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But Nobody Signed

Did somebody neglect to tell Shrub that they didn't sign the new Iraqi Constitution yet? Does democracy really mean that a single country preacher can scuttle the whole rickety enterprise by demanding a veto over every provision? Stay tuned for more fun and games.

posted by Jerry Bowles 4:15 PM

Another terrorist investigation

In case you haven't already heard, the National Education Association has confirmed that the Bush administration has been conducting a long term investigation of possible improper activity in its dispersal of political contributions. The investigation started back in 2002 after some clamoring by right wing Christian groups whose members can, uh, "tithe" and make other types of religious ("tax exempt") contributions outside of government oversight (freedom of religion, you know). Funny how it all amped up after god squad education secetary Rod Paige called the NEA a "terrorist" organization.

posted by Groom 4:08 PM

Golden Shower

It's nice to know that both Mars rovers have found water on the RED planet. But couldn't all those billions being spent to find water on Mars be better used to help solve the water problems down on planet earth? Too bad Mark Twain isn't alive to offer some wisdom on the erector set-size Mars rovers. After all, he's the gent who coined the phrase "whisky is for drinking and water is for fighting." Some folks pay more for a gallon of water than they do for a gallon of gasoline and we're not talking about the Beverly Hills crowd who do their beauty showers with Evian. Desalinization, like solar energy, is regarded by the Bush administration as expensive pariah technology. Maybe in Dick Cheney's effort to brazilianize the American people Bechtel and Halliburton can get together and a develop a long term plan for a water pipeline from Mars to an undisclosed location in the United States.

posted by Groom 10:39 AM

Anatomy of a Mugging

The Center for Responsive Politics has a disturbing account of how supporters of other candidates used a shadowy organization to sandbag Howard Dean in the runup to the Iowa caucuses. As it turns out, the mysterious organization--which spent $1 million in Iowa on negative Dean ads--includes disgraced former Senator Robert Torricelli, a Kerry backer.

posted by Jerry Bowles 9:33 AM

Friday, March 05, 2004

Georgie the Red

With all the chatter about the Shrubby campaign ads you’d think it was the Golden Globes or the Oscars, or maybe the Paume de Frites Americains over at Cannes. But for all the money that’s pissed away on buying air time on the visual medium, the main message remains an aural one. The GOP propagandameisters have attempted to use images of 9/11 to zap the fear center of the American psyche and it blew back in their faces. Uncle Dem needs to develop some strong, simple images to go along with the “voiceover.”

Red… red ink is the color of debt. America is in the red… now more than ever. Red is the color of blood when it spurts out of a wounded American soldier sent to Iraq in a war based on lies. And, yes, Red is the background of the Confederate flag that mealy mouth Saxby Chambliss wrapped around himself to defeat war-hero Max Cleland in Georgia. Oh, and lest we forget the red ties made popular by the GOP during the Reagan era, and the notorious red hand of Ulster, from which so many rednecks descend.

The handlers of the two Skull and Bones boys might agree to some secret campaign ground rules a la Bush-Dukakis in 1988 (Poppy Bush disavowed them when his campaign outed Kitty Dukakis’ booze and pills problem. For his part, Dukakis did not call Poppy on his mistress, the venerable Ms. Fitzgerald). But for Uncle Dem, red should be the color America associates with the enemy. Debt. Blood. Racism. Hatred. Class conflict.

George W. Bush = RED GOP=RED Morning in America, nope. Code Red in America.

posted by Groom 5:08 PM

Sympathy for Martha

I feel bad for Martha Stewart. Not because she didn't break a law or two--she obviously did--but because the laws she broke were not all that serious (certainly not "insider trading") but rather the kind of thing that the average Joe Schmo would in most instances be allowed to cop to, get a wristslap, maybe a fine and community service but no jail time. Martha was what Tom Wolfe called in Bonfire of the Vanities "The Great White Defendent." She was singled out by prosecutors to be made an example of so that politicians can say, see, the law applies to everybody. Except, in this case, a famous defendent was made to defend herself because the usual options for settling the case without trial weren't there.

posted by Jerry Bowles 3:58 PM

Bush’s Other Ad Campaign
(The One You're Paying For)

BushCo is the only beneficiary of a an administration sponsored $12.6 million campaign to persuade us that the Newt Gingrich/AARP/Health Industrial Complex changes in Medicare are a good thing. These are strong compelling ads running nationwide for the entire month of March. Where the Bush campaign ads are fuzzy, these are clear and they have a strong, singular message—“Same Medicare, More Choices.” The only problem is they are misleading and cross the line from information to political advocacy, so much so the Government Accounting Office is looking into it—after the ads have already run.

Make no mistake about it, the ads are CYA for the Republicans and Bush for the flaws in the bill. Remember the pharmaceutical and healthcare industry benefits have already kicked in, but the Medicare “beneficiaries” need to wait until 2006 for their benefits to fully kick in, a key point that the ads overlook. Remember this is the bill the administration lied about, putting the estimates at $400 billion for ten years when the bill was before Congress, but revising the estimate after it was signed into law upwards to $540 billion—some of Bush’s fuzzy math.

The administration is getting away with it because it can and we let them. They claim the campaign is education, not advocacy. So far, only CBS has refused to run the ads.

posted by Josh 1:53 PM

Pit Bulls for Vice President

Picking up on the comments to Opus' post from yesterday, I contend that the pit bull criteria for VP is old, unsuccessful politics, it turns women voters off, and they by and large control who becomes president. (If you go to the link, check out the graphs on both parties.)

Who was the last successful pit bull who won as Vice President? Spiro T. Agnew. He even looked like a pit bull. There hasn’t been one since, and Dan Quayle doesn’t count. Who was the last pit bull on a losing ticket? Jack Kemp in 1996, sorta. Kemp’s problem was he was smarter than Dole and the roles should have been reversed. It was hard for Kemp to go negative—his tax reform agenda kept getting in the way. Gore, as a vice presidential candiate, was not a pit bull either--let's not confuse good debating with pit-bulling.

What we have seen in past years are surrogate pit bulls. One example cited in comments to other postings is Clark taking on Bush’s military record. Dean was a pit bull and he could still fill that role. Kerry is no slouch and as they attack him, HE will respond, not delegate the response, as it should be. Kerry calling this administration “the most reckless” presidency in history is pretty good red meat, in my book.

There will be no shortage of pit bull attacks on both candiates. Tom DeLay is the benchmark.

There is a comprehensive site on all past vice presidents and vice president candidates. A good site, if you want more.

posted by Josh 9:14 AM

Just $190 million more to go

How great is it that the Bush campaign just spent $10 million to make themselves look bad.

posted by Evelyn 9:00 AM

Haiti... have we already worn out our welcome?

You wonder just how detached deposed Haitian narcocrat Jean-Bertrand Aristide must feel in the Central African Republic. He's been dissed by the local chief-of-state and warned to keep his mouth shut if he wants to find a permanent home. And back in Haiti, the folks are starting to act out their rage against the US Marines involved in the international "stabilization" operation. I suspect that if poll numbers don't offer much support for this element of Obersturmbannfuehrer Rove's "product line" there will be some diplomatic mumbo-jumbo, a scaled down US presence and we'll see the French running the show for the UN in less than four months. As for Aristide... he may have discovered his own Hotel California.

posted by Groom 6:11 AM

Prepare to Gag

Check out the op-ed piece by Bob Herbert in today's New York Times. Learn how the Republican legislature is dealing with a long waiting list of poor kids in need of health care--BY ELIMINATING THE LIST AND RESTRICTING ENROLLMENT IN THE PROGRAM THEY WERE WAITING FOR.

Then, if your stomach will let you, check out the op-ed by Paul Krugman on the scare tactics being used in the push to dismantle Social Security.

posted by John 5:20 AM

Thursday, March 04, 2004

White

The thing that surprised me about the 60-second Bush ad ("Lead") is how white it is. I didn't watch it looking for racial make-up, but it was so obvious I couldn't help noticing. So I went back and did a count, just to be sure. I don't pay much attention at all to this in my life, but I am interested in marketing strategies and I just don't believe the people who made this commercial didn't realize that it features 10 Caucasian adults, 8 Caucasian children, and only 5 people of color. There are three different families shown -- all white. There's an Asian-American teacher, with white students. African-Americans are represented by one woman executive and one elderly woman with her daughter. There's one guy working construction who looks less white than the guy he's working with, but maybe he just has a tan.

I love living in a country that is rich in diversity -- but that's not the country I saw in that ad.

posted by Opus 8:43 PM

Spiro Agnew has resigned. Mets up 2-0.

It is well worth your time, if you miss it this evening, to go over to the NPR website and listen to Nina Totenberg's first report on Supreme Court Justice Harry Blackmun's files. She's had access to the files (over 1500 boxes!) for the last month prior to their official release. I have always admired her ability to present complex legal issues clearly and to give her listeners a way to personally connect with every case she reviews, so I've looked forward to hearing this series of reports. She does not disappoint.

Blackmun is alone in having willed this kind of access to his files and the files themselves are extensive because he apparently kept everything. Some of his fellow Justices were not happy about this, but he felt that the needs of history were greater than any particular Justice's desire for the Court's processes to be private. In this first report, you'll hear about everything from the silly notes the Justices passed each other during cases to the machinations that went on behind the scenes during challenges to Roe V. Wade. I'm looking forward to the rest of the series.

posted by Opus 6:52 PM

Dusk In America: Bush’s Opening TV Salvo

I’ve seen the ads. These are no way close to Reagan’s classic “Morning in America” ads that they are trying to mimic. There is no punch, no emotion. The one-of-everything images are blurred and don’t tell a story. I saw them as parts of news stories, not as our fellow citizens will see them, without context or commentary, interrupting their cable programs at the end of the day. It’s mostly a cable buy in 15 or so pivotal states with some national runs, again on cable. The Fox boys will no doubt get a bigger share in round two.

The controversial, but predictable, exploitation of Ground Zero images is very weak; it appears to be a compromise between those who didn’t want any images used and those who wanted a more direct—and emotional—use of the images. I’m sure the latter will be coming. I can’t blame the president for using Ground Zero images, I would. But I would do a single ad, focused exclusive on 9/11 in somber, but reflective tones.

Picking up on recent posts here about the word “change” the ads end with the words “Steady leadership in times of change.” This is the battle-line, and Jerry Bowles is right, Kerry needs to drop his line, “Change is coming to America.”

posted by Josh 1:41 PM

The Bush Ads

For those of you who need to see the ads, you'll find them here. I'll let the victims of 9-11 speak for the tastelessness of having their tragedy, once again, co-opted for political gain, but I noticed a couple of interesting things.

In the first ad, “Lead,” Laura Bush does most of the pitch. What is that all about? Are her credibility numbers stronger? Or is Karen Hughes trying to get him to reach out to women? Personally, I think it is another example of going to Mommy to straighten things out after you've made a shambles of the playroom. Perhaps my more Freudian fellow-bloggers would like to delve into this.

In the last ad, the phrase “turning the corner” is used to try to convince us that things are going to improve. Does this strike anyone as odd, resonant as it is of Herbert Hoover’s “prosperity is just around the corner”?

I think we all should be talking to our brokers about how to take advantage of the lift that all stocks in media (except, of course, print) will be getting from the millions that are going to be dropped in the next eight months. Evelyn Keyes

posted by Jerry Bowles 1:35 PM

Backdraft

Early reaction to Shrub's new ads exploiting 9/11:

"It's as sick as people who stole things out of the place. The image of firefighters at Ground Zero should not be used for this stuff, for politics." Firefighter Tommy Fee, Rescue Squad 270, Queens .

posted by Jerry Bowles 10:09 AM

The VP Choice for 40-Something Naive Idealists

John Lewis, Congressman from Georgia and a honored leader in the civil rights movement.

I know, I know. Too liberal, too risky, blah, blah, ABBcakes. Let me dream for a moment, though -- dream about energizing a big part of the Democratic base, about countering this FMA nonsense with a civil rights veteran, about seeing two men who have shown real-life courage on the same ticket. I'm over the Dean thing, but I want to feel that enthusiasm again and I'm afraid Kerry/Gephardt, Kerry/Clark, Kerry/Bayh, even Kerry/Richardson...well, they ain't gonna do it for me. So let me dream for a second or two...

posted by Opus 5:31 AM

What eras are we in?

A friend writing in The Well suggests that America has regressed to the 50s but the 60s are still before us. I write in reply the following:

I do like the way you think. But the 50s are not where we're at. That's when I grew up and nothing was more defining of that era than big organizations staffed by men who had all experienced training, if not fighting, in the big conscript armies on which the organizations were modeled. The ethos of lifetime employment and taking care of your people was very much alive (which is why, for example, my father, who spent forty years at Newport News Shipbuilding as a machinist and quality control inspector retired with lifetime medical coverage for both himself and my mother).

There's a junkyard dog quality to competition now, and while the latest Harvard Business Review includes a short piece reporting that companies that invest in employee development do better in the market than those which do not, the story is interesting precisely because, as the authors put it, so many companies "can't shake the feeling that employees are costs. Big costs. And they treat them that way. Quarterly earnings off? Cut the perks, rein in training, and downsize." (HBR, March 2004, p. 18)

My favorite sociologist, Zygmunt Bauman argues that critical theory, created to defend freedom against the threat of totalitarianism, now has a new task, to rebuild a fractured public space for reasonable debate. Be nice to think we can do that--but a move from the stiffling 50s to the let-it-all-hang-out-do-your-own-thing 60s? We've been there, done that. That's history, not now.

posted by John 3:21 AM

While Political Battles Rage

Could this be a forecast of political battles to come, with viruses named Repug and Demos ravaging competing parties' on-line presence? Will big rats follow where the little hackers play?

New versions of the Mydoom, Netsky, and Bagle have all appeared on the Internet in the last 24 hours. Antivirus researchers have uncovered text messages in two of the worms that suggest a battle is underway between virus writers, antivirus companies say....

All three variants resemble their predecessors, which spread in e-mail messages with vague-sounding subjects using infected attachments such as .zip, .exe, or .pif files. The viruses have their own SMTP engines and harvest e-mail addresses from infected computers, which are then targeted with infected mail, antivirus companies say.

The Bagle and Mydoom worms also open communication ports on infected systems which can be used by remote attackers to route unsolicited commercial ("spam") e-mail, send malicious instructions to the computer, or install remote monitoring software, says Al Huger, senior director of engineering for security response at Symantec.

See the rest of the story at PC World.

posted by John 2:07 AM

Wednesday, March 03, 2004

If You Support Gay Marriage, Then You Support the Terrorists

The unrestrained id of the culture warriors (voiced in this case by syndicated columnist and talk host Dennis Prager) has decloaked itself. Prager's column is a laff riot on its face, but probably not dismissable as mere provocative hyperbole. Plenty of the wingnuts would readily agree with it, and it's more than likely only a preview of coming rhetorical attractions. (Thanks to my friend Karen for the link.)

posted by jabartlett 4:26 PM

Front loading for dummies

we count the money worse than we count the votes…

It’s a pity that none of the old media have “embeds” at the finance committees of the Dems and the GOP because, like Willie “the actor” Sutton used to say… “that’s where the money is.” We hear numbers from the old media, but they are about as accurate as a Bernie Ebbers balance sheet.

In a global economy this is a global election and that means that parties and candidates will be receiving money from “foreigners.” That's the equivalent of highly paid NFL stars associating with "unknown gamblers." That "ferner" money, wittingly, or unwittingly, will bring heavy juice to our electoral Skinner box. While Andy Kohut and his bean counters at Pew are busy counting votes, the greasy thumbs in both parties will be using any means necessary to shovel offshore bongo bucks into their campaign war chests. But nobody’s going to go there. Forget it, Jake… it’s Chinatown.

In a nation where people can hold a single thought for about seven seconds, front loading has created an eight month campaign. In Britain, France and Germany, campaigns run about two months. Ours is not so much a battle to win hearts and minds but an economic war of attrition. It makes a mockery out of the traditional “convention process” that both parties use to justify their existence. Why bother to have conventions if the old corporate media is going to select the candidates, frame the issues and tell you who to vote for. Terry "the top" McAuliffe seems happy as a clam with all this. Ditto DLC shlemazel Al From. With this in mind, perhaps it becomes easier to understand the kids running around wearing “voting is for old people t-shirts”… probably assembled in Guatemala from fabric imported from the USA… probably ordered by Obersturmbannfuehrer Rove’s minions.

posted by Groom 4:07 PM

The Noose Tightens

Turns out that those Saddam links to al Qaida are even more tenuous than the missing WMDs, according to a new Knight-Ridder investigation. The hits keep on coming.

posted by Jerry Bowles 3:43 PM

The opposite of “wishy-washy” is “nuts”

Ralph Waldo Emerson in his essay, “Self-Reliance,” was famously quoted as saying “a foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds.” The second part of that quotation is less well known: “…adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines.” Whether “little” in this case means “few” or “small,” the reference to our current President could not be more apt.

Any day now, if we live in a battleground state or we can stomach Fox news, we are going to be barraged with millions of dollars of air time of “John Kerry is wishy-washy.” How to respond?

It won’t work to explain away each vote the guy has taken for the last 20 years in office that he may have reversed in some fashion. The American public is not detail-oriented. What will work?

Answer #1. We don’t live in a black-and-white world and Kerry is not a black-and-white guy. We do live in an incredibly complex world with many and various enemies, who may even be our friends today. You need to have a President who can plot a course in the real world, not in the “dress up” world of make-believe.

Answer #2. A view of history would reveal a lot of leaders who consistently led their people down a rabbit hole. (Personally, I don’t think Bush has any particular beliefs, it’s just that BushCo is all enthralled with what Reagan “proved.” Reagan did have a few core stands that he stuck to, which may have had some root in the reality of his experience, and that made him appear resolute. But BushCo’s mission statement is committee-driven: reduce taxes for the rich, convert Social Security to private investment, shove the God of the Old Testament into government, front and center, and invade Iraq. And by golly, they’re sticking right to those principals, bless their hearts.) So the good offense is to point out that Bush may be focused, but the goals he’s focused on are extreme and not shared by the vast majority of grownups.

Would either of these responses work? We need to find a current equivalent of that brilliant ad that buried the political career of the last great man of “Integrity and Morality” who ran for President: a little girl picking daisies before a mushroom cloud explodes.

posted by Evelyn 10:23 AM

Kerry-Clinton (Not That One, The Other One)

Stephen Gillers, a professor of law at New York University, has an interesting favorite candidate for vice president--Bill Clinton. I'd prefer John McCain but Kerry-Clinton (Bill, not Hil) has a nice ring to it

posted by Jerry Bowles 9:47 AM

Will Kerry stop the rape of Social Security?

or will he and the Dems just go through the motions?

If John Kerry wants to get more Americans to like him he ought to bone up on Social Security. Average Americans have been paying more into Social Security than the fund has been paying out in benefits since 1983, about $1.8 trillion. Thanks to tatalech Greenspan, Americans this year will be paying about fifty percent more in Social Security taxes than the government will pay out in benefits. An article by David Cay Johnston in the New York Times outs Greenspan as the jacker of Social Security back in 1983. At that time he was chairman of a "bipartisan" commission, recommended that Social Security be converted from a pay-as-you-go system to one in which taxes are collected in advance. That was how he got his ticket punched to be top Fed head. Sadly, the big rip started when the Dems controlled Congress, during the Reagan years. Remember "voodoo economics" and "the Laffer curve" and the rest of the supply side drat?

The $1.8 trillion contributed by Americans since then has all been spent. "Congress borrowed that huge surplus, replacing the cash with Treasury notes, in order to run the day-to-day business of the federal government," Johnson says. They do stuff like this in Argentina every day and it goes unnoticed. But the US is not supposed to be a third world economy. THanks to self-censorship you didn't hear these details on NPR or in the Washington Post or LA Times or on the Sunday talk shows... will Kerry and the Democrats come clean with the American people on this key issue?

posted by Groom 4:43 AM

9-11 Commission Rejects Bush Administration's Definition of "Cooperation"

Via Kevin, at Calpundit, I see that the 9-11 Commission has told the President what he can do with his offer of a one-hour sit down with only the two co-chairs. Good for them!

Now, when the press goes after Scott on this issue tomorrow, would someone please ask him why he keeps saying the President's cooperation is unprecedented? What, exactly, would the precedent be for this situation?

posted by Opus 1:51 AM

A Slogan for Kerry: “No More Change”

The most overused and overrated word in the political lexicon is “change.” All politicians are for it, even those who’ve been around for a hundred years and have never actually changed anything except their combovers. “Change” is one of those soothing, non-specific words that implies that the candidate promising it feels your pain and is going to do something to make your life better but hasn’t quite figured out what that might be yet but will certainly do so should you vote for him or her.

Thus, it was comme il faut, I suppose, for the victorious John Kerry last night to invoke the cheerful call to arms “Change is coming to America,” which sure sounds a lot like a campaign slogan. In most elections, this would be the usual harmless bromide; most voters don’t really expect a new president to change all that much from the last one. Americans are reasonable people, after all, and most presidents govern from the center. Right?

Well, wrong. Change—real change, radical, relentless, mind-numbing change--is what we’ve had since the day George W. Bush took office. A booming peacetime economy with budget surpluses well into the future has been changed into a stuttering jobless recovery with deficits as far as the eye can see. Peace has been replaced by a policy of all war, all the time. Habeas corpus has become discretionary. Science has been replaced by faith. Tax cuts are for the already wealthy. Big Brother now camps out at your house and demands to see your medical records. This is an administration that wakes up every morning and says to itself—how can we make the world a nastier, more unpleasant place today?

It is fair to say that George W. Bush is the first president ever elected by promising not to do too much. He has since gone on to be the most radical, activist, divisive president in modern history. That’s why the most important change this year is the one that brings back some sense of status quo to our frazzled nation, which has lost its moral and cultural bearings through the Bush administration’s venal misuse of the tragedy of September 11, 2001 to advance a long-established quasi-facist agenda. That's why “Take Back America” has a lot more ring to it than “Change is coming to America.”

No offense, John, but I don’t think change is what the majority of the American people are looking for right now. It’s time for a little normalcy. And, oh yes, pick Gephardt as your running mate. Totally boring man, no skeletons, no surprises, no possibility of change. The Deaniacs will bitch and moan but, in the end, they'll hold their noses and vote against Bush. And who knows? Maybe Gephardt can turn Missouri and Ohio into blue states. And that’s about all we need.

posted by Jerry Bowles 12:23 AM

Tuesday, March 02, 2004

Shameful

I think the thing I'm most angry about these days (yes, "angry," Dr. Krauthammer, and I'm a therapist so don't try to plant your pseudodiagnoses on me) is the fact that George W. Bush constantly uses 9/11 as a persuasive tool while doing everything possible to get in the way of the 9/11 commission. He fought its existence, he fought its impartiality (the Kissinger appointment), he has fought to limit its access to documents and witnesses, and he has fought against a short extension of time for the completion of their work. This last week we learned that he intends to respond to the committee's request for a meeting/testimony by giving a total of one hour to the committee co-chairs.

What on earth could be more important for this country than a thorough analysis of this horrific event? The President's behavior -- callously using the tragedy while blocking our ability to understand and learn from it -- is obscene.

Now, Norbizness and one of his commenters show us the numbers, financial and human.. Read 'em and weep.

posted by Opus 8:31 PM