Hullabaloo

Tuesday, September 28, 2004

 
Swimming In The Tank

Media Matters has a run down on debate expectations and clearly, the media have high expectations of George W. Bush in this debate. Across the board they are assuming that he will win with his two-faced, phony folksy ways. After all, they are the ones who decide such things. So, don't get your hopes up for John Kerry to "win" this debate even if he wins it. The press is in the tank.

On the other hand, I have a feeling that undecideds may be looking for more substance this year than robotic, on-message non-sequitors and they might just find the president's slouchy, casual style a little bit disconcerting in a time of serious challenges. It's easy for him to appear in charge and in control when he's all by himself on a stage. But, when you see him next to someone who has command of the issues and looks straight in the camera and challenges his unresponsive bumper sticker mantras, they may just be surprised. Anything's possible.

By the way, has anybody noticed that Bush is sounding a little bit spacey on the stump these last couple of days? Maybe he hasn't been getting enough sleep or enough coffee. His eyes are very puffy. I don't know what it is, but he doesn't seem to be himself. Wierd.







digby 9/28/2004 02:54:00 PM |

 
Meow

Kitty's Number One

Here's a fun little tid-bit from page 492, just to whet your appetite:

Barbara Bush was more determined than ever to see her daughter re-marry. She believed that only through marriage could Doro and her children find their safest haven. To that end Barbara encouraged Doro to date.

"We spent a weekend up at Camp David with the Bushes....They had two dogs up there at the time and the divorced daughter," recalled one congressional wife. "Barbara told me she was concerned because Doro had dated Representative David Dreier for a year and he never touched her... 'Never laid a hand on her,' said Barbara... I think Doro had better luck when she started dating a democrat."

There's more --- much, much more.

Thanks to Sekmet and Pandora on BCF




digby 9/28/2004 01:37:00 PM |

 
Pink Slip

Taking Bob Novak at face value (always a dicey proposition) I think we have to conclude that our vaunted resolute, CEO president doesn't listen to anyone and can't manage his way out of a bag of pork rinds.

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. For the agency to go semi-public is not only unprecedented but shocking. George Tenet's retirement as director of Central Intelligence removed the buffer between president and agency. As the new DCI, Porter Goss inherits an extraordinarily sensitive situation.

What a good idea it is to re-elect a president who is at war with his own State department and CIA in the middle of a national security crisis. This alleged great leader makes enemies of practically everyone he comes in contact with, particularly those who have expertise and knowledge he desperately needs. Harvard Business School must teach some odd management techniques.

For a man who coasted on his daddy's name until he was fifty four, antagonizing all of America's allies and half the US government is quite an achievement in just three short years. His family must be so proud. Four More Years!




digby 9/28/2004 06:43:00 AM |

 
Inevitablity Dance

Sunday's Washington Post made me suspect that the Bush campaign really does think things are going poorly right now. Why? Because Republicans are starting to make preposterously overconfident predictions of a Bush landslide.

[...]

It's well-known that Karl Rove believes that swing voters like to vote for the winner. Therefore, one of the central political strategies for Bush has been to create an "aura of inevitability" that, theoretically, will bring people to his side. If everyone believes you're a political juggernaut, the theory goes, then you will become a political juggernaut.

[...]

The worse things get for Bush, the more likely his aides are to declare that he is invincible. The Bushies are starting to sound like Baghdad Bob, trumpeting a decisive victory for Saddam Hussein as the American military zooms into Iraq's capital city. Whenever Bush is in trouble, someone—usually Rove—declares that things are going just swimmingly. The most memorable example of this was Bush's 2000 campaign trip to California to make it look like his election was going to be a walk even though polls showed that the race was a toss-up. Bush also took a day off from campaigning as a sign of confidence in his impending landslide. On Election Day, of course, Al Gore won more votes than Bush did, and eventually Bush won the presidency with only one more electoral vote than he needed to take office.

And, if one were to make the obvious comparison of their political campaign to their military campaign, then we can see this exact same dynamic at work with the war in Iraq. Lots of happy talk about "winning" and "mission accomplished" when the results are anything bit clear.

Let's keep this in mind as we go forward this next month. Whatever they say is happy horseshit spin from here on out. And the news media is unlikely to help out much. On Inside Politics yesterday, wide-eyed Judy Woodruff was extremely confused when Tad Devine pointed out that her poll was stacked with Republicans. The cable press corpse ranks only slightly above undecided voters and FoxNews viewers for sheer ignorance of current events.







digby 9/28/2004 06:19:00 AM |

Monday, September 27, 2004

 
The Big Fix

Jeffrey Rosen writes in TNR today:

It's November 2, and the presidential election looks close in Ohio. An army of lawyers are dispatched by the Bush and Kerry campaigns to scour all 11,614 precincts in the state for any hint of voting irregularities. Within hours, both sides have filed competing suits in state courts challenging the standards for counting provisional, absentee, and military ballots, as well as for the use of different voting machines. Within days, Laurence Tribe and James Baker are filing petitions to the Supreme Court, arguing that Bush v. Gore--the case that decided the 2000 election--compels the justices to intervene. The justices, who once confidently predicted that Bush v. Gore would have no effect on future elections, are horrified. Even the Bush v. Gore dissenters are shocked at the mess the decision has created. After all, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg called Bush v. Gore a "one-of-a-kind case" as recently as February 2003 in a speech to San Diego law students, adding optimistically, "I doubt it will ever be cited as precedent by the court on anything."

[...]


Unfortunately, the hopes that Bush v. Gore would fade from memory like an embarrassing dinner guest have proved to be wildly mistaken. And, if the election is close, the nightmare scenario described above seems all too likely to come to pass. During the four years since Bush v. Gore, the case has emboldened political candidates to file a tangle of litigation challenging election procedures in federal and state races--from the recall of Governor Gray Davis in California to the replacement of Senator Robert Torricelli in New Jersey. Moreover, in response to the legalization of politics that has followed Bush v. Gore, Democratic and Republican legal swat teams have been assembled to challenge the results of the 2004 presidential election if the vote in any state proves close enough to provide the margin of victory in the electoral college. And, even if the presidential election is not close, Bush v. Gore will continue to haunt congressional and local elections in November and beyond. "You could have dozens or even hundreds of cases filed on the Wednesday morning after the election," says Jack Goldsmith of Harvard Law School. "Given the litigation opportunities in Bush v. Gore, you could have real, real uncertainty for many weeks and months, not only about national elections but about local elections. And it's likely to get worse."

If this came from anyone but Rosen I would think it was another of those Greenfield-esque parlor games in which they sit around on CNN for hours at a time in stultifying discussion of bizarre election scenarios that will never happen. But we'd be fools to ignore the fact that Bush vs Gore is a cancer that has the potential to metastisize very rapidly if this election is as close as we expect it to be.

If you haven't had a chance to read the fascinating in-depth article in Vanity Fair this month about the Florida debacle in 2000, here are the (pdf) links to it--- Part one and Part two. It opens with a conversation between two of the Supreme court clerks who seem to have had the exact same opinion that I forcefully espoused at a dinner party during the recount drama (as I imagine many others did throughout the country.)

Shortly after the presidential vote in November 2000, two law clerks at the United States Supreme Court were joking about the photo finish in Florida. Wouldn't it be funny, one mused, if the matter landed before them? And how, if it did, the Court would split five to four, as it so often did in big cases, with the conservative majority installing George W. Bush in the White House? The two just laughed. It all seemed too preposterous. Sure, friends and relatives predicted that the case would eventually land in their laps, but that was ignorant, naïve talk -- typical of people without sophisticated legal backgrounds.

A majority of the justices were conservatives, but they weren't partisan; mindful of the Court's fragile authority, the justices had always steered clear of messy political spats. Moreover, the very jurists who'd normally side with Bush were the ones most solicitous of states' rights, most deferential to state courts, most devoted to the Constitution's "original intent" and the Founding Fathers had specifically provided that the Congress, not the judiciary, would resolve close elections. To top it off, the Court rarely took cases before they were ripe, and the political process in Florida was still unfolding. "It was just inconceivable to us that the Court would want to lose its credibility in such a patently political way," one of the clerks recalls. "That would be the end of the Court."

Boy, was I ever wrong. And as you read the article the sheer partisan nature of the court's involvement becomes even more obvious than we have previously known. The article goes on to show how Anthony Kennedy, widely considered dumb as a post and obsessed with his own grandeur, had been staffed by the right wing with a cadre of federalist society Hitler Youth who "guided" him the partisan direction Big Tony and the Chief wanted him to go. (Our gal Sandy, it turns out, was in the tank from the get-go.)

The Bush's petition for certiorari - that is, for the Court to take the case?went initially to Justice Anthony Kennedy, whose task it was to consider all emergency motions from Florida, Georgia, and Alabama. For Kennedy, then 64, a man known to relish the pomp and circumstance of the Supreme Court and his own, often crucial role in close cases, weighing such a momentous matter must have been glorious indeed. Batting aside a Thanksgiving Day plea from the Gore campaign to pass on the case, Kennedy urged his colleagues to take it on, suggesting that the Court was absolutely the essential arbiter of such weighty matters. He conceded, though, that Bush faced an uphill struggle on the law. When Kennedy's memo circulated, one flabbergasted clerk had to track down Justice John Paul Stevens on the golf course in Florida and read it to him over the phone. Under the Court's rules, Kennedy needed only three votes beside his own for the Court to hear the matter. Quickly, the four others who make up the Court's conservative block signed on: Chief Justice William Rehnquist, along with Justices Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas, and Sandra Day O'Connor.

[...]


As was customary, the Court did not detail how many justices had voted to hear the case, or who they were, and Gore's lawyers didn't really want to know. At that point, they felt a certain faith in the institution and in the law: it was inconceivable to them that the court would intercede, much less decide the presidency by a vote of five to four.

As you continue through this article you see that this was the problem for the Democrats throughout the recount period. It wasn't cowardice, it was a naive faith in the rule of law. It was the last vestige of true, internalized belief that the American legal system was immune from naked, opportunistic partisanship.

Desperate for legal advice, Klain reached out to prominent firms in the capital of Tallahassee. He found little help. "All the establishment firms knew they couldn't
cross Governor Bush and do business in Florida," recalls Klain. And so he improvised,
pulling together a team headed by former secretary of state Warren Christopher, now a Los Angeles-based lawyer in private practice. Christopher, Gore felt,would imbue the team with an image of decorous, law-abiding, above-the-fray respectability.

[...]

Unlike Christopher and company, Baker spoke to the press loudly and often, and his message was Bush had won on November 7. Any further inspection would result only in "mischief." Privately, however, he knew that at the start he was on shaky political ground. "We're getting killed on "count all the votes," he told his team. "Who the hell could be against that?"

Baker saw his chance that Thursday, November 9, when the Gore team made a formal request for a manual recount in four counties: Volusia, Palm Beach, Broward, and Miami-Dade. Asking for a recount in these large, Democrat-dominated counties left the Gore team fatally vulnerable to the charge that they wanted not all votes counted, as Gore kept claiming in his stentorian tones, but only all Gore votes. 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 certifed 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.

Proper as this was by Florida election law, the Democrats?strategy gave Baker the sound bite he'd been seeking: Gore was just cherrypicking Democratic strongholds. It was a charge the Bush team wielded to devastating effect in the media, stunning the Gore team, which thought its strategy would be viewed as modest and fair.

Foolishly, Gore thought that being modest and fair still meant something. He was not prepared for a streetfight. And, looking back I realize that I wasn't either. Like a green youth I didn't believe they'd actually go that far. Even after the impeachment sideshow, an event that solidified my belief in the lethal, fascistic nature of the modern Republican party, I was not fully prepared for the no holds barred approach they would take in this situation.

It is what led me to the point at which I am able to say without any sense of restraint or caution that I would put NOTHING past them --- even a staged terrorist attack. This is because every time I think they have some limits, they prove me wrong. As the old saying goes, fool me once shame on you, fool me twice...won't get fooled again....

Gore and his team knew that the Republicans would fight with everything they had, but they still maintained some faith in the legal system to require basic fairness in something this important. And, even the most cynical of us thought that the egos of the Supreme Court justices would never allow them to make a purely partisan decision because history would remember them as whores.

If I had any political idealism left it died on the day that Antonin Scalia stopped judges from counting votes in Florida.

This article shows that fix was in from the beginning. Had Gore audaciously requested a statewide recount he would have been accused of not following the strict laws that required him to show problems in each precinct. It was always headed to the Supremes and once they took the case, the interviews with the Supreme court clerks show that there was never any question about who would win. It was always a decision in search of a rationale.

If Jeffrey Rosen is correct and dozens of lawsuits await filing in close races out there, all based on this ill-considered opinion, then we are likely to see a repeat. After all, the same five vote majority still sits on the court today. And like all the others who voted for this irresponsible, unqualified, incompetent boob in 2000, they are not likely to admit their mistake and vote otherwise this time out.

This time, we must operate on that assumption and prepare for a knife fight --- in the courts and in the realm of public opinion. There are no rules other than winning.

I urge you to read the entire article. There is much more about the disenfranchisement of the black community and the shocking actions they've taken since then to supposedly update the voting system. (Kevin Drum has more on this latest.) With fine fellows like "Buckhead" working on the wing nut Voter Integrity Project, and Ashcrofts new intimidation tactics, this election could be very, very ugly.

Update: Via Suburban Guerilla, here is more on the suppression of black voters Jeb has planned for 2004.







digby 9/27/2004 07:00:00 PM |

 
The Billionaires Are In The House!

I love these guys...




digby 9/27/2004 05:08:00 PM |

 
Now We're Talking Some Real $$$

If you have the nerve, it's now worth more than $8,000 to ask the Preznit One Simple Question




digby 9/27/2004 02:05:00 PM |

 
He's Simple


One of my readers, who works at the UN, noticed something unique about George W. Bush's speech last week.

Evidently, the official UN transcript is the exact speech that Bush read off the teleprompter. My reader says that nobody who works there can ever remember a leader having to have words phonetically spelled out before, as it is here (pdf):

In the last year alone, terrorists have attacked police stations, and banks, and commuter trains, and synagogues ... and a school filled with children. This month in Beslan [bez-LAN] we saw, once again, how the terrorists measure their success in the death of the innocent, and in the pain of grieving families. Svetlana Dzebisov [day-BEES-off] was held hostage along with her son and her nephew and her nephew did not survive.

This is the best the so-called greatest nation on earth can do?




digby 9/27/2004 01:16:00 PM |

 
Embolden This




Matthew Yglesias makes an interesting observation about this new charge of "emboldening" the enemy by criticising the war in Iraq. As he notes:

Does anyone really believe, after all, that our enemies currently lack for boldness of all things? One can say accurately various nasty things about Osama, his hardened core of terrorists-cum-special-forces, his more conventional guerilla fighters, Zarqawi, al-Sadr, their followers, etc., but one thing they certainly aren't is some kind of chickenshit force that would be really scary if only they got bolder.

[...]

The notion that the USA could possibly impress these guys with grand displays of machismo is silly. The bad guys here are hard core and that's just the way it is. A strategy to beat them has to be smart and has to use the many advantages America really does have. Worrying about the other side's boldness isn't going to get us anywhere.

And anyway, doesn't it seem a bit, well...girlie-manish...for our swaggering Crusdader Codpiece to be tremulously waving his hands and shushing his opponents because it might make the nasty terrorists even bolder than they already are? Surely, superheroes such as he are much too strong and manly to care whether the bad guys are emboldened by talk of any kind. Real men say "bring it on," right?

Clearly, people who are willing to blow themselves up aren't suffering from a lack of physical courage. That is not the problem. Indeed, until we create a corps of suicide bombers they have the advantage in willing human cannon fodder material. Our military superiority isn't supposed to be our "courage" and "boldness" it is our international leadership, advanced technology and smart strategy, none of which Junior has employed worth a busted fuck.

This has been part of the fallacy driving Junior's misbegotten strategy from day one. While it's obvious that a fair amount of his ridiculous Hopalong Cassidy bullshit was calculated to thrill the rubes here at home, there is ample evidence that many of the starry-eyed neocons truly believed that a thrilling show of Big American Power would snap some of those Ay-rabs out of their little dreamworld and bring them around right quick to the knowledge that they can never win against us, the Ubermenschen.

As Richard Perle memorably said back in October of 2001:

Having destroyed the Taliban, having destroyed Saddam's regime, the message to the others is, "You're next." Two words. Very efficient diplomacy. " You're next, and if you don't shut down the terrorist networks on your territory, we'll take you down, too. Is it worth it?" Of course it isn't worth it. It isn't worth it for any of them.

You can almost smell the testosterone, can't you? These guys really believed this Neverneverland nonsense. I'm afraid our Boy King still does.

He's just being his typical two-faced self bellowing "bring 'em on" one day and then falling over with the vapors the next because Kerry's words might make the badguys mad. Nothing new there.




digby 9/27/2004 10:52:00 AM |

Sunday, September 26, 2004

 
You can't build alliances if you criticize the efforts of those who are working side by side with you.




The President:

President Musharraf is a friend of our country, who helped us capture Khalid Sheik Mohammed, the operational planner behind the 9/11 attacks. Today, because we are working with Pakistani leaders, Pakistan is an ally in the war on terror, and the American people are safer.

The Ally

ZAHN: Is the world a safer place because of the war in Iraq?

MUSHARRAF: No. It's more dangerous. It's not safer, certainly not.

ZAHN: How so?

MUSHARRAF: Well, because it has aroused actions of the Muslims more. It's aroused certain sentiments of the Muslim world, and then the responses, the latest phenomena of explosives, more frequent for bombs and suicide bombings. This phenomenon is extremely dangerous.

ZAHN: Was it a mistake to have gone to war with Iraq?

MUSHARRAF: Well, I would say that it has ended up bringing more trouble to the world....

ZAHN: Has that happened in Iraq?

MUSHARRAF: Well, there are difficulties. One can't predict. Maybe the difficulties are surmounted and then it ends up with a victory, with a success. But, at the moment, we are bogged down, yes, yes indeed....

ZAHN: Do you think that the war in Iraq has undermined the overall war on terror?

MUSHARRAF: It has complicated it, certainly. I wouldn't say undermined. It has further complicated it. It has made the job more difficult.

The Vice President:

America does not create terrorists. But under President Bush, we will defeat them. (Applause.) And we will defeat them where they live and plot and plan so that we do not have to fight them on the streets of our own cities. (Applause.)

Senator Kerry

The invasion of Iraq was a profound diversion from the battle against our greatest enemy, al-Qaida, there's just no question about it. The president's misjudgment, miscalculation and mismanagement of the war in Iraq all make the war on terror harder to win.

Uh Oh.

This is the kind of thing that gives Lil' Crusader Codpiece a headache and makes him want to drink some choco-milk, eat a PB&J, grab his favorite pilly and go to bed early.




digby 9/26/2004 04:22:00 PM |

 
Do You Believe In Fairies?

I didn't have a chance to see Bush's speech before the UN last week but I recorded it so I could watch it this week-end. It May have been a litle bit optimistic, but for the life of me I can't figure out why John Kerry keeps saying Junior is living in fantasyland:

Here's a transcript:

Terrorists and their allies believe the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the American Bill of Rights and every charter of liberty ever written are lies to be burned and destroyed and forgotten.

They believe that suicide and torture and murder are fully justified to serve any goal they declare. And they act on their beliefs.

We're determined to destroy terror networks wherever they operate, and the United States is grateful to every nation that is helping to seize terrorist assets, track down their operatives and disrupt their plans.

Defending our ideals is vital, but it is not enough. Our broader mission as U.N. members is to apply these ideals to the great issues of our time.

Our wider goal is to promote hope and progress as the alternatives to hatred and violence. Our great purpose is to build a better world beyond the war on terror.

Because, it's a world of laughter, a world of tears, it's a world of hopes and a world of fears. There's so much that we share, it is time we're aware. It's a small small world.

It's a small world after all, it's a small world after all. There's so much that we share. It is time we're aware. It's a small small world.

There is just one moon and a golden sun. And a smile means friendship to everyone,
Though the mountains divide,and the oceans are wide, it's a small small world.

It's a small world after all, it's a small world after all. There's so much that we share,it is time we're aware it's a small small world.

It's a small world after all, it's a small world after all.It's a small world after all, it's a small world after all.It's a small world after all, it's a small world after all.It's a small world after all, it's a small world after all.It's a small world after all, it's a small world after all.It's a small world after all, it's a small world after all.It's a small world after all, it's a small world after all.It's a small world after all, it's a small world after all.It's a small world after all, it's a small world after all.It's a small world after all, it's a small world after all.It's a small world after all, it's a small world after all.It's a small world after all, it's a small world after all.It's a small world after all, it's a small world after all.It's a small world after all, it's a small world after all.It's a small world after all, it's a small world after all.It's a small world after all, it's a small world after all.It's a small world after all, it's a small world after all.It's a small world after all, it's a small world after all.

That John Kerry is just a big ole meanie pessimist! If you're happy and you know it clap your hands!







digby 9/26/2004 03:14:00 PM |

 
Do Something

All of you Democrats out there who are just aching to do something tangible to get Kerry elected, ACT is the place to go.

If you live in or near a swing state, volunteer on the ground. If you don't, there are programs in place (travelling where you're needed, writing letters, calling with your week-end minutes, etc) to help get newly registered voters to the polls.

And, apparently, there are a bunch of them:

A sweeping voter registration campaign in heavily Democratic areas has added tens of thousands of new voters to the rolls in the swing states of Ohio and Florida, a surge that has far exceeded the efforts of Republicans in both states, a review of registration data shows.

The analysis by The New York Times of county-by-county data shows that in Democratic areas of Ohio - primarily low-income and minority neighborhoods - new registrations since January have risen 250 percent over the same period in 2000. In comparison, new registrations have increased just 25 percent in Republican areas. A similar pattern is apparent in Florida: in the strongest Democratic areas, the pace of new registration is 60 percent higher than in 2000, while it has risen just 12 percent in the heaviest Republican areas.

While comparable data could not be obtained for other swing states, similar registration drives have been mounted in them as well, and party officials on both sides say record numbers of new voters are being registered nationwide. This largely hidden but deadly earnest battle is widely believed by campaign professionals and political scientists to be potentially decisive in the presidential election.

"We know it's going on, and it's a very encouraging sign," said Steve Elmendorf, deputy campaign manager for Senator John Kerry, the Democratic presidential nominee. The new voters, Mr. Elmendorf said, "could very much be the difference."

A spokeswoman for the Republican National Committee, Christine Iverson, declined to comment on The Times's findings and said she did not believe Republicans were lagging in the registration battle. "We're very confident that we have a ground game that's as good as the Democrats', and better," she said.

The precise impact of the swell in registration is difficult to predict, as there is no reliable gauge of how many of these new voters will actually vote. Some experts, though, say that the spike has not been accurately captured by political polls and could confound prognostications in closely contested states.

This is awfully good news for us, guys. I always knew there were more of us than there were of them. But, the Republicans are all set to cry foul and say that felons and illegal immigrants and dead Democrats stole the election so we have to do this right and that means grassroots involvement on our side to make sure the voting is transparent and everything is out in the open.

This takes a little time and effort, but it's key. The media are determined to help Bush (for reasons I simply cannot fathom) so we just have to win the hard way, one voter at a time.




digby 9/26/2004 11:13:00 AM |

 
Blog Fever

LA Times, today:

Blogging Sells, and Sells Out by Billmon.

By most accounts, blogs — web logs to the uninitiated — scored a major coup last week when CBS News admitted that it couldn't vouch for the authenticity of memos supposedly written by George W. Bush's commander in the Texas Air National Guard. The conservative bloggers who led the charge against the CBS story were hailed as giant slayers. And yet it's the blogging phenomenon itself that may need the last rites.

That may seem a strange thing to say, given the flattering coverage of blogs triggered by the CBS affair. But the media's infatuation has a distinct odor of the deathbed about it — not for the blogosphere, which has a commercially bright future, but for the idea of blogging as a grass-roots challenge to the increasingly sanitized "content" peddled by the Time Warner-Capital Cities-Disney-General Electric-Viacom-Tribune media oligopoly.

Matt Yglesias said more or less the same thing a month or so ago (I can't be bothered to find the link) only his thinking was that blogs were rapidly devolving into an exclusive forum for professional writers in various specialized fields and the amateur players were fading away into obscurity.

Steve Gilliard, (via Atrios,) believes it's commercial advertising that fuels the blogosphere already.

Meanwhile, The NY Times does a big story on liberal bloggers that apparently has the right blogosphere in a complete tizzy.

Blogging as we know it is dead. Long live blogging.

Update:

I should make it clear that I was in no way beDrudging any blogger's success. I'm thrilled if anyone can make a buck doing this thing. If I got any real traffic on a regular basis, I'd think about doing it myself. And, believe me, on the days when I get one of those links from Atrios or some others, I think about it a lot because my traffic goes through the roof.

It's all about linkage, folks.

The blogosphere is a beehive in which the queenbee bloggers (and I'm not just talking about Sullivan) serve and are served by the rest of the colony. As Atrios points out in the comments, as long as some of the top bloggers continue to link to other blogs, the blogosphere as we know it will continue to thrive. People need hubs and starting points to make their way through all the buzzing and that's what the popular blogs provide.

Commercialization in terms of blogads doesn't have much to do with it so far because the ads don't seem to conflict with the content. That could change, I guess, but I think we are dealing more on a Nation model than Newsweek, anyway. Nobody's going to buy an ad on Kos or Atrios who isn't trying to reach liberals. They know exactly what they are getting into.

In my opinion, if there is any real danger of the old political blogosphere going extinct, I think it's more in what Yglesias describes than strict commercialization. It may be moving toward "professionalization" which is truly a big change. Marshall, Drum, Sullivan, Kaus and The Corner may be the new developing paradigm.

It's not that the blogosphere isn't incredibly enhanced by the presence of those writers, it's that they may develop the habit of only reading and linking to each other which, as Billmon points out, takes it one step closer to the insularity of the mainstream media. In academic fields this is generally a good thing --- consult the experts, talk amongst yourselves, get feedback. But, in politics it's not such a good idea. The blogosphere may not be the best sample of regular folks in the world, but it does consist of some intelligent, well informed citizens outside of the political and media world who are not required to please that establishment either socially or professionally and who bring a different perspective that may not make it into the Washington conference room on Monday morning or the cocktail party on Friday night.

In that sense, politics are more like art than science. The pros need fresh insights and passion or they get stale and repetitive. The blogosphere is a very convenient way to access some of that and it would be a shame if it contracted into a mirror image of the professional political media.. If it does,(with some relief I must admit) I'd probably just go back to reading newspapers and magazines and yelling at the TV, both of which I can do from the much more comfortable position of lying flat on my back.

As a political organizing and fund raising tool, the blogosphere has definitely shown its worth this round and it will remain a player, no doubt about it. Look at how much $$$$ just Atrios and Kos have managed to raise. If they were Republicans they'd be called "Conquerors."

But other than that, I think the blogosphere will continue to change in largely unpredictable ways. Certainly, anything the mainstream media says about it (now that they've discovered it like it's the Macarena of 2004) is almost assuredly wrong. So, I think it just keeps keepin on. Who knows what it all means and as long as it provides some good fun then there's really no reason to question it.

And, as I have said many times, it beats putting your fist through a wall or kicking the cat. In fact, it's downright therapeutic. Maybe that's the real point after all.




digby 9/26/2004 08:45:00 AM |

 
Props To Joe Biden

Joe just turned Chris Wallace into a puddle on Fox, refusing to back down and challenging all the predictable assumptions. At the end, Wallace made a crack about Biden needing to go on decaf and Biden retorted, "the way you guys misrepresent thing, it's just disgraceful."

Correction: Evidently I heard Biden say "you guys misrepresent" meaning Fox, when he actually said "these guys misrepresent" meaning the Bush administration.

Not that there's any real difference...




digby 9/26/2004 08:21:00 AM |

Saturday, September 25, 2004

 
Say It Loud

I'm shrill and I'm proud.




digby 9/25/2004 05:33:00 AM |

Friday, September 24, 2004

 
Shivering In Our Boots

Andrea Mitchell just said that the Kerry campaign knows that if they take the fight to the president they have to be respectful because he is extremely well-liked and very popular. And Kerry talks in long sentences and is boring but there's not much they can do about it.

Gosh, I think she's being much too generous. John Kerry is not only long winded and boring, he is also known to hold forth on aboriginal history in town meetings and sing Andrew Lloyd Webber songs for hours on end on the stump. It will be a miracle if he manages to even stay in the race after debating our very sharp, entertaining president who I understand usually hands out hundred dollar bills and tells hilarious jokes while laying out a cogent, simple plan for all Americans to become millionaires by 2008. I sure hope he doesn't do that in the debates or old boring Kerry will definitely lose.




digby 9/24/2004 04:08:00 PM |

 
Epic Disaster

Charles Peters at the Washington Monthly asks, "Was I right?"

Boy, he most certainly was:

Just before we went to war in Iraq, I wrote in this space, "This country has been conned by Karl Rove and the super-hawks. They have succeeded in changing the subject from Bush's failures and embarrassments, putting Iraq first on the national agenda for nearly six months at the expense of more important matters--like finding Osama bin Laden, securing peace between Israel and Palestine, drastically improving the FBI and CIA's ability to deal with terrorism, keeping nuclear weapons from being used by nations that already have them, including North Korea, and engineering economic recovery here at home. If we end up paying practically all the bill for Iraq and subsequent military occupation, that money won't be there for badly needed health and education programs … Once you consider these other higher priorities, the danger from Iraq isn't nearly imminent enough to justify war." I haven't changed my mind.

I think that one of the most frustrating things about Bush's smarmy rejoinder "they world is better off without Saddam in power" is that you have to answer..."well, yes, BUT THERE ARE PRIORITIES, GODDAMIT..."

It is impolitic to say it, (and probably suicidal) but in a very real sense, the answer to the question "is the world better off without Saddam in power?" is no.

9/11 did change everything. It meant that we could not afford to go around willy nilly experimenting with Wilsonian democracy schemes in the mid-east without further endangering Americans by ramping up terrorist recruiting. It meant we needed to be smart and cunning, not blustering loudly with half baked information or "liberating people" without considering the consequences. It meant that creating another failed state crawling with lawless terrorists was the most dangerous thing we could do. But, that is exactly what we did.

Clearly, if we had left Saddam in power and used the excuse of 9/11 to get inspectors back in, we would probably have made more progress against the fight against the Islamic radicals who pose the greatest threat to us. At the very least we wouldn't have been creating more terrorists every single day with our corrupt mismanagement of the occupation.

Saddam was not an imminent or even near term threat. We knew it then and we certainly know it now. If one had asked the American people in the fall of 2002 if they thought it was worth it to "liberate" Iraq if it made Americans less safe, I think we know what the answer would be. We are a good people but we aren't that good. Sadly, it appears that we will have to have that fact demonstrated before many people will understand that this is precisely what we just did.

And those poor schmucks who are over there fighting and dying for this misbegotten war need to believe that they are doing a good deed for their fellow man and protecting their own. I understand that. But, their commander in chief has made a series of terrible, terrible errors and he is setting them up for death right now by manipulating the situation on the ground in order to get elected here at home. It just gets worse and worse.

Two-faced Bush can pretend and lie and prevaricate and mislead all he wants. But, the facts are what they are. He sent American soldiers to die for no good reason. It has resulted in a large number of unnecessary Iraqi deaths in the process and it is creating Anti-American terrorists much faster than they can even kill themselves.

It's a disaster of epic proportions.





digby 9/24/2004 03:39:00 PM |

 
Freedom's Just Another Word For Chaos

Today, the Iraqi and Afghan people are on the path to democracy and freedom. The governments that are rising will pose no threat to others. Instead of harboring terrorists, they're fighting terrorist groups. And this progress is good for the long-term security of us all. George W. Bush, UN General Assembly, September 21, 2004

Well, except for the victims of the bombings, kidnappings and beheadings:

Gunmen have seized six Egyptians in a raid on their Baghdad office, Iraqi officials say, the third in a series of kidnappings of foreigners in the Iraqi capital this month.

[...]

Rahman said the Egyptians work for Iraqna, a subsidiary of Orascom which is an Egyptian-owned mobile telecommunications company.

Last week, two Americans and a Briton were kidnapped at their home in Baghdad by armed men.

A group led by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi later beheaded the Americans, Eugene Armstrong and Jack Hensley, and posted video footage of the killings on the Internet.

But, don't worry about it. We'll stop hearing about all this unpleasantness soon. It's only a matter of time before it's too dangerous for any journalists to report on what's going on:

Germany's biggest television network, ARD, said on Friday it planned to pull out its two correspondents in Iraq after a foreign ministry warning that German journalists could be singled out for kidnappings.

Separately, the Spanish government has recommended to media that they withdraw their correspondents from Iraq following the increase in attacks and kidnappings there, the newspaper El Mundo said on its Web site on Friday.

The Spanish news agency EFE has withdrawn its only Spanish correspondent, Jose Manuel Seage, from Baghdad, a senior journalist at the agency said.

More than 100 foreigners have been abducted in Iraq since April in a deepening campaign, among them two French journalists who are still being held. Most hostages have been released, but around 30 have been killed.

The German foreign ministry last week strengthened a warning originally issued in March 2003 that mentioned journalists and the "very high risk" of kidnapping. But it declined to comment specifically on the issue on Friday.

[...]

Until this month, almost all the kidnapped foreigners were snatched on Iraq's perilous roads. But the capture of foreigners in Baghdad in operations that seem carefully planned is an escalation that has alarmed foreign embassies and firms.

Everything is going very well. If it weren't for that little problem with fifty percent unemployment, civil war, beheadings and suicide bombers, it would be a lot like Nebraska.





digby 9/24/2004 02:10:00 PM |

 
Flying Blind

What happens when a horserace is being called by different commentators in completely different ways? This post in Salon's War Room again shows that something has gone seriously wrong with the polling this election:

It's been said that the 2004 election would be a challenge for pollsters, and today's polls are a fine demonstration. Put simply, side by side they make little to no sense.

In the national arena, the Associated Press finds Bush up by nine points, 52-41. An Economist poll, conducted on the same days, finds Kerry leading by one point. Both surveys were of registered voters, so previous disputes between pollsters regarding who constitutes a likely voter, can't account for the discrepancy.

Some new state polls also lead nowhere, with Wisconsin going from a two-point Kerry lead to a 14-point Bush romp in 24 hours, and Oregon, which went from a 12-point Kerry rout to a one-point Bush lead in the same span. And two Florida polls released today are at odds. Gallup gives Bush a 47-45 lead among registered voters, while Quinnipiac University finds Bush ahead 49-41.

I wonder if the campaigns can trust their own polls any more than these? How scary. Politics without a net.

I'm beginning to truly believe that this race is the one we've all been waiting for for the last few cycles --- the election when so many people screen their calls and so many people use cell phones that you can no longer get an accurate sample.

One experiment worth watching is the Zogby online poll. He seems to have faith that he's got a good model. We'll see.

If we don't see a better consensus before November 2nd, it's going to be one nail-biter of a night.






digby 9/24/2004 01:44:00 PM |

 
Killing Time

Following up on my earlier post about the Bush campaign claiming that Kerry is causing the insurgency, I find this article by Matt Yglesias that points out that two-faced Junior Codpiece is actually doing it. it is one of the most egregious cases of projection we've yet seen.

Bush has adopted policies designed to keep the death count low, primarily by avoiding ground combat in the Sunni triangle. Good campaign tactics, needless to say, but, as ever, the Bush team seems better at winning elections than winning wars. By delaying any assault on the wily Salafi terrorists (read: Democratic campaign operatives) lurking in Fallujah, Samarra, Ramadi, and Baquba until after November, we give them more time to dig in, prepare defenses, and strengthen their forces before the attack.

An important point comes next, so it gets a paragraph of its own: This plan will get people killed. If an assault is to be mounted, it should be done as soon as possible, before the adversary has been given months to prepare for it. The Marines and soldiers serving in Iraq volunteered for the military, but they've been conscripted into the Bush campaign. Decisions, as Lieutenant General James Conway recently stated, are being made on the basis of narrow political considerations rather than military ones. It's appropriate for generals to be subordinate to civilian politicians, but not to civilian campaign strategists. We're waging war as an extension of an electoral campaign, exposing our soldiers to harassing attacks right now and to a more difficult fight later on in order to help secure the president's re-election.

George W. Bush is setting up our soldiers for a killing field in order to keep the casualty count down during the election campaign. There's a word for that and starts with a "t" and ends with a "reason."







digby 9/24/2004 01:10:00 PM |

 
Security Spin




As I watched Judy Woodruff go on and on yesterday about the alleged Security Moms and how they are abandoning the Democrats in favor of that handsome hunk of manhood, Crusader Codpiece, I was reminded of the interesting piece that Matt Stoller wrote during the RNC on the subject.

This "security mom" story is a campaign tactic to keep Republican women in the fold. The bogus polls gave them cover to make their appeal based upon a two-faced premise that they were already busting the gender gap open. Attractive housewives have been popping up all over television to discuss "their issues" and make the case for Junior as their security teddy bear.

Here's what Matt reported from a GOP training seminar for women at the GOP convention:

"The Bush campaign is not anywhere in the hemisphere of where these women are…" Leslie Sanchez, political analyst for Bush/Cheney

I spent three and a half hours in a training session for grassroots leaders of the GOP, hosted by GOPAC, Newt Gingrich's group that led the Republican Congressional takeover in 1994. ...the most interesting part of the day was a presentation by Leslie Sanchez, Bush/Cheney advisor and frequent commentator on MSNBC, Fox News, and CNN, on how to win women voters. According to Sanchez, women voters make up the majority of registered voters in every battleground state, and they are angst-ridden, scared, tolerant, cynical, distrusting, and want and fear change. They are also the key to this election.


In 2000, there was an eleven point gender gap in terms of Republican support for women. Women are more often registered to vote, they are usually registered independent, and Republican women - who tend to be married - are voting increasingly for Democrats. The model is that they first vote for a Democratic female, and then start voting for Democratic candidates in general. This trend is worrisome to Republicans. The target for the Bush campaign this year is married women with high religiosity, women who voted for Bush in 2000 and value their family's safety.

[...]

The bottom line here is that the President's messaging strategy so far has been a failure with women, and women will decide this election. This Convention is an attempt to fix this political problem, but the only real solution is to scare women into voting for him, because Bush has no real successes that he can credibly point to (and that women believe).

In other words, the "security mom" is actually a Republican who Rove is fearful of losing, not a Democrat who is drifting to the Republicans. As usual, the media got seriously spun.

Noam Scheiber does some fact checking in an interesting article in TNR today:

Indeed, just about the only evidence you can find in support of the security mom proposition comes from the New York Times/CBS poll. A Times/CBS poll conducted September 12-16 found that Bush gained 14 points relative to Kerry among women since mid-August, but a mere four points relative to men (itself a highly dubious proposition), which would have narrowed the gender gap substantially. When I asked CBS polling director Kathy Frankovic about this, her response was sheepish. "I attribute it to short-term/long-term" differences, she said. In any case, Frankovic was quick to add, CBS had just finished another poll, which showed a return of the "gender gap one would expect."

Ruy Texeira runs the numbers.




digby 9/24/2004 11:55:00 AM |

 
Shameless

Joie Chen on CNN just interviewed Brigadier General David Grange who basically said that John Kerry is causing the insurgency in Iraq because he is criticizing the president and "emboldening" the bad guys. (Poodles Chen and Grange hit all the GOP catch phrases right on cue.) It looks as if their plan is to say that the increased violence is John Kerry's responsibility in the hopes that Kerry will ratchet down his effective attack.(See Cheney's remarks of yesterday which he is repeating on the trail today.)


This is just the latest chapter in the classic post 9/11 playbook in which they virtually shut down dissent and paralyzed the country with accusations of 5th columns and treason for speaking out against two-faced Junior Bush. More and more it looks to me as if Rove is simply running a 2002 replay, which depended on keeping the dems off balance on national security and ginning up turnout.

It does not appear that Kerry is going to fall for this line of balderdash and I hope that the red staters in tight contests can resist the urge to fall in line. I think giving in on this is much worse for the Democrat psychologically than aggressively responding. At this point, when Junior forces a member of the opposition to bow to his will it makes them look much weaker than if they are bloodied in the fight.

I've noticed that the wingnuts always vociferously deny impugning the patriotism of their rivals even though they constantly do it. So, I'm hoping the Dems run straight at their accusers with this latest nonsense. I suspect this patented fratboy "don't blame me" strategy is not ringing true with the swing voters. It's just kool-aid for the faithful in a turn-out street fight.

We Dems have been enjoying a little sip of a nice Cabernet (we don't drink children's drinks) ourselves these past few days and it tastes quite good. Give 'em hell John-John.




digby 9/24/2004 09:39:00 AM |

 
"You don't listen to the president? We're gonna mop the floor with the whole fuckin' world. The whole world's gonna be under our control. So what are you worked up about? "

I know the country is feeling all gushy and gooey about our handpicked Iraqi George Washington and all, but it's probably good to keep in mind that in spite of Junior's eloquent rendering of his courage in facing Saddam's henchmen at the foot of the bed in his posh London townhouse, Allawi is reportedly a homicidal maniac himself. This explains why Bush and Cheney love him so much, but the press corpse should probably be a little bit more skeptical:

Iyad Allawi, the new Prime Minister of Iraq, pulled a pistol and executed as many as six suspected insurgents at a Baghdad police station, just days before Washington handed control of the country to his interim government, according to two people who allege they witnessed the killings.

They say the prisoners - handcuffed and blindfolded - were lined up against a wall in a courtyard adjacent to the maximum-security cell block in which they were held at the Al-Amariyah security centre, in the city's south-western suburbs.

They say Dr Allawi told onlookers the victims had each killed as many as 50 Iraqis and they "deserved worse than death".

The Prime Minister's office has denied the entirety of the witness accounts in a written statement to the Herald, saying Dr Allawi had never visited the centre and he did not carry a gun.

But the informants told the Herald that Dr Allawi shot each young man in the head as about a dozen Iraqi policemen and four Americans from the Prime Minister's personal security team watched in stunned silence.


[...]

Given Dr Allawi's role as the leader of the US experiment in planting a model democracy in the Middle East, allegations of a return to the cold-blooded tactics of his predecessor are likely to stir a simmering debate on how well Washington knows its man in Baghdad, and precisely what he envisages for the new Iraq.

There is much debate and rumour in Baghdad about the Prime Minister's capacity for brutality, but this is the first time eyewitness accounts have been obtained.

A former CIA officer, Vincent Cannisatraro, recently told The New Yorker: "If you're asking me if Allawi has blood on his hands from his days in London, the answer is yes, he does. He was a paid Mukhabarat [intelligence] agent for the Iraqis, and he was involved in dirty stuff."

[...]

The witnesses said the Iraqi police observers were "shocked and surprised". But asked what message they might take from such an act, one said: "Any terrorists in Iraq should have the same destiny. This is the new Iraq.

"Allawi wanted to send a message to his policemen and soldiers not to be scared if they kill anyone - especially, they are not to worry about tribal revenge. He said there would be an order from him and the Interior Ministry that all would be fully protected.

"He told them: 'We must destroy anyone who wants to destroy Iraq and kill our people.'

"At first they were surprised. I was scared - but now the police seem to be very happy about this. There was no anger at all, because so many policemen have been killed by these criminals."

[...]


One witness justified the shootings as an unintended act of mercy: "They were happy to die because they had already been beaten by the police for two to eight hours a day to make them talk."

[...]

The Herald has established that as many as 30 people, including the victims, may have been in the courtyard. One of the witnesses said there were five or six civilian-clad American security men in a convoy of five or six late model four-wheel-drive vehicles that was shepherding Dr Allawi's entourage on the day. The US military and Dr Allawi's office refused to respond to questions about the composition of his security team. It is understood that the core of his protection unit is drawn from the US Special Forces units.

[...]

The two witnesses were independently and separately found by the Herald. Neither approached the newspaper. They were interviewed on different days in a private home in Baghdad, without being told the other had spoken. A condition of the co-operation of each man was that no personal information would be published.

Both interviews lasted more than 90 minutes and were conducted through an interpreter, with another journalist present for one of the meetings. The witnesses were not paid for the interviews.

Dr Allawi's office has dismissed the allegations as rumours instigated by enemies of his interim government.

[...]

US officials in Iraq have not made an outright denial of the allegations. An emailed response to questions from the Herald to the US ambassador, John Negroponte, said: "If we attempted to refute each [rumour], we would have no time for other business. As far as this embassy's press office is concerned, this case is closed."

It's worth noting that the reporter of this piece, Paul McGeough, is a widely respected hotshit investigative journalist. This story was buried, but it's probably true. Allawi is a gangster, which explains his comfortable affiliation with the dumbshit Soprano of American politics, Junior Bush.




digby 9/24/2004 01:02:00 AM |

Thursday, September 23, 2004

 
Do As I Say, Not As I Did

For too long our culture has said, "If it feels good, do it." Now America is embracing a new ethic and a new creed: "Let's roll." In the sacrifice of soldiers, the fierce brotherhood of firefighters, and the bravery and generosity of ordinary citizens, we have glimpsed what a new culture of responsibility could look like. We want to be a nation that serves goals larger than self. We've been offered a unique opportunity, and we must not let this moment pass.

Inspiring words from the man who said:

"I was not prepared to shoot my eardrum out with a shotgun in order to get a deferment. Nor was I willing to go to Canada. So I chose to better myself by learning how to fly airplanes."

Two faced bastard.




digby 9/23/2004 11:26:00 PM |

 
Kossacks At The Gate

I have not been among those pumping my fist in blog triumphalism, but I have to say that when I went to Google News tonight and saw at the top of the page...

Wrestling with the Porter Goss dilemma...
Daily Kos - 2 hours ago
Although I'm concerned about Porter Goss, I have to add my voice to those who think Senate Democrats were right not to oppose his confirmation.

...I was impressed. This link came before the NY Times.

I don't know what it all means, but congratulations to Kos Blogger Valentine.




digby 9/23/2004 09:53:00 PM |

 
Phony Sanctimony, Part II

Vice President Cheney's delicate sensibilities were bruised today by Senator Kerry's bad manners:

"I must say I was appalled at the complete lack of respect Senator Kerry showed for this man of courage when he rushed to hold a press conference and attack the prime minister, a man America must stand beside to defeat the terrorists," Cheney told an audience in St. Joseph, Missouri.


"John Kerry is trying to tear down all the good that has been accomplished, and his words are destructive to our effort in Iraq and in the global war on terror.


"As Prime Minister Allawi said in his speech, and I quote, 'When political leaders sound the siren of defeatism in the face of terrorism, it only encourages more violence,'" Cheney added.

If there is one thing that the Bush Cheney administration will not stand for it's disrespect to our allies around the world.

It's quite clear that any criticism of the president's leadership in a time of war is sounding the siren of defeatism in the face of terrorism. It's another example of what Zell Miller decried at the Republican convention --- Democrats determined to bring down the commander in chief by contesting an election. What could be more antithetical to freedom and democracy than that?






digby 9/23/2004 08:32:00 PM |

 
It Depends On What The Definition Of "Mistake" Is

October 7, 2002

Tonight I want to take a few minutes to discuss a grave threat to peace, and America's determination to lead the world in confronting that threat.

The threat comes from Iraq. It arises directly from the Iraqi regime's own actions -- its history of aggression, and its drive toward an arsenal of terror. Eleven years ago, as a condition for ending the Persian Gulf War, the Iraqi regime was required to destroy its weapons of mass destruction, to cease all development of such weapons, and to stop all support for terrorist groups. The Iraqi regime has violated all of those obligations. It possesses and produces chemical and biological weapons. It is seeking nuclear weapons. It has given shelter and support to terrorism, and practices terror against its own people. The entire world has witnessed Iraq's eleven-year history of defiance, deception and bad faith.

[...]

Some ask how urgent this danger is to America and the world. The danger is already significant, and it only grows worse with time. If we know Saddam Hussein has dangerous weapons today -- and we do -- does it make any sense for the world to wait to confront him as he grows even stronger and develops even more dangerous weapons?

[...]

Iraq possesses ballistic missiles with a likely range of hundreds of miles -- far enough to strike Saudi Arabia, Israel, Turkey, and other nations -- in a region where more than 135,000 American civilians and service members live and work. We've also discovered through intelligence that Iraq has a growing fleet of manned and unmanned aerial vehicles that could be used to disperse chemical or biological weapons across broad areas. We're concerned that Iraq is exploring ways of using these UAVS for missions targeting the United States. And, of course, sophisticated delivery systems aren't required for a chemical or biological attack; all that might be required are a small container and one terrorist or Iraqi intelligence operative to deliver it.

[...]

Iraq could decide on any given day to provide a biological or chemical weapon to a terrorist group or individual terrorists. Alliance with terrorists could allow the Iraqi regime to attack America without leaving any fingerprints.

Some have argued that confronting the threat from Iraq could detract from the war against terror. To the contrary; confronting the threat posed by Iraq is crucial to winning the war on terror. When I spoke to Congress more than a year ago, I said that those who harbor terrorists are as guilty as the terrorists themselves. Saddam Hussein is harboring terrorists and the instruments of terror, the instruments of mass death and destruction. And he cannot be trusted. The risk is simply too great that he will use them, or provide them to a terror network.

[...]

The evidence indicates that Iraq is reconstituting its nuclear weapons program. Saddam Hussein has held numerous meetings with Iraqi nuclear scientists, a group he calls his "nuclear mujahideen" -- his nuclear holy warriors. Satellite photographs reveal that Iraq is rebuilding facilities at sites that have been part of its nuclear program in the past. Iraq has attempted to purchase high-strength aluminum tubes and other equipment needed for gas centrifuges, which are used to enrich uranium for nuclear weapons.

If the Iraqi regime is able to produce, buy, or steal an amount of highly enriched uranium a little larger than a single softball, it could have a nuclear weapon in less than a year. And if we allow that to happen, a terrible line would be crossed. Saddam Hussein would be in a position to blackmail anyone who opposes his aggression. He would be in a position to dominate the Middle East. He would be in a position to threaten America. And Saddam Hussein would be in a position to pass nuclear technology to terrorists.


[...]


Knowing these realities, America must not ignore the threat gathering against us. Facing clear evidence of peril, we cannot wait for the final proof -- the smoking gun -- that could come in the form of a mushroom cloud. As President Kennedy said in October of 1962, "Neither the United States of America, nor the world community of nations can tolerate deliberate deception and offensive threats on the part of any nation, large or small. We no longer live in a world," he said, "where only the actual firing of weapons represents a sufficient challenge to a nations security to constitute maximum peril."

Understanding the threats of our time, knowing the designs and deceptions of the Iraqi regime, we have every reason to assume the worst, and we have an urgent duty to prevent the worst from occurring.

January 27,2004:

David Kay, The Central Intelligence Agency's outgoing chief weapons:

"I'm personally convinced that there were not large stockpiles of newly produced weapons of mass destruction," he said on Saturday. "We don't find the people, the documents or the physical plants that you would expect to find if the production was going on. I think they gradually reduced stockpiles throughout the 1990s."

April 14, 2004

Q. In the last campaign, you were asked a question about the biggest mistake you'd made in your life and you used to like to joke that it was trading Sammy Sosa. You've looked back before 9/11 for what mistakes might have been made. After 9/11, what would your biggest mistake be, would you say? And what lessons have you learned from it?

A. Hmmm. I wish you'd have given me this written question ahead of time so I could plan for it. I'm sure historians will look back and say, Gosh, he could have done it better this way or that way. You know, I just I'm sure something will pop into my head here in the midst of this press conference with all the pressure of trying to come up with an answer, but it hadn't yet.

I would have gone into Afghanistan the way we went into Afghanistan. Even though what I know today about the stockpiles of weapons, I still would have called upon the world to deal with Saddam Hussein. See, I happen to believe we'll find out the truth on the weapons. That's why we sent up the independent commission. I look forward to hearing the truth as exactly where they are. They could still be there. They could be hidden, like, the 50 tons of mustard gas in a turkey farm.

One of the things that Charlie Duelfer talked about was that he was surprised at the level of intimidation he found amongst people who should know about weapons and their fear of talking about them, because they don't want to be killed. You know, there's this kind of, there's this terror still in the soul of some of the people in Iraq. They're worried about getting killed. And therefore, they're not going to talk. And it'll all settle out. We'll find out the truth about the weapons at some point in time.

However, the fact that he had the capacity to make them bothers me today just like it would have bothered me then. He's a dangerous man. He's a man who actually not only had weapons of mass destruction — and the reason I can say that with certainty is because he used them. And I have no doubt in my mind that he would like to have inflicted harm or paid people to inflict harm or trained people to inflict harm on America because he hated us.

You know, I hope I don't want to sound like I've made no mistakes. I'm confident I have. I just haven't — you just put me under the spot here and maybe I'm not quick, as quick on my feet as I should be.

September 22,2004:

In Washington, in the tense months before war in Iraq, Charles Duelfer was confident. "Of course he is developing his weapons of mass destruction," the American arms expert wrote of Saddam Hussein.

In Baghdad, however, Hans Blix was much less convinced. The UN weapons inspector, on the eve of the conflict, remarked sadly on the likelihood that armies would be "waging the war at a tremendous cost, and in the end find there was very little".

In the end, as a hurricane distracted Americans, as terrorist car bombings and US air strikes bloodied Iraq, the findings of a Duelfer-led investigation were quietly leaked in Washington.

And, after 16 months of trying, what his teams have found is less than little.

In fact, the only unconventional weapon turned up in Iraq wasn't turned up by the Americans at all, but by the other side, Iraq's shadowy resistance.

In May, in an incident causing no serious injuries, insurgent fighters in Baghdad rigged an old artillery shell as a roadside bomb, apparently unaware it was loaded with sarin nerve agent.

Otherwise, two or three stray shells have been discovered with traces of degraded agent - far short of the 100 to 500 tons of usable chemical weapons that Secretary of State Colin Powell warned of on February 5 2003, as he sought a UN blessing for the US-British invasion.

September 23, 2004:

Q Mr. President, you say today that the work in Iraq is tough and willremain tough. And, yet, you travel this country and a central theme of your campaign is that America is safer because of the invasion of Iraq. Can you understand why Americans may not believe you?

PRESIDENT BUSH: No. Anybody who says that we are safer with SaddamHussein in power is wrong. We went into Iraq because Saddam Hussein defied the demands of the free world. We went into Iraq after diplomacy had failed. And we went into Iraq because I understand after September the 11th we must take threats seriously, before they come to hurt us.

And I think it's a preposterous claim to say that America would be better off with Saddam Hussein in power. I certainly know that that's the case for America and I certainly know it's the case for the Iraqi people. These are people who were tortured. This good man was abed in a London flat, and he wakes up with two Saddam henchmen there with axes, trying to cut him to pieces with an axe. And, fortunately, he's alive today; fortunately, we call him friend and ally. But he knows what it means to have lived under a society in which a thug like Saddam Hussein would send people with axes to try to kill him in bed in a London flat. No, this world is better off with Saddam Hussein in prison.

Q Sir, may I just follow, because I don't think you're really answering the question. I mean, I think you're responding to Senator Kerry, but there are beheadings regularly, the insurgent violence continues, and there are no weapons of mass destruction. My question is, can you understand that Americans may not believe you when you say that America is actually safer today?

PRESIDENT BUSH: Imagine a world in which Saddam Hussein were still in power. This is a man who harbored terrorists -- Abu Abbas, Abu Nidal, Zarqawi. This is a man who was a sworn enemy of the United States of America. This is a man who used weapons of mass destruction. Going from tyranny todemocracy is hard work, but I think the argument that says that Saddam Hussein -- if Saddam Hussein were still in power, we'd be better off is wrong.

King.

Q Sir, I'd like you answer Senator Kerry and other critics who accuse you of hypocrisy or opportunism when, on the one hand, you put so much stock in the CIA when it said Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction, and now say it is just guessing when it paints a pessimistic picture of the political transition.

[...]

PRESIDENT BUSH: Yes, got it. Listen, the other day I was asked about the NIE, which is a National Intelligence Estimate. This is a report that talks about possibilities about what can happen in Iraq, not probabilities. I used an unfortunate word, "guess." I should have used, "estimate." And the CIA came and said, this is a possibility, this is a possibility, and this is a possibility. But what's important for the American people to hear is reality. And the reality is right here in the form of the Prime Minister. And he is explaining what is happening on the ground. That's the best report. And this report was written in July, and now we are here in September, and as I said, "estimate" would have been a better word.

As of September 4, 2004:

7032 coalition forces wounded in action

As of September 23, 2004:

1176 coalition forces killed in action, 67 in this month alone.

As of September 23, 2004:

Between 12800 and 14843 Iraqi civilian deaths

How do you ask a man to be the last man to die for a mistake?







 
digby 9/23/2004 06:24:00 PM |

 
Speaking Out Of Both Sides Of His Mouth

Shortly after our two faced president took office it was revealed that his single largest political contributor had been running a congame on his workers and investors to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars. He quickly came up with a 10 point plan to ensure that CEOs could never snow their investors like that again.

Let's assume for the sake of argument that the country really should be run like a business and that bush has been out CEO for the last four years. Has our prez lived up to his CEO requirements?


1.) Each investor should have quarterly access to the information needed to judge a firm’s financial performance, condition, and risks.

"It's hard for me to explain why we need to make [the tax cuts] permanent. It's kind of like some of the things that happen in Washington. On the one hand, they taketh away. On the other hand, they giveth.
-- Denver, Colorado Sep. 27, 2002

2.) Each investor should have prompt access to critical information.

It's clearly a budget. It's got a lot of numbers in it.
-- Reuters, May 5, 2000

3.) CEOs should personally vouch for the veracity, timeliness, and fairness of their companies’ public disclosures, including their financial statements.

"The CIA laid out several scenarios. It said that life could be lousy, life could be OK, life could be better. And they were just guessing as to what the conditions might be like," he said
-- Washington, D.C., September 22, 2004

4.) CEOs or other officers should not be allowed to profit from erroneous financial statements.

"The really rich people figure out how to dodge taxes anyway."
-- Annandale, Virginia, Aug. 9, 2004

5.) CEOs or other officers who clearly abuse their power should lose their right to serve in any corporate leadership positions.

"Q: So when you say that you want the U.S. to adhere to international and U.S. laws, that's not very comforting. This is a moral question. Is terr -- torture ever justified?

GWB: Look, I'm gonna say it one more time. I can -- if I can -- maybe -- maybe I can be more clear. The instructions went out to our people to adhere to law. That oughtta comfort you. We -- we're a nation of law. We adhere to laws. We have laws on the books. You might look at those laws. And that might provide comfort for you. And those were the instructions out of -- from me to the government."
--- Savannah, Georgia, Jun. 10, 2004

6.) Corporate leaders should be required to tell the public promptly whenever they buy or sell company stock for personal gain.

"I remember campaigning in Chicago one time, and the guy said, would you ever deficit spend? I said, well, only if we were at war, or the country was in recession, or there was a national emergency. I didn't realize we were going to get the trifecta." --- Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, Apr. 3, 2002


7.) Investors should have complete confidence in the independence and integrity of companies’ auditors.

"You know, capitalism is only as strong as the integrity of the people involved in the process. And these leaders will tell you that you've got to be open with your employees. Otherwise, they're not going to work for you very hard.
-- Washington, D.C., Jan. 9, 2004

8.) An independent regulatory board should ensure that the accounting profession is held to the highest ethical standards.

Sometimes things aren't exactly black and white when it comes to accounting procedures.
-- Justifying his oil firm's accounting record, Washington, D.C., July 8, 2002

9.) The authors of accounting standards must be responsive to the needs of investors.

Look, I don't care about the numbers. I know the facts.
-- St. Petersburg, Florida, Mar. 8, 2002

10.) Firms’ accounting systems should be compared with best practices, not simply against minimum standards.

"In order to make sure the country was stronger, I pulled this page out of the economic textbook, the page that says, if you let people keep more of their own money, they're going to spend it on a good or a service. If they spend it on a good or a service, somebody will produce the good and service. And if somebody produces a good or service, some American is more likely to find work."
-- Trenton, New Jersey, Sep. 23, 2002








 
digby 9/23/2004 05:05:00 PM |

Wednesday, September 22, 2004

 
Rhetorical Inversion

Via TAPPED I see that John Edwards has begun to use some of his great primary speech in the stretch of this campaign.

I posted a glowing review of this speech back in June of 2003 because I thought it was one of the best examples of reframing the economic issues I had seen in many a day. He takes the language of the right and throws it right back at them in a way that's very difficult for them to deflect:

"It's the most radical and dangerous economic agenda to hit our shores since socialism a century ago. Like socialism, it corrupts the very nature of our democracy and our free enterprise tradition. It is not a plan to grow the American economy. It is a plan to corrupt the American economy," he told an audience outside in Cleveland. "We don't know all of the details, but we know that people who inherit hundreds of millions will pay nothing; firemen and waitresses and working people will pay everything. And we know his plan will take away the most important incentive for the single most important form of ownership: it will eliminate entirely the tax deduction for home mortgage interest."

Now, I don't happen to think that socialism corrupts the nature of our economy, but you can bet that most Americans have been brainwashed to think that. The key here is to jettison the word "socialism" on to the ashheap of history and tie the Republicans into it by saying they have a similarly "radical and corrupt" economic plan. This is using their own propaganda against them and it's very smart.

The TAPPED post goes on to point out that Bush really has proposed changes to the tax code that would eliminate the home mortgage deduction. That fits in nicely with another part of Edwards speech that goes like this:

Our economy, our people, and our nation have been undermined by the crony capitalists who believe that success is all about working the angles, working the phones, and rigging the game, instead of hard work, innovation and frugality. And these manipulators find comfort in an Administration which, through its own example, seems to embrace that ethic. We will never turn this country around until we put our economy and our government back in line with our values."

[...]

It’s time for a new approach that trusts people to make the most of their own lives and gives them the chance to do so. It’s time to stop emboldening entrenched interests and start empowering regular people. Above all, it’s time to end the failed conservative experiment and return to the idea that made this country great: Instead of helping wealthy people protect their wealth, we should help working people build their wealth."

I just love the way this appropriates all the comfortable GOP catch phrases --- projecting their own critique back back at them while redefining the positive ones for our own purposes. It's a very effective way to make the permeation of GOP rhetoric in the national subconscious work for us instead of against us.

It also has the value of confusing the Republicans. It's one of the most creative uses of political rhetoric I've seen in this campaign. I'm glad they are using it.




digby 9/22/2004 05:48:00 PM |

 
Drumbeat

I said earlier in the week that the stupid CBS memos flap was becoming a full fledged Wurlitzer frenzy and I think we went one step closer today.

Yesterday, Rush said:

"...the question about CBS, and I don't mean to be skirting this, but I don't know how they expect us to trust them on anything else they do, particularly when it's in this presidential race. This is a problem for them, folks. Now they're trying to make it go away by stonewalling it with this independent commission but you've got a major, major federal crime here."

This whore was on FOX saying:

"You start tying these connections together … I said I'm so scared because I know what's going on with my party," Democratic strategist Pat Caddell told FOX News. "The fact is, [Burkett] did not approach CBS, CBS approached him looking for the documents, which means someone tipped CBS off … which could be a violation of the law."

On Wolf Blitzer today, they devoted a full segment to the question of whether the forgeries were a crime. Joe DiGenova, former federal prosecutor de jour, said that a special prosecutor with subpoena power was needed to find out who tried to interefere with a federal election during wartime. Blitzer seemed to agree that the subject was so serious that somebody needed to get to the bottom of it.

Later, Brit Hume had some new nonsense about Mary Mapes and federal prisoners in Colorado.

Fasten your seatbelts. The Wurlitzer is gearing up. It's possible that it won't have legs, but the set up for a long term mediawhore feeding frenzy is being put in place. The good news is that Joe Lockhart and Mike McCurry are the two most experienced flacks on planet in dealing with this garbage.




digby 9/22/2004 04:14:00 PM |

 
Calling Mr Rains, Mr Claude Rains

Jeffrey Dubner at TAPPED takes the Kerry campaign to task for following up the DNC's hard hitting rhetoric of yesterday on the Roger Stone rumor with what he calls a weak-kneed follow-up today:

"Mr. President, this is a shameful advertisement that shows a disturbing disregard for those fighting and sacrificing in Iraq, and you should repudiate it immediately."

He points out that they will never get the Bush campaign to repudiate anything so they show themselves weak by failing to get results.

But, everybody knows very well that Bush is not going to repudiate it and that is exactly why they are saying it. This is the way the game is played. It's why Ed Gillespie gets the vapors every time the Democrats say boo and calls it "political hate speech."

It's called phony sanctimony and it works very well, as the Republicans have shown for years. They always shed crocodile tears and call the other side's attacks vicious and beyond the pale while they are sticking the shiv in as hard as they can. The difference is that this time we stuck the shiv in too.

I see Atrios disagrees with me. I think he should repudiate it.




digby 9/22/2004 11:53:00 AM |

Tuesday, September 21, 2004

 
Tin Foil Freakshow

On Hardball just now, Ben Ginsberg just claimed that Barnes, the NY Times, the Boston Globe, CBS, Joe Lockhart and Terry McAuliffe coordinated the memos story and the liberal media just isn't giving it the kind of scrutiny they gave the Swift Boat story.

Chris asked whether this controversy now means that the public should also be skeptical of the media's Iraq reporting going forward.

Deborah Orin made the important point that the bloggers who "exposed" the forgeries also are very skeptical of the reporting on Iraq so perhaps that should be a lesson for all of us.

Advantage: Idiots




digby 9/21/2004 05:17:00 PM |

 
Masterdebator

Ezra has it right on the debates.

We know he beat the friendly, funny, charismatic Weld. But what's rarely noted is that he also beat John Edwards in the series of one-on-one debates they held at the end of the primary. Edwads came off as nicer and funnier, sure, but he lacked the gravitas and policy knowledge of Kerry. I watched those confrontations expecting to vote for Edwards, but got up from the couch a Kerry supporter. It was clear to me then, as it is now, that the empathy and charm that pols like Edwards and Clinton possess are not applicable to elections fought on serious, scary ground. As I've said before, Bush only won (and he didn't even do that) in 2000 because the country was at peace and the economy was doing well, voters were unconcerned and thus won over by the friendlier, funnier candidate -- that was a popularity contest. But in a time when voters want serious leaders who demonstrate competence, strength and judgment, Bush's glib moralizing and self-effacing jokes are not going to save him. In contrast, Kerry's boring wonkishness and obvious thoughtfulness (not to mention his 4-inch height advantage -- two of the debates are standing) just might.

I sincerely hope that's true. I also think that this time the press may just be a bit less likely to fall back on their script simply because the Iraq story seems to be heating up as we go into the stretch. They used the press conference today to talk almost exclusively about Iraq and didn't mention the CBS nonsense.

I can't believe there is any question that Kerry will beat Bush in the debates when it's obvious that your average ten year old would beat him. But we have to take into account the press corpse which seems to adore his incoherent blather and buy into the idea that making sense is secondary to winning debates than presenting a manufactured regular guy image. So, it's always possible that in spite of what we all see with our eyes, we will be told that Bush won the debate because Kerry was too tall or something. But, I'm hopeful that the electorate is a bit more serious than last time and will see the contrast between a man of real substance and an empty suit.

I do think that Ezra took Atrios and Yglesias a bit too literally. I think their gnashing of teeth about Bush's great strength in the town hall format was a little tongue in cheek exercise in lowering expectations. Nobody really believes that Bush is good in debates, but the game requires that you set up Kerry as a big loser in order to defy expectations. Politics is so dumb these days.




digby 9/21/2004 04:53:00 PM |

 
Why Should I?

40 percent of Army reservists fail to report to Fort Jackson

COLUMBIA--Only about 60 percent of reservists ordered to report to Fort Jackson have reported so far, Army officials said.

As of Tuesday, 186 of the 309 members of the Individual Ready Reserve ordered to report to the Columbia base had arrived, said Lt. Col. Burton L. Masters, spokesman for the Army's Human Resources Command.

"We're not surprised by those numbers at all," Masters said.

Most of those who have not reported are seeking exemptions from active duty or delays in reporting, he said.

Those who have not reported or applied for a delay or exemption will be considered deserters if they do not show up within seven days of the date they were told to report for duty, Masters said.

"We are going to go the extra mile to work with people," he said. "But if they don't report, the Army will track them down."

Troops subject to the recall have been on active duty but have not completed their eight-year obligation to the Army.

The Army said 5,600 individual reservists were being recalled to active duty; 4,500 were to report to Fort Jackson. However, orders have been cut for only 3,667 of the soldiers to return to active duty, Masters said.

Many people believe that the fact that the president went AWOL during his time in the National Guard has set a bad example for those he has called to serve in Iraq today. They fail to see why they should be forced to do something the president used his influence and connections to avoid.

One Republican has spoken out:

The President's actions have had an intangible and coercive impact upon military personnel. To turn a blind eye and a deaf ear to it would be shame on us. The question soldiers and sailors ask is: I took an oath to swear to tell the truth. And I also took an oath to uphold the Constitution. How can this President take the same oath and not be truthful and remain in office? If I were to have done what the President did, I would be court-martialed.

You see, we also have to recognize that each of the services are recruiting young people all across the Nation. At boot camp they infuse these young people with the moral values of honor, courage and commitment, and they're teaching self-restraint, discipline and self- sacrifice. Military leaders are required to provide a good example to those young recruits, yet when they look up the chain of command, all the way to the Commander in Chief, they see a double standard at the top. Again, it is the President that sets the tone and tenor in the military, just as he does for law enforcement.

I believe the President has violated this sacred trust between the leaders and those of whom he was entrusted to lead. I also spoke in my presentation that it was the President's self-inflicted wounds that have called his own credibility into question not only in his decisionmaking process, but with regard to security policies.

Oh wait. Pardon me. That was House Manager Steven Buyers speaking before the Senate during president Clinton's impeachment trial. A president getting a blow job obviously sets a very bad example for the troops. But, running out on your own military committment and then sending men and women to fight in a useless war overseas is a perfectly fine example and nobody in the military should ever think otherwise. My bad.




digby 9/21/2004 02:52:00 PM |

 
Makeup to Breakup

This article pretends that the reason the campaigns insisted on having their own makeup people for the debates is because of Richard Nixon's five o'clock shadow, but the real reason is that in the last debates somebody sabotaged Al Gore by making him look like a circus freak on national television. I've always been curious as to how that happened. I'm glad to see that the Kerry campaign isn't taking any chances.

It's also not surprising that the Bush team agreed seeing as how they must have makeup special effects professionals close at all times to cover Junior's many pratfalls flat on his face.




digby 9/21/2004 01:47:00 PM |

 
Dreams and Visions

I just had the strangest dream. I thought I saw a president who spoke in complete sentences, in great detail, in direct response to questions posed to him in a press conference. It was bizarre and freakish. It made me feel fevered and nostalgic for some reason.

Then I heard a president talk about the pessimistic National Intelligence Estimate. He explained, "The CIA laid out several scenarios. It said that life could be lousy, life could be OK, life could be better. And they were just guessing as to what the conditions might be like," he said. "The Iraq citizens are defying the pessimistic predictions."

I realized that I was not sleeping and our waking nightmare is still ongoing.

Still, it was nice to dream of what might be if we had a president who was sentient and aware --- how much more secure we would all feel with someone in charge who is in control of his faculties. Someone who wasn't living in a fantasy world. It would be such a relief.




digby 9/21/2004 01:20:00 PM |

 
OhMyGoodness

New York Post :

The hot rumor in New York political circles has Roger Stone, the longtime GOP activist, as the source for Dan Rather's dubious Texas Air National Guard "memos."

The irony would be delicious, since Rather became famous confronting President Nixon, in whose service a very young Stone became associated with political "dirty tricks."

Reached at his Florida home, Stone had no comment.

Well, it certainly wouldn't be the first time ole Rog has been called upon to do a little dirty work. He was one of the original ratfuckers back in the day. I wrote about Stone back in August of 2003. Here's just one of his more recent forays into dirty tricks:

What the world watched was a G.O.P. melee. When Geller walked out of the room with a sample ballot, the crowd accused him of stealing a real one and responded as if he had just nabbed a baby for its organs. Geller says he was pushed by two dozen protesters screaming, "I'm gonna take you down!" Luis Rosero, a Democratic observer, claims he was punched and kicked. Republicans dispute the charges, but video cameras caught scenes of activism that had morphed into menace. The organizers in the RV outside, who G.O.P. protesters have told Time were led by hardball Washington strategist Roger Stone, had phone banks churning out calls to Miami Republicans, urging them to storm downtown. (Stone could not be reached for comment.)

I have no doubt that he could have done this. And, by the standard of proof set forth over the past 12 years by Chris Vlasto, Jeff Gerth, Susan Schmidt, Ceci Connolly, Brit Hume, Judith Miller, Howell Raines, Lisa Myers, Jackie Judd, Dan Rather, John Stossell, Chris Matthews, Paula Zahn, Bill O'Reilly, Fred Barnes, and all the rest of our news media, that makes it worthy of endless hours of speculation and long in-depth articles about his past quoting many unnamed sources saying that he's guilty. Bring it on.




digby 9/21/2004 11:29:00 AM |

 
Smart Polls

Today DonkeyRising features a study by Alan Abramowitz that shows the ARG September poll was was highly accurate in the the 2000 election ---- certainly far more accurate than the wildly up and down Gallup poll.

They've just released the first 20 states of their 50 state poll for this year. Unsurprisingly it shows what we all know to be true. The reds are red and the blues are blue --- and it's going to be a street fight in the purple states.

Here's the ARG web site.




digby 9/21/2004 10:22:00 AM |

 
Deja Vu Vu

This passage from "Citizen Perot" by Gerald Posner reminds us that where there's a Bush campaign, there are often strange Texans wielding information and evidence that blows back on the ones who fall for it:

IN JULY 1992, Ross Perot hastily called a press conference to announce he was dropping out of the presidential race. He reentered the race on Oct. 1 and, through infomercials and solid performances in the presidential debates, soon approached 20% in the polls. Then he made a decision that stopped his momentum cold: he agreed to a 60 Minutes interview to present the "real reason" for his earlier withdrawal.

On Sunday, Oct.25, he told startled viewers he had pulled out after receiving "multiple reports" that there was a Republican plot to embarrass his daughter by disrupting her summer wedding, and that there was also a plan to distribute a computerized false photo of his daughter. After the show Perot was widely ridiculed, and many believed his reasons were bogus.

Some aspects of this scandal have long been known, yet the details were always murky. The full account, now available, reveals that while Perot did have some basis for his bizarre charge, he appears to have relied on sources of dubious credibility. The episode provides insights into the behind-the-scenes intrigue of political campaigns, as well as painting a disturbing portrait of FBI incompetence.

Read the whole thing. It's very reminiscent of the bizarre tales we've been reading about these last few days. Funny that.




digby 9/21/2004 09:38:00 AM |

 
The Big Mea Culpa

Tim Grieve at Salon.com thinks that Dan Rather may have inadvertantly provided the template for the speech we've all been waiting for George W. Bush to give:

I no longer have the confidence in the intelligence that led me to take our country to war. I find I have been misled on the key question of whether Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction. That, combined with the complete lack of evidence that Saddam Hussein had any role in the attacks of Sept. 11, leads me to a point where — if I knew then what I know now — I would not have started a war in Iraq, and I certainly would not have done so if I'd known that more than a thousand U.S. troops and thousands more Iraqi citizens would be killed in the process.

"But I did start the war. I made a mistake in judgment, and for that I am sorry. It was an error that was made, however, in good faith and in the spirit of trying to make America safer.

"Please know that nothing is more important to me than people's trust in my ability and my commitment to keeping America safe. "

As Grieve points out, all it would take is a very little bit of cutting and pasting on Microsoft Word and Junior could show that he has as much integrity as Dan Rather.







digby 9/21/2004 08:25:00 AM |

Monday, September 20, 2004

 
Chapter Two

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Washington, DC--Republican National Committee Chairman Ed Gillespie issued the following statement on CBS’s admission today that memos regarding the President’s National Guard service are not real.

“We accept CBS's apology for a breach of the journalistic standards that provide the American people confidence in news organizations, but some disturbing questions remain unanswered.

“CBS has now answered questions about the authenticity of the documents but questions remain surrounding who created the documents, who provided them to CBS and if Senator Kerry's supporters, Party committee, or campaign played any role.

“Did Bill Burkett, Democrat activist and Kerry campaign supporter, who passed information to the DNC, work with Kerry campaign surrogate Max Cleland? Did Bill Burkett's talks with ‘senior’ Kerry campaign officials include discussions of the now discredited documents? Was the launch of the Democrat National Committee's Operation Fortunate Son designed with knowledge of the faked forged memos? Terry McAuliffe said yesterday that no one at the DNC or Kerry campaign, ‘had anything to do with the preparations of the documents,’ but what about the distribution or dissemination?

“In an effort to regain the trust of the American people CBS should not only investigate the process that led to the use of these documents but they should identify immediately those engaged in possible criminal activity who attempted to use a news organization to affect the outcome of a Presidential election in its closing days.”

This is where it's going folks and the cable-whores are eating it up with a spoon tonight. Look for congressional and justice department investigations (maybe a grand jury) and nightly ratcheting up of leaks and speculation on the gasbags shows. They may even call the Barbizon School of blond former prosecutors up from the minors for this one. That's how these trumped up Wurlitzer frenzies work. I could write the narrative in my sleep.

Here's a little parlor game for everyone. Let's assume that I'm right and this story is rapidly shifting to a "whodunnit in the Kerry campaign." What should Kerry's strategy be and what should the surrogates do on the cable shoutfests to get ahead of this?






digby 9/20/2004 05:27:00 PM |

 
Rigged

Following up my post below on the new stepped up Justice department efforts to root out Democratic voters and throw out the votes of those who do manage to vote, Jeffrey Toobin has an article in the New Yorker on the same subject. Jesus, it's going to be tough to win this one even if we win this one. It's not just the voting machines:

On October 8, 2002, Attorney General Ashcroft stood before an invited audience in the Great Hall of the Justice Department to outline his vision of voting rights, in words that owed much to the rhetoric used by L.B.J. and Lincoln. “The right of citizens to vote and have their vote count is the cornerstone of our democracy—the necessary precondition of government of the people, by the people, and for the people,” Ashcroft told the group, which included several veteran civil-rights lawyers.

The Attorney General had come forward to launch the Voting Access and Integrity Initiative, whose name refers to the two main traditions in voting-rights law. Voter-access efforts, which have long been associated with Democrats, seek to remove barriers that discourage poor and minority voters; the Voting Rights Act itself is the paradigmatic voter-access policy. The voting-integrity movement, which has traditionally been favored by Republicans, targets fraud in the voting process, from voter registration to voting and ballot counting. Despite the title, Ashcroft’s proposal favored the “integrity” side of the ledger, mainly by assigning a federal prosecutor to watch for election crimes in each judicial district. These lawyers, Ashcroft said, would “deter and detect discrimination, prevent electoral corruption, and bring violators to justice.”

[...]

Von Spakovsky, a longtime activist in the voting-integrity cause, has emerged as the Administration’s chief operative on voting rights. Before going to Washington, he was a lawyer in private practice and a Republican appointee to the Fulton County Registration and Election Board, which runs elections in Atlanta. He belonged to the Federalist Society, a prominent organization of conservative lawyers, and had also joined the board of advisers of a lesser-known group called the Voting Integrity Project

The V.I.P. was founded by Deborah Phillips, a former county official of the Virginia Republican Party, as an organization devoted principally to fighting voting fraud and promoting voter education. In 1997, von Spakovsky wrote an article for the Georgia Public Policy Foundation, a conservative research group, that called for an aggressive campaign to “purge” the election rolls of felons. Within months of that article’s publication, the V.I.P. helped put von Spakovsky’s idea into action. Phillips met with the company that designed the process for the removal of alleged felons from the voting rolls in Florida, a process that led, notoriously, to the mistaken disenfranchisement of thousands of voters, most of them Democratic, before the 2000 election. (This year, Florida again tried to purge its voting rolls of felons, but the method was found to be so riddled with errors that it had to be abandoned.) During the thirty-six-day recount in Florida, von Spakovsky worked there as a volunteer for the Bush campaign. After the Inauguration, he was hired as an attorney in the Voting Section and was soon promoted to be counsel to the Assistant Attorney General, in what is known as the “front office” of the Civil Rights Division. In that position, von Spakovsky, who is forty-five years old, has become an important voice in the Voting Section. (Von Spakovsky, citing Justice Department policy, has also declined repeated requests to be interviewed.)

Well, I feel much better about these coming elections knowing that such a fair minded, non-partisan civil servant is working to ensure that all goes well.

In case anyone is wondering about the Voter Integrity project, it is another poisonous tentacle of the VRWC run by Helen Blackwell, wife of Morton Blackwell uber-conservative co-founder of the Moral Majority, recently renowned for the classy act of handing out purple band-aids at the Republican convention. (More on Blackwell at Democratic Veteran.)

I think it's also a good bet that Spakovsky is friends with the infamous Buckhead, fellow Atlanta republican elections board supervisor and federalist society clone.

Sometimes I think this whole VRWC could fit into a large jacuzzi.




digby 9/20/2004 04:21:00 PM |

 
Mighty Casio Needs To Crank Up

I wonder what would happen if Democrats worked as hard at discrediting this bogus polling as the Republicans have worked at discrediting those stupid National Guard documents?

Of course we couldn't fall back on decades of charges of liberal bias to get anyone to pay attention, but if even the Wall Street Journal admits that the polls are screwy you'd think we could get just a little attention to the polling firms' bizarre and unsubstantiated notion that there are suddenly much larger numbers of self-identified Republicans in the country than ever before.

I wonder if it might then be possible to reframe the horserace coverage to the real story. Why is an incumbent president who had a 90% approval rating for a large chunk of his presidency having such a hard time closing the deal? Incumbents don't usually have to fight for their lives in the middle of a war unless something has gone terribly wrong.

Oh, and by the way, if the president were really 13 points ahead, he would not have agreed to three debates. This is, after all, a president who has faced the press in formal news conferences fewer times than any president in history. He would not subject himself to three sessions of unscripted questions if he were confident he had it in the bag. They know they're tied and need to break out.




digby 9/20/2004 01:52:00 PM |

 
Framing The Argument

I'm busy today and don't have time to write much, but since I noticed that both Kos and Jerome Armstrong are writing about Lakoff's new book, I thought that I would repost a piece of mine from almost a year ago about Lakoff and his framing of the two parties.

Let me emphasize that my criticism is not of his analysis or of the substance of his frame, but merely of the idea of the Democrats using the frame literally to try to sell our ideas, particularly during a national security crisis. In fact, I think using his frame plays into Republican hands. I never hear Lakoff doing this, but I sure have heard a lot of Democrats saying we should. And that, I think, is absolutely wrong.

Frame Up


A number of readers have written to me today asking if I’m familiar with George Lakoff, whom Atrios points to in this interesting interview, because I discuss this kind of thing quite a bit here on Hullabaloo. As these guys guessed, I’ve read his work and have been very influenced by it. He is completely correct, in my view, about the immense power of framing issues with language and image and his ideas about candidates as “identities” is right on the money.

If I have a beef with Lakoff it’s that the one frame he’s most known for --- the Republican “strict father” and the Democrat “nurturing parent” --- is one of the more unfortunate metaphors for the progressive cause that I can imagine.

It’s not that he’s wrong in his analysis, it’s that he’s used the wrong terms to frame it. (Yep. You heard me. I hereby accept the 2003 Shameless Intellectual Arrogance Award. Thank you very much.)

I don’t think it’s a very good frame to begin with because it isn’t honest. Let’s not pretend that the real frame isn’t “strict father” vs “nurturing mother.” The frame doesn't really make sense otherwise. And, rightly or wrongly, this frame makes the tension gender based, and in doing so it defines progressive leadership as female leadership, something that is an indistinct and still evolving archetypal image. This puts progressives at a disadvantage because people don't immediately associate women with public leadership just yet. That will, of course, come to pass in the not too distant future (I hope.) But framing isn't a matter for wish fulfillment. To work, it must be immediately recognizable. The fact that Lakoff didn’t use the obvious "father-mother" construction indicates to me that knew that this was a problem.

I do not mean to condemn him completely for the fact that his framework is being used to give Republicans an advantage. He has never suggested that Democrats use this as a campaign slogan or even a public identity and yet I read people all the time who think that this “nurturing parent/mother” image is a winning one for the Democrats. I think that it informs a lot of thinking about what issues on which the Democrats should run even when the political environment makes those issues far less salient than others, regardless of what polls say people care about. And, just because we are the “nurturing parent” party does not mean that the way to win elections is to pretend that the only problems worth addressing are those that can be solved with nurturing --- or that nurturing can solve every problem.

Lakoff says that the progressive worldview is:

“Children are born good; parents can make them better. Nurturing involves empathy, and the responsibility to take care of oneself and others for whom we are responsible. On a larger scale, specific policies follow, such as governmental protection in form of a social safety net and government regulation, universal education (to ensure competence, fairness), civil liberties and equal treatment (fairness and freedom), accountability (derived from trust), public service (from responsibility), open government (from open communication), and the promotion of an economy that benefits all and functions to promote these values.”

The conservative worldview, the strict father model, assumes that the world is dangerous and difficult and that children are born bad and must be made good. The strict father is the moral authority who supports and defends the family, tells his wife what to do, and teaches his kids right from wrong. The only way to do that is through painful discipline — physical punishment that by adulthood will become internal discipline. The good people are the disciplined people. Once grown, the self-reliant, disciplined children are on their own. Those children who remain dependent (who were spoiled, overly willful, or recalcitrant) should be forced to undergo further discipline or be cut free with no support to face the discipline of the outside world.

I believe that this is all true. But, I don’t like the “strict” and “nurturing” characterizations any more than I like the “Father” and ”Mother” dichotomy.

If it is necessary to frame the political divide in family terms, I might have done it as “rigid parents” vs. “conscientious parents.” The analysis remains the same, but the words don’t imply character traits that people automatically associate with strong vs weak leadership, but rather they connote negative vs positive leadership.

The word “strict” does imply discipline but self-discipline is valued by most people, even if cruel methods to attain it are not. And the word strict does not, as Lakoff seems to say, necessarily correlate to abuse and heartlessness in most people's minds. “Rigid” on the other hand, implies narrow mindedness and inability to admit error along with a severe, uncompromising temperment.

The word “nurturing” does exactly what Lakoff admonishes the Democrats to stop doing, which is play into the GOP framework. The right has been framing the left and right for many years as the "nanny state" vs "individual freedom." "Nurturing parent" and "nanny state" are too closely related. “Conscientious”, however, encompasses all the empathetic qualities that Lakoff ascribes to the left, but also implies a willingness to react with strength where necessary. A conscientious parent responds to hostile threats as well as well as cries for help.

Both traits are equally masculine and feminine, so there is no archetypal leadership image associated with them.

From a tactical communications standpoint, it is very important for the left to acknowledge that Lakoff is telling us that our current method of framing ourselves is as flawed as the way the other side frames us. (Indeed, I’ve just argued that the master himself has made a major error.) But, even if I agreed with his framework, it would still not be useful to merely parrot it and assume that it is a good tactical framework merely because Lakoff himself is a progressive. The point of all this is to frame issues in such a way as to persuade the undecideds and apathetic and at least some members of the opposition to agree with our side of the argument. That means we have to stop preaching to the choir all the time.

And framing alone is not enough. We also have to take into account certain realities about how people arrive at political decisions these days. It’s my observation that they rely on simplistic symbolism and image more than they have in the past, mostly because of the pervasiveness of the shallow celebrity culture and television's position as the epicenter of the American community. (I’ll elaborate on that in a later post.)

As Lakoff says in the article:

In the strict father model, the big thing is discipline and moral authority, and punishment for those who do something wrong. That comes out very clearly in the Bush administration's foreign and domestic policy. With Schwarzenegger, it's in his movies: most of the characters that he plays exemplify that moral system. He didn't have to say a word! He just had to stand up there, and he represents Mr. Discipline. He knows what's right and wrong, and he's going to take it to the people. He's not going to ask permission, or have a discussion, he's going to do what needs to be done, using force and authority. His very persona represents what conservatives are about.

I think this is right on the money. Schwarzenegger’s campaign rested solely on his scripted action-hero persona. In fact, this may be the first election in which all pretense of substance was completely abandoned in favor of purely manufactured Hollywood symbolism. The “crisis” that precipitated the recall wasn’t real, the ensuing voter “anger” wasn’t real and the winning candidate wasn’t real. The entire narrative was scripted as a loose form reality TV show in which the drama was pushed and prodded by the “producers” even though the outcome wasn’t preordained. It was “real” in the same way that “Survivor” is real.

As Lakoff rightly points out, this stuff is important and the Democrats are just not getting with the program. The other side is doing it with a tremendous amount of sophistication and almost unlimited financial backing. California is the most populated state in the nation and if it can happen here, a Democratic state, it can happen nationally. In fact, in many ways, election 2000 was an early version.

Meanwhile, many on our side seem to believe that there is something distasteful about framing issues and using symbolism and metaphor to win elections as if being unable to govern honestly is the natural consequence of using these communication techniques. This is wrong.

It is only a method to get our ideas across and make the American public see our candidates in a way they are comfortable with. There is no reason that politicians must be vapid in order that their campaigns and issues are communicated through positive framing, metaphor and symbolism. It’s just that the Republicans have such geeky, unpleasant politicians and policies that they have no choice but to pick people like manufactured movie stars or dynastic restoration figures as their symbols and then destroy the opposition with ruthless character assassination.

Here’s a little example of framing that worked for the Democrats. As much as any position on issues or rhetorical brilliance, Bill Clinton, for all of his wonkish intellect, won in 1992 mostly because he symbolized the changing of the guard from the WWII generation to the baby boom. The cold war was over; the boomers were middle aged and ready to take power. There were two important symbolic moments in that campaign, both of which Clinton seemed to instinctively grasp and where his natural gifts as a politician served him well.

The first was when he played “Heartbreak Hotel” on the sax with his shades on, an unprecedented act of post-modern presidential media coolness. The other was showing the footage at the convention of John F. Kennedy shaking a 17 year old Bill Clinton’s hand – an almost literal passing of the torch from the guy who inspired the baby boomers with an inaugural speech in which he said “the torch has been passed to a new generation.” It was brilliant. Clinton understood his historical moment and framed that election as Young vs Old, Change vs Stasis and he used his own quintessential baby boomer narrative (and all that that entailed, good and bad) to make that case.

The task for Democrats in 2004 is to recognize this historical moment and muster all the tools at our disposal to frame this election in our favor and nominate the most qualified candidate whose image and personal narrative best serves as a metaphor for the current zeitgeist.




digby 9/20/2004 01:35:00 PM |

 
Planning Ahead

I'm telling you, if we win this election and it's close, the wheels are in motion for the RNC to contest it. You can see it in the way they are telling their people to vote absentee ballot, by the fact that they've appropriated the Democratic rallying cry "make sure your vote counts" and by this:

Voter Probes Raise Partisan Suspicions

Democrats, Allies See Politics Affecting Justice Department's Anti-Fraud Efforts

Earlier this month, U.S. Attorney David Iglesias in New Mexico launched a statewide criminal task force to investigate allegations of voter fraud in the upcoming presidential election. The probe came after a sheriff who co-chairs President Bush's campaign in the state's largest county complained about thousands of questionable registrations turned in by Democratic-leaning groups.

"It appears that mischief is afoot and questions are lurking in the shadows," Iglesias told local reporters.

[...]

The probe is one of several criminal inquiries into alleged voter fraud launched in recent weeks in key presidential battlegrounds, including Ohio and West Virginia, as part of a broader initiative by U.S. Attorney General John D. Ashcroft targeting bogus registrations and other election crimes. The Justice Department has asked U.S. attorneys across the country to meet with local elections officials and launch publicity campaigns aimed at getting people to report irregularities.

[...]

Justice officials say it is the department's duty to prosecute illegal activities at the polls, and stress that civil rights lawyers are also working to ensure that legitimate voters can cast their ballots without interference. Justice Department spokesman Bryan Sierra said that "the department must strike a proper balance and we cannot be deterred from investigating allegations of criminal voter fraud."

Civil rights advocates and many Democrats, however, complain that the department is putting too much emphasis on investigating new voter registrations in poor and minority communities -- which tend to favor Democrats -- and not enough on ensuring that those voters do not face discrimination at the polls. More attention should be given to potential fraud in the use of absentee ballots, which tend to favor Republicans, the critics say.

They also charge that announcing criminal investigations within weeks of an election -- as was done in New Mexico on Sept. 7 -- is likely to scare legitimate voters away from the polls.

"I'm concerned that the Justice Department is being overtly political," said Nancy Zirkin, deputy director of the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights. "Bells are going off for me because searching for voter fraud has often been a proxy for intimidating voters."

The Justice Department's guidelines say prosecutors "must refrain from any conduct which has the possibility of affecting the election itself."

"A criminal investigation by armed, badged federal agents runs the obvious risk of chilling legitimate voting and campaign activities," the department's manual on elections crime says. "Federal prosecutors and investigators should be extremely careful to not conduct overt investigations during the pre-election period or while the election is underway."

Experts on both sides acknowledge that faulty or bogus voter registrations are a persistent problem. For example, one study found that 5,400 dead people cast votes over a 20-year period in Georgia. But experts question whether the phenomenon is widespread, and elections officials say they are most concerned about absentee ballot fraud.

"The problem is, you don't know if the voter is being coerced, misled or bribed, because it all happens away from public scrutiny," said Denise Lamb, New Mexico's election director.

[...]

Still, in recent months, elections officials in swing states have reported thousands of problematic registrations, including addresses that do not exist, duplicate names, the names of deceased voters and names that appear to be copied out of a phone book by the same person. Republicans have pointed to such registrations as evidence of possible widespread election fraud.

"Violations of voter registration laws, registering dead or nonexistent people to vote, creates the opportunity for Democrats to disenfranchise legitimate voters on Election Day, which on any scale is something that should concern all voters," said Republican National Committee spokeswoman Christine Iverson.

Elections officials of both parties, however, say that bad registrations do not necessarily translate into Election Day fraud. New identification laws, as well as signature checks, make ballot-box stuffing extremely difficult, they say.

[...]

But many Democrats are suspicious of the prosecutors' motives in the most recent cases -- most of which involve GOP complaints and alleged wrongdoing on behalf of Democratic candidates -- and are uneasy with Ashcroft's role in overseeing such probes. Ashcroft, a former Missouri governor and senator, came under fire during his 2001 confirmation for vetoing bills that would have promoted voter registration in St. Louis, a heavily African American Democratic stronghold.

[...]


But civil rights advocates worry that, in the case of criminal investigations such as the one in New Mexico, investigators will have to go door-to-door to question new registrants before balloting. In the 2002 South Dakota elections, state and federal agents questioned hundreds of newly registered Native Americans, a key constituency for Democrats in that state. The probe resulted in charges against one woman, which were subsequently dropped.

"Often there's no real basis for these fraud allegations," said Jonah Goldman of the Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights Under Law. The New Mexico probe was launched in part at the request of Bernalillo County Sheriff Darren White, who chairs the county's Bush-Cheney campaign. The announcement came after a district court judge ruled against plaintiffs in a Republican-led lawsuit that sought at-the-poll identification requirements for new voters registered through drives. As proof that change is needed, the plaintiffs listed a number of questionable registrations in their lawsuit, including one from a 13-year-old. But several women whose registration cards were attached to the lawsuit testified they registered twice by mistake and that no fraud was involved.

Democratic groups have been pushing to register new voters in New Mexico, which Bush lost by 366 votes in 2000. The Democratic Party has testified that changing ID rules would disenfranchise some voters, and spokesman Matt Farrauto called the criminal probe "worrisome."

Iglesias's spokesman, Norman Cairns, said the FBI is investigating "questionable voter registrations." But he added: "Our objective is not in any way to influence this election."

So, the investigations themselves may intimidate voters most likely to vote Democratic. And if we still manage to win, they will form the basis for contesting the election. And, it's purely coincidence that all these investigations are sought by the GOP against Democratic GOTV efforts.




digby 9/20/2004 01:02:00 PM |

Sunday, September 19, 2004

 
OxyMorons For Truth

Jay Rosen has written a very interesting post on the journalistic ethics and dramatic narrative surrounding the memo controversy. He makes the very interesting observation that much of this is unfolding as a spectacle of political theatre as much as anything else:

That report, which Rather hosted, announced to the nation the sensational existence of documents CBS had failed to authenticate.

This is the crime of which the network stands accused in the theater of election year politics, and in a longer history of resentment that some see as coming to a fiery end in Rather's acts of self-destruction. Whether that's true or not, CBS has to understand that its news division has become protagonist (or villain) in a 60 Minutes-style scandal story, an investigative drama, not just an investigation.

The documents were "sensational" because of the revelations in them about the character and conduct of the President in a bitter election-year struggle. If they had forgeries inside them, then the charges CBS aired were very likely attempts at political sabotage. For the network to be involved in something like that goes beyond bounds of forgivable error.

This is no doubt true. The thought of a network or major newspaper acting as a tool of political sabotage to sully the character of a president is chilling indeed.

But, I can't help wondering why this orgy of recriminations is happening over this incident when there have literally been thousands of even worse examples of the press willingly acting as partisan tools over the past 12 years or so, much of it fed to them directly by political operatives. Why is the thought of Dan Rather being used for partisan political purposes (if indeed he was) so shocking when we know that the mainstream press has been the victim of hoax after hoax by such outfits as Citizens United for years?

Did anyone ever call Jeff Gerth on the carpet for falling for the Scaife financed "Arkansas project" propaganda on the NY Times Whitewater stories? How about the chinese espionage "scandal" which was also a right wing hack job that proved to be absolutely bogus (aided and abetted by our good friend Rep. Chris Cox and his wholly discredited Cox Report.) Did anybody pay a price for pimping the Vince Foster story for the Mighty Wirlizter? Troopergate? The White House vandalism and stolen gifts stories? The list is endless. Years and years and years of hoaxes and smears and lies that led to tens of millions of dollars in taxpayer money wasted on investigations that went nowhere and NOBODY SAYS A FUCKING WORD about the press's incestuous involvement with those who perpetrated these expensive frauds on the American public. (I won't even mention the elephant sitting in the middle of the room with the words "Saddam and 9/11" tattooed on his forehead.)

The lesson in this is clear. Dan Rather made a big mistake all right, but it wasn't the one that the rest of the press corp is unctuously wringing its hands over. The lesson is that he should have never have shown the documents. He should have done the story with some guy in the shadows with his voice disguised saying that "he'd seen the documents." He should have hinted darkly at death threats and used many anonymous sources without ever producing any kind of proof. He should have dribbled the story out over a couple of weeks on the CBS evening news instead of presenting it all at one time.

Oh yes, and he should have done the story about a Democrat. Nobody ever gets in trouble for committing journalistic malpractice against them. In fact, it's a career booster.


For the record: I have no idea if the Killian documents are real or forged or whether they were manufactured in Niger or by elves in Karl Rove's office and nobody else does either at this point. When I wrote that it was a dirty trick, I did so with the ironic preface, "according to the new rules of journalism and truth" and "good enough for GOP government work" which should have been a hint that I was, at the very least, being flip. As far as I'm concerned, this story is now in the permanent realm of conspiracy mongering and I am exercising my right to set forth whatever conspiracy fits my personal political bent. That's the way it's done nowadays, boys and girls. Credibility and intellectual consistency are for losers.




digby 9/19/2004 01:45:00 PM |

 
Tribal Leadership

Sports Illustrated readers overwhelmingly voted Mr. Bush the better athlete and sports fan, a conclusion the magazine's managing editor, Terry McDonell, finds baffling.

"Clearly Kerry is a much, much, much, much better athlete," he said, noting that Mr. Kerry has long played competitive hockey and also regularly snowboards, Rollerblades, windsurfs and kite-surfs.

"Kite-surfing," Mr. McDonell said, "is the hardest, most radical thing to do. It's what the most extreme surfers are doing."

Mr. Bush, in contrast, was a cheerleader, and not, Mr. McDonell notes, the kind that did flips. "It's like spirit club."

[...]

Mr. McDonell puzzled over what all this shooting and fishing had to do with being leader of the free world. "Within sports, you can see leadership," he said, "but that does not mean going to a Nascar event will make you a good president."

Helen Fisher, an anthropologist at Rutgers University, said that voters have a primal need to know that a candidate is a member of their tribe. "If you're sitting around watching sports on a Sunday and you know your president is also sitting around watching sports, you're not only in intellectual sync, you're probably in some biological sync on some level," said Ms. Fisher, who is the author of "The Sex Contract: The Evolution of Human Behavior."

So, a bunch of potbellied Nascar fans are voting for George W. Bush because they imagine he and they are great athletes due to the fact that they like watching other people drive cars. Is democracy great, or what?






digby 9/19/2004 09:47:00 AM |

 
It's Not Hype

tristero says that he plans to devote some time to blogging about John Kerry's exemplary career and I think I'll join him in that effort. Kerry is sadly underappreciated by Democrats and I think it's important that we start to point out what a fine man he truly is.

For instance, how many of you knew that after Kerry came back from Vietnam and formed and then left Vietnam Veterans Against the War, that he was the co-founder of another highly effective advocacy group called Vietnam Veterans of America:

tristero says:

Tonight, I'll briefly remind all of us that, after Yale, after Vietnam, after protesting the war with VVAW. Kerry co-founded a different group whose purpose was to move beyond the differences that divided the Vietnam generation. Dedicated to aiding all those who fought in Southeast Asia, it's called Vietnam Veterans of America, "the only national Vietnam veterans organization congressionally chartered and exclusively dedicated to Vietnam-era veterans and their families," currently with over 50,000 individual members.

VVA receives no government funds of any kind whatsoever. But it provides philanthropic assistance to Vietnam Vets that need it, works with homeless vets. and has worked for twenty years in the effort for a full accounting of POW/MIAs.

In addition, the VVA site says they are "single-handedly leading the fight for judicial review of disabled veterans' claims for benefits. The result: In 1988, Congress passed a law creating the U.S. Court of Veterans appeals. This allowed veterans to appeal VA benefits denials to a court and required VA to obey the rule of law." Furthemore, they've pressed the Agent Orange issue, helping to press the Agent Orange Act which has resulted in the Veterans Administration paying compensation for nine Agent Orange-related diseases.

[...]

Given both the heroic nature of his Vietnam service and his efforts to oppose the war, Kerry's co-founding of VVA seems a minor accomplishment. But there are only a handful of people capable and willing to make the effort to start something like this. Kerry has the character to do so, and the skills to do it extremely well. Kerry's co-founding of VVA, which would proudly cap the entire public service accomplishments of a lesser person, is often overlooked because Kerry's well-known achievements are so numerous and yes, truly great ones.

I urge you to read the whole post here and remind those you talk to that Kerry has been an advocate for veterans every day since he came back from Vietnam, not just as someone who lobbied to end the war, but as someone who has worked on behalf of his greater band of brothers from the very beginning. His life was shaped by his experience in Vietnam, the crucible of his generation. At every turn he did the right thing, from bravery in battle to speaking truth to power to trying to get some justice for all the poor grunts who suffered in that war to reconciliation with North Vietnam. This heroic image is not hype set forth just for political purposes. It's really him.

John O'Neill and his swiftboat liars couldn't shine his shoes.




digby 9/19/2004 08:08:00 AM |

Saturday, September 18, 2004

 
Voting Integrity

In case anybody's wondering about the integrity of the voting systems in Georgia, they can relax. The elections board members have looked into it and have found nothing at all to worry about:

Touch-screen opponents have alleged that Barnes' and Cleland's 2002 upset defeats are suspicious because of a last-minute fix to the machines.

[...]

To many people, the solution seems simple. Consumers go to a store and are given a receipt listing what they purchased. So why can't voting machines produce a similar piece of paper the state can use to ensure the integrity of elections?

[...]

"It really adds nothing to the system, [and] the people who think it will don't understand the history of voter fraud we've had with paper," she said.

Cox strongly defends electronic voting, calling Georgia's voting machines "the best solution available."

[...]

In October, the Fulton County Elections Board sent Cox a letter that asked pointed questions about the security of Georgia's voting machines. The state's largest county uses 2,975 machines. Harry MacDougald, a Republican board member, wrote the letter after hearing about Rubin's report.

Cox wrote a six-page response explaining the procedures in place to ensure the machines cannot be manipulated.

The Fulton board replied Dec. 1, telling Cox she had alleviated members' concerns.

"I feel reasonably comfortable," MacDougald said recently. "There's always a theoretical possibility [of tampering]. That can never be excluded, regardless of the voting technology. But the measures that were previously in place, with the new measures and technical fixes that are being made, bring the issue within a reasonable degree of security."

That Buckhead is a real renaissance man, isn't he? Where does he find the time to study typography and forensic document investigation on top of his legal work for the VRWC, serving on the local elections board and spending vast amounts of time on Freerepublic? Busy, busy, busy.

One thing I might warn everyone about on this voting technology issue. Be advised that if we win and it's close, the set-up has been put in place for Buckhead and his grubby little friends to rush online claiming that we stole the election. I have a hundred bucks riding on it. Projection has gone beyond a psychological diagnosis to an actual propaganda tool.



Thanks to Mitch for the heads up
digby 9/18/2004 03:22:00 PM |

 
He'll Sacrifice You Too

Via Suburban Guerilla, I am reminded once again why it is important that Bush used his influence and connections to get out of fulfilling his obligation in the National Guard during wartime. It's because he is now forcing poor schmucks likethis to go back on active duty in his misbegotten war in Iraq because he signed a form incorrectly. Bush has no moral authority to ask today's soldiers to play by the rules when he flagrantly disregarded them himself.

A man who served the eight years required under his ROTC contract remains an Army reservist obliged to report for active duty because he failed to sign a resignation letter, a federal judge has ruled.

Todd Parrish, 31, had sought to block the Army from calling him to active duty until his lawsuit on the issue was decided.

But Judge Louise Flanagan denied the request on Friday, meaning that if the Army denies Parrish's administrative appeal, he could be forced to go on active duty while the case is litigated.

Parrish signed the ROTC contract while a student at North Carolina State University. He argued that his military obligation ended Dec. 19, following four years of active duty and four years in the reserves.

His attorney, Mark Waple, did not immediately return a call seeking comment Monday.

Army lawyer Maj. Chris Soucie told the judge that Parrish could be recalled to duty because he failed to sign a resignation line on a letter asking for an update on his personal information.

Parrish, a married communications officer, said he sent the Army a letter resigning his commission and did not sign the line on the form because he thought he had already resigned.

All this for a war we did not need to fight.

This brings up another point that people really should pay attention to if they are going to be doing any work with young people in the coming few weeks. If the military is so desperate for troops that they would force a guy back to active duty on this kind of a technicality after he's just served eight years,(and they are) it looks more and more as if they are going to try to institute a draft after Bush is elected. It's hard to see how they can avoid it.

Dave Johnson has more on this at Seeing The Forest:

The Draft – A Reason to Vote if You’re Under 30

You already blew it: You didn't vote last time, or voted for Nader or Bush, and now you're gonna get drafted. There's no way around it now, the draft is almost a certainty.

You're hearing about Reserve and National Guard units being called up, and about people not allowed to leave the military even though their term is up. Have you thought about what this means to you? You KNOW this means they're having trouble finding enough soldiers to go to Iraq, right? Of course Bush doesn’t want to start the draft BEFORE the election. Duh! But what do you think happens the day AFTER the election?

I repeat, they are having trouble finding enough soldiers to go to Iraq. Think about it. Right, you're gonna get drafted.

Or, maybe you think they can't do that? Maybe you think the draft doesn't happen in America. Maybe you think they can't just grab your ass up off the street, stick a rifle in your hands and send you off to war? Of course not, that NEVER happens. Right.

And, they've been preparing for it for some time now:

Nov. 3, 2003 | The community draft boards that became notorious for sending reluctant young men off to Vietnam have languished since the early 1970s, their membership ebbing and their purpose all but lost when the draft was ended. But a few weeks ago, on an obscure federal Web site devoted to the war on terrorism, the Bush administration quietly began a public campaign to bring the draft boards back to life.

"Serve Your Community and the Nation," the announcement urges. "If a military draft becomes necessary, approximately 2,000 Local and Appeal Boards throughout America would decide which young men ... receive deferments, postponements or exemptions from military service."

Local draft board volunteers, meanwhile, report that at training sessions last summer, they were unexpectedly asked to recommend people to fill some of the estimated 16 percent of board seats that are vacant nationwide.

Especially for those who were of age to fight in the Vietnam War, it is an ominous flashback of a message. Divisive military actions are ongoing in Iraq and Afghanistan. News accounts daily detail how the U.S. is stretched too thin there to be effective. And tensions are high with Syria and Iran and on the Korean Peninsula, with some in or close to the Bush White House suggesting that military action may someday be necessary in those spots, too.

[...]

Even among those who think the public might support a draft, like Bandow at the Cato Institute, few believe Bush would dare to propose it before the November 2004 election. "No one would want that fight," he explains. "It would highlight the cost of an imperial foreign policy, add an incendiary issue to the already emotional protests, and further split the limited-government conservatives." But despite the Pentagon's denials, planners there are almost certainly weighing the numbers just as independent military experts are. And that could explain the willingness to tune up the draft machinery.

John Corcoran, an attorney who serves on a draft board in Philadelphia, says he joined the Reserves to avoid the draft during the Vietnam War. Today, he says, the Bush administration "is in deep trouble" in Iraq "because they didn't plan for the occupation." That doesn't mean Bush would take the election-year risk of restarting the draft, Corcoran says. "To tell the truth, I don't think Bush has the balls to call for a draft.

"They give us a training session each year to keep the machinery in place and oiled up in case, God forbid, they ever do reinstitute it," he explains.

"They don't want us to have to do it," agrees Dan Amon, a spokesman for the Selective Service. "But they want us to be ready to do it at the click of a finger."

The DOD webpage referred to in the piece above has been purged, oddly enough. Luckily it was saved by Information Clearinghouse:

Serve Your Community and the Nation

Become a Selective Service System Local Board Member

The Selective Service System wants to hear from men and women in the community who might be willing to serve as members of a local draft board.

Prospective Board Members must be citizens of the United States , at least 18 years old, and registered with the Selective Service (if male). Prospective Board Members may not be an employee of any law enforcement occupation, not be an active or retired member of the Armed Forces, and not have been convicted of any criminal offense.

Once identified as qualified candidates for appointment, prospective Board Members are recommended by the Governor and appointed by the Director of Selective Service, who acts on behalf of the President in making appointments. Each new member receives 12 hours of initial training after appointment, followed by 4 hours of annual training for as long as he or she remains in the position. They may serve as Board Members for up to 20 years, if desired.

Local Board Members are uncompensated volunteers who play an important community role closely connected with our Nation's defense. If a military draft becomes necessary, approximately 2,000 Local and Appeal Boards throughout America would decide which young men, who submit a claim, receive deferments, postponements or exemptions from military service, based on Federal guidelines.

Positions are available in many communities across the Nation.

If there was ever a man with less moral authority to call up a draft than the phony AWOL flyboy, I don't know who it would be. He has even less than someone who went to Canada --- at least that person had to live with the consequences of his actions. This was a guy who had the gall to shove to the front of the line, play around with a million dollar airplane for a couple of years and then check out early for reasons we can only speculate about. It takes a lot of nerve for a man like that to tell soldiers who volunteered to go over and fight his losing battle for him. For a man like him to draft young men and women against their will is simply unthinkable. Yet, that is exactly what he is thinking.

All young people in this country should vote for John Kerry and they should drag their slacker friends to the polls with them. He faced all these choices head on in the crucible of his generation and he came out a man of strength and integrity. Bush ran away. Young people should realize that he will not hesitate to put their lives on the line to cover his ass. He did it to his fellow young men when he was twenty one years old, he's doing it to reserves and national guard troops today and he'll do it to young people with a draft tomorrow. It's in his character to make others fight his battles and clean up his messes for him.




digby 9/18/2004 02:39:00 PM |

 
The Death Of Common Sense

A weight may soon be lifted off a Maryland woman charged with carrying a concealed weapon in an airport.

It wasn't a gun or a knife. It was a weighted bookmark.

Kathryn Harrington was flying home from vacation last month when screeners at the Tampa, Fla., airport found her bookmark. It's an 8.5-inch leather strip with small lead weights at each end.

Airport police said it resembled a weighted weapon that could be used to knock people unconscious. So the 52-year-old special education teacher was handcuffed, put into a police car, and charged with carrying a concealed weapon.

She faced a possible criminal trial and a $10,000 fine. But the state declined to prosecute, and the Transportation Security Administration said it probably won't impose a fine.

Harrington said she'll never again carry her bookmark into an airport.

I think this explains why Bush remains even in the polls.




digby 9/18/2004 01:10:00 PM |

Friday, September 17, 2004

 
Buckhead Revealed

I haven't necessarily bought into the conspiracy theories about the Rovian interest in the allegedly forged CBS documents, but something is rotten in Blogland:

It was the first public allegation that CBS News used forged memos in its report questioning President Bush's National Guard service — a highly technical explanation posted within hours of airtime citing proportional spacing and font styles.

But it did not come from an expert in typography or typewriter history as some first thought. Instead, it was the work of Harry W. MacDougald, an Atlanta lawyer with strong ties to conservative Republican causes who helped draft the petition urging the Arkansas Supreme Court to disbar President Clinton after the Monica Lewinsky scandal, the Times has found.

The identity of "Buckhead," a blogger known previously only by his screen name on the site freerepublic.com and lifted to folk hero status in the conservative blogosphere since last week's posting, is likely to fuel speculation among Democrats that the efforts to discredit the CBS memos were engineered by Republicans eager to undermine reports that Bush received preferential treatment in the National Guard more than 30 years ago.

Republican officials have denied any involvement among those debunking the CBS story.

Reached by telephone today, MacDougald, 46, confirmed that he is Buckhead, but declined to answer questions about his political background or how he knew so much about the CBS documents so fast.

"You can ask the questions but I'm not going to answer them," he told The Times. "I'm just going to stick to doing no interviews."

Until The Times identified him by piecing together information from his postings over the past two years, MacDougald had taken pains to remain in the shadows — saying the credit for challenging CBS should remain with the blogosphere as a whole and not one individual.

"Freepers collectively possess more analytical horsepower than the entire news division at CBS," he wrote in an e-mail, using the slang term for users of the freerepublic site.

MacDougald is a lawyer in the Atlanta office of the Winston-Salem, N.C.-based firm Womble Carlyle Sandridge & Rice and is affiliated with two prominent conservative legal groups, the Federalist Society and the Southeastern Legal Foundation, where he serves on the legal advisory board and has been involved in several high-profile cases.


[...]

MacDougald helped draft the foundation's petition in 1998 that led to the five-year suspension of Clinton's Arkansas law license for giving misleading testimony in the Paula Jones sexual harassment case.

And MacDougald assisted in the group's legal challenge to the campaign finance law sponsored by Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) and Sen. Russ Feingold (D-Wis.). The challenge, ultimately presented to the U.S. Supreme Court, was funded largely by the Southeastern Legal Foundation in conjunction with Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), the law's chief critic, and handled by former Clinton investigator Kenneth W. Starr.

[...]



Last week, MacDougald once again plunged into a politically charged controversy — but this time his participation was anonymous.

Operating as "Buckhead," which is also the name of an upscale Atlanta neighborhood, MacDougald wrote that the memos that CBS' "60 Minutes" presented on Sept. 8 as being written in the early 1970s by the late Lt. Col Jerry B. Killian were "in a proportionally spaced font, probably Palatino or Times New Roman."

"The use of proportionally spaced fonts did not come into common use for office memos until the introduction of laser printers, word processing software, and personal computers," MacDougald wrote on the freerepublic website. "They were not widespread until the mid to late 90's. Before then, you needed typesetting equipment, and that wasn't used for personal memos to file. Even the Wang systems that were dominant in the mid 80's used monospaced fonts.

"I am saying these documents are forgeries, run through a copier for 15 generations to make them look old. This should be pursued aggressively."

The Sept. 8 late-night posting — written less than four hours after the CBS report was aired — resulted in a flurry of sympathetic testimonials from fellow bloggers, spreading within hours to other sites. The next day, major newspapers such as The Times and the Washington Post began consulting forensic experts and reporting stories that raised similar questions.

[...]

While bloggers and some conservative activists hailed Buckhead as a hero in their longtime efforts to paint the mainstream media as politically biased, some Democrats and even some conservative bloggers have marveled at Buckhead's detailed knowledge of the memos and wondered whether that suggested a White House conspiracy.

Democratic National Committee Chairman Terry McAuliffe even speculated openly to reporters that the whole thing could have been orchestrated by White House political advisor Karl Rove. The Bush campaign called the allegation "nonsense."

Using the new laws of journalism and truth, this is all that's needed as proof that this was a Rovian operation from the get-go. This guy is no expert on typography, and he's an extremely well connected Republican operative who has worked at the highest level of GOP legal circles. That's good enough for GOP government work.

This was a Republican dirty trick.






digby 9/17/2004 09:33:00 PM |

 
Hell, We Want To Outlaw Apple Pie, Too

If there's one thing liberals are all about it's censorship

Campaign mail with a return address of the Republican National Committee warns West Virginia voters that the Bible will be prohibited and men will marry men if liberals win in November.

The literature shows a Bible with the word "BANNED" across it and a photo of a man, on his knees, placing a ring on the hand of another man with the word "ALLOWED." The mailing tells West Virginians to "vote Republican to protect our families" and defeat the "liberal agenda."

Republican National Committee Chairman Ed Gillespie said Friday that he wasn't aware of the mailing, but said it could be the work of the RNC. "It wouldn't surprise me if we were mailing voters on the issue of same-sex marriage," Gillespie said.

Ed Gillespie is surprisingly stoic in the face of political hate speech, lately. Seems he's learned to hold back the tears and keep a stiff upper lip when political operatives spread scurrilous lies and outright falsehoods. What a brave little soldier.

By the way, when did the Democrats finalize plans for the "ban the Bible" movement, anyway? Here I thought I was in the loop. How are we doing on the kitten strangling and the grandma slapping? It's so hard to keep up.




digby 9/17/2004 04:55:00 PM |

 
What If God Was One Of Us?

Atrios says that even Little Russ now believes that the insurgency in Iraq is actually aimed at defeating Bush in November. In fact, we must now assume that all bad acts everywhere in the world are aimed at that one particular goal.

If this is true, we need to ask ourselves why God would throw three huge hurricanes in a row at the southeast of the United States just before the election. Coincidence? I think not. Obviously, God wants Bush to lose.

...voters apparently do punish politicians for acts of God. In a paper written in 2004, the Princeton political scientists Christopher Achen and Larry Bartels estimate that "2.8 million people voted against Al Gore in 2000 because their states were too dry or too wet" as a consequence of that year's weather patterns.

Achen and Bartels think that these voters cost Gore seven states, any one of which would have given him the election.

God is definitely sending a message. Spread the good Word.




digby 9/17/2004 04:15:00 PM |

 
Solipsism For Dummies

I know that it's hard to understand why anyone would vote for George W. Bush, but the fact is that most people just don't think he's that bad. And the ones that listen to talk radio and watch FOX think he is a downright genius. Sometimes, the world doesn't make much sense, does it?

Mark Kleiman tells it like it is:

A reader says:

Democrats are panicking because they aren't thinking about how this election looks to the median voter. A partisan Democrat looks at Bush and sees: 1) upcoming disaster on Iraq and Al-Qaeda (latter brought about by former); 2) upcoming disaster on climate change and the environment; 3) upcoming disaster on the economy; 4) upcoming disaster on the Supreme Court. Then he or she wonders, "how in the world could anyone vote for this man? We're going to hell in a handbasket! The fact that Kerry isn't miles ahead shows that he's an abysmal candidate, and can never win!" And then Kerry becomes Gore-ified, with the potential of creating a self-fulfilling prophecy.

The problem with this model is that all these disasters are UPCOMING. Policy wonks, politically educated and motivated Democrats can see them (or at least they think they can). But there is absolutely no reason for the median voter to look at the situation that way. The voter is rationally ignorant. He or she is not going to spend time digging into policy details, considering potential budget models, etc. What does this voter see? The economy isn't fabulous, but it isn't terrible. Maybe there will be environmental problems, maybe not, but at this point, there isn't anything in front of his or her face. Newsweek might say that Iraq is a disaster, but I don't see it: maybe it's just tough. I'm not comfortable with it; we probably made a mistake, but it's not clear what we do now. Besides--in Vietnam, we were losing 2,000 soldiers A MONTH. We were told that Reagan's deficits would kill us, but they didn't: every economist has some model. I'm not real satisfied with the way things are going, but things could definitely be worse, and it's tough out there. 9/11 taught us that.

All of this leads to basically what we have now: a very close election, with Bush up by a very small margin. That means that campaigning, and money, and turnout, and events, will determine things. But it is NOT a reason to think that somehow Kerry is doing a lousy job. WE think that no one in his right mind would vote for Bush, but we're not the median voter.

Put another way, panic is the product of solipsism. It should stop.

I think it's stopping. Dems are starting to recognize that as inexplicable as it is, this election is going to be close. So, maximize the strategy, get a slacker to the polls, volunteer to phone bank, download Liberal Oasis's handy "suggested answers to tough questions about Kerry" and use them at the water cooler. Keep giving money.

For a variety of reasons this is a rare presidential race that will depend upon turn-out. That's us.




digby 9/17/2004 01:15:00 PM |

Thursday, September 16, 2004

 
Storyline

Drafts of a report from the top U.S. inspector in Iraq conclude there were no weapons stockpiles, but say there are signs the fallen Iraqi President Saddam Hussein had dormant programs he hoped to revive at a later time, according to people familiar with the findings.

...which explains why the "gathering danger" was so "grave" that we had to launch a war immediately, without allies, without enough troops and without a plan for reconstructing the country. There wasn't time to put those things together before Saddam revived his dormant programs under the nose of the newly admitted weapons inspectors.

And it's all worked out so very well:

The National Intelligence Council presented President Bush this summer with three pessimistic scenarios regarding the security situation in Iraq, including the possibility of a civil war there before the end of 2005.

In a highly classified National Intelligence Estimate, the council looked at the political, economic and security situation in the wartorn country and determined that — at best — a tenuous stability was possible, a U.S. official said late Wednesday, speaking on the condition of anonymity.

The document lays out a second scenario in which increased extremism and fragmentation in Iraqi society impede efforts to build a central government and adversely affect efforts to democratize the country.

In a third, worst-case scenario, the intelligence council contemplated "trend lines that would point to a civil war," the official said. The potential conflict could be among the country's three main populations — the Sunnis, Shiites and Kurds.

It "would be fair" to call the document "pessimistic," the official added. But "the contents shouldn't come as a particular surprise to anyone who is following developments in Iraq. It encapsulates trends that are clearly apparent."

So, we rushed into the war for no good reason and things are going to hell in a handbasket. It's likely that we have created far more danger for ourselves and others by these actions.


John Kerry thinks that it's a mistake to rehire someone for a job if they've made these kinds of catastrophic errors:

Citing an intelligence estimate prepared for Mr. Bush in late July that presents a bleak picture of prospects in Iraq, Mr. Kerry said the president was turning his back on his own intelligence and ignoring the reality that Iraq was increasingly in the hands of terrorists.

"He didn't tell you this," Mr. Kerry said, even though "his own intelligence officials have warned him for weeks that the mission in Iraq is in serious trouble.''

"That is the hard truth, as hard as it is to bear," he said, adding,

"I believe you deserve a president who isn't going to gild that truth, or gild our national security with politics, who is not going to ignore his own intelligence, who isn't going to live in a different world of spin, who will give the American people the truth, not a fantasy world of spin."

What is this fantasy world of spin you speak of?

"This country is headed toward democracy," Mr. Bush said at a Thursday morning campaign rally in St. Cloud, Minn., about five hours before Mr. Kerry made his remarks at the Guard conference. "There's a strong prime minister in place. They have a national council, and national elections are scheduled for January. It wasn't all that long ago that Saddam Hussein was in power with his torture chambers and mass graves."

The Vice president thinks that the most important thing is that you make decisions, a simple and rather basic job description for the world's most powerful position:

Vice President Dick Cheney campaigning in Reno, Nev., took issue with Kerry's remarks at the National Guard convention. "Senator Kerry said today that leadership starts with telling the truth, but the American people also know that true leadership requires the ability to make a decision," Cheney said.

Oddly, however, he doesn't seem to think it matters if every single decision is wrong.








digby 9/16/2004 07:55:00 PM |

 
Pious Phony

Current and former White House aides, as well as religious leaders close to the president, maintain that underneath Bush's religious references is a no-frills set of classical Christian beliefs that he holds firmly but voices softly.

Kevin Drum notices this new talking point that's beginning to float around about Bush being a nice mainstream Christian instead of the fundamentalist zealot that many portray him to be. I read the same article in the Washington Post this morning and wondered about what "classical Christian" belief this was:

"Aides found him face down on the floor in prayer in the Oval Office. It became known that he refused to eat sweets while American troops were in Iraq, a partial fast seldom reported of an American president," according to Stephen Mansfield author of "The Faith of George W. Bush."

Now I've always wondered if he was really praying or if he'd had a few too many "pretzels" myself. (And as for the sweets thing, he must be jonesing for a candy bar big time, by now.)

Frankly, I don't think Bush is the least bit religious. I think it's as phony as the rest of him. Phony cowboy, phony flyboy, phony Christian. The only authentic thing about him is that he's a self-centered fratboy who's greatest faith is in his ability to get away with anything. A real Christian would never have made fun of Karla Faye Tucker the way he did. (A real human being would never have made fun of Karla Faye Tucker ...)

Apparently the evangelicals have taken it on faith that this guy is one of them because his speech writer is adept at using familiar religious phrases and he often evokes God as his guiding spirit. But, it's clear to me that he is nothing but a rich prick playing a role for people for whom he has nothing but contempt.




digby 9/16/2004 05:45:00 PM |

 
Man With A Plan

You know, I don't know why Atrios is so upset about people like Woodruff and Gergen and Carlson obviously spewing RNC talking points about how Kerry has to come up with a plan for Iraq in order to win, but Bush doesn't. The logic is obvious.

Suppose you hired a contractor to put on a new roof and he ended up creating a huge hole in it instead. The contractor simply denies that a hole exists and keeps telling you to relax that your new roof is coming along just fine. The other contractor in town drives by and says he can fix that hole in your roof. You ask him how and he says, "well, I'll have to take a look at it and see how much damage is done but I have years of experience and a lot of good workers and I can get the job done for you. I'll tell you one thing, that guy you've got working on it doesn't know what he's doing. The hole's getting bigger while we stand here looking at it."

Gergen, Woodruff and Carlson would pick the first contractor because they know his work. (And he's a blast to have a beer with at the end of the workday.) The second guy refused to say exactly what he would do without looking at the damage up close so he can't be trusted.

All of these people are very highly paid analysts and they know what they are doing. We should listen to them.




digby 9/16/2004 04:30:00 PM |

 
My Big Endorsement

After exposing the "undecideds" for the attention craving egomaniacs they are, Larry David more or less threatens them with my Slacker Project:

If we really had any brains, we wouldn't spend another second on you, but on the people who can truly make a difference: the "unlikely" voters. And there are millions more of them than there are of you. Those people aren't after attention, they're just incredibly lazy. The only way they'll register to vote is if someone shows up at their door with a form. And then the only way they'll actually vote is if you carry them to the booth.

Not only are they lazy, they're also indifferent. They just don't believe that voting can have an effect on their lives. Well, it just so happens that right after I voted for the first time, I landed myself a big fat job in Hollywood, a biopsy came back benign and I met my future wife as soon as I walked out of the voting booth. Coincidence? You decide.

I'm telling you, all you have to do is get them registered and tell them that it will really mean a lot to you if they will vote for John Kerry. You'll take care of the details of getting them registered, getting them absentee ballots or getting them to the polls.

Just one slacker per person, that's all we need.




digby 9/16/2004 02:58:00 PM |

 
Cannibals

On the CNN morning show they just did a story on Jason Blair receiving $3,000 to speak at a college. Apparently, the students were not happy and gave Blair a very hard time.

One of the happy talking whores (the grizzled, creepy one) said, "who are they going to get next? Dan Rather?"

I thought I was watching FOX.





digby 9/16/2004 06:06:00 AM |

Wednesday, September 15, 2004

 
Maximizing The Strategy

Everybody needs to read Liberal Oasis every day. Bill Sher's analysis of the way the game is played in invaluable. It will make you feel better and it will give you things to think about.

Today he has a long post up about our marching orders called "Your Mission: Maximize The Strategy." The following is just a small excerpt and I urge you to read the whole thing:

At this stage of the game, those of us on the outside do the most good by helping the campaign execute strategy in the grassroots, not by rehashing strategy.

There may be news items to flag, and specific attack lines to suggest, but wholesale strategic overhauls are not worth batting around anymore.

And they can be debilitating.

What was worse in 2000?

The fact that Al Gore didn't ask Bill Clinton to campaign much for him?

Or the fact that people wouldn't shut up about whether Bill Clinton should campaign with him?

In that case, Gore had a tough call to make.

While partisans were convinced Clinton was gold on the campaign trail, polls showed he turned off a large chunk of independent voters.

Monday morning QBs still lambaste Gore for his call, under the "every decision was a bad decision" logic when assessing "losing" campaigns.

But to this day, they can't be sure that a heavy dose of Clinton would have meant a popular vote loss too, or if it just wouldn't have made a difference.

And we also don't know what would have happened if the party just got in line and backed Gore's strategy to the hilt.

I've been thinking about this all day and I think part of what is going on with us Democrats is that while it is natural to treat the race like it's a sporting event our mistake is in thinking that we are the fans. We sit around the metaphorical bar and kibbitz about what the manager should and shouldn't do. Don't pull Pedro! That's nuts!

But this isn't a sporting event in which we are all observers. We are players in this game and it actually matters what we do and say. Our attitude, our intensity, or energy and our willingnesss to walk the precinct and put up signs and talk to our friends can all affect the outcome. The manager can't listen to all of our conflicting advice, but he sure needs us to play to the best of our ability.

There's a lot we can do and each of us has to figure out what that might be, from work on the ground to calling up Grandma Millie and making sure she's registered to vote (and knows that Bush's pals at Enron said they were screwing her during the energy crisis.)

And, the very least we can do is make sure that if the issue of politics comes up in our daily lives that we unequivocally say out loud that we support Kerry and think he's a good man even as we make our case against Bush. (The ABB meme served its purpose and it's counterproductive at this point.) Kerry's working his ass off on our behalf to take down little Junior. We owe him some respect for that and we need to help him make that affirmative case for change.

Here's a little idea for a personal political project that each of us can undertake. Surely, we all know one person who doesn't usually vote, an apolitical type who isn't interested. This country is crawling with them. This is the election to get them registered and make sure they vote, whether by sending them the link for an absentee ballot or offering to pick them up and take them to the polls on election day. Everybody knows somebody like this. If we all make sure that we each get one person to vote who wouldn't otherwise give a damn, we win.

So, think about it. Which of your slacker friends can you get to vote this year? Take the initiative. They won't mind. They don't care. Make that work for us.




digby 9/15/2004 09:40:00 PM |

 
Nothing To Hide

February 13, 2004

Russert: But you authorize the release of everything to settle this?

President Bush: Yes, absolutely. We did so in 2000, by the way.

April 28, 2004

Q He's bringing up an issue that was bounced around this room at length --

MR. McCLELLAN: And it's been fully addressed, and all the records have been released, and the President fulfilled his duty and was proud to serve and be honorably discharged from the National Guard.

September 8, 2004

Q Will the Commander-in-Chief insist that his Pentagon get to the bottom, find every last document of the National Guard service?

MR. McCLELLAN: I think that's what the President directed back in February.

Q Are you frustrated, or is he, that more documents are surfacing?

MR. McCLELLAN: All the personnel, payroll, and medical records have been made public, and the President directed back in February that the Department of Defense do a comprehensive search and make all the documents available, and we had assurances that they had done that and, unfortunately, we have since found out that it was not as comprehensive as we thought. So they've continued to go and look for additional documents.

Q Is the President frustrated, irritated by this?

MR. McCLELLAN: See, that's why I pointed out that all the personnel, payroll and medical records have been released.

Q How do you know that?

MR. McCLELLAN: They've assured us that all those records are out, and in fact, you have those records.

WaPo September 16, 2004:

White House press secretary Scott McClellan hinted that more documents regarding Bush's National Guard service may soon be released. Asked whether officials in the White House have seen unreleased documents, McClellan called that "a very real possibility." Other officials with knowledge of the situation said more documents had indeed been uncovered and would be released in the coming days.

digby 9/15/2004 09:05:00 PM |

 
Hobgoblins

Geraldine Sealey of Salon.com reports:

Republican congressman Christopher Cox is asking for a formal congressional investigation into CBS News' use of what he calls "apparently forged documents concerning the service record of George W. Bush intended to unfairly damage his reputation and influence the outcome of the 2004 presidential election."

Less than a month ago, though, Cox used a different standard to judge the "Swift Boat Veterans for Truth," whose every allegation about Kerry's service in Vietnam turned out to be inaccurate and was most certainly intended to damage Kerry's reputation and influence the outcome of the election -- and was reported endlessly without appropriate skepticism in the media. From the CNN transcript:

"Blitzer: Chris Cox, you're a good Republican. Should the president specifically denounce this ad put out by these Swift Boat Veterans for Truth?"

Cox: Well, this is obviously what's going on now with campaign finance reform, 527s and so on. There's a lot going on around the campaigns that the campaigns don't control. I think that, for the candidates, the risk is, if you try and take ownership, either positively or negatively, of what's going on around you, then it looks as if you're even more involved. With respect to the facts underlying all of this, there was a book published by swift boat veterans. It ought to rise or fall on its own merits, just as with 'Fahrenheit 9/11,' which is loaded with factual inaccuracies."

But Cox isn't content to let CBS' report "rise and fall" on its own merits. He wants Congress involved.

Yes. Christopher Cox is a little bit, shall we say, "inconsistent" about these matters. For instance, back in July 2003, he was very upset about another issue pertaining to media and the government:

U.S. Rep. Christopher Cox (R-Newport Beach), Chairman of the House Committee on Homeland Security, sharply criticized a decision by the U.S. Secret Service to interrogate Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoonist Michael Ramirez about the subject of a recent editorial cartoon. The cartoon, based on an award-winning photograph from the Vietnam War, depicts Bush with his hands behind his back as a man labeled “Politics” prepares to shoot him in the head. The background of the drawing is a cityscape labeled “Iraq.”

“Those of us in Southern California are used to seeing Michael Ramirez’s political cartoons in the Los Angeles Times,” said Chairman Cox. “They are amusing, insightful, sometimes historical, sometimes biting—but never illegal. I was disappointed to read that the U.S. Secret Service, according to an agency spokesman, was considering ‘what action, if any, could be taken’ against Mr. Ramirez for his recent cartoon depicting political attacks on President Bush.

“The use of federal power to attempt to influence the work of an editorial cartoonist for the Los Angeles Times reflects profoundly bad judgment,” Chairman Cox said in a letter to Secret Service Director Ralph Basham.

You see, it is bad judgment to use federal power to influence the work of a conservative editorial cartoonist. A news organization making a controversial claim about the president is subject to a full congressional investigation, however. Anyone can understand that.




digby 9/15/2004 04:27:00 PM |

 
Stock Up For The Season

If anyone's looking for some unusual political buttons or stickers to go along with their Kerry/Edwards stuff, check out pinkObuttons.com.




digby 9/15/2004 02:08:00 PM |

 
Reporters and Pundits Know Their Stuff

I've been trying to be positive about Kerry, but perhaps I've been silly. When the press develops a consensus like this it's hard to argue that they don't know what they are talking about. Jack O'Toole makes you stop and think about what is really going on here:

Business Week asks the question that seems to be on just about every pundit's lips -- Does Kerry Still Have A Chance? -- and the answer sounds really, really bad.

After a long swoon marked by snoozy stumping, staff feuds, and the inevitable campaign shakeup, Massachusetts Senator John Kerry is trying to claw his way back into the...presidential race.

....Kerry has to do something he has failed at thus far: provide a compelling rationale for his candidacy. Indeed, he has trouble coming across as a passionate pol who fights for Middle America. With his attenuated frame, sparkling starched shirts, and aristocratic mien, he looks every inch the Beacon Hill Brahmin. The "real deal"? That's the nickname of former heavyweight champ Evander Holyfield, who was a great fighter in his almost 20-year career but never managed to electrify the crowd.

God, talk about a nightmare. Of course, I have to tell you, I'd probably be even more concerned if the article didn't also say this:

With the Jan. 27 New Hampshire primary looming and Dean holding a commanding lead in the state, the pressure on Kerry to break out is immense. But even on his home turf, there are troubles. In a Nov. 19-21 poll by RKM Research & Communications, he trailed Dean by 9 points in Massachusetts. What's the problem? Kerry's detached sang-froid seems to pale in the face of Dean's fiery populist orations. "Dean is having a virtual coronation in New Hampshire," says a Democratic strategist. "If you're second, you have to take the guy down. Kerry isn't making Dean play defense."

'Nuff said?

I think so.

digby 9/15/2004 01:09:00 PM |

 
Still Waiting

As we watch Dan Rather twist in the wind while the National Guard story transmogrifies into a tale of liberal bias and dirty tricks, let's not forget that we are still awaiting some apologies for hoaxes and frauds that were happily and unabashedly served up for years at a time by a gullible press corpse.The Daily Howler gives us a little reminder today:

Did CBS run with crudely forged docs? Here at THE HOWLER, we can’t really say. But how comical are the outraged squeals about “liberal bias” which are all over cable? Those squeals are very comical. What does this current episode show? It shows this: If you broadcast a shaky tale about Bush, the world will land on your head in an instant. Does this show the corps’ “liberal bias?” We’d have to say that it does not.

Yes, a shaky tale about Bush has produced instant outrage. But what if you broadcast shaky tales about Democrats? Twelve years later, has anyone ever made the New York Times explain its Jeff Gerth Whitewater hoax—the hoax-like stories that gave the name to a decade of phony tales about Clinton? Has anyone ever made the press to explain all those bogus tales about Gore? And by the way—will anyone ever ask O’Neill why he keeps saying that John Kerry fled? At best, O’Neill’s kooky book is highly marginal; more reasonably judged, the book is a joke. But has anyone landed on O’Neill the way the press corps has beaned Kitty Kelley? Indeed, very few papers have even printed a formal review of O’Neill’s kooky book. Liberal bias? To all appearances, major papers are afraid to say how kooky this book really is.

Readers, treat yourselves to a dark, mordant chuckle! O’Neill has dissembled all over the land—and the wolves are screaming for Dan Rather’s head! But we’re supposed to see these troubling events as the latest proof of a liberal bias. Big orgs have produced a string of fake tales about Dems—but one shaky tale about Bush proves a point. Well-trained pundits swarm over cable. And they know what to yell: Liberal bias!

It an amazing thing to watch. From state troopers to lounge singers to homely office clerks to love story to swift boats, this country has been taken on a multi million dollar right wing funded fraud for over a decade and I still haven't seen even one "journalist" apologize, retract or even acknowledge it.

Dan Rather will probably resign over this unless something new comes up very soon to back him up. But, if a reporter being duped by somebody with a political agenda is now grounds for resignation, let's just say that there are going to be a whole lot of job openings in the "liberal" media coming very, very soon. Unless, of course, the standard only applies if it's a hoax perpetrated against a Republican. In that case then we are talking about a completely different animal, aren't we? And that animal doesn't feature the word "liberal" in it's description.

But, the words "chickenshit whores" do come to mind.




digby 9/15/2004 11:17:00 AM |

Tuesday, September 14, 2004

 
Time To Put On Your Game Face

I enjoy backseat campaign managing as much as the next person. And I admit that the press and our inability to manage it profoundly depresses me. But, I NEVER say we are going to lose. I love to analyze the race and offer my ideas, but it is never done in the spirit that the Kerry campaign are a bunch of losers. I cannot conceive of a more demoralizing and hopeless thing to read than something like this:

Some prominent Democrats are already grumbling privately that none of the people in Kerry's communications operation should ever work on campaigns again, should Kerry lose. Given all the money Kerry, the DNC, and the 527s have raised and spent this time around, the typical Democratic lament of having been vastly outspent will ring hollow. If Kerry loses, it will not be because he was outspent; he will be because he was outfoxed.

There was a moment in the 1992 campaign, former Clinton-Gore '92 communications director George Stephanopoulos told Frontline in 2001, where the staffers could suddenly feel the weight of what it was they were trying to do. Stephanopoulous talked about it in the context of the history of the War Room, and it's quite illuminating:

Frontline: After the primaries in California, you then set up the war room. What are you trying to do?

Stephanopoulous: Not to be the Dukakis campaign, which a lot of us had worked in. And a lot of us felt we had been beat because the Republicans had laid out a pretty targeted, fierce assault on Dukakis that we didn't answer. We were determined that if we were going to lose, we were going to lose fighting. We were going down fighting. In June, we were in third place, broke and we hadn't gotten paid in two months. And Ross Perot was moving. And like I said, we were not going to go down without a fight.

And the war room was important, not just for the actual work it would do in answering the Republican charges and counterattacking, but the very idea of it was important -- just having a war room so that Democrats, especially, but also others who were just going to start to pay attention to the campaign, would see that we weren't like Democrats in the past. They'd see that we were different -- not only because we were different on our ideas -- but because we fight back when we're hit.

Frontline: Later in the fall, polls were looking pretty good for you with Bush. Still, according to everything everyone had written, there's a sense of fear that never goes away.

Stephanopoulous: It's a different kind of fear. I remember the first time I ever really let myself believe we could win and we're going to win. It was late September in the Washington Hilton on a Sunday morning, and Clinton was about to go give a speech in North Carolina on NAFTA. And he called me in and had his standard morning outburst on the speech and was yelling about it. And, but his heart wasn't really in it, and I could tell. . . . And he suddenly stops yelling, looks me right in the eye and says, "You think we're going to win, don't you?" I said, "Yes." And he goes, "I do, too." And for me, that was just incredible. He was saying out loud what we all hoped for, but could never say. It would be like talking about a no-hitter in the eighth inning.

And from that moment on, inside we didn't feel like underdogs anymore. We felt like we had this responsibility to win. And as a staffer, it was starting to get a little bit out of control, because I had never been through anything like that and nobody else had either. When you're in a presidential campaign at its peak in the fall, all the sudden it's not just 20 people in Little Rock sitting in a room. You're representing a lot of people who have invested in you, and not just the money. People have just invested their hopes. The whole country is paying attention. There are millions. And we start to think, my God, if we blow it now, it's all our fault. And we will have blown this opportunity that a lot of people are counting on us to carry out.

So the fear of making a mistake and letting these people down and thinking, basically, that you're going to have to leave the country becomes tremendous. You just don't want to blow it.

You have to wonder if the Kerry team is feeling that same fear right now, though, as they approach late September trailing rather than confident of victory. Because if they blow this one...

In late September of '92 people were beginning to beg Perot to get back in the race and nobody knew what was going to happen. There was no empirical reason to believe that Clinton had it in the bag although I'm not surprised that he felt confident. That's how competitors make themselves get up in the morning. That race was like a fucking bungee jump. And believe me, if you'd asked the same crew of sad sack Democratic insiders what they thought at the time they would have said that the sky was falling and that we were doomed, doomed, doomed and should have nominated Tsongas because he didn't have a draft problem.

I'm as fond of Clinton hagiography as anyone on the planet, but a whole lot of this fuzzy nostalgia about '92 is just crap. Bush senior was in free fall in the polls because he was widely considered to be out of touch on the economy, which was perceived to be very bad. Ross Perot had sucked all the oxygen out of the campaign for months and took the press's eye off of the Bush assault on Clinton. Then he dramatically withdrew from the race during the Democratic convention saying that the Democratic party was "revitalized." That was quite a gift and it gave Clinton a chance to re-start what had been a very anemic campaign.

He fought back, yes, by using the innovation of answering charges within the same news cycle. But, I watched that campaign more closely than any in my life and I can tell you that each one of those hits took another piece off of his hide. He didn't lie down, and that was admirable, but that's not why he won. He won because both he and Perot were hitting Senior hard on the economy while Senior and his crew were having to discredit both Perot and Clinton with character smears. Perot imploded, but by the time he did he had helped drive Senior's negatives even farther into the dirt than Clinton's and maintained a "movement" that siphoned off 20% of the vote when he got back in. It was one of the weirdest campaigns in American history and virtually no lessons can be drawn from it.

Kerry has every reason to be hopeful. Indeed, there is good reason to believe that Bush's ephemeral lead is shrinking as we speak. It's a nailbiter, but it is far from over.

I just wish that Dems could put on their game faces and try to sell the guy a little bit instead of constantly writing his epitaph. He's really a good man, you know. He's spent his life in public service, trying to do the right thing, working hard and carrying our agenda. He's our most liberal nominee in decades. He's smart and energetic and he's never been tainted by corruption or scandal. Is it so hard for Democrats to get behind a man like this or are we just as shallow as everybody else? Would we too be happier with a brand name in a suit?




digby 9/14/2004 05:53:00 PM |

 
Poll Jumpy

DonkeyRising has a few more thoughts on the state of the race:

Well, those cards and letters keep coming in, so I thought I'd respond to a few of the most common questions that have been posed to me.

1. How can you deny that Bush is ahead?

I don't. My view is that he is currently ahead, but only modestly, contrary to the tone of media coverage and the findings of some polls. I have tried to explain the reasoning behind this assessment, especially as it pertains to possible problems with contemporary polls.

It's worth noting that the latest poll data on RVs--ending the night of the 12th--have Kerry up by 2 (IBD/CSM/TIPP) or Bush up by 4 (ICR). That averages out to a 1 point Bush lead, even without party-weighting the data. And Rasmussen LV data for the period ending the 12th also has Bush with a one point lead.

2. How is it possible for samples of RVs to suddenly have too many Republican identifiers? Aren't voters just shifting their party identification?

It is certainly possible that we gone from, say, a 4-5 point Democrtic lead in party ID to a 4-5 point Republican lead in the space of the last month. But color me skeptical about this 8-10 point swing in a few short weeks.

A better explanation for this sudden shift in poll samples, in my view, is that when the political situation jazzes up supporters of one party, they are more likely to want to participate in a public opinion telephone poll and express their views. An increased rate of interview acceptance by that party’s supporters would then skew the sample toward that party without the underlying distribution having changed very much, if at all.

In this case, the Republican convention, coming on the heels of the Swift Boat controversy, may have helped raise political enthusiasm among Republican partisans, leading to more interview acceptances and a disproportionate number of Republicans in recent samples.

Do I know this for sure? No, I don't, because we lack direct evidence that this is happening, just as we lack direct evidence that individual voters are suddenly and massively shifting their party allegiance. But I do know which of these explanations I find more plausible and consistent with other evidence about the general stability of party ID.

More here

My uninformed gut tells me that this race is, and will likely remain, close. I always thought it would be, as inexplicable as that is. I have been following this interesting theory by professor James Galbraith that Bush is on a slow trajectory to defeat for some time. Basically, he says that Bush has been artificially boosted above his natural level by three events, 9/11, Iraq and the capture of Saddam. He is fairly sure that it will take an October Surprise for Bush to win:

With about seven weeks to go, this equation suggests that if no new major episode occurs, Bush should lose about 2.1 percentage points between now and Election Day. In that case, he will face John Kerry with approval ratings very close to the lows of his presidency. And very close to the floor, below which he probably can't sink.

The moral remains the same. As I've said in earlier columns, an "October surprise" could tip the balance. The country should be braced for news on the terror front from Pakistan or elsewhere. Or perhaps we'll see the gift of a "You can go home soon" speech by Iraqi Prime Minister Iyad Allawi. One hears, at this stage of the campaign, all kinds of rumors. They can't be verified, but they gain weight from the fact that the Bush team tried to manipulate the terror war -- ordering up well-timed arrests in Pakistan -- to squelch Kerry's convention bounce last July. Who knows what else they have planned?

On the other hand, it's clear that Bush hasn't put the contest away. Kerry can win this thing for sure.

digby 9/14/2004 04:37:00 PM |

 
True Lies

The truth of the Killian memos has been established, at least according to Andrew Sullivan in TNR. But, while simultaneously taking credit both for being a superior blogger and a superior journalist he explains that he is actually superior to everyone by telling them that they should all just stop being so superior. Meanwhile, he reveals that he is living on another planet.

There's been a lot of hubris in the blogosphere about this, and, indeed, some blogs, most especially Power Line, should get the blog equivalent of a Pulitzer for their dogged pursuit of the truth. But the reality is far simpler and less flattering to bloggers. Journalism is not a profession as such. It's a craft. You get better at it by doing it; and there are very few ground rules. By and large, anyone with a mind, a modem, a telephone, and a conscience can be a journalist. The only criterion that matters is that you get stuff right; and if you get stuff wrong (and you will), you correct yourself as soon as possible. The blogosphere is threatening to some professional journalists because it exposes these simple truths. It demystifies the craft. It makes it seem easy--because, in essence, it often is.

Blogging's comparative advantage has nothing to do with the alleged superior skills of bloggers or their higher intelligence, quicker wit, or more fabulous physiques. The blogosphere is a media improvement because the sheer number of blogs, and the speed of response, make errors hard to sustain for very long. The collective mind is also a corrective mind. Transparency is all. And the essence of journalistic trust is not simply the ability to get things right and to present views or ideas or facts clearly and entertainingly. It is also the capacity to admit error, suck it up, and correct what you've gotten wrong. Take it from me. I've both corrected and been corrected. When you screw up, it hurts. But in the long run, it's a good hurt, because it takes you down a peg or two and reminds you what you're supposed to be doing in the first place. Any journalist who starts mistaking himself for an oracle needs to be reminded who he is from time to time.

This must be the bizarro world blogosphere where truth is decisively discovered by an objective judge (perhaps Sullivan himself) who hands down a final order when the facts have been established. In my blogosphere, nobody agrees on what color the sky is. And for some reason, the vaunted self correcting mechanism only seems to run one way. Why is that? For instance, the right spent two months swearing the John Kerry faked his medals in Vietnam and I haven't read any "corrections" to that "simple truth."


Here on planet earth even if writers correct their errors, readers pick and choose which versions to believe and continue to battle the arcane details long after everyone else has lost interest, clinging to their own version of reality as if it is a life raft. The "transparency" of the blogosphere is as clear as orange juice with pulp. Nobody gets stuff "right." They just get stuff. Errors are sustained forever. The "collective mind" is schizophrenic. The blogosphere demystifies the craft of journalism all right and turns it into an endless self-referential loop of The Osbornes.

What an nice bizarro blogosphere it is indeed when you just dismiss fully half of it as "moonbats" in order to believe that you have achieved a pure and real set of facts. I'd like to go there. It sounds soothing. What's the URL?

In Sullivan's blogosphere, credibility is granted once everyone (who's anyone) agrees. Therefore, the famous blogger hero Buckhead, who within seconds of the CBS broadcast, had "proven" the documents were forgeries, should be deemed credible for his other scoops as well, yes? Like this one:

The question on the table is going to be whether John Kerry was a witting or unwitting communist agent.

1. He traveled to Paris for illegal meetings with the communist enemy.

2. He comes back and in his Senate testimony gives them a major, major, major propaganda victory with his lies about war crimes.

3. He presents to the Senate and the country, and argues for, the communist proposal for giving them complete victory.

4. He attends, in leadership positions, meetings of the VVAW at which the assasination of American political leaders is openly discussed, and does not immediately disasssociate himself or do anything to report on this criminal conspiracy.


5. Post war he is lionized by the Vietnamese communists for his indispensable contributions to their victory.

135 posted on 09/02/2004 5:41:03 AM PDT by Buckhead

Just another credible blogger/journalist plying his craft. I'm sure Sullivan will get right on the case and fact check his ass.


Oh and by the way, I'm no expert mind you, but I've spend a bit of time on blogs and I've never come across Sullivan's little insider "blogspeak" term for the mainstream media --- MSM. Is this only for super bloggers who get more than 20K hits a day or something? I feel so small and insignificant.




digby 9/14/2004 03:09:00 PM |

 
Bringing The Two Together

The Decembrist makes an extremely valuable insight into the way the intersection between issues and character help people to make decisions. His advice to the Kerry campaign is, I think, very valuable:

I don't think the problem with Kerry is that he talks about issues when he should be talking about character. That was Al Gore's problem. I think the problem is that the Kerry brain has split into an issues half, and a character half, and the two sides aren't communicating. The character half controlled the convention, and focused on Vietnam. Fine, but what did that say about how he would deal with Iraq? And the issues half has plans -- entirely good ones, even for Iraq. But those proposals don't reinforce any sense of the kind of person Kerry is, and how he would cope in a crisis.

I don't know enough about the internal politics of the Kerry world (in which I know almost no one) to speculate whether one side is represented by Bob Shrum or Michael Whouley or John Sasso or whoever. But whatever the factions are, they have to get it together. The issues and scheduling side of the campaign has to stop picking an issue of the day, based on the polls. It has to start trying to choose some issues that really emphasize whatever it is that they want to say about Kerry as a person that contrasts him to Bush (honest, brave, forward-seeing, smart, common-sense, independent, cares-about-ordinary-people -- pick one and reinforce it) and then use those issues to tell that story over a period of a week or more. And where they want to attack Bush on either character or issues, pick a point that best emphasizes a single point that they want to emphasize to draw the contrast with Kerry. That means, among other things, saying no to all the issue-advocacy groups that are besieging the campaign, brandishing polls and begging Kerry to devote a day to their cause.

The issue advocates need to be bum rushed out the door. Kerry is hanging in there in the polls (contrary to the news which has suddenly decided that outlying polls are the best guage of the state of play) but he needs some focus as we go into the stretch to pull this out. Relying on the debates isn't enough because you simply cannot depend upon the press corpse to properly report the event. What they can do is try to find that sweet spot and hammer it home so that when the debates arrive your storyline has been set.

"Brave" is the quality I'd choose and I'd hammer Bush for not being brave enough to fight off the special interests, the neocons, the tax cut zealots and the extremists in his own party. Kerry volunteered to fight a war, take on criminals as a prosecutor and big corporate interests as a Senator and says "bring It on" to smear artists and dirty tricksters who've tried and failed to take him down. (You don't even have to mention the guard stuff. The implication is clear.) You could tie this in to terrorism, health care, Iraq, the economy and judicial nominations. Any of those issues can be framed as Bush being unable to stand up and be his own man. You could even use the fact that he hasn't vetoed one bill as evidence of his cowardice in facing the congress.

But, regardless of what character trait they choose to highlight, the key is to stick with it and hammer it home relentlessly. Bush is vulnerable on almost everything but I think it it could be quite helpful for Kerry to focus on one character contrast that can illustrate the whole enchilada.







digby 9/14/2004 02:24:00 PM |

 
What The White Men Want


Apparently most white guys are so egotistical that they think they could be president and so they want a president who is just as stupid as they are. People were offended by the title of Michael Moore's book, but the truth hurts.

George W. Bush has it down: the "bring 'em on" macho sensibility, the public swagger, even the quick-draw High Noon cowboy stride. Call it the testosterone factor. It's one reason Bush has maintained a strong appeal to white men throughout his presidency, especially in the South and Southwest.

[...]

"Part of it is a Republican thing," says Rutgers political scientist Ross Baker, "but a good part of it is a Bush thing. For guys who drank and loafed their way through college, he's a familiar figure." And, it turns out, a popular one. In his early years, Bush was a likable party animal, seemingly committed to a lifestyle of making wisecracks, chasing women, and guzzling brew. He says he reformed two decades ago, giving up alcohol and becoming a born-again Christian. As president, he has come across in an equally comfortable way to white men--as a strong commander in chief and a conservative who seeks to return honor and responsibility to public life.


What works for most white men (as opposed, for example, to African-American men, who evaluate the president in starkly different terms) is Bush's reputation as an "average guy," says a senior White House official--the opposite of what California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger famously calls "girlie men." Baker says Bush "has a down-to-earth quality that men find appealing. You know he won't slip off to a quiet place and strum a six-string guitar." And his support among white males has helped Bush open up a 52-to-43 percent lead over Kerry among likely voters, according to that Washington Post /ABC News poll.[bullshit ed.]


Vacillating. No Democratic presidential candidate has won a majority of white male voters since Jimmy Carter in 1976. That's partly because the party's candidates have come across as vacillating on military issues and lenient on social concerns like crime and federal "giveaways" to the poor. Al Gore got only 36 percent of the white male vote in 2000; Bush pulled 60 percent. Bush now has about 57 percent support among white men to Kerry's 39, according to GOP pollster Ed Goeas, and Bush appears to be gaining momentum on issues most important to those voters, such as making America safe and waging the war in Iraq Bush leads Kerry by 8 points among single white men and by 20 points among married white men, according to recent polling.


Adding to Kerry's problems, if the Democratic challenger tries to court the white male vote too aggressively, he risks alienating white single women and minorities who are turned off by Bush's macho tendencies. Joe Lockhart, former White House spokesman for Bill Clinton and now a Kerry adviser, says, "If you want the easiest way to define the Bush doctrine, it's what I call the testosterone presidency. They've worked very hard making him look like Gary Cooper in High Noon. Why? Men have testosterone. Does that make good policy? No, of course not."


But Bush advisers say the president's big advantage in attracting the "white-guy vote" is that he can just be himself. Bush, like those in this core constituency, likes to watch sports on television, enjoys fishing, doesn't take himself too seriously, and doesn't express himself well. White males like to see themselves in what White House officials call Bush's "moral clarity," his attitude toward the war on terrorism, and his espousal of conservative values, such as opposition to gay marriage.

"Bush has his flaws," says Ted Stout, 39, who runs a bus company in Scranton, Pa., where Bush and Kerry made stops after their respective conventions. "But there's no question that when he says he's going to do something, he does it. That's what I like about him." Stout, waiting to bowl on league night at Scranton's Southside Bowl, adds: "He might seem a little dull-witted, but he's an average person. He makes the right decisions when he needs to."


Sporty. "We can't be girlie men" about the war on terror, says Michael Bidwell, a 38-year-old Republican dining at Scranton's Stadium Club with three male coworkers. "We need to go after terrorism. Terrorism isn't going to go away, and we can't put a blanket over it." Bidwell says he has a son and a daughter serving in the Middle East and adds: "I don't want to see them over there on a mission that's not finished." Steve Pasternak, a retired utility worker standing among "Sportsmen for Bush" signs at a pro-Bush rally in Johnstown, Pa., says he will vote for the president "because he thinks like sportsmen do. He's a hunter going after the people who need to be hunted."

Kerry has made a bid for white males by calling attention to his record as a Vietnam War combat hero. The Democratic nominee has also been emphasizing Bush's poor record on job creation and improving the economy.


But so far, none of this has made much difference. "I'd rather vote for action than inaction," says David Thorn, a 30-year-old communications representative from Overland Park, Kan., who sat in the dark-paneled comfort of O'Dowd's Little Dublin, a bar in Kansas City's upscale Plaza district. "And I'd rather stand for something than nothing. John Kerry doesn't seem to stand for anything." That's not an enviable position to be in with the election less than two months away.

God, that's depressing.

However, there is some good news. The GOP pollster who says that Bush has 57 percent of white males to Kerry's 39% is full of shit. (Why this guy is the only one quoted for this article is anybody's guess, but fair and balanced it ain't.) This article by John Judis and Ruy Teixeira explains why. Iraq.




digby 9/14/2004 01:16:00 PM |

Monday, September 13, 2004

 
The Kennebunkport Project

Here's Kitty:

While the Camp David coke party is getting the headlines, Kelley's book is filled with many other tawdry stories about the Bush dynasty. Here is a family that looks 'like "The Donna Reed Show," and then you see it's "The Sopranos,'' Kelley tells Salon in the interview below. As Kelley tells it, the dynasty had respectable origins -- in the form of family patriarch Prescott Bush, the distinguished, moderate Republican senator from Connecticut -- but rapidly slid into cynical opportunism, skulduggery, and a mean-spirited sense of entitlement. The first President Bush is presented as a weak yes man, driven not by political vision but a savage preppy spirit of competition instilled in him by his whirlwind of a mother.

But it is his wife, Barbara (whom the ex-wife of White House counsel C. Boyden Gray calls "bull-dyke tough"), and their eldest son, George, who are the true pieces of work in Kelley's book, a mother and son team brimming with such spite and ambition they would give the ruthless duo in "The Manchurian Candidate" the shivers. In one of the creepier passages of the book, a family gathering from hell at Kennebunkport, Maine, Barbara is shown mercilessly baiting her dry-drunk son, then governor of Texas, as a teetotaling "Chosen One," while he keeps pleading to skip the cocktails and put on the feed bag, and his elderly father "drools over [TV newswoman] Paula Zahn's legs."

Isn't it time the president came clean about his dysfunctionaL family?




digby 9/13/2004 10:22:00 PM |

 
Sticky Blogs

Chris Bowers at MYDD has a very interesting post about the right vs left Blogosphere. In the interest of not being too sticky, I will not discuss it, I will simply recommend that you go and read it.




digby 9/13/2004 08:28:00 PM |

 
Sharon's Revenge

I don't know how many people saw Kitty Kelley this morning on the Today Show, but it was interesting. She'll be on a couple more days so tune in if you get up early. This morning Sharon Bush was on to refute the claims that she told Kelley that Junior was doing cocaine at Camp David during the 80's.

She was pretty weak, mainly because she just couldn't resist trashing the family about how they were treating her during the divorce. It was clear that she harbored enough resentment that she could have easily spilled the beans on little George during a contentious divorce case. It's possible she lied but you'd think she would have come up with one that would be more current if she wanted to stick it to him. Regardless, it seemed clear to me that Kelley accurately quoted her. Here's the publisher's response to Bush's appearance on the show:

Statement by Doubleday Regarding Kitty Kelley:

NEW YORK, Sept. 13 /PRNewswire/ -- The following is a statement by
Doubleday regarding Kitty Kelley:

In an appearance on the Today Show on Monday, September 13, 2004, Sharon Bush repeated a denial she made earlier last week. After telling Kitty Kelley that she had knowledge of President George W. Bush "doing cocaine" at Camp David -- "not once, but many times," Mrs. Bush now denies that statement.

This denial has already been utterly discredited by a third party to the meeting at which Mrs. Bush made the statements. Doubleday and Kitty Kelley, author of "The Family: The Real Story of the Bush Dynasty," firmly uphold the accuracy and veracity of reporting on this topic. Further, Doubleday and Ms. Kelley affirm that Mrs. Bush was read her comments on the day following the meeting in a telephone conversation, lasting over an hour, that was witnessed by Random House Vice President Peter Gethers -- that those comments included her remarks on cocaine use at Camp David -- and that she once again agreed that these comments were true.

The following are undisputable facts:

-- Mrs. Bush confirmed that she was aware of cocaine use by President George W. Bush at Camp David when his father was President

-- Mrs. Bush confirmed that such usage occurred on more than one occasion

-- Mrs. Bush knew that Ms. Kelley planned on using this information in her book and was read the exact quotes that would be utilized

-- Mrs. Bush continued to have a good relationship with Kitty Kelley -- long after the meeting in April at which she confirmed the cocaine report

-- Mrs. Bush called Ms. Kelley in May, 2004 after which there was a friendly correspondence.

Additionally, Today Show host Matt Lauer and Mrs. Bush suggested that Kitty Kelley had a "relationship" with Lou Colasuonno, a public relations executive who witnessed the April 1, 2003 lunch meeting between Kitty Kelley and Sharon Bush. Kitty Kelley had never met or spoken with Mr. Colasuonno prior to April 1, 2003. Kitty Kelley has never had and does not have any personal, social or financial relationship with Mr. Colasuonno.

Knowing the way Kelley operates, there are probably a few hidden bombshells that will come out over the next few days. Has anyone heard anything?




digby 9/13/2004 04:55:00 PM |

 
Free To Be Unemployed

For those who wonder if I am right in saying in my post below that your boss can fire you for your political beliefs, yes she can.

It seems reasonable to ask what business Michael Italie's political convictions were to his employer. But when the local chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union looked into Italie's case, it discovered, as Pastrana evidently had, that Goodwill was on strong legal footing. "There is no legal case to be brought," explains Miami chapter president Lida Rodriguez-Taseff. "The law is pretty clear that a private employer can fire someone based on their political speech even when that political speech does not affect the terms and conditions of employment." A public employer would be prevented from firing someone based on political speech (because that would constitute the government itself suppressing free speech). Rodriguez-Taseff briefly held out some hope that Goodwill could be challenged based on its government contracts. Apparently, though, the case law isn't favorable for government contractors, either. Italie told Chatterbox that every lawyer he's spoken with has told him essentially the same thing. Everyone who isn't a lawyer, Italie said, is outraged. Chatterbox tested this hypothesis by describing Italie's case to Ronald Radosh, the virulently anti-Communist writer. "Everybody has a right to run for mayor on the SWP ticket," Radosh said. "That's a clear-cut infringement of civil liberties."

The irony is that one can make (and many have made) the case that people like Michael Italie shouldn't be permitted to hold jobs in government, where at least in theory they have the power to subvert the U.S. system. Yet it is in government where Italie would be protected. In the private sector, where Italie is entirely harmless, he enjoys no protection at all.

If you refuse to swear fealty to your leige's politics, you can be kicked out on your ass. If you wanna eat, keep your mouth shut. Freedom of speech only goes so far. Creepy, isn't it?




digby 9/13/2004 04:25:00 PM |

 
Manly Men And Their STRONG STRENGTHLYNESS™

Gary Farber helped me to figure out why I've been having disturbing dreams of bouncing a tennis racket off of Scott McClellan's face every night:

KERRY, BUSH'S STRONG STRENGTHLYNESS™, AND NORTH KOREA.

Yesterday:

On Sunday night, Scott McClellan, the president's press secretary, told of Mr. Kerry's comments, said: "Senator Kerry wants to return to the failed policies of the previous administration, where the U.S. was duped. We've been down that road before and we have no intention of letting it happen again."

We are instead far better off with the failed policies of the current administration! Look how much safer we are, today, from the threat of North Korea achieving nuclear weapons, thanks to the Strength™ of the Bush Administration!

It's just that simple. Anything else is just rhetoric.

Truly has there ever been a more arrogant administration? This, apparently, is a real step forward:

A mushroom cloud that towered over a remote corner of North Korea last Thursday was a result of a huge blast to prepare earthworks for a hydroelectric dam, the North said Monday.

Bill Rammell, a British Foreign Office official, met with Foreign Minister Paek Nam Sun of North Korea to discuss the incident, according to a BBC correspondent in Pyongyang."It was no nuclear explosion or an accident," Rammell quoted Paek as saying. "It was a deliberate, controlled detonation to demolish a mountain in the far north. The Press Association of Britain gave similar details about the explosion in a pool report, and Xinhua, China's press agency, quoted a North Korean Foreign Ministry official with the same explanation. In a pool report received by Reuters in London, Rammell noted that he had asked permission for "our ambassador and other ambassadors to be allowed to visit the scene of the explosion." "I am very pleased the North Koreans have agreed to the request," he said. North Korea's neighbors, China, Russia and South Korea, have reported no increased radiation releases.

But five days after seismic detectors picked up the blast, there were as many questions unanswered Monday as after the train explosion on April 22 that leveled a railroad station and killed 171 people shortly after the passage of a train carrying Kim Jong Il, North Korea's dictator, whose father was Kim Il Sung, the nation's founder. If the government planned to blast apart a mountain on Thursday, the 56th anniversary of the founding of North Korea, why do it in the middle of night, when no heroic propaganda videos could be made?

The date was purely a coincidence, I'm sure. Clearly, the reality is that Kim Jong Il is so afraid of Crusader Codpiece that he is trying to get the American people to vote for his good friend John Kerry who will let him have all the nuclear bombs he wants. At least Senator Roberts thinks so:

SEN. PAT ROBERTS (R), KANSAS: It wouldn't surprise me a bit if Kim Jong Il would think in some deranged way that if he had some kind of a test that that would affect the election. I don't know if that's the case, but that could be one of the conjecturing that is going on in the intelligence assessment.

BLITZER: What would be his motive in trying to affect the U.S. election, Senator Roberts?

ROBERTS: Oh, just to cause, you know, more concern in regards to possible terrorist attack, and they would then be the eighth nation that would have the kind of nuclear capability and what we're working against.

We were able to convince Libya to, you know, go the other way; same thing with Pakistan; same thing with other countries. But it's very hard to predict what Kim Jong Il will do. He's just not very predictable.

BLITZER: Before we move on, are you suggesting he would like to see President Bush defeated?

ROBERTS: Well, I think that's probably the case. I'm not going to go out on a limb and say he's endorsing -- or anybody that would want any kind of endorsement from Kim Jong Il.

I'm just thinking in terms of what he is up to, we have to very closely monitor it. And I'm saying the intelligence is mixed, and we'll continue that monitoring.

Yeah, he's obviously very afraid of Junior. That's why he's building nuclear weapons right in front of the whole world while John Bolton ineffectually shakes his tiny fist and Lil' George pulls his proverbial pud. This is working out really well. I sure hope Bush gets elected. Maybe we can have a full fledged nuclear war. That'll teach 'em who's boss.








digby 9/13/2004 04:01:00 PM |

 
Can You Believe It?


The World's Shortest Blog's bounty is up to $2,060.00! A thousand here and a thousand there and pretty soon you're talking about real money.

Isn't it time for the president to come clean about how many times he's been arrested?

Speaking of which, has anyone ever asked him why he had his drivers license number changed in the early 90's?




digby 9/13/2004 03:08:00 PM |

 
There Ought To be Limits To Freedom

Via Salon:

Moulton woman says she lost job for sporting Kerry sticker on car:


MOULTON — Lynne Gobbell never imagined the cost of a John Kerry-John Edwards bumper sticker could run so high.

Lynne Gobbell said her boss fired her last week because of the Kerry-Edwards campaign sticker on the back of her car.
Gobbell of Moulton didn't pay a cent for the sticker that she proudly displays on the rear windshield of her Chevrolet Lumina, but said it cost her job at a local factory after it angered her boss, Phil Gaddis.

[...]

"We were going back to work from break, and my manager told me that Phil said to remove the sticker off my car or I was fired," she said. "I told him that Phil couldn't tell me who to vote for. He said, 'Go tell him.' "

She went to Gaddis' office, knocked on the door and entered on his orders.

"Phil and another man who works there were there," she said. "I asked him if he said to remove the sticker and he said, 'Yes, I did.' I told him he couldn't tell me who to vote for. When I told him that, he told me, 'I own this place.' I told him he still couldn't tell me who to vote for."

Gobbell said Gaddis told her to "get out of here."

"I asked him if I was fired and he told me he was thinking about it," she said. "I said, 'Well, am I fired?' He hollered and said, 'Get out of here and shut the door.' "

She said her manager was standing in another room and she asked him if that meant for her to go back to work or go home. The manager told her to go back to work, but he came back a few minutes later and said, " 'I reckon you're fired. You could either work for him or John Kerry,' " Gobbell said.

"I took off my gloves and threw them in the garbage and left," Gobbell said.

Though she is unemployed and uncertain if she will get her job back, Gobbell said, she doesn't regret her decision to keep the sticker on her windshield.

"I would like to find another job, but I would take that job back because I need to work," she said. "It upset me and made me mad that he could put a letter in my check expressing his (political) opinion, but I can't put something on my car expressing mine."

She was referring to a flier that she said Gaddis placed in employee envelopes to remind them of the positive impact that President Bush's policies have had on them. An employee at the plant who would not identify himself confirmed the contents of the letter.

Gobbell provided a copy of the flier. It says:

"Just so you will know, because of the Bush tax (cut):

I was able to buy the new Hammer Mill
I was able to finance our receivables
I was able to get the new CAT skid steer
I was able to get the wire cutter
I was able to give you a job"
It further says:

"You got the benefit of the Bush tax cut. Everyone did."

It's perfectly legal for an employee to express his or her political view. It's perfectly legal for an employer to express his or her political view.

And it is also perfectly legal for that employer to fire that employee for expressing his or her political view.

Kind of harkens back to the glory days of the feudal system, doesn't it?




digby 9/13/2004 02:29:00 PM |

 
It's All They've Got

The Political Animal is absolutely correct about what this election is really all about. Whether we like it or not, national security is the issue on which this election is going to be won or lost. And Democrats have been at a disadvantage on this issue for the last forty years which is why, despite the fact that the country agrees with us on virtually every other important issue, (and knows that Bush has been a disaster even on national security) it is an article of faith with many people that Republicans are better at defending the country. I believe that John Kerry, of all the primary candidates (except Clark who ran explicitly on that issue) understood that this election would be played on Republican turf and positioned himself to challenge Bush there. And that, in combination with the fact that there were no WMD and Iraq is looking more and more like a total disaster, is why we are tied instead of behind. If Iraq had turned out well, I never believed that there was any chance the Democrat would win.

I have said before and I will repeat, we can and must discuss other issues and in swing states particularly, there is nothing wrong with hitting hard on the economy and other domestic concerns. But, the sub-text of everything in this election has to do with each candidate proving that he is tough enough to beat the terrorists and handle any new threats that come up. If you do an ad about medicare reform, it must show Kerry being tough and calling Bush weak. If you do one about education, again, Kerry tough, Bush weak. The Democrats must show that they will give as good as they get, that they aren't afraid and that they will go after anyone who challenges their willingness to fight. No matter what the actual subject of discussion, the sub-text is who can keep America safe from terrorists and since Democrats operate at a disadvantage on that issue, we have the higher bar to meet.

Kevin notes that Clinton won at a time when national security was not a major concern. (I agree. If Clinton were running for the first time today, I don't think he'd have a chance.) He wisely used that period to lay to rest the shibboleth about Democrats being too irresponsible to manage the economy. He was largely successful in realigning the public's view on that a fact which has only been reinforced by Junior's fiscal nightmare. (They'll keep trotting out their "tax and spend" mantra but it just doesn't have the punch it once had.) Now, we face the other propaganda set piece that the Republicans successfully sold the public for the last forty years, which is the defense issue. Like Clinton and the economy, Kerry is challenging them on their field of battle and is promoting a better and more rational approach to national security. But, it's tough sledding, just as it was for Clinton, to change public perceptions after a notion has been inculcated in the national sub-conscious for a generation.

This is also why I have to laugh at this notion that Rove has gone after Kerry's strength by attacking him on national security. It's bullshit. Any Republican would have done that and they all have since 1960. When we won, it was largely in response to external events that changed the landscape temporarily (assasination, Watergate, end of the cold war.) As long as there was an external threat, the Republicans built in their advantage through relentless propaganda.

But, this is a cautionary tale that we should be very careful to look at with eyes wide open. Forty years ago, as now, the problem of convincing the public that we are tough enough to meet the threats of our time is only the first step. The real problem will be when we win and have to fend off the constant attacks from the right that we are appeasing the enemy. This was an ongoing problem during the cold war and it was how we ended up with a Democratic president escalating a war simply because he was hamstrung by the right wing's obsession with communism. He didn't believe in the war:

It looks to me like we're getting into another Korea. It just worries the hell out of me. I don't see what we can ever hope to get out of there with, once we're committed. I believe that the Chinese Communists are coming into it. I don't think that we can fight them 10,000 miles away from home. … I don't think it's worth fighting for and I don't think that we can get out. It's just the biggest damned mess that I ever saw.

But the political reality was daunting. Robert Sheer explained like this:

Why did Johnson commit to such a disastrous course? He clearly did not share the hubris of his advisors, led by Defense Secretary Robert McNamara (who later recanted), that the war could be won. Nor could those advisors convince him that winning a war against one of the poorest nations on earth mattered to U.S. security.

But he did agree that the status quo in Vietnam was untenable; the choice was withdrawal or escalation. And he chose the latter because to do otherwise would endanger his chances for victory in the election that fall. "The Republicans are going to make a political issue out of it," warned Georgia Sen. Richard Russell, the president's longtime political confidant. "It's the only issue that they've got," Johnson replied.

In particular, Johnson was concerned that Henry Cabot Lodge, the U.S. ambassador to Vietnam, would return to take a place on the GOP ticket, probably as the vice presidential candidate, and use weakness on Vietnam against Johnson. "Now, one of our big problems, the biggest, between us, and I don't want this repeated to anybody, is Lodge," Johnson told Russell. "He ain't worth a damn . . . and he can't work with anybody . . . so it's just a helluva mess."

Russell agreed, adding that in dealing with the Vietnamese, Lodge "thinks he's dealing with barbarian tribes out there and that he's the emperor and he's going to tell them what to do, and there's no doubt that, in my mind, that he had old Diem killed out there himself." Of the killing of South Vietnamese President Ngo Dinh Diem, Johnson responded, "That was a tragic mistake." But he didn't dare remove Lodge because "he'd be back home campaigning against us on this issue every day."

So in the end, Johnson sent half a million troops to Vietnam and carpet-bombed the country with more explosives than were used during World War II because he wanted to deprive the Republicans of their one issue and feared even Congress would turn against him if he withdrew: "Well, they'd impeach a president that would run out, wouldn't they?" he asked Russell.

They impeach presidents for a lot less than that these days.

Kerry is, I believe, uniquely qualified to deal with this difficult issue and reposition the democrats on national security as Clinton did on economics. His personal knowledge of the Vietnam problem and the experience of dealing with the Washington power structure for the last twenty years prepared him for the political battle that lies ahead on Iraq and terrorism. But, it is going to be tremendously difficult to deal with the Republicans on these issues.

As Johnson said forty years ago, "It's the only issue they've got."


UPDATE: Since I linked to Drum's piece, I should make it clear that I generally agree Michael Tomasky's take on why Democrats' fealty to the notion that elections are won on issues as opposed to "character" (I would call it personality) is losing us elections. ("Republicans understand the world, and Democrats do not," is, however, a statement I don't think is precise or wise. The out of context possibilities are frightening.) I don't think that Drum and Tomasky really disagree with one another, either --- what Kevin calls an "issue" (national security) Tomasky would call "character."

Republicans certainly use national security as a character point --- tough, uncompromising and aggressive vs being weak, vascillating and fearful --- to beat us over the head. The reason that people trust republicans more than Democrats on the issue is not because of their superior 10 point plans, but because they trust them to have the character and temperament to fight and win. They have been taught to think the opposiote of Democrats.




digby 9/13/2004 01:06:00 PM |

Sunday, September 12, 2004

 
Big Improvement

BAGHDAD, Iraq, Sept. 12 - In a series of tightly sequenced attacks, at least 25 Iraqis were killed by suicide car bombings and a barrage of missile and mortar fire in several neighborhoods across Baghdad on Sunday.

The attacks were the most widespread in months, seeming to demonstrate the growing power of the insurgency and heightening the sense of uncertainty and chaos in the capital at a time when American forces have already ceded control to insurgents in a number of cities outside of Baghdad.

[...]

American forces appear to be facing a guerrilla insurgency that is more sophisticated and more widespread than ever before. Last month, attacks on American forces reached their highest level since the war began, an average of 87 per day.

In a Sunday appearance on the NBC News program "Meet The Press," Secretary of State Colin L. Powell acknowledged that the United States faced a "difficult time" in Iraq but had a plan to "bring it under control" before nationwide elections scheduled for January.

"It's not an impossible task," he said.

The violence, which began before dawn, all but paralyzed this country's capital city, where portions of several central highways were closed, and traffic slowed to a crawl.

[...]

After the attack, fighters and gleeful onlookers scaled the burning armored vehicle, said Hassan Lazim, assistant security director at nearby Karkh Hospital who said he saw the scene. Reuters reported that several young men had hung a black banner of the Unity and Jihad militant group, believed to be linked to Al Qaeda, on the barrel of the Bradley's main gun.

Helicopters that flew in to protect the Bradley were then fired on from the ground and fired back, the military said in a statement, adding that the aircraft then destroyed the armored vehicle as well. The helicopters "fired upon the anti-Iraqi forces and the Bradley, preventing the loss of sensitive equipment and weapons." The military stressed that the helicopters had not fired indiscriminately into the crowd, but said, "An unknown number of insurgents and Iraq civilians were wounded or killed in the incident."

[...]

In the fighting before and after the attack on the Bradley, 13 people were killed and 61 were wounded, the Iraqi Health Ministry said. A journalist for the Arabiya television network and a 12-year-old girl were among the dead, hospital officials said.

Al Arabiya showed dramatic footage that followed the journalist, Mazen al-Tumeizi, as he stumbled away from the scene of the airstrikes, yelling, "I'm dying, I'm dying!" More than 20 journalists have been killed here since the beginning of the American invasion.

"We can say there were innocent people who died," said Sabah Abud, head of emergency room statistics at Yarmouk Hospital, which received most of those wounded on Sunday.

There's more to the story and it's all bad. I don't know how much more of the "freedom" these poor Iraqis can take.




digby 9/12/2004 08:09:00 PM |

 
An Expert


Just one last little word on this document drama and the blogosphere. We have among us here in left blogistan someone who is not only and expert in typography, but an expert on the blogosphere --- Barbara O'Brien who has written a book called Blogging America (which you should all buy because it features many fine and familiar bloggers, including yours truly) and who also runs the great blog the Mahablog.

Her expertise in these two areas means that her blog is required reading on this subject:

From Friday on the documents:

Even I think I am spending way too much time on the Killian memo issue, but I'm visiting it again because, dammit, I'm an expert. And I don't think they are forgeries.

I studied typography as an academic discipline (circa 1971) as part of the old journalism school curriculum at U of Missouri. I spent roughly 30 years in the book publishing business, most of which was on the production side dealing with type compositors and printers. I have worked with typography and printing processes from the end of the raised-metal-type era to current digital technology. I have designed and written complete type specifications for more books than I can remember.

As a production editor in the 1980s I became especially good at measuring the type in books to be reprinted so that corrections could be made by patching the film. To do that, I had to measure the old type and match font, body size, ledding, and letter spacing exactly. This is not a skill people need much any more, since books are stored digitally. But I still know how to do it.

I'm bouncing around the web seeing wingnuts flying off about proportional letter spacing and kerning and whatnot, and I'm telling you these people are off the wall.

Read the details here

Sunday on the blogosphere:

As of now, I believe all of the "proof" of forgery of the Killian documents has been tossed out of court, so to speak. We've accounted for proportional type several different ways, centered heads, all manner of character questions (including the famous raised "th," which turns out to have been a special character on some type element balls, as I suspected), kerning (there wasn't any), and the astonishing fact that when you set the same document twice in the same type face and size it will look pretty much alike. Imagine.

The hyenas on the right are still mindlessly yapping about forgeries, because that's what they do. But by now most people with brains understand the documents are most likely authentic.

According to this LA Times article, the "forgery" claim can be traced to an anonymous poster on Free Republic. Of course. Then some junior technoweenie on Little Green Footballs discovered he could replicate the documents on Microsoft Word, which said junior technoweenie, who clearly knows absolutely nothing about typography, assumed was proof the documents were phony. And then Matt Drudge picked it up, and then it went to mainstream media. And this in a space of about 12 hours.

No question that the Web is impacting major media and the political campaign. The question is, how? Quoting the LA Times:

This was the first time, some said, that the Web logs were engaging in their own form of investigative journalism — and readers, they warned, should be cautious.

"The mainstream press is having to follow them," said Jeffrey Seglin, a professor at Emerson College in Boston. "The fear I have is: How do you know who's doing the Web logs?

"And what happens when this stuff gets into the mainstream, and it eventually turns out that the '60 Minutes' documents were perfectly legitimate, but because there's been so much reporting about what's being reported, it has already taken on a life of its own?"

There are two legitimate issues here. One is the content of the documents, which proves Our Fearless Leaders was indeed a spoiled little princeling who got away with disobeying a direct order while dissing his country.

But the other question is, how can we restore some semblance of responsibility to news reporting?

When I was in journalism school (a zillion years ago, seems like) there was this notion that a professional journalist verified his information before making a story public. And even then, statements were to be cautiously edged with lots of qualifiers just in case the reporter had been misled.

But now false allegations hit the public so fast the whole world hears them before knowledgable people can clear their throats to speak up.

Short of giving a responsibility transplant to anyone within ten feet of a computer keyboard, I don't know what to do.

I don't either, but whatever we do, I know it's not going to happen before November.


digby 9/12/2004 07:31:00 PM |

 
Two Extra Memos

I'm no expert on the arcana of the Killian documents, but I hadn't been aware until a reader alerted me that there are six memos rather than the four reported by CBS linked on the USA Today site. Maybe everyone already knows about these other two, but they were news to me.

The first is dated 02 February, 1972 and says simply

Subject: Flight Qualifications

Harris,

Update me as soon as possible on flight certifications, specifically Bath and Bush.

The other is dated 24 June, 1973 and says:

Subject: Bush, George W. 1st Lt.32447544FG

Sir,

1. I got a call from your staff concerning the evaluation of 1st Lt Bush due this month. His rater is Lt. Colonel Harris.

2. Neither Lt Colonel Harris or I feel we can rate 1st Lt. Bush since he was not training with 111 F.I.S since April 1972. His recent activity is outside the rating period.

3. Advise how we are supposed to handle this.

Like I said, I'm not an expert and don't want to become one, but these two docs were news to me. The note concerning Bush and Bath from February 1972 is particularly intriguing.


Here's the USA Today pdf link.

If I'm not just misinformed here, I think it's a bit odd that USA today has two documents that CBS never reported. They don't mention it in their article. Where did they come from?



UPDATE: Apparently DU has been on this all day and has lots of intrigue. I'm not all that engaged in the details on this so if you want to get the latest go over there and check it out. In case anybody doesn't know the illustrious history of Bush and Bath, here's a handy site.


UPDATE II: Kevin Drum talked to the USA Today reporters who say that they received the memos from their own sources. One does wonder why they published them but didn't mention that they had their own sources or that there were two more memos. Very strange.




digby 9/12/2004 03:04:00 PM |

 
Who Da Man Redux

Kevin Hayden the overlord of The American Street alerted me that the Freepers seem to think there was a long term conspiracy to get Bush on these TANG issues and they are linking to an old post of mine on AS as some sort of proof. I can't really follow what they think they've found (check for yourself at http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1213742/post) but it did remind me that this old post of mine from last April illustrates nicely why the Swift Boat Liars needed to be formed and why the TANG stuff had to be trivialized.

When you put these two records together it's really quite devastating:


April 21, 2004

Via Atrios, I read that the Republicans have decided to try to take on Kerry’s war record. They’ve trotted out one of Nixon’s old lackeys to disparage his leadership and they got lapdog Russert to imply that he was hiding something in his military files, so today he released them in their entirety. I think that’s a good idea. To start, let’s take a look at some of his military fitness evaluations:

A top notch officer in every measurable trait. Intelligent, mature and rich in educational backround and experience. ENS Kerry is one of the finest young officers I have ever met and without question one of the most promising. Polished, tactful and outgoing, this officer is a brilliant conversationalist who can contribute much worthwhile comment to any discussion. In three months aboard he has clearly made his mark as an outstanding division officer and a skilled administrator. He has done a superb job as Public Affairs Officer, putting many extra hours into collateral duty and exhibiting uncommon ingenuity and initiative. He utilizes the English language expertly, both orally and in writing. He is an alert and active original thinker with great potential to the Navy. He eagerly accepts and actively seeks out tasks of greater responsibility. He is recommended for accelerated promotion.

—

In a combat environment often requiring independent, decisive action LTJG Kerry was unsurpassed. He constantly reviewed tactics and lessons learned in river operations and applied his experience at every opportunity. On one occasion while in tactical command of a three boat operation his unites were taken under fire from ambush. LTJG Kerry rapidly assessed the situation and ordered his units to turn directly into the ambush. This decision resulted in routing the attackers with several enemy KIA.

LtJG Kerry emerges as the acknowledged leader in his peer group. His bearing and appearance are above reproach. He has of his own volition learned the Vietnamese language and is instrumental in the successful Vietnamese training program.
During the period of this report, LTJG kerry had been awarded the Silver Star medal, the Bronze star medal, the Purple Heart medal (2nd and 3rd awards.)

—

LTJG Kerry was assigned to this division for only a short time but during that time exhibited all of the traits desired of an officer in a combat environment. He frequently exhibited a high sense of imagination and judgment in planning operations against the enemy in the Mekong Delta. Involved in several enemy initiated fire fights including an ambush during the Christmas truce, he effectively suppressed enemy fire and is unofficially credited with 20 enemy killed in action. Though relatively new to the PCF he is thoroughly knowledgeable of all aspects of his boat and PCF operations. He is instrumental in planning of highly successful Sea Lords operations. He was cited for his performance during action against the enemy by Commander Task Force in his message 0808072Z Jan 69.

—

LTJG Kerry is one of the finest young officers with whom I have served in a long naval career. His combat record prior to becoming my personal aide speaks for itself and is a testimony to his competence and courage at sea.
As my personal aide he could not have been more effective. In every instance he has displayed tact, judgment, foresight and energy. he is particularly adept in his relations with people both military and civilians from all strata. I have given him personal speaking assignments which he has performed in an outstanding manner to the credit of the Navy and himself.

This young man is detached at his own request to run for high public office to whit the Congress of the United States. The detachment of this officer will be a definite loss to the service. He is the dedicated type that we should retain and it is hoped that he will be of further perhaps earlier greater service to his country, which is his aim in life at this time.

This is a man who certainly seems to have the requisite qualities of leadership. In the earliest evaluation, where he is on ship awaiting his requested assignment to Vietnam (pdf), he is described as an intelligent, energetic, skilled administrator who uses ingenuity and initiative. Special attention is given to his outstanding communication skills and he is shown to be actively seeking out responsibility.

The next assignment shows Kerry in Vietnam. Using phrases like “independent, decisive action” he is said to be constantly reviewing tactics and using his growing experience at every opportunity. Wounded three times, winner of the silver star and the bronze star he is a heroic leader who has smartly taken initiative in everything from battle tactics to learning the vietnamese language.

By the third report, we see a seasoned, battle hardened veteran who has imagination and judgment; a well known leader of men at the highest levels. He is also credited with killing the enemy in double digits in an ambush during the Christmas truce.

At the final report we see Lt Kerry back in the states assigned as the personal aide to a high ranking officer in Washington. Hardened by battle he is described as a young man of tact, judgment, foresight and energy who his officer sees as a great loss to the Navy as he leaves the service to make a run for Congress. The trajectory from his earliest fitness reports to the last were of an intelligent, ambitious, brave young man who consistently surpassed his previous success and abilities.

—

George W. Bush (pdf) entered the National Guard in May 1968. Despite his lackluster performance on the entrance exam, he was allowed to train to be a fighter pilot, which by all accounts he managed to do without incident. His fitness reports start off in promising fashion:

Lt. Bush is an exceptionally fine young officer and pilot. After completing the F102 all weather interceptor school in November 1969, he came to this unit as a highly qualified fighter interceptor pilot. Lt. Bush possesses sound judgment and is mature beyond his age and experience level. During the last weapons firing deployment, he delivered both primary and secondary weapons from the F102. Lt Bush performed in an outstanding manner, following the best project requirements set forth. He also participated in a practice deployment during annual field training. He was able to handle intercepts with varying [?] and tactics selections. He continually flies intercept mission with the unit to increase his proficiency even further. Lt Bush is a natural leader but he is also a great follower of military discipline. Lt Bush has outstanding growth potential and should be promoted well ahead of his contemporaries.

Strengths: Lt Bush’s main strengths are his eagerness to participate in the unit’s activities and his ability to work harmoniously with others.

Suggested assignments: At the present time Lt Bush should continue to serve as a squadron pilot. This will enable him to gain valuable knowlege of the Air National Guard’s role in the defense of this country and experience as a pilot.

Self Improvement Efforts: Lt. Bush makes an effort to learn more abnout the all weather interceptors mission and capability by attending squadron briefings and studying available material in his spare time.

Other comments: Lt Bush is employed by Statford of Texas. Being on the managerial side of this diversified company he tells the story of the ANG and the USAF to the public at every opportunity. Since completing pilot training in November 1969 and F102 all weather interceptor school in June 1970, he has made a concentrated effort to improve his proficiency as a pilot. He is a member of the National Guard Association of the United States and Texas. Lieutenant Bush is an outstanding young pilot and officer and is a credit to his unit. I have personally observed his participation and without exception, his performance has been noteworthy. This officer is rated in the upper 10% of his contemporaries. 27 May, 1971.

—

Lt. Bush is an exceptional fighter interceptor pilot and officer. He eagerly participates in scheduled unit activities. During this past year he participated in several target force deployments and an F-102 aircraft deployment to Canada. His conduct and professional approach to the mission were exemplary and apparent to observers. His skills as a interceptor pilot enabled him to complete all his ABC intercept missions during the Canadian deployment.

Strengths: Lt/ Bush’s major strength is his ability to work with others. He makes a welcome addition to any group of team effort.

Suggested assignments: Lt Bush should be retained in his present assignment. He has gained valuable experience in the [?] area and would be a welcome addition to any fighter squadron.

Self improvements efforts: Lt. Bush is enrolled in the Squadron’s Officer School by correspondence and progressing satisfactorily. He also participates in ground school and briefings to stay abreast of the F-102 response employment and the ANG mission.

Other comments: Lt Bush is very active in civic affairs in the community and manifests a deep interst in the operation of our government. He has recently accepted a position as campaign manager for a candidate for United States senate. He is a good representative of the military and Air National Guard in the business world. His abilities and anticipated future assignments make him a valuable asset. He is member of the National Guard Association of the United States and Texas.

Lieutenant Bush is an exceptionally fine young pilot and officer and is a credit to this unit. I have personally observed his participation and without exception, his performance has been noteworthy.

—

This officer should have been reassigned in May 1972 since he no longer is training in his AFSC or with his unit of assignment.

—

Lt Bush has not been observed at this unit during the period of report. A civilian occupation made it necessary for him to move to Montgomery Alabama. He cleared this base on 15 may, 1972 and has been performing equivalent training in a non flying status with the 187 Tac recon Gp, Dannelly ANG Base, Alabama

—

Verbal orders of the Comdr on 1 Sep 72 suspending ist Lt george W. Bush ANGUS (Not on EAD) TX ANG, Hq 147 Flt GTp, Ellington AFB, Houston TX, from flying status are confirmed, exigencies of the service having been such as to preclude the publication of competent written orders in advance. Reason for suspension: Failure to accomplish annual medical examination. Off will comply with para 2-10, AFM 35-13 Authority: Para 2-29m, AFM 35-13

—

Not rated for the period 1 May 72 through 30 Apr 73
Report for this period not available for administrative reasons.

It’s true that until 1972 they consistently say that Bush is a fine pilot and a credit to his unit. But, look at what he’s actually doing during this time. The only thing that seems to set him apart is that he’s an excellent cheerleader for the National Guard — his “anticipated future assignments make him a valuable asset.” They assert without evidence that he should be promoted ahead of his peers because he is a natural leader, but his strengths are always listed as simply “works well with others.” His performance is “noteworthy,” for what we don’t know. The trajectory is of someone who performed to expectations at first and then lost interest.

Finally, he just stopped showing up altogether.

Perhaps the best way to look at this election is as if we are making a movie called “Post 9/11 America.” That’s something anyone can understand.

Which one of the above two stories provide us with a glimpse of a true leading man for our movie? The full time cheerleader, part-time pilot or the smooth, heroic, battle tested naval officer?






digby 9/12/2004 01:57:00 PM |

 
Business As Usual

The state Democratic Party chairman said Friday that GOP leaders should denounce a state lawmaker who urged Republicans to disrupt a campaign event by supporters of presidential candidate John Kerry.

In a news release, the DFL Party included an e-mail that Rep. Bill Kuisle had sent to Olmsted County Republicans, urging them to attend an event in Rochester on Friday featuring singer Carole King and the group Minnesota Women for John Kerry.

Kuisle provided the details of the event and said, "If anyone can go and harass it would be appreciated. Bill."

[...]

Randy Wanke, a spokesman for the state Republican Party, said it's hard to take the criticism seriously given that Erlandson "didn't condemn the Democrats who heckled the President in Duluth," where Bush campaigned in July, and other disturbances at Bush rallies.

Yes, the two parties are equivalently malignant this way. Except that Bush supporters are routinely allowed their freedom of speech to heckle Kerry and do it quite often. Bush on the other hand deals with it differently:

Officially, the Secret Service does not concern itself with unarmed, peaceful demonstrators who pose no danger to the commander in chief. But that policy was inoperative here Thursday when seven AIDS activists who heckled President Bush during a campaign appearance were shoved and pulled from the room -- some by their hair, one by her bra straps -- and then arrested for disorderly conduct and detained for an hour.

After Bush campaign bouncers handled the evictions, Secret Service agents, accompanied by Bush's personal aide, supervised the arrests and detention of the activists and blocked the news media from access to the hecklers.

The Bush campaign has made unprecedented efforts to control access to its events. Sometimes, people are required to sign oaths of support before attending events with Bush or Vice President Cheney. At times, buses of demonstrators are diverted by police to idle in parking lots while supporters are waved in. And the Secret Service has played an unusual role; one agent cooperated with a plan by the Bush campaign last month to prevent former senator Max Cleland (Ga.), a Kerry ally, from handing a letter to the agent outside Bush's Texas ranch.

digby 9/12/2004 01:41:00 PM |

 
Blogospherics

Sullywatch and Steve Gilliard take issue with my recent posts on typegate and I think they deserve a response.

Sullywatch takes the intriguing position that the left blogosphere should actively debunk these Killian documents because they are forgeries from the right meant to be exposed as such to discredit the news media and the left blogosphere if we fall for them. Therefore, we should get ahead of that and expose them ourselves. That's an interesting idea. We all know that Rove has a history of such dirty tricks. But, I believe that there is almost no chance that we will ever prove that Rove's fingerprints are on this, so if they are forgeries it is actually more likely to be pinned on our side than theirs just because it's the simpler more obvious explanation. I guess I don't buy that by helping to expose the fraud that Democrats would not be blamed anyway.

In the bigger picture, I actually did not suggest that lefty bloggers had an obligation to actively embrace the documents. I don't think it matters one way or the other because a huge news organization has its reputation resting on this and they are highly motivated to see them proven valid. But, I also don't see any strategic benefit in actively helping the other side enact a tactical misdirection, for the reason I stated above. Even if an alleged forger is exposed, I don't think the truth of who was behind it will ever be known and even more depressing, even if it is, I don't think more than half the people will believe it.

On one point, I seriously disagree with my esteemed blogger comrade. I absolutely do not believe that the left blogosphere will be granted points for integrity or for credibility and furthermore I think that we will either be discredited or ignored by the other side no matter what we do. And, there is no mediator to decide who's right and wrong. It depends on who you believe. Certainly, the consensus of belief that your past performance translates into credibility down the road no longer exists. For instance, this morning's LA Times approvingly quoted Charles Johnson of Little Green Footballs, a site that pushed the Swift Boat Lies relentlessly, (not to mention that he is racist and xenophobic to an extreme.) They also discussed Free Republic and Drudge without mentioning that they are wrong about virtually everything.

Modern politics is epistomological quicksand and relativism is the order of the day. There will be no reckoning. Therefore, if the documents actually are forgeries or if they aren't isn't really relevant to the larger point. Being factually right or factually wrong does not necessarily accrue to our benefit not does it discredit us. All that matters is how the story plays out in the media's and public's perceptions.

Which brings me to Steve Gilliard's argument. I stand behind my statement that this was a masterful play on the right. We had 60 Minutes, the most respected news show on television just set back on its heels by the Mighty Wurlitzer (joined by it's newest players, LGF and Free Republic) within twenty four hours. What was a confluence of stories from CBS, the Globe the AP and others revealing that Bush got many more favors in the Guard than previously known was reduced to an arcane argument about typewriters almost immediately. Compare that to the Swift Boat controversy which played out in great detail over the course of a month.

I agree that Rove would rather not have the story be about Bush being AWOL, and he certainly wishes the story would go away entirely. But given the choice between having the press discuss the substance of the charges or typewriter fonts and duelling document experts I think it's clear he would choose the latter. From the look of the Sabbath Gasbag shows, it may be dying more quickly than it came alive. When the major media all decide that "the story" is based upon bogus information they all drop it. It looks as if that may be exactly what happened.

Finally, my post Dupes and Skeptics was aimed at the media. I frankly don't believe that anything the left blogosphere did on this story helped or hurt. It wasn't our play and we were more or less irrelevant. What I do see is that the right blogosphere has now become an integral part of the Mighty Wurlitzer and I have to grant grudging respect for its power and effectiveness. We underestimate them at our peril.

My post was widely seen as being defeatist, which I think is unfortunate. I do admit that I am deeply cynical about the way politics and the media intersect these days but the truth is that I believe that the Democrats can certainly win, both on superior substance and with superior strategy. But, I maintain that we are not going to get there by relying on rules that don't apply anymore --- rules about credibility and fairness and factual integrity. It's difficult, I admit, to know where the lines are and whether we should or should not cross them. It's hard to let go of the idea that truth and reality will out.

The political world I see is one dominated by media manipulation and marketing and public relations in which reality is not as important as the perception of reality. I think we adapt to that or we cease to survive. I certainly believe that we can do it. We are, after all, the smart people.




digby 9/12/2004 08:40:00 AM |

 
Right Blogosphere Takes A Victory Lap


A big article in the news pages of the LA Times this morning. (The best thing about it is that Instapundit isn't mentioned even once.)

No Disputing It: Blogs Are Major Players

Netizen's late-night post questioning CBS claims about Bush's service spreads at warp speed.

These days, CBS News anchor Dan Rather and his colleagues at the network's magazine program "60 Minutes II" are enduring an unusual wave of second-guessing by some of the public and fellow journalists.

For that, they can thank "Buckhead."

It was a late-night blog posting by this mystery Netizen that first questioned the validity of documents Rather cited Wednesday as proof that George W. Bush did not fulfill his National Guard duty more than 30 years ago.

Buckhead refuses to further identify himself, other than dropping hints that he is a male who lives on the East Coast — preferring to proclaim that the scramble to verify the contentions in his posting marks an extraordinary achievement for a medium that has operated more as an underground world of ideological venting than a source of legitimate news.

But Buckhead is vehement about one thing: He acted alone when he posted, to the conservative website FreeRepublic.com, what was widely believed to be the first allegation that the CBS report relied on documents that could have been forged.

"Absolutely, positively, on my own, sitting at my computer in my bedroom just before midnight — but not in my pajamas," he wrote in an e-mail exchange with The Times. "But once I posted the comment to Free Republic I was no longer working alone, and that is the real point of the story about the story about the story."

That story began Wednesday, 19 minutes after the "60 Minutes II" broadcast began, when another FreeRepublic poster, TankerKC, noted that the documents were "not in the style that we used when I came into the USAF…. Can we get a copy of those memos?"

Less than four hours later, Buckhead pointed to "proportionally spaced fonts" in the memos, which CBS said had been written in the early 1970s by Bush's commanding officer, Lt. Col. Jerry Killian, who died in 1984. Buckhead concluded that the documents had been drafted on a modern-day word processor rather than a typewriter.

"I am saying these documents are forgeries, run through a copier for 15 generations to make them look old," Buckhead wrote. "This should be pursued aggressively."

And it was — with startling speed.

Early Thursday morning, Minneapolis lawyer Scott Johnson was in his basement home office, preparing to link some morning news reports to the site he co-authors, when a reader sent an e-mail about Buckhead.

Intrigued, Johnson, whose online ID is "The Big Trunk," put a link on his site, PowerLine Blog.com, to Buckhead's post.

Then the floodgates opened.

[...]


Soon Charles Johnson, a Los Angeles musician-turned-conservative-blogger who hosts the site LittleGreenFootballs.com, posted the results of his own investigation. He wrote that he had opened Microsoft Word, set the font to Times New Roman and used the program's default settings to retype a purported Killian memo from August 1973.

[...]

Within 90 minutes of that post, the Power Line site was linked to perhaps the best-known conservative site of all — the Drudge Report, made famous when Matt Drudge took a lead role in the first reports on the relationship between then-President Clinton and Monica Lewinsky.

[...]

Suddenly, the story line shifted from the question Democrats had been trying to ask — whether Bush received special treatment in the Guard — to whether a network long detested by conservatives had been duped in its quest to air a report critical of the president in the midst of the reelection campaign.

Journalists at mainstream media outlets rushed to consult with experts to check the validity of the documents. The claims of seemingly legitimate analysts posting commentary online could not be ignored.

"If the blog enthusiasts wanted to write a better scenario, they'd have a hard time coming up with one more spectacular than this one," said Jim Geraghty, host of the Kerry Spot blog published by the conservative National Review, whose e-mail queue was filled by font experts from across the nation wanting to weigh in.

[...]

"It was amazing Thursday to watch the documents story go from FreeRepublic.com, a bastion of right-wing lunacy, to Drudge to the mainstream media in less than 12 hours," said Jim Jordan, a strategist for independent Democratic groups opposed to Bush.

"That's not to say the documents didn't deserve examination. But apparently the entire thing was cooked up by a couple of amateurs on Free Republic. The speed with which it moved was breathtaking."

By Friday, articles in The Times, the Washington Post and other news outlets were quoting some analysts raising questions about the CBS documents, and others saying it was impossible to judge the memos' authenticity without seeing the originals.

[...]

Media experts said the role of the bloggers illustrated a significant development in the relationship between mainstream news and the still-nascent phenomenon of blogging.

This was the first time, some said, that the Web logs were engaging in their own form of investigative journalism — and readers, they warned, should be cautious.

"The mainstream press is having to follow them," said Jeffrey Seglin, a professor at Emerson College in Boston. "The fear I have is: How do you know who's doing the Web logs?

"And what happens when this stuff gets into the mainstream, and it eventually turns out that the '60 Minutes' documents were perfectly legitimate, but because there's been so much reporting about what's being reported, it has already taken on a life of its own?"

"All hail 'Buckhead,' " wrote one posting to Free Republic.

"Here, here," wrote another. "But how do we know Buckhead is really not Karl Rove..."

This is really a testament to the right wing echo chamber, not blogging per se. They had a conduit to get this information into the mainstream quickly. Had our side done the same thing it would have taken days to get the attention of the mainstream.

We don't have a Drudge, which is an absolutely necessary bridge from the internet to the mainstream media.

Why not?




digby 9/12/2004 08:18:00 AM |

Saturday, September 11, 2004

 
A Country Full Of Zealots

Craig Crawford notes that if swing voters are turned off by the negative tone of the campaign and don't vote, it would turn the election "into a test of the turnout strength of each side’s faithful."

"That, sadly, would put the next four years in the hands of those seduced by the shrill sound of ideological zealotry. Such people should not be labeled 'true believers,' because they have allowed themselves to believe the most ridiculous lies being spread, frequently on the Internet, about one candidate or the other. Rabid Democrats insist that Bush and Cheney sent young Americans to their death in Iraq just to make money for Halliburton. Equally rabid Republicans insist that Kerry deliberately shot himself for a war medal."

"If these are the people who now decide elections, Heaven help us."

Yes, it's definitely better that 17 uninformed morons who would refuse to vote based upon their dislike of all that icky "negativity" do the deciding. Those are the kind of citizens that make this country great.




digby 9/11/2004 04:38:00 PM |

 
That Awful Day

The best way to show your respect for those who died three years ago today is to read the 9/11 Commission Report. You can download it here or you can get it at any bookstore.

It is a harrowing account of years of political confusion leading up to an administration that pushed it down the list of priorities to that final day of reckoning.

That the man who presided over that day, with all his early inattention and his terrible performance at the time and in all the days that have followed, may be rewarded with another term is sobering indeed.






digby 9/11/2004 01:35:00 PM |

 
Dupes And Skeptics

Not that it matters, because the echo chamber seems to have made a decision, but there are a couple of interesting articles today in the SF Gate ("Authenticity backed on Bush documents") and the Boston Globe ("Some skeptics now say IBM typewriter could have been used") about the premature conclusions reached by the so-called experts in typewriter-gate. There are some who are sticking to their guns but at least two of them are questionable themselves.

I would like to see someone do a thorough forensic investigation on how the skepticism on the memos made its way so quickly into the mainstream. This is a good start. What it says is that once again, the Mighty Wurlitzer played the press for chumps. And, I suppose it won't be the last time because press feels no shame or guilt about falling for GOP super-spin time after time.

Today, we hear the startling news that General Hodges now says he was misled into believing that the memos were handwritten, which for some reason is supposed to make a difference. He claims that he said, "well if he wrote them, that's what he felt."

According to the Washington Post, the conversation went like this:

A senior CBS official, who asked not to be named because CBS managers did not want to go beyond their official statement, named one of the network's sources as retired Maj. Gen. Bobby W. Hodges, the immediate superior of the documents' alleged author, Lt. Col. Jerry B. Killian. He said a CBS reporter read the documents to Hodges over the phone, and Hodges replied that "these are the things that Killian had expressed to me at the time."

Now, it's possible that CBS is just lying outright on a story that was guaranteed to put the entire Republican establishment into a frenzy. Or, perhaps they were terribly sloppy. If you believe Hodges today that is what you have to assume because whether or not these memos were handwritten is irrelevant if they were simply read to Hodges over the phone. And the quote from CBS is entirely different from the one that Hodges claims he gave them.

I will take the big leap here and say that the likely scenario is that when Hodges heard that they had these memos he figured he might as well tell the truth, which was that they reflected Killian's feelings as he remembered them. After the memos were called into question he lied about what he told CBS. (I would say that he'd better be sure they didn't have it on tape, but then the tape will be called a forgery and we'd be back on the merry-go-round.) Logic says that CBS, being a professional news organization, knew that this was an explosive story and was extremely careful with its quotes.

None of the hysterical forensic evidence produced so far has held up. The Boston Globe article pretty well establishes that the "experts" who were contacted by the Post and others in the first cycle had their heads up their asses about what was and wasn't in use during the period. Nobody, as far as I know, has done the basic forensic task of comparing Killian's other memos of the period with these, which would probably shed real light on the subject.

Meanwhile, Killian's wife and son, who if you believe them must have spent many Thanksgivings and Christmases engaged in fond recollections of that fine first Lieutenant George W. Bush, say that they know their husband/father wouldn't have written those memos. And according to the LA Times this influenced Hodges on the issue:

On Friday night, retired Maj. Gen. Hodges, Killian's former supervisor, said in an interview that he also now believes the documents are not real — in part because of the statements of Killian's relatives.

Certainly it is very common for wives to have intimate knowledge of the work memo stylings of their husbands and can vouch for their reliability 30 years after the fact. One should always believe them over a man like Robert Strong, a friend and colleague of Killian who ran the TANG administrative office in the Vietnam era, and who said on camera:

"They are compatible with the way business was done at the time. They are compatible with the man that I remember Jerry Killian being," says Strong. "I don't see anything in the documents that is discordant with what were the times, what was the situation and what were the people involved."

His testimony was very interesting and nobody gives a damn. What he said was that the TANG of the period was completely corrupt. That the kind of favors being granted to rich little chickenhawks like George W. Bush were commonplace. I know that it doesn't speak directly to whether the documents are real but it's a helluva lot more relevant than whether Mrs Killian thinks that Lil' Georgie Bush was a nice boy.

Interestingly,in the LA Times Hodges seemed to walk back a little bit on what he said to ABC:

He also said that he could not recall any conversations in which Killian had complained about Bush's performance or about the fact that Bush failed in August 1972 to take a physical exam, removing him from flight status

"I have no recollection of anything like that happening," said Hodges. "It's possible we did talk about the physical not happening, because we would have to ground him."

In other words, after he'd shot his mouth off, Hodges remembered that he signed off on the grounding. It goes on:

The retired Guard general, who favors the president's reelection, called Bush "a truly outstanding pilot." He called Killian "a good guy" who "ran a tight ship" and might have had concerns about Bush's service.

"But he was maybe a little bit too conscientious, because he wanted his pilots to do everything perfect," Hodges said. "Pilots, like everyone else, are not perfect. [Killian] was conscientious to a fault."

So, if the memos do turn out to be real, it was Killian's fault because he was a tight ass perfectionist about pilots being qualified to fly million dollar airplanes.

(Still think this guy didn't tell CBS what they say he told them?)

(As for Bush being an outstanding pilot, this brings up some new questions on that.)

Perhaps we will never know what the truth is, but we do know three very important things.

First, contrary to the malarky that the Wurlitzer began circulating almost immediately, every single so-called anomoly in the douments that made them questionable could have been produced by typewriters in use at the time. The press jumped the gun and the "experts" were wrong.

Second, CBS had every reason to be extremely careful with its quotes on this story. Hodges, the Bush supporter, has every reason to lie about what he told CBS now that the documents have been called into question. His babbling about handwritten vs typewritten makes no sense. He admits that Killian had very high standards and didn't hold with pilots not meeting them. Therefore, it's not reasonable to assume that Hodges saying that he told CBS "if he wrote it, it must be true" is more credible than CBS's original quote. Indeed, it is ridiculous.

Third, the statements of Killian's family are irrelevant compared to the statement of Strong who handled Killian's work documents and others like it at the time. Unless you believe that spouses and children have better direct knowledge of workplace events than co-workers, that is the only conclusion to which you can come.

But, that is not going to be the story. From this point forward it will be who in John Kerry's campaign (Clinton??) forged the documents:

McClellan made this clear:

Q Scott, on the National Guard documents, do you have any suspicions about their authenticity?

MR. McCLELLAN: We don't know whether the documents were fabricated or are authentic. You know, the media has talked to independent experts who have raised questions about the documents. CBS has not disclosed where the documents came from. But, regardless, it does not -- the documents do not change the facts. The President met his obligations and was honorably discharged. And the one thing that is clear is the timing and the coordination going on here. There is an orchestrated effort by Democrats and the Kerry campaign to tear down the President because of the direction the polls are moving. And it's not surprising that we're seeing the same old recycled attacks. The Democrats are determined to throw the kitchen sink at us, and I suspect this is just the beginning.

Q When you use the word "coordination," it seems to suggest in a legal sense that the Kerry campaign is illegally coordinating with the 527 --

MR. McCLELLAN: It's clear. I mean, look at the media reports, they've documented the coordinated efforts by Democrats to tear down the President here, because they're falling behind in the polls. You look at the -- The Washington Post had a story about it today, talking about the multi-front effort by the Democratic National Committee, other Democrats. You have outrageous comments being made by Senator Harkin. You have the Democratic National Committee using the term "Operation Fortunate Son." "Fortunate Son" was the name of a book by an ex-convict that was widely discredited in the 2000 campaign.

This whole pushback by the right, from the blogosphere to the Wurlitzer to the Whitehouse, is absolutely masterful. And, it should give everyone pause if they think there is even a snowball's chance in hell that any member of the Bush administration will ever get justice for the crimes they have committed while in office. Clearly, the press and much of the public are so willing to be used that it is hopeless. This entire episode is nothing but a pathetic reminder of how easily they manipulate perceptions.

We'd better be content to congratulate ourselves for having integrity because it's clear that we do not get any public credit for it. Indeed, we are perceived as being just as bad as they are. If that's the case, does it even matter that we aren't?





digby 9/11/2004 09:24:00 AM |

 
Compassionate Conservative

Re: "Hospitals Are Gouging the Uninsured," Commentary, Sept. 7: Ruth Rosen's article regarding hospital bills to the uninsured focused on one issue of our current healthcare crisis and ignored many more.

[...]

Rosen uses the example of single mothers who work at Wal-Mart but can't afford their "unaffordable" health premium. I agree this happens to some. But, in my experience, for most it is about financial responsibility and responsible decision-making.

Many lower-income employees can afford the premiums; it just means they may have to prioritize and possibly give up the cellphone, keep the used car another year or two or give up a $5 pack of cigarettes each day. Or, God forbid, develop healthful dietary and exercise routines.


Gordon Tagge MD.

Those poor people would be able to afford the four or five hundred a month in insurance premiums if they'd completely give up their car and walk. It's good exercise. And if only they stopped eating so much they'd lose weight and be healthier.

Clearly, being unable to afford health insurance is another bullshit socialist excuse for being lazy.

Of course, there is this:

Since 2000, the cost of employee health insurance has risen 59%, Kaiser found, and workers' share of their health insurance premiums has surged 57% for individual coverage and 49% for a family. During that period, wages increased just 12% — 2.2% this year.

Well, maybe they could give up shelter, too. There are plenty of gas station bathrooms to clean up in before they walk to work. There is simply no excuse for them to not pay for their health insurance.




digby 9/11/2004 08:27:00 AM |

Friday, September 10, 2004

 
Case Closed

I think the Poorman has finally found the way to properly evaluate the claims of document forgeries:

Let me save everyone a whole lot of time. They are genuine. How do I know? Because the internet is currently awash in wingnuts claiming the memos are fakes. Ergo, they are for real. Q.E.D.

Some people may feel that I'm just being flip here. Is that so, some people? Tell me: how rich would you be right now if, every time something was posted on a right-wing message board, or everytime Drudge had an exclusive, or any time Rush Limbaugh revealed a secret truth that the liberal media won't tell you, you called up your bookie and put down $20 even money on "bullshit"? The correct answer is: "pretty fucking rich". The correct answer is: "I would never, never lose." So, if anyone doubts my methodology, I have a crisp new $20 bill that just told me that I'm 100% right and you're just too dumb to see it. If any of you champs out there think me and Andrew Jackson are both wrong, well then, today's your lucky day, because we're paying 2:1. If you need us, we'll be on the couch playing ESPN NHL 2K5. Peace.

And, I'll be drinking cheap wine in an undisclosed location. I'm convinced.






digby 9/10/2004 06:17:00 PM |

 
Tooth And Nail, Might And Main

As we think about the relentlessness of the Republican machine and its propensity for playing hardball, it pays sometimes to remember that their ruthless tactics are actually a matter of temperament rather than ideology. Conservatives have always been this way. The problem today is that they are operating with a radical agenda, an incompetent president and a country with much too much power to be allowed to run wild with either.

This interesting post from Steamboats Are Ruining Everything takes us back to 1820 and reminds us that brutish conservatives are nothing new:

William Hazlitt explained the nature of it in his 1820 essay, "On the Spirit of Partisanship."

Conservatives and liberals play the game of politics differently, Hazlitt wrote, because they have different motivations. Liberals are motivated by principles and tend to believe that personal honor can be spared in political combat. They may, in fact, become vain about their highmindedness. Hazlitt condemns the mildness as a mistake, both in moral reasoning and in political strategy. "They betray the cause by not defending it as it is attacked, tooth and nail, might and main, without exception and without remorse."

The conservatives, on the other hand, start with a personal interest in the conflict. Not wishing to lose their hold on power, they are fiercer. "We"---i.e., the liberals, or the "popular cause," in Hazlitt's terminology---"stand in awe of their threats, because in the absence of passion we are tender of our persons.

They beat us in courage and in intellect, because we have nothing but the common good to sharpen our faculties or goad our will; they have no less an alternative in view than to be uncontrolled masters of mankind or to be hurled from high---

"To grinning scorn a sacrifice,
And endless infamy!"

They do not celebrate the triumphs of their enemies as their own: it is with them a more feeling disputation. They never give an inch of ground that they can keep; they keep all that they can get; they make no concessions that can redound to their own discredit; they assume all that makes for them; if they pause it is to gain time; if they offer terms it is to break them: they keep no faith with enemies: if you relax in your exertions, they persevere the more: if you make new efforts, they redouble theirs. While they give no quarter, you stand upon mere ceremony. While they are cutting your throat, or putting the gag in your mouth, you talk of nothing but liberality, freedom of inquiry, and douce humanité. Their object is to destroy you, your object is to spare them---to treat them according to your own fancied dignity. They have sense and spirit enough to take all advantages that will further their cause: you have pedantry and pusillanimity enough to undertake the defence of yours, in order to defeat it. It is the difference between the efficient and the inefficient; and this again resolves itself into the difference between a speculative proposition and a practical interest.

It is not fair play, and Hazlitt thinks that liberals who decline to fight fire with fire are fools. "It might as well be said that a man has a right to knock me on the head on the highway, and that I am only to use mildness and persuasion in return, as best suited to the justice of my cause; as that I am not to retaliate and make reprisal on the common enemies of mankind in their own style and mode of execution."

Hazlitt was right. And never more than today when the stakes are so high.

As I said, we have been fighting this beast forever. Conservatives are just more inclined to fight and more serious about winning. But, I have seen the Republican agenda change from conservative to radical in the last 30 years and their candidates from steady, stolid leaders to firebrands and incompetents. America is the most powerful nation on earth. If the modern GOP boasted prudent, tested leadership and a simple desire to avoid radical change, I would still oppose them but I would not be worried. But, these people want to wildly experiment on a global scale and their track record of the last three years is devastating. History proves that bad things do sometimes happen. Being barely left standing to say "I told you so" will be no compensation.


Thanks to reader K Greier for the link.




digby 9/10/2004 05:37:00 PM |

 
Negativity Rising

Liberal Oasis has a typically trenchant take on the latest polls that comports with my gut feeling about the state of the race at this moment. There's plenty of good news, so go ahead and click the link and read the whole thing. But I'd like to focus on a specific point that I think we still need to keep in mind:

There's no getting around Kerry's negatives were raised by the GOP convention onslaught.

Even in the dead heat polls, Kerry lost ground in areas like leadership, personality, ability to fight terror, flip-flopping and favorability.

Of course, there's still conflicting data.

In the Gallup poll, Kerry's favorable-unfavorable rating is 53-43, down from 57-37 after the Dem convention.

Not good, but manageable (Bush is a similar 55-44).

The CBS poll, which appears not to have pushed undecideds to choose, has far worse data for Kerry: 32-41 (with Bush at 47-39).

Can a candidate win with unfavorables in the 40s?

Well, yes. Bill Clinton did in 1992.

Near the end of the race, his fav-unfav was similarly polarizing and conflicting: 51-45 (Gallup), 52-45 (LA Times) and 33-39 (CBS/NYT).

It's not that there was widespread love for Clinton, who was dogged with attacks on his "character" by Poppy Bush, and won with just 43%.

In fact, a late CNN/Time poll had vastly more people saying Poppy was more "honest and trustworthy" than Clinton.
But Poppy's fav-unfav was still worse than Clinton, with his unfavorables generally in the low 50s.

That's Kerry goal, to jack up Bush's negatives.

Like any Bush campaign, this race will be filled with muck, making it impossible to stay positive and generate warm feelings.

Kerry can't expect his unfavorable numbers to go back down to the 30s.

But with Bush probably at his high-water mark, just after his convention, Kerry should be able to get Bush's unfavorables higher than his.

This is not to say Kerry shouldn't try to talk himself up and articulate his compelling, alternative agenda.

It's always a balancing act: promoting yourself, tearing down the other guy.

And since Kerry can't single-handedly put this campaign on the high road, going after Bush is the bigger priority.

One of the keys roles that we in the blogosphere could play is to keep hurling the negative crap out there, build on good stories from the widely read blogs like Atrios and kos and just keep up a relentless pace. If the Killian documents prove to be a distraction from the ongoing negative stuff, just pull back and pick something else. There is plenty to choose from. This isn't pretty, but it's absolutely necessary to raise Bush's negatives over the next couple of months and to do that we have to be a bit....icky.

Kitty Kelley's book has some interesting items, I'm sure. Sy Hersh could provide a new angle. Cheney says something stupid almost every day. We should take a page from Rove and Cheney and Card and Condi and do as they did when they were building their case against Saddam. "We just keep hurling stuff against the wall and hope that some of it sticks."

I know it sounds unattractively shrill to keep pointing this out, and there are those who do not believe that anything substantial will change in everyday Americans' lives if Bush is elected to a second term, but I truly believe that winning this election is more vitally important than any in my lifetime. (My first typewriter was a manual, which after our recent crash course in typewriter history should tell you that I've observed a few.) George W. Bush and the modern Republican party are not business as usual.

I think the country is far more likely to survive a negative campaign from the Democrats than endorsing what George W. Bush has been doing for the last three years and validating the very worst beliefs about America all over the world. This is as serious a problem as terrorism itself. We just have to win.








digby 9/10/2004 04:14:00 PM |

 
Playing By The Rules

It's admirable that lefty bloggers are being duly skeptical of the CBS documents and diligently reporting it on their blogs. It means that we have more integrity than the other side and will probably go to heaven.

Unfortunately, it also means that we are helping Republicans spin their lies and hurting our candidate. Again.

But, now that professional Republican propagandists are on the case, if you can't stomach the idea of not standing up for truth, justice and the American way in all circumstances, the better part of valor may be to blog on the myriad other Bush atrocities and let the right do its own dirty work:

Throughout the Swift Boat smear campaign, the veterans involved asserted they had no political agenda and were unaffiliated with any political party. But Creative Response Concepts, which was obviously paid some undisclosed amount for its Swift Boat work, has many links to the Republican Party and the conservative movement. Among its clients are the Republican National Committee, National Republican Congressional Committee and National Republican Senatorial Committee. Its client list also includes the Christian Coalition, National Taxpayers Union, Media Research Council and Regnery Publishing. Regnery is the firm that published "Unfit for Command," the SBVT screed against Kerry's military record.

Now Creative Response is working the case against CBS's "60 Minutes" report on Bush's questionable service in the Texas Air National Guard...By Thursday, the online Drudge Report and the Weekly Standard were also trumpeting the accusations. And Creative Response Concepts sent out a press release to major news organizations stating that the "documents on Bush might be fake."

In the release, Creative Response promoted a Web site called Cybercast News Service, one of several groups directed by Brent Bozell, a longtime right-wing activist who has devoted years to attacking the "liberal bias" of the mainstream press. His Media Research Center and other similar efforts have been heavily funded by conservative billionaire Richard Mellon Scaife.

They have the Mighty Wurlitzer fully cranked. Do we really need to help the right turn what is an irrefutable charge that Bush was given A LOT of special treatment when he was in the National Guard into a charge against John Kerry? Because, mark my words, that is coming next.

If voices of the left blogosphere work to actively advance the idea that the documents are forgeries, no matter what their earnestly high minded motives, then whatever influence the blogosphere provides certainly doesn't benefit our side.

Imagine the shoe on the other foot.

updated for clarity




digby 9/10/2004 01:16:00 PM |

 
The SS

Atrios has a disturbing post up about the Secret Service preventing the press from interviewing protestors. This isn't the first example of the Secret Service behaving badly toward the press. In fact, I would venture that this was even more outrageous:

Inside the Fleet Center, the working press sits at tables that flank the convention stage. Except during major speeches, the reporters -- like the delegates themselves -- seldom pay much attention to what's happening on the stage. They talk among themselves, burn through their cell phone batteries and write pieces on their laptops.

That's what we were doing Thursday afternoon when a Secret Service agent had another idea. "Excuse me sir," his voice boomed from behind us. "It's the presentation of the colors, and I think it's important enough for you to stand up."

The agent had noticed -- we had not -- that the American flag was being presented in the still half-empty convention hall. We acknowledged his right to his opinion, then we returned to our work. At that point, the agent ordered us to stand -- ostensibly so he could confirm that our press credentials were valid. We complied with the order, then turned on our tape recorder and asked if he was actually ordering us to stand for the flag.

"No sir, I'm not. I'm looking at your deal," he said. "I'm ordering you because I want to see your credentials, and you're going to stand here until the flag is over with."

What's your name? "I'm Chad Reagan, and I'm checking your credentials, out of the New York field office. I'm checking your credentials."

Because we're working during the presentation of the flag?

"No sir, because I'm wondering who you are."

We told him that we worked for Salon.

"Great," he said, "I'm checking your credentials."

Nearby officials from the Congressional Periodical Press Gallery instantly confirmed the validity of our credentials. We asked the agent if he always orders people to stand for the flag, and whether Secret Service policy either authorized or required him to do so.

"I served for six months in the United States Marine Corps overseas, sir, so I like it when people stand. The reason I came over here was to credential you. You can think what you want, but the reason I came over here was to credential you. And I'll stick to that. I'm allowed to credential anyone I want. That is Secret Service policy."

But you told us to stand for the flag, right?

"No sir, I didn't tell you. I said that I think it's important enough to stand, and then I said, 'Let me see your credentials.' There's a difference."

If they are now behaving in a blatantly partisan manner and keeping the press from interviewing protestors, I can only assume that they will not be happy guarding a Democrat. If I were President Kerry, I would not feel particularly secure with people who think like this guarding me.







digby 9/10/2004 07:40:00 AM |

Thursday, September 09, 2004

 
The Power Of Workplace Chit Chat

Donkey Rising asks:

Why would September 6-8 be a better period for Bush than September 3-5, right after the convention?

Because by the 6th, everybody had heard that Bush kicked ass at his convention and he had a huge lead in the polls. When people came back to work on the 7th, the water cooler chatter passed it around.

Then he asks:

And could Fox's polling period, which does not include September 6, mean they missed Bush's best day and he was starting to go downhill a bit?

Could be. As the news that his bounce was questionable began to filter through the grapevine, people probably started to get a grip. Now, with these new numbers based upon the old numbers, the process may reassert itself for awhile.

But reality bites. If Bush has a lead it is still small and manageable. And nobody's measured since the news came out that he was a perfumed little sissy in the national guard who called his daddy in every time he had to do something he didn't want to do. That could slow his alleged big mo just a tad.




digby 9/09/2004 05:25:00 PM |

 
Gut Instinct

One of Josh Marshall's readers writes in to criticize this latest storyline about Bush's guard service because he feels it does not address the real issues in the campaign and will not persuade undecided voters. I hear this a lot --- the whole Vietnam thing is allegedly a distraction from what is really important and Kerry has brought all this trivia on by emphasizing his wartime experience.

I disagree. Campaigns run on several levels only one of which is to reach people with an explicit message in the hopes that they will make the rational decision of voting for your candidate. There are complicated tactical and strategic matters that are just as important (and I would argue more important in this campaign) than telling voters you have a better plan.

The first reason is tactical in that every day Bush and his campaign staff have to defend themselves against these charges is a day they are not getting their message heard. The staff is distracted and worried, they have to weigh all of their statements carefully, the campaign takes on a seige mentality and they make mistakes. It's not a particularly elevating aspect of politics, but it's effective and necessary.

Another reason is that undecided swing voters just don't make decisions based upon the rational assessment that Bush has been a terrible president. Most voters have a complicated range of reasons why they vote the way they do, from tribal identity to personal likeability and reasoned discussion of the issues is way down the list. But, as this very interesting and widely read article says, undecided swing voters are the most susceptible to personality impressions and marketing manipulation:

The advice to the political professionals is: Don’t assume that your candidate’s positions are going to make the difference. “In a competitive political climate,” as one article explains, “informed citizens may vote for a candidate based on issues. However, uninformed or undecided voters will often choose the candidate whose name and packaging are most memorable.

Using reason to reach these voters is a waste of time. In this close election, most people have, for whatever reason, made a decision and are sticking to it. Therefore, the two bases must be mobilized and the undecideds must be reached on a marketing or entertainment level.

The article goes on to discuss the various theories to explain why the electorate as a whole is so dismally uninformed and whether that can translate into any coherent political philosphy. The theory that makes the most sense is that people use shortcuts, or hueristics, that give them a fairly accurate assessment of the candidates and the issues even while they are not specifically informed about the details.

Voters use what Samuel Popkin, one of the proponents of this third theory, calls “low-information rationality”—in other words, gut reasoning—to reach political decisions; and this intuitive form of judgment proves a good enough substitute for its high-information counterpart in reflecting what people want.

These little dramas in campaigns, which seem to be about everything but what we informed voters believe are the essential issues, actually serve as character and issues proxies for the electorate to come to its gut reasoning. Therefore, the Vietnam drama was a way of illustrating the contrast between the high achieving Kerry and the screw-up son of privilege. This was a man who did his duty without complaint but was not afraid to later challenge the orthodoxy that was leading the country into ruin. This picture provides a gut reason for people to vote for Kerry over the privileged playboy who doesn't seem to realize that he's made a mistake.

And, on another level the campaign controversy itself works as a proxy for each man's will to win. In that fight, George Bush has shown repeatedly that he is determined, most recently when he winked and nodded at what is now a notorious smear campaign. In this proxy fight, it is important that Kerry be seen as giving as good as he gets. "If you wimp out when George W. Bush attacks you, what will you do if there's another terrorist attack?" This is not particularly rational, but for many, it is a short cut to figuring out if Kerry is willing to be tough on terrorism. In this sense, the picture of Bush becomes uneasily contradictory and vague, while Kerry is sharply and consistently tough, both in his past and in the present.

Finally, this argument brings to a final head a long standing metanarrative that has been killing Democrats ever since the Vietnam war--- our perceived weakness on national security. Just as Clinton had to work very hard to convince the nation that a Democrat was capable of managing the economy (after decades of relentless negative propaganda) Kerry is having to work very hard to reverse a successful decades long effort to portray Democrats as a bunch of hippies who would stick a daisy in the barrel of bin Laden's Uzi rather than stop him from blowing up Chicago. By exorcizing the Vietnam ghost, perhaps we will actually be able to leave it behind once and for all by killing the shopworn image of Democrats as flower children.

In a long term strategic sense, then, Kerry's history is vital to changing that narrative. His experience in Vietnam and afterward merges that narrative into a more realistic vision of Democratic national security that people can absorb and understand in their gut.

And finally, let us not forget the care and feeding of the press corpse. Stories of the murky mysterious past are far more interesting to them than stale policy arguments and they are far more likely to frame the debate in a simple way that people can understand if you give them the frame to do it. Feed that beast or they'll continue to slurp the spoonfed GOP diet of "Democrats are immoral, spendthrift cowards."

It would be wise for Democrats to accept that in order to win and have the power to implement the policies we care so much about, we have to be ready to construct a narrative that will instruct the public through their emotions and their gut instincts rather than through an intellectual engagement on the issues alone. It doesn't have to be dishonest and it doesn't have to be dirty. What it has to be is authentically connected to what you really want to do and it has to be executed in a way that respects the instincts of the populace.

Clinton said over and over again that the American people almost always get it right. I don't know how true that is, but it's the right thing to say. Knowing the public's propensity for gut political decisions we should give them what they need to make the right one. In that sense, Vietnam works. As sick as all of us informed types may be of hearing about it, it gives Kerry the proper image and frame from which to make his pitch that Democrats have the right stuff to lead this nation in a time of great national insecurity.







digby 9/09/2004 01:45:00 PM |

Wednesday, September 08, 2004

 
Nailbiter

Chris Bowers at MYDD comments on a Zogby analyses of the state of the race:

On the one hand, of course Bush is closing the gap. He made up ground before the convention, and he made up ground--even moving ahead nationally--during the convention. However, Kerry remains in a strong position. He leads in four of the six "red" states that are his best chances for pickups, FL, MO, NV and NH, (OH and WV are the other two) even though Bush just had his convention after and the last three weeks of free media were decidedly negative for the challenger. It would be too much to assume that this is Bush peak, since the attacks will keep coming and history does not tell us what always happens in the future. If at what is very possibly Kerry's low point he still leads in the Electoral College, then it is not hard to be optimistic about this election.

Ruy Texeira analyzes the internals of the Gallup Poll

Prior to the Republican convention, Kerry had a one point lead among RVs (47-46) in the battleground states. After the Republican convention, now that battleground voters have had a chance to take a closer look at what Bush and his party really stand for, Kerry leads by 5 in these same states (50-45)! Note that Kerry gained three points among battleground voters, while Bush actually got a negative one point bounce.

Indeed, if equal polarization of partisans continues and Kerry carries a 3 point lead on independents into the election, he'll win fairly easily, since the Democratic proportion of voters in presidential elections is always higher, not lower, than the Republican proportion. In 2000, after all, Bush carried independents by 2 points and received stronger support from his partisans than Gore did from his--but still lost the popular vote by half a point.

We can certainly be encouraged that the race remains close. But, keep one thing in mind. If the race remains this close, or if Kerry takes the lead, the other side is going to loose another barrage of negative campaigning equally vicious to that which we saw in August. The Bush machine will do anything to prevent President Asterisk's loss after his very dubious win in 2000 and his fathers ignominious defeat in 1992. Two one term presidents in a row and this dynasty is done. Father and son will be remembered as historic losers of epic proportion. They know this. They will not go down easily.

Let's hope the new National Guard info puts them off message. They get all confused when they have to play defense. They aren't used to it.





digby 9/08/2004 06:14:00 AM |

 
Patriotism

Rush Limbaugh has been predicting for weeks that liberals would be celebrating the 1000th death. I haven't noticed any dancing in the streets. The right, on the other hand is very upset.

Kevin writes that the 101st Fighting Keyboarders are pissed off and ready to rumble:

If I see one more headline like this, I'm gonna beat somebody:
U.S. Military Deaths in Iraq Pass 1,000

So F**KING what?

Kevin adds:

From the Associated Press:

"I want pictures of you, to see how big your belly is getting. How much my baby is growing inside of you. Not being with you makes me weak. You are the link that makes my chain strong. You complete me in every way."

Army Sgt. Micheal Dooley, 23, of Pulaski, Va., in a letter home to his wife, Christine, who was six months pregnant with his daughter, Shea Micheal Dooley, when he died.

You can't blame that little cretin. In America, "real men" are too manly to mourn soldiers dying in wars they support but can't be bothered to fight. Just ask George W. Bush and Dick Cheney. They've spent a lifetime doing it. And, no one is more manly than they.




digby 9/08/2004 05:44:00 AM |

Tuesday, September 07, 2004

 
Dumb As As Swing Voter

Irony is indeed dead. In fact, it's been cremated. Unless it's George Bush making a Beavis and Butthead joke, every utterance is now taken literally no matter how obviously absurd or satirical.

For instance, everyone from Adam Nagourney to Chris Suellentrop is all atwitter at how stupid John Kerry was for betraying that he cannot make up his mind at a restaurant."Oh my God, doesn't he realize that it makes him sound indecisive? Somebody tell Teresa!"

Now, I know that Kerry is no Chris Rock, but really, it is clear to any twelve year old that he was speaking with his tongue firmly in his cheek when he said this:

Kerry decided it would be a good idea in Pennsylvania to talk about how he has difficulty deciding what to eat at restaurants. "You know when they give you the menu, I'm always struggling, what do you want?" he said. A cook at a local restaurant, though, solves Kerry's dilemma by serving "whatever he's cooked up that day. I think that's the way it ought to work for confused people like me who can't make up our minds what we're going to eat."

It's not particularly funny, but it is also not an earnest admission of Kerry's flip-flopping dining habits fergawdssake. He was making fun of himself.






digby 9/07/2004 10:07:00 PM |

 
Today's The Day

Freewayblogger Plans 100 Sign Protest in LA

I'm about to hit the 10, the 405 and the 101. I'll let you know what I see.




digby 9/07/2004 10:32:00 AM |

 
Isn't It Time To Ask

One Simple Question?

"How many times have you been arrested, Mr. President?"

There's money in it to the first one who asks it. You can also contribute to up the bounty.




digby 9/07/2004 09:48:00 AM |

 
They Can't All Be Democratic Liars

George W. Bush: AWOL in Alabama

Texans for Truth, established by the 20,000-member Texas online activist group, DriveDemocracy.org, has produced a 0:30 second television advertisement, "AWOL." The ad features Robert Mintz, one of many who served in Alabama's 187th Air National Guard -- when Bush claims to have been there -- who have no memory of Bush on the base. In other words, Bush failed to fulfill his military duty while others were dying in Vietnam.

Click here to see the ad

and contribute to the Texans For Truth.





digby 9/07/2004 09:18:00 AM |

 
Pssst

Just a little word about whisper campaigns. In a gossipy whisper campaign, the evidence, by its very nature, will not hold up in a court of law. It fact, that is the point of whispering it.

The point is to make nasty personal gossip take on a life of its own and have people thinking "where there's smoke there's fire." Whether something is logical or truthful is largely beside the point. It just has to be believable.

So, if you find over these next few weeks that you are hearing whispers about Bush's drinking, drug use or anything else, keep in mind that it's useful to let the Republicans do the debunking. It keeps their minds off of world domination and forces them to defend against a moving and vague target, which isn't easy. Ask Bill Clinton.




digby 9/07/2004 08:40:00 AM |

 
Bad Advice

Brazile said Kerry is right to go on the offensive, but that he's got to be careful when he does it. "It has to be a precision hit," she said, because Bush is the president and because large numbers of Americans bonded with him the moment those planes hit the twin towers. Brazile offered the beginnings of one theme that could work: "On Sept. 11, he led us. On Sept. 12, he misled us."

Precision? This is as precise as "I voted for the 87 billion before I voted against it." Terrible.

First of all, we have it documented on film that Goat Boy couldn't lead anybody out of a paper bag on September 11th. Second, this statement is deeply offensive to the base who knows better. Third, it is unbelievably stupid to utter the other side's talking points. In a close race, the Republicans would NEVER say the words "he led us" about the opposition. Never.

Kerry's biggest problem right now is too many cooks throwing fetid garbage into the soup. (If I were of any influence instead of a kibbitzer, I'd include myself as one of them.) For all that the Republicans are myopic, simplistic and overly controlled, we are the opposite. Democrats are embarrassingly undisciplined about this stuff and can't keep our mouths shut, so this all plays itself out publicly.

At this point, it's all about Kerry's political instincts. There is no consensus on the right approach going into the stretch. The race is a nail biter and he's got people all around him telling him different things. He has to sort out for himself what he thinks will work. It's up to him.




digby 9/07/2004 08:14:00 AM |

Monday, September 06, 2004

 
Malapropractice

"We got an issue in America. Too many good docs are getting out of the business. Too many good OB/GYN's aren't able to practice their love, with women all across this country," he said.

He's right. If we could just get rid of all those malpractice suits, the OB/GYNs could spread love all over the place with no fear of reprisals. Of course, if women would just relax and stop suing these fine doctors for practising their love on them, this country would be a much better place in so many ways.




digby 9/06/2004 10:23:00 PM |

 



Alcoholics Don't Drink Fake Beer

Count the glasses on the table. Eight glasses for the G8. Sitting next to Junior is (I think) EU president Romano Prodi. There's a glass of white wine directly in front of him and another in front of Gerhardt Schroeder. Schroeder has a glass in his hand. Next to Schroeder is Jose Maria Aznar, who would be the owner of the glass in front of Schroeder. Next is Koizumi with an empty beer glass. Putin has the full one. Then at the end of the table are two unknowns with a glass of red wine and what appears to be a coke. I assume that would be Chirac and Blair, but it's impossible to know. However, one thing is clear. At the end of the table, directly in front of Junior is a brewski.

Here's a link to a bigger version of the picture.

Now, I don't want to jump to any conclusions, but with what we already know about the president's cocaine use at Camp David, his septum problems in the early 90's, his bizarre and unexplained falls in which he is unable to keep himself from scraping his face and the common knowledge and now photographic proof that he has been drinking as president, isn't it time that somebody asked the question?

When it the president going to come clean about his drinking and drug use in the White House?

Correction: The man with the full glass sitting next to Koizumi is Chirac. Which means that Putin is drinking either the red wine or the coke. According to this website, Putin is a teetotaler, so I'm thinking he's the coke. Of course, Bush is allegedly a teetotaler as well.

 
digby 9/06/2004 10:01:00 PM |

 
"Hates To Drink. Only In America Could A Guy Like Him Even Find Work"

This wedding video of George W. Bush in 1992, has been widely circulated. But, in light of what we now know about his cocaine use long after he claimed that he had quit drinking, shouldn't we take another look at it?

I realize that this doesn't prove anything in and of itself, but knowing what we know about his illegal use of drugs on government property well into the 90's and his inadequately explained facial scrapes and bruises during the past three years, it's long past time that somebody asked the question:

Shouldn't the president came clean with the American people about his ongoing drinking problem?




digby 9/06/2004 06:35:00 PM |

 
The Nose Knows

I had seen this video before, but until now I didn't realize how significant it was. Nose "issues" are a common problem for those who snort a lot of cocaine. This video was taken while Bush was owner of the Texas Rangers which means that Bush would have been in his mid-forties.

I realize that this is not proof that Bush was using cocaine well into the 90's. But, it does raise serious questions in light of what we already know.

Isn't it time for the president to come clean and tell the American people if he is still using illegal drugs?



digby 9/06/2004 06:05:00 PM |

 
He said he would bring honor and integrity to the White House

...he never said anything about Camp David.

Sometime between 1988 and 1992 --- when Junior was a young and irresponsible 42 to 46 years of age, it is alleged by a member of his family that he used cocaine at the presidential retreat.

It's sad that all of these allegations from long ago are being brought up once again. But, now that they are "out there" I think it's incumbent upon the president to put these rumors to rest once and for all and tell the American people exactly when he stopped using drugs. It appears that he may have still been snorting cocaine well into the 90's. This is reason for concern, particularly with his acknowledged problem with addiction to alcohol. Indeed, it is said to be an open secret that he has been drinking again, as president.

These pictures, two of several from different incidents over just the last three years, show a very alarming and unusual propensity to fall flat on his face.

It's long past time someone raised the question:

Do we have an addict in the White House? Isn't it time that Mr. Bush came clean with the American people?




digby 9/06/2004 03:43:00 PM |

 
Red Meanies

Angry Bear points out that there is some actual evidence that smear politics are winning politics this election cycle. He notes that Bush has benefitted so far from staging the most relentless negative presidential campaign in history and that his handpicked candidate in Florida won by eviscerating his Republican opponent in the primary. Anybody who thinks that this campiagn is going to be waged on issues is terribly misunderstanding the public mood. This election is about how far you are willing to go:

Voters' high-minded claims notwithstanding, negative attacks work. Witness the just-completed Republican Senate primary in Florida, which pitted the very conservative Bill McCollum against the previously somewhat conservative Mel Martinez. The winner would move on to compete against Betty Castor for the Senate slot opened by Bob Graham's impending retirement. Let's watch:

... a political storm is roiling Florida's U.S. Senate race, fueled by hard-hitting accusations that Republican nominee Mel R. Martinez leveled against his chief rival in the closing days of this past Tuesday's GOP primary.

The attacks infuriated some prominent Republicans, and Democrats hope the discord will help their nominee, Betty Castor, win the closely watched contest to succeed retiring Sen. Bob Graham (D).

President Bush handpicked Martinez ... considered more centrist than early GOP front-runner Bill McCollum. McCollum, a solidly conservative former House member, lost the 2000 Senate race to Democrat Bill Nelson, and many Republicans felt they needed a more moderate nominee this year.

But Martinez's campaign was hardly moderate in its homestretch assault on McCollum. First, it arranged a conference call by conservative religious leaders who challenged McCollum's integrity because of his support of embryonic stem cell research and a hate crimes bill. Enraged, former Republican senator Connie Mack wrote to more than 15,000 state GOP activists, saying Martinez's campaign "sunk to a new low in Florida politics" by launching a "mean-spirited, desperate and personal attack" that would "only hurt our party and doom us in November."

A few days later, the Martinez campaign labeled McCollum "the new darling of the extreme homosexuals" because he had supported including protections for gays in a failed federal hate-crimes bill. Editorial pages condemned the comment, and the St. Petersburg Times withdrew its endorsement of Martinez.

Did it work? Yes:

Martinez, who had trailed in several polls, won the primary with 45 percent of the vote to McCollum's 31 percent. Martinez and his allies in the GOP establishment immediately tried to heal the hurts.

Of course it did. The "moderate" Martinez proved he had balls. Read the rest of the post. Aside from the fact that it agrees with my thesis (which obviously means that it is brilliant) AB comes up with some excellent ideas for attack ads. I particularly like this one:

Start with this quote from The Dallas Morning News, Feb. 25, 1990:

"I was not prepared to shoot my eardrum out with a shotgun in order to get a deferment. Nor was I willing to go to Canada. So I chose to better myself by learning how to fly airplanes."

Then cut to Lt. Colonel Bill Burkett alleging that he witnessed Bush's National Guard records being scrubbed, and point out that Bush has never accounted for his whereabouts during 1972 and 1973, nor why he stopped flying.

Then end with Linda Allison:

Before there was Karl Rove, Lee Atwater or even James Baker, the Bush family's political guru was a gregarious newspaper owner and campaign consultant from Midland, Texas, named Jimmy Allison. In the spring of 1972, George H.W. Bush phoned his friend and asked a favor: Could Allison find a place on the Senate campaign he was managing in Alabama for his troublesome eldest son, the 25-year-old George W. Bush?

"The impression I had was that Georgie was raising a lot of hell in Houston, getting in trouble and embarrassing the family, and they just really wanted to get him out of Houston and under Jimmy's wing," Allison's widow, Linda, told me. "And Jimmy said, 'Sure.' He was so loyal."

... Asked if she'd ever seen Bush in a uniform, Allison said: "Good lord, no. I had no idea that the National Guard was involved in his life in any way."

AB notes that neither Kerry or the DNC or even MoveOn can do this sort of thing:

Democrats will need some truly Shadowy groups, brand new 527s that spring up, launch ads and push polls in key states, and then fade away. I'm not sure who would pay for them, but there is an ever-growing number of angry Democrats out there, so the money is surely out there.

We disagree when he says that we should wait until after they launch their next smear. I think we should just go ahead. We get nothing by playing by any kind of rules. After the Swift Boat liars, I see no reason to wait. They set the terms of this campaign.




digby 9/06/2004 02:58:00 PM |

 
The Skinny


James Wolcott gets a sneak preview at Kitty Kelley's shocking new expose of the Bush Dynasty. Frankly, I'm disappointed. The thing about Bush's national Guard bunkmate and the "special" rubdowns was thoroughly vetted in his 1994 run for Governor and the story was dropped when Karen Hughes produced an affidavit from a chiropractor showing that Bush had a serious problem with carpal tunnel syndrome during the 70's. There's nothing there.

I thought this book would reveal things we didn't already know. Well, there is this:

The Elvis White Panty Parties that the teenage Bush twins would reenact for the sordid entertainment of Prince Bandhar on "Saudi Night" at the Crawford ranch.

That I hadn't heard about.




digby 9/06/2004 10:12:00 AM |

Sunday, September 05, 2004

 
Misoverinterpretation


Ferchristsake. Apparently, I've caused something of a stir over on Kos and unfortunately, I'm not registered there (although gawd knows I read it obsessively) so I cannot respond properly in the comments section.

First, my comment in the "Diving Into the Mud" post about "girly-men" was an ironic play on Arnold's little tag line. I certainly was not referring to any individual posters on Kos. I don't usually use childish euphemisms in my own voice. I would have used the grown-up word if I meant it.

The fact is that I was mock lecturing generic handwringers whom I assumed were about to launch into a full fledged freak-out about the "spineless" Kerry campaign and how they didn't "fight back" a fact which is evident by my statement "the Republicans do not respond to adversity by turning on their candidate and neither should we. Take a deep breath and then get mad --- not at Kerry. At Bush."

All I knew at the time, yesterday morning, was that Time, Newsweek and a coming Gallup poll were reporting an 11 to 14 point bounce for Bush. When three polls report a bounce, I generally figure there was, you know, a bounce. I didn't say it meant that Kerry was toast or that Bush was coasting toward victory. My characterization of this bounce was that it was a "good" bounce which evidently makes me Wolf Blitzer. (And btw, doesn't two years of hardball lefty blogging get me Olberman? Paula Zahn, at least? Geez.)

Shockingly, it seems I failed to thoroughly peruse Kos before I wrote (which I will never fail to do again) so I didn't realize when I posted my piece that the Time and Newsweek polls were a subject of huge contention. I have since been informed that the methodology of weighting the party ID has been called into question and I greatly look forward to seeing those polls blown out of the water in the next few days. Believe me, when it happens I will not only say it is "good" I will say it is "fabulous!" (which probably makes me George Bush.) However, at this point, I think it's still fair to assume that Bush did, in fact, get some kind of bounce. At least, that's what MYDD's analysis suggests.

Since the polling was such a small part of my post, when I was informed of this new information I did not think it necessary to clarify my words. Please consider this to be that clarification. The post should read, "Bush may have gotten a bounce, but I don't say it's neccessarily good because it may not be. However, assuming that he may be ahead for now...."

And all of the fine Kossaks who are offended by my alleged disrespect please rest assured that I was speaking of handwringing, 20/20 hindsight types not those who were calling the polls into question. Believe me, no one will be happier than I if all the new polls show Bush is clinging by his fingernails.

My post was not meant as anything more than a call to arms and an analysis of why the public didn't seem to reject the smears and the ugliness of the Republican convention as I think many of us anticipated they would. My contention is that the zeitgeist of this race is "toughness" and a willingness to "do what it takes" and the one who convinces the public they will be and do those things will win.

It remains more likely than not that it will be close because most people have long ago cast their lot with one or the other. Bush's alleged lead is highly unlikely to break beyond a few points and I fully expect it to dissipate back to within the margin of error (if indeed it ever went outside of it.) But, if I had to peg the undecideds who will ultimately tilt this election, I think they'll go with the guy they think has "the right stuff." And in this era, that means a guy who is willing to go for the jugular.

I have also concluded that hitting below the belt would only help our turn-out. The base is hungering for a show of force and while I have resisted it up to now, I think it may be called for. This feeling of impotence is going to take its toll. If turnout is key, the Kerry campaign has to be willing to feed its beast a little red meat from time to time. Clearly, the Republicans understand this and so should we.

Donkey Rising says that this is a panic reaction, but I really don't see it that way. The polls, bounce or not, only show me that Bush's over-the-top mud slinging isn't hurting him and may very well be helping him. And, it's not going to stop. Certainly, the tracking polls during the convention don't show that people were turned off by the likes of Zell and Cheney. The numbers went up. I saw Bush out there on the stump today extolling Zells virtues and saying it proved that the GOP welcomed Democrats. While those of us in blogland recoil at such naked aggression, I think plenty of people think it's the sign of a fighter, even if they disagree with their policies. Ask Richard Cohen. He finds their "amoral wildness" to be "beautiful."

We are in the midst of a national security crisis that is the sub-text of everything going on in this campaign. The campaign is a proxy for handling that crisis and Bush is showing that he will do anything to win. I think that tips it to him if we don't hit back hard. John Judis draws a comparison to 1980 and says Reagan won by only occasionally responding to attacks and directing attention to the underlying failures of the Carter administration. Perhaps that's how he won, but I also remember a relentlessly negative press corps and a deeply divided Democratic establishment ripping at Carter day in and day out over the economy and the Iran hostage crisis while Carter used a Rose Garden Strategy and barely campaigned. People were very skeptical of Reagan, but at the end of the day, Reagan won because he was able to show the nation that he was not a scary madman while persuading them that Carter was a wimp. It's a different set of problems for Kerry. Reagan laying back and responding to Carter like he was landing fly swats made him seem reasonable. Kerry laying back makes him seem weak. Republicans and Democrats labor under different assumptions and must meet different thresholds on national security.

And, then there is the fact that our political discourse, thanks to the Mighty Wurlitzer and cable infotainment, has become a sewer. We need to fix that. But, we can't do it between now and November so we have to work within the parameters that exist. To get the mediawhores' attention we have to do something dramatic and it has to put Bush on the defensive --- the place he functions worst.

That's all I'm saying.




digby 9/05/2004 04:00:00 PM |

Saturday, September 04, 2004

 
Wild Thing

Richard Cohen, liberal pundit, admires the Republicans for being so manly:

The GOP convention was successful because it was part of the overall Republican campaign. It was a loathsome affair, suffused with lies and anger, but also beautiful to watch, like a nature show about some wild animal, amoral and intent only on survival. Speaker after speaker stomped on Kerry because, really, he had made himself the entirety of the Democratic campaign. It's a variation of what I learned in high school: When the man is the message, trash the man.

Is that hot or what?

Liberal pundit Cohen just successfully secured himself invitations to all the right parties where he will be allowed to sycophantically admire the wild and amoral beauty of his Republican masters in person. Yum yum. If you'll recall he's always found Junior to be a distinctly attractive man at any given moment in history. He lobbied hard for Gore, another un-manly man like Kerry, to concede immediately because the nation needed a compassionate uniter not a divider. George W. Bush is a man for all seasons. Understanding that is why liberal pundit Richard Cohen makes the big bucks.




digby 9/04/2004 10:45:00 PM |

 
It Will Never End

...until we cause them enough pain to make them stop.

Michael Froomkin tells us that it looks like Bush's navy may be investigating Kerry's medals in the middle of the presidential campaign:

Among other records to be examined is a citation of Mr Kerry for bravery that was apparently signed by the former Navy Secretary, John Lehman, and contributed to the award of his silver star. The glowing citation states: “By his brave actions, bold initiative and unwavering devotion to duty, Lt Kerry reflected great credit on himself.” But Mr Lehman denies all knowledge of the commendation. “It’s a total mystery to me,” he said last week. “I never saw it, I never signed it and I never approved it.” The inquiry will also investigate other reports and citations leading to the award of Mr Kerry’s medals.

On Friday, Mr Lehman endorsed the investigation of Mr Kerry’s awards, saying that the relevant navy records needed to be “thoroughly researched and the facts established”. Mr Fitton said: “We hope this is the beginning of an actual investigation of the legitimacy of Sen Kerry’s awards by the navy and the Pentagon.”

Update: This is coming too. Note the severity of the charges. Apparently, Kerry said something happened on a Saturday and it may have been a Sunday so he's unfit to be commander in chief.

Update II: here's another. Via Myblahg and pandagon




digby 9/04/2004 07:10:00 PM |

 
Diving Into The Mud

Ok, Democratic girly-men and manly-girls, now is the time to show what we are made of. No 20/20 hindsight, nervous-nellie self loathing is acceptable. Nobody likes whiners. Bush got a good bounce and he's got momentum, but we have two months to go and worrying about spilled milk is worthless self-flagellation. The Republicans do not respond to adversity by turning on their candidate and neither should we. Take a deep breath and then get mad --- not at Kerry. At Bush. That's where the focus has to be. If we lose, we'll help Chris Matthews sort out where it all went wrong later. It's showtime.

First of all, the conventional wisdom about bounces is true. What goes up must come down. That's why they call it a bounce not a trend. Bush's double digit lead is very unlikely to stay double digit for very long. But, he is ahead, no doubt about it.

So let's see if we can figure out the state of the electorate, what it was they liked so much about Bush's convention and what we can do to combat it.

First, I think it's pretty clear that many of us misread the allure of the red-meat, in-your-face macho rhetoric that emanated from the speakers and the delegates. The convention was unrelentingly negative toward the Democrats --- even the so-called moderates called us out. There is no escaping the fact that people seem to like what they were selling. Bashing Democrats is a very satisfying pastime that the whole American family can love. (Perhaps we Democrats could try to change that by not indulging in it with such relish ourselves, but that's another topic.)

After thinking about it for a bit, I realize that the Republicans have their finger on the pulse in a way I didn't understand. Right now, Americans are in the throes of a macho feeding frenzy. Combat, competition and manly virtues are being sold as the product everyone wants to own. One of the biggest shows on TV even features beautiful female models proving their manhood by eating bugs and allowing themselves to be near drowned in some sort of NavySeal hazing ritual. Popular culture is awash in masculine images.

And the 2004 version of heroic manliness isn't an honorable gentleman fighting a duel with elaborate rules and rituals. Today's hero is a guy who will stop at nothing, even scheming, backstabbing and cheating if necessary because winning is the only thing that brings manly respect.

Frank Rich gets to the essence of this political season in his column today called "How Kerry Became a Girlie-Man":

Only in an election year ruled by fiction could a sissy who used Daddy's connections to escape Vietnam turn an actual war hero into a girlie-man.

As we leave the scripted conventions behind us, that is the uber-scenario that has locked into place, brilliantly engineered by the president of the United States, with more than a little unwitting assistance from his opponent. It's a marvel, really. Even a $10,000 reward offered this year by Garry Trudeau couldn't smoke out a credible eyewitness to support George W. Bush's contention that he showed up to defend Alabama against the Viet Cong in 1972. Yet John F. Kerry, who without doubt shed his own blood and others' in the vicinity of the Mekong, not the Mississippi, is now the deserter and the wimp.

Don't believe anyone who says that this will soon fade, and that the election will henceforth turn on health-care policy or other wonkish debate. Any voter who's undecided by now in this polarized election isn't sitting around studying the fine points. In a time of fear, the only battle that matters is the broad-stroked cultural mano a mano over who's most macho.

[...]

But with the high stakes of an election at hand, it's not enough to stuff socks in the president's flight suit. Mr. Kerry must be turned into a girl. Such castration warfare has been a Republican staple ever since Michael Dukakis provided the opening by dressing up like Snoopy to ride a tank. We've had Bill Clinton vilified as the stooge of a harridan wife and Al Gore as the puppet of the makeover artist Naomi Wolf. But given his actual history on the field of battle, this year's Democratic standard bearer would, seemingly, be immune to such attacks, especially from the camp of a candidate whose most daring feat of physical courage was tearing down the Princeton goalposts.

[...]

The truth is that Mr. Kerry was a man's man not just when he volunteered to fight in a losing war but when he came home and forthrightly fought against it, on grounds that history has upheld. Unless he's man enough to stand up for that past, he's doomed to keep competing with Mr. Bush to see who can best play an action figure on TV. Mr. Kerry doesn't seem to understand that it takes a certain kind of talent to play dress-up and deliver lines like "Bring it on." In that race, it's not necessarily the best man but the best actor who will win.

This last, I think, is very astute. Bush and the Republicans understand that the public actually prefers someone who plays the role in a way that brings them emotional satisfaction, than someone who actually embodies that role but plays the part imperfectly. In the media age, people care more about the way a president seems, than what he really does. They know that Bush is no manly man, but they appreciate the fact that he is good at pretending to be one. It's a form of respect.

Moreover, this pageant has been played out in one form or another in every election since 1968. It has a nice familiarity to it, kind of like watching "It's A Wonderful Life" at Christmas. (Democrats are pussies,Zuzu. Can we open our presents now?) It's not all that hard to squeeze the players into their designated roles when it is exactly what people expect. Let's face it, even we Democrats expect it. Why else are we always loudly complaining that Democrats have no spine even when they have just hurled themselves into the moshpit of bloodthirsty Republican thuggery? It's a narrative as comfortable as a well loved bedtime story.

The zeitgeist now, more than ever before, is all about testosterone. As much as people care about issues, and most people do, they are even more seduced by the pageant of The Politics Show. The 2004 season of The Politics Show isn't in the genre of Oprah, or Jerry or even the Sopranos with it's prozac and family problems. It's Survivor.

It's time to recognize and put to use the ugly truth that not only do people respond to smears and dirty tricks --- they actually enjoy and respect them. "By any means necessary" is no longer a revolutionary concept. To many people, it is an All American ideal. It means that you believe that winning is the only option and you will do anything to achieve that. Apply that belief to terrorism and you can see why people respond to talk radio eliminationist rants and George W. Bush's Rambo rhetoric.

People did not recoil at the Republican convention's ugliness as they did in 1992 because that rhetoric was aimed at parochial culture war issues alone. This is about a much bigger, nationalist grievance at the entire world. People believe that it's us against them, good against evil and they want our leaders to sound like movie heroes, not politicians, because in the movies the good guys always win.

So, where do we go from here? Via Suburban Guerilla I would draw your attention to a column today by Susan Estrich, liberal law professor and craven FoxNews enabler:

My Democratic friends are mad as hell, and they aren't going to take it any more.

They are worried, having watched as another August smear campaign, full of lies and half-truths, takes its toll in the polls.

[...]

As one who lived through an August like this, 16 years ago -- replete with rumors that were lies, which the Bush campaign claimed they had nothing to do with and later admitted they had planted -- I'm angry, too. I've been to this movie. I know how it works. Lies move numbers.

[...]

Never again, we said then.

Not again, Democrats are saying now.

What do you do, Democrats keep asking each other.

The answer is not pretty, but everyone knows what it is.

In 1988, in the days before the so-called independent groups, the candidate called the shots. To Michael Dukakis' credit, depending on how you look at it, he absolutely refused to get into the gutter, even to answer the charges. His theory, like that of some on the Kerry staff, was that answering such charges would only elevate them, give them more attention than they deserved. He thought the American people wanted to hear about issues, not watch a mud-wrestling match. In theory, he was right. In practice, the sad truth is that smears work -- that if you throw enough mud, some of it is bound to stick.

You can't just answer the charges. You can't just say it ain't so.

You have to fight fire with fire, mud with mud, dirt with dirt.

The trouble with Democrats, traditionally, is that we're not mean enough. Dukakis wasn't. I wasn't. I don't particularly like destroying people. I got into politics because of issues, not anger. But too much is at stake to play by Dukakis rules, and lose again.

That is the conclusion Democrats have reached. So watch out. Millions of dollars will be on the table. And there are plenty of choices for what to spend it on.

I'm not promising pretty.

[...]

Perhaps with money on the table, or investigators on their trail, we will learn just what kind of wild and crazy things the president was doing while Kerry was saving a man's life, facing enemy fire and serving his country.

[...]

The arrogant little Republican boys who have been strutting around New York this week, claiming that they have this one won, would do well to take a step back. It could be a long and ugly road to November.

Throughout the Swift Boat Liar controversy, I have been posting and exchanging e-mails and talking with various people who believe that Kerry should have been prepared and "fought back" sooner. But, we've mostly concluded that "fighting back" would have come down to more effective responses to the charges, a good rapid response team, better more pithy retorts, well prepared surrogates, more righteous indignation on the stump. And, my feeling is that none of that would have made a bit of difference. The whole point of smears is to raise doubts and get them out there however you can. And with the Mighty Wurlitzer and the cable networks being what they are, even if the major papers had debunked them on the first day --- with sheaves of refutations and rebuttals from the Kerry campaign, it still would gotten out there. It was an entertaining segment of The Politics Show and there was no stopping it.

I reluctantly concluded that the only effective response was probably to engage in the same kind of smear and hope it becomes a zero sum game. And, in the process, we would be forced to drive our politics further and further into a fetid sewer. I find the prospect of that deeply depressing which is what distinguishes me from a Republican. They do not have that emotional reaction. Indeed, they are energized by the prospect. It's a problem.

Still, the stakes are so high that we have no choice but to try to win today by any means necessary and begin the hard work of repairing our politics --- and honestly, our culture --- after we have wrested power from those who have brought us to this place.

Dirty, hate filled, testosterone fueled, phony political spectacle is what the public wants to buy. They are not going to turn off their car radios and TVs and suddenly reject the entertaining pageant they are enjoying so much. They will continue to assure pollsters that they hate all this negativity, but they will tune in to absorb the bloodlust and feel vicariously empowered by this show of masculine prowess. They want action. They will vote for the one who gives it to them.

As God-fearing, all-American winners in the game of politics and life, we have no choice but to give them what they want. It's time to dive into the mud. It's the only hope we have of saving the country.


I'm probably going to take a couple of days off from blogging although I may check in from time to time. I need to clear my head. Next Tuesday, everyone should fasten their seatbelts and get ready for the political fight of our lives. The next couple of months are going to be unprecedentedly turbulent. But we must win and we will.




digby 9/04/2004 01:41:00 PM |

 
Picture If You Will

It's September of the year 2000. The election is heating up. And it is revealed:

FBI counterintelligence investigators have in recent weeks questioned current and former U.S. officials about whether a small group of Iran specialists at the Pentagon and in the Vice President's office may have been involved in passing classified information to an Iraqi politician or a U.S. lobbying group allied with Israel, according to sources familiar with or involved in the case.

Do the Malebranche in The Inferno come to mind? Yeah, me too.






digby 9/04/2004 01:01:00 AM |

Friday, September 03, 2004

 
Here's A Shocker

They Still Don't Know Who They'll Vote For


...because they are from another planet.


Dear God:

In Las Cruces, N.M., government professor Jose Z. Garcia, 59, said of his dilemma, "Bush lost me when we went into Iraq, and Kerry has never really grabbed me." He thinks come Election Day that he will choose between Democratic challenger John F. Kerry and third-party candidate Ralph Nader.

digby 9/03/2004 11:29:00 PM |

 
Fear Sells

Months ago, Kevin Drum wrote a post that I have thought about quite a bit recently. He said:

It's true that doom-and-gloom messages by themselves don't sell, but something similarly negative does: fear. And it sells big.

[...]

You buy deodorant because you're afraid of the social ostracism of BO. You buy Wisk because you're afraid your husband's colleagues will think you're a poor homemaker if they notice his ring around the collar. You drive your kids to school because you're afraid of kidnappers and child molesters.

Of course you need a positive program too, but before anyone will listen to it you have to make them afraid of the opposition. So the fundamental problem for liberals is this: figuring out how to convince the middle third of voters that they should be afraid of what extreme conservatives are doing. When they are more afraid of them than they are of extreme liberals, then the real work can start.

That's not a very inspiring message, is it? But it's the reality of politics today, and liberals need to learn it. Fast.

Interesting stuff.

Kevin wrote a piece earlier today about how to make the case against Bush in what has become a ruthlessly negative campaign:

...Bush plans to run an intensely negative campaign. And guess what? For all the whining we do every four years about negative campaigning, it works pretty well.

[...]

So: what's the best way to make Bush seem either scary, unlikable, or untrustworthy? Forget about trying to turn his charges around and painting him as a waffler or a weakling. It won't work. His branding in those areas is just too strong.

But Bush does have a couple of core negatives that can probably be exploited:


He's a reckless warmonger who's going to get a lot of people killed. This doesn't apply just to Bush, of course, but to all the people around him. It shouldn't be too hard to find a few video clips that make Bush and his supporters look like slavering warmongers --- Zell Miller provided a good start Wednesday night --- and there's enough truth in the charge to turn doubts about Bush's judgment into genuine fears. Basically, Kerry should do to Bush what LBJ did to Goldwater: convince the middle of the country that he can hardly wait to get his finger on the button.


He operates in secret and doesn't tell the truth. Again, there's enough truth to this that it shouldn't be too hard to convince people that Bush and his administration are fundamentally secretive and manipulative. Maybe a few clips of John Dean talking about how they remind him of Nixon would work well.

I'm not convinced that you can sell people on the idea that Bush is a Nixonian madman. But I certainly agree that we should probably go hard negative on Bush. Bush threw down the gauntlet. Kerry had to introduce himself to the public and could not be too harsh until he had at least set out the parameters of his positive image. Now, he must concentrate on tearing down Bush. The question is how should he do it.

This evening Kevin is very discouraged because Kerry's new ad campaign focuses on economic issues when it's all about 9/11, stupid.

It's fine to hammer away on domestic issues with specific target groups. It's fine for John Edwards to focus on the two Americas. But anyone who thinks the primary message of Kerry's campaign should be anything other than national security is just deluding themselves. To paraphrase James Carville, "It's 9/11, stupid."

In fact, it's a no-brainer: somehow Kerry has to convince people that he can be trusted with national security and Bush can't and if he doesn't, he's going to lose. But I guess he still doesn't get that.

I'm finally beginning to think Mickey Kaus might be right: Kerry has spent too much time inside the liberal cocoon. It's going to cost him the election if he keeps it up.

I think that's a bit premature since nobody's seen the ads yet. It may be 9/11, stupid, but in my view, there is no reason that a harshly negative fear campaign cannot be waged using economic issues as one of the symbols of Bush's frightening recklessness.(If the ads are bunch of namby-pamby,kumbaya nonsense with Kerry and adorable children, then I'm discouraged too.)

The fact is that war (not 9/11 particularly, although Bush would like that) is the subtext of the entire campaign no matter what we actually say. All criticism, all negative ads all harsh rhetoric plays to insecurity about Bush's leadership --- and leadership is defined at this moment in history as wartime leadership.

This is more about an aggressive attitude and tone and the general way Bush is portrayed than it is about any ad's literal message, at this point. It's about making people see that Bush is frightening, because as Kevin said lo those many months ago, --- fear sells. And, at this point all fear is wrapped up with Iraq and 9/11 and economic instability and the gnawing in your gut that things are going terribly wrong because Bush is at the helm.

As Kevin said, if we are going to wage a campaign of fear, it's got to be believable and Bush as some kind of scheming warmonger who wants to blow up the world is not believable. What is believable is Bush driving the ship of state into an iceberg because he's reckless and out of control.

To make that case, I think it's perfectly reasonable to use economic issues as well as national security issues to illustrate that point. At the end of the day, if the message is that Bush is a dangerous man for the health of this nation, it doesn't really matter what the subject is. People will make the association with national security all by themselves.





digby 9/03/2004 09:22:00 PM |

 
*Sigh*

CNN is implying that Clinton must have covered up his health problems while he was in office.

Now, passing out eating pretzels and falling flat on your face several times while in office certainly doesn't merit such scrutiny. I'm awfully glad they aren't doing that.


On other hand, Tweety just said the race is over, so I'm going down to the beach.



digby 9/03/2004 03:56:00 PM |

 
Big Scoop

Why is the AP just reporting this now? Some of us had it weeks ago, but more importantly, the Kerry campaign sent it out in its press release at the same time:

PARTISAN: Bush Administration Ties
He is a member of a Bush administration advisory panel on veterans’ issues.

[“VA Announces Membership of POW Advisory Committee,” PR Newswire, 4/17/02;

Better late than never, I guess.







digby 9/03/2004 03:31:00 PM |

 
Heartbreak and Joy

It's a bittersweet day in blogland.

It is with a heavy heart that I share the news that Neal Pollack has shuffled off his mortal coil. Farewell, sweet teabag prince.

But, do not despair. James Wolcott --- writer, gentleman and all around bon vivant (and occasional commenter on this blog, even) has decided to throw in with us lowly bloggers. It must be all the glamour and the money.

Welcome to our little obsession. I hope you don't have a life or anything.


Via TBOGG and Atrios (as if you didn't already know that.)




digby 9/03/2004 01:30:00 PM |

 
The Big One

Charles Pierce:

At a loose moment on radio row in the Garden, I saw Bob Barr, off in a corner, hosting a talk-show. This set me to wondering about the other great Unmentionable -- other than that bin Laden chap -- at the Republican Zellapalooza this week.

Six years ago, the Republicans, for reasons of high principle and in defense of the rule of law and the Constitution, brought forth the only impeachment ever of an elected president of the United States. Remember the soaring rhetoric, the agonized lawmakers talking over their epochal decision with their dogs and their children. (I guess Cokie Roberts's kids came through the Clinton years unscathed after all.) I particularly liked that one guy from California who went surfing, and the great power of the sea convinced him that, sadly, Bill Clinton had to go. It was a bold and brave moment for these young conservatives. Remember how proudly they bore themselves on the talk shows? Remember how nobly they suffered their betrayal at the hands of their Senate brethren? Remember how they attached themselves to the uncompromising Thomas More created by Robert Bolt in "A Man For All Seasons"? (They quoted that movie the way some sportswriter pals of mine quote "Caddyshack.")

My question, then, is this: Where in hell's the video tribute?

Where's the 15-minute package honoring these selfless solons, some of whom got the boot shortly thereafter? Where's the stirring music, the NFL Films narration? Where's the appreciation from the Republican Party for what these courageous men of honor did? They fearlessly dragged out what Thomas Jefferson -- a Democrat, and wouldn't you know it? -- famously called a "scarecrow," and they used it on behalf of the laws to which we all must be subject.

Where's the movie, y'all?

A couple of more conventions without one, and I might think the whole impeachment thing was a prolonged dirty-trick aimed at hamstringing a moderate Democratic president that you couldn't beat at the polls, and rammed through because of some aggravated nutbaggery from the extremists in the House of Representatives. This would be very disappointing to me, and to Thomas More, I'm sure.

I was struck by this as well. The great battle of the blowjob was not even mentioned despite the grave danger to the nation it once presented. I fear that, like Vietnam, the wounds will never heal until we openly honor the brave fighters who served our nation in the great Clinton cockhunt. If we don't, years from now a fine young Republican may wish to run for president and Democrats will mockingly wear condoms on their heads at their nominating convention. I'd hate to see that happen.

On the other hand, if these brave men and women were able to stop even one grown man from enjoying fellatio, then they can take pride that they did their duty. But sadly, like Vietnam, I'm afraid this may be another example of the "best and the brightest" sending our boys and girls out to fight an unwinnable war for the hearts and minds (and penises) of the nation. I could be wrong.




digby 9/03/2004 11:26:00 AM |

 
Tin Foil Soldier

Is it possible that they are incapable of doing anything that doesn't smack of propaganda and self serving bullshit? Do they do this stuff just because it's fun to get away with it time after time, even if they don't have to?

Sigh. Remember the stirring letter from a soldier in Iraq that Bush quoted so dramatically last night?

It turns out that the guy is a soldier all right, but he's also a "scholar" at one of the Scaife funded, right wing foundations.

I don't suppose they could have found any letters of support from members of the military who aren't employed as operatives in the VRWC.

Actually, now that I think about it, they probably couldn't.



Via The Progress Report



digby 9/03/2004 11:02:00 AM |

 
Clinton To Undergo Emergency Heart Surgery

Taken To Columbia-Presbyterian Hospital In New York City
Sen. Hillary Clinton Was At An Event In Syracuse
Sep 3, 2004 11:52 am US/Central

CBS News has learned that former President Clinton was hospitalized on Friday in New York City after complaining of chest pains.

A source close to Mr. Clinton tells CBS News that Mr. Clinton complained of chest pains Thursday night and was taken to a hospital near his home in Chappaqua, N.Y.

Doctors, according to our source, found a blockage. Mr. Clinton is now in the New York Presbyterian hospital in Manhattan.

The New York Times reports on its Web site that Mr. Clinton had a heart attack. CBS News has not independently confirmed that.

Mr. Clinton's wife, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, D-N.Y., was attending an event in Syracuse, N.Y., when the news of her husband's condition broke.

Clinton, who is 58, struggled with his weight during his presidency but has slimmed down since leaving office.

In July, the former president addressed the Democratic convention in Boston.

"We Democrats want to build a world and an America of shared responsibilities and shared benefits. We want a world with more global cooperation where we act alone only when we absolutely have to," he said. "We think the role of government should be to give people the tools to create the conditions to make the most of their own lives. And we think everybody should have that chance."

He appeared on the "Late Show with David Letterman" in August to promote his biography, but much of his talk was about the 2004 presidential race.

"Of all the people I dealt with in Congress," Mr. Clinton said of Democratic nominee John Kerry, "he cared the most about trying to find programs that would keep young, inner-city minority kids out of trouble and out of jail and in school."

Update (thanks to Fiat Lux)

Send Get Well cards to:

The William J. Clinton Foundation
55 West 125th St.
New York, NY 10027




digby 9/03/2004 09:59:00 AM |

 
Child Abuse

White House Chief of Staff Andrew Card said yesterday that President Bush views America as a ''10-year-old child" in need of the sort of protection provided by a parent.

Card's remark, criticized later by Democrat John F. Kerry's campaign as ''condescending," came in a speech to Republican delegates from Maine and Massachusetts that was threaded with references to Bush's role as protector of the country. Republicans have sounded that theme repeatedly at the GOP convention as they discuss the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks and the war in Iraq.

''It struck me as I was speaking to people in Bangor, Maine, that this president sees America as we think about a 10-year-old child," Card said. ''I know as a parent I would sacrifice all for my children."

I don't know about you, but there is something very discordant about that statement. Perhaps because having Bush for president then means a sixteen year old delinquent is in charge of the family. (Please don't kill me, please don't kill me.) And the "sacrifice all" is a bit much considering the fact that he's never sacrificed anything in his entire life except getting drunk every night.


Or maybe it's because adults --- voters--- usually don't care to think of themselves as ten year old children. In any case, if this is true, I think his line about "people should be able to keep their own money" is a bit of a problem. As is all the imperial goosestepping. A country of ten year olds should concentrate on their reading and comprehension skills. But then, if they did that they'd probably vote big brother off the island.




digby 9/03/2004 09:09:00 AM |

Thursday, September 02, 2004

 
Spurned Lover

And another party leaves him. Maybe it's time he took a look in the mirror and asked himself what he might be doing to constantly alienate the ones he loves.

GOP backs away from Miller’s blast
Democrat ‘speaking for himself,’ Bush aide says

After gauging the harsh reaction from Democrats and Republicans alike to Sen. Zell Miller’s keynote address at the Republican National Convention, the Bush campaign — led by the first lady — backed away Thursday from Miller’s savage attack on Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry, insisting that the estranged Democrat was speaking only for himself.

Late Thursday, Miller and his wife were removed from the list of dignitaries who would be sitting in the first family’s box during the president’s acceptance speech later in the evening. Scott Stanzel, a spokesman for the Bush campaign, said Miller was not in the box because the campaign had scheduled him to do too many television interviews.

There was no explanation, however, for why Miller would be giving multiple interviews during Bush’s acceptance speech, or what channels would snub the president in favor of Miller. Nor was it made clear why Miller’s wife also was not allowed to take her place in the president’s box 24 hours after his deeply personal denunciation of his own party’s nominee.

The change was made only a few hours after Laura Bush, asked about Miller’s speech, said in an interview with NBC News that “I don’t know that we share that point of view.” Aides to President Bush and his campaign said Miller was not speaking for all Republicans.

[...]

The Bush campaign stepped backed from Miller’s comments Thursday after it was received with almost immediate criticism, including complaints from prominent Republicans like Sen. John McCain of Arizona.

“Well, Zell Miller is a very experienced politician,” McCain, who spoke earlier at the convention, told NBC News on Wednesday night.

“I’m sure he knew exactly what he was talking about. [But] I just don’t agree with the fact that the Democrats are unpatriotic or the assertion that the Democrats are unpatriotic,” he said. “I don’t think they are.”

In an interview Thursday, Laura Bush told NBC News’ Tom Brokaw: “I don’t know that we share that point of view. I mean, I think Zell Miller has a very interesting viewpoint, just like I had the personal viewpoint to talk about the president when I spoke on Tuesday night. ...

“But, I mean, his voice is one with a lot,” the first lady said. “You also heard Senator McCain. You also heard Mayor Rudy Giuliani and Governor [Arnold] Schwarzenegger.”

A senior White House official, speaking to reporters before Bush’s address Thursday night, said, “Senator Miller was speaking on behalf of himself and obviously on behalf of himself.

Boy, those Republicans sure aren't very steadfast and loyal, are they? But then, turncoat Zell couldn't have expecting much on that score, now could he? As ye sow....

I imagine that overnight polling has shown that the frothing at the mouth wasn't a big hit. I heard one of the pundits on CNN say earlier that polls showed Bush strengthening his support the red states and remaining static in the battle ground states. I haven't seen any numbers, but that wouldn't surprise me. If that's true then their strategy may have failed. The speculation is that they were trying to cement their bond with white males in the mid-west with all the tough talk. It's possible that they may have done that and lost an equal number of women and minorities.

We'll see soon enough. But, clearly Zell was not a big hit, despite Maureen Dowd's bizarre assertion that the convention was a masterpiece. (And she was acting so oddly that I was downright uncomfortable watching her. She is much too shy to be on