely struck a
raw nerve within monopolistic utilities and mega-media companies.

I believe Dean's progressive attack on monopolies helps explain why
the corporate media started piling on Dean, portraying him with the
pejorative term of the "angry candidate."

But while this helps explain why the media went after Dean, it doesn't
explain why they suddenly anointed Kerry as their Golden Boy.

However, it would appear that Kerry would not pose a threat to
corporate America while Dean would obviously challenge their
monopolistic control.

First, a search of Lexis Nexis, a comprehensive computer databank of
news and information, failed to find a single comment by Kerry
supporting re-regulation of media companies. In fact, Gov. Dean was
the only major candidate who ventured into no-man's-land to criticize
media monopolies and even threaten to break them up when elected
president.

We then discovered a newly published book by the Center for Public
Integrity(CPI), a nonprofit, nonpartisan group that does investigative
reporting and research on public policy issues. The book is titled,
"The Buying of the President 2004: Who's Really Bankrolling Bush and
his Democratic Challengers - and What They Expect in Return, (Harper
Collins, 2004)

According to CPI, the three largest fundraisers in the presidential
campaign at this time are Howard Dean with more than $25 million; John
Kerry with more than $20 million; and, of course, President George W.
Bush with $85.2 million (as of Sept. 30, 2003).

As has been reported, Bush plans to build a war chest of some $200
million for the election. His top major donors include financial firms
Merrill Lynch & Co., Credit Suisse First Boston, UBS Paine Webber, and
Goldman Sachs Group. The President's top career donor is the
scandal-ridden Enron Corp.

Kerry's top donors include Fleet Boston Financial Corp., Time Warner,
and a variety of major law firms. Time Warner, as we know, is the
world's largest media conglomerate. Among a variety of media outlets,
it also owns Internet giant America On Line and CNN - a virtual
cheerleader for Kerry.

The research Center does not cite any major donors for Dean. As we
know, the majority of his contributors are ordinary citizens who
donate an average of $77 dollars. Dean's "special interest group" is
the American people.

Finally, we come to a January 28, 2004, report from "The Campaign
Desk," which produces a daily analysis of the 2004 campaign and is
sponsored by the Columbia Journalism Review at Columbia University.

The non-partisan "Campaign Desk" reported that it is concerned "when
the press singles out one candidate for the kind of mauling and piling
on by exaggeration and distortion that Dean has endured in the past
week.

"On CNN last night, Judy Woodruff joined the mob at 10:42 p.m. when
she suggested that perhaps Dean's lower-key post-election address in
New Hampshire means that he was 'preparing his minions, all of his
supporters, for the fact that he may not win this nomination?'

"That's neither fair nor journalism," "The Campaign Desk" concluded.

There may be a limit to the piling on. When Wolf Blitzer polled his
CNN viewers on January 25, "Are the media unfairly characterizing
Howard Dean's post-Iowa loss rally?" 89% said "Yes."

Carl Jensen, Ph.D.
Professor Emeritus,
Sonoma State University,
Founder of Project Censored

(un)Common Sense discussion of public policy in re: the economy.

[Read the whole article. This guy is dead on target with his analysis. Another gem from Dave Farber's IP list. -Thomas]

The Economy Summed Up: Pay Any Price, Bear Any Burden, to Avoid Creating Jobs-http://markschmitt.typepad.com/decembrist/2004/03/the_economy_sum.html

The political analyst Charlie Cook's weekly column, available by e-mail
subscription http://nationaljournal.com/about/cookcolumn.htm is a real
treasure, and usually offers much more than just the horserace. There's a
single paragraph in today's column that I think sums up what we need to
know about the economy and jobs better than anything I've read:
In December, the CEO of a California-based high tech firm told me that
"there is no amount of overtime that we will not pay, there is no level of
temporary services that we will not use, there is no level of outsourcing
or offshoring that we will not do, in order to prevent us from having to
hire one new, permanent worker in the U.S." As I travel around the country,
meeting with business leaders, I hear similar, though less succinct
thoughts in almost every sector and every part of the country. U.S. wages,
health care, and other benefit costs have gotten so high -- and the press
by investors for high stock prices is so great -- that the premium is on
wringing every last bit of work out of as few employees as possible, to do
anything but incur the costs of adding permanent employees. [emphasis added]

[see url above for full article]

Bush has lost

I don't see how our comedian President is going to be able to survive this:

"Political pundits recently showcased on National Public Radio's "Talk of the Nation" said the outcome of this year's election may rely on the swing votes of undecided voters in states like Oregon. Voters like me.

I'm a registered Republican who is loath to vote for a Democrat. But if President Bush doesn't act swiftly to get our sons and daughters out of this hand-picked war of his, he won't get my vote.

Those of us who lost fathers in Vietnam have spent a lifetime debating the wrongs of that war. We shouldn't have to spend our futures distraught over the sacrifices of our offspring, too -- sons like Joel K. Brattain, who gave his life this month while fighting to help free the oppressed people of Iraq."

"A swing voter's plea: Get them out of Iraq, and soon"

Richard Clarke may still be a Republican

To the Editor, Portland Oregonian:

Both today and yesterday you printed columns disparaging Richard Clarke's testimony about 9/11 preparedness. Debra Saunders claims that Clarke is part of "the Clinton machine" and explains that 9/11 was all Clinton's fault. David Reinhard says that it's impossible to take Clarke seriously because his friend Rand Beers now works for John Kerry.

Beers and Clarke both worked for Bush as experts on counter-terrorism – Beers took over when Clarke resigned. Neither was a Democrat then, and Clarke isn't one now. They resigned because they were dissatisfied with Bush's counter-terrorism performance -- Clarke is now giving us the details.

Contra Saunders, Clarke does not exonerate either Clinton or himself. Contra Reinhard, Clarke's book is being published now because of a three-month security-review delay – not because of the upcoming election.

Reinhard and Saunders are trying to discredit Clarke because they think his book will hurt Bush. Aren't they the ones being political?

John Emerson

(150 words -- count 'em.)

**********

They don't usually print my letters; we'll see.
(UPDATE: They did: Friday, March 26)

Here are some links about Clarke. Clarke has the Republicans terrified -- Bush's anti-terrorist leadership is one of the very few positive things they had to run on, and without it they're doomed. They're scarcely contesting his facts at all, and are mostly just trying to discredit him.

Talking Points Memo: just read everything.

Brad Delong: Republican Attack Monkeys

Billmon: Clarke will be hard to discredit

Conason interview of Clarke

Sketch of Clarke's career

Summary of administration smears against Clarke

Daniel Benjamin ("The Age of Sacred Terror") backs Clarke

Clarke and Beers are only two of many professionals to resign from the Bush administration

George W. Bush Coloring Book

[Got this in my inbox at SavageStupidity.com today. Looks amusing. Anything that helps spread the word about the "alternative reality" that this president and his administration operate within is a good thing. --Thomas Leavitt]

New Book by Publisher of Temp Slave

Drawing from the imaginative quotes President Bush has uttered over the
years, the George W. Bush Coloring Book illustrates Bush's very own words
in the form of a coloring book. Illustrator Karen Ocker lends her visually
distinct style to on-the-record quotes such as "It's amazing I won. I was
running against peace, prosperity and incumbency," and "I know the human
being and fish can coexist peacefully." The coloring book includes an essay
on Bush by Joley Wood. Wood has written on numerous Irish writers,
including essays on James Joyce, George Bernard Shaw, William Butler Yeats,
and a preface for Shaw's "Saint Joan" (Penguin).

Examples at: http://www.gcpress.com/gwbush/

Available through INGRAM.
ISBN: 1891053949
The George W. Bush Coloring Book
8.95
release date March 28, 2004

Contact:
G.K. Darby
Garrett Ct. Press
http://www.gcpress.com/
504.598.4685

The Brian

Brought to you by the People's Front of Judea, uh, or the Judean People's Front, or, uh, oh bugger!

Saying a lot

This is one of Billmon's finest. And that's saying a lot.

Rallying

Just a quick comment about Bush and 9/11. It is conventional wisdom that Bush did a good job leading the nation after the 9/11 attack.

Here's what I say. (So listen up.) After 9/11 Bush did not rally the nation under his leadership. The Democrats rallied under Bush because that was the patriotic and sensible thing to do -- we're under attack, we need one leader, etc. Immediately Bush began abusing that patriotic sentiment for political purposes. Immediately they began steering that unity towards more tax cuts, invading Iraq, and the rest of their far-right agenda. AND they used 9/11 to instill a sense of fear and intimidation in the press, the political opposition, and the public. So enough about Bush being an excellent leader. Why should BUSH get credit because WE "rallied 'round the flag?" (So there.)

The Spanish Election and Democracy

The reaction to the Spanish election, in which the party of Bush's ally Aznar was voted out of office, was a litmus test of attitudes toward democracy, and the message I'm getting is not encouraging.

David Brooks: "It was crazy to go ahead with an election a mere three days after the Madrid massacre..... But I do know that reversing course in the wake of a terrorist attack is inexcusable."

Now, Brooks obviously would not have said this if the Spanish voters had voted correctly -- in Israel, terrorist attacks have thrown the election to Likud several times. Since, as Matt Yglesias astutely pointed out, the conservative attacks on the cowardly Spanish voters were just dry runs for attacks at some later date on cowardly Kerry voters, Brooks' speculation about cancelling or postponing the Spanish election makes you wonder whether a terrorist attack might also lead to an attempt to postpone this year's Presidential election -- especially if it seems that voters might vote "wrong".

After the tainted 2000 election, and granted what we know about the Bush machine, I think that we should insist in advance that the 2004 election be held, no matter what. Not only that, we should insist that the prescribed Constitutional procedures for recounts and challenges be followed to the letter next time, without an ad hoc Supreme Court intervention. (Considering that the problematic Diebold machines apparently will be used in many states, a contested election seems very likely unless there's a real landslide, and one wonders whether a post-election struggle -- which worked so well for them last time -- might not be part of the Republican plan.)

The standard right-wing interpretation of the Spanish vote is that the cowardly Spaniards caved in to terrorism. A more reasonable interpretation (based on the facts) is that the Spaniards rejected the Aznar government's strategy on terrorism, and especially the dishonesty of the Aznar government's attempt to convince the voters that the bombing was done by the Basques. In other words, as Krugman said -- in the Spanish election, democracy worked: "By voting for a new government, in other words, the Spaniards were enforcing the accountability that is the essence of democracy."

However, there is an anti-popular theory of democracy which says that democracy cannot be allowed to be harmed by the wrongheadedness of "temporary majorities", and I think that that is what is going on with the conservative commentators. This theory also says that, by and large, the electorate really is not able to understand the larger issues and really do not need to be told the truth.

Fortunately, the Spanish do not believe that, nor do the Poles (judging by some things their President said). But perhaps this is because they are new to democracy, and thus overenthusiastic and lacking in sophistication.

In America, the official conservative story is that what Bush said before the war doesn't make any difference any more. That was then. When they figure out what they were trying to do and why they did it, they'll tell us. Or something like that.

In the U.S., everything works against popular democracy: media concentration, money in politics, experts at "engineering consent" like Karl Rove, and the anti-democratic convictions of the elite. We're definitely fighting an uphill battle. Demanding the truth might be the place to start.

(Documentation here, including a bunch of links about the Iraq lies.)

John O'Neill

Don't forget about John O'Neill, the FBI's terrorism expert who quit in disgust at the Bush administration's lack of response to bin Laden. More here.

Divisions

Cross-posted at american street.

The White House response to Clarke's interview and book reveals a lot about their thinking. From Former Terrorism Official Criticizes White House on 9/11:

"'If Dick Clarke had such grave concerns about the direction of the war on terror, why did he stay on the team as long as he did, and why did he wait till the beginning of a presidential campaign to speak out?' Mr. Bartlett said. He said the book's timing showed that it was 'more about politics than policy.'"

1) How about he stayed because he cared about the country and wanted to try to do some good rather to leave the country in the hands of those who would do nothing but give speeches -- trying to actually do something as contrasted with just making a political statement? That does not appear to be a concept that is in the thinking of this White House.

2) The timing? Since timing of activities to coincide with elections seems to be on the White House's mind, let's talk about timing of events to coincide with campaigns. In September of 2002 the White House rolled out what it called a "marketing campaign" to "sell" the Iraq war. They launched their campaign on Labor Day -- the traditional beginning of campaign season. The Iraq War campaign was EXACTLY timed for the 2002 elections. In this White House politics is everything.

Bush's father waited until AFTER the election to hold a vote on getting Iraq out of Kuwait because he did not want to introduce such a potentially divisive issue -- a war vote -- during a campaign. That would have been bad for the country, and he cared about that. But THIS Bush forced the vote DURING the campaign BECAUSE he wanted to divide the country. And he brought up the Father Mother Homeland Security vote, after opposing it -- and threw in an anti-union provision that would force some Democrats to oppose it, to further divide the country and politicize the issue of terrorism and national security.

WE, blog readers, all knew about the things Clarke talked about on 60 Minutes last night, because we are informed. But now, after last night's 60 Minutes, this is out there in the mainstream. And the number of people who supported Bush's war can't go up. It can only go down. There are facts, and they are not going to change, and eventually facts can break through fog. Iraq did not attack us on 9/11 is a fact. Iraq was not working on weapons of mass destruction is a fact. Iraq was not supporting al-Queda is a fact. Iraq was not a threat to us is a fact. So there is only one direction this can go with the public. Support for the Iraq war CAN NOT increase.

But we are informed and also have seen that this Bush crowd is capable of ANYTHING and THAT is what we have to worry about between now and the election. It has become painfully obvious that this crowd cares more about politics and Party than the good of country and most of the people in it. Another fact. I have seen people like this before, in business. I'm talking about people who only understand their own desires and who have learned that PR can be a magic potion. People who believe that marketing and money can accomplish ANYthing -- and who will turn to marketing and money with no consideration of actually delivering real value to the customer. It's a game of using the power of marketing and money to change the customer -- making the customer believe that what you are already delivering IS what the customer wanted.

It has become so blatant that one has to either see it for what it is or form a cognitive dissonance around it. We're forced to choose "sides." I have observed that those "moderates" among us informed-people-who-read-weblogs, etc. have started to change their views. One can not look at the Bush campaign ads and tactics without realizing that they are just lies and smears. Just lies and smears. It is pretty hard not to see that at this point. And I think the "moderates" are joining us hothead radicals in our view of Bush and his cronies -- that the Bush people just lie, that they care about politics and power far more than they care about the good of the country. I don't think a reasonable person can look at events in the election campaign up to this point and reach another conclusion, and I see even the "moderates" reaching this conclusion. This is happening outside the blogosphere as well. I see the "middle" breaking down.

So my question is, how far are the Bush people willing to push the divisions in the country? The current anti-Kerry campaign line is an indication, yet it is still very early in the campaign -- it actually could get even worse. Today they are saying that the leader of the opposition party is "dangerous." They are saying that he will not protect the children of "real Americans." This kind of language is already beyond just an election -- these are words that encourage a response that goes beyond just voting against the guy.

The Republican choice of PR over Policy, and Politicization of Everything has led to potential civil war in Iraq. How far will they push things here at home?

Thanks Again, Joe

White House Rebuts Ex-Bush Adviser Claim:

"Sen. Joe Lieberman, D-Conn., said Sunday he doesn't believe Clarke's charge that Bush -- who defeated him and former Vice President Al Gore in the 2000 election -- was focused more on Iraq than al-Qaida during the days after the terror attacks.

'I see no basis for it,' Lieberman said on 'Fox News Sunday.' 'I think we've got to be careful to speak facts and not rhetoric.'"

Go away, Joe. You and Zell.

Oh yeah, then there's Other Joe:

"And Sen. Joe Biden, D-Del., told ABC's 'This Week' that while he has been critical of Bush policies on Iraq, 'I think it's unfair to blame the president for the spread of terror and the diffuseness of it. Even if he had followed the advice of me and many other people, I still think the same thing would have happened.'"

You go away TOO, Other Joe.

When we say we want more "Democrat" Senators, maybe we should be careful what we wish for.

The Smearing Begins

Richard Clarke's Legacy of Miscalculation:

"The retirement of Richard Clarke is appropriate to the reality of the war on terror. Years ago, Clarke bet his national security career on the idea that electronic war was going to be real war. He lost, because as al Qaeda and Iraq have shown, real action is still of the blood and guts kind. "

This is from February (after they knew he was writing a book exposing Bush), but is brought out on the far-right Drudge Report to honor his appearance on 60 Minutes, and begins the inevitable character assassination.

Doesn't take long...

And what are Clarke's sins?

In 1998, according to the New Republic, Clarke "played a key role in the Clinton administration's misguided retaliation for the bombings of the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, which targeted bin Laden's terrorist camps in Afghanistan and a pharmaceutical factory in Sudan."

Helping Clinton go after bin Laden. THAT'S "misguided." If you read the piece, it seems to say Clarke is a bad person because he say we should go after bin Laden instead of Saddam.

Well, Did You See It?

Clarke on 60 Minutes. What did you think?

A Green friend says tomorrow the Republicans will "challenge" Kerry to say whether he "agrees with Clarke that the soldiers who lost their lives in Iraq died in vain," and Kerry will say NO, and that's the end of it.

I say, Kerry, prove him wrong!

When The Company IS The Party -- II

Businesses Point Workers Toward Ballot Boxes:

"A growing number of large U.S. corporations are offering services to register their employees to vote and mounting get-to-the-polls drives that advocates hope will swell the ranks of pro-business voters this election year.

Companies portray the voter push as a nonpartisan employee benefit. But Republicans see it as a boon to their hopes of maintaining control of the House and Senate and reelecting President Bush."

This is not as bad as pressuring employees to contribute to The Party (then reimbursing them) but it's clear where the pressure lies. Don't DARE register as a Democrat in these circumstances if you want to keep your job.

This Is "Reporting?"

NY Times today, in After 19 Years in Senate, Kerry of Today Is Far From Kerry of 1985:

"When he first entered the Senate, in 1985, John Kerry was a proponent of a nuclear arms freeze and he joined other liberal Democrats in challenging numerous elements of President Ronald Reagan's military expansion. He called the build-up unnecessary and said some of the weapons systems were useless.

Mr. Reagan's military expansion was subsequently credited for helping hasten the collapse of the Soviet Union."

WTF??? It was? Credited by who? The Soviet Union did not increase their spending by one thin dime in response to Reagan's huge military buildup. It had nothing to do with the collapse of the Soviet Union.

This is a good example of how lies, repeated over and over, become "conventional wisdom."

Some Facts on the Spanish Election

The hawks' interpretation of the Spanish vote is mostly wrong.

First, several days before the bombing the election was already very close (42 - 38) and trending toward the Socialists. Second, the biggest issue for the voters who switched was the aggressive dishonesty of the Aznar government, which went so far as to mislead the U.N. and German police officials. Third, while Aznar's party did support Bush in Iraq, its counterterrorism policy per se was not very good. And finally, the Socialists are not planning to surrender to terrorism; they are simply rejecting Bush's leadership and his discredited strategy.

The Spanish Socialists are not alone. They were followed almost immediately by several Central American countries and South Korea. President Aleksander Kwasniewski of Poland meanwhile expressed serious doubts about the way the war had been sold. (Kwasniewski's initial statement had said that Poland might withdraw from the coalition, though a later statement, which presumably had been made under pressure, declared that Poland would stay.) And finally, the Dutch are also showing signs of restlessness.

Furthermore, during the controversy about Kerry's claims of foreign support, any one of the coalition members could have come forward to make clear that it was Bush whom they supported. But no one did -- not Tony Blair, and not even Dutch Prime Minister Jan Peter Balkenende, who met with Bush recently.

The hawk's conclusion is that the formerly plucky Spaniards have been mysteriously transformed into loathsome Old European appeasers -- and that Western civilization is doomed. A more reasonable conclusion is that Bush's Iraq-based counter-terrorism strategy has almost no international support, and should be replaced by a different and better counter-terrorism strategy. It's Kerry's job to make that case.


(Searching "Aleksander Kwasniewski" in Google News seems to show that the Polish story didn't get much coverage in the US, and that the later statement of Polish support got more coverage than the earlier expression of doubt. So it never really happened.)

Bloggers of the World Unite!

Bloggers of the World Unite!

Plantu

Where's The Party?

Salon's War Room agrees with me about Kerry's bad week, so they must be brilliant:

"But this isn't just Kerry's problem. It's a party problem, and one for anyone who wants to see new leadership in Washington. Which begs the question: Where are Kerry's surrogates? Where is the unified Democratic Party we heard so much about during the primaries? Howard Dean came out to support Kerry on Wednesday, and ended up generating controversy by suggesting Bush's war in Iraq led to the Madrid bombings. Dean later clarified the remark and reporters chased Kerry until he distanced himself from Dean."

Yes - where is the party? As Atrios pointed out yesterday (also agrees with me, therefore also brilliant) in the post United They'll Stand

"The Democrats have about 250 members of Congress. They have numerous official and non-official allies. They need to figure out how to use them to run this campaign in the 24/7 news cycle in a media landscape which is much more fractured than it was back in 1992. At any point in time, they need to have dozens of people ready to fan out to every possible media outlet and perform the inverse judo flip any time the Bush machine turns on the slime. There should be a small army, including a couple top generals, ready to lend their voice on any subject at any time. They should be briefed and prepped with the latest talking points, and they should be out there screaming them at every opportunity."

So how about it? WHERE"S THE PARTY?

Here's A Way To Help

Earlier I asked how we can get the word out about Bush's lies? Here's one way, but only if you send them some moolah: MoveOn.org Voter Fund.

Go watch their Polygraph ad, then send some MOOLAH to help them get it on the air!

The Media Fund

This is a group running ads in swing states, attacking Bush: Make America Work For Us. Go throw them some money! And watch their ads.

Chickenhawk Alert

Over at Altercation today:

"And speaking of Cheney, did you know that he received four 2-S draft deferments -- granted to students -- from 1963 through 1965 while he was a student at the University of Wyoming. He married Lynne in 1964, and was thus banned from the draft.

But in October 1965, the Selective Service announced that married men without children could then be drafted. Exactly nine months and two days later -- on July 28, 1966 -- his first child was born. Cheney hadn't waited until her birth before he sought a 3-A deferment classification -- given to those with dependents. He did so when Lynne was only 10 weeks pregnant."

In Salon: Bush's war on truth

Salon.com News | Bush's war on truth:

"The Bush campaign is twisting the meaning of a quote from Sen. John Kerry to the breaking point, making it clear that the president and his supporters will not allow facts to get in their way."

Yes, we know. He lies. They just lie.

But so what? You and I, we read weblogs, so we know all about this. The public doesn't know it, and hardly anyone is telling them. Weblogs don't count. You and I are in an "echo chamber;" WE know things, so we assume everyone does. In fact, what we know and understand is very different from what the rest of American knows and understands. Remember, the most recent polls still show that half of all Americans think that Iraq was behind the 9/11 attacks, had WMDs and that we found them. Every time someone calls Iraq part of the "war on terror" this just confuses matters further. This is a "frame" they have put together, and each time it is repeated it reinforces itself.

The Right has the entire AM radio band broadcasting 24/7 telling America how Kerry and Democrats lie to them, and that "the liberal media" should not be trusted, especially if they report things that are bad about Republicans -- like that they lie. The far right has FOX News and the NY Post and Drudge and most of the TV pundits and most of the newspaper pundits, and ALL the Republicans all repeating the same line over and over. And then, the rest of the media is "centrist" which means they don't want to appear "extreme" by pointing out where the President is lying. This is not to mention those in the mainstream corporate media who are not rightists but are outright spouting a pro-Bush line.

In fact, the Bush people are so brazen and sure of themselves that President Bush said the other day, I think if you're gonna make an accusation in the course of a presidential campaign, you ought to back it up with facts. Imagine what universe America lives in when the Bush people can get away with saying that KERREY needs to back up his accusations with facts!

So how do we get more and more people checking "progressive" news sources, so that they will learn about what is really going on? The news is here, but we have to get people to it.

Voting Machines

People For the American Way has come out for verifiable voting machines. See Protecting the Integrity and Accessibility of Voting in 2004 and Beyond. Item 2 is "Voters must be able to independently and privately cast and verify their ballot."

Ah, there’s culture and then there’s agriculture...

You know, living in the heartland, here in Bush’s America (Missouri narrowly went for Bush in 2000 but my county is in the rural northern part of Missouri that votes Republican), sure does lead to some interesting experiences.

We often hear about the importance of values and education here in Bush’s America. Well, listen to this story about the value placed on education in my little town, a town, I remind you, with a university in it no less.

Anyway, our local high school team has made the state final four tournament. I was appalled to discover yesterday that the school district decided that, by golly, they’d just take TWO DAYS OFF so that everyone could go down to Columbia and watch the game.

Yes, you read that right, boys and girls. The local school district took two days off from school because the team made the final round of the state tournament. Anyone see anything the slightest bit wrong with that? What kind of message do you send to kids when they get days off from school essentially to celebrate the basketball team’s achievements?

I mean, let’s be honest, the high school kids aren’t going to miss much losing two days of school there (it’s high school for goodness sakes) – but the elementary and middle school kids too? Are you kidding me?

This whole thing led one of my colleagues at work to quip that we should get a local referendum passed renaming the School District the “____________ (town’s name withheld to protect the innocent) Athletic Club.”

Well last night I went to a church function and made a few sarcastic remarks and boy did I get a response. I found out a bunch of people planned to go to the games. My remarks were most certainly NOT appreciated by a lot of people there.

Of course, at least one person seemed to agree with me and even quipped “Well, it does seem a bit much. What if they lose on Thursday and therefore don’t play on Friday? Is everyone just going to dutifully just come back and go to school on Friday?” I responded “No. That will be an official day of mourning.”

The most awful part was when I got in the car after this function and my nine-year-old son, Michael, who had heard all of this, said “But Dad it is important. It’s why Maryville is known.”

You can imagine my response. I won’t share that lecture with you too.

And I'm not even a particularly anti-sports or anti-athletics person at all. It just seemed so out of proportion to cancel school for the basketball tournament.

But, you know what, this really is an important question. Is this the sort of vapid culture and fake commitment to education that exists here in Bush’s America?

"No Child Left Behind" – at least when the team bus leaves for Columbia, huh?

Something more serious: Coca-Cola's union busting campaign in Columbia continues.

[See the full details on my personal blog - said posting includes a sample letter to Coca-Cola's top management via their PR person. This is only the latest in a long string of vicious human rights abuses by the Coca-Cola company's local proxy in Columbia. Please write - the only way we'll preserve our standard of living and rights in the workplace here in the United States, is to ensure that those abroad have the same freedoms. Your letters could mean the difference between life and death for these workers. -Thomas]

Dear Friends,

This morning, Monday March 15, Coca-Cola union workers
in Colombia began a hunger strike in front of the Coke
bottling plants in Barrancabermeja, Bogotá,
Bucaramanga, Cali, Cartagena, Cúcuta, Medellín, and
Valledupar. Juan Carlos Galvis, vice president of the
local union in Barrancabermeja, has said, “If we lose
the fight against Coca-Cola, we will first lose our
union, next our jobs and then our lives.”

On September 9, 2003, Coca-Cola FEMSA, Coca-Cola’s
largest Colombian bottler, closed the production lines
at 11 of their 16 bottling plants. (The Coca-Cola
Company shares several board members with Coca-Cola
FEMSA and owns 46.4 % of its voting stock.) Since then,
they’ve pressured more than 500 workers into
“voluntarily resigning” from their contracts in
exchange for a lump-sum payment. Most of the union
leaders have refused to resign and the company has now
escalated the pressure against them. On February 25,
the Colombian Ministry of Social Protection (Labor)
authorized Coca-Cola FEMSA’s plans to dismiss 91
workers - 70 percent of whom are union leaders. This is
Coca-Cola’s effort to essentially eliminate the union.

The Campaign To Stop Killer Coke supports the union’s
call for Coca-Cola FEMSA to relocate those workers to
other positions within those plants or to transfer them
to other plants. This is what the company is required
to do, according to Articles 18 and 91 of the current
collective bargaining agreements. In January, a
Colombian judge also ordered the company to do this for
the workers at the plants in Barrancabermeja and
Cúcuta.

On behalf of the workers and their families, please
send the strongest possible message to The Coca-Cola
Company in Atlanta and Coca-Cola FEMSA in Colombia.
Here are sample messages and contact information, along
with a communication that was issued by the union this
morning.

In Solidarity,

Ray Rogers
Director
Campaign To Stop Killer Coke
212-979-8320
http://www.killercoke.org
StopKillerCoke@aol.com

Please read on...

--Thomas Leavitt

A world of difference: Brits make fun of FCC/American Puritanism.

Here's a link to a commercial being broadcast by Channel 4 in the U.K. - the participants, many of whom are famous, are asked to say their favorite cuss words on camera (it says something that this is simply unimaginable in the U.S.). It's bloody good fun!

http://www.channel4.com/ads/index1.html

Note: this commercial is likely to land you in hot water if your workplace is corporate or uptight.

I heard about this on Dave Farber's Interesting People mailing list. This, along with Declan McCullagh's Politech mailing list (see below), qualifies as the two most essential bits of reading available anywhere.

See the original posting for more detail.

--Thomas Leavitt

They simply can't stop lying.

Joshua Micah Marshall agrees with me: "They simply can't stop lying."

New MoveOn Ad

MoveOn.org: Democracy in Action.

I think people might have to explain to regular Americans who this is in the ad, what he's being caught at, and why this is is so important, but so be it. Pass it along!

Important To Read This

This just out from Media Transparency. The Apparat -- George Bush's Back-Door Political Machine

"...a vast machine that ... has "played a critical role in helping the Republican Party to dominate state, local and national politics." It is now operating at full throttle to keep Bush in office.

Though its activists like to call themselves conservatives, there is nothing they wish to "conserve" beyond their power, status, and wealth. They are right-wing radicals who have stolen the GOP away from the true conservatives who once dominated it."

Please go read this. It talks about how and why the Right is so powerful now, and how "behind-the-scenes" forces are working to keep the Right in power.

Update -

"The architectural shape of the right-wing counter-establishment resembles the apparatus that ran the Soviet Union. The Russians called it the "apparat" -- a vast bureaucratic web of power that housed the organs, official and unofficial, of the ruling Communist Party.

It included the administrative departments that fictively ran the Soviet government. In fact, the party ran it all. Its ruling Politburo and Central Committee were paramount. The Soviet apparat was headed by a privileged ruling class, the nomenklatura, manned by a faceless army of bureaucrats, the apparatchiki.

[. . .] The American apparat of the far right can be viewed as a variant of the Soviet model - amorphous in overlapping functions at the top but monolithic in its aims. It is an external government that guides the federal government. In a stunning sense, it is counter-revolutionary and anti-Constitutional.
The American apparat has learned from the failures of the Iran-Contra and Watergate operations, which functioned within the government, and were thus subject to governmental oversight and correction. Not so the apparat. With its operations spread over a spectrum external to government, it attracts neither official nor media attention. It operates invisibly -- in the open.

[. . .] Like its Soviet counterpart, the American apparat is also a closed society, largely unelected and unaccountable to the body politic, and casts its penumbra upon the White House. As in the former USSR, there is little discussion or debate. Loyalty is absolute -- "you are either with us or you are with our enemies." Under Bush and Cheney, brisk exchanges of view, the engine of policy formation in prior administrations, are discouraged. Cabinet meetings are scripted for a president unprepared for spontaneous exchanges (as revealed in documents posted by Ron
Suskind, that were used to research his best-selling The Price of Loyalty).
The endgame for the apparat is a one-party state in which elections project only a vestigial appearance of democratic process. It is run, in effect, by the ruling oligarchy, whose members are beholden only to the apparat.

[. . .] The apparat's media-attack organizations are charged with keeping journalists in line, mobilizing the base to wage harassment campaigns against media organizations and reporters they dub as too "liberal." Journalists who dare criticize the Administration are priority targets for abuse. For that reason, among others, Americans learn almost nothing from mainstream media about the apparat, whose media-attack operations effectively silenced Hillary Clinton's charges of a "vast right-wing conspiracy" operating against her husband's administration."

Bloggers -- PLEASE point to this story! Everyone should read this.

Tears

I see a story this morning that almost brings me to tears: Kerry Doesn't Share Dean's View on Spain,

"Presidential candidate John Kerry said Wednesday he does not share fellow Democrat Howard Dean's position that President Bush's decision to send troops to Iraq appears to have been a factor in the Spanish train bombing."

Even though, as Dean had pointed out, THE BOMBERS say they did it because of Iraq:

A man who identified himself as an al-Qaida spokesman said on a videotape that the bombings were in retaliation for Spain's backing of the U.S.-led war in Iraq.

The Republican statement asks Kerry to repudiate Dean, and others who "blame America" for the attacks by opposing Bush's war on Iraq:

"If Senator Kerry understands the nature of this threat and the need to take on terror, then he should immediately repudiate these troubling comments, and stop all efforts on behalf of his surrogates to blame America for these attacks," said Racicot, former governor of Montana.

And then Kerry DOES repudiate Dean (and me, and all the others who oppose Bush)? Like I said, brings me to tears. It was a short throw-away story, maybe I read it wrong. Maybe Kerry actually stood up for Dean, and me, and criticized Bush's war on Iraq for contributing to what happened in Spain, and the story had it wrong.

BuzzFlash Message to John Kerry: It's the Golden Hour of Opportunity, Define Bush or Be Defined by Him. There is No Option "B."

Update - I think a good answer for Kerry would have been, "I don't believe that a mature person in a position of responsibility would say something as stupid and dishonest, or would accuse a respected national leader like Howard Dean of blaming America. Statements like that divide us and diminish America, and I am surprised that you would repeat it. So I am not going to respond."

March 31

If you still don't know who Randi Rhodes is, here she is on CNN today kicking the living crap out of an admittedly third-string wingnut radio goon:

COLLINS: Let's go ahead and get to the crux of the issue, and I want to hear from both of you on this. Do voters, though, when it comes down to it, do they actually go to the ballot box and pull a lever on any of the issues that they have heard on the airwaves?

Michael, why don't you go ahead and take a shot at that?

SMERCONISH: No. Heck, no.

Talk radio listeners are not lemmings. They're not out there as automatons following the instructions of Rush or Sean Hannity of someone else. It's more like a gathering place, talk radio, for like- minded individuals who are there to be informed.

And let me just say to the woman who is seated there with you that it's not as if I have to check a box on my employment application as to whether I'm a liberal or a conservative to get hired. If you can generate ratings and revenue, no one cares what you look like. No one cares what you sound like. And they don't care what your politics are.

(CROSSTALK)

RHODES: Michael, you don't generate either. You're No. 18 in your marketplace, and you're working.

(CROSSTALK)

RHODES: I'm a liberal working for Clear Channel, and I had to be No. 1 every single book, 12-plus, No. 2, 25-54, which is the big money demo, as you know, in order to keep my job working for them.

And I have kept my job through ratings and revenue. And guys like you just are copycats. That's all you've done, was get on the conservative gravy train.

And:

SMERCONISH: If there were a demand for liberal talk radio, it would be on the air already. It's not. No one has heard of any...

RHODES: March 31, Michael.

SMERCONISH: Please give me a moment to respond to you.

RHODES: No, because I've heard this argument over and over.

(CROSSTALK)

RHODES: March 31 in major markets across this country.

(CROSSTALK)

COLLINS: The viewers haven't had

(CROSSTALK)

COLLINS: Michael, go ahead and let him finish.

SMERCONISH: If you listen to her, you see why nobody wants to listen to liberal talk radio in this country. That's it.

RHODES: That's it. Nobody wants to listen to you.

COLLINS: To the both of you, thanks so much, I think.

SMERCONISH: Thank you.

COLLINS: Randi Rhodes, Michael Smerconish, thanks once again for joining us.

RHODES: March 31.

(CROSSTALK)

COLLINS: To the both of you, thanks, guys.

Yeah, March 31!

Aristide to Jamaica

(Via Amy Goodman/Reuters/Le Monde)

They Just Lie

Hesiod spots a big fat Bush lie. Someone has changed a story in order to smear Kerry as weak on terrorism, when it is actually Bush who did the bad deed. He's outraged. He counters with the truth.

Kash spots that decisions in the bush admin. are made "according to political calculations instead of according to the advice of specialists." He is shocked.

Bush is making stuff up and lying, and everyone is surprised and shocked and outraged. And everyone counters with the truth and argues the finer points and tries to disprove each claim.

But what is happening is that while we're all chasing down each and every particular of each and every lie, the general public is hearing over and over again a much broader theme. They're hearing that they should be suspicious of Kerry. For example, today they are hearing the lie that Kerry "voted against American troops," and "did not support bills that would have ensured troops had body armor and earned higher combat pay, and would have given reservists and their families better health care" and all kinds of just the nastiest stuff.

Listen, there is something we all need to get through our heads. They just lie.

If the Bush people did a focus group and found out that people would vote against him because he owns a miniature green Chinese monkey with an earring, THEN WE WOULD BE HEARING THAT KERRY HAS A MINIATURE GREEN CHINESE MONKEY WITH AN EARRING! They are making it up, they are lying, they are going to say and do ANYTHING. OK? They just lie. Get used to it.

They just lie. So don't be surprised and don't be shocked. And most of all, don't start responding by trying to disprove their charges and going through all the points and specifics and particulars! YOU ALREADY KNOW THAT THE CHARGES THEY WILL MAKE TOMORROW AND NEXT WEEK ARE FALSE. OK?

They just lie. What have I been telling you since day one of Seeing the forest? THEY JUST LIE. See the forest, don't get bogged down with trees. See the bigger picture. If you get all bogged down trying to argue each point or disprove each lie you are going to be 100 lies behind by the time you refute the first point of the very first lie.

They just lie. Remember the lead-up to Iraq, all nicely timed for the 2002 election? They just lie. Remember what they said about why we need tax cuts? They just lie. Remember what they said about Al Gore? They just lie. Remember what they said about Clinton?

They just lie. We know it. So when do we figure out that they just lie? When we do figure it out, THEN maybe we can start responding effectively, instead of getting all bogged down in the lies each and every time. The public needs to understand that they just lie, and the things they say should just be ignored. THAT is where we should be spending our time.

(Does repetition work? Tell me what they do.)

Interpreting the Spanish Vote

I've spent a fair amount of time in the last couple of days following the reactions to the Spanish vote. A few observations:

1. The hawks are convinced that the Madrid bombing justifies everything Bush ever did (and nullifies all criticisms of him), and they are enraged when anyone disagrees. (No one else can exploit this tragedy, though; just them).

2. In the world of the hawks, the most vicious chauvinism is right beneath the surface. A few days ago, Spain was our brave ally. Then, right before the election, about 10% of the voters switched parties, and Spain was instantly relegated to that loathsome, detestable hellhole: Old Europe. (Expect to start hearing lots of weird ethnic slurs about Don Quixote, Don Juan, beans, garlic, greasy mustaches, etc., etc. They'll probably mix in a lot of Mexican stuff too -- because, really, who cares?)

3. Many of the hawks primarily just want to vent, and they believe that jumping to conclusions is tough, macho, and sexy. For example, there are good reasons to believe that Aznar's party was voted out mostly because of its dishonest insistence that the Basques were responsible for the bombing, rather than because of its stance on the Iraq War per se.* But the hawks leaped gleefully to the most invidious conclusion that they could: that Spain has surrendered to the terrorists.

So whatever allies we still have in the world should clearly understand that, in the eyes of America, they will be counted among the good guys only as long as they obey us completely.

4. Hawks are completely committed to the Bush brandnaming of the War on Terror, and anyone who proposes an alternative brand will be regarded as a quisling appeaser. No criticisms of his approach are to be allowed.

5. Hawks have a complete and utter contempt for Democrats and liberals, and nothing we say to them will be listened to. We're just a bunch of weenie America-hating pacifists who don't care at all if hundreds of innocent people get killed.

6. As long as the War on Terrorism lasts, all elections should be decided based on what we guess that Osama wants -- we should just vote for the opposite. (However, the idea that Osama wants Bush re-elected, in order to "sharpen the contradictions", is too ridiculous even to think about).

And since the War on Terrorism, which isn't against any specific enemy, can't possibly ever be won (Osama is irrelevant, they're still saying), we should plan for terrorism to be the only real political issue for the rest of our natural lives.

Conclusions

We will never make the hawks happy and shouldn't try, but Kerry definitely needs to get out in front on the counter-terrorism issue. Bush's Saudi ties make him extremely vulnerable, and Kerry should show no mercy. The Bush-Saudi connection is pretty good political red meat, but it also can be the basis for a valid and powerful criticism of the inept and misdirected Bush strategy.

Beyond that, if a terrorist attack occurs on American soil, as it very well might, Kerry has to be ready and waiting. We can be sure that Bush will exploit the tragedy to the hilt, and while we shouldn't sink as low as we can expect him to do, we need to take the battle to Bush and put him on the defensive where he belongs. Otherwise we can kiss the election goodbye.

*Of course, the hawks just spent the last year explaining that Bush's lies about WMD were really perfectly OK, so they might have trouble believing that Spanish voters really do get angry when they're lied to.

How often have we heard this?

People looking for work this spring could find the strongest U.S. job market in more than three years, even as companies remain reluctant to hire, a new survey shows.

Roughly one in four employers plan to add workers in the second quarter of the year to keep pace with increased demand for their products or services, according to a survey of 16,000 businesses by Manpower Inc., set for release Tuesday.

"Someone looking for a job no doubt will have an easier time now than in recent memory, than in the past two or three years," said Jeffrey Joerres, Manpower's chief executive officer and chairman. "It's still going to be difficult in that companies are going to begin this process very cautiously."

Substantial job growth will come if companies fulfill their hiring projections for the quarter, he said.

The survey found 28 percent of companies expect to hire more people in the second quarter, while 6 percent intend to cut jobs. The rest anticipate no change or are uncertain about hiring prospects from April to May.

Now, hold on a minute.

I'm no math whiz but doesn't that mean that this survey demonstrates that 72% of employers (the overwhelming majority -- three out of four in fact) have no hiring plans or, worse yet, plan to lay off some workers?

So how is that good news? Sounds like a pretty flaccid job market to me!

Is it my imagination or is this yet another transparent attempt to pump up Dear MisLeader's poll numbers?

Does anyone happen to know how much money Manpower or people associated with Manpower have given to W's campaign in the last four years?

The Big Flap

This is a big deal, all over the airwaves, pushed by the Bush people. And it would be so simple to respond.

Bush Prods Kerry to Name Leaders Who Want Him Out:

"'If you're going to make an accusation in the course of a presidential campaign, you've got to back it up with facts,' Bush told reporters during a meeting with Dutch Prime Minister Jan Peter Balkenende.

Kerry, the presumptive Democratic nominee, has said he had met with leaders who told him 'you've got to beat this guy' because of unhappiness over U.S. foreign policy. "

Something like this: President Bush is asking me to betray world leaders by revealing confidential conversations we have had, and says I should do so for political purposes. No wonder they've gotten things into such a mess.

New Bush Ad

New Bush Ad Attacks Kerry on Iraq Vote:

"Ratcheting up his criticism of John Kerry, President Bush accuses his Democratic rival of voting against American troops in a new television ad that begins airing Tuesday.

"Few votes in Congress are as important as funding our troops at war. Though John Kerry voted in October 2002 for military action in Iraq, he later voted against funding our soldiers,'' the ad says.

The 30-second ad labels Kerry "wrong on defense'' and claims that the Massachusetts senator did not support bills that would have ensured troops had body armor and earned higher combat pay, and would have given reservists and their families better health care."

This is nasty, lying stuff here, and it makes people like me angry and looking for ways to fight back. With this stuff going on, why don't I hear Kerry calling for all Democrats to send him $100 so he can effectively respond? So what if it's Dean's idea? 2 million Democrats sending him $100 each is $200 million to fight back!

I suggest as a response: Why is the President dividing us in time of war, when we most need to stick together?

Just As Bush Said

The NYT/CBS Poll -- Nation's Direction Prompts Voters' Concern, Poll Finds:

"while the public has doubts about Mr. Kerry's political convictions"

Bush has been repeating that Kerry takes both sides on issues. Now we have polls feeding this message back from the public. Do not underestimate the ability of the Right to plant messages in the brains of large segments of the public. From the story,

Already, most voters think Mr. Kerry is a politician who says what people want to hear, the poll found, rather than what he believes — the line of attack Mr. Bush has used against him in speeches.

And for my Green friends:

The candidacy of Ralph Nader looms as a potentially lethal threat to Democratic hopes of regaining the White House: With Mr. Nader in the race, Mr. Bush leads Mr. Kerry by 46 percent to 38 percent, with Mr. Nader drawing 7 percent of the votes.

No question about it, Nader throws the election to Bush. Do you guys LIKE seeing American imperialism, global warming, massive military spending increases, tax cuts for the rich, and all the rest? Is that what you WANT? It's certainly what you'll GET!

"Spain in perspective"

Over at This Modern World, Tom has posted a letter from Spain that does a good job explaining why the elections went the way they did. Apparently the government tried to blame the ETA (and discredit anyone saying different) even though it was becoming pretty clear it was an al-Queda attack, because the conservative government wanted voters to associate ETA violence with the Socialist party. (I guess they thought it would reinforce a campaign accusing them of being "weak on terrorism.")

"After more than 30 years of ETA terrorism, many people thought at once that this murderers well known to the Spanish people had caused the massacre. But well-informed people immediately noticed it was a classical "Chechen attack", completely different of what ETA has done up to today and essentially identical to the Moscow subway attack several weeks ago. This caused some turmoil, specially when a pro-ETA spokesman made the point. Some minutes later, Interior (Security) Minister Angel Acebes declared openly that the authors were ETA and anyone denying it was a "miserable".

Doesn't this sound a lot like our Republicans? Deny the obvious and call the opposition names for daring to point out what is in front of everyone's faces, because it contradicts their party line?

"Now let me explain to you this turmoil. ETA is an independentist Basque terrorist group who declares itself "marxist-leninist". The Conservative government of José María Aznar has fought hard to combat it while avoiding any concession to moderate Basque nationalists, saying that the only possible way to manage the issue is "the hard one". Some weeks ago, a member of the Socialist / Nationalist coalition Government in Catalonia met ETA representatives and the Aznagovernmentnt used this to proclaim that Socialist weren't hard enough against ETA since they shared government in Catalonia with a guy that spoke to terrorists. If the authors of the carnage were ETA, Aznar government would have been reinforced in their opinion that against those beasts, only force can solve the problem and the Socialists and their Nationalist friends were too weak to do it.

But if the authors were Islamic, a very different panorama arose. The opposition in Spain against Bush's war in Iraq was very important. I don't know if it reached 90% as it has been stated in this groups, but there surely was a wide majority against a conflict that common Spaniards didn't buy. There were massive demonstrations, with several million people in them, against the involvement of Spain in the war. In despite of this, José María Aznar government went to war with Bush and Blair. Many people went home thinking "this guy is involving us in a madmen's war that we don't want and will provoke bloody consequences". If Islamics blew the trains, it was a strong confirmation of this position, something that could only focus anger against Aznar's Government.

. . . The Government stuck to the ETA hypothesis trying to avoid this probable electoral damage. They must have thought that using their massive media control they could cover it up for four days, until election's aftermath. Government-controlled public and private televisions, radios and newspapers broadcasted once and again "it was ETA", but each minute less people was buying it. It has been said that workers of some of this media were near to revolt because of the pressures to avoid the Islamic hypothesis (today, EFE -Spanish state press agency- workers' unions have asked for the immediate resignation of their boss because of this)."

The public was already sick of the government for its lies about Iraq and support of Bush, and this crystallized opinion. Note that "media not controlled by the Government" played a very important role.

"But then, media not controlled by the Government started broadcasting the Islamic hypothesis and how the controlled media were manipulating the whole issue. In a matter of hours, Spain was bipolarized, with thousands seeking information in Internet and sending it via SMS to their friends. IMHO, the Government went mad and commited suicide in this moment. They agreed there were "Islamic clues" but said once and again it was ETA although the mass crime was claimed three times by Al-Qaeda and there were several tapes (two or three, still unknown) with Islamic messages claiming "Operation Trains of Death" in Madrid and threatening "Smoke of Death" in Italy and "Winds of Death" in the USA. Millions began to think they were being lied, with the blood of 200 Spaniards still warm. SMS messages with the truth spreaded very quickly (I received about 50 from about 40 different sources). In workers' districts through the country, people began to protest beating pans in the windows and shouting "they make wars, we suffer them", "we are not puppets" and "Spain is not to be lied". Others demonstrated before Aznar's party offices in different cities singing "Liars, liars!" and "Culprits, culprits!" [all emphasis mine - DJ]

The public resented the conservative government's attempt at manipulating the election through the media and voted them out.

In other words, the government acted exactly like the Bush administration is acting, and an event crystallized this in the voters' minds just in time for the election. But according to this source, the real difference it made was that people who typically do not vote decided they had enough and showed up. That is what made the difference.

"Aznar-Rajoy's party lost about one million votes. Not much, it's true, given the situation. But three million voters arose essentially from disenchanted abstentionists to nail them. And almost all of these voters supported the Socialist Party, the main opposition group that had spoken openly against the Iraq war and was also denouncing the media manipulation. This inverted completely the results, where Rajoy had started as favorite. José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, not Mariano Rajoy, will be the next president of Spain."

And, finally, he ends the letter with,

"Sorry for my English if it sounds a bit strange, I can't practice it often."

Hey, pal, don't worry. This is Seeing the Forest. Grammar, spelling, even coherence are strictly optional.

You and I get to pay for Janklow's negligence

Holy cow!

SIOUX FALLS, South Dakota (AP) -- Bill Janklow was on duty as South Dakota's congressman when his speeding car collided with a motorcycle last summer, meaning federal taxpayers would pay any civil damages arising from the fatal crash, a prosecutor has concluded.

U.S. Attorney Tom Heffelfinger's decision came in connection with a wrongful death lawsuit filed against the former congressman and governor by the motorcyclist's family.

In concluding that Janklow was on duty at the time of the accident, Heffelfinger filed a notice Monday asking that the case be moved from state to federal court, and the federal government be substituted as the defendant for Janklow.

Randy Scott, of Hardwick, Minnesota, was killed August 16 when his motorcycle struck the back of a car Janklow was driving. Janklow spoke earlier that day in Aberdeen and was returning to his home near Brandon when the accident happened.

Lawyer Ronald Meshbesher, who represents the Scott family, said he'll try to keep the case in state court where, unlike federal court, the family could win punitive damages.

"I'm not sure what duty he was doing for the taxpayers of the United States or the state of South Dakota by driving 80 miles an hour through a stop sign," Meshbesher said. "And quite frankly, if he was politicking before it happened I'm not sure that's considered to be on duty."

You're kidding me, right?

Ah, isn't it great that Republicans take personal responsibility so seriously!

Taxes and Jobs

Cross-posted at American Street

Scenario One:

Government man, handing briefcase full of cash to business owner: "Here’s a briefcase full of cash. Go hire more people."

Business owner: "Well, we don’t really need anyone right now, but thanks very much for the cash."

Scenario Two:

Business owner: "Gosh, there sure are a lot of people coming in to buy today."

Owner’s spouse: "You nitwit, don’t you see that people are turning away because of the line that has backed up? Each time that happens you lose another $25!"

Business owner: "You’re right, Honey. Maybe I should go to the bank and borrow some money, or sell our car or something so we can hire a couple extra people."

Scenario Three:

Business owner: "You know, if I hired a few more people to work on the shop floor, we could produce many more of our product. We’re selling everything we can make now."

Owner’s spouse: "But Honey, if you made more money you’d have to pay part of it out in taxes. You know how bad that is."

Business owner: "You know, you’re right again, Honey, I think we should just put this company out of business because we’re making too much money, which means we have to pay part of it in taxes!"

In the Washington Post today there's a story that says a lot about how people in Washington and the media think these days. Link Between Taxation, Unemployment Is Absent:

"It has become conventional wisdom in Washington that rising tax burdens crush labor markets. Bush castigated his political opponents last week for "that old policy of tax and spend" that would be "the enemy of job creation."

Yet an examination of historical tax levels and unemployment rates reveals no obvious correlation."

Actually an examination DOES reveal an obvious correlation, but not the one of the “conventional wisdom” referred to in this aticle.

So what “conventional wisdom” are they referring to?

"Republican economists -- and White House officials -- contend that higher marginal tax rates stifle business investment, hiring and the desire to work. . . . "The bottom line is, cuts in taxes lead to economic growth, which leads to improvements in the labor market to levels that are better than they otherwise would have been," said Mark J. Warshawsky, acting assistant Treasury secretary for economic policy."

But…

"But finding the proof in historical data is difficult, conceded Eric M. Engen, a Republican economist at the American Enterprise Institute. . . . Still, Burtless noted, some prominent conservative economists, including Harvard University's Martin S. Feldstein, predicted wrongly that the Clinton tax cuts would choke off the 1990s recovery and kill jobs, while the millions of new jobs that Bush said his $1.7 trillion in tax cuts would generate have not materialized. The historical disconnect does not stop there."

It's "conventional wisdom” that tax cuts create jobs. (As contrasted with government programs to create jobs... perhaps employing people to retrofit buildings to be energy efficient...) But I think we know where that kind of “conventional wisdom” comes from, don’t we? It comes from right-wingers repeating a carefully crafted phrase over and over, and creating an atmosphere of intimidation and character assassination that makes people afraid or uncomfortable arguing the other – the people’s – side.

The great Thom Hartman wrote a piece the other day, Democracy - Not "The Free Market" - Will Save America's Middle Class. I don’t want to quote from it too much because I want you to go read the whole thing. In fact, go to his website and read some of his other writings as well, and listen to his radio show. In this piece Thom writes,

"Here are a couple of headlines for those who haven't had the time to study both economics and history:

1. There is no such thing as a "free market."

2. The "middle class" is the creation of government intervention in the marketplace, and won't exist without it (as millions of Americans and Europeans are discovering).

The conservative belief in "free markets" is a bit like the Catholic Church's insistence that the Earth was at the center of the Solar System in the Twelfth Century. It's widely believed by those in power, those who challenge it are branded heretics and ridiculed, and it is wrong.

In actual fact, there is no such thing as a "free market." Markets are the creation of government.”

And,

"Markets are a creation of government, just as corporations exist only by authorization of government. Governments set the rules of the market. And, since our government is of, by, and for We The People, those rules have historically been set to first maximize the public good resulting from people doing business.

If you want to play the game of business, we've said in the US since 1784 (when Tench Coxe got the first tariffs passed "to protect domestic industries") then you have to play in a way that both makes you money AND serves the public interest."

And,

"Of course, they can't explain how it was that the repeated series of huge tax cuts for the wealthy by the Herbert Hoover administration brought us the Great Depression, while raising taxes to provide for an active and interventionist government to protect the rights of labor to organize throughout the 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s led us to the Golden Age of the American Middle Class. (The top tax rate in 1930 under Hoover was 25 percent, and even that was only paid by about a fifth of wealthy Americans. Thirty years later, the top tax rate was 91 percent, and held at 70 percent until Reagan began dismantling the middle class. As the top rate dropped, so did the middle class it helped create.)"

So maybe there IS a correlation between taxes and jobs and the economy, but not the one the right-wing clucks want you to believe.

Some previous thoughts and questions... largely (and obviously) off the top of my head. Just to get people asking questions instead of accepting "conventional wisdom." Economists will tell me where I'm wrong.

Who pays taxes now?

Do tax cuts “create jobs?”

Do tax cuts increase government revenue?

Do taxes “take money out of the economy” as Bush likes to say?

Do companies pass taxes on to their customers?

Tax cuts or spending increases?

And, of course, the most dangerous question, "Who is our economy FOR, anyway?"

Almost $80 Million

Look how much your own government is spending on Bush's re-election effort, and this is for just the ONE campaign that we know about! It adds up to almost $80 million leading up to the election to promote Bush's Medicare bill to seniors! The ad campaign is being done by the Bush campaign's own ad agency, which means they not only get the $$ for doing this campaign, but also the commission - $12 million - for placing the ads. Nice work, if you can get it -- and you can't.

U.S. Videos, for TV News, Come Under Scrutiny:

"Other documents suggest the scope of the publicity campaign: $12.6 million for advertising this winter, $18.5 million to publicize drug discount cards this spring, about $18.5 million this summer, $30 million for a year of beneficiary education starting this fall and $44 million starting in the fall of 2005."

Kerry

I have set up a Kerry donation page, with the Kerry campaign icon on the left side of the page. Click it to donate. Even if it is just a dollar or two, get in the habit.

Don't like the nasty "Kerry will send terrorists after your children" theme of the Bush ads? Well, Kerry can't respond unless you send some money to pay for the ads. Think about this, if all 200 million readers of Seeing the Forest just donate $1 each...

Free Markets

I just love Thom Hartman!

Democracy - Not "The Free Market" - Will Save America's Middle Class:

"Here are a couple of headlines for those who haven't had the time to study both economics and history:
1. There is no such thing as a 'free market.'
2. The 'middle class' is the creation of government intervention in the marketplace, and won't exist without it (as millions of Americans and Europeans are discovering).
The conservative belief in 'free markets' is a bit like the Catholic Church's insistence that the Earth was at the center of the Solar System in the Twelfth Century. It's widely believed by those in power, those who challenge it are branded heretics and ridiculed, and it is wrong.

In actual fact, there is no such thing as a 'free market.' Markets are the creation of government."

And

"Markets are a creation of government, just as corporations exist only by authorization of government. Governments set the rules of the market. And, since our government is of, by, and for We The People, those rules have historically been set to first maximize the public good resulting from people doing business.

If you want to play the game of business, we've said in the US since 1784 (when Tench Coxe got the first tariffs passed "to protect domestic industries") then you have to play in a way that both makes you money AND serves the public interest."

Everyone should go read this piece! However, the idea that corporations should only be allowed to exist if they are benefiting the American public is going to really piss off the right-wing vermin that have been leaving comments here lately.