The Sideshow

Archive for October 2002

Check box to open new browser windows for links.

Thursday, 31 October 2002

Happy Hallowe'en!

14:01 GMT: Permalink

You remember the original DNC ad, and the dopey GOP response? Well, MWO now provides Part 3 of the Social Insecurity Wars.

13:00 GMT: Permalink

Toys
Fireworks over Liberty Island
Bubble-wrap

Wednesday, 30 October 2002
18:55 GMT: Permalink

Stand Down
Stand Down is the name of a new joint weblog created by a conspiracy of bloggers on both left and right, and of whom I am one, who have this belief in common:

...that the use of military force to effect "regime change" in Iraq is ill advised and unjustified. We do not deny that the current Iraqi regime is monstrous, but we hold, with John Adams, that the United States must not go "abroad in search of monsters to destroy" unless they pose a clear and direct threat to American national security. This burden of proof has not been met.
Last March I spent a couple nights as a guest at my local hospital after coming down with a nasty stomach virus. When I was finally able to return to my desk and log on, I discovered a funny thing. As I wrote at the time:

Something odd seems to have happened while I was sequestered by the NHS. Suddenly, people who didn't previously think so have become convinced that we are in serious danger of a nuclear strike by Iraq within a year's time. I'm puzzled by this. Yes, they are scumbags, and yes, they are probably trying to develop "weapons of mass destruction" and yes, they are probably getting pretty worried about what we are planning to do to them, what with all the sabre-rattling in their direction from the Bushistas and all. None of this is new. Yet it is all anyone has offered me as an explanation for the sudden zeal to attack Iraq. I don't get it.
I was willing to be convinced, but as the days went by and I clicked on one link after another, I could find no new information that made going after Saddam seem any more pressing than it had been in the last decade.
On the contrary, I was faced daily with many good reasons not to embark on such an adventure. The first of these, of course, was George W. Bush himself, who seemed to have based his entire foreign policy on a strategy of alienating our every ally while exacerbating tensions with any nation that was not already a "friend". Having already proceeded on a course to create a diplomatic nightmare prior to 9/11, he was making things worse as time went by. Al Gore was hardly the first person to point out that Bush has squandered the good will the world felt toward Americans after the towers fell. If there is anything important to be done in the Middle East, the last guy I want touching it is George W. Bush, a man who seems to be able to make foreign policy disasters out of previously stable situations.
Secondly, what happened to Al Qaeda? The Bush administration's attempt to tie them to Iraq was obviously just smoke, but even were it not, surely a war with Iraq could only make going after AQ harder rather than easier; aside from anything else, it makes that diplomatic nightmare Bush has already created even nastier. Our allies are now more afraid of the United States than they are of terrorists. And why shouldn't they be? Only the US is threatening to invade countries or to nuke anyone these days.
And then there is Saddam himself. Yep, he's a bad guy, all right. He was also a bad guy back in the days when the Reagan-Bush administrations were his chums. This was never a secret to anyone on the left, but supporters of then-current US foreign policies shrugged it off as an irrelevancy; back then, you had to be a communist to be regarded as a real bad guy. But the truth is that everything they point to now as evidence of Saddam's evilness is stuff that happened pretty much with the blessings of the existing US administration of the day. Did he use WMD against his own people? Sure - and Washington didn't bat an eye, because he was their guy. He didn't even try to invade Kuwait until he had the Bush administration's permission. Where's the evidence that Saddam is crazy enough to deliberately provoke a war with the US? Face it: there isn't any.
And if there is a war, what's the likely outcome? Democracy in Iraq? Don't kid yourself. Sure, we can bomb them back to the stone age, but Iraq is not going to be a shining star of freedom and western values once the bodies are buried.
And Saddam knows he really has only one ace up his sleeve, and that's the fact that he's in shooting distance of Israel. Iraq isn't much of a threat to Israel as long as things are quiet, but it's all he's holding over our heads to keep us away from him: attack Iraq, and risk Iraq sending serious damage Israel's way. Is that what we want?
The Bush administration persists in talking like war has no costs. We can win it; that's enough. But win what? Another US puppet government surrounded by a populace that hates us for our continuous interference and manipulation of their economy? Is that worth the enormous loss of lives - theirs and ours - that will be paid for it? I can't help the feeling that it all seems cheap and easy to them because they know that no one who matters to them will be on the front lines.
So, I'm not convinced that Saddam can't be contained, and I don't think we've done all we need to do to avoid war - a prospect the administration seems to have written off a long time ago. I very much do believe that it will damage the United States in the eyes of the world in general and diplomatically on every issue that matters to us, including our efforts to defang terrorism, if we advance against Saddam without the willing support of our traditional western allies and the UN.
Most of all, I don't want my country to ask our military personnel to lay down their lives in the service of people who casually lie to them, and to us, about what is going on and why so many people must die. I trust neither their integrity nor their competence. If we must go into Iraq, I want to hear the case made by someone who means it, and I want the job done by someone who hasn't made a pig's breakfast out of foreign policy. I wouldn't ask our servicemen and women to follow this "commander-in-chief" into an ice cream parlor.

18:14 GMT: Permalink

From Hesiod at Counterspin Central:

QATAR BALL: The Agonist has a good piece about the coup attempt thwarted in the Persian Gulf nation of Qatar.
You know. The place where we are building airbases, and doing a massive arms buildup in advance of our invasion of Iraq?
Apparently, some folks there were not happy with the current "regime" because it was helping the U.S. against Iraq, and wanted to "change" it.
Luckily...(wink) there were an awful lot of U.S. forces available to help the Government put down the coup.
Of course, you probably already know about this event because of the saturation coverage it got from the media. I distinctly remember Fox News breaking away from their attempt to get David Berkowitz to comment about the Sniper case, to tell us about this coup....
Oh wait.
Maybe it was CNN? Or were they too busy trying to get the actors from CSI to give us their persepctive on the forensic science involved in cracking the sniper case?
Never mind.

17:45 GMT: Permalink

Sam Heldman at Ignatz tells an interesting story:

A guy named Michael Peter pleaded guilty to a federal indictment, and served his time. Then, after he got out, the U.S. Supreme Court held (in somebody else's case) that the acts that he was alleged to have done -- and that he admitted doing, in his plea -- weren't even a crime under the statute that he was charged with violating. So naturally, he wants to have the conviction deleted from his record, presumably so that he can vote, etc. Sounds reasonable, right? But the Government opposed it, even though the Government agreed that his activity turns out not to have been a crime after all. Think about it: why would the U.S. Government think it good law or good policy to oppose a guy's effort to have his conviction expunged, when the thing to which he pleaded guilty turns out not to have been a crime? I suppose it's just the elevation of procedural fetishism over substantive justice; the same thing that drives much of criminal law in the appellate courts these days. Fortunately, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit rejected the Government's position in this opinion yesterday. Interesting case, I think; and we will now see whether the U.S. tries to take it to the Supreme Court.

17:20 GMT: Permalink

Mikel Reparaz thinks he's found a way to divert George Bush's attention from war.
Scooby Davis had a chat with Sean Hannity about the sexual hypocrisy of him and his guest, Newt Gingrich. Scooby quite rightly thinks Gingrich's form of serial marriage is more destructive than Bill Clinton's playing around on the side.
And Atrios has loads of stuff, but most interesting to me is that he read the latest from Greg Palast on the stolen election. Unfortunately, the page he got it from has been taken down due to copyright issues, apparently, so I'll just have to quote from some people who got there first:

In 2000, Katherine Harris, Florida Secretary of State, ordered county elections officials to purge 57,000 citizens from voter registries as felons not allowed to vote in Florida. In fact, about 95 percent of these voters were innocent of crimes -- but 54 percent were guilty of being African-American. No guess there: a voter's race is right there on the voter form. So there was the election: BBC Television, for whom I conducted the investigation of this black-out operation, figures Al Gore lost 22,000 votes this way.
But I was wrong. The company that put together racial roster that fixed the election, DBT On-Line of Boca Raton, has now 'fessed up, having been sued by the NAACP for violating Floridians' civil rights. They have turned over to the NAACP's lawyers a report indicating that the state ordered the purge of 94,000 voters and that, according to the company's data, no more than 3,000 are likely illegal voters.
And look in the comments to find this bit quoted:

Harris and the state admit that tens of thousands of black voters had been wronged, and with plantation noblesse have agreed to return them to the voter rolls -- at the beginning of 2003. In other words, the votes seized in November 2002 will not be emancipated until after the ballots are counted in the race between Governor Jeb Bush and his Democratic opponent Bill McBride. Is there some technical reason for the delay? The first purge was launched in 1998 only weeks before Jeb's last run for office; yet the order to reverse the process is dragging for months since settlement and nearly two years since the exposure of the list's falsity.
And elsewhere:

It's hard to imagine a machine with a racial bias, but they can be programmed for Jim Crow outcome.
Here's how it happened. Take two counties: Gadsden, Florida's most heavily African-American county (57% minority population) and white-majority Leon County (which includes the capital, Tallahassee). Both counties used paper ballots; both were read by machines. But in the black county one in eight votes was "spoiled" -- voided and never read; while in next-door Leon, almost no ballot went uncounted (a spoilage rate of only one in two-hundred).
The 180,000 spoiled ballots came overwhelmingly from the blackest, poorest, most Democratic counties. How could that be? ABC TV's Nightline sent down their Clark Kents to investigate -- and they concluded that African-American voters were not properly educated and trained to handle the sophisticated voting process. In other words, blacks are too dumb to figure out how to vote.
I found another explanation while investigating the matter for BBC TV Newsnight out of London. The Leon County officials showed me that in their (white) county, if a voter made an error, the machine automatically returned the ballot and issued a new one for correction. However, if the black voters of Gadsden made a minor error -- a stray mark, a circle not an x -- their machine accepted the ballot, then voided it; the reject mechanisms were either missing or disabled.
This was no surprise mistake -- Leon County election clerks told me that before the election, they set up example machines at their office across from the Governor's office, and his election chiefs thoroughly examined how the machines operated.
Florida officials are considering an end to this mechanical apartheid; the issue will be addressed some time AFTER the November race.

Tuesday, 29 October 2002
19:19 GMT: Permalink

Robert Parry with more of the hard stuff, Deeper Into the Big Muddy:

On the campaign trail this fall, George W. Bush has been selling his hard-line foreign policy as a strategy for protecting Americans. But the opposite now appears to be true: Bush's tough-guy rhetoric in the face of complex world problems is adding to the dangers confronting Americans.
The latest episode of Bush's unintended consequences is North Korea's admission that it is pressing ahead to build nuclear weapons.
Bush's supporters have tried to shift the blame for this unsettling development to President Clinton, by claiming that a 1994 agreement to stop North Korea's nuclear program was too weak. But the evidence now is that North Korea cast aside that agreement this year and sped up its quest for nuclear weapons in direct reaction to Bush's threats and rhetoric.
The collision course with North Korea was set early in the Bush administration. In 2001, shortly after taking office, Bush cut off talks with North Korea and snubbed South Korea's President Kim Dae-Jung over his d�tente strategy. Kim Dae-Jung, a Nobel Peace Prize winner, found himself humiliated during a state visit to Washington.
After the Sept. 11 terror attacks on New York and Washington, Bush began counting North Korea as part of his "axis of evil," along with Iraq and Iran. Apparently, Bush's reasoning for putting North Korea into the "axis" was to avoid fingering only Islamic countries. So his speechwriters added North Korea as a kind of politically-correct multiculturalism in reverse.
More substantively, in late 2001, Bush sent to Congress a "nuclear posture review," which laid out future U.S. strategy for deploying nuclear weapons. Leaked early this year, the so-called NPR put North Korea on a list of potential targets for U.S. nuclear weapons. In doing that, Bush reversed President Clinton's commitment against targeting non-nuclear states with nuclear weapons. Clinton's idea was that a U.S. promise not to fire nuclear weapons at non-nuclear states would reduce their incentives for joining the nuclear club.
But to Bush's advisers, Clinton's strategy was simply more "appeasement." So Bush showed his toughness by aiming nuclear missiles at North Korea and other enemy states. As part of the nuclear review, the Bush administration also discussed lowering the threshold for the use of U.S. nuclear weapons by making low-yield tactical nukes available for some battlefield situations.
All of this may have played well with Bush's conservative base and many of his neo-conservative geo-political enthusiasts. But North Korea's famously paranoid communist government went, as they say, ballistic.
There's more, of course, and you should go read it.
It seems to me that the Republican strategy here is to reprise their performance in the cold war, when bellicose hawkishness had the duel effect of keeping Moscow too paranoid about us to relax, and simultaneously providing a convincing enemy for the GOP to pretend to be the "real" defenders against, instead of those wimpy Democratic doves. This program kept the cold war going for decades longer than it had to. (Yes, it was Kennedy who proved the perfection of that strategy, but the Republicans learned from it really well.) It's almost as if they had a plan to create and maintain Big, Scary Enemies for them to play hero against.
Of course, that could be giving them too much credit for being able to see what's as plain as the nose on my face, but it is as plain as the nose on my face that if you insult and threaten people a lot, and stoke up their fears with lots of rhetoric about how you're ready to beat them up, they might just believe you and take measures to prepare for that. They aren't likely to respond with love and friendship.
Which leaves you with two possible theories:
1. The Republicans are smart and evil; or
2. The Republicans are just stupid, bumbling fools.
Well, I guess there is:
3. The Republicans are mean-spirited, small-minded, evil people who are also too stupid to understand the real consequences of what they are doing.
Maybe that's right. It's certainly consistent with what Parry is saying - the White House was apparently genuinely surprised that by telegraphing that they were breaking our side of Clinton's agreement with them, the Bushistas had as much as told North Korea that there was no point in keeping to the bargain. This would speak to a level of short-sightedness and stupidity that might be predictable from someone who has never been held to account for even his meanest and most childish - and stupidest - actions. Someone like George Bush.
Is there really anyone left who imagines that Bush deserves their support? If so, I think they've lost any claim to being called "anti-idiotarians" rather than simply "idiots".
Save our country and save the world: Get the Democratic vote out on November 5th.

13:12 GMT: Permalink

Buzzflash has a list of sleazy things the Republicans are up to in the campaigns. Here's a few:

Someone is making calls in Florida, one assumes for Jeb Bush, urging Democrats not to vote until after the election! How do we know this? The head of the Florida Democratic Party received such a call.

In New Mexico, the head of the Republican Party admitted that the RNC wanted to finance the Green Party campaign there.

The RNC has urged Republican candidates to go on the offensive and claim that privatizing social security was a Democratic idea.
Florida Democratic Party Chair Bob Poe has written to Attorney General John Ashcroft demanding an investigation of that phone call, by the way:

Yesterday afternoon I received a call from an individual who urged me to cast my absentee ballot on November 10th - even though the general election is on Tuesday, November 5th. From the background noise it appears that the call was being made from a call center. When I questioned the caller about the November 10th election date, he was adamant that I wasn't to cast my absentee ballot until November 10th. When I inquired about whom he was making the call for, he said "the McBride campaign" - apparently unaware he was speaking with the chair of the Florida Democratic Party. When I asked what company he worked at, he said "California" and then said something I couldn't understand. Upon asking him again, the caller said he was calling from "CSS." When I asked to speak to his supervisor, he disconnected the call.
I was able to capture the phone number he was calling from on my caller ID. I'll be happy to provide the number to you and/or your investigators. To make sure no one connected with the Florida Democratic Party or the McBride campaign was responsible for this call, I double-checked with our coordinated campaign and the McBride campaign. Neither were currently making live phone calls to voters.
As the election gets closer, you might want to check out MyDD and Daily Kos regularly to keep track of the politics and the various races and polls and projections.
A public service announcement (via The People's Republic of Seabrook).

12:31 GMT: Permalink

Jim Henley has a pointer to this piece by Radley Balko, explaining why he has stopped leaning toward war with Iraq and moved to the other side. There's a lot of that going around.
Walter Cronkite says invading Iraq will start World War III.
Iraq checklist (via Bartcop.)

Monday, 28 October 2002
23:50 GMT: Permalink

Charlie Stross reports that men still can't unhook bras.
And a Lego harpsichord! (Via Epicycle.)

13:25 GMT: Permalink

Here's just a snippet from a piece on media by Lisa English:

Have you ever heard the expression, "don't shoot me, I'm just the messenger?" Oh, it's classic line, and one heard alot among people who carve out a living in journalism. For a long time, in a different America, I bought into the mantra, too. But nowadays, I've come to think differently. When the messenger neglects to pass on the important messages, I think we've got every right to assign blame. We in America are not hearing the important stories from our corporate press. For the most part, we are being fed a pabulum of consumeristic drivel, sensationist spin and conservative rant. And you know...just like I told my friend - if we don't focus on this issue, it's likely to get worse before it gets better.
You might look at all this as some kind of real radical think. You might then ask, "if it's not news they're giving us...what the hell is it?" Well, I and a lot of folks - people who are inveterate media watchers - have come to believe that what the big players in American media call "news" is for the most part, little more than "filler" for advertising. Bottom line: our beloved media is reneging on its responsibility to provide us with more than a passing program in the "public interest." Stories like the one my friend brings up - those 20% of American children, who live in poverty - those stories don't see much of the light of day - they're not sexy enough - they don't sell enough widgets and laundry soap - they run counter to the corporate ideology. But make no mistake about it, these are the important stories.

13:00 GMT: Permalink

I know you need something to cheer you up, so don't forget that Oliver Willis is lots of fun:

The Machine, The Myth
I've seen the phrase on a couple blogs now: "anti-war machine". So of course, if there is an anti-war machine - the "liberal" New York Times must be its propaganda sheet, right? So 100,000 people protest in Washington (plus 40,000 in San Francisco) and it's on the front page. Right? Riiiight.
ADVANTAGE: Anti-war Machine!
And there's a longer bit I'm not gonna quote but it made me chuckle. And some other stuff.

12:43 GMT: Permalink

Big Government
P.L.A. is at it again:

In 1961, under the last Eisenhower budget, there were 782,000 executive branch, non-defense employees in the Federal Government. By the end of 2001 that number had risen to 1,151,000 employees. That is an increase of 369,000 employees or a 47% increase over the 40 year period.
We decided to determine in which presidential terms that increase occurred. In order to do so, we looked at the years 1962 through 2001. We assigned credit or blame to an administration for the years for which it submitted a budget. Thus, for our purposes, the Kennedy term runs from 1962-1965. The Johnson term runs from 1966-1969 etc. We got our data here at table 17-1.
[...]
Conclusion
Under the 20 years of Republican administrations the number of non-defense government employees rose by 310,000.
Under the 20 years of Democratic administrations, the number of non-defense government employees rose by 59,000.
Of the 369,000 employees added between 1962 and 2001, 84% were added under Republican administrations and 16% were added under Democratic administrations.
Again, the details are pretty interesting - like the fact that the only decreases occurred under Presidents whose last names begin with "C".
Don't miss this piece, either, in which he takes a hammer to The Big Liar and his enablers.

12:19 GMT: Permalink

Criminals

Bush Enlists Government in GOP Campaign
President Bush has harnessed the broad resources of the federal government to promote Republicans in next month's elections. From housing grants in South Dakota and research contracts in Florida to Air Force One rides and photos in the White House driveway, Bush has made Republican success on Nov. 5 a government-wide project.
More than 330 administration appointees, some of whom were told by White House officials that they needed to show their Republican credentials, have taken vacation time and are being flown by the party to House and Senate campaigns in states where control of Congress will be decided. The appointees will organize volunteers, work the phones and go door to door.
[...]
Scholars called Bush's partisan use of the government unprecedented for a midterm election, and said the aggressiveness and thoroughness of his politicking approached that of a presidential reelection campaign. The broad orchestration of executive branch activity to benefit campaigns was moved up to the midterm elections this year because of a confluence of history: a hairsbreadth margin of control in both chambers of Congress, the huge repercussions of tiny swings in a closely divided electorate, and the dawn of new campaign finance restrictions the day after the election.
"This full-court press by the whole administration has a very different feel from most midterms," said Stephen Hess, a Brookings Institution senior fellow in governmental studies. "This is a very political presidency, and I didn't expect that. When one seat can make the difference between divided and unified government, that's a big incentive."
Bobby L. Harnage Sr., president of the American Federation of Government Employees, the largest union of federal workers, said he has been hearing increasing complaints about what his members consider politicization of their work, and said the effect is dampened morale. He asserted that Republicans' use of the federal government is the most aggressive he has seen in 34 years as a union official. "Bush and his administration are making no attempt to cover up what they're doing," Harnage said.
Funnily enough, government employees I know who are Democrats have been explicitly told that they are not allowed to involve themselves in any kind of political campaigning in their free time.

12:02 GMT: Permalink

For those who tried the link to the censored Boondocks strip and couldn't find it because it expired, this link should work. (also fixed below). I think I'd be lost without Owen Boswarva telling me when links are bad. I'm still baffled by that one to the WashPost page that said "washintonpost.com" a couple weeks back - I mean, that was the link I clicked on to get to that page, it shouldn't have worked for me, either, but it did - and then it didn't. Strange.

Sunday, 27 October 2002
18:27 GMT: Permalink

On TV
So I watched the anti-war demo on C-SPAN. It almost made me feel a little nostalgic. There was something strange, though: The organizers kept enthusing about how big the turn-out was, how the Mall was overflowing, how there were probably at least 100,000 people there - and later, gosh, must be 150 thousand! Now, I know they've built a couple of things since the last time I went to a demo on the Mall, but I've seen 'em and they don't take up that much space, and it takes a good 300,000 to fill the Mall.
And then NPR said there were 30,000. And the Post said "tens of thousands". Sheesh.
So then I watched the counter-demo the Freeps held. Man, that was hilarious. There were about 17 of them - seriously, look at the picture Atrios has up. The media claim "hundreds" were there. The numbers did swell for a while - after they ranted about how evil Muslims are, they noticed another pro-war group nearby and invited them to join. These were, of course, anti-Saddam Iraqi Muslims, about a hundred of them, who promptly took over the entire event, dominating the podium for quite some time, eventually not even bothering to speak in English anymore.
No media bias here, of course.
Then I watched the McBride-Bush debate from the C-SPAN archive. It was interesting the way McBride was hectored to take responsibility for something someone else (not in his campaign) said while this line of questioning was "balanced" by letting Jeb completely weasel out of taking responsibility for what had come out of his own mouth.
No bias there, either.

18:00 GMT: Permalink

Blog-check
Matt Yglesias says:

So here's the question. After the first post-9/11 terrorist attack the common reaction seems to have been "look, see, terrorism really is a serious problem and we need serious tough Republicans in office to handle it. Don't listen to these silly Democrats who tell you that you should be more worried about the economy." But after some number of terrorist attacks and after the administration has been given some decent interval of time to implement it's policies don't we need to start saying "look, George W. Bush promised he'd lick the terrorism problem and he's obviously failing." After 9/11, I saw a strong response, complete with the rapid drawing-up of a military plan to topple the Taliban and nail al Qaida. But after the Pakistan church bombings I saw . . . words of condemnation. Similarly after Bali. And now after the Moscow theater and the DC sniper still . . . nothing. Nothing but Iraq, that is. But reasonable supporters of attacking Iraq say that such a move won't do anything to prevent people from blowing up buildings with conventional explosives or gunning people down with small arms or even hijacking airplanes. And the Bush administration doesn't seem to have any plan whatsoever about how to deal with this problem. Al Qaida used to have a sovereign state to use as a base of operations. We were told that if they were denied that base, we'd all be a lot safer. And we probably are. But we're nowhere near safe enough.
Matt also responds to a post by Nick Denton about what is allegedly "wrong with the left", which generated some interesting comments. It set me off and I ended up writing a comment that is longer than Matt's entire post. I get prickly when people try to suggest that having Cynthia McKinney in Congress for a while is the same thing as having an entire White House and Republican leadership full of loonies. I think it's useful for the Republicans and their Stepford Press to pretend that the figures for the 2000 presidential election demonstrate that the country is split down the middle ideologically, but I also think it is manifestly untrue. I'm not disagreeing with Matt so much as I'm going a lot farther than he does - but then, I usually do.
Meanwhile, a word on that original Nick Denton post:

I finally understand why the Left has failed over the last two decades. It has stopped trying to persuade. Okay, I'm basing this entirely on one conversation, tonight, with an intelligent but dogmatic left-wing blogger in London. He's the kind of person who believes in moral absolutes: most importantly, that one should care for a stranger as one would do for one's self, child, or friend.
I think the kind of piety Nick mentions here is a problem, but I think it's all in that first sentence: The left has stopped trying to persuade. And not because their arguments are crummy, but simply because they often don't bother to make them at all. People use jargon rather than explaining what they mean and why one formula is more potentially useful than another. Calling something racist doesn't really make any points even when it's absolutely true. What people never quite get the hang of is the fact that even though something was thoroughly examined in the public discourse three years ago, many people are too young to remember it, or were doing something else at the time, or misheard it the first time, or have just plain forgotten. You need to keep doing it, again and again and again. Yep, tedious, I know, but it's still true.
And another thing: The right wing attacks individuals because they have to, the real arguments on issues aren't on their side. It's fair enough if we go after particularly egregious individuals, but if we do that as a substitute for presenting the issues, we lose.

12:45 GMT: Permalink

Cartoons
Great David Horsey cartoon in The Seattle Post-Intelligencer.
And...hmmm, a letter in The Washington Post Free For All says:

There is, as I am sure you know, a difference between exercising editorial judgment and censorship. Refusing to run the "Boondocks" strip on Oct. 13 falls into the latter category ["Pics and Strips," ombudsman, Oct. 20]. And from just what dangerous ideas were you shielding your readership by censoring the strip? From a reminder that George W. Bush wasn't actually elected president? That Hitler was a popular leader? Is your readership so susceptible to terrible ideas that every reference to Hitler in your pages has to be politically correct? [Hugh B. Gordon]
That'd be this strip. God, the Post is such a bunch of weenies.

Saturday, 26 October 2002
23:50 BST: Permalink

Earlier this month I linked to a clever little Democratic Party flash animation on how the Republicans are trying to pull the rug out from under Social Security. Now the GOP has released an amateurish response, in which they claim they aren't doing any such thing, denying that privatizing is privatizing, and repeating Bush's offensive campaign claim that Democratic criticisms are just trying to "scare" seniors. Why, Bush is actually rescuing SS, they claim. In tights.
Here are some interesting recipes for all you folks doing the Atkins diet, from the Low Carb Luxury site. I, of course, am probably too lazy to make any of them, but if anyone wants to make some up in my kitchen, hey, I'm game.

23:00 BST: Permalink

After I did my last virus scan update it started claiming I had a virus. I had no idea what to do, since I've never had one before - I mean, I'm pretty careful about this stuff. But a check of the web revealed:

Problems with W32/Insane.dam and McAfee
In the past week EuroTrust Virus112 has seen a number of false warnings from McAfee Antivirus. Several customers have reported that they have got the virus W32/Insane.Dam on clients and servers, but that they cannot find any information on the virus in question.
However, the case seems to be an error in McAfee's antivirus product, causing the scan engine to warn about this virus. The false virus warning disappears if you follow McAfee's recommendations and update "scan engine".
We await further information from McAfee concerning the problem.
So I didn't do anything, figuring that it would be gone in the next update of the .dat file - which it was. I never heard of anyone getting any interesting notifications about it from McAfee, though. And I thought it was pretty sleazy of McAfee to con people into paying for the upgrade when it would be gone in a few days anyway. If they had any class, they would have immediately put out a new, clean update. They don't appear to have done so.
But my wasn't that fun! I really feel sorry for the folks who deleted files before finding out the problem was the virus scan rather than a virus.

15:44 BST: Permalink

Paul Wellstone
He showed how it could be done.

I guess Josh Marshall pretty much says it:

Like so many others I am in a state of shock over the sudden and tragic death of Paul Wellstone. I can scarcely believe I've just written those words. For every Democrat -- probably as much for those who didn't share his politics as for those who did -- Wellstone was a special treasure: a sort of genuinely progressive, utterly engaged and sincere politician who somehow captured what was essential in the aspirations of his party, even if he supported policies that others didn't. ("I'm from the Democratic party-wing of the Democratic party," he got fond of saying in the late 1990s ...) One thinks of his vote against welfare reform in 1996, on the eve of his first run for re-election. Whatever you think of the merits of that vote [...] no other Senate Democrat who was up for re-election that year had the nerve to make the vote that he did -- though many of them thought the way that he did. He did something very similar this year on Iraq. And in recent days it seemed conviction was making for good politics.
I came home from work late last night (or early this morning) and the first thing I looked at when I logged on was Electrolite, where I saw the news. He also links to two posts at Daily Kos (there is now a third), noting that there is much to read in the comments there as well. Last night I opened a lot of pages and was interested to see the many people who had actually talked to Wellstone and heard him speak in person who were inspired by him. Like Josh Marshall, all seemed to agree that he was both a nice guy and a politician who was guided by his principles.
And yes, there have been a lot of disgusting, jubilant comments from the usual suspects, but have a look at this from the state GOP and this from Peggy Noonan that managed to rise above all that.
This is terrible, terrible news, but it is not an omen that it's time to give up. On the contrary, it means fighting harder. Someone in the Daily Kos comments said we should write to our reps and tell them that with Wellstone gone it is left to them to take up the slack in the fight for principles. Maybe that's a good idea.

Friday, 25 October 2002
15:24 BST: Permalink

Second star to the right
I didn't know 'til I read it at POV that Adolph Green has died at 87.

I have a place where dreams are born
And time is never planned
It's not on any chart
You must find it with your heart
Never Never Land
It might be miles beyond the moon
Or right there where you stand
Just keep an open mind
And then suddenly you'll find
Never Never Land
You'll have a treasure if you stay there
Even more precious far than gold
For once you have found your way there
You can never, never grow old
And that's my home where dreams are born
And time is never planned
Just think of lovely things
And your heart will fly on wings
Forever
In Never Never Land.

14:48 BST: Permalink

The Gadfly's Buzz has found yet another example of the right-wing's fabulous use of language. He quotes some brilliant semanticist at Media Minded:

What is a Stalinist? In popular culture, the definition has evolved somewhat, from "follower of Stalin" to "a person who engages in outrageous personal attacks in an attempt to discredit a political foe."
With that in mind, Harry Belafonte's recent outburst accusing Colin Powell of being a sell-out to his race is a perfect example of Stalinist rhetoric.
Harry Belafonte aside, when has a competent speaker of English ever used the word "Stalinist" to mean "a person who engages in outrageous personal attacks in an attempt to discredit a political foe" . . . or, for that matter, anything other than "a supporter of Marxist-Leninist political principles associated with Stalin?
(Hint: it's a trick question.)
And just as an aside, I thought that the current term in popular culture for "engaging in outrageous personal attacks in an attempt to discredit a political foe" was "fisking."

14:02 BST: Permalink

Brad DeLong on file-sharing and why the music industry is really in trouble:

The reason that the audio entertainment industry may be in real trouble. If it really has lost the allegiance of its performers--if enough of its big name stars are angry enough at it to, in Don Henley's words, be happier los[ing] money to music-downloading fans than losing money to the record companies, it's hard to see how the audio industry will be able to convince anyone it's a useful intermediary standing between musicians and fans...
brushstroke.tv: ...Don Henley encouraging everyone to "Download all you want". "The record companies have been ripping artists off for years", he said. "Go ahead. I'd rather lose money to you than them. I don't have a contract with you." The crowd roars with delight.

13:30 BST: Permalink

Mailbag
Ray Davis (of Bellona Times) responds to Patrick's mail below:

I'm an old-timey heartlander who just came back from a trip to the heartland, and I think Patrick mistook. There was nothing in that entry that called mid-America stupid. It called the mass media of mid-America solidly right-wing. And as far as I encountered this trip (and my trip five years ago for my grandma's funeral), that's correct.
My people are far from stupid, although, like people almost everywhere, they're willing to go against their own interests for what they believe are more important principles. The few I talked to about politics knew, all too well from all too personal experience, what's going on. But everyone agreed that getting the word out was almost impossible, and that the propaganda was coming from one direction only. That's a real problem that has to be dealt with -- it's not necessarily a reflection on those being broadcast to.
One bent ray of hope: for the first time ever, I heard no non-sequitur attacks on New York City.

Thursday, 24 October 2002
15:10 BST: Permalink

Others have earlier cited this one from The New Republic by John B. Judis on how the Democrats might win in November, but here's a nice reminder of what the Republicans are doing:

Most Republican candidates are turning away from traditional conservative economic appeals and instead are running Orwellian ad campaigns in which they claim that they never wanted to privatize Social Security and that they favor the Democrats' prescription-drug programs. They are denying that they ever tried to hamstring the Securities and Exchange Commission, and they are trying to portray themselves as corporate reformers and their opponents as sleazy lobbyists and speculators. For instance, when Jim Talent--the Republican Senate candidate in Missouri--was in Congress, he sponsored legislation to divert 16 percent of Social Security taxes to retirement accounts managed by private managers. Now Talent says he "has not voted and will not vote to fully or partially privatize Social Security." In South Florida, Republican E. Clay Shaw Jr. voted this year for the GOP prescription-drug plan that would have bypassed Medicare in favor of private insurance companies. Now he boasts that he voted for "a comprehensive prescription-drug benefit under Medicare." In Colorado, Republican Senate candidate Wayne Allard--who tried to block accounting reform in 2000 and was initially indifferent to corporate reform--runs ads criticizing corporate executives for "engaging in fraud" and announcing "Wayne Allard said, `Enough.'" But judging from the polls--which show the Democrats' edge on Social Security, prescription drugs, and corporate reform to be as large as ever--this GOP political cross-dressing isn't working.

14:35 BST: Permalink

Someone let me know if the "anti-idiotarians" who have so zealously attacked Noam Chomsky, Susan Sontag, Jesse Jackson, Ramsey Clark et al. have also routinely "fisked" the reprehensible Ms. Coulter, who writes things like this:

The anti-death penalty lobby never sleeps. Unable to convince the public that savage murderers should be given radio shows rather than lethal injections, anti-death penalty zealots have turned to lying about proof of guilt. With convicted felons constantly being "proved innocent," the public finally began to sour on the death penalty. The phony DNA "exoneration" project was the first attack on the death penalty that ever worked.
Years after juries have rendered their guilty verdicts, criminal defense lawyers are still hard at work, hatching new theories of innocence and dredging up phony "new" evidence. Once the police, prosecutors and victims have all moved on, the defense bar can spin its lies to gullible reporters without contradiction. Evidently, it never occurs to journalists that a criminal defense lawyer might lie to them.
Coulter then goes on to perform what she thinks is a take-down of the exoneration of the boys originally convicted in the case of the Central Park jogger. By her lights, this is all just a plot by anti-death penalty conspirators who, according to her, just make this stuff up. DNA evidence, Ms. Coulter appears to feel, is itself just a load of old fabrication. Mere science cannot be expected to be more reliable than, say, confessions elicited by beatings or threats.
You know, it's funny, but I can't remember Ms. Coulter objecting to the use of DNA evidence in the OJ Simpson case. How come it's only bad when it indicates innocence rather than guilt?

14:06 BST: Permalink

Here's another IQ test, just in case you want to be matched up with a Mensa date. I confess to being baffled by their analysis of my performance:

Our analyses indicate that your Intellectual Type is: Visual Mathematician. This means that among other things, you have superior skills in mathematics and spatial reasoning.
Well, there's something no one has ever said about me before.

01:07 BST: Permalink

We were so much younger then
Back before we all had webblogs, C. S. Cleebers wrote this little polemic in the midst of the 2000 campaign, when this was how it seemed:

How All the President's Men Ruined National Political Journalism
I blame Woodward and Bernstein. Also Michael Korda and Dick Snyder. And everyone associated with the movie version of All the President's Men. That thing ruined national-level journalism.
For a year or two in the '70s journalism actually looked glamorous, which it ain't. But before the glow faded, half the fluffbrains in the country decided they wanted to grow up to be reporters, just like Robert Redford and/or Dustin Hoffman.
Some of them actually went and did it. But alas, life has disappointed them. There they are, at the peak of their careers, and they've discovered that journalism at the top is exactly like journalism at the bottom: grubby, underpaid, and only fun if you're a news junkie. If they're on the national political beat they've also discovered that Washington D.C. is boring, provincial, and has godawful weather, and that reporting on national politics is only fun if you're a news junkie and a policy wonk.
See what that movie did? Time was, only news junkies and policy wonks wound up in jobs like that, and they didn't expect to become media stars.
This is why the national media hate Clinton. He's a genuine news junkie and a genuine policy wonk, and unlike those reporters he likes what he's doing. He's fascinated by the process of government. He thinks it's swell.
So not only is Clinton not stuck in the wrong profession, but if he were in the journalists' profession he'd probably have a good time doing that, too.
The man is unforgivable.
And Al Gore is even worse, because he's a news junkie, a policy wonk, AND A FORMER NEWSPAPER REPORTER.
Hate, hate, hate.
Remember all those stories you've heard about how Gore mendaciously claimed to have helped invent the Internet? Every one of those stories was written by a journalist who didn't check his facts, or didn't care that his facts were wrong, because:
Al Gore actually did help invent the Internet. It's a matter of public record. You can look it up.
But tracking down Gore's record is kind of a lot of trouble. Mind you, it's exactly the kind of work national political reporters are supposed to know how to do; but even reporters from the most prominent national newspapers and television networks have blown that off. It's a lot much easier to write some piece of hogwash about Gore being chronically untruthful, or delusional, or some other smart-aleck thing that can't be fact-checked because it's unprovable either way.
George W. Bush is more their kind of guy. They get along. Because just like them, he's an underperformer who doesn't actually want to take on the job. He just wants to play it in the movie.
Today, however, Cleebers says:

I couldn't write it now. I don't have as much naive faith in the American political system as the author of that piece had. I think now that some of these journalists know perfectly well what they're doing, and write the stories they do because they want to have an in with the winning side--some for all the usual discreditable reasons, others because it's getting rarer and rarer to have more than one major daily in any metropolitan area, the organization they're working for wants to be on the winning side, and they just want to keep their jobs.

00:15 BST: Permalink

The Heartland
Patrick Nielsen Hayden takes issue with something from Seeing the Forest that I quoted below. The quote was:

"The Republicans have greatly increased their control over the information that the public receives. I drove across the country in 2001, and once you get away from the coasts, news is ENTIRELY a Republican media operation. Every town is right-wing radio, right-wing newspapers, FOX in the motel rooms, etc. There are very few other sources of information."
And Patrick's reply:

This is simply not true, and assertions like this drive me up the wall, because what they do is reinforce coastal types and Europeans in their belief that the middle of America is a desert of stupidity, while making people of good will everywhere despair.
Every time a liberal rants about how the right totally dominates middle America, Karl Rove smiles, because we're doing his work for him.
There are more of us and we are more powerful than we're constantly being told. And we aren't voiceless. If we're going to hold our own, we need to stop believing the myth that the right owns what is often stupidly called the "heartland." They don't. It's entirely contestable, and contested.
Yes, right-wing media control is a big problem. No, exaggerating the problem -- crying wolf -- doesn't help. It makes the situation seem hopeless, when in fact it's merely difficult. It's shitty, but it's not 1984. It's still possible for passionate conviction to win. We need to inspire people to hope, not bludgeon them into cowed despair.
I don't know much about how media in the midwest differs from coastal media, but I do know that there are no "red states" in any real terms. They're purple states, and many are a lot further along the blue side of the spectrum than many people seem to think. Check out Shades of Purple - the Myth of the Red and the Blue America if you haven't seen it before.

Wednesday, 23 October 2002
18:55 BST: Permalink

I've been busy. Go look at this:
Question Mark #29: 'Promise'

Tuesday, 22 October 2002
03:25 BST: Permalink

Liberal Oasis is always full of good stuff:

Is American foreign policy based on peace, freedom and security for all? Or is it based on power, oil and misleading fearmongering for us?
While the Bush rhetoric implies the former, the North Korea-Iraq contradiction shows it is closer to the latter.
And when an Administration is implementing the wrong foreign policy values, that's when the public has a duty to weigh in.
How do you get to peace, freedom and security? That's a question often best left to the experts.
But are we even striving for peace, freedom and security? That's a question for everyone.
And in the same piece, a pointer to something interesting from Seymore Hirsh:

President Clinton and those aides who supported his decision may have been right: the Iraqi intelligence service may have developed and put in motion a plot to assassinate George Bush during his triumphant visit to Kuwait to celebrate the Gulf War victory over Iraq. And if such a plot did exist Saddam Hussein may have known of it, or should have known, and thus would have been personally responsible for not preventing it. But my own investigations have uncovered circumstantial evidence, at least as compelling as the Administration's, that suggests that the American government's case against Iraq�as it has been outlined in public, anyway�is seriously flawed.

03:00 BST: Permalink

I see I've had another tragic oversight in neglecting to add Seeing The Forest to the blogroll - and I'm not just saying that to repay the compliment. I actually thought I'd already added it. Check it out here on how Enron's PR campaign against Gray Davis seems to have stuck, and this one:

For more reasons than I care to delve into, comparing Saddam to Hitler is a gross disservice to history. For one thing, Hitler never asked our position on attacking Poland whereas Saddam checked with our envoy as to the position of the US regarding Kuwait. The day after we responded that we had no official position on middle east boarders Saddam attacked. I have a whole group of in-laws that survived Nazi Germany (concentration camps and all) and I see firsthand how that effects the next two, three generations. Nobody who has any idea what really happened during WWII would seriously put forth such an insulting comparison. That the world joined forces and repelled Saddam out of Kuwait shortly after his invasion shows that we have indeed learned the lesson that ignoring the takeover of Poland taught us.
And this one, and this one, of course:

The Republicans have greatly increased their control over the information that the public receives. I drove across the country in 2001, and once you get away from the coasts, news is ENTIRELY a Republican media operation. Every town is right-wing radio, right-wing newspapers, FOX in the motel rooms, etc. There are very few other sources of information.
Coming back from my lunch I'm thinking about how AM radio has been completely taken over by the Republican Party and is being used used as a 24/7 running Republican Party political advertisement. Today's Hannity show, while I was listening, was a blatant full-scale Republican Party ad, asking people to donate, to volunteer to work on Republican campaigns, etc. AS WELL as spewing out the right-wing lies, like that Democrats are blocking the Fatherland Security Bill so you have to vote for Republicans if you want the country protected. (Facts - The Democrats PROPOSED the agency, and the Republicans are filibustering it.)
This use of the AM band is illegal, and it shows where The Party wants to take the country. The Democrats should grow spines and demand that the these stations be fined for making in-kind donations to The Party, and that they put some opposing voices on the airwave.

02:45 BST: Permalink

From Bartcop, Great Moments in Freedom.
Here's a good tune you can listen to: Kelley Hunt doing "Talk to Me." (Thanks, M&S!)

02:00 BST: Permalink

President Clinton officially an honorary black man (via MWO):

LITTLE ROCK, Ark. (AP) - Bill Clinton, once famously described by author Toni Morrison as "our first black president," is being inducted into the Arkansas Black Hall of Fame as an honorary member. The former president will be the first non-black recognized in the hall's 10-year history. He is expected to attend the Saturday night event.
"It is this community's way of saying thank you to him for the work that he has done," Charles Stewart, the hall's chairman and founder.

Monday, 21 October 2002
10:42 BST: Permalink

Lack of Judgment
Scoobie Davis has a look at an NR article on Clarence Thomas:

In his article on today's National Review Online, John A. Foster-Bey writes, "October 15, 2001 marked the ten-year anniversary of the confirmation of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas. While the hearings should have been used as an opportunity for the nation to hear and assess the legal philosophy and judicial perspectives of the second black nominee to the Supreme Court, liberal opponents to his confirmation chose instead to attack his character and private life rather than debate his ideas."
Here are the problems with this assessment:
1. Thomas doesn't have a meaningful "legal philosophy and judicial perspectives" to hear or assess. Thomas was a mediocre law student at best. Although his law school transcript is not available, his grade in Thomas I. Emerson's first year course on politics and civil rights, he scored a 69. [Quick note: 69 was the lowest score Al Gore had when was a law student. The right has falsely accused Gore of flunking out of law school. Rather, Gore dropped out to win election to Congress (the same year, George W. Bush's most notable activity was to drink like a fish and drive around his friends and family).] The American Bar Association gave Thomas the low rating of simply "qualified" (with a minority rating him "unqualified")--the lowest rating of modern nominee. It's kind of pathetic when a guy is rated lower than the infamous G. Harold Carswell (remember Senator Roman Hruska's endorsement of Carswell: "Even if he is mediocre there are a lot of mediocre judges and people and lawyers. They are entitled to a little representation, aren't they?"). Since perjuring himself to the high court, Thomas has been a Scalia clone and was part of the 2000 coup.
Famously, part of the problem at the time of Thomas' nomination was that he was close-mouthed about his positions and even claimed to have never given any thought to one of the major political issues of the day (and this day, for that matter, when it comes to Supreme Court nominees), Roe v. Wade. Aside from that, he had a a record for doing a lousy job in his previous positions. People wanted to hear what he had to say, see some evidence of his thinking. The charges by Anita Hill that led to the hearings provided that opportunity. Thomas could have used them to show there was more to him than puppetry and false pride, but he did the reverse, demonstrating that he was even worse than anyone suspected.
Let's go back to the very beginning of those hearings, when Thomas made his opening statement. Bear in mind that at this point no decisions had been made, and that the Senate that was now holding these hearings had resisted holding them until a public outcry had dragged them to the chamber. Yet Thomas' first words were to accuse the assembled body of racism because they permitted Anita Hill to be heard. He made clear that he expected people to assume, without hearing a word Hill said, that she was not worth listening to. Why, we should know merely by looking at her that she had nothing to say. And what did we know about her? We knew she was a black woman. That's it - but that should have been enough, apparently.
Thomas complained that he was being victimized by the use of common racist sexual stereotypes. That was a very odd thing to say, since he was accused of things that are largely associated with white men - abuse of power and use of pornography. Yet his own "defense" of himself exploited another racist stereotype - that of the oversexed black woman. By relying on hearsay (from only one man) suggesting that Hill was "a little bit slutty", he was playing straight to the most prominent of all insults to black women, saying, in essence, that she was just another colored whore.
Thomas also implied that the likes of Ted Kennedy were punishing him for violating racial taboos. He wasn't actually speaking to a white audience when he said it, nor was he speaking to the highest values in the black community. Ironically, where most white people are concerned, it's something you'd have to be thinking like a racist to pick up on - Strom Thurmond and Jesse Helms undoubtedly understood it even though most of Kennedy's white supporters were probably baffled by it; it's a taboo that matters a great deal to Jesse Helms, but not to you and me. (You remember Jesse Helms, whose strongest outrage against Robert Mapplethorpe was in response not to the picture with the bullwhip, not to numerous other highly-charged homoerotic images, but to a photograph that showed a white man and a black man together?) Thomas was not referring to his success in politics or law.
Thomas then proceeded to use thinly-veiled comparisons between himself and Emmet Till, Martin Luther King, Medgar Evers, and, by inference, the brave man he was replacing, Thurgood Marshall. Being asked questions by boring white men who could potentially subject him to the indignity of being denied a seat on the Supreme Court, leaving him only a sitting judge on the federal bench, amounted to a "high-tech lynching". (I always liked that phrase "high-tech" - like speaking into a microphone was all that distinguished it from being wrapped in barbed-wire or hung from a tree.) He implied there was some similarity between what he was experiencing and being the victim of "a sniper's bullet" - threats that King, Evers, and Marshall all faced, and which ultimately claimed both of the former. Marshall, as we all know, survived to win a case before the Supreme Court and eventually earned his own place there; Thomas was pretending that the minor embarrassment of facing a hearing was all he needed do to earn that same place.
From our judges we expect a sense of proportion as well as an understanding of law. We expect good judgment. What we got was a display of the most cynical cunning, manipulating half-understood emotions and fears.
On the Supreme Court bench, Thomas first distinguished himself by offering a minority opinion so offensive that even Rehnquist chastised him - publicly! - for his failure to understand the simplest of restrictions on abuses of power by government's agents. Yet conservatives continue to pretend he is defensible, that only some evil on the part of liberals could have made us despise him. No. We despise him because he is despicable.

09:51 BST: Permalink

Matt Yglesias jumps into the fray on the compartive virtues of the USA and Sweden.
Alex Frantz wonders why the few Republican moderates remain in their party. (I disagree with him about moderate/liberal Republican nominees, though - you have to remember that comparatively speaking, George H.W. Bush was a party moderate, unlike his son.)
Max examines Bush administration policy as if they were all honoroble men. It's a useful exercise, even if you don't believe it, but they still come out all wrong.
Twice in a row, Summary Opinions points me to an article by Ellis Henican, someone I'd never heard of before. This time he is talking about the Central Park jogger case and the phenomenon of people confessing to things they didn't do. (We can make you talk, even if you have nothing to say.)
Are you willing to do your part?

Sunday, 20 October 2002
22:15 BST: Permalink

Jacob Sullum on The Forever War:

Since 9/11, anyone who has questioned a proposed extension of government power or contraction of individual liberty has had to deal with an intimidating three-word rejoinder: "We're at war."
Except...they don't really act like our nation is at war with an enemy. But they're at war, all right. With us.

22:00 BST: Permalink

Terminus is ticked off by MTV:

Gotta Give the Peeps What They Need. This is an interesting story to be filed under the miscellaneous category. You should all know that your humble blogger has been a fan of Public Enemy ever since he saw the video for "Black Steel in the Hour of Chaos" on Yo! MTV Raps many many years ago (back in the good old days when it was hosted by Fab Five Freddy). Anyway, PE's latest album, "Revolverlution" hit the stores a couple of months ago, and it became a part of my CD collection very shortly thereafter. The first track, and also the first single, is called "Gotta Give the Peeps What They Need". It's an amazing song, and just barely edges out "Son of a Bush" for my favorite cut off the album. Anyway, MTV, in its infinite wisdom, has declined to play the video because it is "political". I don't know why, but MTV likes banning videos from my favorite artists. Who remembers the hoopla over Neil Young's "This Note's For You" several years back? Anyway, Chuck D, Public Enemy's powerful principle voice, is pretty ticked off about the whole situation. You might find his comments here to be pretty interesting.

21:22 BST: Permalink

Greeting Cards of the Apocalypse
Rob Humenik says this is a cause he can get behind. Hey, me too!

12:37 BST: Permalink

The week in The Washington Past
The Washington Post has noticed that the budget picture isn't as pretty as it used to be, but seems to think it's some sort of act of god. Rather than admit that we need to reverse the errors of the current administration and their Congressional lackeys, they think our veteran service personnel should pay for it. This same newspaper is perfectly happy to stomp on Democrats who haven't said much lately about overturning the tax cuts (why aren't Republicans to blame for the tax cuts, by the way?), but when it comes to allowing the vets to collect their ordinary pensions and the special thanks we have historically wanted to give them because of the extraordinary risks they take on our behalf, well, hey, we can't talk about those tax cuts, can we?
E.J. Dionne asks, Are Moderate Republicans Obsolete? This is basically an article about why Connie Morella may lose her seat in November - not because of her positions, but because people are wising up to the fact that the only way to moderate the Republican Party is to kick more of them out of Congress. How to counter that? Like this:

Talk about scurrilous charges: Rep. Connie Morella (R-Md.) is running a television ad that ends with a vicious attack on her opponent. "To hear this guy talk," the announcer declares, "you'd think he was the Republican."
What's so bad about calling somebody a Republican? Isn't that normal partisanship? But Connie Morella is -- don't say it out loud in Montgomery County -- the Republican incumbent. The guy she's accusing of being the Republican is state Sen. Chris Van Hollen, a popular liberal Democrat who is offering Morella her toughest challenge in 16 years.
William Raspberry remembers what prisons are supposed to accomplish, notes that they don't do that anymore, and then throws up his hands.
I think Christopher Buckley's Iraq: The Q and A is supposed to be humor, but frankly it looks like a more serious examination of the question than many of the "straight" items in the paper.
Mary McGrory asks:

Are Democrats making a major effort to reduce voter turnout in the coming election? Or are they just trying to fight free of the trap they diligently fashioned for themselves on the subject of war with Iraq? By their conduct on the issue in the recent congressional debate, they seemed eager to show there was no difference between them and the Republicans -- a strategy that guarantees voters will ask themselves, when it comes to digging out on a cold November morning, "Why bother?"
It's obvious that a lot of Democrats voted for Bush's war resolution because they were afraid of getting the Barbara Lee treatment - disagree with the Princeling and have the right-wing brand you a traitor. And, of course, they will, but they will anyway, and in the meantime this kind of cowardice is so obvious that everyone sees through it and the Republicans won't shut up about it, either. They may be damned if they do and damned if they don't, but since that is the case, they should bloody well do what's right. Ditto on the tax cuts, of course.
Two letter writers make helpful corrections to Asa Hutchinson's lame attack on Britain's relaxed marijuana laws:

Under the Lambeth scheme, which was implemented last fall at the behest of British law enforcement, police "cautioned" rather than arrested minor marijuana offenders. Contrary to Hutchinson's allegations, street crime fell in Lambeth by nearly 50 percent during this program. Violent crime also fell dramatically under decriminalization. According to the BBC, robberies in the borough fell 18 percent during the first half of 2002 -- the largest reported decrease in England. Regardless of Hutchinson's impressions, the evidence dictates that marijuana decriminalization makes for safer streets. Additional statistics from Lambeth are equally telling. According to the British Home Office, arrests for hard drugs and drug trafficking increased nearly 20 percent under the pilot scheme. This increase was not because of an overall jump in hard drug use but because police had shifted their focus from marijuana to prosecuting more serious drug crimes. The Home Office further found that cautioning small-time pot users freed an estimated 1,300 hours in police time -- time the police used to better protect the public by targeting robbers, hard- drug dealers and other serious criminals.

10:03 BST: Permalink

You really need to read Paul Krugman's For Richer. No, I really mean it; I'm saving this one, it explains everything:

Still, you can understand why Novak assumed that we were No. 1. After all, we really are the richest major nation, with real G.D.P. per capita about 20 percent higher than Canada's. And it has been an article of faith in this country that a rising tide lifts all boats. Doesn't our high and rising national wealth translate into a high standard of living -- including good medical care -- for all Americans?
Well, no. Although America has higher per capita income than other advanced countries, it turns out that that's mainly because our rich are much richer. And here's a radical thought: if the rich get more, that leaves less for everyone else.
It is, as Krugman says, simple arithmetic. It's always been obvious, and if you were paying attention, you already knew it. But, as Krugman also points out, there is now a rather significant industry built around selling you the counter-intuitive idea that if the top 1% get to hoard most of the wealth, somehow that makes things better for the rest of us. It doesn't - obviously - but we have heard it so often that we have come to doubt what we see with our own eyes. There really are people who believe, despite their own interests, that if a Jack Welch makes $275 million a year, you and they and I are doing better as well. We aren't.

In September the Senate debated a proposed measure that would impose a one-time capital gains tax on Americans who renounce their citizenship in order to avoid paying U.S. taxes. Senator Phil Gramm was not pleased, declaring that the proposal was "right out of Nazi Germany." Pretty strong language, but no stronger than the metaphor Daniel Mitchell of the Heritage Foundation used, in an op-ed article in The Washington Times, to describe a bill designed to prevent corporations from rechartering abroad for tax purposes: Mitchell described this legislation as the "Dred Scott tax bill," referring to the infamous 1857 Supreme Court ruling that required free states to return escaped slaves.
Twenty years ago, would a prominent senator have likened those who want wealthy people to pay taxes to Nazis? Would a member of a think tank with close ties to the administration have drawn a parallel between corporate taxation and slavery? I don't think so. The remarks by Gramm and Mitchell, while stronger than usual, were indicators of two huge changes in American politics. One is the growing polarization of our politics -- our politicians are less and less inclined to offer even the appearance of moderation. The other is the growing tendency of policy and policy makers to cater to the interests of the wealthy. And I mean the wealthy, not the merely well-off: only someone with a net worth of at least several million dollars is likely to find it worthwhile to become a tax exile.
You don't need a political scientist to tell you that modern American politics is bitterly polarized. But wasn't it always thus? No, it wasn't. From World War II until the 1970's -- the same era during which income inequality was historically low -- political partisanship was much more muted than it is today. That's not just a subjective assessment. My Princeton political science colleagues Nolan McCarty and Howard Rosenthal, together with Keith Poole at the University of Houston, have done a statistical analysis showing that the voting behavior of a congressman is much better predicted by his party affiliation today than it was 25 years ago. In fact, the division between the parties is sharper now than it has been since the 1920's.
What are the parties divided about? The answer is simple: economics.
Whose interests does it serve to tell you that huge concentrations of wealth at the top are a good thing? Whose interests does it serve to claim that the capital gains tax, or estate taxes, or corporate taxes are too much of a burden for the rich, and that eliminating those taxes will make our economy better? Not yours.

Saturday, 19 October 2002
20:50 BST: Permalink

Randolph Fritz advises I can find "free moosic" here:

See Dana Lyons' web site. Really. He doesn't have all his albums up, but he does have a fair number of songs, including his one famous one.

Friday, 18 October 2002
14:24 BST: Permalink

Dwight Meredith:

From FY1962 (the first Kennedy budget) through FY2001 (the last Clinton budget) presidents have prepared forty budgets. Control of the White House was evenly divided between Republicans and Democrats with each party preparing and submitting twenty budgets. We decided to take a look at the fiscal performance of the Federal government during that period. The measurement we used was budget deficits and surpluses. We wanted to control for inflation to make the comparisons meaningful. Fortunately, the Government Printing Office publishes such information on the web. We got our data here at table 1-3. All dollars are adjusted for inflation and are expressed as 1996 dollars.
[...]
The twenty years of budgets prepared by Republican presidents increased the national debt by $3.8 trillion. The average yearly deficit under Republican budgets was $190 billion.
The twenty years of budgets prepared by Democratic presidents increased the national debt by $719.5 billion. The average yearly deficit under Democratic budgets was $36 billion.
You should read the whole thing for the details, though; it's short but illuminating.

14:00 BST: Permalink

I've said before that Big Media is still a pretty vital source, even though it is frequently falling down on the job - but even so, it's still a substantial part of our source material, and we mostly couldn't operate without it. CalPundit says so, too, and he's right, but Skippy is right, too, when he takes exception to the idea that those pros are necessarily better than bloggers:

hold the phone, mabel! yes, we may "depend entirely on the regular media," however, we at skippy use many more internet sources than electronic or print sources. and yes, we do very little investigative reporting ourselves. but we would take exception to the stand that we bloggers "aren't as good" as the dunderheads who shout out sound bites in lieu of sources, and present fights and fracases instead of facts.
In fact, we don't depend entirely on the regular media; in many cases, we are responding to it with the thinking and even research and expertise that they should have, but did not, provide. Some of us are even the talking heads they should have phoned when doing that research. You can't rely on the newspapers or news shows to tell you what those big demonstrations out in the streets are about (or even whether they are happening at all, sometimes), but you can rely on Max. You're better off getting your explanations of numerous political activities (legal wrangling, legislation, even straight-politics) by checking out the Blogosphere (e.g. Nathan Newman, Talk Left, or LiberalOasis) rather than trying to ferret out the details from the paucity of reporting the dead tree media manages to do. And for sheer analysis, I'm sorry, but the paid op-ed crowd is by and large presenting some pretty thin stuff, most of it heavily corrupted by too much acceptance of RNC spin. Almost anyone could have given a more intelligent response to Gore's speech on Iraq than Michael Kelly's appalling screed, and the Blogosphere certainly did.
In fact, Max and Nathan are reporting pretty much every week on stories that should be news, but are almost impossible to find in the papers, let alone in broadcast media. Moreover, they are writing more clearly and they are accessible and responsive to their readers, unlike their counterparts in Lazy Old Media. Brad DeLong actually knows what he's talking about. Jim Henley is more measured and thoughtful than David Broder or any of his would-be successors, and doesn't have his mind clouded by the fever that seems to grip the White House press corp with peer pressure, personal enmities, and soul-selling for access. Bear in mind that for a considerable amount of political reporting, there's not much that the Stepford Press is covering that can't be found right on the official websites of various legislators - and the rest, being unattributed whispers, is frequently in serious doubt. By genuflecting in the halls of power, the press corps has given up its independence; even though they know Ari Fleischer is lying, they don't have the guts to come right out and say it. So what good are they? This certainly isn't the press corps that finally lost its temper with Nixon's press flunky and said right to his face, "You're lying, Ron."
No, this is the press corps in which Dana Milbank can dismiss the decades-long reputation of a politician as a scrupulously honest man and simply assume that anything Al Gore says is a lie. This is the press corps that simply does not bother to notice the enormous contradictions between what the administration does and what it says, let alone what it says one day and what it then says the very next day. This press corps can spend the best part of two years writing stories about how George Bush has broken all fundraising records and then not even notice something is wrong when Bush claims Gore has raised more funds than he has. This press corps can write about invading Iraq as if nothing of import is at risk - not even lives.
This - the failure to ask necessary questions, the absence of independent thought, the weak reporting, the glibness of those who no longer have working bullshit detectors - is why political blogging exists. If we thought Big Media was doing its job, we wouldn't feel the need to do this stuff.

12:45 BST: Permalink

William Rivers Pitt still sees four lights:

One of the best 'The Next Generation' episodes is called 'Chain of Command.' A two-part cliffhanger, the story revolves around the abduction and torture of the captain of the Enterprise, Jean-Luc Picard, at the hands of an enemy commander named Gul Madred. Madred strips Picard naked, implants a device in his body that delivers agonizing pain at the push of a button, and over the course of many days attempts to wear Picard down through a disturbingly simple process of psychological warfare. Picard is seated in a chair with four bright lights shining in his face, and Madred attempts through painful coercion to make him say that there are, in fact, five lights. Every time he refuses to say there are five lights, he is drilled with pain. In essence, Picard is expected to deny the reality described by his own eyes, and surrender the will of his mind to the definition of reality offered by his captor.
[...]
Watching television news is not torture, nor is reading a local newspaper, at least not in the physical sense. No one has implanted any devices in our flesh that twist us in agony if we refuse to believe and parrot what we see and read. Yet we are being asked, every day, to say there are five lights when, in fact, there are four.
The thing that worries me is that maybe the people in the news media really do see five lights.

12:00 BST: Permalink

Georgie Anne Geyer
One can see war in their terms only when one has not seen the horror, contradictions and confusion that characterize real warfare. Indeed, there is a strange and delusional sense about them that one used to find primarily on the far left: violence as abstraction, spilt blood as purifying nectar, duty as somebody else's principle.
What's more, a democracy's tendency to engage in unjust or unnecessary warfare has always been contained by the fact that all citizens supposedly had to take equal risks. The coefficient of willingness to send one's people to war, with all that means in terms of loss of life and of derangement of the world, is one's willingness to sacrifice oneself.
But this is not at all true today, when America has a volunteer army often removed from everyday Americans and where these nonserving hawks, none of whose children ever would serve either, actually look down on the uniformed soldiers.
Some Americans seem to be seeing -- or at least, feeling -- what is going on. John P. Artusa of Chicago wrote to me recently:
"May I suggest that the sons or grandsons of Dick Cheney, Richard Perle, Don Rumsfeld and the editors of The Wall Street Journal promptly enlist for infantry officers training. Their war fervor should make them excellent field officers. Then the concept of 'noblesse oblige' will take on its original meaning and no longer will be reserved only for the working class."
The members of this war party in the administration, so filled with fervor for their own purposes, virtually never speak of the American soldier himself or herself with any emotion. It is as if these soldiers were merely pawns on a grand map of personal agendas and remote schemas.
The first President Bush, who served valiantly in a war in which we were attacked, spoke recently on television of suffering terrible pain the night before he led his men into attacks in the South Pacific.
"It was not from fear," he said, tears welling in his eyes even after all this time, "but of my custodianship -- of being responsible for someone else." It makes you think.

02:22 BST: Permalink

It came in the e-mail
Tonight I downloaded 2 megs of mail, most of which was offering the opportunity to have my bank account emptied, a wide variety of niche pornography (most of it illegal in this country), bigger body parts, free money, and enormous attachments with such inviting subject lines as, "Hi", and "memo 234857". A small proportion of it was from real people, though. I could even find some of them.
Sam Heldman writes:

Weren't you looking, a while back, for more sites that gave free streaming audio of albums? I just stumbled, through Beck, onto what is apparently an entire streaming album from Flaming Lips, whom I haven't heard before but so far so good on first listen.
Why, yes, Sam, I was looking for that, thanks! (Well, not albums per se, but entire songs that are not crummed up with built-in drop-outs.) The way I figure it, we ought to be able to listen to the music before we buy it, and I'm happy to spread the word if someone is giving us the opportunity to do that.
And Nick Kessler writes:

Here's the update from Miami-Dade: the county commission met again and approved the election monitors. BUT, now "Democratic" Mayor Alex Penalas is considering a veto, and will announce his decision today. (Recall that Penalas couldn't be bothered to get the ballots counted in 2000, and he gave in immediately to the the "bourgeois rioters")
People, I can't tell you how important this election is. If you doubt me, remember that the reason George W. Bush's name came first on the ballot in 2000 is because in Florida the party of the governor gets listed first. And, as I have remarked previously, the person whose name is listed first has an automatic advantage - and that advantage increases if the ballots are confusing. Which means the Republicans are much less likely to make the ballots confusing if a Democrat is in the Governor's Mansion. Get it?

01:00 BST: Permalink

3G have rebranded themselves as just "3". Go here to see how they present thier logo (via Ben Hammersley).

Thursday, 17 October 2002
14:46 BST: Permalink

Michael Tomasky says:

Liberals are angry over: Florida, still (nope, not over it; have no plans to be). The cocktail of fiscal corruption and incompetence that this White House serves us. The flimsy lies hiding the real motives for going into Iraq (look up a September 29 column by Jay Bookman of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution). The sheer gall of virtually everything they do, like the recent misappropriation of John Kennedy (see Fred Kaplan's terrific piece in Slate, posted last week).
Actually, it's not just liberals, and it's not just people who didn't vote for Bush. I know a number of people who are now very sorry they voted for Bush, and many of them were sorry as soon as they realized (yes, some Republican Bush-voters did realize) that the Republicans were stealing the election. Some were actually angry even before the Supreme Court decision. Some were only angry after the SC decision. Some weren't angry until it became obvious that this administration was the most secretive they had ever seen, or that they have at best a casual, or even hostile, regard for our Constitutional rights. Some weren't angry until they realized that the Bushistas had actually made a policy of laxness toward our security in the face of terrorist threats. Some weren't angry until they began to notice that this administration was selling a war they refused to justify.
For some it has been a slow dawning of suspicion that has grown into a burn, while for others there was a single moment of epiphany. But there have been quite a number of Republicans even since Florida who have been angry at how the election was hijacked, and that number has been growing as the Republicans have continued to heap lie upon insult upon lie.
There were also liberals, and Democrats, who did not really believe the Republicans could have been guilty of what the rest of us knew was a putsch, a coup; that was, they thought, mere paranoia, or hyperbole, on our part. But as the months have gone by and bits and pieces of evidence have been squeezed out, they've come to believe that we weren't so paranoid, or so extreme, after all. And much the same is true of charges of administration negligence in the face of terrorism; it is no longer "reasonable" to assume that such charges are made merely out of partisanship.
For nearly two years now I have been receiving letters, in ones and twos, from people who voted for Gore, and people who voted for Bush, and people who voted for Browne, all saying that they have come to believe that I was right: about the machinations of Republicans in Florida, about the threat of the Bushistas and their values and plans, about the negligence of the administration prior to 9/11. These are all people who once accepted the conventional wisdom as perceived through the lens of a media they failed to recognize as right-wing, and who have increasingly understood that something is seriously, horribly, wrong.

These days, you have to be an awfully intrepid news-digger to notice these examples of resistance to the consensus. What you get out of Washington, and New York, is a bunch of dishwater clich�s about what will play in Peoria. Even those are wrong. Here's the Peoria Journal-Star, which endorsed George Bush in 2000, from October 6: "The president must tell the American people why toppling Saddam is worth the sacrifice of their lives and the lives of those they love. He has not said so yet."

03:54 BST: Permalink

Liars
From Bushwatch:

While others were taking Hughes� lies at face value, I wrote way back in May, "Hughes recently left the White House amid what some sources tell me were some key differences with Rove and others, as well as marching orders from Bush to help his Texas Republican friends. In other words, don�t believe the BS fed us that Hughes just, sniff-sniff, �missed Texas.�" Therefore, I was not surprised to see how nasty and negative and desperate Republican Gov. Slick Rick Perry, who was appointed to that seat when Bush took over the White House, Senate candidate John Cornyn, and Lt. Gov. candidate David Dewhurst have become in their campaigns lately. I was not surprised to see Hughes� name actually appearing in mainstream news articles saying she was campaigning for Cornyn and others, despite her published comments saying she would not do so when she left Washington a few months before.
And from Tapped:

LET'S GET THIS STRAIGHT. The White House resists creating a Homeland Security Agency for months. When the FBI scandals break, they quickly hop on board the Homeland Security bandwagon and the president urges Congress to pass homeland security legislation right away, without debate. Then the administration tries to use the legislation to strip federal workers of their existing collective bargaining rights, on the very thin pretext that the president needs "management flexibility" to fight the war on terrorism. The Senate Democrats try to pass a bill that creates the asked-for Homeland Security Agency, as Joe Lieberman had been advocating ever since September 11, but without the special-interest union-busting. Republicans vote against that bill repeatedly, but still blame the Democrats for holding things up. And now Tom Ridge tells The New York Times that the Democrats are trying to "strengthen" workers' rights in the midst of a national security crisis, which is incorrect.

03:00 BST: Permalink

Escher Legos! (via Pigs & Fishes).
Good stuff via Gary Farber: This entry on The Myth of '18 to 34', and how it's pretty silly that advertising is aimed at a group that has less discretionary income and spends less on music and toys than those over 50. And he also links to The Alabama Dildo Law case at Pitas.com.
Quiz: How free are you?
Homeland Security Advisory System

Wednesday, 16 October 2002
16:25 BST: Permalink

Atrios doesn't quite applaud when Tim Noah backs down in the face of Bob Somerby's criticism:

Tim Noah discovers that maybe, just maybe, he was wrong about Gore. Calls it "split decision." I call it a split decision on Noah -- nice he could revisit the issue, but characteristically whorish that he can't just admit the truth - he spun Gore's comments in the present one way, in the past the other way, and groped for the inconsistency. He should apologize. Or, hey - here's an idea - Call Al Gore and *ask him what he meant.* But, that would, you know, require real journalism instead of the onanism which has taken its place.
I have to agree. What Noah did is, essentially, assume that Gore is not capable of a complex thought. Well, that, or Noah himself is not capable of understanding one; there is a difference between "end the war" and "run off in a hurry as soon as we've dropped the last bomb". As in 2002, there are a certain number of people who simply cannot grasp that there is a great deal of territory between "make war" and "do nothing". One interesting point in Noah's column, though, at the end:

Postscript: In retrospect, the most intriguing thing in that April 1991 New York Times piece dug up by Somerby isn't the part about Gore. It's the part where then-Defense Secretary Dick Cheney defends the decision to end the war. "If you're going to go in and try to topple Saddam Hussein," Cheney said, "you have to go to Baghdad. Once you've got Baghdad, it's not clear what you do with it. It's not clear what kind of government you would put in place of the one that's currently there now. Is it going to be a Shia regime, a Sunni regime or a Kurdish regime? Or one that tilts toward the Baathists, or one that tilts toward the Islamic fundamentalists? How much credibility is that government going to have if it's set up by the United States military when it's there? How long does the United States military have to stay to protect the people that sign on for that government, and what happens to it once we leave?"

14:04 BST: Permalink

Note: Blogging has been light for a lot of reasons that I'm not going to try to explain. I have a few things I want to say percolating in the back of my mind, but they aren't ready to come together yet. When they are, you'll be the first to know. Meanwhile....
Over at Buzzflash, a look at duplicitous stalling:

Oh my. At the eleventh hour Iraqi diplomats threw a wrench into United Nations negotiations over the wording of inspection terms while insisting they're in "100 percent accordance" with that global body's determination to find out what in hell is going on in Baghdad. Every Earthling of passable intelligence knew this would happen, of course, and it just goes to show you, said a U.S. spokesman, "once again the Iraqis want to delay and deceive."
True, delay and deceit are standard tools of the diplomatic trade, and thus, thankfully, far from authentic casus belli. Nevertheless Bush II has added their mealy-mouthed deployment by Iraq as yet another specific and reasonable reason to dispatch the Marines with the latest in guns blazing. Sadly, according to U.S. military officials they'll be blazing away with inadequate protection from Saddam's biological cookery, but best to skip over that for now.
None of this is extraordinary. Everyone expected Iraq to play duplicitous games; everyone expected the Bush administration to capitalize on them; and everyone absolutely knows that whatever transpires diplomatically, hundreds, maybe thousands of young Americans and even more innocent Iraqis -- children, women, the aged -- are about to die. Aside from habitual hawks, those of politically ambitious persuasions, and dropouts from Elementary Logic, no one is quite clear why these deaths are imperative. But, off we'll march behind the exact thinking of George W. and invertebrate Senate Democrats. As columnist Maureen Dowd so eloquently framed our leaders' rationality, "Tom Daschle, Dianne Feinstein and other doubters came around ... to the view that Iraq is an urgent threat after the C.I.A. director, George Tenet, sent Congress a memo ... stating that Iraq is not an urgent threat." Unsettling? Yes. Extraordinary for Washington? No.
Also unextraordinary was that which occurred the very day before Iraq leveled its "delay and deception" at the ever-truthful world community. The loudest opponent of those scandalous tactics leveled its own delay and deception in investigating the rampant intelligence bumbling that preceded the slaughterous event now cynically used as a pretext for more slaughter. On the heels of a delicately reached bipartisan congressional agreement on the terms of an investigative commission, the White House -- whose cooperation seemed assured -- shut it down with "fresh objections." Oh my. And at the eleventh hour, no less.
Who ever could have imagined such betrayal coming from an ethically depraved band of former corporate cutthroats? Certainly not the chief dope of the congressionally bewildered, Democratic Senator Joe Lieberman. He was "surprised" at the administration's underhandedness and openly pondered, "[Does the White House] really want to allow this commission to be created?" It's chumps like Lieberman who entice one to enter the swampland sales profession.
MWO cites a different take on Lieberman by Mickey Kaus, saying he "comes up with the best Lieberman 2004 campaign slogan so far":
LIEBERMAN. HE HAS SO MANY MORE PRINCIPLES TO SELL OUT.
Perhaps Lieberman just rationalizes his principles away. After all, he has to be pretty good at deluding himself if he still thinks he's got a shot at the Democratic nomination.

Tuesday, 15 October 2002
18:38 BST: Permalink

I admit it, I'm feeling a bit depressed about this war thing. Here's something from Democratic Underground to cheer you up:

Belgians Lead Push for Regime Change in America
Spurred by reports of an aggressive military build-up and failure to reign in corporate terrorists, the government of Belgium is pressing for a preemptive strike against the regime of George W. Bush.
"We cannot sit idly by and eat our delicious chocolates while the United States government engages in a policy of harassment," Belgian Prime Minister Guy Verhofstadt said in a nationally-televised address to the Belgian people. "Now is the time for action. We cannot waffle."
Recent reports from Belgian intelligence sources indicate that the United States is now in possession of weapons of mass destruction � chemical, biological and nuclear. "We know that the United States has nuclear weapons and that they have actually used them in the past," intoned the Prime Minister." There is no reason to think they will not use them in the future."

05:35 BST: Permalink

Dwight Meredith has a beautifully sarky put-down of Michael Kelly's disgusting response to Al Gore's Iraq speech - you know, the part where Kelly insists Gore is full of it for claiming that Al Qaeda is still a threat?
Dwight also has a nice take on political patronage and why we want government workers to have employment protections - yes, we really, really do.
LiberalOasis has some projections for the future:

WASHINGTON, April 24, 2004 -- President George W. Bush prepared the nation for his 11th pre-emptive strike by insisting that the impending invasion of Armenia will be his last.
Pandagon says, "Evolution is not a 'belief' system."
Lately Josh Marshall has been doing some absolutely wonderful stuff. Check him out on the dockworkers lock-out and Larry King's boneheaded questions, for example.
Kevin Raybould is in the fight for the soul of the Democratic Party.
Mr. Happy says USS Clueless and Little Green Footballs have long since jumped the shark.
This is not an appropriate response to this.
Question Mark #26: 'Smiling Faces'

05:02 BST: Permalink

Hesiod says:

BUSH ADMINISTRATION PARANOIA: The Secretive Bush administration is finally starting to piss off the White House press corps.
Of course, they will still be as sycophantic in their coverage as ever. They just whine about "access" to make them sound like they are actually doing their jobs.
"Look. The Presdent's kiester is only so big. You'll have to wait in line if you want to smooch it." As evidence, check out this quote from CBS' John Roberts:
"If the National Hurricane Center were as stingy with its information, there would be thousands dead...."
The sick irony of his "joke" is apparently lost on poor John.
Isn't it a lucky thing that no one is going to die as a result of, oh, a War of World Domination.

04:30 BST: Permalink

Check out the the speech Pete Stark (D-CA) made on the House floor:

"Mr. Speaker, I rise in opposition to this resolution (authorizing military force against Iraq). I am deeply troubled that lives may be lost without a meaningful attempt to bring Iraq into compliance with U.N. resolutions through careful and cautious diplomacy.
"The bottom line is I don't trust this president and his advisors.
"Make no mistake, we are voting on a resolution that grants total authority to the president, who wants to invade a sovereign nation without any specific act of provocation. This would authorize the United States to act as the aggressor for the first time in our history. It sets a precedent for our nation -- or any nation -- to exercise brute force anywhere in the world without regard to international law or international consensus.
"Congress must not walk in lockstep behind a president who has been so callous to proceed without reservation, as if war was of no real consequence.
And then he goes on to quote Molly Ivins, and says some other things, too.

00:07 BST: Permalink

In local news, I finally found out what dental dams are actually designed for, and they are great! (It was actually pretty painless, too.) Just thought you should know. And now, back to the usual....
Senator Bob Graham (D-FL) on the Iraq resolution vote:

Congress has granted President Bush the authority to use all necessary force against Saddam Hussein's regime in Iraq. I voted against the resolution -- not because our nation has nothing to fear from Hussein but because I am convinced that the resolution misstates our national priorities in a dangerous way.
What is our greatest responsibility? The answer is easy -- securing the peace and safety of our homeland. Right now the most urgent threats to our security are posed by the shadowy networks of international terrorist organizations that have the capabilities to repeat the tragedy of Sept. 11 -- not Saddam Hussein.
[...]
If this were 1938, the course advocated by the president -- and endorsed in the congressional resolution -- would be the equivalent of the Allies' declaring war on Mussolini's Italy but ignoring Hitler's Germany. We are turning our backs on the greater danger, and pretending not to recognize that an attack on Baghdad could spark the wake-up call to the terrorists sleeping in our midst.
[...]
The resolution just passed by Congress allows the sanctuaries of the next generation of terrorists to remain standing, including the training camps where, in the 1990s, thousands of zealots were given the skills and determination to be hardened assassins.

Monday, 14 October 2002
13:33 BST: Permalink

Matthew Yglesias explains "Is," the present tense of "to be":

&c. decides to break with TNR precedent and accept the conventional wisdom about something, namely Bill Clinton:
History will probably judge Bill Clinton's bathetic efforts to define the word "is" to be his slipperiest moment.
Now Bill Clinton certain was a slippery guy, but Ive never understood w