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The Dean Dilemma

So here we are; the clock ticking down toward Iowa and New Hampshire and Howard Dean looking more inevitable by the day. And, why not, you ask? Wasn't he the only one of the candidates who understood the frustration of the party faithful as they watched their elected representives let themselves be bullied into supporting an immoral war and disasterous tax cuts? Hasn't he shown the courage, the fire, the intellect and moral integrity that deserve recognition? Who else in the race generates real passion?

True, all true, and yet... Nick Kristof nails the Dean dilemma in his column today.

posted by Jerry Bowles 9:44 AM

Friday, December 05, 2003

Who Lost America's Future?

Here is an amazing -- and disturbing -- statistic: The U.S. had a budget surplus in January, 2001, of $269 billion. The current budget deficit is $390 billion, and most economists predict it will swell to at least $500 billion by next year's November election. That's a breathtaking swing of $769 billion, before taking into account the trillions in long-term debt burdens Washington is blithely passing on to future taxpayers. Businessweek Online, December 5, 2003

posted by Jerry Bowles 12:36 PM

Ain't That America

A US woman has been sentenced to three months house arrest after being spotted breastfeeding her child while driving.

Catherine Donkers, 29, was nursing her baby daughter on an Ohio highway while driving at 65mph.

She said she did not stop because she was talking on the phone to her husband and taking notes on the steering wheel. BBCNews, December 5, 2003

Read the rest...it gets better.

posted by Jerry Bowles 9:32 AM

The Viet Nam Rag

Michael Kinsley reopens an old debate in his column in the Washington Post this morning--to wit, does it matter that Wesley Clark and John Kerry served in the military during Viet Nam or that Howard Dean came down with a bad back that failed to keep his off the slopes at Aspen, or that Dick Cheney had "other priorities," or that Shrub Bush joined the National Guard, was taught to fly at enormous expense to taxpayers, and then deserted when the Guard began drug testing of pilots?

It is hard for people who weren't alive then to understand just how unpopular the Viet Nam debacle became; at the end, almost no one thought it had been a good idea. People who resisted the war were admired far more than those who served. It was hard for a soldier in uniform to walk through an airport without someone yelling "baby killer."

Every American male of draft age had a strategy for dealing with the possibility of being called up. Some, like Dean, brought along their back x-rays. Others, like Arlo Guthrie, escaped by being convicted of littering. Some got deferments or moved to Canada. Some were called and simply showed up and took their chances.

Personally, I joined the Navy Reserve because it was a two-year active duty commitment instead of four were I to be drafted and because Viet Nam did not have an air force or long-range guns capable of hitting a ship 100 miles out at sea. As it turned out, that was a wise choice.

My moral position was roughly the same as Kinsley's. If the war found you and you were fit, you were obligated to go but you were not obligated to seek it out. And it was okay to find ways--bad back or National Guard or student deferment--to minimize or avoid service. I do believe that if you signed up for the Guard you were obligated to complete that service and not simply disappear for the last 18 months.

posted by Jerry Bowles 8:41 AM

Thursday, December 04, 2003

What Conflict of Interest?

The FT reports that slimey swamp creature Richard Perle, a prominent Pentagon adviser, lobbied on behalf of Boeing's bid for a controversial $18 billion government contract a year after the aerospace company made a $20 million investment in the venture capital fund he runs.

In August, Mr Perle co-authored an Op-Ed piece in the Wall Street Journal arguing in favour of a deal in which the Air Force would lease 100 767 aircraft refuelling tankers from Boeing. The piece was published at a time when the deal was under intense attack by critics who claimed the tankers were unnecessary and the deal too expensive.

posted by Jerry Bowles 10:02 PM

Reading Between the Lines

U.S. District Judge William M. Skretny, in pronouncing sentence on Mukhtar al-Bakri, the first of the Lakawanna Six to be sentenced:

"Public perception is often fueled by emotion and reaction, and thankfully, it does not drive our system of criminal justice or government."

The judge appeared to get emotional at several points while telling al-Bakri that he engaged in "grave conduct" that "threatens the very core of our society." Buffalo News, December 4, 2003

From reports from the manslaughter trial of U.S. Rep. Bill Janklow, who is accused of running a stop sign and killing a motocyclist:

Janklow's driving history, which includes a dozen tickets and four accidents since 1990, has not been allowed into evidence by the judge. In two of the accidents, Janklow claimed another car was involved that no other witnesses saw, according to public documents. In another case, it was a squirrel. Capital Hill Blue, December 4, 2003

posted by Jerry Bowles 5:06 PM

When Libertarians Make Sense

The Bush administration yesterday mounted its first full defense in the Supreme Court of presidential power to order the capture and long-term detention of 'enemy combatants' during the war on terrorism.

In Hamdi Case Reveals Unchecked Power of President Bush, Cato Senior Fellow Robert A. Levy argues that the Bush administration lacks both constitutional and statutory authority to indefinitely detain Hamdi. He says, "We cannot permit the executive branch to declare unilaterally that a U.S. citizen may be characterized as an enemy combatant, whisked away, detained indefinitely without charges, denied legal counsel, and prevented from arguing to a judge that he is innocent."

posted by Jerry Bowles 2:32 PM

Where is the doctor in Dr. Dean?

Much was made of Dubya’s MBA and his executive delegation style during the 2000 campaign compared with Gore’s obsessive micromanagement style, so maybe Howard Dean is being a little too shy about his degree and first love. He should not be: he is the first physician to run for president and he should use every differentiating asset he has to his advantage. I’ve not read or heard everything he has said, but enough to know that he does not fully invoke his singularly unique advantage—the powerful lingo, metaphors and images of the medical world, such as healing, wellness, noninvasive, annual check up, healthy, curable, misdiagnosis, treatable, prescription, second opinion, take two aspirin and call me in the morning. Even when he talks about AIDS his references to being a physician and therefore understanding medical conditions are not much more than throw-away lines, buried in the text, too general with no passion for healing, just passion for making policy. Too bad.

Why the hesitation Dr. Dean? We all know there is too little prestige in being a politician, a profession that a majority of Americans say they can NOT trust. By dramatic contrast, tracking Harris polls document that doctors/physicians are highly trustworthy—83 percent of Americans trust them, practically tied with teachers and clergymen at 86 and 85 percent respectively, although lately Catholic priests may be bringing the averages down for the clergy. In addition being a doctor is “very prestigious"-- a majority of Americans rank physicians right up there with scientists and firemen.

Yo Howard, is there a doctor in the house?

posted by Josh 11:03 AM

Mueller time…

what's one good conspiracy theory without a follow-up...

If Gitmo and Lackawanna aren't enough, there’s more ham handed hubris from the FBI. After spending 231,000 agent hours on the “Amerithrax” case, the organization run by Bush family retainer Robert “Dial M for Mueller” still can’t make a case. Could it be because those anthrax envelopes were sent only to Democratic lawmakers. Or maybe that the envelopes conveniently closed down Congress and scared our elected officials into passing the Patriot Act, the Homeland Security legislation and biting hook, line and sinker on Shrubby’s Iraq war...

Steven Hatfill, Ph.D., the only “person of interest” that Elder Ashcroft’s Justice Department has identified, has filed suit against the US government in an effort to clear his name. The FBI, in an effort to stonewall Hatfill, claims that his lawsuit and its requisite requests for information could open a Pandora’s box and expose US bioweapons and counter-bioweapons secrets to al-Qaeda terrorists. It’s the old “sensitive sources and methods” song and dance.

Funny that there was no need for secrecy when the FBI leaked Hatfill’s name as the perpetrator to the media back in 2002. As we move toward the 2004 election the FBI has still not provided any evidence of linkage between al-Qaeda or its helper groups and the anthrax attacks on Congress. Sounds like Dial M is dialing “C“… for cover-up.

FBI jacked the facts on “Professor Plague”

If you thought “Dr. Germ” was the one that got away, try Texas Tech professor Thomas Butler. A jury acquitted Butler of 22 charges the FBI and Elder Ashcroft’s Justice Department tried to pin on him to wit that he was involved in a conspiracy to perpetrate a bioterrorism threat with plague samples. Much of the FBI's case against Butler stemmed from a massive public relations campaign built around signed confession he gave, possibly under coercion, which he later argued was false. Butler, however, was found guilty on 44 other cooking-the-books and shadow contract-type charges that pale in comparison to Enron, MCI and other multi-billion dollar scams linked to Republican fatcats and fundraisers.

posted by Groom 5:56 AM

An Injustice in Lackawanna

Mukhtar al-Bakri, a 23-year-old Yemeni-American man who attended an al Qaeda training camp and met with Osama bin Laden before the September 11 attacks was sentenced to 10 years in prison yesterday. He was the first of six co-defendants who lived in Lackawanna, New York, a suburb of the city of Buffalo, to be sentenced for providing “material support” to a terrorist organization, part of an obscure and controversial federal law enacted after the Oklahoma City bombing of 1995, that has already been found unconstitutional by two Federal courts and—many legal experts believe—will ultimately be overturned by the Supreme Court. This is the same statute that sent the exceedingly dangerous Marin County “American Taliban” John Walker Lindh away for 20 years.

“The material support for terrorist organization statute, which the Lackawanna people were, pled guilty to, is an extremely broad statute,” says David Cole, a professor at Georgetown University Law Center, and author of the recent book, Enemy Aliens. “In my view, it's essentially a resurrection of guilt by association, the watchword of the McCarthy era. What it does, is it says it is a crime for an individual to provide support, in any way, shape or form -- through his person, through making a donation, through offering training -- to any organization which has been blacklisted by the secretary of state as a terrorist organization. The government does not have to show that the individual intended to further any terrorist activity in the organization. They don't have to show any link between what the individual did and any terrorist or otherwise violent action of the recipient group.”

Not one of the "Lackawanna Six," as they will forever be known, has been accused of planning or engaging in any act of terrorism. But they are all going to jail. Earlier this year, they reached plea bargains with Federal prosecutors. The other five will be sentenced over the next two weeks and while they may do less time then al-Bakri, they all face lengthy prison terms under Federal sentencing guidelines.

But, then, what would you do if you thought your other option was to be declared an “enemy combatant” and hauled off to Guantanamo or put in a Navy brig without access to a lawyer and no rights to a trial like Jose Pedilla, the so-called “dirty bomber?”

The only supportable facts in the case are that a group of religiously idealistic young men went to Pakistan in 2001 on a religious quest and were lured to one of Osama bin Laden’s training camps in Afghanistan where they heard anti-Western speeches and learned to shoot AK-47s. They all hated it—one of them even faked an ankle injury to get away early—and the rest got out as quickly as they could. They returned to upstate New York and their normal lives.

Until September 13, 2001—in a raid timed for maximum publicity value—when FBI agents swarmed into Lackawanna by the hundreds and took all of them into custody, except for al-Bakri who was arrested in Bahrain where he had gone to get married.

Within hours our snake-handling, tongue-talking, Crisco-oil anointed, Confederate-flag waving, anti-choice, gay-bashing, naked-statue loathing, sap songwriting, holy roller Attorney General John Ashcroft, one of the few politicians ever to lose an election to a dead man, was on TV claiming to have broken up a dangerous “al Qaeda sleeper cell.” Shrub Bush himself even bragged in his January State of the Union speech, about "al-Qaeda cells" that had been "broken in Hamburg, Milan, Madrid, London, Paris, as well as Buffalo, New York."

The “sleeper cell” claim was a complete lie—designed to convince the public that the Bush administration was winning the “war on terror.” Prosecutors admitted in court they had no evidence the men were involved in planning any imminent terrorist act.

U.S. District Judge William Skretny recognized the irony in delivering the mandatory sentence to al-Bakri: “Speculation regarding the actual threat you present has run the gamut from those who believe you were a terror cell member ready to strike, to those who believe you were one of six confused young men who found themselves in over their heads.'' But Skretny said, because the law involved is so broad it really didn’t matter which version was true. “The fact remains you broke the law,'' he told al-Bakri.

Someday, maybe not in our lifetimes, but someday, when more tolerant and rational minds prevail and justice and fair play return to our troubled land, the railroading of the “Lakawanna Six” will be remembered as a national tragedy—a kind of “Scottsboro Boys” story for the 21st century.

posted by Jerry Bowles 12:13 AM

Wednesday, December 03, 2003

Are We Safer?

Seven in 10 Americans do not think the war in Iraq has reduced the threat of terrorism, according to a poll by the Program on International Policy Attitudes at the University of Maryland. The poll also found strong support, 71 percent, for the United Nations taking the lead to help establish a stable government in Iraq. That's up from half in April.

Maybe our government has made us more paranoid than we need to be? Just a thought.

posted by Jerry Bowles 11:27 AM

Sharp, Sharper, Sharpton
The First Winner in the Campaign

Here in New York, the home of chief blogger Jerry Bowles, the Reverend Al has been a bit of a buffoon and his candidacy was perceived as the next installment of his grandstanding. But over the course of the campaign he has emerged as an articulate, thoughtful “elder” statesman and a modifying voice of reason—all said and done with grace and great humor.

It’s a badge of honor to host SNL (Saturday Night Live) which Sharpton will do this Saturday. While others, including Al Gore have done the honors with the help of gag writers, Sharpton is bound to do many of his own lines and mix it up a lot. It should be fun.

Meanwhile, if you did not see Sunday’s New York Times Magazine with the cover story on where inspiration comes from, check it out to see what some graphic designers have come up with for the various candidates. The heading for this blog entry is the proposed slogan for Reverend Al, a great one indeed. (Be sure to look at the Slide Show to see the graphic treatments.)

The only distinguished, unconventional, non-red/white/blue one is the one proposed for the General. It is the “shift” key on the keyboard, grey with a yellow background. If I were an advisor to Clark, I’d jump on that one.

With Karl ‘n Andy (Rove and chief-of-staff Card) knowing something about marketing and packaging people and ideas—and doing an effective job of it—the Democrats need to drop there Joe-and-Jane Six Pack approach to branding and compete on image as well as on ideas. Card, a former General Motors executive, knows that it takes at least $80 million in advertising to imprint a brand, something GM does all the time. More than half of Bush’s $170 million “war chest” will no doubt go for branding…it has already started and we have a lot of catching up to do.

posted by Josh 8:11 AM

Why It is Okay to Hate Shrub Bush

The Bush administration has decided to allow Yaser Esam Hamdi, an American citizen captured in Afghanistan and charged under its evil "enemy combatant" statute, to have access to a lawyer. Ashcroft's goons have argued for more than a year that Hamdi was not entitled to counsel but changed their mind on the eve of a government filing due today at the U.S. Supreme Court, which had been asked by a federal public defender in Virginia to review Hamdi's detention.

In a brief statement, Defense Department officials said Hamdi would be allowed to see a lawyer "as a matter of discretion and military policy." But the statement emphasized that the government did not feel obligated to make a lawyer available and that the decision "should not be treated as a precedent."

When the war crimes of this administration are finally tallied, when all the bloody injustices of Guantanamo and Bagram are fully accounted, when the hundreds of subversions and perversions of civil liberties and international and U.S. law and all the assaults on simple human decency and "Christian" values are added up, does anyone doubt that history will remember the reign of terror of George W. Bush as one of the darkest and most shameful periods of American history.

posted by Jerry Bowles 8:08 AM

What makes Ralphie run?

Take a look at the dark side of "Mr. Green"...

posted by Groom 3:52 AM

Tuesday, December 02, 2003

Nader May Run

Isn't it time someone told Ralph to piss off.

posted by Jerry Bowles 7:47 PM

Clark’s Uninspiring AIDs Proposal:
Me-tooism Will Not Cut it in 2004

The General’s proposal yesterday on World AIDS Day to double the Bush effort on AIDS is well-intentioned but uninspiring, and it does nothing to broaden his appeal on his weak domestic side. There is no way Clark or Dean beats Bush by doing MORE of the same, on AIDS or anything else. Doubling is always nice, second-helpings at Thanksgiving come to mind, but this is poor politics and unimaginative leadership—supposedly Clark’s calling card. Bush has the upper hand on AIDS thanks to Bill Clinton who did not put his conscience where his mouth was and fund a global AIDS program when he had the chance.

So Clark gets all the downside and none of the upside on his AIDS proposal. Oh, he got some press and a one-up on his rivals for the nomination, but he is just a me-tooer. And rather than get some credit for doubling the effort and relying more on international organizations to deliver the services than the Bushies do, he now will spend his time explaining how he will fund it. And guess what, the explanation is a big loser as well: rescinding part of the tax cut, which we have already pointed out, will be portrayed by the Republicans as a tax increase. Now he will be labeled with the perennial TAX ‘n SPEND Democrat mantra that works so well for the Republicans.

What should he have done? (A heads up to Dean!) He should have been super bold and taken a page out of JFK’s legendary moon mission vision and plan—to put a man on the moon within a decade and bring him back safely. Clark should have announced a global plan to eradicate AIDS in 10 years by saying he would create a US-led global coalition to fight the scourge, yes, as he would fight a war.

Foolhardy, you say? Remember the legend: When JFK stated his vision our existing space program was stymied, there was no adequate technology to advance the existing mission, the scientists said it couldn’t be done, and there was no president for the timeline. Exactly where the fight against AIDS stands today. It couldn’t be clearer.

With the economy beginning to play into Rove's game plan, it's time for the Democrats to kick it up a notch or two. Think bolder. The times demand it.

posted by Josh 8:43 AM

NY Times focuses on Diebold voting machine issue

...lack of verifiable paper trail a contentious issue... conspiracy or coincidence...

This mornings New York Times features a Paul Krugman column that takes a look at the controversy over verifiable voting connected with Diebold voting machines and their controversial CEO, Bush campaign fundraiser Walden O’Dell. We've been tracking this issue for some time. (1) (2)(3) (4)

Now, Krugman voices his concern that the machines, which do not provide a verifiable paper trail, "may put the credibility of US democracy at stake." He says he plans to revisit the issue. This is the first time the Times has examined the electronic voting machine issue as something more than a low-priority business story.

posted by Groom 1:05 AM

We're Number One

US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld has won a "Foot in Mouth" award for one of his now legendary bizarre remarks made at a news conference in February.

"There are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns," he said.

The British Plain English Campaign annually hands out the prize for the most nonsensical remark made by a public figure. BBCNews, December 2, 2003

posted by Jerry Bowles 12:10 AM

Monday, December 01, 2003

A Glimmer at Gitmo

Maybe, there's a glimmer of hope out there. A friend sent me a pointer to the following piece of positive news about Guantanamo:

Seven separate amici curiae or friends-of-the court briefs have been filed with the U.S. Supreme Court questioning the legality of U.S. treatment of those prisoners under the Constitution, the Geneva Conventions, and international law. Briefs have been filed by: distinguished former U.S. diplomats; former U.S. federal judges and leading members of the private bar; former judge advocate generals of the Navy and Marine Corps; former American POWs; the Human Rights Institute of the International Bar Association; the Commonwealth Lawyers Association; and Fred Korematsu, the plaintiff who challenged the internment of Japanese-Americans during World War II.

You'll find a link to each of the briefs on the page.

Does anybody know where Dean and Clark are on the "enemy combatant" issue?

posted by Jerry Bowles 4:05 PM

America's Shame

The more I think about human beings being held in jungle cages for two years because my government, the government of the country I love, a government that obviously has known for a long time now that these people were innocents, sold by warlords for American taxpayer dollars, the more angry and disillusioned and ashamed I get. Had the Supreme Court not agreed to hear an appeal, they would still have been rotting there two years from now while the Pentagon waited for a "politically propitious" time to release them. This is a national disgrace and the real tragedy is that the majority of Americans are more concerned about not maxing their Visa at the mall than they are in hearing about one of the most sordid episodes in American history or trying to remember the great country we might have been. I despair, my friends. I despair.

posted by Jerry Bowles 2:38 PM

How Congress screwed the seniors on Medicare

Joint national contract for drug procurement. You didn’t hear those words from Ted Kennedy or Tom Daschle. You didn’t hear them from Dr. Howard Dean. And only a few folks have heard them from General Wesley Clark. Most certainly, you didn’t hear them from the White House or their political operatives on the Hill.

Thanks to legislation passed during the Clinton administration prices paid on pharmaceuticals procured for the Veterans Administration- the nation’s largest public health care delivery system- are negotiated by a joint national contract for drug procurement. The savings to taxpayers during the years 1996-2000 was at minimum $654 million.

Those words- joint national contract for drug procurement- scare the stuffing out of the pharmaceutical manufacturers and their lobbyists and bought-and-paid-fors’ in Congress and in the media. It even sounds a little bit like a Teamsters contract.

An eminently workable technical model for providing seniors and other medicare beneficiaries with low cost drugs existed inside government that could have been migrated over from the VA. Instead, the Bush White House let the drug makers write their own legislation and put it in the hopper after being sheep-dipped through Congress.

Veterans are well organized and they vote. Seniors vote but they are not well organized.

Memo to General Clark: you have spoken quietly about the VA drug procurement system. You need to amp it up to help mobilize seniors and avoid being characterized by GOP talking heads like Tucker Carlson as a one issue (the war) candidate.

posted by Groom 11:28 AM

Another Cancer on the Presidency

Now comes the news that the administration is getting set to release more than 100 of the poor unlucky bastards that the Army rounded up in Afghanistan more than two years ago and has been storing in cages at Guantanamo in defiance of the Geneva Conventions and every other international law governing treatment of POWs. Turns out, according to Time, that some of the detainees being considered for release had been captured by Afghan warlords and sold for the bounty offered by Washington for Al Qaeda and Taliban fighters.

Surely, it didn't take the Pentagon two years to figure this out. More likely, Bush and Rumsfeld have known for months that a large number of the prisoners they were illegally detaining were completely innocent of any crime other than, maybe, being soldiers captured in combat. They are being released soon under the cover of Christmas so Shrub can sell the event to the American public as some sort of act of "compassionate Christianity." Is there no level of depravity to which this administration will not sink?

posted by Jerry Bowles 8:42 AM

Its not about the economy, it’s how we feel about the economy…

That’s the latest dollop of conventional wisdom according to today’s New York Times. Ignoring the “twin towers” of debt and government spending, the Fed says the “jobless recovery” is continuing to post solid growth, particularly in the temporary jobs sector. Consumer confidence statistics are buoyed by all this drat. Even those goniff mutual funds with the Waspy names- lots of Bush Rangers over there- are being rehabilitated. Come Labor Day 2004, the same crew that jacked the election and cooked the books will be supersizing the stats until they are finger lickin' good.

posted by Groom 5:49 AM

Sunday, November 30, 2003

Bush Iraq visit = Nixon Checkers speech

It’s tough not to commend our leader for making a secret visit to Iraq to do a morale boosting photo op for himself and our troops. NPR news even reported that the president had tears in his eyes when he was slinging the hash to the men and women in uniform. The way the bought-and-paid-for media milked the story you’d think it was the first time an American president visited a war zone. But, alas… it’s been done many times before.

Beyond the tears and the born-again religious angle there is something patently disingenuous about the politics of this “secret visit” that one did not see with Roosevelt and Churchill in North Africa, Eisenhower in Korea, or LBJ at Cam Ranh Bay. It smarts too much of a scared Richard Nixon crying as he answered slush fund allegations during his famous Checkers speech. As the political season moves ahead, perhaps many of us will look back at the Thanksgiving “surprise” and put it into perspective as the act of a lame-duck president, desperately seeking validation.

posted by Groom 11:20 PM

Halliburton at War

A senior security representative of Halliburton's Kellogg Brown & Root Services subsidiary was among the 13 friendlies killed in Iraq yesterday in the wake of Shrub's excellent Thanksgiving photo op. This is bad news for the administration since it is clearly Rumsfeld's plan to stealthily reduce the troop numbers by further "outsourcing" the support functions--logistics, maintenance and repairs, custodial and so on--that the Army used to provide for itself. Targeting the civilian replacements is a smart move by the insurgents. Rumsfeld may find that few companies have employees who want to work in a war zone--no matter how inflated the contract.

posted by Jerry Bowles 11:03 AM