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Bush Lied, People Died

Despite a bleak assessment of the state of the infrastructure and immediate potential of the Iraqi oil industry contained a detailed secret Pentagon study completed well before the war, Dick Cheney and Paul Wolfowitz continued to insist that oil revenues would pay for reconstruction, Jeff Gerth is reporting in tomorrow's New York Times. Add this one to the pile of lies that Bush officials used to sell the war (or diminish objections) when obviously they knew they were not true.

posted by Jerry Bowles 4:12 PM

Is General Clark Enough of a "Democrat" to Represent the Party?

In response to my "Move On" post just below, Asa writes: "Are we so embarrassed by our Democratic ideals that we have to run an Independent with a Republican voting record in the most important election this country's ever faced?"

My personal view is that blind partisanship in politics is not healthy. Think of those 75 percent of Republicans who continue to believe that George Bush is doing a good job in the face of overwhelming evidence that's he may well be the worst president in American history. In my adult life, I have voted for Democrats and I have voted for Republicans. To me, beating Bush trumps all other considerations in this election.

We know that General Clark can beat Shrub but can he win over the more party-oriented Democrats who vote in primaries? It's the crucial question of his campaign. What do you folks think?

posted by Jerry Bowles 11:25 AM

Friday, October 03, 2003

Move On

I'm pro-choice ... I'm pro-affirmative action, I'm pro-environment, pro-education, pro-health care and pro-labor. And if that ain't a Democrat, then I must be at the wrong meeting. Wesley Clark, DNC, October 3, 2003

It's a bit churlish for Kerry and Dean to criticize Clark for not being a lifelong Democrat. I don't know about you, but I prefer my generals to be independent and apolitical as long as they are on active duty. The only issues here are who best represents the values of fair-minded Americans--Democrats, independents, disgruntled Republicans--and who can beat Shrub at the polls. Nobody wins anything by some ideological purity test.

posted by Jerry Bowles 8:23 PM

Uncle Karl’s Rabbi

“Deny what they didn’t charge, and charge what they can’t deny… if it’s our charge, we’re revealing the facts… if it’s their charge, it’s a smear." Nixon political hitman Murray Chotiner

It was Murray the C, America’s first paid political consultant, who wrote the rules of the game that Karl Rove has been running from the sidelines of America’ political gridiron. Among other things, those big lies Jerry identifies in his post that sold Shrubby’s war on Iraq. Whether its Watergate witch Lucianne Goldberg (Linda Tripp's pal and one of Murray the C.'s self-confessed "dirty tricksters") or GOP jugendkorps issues pimp Frank Luntz, it all comes down from Murray. See Bill Safire, Len Garment or Sid Zion for details.

You gotta give obersturmbannfuehrer Rove credit for this mythomania. But its strictly Chotiner in a goyische wrapper. Like Gobernador Arnold will say… “hasta La Costa, baby.”

posted by Groom 3:37 PM

Shooting from the Lips

Our old buddy Josh Hammond has joined the BoftheBs blogging team. Josh is, among many other things, the author of The Stuff Americans Are Made Of and quite possibly the only person in America to have worked for both Richard Nixon and Jerry Brown. He'll be checking in regularly on Fridays with some comments and analysis about the week's big polls. Here's his first post. JB

There is only one thing less reliable than polls: CIA intelligence reports. Not surprisingly they both rely on what people “say” as the basis for their conclusions. While polls are exclusively based on what people say, intelligence gathering is largely dependent on hearsay and word of mouth. By contrast, most polls rely on the opinions of randomly selected people—to make it more scientific—where as the intelligence community relies on the usual suspects, a tight-knit group of mouthies, with no scientific basis whatsoever; think Saddam’s hoodwinking of the US and British “intelligence” communities.

What we say is the least reliable predictor of what we do. For example, during the health-fitness craze of the 1980s hotels scrambled to put gyms in their facilities because polls showed that 85 percent of travelers wanted exercise rooms. Hotels don’t do that anymore because less than 12 percent of travelers actually use them.

In the politics-polling-media-industrial complex, to paraphrase President Eisenhower, the insiders know the reliability factors, but the rest of us get all ginned up or ginned down, depending on the poll and our preferences. I like American Enterprise Institute Karlyn H. Bowman’s short hand for this complex, "POLLitics".

This weekly column will attempt to provide some insight into the pollsters and their methods now that we have entered the season where they not only form the questions, get the answers they want, and crank them through the headline makers and writers, but leave the meaning of the finer numbers to the few insiders.

Karl Rove probably has a mild headache this morning with the new results of CBS/New York Times survey showing Bush’s popularity on fighting terrorism and the economy dipping below 50 percent for the first time since 9/11. But he doesn’t have a migraine yet because as a poll insider he knows the poll that counts for re-election is 13 months away—an eternity for a political strategist to change public opinion.

While Rove knows the difference between a national sample of adults (the cited poll relied on 981 randomly selected adults) and a national sample of registered voters who intend to vote—the differences in opinion can vary substantially—most readers tend to take every poll on face value.

If polls are so unreliable, why do we Americans love them so much? I submit the following:

1) Americans crave change;

2) Polls fit our need to label others so that we are not like “them”;

3) We are obsessed with winners and losers and love to see the high and mighty peak and then crash and then peak again, think Donald Trump, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Mariah Carey and maybe the-pills-made-me-say-it Russ Limbaugh;

4) We love to root for the underdog—go Cubbies; and

5) Americans are the most optimistic people on the planet and we thrive on accentuating the positive, eliminating the negative and not messing with Mr. or Ms. In-between. (Josh Hammond)

posted by Jerry Bowles 1:10 PM

Is Our People Well-Informed?

In a country where the president is proud of the fact that he doesn’t read newspapers, it shouldn’t be all that shocking to learn that a majority of Americans supported the Iraq war based on their belief in one of three impressions that are patently false. Still, the news that so many of us are as willfully ignorant of important life-and-death information as our National Guard deserter/Commander in Chief, does not bode well for the future of the Republic.

The three common mistaken impressions are that:

-U.S. forces found weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.

-There's clear evidence that Iraqi President Saddam Hussein worked closely with the Sept. 11 terrorists.

-People in foreign countries generally either backed the U.S.-led war or were evenly split between supporting and opposing it.

Overall, 60 percent of Americans held at least one of those views in polls reported between January and September by the Program on International Policy Attitudes, based at the University of Maryland, and the polling firm, Knowledge Networks.

Not surprisingly, there is a direct correlation between these misperceptions and where people get their news: 80 percent of those who said they relied on Fox News and 71 percent of those who said they relied on CBS believed at least one of the three misperceptions. The comparable figures were 47 percent for those who said they relied most on newspapers and magazines and 23 percent for those who said they relied on PBS or National Public Radio.

Who is to blame? Obviously, the Bush administration has done a terrific job of confounding the minds of ordinary citizens by wrapping its entire sordid little agenda in the American flag covered with the blood of 9/11. The mainstream press has given the administration a free ride until recently—rarely pointing out the lies and inconsistencies. Democrats like Kerry, Edwards and especially Gephardt were silent when they should have been speaking out, supporting the Iraq war because they didn’t want to look like wusses and now claiming they didn’t know things were going to turn out this badly.

And, of course, there is the rabidly partisan Fox News which has become a powerful propaganda machine for the radical right. People do not watch Fox for the news; they watch it to have their prejudices confirmed. “Fair and balanced,” my ass. It’s time for a truth in labeling law for the media.

posted by Jerry Bowles 10:18 AM

Dial C for cover-up… dial M for Mueller

Now that the world knows that Elder Ashcroft paid Turdblossom Rove’s consulting company $300,000 to work on his senate campaign moderate Republicans are worrying about impartiality in the Justice Department’s investigation of “leakgate.”

The New York Times is reporting that if the impartiality firestorm doesn’t abate some Republicans are floating the idea of allowing Bush family retainer and FBI director Robert S. Mueller III to appoint a prosecutor.

Time to stop the charade. Mueller is as much a guarantor of impartiality today as acting FBI director L. Patrick Gray was during Watergate.

Check out what Rense and Skolnick have to say about “Dial M.” Granted, it’s high octane vitriol. But if a there’s a kernel of truth in what these two bloggers are putting out it becomes easier to understand why White House mouthpiece Scott McClellan is looking and sounding more and more like Ron Ziegler each day. Heck, we might even see renewed media interest in stories about constitutional checks-and-balances and the Saturday night massacre.

posted by Groom 7:04 AM

What's That Yellow Stuff on Your Face?

"There are several items of real interest I think that really make a breakthrough in terms of a positive thing. I'd be a little careful were I overly critical about the lack of finding any WMD. You may end up with WMD and some egg on your face." Senator Pat Roberts, CNN, July 3, 2003

"I think in view of a lot of criticism, I would not be surprised if there is a surprise that would end up changing a lot of people's minds." Senator Pat Roberts, BBC, August 1, 2003

"I'm not pleased by what I heard today, but we should be willing to adopt a 'wait and see' attitude," Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Pat Roberts, a Kansas Republican, said. He added that everyone "would have hoped by now there would have been a breakthrough." Reuters, October 2, 2003

posted by Jerry Bowles 12:30 AM

Thursday, October 02, 2003

So Much for David Kay

David Kay has confirmed what most reasonable people have concluded some time ago--there are no WMDs in Iraq. Wherever he's hiding out, Saddam must be laughing his ass off. I agree with Charles Peña of the Cato Institute that it's no longer even all that important if he had them or not. Peña writes in Weapons of Mass Distraction:

"The discovery of such weapons would not justify the war. Nor would it vindicate the administration because the administration will still have to explain how Iraq posed a direct and imminent threat to the United States. Defeating Iraq's military in three weeks is evidence that Iraq did not pose a military threat."

posted by Jerry Bowles 9:22 PM

Arnold Gets It Right

Arnold Schwarzenegger may be a poltical novice but he's proven to me, at least, that he has more brains and common sense than Shrub's White House put together. Within hours of publication of the Los Angeles Times story about his tendency to grab attractive women in rather personal places, Arnold was on TV confessing his "sins," apologizing and promising to do better. If Shrub had handled "leakgate" in a similarly honest and expedient way, that scandal would be gone by now and he'd have earned points for leadership. Amazing how politicians simply don't trust honesty as a strategy.

For what it's worth: my wife tells me she would be thrilled to be groped by Arnold, would rush to tell all her friends, and that we shouldn't confuse a healthy, good-natured man horsing around with a Kobe Bryant-type of situation. I suspect there is more of this type of sentiment out there than feminists like to admit.

posted by Jerry Bowles 4:14 PM

Memo to Mueller: find the authorizer, not the leaker

Now that Shrubby has thrown a screen pass over to family retainer and FBI director Robert “Dial M” Mueller the media is focusing on the process, not the substance of what is being widely characterized as a broad ranging and fast moving investigation. Sending out letters to tell suspects "not to shred" or "delete e-mails" is a little slow out of the gate, even by Ashcroft standards. The shred-a-thon parties are over and the fat lady sang.

If we learned one lesson from Watergate, it was that the operators (McCord, Hunt, Sturgis et al) are expendable and largely irrelevant. It’s who authorized the operation that counts and it went all the way to the top. Dial M’s investigation is focusing on the leakers, not who authorized the leak. As Arnold would say, “bick mistake.” Senator Hillary “Hilla the Hun” Clinton was Sam Dash’s Queen of Hearts when she worked on the Watergate investigation. Why isn’t she stepping up to the plate and taking a swing at this?

The Cousins… if you’re MI6 being half-pregnant is OK

Lord Hutton’s inquiry into the death of proliferation expert Dr. David Kelly and the jacked intel developed by the MOD, M16 and Tony Blair’s media cabal that was the basis for Shubby’s hard sell on the Iraq war has found that neither Blair nor the MOD and the secret intelligence service “significantly misled” the British public. That’s like a woman saying she’s “half pregnant.” Either you are or you aren’t. Looks like a little denial going on across the pond. The inquiry said nothing about whether the Cousins jacked intel misled the American people and their lawmakers. After all, if one looks through the transcripts of the Hutton inquiry, one will note that it was Tony Blair himself who said he put into motion the process to produce the (jacked) report one hour after a phone conversation with Shrubby Bush.

posted by Groom 3:10 PM

Trifecta

Arnold's a groper.

Rush is a racist pillpopper.

Karl is a potential felon.

Be still, my heart.

posted by Jerry Bowles 12:36 PM

What's the Story, Howie?

Judicial Watch, the conservative government watchdog group, that has chased Dick Cheney all the way to the Supreme Court in an attempt to get access to the records of the nasty little troll's energy hearings, is now after Howard Dean, threatening to file suit to get the records of Dean's nearly 12 years in office released.

Dean disclosed in the last days of his gubernatorial career that he had negotiated with the state archives to keep secret for 10 years more than one-third of his official records. The rest are available for public review at the secretary of state's office.

When questioned at January a news conference why he had insisted on keeping so much closed, he replied: "Well, there are future political considerations. We didn't want anything embarrassing appearing in the papers at a critical time in any future endeavor."

Turns out that was too juicy a tidbit for the nosy folks at Judicial Watch to pass up. We love you, Howie, but you've got to learn when to keep your mouth shut.

posted by Jerry Bowles 11:22 AM

No Possum, No Taters, No WMD

The Washington Post says David Kay will tell the intelligence committees of both houses of Congress today that Saddam pretended his battlefield commanders had chemical weapons, in order to deter invasion. That is another way of saying that despite having spent $300 million looking, the U.S. has still not found any. Meanwhile, the NY Times headlines the news that the administration has hidden another $600 million to keep looking in that $87 billion request. Even George Will says it's time to just admit we were wrong and move on.

posted by Jerry Bowles 9:39 AM

May I See Your License Please

Speaking of Teddy messing with Texas (see Groom below), Paul Greenberg, in a refutation in the Moonie Times displays his usual flair for the obvious by referring to Kennedy as the "Knight of Chappaquiddick." Only my sensitivity and keen sense of fair play prevent me from pointing out that Laura Bush isn't such a great driver either. And, of course, let's have a round of applause for Rep. Bill "Speed Demon" Janklow.

posted by Jerry Bowles 7:53 AM

Teddy walks the talk

“There was no imminent threat. This was made up in Texas, announced in January to the Republican leadership that war was going to take place and was going to be good politically. The whole thing was a fraud.” Sen. Ted Kennedy

Sounds like one of us bloggers. Shrubby called Teddy’s soundbite “uncivil.” Paul Greenberg, the poison pen of Little Rock, took his head out of his ass just long enough to say that these “dark words…” are a “low blow” that represents “the fall of the House of Kennedy.” And in his column yesterday, David Brooks tried to sanitize any notion of democracy being at risk by writing off Jonathan Chait and the rest of the Bush haters and cultural warriors as being “ignorant.“

The scary thing about Greenberg, Brooks and Tom Friedman is just how much slack they are willing to cut the Shrub Club and their uncivil tactics, most notably, jacking the election, crapping out on the anthrax investigation that shut down Congress, sitting on the funding to upgrade at-risk voting machines and jacking the intel on Iraq. And now, the in-house “investigation” of what should for lack of better words be called Rovegate.

At the same time, each of these dudes has a hard on for calling out Kennedy and other harsh critics of the Kostly Kristian Krusade, designed specifically to put America‘s social net on the killing floor.

In the convoluted logic of these bought-and-paid-fors‘ Shrubby has a divine right to dump all over us average Americans. He can lie about Iraq because he is el lider, el todopoderoso, anointed by the Electoral College, not by popular vote. And thanks to the Patriot Act and classifying records of what went on during the 9/11 until we’re all dead and gone, we’ll never know the truth. Friedman argued yesteday that we‘re in Iraq too deep now, that we should just spend the money and not question authority… just like the victims of the Holocaust didn‘t question whether water or poison gas would come out from the shower heads. Arbeit macht frei, nicht wahr Tom?

Ted Kennedy isn’t afraid to speak his mind about things he feels strongly about. I remember a day about 20 years ago when he showed up at the funeral of an old friend, Armin Elsaesser, who was the first captain of a magnificent sailing ship called the Pride of Baltimore. Armin was hanging out in Salter’s Point, Massachusetts and looking for something to do after a stint with the Navy in Bahrain. He took the Pride all over the world and then one day family and friends got word that the ship was missing in, of all places, the Bermuda Triangle. Ted Kennedy became personally involved, getting Navy search planes into the area. He didn’t know the Elsasesser family, who happened to be staunch Republicans. But he knew what it meant to lose family members at sea. After talking with Armin’s family, Kennedy showed up one sunny afternoon at the Seaman’s Bethel in New Bedford and delivered a magnificent extemporaneous eulogy from the same pulpit Gregory Peck spoke from in Moby Dick. A lot more genuine than Shrubby landing in his pilot suit 30 miles off the coast of San Diego to announce an “end to major combat.”

Keep the hits coming Teddy. You can co-blog with me anytime.

posted by Groom 6:33 AM

Wednesday, October 01, 2003

Selective Reading 101

Here are a couple of snips from the same article that Andrew Sullivan links to paint Joe Wilson as a “world class meshuggena.”

In 1990, while sheltering more than a hundred Americans at the U.S. Embassy and diplomatic residences, he (Wilson) briefed reporters while wearing a hangman's noose instead of a necktie -- a symbol of defiance after Hussein threatened to execute anyone who didn't turn over foreigners.

The message, Wilson said: "If you want to execute me, I'll bring my own [expletive] rope."

This toughness impressed President George H.W. Bush, who called Wilson a "truly inspiring" diplomat who exhibited "courageous leadership" by facing down Hussein and helping to gain freedom for the Americans before the 1991 war began.

>Snip<

Wilson may laugh now, but in the eyes of hostages, he was a hero. "He stuck his neck out in our behalf . . . He worked so hard to keep us from falling apart," recalled Roland O. Bergheer, 75, a Bechtel Corp. manager who was trapped in Baghdad.

A conservative who lives in Las Vegas, Bergheer added: "I love Joe Wilson. . . . I don't give a damn what his politics are."

posted by Jerry Bowles 8:20 PM

Who Dropped the Dime?

The more interesting question, of course, is which "senior administration official" ratted to the Washington Post on the two "White House officials" who shopped Mrs. Wilson's name around to at least six reporters? Looks like there has been a breakdown in discipline at old Camp Same-Page. Anybody heard any interesting rumors? Want to start one?

posted by Jerry Bowles 4:28 PM

Calling a spade a spade

How many football fans down in Rush Limbaugh’s hometown of Cape Giraudeau, Missouri are chilling at the sports bar and telling each other “my N-words beat your N-words Monday night?”

America’s favorite hatemonger just got his tit caught in the ringer using his ESPN platform to promote racism. Limbaugh claimed that Philadelphia Eagles quarterback Donovan McNabb, one of the NFL’s premier players, is really not very good at all and that his success is part of a conspiracy to make black quarterbacks look good in the media. Apparently Rush thinks that the increase in black quarterbacks in the league is part of a Zionist-Democratic plot to take service industry jobs away from whiteboy quarterbacks who didn’t make the cut and are waiting for phone calls somewhere down on the Redneck Riviera.

Don’t worry, Rush. It’s been going on forever. Nixon’s agricultural secretary Earl Butz made that off-color statement about black men wearing loose shoes. ABC’s Howard Cosell called a black NFL star a “little monkey” on Monday night football. Then Jimmy “the Greek” Snyder did his little eugenics number about black NFL players. And don’t forget former LA Dodgers general manager Al Campanis who got canned for his racist remarks. Oh yeah , and that Atlanta Braves pitcher who went off his rocker about minorities on the New York subway. Shrubby, a former ball club owner himself, says we’re all sinners. What, me worry, dude. We al got our First Amendment rights, don't we?

Maybe Rush doesn’t remember not so long ago when if you were a black quarterback you couldn’t find a job in the NFL. If you were a black running back you could take a hand-off from a white QB. But if you were a black QB you had to go up to Canada and play. See Warren Moon for details. Ditto Hispanic Qbs. Ask Joe Kapp or Sam Etcheverry. This is something that Greg Aiello over at the NFL league office doesn’t like to talk much about.

Doug Williams out of Grambling was the first black quarterback to win a Super Bowl with the Washington Redskins. Joe Gilliam, whose father was a college coach, became a star QB with the Pittsburgh Steelers during the mid-1970s but he couldn’t deal with the pressure of being a “minority” QB and drifted off into the world of drugs, living on the streets and often homeless, checking out finally a couple of years ago. It’s been a long hard road for the black QB in the NFL. Ask Vince Evans. Or James Harris.

In a world where both political and sports marketers look for heroes and not team players the NFL has helped to create a “cult of the quarterback” mythology that is every sports marketer’s dream and it cuts across racial lines. The quarterback has been put on a pedestal: the top role model, the top performer, the top endorsement money. And the NFL is going mano-a-mano with NASCAR so they need as many heroes as the media can help them produce.

Right now, the NFL is more concerned with promoting black coaches to be head coaches than it is with promoting black quarterbacks. Ditto the NCAA. If Limbaugh wants to yack about something, he should yack about that.

posted by Groom 2:33 PM

The 98% Solution

As a tactic to keep the pot boiling I suppose calling for an independent counsel makes sense but does anybody really want to pry the stake out of the heart of that nasty little monster? There is simply no way the Bushies can just ride this one out and even Ashcroft's men should be able to find the perps in a couple of days. It would be so much better for the president if he simply put out the word that he wants the guilty parties to fess up, grant them immunity from prosecution, and fire them. Sure the Dems would scream about the immunity but even Karl Rove would have to admit it would take the air out of the whole scandal and make Shrub look--to some people--like an honest man again.

posted by Jerry Bowles 2:25 PM

What's Our Policy on Classified Leaks?

"I want Congress to hear loud and clear: It is unacceptable behavior to leak classified information when we have troops at risk." George W. Bush, October 10, 2001

"It is wrong. It is against the law. It costs the lives of Americans. It diminishes our country's chance for success." Donald H. Rumsfeld, July 12, 2002 internal memo

"Leaks of classified information do substantial damage to the security interests of the nation. As a government, we must try to find more effective measures to deal with this damaging practice, including measures to prevent it." John Ashcroft, December 14, 2001

"The selective, inappropriate leaking of snippets of information risks undermining national security, and it risks undermining the promises made to protect this sensitive information." Ari Fleischer, June 20, 2002

"The newspeople like all the leaks because they give them stories, but there has been and will be damage to national security because of leaks. Some of these leaks are going to cause people to get killed." Sen. Richard Shelby, September 6, 2001

"The president doesn't like leaks out of the White House. He's already called for everyone to come forward - for anyone to come forward - but for everyone to cooperate in the investigation. But he expects the very highest standards from everyone that works in the White House.'' Laura Bush, October 1, 2003

posted by Jerry Bowles 12:48 PM

Go Howie

Howard Dean's campaign says he's on track to raise nearly $15 million in the July-September period. Knight-Ridder reports that this would be the most any Democratic presidential candidate has ever raised in one three-month period.

posted by Jerry Bowles 8:37 AM

It Couldn't Happen to a Nicer Guy

Does Robert Novak seem a little defensive to you? He's hyperventilating all over the place to cover his own ass and to avoid having his White House buddy swept away by his lapse of judgement. Nobody likes to admit that they killed their own squad with "friendly" fire. I do not feel bad for Novak because he was asked by his sources not to use the name and he did anyway; using the name was an irrelevant detail that added nothing to the story (so it must have been deliberate) and he's an insufferable little prick anyway.

posted by Jerry Bowles 8:19 AM

Spinning or Lying?

Poor confused James Taranto. If only the resident gerbil at Opinion Journal had read the text of the e-mail that counsel Alberto R. Gonzales sent to the White House staff Tuesday morning about the Justice Department's investigation into the leak of a CIA officer's identity, he wouldn’t have had to made such a fool of himself in his column yesterday.

“Anti-Bush partisans are really piling on thick over the purported scandal involving the "outing," supposedly by White House officials, of Valerie Plame, who may or may not have been a covert CIA operative, and who is married to a critic of the administration named Joe Wilson,” Taranto opines. He goes on to quote Robert Novak, who outed Mrs. Wilson as, claiming that he checked with a confidential source at the CIA who assured him that “Mrs. Wilson was an analyst, not a spy, not a covert operative, and not in charge of undercover operatives.”

Gonzales memo is considerably less ambiguous about Mrs. Wilson’s status. The first sentence reads:

We were informed last evening by the Department of Justice that it has opened an investigation into possible unauthorized disclosures concerning the identity of an undercover CIA employee.

Note Gonzales use of the word “undercover,” as in “covert.” No “may or may not have been” there. The transcript of Gonzales’ memo was available on the Web early yesterday—long before Taranto’s Opinion Journal was sent out by e-mail so Fast Jimmy had plenty of time to read it and get the true picture.

Then there is the strange line that Mrs. Wilson was outed “supposedly by White House officials.” Bob Novak says specifically his source was a “senior administration official.” I guess that could be somebody at the Pentagon or the Vice President’s office but—unless Taranto is calling Novak a liar—it was someone pretty close to the president.

Tomorrow Taranto will probably be telling us that Wilson and his wife each gave $1,000 to John Kerry’s campaign without also mentioning that the Wilsons each gave $1,000 to Bush’s campaign in 1999 or bringing up the inconvenient fact that Wilson was George H.W. Bush’s ambassador to Baghdad at the beginning of the first Gulf War. (That, of course, may also tell us something about the nature of Mrs. Wilson’s activities.)

Taranto ends his silly little piece with a gymnastic interpretation of the Intelligence Identities Protection Act that would make Bill Clinton proud. Sorry, Jimbo, like that telltale stain on Monica’s dress, this one just won’t wash that easily.

posted by Jerry Bowles 7:56 AM

Tuesday, September 30, 2003

Generally Speaking

If you haven't seen the new, official Clark blog, get on over there.

posted by Jerry Bowles 5:46 PM

The Hidden Casualties

Once in awhile it is a good idea to remind ourselves that keeping tabs on the number of Americans killed in Iraq (311, as of today) is only part of the story. The number of those wounded in action, or injured in combat-zone accidents, is far higher--1,691 to date. Brad Knickerbocker writes in tomorrow’s Christian Science Monitor:

With no end in sight to a substantial US presence in Iraq, the number of nonfatal casualties (now averaging more than eight per day) is likely to keep increasing, experts say. And beyond the human dimension, the costs of such casualties, which tend to be overlooked as part of the cost of national security and foreign policy, will continue for decades as well.

posted by Jerry Bowles 5:37 PM

Courting the NASCAR dads

…is American politics ready for “Apartheid on wheels?”

Last night on the GE-owned liberal media outlet, NBC, Tom Brokaw gave us an in-depth look at what he characterized as a growing phenomenon, the NASCAR dads. The news anchor suggested that the dads might become a political force to rival the fabled “soccer moms” who helped elect Patty Murray (D-WA) to the US Senate. See Jerry's post to find out how "NASCAR dads" were created by a Democratic pollster, below.

It's common knowledge that soccer moms are soccer moms because they don't want their sons getting their white butts kicked around the football field by black kids who want to become the next Maurice Clarett. And it's conventional wisdom that NASCAR is for whites who are happy to have a sport basically devoid of blacks. There's a don't ask, don't tell dynamic operating here.

The NBC segment featured GOP pollster and issues pimp Frank Luntz, who suggested that candidates from both major political parties are busy developing strategies that can win the votes of millions of NASCAR dads Luntz thinks can swing the 2004 presidential vote (for hatemonger Shrubby, of course).

NASCAR dads represent a segment of working-class white America that, Luntz claims, were politically marginalized during two terms of Bill Clinton’s middle-of-the-road leadership, including, losing their jobs to the “Clinton recession.” Bill Frist, Trent Lott and Tom DeLay are just a few Republicans who have been preaching to that choir for a long time. But can you see Howard Dean, Wesley Clark, John Kerrey, Al Sharpton, Joe Lieberman and Carol Mosley-Braun out there pressing the flesh at Rockingham, Talladega or Bristol? John Edwards and Bob Graham… no problemo. When they start talking just push a button and out comes the grits.

These are Dick Nixon’s “forgotten Americans,” the ones that Jim Baker said are happy with “cheap beer and dollar gas.” But gas isn’t a dollar anymore. And with manufacturing jobs moving out of the country both commodities are getting more expensive.

Tapping into the anger instead of solving the problem is a technique that has been used successfully by Frank Luntz and Karl Rove. But will NASCAR dads vote? Consider a similar ilk: there are some statistics indicating that born-again Christians don’t go out and vote in numbers proportionate to all the media hype they get as a major political force. Maybe this is one reason why Republicans always pray for rain on election day.

To project the power of NASCAR, Brokaw cited the example of how sales of Tide laundry detergent went up after their parent company sponsored a car on the NASCAR circuit.

Get me rewrite! The backstory that Brokaw and GOP shill Luntz didn’t tell us about is that the attitude of the NASCAR folks who are buying that soap isn’t much different than the attitude of the folks a generation ago captured on NBC news clips as they dumped detergent into public swimming pools in the South to protest the racial equality established by the Civil Rights Act.

Bowing to pressure from conservative lobbyists and fans NASCAR has cut off donations to Jesse Jackson’s Rainbow/PUSH coalition, money that was earmarked for promoting "diversity” in NASCAR. For its part, NASCAR has only one black driver in its top three national categories, Bill Lester, who runs on the Class AA-level Craftsman truck circuit. The black driver who effectively broke the NASCAR “color line” was Willy T. Ribbs.

The vague tenets of political correctness mandate that a political market like NASCAR dads be pandered to by politicians of all stripes. But, one wonders, after watching the NBC segment, to what extent NASCAR dads care to be mobilized politically. “We’ll give them their one minute,” one NASCAR fan told the NBC camera, “then we’ll let ‘em know we're here for the race.” What if Jeff Gordon suddenly became Jerry Rodriguez? What if Dale Jarrett suddenly became Kwame Jarrett. What race will NASCAR dads show up for then?

posted by Groom 1:44 PM

The Wuss Factor

Rural southern men, they're going to vote Bush because there's a perception that Democrats are a bunch of wusses. Dave "Mudcat" Saunders, Democratic Strategist

The term NASCAR Dad was coined last year by Celinda Lake, a Democratic pollster, and it describes rural and small-town voters, especially white men in the South, who once were solid Democrats but who've been voting Republican in presidential elections as the parties split over social issues such as race, gays and guns.

In 2000 President Bush swept the South, thanks largely to his astonishing margin among white men there: Seventy percent voted for him, according to exit polls. Knight-Ridder, September 30, 2003

Clark vs. Dean. Discuss.

posted by Jerry Bowles 1:24 PM