November
30,
2004
FCC
Indecency
I keep on hearing
people
refer to that PG-13
Desperate
Housewives/
Monday Night
Football skit from a couple weeks ago as "pornography." I'd like
to send those people some actual pornography and ask, "If that's
pornography, then what the hell is this?"
2 other quick thoughts:
1. Predictably, FCC Chairman Michael Powell
came out strong against such "indecency" being
permitted over the "public airwaves," much stronger than he ever came
out against Republican-owned Sinclair Broadcasting airing a 90 minute
anti-Kerry ad in several swing states the weekend before the election.
Powell and the FCC seriously identify Nicollette Sheridan's bare back
as posing a far greater threat to the public trust than corporations
using unregulated ads for purely partisan purposes – the FCC's become a
complete joke, and with the Republican religious right ruling elite
calling the shots, literally, things are only going to get worse. The
FCC is now little more than a moral ratings board and it should
probably be disbanded.
2. Despite the efforts of some (like Indianapolis Colts head coach Tony
Dungy), I'm not sure that the fact that Tyrell Owens is black and
Nicollette Sheridan is white fueled the controversy much; the moral
police are so vigilant and loud right now that the exact same skit with
Tom Brady and Sheridan may well have been attacked with similar force.
However, there's absolutely no doubt we've seen pitifully little
progress over the past few decades when it comes to love/sex scenes
between blacks and whites (I've seen several thousand movies in my
life, and I can nearly count the number of interracial love/sex scenes
I've seen on one hand). So, the more the better, even if they come in
stupid little ads like this.
Ukraine
If you're not so well
versed in the history, like me, and looking for some better
understanding of what's going on in the Ukraine right now, DHinMI has a
great post up on
Kos,
Ukraine 101.
I've found several media reports on what's going on in the Ukraine
inadequate, so I really appreciated it.
Today on
Inside Politics,
Judy Woodruff reported it something like this: "It appears that
Yanukovych won the election, but Yushchenko's supporters have pointed
to voting irregularities..." It's the all-too-common irritating example
of balance wrongly trumping objectivity, in this case ludicrously so.
No serious person believes Yanukovych actually got more legitimate
votes, so why not just say that?
November
29,
2004
Iraq
Philip Gourevitch, in an
exceptionally well-written piece on Fallujah and
the Iraq outlook in the "Talk of the Town" section of this week's
New Yorker, doesn't have much hope
for January elections:
Against this violent
backdrop,
it seems improbable that the entire country will be sufficiently
pacified, much less organized, to take part in a January election. With
America’s allies steadily ducking out of the Iraq coalition, and
international aid groups also in rapid retreat, the United Nations has
yet to muster the orchestrators and observers whose presence is
considered critical to conducting a credibly free and fair vote. No
precise date has yet been set for the election, which appears destined
to break down along sectarian and tribal lines—creating a political
domination by the Shiite majority, with no great incentive for
participation by the Sunni minority, whose leaders are threatening to
boycott the ballot. The long-persecuted Kurds are also chary. In the
meantime, Allawi imposed a nationwide state of emergency.
Gourevitch also pointedly sums up current Bush administration Iraq
policy:
Instead of a Cabinet, Bush
now
has a chorus, and, in lieu of a policy, he has an alibi: Iraq is a
sovereign state again, and America is there only to support the interim
President, Iyad Allawi.
Jay
Greenberg
I saw a wild 60 Minutes
report last night on this Juilliard student named Jay Greenberg.
He's written 5 full-length symphonies (one in just a few hours) and
he's only 12 years-old. As a two year-old, he drew a picture of a cello
(although neither of his parents had a clue where he'd even seen one
before) and immediately started playing the first one he was shown. One
of his teachers says, "We are talking about a prodigy of the level of
the greatest prodigies in history when it comes to composition – I am
talking about the likes of Mozart, and Mendelssohn, and Saint-Sans."
As I was watching, I had 3 thoughts:
1. I'd really like to hear this kid's music.
2. I wonder what explains such early creative genius... God?
Reincarnation?
3. Why am I such a loser?
November
22,
2004
GOP
Government
Just calling them
Republicans doesn't work any more. Nation-wide, one party hasn't
seen this kind of dominance in all three branches of government since
the 1920s. They need a stronger name. "Republican ruling elite" is my
choice ("Republican entrenched power elite" is my second choice – a bit
too wordy, but maybe more descriptive).
One of the only things we Democrats have going for us right now is our
own innocence; we're simply powerless over their indefensible
decisions. At
every turn, we need to remind people that the Republican ruling elite
has, by historical standards, a highly unusual stranglehold on our
government.
Here's what the Republican ruling elite did for the American people
this week:
1.
Rejected the 9/11 Commission's reform proposals.
Today, the Republican ruling elite is culpable for choosing to maintain
the same basic intelligence system that allowed both 9/11 and the Iraq
War as we know it.
2.
Softened ethical standards for House leaders so
that Tom DeLay can be indicted for anything short of treason and murder
and still run the government.
3.
Passed a bill that enabled powerful Republican
committee chairmen to look at any American's tax return at any time for
any reason. No kidding.
4.
Raised the debt ceiling by 800 billion dollars, in
a party line vote.
5.
Bought the President a yacht, debt be damned.
Again, no kidding.
November
19,
2004
Huh?
From The Los Angeles Times:
Secretary of State Colin L.
Powell's statement that Iran is actively studying how to outfit a
missile with a nuclear bomb caused surprise and confusion in Washington
on Thursday, and members of Congress demanded that he provide more
details.
Powell's remarks Wednesday —
apparently unscripted and based on classified information — appeared to
catch the Bush administration and its European allies off-guard. The
CIA refused to comment, and the White House and State Department
declined to offer details. Some sources raised questions about the
credibility of the intelligence.
and...
One source, however, described the intelligence mentioned by Powell as
"weak."
Three questions:
1. Did Colin Powell get body-snatched sometime before his infamous 2003
speech before the U.N.?
2. If you make classified information public, is it more or less
excusable if that classified information is crappy?
3. After the Iraq debacle, where do we find credible information about
Iran?
November 18,
2004
SCLM
A friend of mine
recently
asked me to comment on some aspects of "the Liberal Media," in
part because his friend had sent him
this article from Michael Barone. The following
was my rather lengthy response:
Any time I hear that old, tired, and wrong "Liberal Media" nonsense, I
have to start with three points:
1. The media is not a monolith. Everything you see, hear, and read
comes from "the media." With that in mind, it's stupid to make
generalizations suggesting a monolithic media ideology.
2. If you do want to generalize about a specific kind of prevalent
media, an overwhelming majority of what most people in this country
see, hear, and read every day comes from corporate media sources, which
are primarily driven not by ideological forces, but by market forces.
The bottom line stands alone as the most pervasive and influential
factor in production choices that directly and indirectly dictate
content (take it from someone who's worked for the world's biggest
media company for over a decade now).
In the corporate news business, it's not about some conservative
executive directing some would-be intrepid liberal producer on what and
what not to do – I don't hear about that happening much
– it's much broader than that. The underlying push towards conservative
reporting for the market-driven corporate media hasn't changed much
since Edward R. Murrow's time. When Murrow set out to explore
difficult, hard-hitting, and sometimes very sad American stories on CBS
over half a century ago, he found that the market didn't welcome them
unless they had some entertainment hook that attracted more viewers and
therefore pleased current advertisers and attracted new ones. Objective
reporting that penetrates institutional social, economic, and political
injustice disturbs people; it's extremely hard to turn such reporting
into enticing entertainment. Thus, a lot of potentially unsettling
reporting has always been, and will always be, underexposed in
market-driven media. This helps maintain the status quo and benefits
those in power. It's a fundamentally conservative system.
3. Some ambitious, objective reporting comes from reporters within the
corporate news media, despite a system that discourages it.
Now, some points about Barone and his
silly opinion piece:
1. Barone is the main author of the biannual Almanac of American
Politics, which is one of the most informative and influential
political texts for political news reporters (a lot of liberal "Old
Media" types, especially). I personally find it an invaluable resource.
Yet I also heard Barone on The Rush Limbaugh Show recently
complimenting Rush as, literally, one of the greatest political voices
in modern American history. Needless to say, Barone is a right-winger,
which is much clearer in this article than it is in his Almanac of
American Politics analyses. However, I won't make the same assumption
that Barone makes in this article – a good reporter's political
predispositions don't have to dictate an ideological bent in his
reporting, and although Barone's a right-winger I think it's unfair to
dismiss his reporting in the Almanac as right-wing.
One of the reasons why conservatives have been so successful spreading
this fallacy of a "Liberal Media" is because several polls of big media
journalists have shown most of them to be socially liberal (although
economically conservative) and Democratic. Yet there are a couple
different studies I've read that have meticuously deconstructed recent
national political coverage itself – much of it coming from supposedly
"liberal" political reporters – to find that it greatly favors
Republicans over Democrats.
2. Barone frames "Old Media" (the networks, The New York Times, and "
often but not always" The
Washington Post – which means as often as it suits Barone's argument, I
guess) in opposition to "New Media" (cable news channels, talk radio,
blogs). He argues that the campaign of 2004 was much different from
1980 because "
The left liberalism
that is the political faith of practically all the personnel of Old
Media is now being challenged by the various political faiths of New
Media. Old Media no longer controls the agenda."
That 1980 election was won in a landslide by an extremely conservative
candidate. The 2004 election was won with a much smaller margin by an
even more extreme conservative as the candidate. That "
left liberalism Old Media"
certainly did a piss poor job of controlling the agenda in 1980, with
their jaded left-wing over-emphasis on Middle Eastern hostages, higher
gas prices, and inflation, no?
Moreover, Barone's frame completely ignores the partisan progressive
voices that are part of the New Media. If the Old Media were really so
monolithically, partisanly liberal, why are so many partisan
progressive bloggers trashing its reporting all the time? Just about
the only subject I can think of that the most liberal and most
conservative bloggers absolutely agree upon is that
The New York Times sucks. How can a
partisan progressive site like
Media Matters continue to eviscerate right-wing
crap from the allegedly partisan progressive Old Media on various
subjects multiple times daily? How can the top progressive blogs get
more combined visitors than the top conservative blogs but not have
nearly the impact on that stubborn liberal Old Media? How does a
right-winger like Matt Drudge find so many of his trial balloons
harnessed by that adamantly left-wing Old Media?
3. Barone asserts the October 25 NY Times story about missing weapons
was planted to hurt the Bush campaign, and that it "
turned out to be full of holes." He
doesn't mention what those holes were, probably because there weren't
any. The real irony, though, is that he completely overlooks the
consistently false front page reporting on WMD in Iraq the NY Times did
in the build-up to the Iraq War, which of course helped the Bush
administration's p.r. campaign immeasurably. The NY Times eventual mea
culpa garnered about 1% of the combined attention that the phony CBS
memos story got in the Old Media. Which story was more newsworthy? If
the Old Media were really such diehard liberal Kerry lovers, how could
the CBS scandal, which was of such little consequence to our country
relative to the NY Times WMD scandal, have gotten at least 100 times
the attention?
4. Finally, Barone claims the Old Media buried the Swift Boat Veterans
for Truth claims for months. Actually, the Abu Ghraib scandal blew the
SBVT off the front pages in May, but the sorry liars regrouped and
picked their marketing campaign back up in August. Propaganda on Fox
News, Drudge, Limbaugh, and right-wing bloggers forced the Old Media
pros to finally publish exhaustive pieces debunking the SBVT claims
(what held those up?) as contradictory testimony from the SBVT
themselves, eyewitnesses and naval records verified them to be lies.
Barone cites a Washington Post article as the rare "careful
examination" that showed the SBVT charges "had some substance" (I guess
total substance sets the bar too high for Barone), but all the WaPo
stories I'm aware of discredited the SBVT.
November
16,
2004
Mini-Me
Governance
Last week, Bush sought
to
replace John Ashcroft – who was reportedly considered a little
bit of a loose cannon by Bush's inner circle – with longtime Bush
loyalist and "yes!" enthusiast Alberto Gonzales. Today, he'll nominate
longtime Bush loyalist and "yes!" enthusiast Condoleezza Rice to
replace Colin Powell, by all accounts a very lonely moderate voice
within the administration. Bush also inserted Ken Mehlman yesterday –
longtime Bush loyalist, "yes!" enthusiast, former Karl Rove deputy, and
Bush-Cheney '04 chairman – as RNC chairman. Meanwhile, new CIA director
Porter Goss
has been busy homogenizing ideological viewpoints
at the CIA, an agency which, until Dick Cheney
started throwing his weight around beginning
9/12/01, took pride in its apolitical traditions.
It's common for presidents to have loyalists in their cabinets – and
especially in positions like chief of staff – but Bush is now clearly
hellbent on complete crony consolidation. For all his exalted talk of
freedom and democracy, you won't recognize their underpinnings –
starting with spirited dissent and lively debate – much in his
administration. He doesn't value such things.
Incompetence
Rewarded: The
Condoleezza Rice Story
I've observed Condoleezza Rice
closely for a few years now, and her only talent that I can
detect is the rare ability to
sound
good while remaining faithful to completely incoherent,
non-sensical daily talking points under heavy questioning. She's been
an absolute disaster as National Security Adviser, one of the most
incompetent government officials in modern American history. Today's
Washington Post barely scratches the
surface in recapping her failures:
Throughout the first term,
policies toward such critical issues as dealing with North Korean and
Iranian nuclear programs have remained mired in disagreement, and
officials said Rice never seemed to drive the process to a resolution.
Officials on both sides of the administration's debate over North Korea
faulted Rice for failing to fashion a coherent approach to dismantling
North Korea's nuclear program.
The Sept. 11 commission
report was particularly tough on Rice, portraying her as failing to act
on repeated warnings in the first part of 2001 about the likelihood of
a major terrorist attack on the United States.
For example, it noted that on
Jan. 25, 2001, a few days after Bush took office, Richard A.
Clarke, who had been held over from the previous administration as the
counterterrorism coordinator for the NSC, wrote to Rice stating that
"We urgently need . . . a Principals level review on the al Qaeda
network." The report noted that Rice did not respond directly to
Clarke's memo, and no such meeting of principals, or top officials, was
held on terrorism until Sept. 4, 2001, although they met frequently on
other issues, such as the Middle East peace process, Russia and the
Persian Gulf.
The report also detailed
several more specific warnings from Clarke to Rice in the spring and
summer of 2001:
• On March 23, he told Rice
that he thought terrorists might attack the White House with a truck
bomb and also that "he thought there were terrorist cells within the
United States, including al Qaeda."
• On May 29, Clarke wrote to
Rice and her deputy, Stephen J. Hadley, about possible assaults by a
Palestinian associate of al Qaeda, adding that, "When these attacks
occur, as they likely will, we will wonder what more we could have done
to stop them."
• On June 25, Clarke informed
Rice and Hadley that "six separate intelligence reports showed al Qaeda
personnel warning of a pending attack," the report said.
• Three days later, he added
that the pattern of al Qaeda activity indicating preparations for an
attack "had reached a crescendo."
• On June 30, a briefing was
given to top officials titled, "Bin Ladin Planning High-Profile
Attacks."
The spike in reported al
Qaeda
activity ended in July, but senior intelligence analysts continued to
be deeply concerned, the report noted, causing them to include in the
Aug. 6 "President's Daily Brief" an article titled "Bin Ladin
Determined to Strike in US."
For all that (and a lot more, including the roles she played in
knowingly spreading false stories about Iraq's nuclear capabilities and
in the Abu Ghraib debacle), she gets a nice raise.
Sad
War sucks. The video
footage behind
this story is really sad – it shows a U.S. soldier
who's obviously pretty scared and panicked and perhaps delusional,
summarily executing a wounded, unarmed man.
He had just been shot in the face the day before. He'll likely be
charged with homicide. A tragic week for him, almost as tragic as the
guy he killed, who had been left wounded for 24 hours before the end.
FUBAR.
November
15,
2004
Democratic
Morality
Andrei Cherny puts it perfectly in this week's
New Republic (subscription):
This month's election results
should serve as a powerful reminder to Democrats of the need to set
forth their vision in starkly moral terms, to address Americans'
longing for a sense of spirituality and community. Most people are not
religious right-wingers, but most people are religious. Democrats need
to do a better job of listening and speaking to them in explicitly
moral and spiritual terms.
The first step for Democrats
in
the months and years to come is to stop thinking of "values" as a
discrete topic--with an encomium to the concept shoehorned into a
speech or a set of policies listed alongside health care and education
on a candidate's homepage. Instead, just as Bush sold his policies on
Iraq and tax cuts, as well as abortion, through the prism of values,
Democrats need to see values as an overarching umbrella for their
agenda.
Democrats should hold
Americans
to an ethic of personal responsibility; a demand for moral decency that
stretches from crooked CEOs to common criminals. Think of the way most
Democrats discussed the Enron scandal: with a combination of a lawyerly
denunciation of financial impropriety and a social worker's concern for
the livelihoods of the harmed workers. Then consider how Roosevelt
spoke of an earlier round of corporate misconduct: "[T]here must be an
end to a conduct in banking and in business which too often has given
to a sacred trust the likeness of callous and selfish wrongdoing. Small
wonder that confidence languishes, for it thrives only on honesty, on
honor, on the sacredness of obligations, on faithful protection, on
unselfish performance; without them it cannot live." It is the thunder
of a prophet. In 2004, Democrats should have decried the values of
WorldCom with the same passion that some Republicans criticized the
values embodied by "Will & Grace."
I heard someone else say today, "You can't mistake separation of church
and society with separation of church and state." FDR understood this,
of course, and modern Democrats have to as well if we intend to win any
more national elections. The good news is that many Democrats seem to
be focused on building a new progressive moral-political vocabulary
right now – we face possible extinction if we don't, which is always a
great motivator.
Hope
in
Montana
Not all was lost a couple of
horrible Tuesdays ago. Democrats did retake a few state
legislatures and made gains in other key local races around the
country. Perhaps the most notable was in Montana, where Democrat Brian
Schweitzer was elected Governor, and Dems took 3 of 4 other statewide
offices as well as control of the state legislature. According to David
Sirota in
The Washington
Monthly, here's how Schweitzer did it:
But in addition to a winning
personality and strong populist convictions, Schweitzer had an
innovative, three-part political strategy, one that perfectly fit the
current conditions in Montana, but which Democrats across the country
could learn from. First, Schweitzer took advantage of public
dissatisfaction with two decades of insular one-party rule in the state
capital, casting himself as an outsider and a reformer. Second, he
rallied small business, usually a solidly GOP constituency, to his side
by opposing the deals Republicans had cut in Washington and Helena to
favor large or out-of-state corporations over local entrepreneurs.
Third, and most interesting of all, Schweitzer figured out how to win
over one of the most important, reliably Republican, and symbolically
significant groups of voters: hunters and fishermen.
Read the
whole thing, and file for use in 2006 and 2008.
November
12,
2004
Another
Reason Gonzales is a Poor
Choice
A lot has been written
about Alberto Gonzales' torture memos. But in addition to looking at
those,
Phil
Carter brings up memos written during another phase of Gonzales'
career that senate Democrats should scrutinize during confirmation
hearings:
The state of Texas executed
150
men and two women during Bush's six-year tenure as governor—a rate
unmatched by any other state in modern U.S. history. As governor, Bush
had statutory power to delay executions and the political power to
influence the state Board of Pardons and Paroles to commute them
entirely, where there was a procedural error, cause for mercy, or a
bona fide claim of innocence. Then-Gov. Bush assigned Gonzales a
critical role in the clemency process—asking him to provide a legal
memo on the morning of each execution day outlining the key facts and
issues of the case at hand. According to Alan Berlow, who obtained
Gonzales' memoranda after a protracted legal fight with the state of
Texas and wrote about them in
the July/August 2003 issue of the Atlantic Monthly , Gonzales' legal
skills fell far short of the mark that one might expect for this
serious task:
A close
examination of the Gonzales memoranda suggests that Governor Bush
frequently approved executions based on only the most cursory briefings
on the issues in dispute. In fact, in these documents Gonzales
repeatedly failed to apprise the governor of crucial issues in the
cases at hand: ineffective counsel, conflict of interest, mitigating
evidence, even actual evidence of innocence.
On the basis of these memos,
Gov. Bush allowed every single execution—save one—to go forward in his
state. It's not clear whether Bush directed Gonzales to provide such
superficial and conclusory legal research, or whether Gonzales did so
of his own accord. Regardless, the point remains that the White House's
new nominee to head the Justice Department turned in work that would
have barely earned a passing grade in law school, let alone satisfy the
requirements of a job in which life and death were at stake. Perhaps
more important, these early memos from Texas revealed Gonzales'
startling willingness to sacrifice rigorous legal analysis to achieve
pre-ordained policy results at the drop of a Stetson.
If you have a chance to read Berlow's
full
article, too, it's pretty damning.
We don't have to filibuster Gonzales, but we must stand on principle.
His judgment and competence – as exemplified in several key legal
writings – is unacceptable for a U.S. Attorney General.
Howard
Dean for DNC Chair?
My cousin Mark makes some
strong points against Dean taking the reins at the DNC:
First of all, I think people
are crediting Dean with the internet fundraising revolution this cycle.
He deserves no such credit. Joe Trippi and others do. Dean was just
lucky enough to be on the receiving end of the first wave of such
fundraising. He's made clear he barely knew what the internet was when
Trippi got to work.
Secondly, his supporters see
him as a visionary Democratic leader with a massive following. That's
simply not accurate. He stood against the war and shouted he was proud
to be a liberal. That spoke to a lot of liberals. But when it came to
rank and file Democrats who actually vote in the primaries, no one
voted for him. He got trounced. His support is a mile deep but an inch
wide.
Worst of all, he's a national
joke. Fairly or not, the 'Dean scream' stands as one of the indelible
images of the 2004 election, and what it stands for is recklessness and
mania. Combine that with his struggles on Meet the Press and other
interview shows, and you have the makings of a genuinely terrible DNC
chair.
Even to his staunchest
supporters, Howard Dean is essentially a metaphor, a rallying point.
He's not an organizer, he's not a visionary, he's not the public face
the Democratic party needs right now.
I'm inclined to agree with most of this (although I think Dean deserves
more credit for his campaign's fundraising juggernaut, which Mark calls
the first wave – Trippi may have built the stables, but Dean milked the
cows). Plus, on 2 of the subjects Dean has been most ridiculed for
during the past year – saying we were no safer with Saddam Hussein
captured and saying the Bush administration was using terror warnings
for political purposes – he was pretty clearly right.
November
11,
2004
An
Opportunity
Arafat's dead. This immediately presents a
global test for the Bush
administration equally as challenging and important as the
global test we face in Iraq. If
Colin Powell planned to resign soon, he may have to put those plans on
hold...
Alberto
Gonzales
The U.S. Attorney General must
be both an aggressive prosecutor and an aggressive protector of
U.S. citizens' civil rights. John Ashcroft was a failure on both
counts. I have slightly more hope for Alberto Gonzales, but his human
rights track record is
dubious:
Gonzales drew criticism after
the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks when he wrote a memo in which Bush
claimed the right to waive anti-torture law and international treaties
providing protections to prisoners of war. That position drew fire from
human rights groups, who said it helped lead to the type of abuses
uncovered in the Abu Ghraib prison scandal.
Specifically, Gonzales' memo
said the Geneva Convention that had long governed the treatment of
prisoners did not apply to al-Qaida or the war in Afghanistan ( news
-web sites ). The memo called some of the Geneva Convention's
provisions "quaint."
Gonzales also defended the
administration's policy — essentially repudiated by the Supreme Court
and now being fought out in lower courts — of detaining certain
terrorism suspects for extended periods without access to lawyers or
courts.
Lose
the
Suits
One thing congressional
Democrats
(men and women) should do is stop wearing suits to work; they should
wear whatever they want. I don't know what the House and senate dress
code rules are, but screw 'em. We need to begin to establish ourselves
as the anti-business-as-usual party, and losing the suits would convey
that in a clear visual image. I'm serious. What do we have to lose?
Craig's
List
You've gotta love the
wonderful
social engine that is
Craig's List. During the World Series, a Red Sox
fan graciously offered a night with his wife in exchange for tickets.
Now, there's
this:
Straight
male seeks Bush supporter for fair, physical fight - m4m
Reply to:
anon-47785163@craigslist.org
Date: Wed Nov 03 19:11:50
2004
I would like to fight a Bush
supporter to vent my anger. If you are one, have a fiery streek, please
contact me so we can meet and physically fight. I would like to beat
the shit out of you.
it's NOT ok to contact this
poster with services or other commercial interests
Sounds like a challenge
this Philadelphia Kerry supporter might offer.
November
9, 2004
A
New Beginning
“Mission Accomplished;”
laughing at not finding WMD in Iraq; waging a protracted,
painstaking character assassination campaign against Richard Clarke;
pitting 9/11 victim vs. 9/11 victim for political purposes; ignoring
the al Qaeda threat before 9/11, despite frequent warnings; marketing
selective intelligence on WMD in Iraq; insinuating Saddam was
responsible for 9/11, and claiming he had operational ties to al Qaeda;
purposefully, publicly underestimating the cost of the prescription
drug bill by over a hundred billion dollars; outing CIA operative
Valerie Plame solely to discredit her husband, which quite possibly led
to assassinations of CIA assets around the world; equating abortion
rights advocates with terrorists; eroding the Freedom of Information
Act; firing Lawrence Lindsey for being honest about the cost of the
Iraq War; retiring General Shinseki early for telling the truth about
how many troops it would take to secure peace in Iraq; telling us the
Iraq War would cost only $2 billion dollars, and could be paid for from
Iraqi oil reserves; “stop loss”; appointing lobbyists to head
government agencies for the explicit purpose of ransacking them;
attempting to enshrine bigotry into the Constitution; deliberately
circumventing the Geneva Convention, which led directly to Abu Ghraib
and ghost detainees; secretly planning and funding the Iraq War while
diverting resources from the war in Afghanistan, even before it began;
failing to protect ammunition sites in Iraq that the IAEA warned about
repeatedly…
That just scratches the surface.
For over a year now, I’ve blogged about these Bush administration sins
with the hope that the American electorate would hold them accountable,
that a majority of Americans would stand together on election day to
affirm to ourselves and to the world that this is not what we’re about.
As I came across more sins in my habitual morning reading – about 10 or
15 news sites and blogs – this week, I was struck continuously by the
stark realization that such hope is lost.
But I refuse to be dispirited. Where there's a little death, there’s
the potential for new life. I believe – as did the Americans I most
admire, including my ancestors – that tomorrow’s America can and must
be better than today’s.
I’ll continue to update this site, and I’ll also be working in the
coming days and weeks to reimagine and rebuild it for the long-term so
that it can reach, include, and impact more people. I have several
ideas about where to go with it, and hopefully you'll begin to see
gradual changes soon. In the meantime, if you have any suggestions on
how this site could be more helpful to you and/or the Democratic party
and progressive politics, please drop me an email.
Thanks.
November
8, 2004
The
Dollar
The dollar has seen
better days, of course, and now it looks like China may be
selling. From
The Financial Times:
The dollar could slide still
further, in spite of hitting an all-time low against the euro last week
in the wake of George W. Bush's re-election, currency traders have
said.
The dollar sell-off has
resumed
amid fears among traders that Mr Bush's victory will bring four more
years of widening US budget and current account deficits, heightened
geopolitical risks and a policy of "benign neglect" of the dollar.
Not good.
What
Happened?
I've read several analyses of
exit poll results today that make strong arguments against the
conventional wisdom that cultural warriors were primarily responsible
for Bush's win. I'll explore further later...
Suicide
Is Partisan
A lot of poems and songs will
be
written about this poor guy, a young man named Andrew Veal. From
Newsday:
Distraught over the
re-election
of President George W. Bush, a Georgia man traveled to New York City,
went to Ground Zero and killed himself with a shotgun blast, police
said yesterday.
The
Newsday reporters don't
give us any insight into who this kid was, but instead immediately seek
judgments on his actions from representatives of the Republican and
Democratic parties:
Visitors there yesterday
reacted in different ways to news of Veal's suicide. Bobbie Jensen, 54,
a Republican from Phoenix, said that while she understood how Bush's
victory disturbed those who dislike him, Ground Zero is not the place
to act on those emotions.
"You can be upset about the
war, about Bush, but this is a sacred place," she said. "You got to
accept what happened and not kill yourself." But Frank Franca, an East
Village artist and registered Democrat, suggested the suicide was
symbolic.
"I'm very moved by it," he
said. "Obviously, this person was devastated. I can see why he would
come here."
It's a pretty absurd example of the Crossfirization of the news media,
and of American life, isn't it?
Funny
Good stuff.
November
6, 2004
Total
Gross
This disparity should
have tipped us off on who had the upper hand in the turnout
battle:
Fahrenheit 9/11 total
domestic box office: $119,078,393
The Passion of the Christ
total domestic box office: $370,270,943
November
5, 2004
Reaching
Out
Wednesday, President Bush told me and the other
56
million + Americans who voted for John Kerry that he would work to earn
our trust. (Actually, Bush gracelessly phrased it, "All those who voted
for my opponent," using typical campaign combat language by referring
to Kerry in the abstract rather than presidential unification language.)
It took him just one day before striking
a different chord:
The campaign over, Americans are expecting a bipartisan
effort
and results. I'll reach out to everyone who shares our goals.
and...
I earned capital in the campaign, political capital. And now
I
intend to spend it. It is my style. That's what happened after the 2000
election, I earned some capital. I've earned capital in this election.
This isn't going to be easy. He's going to do everything he can to
cripple us. Here's some
free advice on how to cope with depression.
Thomas
Mann Interview
Here's a Q&A on the election with the Brookings
Institution's Thomas Mann, an awfully smart, insightful guy. The
whole thing's worth reading, but as far as summing
up how Bush won in a few sentences, I think he pretty much nails it
here:
Kennesaw, Ga.: Mr. Mann, good afternoon and thanks
for
doing this chat. There will be a lot of post-mortems done on such
a close race. Was Kerry the best candidate for the
Democrats? Was he crippled by the long public controversy over
the Swift Boat Veterans' claims? Did he hit Bush hard enough
during the debates?
What is your view on the decisive factor in this race?
Thomas Mann: My view is that Kerry was a plausible
nominee
and eventually proved himself an acceptable alternative to the
President, one who in the debates clearly passed the threshold for
entering the White House. I think the President won by countering
a negative referendum on Iraq and the economy with a reputation for
strength on terrorism, and most importantly by using opposition to
same-sex marriage and a tremendously effective ground game to mobilize
religious conservatives.
November
4, 2004
3
Quick Thoughts
1. This mandate talk is completely irrelevant. In 2000,
BushRove lost the popular vote by about 600,000, but from day one they
governed as if they had won over 400 electoral votes. If there's one
thing we can be sure will come from Rove's political shop (a.k.a. The
White House), it's that they'll take everything they can get away with.
Now, they have 55 senators and a 31 vote majority in the House. With
less procedural opposition than ever, they'll do whatever they want to
do, which is horrible news for public protection lawyers, the
environment, health care, civil rights, fiscal responsibility, and the
list goes on and on.
2. Losing Daschle hurts us badly in the senate. He ran procedural
circles around Bill Frist these past couple years.
The new minority leader, Harry Reid of Nevada, seems to be a decent
enough guy, but he also has a reputation for working well with those on
the other side of the aisle. With the kind of crap legislation that
they'll be pushing soon enough, that's probably not the kind of leader
we need.
3. Just learned 2 pretty interesting facts on Charlie Rose.
First,
Newsweek will report in their election issue next week
that Kerry was so eager to have McCain as his VP that he offered him a
joint position of VP/Defense Secretary.
Second, this is the first time in over 100 years that consecutive
presidents will have second terms.
November
3, 2004
Enough
Okay, enough moping, time for me to
get back to work...
I love this newfound
regard Republicans have for a
popular
vote victory. Even funnier is their spin that Bush's relative
squeaker gives him an assured mandate because he "received more votes
for president than any president in history, including Reagan."
It's true. Bush will end up with somewhere around 60 million votes,
which
gives him the most ever. Still, his margin of victory is clearly
the
smallest of any winning incumbent since Harry Truman in 1948
[update: actually, his margin is smaller than Truman's – you've got to
go back to Wilson's 1916 victory to find a smaller margin for an
incumbent].
Eisenhower, Johnson, Nixon, Reagan, and Clinton all won with vastly
superior electoral and popular vote advantages over their opponents.
Also, do you know who's received the second most votes of any candidate
for president in our history? John Kerry. Kerry will end up with
somewhere over 56 million votes, giving him at least a couple million
more than Reagan's '84 landslide and several million more than Al Gore
in 2000.
As everybody acknowledges, most of Kerry's votes were every bit as
"anti-Bush" as "pro-Kerry," so those who assert that Bush is especially
entitled to enforce his agenda because he got the most votes in history
should also recognize that he had more votes cast
against him than any incumbent
president in the history of two-man races.
On the bright side, 56 million + citizens are more than enough to
reimagine and rebuild America, so let's get it done.
Rock
Bottom
No matter what, Bush has won the
popular vote by over 3 and a half million votes. Barring a miracle in
Ohio, he will narrowly win the electoral college (oddly enough, the
only state so far to switch from 2000 is New Hampshire, which went to
Kerry this time, although New Mexico and possibly Iowa may go Bush's
way – they're both too close to call right now).
In the senate, Republicans will gain 4 seats, and will rule with a
55-44-1 majority.
It looks like they'll gain at least 3 or 4 seats in the House as well.
It's a massacre, and I'm a little stunned by it. I'm also angry, sad,
bewildered. How did all our efforts lead to this? This is going to be
so bad for the country in so many ways that I can't even bear to
consider them right now.
Sorry I don't have anything inspirational to say. This morning, there's
only pain.
I better get some sleep.
THE
MOMENT OF TRUTH
November
2, 2004
I'm out until the final reckoning.
Exit
Polls
Updated totals, from
Slate
(again, don't rely on these too much):
Florida
Kerry 50
Bush 49
Ohio
Kerry 50
Bush 49
Pennsylvania
Kerry 54
Bush 45
Wisconsin
Kerry 51
Bush 46
Michigan
Kerry 51
Bush 47
Minnesota
Kerry 58
Bush 40
Nevada
Kerry 48
Bush 50
New Mexico
Kerry 50
Bush 48
North Carolina
Kerry 49
Bush 51
Colorado
Kerry 46
Bush 53
From MyDD.com,
these numbers are probably more reliable than the leaked horse race
numbers, and very uplifting:
Here's some early exit data polling of Latinos in Florida
(2000 numbers are in parenthesis):
KERRY BUSH
Hispanics 46
(35) 53 (65)
Cubans 32
(17) 68 (82)
Kerry continues to lead Florida overall as well. Again, these are exit
poll numbers, so doubt them, but it looks great! Matthew Dowd has said
that without 40% of the Hispanic vote, Bush cannot win.
Also, they picked this up from the networks:
Ohio - African American precincts are performing at 106%
what
we expected, based on historical numbers. Hispanic precincts are at
144% what we expected. Precincts that went for Gore are turning out 8%
higher then those that went Bush in 2000. Democratic base precincts are
performing 15% higher than GOP base precincts.
Florida - Dem base precincts are performing 14% better than Bush base
precincts. In precincts that went for Gore, they are doing 6% better
than those that went for Bush. African American precincts at 109%,
Hispanic precincts at 106%.
Pennsylvania - African American precincts at 102% of expectations,
Hispanics at 136% of expectations. The Gore precincts are doing 4
percent better than bush precincts.
Michigan- Democratic base precincts are 8% better than GOP base states.
Gore precincts are 5% better than Bush.
I'm still nervous as hell, and will be until late tonight, probably,
because appearances still suggest Ohio and Florida will both be close,
and Kerry will need one to win.
Mystery Pollster writes
about the limitations of exit polls. From what I can recall from
the primaries and 2000, they're often wildly inaccurate, and that's
probably especially true in this race.
With that said,
MyDD,
DailyKos
and
National Review Online's The Corner (conservative,
of course) post exit polls and have some up right now. But be very,
very skeptical. These, according to
MyDD, are the 2pm VNS numbers:
AZ CO LA PA OH FL MI NM
MN WI IA NH
Kerry 45 48 42
60 52 51 51
50 58 52 49 57
Bush 55 51
57 40 48 48 47
48 40 43 49 41
Instead of watching these things hawkishly, I'm going out to vote.
Also, if I can find any Republican poll watchers in Los Angeles – fat
chance – I'm going to
Bernard Hopkins them up a bit.
Damn
Not a great start to
what
could be a beautiful day.
The bastards won in Ohio, so now thousands of paid
non-professionals will be allowed to harass people at the polls. From
The New York Times:
In a day of see-sawing court
rulings, a Federal appeals court ruled early Tuesday morning that the
Republican Party could place thousands of people inside polling places
to challenge the eligibility of voters, a blow to Democrats who argued
those challengers will intimidate minority voters.
and...
But it appeared likely that
when Ohio polls open, the Republicans would be able to put 3,500
challengers inside polling places around the state. Democrats also
planned to send more than 2,000 monitors to the polls, though they said
those people would not challenge voters.
10
Things I Think I Know
1. I know
where you can go if you can't remember where your
polling place is and you want to find out. No excuses.
2. I know I've been wrong in forecasting this election since early this
year – I thought polls would show us a decisive winner going into
election day, but of course they're not.
3. I know I can't completely separate my heart from my head, but my
heart's rooting for Kerry like a 6 year-old waiting for Santa and my
brain's optimistic as well.
4. I know why my brain's optimistic.
First, there's "the incumbent rule," which basically says presidents
don't do better on election day than they do in their final poll
numbers. If they're under 50% in states or nationally in a two-person
race, they're on dangerous ground.
Mark Blumenthal, who authors the terrific Mystery Pollster, does a
thorough job of explaining
here. Here's part of the history:
In the presidential elections
since 1956 that featured an incumbent, Gallup's final projection of the
incumbent's vote exceeded the incumbent's actual vote six of eight
times. The only exceptions were Ronald Reagan in 1984 and George H.W.
Bush in 1992, and then by only 0.2% and 0.7% respectively.
and...
...the incumbent rule tells
us
that, at any given moment, the President's percentage of the vote
relative to 50% is a better indicator of where the race stands than the
margin separating Bush and Kerry. It also suggests the
appropriate way to read the final polls just before the election (and
these are my ranges – others may differ): If the average result
of all the final polls (including undecided) puts Bush's percentage at
50% or higher, the President will likely win. If Bush's
percentage is 48%-49%, the race is headed for a photo finish. At
47% or lower, the President will likely lose (add 1% to these ranges in
any state where Ralph Nader is not on the ballot).
Bush's average in the
last
9 national polls of
likely voters
taken by Marist, CNN/USA Today/Gallup, NBC/WSJ, Fox News, CBS, ARG,
GQR, Pew, and Newsweek comes out to exactly 48%, which puts us at
that photo finish Blumenthal talks about.
Bush's average in
the last 8 national polls of
registered voters taken by Marist,
CNN/USA Today/Gallup, Economist/YouGov, Fox News, CBS, ARG, Pew, and
Newsweek comes out to 46.6%, which according to the incumbent rule
means he will likely lose.
Moreover, registered voter totals for high turnout elections have
proved more accurate in the past (actually, they did in 2000, too,
although that wasn't a particularly high turnout election). I haven't
come across a single person who thinks this won't be a high turnout
election. Curtis Gans is the director of the Committee for the Study of
the American Electorate, and
here's
what he had to say about turnout today:
We had a turnout in 2000 of
about 106 million people and at a rate of 54 percent of the eligible
citizens in our society. My belief is that we will have a turnout rate
of 58 to 60 percent, or 118 to 121 million people, which is an increase
of 12 to 15 million people over what we had in 2000 and an increase of
8 million more than our eligible population growth.
If turnout is that high generally, it's hard to imagine minority
turnout and under 30 turnout – two groups overwhelmingly going to Kerry
(several current polls show 18-29 voters going to Kerry in the mid to
high 50s, including
cell
phone users who aren't ever polled) – not putting Kerry over the
top. Then again, counting on young voters for the Kerry margin is
counting on the extraordinary, and while I believe this election is
extraordinary I'd be a fool if I unguardedly expected under 30s to show
up in huge numbers.
The second thing that makes my brain hopeful is that
Kerry leads Bush in early voting in Florida by a clear
51% to 43% margin. In the past, Republicans have shown superior
absentee ballot and early voting programs in the state. Of course,
there could be some simple explanation as to why Kerry's doing that
well so far, but I haven't heard it yet.
The third thing that makes my brain optimistic is that
Kerry has an even bigger lead on Bush in early voting
in Iowa, 52% to 41%. That represents 27% of Iowa adults.
5. I don't know whether my optimism is warranted or full of shit.
6. I know Matthew Yglesias is one of the smartest bloggers around, and
he says:
I think anyone who tells you
they know what's going to happen is lying. The outcome will be decided
by turnout, fraud, intimidation, and judges.
I also know that
Karl Rove is about as skanky as a human being can
get.
7. I know my friend Cate authored my favorite line of the day:
may the best senator from
massachusetts win.
8. I know every time I hear or read something from an
undecided voter, they strike me as terribly ill-informed, and that
worries me.
9. I know I need to make some predictions.
The states as I see them:
Bush has in the bag: AL, AK, GA, ID, IN, KS, KY, LA, MS, MN, NE, ND,
OK, SC, SD, TN, TX, UT, and WY.
Kerry has in the bag: CA (especially considering the number of times I
plan to vote tomorrow), CT, DE, DC, IL, MD, MA, NY, RI, VT.
I'll be really surprised if Bush doesn't win: AZ, AR, CO, MO, NV, NC,
VA, and WV.
I'll be really surprised if Kerry doesn't win: HI, ME, MI, MN, NH, NJ,
OR, PA, WA.
I think the closest states will be FL, IA, NM, OH, and WI. I predict
Kerry wins all of them but Ohio. That would again make Florida
decisive, and give Kerry an electoral victory of 291 to 247.
Several days ago, I would have given Bush Florida and Kerry Ohio, but
Kerry seems to have momentum in FL polls and Bush seems to have a
little momentum in OH polls. Before the last couple polls in OH, Bush
couldn't break 48%. I wouldn't be surprised to see Kerry win it 50% to
49%, but it's still a Republican state and it's going to have a whole
lot of GOP poll mercenaries and an initiative to ban gay marriage. In
1999 I wouldn't have believed the former could make a big difference,
but now I know.
Other random predictions:
We'll know the winner by midnight tonight (Pacific time).
I don't think NJ or HI will be close, despite recent Republican
bravado.
I predict Kerry will outdo Gore's 2000 performance in MI and MN, both
of which Gore won by 5%.
I predict Kerry will get a little over 50%, and Bush will get a little
over 48% in the popular vote.
African-Americans will vote for Kerry in even larger numbers and
margins than they did for Gore (about 90%), and African-American
turnout in FL will be enormous.
Kerry will receive 64% of the Hispanic vote.
Voters will split on who can better handle Iraq, but Kerry will win
handily among those who say it's the most important issue.
Bush will win by 10% among those who think "terrorism" is the most
important issue.
Kerry will win women by 8, Bush will win men by 8.
Kerry will win Catholics narrowly, with some inadvertent help from
several Catholic bishops, who did a better job advertising Kerry's
Catholicism than he did.
Nobody ever seems to mention this, but there are about 180,000 or so
Arab-American voters in Florida. In 2000, Bush won the plurality. This
time, polls show they'll go for Kerry by at least 3 to 1.
Also, I think Kerry will do considerably better with younger Cuban
American voters than Gore did.
Bush got a million of the 4 million voters who identified themselves as
gay in 2000 exit polls. This time, he'll be lucky to get half that.
Young voters (18-29) will account for 18% of the total vote, up 1% from
2000.
Military voters will still go for Bush in large numbers, but there will
be slight erosion in support among some of their family members,
particularly those in the National Guard.
Rain in OH, PA, and NM won't keep voters away.
Democrats will gain 6 House seats.
I predict the senate seats will go like this:
In IL, Obama will beat Keyes by 50%, a sure Dem pick-up.
Isakksen will beat Majette easily in GA, a sure GOP pick-up.
Salazar will beat Coors in CO, a Dem pick-up.
Knowles will beat Murkowski in AK, a Dem pick-up.
DeMint will probably beat Tenenbaum in SC, a GOP pick-up.
Burr will probably beat Bowles in NC, a GOP pick-up.
I give Coburn an edge over Carson in OK, a GOP pick-up.
Daschle holds on in SD by a few thousand votes, a Dem retention.
Bunning will probably beat Mongiardo, a GOP retention.
David Vitter will miss hitting the 50% in LA by a whisker, meaning
there will be a December run-off, probably between him and Chris John.
Castor wins with Kerry in FL, beats Mel Martinez, a Dem retention.
This means Republicans will pick up one seat in the senate. I hope I'm
wrong about this, of course, and Democrats surprise. Bunning, Coburn,
and DeMint are all unbearable scumbags, pure and simple.
10. I know there's a chance I'll be despondent late tonight. I've
dreaded the possibility. In the event of such tragedy, however, I hope
this story from dailykos diarist ArkansasJoseph
helps to keep my vitriol in check:
There is the old Zen story
about the warrior who asks a master what is hell is like. The master
immediately begins insulting the warrior, saying the warrior was an
uneducated peasant, to shallow to understand such teachings, calling
him everything that would trigger an angry and violent response.
And as the warrior became madder and madder, eventually losing
control of his reason, he grabbed the hilt of his sword, pulled it free
and raised it in the air with the intent of beheading the master.
At which point the master said "That is hell" and the warrior
became enlightened.
Who am I to improve upon a Zen story, but the first time I read it I
thought the warrior actually cut off the master's head and then the
master's severed head told him, "That is hell." I find it more powerful
that way.
November
1, 2004
My new home office is
now
operational, and I too will be operational later today...
