A lot is said about Kerry's privileged upbringing, but here's something I didn't know: He worked his way through college selling encyclopedias. This is something I want everyone to repeat: John Kerry knows what it's like to have a crappy job; he's had one. I know this because a guy who hung out with him at the time mentioned it while giving interviews to promote his film, Going Upriver. You can see the trailer here.
A while back I observed that British journos covering the campaigns from the US were picking up the groupthink from the Stepford Press and sounding just like them. The same thing seems to be going on in Australia. (Thanks to Helga for the tip.) 19:08 BST
The eccentric justice launched into a parody of a police radio dispatch under a scenario in which profiling were prohibited. "The suspect is 5'10, we know what he looks like, but we can't tell you," Scalia quipped - drawing laughter from the audience.
In other words, a Supreme Court justice does not know what racial profiling is.
Scalia is also a big cut-up on other laws he doesn't know anything about:
Earlier in the evening, Scalia ridiculed the European Court of Human Rights' 2000 decision striking down British legislation that bars group gay sex on the grounds that the law intruded upon private life.
He asked - rhetorically - how many individuals would have to be involved in a sex act for it to no longer qualify as "private."
"Presumably it is some number between five and the number of people required to fill the Coliseum," Scalia joked.
Yeah, that's a real knee-slapper. The law in question said a sex act between only two men in a closed room was still not "private" if only one other person was in the same house. That's fewer than the number of people Scalia needed to help him screw the United States.
And while conservative justices have been criticized for effectively deciding the 2000 election themselves, Scalia quipped: "Would you rather have the president of the United States decided by the Supreme Court of Florida?"
No, you crackpot, we'd rather have the voters decide that - which is just what the Supreme Court of Florida said. (via) 17:11 BST
I generated random numbers (on Excel) to plug in for Gops for Bush, etc., selecting those trials that gave me a Bush% of 51.5% - 52.5% (52% is the result of rounding) and Kerry% 43.5% - 44.5%, and then averaged same to determine Gops for Bush, etc. Several samples of 20,000 trials gave results similar to one decimal point.
My estimates:
Gops for Bush 87.1%
Dems for Bush 8.5%
Inds for Bush 45.6%
Gops for Kerry 8.9%
Dems for Kerry 89.2%
Inds for Kerry 48.4%
Plugging these estimates into Rasmussen's weights yields Kerry 50.1%, Bush 46.0%. Not statistically significant, but a far cry from the 52/44 spread announced by Gallup.
My question isn't whether Kerry is ahead, it's how much farther he was ahead back when they were actually acknowledging his edge before the GOP convention.
Of course, back when Kerry was leading fairly consistently, that wasn't considered a big news story, although of course it's a very big story when an incumbent is behind a challenger. Yet now that Bush is allegedly leading, that is being treated as a big deal. There's your "liberal bias" right there.
Go on over to Suburban Guerilla and wish Susan a Happy birthday, and then check out the stuff below, like the one about the British soldier who says "we can't work with the Yanks - they just want to bomb everything." And perhaps you'd like to write to the networks and complain about their refusal to take ads for the F9/11 DVD. And - could it be a conspiracy? If I were a suspicious person, I'd wonder why there's a developing pattern of Republican secretaries of state reinterpreting the election rules in a retroactive way.
This is why I keep telling you to write letters. It works if enough people do it. It has worked for more than a decade for the right-wing. And yesterday, it worked when Media Matters put out the call on MSNBC's use of Frank Luntz to do post-debate comment.
Fight To Survive: This site is the mouthpiece for a group of soldiers who are fighting in a war they oppose for a president they didn't elect while the petrochemical complex turns the blood of their fallen comrades into oil I hear they've been getting hate-mail from people in America telling them to shut up.
Big Path has created a number of pages that can be printed out to use as fliers or posters, available in PDF, JPEG, or text form. (I rather liked Hope.)
Gary Farber asks, "Who wants to vote for more of this?": "We're trying to climb out of a hole," said an official with the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad, who spoke on condition of anonymity. American missteps during the occupation, the official said, "continue to haunt us." 01:45 BST
Wednesday, 29 September 2004
American angles
From Tina's Shark Tank: For the Bush apologists who claim that comparisons between the war in Iraq and the Vietnam War are ridiculous because the casualties in Iraq "aren't as high", the Funny Farm has an interesting chart comparing the casualties in the first 18 months of both conflicts. The trends are strikingly similar, but the casualties are MUCH higher for the CURRENT conflict!
Things they believe: Thanks to the Swift Boat Veterans we know that the central formative event of Kerry's life, Xmas in Cambodia, described repeatedly in the most vivid terms, never occurred. For our contemporary liberal arts post-modern wordsmiths, reality is "constructed", and constructed out of words. For them Kerry's Cambodia story possesses narrative truth sufficient to make it `real', even if for most of us the fact that it isn't true constitutes an overriding reality. Leaving aside the fact that "liberals" don't regard the Cambodia story as being central to anything in particular, we do know that (a) he was in Cambodia sometime not far from Christmas and (b) the record demonstrates that the SwiftVets have lied far too often to be taken as a source for any kind of truth.
What their children blog: I remembered pieces of some of my (numerous) conversation/arguments with my parents on the subject of homosexuality. My father, in the middle of explaining why queers are all intrinsically awful people, no matter how lovely they may seem. in the end his argument came down to basically, It's inherently selfish to be queer because no matter if we say we're in love it's only for selfish reasons (read: we just want to hump like bunnies and don't really care about anything else but physical pleasure) because we don't have CHILDREN like the beautiful selfless heterosexuals. Ergo, queers live only for self-gratification and no matter what else goes on in their lives, ultimately (consciously or subconsciously) our entire existence is directed towards the purpose of self-seeking pleasure; queers are not capable of anything but selfish actions whether we know it or not. 21:26 BST
Sometime in the 1980's political coverage began to confuse itself with drama criticism. The word "performance" started showing up frequently in debate analyses, and reporters started citing Samuel Beckett in their front-page articles.
Interviews with focus groups just after the first 2000 debate showed Al Gore with a slight edge. Post-debate analysis should have widened that edge. After all, during the debate, Mr. Bush told one whopper after another - about his budget plans, about his prescription drug proposal and more. The fact-checking in the next day's papers should have been devastating.
But as Adam Clymer pointed out yesterday on the Op-Ed page of The Times, front-page coverage of the 2000 debates emphasized not what the candidates said but their "body language." After the debate, the lead stories said a lot about Mr. Gore's sighs, but nothing about Mr. Bush's lies. And even the fact-checking pieces "buried inside the newspaper" were, as Mr. Clymer delicately puts it, "constrained by an effort to balance one candidate's big mistakes" - that is, Mr. Bush's lies - "against the other's minor errors."
If 2000 was any indication -- and there's every reason to think it is -- the winner of the debate won't be determined during the 90 minute encounter itself but during the spin war that will follow it. And with the advantage the Republicans have on the cable nets, talk radio and chat TV shows, the odds are stacked in their favor. [...] More than just these built-in advantages, though, Democrats, I think, have seldom really appreciated that there is such a thing as a post-debate debate. I don't mean that they don't know about putting out surrogates or trying to spin the results. Of course, they do. But in 2000 at least (a certainly in analogous situations in this cycle) the effort was very reactive and scattershot. And that inevitably leaves the Democrats trying to parry or deconstruct the ways that Republicans are trying to define what happened. In that way, they're fighting at best for a draw.
Republicans are already leaking hints and taunts about whether Kerry will sweat profusely under the lights, whether he's too tanned and other similar nonsense. But the antic nature of these taunts doesn't mean they won't be effective. They're meant to throw the other side off balance and, in a related manner, to provide grist for a catty and frivolous press corps.
As for my pre-debate spin, which has the added benefit of being honest, is that what we're going to get from Bush is the exact same thing we've been getting from him throughout his presidency. We'll get "happy talk" on Iraq which contradicts reality. We'll get "tough talk" on unnamed terrorists, despite the fact that Ashcroft hasn't managed to convict any. We'll get "happy talk" on Afghanistan, with Bush doing things like hilariously claiming that the "Taliban is no longer in existence." We'll probably get some shockingly unpresidential behavior, including the inappropriate humor he so loves.
But, what we probably won't get is anything new. Same shit, different night, as Iraq continues to burn.
So the next step for all of us is to be ready for post-debate spin to bring to the attention of the Democratic leadership. Write to Terry McAuliffe with your ideas. Find out who else the networks will be using and send them material right away. (Right now would be a good time to start making phone calls if you are prepared to do debate-duty. And find out who they will be listening to - that is, who they are willing to take advice from.) Blog it like crazy - make sure every Bush lie is dissected in detail. Make sure every false headline is countered. And be certain to shame any journalist who indulges in RNC spin rather than a real examination of the facts.
And the facts, remember, are these:
George Bush blew it by invading Iraq instead of pursuing Al Qaeda, leaving the latter free while destabilizing a secular country and turning it into a terrorist recruitment ground.
George Bush has emptied our treasury and refuses to make any moves to replenish it, threatening our entire economy and placing us in further debt to foreign countries from whom we have been forced to borrow, and saddling each American household with a debt of at least $80,000 so far.
George Bush has broken our military, over-stretching it, failing to protect our troops, and damaging our military readiness overall.
George Bush has made us look weak in front of the world.
George Bush has burnt all his bridges with our allies; he can't get the rest of the world to work with us because he has insulted them, threatened them, and tried to blackmail them rather than dealing with them through normal diplomatic means and showing them respect. He has violated his promises and no one trusts him. He can't change course because he has destroyed all other courses.
George Bush has done nothing to make us more secure at home; no money designated for Homeland Security has been used to secure our ports or other vital sites; it's being used instead to spy on peace activists and chase pot-smokers.
George Bush has completely politicized every aspect of these vital issues and made it impossible for anyone at home or abroad to work with him in good faith. He has acted in bad faith and labored to divide our country and the world rather than try to solve problems.
George Bush has made a mess, and he can't fix it because he refuses to acknowledge his mistakes. He has always been the wrong man for the job.
Those are the broad issues, but we'll have to watch both the debates and the spin closely to deal with the details. Don't be caught off-guard. Remember: You already know they will lie.
Meanwhile, it turns out that, in spite of the triumphal ravings of the right-wingers, Dan Rather's ratings are not down at all since the Killian memo flap. In fact, they've gone up. I'm grateful to Roger Ailes (the good one) for passing on that little bit of news.
Scorpio has an update on that woman who received a phone call from the Department of Homeland Security after buying a Cat Stevens CD.
Even as John Kerry struggles to establish national-security credentials nationally, an exclusive WW straw poll shows his campaign dominating one skeptical, warlike demographic: Klingons. [...] Bush scored an abysmal zero percent in the poll.
"A good war is based on honor, not deception," says K'tok (Earth name: Clyde Lewis), a 40-year-old Klingon from Lair Hill. "The first warrior, President Bush, deceived us all with this war." [...] "On the home world, if there had been a contested election between Gore and Bush, the honorable thing would be for Gore to kill Bush," explained Khraanik (Earth name: Jason Lewis), a 38-year-old from Southeast Portland. "Or the other way around. And then ascend to the head of the High Council."
It's too early for Kerry to chill the ceremonial bloodwine, but Portland Klingons are clearly warming to the cerebral Massachusetts Democrat.
"Kerry has shown his prowess," says 33-year-old Neqha (Earth name: Eric King) of Tigard. "He saved his fellow warrior under the gun, and has been commended and awarded medals."
Well, well, it looks like this time they're not waiting for the debates to start attacking the candidate's skin-color - Drudge's headline: KERRY ON ORANGE ALERT: SKIN TRANSITION ON EVE OF DEBATE. The right-wingers, having spent the last couple of weeks talking about Kerry's wind-surfing, are now unwilling to believe that all that sunshine could have given him a real tan, and they're already smirking about how it must be the spray-on variety. 04:38 BST
Tuesday, 28 September 2004
They were ready then, and they still are
Atrios has linked it already, and I linked the
Vanity Fair story already, but for those of you who didn't want to download the .pdfs, please do read Digby, who has pulled out some excerpts and discussed the content and said some important things. Oh, and here's one quote he highlighted that you should have handy for whenever anyone asks you that damned question:
Yet the Bush team knew full well that Gore could not have asked for a statewide recount, because there was no provision for it in Florida law. A losing candidate had 72 hours to request a manual recount on a county-by-county basis or wait until the election was certified to pursue a statewide recount. The requests had to be based on perceived errors, not just the candidate's wish to see recounts done. Certainly, Gore chose counties that seemed likely to yield Gore votes. But he chose them because that's where the problems were.
And this is from Digby:
If I had any political idealism left it died on the day that Antonin Scalia stopped judges from counting votes in Florida.
I admit it: For all my hard-won cynicism, it was a shock that went to my core. Like I wrote in the comments, I continue to be shocked, and I am still shocked by my capacity to be shocked. I know they will do anything, but I just don't want to believe it.
They will do anything. They will do it in November, just as they have been doing it for more than four years.
We have to be ready.
Elsewhere, Digby discusses the story that's been making me so inarticulate today, Novak's Is CIA at war with Bush?, which I was hearing about on the radio and just gasping at. In spite of the way the piece is titled, the real story is this: Paul R. Pillar, the CIA's national intelligence officer for the Near East and South Asia, sat down Tuesday night in a large West Coast city with a select group of private citizens. He was not talking off the cuff. Relying on a multi-paged, single-spaced memorandum, Pillar said he and his colleagues concluded early in the Bush administration that military intervention in Iraq would intensify anti-American hostility throughout Islam. This was not from a CIA retiree but an active senior official. (Pillar, no covert operative, is listed openly in the Federal Staff Directory.) For President Bush to publicly write off a CIA paper as just guessing is without precedent.
I'm feeling a bit inarticulate at the moment, so here's stuff from The Smirking Chimp you can read instead:
Ted Kennedy at George Washington University: President Bush's record on Iraq is clearly costing American lives and endangering America in the world. Our President won't change, or even admit how wrong he's been and still is. Despite the long line of mistakes and blunders and outright deception, there has been no accountability. (Full speech.)
Ed Naha: In the foreseeable future, I think all statements, events and appearances arising from this Administration should be exclusively covered by "The Medical Channel" and filed under schizophrenia. Depending on who you paid attention to this past week, Iraq is either under siege by terrorists or not, national elections will be held or not, more troops are needed to insure peace or not and America is safe or not. Bush and his pals were slipping on so many verbal banana peels that the entire week resembled a political Keystone Cops movie.
Carla Binion says Kerry: Don't let Bush get away with this one: The two most likely explanations for the Bush administration's failure to prioritize the search for bin Laden are: (1) The administration is astoundingly incompetent; or (2) The Bush team doesn't actually believe bin Laden is the person responsible for the 9/11 attacks. (Well, I can think of another one.)
Howard Dean on The myth of corporate accountability: But the truth is that there are very few "American" corporations of any size left. An even sadder truth is that many of these large multinationals no longer value employees as people, they see labor as nothing more than a commodity. And in the last ten years, they have seen small investors as a commodity as well. Dean has a prescription for changing the situation. 16:54 BST
Entertainment section
Britons may not be aware that Sacha Baron Cohen has been doing his thing on HBO and that now some Americans are being exposed to Ali G and Borat. I've never really liked the Borat stuff as much, but you know you're successful when you can get officials to contradict a comedy routine. In The New Yorker, The Borat Doctrine:
Roman Vassilenko, the press secretary for the Embassy of Kazakhstan, wants to clear up a few misconceptions about his country. Women are not kept in cages. The national sport is not shooting a dog and then having a party. You cannot earn a living being a Gypsy catcher. Wine is not made from fermented horse urine. It is not customary for a man to grab another man's khrum. "Khrum" is not the word for testicles. [...] So what is the national sport of Kazakhstan? "The most known ones are wrestling and all kinds of sports that try people in how they master horses," Vassilenko said. "Kazakhs were traditional nomads, so there are various sports like horse races. Another horseback sport is called something like Catch a-what is name?-Catch a Bride. And that is that a group of young guys race to get a bride, and she races away from them and they have to catch her while she fends them off with a whip." This sport does not result in actual matrimony-just a kiss.
You know, that game may not necessarily be an improvement. 15:35 BST
If it all comes down to Florida again, you can be sure that Jeb Bush will find a way to ensure that no fair vote interferes with his family's plans. The media-in a state of collective pre-frontal lobotomy - continue to treat Bush as if he were any other governor of any other state, just as they did Katherine Harris, but you'd have to be stupid to think that elections are something that Jeb or George (or Karl) are willing to leave to the voters.
Eric's article is rich with links, too. (And in Friday's post, a letter from Charles Pierce says what needs to be said for Dan Rather.)
Here it comes. Just in time for the looming election. Republicans are attempting to pass significant additions to the Patriot Act via hurried proceedings in the Senate, including provisions from last year's Patriot Act II. The chances are good they will succeed.
Is that the one that lets them take away your citizenship? Jeralyn advises:
Let's not let Congress pass another law without adequate time for relection and open debate. Act in haste, repent at leisure.
In the three years since 9/11, the U.S. government has instituted a series of security measures at our borders, all designed to keep terrorists out. One of those measures was to tighten up the rules for foreign visas. Certainly this has hurt the tourism industry in the U.S., but the damage done to academic research is more profound and longer-lasting.
According to a survey by the Association of American Universities, many universities reported a drop of more than 10 percent in foreign student applications from last year. During the 2003 academic year, student visas were down 9 percent. Foreign applications to graduate schools were down 32 percent, according to another study by the Council of Graduate Schools.
There is an increasing trend for academic conferences, meetings and seminars to move outside of the United States simply to avoid visa hassles.
This affects all of high-tech, but ironically it particularly affects the very technologies that are critical in our fight against terrorism.
This is only one aspect of the ways in which the policies of this administration have hindered us in terms of keeping up with the sciences on which we depend. With both the academic work and the jobs themselves being exported, we are heading into an America where an impoverished and angry population will be thoroughly policed - by foreigners. 20:14 BST
Jessie Cunningham, mother of the late Aaron Hawkins, says Uppity Negro will continue: "We are working out the details, but rest assured it will be here." She adds, "If you really want to honor [Aaron] this year, please register and vote on November 2, 2004."
I'm glad they're going to try to continue the site, and definitely do register to vote if you haven't already. If you're registered yourself, find someone who isn't and get them to do it, too. 19:24 BST
President Lindbergh in 2004 is Frank Rich's review of Philip Roth's new book, The Plot Against America. Roth has said that the book was planned before the invasion, in the immediate aftermath of 9/11, and is not intended to reflect current reality. Rich thinks it's a bit closer than that, and illuminates the plausibility of something worse.
12th Harmonic has compiled a list of downloads of some of the political music that's available on the web. They also have a weblog, where, among other things, they point to an article by comedian Rory Bremner in The New Statesman on The real Tony Blair that isn't funny at all: True, we were told at the outset that having won as new Labour, he would govern as new Labour; but how have we got to the situation where the election of a socialist government in Spain and the (slim?) possibility of a Democratic victory in America can cause our own Prime Minister such embarrassment? After all, a Labour prime minister traditionally supports the Democratic candidate: but then, a Labour prime minister traditionally supports the Labour Party.
Dwight Meredith disagrees with Matt Yglesias about the seriousness of an issue raised in a George Will column about abuse of the power of eminent domain by local governments to illegally condemn private property. (Dwight also puts arguments that it was inappropriate for Joe Lockhart of John Kerry's campaign to point out that the Bush administration was treating Allawi like a puppet under his microscope.)
Two items at Talk Left - Snitch System Undermines Justice and Jury Trials Becoming a Thing of the Past - with two more reasons why I think you shouldn't be allowed to plead at all - everyone should have to go to trial. They can choose to tell the truth or not, but the whole idea of being punished extra for pleading not guilty, or being rewarded with reduced sentences for falsely testifying against someone else, really warps the whole system.
The bounty for asking George Bush one simple question in a public forum has risen to $6,000 if it's televised and answered.
Xan at Corrente explains how the vast right-wing conspiracy is working to politicize the National Park Service.
Game lets players command Kerry boat: A video game company hopes to cash in on the publicity surrounding Senator John Kerry's Vietnam service by sending players on a simulation of the Swift Boat mission that won the Democratic presidential candidate the Silver Star. 04:51 BST
1. This is the most personally embarrassing reason, but it has to be said: in the aftermath of 9/11 I lost my head a bit and wanted to take some decisive action.
I watched a lot of people I respect make this same mistake, to my horror. A few of them have acknowledged their error, but I think Belle's examination of her reasons, and what she has since learned, is about the best I have seen.
A day later, I found Dominique Moisi's I was wrong to support the Iraq war in the IHT, but I thought Belle's was better. And, of course, it generated a lot of comments from others about their own reasons for how they felt about the invasion. 23:50 BST
From the notebook
David Broder on The Media, Losing Their Way: We don't yet know who will win the 2004 election, but we know who has lost it. The American news media have been clobbered. I think he's right in the main, here, although I think it has to be said that Dan Rather still showed more skepticism than most of his colleagues (including Broder) have shown in recent years. I think Rather made an honest mistake, having been led to a mistaken faith in the validity of the Killian memos by the fact that it was consistent with the facts and that the White House itself seemed to think they were real. On the Iraq sale and the SwiftVet Liars, no one has any excuses.
At Eccentricity: Because Cat Stevens is back in the news, one of my colleagues at work was reminded that she had not yet replaced one of her old Cat Stevens record albums (which she'd had since she was 10 years old) with the CD version. She went to Hastings here in town last night about 7 p.m. and bought a copy on her credit card. At 9:15 last night, she received a phone call from the "Regional Homeland Security Office" asking why she bought that CD.
Interesting stuff from Ruy Teixeira on the latest polls, with more on why Gallup is wrong and the amusing news that Democracy Corps and the Fox News poll both have Bush & Kerry in a statistical tie.
At Bad Attitudes, Kerry is back in the lead in a poll for The Economist, and things are not better without Saddam. Meanwhile, Jerome points to a rant by Hal Crowther that says: This is a referendum on George W. Bush, arguably the worst thing that has happened to the United States of America since the invention of the cathode ray tube. One problem with this referendum is that the case against George Bush is much too strong.
Shari at An Old soul... looks at a movement to fully fund No Child's Behind Left and says: I support more funding for public education. But my dilemma, and believe you me this really makes me angry, is that I can't support full funding for a law that is rigged to undermine public education.
They finally found a way to get me to want a copy of their crummy newspaper. Painful as it is for me to say this, you need to run out and buy a copy of the Mail right now, and hope that they have some left. It's got a free promo disk for Smile that is absolutely brilliant. Okay, I still don't want the so-called newspaper, but I'm really glad I have this disk. If you live in Britain, go get it. 15:05 BST
Things I learned this morning
Chris Bowers at MyDD says the Kerry campaign should stop using the GOP term "War on Terror". I think he's right.
Mousewords: I never thought I'd say this....
....but kudos to Montel Williams for stepping out and admitting that he has to use marijuana to control his pain from MS and wants to see it legalized for medical use.
A report to The General on the death of a dirty old man, Bill Ballance.
Norbizness has just a niggling detail about Bush's statement that, "If we stop fighting the terrorists in Iraq, they would be free to plot and plan attacks elsewhere, in America and other free nations."
Taxwisdom with some words on the virtues of the progressive income tax.
Mr. Kerry is a meticulous, deliberative decision maker, always demanding more information, calling around for advice, reading another document - acting, in short, as if he were still the Massachusetts prosecutor boning up for a case. [...] In interviews, associates repeatedly described Mr. Kerry as uncommonly bright, informed and curious.
But the downside to his deliberative executive style, they said, is a campaign that has often moved slowly against a swift opponent, and a candidate who has struggled to synthesize the information he sweeps up into a clear, concise case against Mr. Bush.
Blah blah blah. Kerry actually thinks about stuff and finds out what it's about before shooting his mouth off and taking action. That's the downside. Uh huh. Because:
Unlike Mr. Bush, who was a governor and a business executive before he ran for president, Mr. Kerry - who has spent the past 20 years as a legislator, with a staff of perhaps 60 - has little experience in managing any kind of large operation. Several Democrats suggested that this presidential campaign was in many ways a learning experience for him.
Wow, he was a governor! Oh, wait, weren't we told that Texas being such a mess wasn't Bush's fault (nothing ever is) because the Governor of Texas has no real power?
But he was a business executive! He made lots of decisions! Oh, wait, didn't all those decisions end up as business failures?
Somehow I can't escape the feeling that Kerry has more hands-on experience of management with his staff of 60 people than Bush ever got through his entire career.
And, of course, there's this other problem that Nagourney and Wilgoren keep forgetting: The job of President of the United States is the job of working for some three hundred million people, and George Bush never seems to have worked for anyone else in his life. He's inexperienced. He's still inexperienced, after nearly four years during which he has never shown any sign of realizing that I'm his boss.
Well, I am his boss, and I don't want my employees making lots of stupid decisions and screwing up the job. I don't want employees who can neither ask appropriate questions nor answer them. I want people who think before they act, and then I want them to do what I hired them to do. This guy doesn't, and it's time to fire his ass. 11:54 BST
But then, pretty much the entire Republican line about any aspect of policy is a lie. However, you already know what I think about this, so read Joe Gandelman of The Moderate Voice, to see what a swing-voter who is still willing to cut the RNC some slack has to say about it.
Steve Gilliard, whose spell-checker has clearly passed away, looks at this mailing as a sign that team Bush is worried about the base and is really getting desperate. He wonders what their internals must look like. (There are a couple of interesting comments to his post, too.)
However, since the Democrats are in the mood for apologies, here are a few that should come first:
* Terry McAuliffe should apologize for calling President Bush "AWOL" and repeatedly asserting that Bush dishonored the country. McAuliffe has never presented a shred of evidence for those charges, and unless he does, he should apologize.
Gee, I thought the fact that real documents released by the White House verify that Bush failed to show up to fulfill his duty was enough evidence for those charges. Do keep up at the back.
* Madeline Albright and Teresa Heinz Kerry should apologize for insinuating or outright stating that Bush already has Osama bin Laden and are holding him secretly until just before the election.
Nah, every time someone accuses Bush of something that seems far-fetched, it turns out to be true. There's no reason to apologize for this one unless we get to November 3rd and they still haven't produced Osama.
* Howard Dean should apologize for insinuating that George Bush got tipped off to the 9/11 attacks ahead of time by the Saudi royal family and allowed it to happen anyway.
Howard Dean never said or insinuated that George Bush got tipped off to the 9/11 attacks ahead of time by the Saudi royal family and allowed it to happen anyway. What he said was that George Bush should stop stonewalling investigation of 9/11 because it makes people wonder what he's hiding and inspires stories like the one about how he got tipped off by the Saudis and let it happen anyway. (Of course, Bush was actually tipped off by the Presidential Daily Briefing and let it happen anyway.)
* Pat Leahy and a raft of other Democrats should apologize for calling Dick Cheney a "war profiteer" because of his sealed, blind trust that contains his deferred compensation from Halliburton. That money exists regardless of Halliburton's work, and the pay is fixed; any profits Halliburton made since the deferral have no impact on its value, and everyone knows it. Cheney lost a lot of money when he cashed out his options in his former company. It's a baseless and cowardly smear.
Prove it. There's a whole lot of profiteering going on, Cheney still gets money from Halliburton, and since he has ignored every other law there is no reason to think he won't ignore laws that restrict his access to more money from them. Cheney was dealing with Iraq and Iran when it was illegal, after all - and then lied about it later. Besides, what kind of a "blind trust" is it that he already knows everything about?
* The DNC, including its chairman McAuliffe, should apologize for suggesting in the same breath that the Killian memos were authentic when they had no idea if they were, and then stating that Karl Rove planted them if they were fakes.
Karl Rove's history is to do things exactly like this, and it certainly makes more sense than the RNC's suggestion that the Kerry campaign forged the memos.
These people are officials in the Democratic Party, not some special-interest wackos or 527 lunatics. If they want to hear apologies over the Bible-ban smear, they have some catching up to do first.
The RNC has been lying about Kerry and distorting his record from the top - we're talking about Bush and Cheney themselves, not just "special-interest wackos and 527 lunatics." And the RNC's 527 lunatics are coordinated with the RNC leadership. Even if the items above exposed any unfair tactics on the part of the Democrats, they still wouldn't rank with the Swift Boat Liars (coordinated by Team Bush), the phony claims that Kerry and other Democrats are uninterested in fighting terrorism, the lie that Kerry tried to weaken our military, and pretty much everything else Bush and Cheney have said. Especially their suggestion that Osama wants Kerry to win. It's pretty obvious that the terrorists reap far more rewards from the Bush presidency than they could with anyone else in the White House.
Get this straight: The claim that liberals want to ban the Bible isn't mere paranoia or over-the-top speculation, it's an outright lie. Compared to this sort of thing, the Democrats have nothing to apologize for. 21:00 BST
More things to check out
Howard Dean,
Hidden Agenda: A National Draft in the Future?A key issue for young Americans and their families to consider as they prepare to cast their votes in the upcoming presidential election is the real likelihood of a military draft being reinstated if President Bush is re-elected. President Bush should tell us now whether he supports a military draft. Dean presents the evidence.
NYT: '60 Minutes' Delays Report Questioning Reasons for Iraq War: CBS News said yesterday that it had postponed a "60 Minutes" segment that questioned Bush administration rationales for going to war in Iraq. ... The Iraq segment had been ready for broadcast on Sept. 8, CBS said, but was bumped at the last minute for the segment on Mr. Bush's National Guard service. The Guard segment was considered a highly competitive report, one that other journalists were pursuing. CBS said last night that the report on the war would not run before Nov. 2. "We now believe it would be inappropriate to air the report so close to the presidential election," the spokeswoman, Kelli Edwards, said in a statement. So now one of the most significant issues of the election is off-limits until after the election, eh? (BTW, check this. Yes, I know it's a common problem with NYT stories, but still.... [But CBS is no more full of bull than any other network, don't forget.])
The meme of the last day or two has been Two-faced Bush. Aside from Atrios, and Atrios, and Atrios, and Atrios, there is also LiberalOasis, and it looks to me like E.J. Dionne is in the same territory: A very intelligent political reporter I know said the other night that Republicans simply run better campaigns than Democrats. If I were given a free pass to stretch the truth to the breaking point, I could run a pretty good campaign, too. (I'm not sure where that graphic comes from; I stole mine from - well, you know.)
I have learned from Kevin Drum that Publius has gone all shrill: I'll tell you what undermines our troops - getting troops killed undermines troops, Mr. Hatch - not criticizing the failed policies that got them killed in the first place. Bumbling an occupation and having no plan undermines troops.
A while back I mentioned a blog by a soldier in Iraq, My War, which I recommended. When I went back there later to see what was up there, it just said "Over and out." I meant to post about that but it somehow became one of those many things that gets lost whenever I have a browser crash or need to shut down for some other reason. He's back, now, after apparently having come to some sort of agreement with his chain of command that involves not posting in the same way. That's a loss, but I hope he is keeping a record somewhere (maybe even - dare I say it? - on paper) of the kind of thing he was posting before, for future publication. He has posted a number of articles culled from elsewhere about his situation, and his latest is a message he received from Jello Biafra.
Griff Witte in The Washington Post on the vanishing middle-class job: "We don't know what the next big thing will be. When the manufacturing jobs were going away, we could tell people to look for tech jobs. But now the tech jobs are moving away, too," said Lori G. Kletzer, an economics professor at the University of California at Santa Cruz. "What's the comparative advantage that America retains? We don't have the answer to that. It gives us a very insecure feeling."
I can't get to Black Box Voting at the moment, because a lot of other people obviously had the same idea I did and it's reporting bandwidth exceeded. What I wanted to look for was something I heard Bev talking about on the radio, the fact that the guys who were the original programmers for Diebold got sent to the slammer for some sort of fraud and stock manipulation or something. Perhaps you can check that out later and tell me what you found.
Dana Milbank writes about the vicious rhetoric coming from the Republicans, Tying Kerry to Terror Tests Rhetorical Limits: "Rhetoric this sharp and ugly is not by any means brand-new," said Jeff Shesol, a speechwriter for President Bill Clinton and author of a book about Lyndon B. Johnson and Robert F. Kennedy. "What we're seeing now isn't just offhand comments by outliers but clearly a decision by the Republican hierarchy to put this charge out there consistently." Given that it's so obvious that Bush is the best present the terrorists ever had, I guess they had to try to turn it back on Kerry.
Taegan Goddard's Political Wire has posted .pdf files of a must-read article from the October Vanity Fair on Bush v. Gore that includes "never-before-reported details about what happened inside the Supreme Court." Via Unfogged.
Via Atrios, Blast Off! has transcribed the remarkable phone-in to C-SPAN that you really must read. Here's the teaser:
CALLER (in a very airy voice): Good morning. I'm going to vote for President Bush because, after all, you know, God made us there, you know, in His image, free from any black color and all [Host looks up, surprised]. The only church that Kerry can go to is where they say the Black Mass, and that is in the Merriam-Webster Pocket Book dictionary, where it says that that is the devil worshippers. [Host looks uncomfortably off-camera, at producer?] So, definitely, I would never vote for, you know, Senator Kerry.
UK workers are apathetic and lacking in skills according to a bunch of highly-skilled and very driven management bods. The survey of board-level executives, paid for by HP, reveals "deep seated concern about the competency and motivation of the modern UK workforce". And we thought it was just journalists...
The researchers spoke to 200 executives at companies with more than 500 staff and found the biggest concerns were skills shortages and employee apathy.
Of course, everyone already knows the answer to this problem: Get new management. Everybody knows.
Before I left I marked Why Should I? by Digby - a reminder of why it's supposed to bother us when presidents lie. You might also want to read his little history lesson on Roger Stone. (And fat chance of Bush ever standing up and being as much of a mensch as Dan Rather is.)
John Kerry was rude enough to share that truth -- the truth understood by everyone in the world, with the possible exception of George W. Bush and a few warbloggers -- with the voters.
Of course, Glenn also thinks that serious talk about winning in Iraq is the same as chanelling Howard Dean.
(Of course, even channelling Howard Dean isn't channelling Howard Dean.) I'm sure Glen Reynolds isn't really stupid, but, jeez, how can he be so stupid?
I just flew in from Dublin, and boy are my arms tired
It's from all that schlepping luggage around. It's so nice to be able to walk around without carrying something. But that's all I'm gonna say about the hardships of travel. I'm just glad to be home. And just like last year, the debate itself - at University College, Dublin - was great fun.
I'm still decompressing, but I did drop by Eschaton, where Atrios has illuminating things up, as always, but I particularly like this post which quotes Gene Lyons' Telling Tales about the performance of the media over the last several years. What's the difference between Dan Rather and most of his remarkably smug colleagues who are now acting like they never got anything wrong? Well, there are two big ones: The first is that some of them very deliberately purveyed falsehoods, doctoring tapes and inventing tales to make it look like innocent actors had done dishonest things. The other difference, obviously, is that Dan Rather, who was at least trying to get it right, is the only one among them who has apologized for getting it wrong.
And I checked out Tapped, where Nick Confessore directs our attention to John F. Harris' article in The Washington Post acknowledging that Despite Bush Flip-Flops, Kerry Gets Label. Well, four years ago the man who lied his way into the White House so he could lie us into war portrayed one of the most honest men in Washington as a liar, and now he's flip-flopping around like a fish on deck while claiming Kerry - whose positions have been pretty consistent - is the one who keeps swinging around on issues. SOP for the SOB.
Also, Matt Yglesias on The CEO President: Apparently, the president not only doesn't read the newspapers, he also doesn't get briefed by his top military commanders. What else to make of this?
Matthew Yglesias in The American Prospect on Dirty Tactics: George W. Bush is making Iraq more dangerous for our troops because doing otherwise might hurt his campaign.
The Ad That Beats Bush: The ad starts with Bush and his September 14, 2001, bullhorn. This time, though, it's a Kerry commercial that reminds swing-state Americans of Bush's blood vow-precisely three years ago-that "the people who knocked down these buildings" would "hear all of us soon." The cowboy soundbites that we would "smoke 'em out" track across the screen with any network's footage of the "wanted dead or alive" culprits: Osama bin Laden, Ayman al-Zawahiri, and Mullah Omar. (via)
A strident minority: anti-Bush US troops in Iraq: Inside dusty, barricaded camps around Iraq, groups of American troops in between missions are gathering around screens to view an unlikely choice from the US box office: "Fahrenheit 9-11," Michael Moore's controversial documentary attacking the commander-in-chief.
Campaign 2004's Jedi Mind Tricks by Sam Parry: In Campaign 2004, it's as if George W. Bush's campaign has mastered the same trick, applying it to much of the national news media and to many voters: "John Kerry is not the candidate you're looking for."
Joe Conason remembers another thing Bush has never explained, and provides the question that really should be asked in the debates: The President has never explained why he allowed Mr. bin Laden to escape from Afghanistan. Oh, please, please, someone ask him why.
Chris Bowers says Kerry is not showing up as strongly in the polls as Gore did among black Americans. While all of these polls have extremely small samples of African-American voters, none of them show Kerry anywhere near Gore's 90% national level of support.
In earlier conversations with USA TODAY, Burkett had identified the source of the documents as George Conn, a former Texas National Guard colleague who works for the U.S. Army in Europe. Burkett now says he made up the story about Conn's involvement to divert attention from himself and the woman he now says provided him with the documents. He told USA TODAY that he also lied to CBS.
Burkett now maintains that the source of the papers was Lucy Ramirez, who he says phoned him from Houston in March to offer the documents. USA TODAY has been unable to locate Ramirez.
When Burkett gave copies of the documents to USA TODAY, it was on the understanding that his identity would not be disclosed. USA TODAY honored that agreement until Burkett waived his confidentiality Monday.
"I didn't forge anything," Burkett said. "I didn't fake any documents. The only thing I've done here is to transfer documents from people I thought were real to people I thought were real. And that has been the limitation of my role. I may have been a patsy."
Nice one from E.J. Dionne in today's Washington Post, asking, What Is Bush Hiding?
But what's good for Dan Rather, who is not running for president, ought to be good for George Bush, who is. "There are a lot of questions and they need to be answered." Surely that presidential sentiment applies as much to Bush's Guard service as to Rather's journalistic methods. [...] Oh, I can hear the groaning: "But why are we still talking about Vietnam?" A fair question that has several compelling answers.
First, except for John McCain, Republicans were conspicuously happy to have a front group spread untruths about John Kerry's Vietnam service in August and watch as the misleading claims were amplified by the supposedly liberal media. The Vietnam era was relevant as long as it could be used to raise character questions about Kerry. But as soon as the questioning turned to Bush's character, we were supposed to call the whole thing off. Why? Because the media were supposed to question Kerry's character but not Bush's.
And, please, none of this nonsense about how Kerry "opened the door" to the assault on his Vietnam years by highlighting his service at the Democratic National Convention. Nothing any candidate does should ever be seen as "opening the door" to lies about his past. Besides, Vietnam veterans with Republican ties were going after Kerry's war record long before the Democratic convention.
But, most important, there is only one reason the story about Bush's choices during the Vietnam years persists. It's because the president won't give detailed answers to the direct questions posed by the Times story and other responsible media organizations, including the Boston Globe. Their questions never depended on the discredited CBS documents. [...] Dan Rather has answered his critics. Now it is Bush's turn.
CBS arranged for a confidential source to talk with Joe Lockhart, a top aide to John Kerry, after the source provided the network with the now-disputed documents about President Bush's service in the Texas National Guard. [...] Burkett told USA TODAY that he had agreed to turn over the documents to CBS if the network would arrange a conversation with the Kerry campaign.
I don't know about you, but this strikes me as very odd. It sounds like meeting with someone from the Kerry campaign was a condition of handing over the memos. If Burkett's goal was simply to air the information, surely he realized the real advantage was to have it aired on 60 Minutes, where lots of people would hear it, rather than merely with the Kerry campaign, which might not use it as effectively. So why insist on using the memo as currency to arrange a meeting with a campaign he could have contacted independently? (Here's a little more on the same story from Yahoo, and at the WAPO Michael Dobbs says Questions Surround Man Who Provided Documents .) 19:34 BST
Blogger's notepad
Michael Bérubé is doing a series of posts on Thomas Franks' work, starting here (and then you might as well just read upward).
Greg Palast explains what the payoff was for the long silence of Ben Barnes on Bush's frog-jump into the Texas Air National Guard.
Kevin Hayden has put together a list of progressive blogs ordered by state and coded by the political color of the states - and since it's by state, I'm not on it, dammit. Kevin, please, I still regard myself as an American with an American blog, it just happens to be typed in England. I'm from the Maryland side of the Beltway, y'know?
Travis spells out the tin-foil hat analysis of Gallup polling. Maybe it's not so crazy, since we already know that the Republicans are doing their best to steal the election. (And: Ooops!)
Democrats for America's Future has a short list of a few of George Bush's (many) flip-flops that would make a good little flier to print out and distribute to your neighbors and at your mom's church. (You could also send it to columnists at your local paper and ask them why the media doesn't make more of this.) They have a similarly useful piece on health care.
Looking better. At MyDD, Chris looks at the latest Zogby Battleground numbers and sees some good signs. Arkansas is so close as to make no difference (with an infinitesimal .1% edge to Kerry), Florida is edging Kerry by half a point, and Oregon has moved Kerry into double digits. MyDD now gives Kerry 282 electoral votes and 256 to Bush.
And, just to amuse yourself, check out what Jerome calls "a trend" in South Carolina:
July 12 -- 53% Bush to 36% Kerry
Aug. 29 -- 52% Bush to 43% Kerry
Sept. 17 -- 50% Bush to 44% Kerry
(And I am trying to figure out why when I use [pre] it shrinks the characters, although it doesn't on other pages I've seen using it.)
Kos notes that although Kerry's numbers in a Republican stronghold in Ohio aren't great, Bush's numbers there are significantly worse than they were in 2000. And in Texas, Martin Frost still has a good chance to beat Pete Sessions, which would be a nice one in the eye for DeLay for that redistricting that was supposed to get rid of Frost.
The Wall Street Journal has picked up on Ruy Teixeira's (and Steve Soto's) discussion of poll weighting, and Ruy Teixeira has picked up on that article. (Now, this is a case where "old media" is wisely picking up on real expertise in the blogosphere, unlike some others I could mention.)
02:45 BST
News & views
CBS has now said they no longer have confidence in the Killian memos, which they have now acknowledged were provided by Bill Burkett. In the statement, CBS said: "Burkett originally said he obtained the documents from another former Guardsman. Now he says he got them from a different source whose connection to the documents and identity CBS News has been unable to verify to this point." Was it Karl Rove? We still don't know. But South Knox Bubba knows what it's all supposed to mean.
Andrea at Shameless Agitator has posted some passages from Glenn Smith's The Politics of Deceit: Bush's real rhetorical goal is to present himself as the very image of freedom. Oppose Bush and you oppose freedom, albeit a warm and fuzzy definition of freedom.
Pandagon: It is not enough to say that a war was designed to prevent attacks - it helps if you can show that it prevented attacks. That's the Bush plan for terrorism: designing a plan with a series of objectives, watching the plan summarily fail to meet the objectives, and then saying that anyone who opposes the plan opposes the objectives. It's a continual excuse for failure, and nobody should be afraid any more to point out that Bush's godawful plans will meet none of his supposed objectives. And, I am pleased to say, Kerry is not afraid to say it, or to point out that this isn't just "20/20 hindsight" - and that, still, George W. Bush doesn't even have hindsight.
This story cheered me up immensely: This morning I had the most bizarre subway ride. I board the Number 3 train at Grand Army Plaza after 9 a.m. Find a seat, then settle into reading Henry James for class. I hear a woman's voice gradually rising in volume. She is preaching the "Lord's" word to the train car's sleepy riders. Read this and feel the spirit.
I can't seem to get this permalink to work, but that may only be a local phenomenon - but hey, look, Brick found a mnemonic for the taxonomic hierarchy.
Cheers to Nigel Richardson (of amBLOnGus), who knows I am too inept at Googling to have found it for myself:
Since our apartment manager is Alex Jones' bodyguard, I can point you to his website: [link]
He has a public access cable TV show here in Austin and his radio show is on a few hundred national stations. He's a useful gatherer of uncomfortable information from the mainstream media, but it's what he assembles from it that the trouble begins. He sees conspiracies everywhere and is convinced the New World Order is behind everything, so beware. He did prove that all that weird Bohemia Grove shit was real, however, so he can't be completely ignored.
Well, that's perfect for a Paranoia File item, then, nicely borderline, in an almost Private Eye sort of way. 20:39 BST
Things to read
Whoa, I was just following some more links from Skippy and I found the absolutely most perfect contribution to The Paranoia Files: 9/11 a White House Plot? This is great! It's the transcript of an interview from The Alex Jones Show (which I've never heard of) with Stanley Hilton, Bob Dole's former Chief of Staff, who is now suing the Bush administration for 9/11. He says the administration had rehearsals for 9/11 and that the people who should have been at ready to protect us on the day were told that it was a drill. He also says a lot of other stuff and my goodness it would make a great movie.
David at The Art of Peace says, (referring to this article): I've been wondering about this! Old fashioned reporters are starting to fact check bloggers. ... The Chicago tribune realizes how important this new medium is - bloggers are important enough to scrutinize carefully.
I'm tempted to start referring to it as "File 770", for reasons Eric Boehlert makes clear: What is also already known is that in the spring of 1972, with 770 days left of required duty, Bush unilaterally decided that he was done fulfilling his military obligation.
Atrios: Kerry's plan for Iraq is simple - put competent people in charge. I'm not optimistic about that, either, but it's better than having incompetent ones in charge. (Also, I agree that this ad would look great on TV.)
Jeralyn here and here on CAPPS, the government's data-mining program, which they were trying to expand but fortunately the expansion has been killed. The existing measures, however, are bad enough, and Congress is now looking into some sort of restraint on it. Unsurprisingly, this seems to be thanks to Senators Patrick Leahy (D-VT) and Russ Feingold (D-WI). (Jeralyn also calls our attention to this post from TBogg comparing the two candidates as shown to us in pictures.) 16:54 BST
And Skippy calls my attention to this item on memo-watch by Mary at The Left Coaster: Anatomy of a Rove Dirty Trick, which explains why it seems so obvious to some of us that Rove set Rather up. Look, this is like Lucy with the football - when it happens over and over and over again, you really gotta stop thinking it's "conspiracy theory" to suspect Karl Rove of dirty tricks.
Through the Looking Glass: Let's be plain. Under Saddam, the country was ruled by a bloodthirsty tyrant who tortured his opponents, and allowed dozens of his henchmen to rape and murder at will. But...
Washington Post ombudsman Michael Getler: The Battlefields of War and Politics: The daily news reporting from Iraq remains solid. But will the big news organizations somehow be able to capture and present to citizens the larger questions that this war raises? He's not optimistic, and I don't blame him.
A major problem, said leaders of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, was incompetence by the administration in reconstructing the country's shattered infrastructure. That's from the AP story at The Boston Globe, Senators ask for Bush rethink of Iraq policies as elections loom. Two of them are running Bush's state campaigns: McCain said Bush was not being ''as straight as we would want him to be'' about the situation. The Reuters version of the story is Republicans Criticize Bush 'Mistakes' on Iraq.
Earlier, I alluded to a comment I saw (don't remember anymore where it was) that there was some extraordinary difficulty involved in typing a memo on a Selectric II without making visible errors. As a fairly sloppy typist who has actually produced quite a number of errorless pages on a Selectric II, I had a good laugh at this.
I did not marshall this as proof that the Killian memos were not forgeries; I merely wanted to point out that people who never used these typewriters have some fairly fantastic ideas about just how superior MS Word is to the Selectric II.
Is word-processing superior? Well, yes, especially for someone like me who absolutely hates having to slow down to 60 wpm in order to avoid errors. I fell in love with word-processing instantly, and the very first time I used a PC I started saving up for one of my own. I'm very glad not to have to write articles and books on a typewriter anymore, even one as nice as a Selectric II.
But trust me, if even I could produce a clean page on a Selectric II, so could Killian. The fact that the memo wasn't a smear of errors isn't evidence of forgery. (That doesn't mean the memos aren't forged, it just means this isn't the evidence for it.)
I would think someone who has been in science fiction fandom for years would be aware that arguments like this are interesting to people who have typed fanzines on real typewriters in their own right. Yes, that's right, we like talking about typewriting! This goes way beyond the political questions involved. And yes, I am talking to you, Joel. 00:54 BST
Sunday, 19 September 2004
While I was out
Maureen Dowd wrote a pretty good article about Bush's invasion, and about the unprecedented contempt this administration shows for the lives of our kids in the service - and their mothers. Astonishingly, however, she still repeats the meme that Kerry's position on the war is "tortuous".
Get this: Bush Says Questions About Guard Memos Used by CBS 'Need to Be Answered'. Not questions about the White House burning a CIA agent, not questions about Bush lying us into war and getting thousands of people killed, not questions about how a lying drunk who still refuses to take responsibility for his own actions ever got into the White House in an election he lost, but by God a bit of sloppiness on the part of one high-profile newsman whose sloppiness didn't automatically turn into smears against a Democrat (and, in fact, whose sloppiness nevertheless was part of a story that was, in the main, true), now that needs investigation! Is this a knee-slapper or what? 22:50 BST
Saturday, 18 September 2004
Checklist
I'm gonna be busy for a while, so here's a few things I wish I could spend some time with:
Unqualified Offerings on Col. Klink Envy and various items on the influence of neoconservatives.
Steve Clemons saw Kinsey: a new movie by Director Bill Condon, scheduled to be released November 12th. This film is powerful, political, and needs to be out in October.
After seven AIDS activists disrupted a Pennsylvania campaign appearance by President Bush, "Secret Service agents ... supervised the arrests and detention of the activists and blocked the news media from access to the hecklers. ... Journalists were told that if they sought to approach the demonstrators, they would not be allowed to return to the event site - even though their colleagues were free to come and go. ... One journalist who was blocked from returning to the speech [was told by an agent] that this was punishment for approaching the demonstrators."
(I think Atrios linked this one earlier, and I referred to it, but I was a bit preoccupied at the time. Didn't want you to forget it, though.)
The Left Coaster has confirmed that Gallup is using a polling sample of 40% Republicans, 28% Independents, and only 33% Dems. That doesn't look like the voting population and is unlikely to reflect the voters in this race unless the GOP can really discourage Democrats from voting. That part is up to you. (One thing you can do immediately is write to the media to complain about their coverage of Gallup's polls and their failure to point out that it is an outlier that uses a skewed sample.)
Neil Colton has some good pictures up for Autumn 2004, go have a look.
Elton Beard: Mr. Boot is right about one thing - when he notes that democracies "are less prone to armed conflict". For example, if the United States of America were a democracy then it would probably not currently be engaged in crimes against humanity in Iraq.
Anti-Abortion Activists Broaden Efforts: A little-noticed provision cleared the House of Representatives last week that would prohibit local, state or federal authorities from requiring any institution or health care professional to provide abortions, pay for them, or make abortion-related referrals, even in cases of rape or medical emergency. Via No More Mister Nice Blog, via Skimble.
Fred Clark looks at a little bit of spin that seems to be rather common in the news media: So here then is Sanger's proposition: 1. George W. Bush has created a colossal, deadly, terrorist-breeding mess and a no-win situation by neglecting to have a plan for post-invasion Iraq and botching nearly every decision in the last 18 months. 2. John Kerry has not yet presented a detailed, step-by-step plan for quickly and easily cleaning up Bush's mess. 3. These two things are equivalent. Fred also supplies a warning from the Bible and flunks Bush at the job interview.
E.J. Dionne: It may sound contrived, but my affection for conservatives and conservatism has a lot to do with why I'm so frustrated over the political choices these friends of mine are making. It's a shame they're not going to listen.
I just want to say that anyone who thinks you have to be an ace typist to get a perfect page with a Selectric II is an idiot. Even if you make mistakes, those cool little lift-off tabs worked beautifully to remove the carbon from any typos so that you could retype without all the mess from White Out/Liquid Paper. If it was a Correcting Selectric, you didn't even have to use a correction tab because there was correcting tape in the machine that you used by just hitting the correction key. Look, you shouldn't even be "analyzing" this stuff if you're so unfamiliar with these machines. [Update]
Presidential elections are poll-driven. The candidate ahead in the surveys usually gets better coverage, and the results energize supporters. The one behind often comes across as doing little right, and campaigns and constituencies lose confidence.
But what if the polls are wrong, and we aren't surveying the real likely electorate?
This might be more than an academic issue. A number of polls this presidential race show a gap in the preferences of registered voters vs. likely voters. In these models, the president usually does better with likely voters, the figure most news organizations emphasize. To get to likely voters, all polling organizations use what is called a "screen," asking questions to determine who is likely to actually turn out on election day.
These screens differ greatly, as there is no consensus among experts on what works best. "This is an art, not a science," says Peter Hart, the prominent Democratic polltaker who has helped conduct The Wall Street Journal/NBC News survey for 15 years.
This controversy will be fueled by today's just-released Gallup poll that shows George Bush with a 13-point lead over John Kerry. That is at variance with other surveys this week, which suggest a tight race with a much smaller Bush tilt. But the likely voters margin also is considerably larger than the eight-point advantage in Gallup's registered voters in this survey. The likely voters match-up invariably gets more attention. [...] But there is reason to suspect those criteria are outdated, especially in an election where both sides say the intensity level is much higher than four years ago and get-out-the-vote organizations are considerably better than ever -- few people on Nov. 2 will be in the dark on where the voting polls are.
"A formula that made sense years ago may not recognize all the changes in society," notes Mr. Hart. "It gives more credence to past behavior and too little to current interest."
"For low-turnout elections those old models work well," suggests Bill McInturff, a Republican, and the other WSJ/NBC News pollster. "But in today's presidential election those models tend to [tilt to] a little older, a little more white, a little more affluent and a little more Republican voters. They may miss some of the extraordinary activity going on in African-American and Latino communities." [...] But most of the time the screen for likely voters tilts Republican. In 2000, Gallup's election eve survey showed George Bush ahead by two points among its likely voters; he trailed Al Gore by a point among registered voters, very close to the final outcome.
In 2000, the next to last WSJ/NBC poll before the election showed Republicans doing three points better among likely voters than registered voters. The election eve survey showed Bush up three points among likely voters, but failed to tally registered voters and didn't predict Al Gore's victory in the popular vote.
So, what does this mean? "Dewey wins," again? I forget whether it was Ruy or Jerome or Chris or Kos who was saying "Likely Voter" polls really only work when you're tight against election day, and not this far in advance. But that's not the only problem - I think it's Chris who's been analyzing the constitution of the subject base for many of these polls and finding they are weighted toward those who identify themselves as Republican, which would naturally skew the numbers.
Even so, it does look all of a sudden like the Kerry campaign has lost a bit of steam, and many people are saying it's because they've made a lot of bad decisions. I think it may be more that Karl Rove has made a lot of good (but evil) decisions. But Democrats - and I don't mean the Kerry campaign itself - still need to remember that no good can come of spending a lot of time attacking the Kerry campaign strategy in public. If you have suggestions for them, send them to them rather than out into the world where the Republicans can have fun with them. The more you talk about how bad the campaign is, the more you do the RNC's work for them. Bill Scher has some wise words on this subject, and also offers a briefing document on tough questions about Kerry that would make a lovely series of fliers (with some proofreading) to pop through your neighbors' doors. 19:13 BST
Pet peeve corner
Averse: Having a feeling of opposition, distaste, or aversion; strongly disinclined
Adverse: Acting or serving to oppose; antagonistic: adverse criticism.
Contrary to one's interests or welfare; harmful or unfavorable: adverse circumstances. Moving in an opposite or opposing direction: adverse currents. Archaic. Placed opposite. 17:57 BST
One nation, Inshallah
I don't know what to make of it. Is it even? Is it not? Donkey Rising looks at a bunch of polls released in the last couple-few days showing that Kerry and Bush are tied, or Kerry is leading Bush, or Kerry is trailing Bush. The percentage difference seems to be all over the map, too, ranging from very slight edges to wide margins. Also, Kerry either has a strong lead in Minnesota or Bush has a slight lead there. I am now officially confused. I also find it scary that the polls are so divergent. It's almost as if someone is trying to make us think...something that isn't true.
Judge Orders U.S. to Find Bush Records. This is in response to an AP FoI lawsuit. This is getting tedious. There's lots of documentation that Bush was AWOL, and no evidence that he wasn't. It doesn't matter about the damned memos; Michael Moore was right, no matter how the right-wing wants to whine about him.
Mithras amuses me by finding a letter of comment in the NYT responding to that stupid David Brooks article that divided us into "spreadsheet people" and "paragraph people".
Digby compares reality with what Bush says and concludes that Kerry is right. Bob Herbert says This Is Bush's Vietnam. Sidney Blumenthal hears that the military pros aren't thrilled by the situation, either. Let's be honest: The best-case scenario now on offer is that things will continue to be worse in Iraq than they were before the invasion - but then, that was obvious before the invasion, too. Like I said.
An NYT editorial on Taxes for an Ownership Society says, "When President Bush talks about an "ownership society," hold on to your wallet." Honey, when Bush says he's gonna do anything, it's a scam.
Jay Leno, closet lefty? I believe the media is in the pocket of the government, and they don't do their job. They have people like Michael Moore who do it for them.
Maryland governor joins the effort to steal the vote: In a brazen bid to take control of Maryland's election process--a move that has sinister overtones to say the least--Publican Gov Bob Erlich wants Maryland's feisty, independent Elections Administrator fired and replaced by an appointee of his own. The grounds for her dismissal? She's 'crabby' to him.
Another Republican scandal gives us a brighter outlook for a possible Senate pick-up, according to Chris at MyDD.
Brad DeLong discovers that Francis Fukuyama is shrill! "Just what part of 'Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Fukuyama R'lyeh wagn'nagl fhtagn!' don't you understand?" (via)
There are all sorts of rumors floating around. One I've got third-hand by whisper, supposedly coming from someone in Pakistani intel, is that Osama's body was actually recovered at Tora Bora and they've been holding on to it to produce as the October Surprise. This sounds way too sick to do, but there's a shock a week at the very least, so that wouldn't be new.
The announcement by "the Jersey Girls" of their endorsement of John Kerry and John Edwards is something the right wants to dismiss as "partisanship" and loss of moral authority. At Corrente, Leah looks at that issue and why it means something that so many of the 9/11 families have lost faith in this administration.
Tales from The War on (Some) Drugs: Last One Speaks has another story of police terrorizing people in their homes despite the fact that they were obviously not the people described in their warrant.
What She Said!: The next time some guy asks you where all the female bloggers are, tell them What She Said!
Atrios has a pointer to this story about the unusually highly-paid Chief of Staff to Rep. David Dreier (R-CA), recently outed by BlogActive. What interested me, though, was a paragraph toward the bottom about a former challenger who knew, but had chosen not to say, that the two men appeared to be lovers, but: She came forward only after reading an article on RAW STORY which alleged that local newspapers had told reporters that they would be fired if they asked Dreier about his sexuality and/or public policy issues relating to sexuality. Dreier has voted against nearly all gay rights measures that have passed through Congress, including a measure to strip the courts of jurisdiction on gay marriage.
