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Give Peace a Chance

The Bushies are trying hard to spin Colonel Qaddafi's capitulation as a victory for the administration's "tough-guy" foreign policy. In reality, it's a triumph of nine years of patient European diplomacy and a deal that was in the works long before the Iraq war and the capture of Saddam.

Says who? Says, our good friend Tony Blair:

Tony Blair rushed before the cameras on Friday to praise the decision, heralding it as a sign that disputes over weapons of mass destruction, as opposed to the outcome in Iraq, could be resolved peacefully. “It shows that problems of proliferation can, with good will, be tackled through discussion and engagement,” Blair said. Deutsche Welle, December 20, 2003

posted by Jerry Bowles 12:24 PM

Rollout Time

A new year is fast approaching and with it the dreaded State of the Union address. Since it's an election year, the White House has been trial-ballooning some new "products" designed to demonstrate that Shrub's agenda is more than simply all war, all tax cuts, all the time. Last week, the notion of going back to the moon (or was it Mars) was floated for about ten seconds before sinking like a fat kid in a wading pool of public indifference. In his column this morning, David Brooks unveils something called the "Ownership Society" in which the Bushies envision giving unemployed workers personal re-employment accounts, which they could spend on training, child care, a car, a move to a place with more jobs, or whatever else they think would benefit them. No mention of how the program would be financed or what the workers would be asked to give up in order to get such help but you can bet your ass that there are strings attached.

The President is said to be particularly keen on the plan since it calls for "personal responsibility." Don't you love being lectured about personal responsibility by an arrogant rich prick who takes his pillow with him everywhere he goes and thinks it's weird that other people don't? Wonder if Laura packs his "blanky" too?

posted by Jerry Bowles 11:05 AM

When Push Comes to Shove

If you haven't seen it yet, don't miss Howard Dean's Newsweek interview. (John McCreery)

posted by Jerry Bowles 8:55 AM

Can Democrats Fill the God Gap?"

According to this Fox News story , "Regular attendees of religious services are more likely to vote Republican while those who infrequently attend services or belong to no assembly at all are more likely to vote Democrat, a growing body of polling indicates."

If this were Japan or Europe, the Democrats wouldn't have to worry, since in both the religious hard core are in the minority. But as folks who live outside the USA frequently observe, Americans tend to be religious, making our politics, at least in this respect, more like those of the moderate Muslim nations where Muslim fundamentalists have become a growing force. (It is not for nothing that European friends in Yokohama have been reading with serious interest Tariq Ali's The Clash of Fundamentalisms: Crusades, Jihads and Modernity.

If Democrats allow ourselves to be depicted as despisers of religion, this could spell real trouble for our chances in 2004. (John McCreery)

posted by Jerry Bowles 8:54 AM

Will the real Joe Lieberman please stand up

For those of you with senior memories or are just too young to remember, Lowell Weicker was an excellent liberal Republican senator from Connecticut. He opposed the Vietnam war. He was vocal on Watergate. He was pro-choice. He thought it wasn’t a bad idea to stop isolating Cuba because everybody was circumventing the embargo anyway and he went down there to meet with Fidel a couple of times. So did lots of pols.

Joe Lieberman was a Yale classmate of John Kerry. During the late 1970s he tried to run for Congress but saw his political career head south thanks to a bad case of Carter cooties. He got whupped. After reinventing himself as an “environmentalist” attorney general, Lieberman was encouraged by “liberal” friend Kerry to go after Weicker’s senate seat in 1988.

Aware of Weicker’s visits to Havana, Lieberman got cozy with the late Jorge Mas Canosa and his crew of political ingrates otherwise known as the Cuban-American National Foundation. The same crew who worked with former Montana governor Mark Racicot in South Florida to organize “peaceful” demonstrations that wound up trashing government offices and creating enough chaos to disturb legitimate vote recount efforts in Dade in Broward counties during the 2000 presidential election.

Lieberman attacked Weicker on the Cuban trade issue and got plenty of bongo bucks for his campaign from Mas Canosa in return. He also pandered to the religious right, cozying up to pro-life groups and picking up some Konservative Kristian Kampaign funds in the process.

In 1988, the year Poppy Bush turned Mike “the Massachusetts miracle” Dukakis into a human swiffer mop, Joe Lieberman defeated Lowell Weicker by just 10,000 votes. Cubans in towns like Bridgeport and New London and New Haven helped put him over the top as did right wingers in places like Danbury and Meriden, where the Konnecticut Klan has been out of the Kloset for some time now.

Just two very junior years later, he was one of the first Democrats in the Senate to break ranks with his party to support Operation Desert Storm, the first Bush Iraq war, knowing very well that number one reason the “coalition“ of Arab nations agreed to come together against Saddam was that Washington would make sure that Israel was off on the sidelines with it’s hands tied.

Now, he’s fronting points for his DLC friend Al From From and Yale buddy John Kerry, employing the same smear tactics he used to narrowly beat Weicker in an effort to damage Howard Dean. And with this kind of pathological behavior we're supposed to think he's serious about running for president...

posted by Groom 7:20 AM

Friday, December 19, 2003

The Boogeyman Cometh

I hate to be a cynic and I'm one of those people who believes Chicken Little only needs to be right once. But, don't you think the timing of the new terror alerts is a bit "convenient," coming as they do on the day after the Bushies misguided approach to the "war on terror" takes a couple of hits in the courts? Just wondering.

posted by Jerry Bowles 4:45 PM

Ain't That America

The gifted Paris Hilton--you should excuse the phrase--blew the Shrubster away in the TV ratings Tuesday which is either testimony to the good taste of the American public or a sure sign that we are doomed, doomed, doomed.

posted by Jerry Bowles 9:32 AM

A Bright Day for Justice

For Americans who believe that concepts like “due process” and “habeas corpus” and “presumption of innocence” are permanent and immutable safeguards against judicial abuse and not concepts to be selectively applied or worked around for political gain (look how tough we are on crime/terror) by rightwing political lynch mobs, yesterday was the most encouraging day since Shrub somehow decided he had an absolute right to detain anyone he wanted to and hold them forever without charges or access to the courts.

The Second Circuit Court of Appeals in New York City ruled that the President does not have the power to detain an American citizen seized on U.S. soil as an enemy combatant. In reviewing the case of so-called “dirty bomber” Jose Padilla, it said only the Congress can authorize such detentions and it ordered the government to release him from military custody within 30 days. Padilla has been held in a Navy brig for 19 months without access to a lawyer.

In another case, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco ruled that the U.S. cannot imprison "enemy combatants" indefinitely at the U.S. Navy base in Guantanamo Bay in Cuba. In another 2-1 decision, the court said that such indefinite imprisonment was inconsistent with American law and raised serious concerns under international law. It also said that the more than 600 detainees should have access to lawyers. The Supreme Court has already indicated that it will take up the Guantanamo issue next year.

And, in what ought to be a major embarrassment for the Administration and a cautionary tale to Americans on both sides of the political equation, the Justice Department’s Inspector General has found hundreds of tapes that corroborate the testimony of abuse by prison guards of many of the 1,200 or so foreigners who were rounded up after 9/11 and held for months on minor immigration charges.

Inspector General Glenn A. Fine is quoted as saying that "some officers slammed and bounced detainees against the wall, twisted their arms and hands in painful ways, stepped on their leg restraint chains and punished them by keeping them restrained for long periods of time." The report also found that jail personnel improperly taped meetings between detainees and their lawyers and overused strip searches to punish them.

Presumably, the Second Circuit and Ninth Circuit cases will wind up on the doorstep of the Supreme Court which—the 2000 election decision notwithstanding—has always been the fairest and most impartial of the three branches of government. I like to think that even Rehnquist and Thomas and Scalia will rebel at giving the president—any president—absolute power over the justice process.

The reaction of the Justice Department and the Bush White House to the September 11 murders has been to run jackbooted over the American justice system. In the process, they have done far more damage to America than Osama bin Laden could ever have imagined. As long as John Ashcroft and George W. Bush are in office, the terrorists have won.

posted by Jerry Bowles 12:13 AM

Thursday, December 18, 2003

Justice Served

Jose Padilla has won a big victory for all Americans over our imperial president and his administration's outrageous, illegal and immoral efforts to concentrate all power in the Executive branch. A federal appeals court just ruled that the president does not have the power to detain an American citizen seized on U.S. soil as an enemy combatant. Little by little, the courts are rolling back the excesses. I don't think even the Supremes are going to go along with Junior on this one.

posted by Jerry Bowles 4:21 PM

When Push Comes to Shove

If you've wondered how Howard Dean would respond to all the crap thrown at him last week, why not listen to the man himself. Then, ask yourself why the following Newsweek interview is a Web exclusive and doesn't appear in the print edition. (John McCreery)

posted by Jerry Bowles 2:51 PM

Old Times There

It’s about time the Times covered the Strom Thurmond revelation that he had fathered a daughter by his family’s maid on page one. They buried it in main news last Sunday.

I first came across this stunning piece of information in Diane McWhorter’s Pulitzer-Prize winning book about the 1963 bombing of the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church Carry Me Home: Birmingham, Alabama, The Climactic Battle of the Civil Rights Revolution. McWhorter used the bombing as a climax to a long history of race relations in the South, so that it was not out of place to mention what had been known but largely hushed-up, that one of the South’s staunchest warriors for segregation had engaged in a little mingling of the races. McWhorter also points out at the end of a brilliant passage on the role that fear of miscegenation played in Southern history and politics that in the South race relations was always “as much about Freud as Marx,” (I may be paraphrasing slightly since I loaned my copy of the book). In other words, the need to preserve economic privilege alone did not explain the motivations of the white South and the accompanying violence.

Over a long family reunion weekend in Virginia I had the chance to discuss this topic with my cousin, professor of Southern history at – where else – Washington and Lee University and he agreed that the farther you dig into the Southern psyche the closer you get to the root source of the region’s peculiar history: sex. It wasn’t for stealing bread that young black men were lynched; more often than not, it was for looking the wrong way at a white woman walking down the street. And remember the Scottsboro boys?

Psychoanalysis teaches that the first few months of life are critical for forming lasting impressions of intimacy and self-worth. Chances are ol’ Strom, like many of his white gentry contemporaries and predecessors, was nursed by a black nanny. So for white men to gravitate later to black women for sexual intimacy was not only because in many cases the women couldn’t refuse but also because of their connection to white men’s deepest sexual drives. At some point the Dixiecrat, like others in his race and class, was taught that the same skin to which he had formed his earliest bond was also inferior to his own, and that those to whom it belonged were to be subjugated to the Southern way of life (keeping “them” down.) When you imagine the enormity of this crack in the soul you get the key to the violence and self-delusion that fueled politics, and gave birth to Quentin Compson and Atticus Finch.

So Strom was just the longest lasting of a long tradition of Southern cultural chasm-reinforcers. With his death and with this revelation, can we and have we moved on? Well, it helps to finally put this story on the front page (perhaps the Times was originally hesitant after making such a big deal out of Hootie Johnson under its previous regime). I have not lived in the South for a long time, but my impression from infrequent visits is that while racism still exists it is more of the Northern variety, less overt and a lot less intimate. But as Brent Staples points out on the Times editorial page today, the Strom story, like that of countless others, gives the white community, like Strom Jr., an opportunity to acknowledge their kin and perhaps, in the bargain, to feel a lot more at home in their own skin.

posted by Evelyn 1:35 PM

PR, Iraqi-Style

Got to hand it to the Pentagon's boy Ahmad Chalabi who used his own newspaper, Al-Moutamar, to flood Iraq with a picture of himself leaning over Saddam Hussein, who appears to be huddled at his feet. No sign of the three other Iraqi Governing Council members who were taken to see the former dictator on Sunday. Chalabi, the chubby convicted bank robber and international fugitive, left Iraq when he was 14 and returned only a few months ago. It is quite possible that Saddam doesn't know who this strange little man is. Despite his claims to gullibles like Paul Wolfowitz to have a large popular following inside Iraq, most Iraqis didn't know who he was until recently and now what they know is that he is the American stooge apparent. The photograph of him lording over Saddam is obviously a cheap publicity stunt designed to give the little thief some credibility.

posted by Jerry Bowles 12:09 PM

Clark gets “Bush bounce” in Arizona poll

A poll of 414 Arizonans “certain” to vote in the coming Democratic party primary conducted by New Jersey-based Survey USA indicates that Wes Clark is closing on Howard Dean. Released on Tuesday, the poll indicates that 31% of those asked favor Dean, while 29% now say they favor Clark. Joe Lieberman was favored by only 10% of the voters and only 9% said they’d vote for Dick Gephardt in the primary. The poll was conducted on the heels of a Clark TV ad blitz that saturated the Phoenix and Tucson markets… just days after US troops “found“ Saddam in a spider hole disoriented from the possible effects of inhalation therapy correctly administered, unlike the Russian botch job that killed over 200 in a Moscow theatre last year.

A poll conducted by Northern Arizona University in Flagstaff and released Monday shows the effect of Clark’s “Bush bounce.” Taken before Al Gore’s endorsement of Dean and prior to Saddam becoming an unpaid demonstrator for Sargent’s Flea & Tick spray, the NAU poll found that 22% of those Democratic queried said they would support Howard Dean in the primary while only 12% said they would support Wes Clark.

For a fistful of dollars…

To what can we attribute the mighty Wurlitzer suddenly pumping out planet news that the Israelis had low cost a plan to take out Saddam in 1992? Hanukah? Christmas?

“Operation Bramble Bush” it was called and everyone’s saying that the op got 86ed after five Israeli commandos were killed during a test run. This mellow little number wasn’t Likud stuff; it came down on Labor’s watch, green lighted by then-prime minister Ehud Barak.

The intelligence was there. The psychological tendencies of Saddam gave the op a very high probability of success. And why, after Shrubby signed an Executive Order green lighting assassination of foreign leaders by US operatives, couldn’t we have gone in and done a similar surgical strike. When you consider that Americans spent $47 billion last year (2002) on supermarket purchases (not including megastores like Sams, Costco and K-Mart) and we’ve pissed away about $100 billion so far this calendar year on Shrubby’s unilateral war, the sheer folly of the exercise becomes, as Dick Nixon used to say “perfectly clear.” If we had the cojones, Saddam could have slipped down some stairs and banged his head like diet Dr. Robert Atkins and the American people could focus on rebuilding their own crumbling democracy.

posted by Groom 6:29 AM

Wednesday, December 17, 2003

The Shrub Effect

More than one-third of Americans--37%--believe that the United States is a threat to world peace. ADL Survey, December 17, 2003.

posted by Jerry Bowles 9:16 PM

Can of Worms?

"...despite the carefully choreographed announcement by US civilian administrator Paul Bremer of the fallen dictator's discovery in a concealed cellar close to his home town of Tikrit, there are some leading figures within the Bush administration who would have preferred Saddam to have gone down fighting to the death in the same way as his sons Uday and Qusay did in late July. A dead dictator would have dispensed with the need for a public trial - the prospect of which is deeply troubling for some within the Bush administration. Jane's Intelligence Digest, December 17, 2003.

Gee, I can't imagine why.

posted by Jerry Bowles 4:49 PM

Byrd Tells It Like It Is

The senior senator from West Virginia speaks out following the capture of Saddam Hussein.

Early this morning came news of the capture of Saddam Hussein. That is good news. Despite his fall from power many months ago, the specter of a possible return to power had cast a constant shadow over Iraq and the Iraqi people. I applaud the tenacious work of the military and intelligence communities for their success today.

But that success does not diminish the challenges that remain in Iraq, and it certainly does not tamp the passions inflamed against the United States throughout the Muslim world by our actions in Iraq. The capture of Saddam Hussein will not be the keystone for peace in that volatile region. This day's news does not lessen the danger that the Bush doctrine of pre-emptive strike poses to international peace and stability.

See the rest in The Nation. (John McCreery)

posted by Jerry Bowles 1:08 PM

Family Secrets

Although you probably wouldn’t suspect it from the stuff I write here, I am a lifelong registered Republican. It’s probably more a matter of family custom than true commitment but there are certain traditionally pre-Bush Republican—or, more properly—libertarian, principles that I believe in quite fervently. Governments should be no bigger than they need to be, they should be open and transparent, balanced budgets are better than deficit spending, the biggest and most heavily armed country in the world should behave with “humility” toward others and—above all else—government should stay out of citizens’ private lives. Sexual orientation, views on abortion, who I am married too and which sex they happen to be, and which—if any—God I believe in—these things are my personal business…and yours. John Ashcroft shouldn’t lay his mama or God shit on us and we should spare him the same.

All of which is a preface to saying that while I disagree passionately with most of what William Safire writes, I find myself in total solidarity with his column today in which he takes the Bush administration to task for its fanatic obsession with secrecy. No group of temporary government employees in history has tried harder to hide its inner workings from the citizens who employ them than the Shrub White House. From day one, the administration began reversing the welcome trend toward openness and access to non-classified administration that the Internet had made possible.

I have a theory about why this is so. In the kind of crony capitalism practiced by Shrub and his chief advisors, the key to success is to know something that others don’t—call it insider information—and to be able to share that information with other insiders. Next time they know something you don’t, they share with you. All very cozy and designed to keep the goofy golf pants set in power forever. Openness and transparency rob the Dick Cheneys of the world of their power by making them play by the same rules as everyone else. That’s why they love secrets.

posted by Jerry Bowles 11:45 AM

Campaign Themes

In Salon Table Talk, Mary Schumacher writes,

I know lots of Republicans -- collegues, former clients, family members -- and I don't know one who will not vote for Bush. Most of my family lives in Missouri and Texas. They are very typical of the Republican base; white, Protestant and Catholic, many born again, upper middle class, mostly entrepreneurial business owners, like myself, or, professionals -- doctors, lawyers, architects. They are investors. And, they're educated; at places like Princeton, Columbia, Vanderbilt and Rice. They do not listen to Rush Limbaugh, and they would find Ann Coulter, who they most likely have never read, appalling.

They attend church, volunteer in their communities, give to charity. They see themselves as good people, and they are. I have never heard, in my entire life, one of them utter an ethnic or racial slur.

They see themselves as people who have pulled themselves up by their bootstraps -- or, the children and grandchildren of people who have done so.

They are the kind of people who turn out in large numbers at election time.

They also are NOT veterans, for the most part. In the age of an all-volunteer army, their children and grandchildren do not go into the service. And among my generation, the Viet Nam generation, who were draft age when the draft was still in place, only two served; my brother and one of my Texas cousins. Both enlisted in the Navy rather than be drafted into the army and risk being put into the infantry. My Texas cousin spent his service mostly in Italy. My brother went to Viet Nam, but, only because he volunteered to -- by becoming a Navy Corpsman; a medic.

They are not Republicans because they've been brain-washed by the conservative media or Karl Rove. They are Republican because Republican ideology works for them; it matches their values and their experience. They are not people who have spent much time as someone else's employee. They are not people who have ever worked for the government. They are not people who have ever had to worry about health care or housing. They are not people who have had to go into debt to get an education. They are not people who see their own children as being at risk from an ill-advised war. They are people who benefit from W's tax cuts. People who benefit from a rise in the stock market and a decline in wages and prices. People who don't want the government telling them how much to pay their employees. People who live in parts of the country where the cost of living remains low and housing is still affordable. People who genuinely believe that the unions are corrupt, the Democratic party is corrupt, and that Democrats who charge THEIR party with racism, or claim that they don't have "compassion" for the poor, are dishonorable people stirring up racial and class animosity in order to get elected.

And when Democrats criticize Bush or the war, they think they are just up to their old tricks; lying to get what they want. They believe Bush is a "good" man dealt a hard hand -- and that criticism of him demonstrates disloyalty and lack of fortitude. And that claims to be "better" than him are pure arrogance.

Mary's description of her Missouri and Texas relatives is a good close fit with my Georgia relatives as well. Some types that she's left out include my younger brother, who works as a model maker (equipment prototyper) for the Army Transportation Command and loves his government job because the healthcare and other benefits and, especially, because he can accumulate then take off time to hunt and fish. There is also my cousin, a one-time hippy turned born-again Christian highschool English teacher. Both are pillars in their churches, have black as well as white friends (and, in my brother's case, a Japanese daughter-in-law), are devoted to their families and deeply disturbed by what they see as the degredation of American culture. They are good but parochial people with a narrow worldview in which the themes of Republican advertising resonate strongly. They haven't yet made the connection between an administration run like Enron (faked growth, secrecy, screw you to the underlings when things fall apart), the moral chaos endemic in the financial services industry, and the big corporations whose advertising drives the mindless consumerism in which the moral decay they sense around them is rooted. They don't, moreover, want to hear about it, since it undermines their faith in the Good America of which they see themselves exemplars. Attacking their faith head on does nothing but make them mad, and sophisticated analyses of economic or foreign policy make no impression on them. That's not because they are stupid--they aren't. It is, as Mary points out, because their lives are structured in such a way that experience reinforces their faith and being busy with their personal commitments to job, family and church doesn't leave much time for the reading and thinking that make sophisticated analysis intelligible and persuasive.

Most will, I am sure, be unreachable by anything we Democrats say or do. There are, however, some who are unhappy with the administration for what they see as good reasons--out of control deficits and libertarian fears of attacks on civil liberties being, in my view, the most important.

I look, then, at the themes of the campaigns being run by my two favorite candidates. To me, "A New American Patriotism" looks too me-too. People who already see themselves as good, passionate patriots are not likely to be impressed. In contrast, "Restoring American Community" is a great platform for speaking to people who fear more than anything else that the families and communities they treasure are in danger of being torn apart.

I haven't studied polling data or run focus groups, but this is what my heart tells me: It's a big idea, a campaignable idea, and an idea that feels just right. (John McCreery)

posted by Jerry Bowles 9:20 AM

Come Let Us Reason Together

Lieberman has no chance of winning the nomination. Why is he being so destructive to Dean?

posted by Jerry Bowles 8:51 AM

Ashcroft rebuked for violating gag order

A federal district judge in Detroit has called out America’s top cop, attorney general John Ashcroft for praising a government witness during the trial of the “Sleeper Cell 4” a group the government said was planning to attack the US and other nations. (Two of the four were acquitted; the other two convicted on much less serious charges). Granted, the anointed one’s blood was probably up since it was the first trial of terrorists in the US after 9/11 and he did eat a little crow by saying later that the remarks were “inadvertent.” But let’s let the other shoe drop, Elder John’s henchmen, the federal prosecutors in the case, withheld evidence from the defense that attorneys for the “Sleeper Cell 4” claim could have been used to exonerate their clients. This is the same crew that is telling us that they may never find the anthrax perp who sent envelopes only to Democratic legislators. The same crew that is squishy soft on prosecuting Enron executives and MCI scammers who have ties to born-again Christian groups.

Dictators on parade

General Idi Amin murdered far more than Saddam during his bloody reign and spent his last decade in exile, (after the Brits decided to finally cut bait due to the human rights baggage) protected by the Saudis, living high in the presidential suite of a Saudi hotel. Mobuto Sese Seko, our boy (the Brits too) in the Congo, ordered the death of enough people to turn Austin, Texas into a ghost town. Pol Pot, Sukarno, Suharto, all the Latin dictators we trained at the Escuela de las Americas.

“On balance” with the rest of this crew, Saddam Hussein would hardly go to the head of the class. Even with his nation floating on oil, he’d be lucky to be a piss-ant on steroids. It’s too bad that Shrubby didn’t go over there wearing his flight suit with a video crew and pull Saddam out of the spider hole himself and then shoot global public enemy #1 “while he was trying to get away.” At least that’s how the Texas Rangers always say it happens.

posted by Groom 5:41 AM

Tuesday, December 16, 2003

A four-year-old federal commission, led by James S. Gilmore III, a former Republican governor of Virginia, said in a final report issued today that President Bush should create a "civil liberties oversight board" with a bipartisan membership that would "provide advice on any change to statutory or regulatory authority" that might infringe on civil liberties, the New York Times reports.

It's about damned time.

In Breaking the Vicious Cycle: Preserving Our Liberties While Fighting Terrorism, Timothy Lynch, director of Cato's Project on Criminal Justice, writes: "The president of the United States wields enormous power, but it is sheer folly for anyone to think that he can stop terrorists from attacking the American homeland. Since intelligence and defense experts fully expect more atrocities in the foreseeable future, it is clear that Americans have a stark choice: We can either retain our freedom or we can throw it away in an attempt to make ourselves safe."

posted by Jerry Bowles 4:01 PM

Speech Writers Desperately Needed

Poor Dean: the timing of his first major foreign policy speech yesterday could not have been worse, coming on the heels of Bush’s biggest foreign policy moment. The location, in the fantasyland of Hollywood, could not have been more ill-advised and isolated from real world events and the centers of foreign policy thought and leadership. It was poorly propped with some obscure podium sign and lonely American flag as a weak backdrop, to say nothing about dusting off the former James Baker wannabee Secretary of State Warren Christopher for an unconscious “retro” introduction. And most importantly, the content could not have been more insipid. Who edited this claptrap? And what’s with mimicking the clipped cadence of Bush’s speeches?!

Reading the entire speech it appears that there were at least three writers (or groups) and no editor. First there was obligatory opening re-write section acknowledging the capture of Saddam which changed everything except Dean’s view of the world. Then there was the “I will” sentence group, charged, no doubt with making this all about Dean as the doctor and chief surgeon of foreign policy. The 16 references to “I will” was excruciatingly excessive and failed to acknowledge the complexity of foreign policy and the fact that no single person can dominate, control or singularly control foreign policy—although Bush may prove this assertion wrong. Then, finally, there was the “We will” group that seemed to change course and revert back to the grassroots assertion of Dean’s people campaign. But dragging up Eleanor Roosevelt, Martin Luther King, Carter, Clinton and Thomas Paine to come to some ill-advised rhetorical fever pitch for the speech was sophomoric at best, doing nothing for Dean’s stature on the world stage.

Then if anyone was listening two-thirds of the way into the speech, Dean’s self-appointed foreign policy speech reader/editor, Al Gore, did get acknowledged—after Senator Sam Nunn and Republican Senator Richard Lugar—with this gratuitous assertion: “And our effort will build on the extraordinary work and leadership, as Senator and as Vice President, of one of America's great leaders, Al Gore.”

The heart of the matter is the role of truth in our fight against terrorism. I agree with Dean's major assertion that America is NOT safer now that Saddam has been captured, but I would wager that the majority of Americans think they are and with the Bush juggernaut insisting that is so, Dean only sounds shrill and in desperate need for a new way of saying things. His speech writers are not serving him well.

posted by Josh 9:02 AM

Reasons to Hate Shrub Bush, Part 731:
Used 9/11 to Grab Power for Executive

Rightwingers have long harbored the conviction that crime is caused by liberals. Were it not for these mushy-headed lefties, the world would be a more orderly place. They simply “enable” lawbreakers with their overly scrupulous concern for the rights of suspects and their tiresome insistence that legal authorities behave to the letter of the law. More often than not, the wingnuts believe, shifty defense attorneys get the bad guys off on technicalities and the testimony of professional bleeding hearts like psychologists and social workers. Lenient judges’ cut them loose as fast as our tireless and heroic law enforcement officers can catch them.

What the country really needs, radical conservatives believe, is a nationwide judicial system modeled on, say, Texas, where minor details like being represented by an incompetent and/or drunk court-appointed public defender (generally a political crony of the judge) who sleeps through your trial will not deter the system from delivering “justice”—even in death penalty cases.

Two of the most prominent believers in the justice-system-has-gone-to-hell notion are Shrub Bush, whose execution count as governor of Texas would fill one of Saddam’s midsized killing fields, and our snake-handling, tongue-speaking, 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.

In their paranoiac vision, miscreants come in all races and genders (although, regrettably, they are most frequently black and male which is, in no way, you understand, to be construed as a reflection on the fairness of the system). They can also be very young.

As governor of Texas, Shrub rewrote the Texas Juvenile Justice Code, lowering to 14 the age at which juveniles can be tried as adults, expanding the use of fingerprinting and photographing juvenile criminals to help police track gangs, and encouraging the use of boot camps to house and rehabilitate juvenile offenders.

“Each of us is responsible for the decisions we make in life,” declared a man who has never seen a situation that Poppy’s friends couldn’t get him out of. “The old code used to say if you commit a crime it is not your fault, it is our fault. The new code recognizes that discipline and love go hand in hand. Our new juvenile justice code says there will be bad consequences for bad behavior in the state of Texas. We want you to understand you are responsible for the decisions you make in life. It’s called tough love.”

Most Americans take a more centrist view. For example, a 2002 Public Agenda poll found that only 29% of the American people believe putting guilty people in jail should be the most important goal of the criminal justice system. More than half believe it is just as important to protect the rights of the accused as it is to jail the guilty.

The terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001 provided Bush and Ashcroft with the opportunity they needed to advance the right wing “tough on crime” agenda by rolling back many of the protections of individual rights that had been enacted following the exposure of widespread malfeasance by the FBI and other law enforcement agencies during the 60s and 70s. Their response to terrorism turned out to be exactly the same “solutions” they had been offering for years as cure for crime—unleashed restraints on search and seizure, an assault on habeas corpus, large-scale incarcerations, harsher, mandatory sentences, and the death penalty.

Shrub used 9/11 as a power grab for the Executive Office. Instead of attempting to bring the country together, he opted for draconian measures that trampled on the individual rights of all Americans.

posted by Jerry Bowles 8:17 AM

Nations Un-united under America

We saw Shrubby in campaign mode during his press conference, smirking and basking in the afterglow of Saddam’s capture with zippy one liners designed to create pretrial publicity that will keep the Butcher of Baghdad from becoming the O.J. Simpson of the international legal system.

“I don’t believe he will tell the truth.” (Shrubanese)

Everbody knows Saddam will lie to save his ass. (English translation)

Groom Lake comment: President George W. Bush lied to Congress and the American people and the world to start the war. Saddam Hussein had nothing to do with Osama Bin-Laden’s group of Saudi terrorists who carried out 9/11.

“We’ve got sixty nations involved in the coalition.” (Shrubanese)

My government has no faith in international law. We’ll make nice with the United Nations but we don’t trust them either since they opposed the war me and my advisers started to help me win the next election. All the nations in our coalition show that I can circumvent the UN whenever I want to. (English translation)

Groom Lake comment: The current administration would be happy if the United Nations morphed into the League of Nations.

posted by Groom 12:41 AM

Monday, December 15, 2003

Electability Redux

I am certain that my fellow Americans expect that on my induction into the Presidency I will address them with a candor and a decision which the present situation of our people impel. This is preeminently the time to speak the truth, the whole truth, frankly and boldly. Nor need we shrink from honestly facing conditions in our country today. This great Nation will endure as it has endured, will revive and will prosper. So, first of all, let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself—nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance. In every dark hour of our national life a leadership of frankness and vigor has met with that understanding and support of the people themselves which is essential to victory. I am convinced that you will again give that support to leadership in these critical days.

From Franklin Delano Roosevelt's first inaugural (John McCreery)

posted by Jerry Bowles 5:44 PM

Electability: Compare and Contrast

Candidate A

They said a Governor from a small Northeastern State had no chance-->Now the frontrunner.

They said he'd have to raise at least $5 million to be credible-->$31 million and growing.

They said he'd be so easy to attack-->Every time it's happened, he's picked up more supporters and cash.

They said he had no appeal outside a lilly-white Internet clique-->Tell it to Jesse Jackson Jr., Elijah Cummings, John Conyers,Loretta Sanchez, the Black Commentator.

They said that Party insiders wouldn't back him-->Tell it to Al Gore, Fred Harris, Zoe Loftus, the 39 super delegates who have already pledged their support.

They said that labor belonged to Gep-->Tell it to the SEIU, AFSCME, the painters....

They said he couldn't win a conventional suck up to the heavy contributors, media-heavy campaign-->He grasped the potential of the Internet and created a campaign whose organization, scale and success are--even his attackers agree-utterly unprecedented.

Candidate B

He's got a fantastic resume, a military uniform with four stars on his shoulders--> Still true.

He's a decorated Vietnam veteran-->Sure, but why did Max Cleland get butchered and, more to the current point, why is Kerry sinking like a stone? How did Bill Clinton ever beat Bob Dole?

He's put together a team of first-rate party professionals-->Right. Just like the folks who sunk Kerry.

He had great exposure out of the gate-->Great poll numbers just after the announcement. But since then?

He was heralded as a white knight, the man who would blow away the competition-->Why is he still running second, or more often third, in so many states? Why, when it comes to debates, does he do pretty well....but only pretty well? Where are the knockout punches?

He took six months to make up his mind to run-->Fire in the belly? The courage to run when standing up for convictions looked like being Don Quixote?

Find your average, hard-nosed political insider. Ask him or her which of these candidates is more electable. Care to predict the answer? (John McCreery)

posted by Jerry Bowles 4:26 PM

Osama Bin Forgotten

While basking in the triumph in the capture of one of world's many despicable tyrants, it is worth remembering that most of the real killers behind the September 11, 2001 attacks remain at large and as deadly as ever. In terms of American interests, Saddam's arrest advances the "war on terror" only in the most symbolic way. The Bush administration went to war on the assertion that Saddam's weapons of mass destruction and ties to terrorism presented such a direct threat to the United States that "regime change" was its only option. It has failed to prove that contention. It is time to demand that the administration re-focus its efforts on destroying Osama bin Laden, his al Qaeda network, and all of its subsidiaries. Too much valuable time has been lost already.

Update: Charles V. Peña, director of defense policy studies at the Cato Institute, nails it in "Iraq: The Wrong War" published today:

The war against Iraq was the wrong war because the enemy at the gates was, and continues to be, Al Qaeda. Not only was Iraq not a direct military threat to the United States (even if it possessed WMD, which was a fair assumption), but there is no good evidence to support the claim that Saddam Hussein was in league with Al Qaeda and would have given the group WMD to be used against the United States.

posted by Jerry Bowles 2:20 PM

Those Pesky WMDs

Harretz is reporting that Saddam Hussein could be offered a deal in which he would provide information on if and how he hid weapons of mass destruction and if he smuggled some of them into Syria. In exchange, he would face life imprisonment and not be executed for war crimes.

posted by Jerry Bowles 1:54 PM