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Peace in Our Time

David Brooks’ column in the New York Times this morning proposes that we all declare an end to “the partisan war between Republicans and Democrats that rages every day in Washington and produces behavior that would be unacceptable in any other arena of life.” Lest we miss the point, he goes on to explain that he means “the war that poisons our airwaves, clogs up our best-seller lists and stagnates our politics.”

A retreat from the nasty partisanship that characterizes today’s Washington would certainly be a major step in the right direction. As I wrote here just last week, an emphasis on bipartisanship “is not only good politics, it is an important and noble goal in a country as divided as this one.”

Brooks pulls no punches in identifying where the problem lies on the right end of the political spectrum:

Remember when George Bush used to say he was going to change the tone in Washington? He lied about that. He couldn't even reach out to Jim Jeffords, a moderate in his own party. He was never going to reach out to Democrats. He is too intellectually insecure. He can't handle people who disagree with him, so he retreats into the cocoon of the like-minded.

Democrats may find his chosen enemy on the left less convincing. “I have seen Dean up close,” he writes. “The man hates his opponents. His kind thrives only during times of domestic war.” Brooks goes on to say that nominating Dean will be bad for the party and bad for the country “…because 40 percent of the voters in this nation call themselves moderates.”

Tell you what, Mr. Brooks. I actually think Howard Dean is more moderate, even conservative, than most of the other Democratic candidates but if your side is willing to throw Shrub overboard and come up with a new candidate first, I’ll grab one of Dean’s legs for you. Otherwise, no deal. There can be no peace and no retreat as long as George W. Bush remains in Washington.

posted by Jerry Bowles 12:07 AM

Friday, November 14, 2003

Who Knew?

Did you know that if you Google the words bush+bait+and+switch you will get about 25,100 entries?

posted by Jerry Bowles 11:48 AM

Winning the Q Race

It seems pointless to post something so light after Jerry's link to the story about Abu Hanan, a Palestinian mother who murdered her daughter because she was raped by her siblings and the family honor needed to be restored.

But, at the other end of the global news spectrum, the Wall Street Journal this morning carries a story they admit is "ridiculous," but they run it nonetheless: Which Democratic candidate has the highest Q rating, an established and popular way to determine the likability of personalities. In popular culture Bill Cosby is the most likeable, scoring 71. Other high scores from Marketing Evaluations, Inc. who has been conducting these tests for over 40 years, are Tom Hanks, Julia Roberts, Sean Connery and George Foreman (which explains why he is still selling mufflers and grills). At the low end, you'll find Woody Allen and Martha Stewart, so there may be some validity to it after all. The score was used to help fire Connie Chung after she switched to CNN, apparently context can impact your score as well.

So on the political front, pretty boy Edwards and ugly boys, Gephardt and Lieberman don't even make the minimal score of 19. I thought tall and lanky Kerry would do better, but he has a low Q score as well. The suspense is now over: Dean is the Q race leader.

For those of you who remember the Robert Kennedy presidential campaign, do you recall the white shirts and ties--with the shirt sleeves pushed (not folded) above the elbows to give him that sense of urgency and intimacy. Dean has the look down, and that helps, I'm sure. He also has the choir-boy smile that is growing on me.

As ridiculous as this is, keep in mind that likeability is worth at least 5 percentage points among the undecided in the final days of the campaign. Shrub's ability to fake likeability won him the last election. Keep working on that smile, doc.

posted by Josh 10:36 AM

Who You Calling Crazy?

I'm sure by now most of you have read the terrific article in Psychological Bulletin titled "Political Conservatism as Motivated Social Cognition." No? Well, I haven't either but the crux of the matter, so to speak, appears to be the observation that the conservatism of, say, Hitler, Mussolini, Ronald Reagan, and Rush Limbaugh "...can be explained psychologically as a set of neuroses rooted in 'fear and aggression, dogmatism and the intolerance of ambiguity.'"

This finding somehow got into the papers and got some people riled up. The nice folks at rightwing Hoover Institution hosted a special seminar last week titled "Who's Crazy Anyway, Right or Left: Some Reflections on a Recent Controversy" led by Dr. Bernard J. Baars, an affiliated research fellow with the Neurosciences Institute in San Diego. In the seminar Baars discussed the methodology used in the offending study. You'll enjoy the tap dancing here.

posted by Jerry Bowles 9:44 AM

Health not-care

As lawmakers and lobbyists squabble over the cost of prescription drugs a study by the World Health Organization rates the US health care “system” in 16th place among major industrialized nations in the quality of health care services delivered, the Guardian reports. The top five nations are Sweden, Norway, Australia, Canada and France. But heck, we all know that the UN jacked the results and that the winners are a bunch of frickin commos and sinners anyhow. So much for what one US provider calls "the business of caring."

posted by Groom 9:38 AM

Late Night Ramblings

I have always felt that all of us--all the different people of the world--are bound together by our imperfect humanness. What any one of us is capable of, all of us are capable of--the good, the indifferent, the evil. When I read stories like this one, I despair for the future of the species. Billions for guns, virtually nothing for ignorance. We are doomed and it's because we don't recognize what the real enemies are.

posted by Jerry Bowles 12:37 AM

Thursday, November 13, 2003

Waterbury, Connecticut must be the greatest
place to live in the United States right now.

Why is that?

Because it is a totally Republican-free zone.

That's right: the results from November 4's election hosed out any of
the remaining cooties from the three mayoral terms of the Republican
child-raper and US Senate candidate, Philip A. Giordano. The city's
governing body -- the 15-seat Board of Aldermen -- no longer has a
single Republican on it. And the mayor, Democrat Michael Jarjura, a
popular former state representative whose only vice appears to be
eating, just won reelection by a wide margin -- this despite the fact
that Jarjura's closest competitor was a renegade Democrat who took votes
away from him, not from the Republican challenger, who was so far back
in the pack you needed a telescope to see him.

Jarjura got 58% of the vote. Lawrence DePillo, the independent and
maverick Democrat, got 30%. The Republican, Mark Forte got 11% of the
vote.

Look at it this way: Democrats won 88% of the vote. And the
coattail-effect of this landslide carried over into every single other
office in the city of Waterbury. No Republicans to be seen within blocks
of City Hall. All minority party slots are filled by independents.

In short, the GOP is dead and buried in the Brass City.

Waterbury's current situation would make a good case study for those who
fret about the future of the Democratic Party. The city, desperate for
any uplift back in the late 1980s, fell for Republican bromides. The
result was the thinnest of mayoral election edges for a Republican, Joe
Santopietro, whose 1986 coattails brought some Republicans along with
him to the Board of Aldermen. Santopietro barely got through his second
two-year term before the federal government elected him to a 15-year
term in prison, after finding him guilty on 18 of 21 counts of receiving
or soliciting money in exchange for approving development projects in
Waterbury. (He got out of prison last year and promptly announced his
intention to run for office again!) Five of Santopietro's Republican
associates were also found guilty and sent to prison.

The voters fell again for the Republican bromides in 1996, this time in
the person of Philip A. Giordano, a slick young lawyer who favored
nicely tailored suits and ran on a family values platform. He was the
lucky beneficiary of a then-popular Republican governor, John Rowland,
who also happened to be from Waterbury, the coattail effect bringing
Giordano to this city's doorstep. It was during an FBI investigation of
Giordano for corruption similar to Santopietro's that horrified agents
discovered the Republican mayor and US Senate candidate was regularly
having sex with children aged 8 and 10. They cut the corruption probe
short and arrested his slick and sick ass.

Giordano is already serving a 38-year sentence in the federal pen and
still faces a state court trial (in his hometown, no less!). Meanwhile,
3-term Republican governor John Rowland is in a whole heap of trouble of
his own. Putting aside his approval ratings (dipping into the 30s), it's
only a matter of time before he's dragged into a courtroom for his role
in brokering an illegal deal with an Enron subsidiary that bilked the
state taxpayers of $224 million. The state's attorney general Richard
Blumenthal (remember that name: he will be state governor or US Senator
soon) called Rowland's "deal" what it was: "an illegal no-interest
loan". He vows to get the money back and send those criminals
responsible to prison, even if that includes the man whom George W. Bush
fondly calls "Johnny Boy" (shades of "Kenny Boy" Lay).

Waterbury was, prior to taking a regrettable turn toward Republican
candidates, a Democratic stronghold dating back to the 1930s, when the
brass factories were booming and the unions were strong. Typical of this
city's former "weathervane" political status was the 11th-hour visit of
John F. Kennedy just prior to the 1960 presidential election. On his way
back to Boston, Kennedy decided to make one last stopover in Waterbury.
The tumultuous gathering on the Waterbury Green, spilling into the
streets and standing on tops of buildings, is still spoken of in hushed
tones by city residents. Theodore H. White, in The Making of the
President 1960, credits this Sunday rally with vaulting Kennedy's
momentum over the top in the close election with Nixon. The green was
packed similarly for Humphrey in 1968, McGovern in 1972, and even in
1984, when McGovern made another gallant and now nearly forgotten run
for the White House.

The latter campaign, which could be instructive to the insurgent Howard
Dean, is detailed in an excellent new book by Waterbury native Richard
Marano: Vote Your Conscience: The Last Campaign of George McGovern
(Praeger). In addition to its usefulness to historians, Marano's book
also reveals a hidden secret waiting for the Democratic Party to exploit
to its advantage nationwide. That is, that all those former Democrats
who voted for Republicans did not become dyed in the wool Republicans.
They are still Democrats at heart, as witnessed by this remarkable 88%
vote in 2003.

The Republicans in Waterbury , Marano said, got their past strength from
"disenchanted Democrats, and to some degree, a strong Republican-leaning
daily newspaper [Republican-American, which endorsed Giordano in all
three campaigns]."

Now, mostly because of Giordano's travails but also due to the GOP's
inability to deliver on promises, the Republicans can't get decent
candidates to run for city offices. "The Republican Party ought to
apologize for their past two corrupt administrations [including the
Santopietro administration]," said Marano. "Many people, I believe,
still hold the corrupt administrations against their two recent
nominees. Giordano's pending criminal case sure doesn't help, either."

Taking a larger view, Connecticut-the Bush family's ancestral home-has
no fondness for the little man who squats in the White House. In the
Republican primary of 2000, John McCain won handily and Al Gore did
likewise in the general election.

So, when the totality of the corruption of the Bush Regime is shared
with the American people, the results may not be nearly as wonderfully
dramatic-a wiping out of all Republican representation in Washington,
D.C.-but it will have a dramatic effect. It will send those disenchanted
Democrats back to the party that is really in their blood.

One might even, at that point, see a regime change in America.

Alan Bisbort is a columnist for the Hartford Advocate. His most recent
publication is What Happened Here? New York City History (Pomegranate
Communications).

Story reproduced with permission of The American Politics Journal.

posted by John 10:36 PM

Is Iraq America's Afghanistan?

We hear a lot of comparisons between America's wars in Vietnam and Iraq. But just think about it, isn't Muslim but ethnically (Shiite, Sunni, Kurd, Turkomen, Assyrian) Iraq a lot more like Afghanistan? Doesn't what's happening to US troops in Iraq look an awful lot like what Soviet troops faced when "the evil empire" was trying to assert its will around a place called Kabul?

The author of this piece in the New York Times was in Afghanistan, working for the CIA and working with the Muhajeddin--the people who gave us Osama Bin Laden. His story begins,

As the daily attacks against American forces in Iraq increase in number and sophistication, the Bush administration continues to portray its adversaries as an assortment of die-hard Baathists, criminals, thugs and foreign terrorists, all acting out of desperation.

Certainly, there are Baathists and foreign terrorists operating against the American-led coalition, and their ranks probably include criminals. But the overarching reality is that the American and British forces are facing a resourceful adversary whose game plan may be more fully developed than originally thought.

Our adversaries are, he says, following a playbook as old as Sun-Tzu's Art of War. Scary stuff this.

posted by John 10:04 PM

Quote of the Week

"I am frustrated. As horrible as September 11 was, it was a real opportunity to move forward in a positive way. There was a lot of goodwill to tap into and it took the incredible talent of George Bush to piss it all away in two years." Christine Swanson, an ex-pat American living in London, quoted by Reuters. November 13, 2003

posted by Jerry Bowles 3:07 PM

And you thought Iraq was a quagmire…

The “free market” government in Colombia led by our hand-picked puppet president Alvaro Uribe is imploding too, according to Knight-Ridder. First the interior minister resigns. Then the defense minister, the commander of the armed forces, the national police chief, even the environment minister has quit. It all seemed to get started when Uribe granted amnesty to right-wing death squads which have the tacit backing of US interests.

Uribe is staffing up with businessmen from the “private sector,” a tactic that has fomented class conflict and armed confrontation elsewhere in the northern tier of South America. This government was supposed to be the showpiece of Bush administration Latin policy and its presumed architect, former Contra shop thug and current assistant secretary of state Otto Johan Reich. How much money we are throwing down the black hole in Colombia and how many troops and “advisers” we have there remains a mystery. As they say in the Barranquilla free trade zone… cumbia culpa.

posted by Groom 1:40 PM

Is Howard Dean a paradigm candidate?

Some are saying yes, but absent an agreement on what a paradigm is in politics, I am not so sure. Raising the most money ever for a Democrat and forgoing federal matching funds is gutsy but not the stuff of which a paradigm is made. Being against a popular (although getting less so) war does not qualify either. These are significant accomplishments and positions, but they are conventional political tools and positions that Dean has simply wielded better than anyone else. Using the Internet more effectively than anyone may qualify as a true paradigm shift but only if it leads to a new way to govern and is not simply a new way to raise funds.

What would constitute a paradigm in politics? The word not only calls for a new model, but a model that can be replicated. Paradigm also means a dramatic shift from a current practice or process that becomes the new norm. In this sense the Bushies pre-emptive war idea has paradigm potential, but only if it is successful in Iraq and is replicated elsewhere. The only paradigm shift I have witnessed over the years is in business when corporations, all over the United States, starting in the mid-1980s, discovered the external customer as the raison d’etre for business. The application of quality manufacturing process (TQM) to the service industry was a paradigm shift. But what about in politics?

Walter Mondale’s choice of a woman to be vice-president? No. It has not been replicated since, and Dean is not likely to go down that road. Clinton’s triangulation? Maybe, but who has successfully replicated it? For me Roosevelt’s Social Security initiative meets all the criteria of a paradigm shift in politics: a separate tax on wages that everyone benefits from, channeled into a separate fund, paid for--and continues to pay for-- the program. And the model was replicated when Eisenhower created the Highway Trust Fund.

So what can Dean do? My suggestion is lifted from a conversation I had with Walter Cronkite a few years back that has intrigued me quadrennially ever since. Like many paradigms his idea is simple: nominate his entire cabinet before he is elected. We know a lot about George Bush by the cabinet members he picked, and much of what we don’t like about Bush is his cabinet: Step ‘n Fetchit at State, a Pentecostal Nazi at Justice, several nincompoop MBA CEOs at Treasury, Dr. Strangelove at the Pentagon, a weasel scumbag as VP, and so on. Keep in mind that in 2004 the entire cabinet will be campaigning against the dynamic Democrat duo, whoever they end up being.

Selecting a cabinet ahead of time has political paradigm potential. I’m not talking “kitchen cabinet,” but the whole remodeling crew! Let’s see, maybe Wesley Clark at Defense; New York State’s crusading Attorney General and Wall Street buster, Elliott (Ness) Spitzer at Justice (or Chairman of the SEC); an Arab-American for the first time at State, say Newsweek’s Fareed Zakaria; Paul Krugman as Secretary of the Treasury or Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisors where Bob Rubin started; an Hispanic woman or Carol Mosely Braun at Health and Human Services; and Senator Bob Graham as VP, with Washington Hill experience, an expert in terrorism and popular former governor from Florida, serving notice to the Bush Brothers that the jig is up.

The main argument against establishing such a paradigm is that a candidate foregoes the (questionable) ability to dangle offers in front of many disparate groups whose support they covet and need. I say, let the spoils of victory apply to the other 1,000 plus presidential appointments at the number two and three positions, heads of sub-cabinet agencies, and regulatory bodies. And dangle the two to three Supreme vacancies the next president will appoint in front of every political constituency group.

Voters need to know what kind of people a president plans to surround himself (or herself) with. As we know from our experience with the current crew in Washington, an unengaged leader leaves lots of room for mischief.

posted by Josh 10:05 AM

Those Profligate Republicans

Remember Shrub's pledges to rein in government spending? Another fib to add to the ever expanding pile of whoppers. Federal discretionary spending expanded by 12.5 percent in the fiscal year that ended Sept. 30, capping a two-year bulge that saw the government grow by more than 27 percent, according to preliminary spending figures from congressional budget panels.

Cato Institute's Veronique de Rugy and Tad DeHaven write: "Almost 10 years after the GOP swept into Congress, it is evident that the self-proclaimed party of limited government has become the party of unlimited spending. The GOP Congress has delivered three of the top five largest spending sprees in American history--the other two occurred during World War II."

posted by Jerry Bowles 7:56 AM

Wednesday, November 12, 2003

Thought Overtime Pay Was Safe? Not with Bush in the White House

From the e-activist network

Nov. 12, 2003

Even though both houses of Congress responded to your appeals by
voting to block President Bush's overtime pay cuts, the
president is refusing to withdraw his pay cuts and says he will
veto final legislation protecting overtime pay. Back-room
maneuvering by the Bush administration and House Republican
leaders has made it increasingly likely that the overtime pay
protections we won will not make it out of Congress this year.
Bush's Labor Department could put the overtime pay cuts into
effect as soon as January.

We still have a final chance to stop President Bush from taking
away overtime pay from some 8 million workers if we make our
voices heard. As many people as possible need to contact their
senators and U.S. representative and tell them not to come home
for the holidays without acting to protect overtime pay. Click
here to take action or keep reading for more information.

How did this outrageous betrayal happen? After both the Senate
and the House of Representatives passed measures to block
President Bush's overtime pay take-away, a hand-picked committee
of members of both of these bodies met behind closed doors to
hammer out differences between the two versions of the overtime
pay protections.

House Republican leaders--working with President Bush's
lobbyists--stacked the committee with legislators who support
Bush's overtime pay take-away. So despite congressional votes to
block President Bush's overtime pay take-away, millions of
America's workers are likely to lose it soon.

Please take one minute right now to send a message to your
senators and representative by clicking on this link . Tell
them not to come home for the holidays without acting to protect
overtime pay.

It is increasingly clear that President Bush will not withdraw
his overtime pay take-away. That is why it is so important that
as many people as possible get involved before it is too late.

The sweeping changes in America's work life President Bush is
pushing will hurt millions of working families. Paychecks will
be smaller. Work hours will be longer. Job quality will be
worse. This is a sad moment in U.S. history--President Bush is
taking America back nearly 70 years.

Please take action and then spread the word. Thanks for all you
do.

posted by John 5:19 PM

Joe Trippi’s magic numbers

If John Edwards can do the math on class action lawsuits, why can't he do it here...

Two million Americans x $100 = bye-bye Bush.

Four million Americans x $50 = bye-bye Bush

Eight million Americans x $25 = bye-bye Bush

You don't need a Harvard MBA to do this equation. In the context of retail politics its all about how much money. And 200 million is only ten percent of what Republican insider and Haley Barbour pal Bernie “I’m a Canadian rancher” Ebbers jacked from MCI/Worldcomm.

Trippi’s numbers are eminently achievable. $200 million is an average annual advertising budget for one of America’s leading anti-depressant prescription drugs. The way the D train is rolling, Shrubby might be having a few Prozac moments.

posted by Groom 4:13 PM

Bush in Iraq: A B-School Case Study

Business Week reports that the MBA president receives sub-par marks from many professors, who cite the mishandled aftermath as a huge management failure.

It's a conversation heard more and more around the halls of Harvard Business School these days: One of President George W. Bush's unique qualifications for office was his Harvard MBA. Yet the mess in postwar Iraq has revealed a lack of the careful planning that Harvard teaches its elite clientele.

And a related problem -- the ballooning federal budget deficit -- hints at much less financial discipline than B-school alums are supposed to have. "Because George is a graduate of the school, there's lots of casual discussion about what he learned, or didn't learn, while he was here," says David Yoffie, a Harvard Business School professor of international business administration.

posted by Jerry Bowles 3:12 PM

Is It Ok to Hate George W. Bush?

Ever since The New Republic published Jonathan Chait's now famous article The Case for Bush Hatred in its September 29, 2003 issue, rightwingers have gone mashugana over the "incivility" of liberal political commentators, their "irrational" anger toward the Bush, the "extremism" of Bush opponents and the general decline of political discourse as we know it.

Chiat eloquently expressed the rage and frustration felt by millions of Americans toward the president and argued quite logically that there is nothing wrong with hating George W. Bush to the core of his hypocritical, bald-face lying, arrogant, destructive, callow, dumbass, serial-killing, incompetent spoiled-rotten-rich-kid-in-way-over-his-head being.

Chiat's confession elicted an extraordinary pile of hubris from writers who for much of the 1990s spewed forth daily venom about such absurdities as the Clintons' dirt road land deal being the crime of the century, worth tearing apart the country if necessary; Vince Foster's "murder" (presumably by one of Hillary's lesbian lovers) and the subsequent cover-up; and don't forget that small Arkansas airport that was the hub of the international narcotics trade during Bill's tenure as governor. This is not even to mention every skirt that Bill ever chased or every time a GOP-bribed state trooper ever saw him drop his pants.

Clinton may have been a sinner and a liar and a perjurer but he was also smart and led the country from the center. He embraced policies from all sides of the political spectrum that the majority of Americans could agree were fair. He did not favor rich people over poor in matters of economics. He felt your pain...at least, as long you were in the room. He was wary of foreign entanglements. He was not a radical.

Most of all, he was not evil. In general, we tend to think of evil as something spectacularly horrible and its architects as cold, calculating, deliberately destructive human beings. Osama bin Laden and his homicidal band of cave-dwellers, for example. Or Hamas, with its suicide bombers, or Ariel Sharon, with his punitive retaliations. But, that’s only one form of evil and not the most common at that. Most of the world’s evil is done by thoughtless people who simply lack empathy for others.

“The sad truth is that most evil is done by people who never make up their minds to be good or evil,” Hannah Arendt wrote, in her account of the trial of Nazi Adolf Eichmann, Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil. "The deeds were monstrous, but the doer was quite ordinary, commonplace, and neither demonic or monstrous." Arendt concluded that Eichmann, far from having the desire to be a villain, sent thousands to their deaths merely because of "a lack of imagination." Arendt wondered whether "the activity of thinking as such, the habit of examining and reflecting upon whatever happens to come to pass, regardless of the specific content and quite independent of results...could 'condition' men against evildoing."

The famed jurist Richard Poser wrote that evil results from "the indifference to the human consequences of decisions." Martin Buber argued that evil is not, as it is commonly understood, the opposite of good. Buber argued that whereas good comes from a dedication to walking the moral path, one falls into evil through an absence of attention.

George W. Bush is president of the most powerful nation on earth, a man responsible for the lives of millions of people. He is also a man who has deliberately and willfully never acquired “the habit of examining and reflecting upon” anything vaguely intellectual, who has—from Texas executions to soldiers’ funerals--demonstrated complete indifference to the human consequences of his actions, and who pays virtually no attention to injustices performed by others in his name. He deserves to be hated because he is an evil man--by choice--through his willful dereliction of attention.

posted by Jerry Bowles 2:00 PM

Root for the French: Make Bush's and Blair's Day

Hey, it's a small thing, but the irony is oh so sweet. With exquisite timing, one of the World Cup rugby semifinals is scheduled for Sunday between the Brits and the French. Having dismissed the American team 41-14 on Halloween, the inside-favorite French can make a sweep of their political nemesis duo and face another "coalition" team (Australia or New Zealand) in the finals.

Blair is already cautioning demonstrators to be nice to the Americans when they land, but with 60 percent of Brits disapproving of Bush's war and peace initiatives, it will not be the easiest of visits. While the French have other scores to settle with the Brits, on and off the field, a loss by the Brits on Sunday will make my day and week.

posted by Josh 10:42 AM

Daschle disappoints

The Dems need a "wartime consigliare" in the Senate

In his new book “No Other Time” Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle (D-SD) says that the worst moment of the 107th Congress was the anthrax attacks. This American equivalent of the Reichstag fire, which effectively shut down representative government and set the political-psychological situation for the passing of the Patriot Act, remains unexplained, the perpetrators and intellectual authors unfound. And Sunday, on Meet the Press a soft-and-cuddly Daschle offered no clues, no hints of progress and not even a suggestion that he might to press Bush family retainer and FBI director Robert “Dial M“ Mueller on the status of the investigation. Offering a $2 million reward for the anthrax perp and a $30 million reward for Saddam provides the American people with a fair indication of the importance the White House places on bringing to justice the folks who shut down American democracy.

Daschle sits on his hands while our president preaches to the choir that Iraq is where we’ve got to hold the line against Osama, Al Qaeda and Fedayeen and every other Islamic sounding name he cram into a soundbite before terrorism (Shrubanese for “jihad”) attacks us at home. It hit home back on 9/11 and if anybody should know it is Daschle, who was one of the all-Democrat list who received the anthrax envelopes. He remains as meek today as he was back then. Perhaps his best quality as a minority leader is that he offers opponents very few angles to get off a good punch. Which is exactly how he squirmed out of Russert’s question about the $20 billion that was supposed to be designated as “loans” to Iraq. How did that little item get lost on the cutting room floor, Senator Tom?

Tom Daschle… not your basic wartime consigliare. Since politics remains America’s number one spectator sport, anybody have a suggestion for Tom’s replacement?

posted by Groom 3:18 AM

Do You Want to Know a Secret?

Somebody wasted no time in leaking a new, top-secret CIA report on Iraq that hit the desks of senior policymakers in Washington yesterday morning. According to Knight-Ridder, the report paints a bleak picture of the political and security situation in Iraq and warns that growing numbers of Iraqis are concluding that the U.S.-led coalition can be defeated and are supporting the resistance. This report is said to be supported by L. Paul Bremer, who was summoned back to Washington yesterday, for emergency talks.

“The speed of the leak suggested that senior policymakers want to make sure the assessment reaches Bush,” Knight-Ridder reports. “Some senior policymakers have complained of being frustrated in their efforts to provide Bush with analyses of the situation in Iraq that are more somber than the optimistic views of Vice President Dick Cheney, Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld and other hardliners.”

Meanwhile, the FT is reporting that Iraq's foreign minister blames "geriatric ambassadors" from the West and "American infighting" for many of the problems and security failures bedevilling the US-led occupation.

Isn’t it reassuring to know that Bush administration policymakers are all together on this Iraq disaster and rowing the boat in the same direction?

posted by Jerry Bowles 12:05 AM

Tuesday, November 11, 2003

Republican Pollster Memo Says Dean Can Beat Bush

A note to all those who keep saying that Howard Dean will be a disaster for the Democratic Party.

A recent article by David Brooks left readers with the distinct impression that Republican pollsters are all of the opinion that Howard Dean cannot possibly beat George Bush.…We regret that he didn't check with us first, as it is our belief that Dean has the potential to be a formidable candidate who could give the President a very difficult race.

The conventional wisdom that has some Republicans giddy about a potential Dean candidacy is not only misguided, it is counterproductive.… Writing off a candidate like Dean by selectively sorting statistical gobble-de-gook and mixing it into a broth of empirical sociological evidence ignores the political realities of our time.

Howard Dean can win because he believes in what he is saying, because he can semi-legitimately spin his record as Governor into one of fiscal conservatism, and because he comes across as if he actually cares about people.

For details see Moore Memo.

posted by John 11:18 PM

There He Goes Again

Just when you think Shrub has run out of big lies, his puppetmasters come up with a new one that is so blatant, stunning, audacious and demonstrably false that it sucks the air right out of your lungs. Today, at the Heritage Foundation, the biggest liar ever to occupy the White House, joined his lunatic vice president in attempting to mix Iraqi insurgents, foreign fighters and al Qaeda (You remember them, they’re the people responsible for 9/11) into one big terrorist stew for no other purpose than to mislead the American public into believing that everyone who is now resisting in Iraq is part of the same vast anti-American plot and represents a direct danger to Americans here in the U.S.

In Bush’s rickety construct: “Our men and women are fighting terrorist enemies thousands of miles away in the heart and center of their power, so that we do not face those enemies in the heart of America.” Why they couldn’t also spare another 20 guys to hijack a few airplanes and crash them here is unclear.

Over time, Baath Party and Fedayeen fighters and other Saddam loyalists have organized to attack our forces, to terrorize international aid workers and to murder innocent Iraqis. These bitter holdouts would rather see Iraqis dead than see them free.

(Isn’t it possible that the Baathists, Fedayeen and Saddam loyalists are not three groups, but one.)

Foreign jihadists have arrived across Iraq's borders in small groups with the goal of installing a Taliban-like regime. Also present in the country are some terrorists from Ansar Islam and from al Qaeda, who are always eager to join in the killing and who seek revenge after their defeat in Afghanistan. Saddam loyalists and foreign terrorists may have different long-term goals, but they share a near-term strategy -- to terrorize Iraqis and to intimidate America and our allies.

Notice that he offers no proof that anyone wants to install “a Taliban-like regime" and no evidence that any of the fighters are al Qaeda (In fact, General Sanchez said as recently as yesterday that the Army has not been able to link a single one of the suspects it has detained to al Qaeda.) Note, too, the need to explain, poorly, why secular Baathists and religious nuts with completely opposite goals would work together to kill Americans.

Friends, this is as sad and sorry as performance as you’re ever likely to see by an American president. Save this one for your grandchildren’s history classes.

posted by Jerry Bowles 4:53 PM

Justice at Guantanamo

The Washington Post editorial page got the Iraq war wrong but its reading of the Supreme Court’s decision to review the status of those poor souls rotting away at Guantanamo is dead on. The Court is clearly stepping into an area where it has consistently ruled it has no authority out of frustration with a serious breakdown in the American justice system. Most of the people being held are Taliban or al-Qaeda foot soldiers swept up in raids in Afghanistan and have dubious value as intelligence sources. As the Post writes: “The administration effectively asks Americans to tolerate the indefinite detention of large numbers of people with no charge, no accountability and no seeming urgency about making the rule of law into a reality.” The solution, argues the Post, “could and should come from the administration and Congress. Both have failed in their duty to create a process that is fair and understandable, thereby creating a risk that the courts will fill the legal void. Guantanamo can't remain a lawless human warehouse forever.” Perhaps, the Court hopes that be putting the issue on its calendar, it can induce Congress and the president to get hopping and do the right thing.

posted by Jerry Bowles 1:56 PM

Better Off?

Medact, a medical charity, estimates that between 22,000 and 55,000 people - mainly Iraqi soldiers and civilians - died as a direct result of the Iraq war. In a report entitled Entitled Continuing Collateral Damage: the health and environmental costs of war on Iraq, the organization says the conflict disrupted immunization programs and destroyed water systems, increasing levels of disease. As a result, the people of Iraq may have poorer health for generations.

posted by Jerry Bowles 7:52 AM

Japan Smoking?

According to a JT (Japan Tobacco Sangyo) report, 30.3 percent of
adults in Japan smoke "daily or upon occasion." There has been a
gradual decline over the last eight years. The peak rate was in
1966 when it was 49.9 percent. The male/female rates are 48.3 vs
13.6 percent. Female smoking is highest in the 20s and 40s. Male
smoking is 30s, 40s, 20s (descending rates).

posted by John 12:08 AM

Monday, November 10, 2003

Meet the Russert

General Wesley Clark will appear on Meet the Press on NBC Sunday, November 16. Tom Russert will interview Clark for the entire hour. Watch out, general, Tim is tricky. He may ask you how many troops the U.S. has.

posted by Jerry Bowles 10:27 PM

The World According to Ziggy

Zbigniew Brzezinski made a speech the other day at the American Prospect’s “New American Strategies for Security and Peace" conference that has attracted a lot of buzz. Brzezinski may have been Jimmy Carter’s national security advisor but he is nobody’s teddy bear liberal. When a “realpolitik” hawk like Ziggy worries about the loss of U.S. international credibility and the growing U.S. international isolation, alarm bells should go off in conservative circles. Sure, the U.S. is big and tough, he says, but there’s a “paradox” in that influence:

American power worldwide is at its historic zenith. American global political standing is at its nadir. Why? What is the cause of this? These are facts. They're measurable facts. They're also felt facts when one talks to one's friends abroad who like America, who value what we treasure but do not understand our policies, are troubled by our actions and are perplexed by what they perceive to be either demagogy or mendacity.

To say that the world hates us because we are too rich and too powerful is too facile an answer, Brzezinski argues. The reason many other nations disagree with our policies today is that since 9/11, the Bush administration has taken “a paranoiac view of the world” that can be “summarized in a phrase repeatedly used at the highest level, ‘he who is not with us is against us.’” That phrase, Brzezinski points out, originated with Lenin, one of history’s great despots.
This “paranoiac view of the world” is reflected in the badly defined “war on terrorism” which, Brzezinski notes, “…defines the central preoccupation of the United States in the world today, and reflects “…a rather narrow and extremist vision of foreign policy of the world's first superpower, of a great democracy, with genuinely idealistic traditions.”

This “skewed view of the world is intensified by a fear that periodically verges on panic that is in itself blind” and leaves us with a “clearly, sharply defined perception of what is transpiring abroad regarding particularly such critically important security issues as the existence or the spread or the availability or the readiness in alien hands of weapons of mass destruction.” The nut:

We have actually experienced in recent months a dramatic demonstration of an unprecedented intelligence failure, perhaps the most significant intelligence failure in the history of the United States. That failure was contributed to and was compensated for by extremist demagogy which emphasizes the worst case scenarios which stimulates fear, which induces a very simple dichotomic view of world reality.

Brilliant stuff. I urge you to read it here.

posted by Jerry Bowles 2:16 PM

Kerry's Desperation

Senator John Kerry fired his campaign manager Jim Jordan today and gave the job to veteran Democratic operative Mary Beth Cahill. Cahill is currently Ted Kennedy's chief of staff.

Kerry is also considering foregoing public financing for his campaign. He should tell the wife to hold onto the ketchup money. To paraphrase Rod Steiger talking to Marlon Brando in On the Waterfront, "It's not your night, kid."

posted by Jerry Bowles 10:50 AM

Bought-and-paid-for

You said you wanted the Republican winning by 3200 votes and throw in a few hundred hanging chads to make it look good... it turns out that all those government regulatory officials who complained about bad vote counts are being co-opted to work for the vendors who sell and manufacture the "voting machines," the LA Times reports.

posted by Groom 9:59 AM