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Big D Has the Big Mo

Adam Nagourney has an good piece on Howard Dean in tomorrow's New York Times. The nut: "Democrats across the country are expressing admiration for Dr. Dean's evolution as a candidate and no longer view him simply as an intriguing if quirky doctor from Vermont who would like to be president."

posted by Jerry Bowles 5:10 PM

Frist the plumber

The drama over the jacked "prewar" intelligence is taking on the histrionics of an old Amos n' Andy show. From the looks of things, the White House is still not cooperating and now they’ve got Frist the plumber on the case. The Senator from Sudan is threatening to roll up the investigation early and making a fuss about a memo allegedly circulated by Democrats (that he himself may have leaked) calling for an independent investigation. Massa Bill, you come from the country music capital of America… what part of separation of power don’t you understand? Get you some time on yo’ buddy Franklin Graham’s show, tell the whole white world about it… mmm, hmmm. We better get Calhoun down to the courthouse Andy, and make sure Lightnin’ ain’t far behind.

posted by Groom 11:24 AM

Wanted: Fall Guy

Shouldn't somebody be held accountable for promising Turkey $8.5 billion in cheap loans for sending troops to Iraq without realizing that this was a very stupid idea that was likely to make both the Turks and the Iraqis so unhappy that it would fall through? Who is the author of this bright idea?

posted by Jerry Bowles 9:33 AM

Friday, November 07, 2003

CBS News Gets It Right

There continues to be an uneasy feeling among Democratic insiders about Dean and one AFL official suggested this week there's a worry in the building that the Dean campaign could turn out to be a "fiasco." The party professionals are particularly worried about his record on civil unions and McGovernesque campaign. But as Democrats search for that winner they so sorely want, only Dean has generated enthusiasm, intense supporters and broad-based financial backing.

posted by John 9:33 PM

Depends on What You Mean By “Post-War”

That darling war slut Andrew Sullivan is so exercised over Maureen Dowd’s claim in her Thursday column that the Bush administration “…said this (Iraq) would be easy, and it's teeth-grindingly hard” that he has issued a challenge to readers:

“…can anyone find a statement from any administration official who said that the post-war reconstruction in Iraq would be ‘easy.’ Notice she wrote: ‘said.’ Not implied or hoped or suggested. Said.”

Clever boy. The trick in his challenge is the “post-war” stipulation which eliminates some of the rasher pre-war “cakewalk” statements of peripheral administration figures like Kenneth Adelman and Richard Perle, as well as Dick Cheney’s “greeted as liberators” bad joke.

But, if you read Dowd’s column, it is clear that she is talking about the whole Iraq misadventure, not just the disaster since May 1 when Shrub declared the end of “major combat.” Presumably, that’s when Andy starts his “post-war” calendar. The fact that 32 Americans died in Iraq in the last week alone suggests to me that we haven’t quite gotten to “post-war” yet.

Can anyone seriously deny that the administration expected a swift and easy military victory, happy Iraqis cheering American troops, a model Middle Eastern democracy rising in Baghdad, reconstruction paid for by Iraqi oil revenue and a brief military occupation?

But, did anyone in the administration actually “say” it would be easy. I refer the jury to Exhibit A, a March 17, 2003 column by Robert Novak, a fairly well-known Washington columnist known for outing CIA agents. In the column in question, Novak writes about the regular Tuesday luncheon of Republican senators that Vice President Cheney faithfully attends. At this particular lunch, Novak reports, Cheney “spoke out -- at length, vigorously and in a way that revealed the Bush administration's secret concerns and real intentions about Iraq.”

After assuring his fellow Republicans that the President had not been on drugs during his strangely lethargic and totally stage-managed press conference the week before and that the administration was really only going back to the UN to give Tony Blair some cover, Novak writes:

“Cheney closed by addressing apprehension about the war that grips even senators who strongly approve of the administration's course. Unlike the U.S. military commanders in the coming conflict who stress the uncertainties of war, the vice president predicted victory. It will be concluded ‘quickly and confidently,’ he promised.”

Note the quotation marks around “quickly and confidently.” Bob Novak may be a singularly unattractive little troll but he is an honest reporter and when he puts quotes around something, the person quoted “said” it.

I know, Andy dearest, you said “post-war.” But, you have to cheat to win on this one.

posted by Jerry Bowles 9:31 PM

Folly Marches On

Well, here's an explanation for Chalabi's absence. The missing Pentagon stooge and international bank robber (see below) is lining up cronies to loot the American public's Iraq reconstruction money. This is one cockroach who needs a good stomping.

posted by Jerry Bowles 2:56 PM

Bring 'em Home for Christmas

Another helicopter down, six more lives flushed down a dirthole shithouse so draft dodgers Bush and Cheney can feel more manly. Why is it that the guys who could use the "penile enhancement pills" spam never see it?

The scariest thing about Quagmire II may be it sheer pointlessness. Tom Friedman had a couple of throwaway lines in his column yesterday that revealed just how doomed this whole exercise really is:

"... it now looks as if we have only a military process in Iraq and no political process.

"The reason this happened is that the U.S.-appointed Iraqi Governing Council, which is supposed to come up with a plan for forming the constitution-writing committee, is becoming dysfunctional. Several key G.C. members, particularly the Pentagon's favorite son, Ahmad Chalabi, have been absent from Iraq for weeks. Only seven or eight of the 24 G.C. members show up at meetings anymore."

Even our handpicked stooges are just waiting for us to get worn down.

posted by Jerry Bowles 1:03 PM

A House Divided Redux

E. J. Dionne's column in this morning's Washington Post is called "One Nation Deeply Divided" and touches on the same concerns I wrote about here yesterday.

posted by Jerry Bowles 8:51 AM

Fair and Balanced For Real

"She was a bit of a news nut. She loved NPR and its unfiltered presentation of the news. . . . It wasn't liberal and it wasn't conservative. It was as objective as you're going to find." Dick Starmann, friend of McDonald's heiress Joan Kroc, who left $200 million to NPR. Washington Post, November 7, 2003

posted by Jerry Bowles 8:38 AM

Kingmaker on both sides of the aisle

Jack Stephens, come on down…

As we get closer to nut-cuttin’ time, let’s take a look at the man who would be kingmaker in the 2004 presidential election. Jimmy Carter’s Annapolis classmate Jackson Stephens. The native Arkansan always seems to do the right thing. And with impeccable political connections his investment firm, Stephens & Co. and the rest of his financial empire are way too big to fail.

Stephens made sure Jimmy Carter’s “running against Washington” campaign was never running on empty. And he introduced Carter and bagman Bert Lance to the Arab crew who gained control of outlaw bank BCCI (are you listening John Kerry). He had considerable access and influence with Poppy Bush when he was DCI at Langley. Jack Stephens was a big contributor to Poppy’s warchest and his wife was chairman of the 1988 Bush campaign in the Razorback state.

Then, of course, there’s the $25 million loan he helped facilitate way back for Shrubby’s play-doh oil company, Harken Energy, through the Union des Banques Suisse (UBS).

That loan, by the way, was paid through a joint venture of UBS and the Geneva branch of BBCI, which was controlled by Kahled bin Mafouz, who has been identified by the US government as a longtime funder of Osama bin Laden’s Al Qaeda network(s). Mafouz has also been a major investor in, you guessed it, The Carlyle Group.

Now that nearly all the usual suspects have been rounded up, let’s not forget that it was Jack Stephens who ponied up $3 million to keep Bill Clinton’s campaign from tanking in 1992. When Wes Clark “retired” from the Army, Stephens brought him in as a director of his company with the goal of developing lots of new business.

But columnist John Brummett writing in the Stephens-owned Arkansas News Bureau newsletter back on October 2nd says that chronic overachiever Clark didn't get the highest of marks during his tour of duty in the business world.

With all the Clinton retainers hanging around the Clark campaign operation in Arkansas, one can only wonder whether hidden hand of Jack Stephens will pull the strings or pull out the stakes.

posted by Groom 5:50 AM

Defending Dean

Paul Krugman takes the other Democratic candidates to task in his column today for ganging up on Howard Dean when they all know perfectly well that he is not a racist and is completely right when he says that Democrats have to do a better of explaining to southerners that supporting the right-wing Bush agenda is not in their own best economic interests. The fact that so many poor and lower middle class white southerners support a president (and party) whose economic policies demonstrably benefit the already affluent at their expense can only be explained by the Republicans' coded (and sometimes overt) appeals to racism and intolerance. That's where the rage belongs.

posted by Jerry Bowles 12:10 AM

Thursday, November 06, 2003

Another Great Moment in American Journalism

L.A. Times Bans 'Resistance Fighters' in Iraq News
Wed November 05, 2003 09:21 PM ET

By Dan Whitcomb

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - The Los Angeles Times has ordered its reporters to stop describing anti-American forces in Iraq as "resistance fighters," saying the term romanticizes them and evokes World War II-era heroism.

The ban was issued by Melissa McCoy, a Times assistant managing editor, who told the staff in an e-mail circulated on Monday night that the phrase conveyed unintended meaning and asked them to instead use the terms "insurgents" or "guerrillas."

McCoy told Reuters in an interview on Wednesday that the memo followed a discussion among top editors at the paper and was not sparked by reader complaints. The memo first surfaced on the Web site L.A. Observed.

"(Times Managing Editor) Dean Baquet and I both individually had the same reaction when we saw the term used in the newspaper," McCoy said. "Both of us felt the phrase evoked a certain feeling, that there was a certain romanticism or heroism to the resistance."

McCoy said she considered "resistance fighters" an accurate description of Iraqis battling American troops, but it also evoked World War II -- specifically the French Resistance or Jews who fought against Nazis in the Warsaw ghetto.

"Really, it was something that just stopped us when we saw it, and it was really about the way most Americans have come to view the words," McCoy said.

See full story at Reuters

posted by John 9:33 PM

What I Like About the South

Southern man
better keep your head
Don't forget
what your good book said
Southern change
gonna come at last
Now your crosses
are burning fast
Southern man
Southern Man (Neil Young)

I'm going down to the Dew Drop Inn
See if I can drink enough
There ain't much to country living
Sweat, piss, jizz and blood
"Sweet Home Alabama"
Play that dead band's song
Turn those speakers up full blast
Play it all night long
Play It All Night Long (Warren Zevon)

We talk real funny down here
We drink too much and we laugh too loud
We're too dumb to make it in no Northern town
And we're keepin' the niggers down

We got no-necked oilmen from Texas
And good ol' boys from Tennessee
And college men from LSU
Went in dumb - come out dumb too
Hustlin' 'round Atlanta in their alligator shoes
Gettin' drunk every weekend at the barbecues
And they're keepin' the niggers down
Rednecks (Randy Newman)

Hey, don't send me nasty notes. I was born and grew up with this ignorant crap. I got over it.

posted by Jerry Bowles 6:50 PM

Other Than That, Mrs. Lincoln...

Some common sense from the right:

The Bush administration and its political allies continue a propaganda barrage against the news media, accusing journalists of overemphasizing the negative in Iraq. That criticism comes close to embracing a Peter Pan strategy: the notion that everything in Iraq will be fine if we just think happy thoughts...

...Administration officials have a point when they argue that reconstruction is progressing. Some progress has been made in reconstruction. But though the United States may be opening new schools, it's likely that some of the older members of the student body may be guerrilla fighters in their off hours. Washington and its Iraqi allies may patch together remnants of the infrastructure, but insurgents can blow up almost anything at their leisure...

...The administration and its allies may focus on transitory achievements and downplay the importance of the security issue all they wish. Their actions, though, are reminiscent of the grim joke: "Other than that, Mrs. Lincoln, how was your evening?" Security is central. Without it, all of the other accomplishments mean little. Ted Galen Carpenter, vice president for defense and foreign policy studies at the Cato Institute, November 6, 2003

posted by Jerry Bowles 3:54 PM

Aks the experts

“Governor Dean was trying to reach out to disenfranchised voters in the South, but he needs to be more careful…I don‘t think this is serious, but it has put a little bit of a dent in his front runner status…” NM Governor Bill Richardson

Now that “the apology” is official, its fair to say that the flap over the Confederate flag vote was taken way out of context by the bought-and-paid-for media. Everybody who played follow the leader should take time out to read Tom Wolfe’s classic “Mau-Mauing The Flak Catchers” and then say a few acts of contrition. If Dean had said NASCAR, maybe it would have gone down a little sweeter, after all, it’s only all about Apartheid on Wheels. And, don’t forget, the NASCAR folks have been taking Jesse Jackson to the bank for quite some time.

Amidst all the media clutter, it’s troubling when an oblate OxyPete shill like New Mexico governor Richardson jumps in to play 6 on 1 against the D-train. One more bully for the ambush snowball attack on the way home from school. Hit the kid with the Confederate flag on his lunchbox. And this from a governor who is just waiting for the opportunity to appoint himself to the US Senate when “St. Pete” Domenici sits himself down for health reasons.

“Milquetoast Joe” Lieberman fronting points for the Likudniks and the DLC. “Dour John” Kerry still groping for an identity. John “the senator from Riyadh” Edwards who slithered out of a scandal after the Saudis tried to help him hang some paper on a new home. Their carefully crafted made-for-TV images have more to do with attracting the corporate slush money that is the methadone of the American political system than with reaching out to the voters. They don’t want to work the crowd. That’s too labor intensive. They want to be videotaped for five seconds working the crowd and then move on to the next photo-op.

Bill Richardson knows a lot about disenfranchisement. His state has the lowest per-capita income in the nation. According to a study by the United Health Foundation, New Mexico has the second highest child poverty rate in the nation. It is 49th in support for public health care and over all ranks 42nd in the quality of health care services delivered. You'd think Gobernador Bill's old mentors at Tufts would have taught him better. It’s no wonder that the rich folks in Santa Fe call St. Vincent’s, the local hospital “St. Victims.”

Conventional wisdom suggests that Richardson is entitled to take potshots at Dean because of all the great press he receives as the Dems point man for Native Americans and Hispanics. Yet in New Mexico there is racial and cultural polarization. "Spanish blood" New Mexicans in the North hate the "Mexican blood" New Mexicans in the South and both groups hate the "Anglos" who colonized from the East. And then there's the time Richardson was Energy Secretary and flew down to Colombia and helped jack some big time oil producing land from the “natives” down there, land that was theirs by way of the Colombian constitution. Are those “natives” any different than the ones who live in New Mexico, who make “authentic Native American jewelry” out of turquoise imported from China? And are the Democrats who reload and put Confederate flag decals on the back of their pickup trucks down in Catron County, New Mexico, where Boss Bill Richardson rules the roost any different than the ones that Howard Dean suggested need to be included in the broad party coalition?

Memo to D-train... next time you talk with Jimmy Carter, maybe you ought to ask him about his being the real Godfather of the "tilt to Iraq" policy, and maybe a little bit about Wes Clark's friend Jack Stephens, and Bill Clinton's pal from Indonesia, Moctar Riady, and your pal Bert Lance and BCCI. John Kerry won't be asking any questions, that's for sure. Let us know what you hear...

posted by Groom 7:09 AM

We have nothing to fear but fear of losing

Howard Dean has done something incredible. He has asked us, his supporters, to vote on whether or not the campaign should accept federal matching funds and the spending limits they impose. Here, my friends is democracy in action--democracy of a kind that will, I am sure, be seen as absolutely appalling by political "professionals" trapped in the memes of political campaigning conceived as a marketing exercise controlled from the top down.

I have voted yes and used the space provided on my electronic ballot to explain my decision as follows.

When one party rejects federal matching funds, they become a poison pill for the other. But the real reason we have to reject these funds is to challenge ourselves once again to pursue the Dean campaign's vision--to make democracy real again. Like Paul Wellstone said so well, it's time to ENERGIZE! MOBILIZE! ORGANIZE!

I end with the words I have used as a title, We have nothing to fear but the fear of losing.

To the campaigns that will bitch and moan and cry foul, I have only this to say: Stand aside and let real democracy reign.

posted by John 2:58 AM

One Wonderful Thing Today--Spoiled

I phoned San Diego. Both daughter (Navy helicopter pilot) and son-in-law (Marine F-18 jock) are home safe and sound. I wish I could share the relief I feel with all of the other parents who still have kids in or around Iraq. Knowing about all those whose kids will never come home or have come home badly wounded and been hidden out of sight like used kleenex makes my joy indecent.

posted by John 2:38 AM

Out of the Mouths of Major Liars

"I think that the proposition of going to Baghdad is also fallacious. I think if we were going to remove Saddam Hussein we would have had to go all the way to Baghdad, we would have to commit a lot of force because I do not believe he would wait in the Presidential Palace for us to arrive. I think we'd have had to hunt him down. And once we'd done that and we'd gotten rid of Saddam Hussein and his government, then we'd have had to put another government in its place.

"What kind of government? Should it be a Sunni government or Shi'i government or a Kurdish government or Ba'athist regime? Or maybe we want to bring in some of the Islamic fundamentalists? How long would we have had to stay in Baghdad to keep that government in place? What would happen to the government once U.S. forces withdrew? How many casualties should the United States accept in that effort to try to create clarity and stability in a situation that is inherently unstable?

"I think it is vitally important for a President to know when to use military force. I think it is also very important for him to know when not to commit U.S. military force. And it's my view that the President got it right both times, that it would have been a mistake for us to get bogged down in the quagmire inside Iraq."

-- SoD Dick Cheney, from 'The Gulf War, A First Assessment', Soref Symposium, Washington Institute, April, 1991

posted by John 2:37 AM

A House Divided

“A house divided against itself cannot stand,” Abraham Lincoln warned his colleagues at the Republican National Convention in 1858. It was a prophecy that was to come all too true with cataclysmic consequences as the nation descended into Civil War. Could such a destructive event happen here again? It’s a question I don’t recall ever hearing anyone ask. The vast majority of Americans, I suspect, think of themselves too evolved, too prosperous, too patriotic, too “Christian,” too self-satisfied, to even consider such a terrible possibility.

I hope they’re right. Simmering just under the mushroom cloud of denial and ennui emitted daily by a lethal combination of automobiles, malls, fast food joints, charge cards and bad TV, this is a country that is deeply and dangerously divided against itself. That troubling conclusion lies at the heart of the latest study of American political attitudes performed by the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press. The Bush administration’s response to 9/11 has only deepened the divide:

National unity was the initial response to the calamitous events of Sept. 11, 2001, but that spirit has dissolved amid rising political polarization and anger. In fact, a year before the presidential election, American voters are once again seeing things largely through a partisan prism. The GOP has made significant gains in party affiliation over the past four years, but this remains a country that is almost evenly divided politically, yet further apart than ever in its political values.

Pew’s longitudinal measures of basic political, economic and social values, which date back to 1987, show that political polarization is now as great as it was prior to the 1994 midterm elections that ended four decades of Democratic control in Congress. “But now, unlike then, Republicans and Democrats have become more intense in their political beliefs,” the Pew study reports.

From national security to the need for more business regulation to the importance of a strong social safety net, Democrats and Republicans are deeply divided. A large partisan gap remains on issues like abortion, homosexuality, and race. African Americans, who are overwhelmingly critical of the Bush administration, feel much more estranged from government than they did four years ago. This year's Pew survey found a wider gap in strong religious commitment between Republicans and Democrats than at any time over the 16-year period.

Americans can’t even seem to agree on whether they are better off today than four years ago:

Perhaps the most striking evidence of a growing partisan disparity is the extent to which Republicans, Democrats and independents now judge their personal financial situation differently. Republicans are at least as satisfied financially as they were four years ago, but Democratic personal contentment has declined significantly since 1999. Independents also have become more negative about their personal financial situation over the past four years, to the point where their economic views now mirror those of Democrats.

As the electorate has become more polarized in its political values, it has become more evenly divided in partisan affiliation. Throughout President Clinton's second term the Democrats held about a six-point advantage over the GOP among the general public. That held steady through the first nine months of Bush's first year in office. But since the Sept. 11 attacks, the Democratic advantage has vanished.

In Pew Center surveys conducted since the Iraq war earlier this year, 30% of Americans identify themselves as Republicans, 31% as Democrats and 39% as independents or other. When that combined sample is winnowed to registered voters, the partisan breakdown is just as narrow 33% Republican, 34% Democrat, 33% independent or other.

As I’ve written here before, America today is almost evenly divided between people who believe there are, or should be, certain immutable cultural standards of right and wrong that govern how all of us live, and those who believe that many issues are neither entirely right nor entirely wrong but depend upon circumstance. Both the absolutists and the moral relativists have already applied their particular logic to every political question and staked out an immovable position.

Recognizing the growing divide, most presidents from LBJ onward have made a conscious effort to strike a balance between the extremists in their parties and have governed from the center. This is not only good politics, it is an important and noble goal in a country as divided as this one. As George W. Bush said in his inaugural speech on January 21, 2001: “Our unity, our union, is the serious work of leaders and citizens in every generation. And this is my solemn pledge: I will work to build a single nation of justice and opportunity.”

My greatest fear has long been that a charismatic and insenstive political demagogue would emerge—having falsely disguised himself as a centrist--on the extreme end of the political spectrum who would attempt to use executive powers and the nation’s courts, police and military to enforce a vision of right and wrong that leaves half of the American public feeling cut out of the political process. That is a surefire recipe for revolution.

Actually, that’s not my greatest fear. My greatest fear is that it has already happened.

posted by Jerry Bowles 12:15 AM

Wednesday, November 05, 2003

Five Ways Bush Wins a Year from Now

1. Lowers expectations
No one is better at lowering expectations—and then beating those expectations—than the Bushies. Remember in 2002 when the Bush campaign continually downplayed his ability to debate, especially going up against the established skills of Gore? Just showing up made him a winner. Matthew Dowd, Bush pollster, has already sent a memo out rationalizing Bush’s drop in the polls and projecting further drops. On the job front, needing at least 200,000 new jobs a month in order not to have the worst job loss record since Hoover, the Bushies are already lowering expectations while touting the 55,000 new jobs in September and the additional 55,000 in October. Pretty soon creating more new jobs every month is more important than how many, and whining about the numbers not adding up doesn’t help the Democrats.

2. Tars Democrats as Tax ‘n Spend Liberals
Democrats can’t shake the label. All the Democrat candidates have proposed some form of repeal of Bush’s tax cut. Any repeal of any tax cut is now spun as an increase in taxes! The logic is not there, but Ralph Reed, chairman of the Southeast Bush re-election campaign, was perfecting the line this week on CNN. And it’s a big number—one of those trillion dollar mindblower numbers. So even before there is a Democratic candidate, they are all being tarred and feathered with the “tax ‘n spend” label that sticks to Democrats like flies stick to …

3. Dumps Cheney
Cheney bows out and with him all his mischief, machinations, misquotes, missteps. Bush surfaces with a clean slate and the Halliburton connect and all secret oil society meetings are neutralized. Bush then waits until the Democratic ticket is set in August and builds genuine suspense about who he will pick as a running mate in the New York-based Republican Convention in early September. (Think Pataki, Giuliani, Romney, Frist, etc. and guaranteeing the nominee his early backing for 2008.)

4. Wins on Personality
In general, five percent of undecided voters wait until the last minute to decide who they will vote for and usually that decision is made on the basis of likeability—often the margin of victory. Here the edge goes to Bush who still has that winsome folksy manner and fraternity look that beat the wooden Gore in 2000 and beats the scowling Democrats next year. The only Democrat with charm points is long-shot Edwards.

5. An October Surprise
Any uptick in the economy or corner turned in Iraq and Bush wins. Saddam sacked or Osama corralled—especially in early October—and Bush wins. Look for Bush to cash in one of his Saudi IOUs or for Rummy to leak another memo with the outlines of a secret turn-around plan a la Nixon/Kissinger’s secret plan to exit Vietnam.

posted by Josh 4:08 PM

Free Enterprise

Prodded by the White House, House Republicans have stripped the Iraq supplemental bill of an anti-profiteering provision that would have subjected those who deliberately defrauded the United States or Iraq to jail terms of up to 20 years and costly fines. Score another big one for Dick Cheney's Halliburton, which has been price-gouging the Bremerites on gasoline imported from Kuwait for months now.

These people really have no shame.

posted by Jerry Bowles 12:56 PM

Confessions of an Accu-Voter

"As the Global representative I talked to informed me... the I-mark system uses only a single DES key for all voting machines they manufacture. This is comparable to the situation you would expect if all ATM cards issued by some bank had the same PIN." Professor Douglas Jones, Department of Computer Science, University of Iowa

There I was, on the scene, election day at Precinct 216, Ward 2, Tuscon, Pima County, Arizona. It was shortly after lunch hour and things were pretty quiet…

I didn’t need a photo-id. At least nobody asked me for one. All I had was a scrap of paper I got in the mail from the Pima County Recorder telling me where to show up to vote and I didn’t even need to show that. I just confirmed my name and address with the three person crew, signed the voter register, was given a paper ballot and told to go over to a small table where I would find a felt tip pen with which I could mark it.

No curtains, no privacy. No matter. I was pointed toward a thin flat scanner sitting on another small table and instructed by a crew member to put my ballot in the slot so the machine could record my vote.

“So do I get any kind of receipt for my vote?” I asked a poll worker.

“No,” she replied, shaking her head. “Your vote is recorded automatically by the machine.”

“And what if the machine crashes,” I asked.

She shrugged and broke off a small piece from her chocolate bar, deferring to a male counterpart. He had just returned from the toaster with piping hot sticky bun.

“The tape records the votes and then we transmit the tape to the tabulating center by the telephone lines.”

“Oh...” I replied, imitating my fraternity brother and convicted Watergate co-conspirator George Steinbrenner in his latest Visa ad. “But what if there are problems with the data transmission at the back end, at the center?"

“I don’t know,” said the poll worker.

For those who want to go beyond the “I don’t know” in connection with Accu-Vote and Global Election Systems (which acquired the Accu Vote optical sense mark system from Unisys in 1991) check out what Professor Douglas Jones at the University of Iowa’s Department of Computer Science has to say about some of the serious security issues connected with this “privatized” vote counting system.

posted by Groom 7:10 AM

Exporting the American Way...of Politics, That Is

This morning's Japan Times front pages a story titled Battle for power waged on voters' screens: DPJ and LDP use mass media, PR firms to woo unaffiliated segment.

The lead reads,

"The leader of the Democratic Party of Japan is fleetingly portrayed in a recent TV commercial as the stern-faced chairman of a fictitious Cabinet meeting, the scene accompanied by upbeat rock music....

Deeper in the story we find,

"In June, the DPJ took the unprecedented step of hiring the Japan unit of U.S. public relations giant Fleishman-Hillard Inc. to streamline its campaign strategies for this election."

Oh boy, oh boy, oh boy.

posted by John 12:42 AM

Reagan Family Values

Ron and Nancy's daughter Patti Davis weighs in on the CBS controversy:

"Many women in the Sixties were prescribed tranquilizers, and my mother never noticed hers missing, so she couldn’t have been using them too often. You won’t get this context in the CBS movie; they just wanted you to know there were drugs on the premises." Patti Davis, Time, November 4, 2003

"My mother chose to make the anti-drug issue her campaign. I always felt that it was a subconscious cry for help." Patti Davis regarding the irony of her mother Nancy Reagan's "Just Say No" campaign against drugs. Davis claimed that Nancy was heavily dependent on prescription tranquilizers in her autobiography, The Way I See It, 1992

"To deliberately and calculatingly depict public people as shallow, intolerant, cold and inept, with no truths or facts to back up the portrayals, is nothing short of malevolent. Patti Davis, Time, November 4, 2003

"As uncomfortable as it is to talk about, and write about, abuse is part of this story. I first remember my mother hitting me when I was eight. It escalated as I got older and became a weekly, sometimes daily, event. The last time it happened was when I was in my second year of college." Patti Davis, The Way I See It, 1992

posted by Jerry Bowles 12:11 AM

Tuesday, November 04, 2003

Bush Bustout II... phony growth masks job losses

The bloom is off the rose for yesterday's dog-and-pony-show down on the Redneck Riviera with Shrubby and Silvertongued Haley Barbour. Regardless of what these two crooks and the bought-and-paid-fors' in the media are doing to pimp the phony growth in our economy, the reality is that in October, the US economy lost 171,847 jobs, the biggest job loss in one year. This according to the Chicago-based outplacement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas. Empty growth... twin towers... it's still the economy.

posted by Groom 4:00 PM

Holy Hypocrites

Isn't it kind of ironic that a nation that has made pissing on the graves of dead Kennedys a major sub-genre of the entertainment industry is not mature enough to tolerate the notion that Ron and Nancy may not have been an ideal couple and were subject to some of the imperfections that afflict us all? The cancellation of the Reagan mini-series by CBS is a disgraceful bow to right-wing pressure and another dent in the battered armor of free speech.

posted by Jerry Bowles 3:08 PM

Could It Be? Yes, it Could

Here's something cheerful. More than four in 10 voters nationwide say they definitely plan to vote against President Bush next year — more than plan to vote for him, according to a poll by Marist College's Institute for Public Opinion. 44 percent of the voters questioned said they planned to definitely vote against the Republican president while 38 percent said they would support his re-election.

posted by Jerry Bowles 11:20 AM

We always buy the lie

Senator Robert Byrd shouted “nay!” Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg wrote “I dissent.” When the “winners” write history, that should be noted. Then too, most folks in Congress didn't seem to mind when LBJ bonked America with the Gulf of Tonkin resolution, another made-in-Texas tale that used lies and smoke-and-mirrors publc relations to legitimize a costly and socially divisive “peace action.” Back then, the war economy wasn't threatened by the “twin towers” of deficit spending and external debt. Today, the towers are weighing down the economy like a pair of concrete shoes in the East River. When Shrubby's war is over the American people will have about as much of a social safety net as Iraq, which is classified by international lending organizations as a middle income nation. After seeing what the bright shining lies of Viet Nam did to America, LBJ did the right thing and announced that he would not seek the office of the presidency again.

posted by Groom 6:41 AM