|
Thursday, September 16, 2004
What Bush Bounce?
From PRNewswire: The latest Harris Poll finds that Senator John Kerry and President George W. Bush are now enjoying almost equal levels of support. Immediately after the Republican convention in New York, several polls showed President Bush jumping ahead of Senator Kerry with a clear lead of between six and 11 percentage points. This "convention bounce" has now disappeared.
These are some of the results of a nationwide poll of 1,018 U.S. adults surveyed by telephone by Harris Interactive(R) between September 9 and 13, 2004. It seems that the short-term effects of the Republican convention have worn off. The poll shows Senator Kerry leading 48 percent to 47 percent among likely voters. Obviously, this small lead is well within the possible sampling error of the survey (however, it would be incorrect to label even a one-point lead, as some media have done in the past, a "statistical dead heat").
One reason that President Bush is no longer ahead is that a slender 51 percent to 45 percent majority does not believe that he deserves to be re-elected. To which we can only add: No shit, Sherlock.
posted by Jerry Bowles
10:23 PM
A Friend Writes
This article in Salon is extremely important.
One quote:
But the 2001-2004 Bush/Cheney record provides no support for the boast that Republicans are well equipped to fight transnational terrorism. On the contrary, that record, both before 9/11 and after, reveals an ideologically driven administration that has consistently made disastrously wrong decisions about how to terrorism.
I Reply
No kidding.
To the argument that the US hasn't had a major terrorist incident since 9/11, reply
"Sure, I understand, the administration is just like this little rabbit's foot...it keeps elephants out of the room. Don't see any elephants here, do you?"
To the argument that George W. Bush is decisive and doesn't change his mind, reply,
"Sure, great leadership....just like the first lemming over the cliff."
But seriously, if you are of a reading disposition and want to understand why so many Americans still support George Bush, read John Micklethwait & Adrian Wooldridge, The Right Nation: Conservative Power in America. Learn why this isn't just people being foolish or scared. The radical right wing of the Republican Party has been working on this and working on it for years. We will have to do likewise if we want to change the country back to the way we think it ought to be.
posted by John
9:31 PM
We’ve all done it…
As an initiate of the same national college fraternity as our president, Delta Kappa Epsilon, I’ve got to confess that I’ve been guilty of some of the same “clubby” misdeeds that Nicholas Kristof mentioned in his article and are being discussed here on the blog. Even my old pal P.J. O’Rourke, the original “Republican Party Reptile” went Deke for a few weeks when we were freshmen back at Miami University in Ohio; he opted out perhaps not being too keen on the hazing. But P.J. didn’t need a big dose of Deke in order to churn out a generation of “Kristof syndrome.” It's just that not everybody who's "done it" gets to be president and has an Obersturmbannfuehter Rove to brainwash the body politic into thinking the schande is a good Christian act.
To put Kristof’s piece into perspective one needs to acknowledge that the same behavior(s) existed on a far broader scale among members of organized labor during its heyday, and continue to some extent today. Remember how Richard Nixon harnessed the “hate power” of the “hardhats” during his 1968 presidential campaign, turning them against students, hippies and anybody else who opposed his Vietnam policy. Blacks will remember the hatred and opposition they faced trying to join craft unions of George Meany’s American Federation of Labor (AFL). You won’t hear the toppers at the AFL-CIO talk much about how the AFL ran a blood feud with Walter Reuther’s Congress of Industrial Organizations that continued well after the two organizations merged. I remember heading down to New Orleans one spring break during the mid-1960s with a few Deke brothers from the Miami of Ohio chapter. When we got to the Crescent City and checked in at the hoity-toity Tulane University Deke chapter one of the more senior brothers came downstairs in his bathrobe and said “you Jewboys better go over to the Sammy house (the Jewish fraternity, Sigma Alpha Mu) because you can’t sleep here.” This was the chapter that disgraced former House speaker-elect Bob "Bill Clinton should resign" Livingston belonged to. Remember him? Everything cuts both ways. Have times changed?
posted by Groom
6:47 PM
The Looking Glass Wars
Spies for Israel in the Pentagon. Now, spies for Taiwan in the State Department. Who's looking out for our side?
posted by Jerry Bowles
6:26 PM
Troop Morale
Read this. I believe it's called blackmail.
There will be stories coming out about the conditions of service in Iraq and the consequent bad morale. Does anyone doubt the army, at Bushco directive, is doing it's best to suppress these reports now? I can only imagine the pressure being put on soldiers not only to re-enlist but to keep their complaints to themselves. Who do you think would be more severely punished, the soldier who thought it fun to pile naked Iraqis on top of one another or the one who would tell a local reporter about the deathtrap in which he's serving? (We know which sentence will be publicized by the military and Bushco, in any case.)
Yesterday John Edwards, in a speech in West Virginia, in response to a question, said unambiguously that a Kerry-Edwards administration will never reinstate the draft. I think Kerry-Edwards would make a political mistake staking out a "no draft on my watch" stance - it's too easy to point out that circumstances may someday be dire enough to require a draft and therefore the position is not only politically driven but militarily irresponsible. But there is much ground to gain by legitimately pointing out the current circumstances of our volunteer soldiers.
posted by Blackdogred
1:56 PM
Ce Matin La
Hey, let's talk about something cheerful. Like many people of my age, I suspect, I cling to the old masters--Springsteen, the Stones, your basic "classic" rock. Let the kids have their music after we're dead. Lately, I've kind of re-discovered Joni Mitchell who (or, is that whom?) I didn't appreciate enough the first time around. I could drink a case of her and still be on my feet.
But, in an attempt to prove that the old mind hasn't atrophied, I've been sampling some "new" (last ten years)music and discovered that I'm a "low-fi" or "dream rock" or "electronica" kind of guy; thanks, in part, to the fact that I've developed a crush on Sofia Coppola although I'm much too old for that kind of trouble. I like Air, the French duo who did the music for "Virgin Suicides" and much of the music for "Lost in Translation." I especially like a French group called Autour de Lucie. Think The Carpenters meet Pink Floyd. Beth Orton is today's Joni and there is a great Canadian gal group called the Be Good Tanyas that manages to create the dream rock mood with acoustic instruments.
Who's got some recommendations?
posted by Jerry Bowles
11:04 AM
Mon Semblable, Mon Frere du Frat
Like Jerry, I was struck by Nicholas Kristof’s column yesterday about Bush’s Guard Service, or lack of, but what struck me particularly was the description of the young Bush at Harvard Business School provided by one of his former profs:
Professor Tsurumi says he remembers Mr. Bush so vividly because he was always making outrageous statements: denouncing the New Deal as socialist, calling the S.E.C. an impediment to business, referring to the civil rights movement as "socialist/communist" and declaring that "people are poor because they're lazy." (Dan Bartlett, an aide to Mr. Bush, denies that the president ever made these statements.)
Now, maybe you folks from Up North found these asides from the seventies somewhat unusual, but matriculating as I did in a large, elite Southern university, I knew TONS of guys like Bush who shared and shouted similar opinions.
Add to those opinions a personality type that was also rampant: hard-partying, back-slapping, rabidly anti-intellectual, anti-feminist, belligerently defensive about anything that smacked of ethnic sensitivity and you have our current President in a nutshell.
(I daresay that there were more than a few of these guys at Dartmouth during time as well.)
One fraternity, which included most of the legacies from old Southern families, featured a youth who routinely attended cocktail parties -- to which the faculty were invited --dressed only in his tassel loafers. The brothers in this same fraternity still referred to their ancient black retainer as the “house boy.” Another brother, who measured well over six feet, found it necessary to shove a young coed down a hill because “she spilled some beer on him.”
(Interestingly, quite a few of these guys, after entering the “real world,” and a few totaled cars later, gave up drugs and drinking for Jesus.)
Was this simply a way to get attention during a period of post-Viet Nam national reevaluation, although no doubt they truly believed this stuff, or was it something more?
In reading this piece about Bush from a psychological standpoint, I was struck as well by the similarities to the families who spawned these W clones: father fights WWII, comes home to make fortune and is largely absent, lots of hard drinking to substitute for introspection, large families where Mother rules but is second-class citizen, a sense that your place in life is guaranteed as long as you toe the line.
In other words, the successes of these families in attaining and maintaining the privileges of the upper rungs of American life came with a price: the stunted moral development of their children. Perhaps these families were ever so, but I wonder, was I experiencing then, and are we all experiencing now with the current occupant of the WH, the greatest failure of the Greatest Generation?
posted by Evelyn
11:03 AM
It's Lying Time Again
It should surprise absolutely no one to learn that the Bush administration has been sitting on an extremely bleak National Intelligence Estimate of the immediate future of Iraq since July while continuing to spin the public line that things are going just hunky dory. Iraq prospects through the end of next year are, at best, tenuous and unstable and, at worst, civil war. Once more, Junior Bush has created a mess that will take his apologists decades to clean up.
Some mornings I wake up and think "Let's just re-elect the bastard and get this cancer on the national psyche behind us." Surely, by 2008, even the most rabid will have seen that unless we change course the good old U.S. of A. is headed on a slow cruise to disintegration as a nation. But, then again, maybe not.
posted by Jerry Bowles
10:04 AM
Inquiring Minds Want to Know
Did the Evil Karl write the CBS memos? Maureen Dowd and Wonkette are spreading the rumor. After all, it wouldn't be the first time he faked something like this....
And if the CBS researchers start poking around, would they please let us know if they find Valerie Plame's file and traces of Anthrax as well?
posted by Evelyn
8:11 AM
Bu$h “bounce” flatlines in “battleground states”
Fresh polling data from the LA Times poll tracker (reg. reqd.) indicate that voters are giving Kerry the edge in Minnesota and Michigan. In Minnesota voters prefer Kerry to Bu$h by a margin of 9 points, 50 to 41 percent. Across the lake in Michigan, Kerry leads by 6 points, 50 to 44 percent. Ohio continues to be a problem for Kerry, with Bu$h whupping him by 12 points and Diebold machines poised to “tabulate” the vote (if election not postponed due to weather or homeland security). Just two weeks ago Sir Rudy Giuliani was top of the pops in Gotham. But Empire State voters prefer Kerry by a margin of 52 percent to 41 percent for the president. If Kerry could convince the American people that he is “one of us,” stop his pontificating and forget about trying to win the Mr. Blackwell award for best dressed candidate he might get lucky and bushwhack himself into the White House.
posted by Groom
7:07 AM
|
