mattgunn.com

- April 2004 -

April 30, 2004

Balance vs. Objectivity

A few months ago, I watched a debate on CSPAN on whether press bias generally tilts left or right. Eric Alterman, who argued along with Al Franken on behalf of liberals, made a very interesting, important distinction between "balance" and "objectivity." The press goal, he argued, should not be balance, but objectivity. In other words, reporters often simply regurgitate what the spokesperson for a particular institution – say, the White House or the Pentagon – says so they can record that and balance it with an opposing viewpoint articulated by some opposing side. The problem with this is that, in the name of "balance," truth – which should always be the goal – is left out of the equation. This is much easier for reporters who want to meet their deadlines on time, of course, but bad for a public seeking reliable information.

In this week's issue, The New Yorker details a good, if somewhat extreme, example of the wrongheadedness of putting balance before truth:

Among the many peculiarities of [NY] Times house style—such as the tradition, in the Book Review, that the word “odyssey” refer only to a journey that begins and ends in the same place—one of the more nettlesome has been the long-standing practice that writers are not supposed to call the Armenian genocide of 1915 a genocide. Reporters at the paper have used considerable ingenuity to avoid the word (“Turkish massacres of Armenians in 1915,” “the tragedy”) and have sometimes added evenhanded explanations that pleased many Turks but drove Armenian readers to distraction: “Armenians say vast numbers of their countrymen were massacred. The Turks argue that the killings occurred in partisan fighting as the Ottoman Empire collapsed.”

Of course, The Turks are wrong, and there's no legitimate question about the fact of Armenian genocide in 1915. Some professors asserted as much in letters to the editor, which captured the attention of Daniel Okrent, the NY Times new public editor (an ombudsman, really). He got the professors together with the editor of the Times, Bill Keller, and the paper's standards editor, Allan Siegel, and they put an end to the silly practice.

Siegal drew up new guidelines. “It was a nerdy decision on the merits,” he said. Writers can now use the word “genocide,” but they don’t have to. As the guidelines say, “While we may of course report Turkish denials on those occasions where they are relevant, we should not couple them with the historians’ findings, as if they had equal weight.” Okrent pointed out that “the pursuit of balance can create imbalance, because sometimes something is true.”

It's a smart correction by The Times that they should apply more broadly, and other dailies should do the same. They should all have an ombudsman, too. They work.

The Greatest Resource in Internet History

Want all the specific dishonest quotes, say, from Dick Cheney on Iraq pre-invasion? Or George W. Bush post-invasion? Or John Ashcroft on civil liberties? Or just generally stupid statements from Brit Hume?

They're all nicely organized for us in this new database, claimvfact.org, from the Center for American Progress.

Pass it on.

April 29, 2004

Happenings

1.    Bush and Cheney appear before the 9/11 Commission today, together and unrecorded. What a joke.

2.    Joe Wilson's The Politics of Truth, which reportedly reveals the identity of the senior administration scumbag who leaked the identity of his undercover CIA operative wife, hits bookstores on Friday. My guess is it's Cheney's Chief of Staff, Lewis "Scooter" Libby.

3.   Some protestors, according to The New York Times, are trying to infiltrate the Republican Convention in NYC as volunteers.

Here's counterconvention.org, which tries to organize the various groups planning to protest the RNC this Summer. There's a golden opportunity to really turn the GOP's shameless politicization of 9/11 back on them, but it'll be interesting to see if the renegades are able to produce something that actually hurts Republicans and helps Democrats. Protestors aren't typically the politically savviest lot, but I retain hope.

Unfortunately, there's a jackass out there who's trying to get protestors at the Democratic Convention in Boston as well. When are these Naderian idiots gonna learn that by trying to hurt both parties equally in a two-party system, they're actually working in support of the status quo? Anybody who's interested in trying to disrupt both conventions may as well just volunteer for the GOP for real.

4.    Yesterday, Senator Frank Lautenberg of New Jersey put on some great theatre on the senate floor. I tip my cap to him:

Lautenberg pointed to a poster with a drawing of a chicken in a military uniform that defined a chicken hawk as "a person enthusiastic about war, provided someone else fights it."

"They shriek like a hawk, but they have the backbone of the chicken," he said.

"We know who the chicken hawks are. They talk tough on national defense and military issues and cast aspersions on others. When it was their turn to serve where were they? AWOL -- that's where they were," Lautenberg said.

"And now the chicken hawks are cackling about Senator John Kerry. And the lead chicken hawk against Senator Kerry is the vice president of the United States -- Vice President Cheney.

"He was in Missouri this week claiming that Senator Kerry was not up to the job of protecting this nation. What nerve. Where was Dick Cheney when that war was going on?" Lautenberg said.

Cheney did not serve in the U.S. military. Lautenberg quoted a Cheney interview from the 1980s that he had "other priorities" in the '60s than military service.

The Kerry campaign also has some pertinent questions about G.W.'s Guard service up on their web site. I think the phony medals flap really pissed them off.

April 28, 2004

Kerry on Hardball

John Kerry was very aggressive on Hardball with Chris Matthews last night. Statements of note on the Iraq War:

“We know that the president and the White House exaggerated material that they were given purposefully, even though they were told otherwise.”

True.

“I think the president has made some colossal mistakes, not the least of which is taking our nation to war in a way that was rushed, that pushed our allies away from us, that is costing the American people billions of dollars more than it ought, that is putting our young soldiers at greater risk they they ought to be, without a plan to win the peace. And he broke his promise to go to war as a last resort.”

True, true, true, true, true, true, and true.

He accused Bush and his advisers of having gone to war in Iraq simply “because they could.”

“I think it comes down to this larger ideological, neocon concept of fundamental change in the region,” he said. But “they misjudged exactly what the reaction would be and what they could get away with.”

Sounds over the top, and he'll probably catch a lot of fire for this statement, but I think that's basically right. I believe, and I think Kerry would agree with this, that almost everybody in the Bush administration did believe Saddam had WMD. But I don't believe that they thought it was nearly the threat they presented it as. Hell, Kerry himself thought Saddam was a long-term threat, but that's a far cry from Bush's hammering the idea of Iraq as a "unique and urgent" threat into American consciousness. Bush certainly didn't have any reliable evidence for making those statements (along with the fraudulent al Qaeda and 9/11 linkages), and I don't think he entirely believed them. So he was either lying or he had the judgment of a willful seven year-old. I don't know which it worse.

Kerry's right – more than anything else, the Iraq invasion was driven by the neocon ideal of gaining a stronghold in the region. It was meant to be the first move in a long-term strategy that was born from a very narrow ideology. They didn't just think it would be doable, they thought it would be easy – "a cakewalk," as Don Rumsfeld's neocon friend Ken Adelman often called it.

They were wrong, and they must be held accountable. Kerry leads this nation where it needs to go when he calls for that accountability.

Another interesting thing Kerry said, and unfortunately MSNBC doesn't have the full transcript up yet so I'll have to paraphrase, is that he finds it kind of funny that some have called his Vietnam war protesting opportunistic, given how unpopular he knew his statements and actions would be with so many people.

He's right. This "opportunism" charge is the pure invention of his political enemies, starting with Tricky Dick Nixon. If any fair-minded person has any doubt about the depth of Kerry's sincerity in his vocal opposition to the war in those days, they could read Tour of Duty and their doubts would be erased.

Finally, I shake my head as I hear that evildoer, Karen Hughes, have the gall to suggest that Kerry "pretended" to throw away his war medals. She does a wonderful job carrying on the Nixonian tradition, doesn't she? Thank God we have eyewitness accounts from people like Tom Olyphant of the Boston Globe, who was within a few feet of Kerry when he relinquished his medals/ribbons on April 23, 1971 (read the whole account, which I think should be considered definitive):

At the spot where the men were symbolically letting go of their participation in the war, the authorities had erected a wood and wire fence that prevented them from getting close to the front of the US Capitol, and Kerry paused for several seconds. We had been talking for days -- about the war, politics, the veterans' demonstration -- but I could tell Kerry was upset to the point of anguish, and I decided to leave him be; his head was down as he approached the fence quietly.

In a voice I doubt I would have heard had I not been so close to him, Kerry said, as I recall vividly, "There is no violent reason for this; I'm doing this for peace and justice and to try to help this country wake up once and for all."

With that, he didn't really throw his handful toward the statue of John Marshall, America's first chief justice. Nor did he drop the decorations. He sort of lobbed them, and then walked off the stage.

Kerry and Likeability

Here's a positive Washington Post article on what people who know John Kerry think of him. The bottom line seems to be that he's a complicated guy, uneasy to understand, but he has a lot of friends and is comfortable with who he is.

It also goes into the typical stuff about how voters often perceive him as cold or aloof. Yes, Kerry can be a little bit of a robot, but he's worn well in all his elections and has been a terrific closer. He's also always done well with the working class voters with whom political analysts often suggest, perhaps sometimes with wrongful condescension, that accessibility is such an important trait.

I think William Weld, Kerry's opponent in 1996, makes a key point:

Like John Edwards this year, Weld was considered a far more "likable" candidate than Kerry. And – like Edwards – Weld was defeated. "Maybe it's good to be a backslapper superficially," Weld says. But ultimately, he says, presidential elections come down to how voters judge a candidate's gravitas, experience and ideas.

I'm not sure that Weld would be right about gravitas, experience, and ideas trumping likeablity in your typical election, but given the gravity of the times I think he'll be right this year. If he is, it's hard to imagine Bush could beat Kerry with voters focused on "gravitas, experience and ideas."

A Political Diversion

Because 3 African American women – LaToya, Fantasia, and
Jennifer – finished in the bottom 3 last week on American Idol, Elton John called the voting "incredibly racist." That's an incredibly stupid comment, not just for the obvious reasons but also because (assuming it's true what I've been told) the crawl at the end of the closing credit sequence reveals that the producers can put whomever they want in the bottom 2 or 3 every week.

Now, if John had called the producers "racist," and not the same voters who crowned Ruben Studdard the winner last year, it would have been a slightly less stupid charge, because I'd bet huge coin that producers did want to separate the African American "divas" from the rest of group last week.

April 27, 2004

Defending John Kerry

So Bush-Cheney '04 succeeded in getting a phony controversy on the networks and in some newspapers about what John Kerry did with his war medals/ribbons in 1971, and what he said he did with them. Here's the transcript from Good Morning America yesterday of Kerry defending himself.

I won't go into all the details, but basically all the confusion stems from arbitrary distinctions between military ribbons and military medals. From what I understand, ribbons represent medals and it's common in the military to refer to the two interchangeably (i.e. "he's got a chestful of medals" often really means "he's got a chestful of ribbons"). Thanks to dailykos, here's a page of "Navy Service Ribbons" that are called "medals."

Kerry did the right thing by turning this nonsense back on his attackers. He told NBC News last night:

"If George Bush wants to ask me questions about that through his surrogates, he owes America an explanation about whether or not he showed up for duty in the National Guard. Prove it. That's what we ought to have. I'm not going to stand around and let them play games."

It turns out Bush, as a matter of fact, did not turn over all his Guard records last month, as his campaign claimed. There are a lot of unanswered questions Kerry can pick at if he continues to be maligned. I've got another good line for Kerry, too: "I wouldn't expect George Bush or Dick Cheney to understand a word of military parlance, considering neither one of them ever served a day in combat."

The news outlets (in a positive development, many haven't taken the bait) that have picked up this latest "Kerry as flip-flopper" narrative from Bush-Cheney should be ashamed of themselves. It's unsurprising, but they shouldn't be allowed to be as sloppy as they were in 2000, when they started letting Karl Rove write their front page stories on Al Gore. Ben Fritz wrote a very good article for Salon way back in May of 2003 called "The Gore-ing of John Kerry." Here's how it starts out:

Media accounts describe him as phony and calculating, incapable of making a heartfelt statement. His history is analyzed cynically, sometimes falsely: Misrepresentations of his statements and actions metastasize into myth. As a result, he is seen as the archetypal slippery, soulless politician. That much of the supporting evidence is false seems utterly beside the point.

That's how Republicans caricatured Al Gore in 2000 -- a line the media dutifully parroted. And as the 2004 presidential campaign gets underway, it's happening again. This time the victim is Sen. John Kerry.

If ABC News (by the way, one of their "investigative reporters" on the Kerry piece has a history of corruption in stories on Democrats) or The New York Times or whoever else wants to do a relevant story on hypocrisy, how about an examination of Dick Cheney's illustrious history of proposing, publically advocating, and voting for massive defense cuts while he's for weeks been front and center attacking Kerry, erroneously, for things Cheney himself did?

Karen Hughes, Terrorist

Yesterday, on Late Edition with Wolf Blitzer, Karen Hughes equated those who disagree with her on abortion with terrorists:

BLITZER: There is a clear difference when it comes to abortion rights between the president and his Democratic challenger, John Kerry. In your opinion, Karen, how big of an issue will this abortion rights issue be in this campaign?

HUGHES: Well, Wolf, it's always an issue. And I frankly think it's changing somewhat. I think after September 11th the American people are valuing life more and realizing that we need policies to value the dignity and worth of every life.

And President Bush has worked to say, let's be reasonable, let's work to value life, let's try to reduce the number of abortions, let's increase adoptions.

And I think those are the kind of policies that the American people can support, particularly at a time when we're facing an enemy, and really the fundamental difference between us and the terror network we fight is that we value every life. It's the founding conviction of our country, that we're endowed by our creator with certain unalienable rights, the right to life and liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

Unfortunately our enemies in the terror network, as we're seeing repeatedly in the headlines these days, don't value any life, not even the innocent and not even their own.

Karen Hughes worked for Texas Governor George W. Bush when the state repeatedly oversaw more executions than any other. Does Karen Hughes value life? Is she a terrorist?

I didn't think so, but by her own logic she undoubtedly is.

April 26, 2004

Political Catholicism

Last Friday, Vatican Cardinal Francis Arinze of Nigeria suggested John Kerry should be denied communion because he's pro-choice. In February, St. Louis Archbishop Raymond Burke, under dubious authority, publically warned Kerry not to present himself for communion in St. Louis.

Republicans will try to run with crap like this all the way through to election day and try to turn Kerry's Catholicism against him.

For now, I'd just make the following 3 points:

1.    The Catholic Church is a worldwide body of Christians, not just the Vatican or the clergy. Arinze and Burke are just 2 out of over 1 billion baptized Catholics around the globe. While some in the Church may agree with them, I and many other Catholics – including other Cardinals and Archbishops – think their views are ridiculous. The Catholic Church is not a top down corporation or a monolith, as some people – including a few who write for popular media outlets – often incorrectly portray it.

2.   If Arinze and Burke seek consistency, they have to call for the denial of communion to every Catholic politician who supports the Iraq War or the death penalty (damn near all of them on the latter, with the glaring exception of John Kerry). They'd also have to consider calling for the denial of communion to all those Catholic politicians, like "pro-life" Pennsylvania Senator Rick Santorum, who have consistently refused to push universal health care, a higher federal minimum wage, and other issues vital to the working poor as national priorities.

3.   Jeanne from Body and Soul has some terrific insights and links to other great stuff on this topic, including this Gadflyer article by Amy Sullivan. Sullivan makes some great points, like these:

...Kerry has not made his religiosity an issue. Although I often argue that if candidates bring their religion into politics they have an obligation to explain the content of their beliefs and how those beliefs influence their political attitudes, I don't think that voters have a right to know much more. I certainly don't want my candidates squaring off to prove which one of them reads the Bible or prays more often. I don't think it's related to their fitness for office. If, however, they make their religiosity one of their selling points, if it is something they run on, then religion becomes fair game.

Which is why I want to know why these same questions aren't being asked of George W. Bush, a man who has Jesus as his running mate and who told Bob Woodward that he doesn't turn to his father (George H.W. Bush) for advice, because he's more concerned about what His Father (God) has to say. No word yet on what God actually says.

But this is not just a throw-away point. Does Bush deviate from the teachings of the United Methodist Church? Yes he does, on some crucial political issues. Has he been reprimanded by leaders in his denomination? Yes, particularly on the issue of war in Iraq. And if you want to make this a question of who's the better Christian, then it's fair to ask why President Bush doesn't go to church. You heard me – the man worships at Camp David and every so often wanders across Lafayette Park (although the park is pretty much impassable now what with all of the security construction going on) to attend services at St. John's Episcopal Church. But the man who has staked his domestic policy on the power of civil society and of good Christian individuals to change lives isn't an active member of a congregation – the very kind of organization in which he claims to have so much faith.

Good questions.

Also, since Bush has made it clear that he runs everything through Jesus, wouldn't it be fair to ask him to point out what sayings of Jesus in the New Testament led him to believe that Jesus advocated bombing Iraq?

A Couple Quotes

"If we're in a war on terror, let's tell them to do something besides go shopping and take a trip." – Senator John McCain, taking an unmistakable jab at President Bush during a discussion on how young Americans could serve their country.

"After what has happened in Iraq, there is an unprecedented hatred and the Americans know it... There exists today a hatred never equaled in the region." – Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, speaking to Le Monde last week.

The Other Casualties

I don't read Doonesbury or Get Fuzzy, comic strips that last week featured characters who lost limbs in Iraq, so I can't comment on them in context. But there's no doubt that a brighter light needs to be shined on the fact that thousands of service men and women have been maimed in Iraq, including over 300 this month. Pentagon numbers are often inexact and slow to develop, too, so sadly the numbers could be a lot higher than sites like this one can confirm.

April 23, 2004

Bremer Pre-9/11

I don't want to beat a dead horse – I know there's no honest person who would argue that the Bush administration took terrorism seriously before 9/11. But Atrios linked to these interesting comments made on February 26, 2001, by the terrorism expert the Bush administration later named to be the top guy in Iraq, Paul Bremer:

The new administration [Bush] seems to be paying no attention to the problem of terrorism. What they will do is stagger along until there's a major incident and then suddenly say, 'Oh, my God, shouldn't we be organized to deal with this?' That's too bad. They've been given a window of opportunity with very little terrorism now, and they're not taking advantage of it. Maybe the folks in the press ought to be pushing a little bit.

Also, check out what he told The Washington Post in December of 2000:

L. Paul Bremer, who succeeded Oakley as ambassador for counterterrorism and who recently chaired the National Commission on Terrorism, said Clarke and the Clinton administration have their resources "correctly focused on bin Laden."

April 22, 2004

Kerry's War Record

Last week, The Boston Globe published a story, "Kerry faces questions over Purple Heart," which was based on the uncertain recollections of a Republican named Grant Hibbard, who was Kerry's commanding officer at the time the Navy rewarded him his first Purple Heart (of three). Republican Hibbard insinuated that Kerry's minor wound didn't really merit a Purple Heart.

The Republican Attack Machine (Rush, Hannity, Drudge, BC04, etc...) begged for more details. I suppose they intended to prove Kerry a phony by suggesting he probably only deserved 2 of his 3 Purple Hearts to go along with his Silver and Bronze Stars. Do they really want to invite a debate on the degree of pain John Kerry felt under fire in the Mekong Delta versus the degree of absenteeism in George Bush's Alabama Guard service?

I suppose so, because they intensified calls on Kerry to release his full military records, which he did yesterday. Boy, the Kerry campaign must have really wanted to keep a muzzle on headlines like the one in today's New York Times: Kerry's Military Records Show a Highly Praised Officer. They must have really dreaded facing the repurcussions of Kerry's superiors' written evaluations of the young soldier, things like:

Intelligent, mature and rich in educational background and experience, Ens Kerry is one of the finest young officers I have ever met and without question one of the most promising.

and

...in a combat environment...Kerry was unsurpassed.

How will Democrats control the damage?

Make It Disappear

It's well-documented that this administration has its fair share of secrecy fetishists. But Donald Rumsfeld wouldn't just take something politically inconvenient and make it disappear from a public transcipt, would he?

Oops:

The Pentagon deleted from a public transcript a statement Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld made to author Bob Woodward suggesting that the administration gave Saudi Arabia a two-month heads-up that President Bush had decided to invade Iraq.

That's the lead of this Washington Post story. It goes on to reveal that Rumsfeld had characterized the deleted passage as just "some banter," even though it directly validated a key assertion of Bob Woodward's book that Rummy tried to dispute Monday.

Happy Birthday to Me

I've had my fair share of dust-ups with myself over the years, but on balance, I'm an okay guy.

Happy birthday, buddy.

In addition to being the day of my birth, April 22 is notable for other reasons. It's Jack Nicholson's birthday. And Earth Day. But most relevant to today's issues is that it's the 33 year anniversary of John Kerry representing Vietnam Veterans Against the War in his testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. The highlighted questions below became famous:

Each day to facilitate the process by which the United States washes her hands of Vietnam someone has to give up his life so that the United States doesn't have to admit something that the entire world already knows, so that we can't say that we have made a mistake. Someone has to die so that President Nixon won't be, and these are his words, "the first President to lose a war."

We are asking Americans to think about that because how do you ask a man to be the last man to die in Vietnam? How do you ask a man to be the last man to die for a mistake?

Right-wingers have used parts of Kerry's testimony to demonize him, but I think there's little doubt after reading the testimony in its entirety that even then Kerry was an extraordinarily knowledgable student of history. Moreover, history has now proven Kerry right, and it took admirable courage for him to first fight a war and then come back home to lead, to stand up for what he knew was just.

April 21, 2004

"Brilliant" War Plan?

During the Woodward interview on 60 Minutes Sunday, Mike Wallace offhandedly referred to Rumsfeld's original Iraq war plan as "brilliant." It bothered the hell out of me, because many people I listen to about the Iraq War still take for granted the dated conventional wisdom that, despite our current problems, the original Iraq war plan was genius.

Nonsense.

War is only as good as the peace that follows it, and there hasn't been peace in Iraq since the invasion began. The troubles we experience in Iraq today are inextricably tied to that original plan.

By deciding to invade with a smaller force, Rumsfeld and Co. certainly were able to assert military control over Baghdad startlingly quick, within about two weeks. But the decision also forced them to sacrifice security for speed.

Before the war, Army chief of staff and the preeminent expert on U.S. military peacekeeping operations, General Eric Shinseki, testified before Congress that "several hundred thousand troops" would be needed to stabilize Iraq. Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz publically rebuked Shinseki as "wildly off the mark." Shinsheki was discredited privately, too, before his retirement last year. So was former Army secretary Thomas White, who went on record agreeing with Shinseki after the war. And so were retired Generals Barry McCafferey and Wes Clark, who were dismissed as "blow-dried Napoleons" by Tom DeLay after they questioned the wisdom of the Pentagon's plan as cable tv military analysts.

What Wolfowitz, DeLay, Cheney, Rumsfeld, and Bush failed (and perhaps still fail) to understand is that more troops were necessary to keep the peace, not win the war. Nobody can say for sure how many lives – Iraqi, American, and other – their misunderstanding cost us. But there's no doubt their original plan was risky, and in this case I think risky equals stupid.

In a recent Newsweek article, Fareed Zakaria, my Yoda when it comes to international affairs, has it right:

The history of external involvement in countries suggests that, to succeed, the outsider needs two things: power and legitimacy.          Washington has managed affairs in Iraq so that it has too little of each. It has often been pointed out that the United States went into Iraq with too few troops. This is not a conclusion arrived at with 20-20 hindsight. Over the course of the 1990s, a bipartisan consensus, shared by policymakers, diplomats and the uniformed military, concluded that troop strength was the key to postwar military operations. It is best summarized by a 2003 RAND Corp. report noting that you need about 20 security personnel (troops and police) per thousand inhabitants "not to destroy an enemy but to provide security for residents so that they have enough confidence to manage their daily affairs and to support a government authority of its own." When asked by Congress how many troops an Iraqi operation would require, Army Chief of Staff Eric Shinseki replied, "Several hundred thousand" for several years. The number per the RAND study would be about 500,000.

How many troops did the administration deploy originally? About 200,000. God only knows where we'd be today if they had sent twice that.

For more, Frontline did an exhaustively researched 2 hours on the Iraq invasion a couple months ago, and this failure to send enough troops was a centerpiece. The Frontline site has a full chronology, interviews, and analysis covered on that program.

April 20, 2004

Longing for Edwards

I'm on record endorsing John Edwards for Kerry's VP. This Sunday Boston Globe article illustrates how eager and ready Edwards is for the job.

Edwards shoots fish in a barrel:

''You know it must be an amazing thing to live a life where, when you're asked multiple times whether you've questioned anything you've done, whether you've made any mistakes . . . you can't think of a single thing," he said. The 1,000-plus crowd began chortling loudly. Edwards's voice rose.

''Well I have a suggestion for the president. If he's struggling with that question, give me a call," he said. ''I'll give him an answer."

Edwards bears witness to John Kerry's greatness:

''I knew John Kerry well before this presidential campaign. I know him much better now. Here is a man who has fought for jobs, health care, clean air, clean water, . . . put his life on the line in Vietnam," said Edwards. ''This man needs to be president of the United States."

Please, John Kerry, bring this man back to the campaign trail, full-time. He was born to do it.

Bad Bandar

Tonight on Larry King Live, Prince Bandar called in to say that Woodward got everything right in his book, except that Cheney and Rumsfeld told him that "The President hadn't made a final decision on going to war" before they showed him the Iraq war plan and told him that they were definitely going to war. Woodward was in the studio, and he questioned Bandar, who had no good answers, on why Cheney/Rumsfeld would tell him no decision had been finalized before showing him war plans and making sure he was on board with the decision to go to war. Bandar's a terrible liar. And after the commercial break when King and Woodward came back on-air sans Bandar, Woodward said that, after his 30 years of reporting, Bandar's explanation (or non-explanation) goes into the Hall of Fame of strange things he's heard from interviewees.

Speaking of Bandar, why aren't more people talking about this item in The Washington Post on Sunday:

Investigators are looking at the Saudi accounts for evidence of money laundering, which is the use of complex transactions to hide the origin or destination of funds related to illegal activities such as drug smuggling or terrorist acts. The investigators have reached no conclusions about the reasons for the transactions in the embassy accounts, including the personal accounts of the Saudi ambassador, Prince Bandar bin Sultan.

Am I crazy, or shouldn't Bandar's curious financial transactions be part of any discussion measuring how appropriate it is for Bush to be sharing top secret government information with this guy?

Finally, Atrios makes a very important distinction on Bandar's election year oil price accommodation with the Bush administration:

You know, sometimes it just drives me crazy that the media is just incapable of explaining very simple concepts.

If Woodward's allegations about the Saudi Prince and oil prices are true, and given Scotty's non-denials today they clearly are, then the issue is not WOW BUSH STRUCK A DEAL TO LOWER OIL PRICES.

The deal is...

BUSH STRUCK A DEAL TO KEEP OIL PRICES HIGH UNTIL CLOSER TO THE ELECTION AT WHICH POINT THEY'LL FALL.

That's right.

You can also now add the fact that Bandar himself, on Larry King, acknowledged the accuracy of Woodward's version.

The Condensed John Kerry

Here's Slate's cheat sheet on the upcoming release, John F. Kerry: The Complete Biography by the Boston Globe Reporters Who Know Him Best.

They emphasize the bad more than the good, but nobody's perfect.

My Favorite All-Time Link

I was emailed this link 8 times in a two day period several months ago. The laughs got heartier each time I watched it. If you haven't seen it, you will not be disappointed.

April 19, 2004

No Plan, Just Attack

I'm eager to read Plan of Attack, Bob Woodward's new book, in its entirety. But most of the stories Woodward told on 60 Minutes last night just corroborated stuff we already know from previous books and other public documents: Cheney's the master puppeteer of this administration; CIA Director George Tenet's certainty is about as reliable as a compulsive gambler's; Bush may think he's the Son of Man; within the administration, Colin Powell is given roughly the same amount of attention the average 16 year-old boy pays to his mother; and Bush planned to invade Iraq well before we'd been led to believe.

There are a couple new bombshells that jump out, however, that should be taken very, very seriously by Congress, the Justice Department, and the press:

1.   This one could be on an Iran-contra Affair level of scandal:

”Rumsfeld and Franks work out a deal essentially where Franks can spend any money he needs. And so he starts building runways and pipelines and doing all the preparations in Kuwait, specifically to make war possible,” says Woodward.

“Gets to a point where in July, the end of July 2002, they need $700 million, a large amount of money for all these tasks. And the president approves it. But Congress doesn't know and it is done. They get the money from a supplemental appropriation for the Afghan War, which Congress has approved. …Some people are gonna look at a document called the Constitution which says that no money will be drawn from the Treasury unless appropriated by Congress. Congress was totally in the dark on this."

Congress holds some hearings on Iraq this week (finally), and I hope we get some answers on this. But it seems rather obvious to me that diverting money Congress allocated to Afghanistan to another "secret" war is grounds for impeachment.

It's startling news, and it's rather remarkable that this single item isn't the lead story on every newspaper this morning. Perhaps so many bombs have dropped with the O'Neill book, the Clarke book, the 9/11 Commission revelations, and so on, that the press can no longer adequately distinguish between news that's politically bad for the administration and news that clearly implicates criminal wrongdoing on the part of the President.

Let's see how Congress deals with this revelation today. I figure some of them have to be mad as hell, and if they're not, there's something wrong.

Woodward, by the way, is notoriously meticulous with facts.

2.   Check this out:

But, it turns out, two days before the president told Powell [about his decision to go to war], Cheney and Rumsfeld had already briefed Prince Bandar, the Saudi ambassador.

”Saturday, Jan. 11, with the president's permission, Cheney and Rumsfeld call Bandar to Cheney's West Wing office, and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs, Gen. Myers, is there with a top-secret map of the war plan. And it says, ‘Top secret. No foreign.’ No foreign means no foreigners are supposed to see this,” says Woodward.

“They describe in detail the war plan for Bandar. And so Bandar, who's skeptical because he knows in the first Gulf War we didn't get Saddam out, so he says to Cheney and Rumsfeld, ‘So Saddam this time is gonna be out, period?’ And Cheney - who has said nothing - says the following: ‘Prince Bandar, once we start, Saddam is toast.’"

After Bandar left, according to Woodward, Cheney said, “I wanted him to know that this is for real. We're really doing it."

But this wasn’t enough for Prince Bandar, who Woodward says wanted confirmation from the president. “Then, two days later, Bandar is called to meet with the president and the president says, ‘Their message is my message,’” says Woodward.

Prince Bandar enjoys easy access to the Oval Office. His family and the Bush family are close. And Woodward told 60 Minutes that Bandar has promised the president that Saudi Arabia will lower oil prices in the months before the election - to ensure the U.S. economy is strong on election day.

Woodward says that Bandar understood that economic conditions were key before a presidential election: “They’re [oil prices] high. And they could go down very quickly. That's the Saudi pledge. Certainly over the summer, or as we get closer to the election, they could increase production several million barrels a day and the price would drop significantly.”

Okay, if you're having trouble keeping track of the scandalous info. in that passage, let me try to help.

Bandar, the ambassador from Saudi Arabia, home of 15 of the 19 9/11 hijackers, was briefed on a war plan marked "no foreign" before the U.S. Secretary of State was even told of a decision to go to war.

Bandar is seemingly discussing favors (quid pro quos?) directly with the President of the U.S..

You may also remember that the Bush administration blacked out all the unflattering references to Saudi Arabia in the Congressional Joint Inquiry's public report on 9/11.

Perhaps you also have a vague recollection of a Newsweek article published about 2 years ago entitled: Exclusive: New Questions About Saudi Money—and Bandar. Here's Michael Isikoff's lead:

A federal investigation into the bank accounts of the Saudi Embassy in Washington has identified more than $27 million in "suspicious" transactions—including hundreds of thousands of dollars paid to Muslim charities, and to clerics and Saudi students who are being scrutinized for possible links to terrorist activity, according to government documents obtained by NEWSWEEK. The probe also has uncovered large wire transfers overseas by the Saudi ambassador to the United States, Prince Bandar bin Sultan. The transactions recently prompted the Saudi Embassy's longtime bank, the Riggs Bank of Washington, D.C., to drop the Saudis as a client after embassy officials were "unable to provide an explanation that was satisfying," says a source familiar with the discussions.

There are also legitimate quesitons about some money that found its way from the hands of Bandar's wife, Princess Haifa, into the hands of two 9/11 hijackers.

For whatever reasons, I don't think these Saudi Arabia money trail questions have been adequately answered. But I find it incredibly strange, discomforting, and inappropriate for the President to be sharing top secret, "no foreign" war plans with Bandar.

I thought John Kerry came off relatively relaxed, smart, clear, resolute, and assertive on yesterday's Meet the Press. It was his best performance on the campaign trail in months. It looks like he studied, which would have required his having taken some time off from counting the tens of millions of dollars his fundraisers have brought in over the last couple weeks.

April 16, 2004

Tom Stoppard: Two Americas

On Charlie Rose last week, British playwright Tom Stoppard had some really insightful stuff to say about the two conflicting ways we're perceived overseas:

I'm sure you don't need me to tell you that there is a dual vision of America when you're standing outside America. I think abroad it's true to say that there are two Americas in competition for the focus of one's perception of this country.

There is a very, very well-known, much-loved, well understood America which is open-hearted, liberal, generous, kind... rich, certainly, but a model, in a sense, for free societies. That America is always there, and it exists in movies as well as in novels and it exists, as it were, in real life where one meets America – one goes there and meets Americans.

Inside this pattern, there is this very strange America which is unpopular, rather insensitive, perhaps too self-interested, just a little greedy about imposing its idea of immorality on, quote, "lesser nations." It's rather Kiplingesque.

These two rather dislocated Americas, as I say, are in competition for one's belief. As you know, in Europe, elsewhere, this administration comes in for a huge and acute degree of dislike, resentment, fear – you know, quite aggressive responses, to say the least... And, one has to say, "Well, is America being misrepresented by its administration, or have we got America wrong?" Is the heart of this country the heart which is saying, "No, I'm right and you really have to live with my form of rightness?"

Our overseas relationships can't be repaired overnight, and the breach won't be immediately repaired this year even if we elect the lifelong internationalist John Kerry instead of George W. Bush. But voting for Kerry over Bush would certainly signal to the world that we believe we've been misrepresented, and advance the image of the more benevolent America into the international imagination.

Fire the Pollsters

On Tuesday night, W. again told one of his favorite, most blatant, and most ridiculous lies:

"And, you know, as to whether or not I make decisions based upon polls, I don't. I just don't make decisions that way."

If that's the case, then I think Americans should call on him to fire the two (or is it 3?) taxpayer-funded full-time pollsters employed by the White House. The people who finance the Bush-Cheney '04 campaign also might want to quesiton the huge payouts they're doling out to many pollsters who apparently have nothing to do.

Also, W. should alert his staff that they should stop advising him on the basis of polling they've read. I know he hasn't read this New York Times article, because he's said publically he doesn't read the newspapers and gets all his news from advisers, but if he did he'd know this adviser must not have gotten the memo:

One adviser said the White House had examined polling and focus group studies in determining that it would be a mistake for Mr. Bush to appear to yield.

This is one of those lies W. absolutely knows is a lie. He can't use ignorance as an excuse, because polls are so basic to political decision-making. He's just disingenuous to the core.

Trump might the right call last night. It was an obvious choice, but he still deserves a tip of the cap.

It's hard to read this article on Governor Schwarzenegger's daily schedule and not be reminded of Bill Clinton's energy. They're very similar in a lot of ways.

No, This Isn't April Fools

From The Guardian:

Some Iraqi nuclear facilities appear to be unguarded, and radioactive materials are being taken out of the country, the U.N.'s nuclear watchdog agency reported after reviewing satellite images and equipment that has turned up in European scrapyards.

When does an administration cross the line from being weak on defense to actually being helpful to terrorists?

Time Off

There are a 3 extremely interesting nuggets in this Slate piece by Fred Kaplan about Bush's month-long vacation from August 3, 2001 to September 3, 2001:

1.   Larry Johnson, a former CIA officer and the State Department's counterterrorism chief from 1989-93, explained on MSNBC this afternoon, during a break in the hearings, why the PDB—let alone the Moussaoui finding—should have compelled everyone to rush back to Washington. In his CIA days, Johnson wrote "about 40" PDBs. They're usually dispassionate in tone, a mere paragraph or two. The PDB of Aug. 6 was a page and a half. "That's the intelligence-community equivalent of writing War and Peace," Johnson said. And the title—"Bin Laden Determined To Strike in US"—was clearly designed to set off alarm bells. Johnson told his interviewer that when he read the declassified document, "I said 'Holy smoke!' This is such a dead-on 'Mr. President, you've got to do something!' " (By the way, Johnson claimed he's a Republican who voted for Bush in 2000.)

2.    The official story about the [now famous 8/6/01] PDB is that the CIA prepared it at the president's request. Bush had heard all Tenet's briefings about a possible al-Qaida attack overseas, the tale goes, and he wanted to know if Bin Laden might strike here. This story is almost certainly untrue. On March 19 of this year, Tenet told the 9/11 commission that the PDB had been prepared, as usual, at a CIA analyst's initiative. He later retracted that testimony, saying the president had asked for the briefing. Tenet embellished his new narrative, saying that the CIA officer who gave the briefing to Bush and Condi Rice started by reminding the president that he had requested it. But as Rice has since testified, she was not present during the briefing; she wasn't in Texas. Someone should ask: Was that the only part of the tale that Tenet made up? Or did he invent the whole thing—and, if so, on whose orders?

3.    Then again, it's easy to forget that before the terrorists struck, Bush was widely regarded as an unusually aloof president. Joe Conason has calculated that up until Sept. 11, 2001, Bush had spent 54 days at the ranch, 38 days at Camp David, and four days at the Bush compound in Kennebunkport—a total of 96 days, or about 40 percent of his presidency, outside of Washington.

Yet by that inference, Bush has remained a remarkably out-of-touch—or at least out-of-town—leader, even in the two and a half years since 9/11. Dana Milbank counts that through his entire term to date, Bush has spent 500 days—again, about 40 percent of his time in office—at the ranch, the retreat, or the compound.

I understand that a President never gets a complete vacation, really, because he still has to be briefed every day and stuff like that. But a month-long vacation seemed excessive to me then and looks particularly bad now that we know about the voluminous pre-9/11 al Qaeda warnings (not just the 8/6 PDB). 40% of your time out of Washington when that's where your principals are also seems pretty ludicrous.

April 15, 2004

Sunday's a big political t.v. day. John Kerry is Tim Russert's guest on Meet the Press, and Bob Woodward gets the Richard Clarke treatment on 60 Minutes for his new book, Plan of Attack, which is rumored to be more damaging to the administration than the Clarke book. Set your TiVos.

Fareed Zakaria, my favorite international affairs analyst, has a great article in this week's Newsweek called Our Last Real Chance. There are two things I admire about Fareed – his ability to put complex ideas into simple language and his courage to prescribe specific solutions after he diagnoses problems – that are on classic display in this summarizing of what went wrong in Iraq and the way we might begin to solve our current predicament there. I was surprised by how much he thought our hopes depended on Ayatollah Sistani:

Next, the CPA must find a way to create a legitimate interim government. Ayatollah Sistani can provide that legitimacy. America will have to concede to Sistani's objections to the current plans: he     is unlikely to endorse any transfer to the current Governing Council,   or even a modestly expanded version of it. He has objected to a three-person presidency, and to giving the Kurds a veto over the constitution. He also wants restrictions on the powers of the interim government, and an understanding that the interim constitution can be amended. Many of Sistani's objections are valid, others less so. But in any event, right now his blessing is crucial.

ABC News reports that Kerry should surpass his original pre-convention fundraising goal of $80 million tonight. That's pretty amazing.

I'm also encouraged that the Bush-Cheney campaign is starting to reduce their t.v. advertising in the swing states. It's hard to determine the anti-Kerry ads precise effect so far, but there's no doubt that Kerry has succeeded in his first post-primary goal – raising enough money to compete against the Republican Attack Machine – unambiguously, while Bush-Cheney have had decidedly mixed to poor results in their first goal – unilaterally defining John Kerry, knocking him out if possible.

Having spent only about $6 million on ads (to BC's $40 million), Kerry's even or leading in most polls. Of course, the 9/11 commission and the situation in Iraq have contributed to that more than anything else, but part of the measure of a good campaign is how they negotiate paid advertising with current events.

April 14, 2004

The Mistakeless President

9 Lessons Learned from W's Press Conference

1.    As an actor, Bush is usually better with scripted material than he is on his feet, and last night was no exception. Trying to be as objective as I can possibly be about it, I can see how a person (perhaps a somewhat dim-witted person) could have watched Bush read his opening statement tonight and seen a resolved, determined leader. I'd say Bush's acting ability with a script is roughly on par with the acting ability of, say, Keanu Reeves. But he's without peer on improv – he's the worst actor I've ever seen. He stammered, dithered, evaded, mumbled, looked unsure of himself, and sometimes even put his body into strange contortions. Hopelessly unPresidential.

2.    One of the talking points Bush's advisors fed him was "We just weren't on war footing before 9/11." Yet Condoleezza Rice has as one of her talking points that "we were at battle stations" before 9/11, because the President had ordered them there. I thought being "at battle stations" might put you on "war footing," but maybe that's just me.

3.    In an answer to one of the night's best questions, GWB claimed he could not think of a single mistake he's made after 9/11:

QUESTION: Thank you, Mr. President. 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?

BUSH: Hmm. I wish you would have given me this written question ahead of time so I could plan for it. (Laughter.)

John, 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, all the pressure of trying to come up with an answer. But it hasn't yet.

I may send a resume to the White House, because if he hired me he'd never have to worry again about answering this type of question directly and completely.

4.    This GWB statement was jaw-dropping:

Nobody in our government, at least, and I don't think the prior government, could envision flying airplanes into buildings on such a massive scale.

Unbelievable. He's actually working from talking points dated almost a year ago.

There were many explicit warnings about terrorists using planes as missiles before 9/11, so many that Condoleezza Rice took the rare step in her 9/11 commission testimony of correcting a previous statement she had made about no one being able to predict using a plane as a missile. She conceded that people in the government had imagined such a scenario (because she had taken so much flak from the media and some of the 9/11 widows for suggesting otherwise).

While we're used to Bush getting the facts wrong, it's astonishing that he wasn't on top of some of the highlighted portions of Rice's and Richard Clarke's recent testimonies. These Clarke lines were played and replayed a lot on newscasts nationwide just 3 weeks ago:

CLARKE: But as to your question about using aircraft as weapons, I was afraid beginning in 1996, not that a Cessna would fly into the Olympics, but that any size aircraft would be put into the Olympics.

And during my inspection of the Atlanta Olympic security arrangements a month or two before the games, I was shocked that the FBI hadn't put into effect any aircraft -- air defense security arrangements. So I threw together an air defense for the Atlanta games somewhat quickly, but I got an air defense system in place.

We then tried to institutionalize that for Washington to protect the Capitol and the White House. And that system would have been run by the Secret Service. It would have involved missiles, anti-aircraft guns, radar, helicopters.

Secret Service developed all the plans for that. Secret Service was a big advocate for it, but they were unable to get the Treasury Department, in which they were then located, to approve it. And I was unable to get the Office of Management and Budget to fund it.

5.    Tonight, Bush downgraded the Iraq War from "the central front in the war on terror" to just "part of the war on terror" or "a theater in the war on terror." Do you think he'll ever downgrade it to the point where he gets it right by calling it "a tangent to the war on terror"?

6.    A hard-hitting question from Fox News reporter/Bush-Cheney Reelect operative Bill Sammon:

QUESTION: You have been accused of letting the 9/11 threat mature too far, but not letting the Iraq threat mature far enough.

First, could you respond to that general criticism?

What a clown.

7.    The most frightening moment of the Q & A? Look how Bush goes directly from talking about his reelection prospects to talking about dead people, without any segue. A psychologist (or a psychopathologist) could have a field day with this:

QUESTION: Thank you, Mr. President. Sir, you've made it very clear tonight that you're committed to continuing the mission in Iraq. Yet as Terry pointed out, increasing numbers of Americans have qualms about it. And this is an election year.

BUSH: Yeah.

QUESTION: Will it have been worth it, even if you lose your job because of it?

BUSH: I don't plan on losing my job. I plan on telling the American people that I've got a plan to win the war on terror, and I believe they'll stay with me. They understand the stakes. Look, nobody likes to see dead people on their television screens. I don't. It's a tough time for the American people to see that. It's gut-wrenching.

With that wording, "nobody likes to see dead people on their television screens. I don't," it's like he's just a spectator in this thing, not the guy who ordered it. It calls his stature into question.

And, of course, I still don't understand why he's mixing dead people on television with his reelection prospects.

8.    This is another scary jaw-dropper, and I'd also consider it funny if Bush's incompetence on this kind of stuff wasn't leading to casualties:

QUESTION: Mr. President, who will we be handing the Iraqi government over to on June 30th?

BUSH: We'll find that out soon. That's what Mr. Brahimi is doing. He's figuring out the nature of the entity we'll be handing sovereignty over.

Let me get this straight. He's absolutely certain we're on the right course and we're making progress and we have to stick to turning over sovereignty on 6/30 (a date originally dictated by our Presidential election, by the way), but not only do we not know who we're turning it over to, nobody does.

All that brilliant Bush administration post-war planning has forced the U.N. into a situation where they have to try and create some kind of responsible Iraqi government within the next 77 days. Oops, make that 76.

9.   Final headshaker. Bush bragged:

The A.Q. Khan bust, the network that we uncovered thanks to the hard work of our intelligence-gathering agencies and the cooperation of the British, was another victory in the war against terror.

If you don't know, A.Q. Khan is the Pakistani nuclear scientist who sold nuclear weapons to North Korea (and others on the black market), got caught, and was immediately pardoned by Musharaff, who also took the moment to praise Khan as "a national hero." Reportedly, there's no chance in hell Khan could have committed his crimes without the support of Pakistani intelligence and the Pakistani military.

Bush is now so desperate that this is the kind of thing he wants to trumpet as a success.

April 13, 2004

Easter Fun

This sounds like one hell of a good show. From the Associated Press:

A church trying to teach about the crucifixion of Jesus performed an Easter show with actors whipping the Easter bunny and breaking eggs, upsetting several parents and young children.

People who attended Saturday’s performance at Glassport’s memorial stadium quoted performers as saying, “There is no Easter bunny,” and described the show as being a demonstration of how Jesus was crucified.

Melissa Salzmann, who took her 4-year-old son J.T., said the program was inappropriate for young children. “He was crying and asking me why the bunny was being whipped,” Salzmann said.

Patty Bickerton, the youth minister at Glassport Assembly of God, said the performance wasn’t meant to be offensive. Bickerton portrayed the Easter rabbit and said she tried to act with a tone of irreverence.

“The program was for all ages, not just the kids. We wanted to convey that Easter is not just about the Easter Bunny, it is about Jesus Christ,” Bickerton said.

Performers broke eggs meant for an Easter egg hunt and also portrayed a drunken man and a self-mutilating woman, said Jennifer Norelli-Burke, another parent who saw the show in Glassport, southeast of Pittsburgh.

“It was very disturbing,” Norelli-Burke said. “I could not believe what I saw. It wasn’t anything I was expecting.”

I wonder if Bickerton conveyed her "tone of irreverence" wearing a full bunny suit or just some ears and a strap-on nose or something.

Anyway, if the show hits L.A. next year it's definitely something I plan to take my nephews to see.

Kerry's Iraq Plan

As The Los Angeles Times Ron Brownstein pointed out this weekend, Kerry has been very consistent in his proposed course of action in Iraq:

Kerry has often been accused of shifting positions and splitting hairs on the war. But on one point the senator has never wavered: that the key to long-term stability in Iraq — and more financial and military support from other nations — is to transfer authority for designing a new government from the United States to the United Nations.

Although many media outlets have reported that Kerry hasn't specified an alternative to Bush's plan in Iraq, he detailed his position in a speech in September and reiterated it this week.

"They need to go to the world and say we're not going to have an American authority that is creating this new government," Kerry said Wednesday. "We're going to have an international authority that will help develop the new government."

In fact, I think Kerry reiterated that position just about every day since last September.

Kerry's Washington Post editorial this morning once again spells out his views pretty clearly.

Bush's Tax Cuts for Terrorists

Thank God David Cay Johnston of the NY Times unearthed this. It was buried in some tedious I.R.S. budget bill. It's inexcusable:

The Bush administration has scuttled a plan to increase by 50 percent the number of criminal financial investigators working to disrupt the finances of Al Qaeda, Hamas and other terrorist organizations to save $12 million, a Congressional hearing was told on Tuesday.

The Internal Revenue Service had asked for 80 more criminal investigators beginning in October to join the 160 it has already assigned to penetrate the shadowy networks that terrorist groups use to finance plots like the Sept. 11 attacks and the recent train bombings in Madrid. But the Bush administration did not include them in the president's proposed budget for the 2005 fiscal year.

Here's the administration pinching pennies on national defense and seemingly trying to hide it. One of my great frustrations is that so few people understand the extent to which funding the war in Iraq and gargantuan tax cuts have taken away from some fundamental items necessary for a real war on terror. This is a perfect example.

Bush's first press conference of 2004 is scheduled for 5:30pm PST today.

April 12, 2004

Kerry Veepstakes

It’s folly to predict who John Kerry will choose as his running mate. Few imagined Gore would pick Lieberman, Clinton would pick Gore, or Bush would pick Cheney.

What captures my interest is: who should Kerry pick? Which addition to the ticket would most help Democrats take back the White House?

In an attempt to answer those questions, I’ll evaluate some prospective running mates by subjecting them to the following questions:

Do they help affirm Kerry’s best attributes?

Do they balance the ticket?

Would they be likely to deliver a state, or hold particular appeal in a certain region?

Do they appeal to the moderates and independents likely to decide this election?

Do they have any weaknesses that are likely to damage the ticket?

On April 4, The New York Times reported that Kerry is likely to make his selection relatively early, by the end of May. The Times also reported that Jim Jordan, the Chairman of Kerry’s VP selection committee, has already interviewed 4 candidates and begun asking others for their thoughts on them. Let’s evaluate them first, keeping in mind the 5 questions:

North Carolina Senator John Edwards

If Kerry and Edwards shared a seesaw, neither side would ever hit the ground. Edwards is the South to Kerry’s North, a fresh face to Kerry’s experience, and an easy charm to Kerry’s senatorial gravitas.

Edwards’ stock has risen steadily since he emerged as a national political figure. His “Two Americas” campaign theme hit people where they live. James Carville, Clinton’s top campaign strategist, called Edwards “the best stump speaker I’ve ever seen run for President.”

During the primary, there was a clamoring for a Kerry-Edwards ticket, and Edwards continues to top opinion polls as Democrats’ VP choice. More importantly, polls show he’s an enormously appealing figure to moderates and independents. Although his presence on the ticket is unlikely to turn his home state of North Carolina our way, his down home style and economic populism could be a considerable boost in the Midwestern battleground states. It’s also important to note that the ladies, no matter where they live, seem to love this guy.

Some have suggested that Edwards is so dynamic that he would overshadow Kerry, but do they really think somebody wouldn’t vote for Kerry-Edwards because they like Edwards more?

I’ve heard others say Edwards is too sunny to adequately perform the Vice President’s attack dog responsibilities, but they must have missed Edwards during the primary calling Bush “an unadulterated phony” who “doesn’t care about ordinary people.” In fact, I think Edwards would make the best Bush–Cheney detractor of all the VP candidates, because his attacks land stealthily and consistently, with varying degrees of force.

Bush–Cheney would go after Edwards as “an ambulance-chasing trial lawyer,” but Edwards has demonstrated an ability to expertly turn those attacks against Bush’s biggest weakness: for most of his life, Edwards has championed regular people against the powerful corporate forces Bush and Cheney have protected most of their lives.

Bush–Cheney might also say he’s too young and inexperienced to be President, but at 50 he’s not too young and his six years on the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence are six years more foreign policy experience than Bush had entering office.

New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson

Richardson would bring 4 enormous assets to the ticket: he’s Latino; he’s acknowledged by both parties as a superb diplomat; he’d add executive experience to the ticket; and he’d deliver New Mexico.

Bush’s own pollster, Matthew Dowd, admits that if Democrats win the Latino vote by the same percentages they did in 2000 (62% Gore to 35% Bush), Bush will lose. Richardson, a Mexican American, should appeal to Latinos nationally, and specifically in states with high Latino populations like New Mexico, Nevada, Colorado, California, New York, and Florida.

During the Clinton administration, Richardson was U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations (1997-98) and Secretary of the U.S. Energy Department (1998-00). He was even tapped by the Bush administration last year to negotiate with North Korea. His vast experience and standing as one of our country’s most capable diplomats bolster Kerry’s own foreign policy credentials. Moreover, the broad multilateral foreign policy vision of Kerry–Richardson would contrast favorably with the kneejerk unilateralism of Bush–Cheney.

As Governor of New Mexico and a Clinton cabinet appointee, Richardson’s executive background balances Kerry’s legislative background.

Contrary to popular belief, the closest state in the 2000 election was not Florida (which Bush officially won by 537 votes), but New Mexico (Gore beat Bush by 366 votes). Richardson is enormously popular in the state, and his presence on the ticket would protect its 5 electoral votes for Democrats.

Missouri Congressman Dick Gephardt

Almost all Gephardt’s advantages as the VP pick have disadvantages attached.

He’s from Missouri, a battleground state that Bush won by about 3% in 2000, but Gephardt’s name on the ballot may not actually help Kerry as much in the state as you might think. He’s never held statewide office, only local office in St. Louis, and any Missouri political observer (I’m a native St. Louisan) will tell you that the rest of Missouri can actually be prejudiced against “big city” St. Louis politicians.

Gephardt is very popular with the unions, which might help particularly in battleground states like Michigan and Ohio, but unions are energized to oust Bush already and his message to Midwestern working class voters can fairly be described as John Edwards-lite, without the great delivery.

He’s got decades of valuable experience in domestic and international affairs, but he’s also got 14 terms of Congressional votes for Republicans to mischaracterize.

Also, not only did he vote to authorize force in Iraq, but he was a leader of the resolution in the House, which tied the hands of senators like Kerry who sought to add restrictions to the resolution.

Gephardt could be a decent attack dog. His oft-repeated line in the primary, “This President… is a miserable failure,” had teeth.

I like Gephardt, but all in all I think his addition makes it easy to coin Kerry–Gephardt a “Washington insider” ticket, and it would be a net loss.

Iowa Governor Tom Vilsack

The two-term Governor – the first Democratic Governor Iowa’s had since 1968 – has had an impressive political career in Iowa. Gore beat Bush by a mere 4000 votes in Iowa in 2000, so Vilsack stands to help Kerry most by securing those 7 electoral votes.

As a personable, if undynamic, fresh-faced Midwestern centrist with executive experience, I understand why Vilsack’s on the short list. But I don’t think there’s enough solid information available to determine whether Vilsack would have carryover appeal to other Midwestern battleground states. Accordingly, his positives aren’t nearly as impressive as Edwards’ or Richardson’s.

Others

Pundits have bandied about a number of other considerations – Virginia Governor Mark Warner, Pennsylvania Governor Ed Rendell, Florida Senators Bob Graham and Bill Nelson, Indiana Senator Evan Bayh, Arkansas Senator Blanche Lincoln, Delaware Senator Joe Biden, former Nebraska Senator and 9/11 commissioner Bob Kerrey, and, of course, Hillary. But nobody has garnered more attention of late than Republican Senator John McCain of Arizona.

McCain hits home runs when subjected to the criteria questions I outlined originally: his well-known Vietnam heroism would make Kerry-McCain the “war hero” ticket; he would balance the ticket ideologically, while also creating an unprecedented “fusion ticket,” a very attractive idea in these politically-splintered times; he’d probably swing Arizona’s 10 electoral votes from Bush to Kerry; and he’s remarkably popular with the independents and moderates who will probably decide the election.

There are few big problems, though.

While McCain initially flirted with an offer from Kerry, saying he’d “entertain” it, he’s since absolutely ruled out accepting the nomination. It’s almost a right of passage for future Vice Presidents to rule themselves out of consideration before they’re tapped, but McCain’s rejections have become increasingly strident. If he went back on them, he’d look weak and opportunistic.

Secondly, not only is McCain a Republican, but he’s also said repeatedly that he thinks George W. Bush deserves re-election because “he’s shown moral clarity and leadership after 9/11.” If McCain were the selection, how many times do you think Bush-Cheney would air a television ad of him repeating those words? It would be very discrediting, I think.

Thirdly, it’s difficult to say how negatively Democratic interest groups would react to the many conservative positions McCain has taken over the years, but it could get ugly. One thing Kerry doesn’t want is a choice that ruffles a lot of Democratic feathers.

It’s too bad, in a way. As The New York Times reported, “One [Kerry] adviser said that choice [McCain] would almost guarantee Mr. Kerry's election.”

I find that statement a little hyperbolic, but selecting McCain would certainly cause a political earthquake, attract a lot of voters Kerry is unlikely to win otherwise, and undermine any suggestion that Kerry is a “safe” politician.

So if I were advising Kerry, I'd tell him:
1.    Edwards
2.    Richardson
3.    McCain
4.    The Rest

April 9, 2004

Condi's Headshakers

Condoleezza Rice makes a lot of excuses. Sometimes her statements gel with the facts and sometime's they don't. Sometimes they gel with previous statements she's made, and sometimes they don't. But as a witness, she's about as reliable as a few scattered pages of RNC talking points.

The Center for American Progress has a thorough catalogue of Rice's claims vs. facts. Among the most damaging:

On the now infamous August 6, 2001 Presidential Daily Briefing (PDB)...
CLAIM: There was "nothing about the threat of attack in the U.S." in the Presidential Daily Briefing the President received on August 6th. [responding to Ben Veniste]

FACT: Rice herself confirmed that "the title [of the PDB] was, 'Bin Laden Determined to Attack Inside the United States.'" [Source: Condoleezza Rice, 4/8/04]

On using planes as missiles...
CLAIM: "I do not remember any reports to us, a kind of strategic warning, that planes might be used as weapons." [responding to Kean]

FACT: Condoleezza Rice was the top National Security official with President Bush at the July 2001 G-8 summit in Genoa. There, "U.S. officials were warned that Islamic terrorists might attempt to crash an airliner" into the summit, prompting officials to "close the airspace over Genoa and station antiaircraft guns at the city's airport." [Sources: Los Angeles Times, 9/27/01 ; White House release, 7/22/01]

More on the domestic terror threat...
CLAIM: "One of the problems was there was really nothing that look like was going to happen inside the United States...Almost all of the reports focused on al-Qaida activities outside the United States, especially in the Middle East and North Africa...We did not have...threat information that was in any way specific enough to suggest something was coming in the United States." [responding to Gorelick]

FACT: Page 204 of the Joint Congressional Inquiry into 9/11 noted that "In May 2001, the intelligence community obtained a report that Bin Laden supporters were planning to infiltrate the United States" to "carry out a terrorist operation using high explosives." The report "was included in an intelligence report for senior government officials in August [2001]." In the same month, the Pentagon "acquired and shared with other elements of the Intelligence Community information suggesting that seven persons associated with Bin Laden had departed various locations for Canada, the United Kingdom, and the United States." [Sources: Joint Congressional Report, 12/02]

Not only is Rice incredible, she's incompetent. I agree wholeheartedly with what Kristen Breitweiser, a 9/11 widow, had to say yesterday on Hardball with Chris Matthews:

Condoleezza Rice-- It’s her job to not have that Grand Canyon [of intelligence between the director of the CIA and the president]. It is her job to fuse that information in one fusion center. And, you know what? She didn’t do it.

The four 9/11 widows who basically drove Congress and this administration into creating the commission are Breitweiser, Lorie Van Auken, Mindy Kleinberg, and Patty Casazza. They may be the 4 best people in the world to listen to when considering mistakes made by both the Clinton and Bush administrations before 9/11.

Here's the entire transcript of their Hardball interview.

I've been watching them in various t.v. interviews for the past few weeks, and it's obvious that they've spent a great deal of time, if not most of their time, since their husbands have died studying the hell out of how these attacks might have been prevented. They've been weeks, sometimes months, ahead of the mainstream press. For instance, when Condoleezza Rice came out with her "No one could have possibly imagined planes being used as missiles" nonsense last year, the widows detailed 12 specific warnings received by government officials about terrorists using planes as weapons.

6 other things that struck me as I watched Rice's testimony in its entirety today:

1.    There were 3 bombshells. The first was commissioner Ben-Veniste getting Rice to acknowledge the name of the August 6, 2001 Presidential Daily Briefing from George Tenet: "BIN LADEN DETERMINED TO ATTACK INSIDE THE UNITED STATES." When you've been running around for months, as Rice has, telling everybody that all the pre-9/11 chatter was exclusively about threats overseas, that's kind of daming, isn't it? Rice tries to split hairs by saying that we already knew he was determined, that somehow it was a historical summary, but then why was it in the PDB, which is supposed to highlight the urgent stuff?

But more importantly, and this is the second bombshell, why didn't the President take any action after hearing this in the same PDB (which Bob Kerrey unilaterally declassified, which I'm sure pissed somebody off)?

In the spirit of further declassification, this is what the Aug. 6 memo said to the president. That the F.B.I. indicates patterns of suspicious activity in the United States consistent with preparations for hijacking. That's the language of the memo that was briefed to the president on the 6th of August.

The President went on a month-long vacation on August 7 and Rice couldn't name a single action he took to deal with that information.

The third bombshell came when Ben-Veniste asked her if she ever relayed to Bush that she knew there were al Qaeda cells inside the United States. Her answer: "I really don't remember if I had discussed this with the President."

Do you feel safer with this person as our National Security Advisor?

2.    Rice began her opening statement with a concession ("America's response across several administrations of both parties was insufficient"), and then she gave about 15 minutes worth of excuses (starting with "Historically, democratic societies have been slow to react to gathering threats, tending instead to wait to confront threats until they are too dangerous to ignore or until it is too late"), but she offered no apologies, and refused to utter what 9/11 commissioner Bob Kerrey called "the m-word," mistake. It's a tremendous contrast with the straightforward apology that was Dick Clarke's entire opening statement.

3.    Also in her opening statement, Rice said we couldn't have a narrow war on terror, and that "He [Bush] recognizes that the war on terror is a broad war." I think she's got it completely wrong.

Phase one should have been decapitating al Qaeda and eliminating the Taliban in Afghanistan, which would have required putting pressure on Pakistan (yes, perhaps even threatening that nuclear power with war if they didn't cooperate) to help us find and kill bin Laden, Zawahiri, and Mullah Omar. We shouldn't have left Afghanistan until al Qaeda's leadership was dead, Mullah Omar and the Taliban were gone without possibility of return, and Karzai had military control of the entire country. Instead, we committed fewer troops to Afghanistan than were needed because we were already planning war on Iraq; bin Laden, Zawahiri, Mullah Omar and other principles have gotten away; warlords now control most of the country; and we basically appeased Pakistan (there are a ton of indications that their intelligence agency, who basically installed the Taliban, continues to jerk us around). We also need to rid Northwestern Pakistan of terrorists, but Bush and Musharaff are too afraid to go in there.

Concurrently, a massive U.S. special ops force, perhaps combined with NATO forces, should have been plotting out and activating not just the elimination of the rest of al Qaeda, but also Hezbollah, throughout the globe.

Also, there should have been an international conference defining terrorism and then outlining and activating the specifics of an international war on terror, ignorance, poverty, sytemic abuse of women, and religious intolerance.

Some serious attempt at dealing with Hamas and sticking with a more realistic Middle East road map would also have to be part of it.

We'd have to define a single standard with which to deal with host states, particularly Saudi Arabia, Iran, Pakistan, and Syria, which clearly have the worst terrorist-coddling records (although focus on the terrorists themselves and the war of ideas first, as opposed to this administration's out-of-date cold war inclination to focus on single governments).

Now that's a broad, ambitious war. People would call it impossible to realize, but a great leader would push us to act on it as our best and brightest continued to imagine and build it. A real leader would also ask regular Americans to sacrifice something.

Taking over Iraq, which was not a terrorist haven before the war but probably is now, was the narrow option, and that decision sucked all our resources away from a global war on terror that would have made us more, not less, safe.

Whew. I apologize for my long-windedness. Back to Dr. Rice...

4.    Rice disparaged the idea that holding principals' meetings, opposed to deputies' meetings, would have made any difference. This shows she doesn't understand bureaucracy in a way that would allow her to be affecive within the system.

The FAA Director, Norm Mineta, hadn't even heard about the hijackings threats, for Chrissakes. That's inexplicable, and both Rice and Bush bear ultimate responsibility.

It's so silly to deny that principals' meetings couldn't have made a difference. It defies common sense, really. Anybody who's ever worked in a corporation knows that if you want something done, the closer the help you can get is to the top, the more likely it is you get what you want. Your CEO makes one phone call and you get the world, your direct supervisor makes a thousand phone calls and you're lucky to get a free sandwich.

5.    One of the most astonishing parts of Rice's testimony that I haven't heard or read anyone else mention is her saying that an immediate military response to the U.S.S. Cole attacks, which caused the murder of 17 American servicemen, might have been "tit-for-tat" and just "emboldened the terrorists." Appeasement? Weak on terror? Hello?

6.    My favorite exchange of the day came between Rice and Bob Kerrey. It's mostly hilarious, but Kerrey makes a good point:

(the background on this is that Bush, before 9/11, once told Rice that "I'm tired of swatting flies," and Rice somehow started spinning this as an example of the President being aware of the al Qaeda threat and being proactive on it)

KERREY. You've used the phrase a number of times and I'm hoping with my question to disabuse you of using it in the future, you said the president was tired of swatting flies. Can you tell me one example where the president swatted a fly when it came to Al Qaeda prior to 9/11?

RICE. I think what the president was speaking to -

KERREY. No, what fly had he swatted?

RICE. Well, the disruptions abroad was what he was really focusing on. When the C.I.A. would go after Abu(?) -

KERREY. No, no. He hadn't swatted -

RICE. - or go after this guy. That was what was meant.

KERREY. Dr. Rice, we only swatted a fly once on the 20th of August 1998. We didn't swat any flies afterwards. How the hell could he be tired?

RICE. We swatted - I think he felt that what the agency was doing was going after [audio glitch on CNN] and there. And that's what he meant by swatting flies. It was simply a figure of speech.

KERREY. Well, I think it's an unfortunate figure of speech. Because I think especially after the attack on the Cole on the 12th of October 2000 it would not have been swatting a fly. It would not have been - we did not need to wait to get a strategic plan. Dick Clarke had in his memo on the 25th of January overt military operations. He turned that memo around in 24 hours, Dr. Clarke.(as spoken) There were a lot of plans in place in the Clinton administration, military plans in the Clinton administration. In fact, just since we're in the mood to declassify stuff, he included in his Jan. 25 memo two appendixes. Appendix A, strategy for the elimination of the jihadis threat of Al Qaeda. Appendix B, political military plan for Al Qaeda. So I just, why didn't we respond to the Cole? Why didn't we swat that fly?

Clinton testified for 4 hours yesterday, too. It's a shame his testimony wasn't public. I'm sure he would have loved it if it were. Good ol' Billy.

April 8, 2004

Iraq

There are two competing portraits being drawn about what's happening in Iraq.

One is the Bush/Rumsfeld/RNC version, which focuses on Shiite cleric Moktada al-Sadr causing all the trouble as the leader of a relatively small group of insurgents (1000-6000 men in a country of 25 million is the way Rumsfeld spun it in yesterday's press conference). The troubles in the Sunni areas, they say, are perpetrated by disgruntled Baathists, former Saddam loyalists.

The other is what all the journalists on the ground seem to be saying, which is that both the Shi'a and Sunni insurgencies have a considerably broader base. As the NY Times reports today:

A year ago, many Shiites rejoiced at the American invasion and the toppling of Saddam Hussein, a Sunni who had brutally repressed the Shiites for decades. But American intelligence officials now believe that hatred of the American occupation has spread rapidly among Shiites, and is now so large that Mr. Sadr and his forces represent just one element..

Meanwhile, American intelligence has not yet detected signs of coordination between the Sunni rebellion in Iraq's heartland and the Shiite insurgency. But United States intelligence says that the Sunni rebellion also goes far beyond former Baathist government members. Sunni tribal leaders, particularly in Al Anbar Province, home to Ramadi, the provincial capital, and Falluja, have turned against the United States and are helping to lead the Sunni rebellion, intelligence officials say.

The result is that the United States is facing two broad-based insurgencies that are now on parallel tracks.

I hope we catch al-Sadr soon, dead or alive. He is a thug, a murderer. But he's just a small part of the equation, I'm afraid.

There's Joy in Inglewood

Inglewood, California voters went against a new Wal-Mart Supercenter overwhelmingly. For us Californians, it's just the beginning of the battle. One down, 39 to go.

White People Need Compassion, Too

Now this is unbelievable. I really had to see if it wasn't a meticulously crafted practical joke. It's the "Compassion Photo Album," which is found on the Bush-Cheney '04 official web site.

For those unable to access, it's just a bunch of pictures of George W. and Laura posing with African-Americans (and even some actual Africans – they're so compassionate!) and other minorities. Has to be seen to be believed. It's so wackily ironic it could go unedited in The Onion.

Wait. Do you think maybe there was just some confusion over at BC04 headquarters, and it was meant to be called the "Condescension Photo Album"? It's certainly a more accurate description of the contents.

Thanks to Atrios for the tip.

Journalist Soldiers

I missed this when it happened last September. CNN war correspondent Christiane Amanpour – whom I admire about as much as any other journalist – made the following statement about Iraq war coverage:

"I think the press was muzzled, and I think the press self-muzzled. I'm sorry to say, but certainly television and, perhaps, to a certain extent, my station was intimidated by the administration and its foot soldiers at Fox News. And it did, in fact, put a climate of fear and self-censorship, in my view, in terms of the kind of broadcast work we did."

Some of that may be arguable, but the idea that Fox's journalists aren't really fair and balanced but are foot soldiers for the Bush administration isn't.

Remarkably, Fox agrees with me, and they went on the record. Here was Fox's official response delivered by spokeswoman Irena Briganti:

"Given the choice, it's better to be viewed as a foot soldier for Bush than a spokeswoman for al-Qaeda."

At first, I was thinking Briganti was definitely a foot soldier for Bush, but now I'm viewing her more as a spokeswoman for al-Qaeda. I don't know, though. It's a close call.

How a Bill Almost Becomes an Unconstitutional Law

Thanks to Reanna Remick, a Georgia reader, for passing this and this along.

Here's the basic story: A jackass in the Georgia House named Bill Heath added an amendment to an existing bill that outlawed involuntary female genital mutilation so that it would include a ban on voluntary genital piercing for Georgia women (although not Georgia men, perhaps because Heath doesn't want to be forced to remove the two nails that keep most of his brain lodged in his penis). It's so bizarre I wondered if Heath was just naive about some women's preferences, but his public statements show he knew exactly what he was doing – preventing adult women from controlling their own bodies:

"The original intent of the amendment was to make illegal the voluntary piercing of female genitalia for decorative purposes."

"What? I've never seen such a thing. I, uh, I wouldn't approve of anyone doing it. I don't think that's an appropriate thing to be doing."
Astonishingly, 159 other jackasses in the Georgia House failed to object to his amendment and passed it in a unanimous 160-0 vote.

After being pushed by many women's rights organizations, however, the Georgia Senate struck down the ridiculous piercing amendment and restored the female genital mutilation ban (a good law now, actually).

Hopefully, the people of Georgia will now see to it that al Qaeda spokesperson Bill Heath never gets elected again.

April 7, 2004

Iraq

New York Times reporter John F. Burns, who's been in Iraq since well before the war began, gave a very sobering analysis of the situation on Charlie Rose Monday night. Among the more ominous statements – and unfortunately one that's probably a conclusive description of what's happening, as it echoes all the major news stories on events in the ground in Iraq today and over the weekend – was this:

What we see here is a metastasis of the [Sunni] insurgency into the Shi'a majority community, which is the one thing that American generals here have always said privately was their worst fear.

It's hard to see now what the possible solutions are, but I pray for them.

Mess with Texas

Republican Sam Walls looked like a good bet to win a seat in the Texas state legislature. Then various pictures of him clad in female apparel started showing up, which I understand can be a problem for Texas office seekers. His Republican primary opponent is shopping the pictures everywhere, but Sam won't withdraw from the race.

He is sorry, though: "I apologize for any embarrassment caused to my supporters by my opponent's disclosure of a small part of my personal past."

Personally, I would find it infinitely more embarrassing to be a Texas
Republican than a cross dresser.

Dishonest Dick

As a Wyoming Congressman in 1986, Dick Cheney proposed a huge gas tax, saying, "Let us rid ourselves of the fiction that low oil prices are somehow good for the United States." Now, Cheney excoriates Kerry for considering (not even voting for) a 1993 proposal for a gas tax.

Cheney also proposed signifigant defense budget cuts as Secretary of Defense in 1991, but he continues to scold Kerry for having voted against some of the same cuts he proposed.

If you multiplied Cheney's integrity a thousand fold, you could still fit it into a thimble.

Darth Nader Update

State law in Oregon says if you can get 1000 people in the same room to sign a petition for you, you can get on the Presidential ballot. No problem for somebody with Ralph Nader's name recognition and stature, especially in a state with a relatively high number of progressives, eh?

Nope. Nader's best organizational effort brought him only 741 people (aka "Bush/Cheney supporters") willing to sign a petition for him. What an embarrassment.

To prove a point, I'm tempted to drive up to Oregon myself this week and hold a huge kegger where I'm confident I could get the 1000 signatures necessary for ballot eligibility. If an anonymous, slightly above average Southern Californian loser like myself could get on the ballot, maybe it's time for Nader to retire (and by retire, I mean pass away).

April 6, 2004

Fundraising Totals?

Wait a minute. On Friday, the Bush Cheney campaign didn't report an exact fundraising total, but they claimed they surpassed the record-breaking $50 million + reported by the Kerry campaign. But Monday's Wall Street Journal reported:

"President Bush is expected to report having raised $37 million in the first quarter, which ended Wednesday. The windfall has helped him surpass his low-end fund-raising goal of $170 million."

At first I thought maybe it's a misprint, but looking at the monthly BC FEC filings without March yet included shows that they were indeed on pace for $37 million, not $50 million.

Who's lying here? I don't know for sure, but I'd bet that BC wanted to dilute the enormity of the Kerry achievement and cover up the rather astonishing reality that a running mateless Kerry outraised them by over 35%. That's a big story. I haven't noticed anybody else writing about this, but I find it outrageous, if unsurprising. Why do the press corps trust these people at all?

Actually, it might be fair for Bush to say he raised about $87 million, since he earned $37 million from people that like him and generated $50 million for Kerry from people that hate him.

Also, this last paragraph of Political Wire's summary of the WSJ article (which I can't link to because it's subscription only) is an eye-opener:

Meanwhile, Sen. John Kerry "reported raising $50 million in the quarter -- exceeding the total raised by former Vice President Al Gore during the entire 2000 primary campaign." And Kerry "has tapped a robust source of small donors on the Internet. His campaign has raised roughly $1 million a day via the Web -- a pace that outshines that of former rival Howard Dean."

Awesome.

Joey Pulitzer Gets It Right

More than a few mediocrities over the years have taken home Pulitzers (perhaps almost as many as have won Oscars). But Nancy Cleeland, Abigail Goldman, Evelyn Iritani, and Tyler Marshall of The Los Angeles Times couldn't be more deserving of the prize they earned for their 3 part series on how much Wal-Mart sucks. Please read the whole thing – it's a story well told that rather dispassionately explores contemporary American consumer and business values, good and bad.

For me, I don't think I'll ever shop at Wal-Mart again. I'd rather pay full price for something than get a bargain paid for by others.

It's so good I can't help but excerpt the lead paragraphs from the first 2 parts:

Part 1: An Empire Built on Bargains Remakes the Working World

Chastity Ferguson kept watch over four sleepy children late one Friday as she flipped a pack of corn dogs into a cart at her new favorite grocery store: Wal-Mart.

The Wal-Mart Supercenter, a pink stucco box twice as big as a Home Depot, combines a full-scale supermarket with the usual discount mega-store. For the 26-year-old Ferguson, the draw is simple.

"You can't beat the prices," said the hotel cashier, who makes $400 a week. "I come here because it's cheap."

Across town, another mother also is familiar with the Supercenter's low prices. Kelly Gray, the chief breadwinner for five children, lost her job as a Raley's grocery clerk last December after Wal-Mart expanded into the supermarket business here. California-based Raley's closed all 18 of its stores in the area, laying off 1,400 workers.

Gray earned $14.68 an hour with a pension and family health insurance. Wal-Mart grocery workers typically make less than $9 an hour.

"It's like somebody came and broke into your home and took something huge and important away from you," said the 36-year-old. "I was scared. I cried. I shook."

Wal-Mart gives. And Wal-Mart takes away.

Part 2: Scouring the Globe to Give Shoppers an $8.63 Polo Shirt

When Wal-Mart Stores Inc. demands a lower price for the shirts and shorts it sells by the millions, the consequences are felt in a remote Chinese industrial town, at a port in Bangladesh and here in Honduras, under the corrugated metal roof of the Cosmos clothing factory.

Isabel Reyes, who has worked at the plant for 11 years, pushes fabric through her sewing machine 10 hours a day, struggling to meet the latest quota scrawled on a blackboard.

She now sews sleeves onto shirts at the rate of 1,200 garments a day. That's two shirts a minute, one sleeve every 15 seconds.

"There is always an acceleration," said Reyes, 37, who can't lift a cooking pot or hold her infant daughter without the anti-inflammatory pills she gulps down every few hours. "The goals are always increasing, but the pay stays the same."

Reyes, who earns the equivalent of $35 a week, says her bosses blame the long hours and low wages on big U.S. companies and their demands for ever-cheaper merchandise. Wal-Mart, the biggest company of them all, is the Cosmos factory's main customer.

Reyes is skeptical. Why, she asked, would a company in the richest country in the world care about a few pennies on a pair of shorts?

The answer: Wal-Mart built its empire on bargains.

Damn good, appropriately dramatic journalism.

O'Reilly Is a Disaster

From Atrios from The Forward (subscription):

The self-described enemy of political spin, Fox News commentator Bill O'Reilly, appears to have been overstating his charitable efforts on behalf of Israel. During a March 10 appearance on the Don Imus radio show, O'Reilly said, ‘I did a benefit in L.A. four weeks ago where we raised millions of dollars for Israel.’ O'Reilly and his publicist told Business Week media editor Tom Lowry that the benefit he "chaired" in Los Angeles had raised $40 million for Israel. But a few inquiries into the event in question raise questions about the account given by O'Reilly, who routinely refers to his television show as the ‘no spin zone.’