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Those Colorful Southerners

"For Saxby Chambliss, who got out of going to Vietnam because of a trick knee, to attack John Kerry as weak on the defense of our nation is like a mackerel in the moonlight that both shines and stinks." Max Cleland, NY Times, 2/21/04

posted by Jerry Bowles 6:52 PM

Shrubby's October surprise... the Hitler’s bunker scenario

Josh has pointed out how it will be all over for Uncle Dem if Shrubby pulls an October surprise and captures the US-trained jihadmeister Usama Bin-Laden. Consistent with the pattern of pathological lying exhibited by this administration I see a somewhat different, and more specious scenario unfolding… not unlike what happened when the Red Army claimed to have found Adolf Hitler's body. Lots of hocus-pocus there.

October 10, 2004. John Kerry, leads Bush in the polls 53% to 45% with 2% undecided… and then… we interrupt this program for late breaking news direct from the White House, the president of the United States…

We got him, my fellow Americans. Found dead in a spider hole. Hiding out just like his disciple Saddam Hussein. Here are the videotapes of our outstanding troops pulling the dead body out of that cowardly spider hole. Unfortunately looters took everything and we can’t match dental records with his teeth. As you can see from the pictures on the screen the body is badly decomposed. But we know it’s him. We’re working with the Pakistani government on trying to get the DNA testing done right now. But there are some Islamic law issues that might cause that process to take some time. But we’re sure it’s him. This is a great day for the people of the United States of America. God bless America.

Three days later. Bush gets a big bump in the polls and is running ahead of Kerry 61% to 37% with 2% undecided.

One week later, two weeks before Election Day. El-Jazeera releases new videotapes of Bin Laden chastising Bush and the western world. Experts at the CIA, citing voiceprint analysis, are absolutely certain that the voice is not that of Bin Laden, but of his “double.” The president addresses the American people, absolutely confident that the CIA analysis is correct.

No time before the election to do a WMD-style investigation into whether Bin-Laden is really dead or alive. Bush wins election. In April, 2005, France’s foreign minister Dominique de Villepin holds a press conference at the United Nations in New York in which he shows recent photographic images from the French SPOT satellite as well as voice tapes that match exactly with the real Bin-Laden voice. He also shows a videotape of two TF1 journalists meeting with Bin-Laden. They are present at the UN to meet the press. The Bush White House insists that Bin-Laden is dead and that the French have been duped by global terrorists who want the world to think Usama is still alive... plus ca change…

posted by Groom 5:31 PM

Terminator 5... Gay marriage

Gauleiter of California Arnold Schwarzenegger has declared gay marriages an “imminent risk to public order.” Bick mistake. The state attorney general doesn’t seem to agree. On the eve of the California primary... will Kerry and Edwards put their hole cards on the table?

posted by Groom 1:54 PM

Probably Related to Bucky

About that nasty and almost certainly untrue rumor about Texas Governor Rick "Family Values" Perry, here's a name to watch out for as the story unfolds--Becky Beaver. Ms. Beaver is a famously ball-breaking divorce lawyer.

posted by Jerry Bowles 12:17 PM

Long Live Osama, (or at least until November 3)

There, I said it, and I bet you have been thinking it too: if Osama bin Laden is captured or killed before the election, it’s all over. There is nothing any Democrat can do about it, and Dean can do whatever he wants with the party, because no one else will care, and a whole new generation of boys will be named George or Jorge.

This is especially true if Edwards is the nominee. No one will need to say it (although I am sure Rove will), but why change horses or riders in the middle of the stream, with Osama in the can or in the ground, and the war on terrorism still out there for our “war-time” president to fight, to make us more secure, so we can get back to our pre-9/11 indifferences and self-pursuits.

Edwards, a man who only has served his country in an undistinguished one-term of less than six years in the Senate, will not have a viable courtroom case or objection to make, except for a retro-isolationist view of the world that will punish our neighbors to the North and South on the flimsy proposition that only he can bring jobs to dying industries in America. The jury will not be listening.

If Kerry gets the nomination, at least he can make a case, with considerable credibility, that these fatwa fanatics, like the guerillas in North Vietnam, are more dangerous headless than they are with a mastermind. Note: A sacked Saddam has not tamed the tempest. Looking to this likely scenario, Kerry may even hedge his bets and pick Clark as his VP, something only he, of the two candidates, can afford to do, and thereby cut Bush off before the victory lap begins. Edwards cannot afford to pick Clark because of regional considerations and because the combo simply lacks any substantive national domestic experience on any issue.

Getting OBL has to be job one for Bush & Company. Amid reports of new and intensified searches for “the evil one,” this is looming as the Achilles’ heel, foot, leg and soul of the winning strategy for a Democrat in November. There will be no Winston Churchill replay here--sacking a popular war-time leader, once victory has been declared. If Osama's gone, Bush rules.

posted by Josh 10:44 AM

More fudge from the White House

If you thought the news that the White House was reclassifying fast food jobs from the service sector to the manufacturing column to gloss over the outsourcing of US jobs overseas was a publicity spot for the next episode of the West Wing, guess again. Mao-tse McMankiw is at work busy proving why economics is an imprecise social science.

posted by Groom 5:03 AM

Friday, February 20, 2004

Wisconsin Humor

Because Wisconsin is among the states with an "open" primary, voters don't need to declare a party affiliation before voting. That provides Republicans and conservative independents with an opportunity to play a little joke on their Democratic friends by indulging in what local newspapers describe as "mischief crossover voting." (Sort of like "wardrobe malfunction" and "weapons of mass production program-related activities.")

Back in 1972, for example, George McGovern won the Democratic primary but George Wallace finished a strong second--thanks to those fun-loving cross-voting, cheese-loving Badgers.

Although the Edwards people are trying to spin their candidate's surprisingly strong performance on Tuesday as a sign of his appeal to a broad segment of voters, a lot of his strength appears to have come because Republicans who wanted to stop Kerry voted for him. Exit polls showed that many Edwards' "supporters" totally disagreed with him on issues. But, I guess you got to take those votes where you can them.

posted by Jerry Bowles 8:13 PM

Profiles in Courage

Tom? Ralph. Ralph? Tom.

posted by Jerry Bowles 4:42 PM

Unsafe at Any Age

Faux News is reporting that Ralph Nader will announce Sunday that he will run. Eaawwwwwaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaawwww! There, I feel better.

posted by Jerry Bowles 2:55 PM

Want to Be a Guest Blogger?

We're thinking about having a kind of "guest blogger of the week" thing where we'll invite you to post here, say Monday to Sunday, and we'll say nice things about you and put up some kind of graphic that links back to your blog or Web page. We're especially keen on the folks who leave comments here regularly. If you're interested, send me a note.

posted by Jerry Bowles 11:06 AM

Is Anyone Serious About Edwards?

Now that John Edwards has staked out New York, Ohio, and Georgia as his primary Super Tuesday, stop-Kerry states, I'm encouraging Jerry Bowles, who lives in the Big Apple, to employ the time-honored Irish voting strategy: vote early, vote often.

Edwards is taking a page out of Hillary's winning New York stategy and campaigning upstate in the rural, more conservative part of the state in order to offset the "liberal" vote in Manhattan. There is no way I see him winning New York and running only second in Ohio. Maybe Georgia, but Kerry campaigning with former Georgia Senator Max Cleland and his Band of Brothers has a sweet smell of revenge to it and makes Georgia a less sure bet for Edwards than his home, but bordering state of South Carolina.

Who cares about South Carolina or Georgia, they are Red States anyway?

What I am curious about is whether or not any Deaniacs are going to get even with Kerry and vote for Edwards? In Wisconsin the exit polls gave a very slight edge to Kerry among Dean voters who where asked who their second choice was, Kerry or Edwards. But that was before the media annointed Edwards a viable candidate.

posted by Josh 10:50 AM

Was Howard Nuts?

Once in awhile on the road of life, we all have a relationship that seems, in retrospect, to have been not quite...rational. Some of us have had more than one of those. Months or years or days (depending upon your powers of recovery) later you look back and say "Whatever was I thinking? I must have been nuts." Quite frequently, it becomes equally clear that the other party wasn't all that sane at the time either.

Which brings us around to Gerald W. McEntee, head of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, who said yesterday that he had decided that Howard Dean was "nuts" shortly before withdrawing his union's support. Personally, I think working for a goal around the clock for more than a year, climbing to the most-likely position, generating an enormous amount of support, and then watching the whole thing crumble in a couple of weeks is enough to push anyone over the top. Anybody disagree?

posted by Jerry Bowles 9:54 AM

The chutzpah factor?

It was the longest answer to a yes or no question that he'd ever heard, Edwards said of Kerry's response. Now that's chutzpah. Some call it cojones, or badda-bing badda-boom, or just plain gaul. But it's chutzpah. John Edwards, who is a Methodist, has it. John Kerry, who morphs out of his Boston Brahmin persona by hanging with his Viet-vet pals, doesn't.

By anointing him as a "populist" the New York Times has, effectively, made John Edwards into a serious sparring partner for candidate Kerry. But that's all he will be, I suspect. My sense is that John Edwards is a "feel your pain" populist, not a progressive populist.

Underneath the patina of populism lurks the real John "the senator from Bank of America" Edwards. The same John Edwards who supported Shrubby's ill-fated bankruptcy "reform" bill, which would have had a catastrophic impact on "average Americans" John Kerry voted against it. There's one Kerry should call Edwards out on...

This is the race where Kerry will need to show he can take a punch. What passes for "negative campaigning" in most other states is regarded as mere chutzpah in the state of New York. That's why Edwards doesn't need to go negative. And it's every reason why Kerry's handlers should send him for a crash course in the Catskills. The Teflon John needs some Mel Brooks-style one liners to fend off Shrubby's pithy aphorisms come nut-cuttin' time. Loosen up John. Have a couple Pilsner Urquells and put some chutzpah in your tank.

posted by Groom 5:50 AM

Why We Still Love Howard Dean

Today Howard Dean supporters received the following letter from the Governor. It is, to be sure, a bulk mail piece. Still, don't just look, listen to the language. Here is the authentic voice of the man who brought us Deaniacs together and made us a force still to be reckoned with. Both those who are waiting for us to fall apart and disappear and those who expect us to fall meekly in line and open our hearts and wallets should listen especially carefully.

Dear John,

You folks are the best! I hope you will all keep active both in our new enterprise as we develop it, and also in the short term. We can still send delegates to the convention, and we should. If you are in a state with district, and state conventions, please make sure everyone goes, so that we send all the delegates we are entitled to. If you are in a state that has not yet voted, be sure to vote. We'll have a great time at the convention.

Thank you all for how hard you have worked, and how much money you raised. And thanks for getting involved. It feels a hell of a lot better to try and lose than not to try at all. In any case I have to say that I don't really feel like we have lost. We only lose if we quit. There is an enormous amount of power in numbers, and we can still
change this country (and that is exactly what we're going to do!).

Many thanks,

Howard Dean (John McCreery)

posted by Jerry Bowles 12:12 AM

Thursday, February 19, 2004

Tales of Macondo

Fans of Gabriel García Márquez will find nearing echoes in the Project for Defense Alternatives' new report called Disappearing the Dead: Iraq, Afghanistan, and the Idea of a "New Warfare," a searing indictment of the Pentagon's calculated "perception management" campaign to disguise the real human costs of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. By pretending, for example, that it doesn't track civilian deaths (when, in fact, such intelligence is available from the unit level to the Secretary of Defense) while promoting the notion of "precision warfare," our warriors have successfully manipulated the public's understanding of just how large the human toll has been.

posted by Jerry Bowles 6:40 PM

The fix is in

John Kerry just picked up the support of the AFL-CIO. But in an era of electronic voting that can jack an election with a keystroke, the most powerful unions in America aren’t the plumbers or the teamsters or the auto workers who vote, but those that look after the interests of a handful of millionaire male athletes who play professional sports.

For that reason you might not have noticed that Chris Webber, one of the stars of the NBA Sacramento Kings, was suspended 8 games by the National Basketball Association for violation of drug policy and for accepting money from a known gambler while in college. The news was buried on a back page in the small agate of the “transactions.”

The love tap justice and megabuck fine meted out by NBA commish David Stern gloss over the fact that Webber and the rest of the Fab Five at the University of Michigan were on the take from a big time numbers banker all the way through college. By copping a plea, Webber avoided being indicted for lying to a federal grand jury (which, effectively he did). According to Justice Department records, Chris Webber received at least $280,000 when he was in college. Some sports pundits have suggested he may even have been on the take while playing hoops at an elite private school outside Detroit.

And he had the gaul to testify that while in college he could hardly afford a McDonalds hamburger. As a result of the “scandal” the University of Michigan forfeited 113 victories and had to take down their NCAA championship banners from the Crisler Arena (won during Webber’s tenure).

Look at all the fuss over Pete Rose. Shoeless Joe Jackson. Or go back to Paul Hornung and Alex Karras in pro football. Or ask Frank Rosenthal (the real central character of the film “Casino”) for details.

What’s wrong with sports is what’s wrong with America's political class… like Dick Vitale would say… the fix is in, baby. Front load those primary elections... and did you say you wanted a receipt for that electronic vote?

posted by Groom 3:23 PM

We Have Nothing to Fear But...

Did you ever think you'd live to see the day when Pat Buchanan was the voice of reason?

posted by Jerry Bowles 2:17 PM

Can Edwards Risk Going Negative?

It is clear that Kerry is up for a blood feud with Bush, after all, he was Lieutenant Governor under Dukakis and revenge on Papa Bush is no small incentive to go for Junior’s jugular when necessary. It’s also clear Kerry learned a thing or two about defining issues, quick response and going negative in a positive way. I’m not confident at all that Edwards can do any of this, and more importantly, Edwards risks a lot by trying to do so. Edwards is too busy staying on message, sticking to his closing arguments that are no different than his opening statements, that he has already missed big opportunities to nail Bush on his job projections and Bush’s back peddling on the high numbers because “he is not a statistician.”

One lesson to be learned from Howard Dean, the “Father” of the New Democratic Party, is not to present one persona and then change it without warning or testing it first. Edwards, a man of little experience and less substance than anyone else in this race except for Sharpton, has only his personality to run on, and that personality, happy as it is, does not stack up well against Bush.

When--not if--Edwards goes negative and supplements his son-of-a-mill-worker grin with something other than sunshine, he risks confusing his well-polished “positive” brand and undermines his credibility, becoming less likeable if he does not do it right. What Edwards needs to do in the next two weeks is start testing the boundaries of how far he can go negative with Kerry and get away with it. Otherwise, he will not be ready for primetime and we will end up with an untested candidate for president, should he pull off the miracle of American politics and get the nomination.

posted by Josh 11:13 AM

Say It Ain't So, Barry

Barry Bonds may be the most unloved sports hero in history and the news that his trainer is somehow involved in the dispensing of steroids is unlikely to surprise anyone who has been watching with horror the evolution of a new generation of android players with arms like tree trunks and shoulders the size of Michigan. Does anyone seriously believe that Sammy Sosa, Mark McGuire or Bonds got that way through careful diet and exercise?

The common and widespread use of "performance enhancement" pills is an epidemic that is dangerous (how many fathers can resist giving their talented 13-year-old that little extra advantage?) and threatens the integrity of virtually all sports. It especially threatens baseball, a sport at which even such unlikely physical specimens as David Wells and Babe Ruth, could excel. Baseball is one of the few sports that measures and records everything that happens on the field. How do we compare the achievements of a Ted Williams or Joe DiMaggio to those of a Barry Bonds or Sammy Sosa when we know, although they deny it, that Bonds and Sosa have cheated?

I don't know what the solution is--maybe ban a few of these guys for life--but we could start by not allowing players to have personal trainers. The only personal trainer Babe Ruth ever had was the bartender at the Algonguin who said, "You've had enough, Babe. Go home and hit the sack."

posted by Jerry Bowles 9:47 AM

Snow blind

While everybody’s been counting candidates, the dollar continues its free fall against the Euro hitting a record low yesterday. One unit of the European currency is now worth $1.2929. From the White House perspective, a weak dollar makes US goods more competitive on world markets. That translates into declining real wages and more manufacturing and tech jobs being “outsourced” overseas. On the home front, consumer confidence is down. The twin towers of trade deficit and foreign debt are getting taller.

Treasury secretary, John Snow, is an old friend of Dick Cheney from their days in the Ford administration. Snow got the job at treasury on the strengh of running a railroad that sends empty hopper cars uphill and brings them down full of coal. This considered, it behooves one to ask to what extent Cheney might be pulling the strings in the area of economic policy.

The economy is Shrubby’s Achilles heel and the Democrats need a “great communicator” to get the message across to those of us who still bother to vote. Will Bob Rubin become the horse whisperer for John Kerry?

posted by Groom 5:54 AM

Blinded by Science

You would think that hopelessly destablilizing two large Muslim nations and saddling the American economy with debts into the 22nd century would be enough destruction for one administration but that would be to "misunderestimate" the Shrubster's band of merry thiefs. A group of more than 60 top U.S. scientists, including 20 Nobel laureates and several science advisers to past Republican presidents, yesterday accused the Bush administration of manipulating and censoring science for political purposes. What do you expect from a government in which the President and the Secretary of Education both believe evolution is a theory and creationism is a science?

posted by Jerry Bowles 12:12 AM

Wednesday, February 18, 2004

The Rumor Mill

Funny I haven't seen anything on Drudge about a certain GOP governor of a very large state whose wife is said to be on the verge of filing for divorce because her "family-values" husband is involved with another (gasp!) man. I'm sure Matt, being the ever-scrupulous journalist that he is, is just waiting for all the facts to be verified before going with it. Lovely time for something like this to come up, what with the gay marriage discussion and all. It might even explain this strange encounter.

posted by Jerry Bowles 7:07 PM

For He's a Jolly Good Fella

And so the inevitable has become official. Let's never forget that we owe Howard Dean an enormous debt for recognizing before it became comfortable to do so that his country was in deep trouble and that many of its citizens were feeling dispossessed and betrayed--not simply by the administration in power but by their own party. He fought a great battle. He touched lives and made history. He won the war of ideas. He is a true patriot and a great American.

posted by Jerry Bowles 2:01 PM

Newt’s Reform Model: Lessons for Deaniacs

The revolutionary Contract With America, the only political reform model that worked at the national level in the past 50 years, had, among other things, these key ingredients: 1) reform from within the party through established insiders; 2) it was at least five years in the making; 3) specific plans with specific accountable timelines; 4) the cheerleading support of a popular radio talk-show that hammered the reform message daily; 5) the good fortune to have Bill Clinton as president with his personal baggage and obsession with moving the Democratic Party to the center.

Unfortunately Dean has only one of Newt’s advantages working for him. He’s an outsider and proud of it. He has excoriated the very people he needs to carry the water and implement the reforms. He’s impatient, and his core constituency group, mostly young, relatively powerless outsiders, are equally impatient. He has no specific, tangible, easy to articulate plan of reform with a manageable timeline. He has no media cheerleaders and “co-conspirators.” A Bush victory in November could do for Dean what Bill Clinton did for Newt, except we don’t want four more years of Bush so that Dean can reform the Democratic Party and “take America back.”

Dean matches up well with Newt on intellect, and Dean has an impressive track record of reform that Newt did not have. But Dean does not match up well on temperament and he lacks Newt’s sagaciousness. Dean was successful in Vermont because he worked for change in a collaborative process from inside, just as Newt achieved change from inside the process. So whatever hopes Dean has for reform, he needs to get back to the formula that worked for him in Vermont.

posted by Josh 12:58 PM

Edwards’ Surprise Finish? He Comes In Second, Again

Out of 17 contests nationwide, so far Edwards has one win and one close second-place notch on his freshman political belt. And now--according to the same pundits who had the race sewn up by Dean back in January--the race is tightening? Edwards is an alternative to Kerry? Edwards is the “stop Kerry” candidate? With Dean limping back to Vermont, Edwards is the beneficiary? I don’t think so.

In both South Carolina, where he was born, and Wisconsin, Edwards out spent Kerry by at least 3:1 and spent significantly more time in each state while Kerry was campaigning nationwide. And in both states Edwards ran a narrowly-cast, Pat Buchanan-styled campaign of anti NAFTA, anti-trade, and economic isolationism on domestic policy, while arguing for multilateralism on foreign policy. No inconsistency there.

In Wisconsin, with its unusual open primary, Edwards did better with Independents than Kerry, the only variable that made the contest closer than most had predicted. Does this mean Kerry will not be attractive to Independents should he win the nomination? Absolutely not. Kerry, unlike Dean, is attending to the Democratic base first—a lesson that both Dean and Edwards have failed to learn. Consequently, most of Kerry’s wins have been by double digits. First things, first.

Should Kerry pick Edwards as his running mate because Edwards is a consistent second in the primaries? Absolutely not. Edwards is a lightweight: he has no executive experience, he’s only a one-term legislator, and he comes from a state he would lose if he had chosen to run again for the Senate. He’s a younger Perry Mason that wins in orchestrated courtroom cases, but can’t persuade the larger national jury of his case. Positive campaigning has earned him second-place finishes, but this happy-face, bouncy, Tony Blair-lite style will not fly in the general election where the role of the vice-president is to take it to the opposition. Edwards is a Boy Scout, Cheney, the Scout Master.

As Edwards said last night at the beginning of his "victory" speech, laughing at his own line first, "Objects in your rearview mirror [Kerry], are closer than you think." Kerry can do better than a tail-gater. We certainly deserve better.

posted by Josh 9:36 AM

Contrast and Compare

So, the question of the day. Who is Dean hurting more by staying in the race? Edwards or Kerry? Extra credit: what would happen if Dean dropped out and threw his support to Edwards?

UPDATE: The LA Times is reporting that Dean will announce today that he will stop campaigning but won't officially drop out of the race.

posted by Jerry Bowles 8:00 AM

The Class of 1958

…the last time the Democrats “took back America”

Howard Dean was probably watching Captain Kangaroo somewhere in Sag Harbor. I was a twelve-year-old kid, paying a dollar to see Jim Brown and Sam Huff knock heads along with 78,000 other Browns fans in Cleveland. DNC chairman Terry McAuliffe wasn’t even born yet.

It was probably one of the greatest moments in the history of the Democratic Party. Voters, in a single mid-term election ended a decade of anti-communist psychoterror and Joe McCarthy witch hunts by voting in 13 new Democratic senators to replace incumbent or retiring Republicans. Among them were Robert Byrd, Eugene McCarthy, Bill Proxmire and Ernest Gruening.

A decade later it was McCarthy, a decorated WW II hero who had voted for the Gulf of Tonkin resolution, trying unsuccessfully to wrest America away from the hawks. His presidential candidacy helped bring about Lyndon Johnson’s decision not to seek a second term.

Now, the Democratic Party and John Kerry have co-opted Howard Dean’s message and the methods developed by him and Joe Trippi to “take back America” from a disingenuous, radical right wing Bush administration. But it's not clear if their version of “taking back America” is driven by “the people” or by “the special interests.” The party, Kerry and, yes, you too John Edwards, need to go on the record about this.

“Taking back America” means more than just winning the White House. It means having the war chest and the ideas to gain control of the Senate again. Maybe instead of fundraising at Classmates.com Terry McAuliffe needs to talk with Bob Byrd from the Class of 1958 (or Gene McCarthy, who's in an assisted living facility in DC but still reading Homer) to find out how “taking back America” is done.

posted by Groom 6:35 AM

Tuesday, February 17, 2004

It's a Horse Race

Hmmm. Kerry and Edwards running neck and neck in Wisconsin. Edwards can't beat Bush at the top of the ticket but he's making a strong play for the number two slot. Not my first choice but he may earn it.

posted by Jerry Bowles 9:46 PM