Wednesday January 28, 2004
Primary results
So, my prediction didn't hold up. Kerry did win, but the tenacious Dean supporters held on, although the spread between his percentage and Kerry's was at the wide end of the poll predictions. Edwards' and Clark's poor showings just prove to me that the North/South divide of mistrust goes both directions. I think this helps, in a way, to make my South Carolina prediction of a John Edwards win more solid. I'm personally surprised that Kerry's patrician delivery went over so well in Iowa and New Hampshire. I can't imagine it playing in the real South. Dean has a lot to do to catch up, but his message is more focused that it has been in the past few weeks. Unfortunately these guys are playing the big issues, unwilling to step beyond their stump speeches and deal with daily news out of Iraq and the White House. There's plenty of fodder for talking points, and they should be using their pulpit, which the news media has kept from Dems for three years, to the best effect. Comment daily about Iraq and comment daily about the massive job loss. No news piece devoted to the campaign should be able to run without showing a candidate taking the fight directly to the Bush administration.
Three words for Lieberman: Go home, Republican.
Tuesday January 27, 2004
Paul Krugman details how the right is cleverly characterizing Bush as a 'big spender', shifting the blame for the budget imbalance from Bush's tax cuts to his not being 'sufficiently conservative.' It's a con, of course, and one that has been seen through, but is it one that the American public can understand?
As my dad has been saying, the Right has perfected their schtick -- the content of their talking points doesn't matter; it's the delivery. They deliver their words with conviction, they don't take them back, and they pretend that anyone questioning them is simply partisan. I think Paul is glossing over a significant part of the equation:the Republicans tell us the sky is falling and a significant portion of our population believes them implicitly.
They've brainwashed people so that certain keyword triggers, when used, can convey a concept without having to provide any further explanation. 'Massachusetts liberal' is a perfect example; the phrase conveys two memes that have sufficiently saturated the right wing of America: that liberals and Northeasterners are both antichrists, and the combination is the perfect storm of evil. John Kerry and Howard Dean are tarred by their simply being. With that, the Dems can write off about 30-40% of the country. With that, the country can write off any possibility of meaningful progress without significant breakdown, because when 1/3 or more of your population can be so easily manipulated with such apocalyptic memes, it will take a crisis in their own back yards to make them change their minds.
Monday January 26, 2004
Two pilots missing after being shot down in Mosul
Two pilots missing after their helicopter was downed in Iraq, and it isn't top-o-the-fold news on the NYTimes website or the Washington Post's website. CNN has it consigned to one line, below "Bird Flu claims first Thai victim" and "'Rings' dominates Golden Globes."
Nevermind that this was the fifth helicopter crash in a month, the third due to attack. But, WWTMD (What would the media do) if this was the Clinton administration?
Another soldier was also killed after an RPG attack on his vehicle. The total number of soldiers killed to date is 512.
How long before we hear that the insurgency attacks are getting more frequent? One week? One month? How long before it is recognized that the insurgency attacks have reached the same frequency they had before Saddam's capture?
How long before the press asks the question of the administration, "These insurgency attacks are obviously not coming from Saddam Hussein loyalists; Saddam will never come to power again. What do you think is the reason behind their fighting, and what are you doing to stop the attacks on our young men and women?"
Sunday January 25, 2004
Bush drops; was the US warned?; another leak; Scalia again
Damn, Bush has a 44% re-elect (47% strongly want him out). But his team has not even begun to fight yet. Just you wait. Dean's crushing was just the tip of the iceberg. And now we've seen how two anchors of major news organizations (Peter Jennings and Wolf Blitzer) will defend Bush over the issue of his absence from duty in the National Guard, without even looking into the facts for themselves. (UPDATE: Tim Russert just did the same thing.) Irresponsible and corrupt. Bet the Dems wish they had these guys on *their* side.
German Secret Service agents testified, in the trial of an alleged Al-Quaeda terrorist, that the US was warned of the September 11th attacks by an Iranian spy, but that he was ignored. "The spy, identified as Hamid Reza Zakeri, tried to warn the CIA after leaving Iran in 2001, but was not believed, two German officers who interviewed him told the Hamburg court. Zakeri worked in the department of the Iranian secret services responsible for 'carrying out terrorist attacks globally', one of the officers said."
"The Justice Department... faced new controversy over the alleged leak of the name of a Detroit man whom government sources described to TIME as a key confidential federal terrorism informant. ...Marwan Farhat's name was revealed in a Detroit Free Press story last week that cited "officials" as the source of information..."
Will Scalia recuse himself from the Energy Task Force case? Doubt it, but the NYTimes thinks he should.
Saturday January 24, 2004
The Bush administration still thinks that WMDs will be found in Iraq, despite the statement of the resigning weapons inspector David Kay that Iraq had no stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons at the start of the war last year.
Scott McClellan, in response to inspector Kay's comments, stated "Yes, we believe he had them, and yes we believe they will be found. We believe the truth will come out."
As the Bush administration continued their campaign of deception, aided by the American press, two more soldiers were killed in Iraq. As America made fun of Howard Dean's yelp, a few more guys were needlessly slaughtered.
Thursday January 22, 2004
And for good measure, "out of touch", "neo-fascist", "calvinist despot", "usurper", "tyrant".
Miserable Failure
Quick note to help the miserable failure rise to the top of the Google index.
Wednesday January 21, 2004
So, for most of us, Bush jumped the shark well before he was elected, but it seems that he jumped the shark with mainstream America with his nonsensical "Moon, Mars, and Beyond" mission. His SOTU didn't even get a majority "very positive" reaction (down 5% from last year, even with Saddam's capture). That can't be good.
Tuesday January 20, 2004
Krugman; Drudge misses the train; Coalition miscalculation
Drudge hasn't yet realized (or hasn't yet gotten the RNC fax) that he has to change his focus, that the Dems are already moving off of Dean. His headline? "Dean goes nuts". No link (of course).
Fareed Zakaria: An Absence of Legitimacy: "U.S. policymakers made two grave mistakes after the war. The first was to occupy the country with too few troops, creating a security vacuum. This image of weakness was reinforced when Washington caved to Sistani's objections last June, junked its original transition plan and sped things up to coincide with the U.S. elections. The second mistake was to dismiss from the start the need for allies and international institutions. As it turns out, Washington now has the worst of both worlds. It has neither enough power nor enough legitimacy."
More on Iraq elections, from the Guardian: "At least in Iowa, the Democratic party caucuses involve elections. Not in the US plan for Iraq. The US is proposing that "notables" in each province attend these caucuses to appoint an assembly which would select a government. Not surprisingly, the Shia leadership smells a rat. After generations of being excluded from power, first by the British occupiers in 1920, and then by successive Sunni governments up to the one led by Saddam, they are angry."
It was estimated that 100,000 attended yesterday's protests against the American plan for "elections". More are protesting today.
Monday January 19, 2004
My Gephardt prediction took about 5 seconds to come true. (Well, the first half!)
Update: Josh Marshall agrees with me that Bill Schneider's comments about Saddam were patently ridiculous.
Dropout and endorsement predictions
Gephardt drops out before NH, endorsing Kerry. Kucinich is out, delaying endorsement. Sharpton holds on, into at least another debate and another primary, then drops out, witholding support as well. After NH, Dean, after a disappointing 4th place finish, drops out, endorsing Wesley Clark (the only other outsider), even though Edwards has been playing nice. Anyone else? If I've forgotten any of them, they don't count for anything anyway, so...
Hah! I forgot Lieberman. He's out. Whoever he endorses drops 5 points in the polls.
After NH, it's a three-way scrum, and apart from an Edwards win in SC (by a nose over Clark), I am not ready to make predictions.
Note: Bill Schneider says that it's Saddam Hussein's capture that kicked the Dean campaign in the gut. Of course he's wrong. It was the relentless negative reporting that wore down the resolve of his supporters. The Dems in Iowa decided to make a national decision, and cut Dem losses early. Dean is in trouble.
The big loser? Bush. Not that this affects my November prediction at all, but this is a hit for his advance men and their conniving.
Predictions holding. I'll stick with my NH prediction.
Hmm... my prediction as of 9:30 seems to be holding out. Kerry is ahead, Edwards close behind, people abandoning Dean in droves. If anything, Edwards is the big winner. Clark now dukes it out with Kerry in NH, stalemating, but I think with Kerry coming out on top. So, my NH predictions still hold. If the night finishes out with the same places, it will be Kerry, Clark and Edwards in NH, followed by a strong win for Edwards in South Carolina. If Edwards ekes out a win, It's Edwards vs. Clark in NH, with Edwards on top, Clark #2, and Kerry a distant third.
The Republicans shot themselves in the foot. They managed to so poison the well for the preferred opponent, Dean, that they managed to push him out completely. This isn't good news for them. This also has the effect of bringing up Edwards and Clark, knocking the wind out of Gephardt, preferred candidate #2, and Kerry, preferred candidate #3. It will be interesting to see how they change tactics as they continue. Will they now decide that it's best to not attack their preferred opponent? In any case, the Republican war room has a lot of repositioning to do. By tarring Dean as angry, they've essentially indemnified the rest against the charge. They could find themselves toe-to-toe with a better-qualified Southerner (or two) going into the election. They could very well have brought on their worst-case scenario.
A fast one; segregation on the rise; 50% of America hates America; John Dean on presidential power; memo leaker standing trial
A guy gets one over on Fox News (Quicktime required).
School segregation at its worst since 1969. " Half a century after the Supreme Court ordered the desegregation of American education, schools are almost as segregated as they were when the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated, according to a report released today by Harvard University researchers. The study by the Harvard Civil Rights Project, shows that progress toward school desegregation peaked in the late 1980s as courts concluded that the goals of the landmark 1954 Supreme Court decision Brown v. Board of Education had largely been achieved. Over the past 15 years, the trend has been in the opposite direction, and most white students now have 'little contact' with minority students in many areas of the country, according to the report."(a href="http://counterspin.blogspot.com/2004_01_18_counterspin_archive.html#107445042314185603">Via Hesiod)
Bush approval drops to 50%. Why does 50% of America hate America? (I'll let you decide which half!)
John Dean on our current administration. " I've spoken with Arthur Schlesinger about it -- asking him if he thought the Bush presidency fit his description of an imperial presidency. In response, he chuckled, and said, 'I'd certainly say this is an imperial presidency.' The fact that five cases currently before the Supreme Court address the question of presidential powers -- and whether or not the Bush presidency has exceeded them -- speaks for itself. Bush has had almost twice as many such cases before the Court as Nixon had, in half the time."
Remember the U.S. plan to spy on U.N. delegates in advance of the Security Council vote over the war in Iraq? The British intelligence officer who leaked the information is now standing trial. "The plans, which included e-mail surveillance and taps on home and office telephones, was outlined in a highly classified National Security Agency memo. The agency, which was seeking British assistance in the project, was interested in 'the whole gamut of information that could give U.S. policymakers an edge in obtaining results favorable to U.S. goals.' Countries specifically targeted were Angola, Cameroon, Chile, Bulgaria, Guinea and Pakistan. The primary goal was a Security Council resolution that would give the U.S. and Britain the go-ahead for the war. Ms. Gun [the agent] felt passionately that an invasion of Iraq was wrong — morally wrong and illegal. In a move that deeply embarrassed the American and British governments, the memo was leaked to The London Observer."
Sunday January 18, 2004
Predictions for Iowa and beyond
Quick prediction on the caucuses and beyond:
Dean is on his way out, and he loses big in Iowa. Kerry squeaks out a first place finish, Edwards close behind; Edwards carries his second place showing to turn up in the top three in New Hampshire, close behind Kerry & Clark (not sure who comes out on top there), then first in South Carolina.
Lieberman? As long as he shows up at or near the bottom in New Hampshire, I'll be happy. The most incessantly negative campaigner deserves nothing but the censure of the voting public.
But all this hinges on Dean's organization. It could very well trump all the polls and my predictions.
Saturday January 17, 2004
Dirk Steele at The American Street is able to lay out very clearly how the American Conservative movement feels about homosexuality.
They don't want gays and lesbians to be portrayed this way [as affectionate beings]. Pictures of affectionate couples don't outrage middle America. Such pictures don't prompt financial contributions or get conservatives out to the polls.
The right wants us to think of gays and lesbians as alien beings, not worthy of the rights given to the rest of us. They'd rather we'd see a leather and chain clad man leading his submissive partner on a leash than two grandmotherly women looking lovingly into each other's eyes. They want this because alienness inspires hate and hate is more valuable to them than tolerance.
Follow the link above to see the billboard that offended American conservatives so. And read one conservative's take on it at the National Review Online.
By the way, this billboard appeared in Macedonia!
Grinding down the Democratic field
Ok, folks, don't say I didn't tell you so.
The RNC-Drudge-Mainstream media block has started up, and you have now seen the results.
An Ed Gillespie-inspired piece of misquoting and disinformation about Wesley Clark's statements about the war makes it onto Drudge, and it is soon picked up by major news networks like CNN, who don't even bother checking to make sure the news is legitimate. No apologies, no remorse, no shame. These folks are already manufacturing and proliferating stories for the sake of destroying the Democratic candidates. And this is just the first salvo. What amazes me is that people like Josh Marshall believe that bringing these machinations to light will actually do any good. The Republicans know that the damage is done immediately; it doesn't matter if the story is manufactured, or if the charlatans behind the ruse are eventually exposed in all their duplicitous glory. All you can ever do is make back some of the ground you have lost. And through this slow wear on the Democratic candidates, the Republican machine is going to grind them down to nothing.
Today, three GIs and two Iraqis were killed in Iraq when a roadside bomb exploded in Baghdad. This brings the total count of soldiers killed in Iraq to 501, if you go by the numbers at the Casualties in Iraq page. News sites are saying 500. The number is almost 600 if you count all coalition forces. UPDATE:CNN is acknowledging that the number is 501.
***
A student told me that one of her soldier friends was back on leave from Iraq and was getting dirty looks from people. I'm curious to know more about this, because I have not seen one liberal anywhere (even the most radical ones) disparaging troops. It just isn't happening. I'm not saying that this soldier didn't get dirty looks -- but my guess is that it is not a common thing, and if he himself is having some doubts about the war and this administration (which many, many soldiers are having, if you read Stars and Stripes), he is probably projecting onto people what he expects to see.
The liberals that I have talked to just want Bush out of office and those guys back home as soon as possible before more of them get killed defending a country that their President decided to invade.
Thursday January 15, 2004
Washington Post Trashes O'Neill
Now the Washington Post is defending its reporting, in light of Paul O'Neill's comments, and taking a few potshots at O'Neill at the same time.
If you doubted the complicity of the Post in helping to prop up the administration, you should read that editorial.
O'Neill to release documents
According to Sid Blumenthal, Paul O'Neill and his publisher will soon release onto the Internet all 19,000 documents that had been source for Suskind's book "The Price of Loyalty."
O'Neill's revelations have not been met by any factual rebuttal. Instead, they have been greeted with anonymous character assassination from a "senior official": "Nobody listened to him when he was in office. Why should anybody now?" Then the White House announced that O'Neill was under investigation for abusing classified documents, though he claimed they were not and the White House had eagerly shoveled carefully edited NSC documents to Woodward.
Quietly, O'Neill and his publisher have prepared an irrefutable response. Soon they will post every one of the 19,000 documents underlying the book on the Internet. The story will not be calmed.
Soldier suicide rate on the rise in Iraq
Soldier suicide rate is up in Iraq. "U.S. soldiers in Iraq are killing themselves at a high rate despite the work of special teams sent to help troops deal with combat stress, the Pentagon's top doctor said Wednesday. Meanwhile, about 2,500 soldiers who have returned from the war on terrorism are having to wait for medical care at bases in the United States, said Dr. William Winkenwerder, assistant secretary of defense for health affairs. The problem of troops on 'medical extension' is likely to get worse as the Pentagon rotates hundreds of thousands of troops into and out of Iraq this spring, he said... Winkenwerder said the military has documented 21 suicides during 2003 among troops involved in the Iraq war. Eighteen of those were Army soldiers, he said. That's a suicide rate for soldiers in Iraq of about 13.5 per 100,000, Winkenwerder said. In 2002, the Army reported an overall suicide rate of 10.9 per 100,000. The military investigates every death and some of those probes may be incomplete, meaning the actual suicide rate could be even higher, Winkenwerder said. He said health officials haven't identified any common threads among the confirmed suicides."
Wednesday January 14, 2004
Drudge, the idiot, panders to the rest of the idiots who don't understand that it's not "global warming", it's 'global climate change'. I linked to, over a year ago, an example of how a rise in global temperatures could end up, paradoxically, dropping the temperature of the Northeast of the US by 10 degrees, sending it into a "New little ice age".
But Drudge decided to make fun of Gore for talking about global climate change in New York, on one of the coldest days of the year. Sadly, it just makes Drudge look like a putz. But he's used to it by now.
Margaret Cho's hate mail
You need to set your head straight? Wondering if what you do matters, if there's really something out there worth fighting for (or against)? Well, read these letters to Margaret Cho, following her routine at the MoveOn.org awards ceremony. It makes you wonder how these people even figured out how to use the Internet.
Via Eschaton.
Monday January 12, 2004
Mars
This is simply fantastic, and something that every human should see. (Requires a broadband connection). Here it is in a smaller, 300KB file.
The rundown
Back to school, back to school, but first, the rundown, chronicling the slow-motion hit-and-run that is our country under the current administration.
Read the story of Maher Arar. A Syrian-born Canadian, who lived 16 years in Canada, suspected of terrorism through some of the flimsiest of evidence you could ever imagine, was whisked away to Syria. Why? Because Syria can torture suspects, and we can't.
The Syrians locked Arar in an underground cell the size of a grave: 3 feet wide, 6 feet long, 7 feet high. Then they questioned him, under torture, repeatedly, for 10 months. Finally, when it was obvious that their prisoner had no terrorist ties, they let him go, 40 pounds lighter, with a pronounced limp and chronic nightmares.
As the article states, "Our intelligence agencies have a name for this torture-by-proxy. They call it 'extraordinary rendition.' As one intelligence official explained: 'We don't kick the s -- out of them. We send them to other countries so they can kick the s -- out of them.' This secret program for torturing suspects has been authorized, if that is the right word for it, by a secret presidential finding. Where the president gets the authority to have anyone tortured has never been explained."
What is America becoming? Is this fascism? Is this totalitarianism? What do you think?
(That article first seen via Brad DeLong's great weblog.)
A thing of beauty was Paul O'Neill's decimation of the Bush administration's facade of competence. And don't forget that he's blown their story on Iraq, too.
Finally, the Army War College has put out a paper critical of the administration's handling of the "war on terror". It states that the Iraq war was unnecessary, and that because of it, the Army is near a breaking point.
Tuesday January 06, 2004
What the...?
Here's the latest, off the wires from the AP. I kid you not. It's on the Washington Post's website as I type this:
"AP Kills Limbaugh Painkillers Story
The Associated Press
Saturday, January 3, 2004; 5:06 PM
WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. - Please kill the story Limbaugh-Painkillers, V9991. Rush Limbaugh has not been charged with doctor shopping.
A kill is mandatory.
Make certain the story is not used."
As Kos states, it's been there since Monday. The article they wanted to kill ran here.
Call someone a "neocon" lately? You're anti-Semitic!
Josh Marshall points out an aspect of David Brooks' latest column that I also found atrocious: equating "calling a person a neocon" with "being an anti-Semite." That's right, you call someone a neocon, you're an anti-Semite. Nevermind the fact that neocons call themselves neocons. And Brooks' article's title? "The Era of Distortion." Chosen without even a hint of irony, I'm sure.
Liberals have turned from being anti-Catholics to anti-Semites. But what Brooks is really saying is that "Democrats HATE your glorious God! They hate him and they want him to die! You are righteous in your fight for your God to do anything to stop the heathens from destroying the way of life that he has set up for you in this fertile land!" This is simply another step of a smear campaign that started a year or so ago intended to paint Democrats as secular heathens willing to protect the basest of perversions, but not willing to stand up for God.
As Josh points out, Brooks' argument is "almost the definition of anti-intellectualism... The whole thing is disinformation from start to finish." Here's a quote Josh gives from Brooks' column:
"Theories about the tightly knit neocon cabal came in waves. One day you read that neocons were pushing plans to finish off Iraq and move into Syria. Web sites appeared detailing neocon conspiracies; my favorite described a neocon outing organized by Dick Cheney to hunt for humans."
As Josh says, the first is demonstrably true (an article had originally appeared at Haaretz.com about John Bolton's comments on the matter, at this location -- the article has been removed but was heavily linked to at the time, and there's also this article at Telegraph.co.uk for starters), the second false. But by placing them side-by-side, Brooks paints the first as absurd by association.
As I've stated before, the Republicans will win this next election fight by just these tactics, and there's not a damn thing the Democrats can do about it. The Republicans have shown that there are no depths they're not willing to sink to in order to keep their man in the White House and his lackeys in the Senate and House. But just wait until the real campaign gets going. It's going to get much, much worse. They haven't even begun.
Monday January 05, 2004
NYTimes against factory farms
Today is a good day, if only because the New York Times has issued their first editorial (that I am aware of) against the "efficiencies" (and, by association, the horrible cruelties) of factory farming. "...it makes greater financial, ethical and social sense if we subscribe to the cows' notions of efficiency, which do not include living on concrete or eating anything but grass and grain, rather than to ours. The animals would be healthier, their milk would be better, and we would not have to worry quite so much about what was in our food." Yes, people, it's time your head got infected with this particular virus -- the meme that factory farming is inherently vile, and should be abolished. You should go out of your way to look up some information on factory farming, and educate yourself on how meat-eating has drawn us into a hierarchy of cruelty and torture and monstrous genetic (and other medical) manipulation that has no equal.
Saturday January 03, 2004
Anxiety, personal freedom, and tyranny
From "A Buddhist History of the West: Studies in Lack," by David Loy:
For the masses totalitarianism is a temptation to surrender our freedom, yet the sense-of-self's sense of lack also enables us to understand this authoritarianism from the autocratic side. Another way to try to resolve one's sense of lack is by extending control over others. If the self is groundless and therefore naturally anxious, it can try to defend itself and gain control by seeking to dominate what is outside it. "This absoluteness, the sense of being one ('my identity is entirely independent and consistent') and alone ('There is nothing outside of me that I do not control') is the basis for domination -- and the master-slave relationship" (Benjamin 33). If, again, no amount of control can allay the insecurity that haunts the self, this search for control also has a tendency to become demonic. Stalin never felt secure enough because it is not possible to feel secure enough.
The need to surrender our freedom by submitting to an authority figure therefore meshes all too comfortably with the anxiety that drives tyrants to keep trying to totalize their power. They evolved together at the expense of those countervailing social forces that traditionally limited the exercise of such concentrated power as much as the exercise of personal freedom.
Thursday January 01, 2004
Terrorist strike on New Year's Eve
For those of you who think that your New Year passed without a terror incident, don't forget about the car bomb that blew up the restaurant (one frequented by Westerners) in Baghdad. The car contained 500 lbs. of explosives, it killed 7 Iraqis, and wounded 20, at least three of those Americans -- three Los Angeles Times correspondents. The target was civilian, not military, and was detonated as people were having their New Year's celebrations in the restaurant.
So despite Bush's security, they did hit us. But they're doing it where the targets are opportune, as terrorists are wont to do. Is this a good thing that they're hitting us on foreign soil? Is it really a better state of affairs that we're being ripped to shreds in bodegas outside our border?
And do the people of New York and Washington feel safer with military flyovers of their cities? Do they feel safer knowing that there are many who now watch the New Year's festivities with the morbid expectations that accompany a Nascar race? Do passengers on international flights feel safer now with guns on board? Do they feel safer when they're screened again, even after the plane has landed?
Unfortunately for us the people telling us that we are safer are the same ones trying desperately to prove to us that we are less safe -- because that's how they're going to win the White House for another four years. And it's hard to avoid the conclusion, given the qualities of this administration, that the flyovers and the screenings and the air marshalls are nothing more than a political maneuver meant to prove their mettle at keeping "the homeland" protected, and that this increase in "chatter" is coming more from the Bush campaign headquarters than the cellphones of imprudent terr'rists.
Seriously, folks. Remember their first reaction to the Mad Cow incident? "EAT BEEF! I WILL!" intoned the Agriculture Secretary. This was said with no regard to the facts; we found out that that kind of mindless cheerleading was completely uncalled for, considering the slack controls in place to protect the meat supply from taint from downer cattle and central nervous system tissue. Yet they behaved with complete disregard to the health of the American people. It was days later, with the scare not abating, that appearing tough became more important than protecting the cattle ranchers. But if the scare had died down even a little, does anyone think they would have done "the right thing"?
Apparently "the right thing" is scaring the bejeesus out of the American public, except when doing so could step on the toes of an important Republican business concern.
