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Saturday, July 03, 2004
Fahrenheit Church and State
The Southern Baptists have some major problems with the Bushovic move to mobilize religious groups to vote for him.
posted by Groom
6:22 PM
Will Cheney play in Parma?
Growing up in Shaker Heights, Ohio with our 3,000 seat high school stadium I remember my first trip across town to play Parma High School in a Lake Erie League football game. It was the beginning of the Vietnam era. Parma, a sprawling blue collar suburb on the west side of Cleveland comprised of white ethnic groups who moved out of the blighting inner city. Home of the Parma Redmen, always in the Associated Press “top 10” Ohio high school football powers along with Massillon, Canton McKinley and Niles. Their quarterback was Joe Sparma, who later starred at Ohio State and went on to win a World Series as a pitcher with the Detroit Tigers. Parma stadium sat 17,000 and it was full. Talk about intimidation… Across the line of scrimmage they called us “college boys” and “sissies” and “fuggin peaceniks.” A lot of Parma boys served and died in Vietnam. Some of us called them “gominas” and “fuggin polocks.” We had two or three black players on our team and in the pile-ups one would hear the “n-word” combined with other expletives. I’d seen hockey players but this was the first time I saw a kid my age playing across from me with no front teeth.
Here it is 40 years later and Dick Cheney is humping the bush in Parma. Plus ca change. Same demographic snapshot. A lot of traditionally democratic families who crossed over to the GOP because of race issues, Nixon's "forgotten Americans" propaganda and the Reagan mythology. Some say that Cheney’s bus tour of Ohio, West Virginia and Pennsylvania is designed to test his popularity in these “battleground states.” If he gets a bad report card will it be exit stage right? Or does the Dickster hold too many cards?
posted by Groom
3:39 PM
Mission Staged

The really sad thing about the admission by the Army that it stage managed the toppling of Saddam's statue is that it was always obvious (even to the journalists who were there) that it was a piece of political theater and yet virtually every newspaper and TV station in the world ran it uncritically as a symbol of Iraqis celebrating their new-found freedom. A handful of Chalabi's boys, aided by Army tanks, threw out the bait and the press swallowed it, hook, line and picture.
posted by Jerry Bowles
9:41 AM
Kerry Net Strategy now Focusing on Voters
See the story inWired.
The Internet has already proved a huge success as a small-donor fundraising tool. Now the question is, can it also help to get out the vote. Can the Kerry campaign score where the Dean campaign fumbled?
posted by John
9:29 AM
Will the Poodle Become a Bulldog?
Interesting story found in The Scotsman. Opening paragraphs read
Blair seeks distance from Bush for elections
FRASER NELSON POLITICAL EDITOR
Key points • UK government to become more critical of Bush following handover of power • Polls reveal Blair suffering from association with Bush with Labour voters • Straw criticises Americans for demobilising Iraqi army
Key quote "It’s hardly a great surprise that I don’t subscribe to a neoconservative view of life" - Jack Straw, Foreign Secretary
Story in full TONY Blair is to drop his policy of unflinching support of George Bush’s foreign policy, deciding that the handover of power in Iraq has now released him from his diplomatic obligations.
The Prime Minister has made it clear to Jack Straw, the Foreign Secretary and Geoff Hoon, the Defence Secretary, that they can now point out where disagreement with the Bush administration occurs.....
posted by John
8:46 AM
Rule Number One In Handling Wingnuts
NOVAK: I didn't say he was engaging -- and you're lying.
BEGALA: I'll read your words.
NOVAK: And when I said that . . .
They hate to get called on their bullshit!
posted by Michael
1:15 AM
Friday, July 02, 2004
Colin Powell plays Christopher St. It's wicky-wacky-woo time in Jakarta, with our moral compass playing the gay blade to close down an Asian security summit. The only thing missing was a Blue Light Special with little boys pants half off. Since it's outside his jurisdiction, FCC topper Michael Powell can only read it and weep. Props to Colin for having a sense of humor.
Don't Axe, Don't Tell

posted by Groom
6:09 PM
Nader's Nadir
Could this be the beginning of the end for Ahmad Chalabi look-alike Ralph Nader? The Arizona Republic is reporting that his people have taken him out of the race in that state. Over in New Mexico it's not uncommon for dead people to sign election petitions. Arizonans (and the "independent" Democrats who filed a legal action to challenge Nader) see things a little differently.
posted by Groom
5:40 PM
Speaking of the Pope
My friend, Tom Teicholz, interviews famous producer/husband/cokehead/raconteur Bob Evans today in the LA-based, Jewish Journal, about Bob's favorite picture: no, not Chinatown, but his documentary about John Paul II.
posted by Evelyn
3:21 PM
Stop the Bubba machine
Bubba Bandar won't admit it, but all is not well between the House of Saud and the Bushovic. The International Herald Tribune reveals that Crown Prince Abdullah isn't comfortable with the Chalabi boys strutting around Baghdad in their Saville Row suits. Lord Cheney of Halliburton can't keep the Dems from further outing the Saudis on money laundering for terrorists and Al Qaeda. The Saudis have "flip-flopped" on their support for Saddam more than the GOP says John Kerry has "flip-flopped" on national security issues. Will a Saudi-financed team rescue Saddam from his captors and spirit him off to Mecca where he could live out his years as a Saudi retainer in a penthouse hotel suite, much as Idi Amin did?
posted by Groom
2:23 PM
Krugman for Pope
Got to give major props to Krugman for finding something new to say about Farenheit 9/11. At this point, it's not easy but his notion that many red state salt-of-the-earth types are shocked by the film because the "respectable" media has failed to report or glossed over many of its inconvenient truths strikes me as dead on. Those of us who read and write blogs already knew that the Bushes and the Saudis were tight; that Prince Bandar is known within the family as "Bandar Bush." We knew that Shrub sat and read "My Pet Goat" with the kids for seven long minutes after learning that the country was under attack while he waited for Andy Card to call Uncle Dick and find out what to do next. We knew that being a cool Neocon doesn't mean you have good personal hygiene.
But, a lot of people didn't know these things. In its efforts to play fair and balanced, (and, no doubt, cowed by all the flagwaving) the establishment media played along with the myth of Shrub, the decisive leader, immediately springing into action and rallying the forces of good. Moore deflates the myths that the mainstream press not only allowed to develop but actively promoted. And he's done it in a way that reaches the level of society hardest hit by Dick Cheney's dirty little war of choice.
posted by Jerry Bowles
11:37 AM
The Wind Done Come Back
Not too long ago, I came across my grandmother's application to join the Daughters of the American Revolution, in which she details the military credentials of an illustrious ancestor who joined up as an officer and was discharged as a private.
I've also heard the other side of my family extol the virtues of my great, great uncle who despite being a friend of General Lee and a university graduate, was a private in the infantry, becoming Yankee cannon fodder on Cemetary Ridge, and leaving a mind cultivated with Latin and Greek in an unmarked grave. (This happening almost on this day in 1863.)
As lacking in luster as these ancestors were, they formed a piece of the rich history of my Southern upbringing, placing me firmly in a cosmology that extended deep into our country's history.
How delighted I was then to read in the New York Times today that Essie May Washington, illegitimate daughter of Dixiecrat and Senator Strom Thurmond, is applying to the UDC, the subject of Eudora Welty stories and object of any well-born Southern girl. Pleased not only because Essie Mae's entrance will flush out any remaining racists in the membership, and there is not a chance she will be denied admittance, but also because it signals her forgiveness of the people and the past that kept her and her mother down. (She's also planning to join the DAR, who sixty-five years ago kept Mahalia Jackson from performing in their hall in Washington.) Those old gals on the membership committee should get take her application and write back on the nicest monagrammed paper a big "Thank you, Essie Mae," for joining up and not doing to us what we did to you.
posted by Evelyn
8:57 AM
Name the Underblogs
It's Friday before a long weekend; many of our regular readers have probably hit the beach or the backyard wading pool already. Let's have some fun. Take a look at our list of "Top Blogs" in the left column and tell us who should be on the list but isn't and who's on the list and shouldn't be...with a couple of sentences why. That's it. You don't win anything but you can do that rude Tony Soprano thing with the Italian sausages while barbequing if you like.
posted by Jerry Bowles
8:26 AM
The following article appeared in today's Tokyo Weekender.
What will John Kerry’s election mean to Americans living in Japan?
The obvious answer is straightforward, a feeling of immense relief. It will be simply and truly wonderful not having to cringe every time a Japanese or European friend mentions the Bush administration and asks about its arbitrarily walking away from international treaties, the missing weapons of mass destruction, the missing link between Iraq and Al Qaeda, the pictures from Abu Ghraib, the memos from administration lawyers claiming that the President may authorize torture and decide arbitrarily who is or is not an “enemy combatant,” or—from the business minded—the fiscal insanity that is putting the whole global economy at risk.
Along with that relief, there will also be a feeling of hope. John Kerry is an internationalist and an advocate of free trade. He has also been a staunch defender of the natural environment and a vigorous advocate for ending both US and global dependence on the world’s dwindling petroleum resources. Women will rest assured that this President will be a staunch defender of reproductive rights and very unlikely, indeed, to appoint Supreme Court or other Federal judges who would threaten those rights. Educators will know that this President will not cynically support a program named “Leave No Child Behind,” brag about it in his campaign speeches, then deliberately cut the funding for it, leaving schools facing new demands without the resources to meet them and forcing school districts to seek increases in property taxes or cut other programs.
Military personnel will know that John Kerry won’t wrap himself in the flag, waste taxpayers’ money on carrier landing publicity stunts to announce the end of an unended war, accuse his opponents of failing to support the troops—then turn around and slash veterans’ benefits. They may recognize, too, that here is a genuine hero, who went deliberately in harm’s way to save the life of a soldier for whom he felt responsible, and a man with the good sense to recognize when a war has gone wrong and speak out against it. (“Treason!” shout his enemies. “Tell it to Generals Clark, McPeak, Odom, and Zinni,” say his friends.)
Members of the business community will also have reason for optimism. Instead of an administration with ideological blindfolds and a President Bush described by former Treasury Secretary Paul O’Neill as impervious to rational argument, even from members of his own party—the deaf leading the blind—they will, instead, be able to work with a thoughtful pragmatist. President Kerry will know the difference between strong convictions tempered by awareness of changing realities and blind faith in divine election.
We should not look for radical changes in trade or security policy vis-à-vis Japan, say Washington insiders. What we should expect is more attention to economic and trade issues, a more engaged posture, and tougher stance toward currency manipulation, an issue in dealing with China as well as Japan. There will also be greater willingness to engage in bilateral negotiations with North Korea as well as continued participation in the current six-nation process.
Make no mistake about it: the problems that face the world today—terrorism, ethnic conflict, genocide, epidemic disease, environmental destruction, depleted resources, and the awful poverty that affects more than half of humanity—will not go away on the day that John Kerry is inaugurated as America’s forty-fourth president. But Americans living in Japan will, like people everywhere, enjoy a rekindled hope—the hope that America will, indeed, “be America again.”
John L. McCreery International Vice Chair Democrats Abroad
posted by John
3:16 AM
Day-um! I Sure Loves Me Some Freewayblogger.com!

posted by Michael
12:25 AM
Thursday, July 01, 2004
What If
Somehow last week I managed to miss this: "Voting Official Seeks Terrorism Guidelines," in which the chairman of the Election Assistance Commission says hey, we need some guidelines for canceling or rescheduling elections in case terrorists try to strike on or close to Election Day. The chairman, DeForest Soaries, notes that the September 11 attacks happened on the day of New York's mayoral election. And also, he says, remember what happened with the train bombings in Spain.
Talking about the train bombings in Spain is a bit of a red herring, though: they didn't disrupt the election all that much. It went off as scheduled, all except for the part where the party of coalition-of-the-willing member Jose-Maria Aznar got beat. And you can argue that even if there'd been a law in place that mandated, say, an automatic 60-day delay in the event of an attack, the mere fact of the attack would have affected the election anyhow. As for the idea of "canceling" elections--let's not even go there, Bubba.
But let's give the commission the benefit of the doubt, even though it owes its existence to the Help America Vote Act, which some suspect is designed to do the opposite, at least to some voters. It's a fine idea to put some sort of guideline in place. Do I think we'll get it by this fall? No chance. This is one issue I am guessing Bushco would rather trust to improvisation--and serendipity.
posted by jabartlett
6:14 PM
Florida Judges Get Even
A state court has ruled that CNN and other news organizations can obtain a copy of Florida's list of convicted felons who are ineligible to vote.
posted by Evelyn
5:51 PM
Saddam's New Look
Someone call Queer Eye for the Iraqi Guy:
Brian Rodgers
posted by FPN
3:18 PM
If it's the Sudan, it's slavery Show me an Arab in the Sudan who doesn't call a black African a slave and I'll show you an Arab without a machine gun. Slavery continues big time in the Sudan and elsewhere in the Arab world. Some might think that "Arabs" are getting a bad rap on this, but the historical antecedents are there, ditto Euro colonial powers like Portugal. How ironic it is that arch Semite and Nation of Islam honcho Louis Farrakhan, with his light skin, doesn't seem to mind what's happening to his dark brothers and sisters.
posted by Groom
2:31 PM
Paging Atticus Finch
According to the nice folks over at Hit & Run, who got it from a reader who got it from a friend who reads Arabic newspapers, Saddam Hussein has requested a copy of his favorite novel whose title, when translated back into English, is "Kill the Bird That Laughs" and was written by a certain Miss Harper Lee. Looks like the evildoer de tutti evidoers is really a Boy Scout at heart. (Ok, ok, I hear the groans.)
posted by Jerry Bowles
12:32 PM
Out of the Closet
The name of the CIA guy who wrote Imperial Hubris is Michael Scheuer and he doesn't really want to be anonymous--the Company is just doing damage control, according to the The Boston Phoenix. Scheuer has been with the CIA for 22 years and was in charge of its Osama bin Laden station.
posted by Jerry Bowles
10:47 AM
Depose the Dictator, Dismantle the Infrastructure, Stir Up an Insurrection, And
According to this GAO report summarized in The Seattle Times, Iraq is, no duh, substantially worse off in several important respects than it was under Saddam Hussein. Who but the carpetbaggers, a.k.a. Halliburton, is making out over there?
posted by John
8:49 AM
Well, What Does a Party Do When It Controls The White House and Both Houses of Congress?
We Democrats expect the Republicans to govern badly. But whoever thought they'd have trouble governing at all, their control of the White House and both houses of Congress notwithstanding? Reading Jonathan Weisman in the Washington Post on The Budget Impasse in Congress, we find that the monolith is cracking, with moderate Republicans joining Democrats to beat back the charge of right wingnuts who never saw a tax they didn't want to cut regardless of putting the nation's finances in the toilet. Let's hear it for sanity.
posted by John
7:43 AM
More Money and Tighter Fisted, Too
Interesting item in The Hill.
Some feared that McCain-Feingold would be the death of political parties. Given what I heard at the legal briefings laid on for last weekend's Association of State Democratic Chairs (ASDC) meeting in Boston last weekend, it has, at the very least, created hellish complications and generated lots of new business for lawyers with plausible interpretations of what the bill actually says.
That makes it very interesting, indeed, that both parties have already raised more hard money this year than the total amounts of hard and soft money raised in 2000. Plus, on the other side of the ledger,
The efforts to raise so-called hard dollars have been labor-intensive and costly. Some fundraisers quip that these funds are truly “hard” dollars because they must be raised in limited increments, which means that the parties must persuade thousands of people to give $10, $20 or $30 to raise an amount that a wealthy individual could once match with a single six-figure soft-money check.
To avoid spending the bulk of their contributions on the towering cost of small-bore fundraising, the parties have had to dramatically cut their costs and drop many of the perks formerly enjoyed by donors and staff members. .
Gone are the goodies of yesteryear when parties were thrown at top-class hotels and staffers flew full-fare, using bought at the last minute tickets, as they jaunted about the country. Now it's all lean and mean, with half the folks doing twice the work.
P.S. The Christian Science Monitor has also picked up this story.
posted by John
6:25 AM
Forget it Jake, its E-mail Chinatown was a movie. But this is for real. The Washington Post examines why E-mail does not have the same legal protection as telephone conversations. With the power to become a private sector NSA for E-mail, the big E-mail services, inter alia AOL and Earthlink, are already out with their damage control denials. The blogosphere has been uncharacteristically quiet...
posted by Groom
5:29 AM
Wednesday, June 30, 2004
So you think your e-mail is private...
Think twice... the 1st US Circuit Court of Appeals in Boston has ruled that its ok for companies who offer email to surreptitiously track subscribers messages. Caveat emptor.
posted by Groom
6:08 PM
God Help Us
Forget Edwards, Drudge says it's going to be Hillary. Any takers?
UPDATE: I suspect (hope) that this is right-wing disinformation designed to "re-energize" the Bushies who are beginning to stray from the fold. Nothing Kerry could do would be more likely to doom his chances than going with the Hil. Now that he's put the alligators to sleep, it would be incredibly stupid to wake them up.
posted by Jerry Bowles
2:38 PM
John Axecroft... 86
That's the buzz. The worst US attorney general since Harry "Teapot Dome" Daugherty during the super-corrupt Harding administration. The Kompassionate Kristian Krooner won't need Spencer Stuart or Korn-Ferry to hook him up at the job he's eminently qualified to perform... director of the Convention & Visitors Bureau in Branson, Missouri.
posted by Groom
1:40 PM
Irrational Thoughts
Joel Steinberg is getting out of prison today after serving a 15-year sentence for brutally beating his 6-year-old adopted daughter, Lisa, and leaving her to die on the floor of his Greenwich Village apartment while his battered, perpetually stoned-out-of-her-mind companion, Hedda Nussbaum, tried to decide what to do. Nussbaum was originally charged with Steinberg but the charges were dropped when she agreed to testify against him. She went on to become something of a poster gal for battered women. To this day, Steinberg, who was then a successful attorney, has denied responsibility for Lisa's death
There are certain crimes that grab you by the gut and never let go. For me, this is the one. I don't believe in the death penalty and I no longer hunt since the last of my hillbilly uncles died. But I have this little piece of deep-woods property in southern West Virginia that I'd love to show to Mr. Steinberg sometime. And, frankly, I think Hedda ought to see it too.
posted by Jerry Bowles
11:45 AM
Bushovic as Elmer Gantry
A photo-op, preaching the gospel of Christian theocracy to the unwashed in Istanbul. As empty as photo-op in Louisiana the day the Saudis attacked America. As empty as our efforts to press the Turks to participate in the Northern Front that would have "won" the "War of Lies?" It's not about Democracy, or "winning"... it's about "churching" the heathens.
posted by Groom
10:10 AM
Alas, Edwards
There is a rising drumbeat among bloggers and political junkies for John Kerry to put aside the matter of lack of personal chemistry and choose John Edwards as his running mate. For awhile it looked like Kerry might need some buffing on the military/tough on terrorism front but now that most of the country agrees that Iraq was a mistake he no longer needs to go that route. Thus, Wes Clark is expendable. Dick Gephardt would make a great Secretary of Labor and even his fellow Missourians prefer Edwards for the VP spot. Tom what's his name contributes nothing to the campaign and probably gives the press and the RNC new meat for the sausage grinder.
The common wisdom now is that Kerry is more than a match for Bush on the fundamentals; what he needs most is a personality. That's where sunny John Edwards comes in.
Now, I grew up south of the Mason-Dixon and have done a lot of business with guys who hustle around Atlanta in their alligator shoes. When Edwards launches his "born in a mill town" routine I instinctly check to see if I still have my wallet. He is Slick Willie in a pink bow and dancing heels, multiplied by two; an ambulace chaser and born politician, which is not meant as a compliment. He didn't win a single primary in which he ran.
Still, if this is what it takes to beat Shrub, bring him on.
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