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Saturday, June 05, 2004
Ronald Reagan
From the perspective of a liberal Republican like myself, Ronald Reagan's death is an occasion to recall how much more principled and thoughtful he was than the current resident of the White House. He had old-fashioned "quaint" beliefs like keeping government out of people's homes and bedrooms and not starting wars of choice. He believed in due process and civil liberties and, yes, the Geneva Conventions. How civilized and decent he seems by contrast.
posted by Jerry Bowles
5:06 PM
Dubya the multi-dysfunctional personality
Click here for the animation that will make even Turdblossom Rove laugh.
posted by Groom
2:56 PM
The Veep from Checkerboard Square
While never directly implicated, Bishop Danforth resigned from the world’s most exclusive club in the firestorm of the Keating Five. He lost credibility with many moderate Republicans when he became chief advocate for the nomination of Clarence “I’m not Opus Dei” Thomas to the Supreme Court. After the Clintons named him chief nettoyeur for their god squad fiasco in Waco, the Bishop turned on them, becoming a live wire for impeachment. When Arthur Andersen laid an egg on Enron, the Bishop was brought in to instill morality and ethics. As US Special Envoy to Sudan in 2001, Danforth probably had a couple of prayer meeting Wheat-Chex breakfasts with Nurse Frist when the now majority leader was doing his “missionary work” over there. A couple months of high profile work at the UN reading Kofi Annan’s phone logs… bad report card for Lord Cheney from the sawbones and on the Plame case and bingo! Checkerboard Square hits Times Square… Vice President Danforth.
posted by Groom
2:26 PM
Is Nothing Sacred Anymore?
The only unabashed socialist in the U.S. Congress -- and he's shilling for Wal-Mart in Vermont? Say it ain't so, Bernie!
posted by Michael
3:58 AM
Friday, June 04, 2004
Sandbox time for El Jefe
From Capitol Hill Blue
President George W. Bush¹s increasingly erratic behavior and wide mood swings has the halls of the West Wing buzzing lately as aides privately express growing concern over their leader¹s state of mind.
In meetings with top aides and administration officials, the President goes from quoting the Bible in one breath to obscene tantrums against the media, Democrats and others that he classifies as 'enemies of the state."
Maybe Anthony Hopkins is available? Evelyn Keyes
posted by Jerry Bowles
9:01 PM
Specifics please
If we look at the presidential election as a boxing match, the voters are the judges. In order to win, the challenger must “show more” to defeat the champion. Josh writes below that he thinks Kerry is starting to get some traction. What I see is about enough to get the Brahmin from Louisburg Square a one way ticket to Palookaville.
Here’s Lord Rummy, humping the bush over in Asia, laying out specific US security plans for the region, and pushing the #1 product line, the global war on terrorism. And while polls show that Rummy is not too popular at home the Asians think highly of him… after all the key to successful global security policy is continuity. Lord Rummy, global defense visionary, spinning the web of the post-Cold War security paradigm that Kerry will inherit by default if he wins.
Only Howard Dean had the guts and moral integrity to call Bush on the War of Lies and we know what happened next. This is not to say Dean would be the man, rather that Kerry’s detachment, in spite of the minimal “traction” he is getting, does not project him as a champion. He needs to come up with a knockout punch to win the fight.
Ironically, I just got an e-mail from Terry McAuliffe saying that him and Kerry are committed to moving America in a new, more promising direction. What direction is that, guys? Roadmap to where? Palookaville? If I wanted to get there I could ask Sid Hutchins from Hush-Hush Magazine.
One more thing… Terry, have your schleps do the math. Those ads in the New York Times soliciting contributions telling us that it only takes about $175 to send George Bush back to Texas (on the bus)… actually, if you buy the ticket down to Waco one week in advance, it only costs $79. We wouldn’t want to think an ace fund raiser like Touchdown Terry was getting his math lessons from another Dem fundraiser, the late, great Billie Sol Estes, now, would we… split the difference. Four more years… John Kerry, president.
posted by Groom
1:54 PM
And They Said Gore Was Nuts
Do you suppose he's talking to the paintings yet?
posted by jabartlett
11:53 AM
Triangulating the Presidential Race
In his first major pitch for his soon-to-be-published memoir, Bill Clinton told the booksellers convention, “A lot of presidential memoirs are dull and self-serving. I hope mine is interesting and self-serving.”
His book is in three parts: growing up in the 60s, the process of being a president, and how he would operate in a post 9/11 world. In another of his trademark triangulation of issues--the moral relativism that gave him some legislative “victories” but relegated the Democrats to a minority party for the first time in his lifetime--listen to Clinton's take on Bush and the mess we are in: “You shouldn’t worry about this. What’s going on has happened before in America, and it should be no particular cause for concern to you.”
Unbelievable! He continued to play the wise parent by chiding those of us who are horrified by the course of events and said, in no doubt a veiled defense of his own failures, that Bush is only trying to find a new political paradigm in this changing world.
What? It’s clear to me that Clinton is trying to neutralize the coming criticism from the right about him, not caring about anyone else, except perhaps Hillary, in hopes that his "centrist" views will erase her fast-dimming reputation as a liberal. My worst fears about the timing of this book are confirmed now. I can see Clinton taking a middle ground between Bush and Kerry, thus weakening Kerry’s position and strengthening Bush’s. And, as I predicted here, this is coming at a time that Kerry is just beginning to get some traction against Bush and starting to articulate the differences. Thanks a lot, Bill.
posted by Josh
8:53 AM
I don't usually recommend Tom Clancy, but....
Started reading Clancy's technomilitary thrillers a decade ago, when daughter Kate won her appointment to the US Naval Academy. Didn't buy them, though. Just picked them up whenever they appeared in the free paperback book exchange at the YC&AC, the club we belong to in Yokohama.
Today Slatehas a review of one of Clancy's new series on US military commanders, Battle Ready, jointly authored with and about the career of US Marine Corps Major General (ret) Anthony Zinni, which, the article tells us amplifies Zinni's devasting critique of the Iraq war.
But the real reason I just went to Amazon.com and ordered Battle Ready is that, just a week ago, I picked up at the club an earlier volume in the same series, Every Man a Tiger, co-authored by Clancy and General Chuck Horner, USAF (ret), who commanded the air component during Desert Storm. It's a fascinating book on many levels, not least for what it reveals about US military thinking circa 2000, the thinking that clearly informed US strategy and tactics during the opening stages of the current Iraq conflict. If Battle Ready is anywhere as informative, it should be a must-read for everyone here.
posted by John
4:14 AM
American Jihad
The story of Brandon Mayfield, the Portland, Oregon attorney who was arrested and detained for two weeks when the FBI misidentified his fingerprint, sure dropped off the charts in a hurry. This is not, apparently, because of any effort at public relations containment by an obviously embarrassed FBI, but because Mayfield’s brother blew the chance for him to do the network talk show round by demanding so many limos and expense-paid trips to New York for the extended Mayfield family that NBC and ABC finally said, “forget about it.” I assume the brother must be an attorney also.
That’s too bad because the Mayfield case provides a valuable cautionary tale for those Fox News intellectuals who believe the Justice Department’s post-9/11 assault on civil liberties is okay because it only targets brown guys named Mohammed. Not so. In John Ashcroft’s America, bad things happen to white people with Christian names, too.
For those of us who can’t remember back past two or three news cycles, let us go to the videotape. On May 6, the FBI walked into Mayfield's law office in suburban Portland and arrested him as a material witness in the March 11 terror attack on four commuter trains in Spain. An automated searching system had compared a smudged partial fingerprint found on a bag of detonators at the scene of the Madrid bombing with millions of prints on file and came up with 15 possible matches. F.B.I. analysts made the final judgment that a print submitted from Spain was identical to prints on file for Mayfield. In an affidavit presented to a judge, Portland-based Special Agent Richard Werder reported that three F.B.I. examiners considered the match to be a "100 percent identification" of Mayfield. A court-appointed examiner agreed.
Werder spent three paragraphs in the affidavit focusing on the fingerprint, noting in passing that the Spanish National Police was not convinced that the FBI’s “100 percent identification” was valid but, hey, we’re the FBI and what do those Spanish people know anyway. The fingerprint was an “absolutely incontrovertible match” to Mayfield, a “top U.S. counterterrorism official” told Newsweek magazine for its May 17 issue.
Eight paragraphs in the arrest warrant were devoted to the fact that Mayfield is a convert to Islam. Among the “probable cause” noted by Special Agent Werber and his associates: Mayfield is married to an Egyptian-born woman; he represented a local Muslim who has since been sentenced to federal prison and may have known somebody who knew somebody who knew bin Laden; he was contacted by a representative of an Islamic foundation that the government believes is linked to terrorists; and he advertises on a Web site referred to as the “Muslim yellow pages.” Most damning of all: he was seen going into a mosque. As Special Agent Werber put it “…“since March 21, 2004, surveillance agents have observed Mayfield drive to the Bilal Mosque located at 4115 S.W. 160th Ave., Beaverton, on several different occasions.”
Only problem, of course, is that it wasn’t Mayfield’s print. The FBI and the U.S. attorney’s office were forced to admit their mistake after a federal judge threw out the case on May 24. That was a few days after Spanish police said they had matched the fingerprint to an Algerian living in Spain and more than a month after Spanish police first told the FBI that they did not believe Mayfield was a correct match. Mayfield was exonerated after being detained for two weeks as a material witness in the Madrid investigation. The FBI issued him a “full” apology.
The local U.S. Attorney and the Portland FBI spokesperson both insisted that Mayfield was not targeted because he was a Muslim and blamed the misidentification on a “poor copy” of the print used for analysis. What they didn’t say is that the automated search produced 15 potential “matches” for the smudged print but somehow Mayfield, the only Muslim in the group, found himself at the top of the list of the suspects.
Brandon Mayfield’s wrongful arrest was not an innocent mistake or an isolated incident but the deliberate result of the Justice Department’s jihad against Islam and especially American Muslims. From the rounding up and subsequent abuse of immigration violators in the immediate wake of 9/11 and the hysterical prosecutions of American “Taliban” John Walker Lindh and the so-called Lackawanna Six to the Army’s mean spirited persecution of Captain James Yee, the illegal detention of Jose Padilla, and now the Mayfield case, Elder Ashcroft’s Justice Department has made it clear that if you happen to be a Muslim, you’re guilty until proven innocent.
posted by Jerry Bowles
12:15 AM
Was Today Bush's D-Day?
What a day it was: Tenet takes a powder, while Bush "lawyers up" in the Plame investigation.
Coinky-dink? Maybe . . . maybe not.
posted by Michael
12:08 AM
Thursday, June 03, 2004
Real patriot games
When George W. Bush heard George Tenet say Iraq would be a “slam dunk” his Christian beliefs must have led him to conclude that white men can jump. Rolling into Iraq was, in fact, a slam dunk. Then the Turks screwed Lord Rummy and US diplomatic efforts to establish a critical “northern front.” The “northern front” botch was the true blunder that changed the course of operation “Iraq Freedom.” By contrast, Tenet telling Shrubby that Iraq would be a slam dunk is an effort by a DCI to make his boss feel good about something Lord Rummy and Lord Cheney want the lad to feel confident about… after all, it was their obsession.
The White House gamble on the timing of the Tenet “resignation” is that he will do less damage to the Bush reelection efforts from the outside than he will from the inside. While he is being characterized by some in the old media as being a scapegoat for “intelligence failures” that have caused the War of Lies to run amok, look at the blowback that has hit the White House during Tenet’s watch… the Abu Ghraib prison abuse scandal… the Chalabi Kleptocracy… the shadow NSC and intelligence coordination apparat being run out of Lord Cheney’s office by Lou “Scooter” Libby. The more Congress pressed Tenet during hearings on the Hill, the more the leaks kept coming. Is it no accident? Tenet made his bones on the Hill as director of the intelligence subcomittee and he was a Clinton appointee.
One day after Shrubby hires a mouthpiece to cover his butt on the Valerie Plame case the White House announces the “resignation” of Tenet. Without an Enron-style golden parachute, will the real “October surprise” come from Tenet, who, unlike Shrubby, could go mano-a-mano with Amarillo Slim in a game of liar’s poker.
posted by Groom
2:05 PM
The Honorable Thing
What Al Gore said about George Tenet on May 26: I want to offer a special word about George Tenet, because he is a personal friend and I know him to be a good and decent man. It is especially painful to call for his resignation, but I have regretfully concluded that it is extremely important that our country have new leadership at the CIA immediately.
posted by Jerry Bowles
1:38 PM
Read It and Puke
Condi on how history will view her husband...ur, boss.
posted by Jerry Bowles
12:21 PM
Tenet Quits
One down, four to go from Al's list. More likely, this is Chalabi's revenge.
posted by Jerry Bowles
10:56 AM
Extremely UnFair and Blatantly UnBalanced
Today’s New York Times coverage of Kerry and Bush is a painful and dramatic reminder of the skewed print media coverage of the campaign in favor of Bush.
Here are the facts: 8 headlines for Bush, three of them on page one, but only one headline for Kerry, buried on page A24—and even that one is opposite another headline for Bush. All of Bush’s headlines and stories appear before Kerry’s.
And it’s not just the stories, the pictures are worth a million words for Bush, but worthless for Kerry. Bush, on page 14, (page one is some editions) is pictured in a fun, jovial, likeable photo, matching flexing muscles with a happy cadet. By dramatic visual contrast, Kerry, ten pages later, is shown in a pensive funk—-fingers in his mouth and on his chin—-with reflective people of no importance or message value.
And, it’s not just today: this is a disquieting pattern that I have been noticing for some time. I don’t get it—-Rupert doesn't own the New York Times! What gives?
posted by Josh
8:29 AM
Wednesday, June 02, 2004
The Most Sensible Politician Ever To Call Crawford, TX Home
is not who you think:
Crawford may be the heart of Bush country, but the town's mayor says John Kerry is the best choice for president.
"I don't see where I'm better off than I was four years ago," Robert Campbell said Tuesday. "I don't see where the city is any better off."
The Kerry campaign recently listed Campbell as one of 100 black mayors around the country - seven of them Texans - who support the Massachusetts senator over President Bush. But the campaign has not focused particular attention on the endorsement.
posted by Michael
11:58 PM
Full Cooperation Explained
So Shrub has hired himself a private lawyer in the Valerie Plame case. Velly intelesting crue, number one son.
posted by Jerry Bowles
8:49 PM
Say, Jack, Is It True That French Cows Go "Moi, Moi?"
Via Reuters: Bush, who barred Chirac from his ranch in Texas last year, even indicated he was now ready to host the French leader.
"If he wants to come and see some cows, he is welcome. He can come and see some cows," he said.
posted by Jerry Bowles
6:38 PM
NASCAR update… Heinz 57 Special needs a new crew chief
How long will John Kerry’s “pit crew” let George Bush take him to the wall on Iraq and the “war on terror?” Indefinitely, so long as Kerry’s oblique policy statements and ads follow in the slipstream of the leader, opines Harold Meyerson in today’s Washington Post. One problem… as any NASCAR dad will tell you, trying to “slingshot” your way to victory only works half the time… even less so when the Ralph Nader Corvair Special is blocking the Heinz 57 car in its quest for the checkered flag. While Shrubby was out there comparing the “war on terror” to the crusade for freedom in World War II, Kerry was at a Vietnam vets memorial, flipping the bird to a heckler. The last thing the world needs is for Shrubby to be sitting at his desk the day after the election holding up a old newspaper with the famous headline “Dewey beats Truman.“ The time trials are over John Kerry… the race is on.
posted by Groom
6:35 PM
There He Goes Again
Bush gave the commencement address at the Air Force Academy today, where he made yet again his trademark linkage between 9/11 and the Iraq war, and compared Iraq to World War II for good measure: "Like the Second World War, our present conflict began with a ruthless surprise attack on the United States. We will not forget that treachery and we will accept nothing less than victory over the enemy."
Class, let's all say it together, shall we? THE ENEMY THAT ATTACKED US ON 9/11 WAS NOT THE ONE WE FOUGHT IN IRAQ. (Although the way things are going over there, the two are converging quite nicely now. Maybe that was the one of the administration's brilliant strategies. If so, it's the first one that's worked.)
Bush is headed for the G8 economic summit later this week, just in time for the observance of the 60th anniversary of D-Day, where he'll be tempted to stand on the beach at Normandy and compare it to the outskirts of Baghdad like a five-year-old is tempted by the cookie jar. The French have already warned that he'd better not try it. French officials say they fear it would inflame anti-American sentiment among the French people. Well, wave the red flag in front of the bull, why dontcha. He's liable to do it just for spite now, even though he claims to be best friends with Jacques Chirac these days. (And if Karl just goes ahead and has it put in the script, he may read it without even thinking about it.)
posted by jabartlett
5:01 PM
Kerry and the Addams Family
Much missed (by me, anyway) former New York Times editor Howell Raines has written a merciless critique of John Kerry, the presidential candidate who served in Viet Nam, for The Guardian. It is brutal, but has the undeniable ring of truth. Opening graph: A lot of Democrats are nostalgic these days for the exuberance that Bill Clinton exhibited on the campaign trail and for the clarity of his message: "It's the economy, stupid." With John Kerry, the message so far seems to be: It's the war, sort of, and it's the economy, maybe. Money graph: I personally find him easier to talk to than Al Gore, but there's no denying that he's ponderous. And he's pompous in a way that Gore is not. With Gore, you feel that if he could choose, he would have been born poor and cool. Kerry radiates the feeling that he is entitled to his sense of entitlement. Probably that comes from spending too much time with Teddy Kennedy, but it's a problem. The TV camera is an x-ray for picking up attitudinal truths, and Kerry's lantern jaw and Addams Family face somehow reinforce the message that this guy has passed from ponderous to pompous and is so accustomed to privilege that he doesn't have to worry about looking goofy. It's as if Lurch had gone to Choate. Recently, a lot of campaign reporters were writing that Kerry is altering his "populist" message and moving to the centre. If John Kerry was ever a populist, George W Bush is a Rhodes scholar.
posted by Jerry Bowles
3:10 PM
What's Your Vector, Victor?
While most Americans were busy dragging out the barbie and filling their wading pools over the long weekend, those wily beavers at the Iraqi Governing Council, a body not heretofore noted for its work ethic, were reconstitutuing themselves as the Iraq interim government. This sudden burst of industriousness appears to have taken everybody by surprise, including viceroy Paul Bremer and White House envoy Robert Blackwell, as well as poor Lakhdar Brahimi who was under the impression that he was picking the new government on behalf of the UN and managed to fool even George Bush (not that that is hard) into believing he was doing so. Having completely outflanked the hapless Bremer and Blackwell, the Governing Council simply appointed its own members to the important jobs in the new government and then dissolved. As an outcome it was probably as good as any. As an example of nation building in action, it proves, once more, that the Bush administration doesn't know its ass from a hot rock.
posted by Jerry Bowles
11:11 AM
Here We Go Again
Kerry launches a new ad today called “Optimists” and it has at least three problems, the least of which is its sophomoric production values with a dizzying zoom take on practically every scene, no doubt trying to appeal to a younger audience. Its most serious problem is its “whiteness,” evidenced by the single framing of white people that dominates the ad and the relegation of one Black woman to a split screen and one half of a Black man’s face shot from the back to get a little darker skin tone in before the spot ends on a warm, friendly face of Little John. The third problem is that it introduces yet another theme, this time, “Stronger at home, Respected in the World.” This attempt is as weak as all the others, but there are some signs that the sophomores are beginning to understand what a theme line should be.
Get me rewrite.
PS. If you want to see it, you need to live in a swing state or dig down deep into his website to spot the ad. This is another example of Kerry not being able to get even the most basic communications right and failing to understand Internet-based information and access.
posted by Josh
7:56 AM
Steel cage grudge match update…
Terrible George Tenet bounced off the turnbuckle with a vengeance and pinned Ahmed “our man in Tehran” Chalabi’s shoulders to the mat. The referee was just reaching the three count when… Rebbe Poyle, lurking at ringside disguised like a member of the Blues Brothers, threw a can of whoop-ass into the ring, creating enough confusion for Chalabi to escape. Cool Hand Colin Powell, manager of the Chalabi-Perle tag team, spoke to reporters at ringside… “We know that can of whoop-ass contained WMD made by Saddam Hussein for Osama bin Laden and that Terrible Tenet covered up the facts. Praise the lord for giving us patriots like Ahmed Chalabi and Rebbe Poyle, who take the high moral ground in their search for the truth…”
Don King Productions and Louis Farrakhan’s Nation of Islam are arranging details for the rematch, which will be conducted, as usual, under WWWF rules, and held prior to the coming October Surprise at a still undisclosed location pending a full security audit by a Halliburton subcontractor. Michael and Janet Jackson are penciled in to sing the National Anthem...
posted by Groom
7:06 AM
Uh, right. Hand us that back, too, OK? And, from now on, don't touch anything!
posted by Michael
2:04 AM
GOP Spin Machine (Dutifully Drinking Their Kool-Aid) Announce In Unison That Gore Is "Crazy"
Ah, the Mighty One-Note Wurlitzer! Bob Somerby over at the Daily Howler, and a new upstart --Media Matters (scroll down to May 28th) -- pretty much nail the wingnuts' lying asses on this one.
They should know better than to try to practice Soviet psychiatry (political dissent = psychosis) without a license!
posted by Michael
1:27 AM
Tuesday, June 01, 2004
More Bush lies
Australian PM John Howard has been a strong supporter of the "coalition of the willing." Now, on the eve of his visit with president Bush he finds out that senior administration officials failed to inform him about the existance of a prisoner abuse scandal in Iraq, making him look stupid in front of his own people when the info was finally leaked. No Aussie troops have been implicated... No wonder the Czech Republic is pulling out early.
posted by Groom
4:46 PM
Dirty Rotten Scoundrels
From the BBC: US terror suspect Jose Padilla had been planning to blow up apartment buildings and use a "dirty bomb", according to US Deputy Attorney General James Comey.
The former Chicago gang member has been held without charge at a US military prison as an "enemy combatant" for the past two years.
Mr. Comey said the US Justice Department was releasing new information about him in order to explain his imprisonment. Isn't it odd that with the Supreme Court about to rule on this case in the next few weeks that the Bush administration should just happen to make some new, highly prejudicial, details public. And this guy is an American citizen.
posted by Jerry Bowles
2:38 PM
Cheney Lied. Ho Hum.
Remember when Dick Cheney told Tim Russert on Meet the Press that "I have absolutely no influence of, involvement of, knowledge of in any way, shape or form of contracts led by the [Army] Corps of Engineers or anybody else in the Federal Government." Well, an internal Pentagon e-mail obtained by Time magazine reveals that Cheney's office had specific influence, involvement and knowledge of a multibillion-dollar Halliburton contract. The email, sent by an Army Corps of Engineers official, said the contract was approved contingent on informing the White House, but that the Corps "anticipate no issues since the action has been coordinated with the VP's [Vice President's] office."
posted by Jerry Bowles
12:35 PM
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