mattgunn.com

- June 2004 -

June 29, 2004

Vacation

I'm gonna leave town for a week and rest up for the election stretch drive. I'll resume posting next Tuesday. Have a good one.

More Fahrenheit 9/11

Before I get back to examining individual sequences in F911, a few points:

1.   I failed to mention yesterday the great irony of Moore complaining about the 2000 election tragedy. How did Moore spend the weeks preceding the November election? That's right, campaigning in swing states for Ralph Nader, against Al Gore. Including shoulder to shoulder with Nader in Florida, I think. I'm glad to see he doesn't intend to repeat his mistake, and that's all I ask, but it irks me when those partially responsible for that result don't make a fundamental apology before they protest the results so loudly. It makes me wonder if they're motivated more by the fundamental injustice of it, or their own guilty consciences.

Anybody who tries to tell you that Nader didn't turn it for Bush is crazy. In fact, simple math tells you he cost Gore both Florida and New Hampshire (as well as forcing the Gore campaign to spend more $$$ and other resources in states that were closer with Nader on the ballot). In Florida, I know the numbers by heart: Nader got over 97,000 votes; Gore lost in the certified tally by 537; based on exit polls, 48% of Nader voters said they would have voted for Gore if Nader weren't on the ballot, 24% for Bush, and the rest said they would have stayed home. If Nader didn't campaign so hard in Florida and other swing states, no recounts would have been necessary, Moore would have made some film eviscerating Al Gore, Sr., and by now I would have completed my critical treatise on White Chicks.

Incidentally, here's a persuasive Chris Bowers post on mydd.com explaining why Nader's 2004 candidacy is effectively impotent.

2. Obviously, I have no problem with anybody criticizing Moore or his film, but it's more than a little disingenuous for the political press to make comments like one made in ABC's The Note yesterday morning:

(We gotta say: … with Moore's film, you 'aint seeing the whole truth,. but that's another matter).

Nothing wrong with that statement, but definitely something wrong with the double standard. Could you imagine The Note writing this about a Scott McClellan White House press conference? Or a Dick Cheney speech? Give me the transcript of any McClellan press conference or Cheney speech, and I'll show you a level of evasiveness, dishonesty, and sleight of hand quite similar to Moore at his most irresponsible.

How about Hannah Storm and others asking Moore if his film is propaganda, and suggesting it shouldn't be called documentary? It would be a fair question if those like Storm and ABC News were equally objective with, say, Condi Rice when she looks them straight in the eye and tells them Ahmed Chalabi was just one of many Iraqi exiles who gave the administration some advice before the war. That's totally misleading, pure propaganda that comprised White House talking points, but they don't dare use that term with her.

Rice, Rumsfeld, Cheney, Bush, Powell – these people happen to be particularly accomplished misleaders, but let's not personalize it: some are worse than others, but all White House communication machines systematically propagate talking points that centrally serve to advocate White House interests. That's the definition of propaganda, so if the political press don't want to shy from the word, great, but don't be selective with it.

3.   Is F911 good for Democrats? I think we'll know a lot more in the coming weeks, but I think two central factors must be taken into account: how many persuadable voters will end up seeing it, and how successfully can Republicans tie Moore around John Kerry's neck. (Remember, Moore is the same guy who, according to more than one critic of Moore's one-man show in London, called the passengers on the 9/11 planes cowardly for not fighting back.)

Undecided voters are sometimes glorified as being somehow sophisticated or level-headed, but none of the data in polls I've seen on them really supports that. In fact, they might be just the types to check out a political film merely because it finished #1 at the box office, and they're equally likely to be swayed by it.

On the other hand, as I heard someone say today, "Democrats showcasing Michael Moore as their spokesperson is about as smart as Republicans presenting Ann Coulter as theirs." True, and not smart. People question why the Kerry campaign hasn't been aggressive outside theatres and such, and while I think there might be some creative oppportunities there, the downside is that it's an invitation for a moderator to ask John Kerry to condemn some controversial Michael Moore statement at one of the Presidential debates (it happened to Wes Clark in New Hampshire, and it hurt him).

Also, I'm starting to sense some Bush hatred fatigue among independents. I may be wrong, and I know I'm guilty of it myself sometimes, but personally demonizing a guy will hurt us politically more than it helps us. That's why Democrats should focus on the facts of Bush's actions rather than the content of his character, as hard as it is to separate the two.

Okay, now a few more thoughts on Fahrenheit 9/11 sequences:

Saudis/bin Ladens Exit Post 9/11

Moore certainly has a point when he suggests an inappropriate coziness between the Saudis and the Bush family – the facts that Prince Bandar is the only foreign ambassador with secret service protection, that he's nicknamed "Bandar Bush" within the Bush family and had a long, chummy meeting with Bush on 9/13 (both are confirmed in Woodward's book, which is on the Bush-Cheney '04 suggested reading list), are good to know because the favoritism and other conflict of interest issues are important to debate. Through Dan Briody, author of "The Halliburton Agenda," Moore also makes some good points about the seamlessness with which people like George H.W. Bush and James Baker move from representing public interests as U.S. government officials and private interests – particularly in the oil and defense industries – as business men for profit. (By the way, in one of the Democratic primary debates, John Kerry promised to sign an executive order adding restrictions on such corrupt revolving doors as soon as he takes office.)

However, I find this Moore voiceover statement discrediting and ridiculous:

So one bin Laden attacks the United States and kills thousands of people, and, just by coincidence the other bin Ladens, and the Bush family, reap profits as a result of the military build-up that followed.

If asked to defend this I'm sure Moore would argue it's the literal truth, but clearly it's an insinuation that Bush was in bed with the 9/11 terrorists. There's no evidence for this, it's completely unfair, and it's stupid.

Moore also implies Bush had a hand in arranging flights for bin Laden family members and other Saudis to quickly get out of the U.S. in the days following 9/11. Oddly, the guy who takes full responsibility for approving these flights for the bin Laden family is someone Moore wisely uses as an authoritative voice critical of the Iraq War, Richard Clarke.

Bush Opposes Creation of an Independent 9/11 Commission, and then Delays Its Progress

There can be no argument here. Moore simply shows Bush speaking against the commission's creation and later trying to wiggle out of testifying before it. He also shows Commission Chair Tom Keane criticizing the White House for not producing relevant materials more quickly. The administration's conduct on this always struck me as particularly indefensible and egregious.

Also, the White House did black out several pages on Saudi Arabia in the congressional report on 9/11. Weird.

The final 25 minutes or so of the film, which deals mostly with Iraq, is the most powerful stuff in the film, but unfortunately I'm gonna have to get to that and the other stuff when I get back next Tuesday...

June 28, 2004

Fahrenheit 9/11

[Full disclosure: My brother Patrick oversees distribution of Fahrenheit 9/11 for Fellowship Adventure Group, the company Harvey and Bob Weinstein set up to deal with all aspects of F911's launch – once you read some of my criticisms you might think either I dislike my brother or I'm an independent-minded man. I can assure you both things are true.

Just kidding, I love my bro.]

I haven't been a Michael Moore fan: he's often quick to connect fact A to fact Z without bothering with the letters in between; he frequently takes unfair and mean-spirited shots at his subjects (not just the fat cats, but sometimes really poor, vulnerable folks – the rabbit killer in Roger and Me, for example); he seems to be against lots of stuff, but I can tell you very few things that he's for; he's often self-contradictory; he's an incorrigible demagogue; and the hero of every Michael Moore film, pre-F911, is Michael Moore.

Fahrenheit 9/11 shares some of these symptoms, but it's Moore's most interesting film, by far, because he wisely cuts down on his screen time and in key spots lets the words and actions of others make his points for him. In fact, there are some stunningly powerful sequences in the film, and invariably they occur when Moore's voiceover vanishes and his clowning is off-screen. Also, he's a lot more careful with the facts than he's been in previous works.

Of course, Moore's about as fair and balanced as Fox News. Unlike Fox, though, Moore owns up to what his film is: an op-ed piece where he weaves together facts that support his opinions. I judge Fahrenheit 9/11 on the power and truth of its arguments.

Sorry the following is so scattershot, but I took some frantic notes as I watched the film on the big screen, and tried to pull it altogether later. The film travels from subject to subject, starting with the...

2000 Election Fiasco

Moore's general point that the certified election results were tainted is almost inarguable.

John Ellis, George W. Bush's first cousin, was the ranking Fox News election returns analyst, and he was the first to call Florida, and thus the Presidency, for Bush. The other networks soon followed, as Moore says.

Moore doesn't go deeper into the signifigance of Ellis' early call, but it proved to be very important for the debate that followed. If the networks had shown more prudence and delayed projecting a winner, then the argument shifts from "Bush is the winner and they're now recounting the votes" to "It's so close nobody can figure out who won yet." As it was, the networks put Gore at a terrible p.r. disadvantage simply because Katherine Harris, who was Bush's campaign co-chair in Florida as Moore points out, was in a rush to quickly report and later certify a preliminary vote total.

Katherine Harris did hire a company, Database Technologies, to purge voter rolls in Florida, and they purged thousands of legal voters from the roles (example: if Jamal Simmons from Jacksonville was a felon and therefore couldn't legally vote in Florida, they'd remove every Jamal Simmons from Jacksonville from the list), an inordinate number of whom were African American. About 90% of the African American vote went to Gore. Thus, the election was totally screwed up before anybody even voted.

Moore slips in a short clip of author Jeffrey Toobin saying, "If there was a statewide recount, under every scenario Gore won the election." According to the media consortium that cooperated on a comprehensive recount in Florida, that's true. For some reason, though, most newspaper outlets focused on the fact that Bush still would have won if Gore had gotten the partial recounts his legal team had fought for in court. Here's a good article from Salon explaining it all.

The most powerful part of Moore's election 2000 sequence is when he shows several African American House members (along with Hawaii's late congresswoman, Patsy Mink) formally objecting to the federal certification over the boos of Republicans as they've run into a procedural dead end because they're unable to get a single member of the African American-less senate to object with them.

Bush on Vacation

Moore claims that Bush was on vacation 42% of his first 8 months in office. This comes from The Washington Post. While it's true that Bush did do some work while at his favorite vacation spots, now we know that "chatter" about possible terrorists' attacks during this period was way up and Bush certainly failed to bring his principals together and shake any trees. It's certainly fair to point that out.

Opening Credit Sequence

With ominous music playing, administration members receive make-up and fix their hair, getting ready like actors about to take the stage. It's good, artful stuff from Moore that visually reinforces the idea of politics as show business.

Bush's 9/11 Activities

As Moore says, Bush did receive word of the first plane hitting the WTC before setting foot in the Flordia classroom, but chose to go through with it anyway. I can't believe Moore passed up the opportunity to chide Bush for his first reaction upon hearing the news, which he told Bob Woodward was, "Boy, that's one bad pilot."

Upon hearing from chief of staff Andrew Card that a second plane hit the WTC and "America is under attack," Bush did in fact continue to sit and listen to the children read My Pet Goat for nearly 7 minutes. Moore does a great service popularizing these moments in Fahrenheit 9/11, because most news outlets never gave this aspect of Bush's performance that day any scrutiny.

I'm astonished when people try to defend Bush's inaction during those 7 minutes. What kind of leader doesn't spring to action upon hearing the words, "America is under attack"? There were a ton of decisions to be made in those precious moments. To be specific, Card informed Bush at 9:03am that we were under attack, and American Airlines Flight 77 didn't slam into the Pentagon until 9:39am and United Flight 93 was still in the air until 10:03am. Bush didn't even call Dick Cheney in the Presidential Emergency Operations Center until approximately 9:44am. What would have happened if Bush would have gotten on the phone immediately at 9:03am and tried to get a better grasp of the situation? We'll never know, because our commander-in-chief's instinct in this crisis was to do nothing.

To be continued...

June 27, 2004

3 Things

1. Last week, Ralph Nader picked long-time Green Partier Peter Camejo as his Vice Presidential running mate so he'd have a better shot at the Green Party endorsement, which would have put him on the ballot in 22 states for sure and probably more. Yesterday, the Green Party nominated David Cobb instead. This is great news for Democrats, because Cobb believes the best way to advance the Green agenda is to make sure Bush isn't re-elected, which means not getting in John Kerry's way.

Meanwhile, Republican groups are openly supporting Nader's candidacy, in Oregon and elsewhere, and he's accepting it. So far, though, it's not making much difference, because he can't even get on the ballot anywhere. In Oregon, which has a sizable population of progressives, all he has to do is get 1000 valid signatories gathered in the same place to sign a petition, but he failed to get that many in April and it looks like he failed again yesterday. Pathetic.

2. A charm offensive, Dick Cheney-style. From The Washington Post:

Vice President Cheney on Friday vigorously defended his vulgarity directed at a prominent Democratic senator earlier this week in the Senate chamber.

Cheney said he "probably" used an obscenity in an argument Tuesday on the Senate floor with Patrick J. Leahy (D-Vt.) and added that he had no regrets. "I expressed myself rather forcefully, felt better after I had done it," Cheney told Neil Cavuto of Fox News. The vice president said those who heard the putdown agreed with him. "I think that a lot of my colleagues felt that what I had said badly needed to be said, that it was long overdue."

Somebody must have done some really bad things to Dick Cheney when he was a little kid, because obviously he's holding on to a lot of crap.

3. Fahrenheit 9/11 made about $8.2 million at the box office on Friday, and about $7.5 million yesterday. It'll probably make another $6 or $7 million Sunday, and will definitely be the weekend box office king (despite being on about 1/3 as many screens as the probable weekend runner-ups, White Chicks and Dodgeball). That should make it a pretty big national story on Monday.

Also, the all-time record domestic box office gross for a documentary is Moore's Bowling for Columbine, which made $21.6 million over the course of its entire run. That means Farhenheit 9/11 could conceivably break that record in its opening weekend.

I'm working on my Farhenheit 9/11 review, and will post it soon.

I'm working on my White Chicks review, too, but that film's impact on the election is potentially so enormous that it could take me months to complete.

June 25, 2004

Sudan

It's a rare moment when I wholeheartedly, enthusiastically support the initiatives of two Republican senators, but this Washington Post op-ed by John McCain and Mike DeWine (of Ohio) is very important. First, they describe the problem in the Darfur region of Sudan:

Darfur, a Texas-size region in western Sudan, is the site of the worst humanitarian crisis in the world today. Since December the largely Arab Sudanese government has teamed with the Janjaweed, a group of allied Arab militias, to crush an insurgency in Darfur. The methods that the government and the Janjaweed have employed are nothing short of horrific. They are slaughtering civilians in a systematic scorched-earth campaign designed to "ethnically cleanse" the entire region of black Africans. By bombing villages, engaging in widespread rape, looting civilian property, and deliberately destroying homes and water sources, the government and the Janjaweed are succeeding.

The numbers are appalling. Some 1.1 million people have been driven from their homes, and as many as 30,000 are already dead. The U.S. Agency for International Development estimates that, even under "optimal conditions," 320,000 may die by the end of this year, and a death toll far higher is easily within reach. In the face of this catastrophe, the government and the Janjaweed continue to block humanitarian aid, and widespread killing and destruction persist. While civilians flee, the government's Antonov bombers target water wells, granaries, houses and crops, clearing villages so that the Janjaweed can enter and take over. In the meantime, famine looms.

Then, they prescribe action:

The U.N. Security Council should demand that the Sudanese government immediately stop all violence against civilians, disarm and disband its militias, allow full humanitarian access, and let displaced persons return home. Should the government refuse to reverse course, its leadership should face targeted multilateral sanctions and visa bans. Peacekeeping troops should be deployed to Darfur to protect civilians and expedite the delivery of humanitarian aid, and we should encourage African, European and Arab countries to contribute to these forces.

The United States must stand ready to do what it can to stop the massacres. In addition to pushing the U.N. Security Council to act, we should provide financial and logistical support to countries willing to provide peacekeeping forces. The United States should initiate its own targeted sanctions against the Janjaweed and government leaders, and consider other ways we can increase pressure on the government. We must also continue to tell the world about the murderous activities in which these leaders are engaged, and make clear to all that this behavior is totally unacceptable.

As McCain and DeWine remind us, both the U.S. and UN must not repeat the shameful inaction that led to the slaughter of over 800,000 Rwandan Tutsis in April of 1994. That tragedy was given scant U.S. news coverage, but it should stand as one of the most egregious foreign policy failures of the latter half of the 20th century. We'll never fully absolve ourselves from that failing, but at least we can try to honor those that died by demonstrating we've learned from our mistake. We must take Sens. McCain and DeWine up on their prescriptions, immediately.

JK

In its weekly Democratic Insiders Poll, The National Journal asked 50 Democratic insiders to grade John Kerry's post-primary performance thus far. 34 gave him a B, 8 a C, 7 an A, and 1 a D. One insider arrived at his B grade this way: "Fundraising, A; lack of major campaign-killing mistakes, A; message, D; not being Bush, A."

If Kerry were being graded on message alone, I think a lot of experts would agree with the D. Now, The New York Times gives us a glimpse into a further refined general election message the campaign is set to focus on at the convention and on the campaign trail:

His message, in part, is a return to the promise of Clintonian centrism: reducing the deficit, spurring economic growth, trying to ease "the squeeze on middle-class America," as Mr. Kerry puts it, from things like the cost of health insurance and college tuition.

Before you say, "Oh, how exciting, he's just cheating off Clinton," there's more:

But Mr. Kerry's message also reflects a very different time from the 1990's, framed by three unsettling years of terrorism, war and political division. Mr. Kerry's favorite refrain these days is a plea to "let America be America again." It is a quotation from a Langston Hughes poem that he uses to evoke the idea of restoration - for the economy, for a tax code that he asserts is increasingly unjust, for the dreams of the middle class and, perhaps most of all, for the country's foreign policy.

Now here's the part that completes the package, and distinguishes Kerry from Democratic nominees of recent decades:

In a break with at least a generation of Democratic candidates, and certainly with Mr. Clinton, Mr. Kerry's primary emphasis these days is often foreign policy and national security. "This will be more like a cold war election than the elections of the 1990's," said Elaine Kamarck, a leading strategist for the Clinton-era "new Democrats," now a professor at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard.

The son of a foreign service officer and the veteran of both the Vietnam War and 20 years on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Mr. Kerry is comfortable on this terrain, campaigning on the promise of a safer, more secure United States that is respected by its allies.

Just as he invokes Mr. Clinton on the economy, Mr. Kerry summons the legacy of John F. Kennedy, Harry S. Truman and Franklin D. Roosevelt when it comes to the United States' role in the world - a kind of muscular internationalism. He pledges an end to a "go it alone" foreign policy. He is regularly cheered when he talks about a return to the days of alliance building, arguing that alliances make the United States stronger, not weaker.

Pretty good raw material. Almost exactly a month from now, at the convention, it'll be put to the executive test.

I still love "Let America Be America Again." It appeals to the right, center, and left, because voters of all persuasians, I think, tend to think there was a golden age behind them, and they hope there's one in front of them. But few people think they're living in it now.

Dick

Hilarity courtesy of CNN:

Typically a break from partisan warfare, this year's Senate class photo turned smiles into snarls as Vice President Dick Cheney reportedly used profanity toward one senior Democrat, sources said.

Cheney reportedly told Senator Pat Leahy of Vermont either to "go fuck yourself" or "fuck off" or simply "fuck you." It's unclear exactly which, so go ahead and imagine Cheney said whichever is your favorite.

I don't think Democrats should criticize Cheney for this too loudly, because if the public gets wind that Cheney had an outburst of profanity, they may suffer from the misimpression that he's a human being.

June 24, 2004

Hell Breaking Loose

It's very late on the West Coast (3:45am), and a lot of hell is breaking loose in 4 Iraqi cities. It's very hard lately to distinguish the really bad from the really, really bad, but these attacks appear relatively widespread, which is a really, really bad sign for the "turnover" 6 days from now.

Kerry's Senate Seat

This is news that could affect the balance of power in the senate if Kerry is elected President:

If John Kerry is elected president, his seat in the U.S. Senate would be filled by the winner of a special election rather than a successor hand-picked by Republican Gov. Mitt Romney under a bill approved Wednesday by the Massachusetts Senate.

Going by current polls, several senate races look to be very close, and a deadlocked senate is as likely a scenario as any.

By the way, I think all states should pass a similar law. Why should a governor's party automatically get to assume a federal seat, particularly when the seat was previously filled by the opposing party? It doesn't make any sense to me. Most people consider themselves non-partisan, anyway, and vote for individuals, so why not give them the chance.

2 Tidbits on the Artist Still Known as Bill Clinton

1. I still don't know what the deal was with the gaudy tennis shoes (to my girlfriend's mock horror, that's what I grew up calling "sneakers" or whatever else you may call them) Clinton wore for the 60 Minutes interview, but here's the deal on the bracelet from Mail and Guardian Online (thanks to Atrios for the tip):

We ask him about the red and blue crocheted band around his right wrist -- an incongruous clash with the statesman attire. For the first time in the interview he becomes emotional, the voice catching and his eyes redening. "I've worn it for two years. I went there [to Colombia] and met these unbelievable kids from a village on the edge of the rainforest where the narco-traffickers are dominant," he says. "They sang and danced for peace and I fell in love with these kids. I asked them to perform at the White House one Christmas. They came with the culture minister, a magnificently attractive woman called Consuelo. The bad guys hated these kids because they made them look like what they are. The guerillas couldn't kill these children, so they murdered her ... I can still hardly talk about this.

"Two years ago they asked me back and I said, 'I'll come, but you've got to bring those kids to see me.' So I turn up -- and the children greeted me at the airport, along with the new culture minister -- the niece of the murdered woman. And they gave me this bracelet, which I've never taken off."

2. David Maraniss, who wrote the most informative biography on Clinton I've read, First in His Class, said on Inside Politics yesterday that the revealing heart of Clinton's book is on page 58, where Clinton excerpts an autobiographical essay he had written for his junior English honors class:

I am a person motivated and influenced by so many diverse forces I sometimes question the sanity of my existence. I am a living paradox – deeply religious, yet not as convinced of my exact beliefs as I ought to be; wanting responsibility yet shirking it; loving the truth but often times giving way to falsity.... I detest selfishness, but see it in the mirror every day.... I view those, some of whom are very dear to me, who have never learned how to live. I desire and struggle to be different from them, but often am almost an exact likeness.... What a boring little word – I! I, me, my, mine.... the only things that enable worthwhile uses of these words are the universal good qualities which we are not too often able to place with them – faith, trust, love, responsibility, regret, knowledge. But the acronyms to these symbols of what enable life to be worth the trouble cannot be escaped. I, in my attempts to be honest, will not be the hypocrite I hate, and will own up to their ominous presence in this boy, endeavoring in earnest to be a man....

Bush's Guard Records

Many journalists doubt that the White House turned over all Bush's National Guard service records, as they had claimed. The Associated Press has now filed a lawsuit against the Pentagon and Air Force seeking access to Bush's microfilmed personnel file from the Texas State Library and Archives Commission. From the AP Wire:

There are questions as to whether the file provided to the news media earlier this year is complete, says the lawsuit, adding that these questions could possibly be answered by reviewing a copy of the microfilm of Bush's personnel file in the Texas archives.

The Air National Guard of the United States, a federal entity, has control of the microfilm, which should be disclosed in its entirety under the Freedom of Information Act, the lawsuit says.

The White House has yet to respond to a request by the AP in April asking the president to sign a written waiver of his right to keep records of his military service confidential. Bush gave an oral waiver in a TV appearance that preceded the White House's release this year of materials concerning his National Guard service.

The government "did not expedite their response ... they did not produce the file within the time required by law, and they will not now estimate when the file might be produced or even confirm that an effort has been initiated to retrieve a copy from the microfilm at the Texas archives," the lawsuit says.

Another Poll, Not So Good

I loved the internals of the recent ABC News/Washington Post poll, but I worried a little about the optimistic/pessimistic numbers, which at 62% to 36% was one of the few positive signs for Bush's re-election (by the way, I failed to mention that I doubt it's a coincidence that Bush-Cheney '04 has an ad out called "Pessimist" about John Kerry, and they've been trumpeting that label on the campaign trail). From Political Wire:

The latest National Annenberg Election Survey shows President Bush beginning to bounce back. "In May, 33 percent of the public said 'right direction' and 58 percent said 'wrong track.' In June, the balance was still negative, but the reading improved to 40 percent saying right direction and 50 percent saying wrong track."

The gains for Bush are called "the single most important change between the two polling periods."

But there was also some good news for Sen. John Kerry in another finding: "Among the persuadable voters, Bush and Kerry were now even on their ratings as a 'strong leader.' In May, Bush held an advantage on that attribute."

June 23, 2004

Privacy

From The Chicago Sun-Times:

Actress Jeri Ryan accused ex-husband Jack Ryan of insisting she go to "explicit sex clubs" in New York, New Orleans and Paris during their marriage – including "a bizarre club with cages, whips and other apparatus hanging from the ceiling."

Jack Ryan wanted her to have sex with him while others watched, the star of "Boston Public" alleged.

If you don't know, Jack Ryan is a Republican running against Democrat Barack Obama to represent Illinois in the U.S. Senate. Republican Rep. Ray LaHood has already asked Ryan to withdraw from the race, and plenty of others (including Democrats, I'm sure) are similarly prepared to throw stones.

They're wrong, and they make our society sicker. This is exactly the kind of thing that is the business of Jack and Jeri Ryan and no one else. Their divorce is settled, and there are no public issues at stake. Moreover, I think Bill Bradley drew the line pretty well on this kind of stuff in his 2000 run for the Democratic nomination, when he told reporters: "You have the right to know about my crimes, but not about my sins." Clearly, Jack Ryan's alleged indiscretions fall into the sin category.

When I first read about this "scandal," I recalled a Milan Kundera essay I read years ago. (Actually, that's a lie: I first thought about how hot Jeri Ryan is, and then I thought about Milan Kundera). I couldn't find Kundera's essay, but I Googled upon this:

In "The Unbearable Lightness of Being," Milan Kundera describes how the police destroyed an important figure of the Prague Spring by recording his conversations with a friend and then broadcasting them as a radio serial. Reflecting on his novel in an essay on privacy, Kundera writes, "Instantly Prochazka was discredited: because in private, a person says all sorts of things, slurs friends, uses coarse language, acts silly, tells dirty jokes, repeats himself, makes a companion laugh by shocking him with outrageous talk, floats heretical ideas he'd never admit in public and so forth." Freedom is impossible in a society that refuses to respect the fact that "we act different in private than in public," Kundera argues, a reality that he calls "the very ground of the life of the individual." By requiring citizens to live in glass houses without curtains, totalitarian societies deny their status as individuals, and "this transformation of a man from subject to object is experienced as shame."

Here's another cool, applicable quote, from Jean Rolin:

The pretension of man to explore the conscience of others, the forcible rape of secrecy, are a diabolical parody of the all-seeing-ness of God.

That one's particularly good to throw at judgmental people who fancy themselves religious.

June 22, 2004

Wow

I expected a slight Bush surge after the Reagan commemorations, some very spin-friendly recent economic numbers, and at least the appearance of some international progress on Iraq. For the first time in months, there’s been some cause for optimism for Bush-Cheney. So you can imagine my joy when I looked at the internals of the Washington Post/ABC News poll released yesterday afternoon. (By the way, I highly recommend reading the internals of a poll before reading a summary – first, the headline writers often tend to focus on the national horse race – which is useless because the 20 or so swing states mean everything and Kerry’s huge margin in a solid blue state like New York and Bush’s huge margin in a solid red state like Texas mean nothing – and second, they sometimes obscure the gems by paying attention to marginally helpful internal indicators).

The bottom line on the poll’s results, I think, is that Bush no longer really has even a single issue to leverage politically. Here’s the result that must have forced Karl Rove’s jaw into his colon:

Who do you trust to do a better job handling THE US CAMPAIGN AGAINST TERRORISM, George W. Bush or John Kerry?
Bush    47%
Kerry    48%

Bush, Cheney, Rove, and Co. have worked furiously the last couple years to ensure that November 2, 2004 would be first and foremost a referendum on Bush’s trustworthiness as commander-in-chief of a war on terror. Oops.

Here’s another issue they thought they wanted to make the election about:

Who do you trust to do a better job handling TAXES, George W. Bush or John Kerry?
Bush    40%
Kerry    53%

In the WaPo/ABC News April poll, that question went 49% to 43% to Bush.

Voters trust Kerry more on the economy, education, federal budget deficit, prescription drugs, health care (by an enormous 58% to 37% margin), taxes, war on terror, and international affairs. The only issue voters trust Bush more on is handling the situation in Iraq, by a 50% to 45% margin (don’t ask me how Bush is winning this issue, but I think it’s doubtful he’ll be running on how things are going in Iraq).

This one’s also pleasurably shocking:

Please tell me whether the following statement applies more to George W. Bush or more to John Kerry: He is honest and trustworthy.
Bush    39%
Kerry    52%

Everybody in the country knows damn well who George Bush is, and 52% think he’s dishonest and untrustworthy. If you’re Karl Rove, how do you turn that around? Run a “We were just kidding about all that crap” campaign?

Unless this poll proves somehow to be an outlier, moderation may no longer be an option for Bush. There are few undecided voters, and traditionally more of them will go with the challenger, anyway. Bush and Rove are going to have to decide soon if they’re gonna do it, but I think their only option is to go absolutely berserk on Kerry. This would probably entail waging a mult-faceted culture war (getting gay marriage on swing state ballots must be a top priority for them), and a lot of the underhanded stuff we typically hear from the Drudges, Limbaughs, Hannitys, and Coulters may start to come to us officially from Bush-Cheney ’04.

Is there a silver-lining at all in this poll for Bush? Unfortunately, there is. It’s this:

Thinking about the next 12 months, would you say you feel optimistic or pessimistic about the way things are going in this country?
Optimistic    62%
Pessimistic    36%

This is the reverse image of other recent polls I’ve seen on right track/wrong track numbers. It may be explained by respondents' general inclination to associate themselves with optimism rather than pessimism (or even by people like me becoming more optimistic because it looks like we might have a new President), but I don’t know. Scares me a little, though.

Besides that, I’ll sleep soundly tonight.

June 21, 2004

Long-Established Lies, Part II

Last week, President Bush said, "This administration never said that the 9/11 attacks were orchestrated between Saddam and al Qaeda."

Well, he may not have said it, but he basically wrote it. Here's the full text of Bush's March 19, 2003 letter to Congress (sent the day before he sent missiles into Iraq):

Dear Mr. Speaker: (Dear Mr. President:)

Consistent with section 3(b) of the Authorization for Use of Military Force Against Iraq Resolution of 2002 (Public Law 107-243), and based on information available to me, including that in the enclosed document, I determine that:

(1) reliance by the United States on further diplomatic and other peaceful means alone will neither (A) adequately protect the national security of the United States against the continuing threat posed by Iraq nor (B) likely lead to enforcement of all relevant United Nations Security Council resolutions regarding Iraq; and

(2) acting pursuant to the Constitution and Public Law 107-243 is consistent with the United States and other countries continuing to take the necessary actions against international terrorists and terrorist organizations, including those nations, organizations, or persons who planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001.

Sincerely,
GEORGE W. BUSH

Also, you can look at almost any Bush speech pushing the Iraq War for other examples of Bush rhetorically linking al Qaeda to the 9/11 attacks, but here's a good example from his infamous "Mission Accomplished" speech given aboard the U.S.S. Abraham Lincoln on May 1, 2003:

The Battle of Iraq is one victory in a war on terror that began on September the 11th, 2001, and still goes on. That terrible morning, 19 evil men — the shock troops of a hateful ideology — gave America and the civilized world a glimpse of their ambitions. They imagined, in the words of one terrorist, that September the 11th would be the "beginning of the end of America." By seeking to turn our cities into killing fields, terrorists and their allies believed that they could destroy this nation's resolve, and force our retreat from the world. They have failed.

In the Battle of Afghanistan, we destroyed the Taliban, many terrorists, and the camps where they trained. We continue to help the Afghan people lay roads, restore hospitals, and educate all of their children. Yet we also have dangerous work to complete. As I speak, a special operations task force, led by the 82nd Airborne, is on the trail of the terrorists, and those who seek to undermine the free government of Afghanistan. America and our coalition will finish what we have begun.

From Pakistan to the Philippines to the Horn of Africa, we are hunting down al-Qaida killers. Nineteen months ago, I pledged that the terrorists would not escape the patient justice of the United States. And as of tonight, nearly one-half of al-Qaida's senior operatives have been captured or killed.

The liberation of Iraq is a crucial advance in the campaign against terror. We have removed an ally of al-Qaida, and cut off a source of terrorist funding. And this much is certain: No terrorist network will gain weapons of mass destruction from the Iraqi regime, because the regime is no more.

2 Thoughts on Billy Jeff Clinton

I'll write more on Clinton later, but for now I'll just share these 2 things that struck me as I watched The Greatest Communicator last night on 60 Minutes:

1.   According to psychologist James Hillman, "the very word character originally meant a marking instrument that cuts indelible lines and leaves traces." In its original Greek uses, character often referred to the flaws in people that made them interesting, which puts its use then in stark opposition to the way it's often used in American politics today, as a synonym for integrity or even flawlessness.

Bill Clinton always rebelled against the idea that candidates had to be, in the Greek sense, characterless. He's the deepest, most complex American character I've ever studied, and one of the things I think sets him apart is that he doesn't buy into this ridiculous idea that politicians must pretend to be spotless ideals – he never boasted about his high "character" and never claimed he would do anything like "restore honor and integrity to the White House." Of course, his detractors would say it's because he couldn't, but who can, really? All politicians play games with the truth, but to me the unforgivable ones are those who don't know it. Clinton knows he's a liar, a sinner, and that leads to one of his great paradoxes: he's an honestly dishonest man. He simply shows us more humanity than other politicians.

2.   When Dan Rather asked him "Why?" with Monica, and Clinton responded, "Because I could," I couldn't help but think of that old joke:

Why do dogs lick their balls?

Because they can.

I wonder if Clinton ever heard that joke, and maybe had been planning for years to use the dog excuse the first time he was asked "Why?" by an American journalist in an in-depth interview.

Joking aside, you may hate the answer (Clinton himself called it the most morally indefensible reason), but that's pretty damn honest.

Kerry's Serious About Raising Minimum Wage

Unfortunately, many of the approximately 7.5 million people who would benefit from a minimum wage increase don't vote, but it's still something that a compassionate society must require. On Friday, John Kerry proposed raising federal minimum wage standards from $5.15 to $7 an hour, a hike well overdue (the last increase was in 1997). If elected, Kerry might not get the full increase, but even if he got an increase to $6.25 it would lift the prospects of several million Americans, particularly working single mothers. It's a key difference between Kerry and Bush, a good one to bring up any time some ill-informed cynic suggests there are none.

June 19, 2004

The Road Less Travelled

I keep on thinking about Paul Johnson's crying son, and the barbarians who killed his dad. Incidents like Johnson's beheading reinforce the absolute necessity of waging an effective global war on terror. That's strikingly clear at first glance of the pictures of the lifeless Johnson (WARNING: the pictures are profoundly disturbing, and you don't want to see them unless you're positively certain that you do. Here's the link). The barbarians put Johnson in an orange jumpsuit, just like the Guantanamo prisoners wear. The Iraq terrorists dressed poor Nick Berg the same way, and the pictures I saw of Berg after his death are virtually identical to the pictures of Johnson. Al Qaeda operatives all over the world appear intent to popularize the image of dead Americans, arms tied behind them, with their heads resting on their orange jumpsuit-clad backs.

Al Qaeda's ambitious plan in Saudi Arabia is clear: sensationally kill several Americans; create widespread panic in the U.S. and internationally; drive the approximately 35,000 Americans (many of them experts necessary to keep Saudi Arabia's oil flowing) out of the country to disrupt the oil supply, causing oil prices to skyrocket; devastate the international economy; and topple the reigning Saudi regime. It's not known how many American workers have already left, but I imagine it's a lot. Now that the leader of the al Qaeda group that murdered Johnson has reportedly been shot to death (it's curious that he was killed so soon after the incident – few doubt al Qaeda has friends inside Saudi's security apparatus), we'll see how well-organized they are. If Americans continue to be taken, they could go a long way toward reaching their goals.

What really troubles me today is that I don't see how our response to this kind of terrorism today is any different or more effective than it would have been before 9/11. Cheney and Bush give some tough talk about America hunting down killers, but we have very limited resources in Saudi Arabia and are mostly at the mercy of the Saudis. Where's the step-by-step approach that harnesses the full range of pressures with which we can bear down on terrorists and their protectors? I'm talking about a real global war on terror that could galvanize the cooperative resources of every civlized nation. Something like what Wes Clark wrote about in the September 2002 issue of The Washington Monthly:

The Kosovo campaign suggests alternatives in waging and winning the struggle against terrorism: greater reliance on diplomacy and law and relatively less on the military alone. Soon after September 11, without surrendering our right of self defense, we should have helped the United Nations create an International Criminal Tribunal on International Terrorism. We could have taken advantage of the outpourings of shock, grief, and sympathy to forge a legal definition of terrorism and obtain the indictment of Osama bin Laden and the Taliban as war criminals charged with crimes against humanity. Had we done so, I believe we would have had greater legitimacy and won stronger support in the Islamic world. We could have used the increased legitimacy to raise pressure on Saudi Arabia and other Arab states to cut off fully the moral, religious, intellectual, and financial support to terrorism. We could have used such legitimacy to strengthen the international coalition against Saddam Hussein. Or to encourage our European allies and others to condemn more strongly the use of terror against Israel and bring peace to that region. Reliance on a compelling U.N. indictment might have given us the edge in legitimacy throughout much of the Islamic world that no amount of "strategic information" and spin control can provide. On a purely practical level, we might have avoided the embarrassing arguments during the encirclement of Kandahar in early December 2001, when the appointed Afghan leader wanted to offer the Taliban leader amnesty, asking what law he had broken, while the United States insisted that none should be granted. We might have avoided the continuing difficulties of maintaining hundreds of prisoners in a legal no-man's land at Guantanamo Bay, which has undercut U.S. legitimacy in the eyes of much of the world.

It's not too late. For this administration it is – they're too ideologically-handicapped, mistrusted and incompetent to reimagine an international war on terror where we reduce more terrorists than we create. But the next administration still has a chance to reverse course. We must.

June 18, 2004

Long-Established Lies

Here's Bush at his cabinet meeting yesterday:

QUESTION: Mr. President, why does the administration continue to insist that Saddam had a relationship with al Qaeda, when even you have denied any connection between Saddam and September 11th, and now the September 11th commission says that there was no collaborative relationship at all?

BUSH: The reason I keep insisting that there was a relationship between Iraq and Saddam and al Qaeda, because there was a relationship between Iraq and al Qaeda.

This administration never said that the 9/11 attacks were orchestrated between Saddam and al Qaeda.

We did say there were numerous contacts between Saddam Hussein and al Qaeda. For example, Iraqi intelligence officers met with bin Laden, the head of al Qaeda, in the Sudan. There's numerous contacts between the two.

Bush also said:

He [Saddam] was a threat because he provided safe haven for a terrorist like Zarqawi who is still killing innocents inside of Iraq.

Why this is so misleading, and morally disgusting:

1. Here's the pertinent passage from the 9/11 Commission's Staff Statement 15:

Bin Laden also explored possible cooperation with Iraq during his time in Sudan, despite his opposition to Hussein's secular regime. Bin Laden had in fact at one time sponsored anti-Saddam Islamists in Iraqi Kurdistan. The Sudanese, to protect their own ties with Iraq, reportedly persuaded Bin Laden to cease this support and arranged for contacts between Iraq and Al Qaeda. A senior Iraqi intelligence officer reportedly made three visits to Sudan, finally meeting Bin Laden in 1994. Bin Laden is said to have requested space to establish training camps, as well as assistance in procuring weapons, but Iraq apparently never responded. There have been reports that contacts between Iraq and Al Qaeda also occurred after Bin Laden returned to Afghanistan, but they do not appear to have resulted in a collaborative relationship. Two senior Bin Laden associates have adamantly denied that any ties existed between Al Qaeda and Iraq. We have no credible evidence that Iraq and Al Qaeda cooperated on attacks against the United States.

Here's the analogy: You stopped by your neighbors' house 10 years ago to make a peace offering because for years your kids had been killing their kids and then they vowed to kill you. At that meeting, they ask you if their kids can play on your yard and you completely blow them off. You have no other real discussions with them over the next 10 years. Do you have a meaningful relationship with your neighbors? Do you have long-established ties to them?

In George Bush's and Dick Cheney's bizarro universe, you do.

Here's a list of pre and post-invasion Bush administration insinuations of a meaningful Iraq/al Qaeda connection. Of course, in every case, they link the two in order to suggest a collaborative relationship, which is exactly what the 9/11 Commission statement rejects.

(Ironically, the Reagan and Bush I administrations have far more well-established ties to Saddam than bin Laden – that's not lefty conspiracy jargon, that's a fact.)

Almost every nation's intelligence agency thought before the war that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction stockpiles, so some of Bush and Cheney's statements on chemical and biological WMD were forgivable (although their statements on the nuclear were not). But there was wholesale skepticism about the Iraq/al Qaeda links before the war, and they flat-out ignored it as they pressed their case. Now, they revive an active campaign to mislead all Americans, to strongly assert supremely dubious conjecture as fact. It's inexcusable, reprehensible, and – it's a stark word, but I think absolutely warranted in this case – evil.

2.   Bush said yesterday: This administration never said that the 9/11 attacks were orchestrated between Saddam and al Qaeda.

Most Americans thought Saddam did have a role in 9/11, perhaps because in nearly every speech Bush made pushing the case for war against Iraq, he used 9/11 as the justification for it. I don't think any Bush administration officials explicitly said in public that Saddam played a role in the orchestration, but they all implied it. Here's a textbook example (Meet the Press, 9/14/03):

CHENEY: With respect to 9/11, of course, we’ve had the story that’s been public out there. The Czechs alleged that Mohamed Atta, the lead attacker, met in Prague with a senior Iraqi intelligence official five months before the attack, but we’ve never been able to develop anymore of that yet either in terms of confirming it or discrediting it. We just don’t know.

Of course, the story had been widely discredited by then, because Mohammed Atta had a paper trail in the United States that suggested he was in the United States during the time of the alleged Prague meeting (which came from one very flimsy source to begin with, and the Czechs had already backed off it before Cheney made his statement). Even if it hadn't been disproven, why would Cheney talk about the unknown on national television? Obviously, it's sleight of hand.

(By the way, Cheney's 9/14 MTP performance is startlingly dishonest throughout – he is a very dangerous person.)

3.   David Corn is very careful with the facts, and he's got good stuff on all this. Here's what he says about the Zarqawi connection:

Defending himself, Bush also said that Hussein “was a threat because he provided safe haven for a terrorist like al-Zarqawi who is still killing innocents inside Iraq.” Neoconservative supporters of the war have claimed that the (supposed) fact that Zarqawi received medical attention in Baghdad before the war indicates that he was in league with Hussein’s regime. But the Zarqawi-in-Baghdad episode remains sketchy. And, as I noted here , Zarqawi has been linked to Ansar al-Islam, a fundamentalist terrorist outfit that claimed it was opposed to Hussein and that (prior to the war) operated out of northern Iraq, in territory not controlled by Hussein’s regime.

And another point: on February 8. 2003, five weeks before launching the invasion of Iraq, Bush said, “Iraq has sent bombmaking and document forgery experts to work with al Qaeda. Iraq has also provided al Qaeda with chemical and biological weapons training.” What was his basis for making these claims? If Bush had been speaking truthfully back then, he could use the evidence for these charges to back up his argument and challenge the commission’s report. Earlier this week, Bush called Zarqawi the “best evidence” of the al Qaeda-Iraq connection. But if he really possesed evidence that Iraq was supplying these forms of assistance to al Qaeda that would be make a slam-dunk case. Yet the 9/11 commission saw no such evidence.

By the way, on March 2, NBC News reported that “long before the war the Bush administration had several chances to wipe out [Zarqawi’s] terrorist operation and perhaps kill Zarqawi himself–but never pulled the trigger.” Three times in 2002 and 2003, according to this report, the Pentagon drew up plans to attack Zarqawi in his camp in northern Iraq. Yet the White House said no. According to NBC News, “Military officials insist their case for attacking Zarqawi’s operation was airtight, but the administration feared destroying the terrorist camp in Iraq could undercut its case for war against Saddam.”

If this report was true, it should be big news. The White House had Zarqawi in its sights. Yet Bush officials believed that if they took him out, they would lose an argument for war. (At his presentation to the UN, Powell tried to use Zarqawi to link al Qaeda to Hussein.) So did politics trump a national security decision? Did the administration allow to roam free a terrorist who would soon become perhaps the biggest threat to American GIs in Iraqi? Is Bush now playing politics with the truth by insisting there was a connection between al Qaeda and Hussein, even though the more objective members of the 9/11 commission–who have had access to the intelligence reporting on this dicey matter–have reviewed the record and found no compelling evidence of a signficant relationship?

June 17, 2004

Overview of the Enemy

Here's the pdf file for the 9/11 Commission's Staff Statement No. 15, "Overview of the Enemy." It has several interesting parts to it above what's generally being reported, and I'll get to those another day. But this statement should make Dick Cheney feel foolish:

We have no credible evidence that Iraq and al Qaeda cooperated on attacks against the United States.

It's mind-boggling why Cheney wants to continue to spread statements that not only counter media and governmental reports, but also people within his own administration. My guess is that Cheney has decided it's his job to play without compromise, and often without facts, to the true believing Iraq War zealots.

JEdwards

Charlie Rose's panel on Monday – with ABC News political director Mark Halperin, New York Times reporter David Halbfinger, and Boston Globe columnist Tom Oliphant – focused on Kerry's VP prospects. The interesting thing is that it became a discussion only about John Edwards, and each guy seemed to agree that if Edwards can't definitively be called the Democrats' consensus pick, he's awfully close to it. Moreover, they agreed that if Kerry doesn't pick Edwards, he better do something very soon to undercut the expectation that he's going to. If he doesn't, the eventual pick is vulnerable to being overshadowed by questions about why Kerry didn't pick Edwards, and you'll have a lot of pissed off Democrats. I'll be one of them.

June 16, 2004

The Campaign for Catholics

Several of November’s battleground states – particularly Pennsylvania, Michigan, Ohio, Iowa, Minnesota, Wisconsin, and Missouri – have very large Catholic populations. It wouldn’t be a bad bet to take the winner of the Catholic vote as the winner of the Presidency. Right now, I’m hopeful that the recent politicizations of Catholicism are working to John Kerry’s advantage.

3 points:

1.   From Monday’s New York Times:

On his recent trip to Rome, President Bush asked a top Vatican official to push American bishops to speak out more about political issues, including same-sex marriage, according to a report in the National Catholic Reporter, an independent newspaper.

In a column posted Friday evening on the paper's Web site, John L. Allen Jr., its correspondent in Rome and the dean of Vatican journalists, wrote that Mr. Bush had made the request in a June 4 meeting with Cardinal Angelo Sodano, the Vatican secretary of state. Citing an unnamed Vatican official, Mr. Allen wrote: "Bush said, 'Not all the American bishops are with me' on the cultural issues. The implication was that he hoped the Vatican would nudge them toward more explicit activism."

Mr. Allen wrote that others in the meeting confirmed that the president had pledged aggressive efforts "on the cultural front, especially the battle against gay marriage, and asked for the Vatican's help in encouraging the U.S. bishops to be more outspoken." Cardinal Sodano did not respond, Mr. Allen reported, citing the same unnamed people.

If Bush really did say “’Not all the American bishops are with me’ on the cultural issues,” then that’s clearly pretty arrogant and slimy. You’d expect him to talk to Cardinal Sodano a little differently than he would a Republican ward boss. What’s more, Bush’s none-too-subtle nudging of the Vatican to encourage all American bishops to “get with him” would necessitate asking American bishops to violate at least the spirit of the law. In their “Political Activity Guidelines for Catholic Organizations” posted on their web site, the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops advises on the United States Internal Revenue Code:

What does section 501(c)(3) of the IRC say about political campaign activity? Section 501(c)(3) of the IRC prohibits organizations that are exempt from federal income tax under its provisions, including Catholic organizations exempt under the USCCB Group Ruling, from participating or intervening in political campaigns on behalf of or in opposition to any candidate for public office. As noted, this prohibition has been interpreted as absolute.

Isn’t Bush essentially asking Sodano and the bishops to intervene in the 2004 political campaign on his behalf? Notice that Bush, according to the National Catholic Reporter quote, doesn’t just say “I think we agree on this cause and I wish you’d be louder speaking out for our cause,” he makes it a personal, partisan issue – “Not all the American bishops are with me.”

Bush has made it abundantly clear, of course, that if the American bishops aren’t with him, they’re against him.

2.   Obviously, some bishops need no such prodding from Bush and are clearly “with” Bush and against Kerry. Months ago, St. Louis Archbishop Raymond Burke warned Kerry not to present himself for Communion in his diocese. Colorado Springs Bishop Michael Sheridan out-extremed that by declaring that any Catholic who dares vote for a pro-choice politician should be disallowed Communion.

If you're wondering what might motivate Burke and Sheridan to yell such divisive pronouncements so loudly, I think Father McBrien is on to something in a Time article accompanying the poll:

"Bishops are picked not because they're independent but because they are reliable company men who follow the policies of the Holy See," says Father Richard McBrien, a professor of theology at Notre Dame. "Burke in St. Louis is angling to become a Cardinal. Sheridan in Colorado Springs would love to be an Archbishop. What better way to get noticed than to deny Communion to politicians and voters who are pro-abortion? They get points in Rome!"

I think Father Andrew Greeley, whom I respect tremendously, has made public the same assessment.

3.    I have a message for additional theological incompetents who'd like to join Burke and Sheridan: bring it on. Your radicalism may indeed help John Kerry capture the White House.

Consider the results to these poll questions, asked only of Catholics, from this week’s Time Magazine:

Do you think the Catholic Church should be trying to influence the way Catholics vote?
No    70%
Yes    26%

Do you think the Catholic Church should be trying to influence the positions Catholic politicians take on issues?
No    69%
Yes    26%

Should Senator John Kerry be denied Communion because he is pro-choice?
No     73%
Yes    21%

Does an American Archbishop’s criticism of Kerry’s position on abortion make you less likely to vote for Kerry?
No difference    83%
Less likely        14%

Now, here’s the key: 33% of Americans don’t know Kerry’s Catholic. I can't find what percentage of Catholics don't know he's Catholic, but I'd guess it's a similar figure. The only Catholics who give a damn what bishops like Sheridan and Burke say are right-wing Catholics, and they're already voting for Bush (based on my experience, these Catholics probably account almost entirely for the smaller percentages in the poll questions above – I'd estimate they represent roughly a quarter of the Catholic vote). Out of the persuadable Catholic voters, who are unlikely to be right-wing, a large percentage probably don't know Kerry's Catholic. Moreover, what these controversies do effectively is advertise the fact that he is Catholic, which presumably makes him more attractive to these Catholic persuadables.

More simply put: Is Kerry a good Catholic? questions = good

I have 2 more points, but I need some sleep, so I'll address them tomorrow.

June 15, 2004

Dick

From the AP:

Vice President Dick Cheney said Monday that Saddam Hussein had "long-established ties" with al Qaeda, an assertion that has been repeatedly challenged by some policy experts and lawmakers.

The vice president offered no details backing up his claim of a link between Saddam and al Qaida.

"He was a patron of terrorism," Cheney said of Hussein during a speech before The James Madison Institute, a conservative think-tank based in Florida. "He had long established ties with al Qaeda."

Cheney continues to proudly and defiantly present empty conjecture as hard intelligence. It's exasperating. I wish I could come up with some new way to condemn it, but the only thing that came to my mind when I read this story is how much Cheney sounds like Rain Man. I'm dead serious. Cheney's Rain Man. Until he grows up, the American press should condescend to him the way Tom Cruise did to Dustin Hoffman.

Tony S.

Jon Bon Jovi raised $1 million for Kerry last night. But this is more important than money:

More than 300 people attended the fund-raiser, including actors Meg Ryan, James Gandolfini and Steve Buscemi, both of HBO's "The Sopranos," and Richard Belzer of NBC's "Law and Order: Special Victims Unit."

You read that right. Tony Soprano is a Kerry supporter. This thing's in the bag.

Poll Watching

Here's George W. Bush on June 12, 1999, kicking off his 2000 presidential run:

I don't run polls to tell me what to think.

This is from an article that contrasts Reagan and Bush in yesterday's New York Times:

The second difference is in the business of politics. Mr. Bush, who is his own de facto campaign manager, loves the combat and gossip. His advisers say he knows his exact standing in recent polls, the names of his chairmen in the battleground states and probably the names of important county chairmen.

Bush is a poll hawk. Any fair-minded person who looks at some of his flip-flops would conclude that polls probably influenced his thinking about 100% on at least a few different issues.

June 14, 2004

The Mother of All Torture Memos (until details about the next one emerge)

The Washington Post has posted the full original text of the Justice Department's 2002 memo to President Bush saying torture of terrorist detainees "may be justified." I've yet to read it, so I'll withold comment until I do.

Billy Jeff

Clinton's book comes out a week from tomorrow, and his inaugural interview will be on 60 Minutes this Sunday, so some of its details should begin to emerge this weekend. According to The New York Times, his book tour will double as a campaign for John Kerry. Awesome:

As former President Bill Clinton prepares for a barrage of publicity and a cross-country tour to promote his memoirs, his political advisers are consulting with the Democratic Party and Senator John Kerry's campaign about ways that Mr. Clinton can lend a political hand in the process.

Mr. Clinton received an advance of more than $10 million to write his memoirs, "My Life," and aides to the former president say his first priority now is to sell as many books as possible.

But they also say that whenever his book-selling obligations allow, Mr. Clinton is eager to pitch in for the party by plugging Mr. Kerry and subtly putting down Republicans at book-selling events, and by speaking at fund-raisers or campaign stops on his tour.

With Michael Moore's new film Farhenheit 9/11 opening nationally June 25, right on Clinton's heels, there are certain to be some disgruntled Republicans around. It's gonna be a fun Summer.

More Republicans Suggest Bush Is Weak on Defense

The Los Angeles Times rightly put this story, Retired Officials Say Bush Must Go, on its front page yesterday morning:

A group of 26 former senior diplomats and military officials, several appointed to key positions by Republican Presidents Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush, plans to issue a joint statement this week arguing that President George W. Bush has damaged America's national security and should be defeated in November.

The group, which calls itself Diplomats and Military Commanders for Change, will explicitly condemn Bush's foreign policy, according to several of those who signed the document.

"It is clear that the statement calls for the defeat of the administration," said William C. Harrop, the ambassador to Israel under President Bush's father and one of the group's principal organizers.

Those signing the document, which will be released in Washington on Wednesday, include 20 former U.S. ambassadors, appointed by presidents of both parties, to countries including Israel, the former Soviet Union and Saudi Arabia.

Others are senior State Department officials from the Carter, Reagan and Clinton administrations and former military leaders, including retired Marine Gen. Joseph P. Hoar, the former commander of U.S. forces in the Middle East under President Bush's father. Hoar is a prominent critic of the war in Iraq.

These are some pretty serious people, and the fact that so many Republicans signed up for something so critical of an incumbent President is extraordinary. In fact, I wonder if it has any precedent. Perhaps more than anything else, it illustrates how a completely neocon-driven foreign policy can isolate conservative foreign policy thinkers.

I didn't see this in the other major papers today, but when they issue their official statement it should be considered a very big deal.

Vice President Edwards

Since the end of the primaries, I haven't seen a poll that didn't have John Edwards as far and away the preferred VP choice for Democrats. Now, a number of senators have gone firmly on record encouraging Kerry to put Edwards on the ticket. In fact, From the Senate, a Chorus Rises in Support of Edwards, from The New York Times, has an amazing number of on-the-record sources, which tells me that Kerry must be under considerable private pressure to choose Edwards. One of the reasons Kerry's senate colleagues (and Democratic candidates for the senate) are so intense about pushing Edwards is because they think he would help in some of the important Southern senate races. They're right. To me, these quotes seem to share an urgency often motivated by self-survival:

Louisiana Senator John Breaux (who's retiring, but has endorsed Rep. Chris John to be his successor): "Edwards is from the South and speaks Southern, and I think would be helpful to the candidates in that regard. I think he can campaign well in the South, and I think the candidates would be proud to stand with him when he comes down there."

Louisiana Democratic Senate Candidate Chris John: "It certainly would be helpful in Louisiana, for the mere fact that it's a state where we're looking for some excitement. Edwards would bring some excitement."

North Carolina Democratic Senate Candidate Erskine Bowles: "I've had lots of people who are close to Kerry ask me, and I've always been very candid: he'd be nuts not to pick him."

North Dakota Senator Kent Conrad: "We invited him to North Dakota for our state convention in April and he got the most positive response of anybody I've seen since Bobby Kennedy. He's a terrific speaker, but he's also somebody that people like. You can't overstate the importance of that in politics."

North Dakota Senator Byron Dorgan: "His appeal goes beyond the South. He's Southern, but he's also centrist, he's charismatic and I think he'd add a lot of spark to this ticket."

Perhaps most revealing is this little passage, which appears to have been reserved for an Edwards' detractor. Some detractor:

With Mr. Kerry making clear his desire for discretion, even those who favor Mr. Edwards hastened to say the decision was Mr. Kerry's alone to make, and in any case the Democratic caucus is hardly unanimous in promoting Mr. Edwards.

"We've worked with him, we know him, he's been part of our caucus, he's got the skills that translate on the campaign trail and I think he plays well in a lot of our states, but I'm not going to endorse anybody," said Senator Patty Murray of Washington, who raised $200,000 with Mr. Edwards's help in April.

If Kerry doesn't choose Edwards, it's clear that at the very least he's gonna have to spend a lot of time on the phone explaining why not.

Bush's Tax Increases

Because our taxpayer dollars subsidize it, Iraqis currently pay only 5 cents per gallon for gas. In Los Angeles, we're currently paying about $2.45 per gallon and Americans nationally are paying about $2.05 per gallon.

I have no problem with us subsidizing what Iraqis pay for gas. We need to help them rebuild their nation. What I do resent, however (especially when I read the meter as I pump gas into my tank), is the President's failure to level with us on what the costs of war might be, and his ardently pushing trillions of dollars in tax breaks for millionaires and billionaires as he pushed war. In the end, the money for the Iraq War and for the trillion dollar tax cuts is inevitably gonna come largely from cuts in post-baby boomer social security benefits. That is, unless we can kick this administration out in November and stop the bleeding.

Darth Nader

Ralph Nader has only recently come to national recognition as the poster child of egomania triumping over principles. But he's been working at it for quite awhile. Check this out from "Boss Nader," in National Journal's 6/5/04 print edition (sorry, subscription required):

Amid a dispute with the staff of one of his flagship publications in 1984 over its editorial content and a bid by staff members to form a union, Nader responded with the same kind of tactics that he has elsewhere condemned: He fired the staff, changed the locks at the office, unsuccessfully tried to have one employee arrested, and hired permanent replacements. When the fired workers appealed the action to federal authorities, Nader filed a countersuit. Applying a legal tactic that employers commonly use to resist union-organizing efforts, Nader claimed that the fired workers were trying to appropriate his business. Nader spurned efforts by other progressives to mediate the fight, and he refused an offer to settle the litigation by simply signing a declaration that his workers thenceforth would have the right to organize.

"I was shocked by how Ralph acted," said John Cavanagh, director of the Institute for Policy Studies, who tried to mediate the dispute. "He seemed unable to see how this conflicted with his ideals."

The rest of the article is pretty ugly for Nader, too.

Manchurian Republican Women

The movie I'm most excited to see this Summer is Jonathan Demme's remake of the 1962 classic The Manchurian Candidate. You can check out the trailer here.

Great director (Demme, who did Silence of the Lambs and some lesser known greats like Melvin and Howard). Great cast (Denzel Washington, Meryl Streep, Liev Schreiber, Jon Voight, Jeffrey Wright).

If you've seen the original, you know how chilling Angela Lansbury's performance is. Meryl Streep reprises that role in the remake, and according to Variety (the 5/31-6/6 weekly issue), she's got some role models that should allow her to outchill Lansbury and frighten the bejesus out of all of us:

... [Streep] revealed that watching tapes of Karen Hughes and Peggy Noonan was her research for the role of the politically diabolical mother in "The Manchurian Candidate" remake.

June 13, 2004

Why McCain's a No Go, Why the Leak

The Washington Post gives some specifics that explain why McCain isn't interested in even being considered as Kerry's VP. "Informed sources" say it's generally because "...McCain believes such a bipartisan ticket would not work and could weaken the presidency..."
The two men simply disagree on too much:

McCain has said he supports Bush and has outlined areas where he and Kerry disagree. In yesterday's Washington Post, McCain noted some of those differences to columnist David Ignatius, including a fundamental difference on how to deal with North Korea and differences over the military's "don't ask, don't tell" policy with regard to gays.

McCain, who is outspoken on all subjects, is concerned that policy differences, if openly discussed in office, would make his role untenable if he were to become vice president under Kerry, leading to a potential conflict that would harm the institution of the presidency.

McCain and Kerry also disagree on abortion -- McCain opposes abortion; Kerry supports abortion rights -- and that issue would have the potential to roil a crucial part of the Democratic base. Despite their friendship, the senators disagree more than they agree on issues, according to those who know them.

I think McCain's right, it wouldn't work, and he does Kerry a big favor by rejecting consideration. Effective administrations simply can't have that much disunity at the top, and McCain's the last guy who's gonna hold his tongue when he disagrees with something. Plus, McCain's already made strong statements supportive of Bush that would embarrass the ticket and erase some of its initial luster. These are two primary reasons why I think John Edwards is a better choice than McCain.

I wondered yesterday if the leak may have actually been authorized by the Kerry campaign braintrust, and these WaPo paragraphs suggests that may have been the case:

It could be advantageous for Kerry to make known his interest, aware that McCain would turn it down, strategists say. Hailing from one of the most liberal states in the nation, Kerry has spent the general-election campaign trying to position himself as a centrist who is strong on national defense and a hawk on deficits, two positions the Bush campaign has repeatedly challenged. Kerry frequently mentions McCain in his stump speech, as a way of putting a bipartisan stamp on his work, and has included images of the two men together in his television ads.

It is unclear how seriously Kerry has considered a unity ticket. Aides described Kerry as intrigued but not committed to the idea, even if McCain were seriously interested, which he has made clear he is not.

I'm not convinced the leak helps Kerry any – people will probably register the rejection more than any thought behind an offer.

Incidentally, if Republicans try to work some p.r. advantage into the McCain rejection, it will be important to remind them that McCain has said publically that he rejected consideration as Bush's VP in 2000. Like Kerry's, it was a personal, informal gauge of interest, and came directly from Bush himself.

From the H.I.B. Network (Hypocrisy in Broadcasting)

Rush Limbaugh looks determined to remain a pace ahead of J'Lo on divorces. He's rewinding the aisle walk for a third time. If it weren't for his public hypocrisy, I wouldn't mention it. Atrios has a greatest hits of some of Rush's previous statements criticizing divorce (implicitly or explicitly). Here's one example:

July 16, 1996:

[from the childless Limbaugh]
Marriage is simply the way humanity has discovered that it is the best way to build a building block of an orderly society and sustain it. That's all it is. It is also the means by which you produce legitimate offspring. And I--and I've--whatever else Barney and his mate do, they cannot do that. And that's the soul purpose--now look, we're devaluing marriage--a lot of divorce. Got to fix that. There is way, way too much illegitimacy in this country, and it's leading to the crime rate. This business of the gay marriage is nothing more than a money grab, in my opinion, so people can get on the welfare rolls or the benefit rolls, in state offices and other--and other places.

I--I really do not even think marriage is a right. Marriage is a responsibility. It's not a gift that somebody says, Hey, now it's time for you to get married. It's our bestowal to you.' It's--it's a--it's a commitment that you make and it is a responsibility that you accept. And it's--to--to be--to be tossed around in this manner is to devalue it, which is to devalue the fundamental building block of our society. And I think that's what's wrong with this whole process of same-sex marriage. It just simply denies the definition of what the institution is.

That's a childless, thrice-divorced, former welfare-recipient (as Al Franken has documented) delivering that diatribe. How in the world can millions of listeners fail to identify him as a complete fraud?

June 12, 2004

McCain Rejected VP Consideration

I kind of expected this headline, but it's still unwelcome. It doesn't make Kerry look very good, and makes his eventual choice appear to be a second choice. From the Associated Press:

Republican Sen. John McCain has personally rejected John Kerry's overtures to join the Democratic presidential ticket and forge a bipartisan alliance against President Bush, The Associated Press has learned.

Kerry has asked McCain as recently as late last month to consider becoming his running mate, but the Arizona senator said he's not interested, said a Democratic official who spoke on condition of anonymity because Kerry has insisted that his deliberations be kept private.

The AP uses this language in its lede: "...McCain has personally rejected John Kerry's overtures to join the Democratic Presidential ticket...". So now there's a bunch of "McCain Rejects Kerry VP Offer" headlines instead of "McCain Opts Out of Kerry VP Consideration." The article seemingly contradicts those headlines (and the AP its own lede) when it emphasizes just a few paragraphs later that Kerry never actually offered McCain the nomination:

Both officials said Kerry stopped short of offering McCain the job, sparing himself an outright rejection that would make his eventual running mate look like a second choice.

"Senator McCain categorically states that he has not been offered the vice presidency by any one," said McCain's chief of staff, Mark Salter, who would not confirm the officials' account.

In their article, headlined "McCain Is Said to Tell Kerry He Won't Join" (odd wording – I won't be surprised if it's changed by the time you read this), The New York Times includes a confusion-clarifying quote from "one person who has discussed the issue with both [Kerry and McCain]":

"It was always artfully phrased, but he asked him on several occasions to serve as his running mate," the individual said. "He'd say, `I don't want to formally ask because I don't want to be formally rejected, but having said that, would you do it?' or `I need you to do it,' or `I want you to do it.' "

"It was always phrased in such a way as to give both men plausible deniability," the individual added.

He much you wanna bet that Republicans try to fit this "artful phrasing" into their flip-flopper routine?

Please, please John Kerry, pick John Edwards next month and all will be made right again.

June 11, 2004

"The Genius"

Ray Charles, a great American, died yesterday. He brought soul music to the secular world, but now he's bringing it back to God.

Reagan

Three quick things:

1.   Bravo to ABC's Nightline, which actually went to the journalistic trouble Wednesday night of taking an objective look at Reagan's Presidency, covering the good and the bad.

2.   I'm really late on this, because just about every liberal blogger in the world has mentioned it, but I've heard a few different talking heads say something like, "Reagan left office with the highest approval numbers in the history of modern polling." That's complete fiction. Billy Jeff Clinton left office with an approval rating of 65% in the Gallup poll, while Reagan was at 63%. Atrios goes into more detail, and if you take the average of the last several polls, Clinton expands his lead. Also, while Reagan's final approval numbers were high, when it came to specific poll questions (according to Nightline), his only positive numbers were on foreign policy and defense.

3.   Andrew Sullivan posted two jaw-dropping transcripts of White House press briefings in 1982 and 1984 (Larry Speakes was Reagan's Spokesman):

Q: Larry, does the President have any reaction to the announcement from the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta, that AIDS is now an epidemic and have over 600 cases?
MR. SPEAKES: What's AIDS?
Q: Over a third of them have died. It's known as "gay plague." (Laughter.) No, it is. I mean it's a pretty serious thing that one in every three people that get this have died. And I wondered if the President is aware of it?
MR. SPEAKES: I don't have it. Do you? (Laughter.)
Q: No, I don't.
MR. SPEAKES: You didn't answer my question.
Q: Well, I just wondered, does the President ...
MR. SPEAKES: How do you know? (Laughter.)
Q: In other words, the White House looks on this as a great joke?
MR. SPEAKES: No, I don't know anything about it, Lester.
Q: Does the President, does anyone in the White House know about this epidemic, Larry?
MR. SPEAKES: I don't think so. I don't think there's been any ...
Q: Nobody knows?
MR. SPEAKES: There has been no personal experience here, Lester.
Q: No, I mean, I thought you were keeping ...
MR. SPEAKES: I checked thoroughly with Dr. Ruge this morning and he's had no - (laughter) - no patients suffering from AIDS or whatever it is.
Q: The President doesn't have gay plague, is that what you're saying or what?
MR. SPEAKES: No, I didn't say that.
Q: Didn't say that?
MR. SPEAKES: I thought I heard you on the State Department over there. Why didn't you stay there? (Laughter.)
Q: Because I love you Larry, that's why (Laughter.)
MR. SPEAKES: Oh I see. Just don't put it in those terms, Lester. (Laughter.)
Q: Oh, I retract that.
MR. SPEAKES: I hope so.
Q: It's too late.

With the death toll rising, Speakes remained ignorant and insensitive. Here's a 1984 briefing:

Q: An estimated 300,000 people have been exposed to AIDS, which can be transmitted through saliva. Will th