Lot's of stuff about the bin Laden tape at TalkLeft, with this round-up post of others blogging on the subject, and also asking the question: Has anyone asked whether Osama could have made this tape in captivity? And this later post rounding-up others who have played with theories that the tape is not what it purports to be. (Personally, I thought it was weird that he referred to Bush as "the commander in chief" - has he been watching a lot of American television news, or what?)
I know it's silly, not to mention garish, but I just really feel like celebrating Hallowe'en with silly black & orange junk, even though orange is my least favorite color and it clashes horribly and really I hate it. But I love autumn and Hallowe'en and I got a little carried away and I'm glad it will be over at midnight and I can go back to magenta.
I just got e-mail from my cousin in New Jersey telling me his father, my favorite uncle, has died. He was 93 and it's been years since I last saw him but he was really the only uncle I ever actually liked, and also he and his wife Vicky (my mother's sister) gave me my two favorite Xmas presents when I was a child (and which I still have). Ash was also my best-looking uncle, and the last uncle I had. I tried to call my cousin but the number I have for him is dead and I can't reach my mother to get the new one.
I'm watching Rory Bremner and it's all RNC talking points and he's usually better than that so I'm really irritated. 21:24 GMT
Read this
Vaara has provided a great public service with a Transcript of the first episode of The Power of Nightmares at Silt. If you were unable to watch this on the BBC, it's very much worth your time to read it all. Part I, "Baby It's Cold Outside", provides an overview of the twisted thinking of Strauss, Kristol, and others in parallel with the likes of Qutb and Zawahiri to bring us to the dreadful state of affairs we now have.
Update: For some reason that link doesn't appear to work, but Vaara tells me this one will get you to the main entry which now includes the transcript of the second part, which is also fascinating. 20:17 GMT
Scary management
Dominic has a good post up at Epicycle about costly, stupid, aggravating management that gets in the way of getting things done efficiently and drives everyone crazy in the bargain. He's mainly focused on "the British government's appalling track record of failed IT projects" - but you can apply it more broadly to a whole raft of areas in both public and commercial institutions where too many people who don't understand a specialty will gum-up a process that could have been done a whole lot better, faster, and less expensively.
You don't have to look far to find examples of projects where crucial decisions about who should really be in charge of that project are put into the hands of people who have so little experience in the area that they completely underestimate the importance of sharp-end professionals. Whether you're a secretary, a systems administrator, or a career diplomat, you know that if they don't value your expertise it's going to lead to screw-ups not too far up the road - and that you're probably going to end up carrying the can for it.
Sometimes there's just nothing you can do but grin and bear it - but this time, youknowwhat to do. 15:52 GMT
In the blogosphere
Steve Soto at The Left Coaster has an interesting analysis of trends, including an interesting little poll showing that Osama's tape made more people think about how Bush took his eye off the ball than thought it underscored the importance of having Bush around to protect us.
Not that the Bush people see it that way, according to Kos, who says they are celebrating their incompetence and have called Osama's tape "a little gift": "We want people to think 'terrorism' for the last four days," said a Bush-Cheney campaign official. "And anything that raises the issue in people's minds is good for us."
A senior GOP strategist added, "anything that makes people nervous about their personal safety helps Bush."
Kos also reports that the day before the 2000 election, the polls had Gore trailing - and then he went on to win the popular vote. Kerry is in a much stronger position right now. Meanwhile, back in 2004, Tucker Carlson predicts that Kerry will win the EC and the popular vote.
Lambert at Corrente reports on more suppressed material from the 9/11 Report. Maybe there's something fishy going on....
Michael takes a hard look at Slate's sniffy endorsements of John Kerry and predicts that once Kerry gets into the White House, we can expect for more years of sniffy press for the Dem.
Digby highlights a lovely example of chutzpah - Republicans complaining that a radio show advocated the defeat of a Republican candidate.
Hint: It's not the candidate squandering American lives, letting underlings do his thinking, and threatening civil liberties
Four years ago in this space, a simple political rule-of-thumb was put forth in an attempt to slash through all the confusing polls and hot-air punditry surrounding the Presidential race: The cool guy wins (see BW Online, 8/4/00, "Cool Guys Finish First").
And then we get a few paragraphs talking about why Bush was cool - or at least in the eyes of the kind of person who thought so. There's a bit of an insight there into a way of thinking that is, frankly, alien to me. But then he starts talking about how Bush lost his shine since then and looks at Kerry, who he blows hot and cold about but also says this:
The subtext of the vicious attacks on Kerry isn't just that he denounced the war, but that he broke ranks with his elitist brother officers to denounce the war. It's telling that the enlisted men who served directly under Kerry almost all support him. A candidate who has been in firefights and retains the loyalty of his men -- that's cool.
So Kerry is going to win, because he's cooler.
And James Wolcott says Kerry will beat Bush 55 to 45, because when 400,000 kids Nickolodeon poll, they picked Kerry over Bush 57-43. So Kerry will win because they say so. 22:13 BST
In the mix
The IRS now thinks Julian Bond and the NAACP aren't allowed to talk about anything suspiciously racist done by the RNC or by any state or governmental body that happens to be run by Republicans because that's "partisan". Geraldine Sealey at Salon's War Room says: We've all made jokes at one time or another about the taxman paying visits to people who speak out against the government. But in the Bush administration, this actually happens. The IRS is investigating the NAACP -- the group Bush has declined to personally visit as president -- because chairman Julian Bond "condemned the administration policies of George W. Bush" during a speech this summer.
Also at the War Room, David Talbot says Holbrooke wins Round 1 in bin Laden spin battle against Wolf Blitzer and "Danielle Pletka, who seemed overwrought and unable to look directly at the camera," and who continued with the RNC talking point falsely claiming that, "It's a lie we had bin Laden in our clutches and let him get away." And apparently a new talking point is: "And it's a lie that once we have him, the war on terror will be over." Funnily enough, I've never heard anyone say it would be.
Wouldn't it be cool if after all Tom Delay's scheming, the Republicans still lost those Texas seats?
Hm, I've been asked to participate in this thing Tuesday night. Kind of an interesting idea.... (Anybody feel like driving around London at three in the morning?)
Fraud by voters is rare: Demos has a .pdf available of Securing the Vote:
An Analysis of Election Fraud that you may want to have a good look at. The gist is this: The disenfranchisement of voters through antiquated voting systems, system error, and improper management of registration databases, as occurred in Florida in the 2000 election, is a far bigger problem than traditional forms of election fraud. (via)
Steve Clemons meets "a very tough soldier": He has had one rotation in Afghanistan, one in Iraq. He is now in Germany but will soon be transferred back to Iraq. He was at Tora Bora and has seen a lot of Iraqi, Afghan, and American dead. According to him, 75% of all soldiers want Bush defeated in the election and don't care who defeats him; anger and resentment are high.
DHinMI and DemFromCT at Daily Kos both say that tape shouldn't really help Bush much: I'm still here. You haven't caught me. And you went after the wrong guy. I just thought I'd remind you.
Bush Seeks Limit to Suits Over Voting Rights: Bush administration lawyers argued in three closely contested states last week that only the Justice Department, and not voters themselves, may sue to enforce the voting rights set out in the Help America Vote Act, which was passed in the aftermath of the disputed 2000 election. Via Kevin at Lean Left, who said: When is a right not a right? When you have to wait for the government to decide that its a right.. And Matthew Gross said: Man, what does it tell you when one candidate's only strategy to winning an election is to keep voters away from the polls?
Jeff Cooper ponders originalism and Scalia's constitutional interpretation.
I watched tonight's (that is, Friday's) special Question Time in America, with Michael Moore, David Frum (RNC hack), Sidney Blumenthal, Richard Littlejohn (tabloid and TV hack), and Lida Rodrigues-Taseff (civil liberties attorney), with some discomfort as it devolved into an opportunity for Bushistas to recite their talking points, and particularly the one where the people registering new voters and then throwing out registration forms for the other party are Democrats throwing out Republicans' forms. You can watch it now; the video is linked on the page.
October surprise: I can't think of any greater proof that bin Laden wants Bush to win this election than the release of this tape calling Bush a liar right before the election.
They blew it again. Oh, right, it was much more important to listen to Chalibi rather than the CIA about what we should be looking out for in Iraq. Fox has the fake excuse, and the wingnuts reckon no one can get upset about it now because, well, gosh, lots of stuff was out there. Sure: So far, they went missing before we got there, but we destroyed them ourselves after we got there, and after all it's only 40 truckloads of explosives - so why should anybody mind?
The whole loyalty oath thing gets better and better, and someday we will be able to hear rooms full of schoolchildren reciting the new one: I care about freedom and liberty. I care about my family. I care about my country. Because I care, I promise to work hard to re-elect, re-elect George W. Bush as president of the United States. According to Chris Suellentrop in One Nation Under Bush, you get to recite it now at Bush rallies. (Via The Liquid List) 23:56 BST
"Just politics"
Yesterday I heard this read out on the radio, but now I see a picture of the thing at Oliver's site (he got it from Kos).
For the benefit of my British readers, who are continually astonished at American law, I assure you in this case that not a single thing on this flyer is true. (In many states, even a felony conviction doesn't prevent you from voting.) But it appears to be circulating in black neighborhoods in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.
Meanwhile, Atrios has a few links on what's going on in Ohio, such as this story:
Phony letters tell people they cannot vote
PAINESVILLE -- It is an outright case of election fraud in Lake County.
The phony letter says newly registered voters signed up by the Kerry or Capri Cafaro campaigns or the NAACP, their registrations are illegal and they will not be able to vote.
"That was not authorized by the Board of Elections, said Elections Director Jan Clair. "It was not mailed by the Lake County Board of Elections."
Jerome Armstrong has details of a "caging" incident in which a Republican activist challenged a voter's right to vote on the basis of the fact that a registered letter allegedly sent to the voter was not received. From the hearing transcript:
MR. PRY: And what is the basis for you making this challenge?
MS. MILLER: That was my impression that these items that I signed were for people whose mail had been undeliverable for several times, and that they did not live at the residence.
MR. PRY: Did you personally send any mail to Ms. Herrold?
MS. MILLER: No, I did not.
MR. PRY: Have you seen any mail that was returned to Ms. Herrold?
MS. MILLER: No, I have not.
MR. PRY: Do you have any personal knowledge as we stand here today that Ms. Herrold does not live at the address at 238 30th Street Northwest?
MS. MILLER: Only that which was my impression; that their mail had not been able to be delivered.
MR. PRY: And who gave you that impression?
MS. MILLER: Attorney Jim Simon.
MR. PRY: And what did --
MS. MILLER: He's an officer of the party.
MR. PRY: An officer of which party?
MS. MILLER: Republican party.
MR. PRY: Where did you complete this challenge form at?
MS. MILLER: My home.
MR. PRY: What did Mr. Simon tell you with respect to Ms. Herrold's residence?
MS. MILLER: That the mail had come back undeliverable several times from that residence.
MR. PRY: And you never saw the returned mail?
MS. MILLER: No, I did not.
Sure. They send registered letters to people, and the people aren't there to sign for them (because, you know, they might have jobs or something), so the RNC thinks they have a valid excuse for claiming these people aren't registered legitimately. In this case, the voter was in fact registered at her correct, current residence, but in some other cases the voter is currently stationed in Iraq or Afghanistan and therefore is not home to receive mail. The Republicans know this, but such is the basis of their claims of voter fraud by Democrats.
Meanwhile, you've no doubt already heard about the various dirty tricks in Florida, such as the 58,000 absentee ballots that just seem to have gone missing in the post. The Post Office says they never had them - they're pretty sure they would have noticed 58,000 pieces of mail of that type.
But it's not just voter-suppression that has shown the RNC doing absolutely everything to keep their agenda alive. Despite pretty solid evidence all over the place making clear that this administration's policies are responsible for losing all those missing explosives. How are the administration and their attack-dog minions dealing with this? By pretending it's a myth. Jesse Taylor is calling this Desperationgate, "the push to prove that, in fact, explosives are a creation of the liberal media, and combustion is simply a great historical lie of the anti-American left."
So that's the strategy: Have the right-wing hacks at the Moonie Times and The New York Post and the Wargasm Bloggers tell us the "truth" that The New York Times, CBS, NBC, ABC, and even a videotape that shows the whole business in detail are just making the whole story up because they are the "lieberal media" and bent on "saying anything" to try to "steal the election" for Kerry.
(The bright side of this is that the massive spin campaign by the administration has helped to keep the whole story alive, says Bill Scher, who notes that it's all proven to be a fairly solid disaster since they no sooner throw out another excuse than it gets debunked big time.)
Meanwhile, that same "liberal" media seems uninterested in this story that appears to prove even Sy Hersh naive in his belief that Bush really did invade Iraq because he believed he could bring peace and democracy to the Middle East by declaring war on it:
Houston: Two years before the September 11 attacks, presidential candidate George W. Bush was already talking privately about the political benefits of attacking Iraq, according to his former ghost writer, who held many conversations with then-Texas Governor Bush in preparation for a planned autobiography.
"He was thinking about invading Iraq in 1999," said author and journalist Mickey Herskowitz. "It was on his mind. He said to me: 'One of the keys to being seen as a great leader is to be seen as a commander-in-chief.' And he said, 'My father had all this political capital built up when he drove the Iraqis out of Kuwait and he wasted it.' He said, 'If I have a chance to invade..if I had that much capital, I'm not going to waste it. I'm going to get everything passed that I want to get passed and I'm going to have a successful presidency."
Herskowitz said that Bush expressed frustration at a lifetime as an underachiever in the shadow of an accomplished father. In aggressive military action, he saw the opportunity to emerge from his father's shadow. [Emphasis added.]
Yes, that's right, Bush was planning to invade Iraq in order to shore up his own political standing. Was there any ideology involved, or was it simply self-serving? The only ideology we can be sure of is the one that says the lives of thousands of maimed and dead soldiers are not important enough to protect against the ambitions of this self-important madman. 14:27 BST
Bits of news
In The Washington Post, Richard Morin reports on a new wrinkle in this year's political landscape - people protesting against polls: Three dozen protesters gathered outside the Minneapolis Star Tribune building a month ago. They glowered and pounded on the windows. They carried signs calling the newspaper the "Star and Sickle." They shouted "Liberal!" at staffers leaving the building. A few days before the demonstration, Ron Eibensteiner, chairman of the state Republican Party, had demanded that the publisher fire Rob Daves, the paper's longtime pollster But it's also more people refusing to respond to polls, less money for polls, and a whole lot of things that make some people wonder how long they will be usable.
Media Matters reports on another example of "conservatives" supporting our troops - by blaming them for following the orders they received from our incompetent leadership and going to Baghdad like they were told instead of securing Al Qaqaa.
Richard Cohen finally says two things that are long overdue in Hold Bush Accountable: I do not write the headlines for my columns. Someone else does. But if I were to write the headline for this one, it would be "Impeach George Bush." [...] Congress lent its approval and so, significantly, did the media (myself included). The failure of leadership was across the board. This is the good Richard Cohen; I wonder if he'll stick around for a while, and how soon the hack will be back.
[I woke up this morning and found zillions of typos and broken links and stuff on this page. I think I'm starting to feel the pressure, I post in a trance and don't seem to see the mess when I proofread the first time. It's getting so close. It's obvious Kerry will draw a larger number of voters, but it's not so obvious that the Republicans won't prevent our votes from being counted. Scary times.]
There's a nice little item from Michelle Goldberg at the Salon War Room, Are people who live in cities real Americans? NRO says no! looking at a defense of the Electoral College from Gary L. Gregg called - get this - Counting the Real People's Vote which, says Goldberg, "argues that without the electoral advantage given to small, rural red states, American elections would be dominated by 'a metropolitan elite who distain the cultures and values of middle America.' In other words, the urban vote needs to be diluted because it's so Democratic." She goes on:
It's perfectly fair to argue that the Electoral College is needed to protect the interests of minority voters against the tyranny of the majority. But Gregg's argument is more sinister. By separating voters into "real people," whose votes should be given extra weight, and the "secular urban base" who don't quite count as fully legitimate citizens, he reveals one of the driving forces behind the modern Republican party -- a party which professes to embody Americanism while hating a great part of America. "Al Gore demonstrated in 2000 that the national popular vote can be won by appealing to a narrow band of the electorate heavily secular, single, and concentrated in cities," Gregg writes. This is an amazing statement -- if this band is so "narrow," how can it also be a major part of a popular majority? The answer, in the right-wing imagination, is that only a certain kind of citizens constitute real Americans, and thus are implicitly deserving of power despite the fact that they're a minority.
We've covered this territory before, but it's worth driving the point home that it's not an accident, and it's not just "partisan", either - they really do mean to disenfranchise these particular groups of people, not simply because it's to the political advantage of their party, but because they really don't regard those people as entitled to vote. They're genuinely racists, and they are elitist to the core. 15:45 BST
Get your vote on
In The Rocky Mountain News, Republicans gather to bash Bush: A number of lifelong Republicans gathered at Kerry-Edwards headquarters in Denver on Monday to endorse Democrats this year. Members of the group said they had soured for various reasons on President Bush's policies and would not support his re-election.
Sadly, No! finds yet another thing that's creating right-wing outrage - school kids getting the vote out. Gasp!
Eli at Left I on the News notices something about the crowds at Bush's rallies that doesn't jibe with Ed Koch's evaluation.
Get your red hot Lie Girls! (Warning: Mark of Biomesblog passed this one on to me because he can't use it on his page.) (Unwarning: Alun, you're gonna love this.)
What's wrong with Harold Meyerson's Washington Post article The GOP's Shameful Vote Strategy is that it's on page A25 of Wednesday's paper: With Election Day almost upon us, it's not clear whether President Bush is running a campaign or plotting a coup d'etat. By all accounts, Republicans are spending these last precious days devoting nearly as much energy to suppressing the Democratic vote as they are to mobilizing their own.
A little something for the paranoia files: Scientists warn of 'ethnic weapons': BIOLOGICAL weapons that target selected ethnic groups could become part of the terrorists' arsenal unless governments and scientists act now, the British Medical Association warns.
The Rude Pundit explains that Kerry is a superhero, and Bob Schrum is an idiot for not making it clear throughout the campaign. Kerry has taken on all the supervillians, and now, he's doing what he does best: In the vicious end of days in this campaign, so much gets lost in the caterwauling of the media. Here's something that's happened in the last couple of days: John Kerry has found the last piece of the puzzle, the final cause to push to the end of the battle. If you've listened to Kerry since the dual revelations of the missing 760,000 pounds of high-powered explosives from a known ammo dump and the coming request for an additional $70 billion dollars for Iraq and Afghanistan, Kerry has become the man we've all heard about - the unstoppable crusader for what's right against however powerful the forces of evil may be.
I am not authorized to view this page, although you probably are: Surfers outside the US have been unable to visit the official re-election site of President George W Bush. It appears to be deliberate blocking by the Bush campaign, as far as anyone can tell.
In the Independent, US gave date of war to Britain in advance, court papers reveal
: Secret plans for the war in Iraq were passed to British Army chiefs by US defence planners five months before the invasion was launched, a court martial heard yesterday. That was while we were being told that every effort to avoid war was being made. And yet, somehow, they didn't have time to plan it properly. Imagine that. (And it means Clare Short was right when she said that Blair had knowingly misled Parliament.)
Katherine Harris's Car Trouble: A Florida man has been charged with attempting to run over controversial Republican congresswoman Katherine Harris with his Cadillac. 01:01 BST
Wednesday, 27 October 2004
More liberal media
Al Franken wants you to write to MSNBC to defend Lawrence O'Donnell and thank them for having him on. He's "taking flak" for having called John O'Neill a liar - which is what everyone should have been doing all along with the Swiftvet Liars. In the usual way of things, the wingnuts are taking O'Donnell's high-volume response as some sort of counter-balance to all the Coulters and Carlsons and O'Reilly's - and then some. And they definitely seem to miss the point that, unlike the Coulters and the Carlsons and etc., O'Donnell was confronting a liar.
And Atrios also comments on a post at MyDD about the battleground polls and in particular a curious story about a CBS/NYT poll of Florida being suppressed because it shows Kerry leading Bush by four - or is it eight or nine? - points. 23:42 BST
Worldscape
Today's Talking Point at Unfiltered is about what you can do to help get out the vote, and includes a few other interesting suggestions besides the usual traditional ones. This includes doing things to entertain people or make them comfortable during what may be some very long waits in line. With enormous turn-outs predicted and the RNC actively conspiring to slow down the process as much as possible, this sounds like a very good idea. Suggestions include bringing snacks and water, games and a few decks of cards, spelling people in line, checking the area to find out where rest rooms or other conveniences are, and so on.
Josh Marshall says: This evening, Wingerdom is all aflutter about what they now see as the New York Times-CBS-IAEA international anti-Bush conspiracy. But they might do better to focus their anxieties elsewhere. It's all Drudge's fault, naturally. Of course, CBS had a story that would look bad for Bush, and given the stir over the Killian memo, I bet they wanted to be really careful to take all the time they needed to check it out. But they didn't want to get scooped, either, which meant they held on to it, and they were beaten to the punch. As far as the wingers are concerned, this was all a plot by the liberal media to create an October surprise on the eve of the election. And anyway, NBC had a story that disproves the whole idea that we just let a whole lot of explosives get looted. Oh, wait, they didn't, according to the NYT and NBC themselves. Short form: The administration screwed up royally, the RNC is spinning like mad, and their worshippers among the right-wing warbloggers believe them and spread the pile further. No news there. [Update: More from Media Matters.]
Blunkett must be having a lot of trouble with his creepy ID card scheme, because he's been forced to change his mind about the amazingly cumbersome idea of making it a combined national ID and passport. But it's still a stinky idea, you terrible, terrible man.
Forest is something I don't get to see a lot of here in England. Come to think of it, I don't think I've ever seen any forest in England. Maybe I should be in Finland.
18:43 BST
A bunch of political stuff
Lots of interesting stuff recently at Salon's War Room, such as:
RNC pretends newspapers lean left. This is the usual spin about how all the newspapers are liberal, and that supposedly explains why so many papers have endorsed Kerry. But the truth is that it's very rare for a majority of the big dailies to endorse Democratic presidential candidates: In fact, the complete opposite is true. Since 1940 when industry trade magazine Editor & Publisher began tracking newspapers during presidential elections, only two Democratic candidates -- Lyndon Johnson in 1964 and Bill Clinton in 1992 -- have ever won more endorsements than their Republican opponent. That's because newspaper publishers, who usually sign off on endorsements, tend to vote Republican (like lots of senior corporate executives), which means GOP candidates pick up more endorsements. A lot more.
First Sinclair, now Pappas: Is it just us, or are Republican media moguls becoming increasingly brazen down the campaign homestretch, as they ignore decades worth of broadcast guidelines in order to use the public airwaves in blatantly partisan ways? First, the Sinclair Broadcast Group tried to order its 62 stations nationwide to air an anti-Kerry hit piece. Now in another unprecedented move, Pappas Telecasting, one of California's largest broadcast owners, is donating $325,000 worth of airtime exclusively to Republican candidates locked in tight local races.
The battle for the Senate: While a big Kerry win may seem unlikely, Democrats still have a chance to take a majority in the upper house, thanks to some remarkably incompetent Republican opponents. Top honors in that category, of course, go to Illinois GOP contender Alan Keyes, of whom the National Review magazine has said "there is not a worse candidate for a major office in America this year." But he's not the only who is flailing: In Alaska, South Carolina and Oklahoma, three states that President Bush is expected to dominate by 15 to 30 points, Republican candidates are struggling to stay afloat. And that's not all.
Was Bush keeping quiet about Rehnquist?: At one point Bush promised loyalists that soon after his inauguration he would have the opportunity to appoint a justice to the Supreme Court; just the first of what Bush insisted would be four during his second term.
The enemy of Moby's enemy... - Moby and Eminem really, really don't get along, But Moby was impressed enough by Eminem's new anti-Bush video to put all that aside. "wow," he writes on his blog . "you know that eminem and i have had our differences in the past. but this video is the best thing that i've seen all year. it's an amazing song and an even more amazing video. please go watch." George Bush -- a uniter, not a divider!
Medical experts: Rehnquist's condition could be severe: Numerous medical studies only mention tracheotomy -- in which surgeons cut a hole into a patient's windpipe to aid breathing -- as a treatment for a rare form of thyroid cancer called anaplastic carcinoma. According to the University of Virginia Health Center, "anaplastic carcinoma is an extremely serious and aggressive thyroid cancer which often results in the death of the patient.within several months of diagnosis."
Ex-pat voters' homeland insecurity: People all around the world are riveted on a watershed American presidential race to close to call, and maybe none more so than U.S. citizens living abroad. Reuters reports today that a number of them, discouraged by complicated overseas voting rules and nervous about problems with absentee ballots, are spending substantial time and money to return home to vote. Of course, there is a bit of partisan sentiment in the mix, too. Oh, I wouldn't say so - on this side of the water Bush is seen as such a disaster that even Republicans want to vote against him this year.
If you didn't believe before that Republicans suffer from the worst case of projection you never imagined, just read this amazing David Brooks article about someone who sounds amazingly like David Brooks. Only he doesn't seem to know it. Via Busy, Busy, Busy, which is spot-on as usual.
Jeanne D'Arc finds the reason to vote for Kerry, from Riverbend, even if you're not in love with him: So is Kerry going to be much better? I don't know. I don't know if he's going to fix things or if he's going to pull out the troops, or bring more in. I have my doubts about how he will handle the current catastrophe in Iraq. I do know this: nothing can be worse than Bush. No one can be worse than Bush. It will hardly be fair to any president after Bush in any case- it's like assigning a new captain to a drowning ship. All I know is that Bush made the hole and let the water in, I want him thrown overboard.
Finally, finally, Andrew Sullivan actually gets there. I can't believe it took him so long, but yes, at long last, he has endorsed Kerry, over at TNR.
Good article by E.J. Dionne in the Post on The Intensity Gap - that is, the fact that "John Kerry's supporters are more likely than George W. Bush's to believe that this year's election is the most important of their lifetimes." And while the GOP may like to dismiss anti-Bush feeling as irrational "Bush-hating", Dionne says that the desire to de-select him is rooted in rationality, coming not just from partisan Dems but even from many who once supported him.
Nick Confessore has a good analysis of the Republican vote-fraud strategy. Guys, it's important to get that vote out. And, speaking of that, wow, does Marshall Mathers want you to vote - you gotta see the video. Join the movement to try to get MTV to play it.
Maru finds another example of the highly-lubricated Bush-endorsement that reads like an endorsement of Kerry. After this one, I mean.
Remember after the debate when all the fact-checkers were dissing Kerry for saying the war was costing $200bn, claiming it wasn't costing that much? Well, it is. In fact, WaPo says $225 billion now that Bush is asking for more money again. (I hope their fact-checkers are embarrassed.) (via)
A secret document obtained from inside Bush campaign headquarters in Florida suggests a plan - possibly in violation of US law - to disrupt voting in the state's African-American voting districts, a BBC Newsnight investigation reveals.
Election supervisor Ion Sancho believes some voters are being intimidated
Two e-mails, prepared for the executive director of the Bush campaign in Florida and the campaign's national research director in Washington DC, contain a 15-page so-called "caging list".
It lists 1,886 names and addresses of voters in predominantly black and traditionally Democrat areas of Jacksonville, Florida.
An elections supervisor in Tallahassee, when shown the list, told Newsnight: "The only possible reason why they would keep such a thing is to challenge voters on election day."
The other, of course, is a tribute to one of the most important broadcast personalities in the country:
Veteran BBC broadcaster John Peel has died at the age of 65, while on holiday in Peru.
Peel, whose radio career spanned 40 years, was on a working holiday in the city of Cuzco with his wife Sheila when he suffered a heart attack.
He was BBC Radio 1's longest-serving DJ and in recent years had also presented Home Truths on Radio 4.
You can get the full Newsnight stream on the page with the Palast article. (The BBC site's obituary for Peel is here.) 01:48 BST
Tuesday, 26 October 2004
Liberal media
You know, for months I've been seeing stories and pictures about Kerry/Edwards campaign stops where even visits that are expected to be brief - in one case, a town where they were expected only to pass through and not scheduled to stop - generate these enormous, enthusiastic crowds. And then the pundidiots continue to tell us how little enthusiasm there is for Kerry, how it's all very ho-hum and nobody cares about the candidates and it's just that people don't like Bush. James Wolcott (via) touched on this the other day, but it's been bugging me for a while. Kerry opens his mouth and the cheers are deafening; then the talking heads and stenographers tell us that no one really likes Kerry.
Now, maybe they are misled by the fact that any Bush rally is full of carefully screened Bush sycophants who think they are seeing the messiah and who cheer at everything Bush says no matter how lame it sounds. These are also people who by and large don't know what's going on, of course. They are unaware that most of the people on the planet opposed the invasion of Iraq and that Bush has brought America's standing in the world down into the dirt. Bush tells them things are peachy in Iraq and they believe it. They are in love with Bush and no power in Heaven or on Earth will change that.
So, yes, it's true that Kerry supporters, by and large, are not stupefied with adoration for their candidate. Democrats tend to be, well, democrats, which means we don't believe in the divine right of presidents and we don't believe America should be run by some sort of pretend-inerrant pope, either, whether Catholic or some kind of weird sorta-Methodist. But if we dislike Bush for what he is, it stands to reason that we might very well like Kerry for being what Bush is not. And we rather do like the fact that Kerry is a sensible man who has shown plenty of personal courage, both physical and moral, and who also appears to be able to win in a fight with a pretzel.
The thing is, we're not voting for Messiah, we really are just voting for a president. And he looks like a pretty good public servant to me. After the last four years, that makes him downright spectacular. 19:02 BST
In the currents
This is supposed to be the big exposé about Kerry: He said he'd met with the UN Security Council, and some UN ambassadors say he didn't meet with them. But as Atrios points out, Kerry was referring to the permanent Security Council, which those ambassadors don't happen to be on. And anyway, nobody cares, because we did not invade a country and get thousands of people killed just because Kerry said he'd met with the UN Security Council.
Bush's Brain will screen on the Sundance Channel on 1 November.
Sam Rosenfeld at Tapped wants to know when the media will pay attention to this important story: However they cover the Iraqi explosives scandal, the fact remains that the average citizen likely has no idea at this late date that one of the major political parties -- and not the other -- has funded systematic efforts to disenfranchise and scam voter registrants across the country.
A couple of items from Truthout:
Oh, those touch-screen machines, they're causing trouble in New Mexico.
John Dean warns of The Coming Post-Election Chaos: Look at the swirling, ugly currents currently at work in this conspicuously close race. There is Republicans' history of going negative to win elections. There is Karl Rove's disposition to challenge close elections in post-election brawls. And there is Democrats' (and others) new unwillingness to roll over, as was done in 2000. Finally, look at the fact that a half-dozen lawsuits are in the works in the key states and more are being developed. 12:03 BST
The New York Times published an article yesterday about what should have been the big issue three years ago, when we were so rudely interrupted by the Mule presidency.
For years the people in Washington have offered one plan after another that they said would provide health care for all Americans and rein in costs. Each plan has failed. Today more people than ever have inadequate coverage or no insurance at all. And still costs continue to spin out of control.
Notably absent from the rhetoric has been any mention of the existing system's inherent flaw - the inability of market-based, for-profit medicine to deliver on the political promises.
Two decades ago, when Washington embraced the for-profit model to curb escalating charges, health care spending represented 10.5 percent of gross domestic product. Now it is approaching 16 percent. We spend more per capita on health care than any other developed country. Yet on the important yardsticks, like life expectancy measured in healthy years, we don't even rank among the top 20 nations. In fact, according to the World Health Organization, we come in an embarrassing 29th, sandwiched between Slovenia and Portugal.
The explanation for this abysmal record is one that politicians decline to discuss. The market functions wonderfully when we want to sell more cereals, cosmetics, cars, computers or any other consumer product. Unfortunately, it doesn't work in health care, where the goal should hardly be selling more heart bypass operations. Instead, the goal should be to prevent disease and illness. But the money is in the treatment - not prevention - so the market and good health care are at odds. Just how much at odds is seen in the current shortage of flu vaccine, as men and women in their 80's and 90's line up for hours at a time, hoping to get the shot they have been told they need, but may not receive because not nearly enough has been manufactured.
JACKSONVILLE, Fla., Oct. 23 -- President Bush turned his Marine One chopper into a campaign prop Saturday and used it to drop in on huge crowds at three stadiums around Florida, at a time of concern in his campaign about his failure to gain a decisive lead in the most crucial battlegrounds. [...] The commander in chief landed at the ballparks to the strains of the "Top Gun" theme, his most dramatic use of a military asset since he rode a fighter jet onto an aircraft carrier 17 months ago to declare the end of major combat operations in Iraq.
Kerry, meanwhile, was explaining that he was ready to relieve former Governor Bush of the hard work he complained about during the debates. And some Republicans are worried that Kerry will send Bush back to Texas to pretend to work on his ranch:
The Republican official said polling for Bush showed him in a weaker position than some published polls have indicated, both nationally and in battlegrounds. In many of the key states, the official said, Bush is below 50 percent, and he is ahead or behind within the margin of sampling error -- a statistical tie.
"There's just no place where they're polling outside the margin of error so they can say, 'We have this state,' " the official said. "And they know that an incumbent needs to be outside the margin of error."
So Bush's internal polling is looking gloomier for him than the news media has suggested, eh? Hey, you know, I can't feel bad about that. (Via Kos.)
And not to put too fine a point on it, there are things like this in The Chicago Tribune from Steve Chapman:
At the age of 50, I get few chances to try something entirely new. Come Nov. 2, I plan to take one of those rare opportunities. I'm going to vote for a Democrat for president. I've never done it before, and I hope I never have to do it again.
There's a lot of that going around. It's particularly interesting since Chapman is a Trib editor, and the paper has officially endorsed Bush. If the ballots are counted, Bush is toast. (Via Skippy.) The GOP is already visualizing losing (via). 16:16 BST
Media hits
Students at State College, Pennsylvania, regard The Center Daily Times as a "right-wing rag", but the paper surprised them by saying John Kerry is the best choice for president.
South Knox Bubba finds out why you should support Bush when Knox News (unlike major papers) gives him their endorsement: They say that Bush was wrong about WMD, lied about Saddam's links to al-Qaida, botched the occupation of Iraq, has a terrible record on the environment, has done nothing about the health care crisis except give a huge government handout to pharmaceutical companies, and ran up the largest deficit in U.S. history. But you should vote for him anyway because you "need to remember that the United States was attacked on 9/11." Anyone who disagrees is guilty of "mindless conformity" to their party.
Jerry Lee Friendly still can't wait to vote: This kind of lying has a curious power to it, because most people lack the moral vacuum necessary to comprehend it. They simply can't relate, so by default they are prone to believing, or ignoring, the lie. Maybe this is the reason for the old adage that the more preposterous a lie, the more people are likely to believe it. At any rate, this kind of total corruption is, I'm sorry to say, the driving force behind the Bush Technique. But JLF can't figure out why some people are voting for Bush.
Sam Rosenfeld at Tapped does not find that heartening that, "General John D. Altenburg Jr., the Pentagon official overseeing the war crimes commissions system in Guantanamo Bay, has dismissed three officers from the military tribunal who displayed obvious conflicts of interest and/or gross ignorance about pertinent issues," and explains why. Meanwhile, Nick Confessore ponders the scary prospect of a 269-269 electoral vote tie.
Drug WarRant has a whole post full of stories that mostly made me gape in horror, but I had to laugh (bitterly) at this one: D'Alliance reports that a three-year British controlled experiment in a local area to combat drugs using tougher enforcement and treatment failed miserably. Not a surprise here, but that's got to be pushing up the denial factor in prohibitionists.
In The Washington Post: Corey Robin says that the private sector can be just as scary as the government when it comes to suppressing free speech, in When Fear Is A Joint Venture: For all the legal constraints the Constitution puts on the government, we rarely recognize the ironic by-product of those constraints: the subcontracting of coercion to the private sector. In its search for those who might be conspiring to attack the United States, the government lacked the evidence required by the Bill of Rights to prosecute individuals with suspicious associations and beliefs. So what did the government do? It asked private employers to use their power of hiring and firing -- which is not subject to the Bill of Rights -- to punish these individuals instead.
Post ombudsman Michael Getler says one question still bothers him: How could it happen that the United States was taken to war on the basis of assertions to the public that turned out to be false? It bothers a lot of us. Getler says his colleagues in the news business fell short.
Don't Do It, Justices - Garrett Epps explains why the Supreme Court should have stayed out of the 2000 election and begs them not to make the same mistake again.
George F. Will is worried that someone will bring our election's integrity into question. Clearly, rumors from Republicans that Democrats may want to register lots of people places the entire system in jeopardy. Yeah, you read that right.
In The New York Times: A movie by right-wingers called Celsius 41.11 is Lowering the Subtlety of Political Discourse. Even Manohla Dargis, who buys the hype that Michael Moore's film was insufficiently accurate (despite the fact that no one has actually found any falsehoods in it), can tell what this piece of crap is up to.
In the Observer: Abu Ghraib team bids to run UK prisons: Liberal Democrat Home Affairs spokesman Mark Oaten expressed concerns that Britain's prison culture could be undermined by the arrival of American firms. Blimey, he's right on top of things, isn't he? We've already got American firms here doing things that used to be considered too sensitive for anyone but your own government. Jeez.
In the Telegraph: Ah, it must be obvious to absolutely everyone if even Michael Heseltine has noticed that Tony Blair lied to justify the invasion. The attack by the Tory peer was supported by Kenneth Clarke and Lord Hurd, two other former Conservative heavyweights from the Thatcher and Major eras. 21:51 BST
First past the Post
Yesterday The Washington Post discussed the question of how the outcome of this election could affect the courts, and expressed a preference for Kerry on the grounds that a second Bush term might not be as benign in that respect as one would hope. This is rather like saying you're using an umbrella when you go out into a rainstorm because there's a vague chance that the rain could get you wet. The entire editorial is a signpost of how far to the right things have swung, right from the top:
EVERY FOUR YEARS, partisans at both ends of the political spectrum wring their hands at the devastation the other side will wreak if its presidential candidate gets to nominate the next four years' worth of federal judges. Conservatives warn that the courts will impose a liberal social agenda. Liberals fret about a "rollback" of basic rights. Somehow, the stakes always prove a bit lower than threatened. The courts generally seem to find a way to avoid diving off a cliff.
A rollback of basic rights is a fairly specific sort of threat, but I find it alarming that the Post thinks "a liberal agenda" defines some scary thing we should all be concerned about. What, exactly, is a liberal agenda? Will we have to care about discrimination again? Oh, no, how awful! How can the country stand it? God forbid we should drive off of that cliff!
In assessing what a second Bush term would augur for the courts, it makes sense to look at the first. Some of President Bush's nominees have been highly objectionable, and Mr. Bush, rather than working with Democrats to de-escalate the judicial nominations wars, too often has added fuel to the fire. But the demonization of his judges has greatly overstated their radicalism. They have been, on the whole, mainstream conservatives, for better and worse.
Well, no, the ones who have been singled out as extreme are already pretty far over the top, and at no time has this been over-stated. But what they all have in common is a preference for institutions - government and corporations - over individuals. Whether you regard that as "mainstream conservatism" depends on what your idea of mainstream conservatism is, but as a whole, Bush's choices have at best leaned to the right of the mainstream, and quite a few of them have been out-and-out racist and at least borderline fascist if not overtly so. Some of those with the most blatantly sickening records have captured the headlines (and inspired filibuster), but others have been kept from the limelight only because they aren't quite as far beyond the pale as these superstars of extremism. (Or, at least, they haven't been so extreme on the record; we've already seen an interesting propensity on the part of the GOP to field stealth right-wing nuts at both the legislative and judicial level. And one nominee has been filibustered because he refuses to expose his thinking.)
Better, because such conservatism can imply a judicial restraint and a respect for the prerogatives of elected legislators; worse, because it can bring with it too cramped an understanding of rights we believe are guaranteed by the Constitution.
Another signifier of the right-ward trend at the Post is the presumption that "judicial restraint" is a trait of conservatives, and not of liberals. But modern conservatives clearly don't restrain themselves in areas where the Constitution is explicit if that goes against their overriding agenda, which is not adherence to the Constitution but something else entirely. Conservatives railed against the 9th Circuit when it decided for Nedow, even though there is absolutely no wiggle-room for religious phrasing in a pledge that children in public schools are encouraged to recite every morning.
The conservative agenda is all for the virtual elimination of the 1st Amendment - their interest in it seems to be solely for the purposes of protecting corporate speech (the right to defraud the public with false advertising) and political speech if it is in keeping with their own agenda; that is, conservatives get free speech, and the rest of us don't. Note, for example, the fact that the right wing is deeply disturbed that Democrats objected to Sinclair's plan to air an entire movie that libelled John Kerry immediately before the election, yet they have been pretty much silent about the continuous suppression of free speech by dissenters from this administration's policies, except to say that said dissenters should shut up because their speech is "treason".
Similarly, the same people who claimed to hate Bill Clinton for encroachments on Constitutional rights that occurred during his administration have been remarkably unwilling to rail with the same passion against the Patriot Act and other clear violations of due process brought in by this administration. A stunning proportion of the libertarian right still plans to vote for Bush, on the grounds that, well, whatever Bush is doing, Kerry must be worse - for reasons that are not clear at all, but apparently have something to do with the fact that Kerry is, um, not a Republican. And even among libertarians who have become disgusted with Bush and refuse to vote for him, many are saying they will cast protest votes for third-party candidates or sit out the election rather than act to remove these criminals from office. A lot of Bush's support comes from people who may not be alert to what's really going on, but the rest of it comes from people who are more openly anti-individual, anti-Bill of Rights, and they are prepared to junk the entire structure in order to establish a fascist theocracy where bigotry is the law rather than something to rise above. None of these goals can be met with adherence to judicial restraint.
Sen. John F. Kerry made clear in the third debate that he would subject potential nominees to a litmus test on abortion, which we think is the wrong way to pick judges.
A litmus test on protection of individual rights and privacy is exactly the right way to pick judges. Abortion happens to be a bellwether, and it has become clear that a judge who wants to overturn Roe v. Wade doesn't respect those most vital aspects of our Constitutional democracy. The Bill of Rights itself is about privacy, although it never uses the word. If you can't support Roe v. Wade because of the privacy argument, you can't support the Bill of Rights, and you have no business being a judge. Don't kid yourself that the arguments against Roe v. Wade are about "judicial restraint" - that's just a cover; the arguments are about reproductive freedom and about privacy, and anti-individualists want you to have neither. A considerable number of these people want to eliminate birth control altogether. These aren't people who are concerned with restraining the judiciary from extra-constitutional excursions.
Beyond that it's harder to predict the kind of judges Mr. Kerry would nominate, since he has no record. Few likely Democratic judicial nominees aspire to the aggressive judicial liberalism of the 1960s and 1970s -- even if such a nominee could win confirmation.
The "aggressive judicial liberalism of the 1960s and 1970s" is another one of those assumptions that conservatives have injected into the discourse which, of course, are purely a matter of politics. What did all that "aggression" amount to? Civil rights and reproductive control, that's what. And those things are supposed to be more "radical" in terms of Constitutional doctrine than merging church and state? Have any of these people ever read the Constitution? Say what you will about its glaring omissions, that document was written in such a way as to always move in the direction of expanding individual rights and freedoms, and in opposition to the accumulation of power by powerful bodies over the populace at large. If you read The Federalist Papers as well, you know that this is not just an inference by liberal thinkers; the whole point of the Constitution is liberal thinking.
Kerry nominees could be expected, in general, to display a greater solicitude for privacy rights, for federal power in the environmental and civil rights arenas, and for the rights of those whom the government would lock up or kill. Greater concern for these values comes at the cost of a more freewheeling jurisprudence, one less respectful of traditional state powers, less constrained by the text and history of the Constitution, and more willing to assert judicial power in areas where it has not traditionally operated.
Again, the Post seems to be unaware that "the text and history of the Constitution" is right in keeping with those liberal values of privacy, environmental protection, and even civil rights. The seeds for Brown v. Board of Education and Roe v. Wade are right there in that text and in the other writings of the Founders as well. And some of the most radical changes in the interpretation of that text have been the recent actions - over the last 25 years - by conservative courts. Acknowledging the rights of blacks to equal distribution of government largess may have been socially liberal, but it was not textually radical. But giving corporate bodies the individual right of free speech, and giving media conglomerates greater control of the public airways, on the other hand, certainly was. So is the expansion of police powers and the battering of the 4th Amendment that conservatives have pushed for over the last two decades and now achieved in such stunning triumph since 9/11 that it's a question whether the 4th survives at all.
The Bush administration has pushed the line so far - and expressed a willingness to go even farther - that the question is not whether the courts will be "liberal" or "conservative". The question is whether we will have a Bill of Rights at all.
And so, it is no surprise that The Washington Post bites the bullet this morning to tepidly endorse Kerry in similarly conservative terms. No doubt the right-wing will point to this as the "liberal media" coming out for a liberal candidate and declare that this proves things. But no liberal wrote these editorials, and all it proves is that somehow the Post has shaken loose from the cult of personality that surrounds Bush to support, instead, a more traditionally conservative candidate rather than a dangerous radical.
Not that they could bring themselves to see it in those terms.... 14:27 BST
Saturday, 23 October 2004
A little piece of history in the East End
Carillons in the courtyard
Yesterday I finally got to see the Whitechapel Bell Foundry, meet the cast of characters I've heard so much about, tour the grounds, and stand where the Liberty Bell itself was made. The place seems a bit magical, and the people who work there add to the feeling.
It all put me in mind of that Christmas party the Ghost of Christmas Past recalls from the life of the young Ebanezer. Perhaps this is an effect of the firm having been owned by the same family for the last hundred years, the event they were celebrating. 23:21 BST
No news is no news
This is an odd one I found at Memeorandum - a Slate article called Political Poseur in which Richard Rushfield wanders around in political t-shirts trying to see if Republicans will react to his Kerry/Edwards t-shirt or if Democrats will react to his Bush/Cheney t-shirt.
The problem is that he seems to know where all of the rabid liberal enclaves are in his blue state, but he appears to think that only the most well-heeled represent the Bush-supporting types. There are a couple of problems with this, of course. One is that upper-end types are better schooled in avoiding a scene; he'd likely have received a noiser response from some low-rent Bush-supporters. Another is that the "red" districts he picked may be far more divided than he realizes.
But the funny thing is that right-wingers really seem to think that a few dirty looks and incidents of muttered "asshole" are evidence that the left is meaner than the right. Yet anyone who has been reading Dem-leaning blogs for a while knows that events of that sort don't even rate a mention when there is real physical violence, not to mention harassing activities by whole groups of people, not to mention firings, already on the record for those whose support for Kerry gets noticed by right-wingers. I'm not going to look for the old links right now, but I do remember that story of the guy who made the mistake of borrowing a car that had a Dean sticker on it while driving through heavy Bush country. And I'm sure you all remember the recent story of the woman who was fired because she had a Kerry sticker on her car. Then there was the recent violent assault on a woman protesting at a Bush event. (I'm quite certain it wasn't liberals who cut my fan belt in response to my pro-choice bumper-sticker, either.)
It's a pity we won't have some enterprising member of the pro-Bush blogosphere going to real Bush country wearing a Kerry/Edwards t-shirt, to see how nice those people are.
20:48 BST
Seen and heard
You probably already noticed that the Republicans are ready to challenge voters just to make life harder. The Republicans still want to pretend that lots of people are illegally voting, although there are far more instances of legitimate voters being illegally prevented from voting. But it serves their purposes to disenfranchise as many people as possible, so that's what they're doing. As TBogg observes, these are the kind of guys who'd make Rehnquist proud.
David Neiwert explains Today's Bush Skeleton-from-the-closet: Careful observers of Bush's autobiographical claims know that he has described himself as having "worked" at a project voluntarily, when instead it appears he was forced to put in community-service time as compensation for some kind of legal difficulty. Once again, it turns out that the Lyin' King has stolen the clothes of better men.
There are many reasons to love Ted Barlow, but To blog a mockingbird is definitely one of them. As one person said in the comments, it's not a sin to mock Mickey Kaus.
Every time I start to respect these people, they say things like this. (OK, some of them I never did start to respect. God, P.J. O'Rourke is a twerp!)
A Shorter Charles Krauthammer round-up at BBB this time. I'm still so disappointed that he missed his chance to tell us how crazy Al Gore is again. But then, the media crackpots have apparently decided that the best way to deal with Al's truth-telling is to ignore him completely. Don't you do that.
Juan Cole analyzes the meaning and potential impact of Eminem's anti-Bush song "Mosh". Via LO's Blog Wire, which advises: to hear the song, go to DJ Green Lantern, click "Store" then click "Mosh". 17:41 BST
Peach & Frog
The Brownshirting of America: Bush's supporters demand lock-step consensus that Bush is right. They regard truthful reports that Saddam Hussein had no weapons of mass destruction and was not involved in the September 11 attack on the US--truths now firmly established by the Bush administration's own reports--as treasonous America-bashing. Even traditional conservatives and some who are fairly far to the right are getting the treatment, now. (via)
Just in case anyone doubted it, Josh Marshall reinforces what I said in my debate-check of the WashPost fact-check: On the basic question of whether the US missed a key opportunity to bag bin Laden in Tora Bora, Bergen says Kerry's claim is not 'garbage' but "an accurate reflection of the historical record."
Andrew Sullivan's fans think he has gone round the bend. He - I can hardly say it - doesn't think George Bush has done a very good job in Iraq! Imagine! Gary Farber reports.
Bill Scher looks at the recent campaign ads and concludes that the Bush team is misreading the public.
Ben Bradlee recently gave an interview to Der Spiegel in which he acknowledges that Bush is a liar and says reporters should say so. I found a translation here.
Eric Alterman, of course, feels no hesitation at calling Bush a liar - and condemning the media for swallowing.
Could the Associated Press (AP) Rig the Election? Asks Journalist Lynn Landes: The Associated Press (AP) will be the sole source of raw vote totals for the major news broadcasters on Election Night. However, AP spokesmen Jack Stokes and John Jones refused to explain to this journalist how the AP will receive that information. They refused to confirm or deny that the AP will receive direct feed from voting machines and central vote tabulating computers across the country. But, circumstantial evidence suggests that is exactly what will happen. [...] But, can't the AP be trusted? Isn't it an objective non-partisan news organization? Some say no. The AP is batting for a Bush presidency.
Fred Clarke sees Jon Stewart's criticism of Crossfire echoed in David Grann's Inside Dope (in The New Yorker), but aimed at The Note's Mark Halperin. Halperin is the classic example of the annoying tendency to treat politics as celebrity gossip and to "discuss" issues without ever actually touching on the substance of vital policy matters. Like Stewart, Fred says it's bad, it's hurting America; stop stop stop.
Our favorite Talking Dog says: The stakes of our adventure, which is no longer being managed for military or strategic or even geo-political advantage but entirely for domestic political reasons is that more and more of our troops are being killed each month, more contractors are being kidnapped, and at this point, just keep going up. [...] It's astounding just how badly Iraq is going, how widely it's being reported, and how little regard the American people seem to be showing for it, given that the President isn't down 40 points in the polls.
Ruy Teixeira says things are looking good in Ohio. He also recommends a WashPost article on A Fading Nader Factor that says suggests Nader's support is now a negligible factor in the race. There's also an article by Alan Abramowitz observing something suspicious in the Mason-Dixon battleground state polls.
The American Conservative has a cover story in which different writers endorse different ways to deal with their ballots. Scott McConnell, comparing Bush to Tsar Nicholas, says Kerry's the One. It's not that he loves Kerry, but: Bush has behaved like a caricature of what a right-wing president is supposed to be, and his continuation in office will discredit any sort of conservatism for generations. The launching of an invasion against a country that posed no threat to the U.S., the doling out of war profits and concessions to politically favored corporations, the financing of the war by ballooning the deficit to be passed on to the nation's children, the ceaseless drive to cut taxes for those outside the middle class and working poor: it is as if Bush sought to resurrect every false 1960s-era left-wing clichT about predatory imperialism and turn it into administration policy.
Atrios: When is the media going to start caring that there is clearly a well-organized nationwide effort to throw votes in the garbage?
Bless Carl Levin for going after Doug Feith for lying to Congress about ties between Saddam and Islamist terrorists. This one is very much worth talking up and trying to get the press to pay lots of attention to.
Kerry campaign responds to new Bush ad: Instead of giving voters even one good reason to vote for him, George W. Bush has chosen to scare the American people with images of wolves.Taegan Goddard says: Meanwhile, Political Wire has learned that the Kerry campaign is coming out with an ad comparing Bush to an ostrich.
David Corn isn't merely against Bush, he is actively for Kerry. He reminds us of some of the brave things Kerry did during his time in Congress. 22:43 BST
Some news and stuff
Stenography sighting from Cursor: Take Him Out of the Ball Game: The AP's Nedra Pickler claims that for Kerry, watching the Red Sox is "part of an effort to win over swing voters," and the Washington Post reports that the Bush campaign "carpet-bombed reporters with an e-mail that accused John Kerry of 'sports pandering.'"
Paul Krugman says Kerry is ahead in the polls and could likely win the election on votes - but he's worried that the votes won't be counted.
Charles Krauthammer has fabricated his very own Kerry foreign policy: sell-out Israel. This fascinating projection is based on the idea that Kerry will need to suck up to the rest of the world by giving them something they want, and they want us to abandon Israel. Krauthammer doesn't seem to understand that the rest of the world at this point would probably be satisfied by Kerry simply not being Bush.
So "tens of thousands" turn out for a Kerry rally and cheer their little hearts out ("Kerry ignited thousands of supporters, many of whom waited outside the Metrodome in a light drizzle and steady winds for more than two hours"), and some spin-meister makes it sound like hardly anyone turned up except a clown, and nobody stuck around to hear what the candidate had to say. And both of these stories appeared in the same paper.
21:07 BST
I want to show you a campaign ad that is about to go into heavy rotation in swing states around the country. It's called 'He Just Doesn't Get It'. I would appreciate it a great deal if you could take just a few moments to watch it and let me know what you think.
Personally, I think it's pretty good. Without any frills, it tells you two things that a frightening number of Americans don't know: That there were no WMD, and that George Bush doesn't care about the lives he spent for his lie. 11:01 BST
Election section
Endorsements: Former Republican Governor William Milliken of Michigan ("This president has pursued policies pandering to the extreme right wing across a wide variety of issues and has exacerbated the polarization and the strident, uncivil tone of much of what passes for political discourse in this country today") and Former Republican Governor Elmer Anderson ("The present Republican president has led us into an unjustified war -- based on misguided and blatantly false misrepresentations of the threat of weapons of mass destruction") both endorse Kerry.
Atrios cites a new AP poll that has Kerry up by three, but the headline is "Bush, Kerry in Dead Heat." As Atrios also notes, it frequently seems to be the case that when Kerry is ahead, it's a tie, but when Bush is ahead, he's "leading".
The fact that Bush is even still in the race is, of course, incomprehensibly maddening, but Chris Bowers knows why:
Even after the final report of Charles Duelfer to Congress saying that Iraq did not have a significant WMD program, 72% of Bush supporters continue to believe that Iraq had actual WMD (47%) or a major program for developing them (25%). Fifty-six percent assume that most experts believe Iraq had actual WMD and 57% also assume, incorrectly, that Duelfer concluded Iraq had at least a major WMD program. Kerry supporters hold opposite beliefs on all these points. Similarly, 75% of Bush supporters continue to believe that Iraq was providing substantial support to al Qaeda, and 63% believe that clear evidence of this support has been found. Sixty percent of Bush supporters assume that this is also the conclusion of most experts, and 55% assume, incorrectly, that this was the conclusion of the 9/11 Commission. Here again, large majorities of Kerry supporters have exactly opposite perceptions.
Understand: 58% of Bush supporters believe we should not have invaded Iraq if Saddam did not have WMDs or links to Al Qaeda. But, somehow, they have managed to block out the fact that he didn't, and we still did.
But the troops, it appears, do not blame Bush for what they are going through; they, too, seem to have bought into the idea that the Iraqis have no right to resist what the mad neocons and their maniac leader have done to them, as Jeanne D'Arc has discovered. I think it's safe to assume that most of them are still planning to vote for the man who put them in harm's way for no good reason.
I think that electing John F. Kerry at this juncture would be like electing the ugly bastard child of Jimmy Carter and Millard Fillmore -- in 1940. (I could be wrong, of course, and if Kerry should happen to be elected, I fervently hope to be proven so. But that's how it seems to me. I mean, Jesus, just look at the guy.)
Matt wonders if people really believe that Kerry wouldn't have gone to war against the Axis powers if he'd been President during Pearl Harbor. This is a fantasy that a lot of Bush-supporters seem to live in, that Al Gore would have done nothing on 9/11, that Kerry wouldn't have noticed an act of war when the Japanese attacked us.
Think about the extraordinary mental gymnastics involved there. George Bush was the guy who was explicitly warned about the planned 9/11 attacks, and did nothing. And when told that America was under attack, he just sat there wetting his pants. And when he finally got back to the White House after running away and hiding, he spent all his time trying to find a way to avoid retaliating against Afghanistan and Al Qaeda, instead wanting to use it all as an excuse to go into Iraq and tidy up the job his right-wing base insisted his old man had wimped out on. And then when he went into Afghanistan only because he couldn't find an excuse not to, he walked out in the middle of it all and invaded Iraq anyway, having made up a bunch of excuses for doing it that couldn't pass the laugh test.
But they think that only Bush was up to the job of responding to 9/11. I don't even know of a drug that could detach you that far from material reality. 16:44 BST
Good Stuff
Kevin Hayden found the Rolling Stone interview with Kerry: Well, I should be tough on him. This is an amazing moment in American history -- where a president of the United States is finding the rationale for invading another country after the fact.
Atrios asks: Has our country gotten so stupid that we now all believe that "democracy" equals "any system of government in which an outcome is determined by a majority or plurality of voters. That does seem to be what they mean by "democracy" when they talk about Afghanistan and Iraq, but some of us still remember that what makes it work is this. When it works.
Via TalkLeft, a story in The Village Voice, Political Prisoners, details the relationship between racism and disenfranchisement of those convicted of crimes, and why we need to put a stop to it.
The Pew Center reports a new poll showing the race tied, saying this results from Kerry's improved image. Note that the tie is 45-45 - very bad news for Bush. MyDD has Kerry at 284 and Bush at 254 in the EC; The EVP has Kerry at 291 and Bush at 247.
Garance Franke-Ruta wonders why David Brooks isn't worried about whether Condi is being distracted from her job:
DISTRACTED BY THE RIGHT? Back in the olden days when the conflict with insurgents in Falluja was new rather than ongoing and Washington was still abuzz about National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice's testimony before the 9-11 Commission, conservative columnists such as David Brooks tut-tuted about how making her testify before the Commission was a terrible distraction from fighting the war on terror.
Not now, apparently.
Gary Farber, on the other hand, is worried about something else:
THEY'LL DO ANYTHING TO WIN. That's the category most people won't realize this comes under.
Rice Hitting the Road to Speak
It seems very tame. Most people won't blink an eye, and they'll think it's perfectly natural and normal. They won't realize this shredding the absolute unwritten rule that the Secretary of State and the Secretary of Defense and the National Security Advisor are non-partisan positions and the office-holders who more or less never speak in a political campaign while in office. They'll sometimes deliver a sole speech or two during election season that outlines the President's policies, but they don't campaign like what's described here.
It's a small matter, says Gary, compared to all of the other things they've done, but it's important all the same.
Thanks to Dave Weis, who found a link to a copy of Al Gore's Georgetown speech over at The Smirking Chimp. The speech weave Bush's policies together into a whole, which is something that makes it remarkable as political speeches go. As always, I recommend hearing it delivered (at C-Span), but if you do nothing else, at least read it. Here's a taste:
During this series of speeches, I have tried hard to understand what it is that gives so many Americans an uneasy feeling that something very basic has gone wrong in our democracy. There are many people in both political parties who worry that there is something deeply troubling about President Bush's relationship to reason, about his disdain for facts, his incuriosity about new information that might produce a deeper understanding of the problems and policies that he wrestles with on behalf of the country.
One group mistakenly maligns the president as not being smart enough to have a normal active curiosity about separating fact from myth. A second group seems to be convinced that his personal religious conversion experience was so profound that he relies on religious faith in place of logical analysis. But I disagree with both of those groups and reject both of those cartoon images. I know President Bush is plenty smart, and while I have no doubt that his religious belief is genuine, and it's an important motivation for many things that he does in life, as it is for me, and for most of you, I'm convinced that most of the president's frequent departures from fact based analysis have much more to do with right-wing political and economic ideology than with the Bible. And it is crucially important to be precise in describing exactly what it is he believes in so strongly, and then insulates from any logical challenge or even debate. It is ideology, and not his religious faith that is the source of this troubling inflexibility.
Most of the problems President Bush has caused for this country stemmed not from his belief in God but his belief in the infallibility of the right-wing Republican ideology that exalts the interest of the wealthy, and of large corporations over and above the interests of the American people. It is love of power for its own sake that is the original sin of this presidency. [...] The essential cruelty of Bush's game is that he takes an astonishingly selfish and greedy collection of economic and political proposals, and then cloaks them with a phony moral authority, thus misleading many Americans who have a deep and genuine desire to do good in the world. And in the process he convinces them to lend unquestioning support for proposals that actually hurt their families and their communities.
Truly, President Bush has stolen the symbolism and body language of religion and used it to disguise the most radical effort in American history to take what rightfully belongs to the American people, and give as much of it as possible to the already wealthy and privileged. And these wealthy and privileged look at his agenda and they say, as Dick Cheney said to former Secretary of the Treasury Paul O'Neill, "this is our due."
The central elements of President Bush's political as opposed to religious belief system are actually plain to see. First, the public interest is a dangerous myth according to Bush's ideology -- a fiction created by those hated liberals who use the notion of public interest as an excuse to take away from the wealthy and powerful what they do believe is their due. Therefore, government in this system of beliefs, government of, by, and for the people is bad -- except when government can help members of his coalition. Laws and regulations are also therefore bad, again except when they can be used to help members of his coalition. Therefore, also, whenever laws must be enforced and regulations administered, it is important in their view to assign those responsibilities to individuals who can be depended upon not to fall prey to this dangerous illusion that there is such a thing as the public interest, those who will instead reliably serve the narrow and specific interests of industries and interest groups. [...] In one of the speeches that I gave a year ago last August, I proposed that one reason why the normal processes of our democracy have seemed dysfunctional is that our nation acquired a large number of false impressions about the choices before us including for example that -- the false impression that Saddam Hussein was the person primarily responsible for attacking us on September 11th, 2001. According to Time magazine again, 70 percent thought that in November of 2002. Or, to take another example, an impression that there was a tight linkage and close partnership and cooperation between Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein, between the terrorist group al Qaeda, which did attack us, and Iraq which did not. And the impression that Saddam had a massive supply of weapons of mass destruction and that he was on the verge of obtaining nuclear weapons, and that he was about to give nuclear weapons to the al Qaeda terrorist group, which would then use them against American cities. Also the impression was widely shared that Iraq would welcome our invading army with garlands of flowers. And even though the rest of the world opposed the war when it began, they would quickly fall in line after we won, and then they'd contribute lots of money and soldiers, so there wouldn't be a risk that our taxpayers would foot the whole bill. And, in any case, there would be more than enough money from Iraqi oil supplies which would flow in abundance quickly after the invasion -- we could use that money to offset expenses, and the net cost to America would be zero. The impression also was widespread was that the size of the force required would be relatively small and would not put a strain on our military or our reserves, and would not jeopardize other commitments we have around the world. Now, of course every single one of these impressions was wrong.
And, unfortunately, the consequences have been catastrophic for our country. And the plague of false impressions seem to settle on other policy debates as well. For example, in considering President Bush's gigantic tax cut, many somehow got the impression that first the majority of that tax cut would not go disproportionately to the wealthy but would go to the middle class; second, that it would not lead to large deficits, because it would stimulate the economy so much it would pay for itself; and, third, not only would there be no job losses, but we would have big increases in employment as a result. And of course, as everyone knows, here to every one of these impressions was completely wrong. [...] This is not negligence. When the administration is told specifically and repeatedly that there is no linkage, and simultaneously makes bold assertions in a confident manner to the American people that leave the impression with 70 percent of the country that Saddam Hussein was primarily responsible for the attack, this is deception. This is deception. [...] President Bush asserts, again without any corroborating evidence, that the diversion of $2 trillion worth of payroll taxes presently paid into the Social Security Trust Fund will not result in any need to make up that $2 trillion from some other source, and will not result in cutting Social Security benefits to current retirees or raising taxes, but the bipartisan Congressional Budget Office, run by a Republican appointee, is one of many respected reality-based organizations that have concluded that the president is c
